Natalie snorts. “First I was a them,” she says to Matt, “now I’m a you people. That’s mildly racist.”
“Out! Get out, now! I swear I’ll call security and have you removed if you don’t —”
“Dad. Knock it off,” Matt says.
“It’s cool, Matt, it’s cool. We were finished anyway,” Natalie says, standing. “You heal up. I’ll see you later.”
“No you won’t,” Wil says.
Natalie restrains a comeback and slips out of the room.
“Brought you a burger from Carnivore’s Cave,” Wil says, tossing a white paper sack onto Matt’s overbed table. “Thought you might be sick of hospital food.”
“That’s not the only thing I’m sick of. You need to stop shutting out my friends. Natalie’s the reason I’m alive.”
“Barely.”
“Still counts.”
Wil sighs and drops into the chair next to Matt’s bed. “Dammit, Matt, how many times are we going to go through this?”
“I don’t know, Dad. How many times are we going to go through this before you get it through your head I’m not going to quit? I have a job to do.”
“It isn’t a job, Matt, it’s suicide. You’re going to get killed if you keep this up. I don’t want to lose you. Your mother doesn’t want to lose you. Don’t you care about us at all?”
“Of course I care about you.”
“Then tell me you’ll quit. Put us first, like Dad did.”
“Like —? What?”
“You gave me Dad’s old journal, remember? Well, I read it, beginning to end. The last entry is dated seven months before I was born — the day Dad found out Mom was pregnant with me. You know what it said?”
Matt keeps his peace. He knows every word on every page, but his father has a point to make.
“He said it was time to quit. He had a wife and was going to have a child and he needed to put them first.” Wil grabs his son by the arm. “Put your family first, Matt, like Dad did.”
“If you really read Pops’ journal beginning to end, you’d know that entry actually wasn’t the last one. There was one more, dated eight years after his retirement,” Matt says. “He stopped by a package store on his way home from work to grab some wine for dinner. He was in the back of the store when some guy came in and pulled a gun on the woman at the register. Pops thought about intervening. Then he thought about you and Grandma and Uncle Terry and what would happen to them if he got himself killed, so he stayed hidden in the back. You know what happened?”
“No.”
“The cashier did something to spook the guy. He shot her, grabbed the money, and ran. She died on the way to the hospital. ‘Two children lost their mother tonight because I put myself before someone in need,’” Matt says, reciting the entry from memory. “‘An innocent woman didn’t get to go home to her family because I wanted to get home to mine. I could have done something. I should have done something. I have to live forever with the shame of knowing I didn’t.’ That’s not the kind of life I want for myself, Dad.”
“But that’s just it, Matt, you’re still a child. You have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t throw it away.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? You think if I died saving someone else, I’d have thrown my life away?”
“I think you’re too young to be —”
Matt holds up a mangled hand, a silent request for a moment to think. It’s happening again; they’re falling into another circular debate, both of them raising the same points over and over, neither of them conceding to the other. Something — someone has to give.
“All right, Dad, you say I’m a child who’s throwing his life away? I’ll make you a deal, then, and this is a serious offer. I’ll step down from active field duty until I’m eighteen. I’m not going to abandon my friends so I’ll still help out behind the scenes, and I plan to keep training with Natalie, but I won’t go into the field — but when I turn eighteen, I’m back in all the way. I’ll be a legal adult, which means you can’t complain, you can’t ask me to quit, and you can’t worry about me.”
“Matt, come on,” Wil says. “You’re my son. I’m always going to worry about you.”
“Can’t you worry about me while still respecting my decision? That’s all I’m asking for.”
“You’re asking too much.”
Matt nods and lies back, sinking into his nest of pillows. “Then I don’t have any reason to quit now, do I?”
Wil stands. A dozen different rebuttals swim around in his head, all of them familiar, all of them well worn, all of them proven ineffective time and again — just as any new argument he might conjure would be. He’s dealing with more than the latest in a long line of headstrong Steiger boys; he’s dealing with a young man who has raised obstinance to an art form.
That stubbornness may have saved his life. It might save his life again one day.
It might get him killed.
“I love you, Matt.”
“I know.”
His father crosses the room, slowly, praying his son will recant at the last minute. Wil Steiger hasn’t prayed for many years, not since his brother received his cancer diagnosis.
No one listened to him that time either.
THIRTY-ONE
Thursday, January 17.
That’s the deadline Edison sets for the big brains. That’s how long Matt, Dr. Quentin, and Tisha have to locate the Foreman’s base of operations before we resort to questioning Archimedes. Matt, armed with the data from Edison’s attempt to trace the Foreman’s communications system, spends so much time trying to solve the puzzle he risks setting his recovery back. I learn through Meg that as soon as her mother received the data she went into what the family calls “mad scientist mode,” which involves Dr. Quentin locking herself in her lab with a supply of onion bagels, frozen pizzas, and K-Cups and living like a doomsday prepper for days on end. During these obsessive periods, she emerges only to use the bathroom, restock her supplies, and maybe take a shower. Maybe. Her record is fifteen days, after which she emerged looking and smelling like she’d crawled out of her own tomb.
Edison extends the general task of brainstorming ways to find the Foreman to the Protectorate and the Quantums, but he keeps the rest of the New England HeroNet roster out of this particular loop. Like me, he’s feeling a tad paranoid and wants to keep what little intel we do have confined to an inner circle.
The Squad is assigned to dig up whatever we can on the man we knew as Carson Dent, assistant principal of Kingsport High School. The first thing we do is hit Google, but not surprisingly, that’s a bust. All we find are a few stories from the two town newspapers and the Kingsport Report blog. None of them are very insightful, although a Report story bearing the headline KINGSPORT HS HIRES NEW ASST. PRINCIPAL lists three schools where Mr. Dent previously worked — or should I say, allegedly previously worked. I make a few phone calls and discover that no one has ever heard of Carson Dent, much less employed him.
That sets off a whole new wave of paranoia. Stuart knows how administrator hiring processes work thanks to his mother, a sitting member of the Kingsport School Committee, and it isn’t as simple as reviewing a résumé and saying, “You’ll do, when can you start?” There are multiple in-person interviews, reference checks, sometimes site visits to the applicant’s current school. These aren’t easy things to fake your way through unless you have inside help — including, possibly, within the Kingsport School Department. I tuck that worrisome possibility aside for later investigation.
After school ends one day, I use a favorite trick of mine to sneak into the superintendent’s office and take a peek at Mr. Dent’s hard copy personnel file. By broadcasting a simple telepathic suggestion to ignore me, I can walk by just about anyone as if I were invisible. No one spares me a glance as I enter the office, snag his file, and walk out.
As I’d hoped, the file includes a residential address. Mr. Dent lived in — sorry, allegedly lived a few towns over in Randolph. Wit
hout Matt to chauffeur us around, it takes Stuart, Missy, and me a good chunk of that afternoon to get there by public transit and another half hour of walking to reach his apartment. I manage to telekinetically pop the lock without cracking the door or the frame, which marks the high point of my day. The apartment has been scrubbed, and I mean that quite literally; the whole place smells faintly of household cleaners. We check every nook and cranny and come up empty. There isn’t a hint of grease on the stovetop or crumbs in the oven, the refrigerator is pristine, there’s no razor stubble in the bathroom sink or stray hairs in the shower drain. We can’t even find holes in the wall from picture hooks. If it weren’t for the depressions in the carpet indicating the recent presence of furniture, I’d swear Dent never spent a single night in this place.
Throughout the week, Stuart and Missy and I make some gentle inquiries among our teachers, hoping to tease out of them anything that might become a solid lead — Dent’s favorite restaurant, a mention of a dinner date, passing references to family or friends outside of school, et cetera — but it’s another dead end. Dent didn’t socialize with his coworkers, and he never discussed his personal life at all.
Never say more than you absolutely have to. One of Edison’s cardinal rules of lying.
The day after our deadline comes and goes, Edison calls an all-hands meeting at HQ for Friday night. Meg drives down to attend in person. Matt and the rest of the Quentins Skype in, and I have to say that Dr. Quentin, in her own way, looks as awful as Matt. Her skin is pasty, there are ugly black circles around her eyes, and I would say she has several days’ worth of compounded bedhead going on, but that implies she slept. I have my doubts.
“I think we can keep this fairly brief,” Edison says, his arms folded and his eyes cast toward the floor. “We’ve exhausted all other options. The Foreman is in the wind and we can’t locate his base of operations.”
“If you’d give me more time to analyze the data,” Dr. Quentin grumbles in-between massive gulps of coffee. Caffeine and sheer force of will are the only things keeping her upright.
“I know, but I don’t believe we have time to spare. Every day we fail to act is another day the Foreman has to relocate his operation. We need to smoke him out before he vanishes again.”
“Is Archimedes really our only option?” Natalie asks. Edison throws his hands up: I have nothing better. “Great.”
“I’ve already spoken to the DA. He doesn’t consider Archimedes a major case so he’s willing to go as far as dropping all the charges, but only as a last resort. Obviously, if we can get him to roll on the Foreman for less...”
“When do we approach him?” Bart says.
“Tomorrow. I spoke to Warden Pearce this afternoon to set things up.”
“Let me know when to meet you and we can —”
“No. I want Sara on this one.”
Huh?
“Okay,” Bart says, taken aback. Yeah, you and me both.
“Why me?” I say.
“This is a light assignment; I only need you there to keep Archimedes honest,” Edison says. “And it never hurts to get some more field experience in.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“All right,” Bart says. He lays a hand on my shoulder and makes very deliberate eye contact. “I have complete faith you’ll do the job as well as I would.”
Ooookay...
Edison adjourns the meeting and tells me to go home and get some sleep, but I haven’t seen Meg all week, so screw that. She joins what remains of the Squad for some Chinese food, and then Meg and I head back to my house for a lazy night of watching movies. Well, that’s the plan until I find a note on the fridge from Christina letting me know she’s spending the night at Ben’s place. We watch maybe the first fifteen minutes of Hairspray before we...um.
No further comment.
***
Meg and I grab breakfast in town before she drops me off at Protectorate HQ. She tells me to call her when I get back, and she’ll pick me up. I offer a token protest. She doesn’t have to waste her day hanging out in town on my account, I say.
“I don’t have to, no,” she says before sending me on my way with a good luck kiss.
I meet Edison at the landing pad in the back of the complex where they park the Pelican, the Protectorate’s transport for non-flyers. I expect to find Bart or Natalie waiting there too since Edison usually flies on his own, but today he’ll be piloting the Pelican himself.
“Give me a few minutes to get into uniform and I’ll be good to go,” I say.
“Ah, yes, your uniform,” Edison says. He slides the Pelican’s cargo bay door open and makes a small gesture of presentation to a case on the floor. “Take a look.”
I open the case. The first thing I pull out is a new uniform shirt, dark purple with blue and white accents. The material feels denser than my old one, and there are sections that are especially dense and stiff.
“After your encounter with Damage Inc. I thought you could do with some better body armor,” Edison says. “And I took the liberty of giving you a little color. Your team really likes black.”
There’s a pair of matching pants in there too, and a new hooded cloak, and a new headset. This one is made of what appears to be clear plastic but is in fact, according to Edison, a durable polymer similar to the headsets Matt and Carrie wear. It has the same features too: comm system, heads-up display, and it can withstand the impact of small arms fire. I’m not eager to try that last feature out, but good to know.
I close up the Pelican, change into the new ensemble, and step out for inspection. “How does it look?”
Edison nods in approval. “I like it.”
“Cool. Thanks, boss.”
“After everything you’ve gone through lately, you’ve more than earned it. Shall we get going?”
We climb into the cockpit and strap into our seats. Edison fires up the Pelican, and a low vibration from the ship’s powerful maglev engine ripples through my body. My stomach lurches as we lift off. Away we go.
“What are you doing?” Edison asks.
“Taking a selfie.”
“Of what?”
“Us.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“You’re not planning to post that on Facebook, are you?”
“Uh...no?” I say. Edison frowns. I put my phone away. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’d appreciate a little discretion is all. My identity may be public now but I’m not interested in drawing undue attention to myself.”
“Didn’t you do a huge interview with some magazine a few days ago?”
“My one and only interview on the subject of my life as Concorde,” he says, “and I did it so I could demystify the issue and get on with my life. That doesn’t mean I want to continually point it out to the world.”
“Sorry,” I mumble again, duly chastised.
Edison waves it off. “No worries. Want to take the yoke for a few minutes?”
“The what?”
“The yoke. The steering wheel.”
“Of the Pelican?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“Why not?”
“Edison, I only have a learner’s permit for a car and you’re trusting me to fly an aircraft?”
“The sky’s nice and clear,” he says, glancing at the main radar screen to confirm his claim. He takes his hands off his steering whee— er, yoke. “Go ahead. See how it feels.”
Tentatively, I grab the copilot’s yoke, and Edison talks me through a few simple maneuvers. I climb a little, dive a little, bank gently right and left — nothing too taxing or dramatic, but it doesn’t stop my heart from beating like a jackhammer. He explains all the controls, which are a weird mash-up of airplane and helicopter controls. He also gives me a brief rundown of the radar system and how to read the display, of takeoff and landing protocols...
“If you’d like formal lessons on how to fly her, let me know,” he says, taking the controls
back.
“Really? You’ll teach me how to fly the Pelican?”
“I can arrange for you to take basic pilot training, which is the first step, and since it would benefit the Protectorate to have another qualified pilot, I’d of course cover the cost.”
“I, um, wow,” I stammer. “Edison, that’s — yeah, that’d be awesome. Thank you.”
He nods like it’s no big deal, and then radios in to Byrne to let Warden Pearce know we’re on our final approach.
“What’s the game plan, boss?” I say. “I assume I sit back, keep quiet, let you do the talking, and tell you if Archimedes is trying to take us for a ride?”
I expect Edison to offer an impressed compliment or two, some praise for my familiarity with an interrogation process. What he says hits me like a bucket of ice water to the face.
“I’m going to distract him. I’ll get him talking, and while he’s focused on me, I want you to slip into his head and get the information we need.”
“Excuse me?”
“Archimedes won’t give up whatever he knows willingly. He’s almost certainly going to demand clemency but we can’t risk cutting him loose. He’s far too dangerous.”
I sit there in stunned silence. I don’t say anything until we touch down at Byrne, at which point my temper boils over, and I let it all spill out.
“You lousy, lying, manipulative son of a bitch,” I say. I’ve never spoken to him like this before, even when Edison and the Squad were on less friendly terms, but right now, I’m absolutely ripped at the guy. “You didn’t bring me along so I could get field experience; you thought you could talk me into conducting an illegal telepathic scan.”
“Sara —”
“Is my new uniform really a gift, or is it a bribe? Would you have offered to teach me to fly the Pelican if you weren’t trying to buy me off? Answer me!”
Edison’s lips press into a thin, bloodless line. “I told you, Archimedes is too dangerous to let loose into the world. If we let him go and we fail to follow through on taking down the Foreman, we could be putting ourselves in greater danger than any of us have ever known. If the Foreman snatches him again, he could be used against us in ways we’d never see coming. Is that what you want?”
Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play Page 25