Recursion Read online

  “Yeeeah.” She smiled at my reaction. “So we have to tell everyone something. Yes, you’re the hero who flew the President to safety and took down Seif-al-Din, you’re still a newbie, you just got off the recovery list, and you still haven’t formally completed CAI certification.”

  “Then I can’t do it. I can’t be team leader. Everyone would have to know why, and we can’t tell them the truth.”

  “Of course not. Then the wrong people would know, too.”

  “So why are you smiling?”

  “Because we’re going to do a Blackstone. Look, Villains Inc., the Wreckers, they already know something’s up with you. You just won’t die. You’ve fought way above your sidekick weight three times now. Twice when they’ve come after you, and once when you come out of nowhere to cut short their shot at the rest of us. Something’s going on.”

  She brought up my public file on her epad. “Look at your fight record so far. Last year you engaged in five known fights. You took down Brick and Cryo, saved Baldur from El Doppo, helped in the Freak Show riot, took down Brick again, and then fought at Whittier Base. The only fight that wasn’t a clear win was the riot, and at Whittier Base you took out Seif-al-Din. Seif. Al. Din.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Then you’re on the injured list recovering from almost dying. You finally get back in the field . . . and now—” She brought up my last week of posted action reports. There were the public comments on my “save” with the gravikinetic, more comments on posted images of my fight with the qlippoth. Yesterday’s fight had created an explosion of comments that included posted cellphone pictures of my counter-assault from the Bean with the Hillwood team. “Now you do this. And when the full press-kit report of yesterday gets released, it’s going to be all about Blackstone’s last stand and your arrival with the cavalry.”

  I shook my head. “So I did the job. That still doesn’t magically qualify me.”

  Her smile got broader. “Okay, I’ll spell it out. From the outside, your record is not the story of a newbie cape who isn’t even certified yet. Some of our Deep Fans have already been talking about it. Clever people that they are, they’ve figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” I was completely lost.

  “You come out of nowhere, and get picked right up for the Sentinels before getting any formal training. We tell everyone you’re getting ‘on the job training.’ And then you win and you win and you win and you win. Sure, you talk all new and inexperienced, but it can’t be true. The truth is you didn’t have your breakthrough when the Teatime Anarchist dropped the Ashland Overpass on you—that’s just when you got outed, when everyone learned there was another Atlas-Type in town.”

  “I—what?” I was surrounded by crazy people. Why had I not noticed?

  “Before that, you were obviously covert ops. Someone as harmless looking as you? You’re perfect. You’ve been all over the world, wherever the fire’s hottest.” Now Quin was laughing. “Kidnap rescues. Extractions and insertions. Wet-work. Your covert resume is growing every day.”

  “They can’t— Nobody can believe that!” I knew about what Quin called Deep Fans. Deep Fans knew everything publicly available about their idols, could recite their Fight-and-Save Stats like an athlete’s statistics, and speculated endlessly about what they didn’t know. Most of them were perfectly nice, but a subset regularly engaged in flame-wars over which cape could kick which cape’s butt and why their hero was the best cape ever and your hero sucked. Since I didn’t pay attention to that part of fandom, I hadn’t heard anything like this.

  “You don’t think so?” Quin shook her head at my naivety. “Seriously, I can’t think of any story so out there that somebody doesn’t believe it. Sure, it’s only a fringe theory pushed by a few obsessive cape-watchers, but you can’t disprove it. Any facts you throw out there are part of the coverup, so don’t even try. But that means all we’ve got to do is refuse to comment on stories of your pre-Astra training and activities, while expressing our ‘utmost confidence in your experience and abilities.”

  “But the bad guys know who I am! They know there’s no—no ‘pre-Astra’!”

  “Do they really? In an organization like the DSA, sensitive information is compartmentalized. So maybe the leak knows about you, maybe not. If they don’t . . .” She waved her hands theatrically. “Look at this shiny, shiny object. Classic stage-magic misdirection—you know they’re looking for the trick, so you get them to look the wrong way.”

  “A Blackstone. Wow, that’s . . . brilliant.” As crazy as it was, it was a lot more believable than me being Future Girl—something we wanted absolutely nobody thinking under any conditions. “What do I need to do to sell it?”

  “That’s the beauty of it. You don’t do anything. You can deny all of it, because obviously none of it’s true.”

  “And when I’m outed as Hope? It’s going to happen.”

  “We’ll take that hill when we get to it.” She winked. “Misdirection Implausable deniability. Join me on the dark side. It’s lots and lots of fun.”

  My smile stretched so wide it hurt. It was so, so wrong, but after all the tabloid slander and haters trashing me with filthy speculation, just the idea of Quin’s plan made me positively giddy.

  “Do it. And—”

  Shell appeared on the main screen. “We’ve got a Superhuman Crimes Liaison call from Fisher’s team, boss. You’re still the one officially on that spot, what do you want me to do?”

  “Go,” Quin said. “Be seen doing what you do. I’ll get the release ready for a noon posting.”

  * * *

  I touched down outside the Metro. The old performance hall’s doors were open, but not to the public; four squad cars and a crime-scene tech van had been parked halfway onto the sidewalk in front and two uniforms standing outside kept curious pedestrians back. The uniform standing in front of a freshly posted Polychromatic Sharknado show poster waved me inside. Passing more uniforms in the lobby, I followed the smell of shots fired and sounds of raised voices into the old performance hall.

  Fisher stood by the low, shallow stage in heated debate with another detective. Beyond him I could see two bodies on the stage. Another body lay alone on the hall floor, the focus of one crime-scene tech’s attention. When I walked over to the stage, the second detective threw up his hands.

  “Great, and now the kid’s here.”

  I just smiled. I really didn’t have time for this, but picturing him spitting his coffee when Quin’s carefully dropped Blackstone-bomb hit the news over lunch gave me a warm, sunny feeling. “Fisher calls me ‘kid’ so I won’t take it like you mean it.” I held out my hand. “Astra, the Sentinels’ current Superhuman Crimes Liaison. Who are you?”

  With his only other choice being terminally rude, he shook my hand. “Detective Nowicki. And this isn’t one of yours.”

  “It’s not?” I looked at Fisher, then past him at the stage. I wasn’t up on the indie-rock scene, but if the two lying there were part of Polychromatic Sharknado . . .

  Fisher cleared his throat, pointed to the body on the hall floor with the hand holding his stubbed-out cig. “That one died by powers, not bullets. That makes this a superhuman scene, Nowicki, so I’m here and she’s here.”

  I blinked, confused, and Shell appeared just behind me. “Territorial dispute,” she whispered. “The current Chief is trying to move crimes not breakthrough-caused out of Superhuman Crimes.”

  So crimes against breakthroughs wouldn’t be investigated by the same team that investigated breakthrough-involved cases. I tried to remember back that far, but didn’t recall it being an issue when I got the SCL job the first time around. “What happened?” I asked Fisher.

  He waved to the two bodies on stage. “Polychromatic Sharknado was in rehearsal this morning when the guy on the floor back there busted in and started shooting. He got three before they got him.”

  “Three?”

  “These two, and a third in surgery now. The only uninjured
band-member is over there.” He pointed to a skinny blond guy in a tight t-shirt, black with Polychromatic Sharknado spelled out in rainbow stenciling, being watched by another pair of uniforms.

  “That’s what he says,” Nowicki interjected. “Right now he’s the only witness, and he’s not exactly reliable.”

  Fisher shrugged, took out a fresh cigarette. “So we’ll get confirmation at the hospital when Shokwave can talk to us. Do whatever you want, Nowicki, but until the captain says otherwise, this is my gig. Astra?”

  I followed Fisher over to the blond scarecrow, folded my arms to watch as he looked the guy over.

  “Martin . . . Lucius, right? Flare? Sorry to keep you in here.”

  The guy nodded, an extension of the twitches that he couldn’t seem to suppress as his eyes flicked between Fisher and me. “It’s okay, man. But, hey couldn’t you at least cover them up?”

  “Have to wait for the evidence techs to process the scene.” He pulled out his notepad. “Could you tell us what you told the uniforms?”

  “Sure. Sure. We were just rehearsing, you know? We had the guitar parts down, but Shokwave’s a new drummer and we’re opening in three nights.”

  “Shokwave. So the owner of the band was Echo?”

  “Yeah, man. He and Haunt played together for years, Echo’s power-amped vocals anchored their music. They brought me on to play backup guitar and do the lightshow.”

  “So you’re backup and effects, got it.”

  “Not the only effects. Shokwave—that’s with a ‘k’ and no ‘c’—his power let him do this projection thing. Like when you’ve got really big sub-woofers? The deep bass pounds the floor and feels like it’s thumping your skin? That kind of thing. I didn’t know he could focus it. That’s what—”

  “Slow down. So you were all rehearsing, and then what?”

  “Then him.” He pointed at the body face-down on the floor now being photographed. “He just came busting in—not that there was anyone to stop him. Got maybe halfway to the stage, started shooting.”

  “No talk? Threats? Exchange of words?”

  “No, man. Just shooting!”

  “Okay. And?”

  “And I flared, man. Flashed my guitar to blind him. And then the dude was down. Shokwave said he’d dropped some bass on him, nice trick from up on stage. There was blood everywhere, Echo and Haunt— They were gone. Shokwave was bleeding out. I stayed with him, did what I could ’til the ambulance arrived. That’s all.”

  “And there’ve been no threats? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

  “No, man. Well, you know, the usual stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Firsters—Humanity First shits. Some people don’t like the Metro hosting super-bands. Like, hey man, rock is rock, music is a universal language, you know? People who like . . . have no chill.”

  “They made threats?”

  “Nah, just stuck up flyers. Made it hard to get a drink, in the local bars, not without getting in a fight.”

  “And you never saw the shooter before?”

  “Don’t know. He’s still got his mask on.”

  Fisher looked over, saw that the photographer had finished. “Okay, let’s look.” He led us over to the body, pulled out a pair of latex gloves and squatted down by the crime-scene tech. “Can we?”

  When the tech nodded, he helped her take the body by the shoulders and turn it over. Flare turned green, and I managed not to make a sound.

  The shooter’s chest had been caved in like he’d been kicked by a Clydesdale (or taken an unrestrained punch from me). And I knew the man by his trench coat and spandex stocking-mask, dyed with a sinister skull pattern.

  It was Nemesis.

  Dead again.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  “I know everything can turn out different, there’s no such thing as destiny. Just knowing histories from the Future Files that never happened now killed any belief I had in Fate, and tripping through alternate-history extrarealities cremated Fate’s remains. But there are people who, however the history plays out, keep doing the exact same thing. Like dying, often stupidly.

  “I’ve decided it’s not so much fate as character.”

  From the Journal of Hope Corrigan.

  * * *

  Snowplows churned the streets below and I had Shell forward some of the traffic-clearing work to me. Mostly the job was unblocking roads and intersections by picking up vehicles that had slid into each other on the ice and moving them out of the way. Even flying a couple of people to emergency rooms, it gave me time to think.

  Nemesis.

  What were the odds?

  I’d always remember him—he died in Future Me’s hands when K-Strike shot a steel marble through his head to stop him from shooting any more innocent people. I’d picked pieces of his skull out of my mask and tried to think of fluffy bunnies.

  “It is unwise, my dear, to blame a known enemy for everything that happens to us.” Blackstone had said. We’d had that conversation while watching over a wounded Chakra in the ICU after Nemesis had shot her. Blackstone had patiently used Nemesis’ shooting up of the Fortress as a threat-analysis lesson, and I knew what he’d say now.

  “Shell? Tell me what Blackstone had on Nemesis?”

  “Jed Taylor, twenty-four year old Caucasian male, US citizen. Superhuman-obsessed, went through three stress-camps attempting to achieve his own breakthrough and never did. Serious bodybuilder and mixed martial artist. Did ‘neighborhood patrols’ as Nemesis, got in legal trouble for beating the crap out of some drug dealers. He was on the CPD’s watchlist, but he never escalated. Until now.”

  “How about his guns?”

  “Not purchased legally. Nobody saw this coming.”

  And nobody had the first time around, either; if we had I wouldn’t have picked bits of his skull out of my mask. Blackstone had hypothesized that Nemesis had been triggered by all the anti-breakthrough rhetoric after the California Quake—that he’d decided that capes were the bad guys. Detective Fisher’s investigation had never turned up a solid link between him and Villains Inc.

  But he’d shot up the Fortress, starting at our table, when Kitsune had been chatting me up as Yoshi. Villains Inc.’s attack on the Dome had ostensibly been an attempt to kill Kitsune, and now I knew that Hecate had been paid for the whole Villains Inc. vs. The Sentinels thing. Kitsune, and then the mob-war, had been a pretext.

  And if Nemesis was just a lone whack-job, what had changed his targets of choice this time?

  “Shell, tell me about Polychromatic Sharknado?”

  “Not much to tell. They’re new to the indie-rock scene. The only criminal history among them is Flare’s—he’s another superhuman-obsessive, all about the fame. He minioned for Photaos, got his own breakthrough when one of his boss’s capers went south. His idol-slash-rolemodel is Lux; they’re both photokinetics, and he figures if she can achieve her own super-band and reality show, he can too.”

  I sighed. I’d met Lux in Hollywood. She and her duo-partner Noctis were the Big Thing right now, Lux & Noctis sold out stadiums. She was surprisingly nice for an entertainment super-celebrity, but after the superstar careers of Burnout and Have No Fear it seemed that just singing wasn’t enough anymore. To be Number One, you had to be powered. Half the up-and-coming groups, even indie-rock bands like Polychromatic Sharknado, were all or part breakthrough talent.

  And none of that explained why Nemesis had gone after Polychromatic Sharknado. Future Me had decided that Nemesis had shot up The Fortress as a cover for targeting Kitsune. But if Blackstone had been right, if he’d gone after capes the first time, he’d done it in Chicago’s most famous public cape venue. So why the Metro this time? Why a band almost nobody’d heard of yet? Why during a rehearsal? Why not opening night?

  Unless— My breath hitched. Unless his target hadn’t changed? “Shell, what can you tell me about Shokwave? Flare said Shokwave had just joined the band, right?”

  “Um.”

  “Um?”
/>
  “Yeah, no performing history outside of a resume with a track of his drum skills. He dropped in on an open audition last week, got the gig. I can play you his tape?”

  I tried not to panic. “Can you do a complete background check? Tell me what you think the odds are that he’s a fake identity?”

  It took her two seconds, and her voice came back high and climbing higher. “Crap. His background is definitely faked. I found a guy? Bryce Pulsifer? Looks enough like Shokwave to be a twin, a gifted amateur drummer, US Marine, died three years ago.”

  I was dropping out of the sky before she finished, headed for the Dome. “Tell Fisher—” What could I tell Fisher? “Tell him Shokwave’s one of ours and a target! Tell Lei Zi that Nemesis shot Kitsune—and what’s his condition?”

  “Hospital logs show they’re operating on him again. They had to stabilize him and they’re removing a second bullet!”

  I almost fell. Fisher hadn’t made it sound that bad when he’d talked about questioning Shokwave when he woke up. Coming in just slow enough for the flight bay doors to open ahead of me, I headed for the elevator. “Astra,” Lei Zi spoke through my earbud. “Meet me in my office.”

  That wasn’t the plan. The plan was—

  The plan sprang full grown from my brain, like Athena from the head of Zeus. I got off on the Base Level and power-walked to Lei Zi’s new office following Shell’s projected virtual icon.

  “The team is assembling,” she said without looking up from the pad in her hand as I crossed the threshold to her spartan office. She didn’t have a single bit of personal decoration in it yet, just a shelf full of manuals and a desk stacked with epads. “Do you know why she was hit?”

  “She was hit because she came back with me.” That got her to look up. “I don’t know everything, but I know that much. She’s in a spy-vs-spy game and I think she just lost.”

  “Okay. Since the job wasn’t finished, how much immediate danger is she in?”