Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) Page 2

  He had it set to Powernet; not a shock — he wasn’t a supergeek, but only because they were the worst kind of geeks and he wasn’t interested in getting beat on or hazed every other school day. The pad showed a streaming video identified as news helicopter footage.

  The Sentinels and every Guardian team in Chicagoland were fighting a bunch of trees.

  Holy crap.

  The information bar scrolled team stats and facts, going on about how Riptide had obviously leveled up — he’d never shown the ability to use his water jets to cut before.

  “Dude, it’s at the municipal airport! No wonder they’ve got us out here!” Tony took the pad back, keeping it tilted so I could see, and we watched mutant trees waste a bunch of connected buildings the infobar said was the Chicago Executive Airport terminal, the place rich guys kept their jets. The capes kept working the edges, like they were trying to trim a hedge growing faster than you could cut. They blasted trees, smashed them, sliced them, and the bar kept referring back to Riptide’s new attack style. Trees are eating the airport and that’s their priority?

  “That is one bad-ass Crip,” Tony said admiringly. He had more than just my attention now, and we became the center of a crowd as half the class tried to look or asked what we were watching; nothing like this ever happened out in the burbs. I smelled lavender, turned, and had to grab Tiffany before she hit the grass.

  “Sorry!” she said as if my bumping her was her fault. She got herself straight and flashed me a smile when I let go of her arm. “What’s going on?”

  I shrugged, not sure what to do with my hands. “It’s not a drill.”

  “Oh, no!” She dropped her clipboard and spun around, looking up like she expected the capes to airdrop right into the soccer field. I bent and scooped the board up from the wet grass, reattached the emergency phone she’d clipped to it, but kept hold of it all as some of the guys laughed. She flushed. Skinny and awkward, Tiff was probably the girl who would bloom into a supermodel after graduating, but guys are dicks and right now it sucked to be her.

  “I’ve got to take that to the flagpole,” she explained, ignoring the guys. “Now that everyone’s been counted.”

  “So let’s go.” I started off and she skipped to catch up.

  “You don’t — Thanks. For back there.”

  I shrugged, still walking. “Not a problem.”

  “So, do you think they’re going to evacuate us?”

  Coming around the side of the school, we watched school buses pulling into the half-circle drive that separated the front parking and the flagpole lawn from the main doors.

  “I think that’s a strong maybe.” We crossed between two buses already in line, engines idling while they waited to move up and load, and joined the crowd of students and adults at the flagpole.

  Vice Principal Blevins stood at the center of the group, looking at his own clipboard and talking into his phone. He nodded and said something as a packed bus pulled away. The sound of the engines made it impossible for us to hear him, but after all the drills he was probably totally into finally doing it. Tiffany pulled herself up straighter and reached for the clipboard.

  “Thanks Mal, I — Wait! The phone!”

  Shit. It had come unclipped somewhere. I looked around behind us, spotted it back in the drive. One of the buses we’d passed between had moved up but the other just sat there, and of course the phone lay on the pavement in front of it.

  “I’ll get it!” I darted back across the drive.

  “No, wait!” Tiffany cried, but I crouched and grabbed it. I turned back to her, heard the engine throttle down, and the lurching bus smacked me to the ground.

  Shit. The pain of my head hitting the drive blinded me, but I felt the scrape of the pavement as the bus fender caught my jacket. Blinking my eyes clear as the rolling bus twisted my body into line with it, I saw the right wheel coming at my legs, knew it was going to roll right over me. Panicking, I kicked, the wheel caught my shoe, twisted my foot. My scream went higher than Tiffany’s at the wrenching pain, sharper than any wrestling hold and hot pressure erupted beneath my skin, flared out as I pushed.

  The concussive explosion hammered my ears and I barely heard the shriek of wrenched metal, couldn’t see through the blinding flash. I blinked, blinked again, desperately scrubbed my eyes and tried to hear through the ringing. What —

  The bus, what was left of it, lay twisted on its side twenty feet away from me — the entire front window buckled and craze-cracked and pushed deep into the cabin with the rest of the front of the bus. Blood painted the webbed glass, dripping onto the drive. Tiffany wouldn’t stop screaming.

  The crowd around Blevins added its noise, mute in my ringing ears, and my stomach rolled with a way too familiar nauseating panic. I tried to stand but couldn’t make my legs work. Blevins yelled something, pointing, and two of the campus-cops headed for me, pulling the guns we always teased them about — like they’d shoot kids. I scrambled uselessly backward as heat and pressure flashed through me. I exploded again, and kept exploding.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaah!”

  I rocketed into the air, acceleration squishing me like a thrill ride. Hersey High dropped away under my feet and my ears popped hard as the buildings shrank and the clouds got more personal.

  “Aaaaaah stop!”

  It did. The burning thrust bursting from my bones vanished — and with it the roaring flaring column pushing me up. Now my stomach decided we were falling. Nope, the buried science-geek in me said. We’re just decelerating, coasting to apogee. We’ll be falling in a few seconds.

  Awesome — I’d burned through all my adrenaline and my brain had decided that sixty seconds of non-stop terror were enough, so I was going to die calm and sarcastic. I should have been nicer to Tiff —

  “Are you done?”

  I flailed about my center of gravity. A tiny, blonde sticky mess, lightly swinging a bell-shaped chunk of metal that probably weighed more than I did, hung in the air beside me.

  “Because I can give you a lift.”

  Chapter Three: Astra

  "Life is unfair. I know that. I may have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I have a dead older sister I was too young to remember, childhood cancer I remember too well — seventh grade was not fun — lost my BFF to terminal stupidity ... But my breakthrough was a good thing. I was able to use it to save people. I got cool, helpful powers. The public loved me, mostly. Lots of breakthroughs aren’t so lucky.”

  Astra, Notes From A Life.

  * * *

  “It happens more often than you think.”

  Blackstone looked old — well, older. Thanks to iron discipline and Chakra’s help (a regimen of aerobic exercise and tantric magic, don’t ask) the white-haired magician and ex-Marine could run a marathon and hold his own in mixed martial arts, but his age showed when he was tired. Or sad. Like the night in the chapel when he’d held me while I cried like a child.

  I’d dropped Malcolm Scott off in the infirmary for the Dr. Beth Treatment; just a look at his head and foot and a physical — our team doctor wasn’t asking for any power demonstrations yet. Now Blackstone, Chakra, and I sat in Blackstone’s office and watched Dr. Beth run Mal through his tests. Early news footage of the accident scene — the smashed bus and the ring of emergency vehicles — filled a second screen and showed glimpses of Watchman and Seven, who Lei Zi had sent over to the school. Hersey High. The rest of the field team remained out at the airport.

  On Dr. Beth’s table, the kid had taken off his scraped and soiled varsity jacket. Average looks, brown hair, brown eyes. He was pretty big, overweight but in a fit way, decent muscles under the fat. I guessed linebacker or wrestler.

  Chakra looked up from the screens, brow furrowed. “What happens more often?”

  “Deadly breakthroughs.” Blackstone sat back and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Many breakthroughs come from trauma inflicted by other people, and the reaction is often extreme. Look at Safire — a nice e
nough stripper going to business school until her abusive boyfriend nearly beat her to death and she broke through as a B-Class Atlas-type. She killed him with one punch before she knew what she could do.”

  “Jamal — ” I said before I could stop myself. I’d stripped off my filthy mask and wig and washed my face, but hadn’t changed before quietly joining them.

  He nodded. “Crash, indeed. Fortunately, you and Rush stopped him from doing anything unforgivably permanent to the young hoodlums who attacked him.”

  Chakra watched Dr. Beth poke and prod our new problem. “Poor kid,” she said, echoing my own not happy inside-voice. “What will happen to him now?”

  “Legally? Nothing. Sometimes it’s hard to prove whether a breakthrough-related death was intentional or not, but in this case the death of the bus driver was clearly accidental.” He sighed. “But mentally?”

  Oh, yeah. This was going to mess up the kid’s head in so many ways. I must have given something away; ever-alert, Blackstone looked up at me, a bit of the twinkle back in his eyes.

  “Could you take this one, my dear? Young Mr. Scott’s parents are on their way, but Dr. Beth will be done with his poking and prodding soon, and we don’t want the boy left alone too long. Heaven knows, he could work himself back up and start blowing holes in the Dome. And Chakra and I are rather...fragile.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, closed it as Blackstone’s point sank in. How sensitive was the kid’s trigger? Would any normal person who upset him now end up drippy paste on pieces of wall? Dr. Beth was insane just being in the same room with the unexploded boy without knowing what could set him off.

  Jeez, calm down, he hasn’t blown anyone else up yet. Shelly wasn’t in my head anymore, but I could still hear her sarcastic response.

  I nodded, wishing Seven were here. “Okay. How long have I got?”

  Blackstone focused on the screen, where Doctor Beth had the boy’s shirt off. “I would guess you have perhaps ten more minutes before the good doctor is finished.”

  And Dr. Beth’s friendly talk could calm anybody down, giving me just enough time to change. I ran.

  “Want to hear all about him?” Shelly whispered in my ear as soon as the door closed behind me. I didn’t answer until I was safe in the elevator.

  “Tell me you didn’t hack the school’s student files.”

  “Hey, it’s a good cause.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s curiosity and we’ll know soon enough the legal way. We’ve talked about this.” Boy, had we ever, and she wasn’t listening and one of these days...

  I wanted to bang my head against the wall, but even Dome elevators could be fragile. Hindsight is always perfect; you’ve had time to think about the decisions you made, maybe more information than you had then, enough time for horrible realizations.

  The night of the Omega operation, I’d asked Shell to hack a military system, to redirect a missile, and now the U.S. military knew that someone could dance through their most vital defense systems and play with their hardware — which made her a Threat To National Security. To make it worse, she wasn’t a person, not legally. If she kept exposing herself, if they traced the hack to her ... even if the ACLU had three cases of Verne-science augmented animals and one unique car working their ways through the federal courts, Shell had no rights.

  Some nights, I woke up in cold sweats from a nightmare that they’d come to take her away and there was nothing I could do about it but go full supervillain. It was my fault, and I had to fix it.

  One problem at a time.

  “Later, Shell. Right now, I have to go poke a boy and see if he explodes.”

  Megaton

  The doc gave me a lollypop and an epad displaying directions, and nudged me out the door. Which was really weird, cutting me loose in the middle of Sentinels central. I just followed the map, trying not to think too much; the parentals would be here soon and Mom would be freaking out. No idea what Dad would be doing — he’d hated the wrestling thing since it “distracted” from my studying to make something of myself. What he’d think about this... I ran fingers through my hair, winced at the goose-egg the doc had promised wasn’t a concussion.

  Testing the ankle brace the doc had fitted me with, I limped back past Laconic Bob in the lobby. He’d said four words when Astra introduced us, two were my name, and he didn’t add to them now. Turning a corner, I went through a door and walked onto a movie set.

  Okay, not a movie set — but I’d seen it in The Sentinels I, II, III, IV, and V. I’d been directed to the Assembly Room. Huge oak table, check. Sentinels “S” engraved above their motto — “We stand ready” in fancy Latin — check. Huge screens, ceiling-mounted projectors, check. The I Love Me wall full of pictures and news clippings was new, or at least not in the shows. Looking closer, they even had a black-framed cover of Time Magazine’s special Funeral Edition. Right...

  “Morbid, isn’t it?”

  I spun around and nearly tripped as my ankle screamed and heat and pressure shot through me, leaving me lightheaded. The tiny blonde standing behind me smiled.

  “You didn’t blow anything up, so that’s good.”

  She wore dark blue cargo pants and a tight white athletic shirt with Astra’s star symbol on it in sparkly silver. Platinum blonde hair pulled back in a short ponytail framed a freshly scrubbed face. I went cold, like I’d fallen in ice water.

  “Are you freaking crazy? I could have — ”

  “Gone off? I know.” She hopped up to dangle her legs off the edge of the conference table. “That’s why I’m here — I’m tougher than a bus. How’s the bump?”

  “You’re tougher — wait — you’re Astra?” Her smile widened while I tried to make it work in my head. I hadn’t believed the tabloids, but she couldn’t be legal, let alone a full-on superhero; Tiffany had more going on under her shirt than she did, and... Sure, stare at her chest, moron — great way to make an impression.

  She actually laughed, and my face burned.

  “My bust is mostly in my costumes,” she said with an easy shrug. “For superheroes there’s a certain look that’s expected...and wow is this conversation familiar.” Huh? She smiled at something, shook her head. “FYI, I turned nineteen last spring, which makes me totally the opposite of jailbait.”

  The burn deepened. “Shit — I mean, sorry...”

  She actually looked sympathetic, not disgusted like she smelled dog crap on my shoe or something, and that just made it worse. She wasn’t supermodel-stunning or anything, but she was cute and confident, the kind of girl who wouldn’t have given me a second look last year.

  When I didn’t add to my stupid, she waved it away. “Moving on, may I call you Mal?” Her easy smile disappeared and she looked older, all the teasing gone. “We need to talk. About your accident.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later, I wanted to kill myself.

  She’d sat me down and sunk into a chair beside me, tucked her sneakered feet up, and walked me back through the steps that led to my launching screaming into the sky. The smashed bus. The blood.

  “The driver, he’s...”

  “Dead.” She watched me carefully, eyes wet but steady. “He probably didn’t even have time to realize what happened.”

  The hot pressure was back, swelling beneath my skin. I couldn’t breathe. “I think, I think I’m going to be sick.” Instead of recoiling, she scooted forward and put a hand on my knee.

  “Nothing — Nothing I say right now is going to help,” she said earnestly. “But your breakthrough saved you, protected you, and you didn’t mean to hurt him. It was a thing, it’s awful, it happens sometimes, and it’s absolutely not your fault.”

  “The hell it’s not!” I was on fire.

  Her grip tightened, a soft vise. “No, it’s not. But it’s a debt. You owe a life, so save a life. It won’t make up for it, but we all have debts we can’t repay.”

  “Save who?”

  “Start with yourself and work outward.” Letting go, she s
at back but kept her eyes on me. “So, are you going to...” She mimed an explosion.

  I realized what she’d done and almost hurled for real. “You just tried to, to — ”

  “Twice,” she agreed. “I meant to sneak up on you, too. Did you know your body temperature spiked both times?” Her smile came back, tentatively. “So I’m pretty sure you’re safe to stand next to, at least while you’re here. And we’ll help you figure it out so what happened today won’t happen again. Promise.”

  Chapter Four: Astra

  Today, Representative Mallory Shankman spoke out in favor of the hotly debated Public Safety Bill, which would require the certification of dangerous breakthroughs and establish a public database of the names and addresses of all known superhumans. In the representative’s words, the recently passed School Safety Bill is “no more than a symbolic Band-Aid.” Representative Shankman also responded to this morning’s tragic breakthrough-related death with a call for more research to “detect these unstable breakthroughs before they kill more innocent people.”

  Chicago News.

  * * *

  That nobody had died in the woods was an absolute miracle. After handing off Mal to Willis (the Dome’s majordomo’s lunch creations were better than therapy), I went and lit a candle in the chapel and thanked the white jade statue of Quan Yin, Mary of the Pagans, while waiting for the team to come home.

  My lucky early spotting had helped, but also the wet chilly morning had meant the greenbelt paths were lightly used, Chicago now had four A Class Minuteman-types able to evacuate in between seconds, and the wave of growth started at the lake and didn’t jump the river until we’d had time to gather most of Chicago’s heavies. Mal’s bus driver was the only related fatality and I lit a candle for him too, and one for Mal.

  The FBI and the Department of Superhuman Affairs got permission from the mayor and landed a field team to examine the site before noon. Once they determined that there was nothing remaining of whatever had driven the explosively guided growth, the rest of the team came home. Blackstone gave them time to shower and change into fresh costumes before summoning us all to the Assembly Room to give us the bad news.