Villains Inc. (Wearing the Cape) Read online

  “So much for the sport coat,” Seven said as I hoisted us all onto a platform.

  I slapped my hand over the giggles, biting down on relief-fueled hysteria. Between Riptide’s distraction and Seven’s supernatural luck, we’d gotten away with it.

  The boy shook his camera. “If you destroyed my footage I’m going to sue.”

  Seven pushed him back in the water.

  We dropped him on Streeter Drive and returned to our improvised forward base at the corner of the Children’s Museum. The godzilla still squatted atop the parking garage, blasting plasma-jets. The rides and concession stands didn’t so much burn as blow up. I sighed.

  I’d loved that amusement park, especially the Ferris wheel.

  Seven dropped his arm and stepped away from me when we landed.

  “Safe and sound, boss,” he said.

  Lei Zi shook her head. “At least the idiot gave us a way to take the thing down—probably your ‘luck.’“

  He looked blank. I’m sure I did too.

  “Look at the Ferris wheel.”

  The godzilla’s plasma-jet had cut right through it, snapping spokes like thread, slagging cars, twisting the whole thing off its frame. The shattered frame, a matching pair of pylons, cantered drunkenly—ripped away from the hub they’d supported.

  “I don’t... oh.” The left pylon came to a jagged point, making the thing a lance more than a hundred feet long. Oh no.

  “Yes,” she said. “If we let it get off the pier this mess is going to become a complete Charlie Foxtrot. The trick is to penetrate its hide. Do that, I’ll take care of the rest. Can you do it?” The air around us grew sticky with a gathering electrical charge. Lei Zi’s name meant Mother of Storms, and I could feel her bringing the lightning.

  Seven and Riptide looked doubtful, but I took a deep breath and nodded.

  “I can do it. Just keep it off of me.”

  “We will.”

  At her signal, Riptide pulled more water from the harbor. I leaped into the air to drop immediately back down into the park. Landing at the base of the wrecked wheel, I braced myself, kicked, and the already stressed pylon sheared off at the base with an explosion of snapping bolts. My heart in my throat, I heard the sizzle and hiss of heavy mega-watts above me as Lei Zi electrified Riptide’s spray around the godzilla’s face to distract it from the noise I made.

  “Go, go, go!” Shelly chanted in my ear.

  The pylon weighed tons and I fought to balance it as I rose, swinging around for distance. No jet of plasma burned me out of the sky, but I desperately wished I were still carrying Seven with me; with him as a passenger, if the thing shot at me it would fall over its own feet before it hit us.

  Riptide’s attack had it biting at the air. It jetted madly, its attention fixed away from me as I came around and dove. Pouring on all the speed I could, I went in low and fast, aiming below its ribcage and off its bony ridge with my huge and ungainly spear.

  It saw me coming, opened its jaws, but I was in and the impact ripped the pylon lance out of my hands. The stricken monster gave a deafening roar, its armored tail smacking me out of the air as it spun about, and I hit the parking garage roof as the sagging structure finally collapsed under the enormous weight it had never been designed to carry.

  Then the lightning hit with a world-ending thunderclap as Lei Zi let go of everything she’d been pulling in and storing up. She put it right down the steel spike I’d driven into the creature, and discharge washed over me. Deafened, stunned, I barely felt the beast fall on me but I heard more crashes as we fell through each level of the garage.

  “Astra! Astra! Dammitall Hope, talk to me!”

  Shelly. Right. I couldn’t see a thing, and realized I’d been buried. Bright side, the jolly green giant was dead—lying under the still-twitching thing, I wasn’t hearing any heartbeat or breathing. Its ass had been waxed.

  Poor ‘zilla.

  Chapter Two

  After helping to save the President of the United States, I got to be America’s Sweetheart for a week. Then word got out about my little Hollywood Boulevard shopping trip to Forever 21 and Victoria’s Secret and my three-day getaway with Atlas. The tabloids had always claimed I was a minor under the mask. Add to that Atlas’ playboy reputation, and suddenly I was America’s Scandal, at worst a skank, at best a Cautionary Tale. Mal Shankman used the scandal to blacken Atlas’ reputation and the California quake to attack all “false idols.” Chicago’s very own racial hate-monger, he got his start going after whites and Jews; after the Big One, it was our turn.

  Astra, Notes From A Life

  * * *

  Godzilla blood ruined my costume, not that I didn’t have lots of changes back at the Dome. After I dug myself out we spent the rest of the day getting the injured medical assistance, working to unsnarl traffic—harder than it sounds with all the dead cars—and otherwise assisting the other CAI capes and the Chicago Police Department in getting the city back to normal.

  Navy Pier wasn’t a complete loss. Riptide smothered the fires before Dad showed up as Iron Jack along with The Crew, and he said the pier itself hadn’t been structurally compromised. Of the three godzilla attacks so far—New York, Tokyo (of course) and now us—ours had done by far the least damage. Being number three, we’d learned from the mistakes of others, so nobody had died although there were a lot of injuries, mostly from trampling.

  Thankfully the rest of the weekend remained routine, but Monday morning I arrived at the Dome and barely had time to change before Shelly sent me right back out. “That cute Detective Fisher just called,” she whispered in my earbug. “He wants you at First Chicago on a robbery.”

  The First Bank of Chicago is a grand marble temple to money just off Michigan Avenue. Detective Fisher greeted me when I landed on the steps, ushering me inside past the news crew already on the scene. I didn’t think he was that cute: narrow face, long jaw, thick eyebrows, and the kind of mouth that made any smile look sarcastic. A cigarette hung from his lips at every opportunity. Sometimes I thought he’d been created by Central Casting to be the perfect gumshoe detective.

  “Morning, Astra,” he said, looking down at me from his six foot four height as he ground out his smoke. “So how long are you going to wear black?” Everyone was taller than me, but Fisher loomed.

  “Black is the new black. Those things will kill you.”

  “Not me they won’t. I’m going to live forever, sweetheart.”

  I liked Fisher. He didn’t care about the media-scandal swirling around me, and he didn’t tiptoe around. After Atlas’ death I hadn’t felt right wearing his blue-and-white colors. Black was dramatic and, like my sewn-in wonderbra and the wig that lengthened and darkened my short platinum bob, it helped me look older. I needed all the help I could get, since without wardrobe tricks I looked like an underdeveloped teenage pixie, but in hindsight it hadn’t been a good color-choice; the scandal-sellers took it as a sign of mourning for my “lost lover.” If only.

  But all Fisher cared about was the job.

  “So what have we got this morning?” I asked, looking around. First Chicago’s public space was huge, with a high vaulted ceiling, a row of teller’s cages behind ornate brasswork lining the west wall, and a corral of bank officer’s desks separated from the main floor by an oak rail; everything about the bank screamed we’ve been here forever and can be trusted with your money.

  “Somebody robbed the vault just before opening time,” Fisher said. “At first it looked like an inside job. Trusted bank employee hacks the alarm system, steps into the vault, blows the door on a deposit box with a perfectly shaped charge, grabs the contents, and walks out through the lobby doors to disappear into the morning rush.”

  “And we’re both here, why?”

  Fisher was the senior detective the CPD Detective Division assigned to superhuman crimes, and, with Atlas gone, I’d become the Sentinel whom Blackstone sent most often to superhuman crime scenes. Not that I took an active role in police investigati
ons; it was all about showing the flag, and hopefully it helped combat the bad press I’d gotten since the scandal broke and I made the mistake of coming out publically against the Domestic Security Act.

  “I’ll show you.” He walked me past the other officers and patrolmen taking statements, to where he’d left a computer pad on one of the big oak desks. With a couple of taps he brought up a video file.

  “Watch this.”

  Time-stamped this morning, it showed the vault with a good view of the narrow steel table where bank patrons could set their trays. A young male employee entered the vault and unhurriedly, almost casually, stuck a silver disk onto a mid-sized box. A flash, and he swung the door aside to remove the tray. Setting it on the table, he removed its contents, a thick document case which he flipped open. Satisfied with what he found, he closed the case, tucked it under his arm, set something small on the table, and turned to leave.

  Fisher froze the image. “What do you see?”

  I looked closer, and whistled.

  “He’s a she.” His hair had been ear length when he entered. It was past shoulder length in the framed shot.

  “You got it,” he said. “Other employees identify the man who went in as Ralph Moffat. They have no idea who walked out.”

  “Just walked?”

  “Walked. She timed it perfectly; every guard was out of sight when she walked out of the bank. The hallway footage shows she drew a gun, but she never broke stride, never even pointed it at anybody. Even the vault guards were down the hall changing their shift, and since the alarm didn’t go off...”

  “Have you found the real Mr. Moffat?”

  He nodded approvingly. “Patrolmen found him at his place about ten minutes ago. Drugged.”

  “You’re certain he didn’t go home and drug himself?”

  “No, but we’re testing him and his apartment has a good security system. The team is requesting the files now, but my gut tells me they’ll find Mr. Moffat has an airtight alibi. Want to guess what else we’ll find?”

  I gave it some thought, grateful that Detective Fisher took me seriously—or was at least polite enough to fake it. I think my not re-experiencing my lunch at the crime scene where we’d been introduced had something to do with that. I’d kept myself from saying anything stupid then, too, and he seemed to have decided I had a good mind.

  “His date from last night?” I looked at the image on the monitor. “Probably her, but I don’t think it’ll help.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Why not?”

  “You said her exit was smooth. So I’d guess she intended to show us her other face, probably because it isn’t her real one either.”

  “Very good,” he said. “You’re wasted at the Dome.”

  “The police department doesn’t need any bulletproof cheerleaders. Why did she show us what’s in the case?

  “Sorry?”

  Now I flushed. Had I asked my first stupid question?

  “It sounds like she planned all this down to the second?” I offered. “And it looks like she knew what she came for. So why waste time opening the case with the clock ticking? If it had been empty the plan wouldn’t have changed, right?”

  Fisher opened his mouth, then closed it. Leaning over, he replayed the video file, freezing it on the image of the open case.

  “Jesus. Sorry, kid. She even posed the tray so the camera got a perfect shot.”

  “She didn’t touch the pages inside, either,” I said. “If she was seriously checking she’d have at least flipped through them, don’t you think?” I pantomimed a quick thumb-flip. “What was in there, anyway?”

  He ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “We don’t know yet. The deposit box belongs to a Mr. Tony Ross, and we’re still trying to get hold of him. Phelps!”

  The younger detective looked up from his own conversation.

  “Boss?”

  “Get Jenny to enhance the vault file, will you? I need to know what’s in the case. And don’t call me boss.”

  “On it, boss.” Phelps frowned at me and turned away, pulling his cell phone. Like so many now, he wasn’t a fan.

  “Anything else I missed?” Fisher asked.

  “No,” I said, ignoring Phelps. “What did she leave on the table?”

  “Now that is interesting.” He brought up another file. It was a picture of a business card. No name or other contact information; just a red symbol on white card stock. The head of some animal? It looked...

  “Is that a fox?”

  He shrugged. “Could be, don’t know. Jenny’s looking for a match in the database. I’ll tell her your guess; might help. Are you ready to go in?”

  I nodded. The official excuse for my presence, instead of a more experienced Sentinel, was my super-duper senses. My breakthrough last September had given me the full Atlas-type power package: the power to fly, bench-press buses, survive hits from military ordinance, and hugely expanded and sharpened senses. My visual range had expanded into the telescopic and came darn close to microscopic.

  Detective Cramer waited for us in the hall outside the vault with their forensic team, and he handed me a stack of markers as I slipped a pair of foot covers over my boots. He was friendlier than Phelps. While the two of them stood in the doorway I lifted a couple of inches and drifted into the vault.

  “Semtex,” I said, and Fisher nodded. The sharp (to me) smell of the shaped charge lingered even in the well-ventilated air of the vault. Scanning the floor in front of me as I went, I placed a couple of markers. “Hair, short. Street stuff.” I circled the room, placing more markers over pieces of explosive and lock. The card was still on the table, and I leaned in. I wasn’t good enough to see fingerprints unaided, but... I sniffed.

  I looked up. “Chanel Number Five.” Fisher made another note while I did a final circuit. I’m sure I didn’t find any trace the team would have missed, but they didn’t seem to resent it and the job was good public relations—the public liked to see superheroes at superhuman crime scenes. Atlas had done this for years, and when Blackstone gave me the job Fisher and his people took me through a see-and-sniff crash course of crime scene trace. My education was nowhere near complete (one more thing for me to study), but I was getting pretty confident.

  I stepped out and the team went in, moving just as carefully. Five minutes later I was on my way. I nodded politely to the waiting press as I took off, ignored the questions they fired at me (most having nothing to do with the robbery), and wondered if I would ever hear the details on this one. As it turned out, I’d wish I hadn’t.

  Chapter Three

  The US Senate voted on the Domestic Security Act today, securing passage by only nine votes. President Touches Clouds vetoed the bill, which leaves it dead in Congress unless its advocates can somehow muster eight additional votes. If passed, the law will require all superhumans to register with the Department of Superhuman Affairs and place all superhuman crimes under federal jurisdiction. Inspired by the catastrophic loss of life during the California earthquake deliberately triggered by a mentally unstable terrakinetic, the bill is tremendously popular with large parts of the American public. It is also loudly opposed by many superheroes, notably including Astra of the Chicago Sentinels. Critics of the bill argue that it detracts from the effort to secure the country against another attack by The Ring, the transnational super-terrorist group that attacked the President at Whittier Base in the wake of the California quake.

  The Chicago Times

  * * *

  For me Spring Quarter at the University of Chicago meant three classes and a lab. I maintained a true secret identity, which meant that unlike most superheroes I could still take off my mask and disappear into plain Hope Corrigan. No emergencies, no cameras or newsies, pure bliss. Getting out of class Wednesday evening, I dropped by the Bee’s rooms in Palevsky Commons. Julie and Megan were out, but Annabeth answered the door.

  “Hope, hi! Keep going, girls!”

  She dragged me past the other girls, putting togeth
er favors in the common room, as I laughed and juggled the box I carried. Closing the door behind us, she flopped on her bed. As always, her bedroom looked like her wardrobe had exploded, and she’d completely changed the wall décor again, leaving only The Dane—the huge poster of Dane Dorweiler (her surprisingly long-lasting boyfriend, former captain of our high school soccer team and now UofC’s rising star). It was a good picture: Dane poised mid-kick, a look of dismay on his opponent’s face as he took the ball away from him. The poster had been a gift from me and the other Bees.