Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes Read online

  And Blackstone couldn’t tell Max what we knew; the FBI had confirmed it to be The Box, the one they’d been watching. And that meant…what? Pellegrini had known the feds had been using the box as a trap, so he’d had it “picked up.” But why hire someone when the Wreckers had shown they were as capable of in-smash-out as anyone? It wasn’t like the feds would think the heist had been ordered by someone else.

  It was Blackstone’s job to ask what it all meant—Jacky’s, too, if she ever took him up on his standing offer to come back for good—but even if there was no discernable connection between the bank job and my dream the knot in my stomach wouldn’t go away. The Sentinels go out of town, and suddenly old business was back. All my old business.

  You’re being paranoid, Hope. I ignored Jacky’s past observations on the subject of paranoia.

  * * *

  Paperwork done, I found the rest of the team hanging out in the Clubhouse—Jamal’s name for the Young Sentinels’ common room.

  Everyone says that girls are more emotionally evolved than boys, but sometimes I wonder. Brian sat talking to Kindrake like her dragon hadn’t eaten him less than two days ago. I held an unworthy grudge, and I hadn’t even been the victim. Typically, Reese was trying to edge into their conversation; buried in Goth makeup or not, Kindrake was reasonably cute and the self-evident fact that she just didn’t seem to be into him made her that much more irresistible.

  Jamal and Shell—physically present in her prosthetic body—were still playing Halo. His fingers moved too fast for natural reflexes, which meant he had to be speeding but... I laughed and shook my head when everyone looked at me. From the speed of the enemy on the screen, Shell was ticking up the clock-time in the game to match Jamal.

  “Boss?” Mal asked. He was typically studying, although he’d already been accepted to the University of Chicago.

  “At ease, everybody.” I’d left my cape, mask, and gloves in my rooms—in an emergency I could always grab a set on the way out. I chose a couch opposite the chatty trio, slouching down next to Ozma. She sat quietly, knitting lace. I didn’t ask.

  “And don’t call me boss.” Because it completely freaks me out. “Fearless leader if you really must. Anyway, we’re still all grounded—they let me out to play this morning because I’m the only A Class flying brick in town today and something came up.”

  Kindrake had the grace to look guilty, and I tried to think nicer thoughts.

  “She seems to like our Brian,” Ozma observed quietly, tucking her legs up to give me room. So much for nicer thoughts. And that wasn't right; whatever stupid choices she'd made before, Kindrake was here and apologizing to the right person—taking it any other way was just wrong. I looked away and caught Ozma’s smile, the one that said she was aware of my problem.

  I liked Brian. It was as simple and as stupid as that. After my false-positive alarm with Seven, I’d wondered if I was still able to “fall in love,” or at least the heart-pounding, attention focusing, love euphoria that Shell blamed on oxytocin and dopamine. It turned out I still could, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  Shell’s theory was that I’d imprinted on Brian when he’d rescued me, and it had certainly been a high-stress moment, but this time I flatly refused to play. I wasn’t the kind of girl Brian went in for, and that was okay, really. And in retrospect, I knew I hadn’t fallen for Seven because if I really had then I would have been too scared to risk it. The way I felt about Brian… if I got crushed again I wouldn’t be able to stay. Or he wouldn’t, and he had to; in a weird way, Ozma—and Nox and Nix—had become his family.

  So I’d have to go join Heroes Without Borders or the Hollywood Knights or something, and that wasn’t going to happen either. It was what it was, and I’d get over it. I’d grown up that much, at least.

  “One little drop of Love’s Measure would clear that right up,” Ozma murmured without looking up from her needles.

  I barely kept from rolling my eyes. Using magic to play with people’s minds wasn’t exactly verboten in her rulebook; she’d turn you into a contented hat and then use crystalized Water of Oblivion to wipe your memory of it afterward if she didn’t feel you deserved to keep the experience as a lesson (a favor she hadn’t done for Spinner), but I’d been relieved to find we drew the same line at anything that shaded into brainwashing. So her offer was a dig and a test, and not a nice one. Which was totally Ozma; she was royal, she was courteous, she was Good, but she wasn’t nice.

  Nice hadn’t ruled a small empire for a hundred years, and nice wouldn’t liberate Oz.

  She made a final twist with her needles and neatly bit off the threads, spreading it out so I could see it: a short ribbon of delicate snowflake lace, so white it seemed to glow.

  “Moonmoth silk.”

  “Okay…”

  Instead of explaining, she took my hand and wound it round my ring-finger, tying it into a neat little bow so that it made a tiny lace ring. “Don’t take it off until you have to.” she whispered and leaned in to kiss my cheek, soft as the brush of a falling petal. A bloom of warmth pulsed where she touched my skin, echoed in my finger where the lace hugged it tight.

  I rubbed my cheek. Amazingly nobody else even blinked. Only Grendel seemed to be looking our way at all.

  “Well, thank you? I didn’t get you anything?”

  She laughed quietly, an innocently inscrutable sweet-sixteen centenarian. “You will. Remember, do not take it off too soon. The Question Box said you will be traveling a long way today. Alone.”

  I froze, breath caught. “Then what—”

  “Astra,” Blackstone spoke in my earbug. “I need you to get your go-bag and go now. You are meeting your ride over Ohio.”

  Sometimes I really do hate magic.

  * * *

  I ran. “How long will I be gone? Where am I going?”

  “Classified. This comes through DSA channels.”

  I stumbled and stopped. The DSA. Now I knew where I was going and wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. Alone?

  “Astra?”

  I got going. “I’m here. I— What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, my dear. The call came from Director Kayle’s office. Your help is requested and required, and you’ve been called up through your Illinois State Militia officer’s commission.”

  That almost stopped me again. Our state commissions were partly intended to protect capes like us from getting drafted by Washington—which meant the DSA had had to get hold of the governor and get his permission to activate me while I’d been showering and doing paperwork. Telling myself that this had to be a good thing didn’t stop the churning in my stomach. What was going on?

  The elevator doors didn’t close fast enough for me, and I spent the seconds before they opened on the bay spinning in my head. Every question I wanted to ask would just have led back to “classified,” so I didn’t. “Understood, sir. The review? The team?”

  “Will be taken care of. Your testimony is recorded and if there are further questions then they can wait. Good luck, Astra.”

  The doors opened and it took just seconds for me to pull the rest of my uniform off my designated rack. Sliding my gloves on, I was careful of Ozma’s gift. Go-bag over my shoulder, I launched up and out of the still opening hatch. “Shell?”

  “Right here!” Shell floated beside me. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Like I know? Shell…” I swallowed the thickening lump in my throat. Sunday was two days away, but… “I need you to tell Mom and Dad I probably won’t be to Mass and dinner Sunday, that I’m away for a while and they won’t be hearing from me. Tell them everything’s okay.”

  “No worries, I’ll cancel for us.”

  “No! You should go. And—” I’d forgotten about Julie. The lump got worse. “I need you to keep my promise with Julie tonight. Please.”

  “Huh? What would I say?”

  “Tell her everything’s alright with us. Tell her I’ll be back and we’ll talk for just hours. Tell her I love
her?”

  “Okay…” Nobody could sound more dubious, and I had to laugh despite my twisting gut.

  “Love you too, Shell. Point me?”

  She nodded and faded out. A virtual targeting icon appeared in my sight, red glow laying out my course. I turned and poured on the speed, trying to shut out the useless questions filling my head. It was barely lunchtime, hours till sunset, but I couldn’t keep one thought away.

  Jacky is so going to kill me.

  Chapter Eight

  “As a cape, probably the hardest things for me to get used to were the concepts of authority and legal jurisdiction. In the comic books and movies, superheroes see a problem and they help because they can, any way they can. But national, state, and city governments are authorized and empowered to keep their citizens safe and do justice, and capes work with the system and the laws or they’re outlaws by definition. Vigilantes. And Vigilantes are public challengers of the rule of law; they undermine what we try and accomplish and get a lot more attention than simple lawbreakers from every government agency. As a cape, if you want to do any good and have it last, you’ve got to have the backing of those empowered to let you do it.”

  Astra, from her speech at the 20th Midwestern Crisis Intervention and Aid Conference.

  * * *

  I love flying, and even with everything happening Ohio was beautiful from three thousand feet.

  I could have spent the time making personal calls, but I’d learned from experience that doing that at the beginning of a mission didn’t help anybody. While they sound great in dramas “I might not make it so I just wanted to tell you…” conversations are never good. I could have asked Shell to try and find out what was happening, but Blackstone had told me everything he could without violating security; encouraging her to hack her way into government files to see what wasn’t supposed to be seen qualified as a Bad Idea. So since I hadn’t had time to stop in the chapel and light a few candles, I directed a few prayers to Mary of the Pagans and enjoyed my high-speed flyover while I could.

  All too soon I saw my ride. A business jet, I’d have blown right past it with a wave except that Shell’s targeting icon settled right on it.

  “Shell?”

  “That’s it. And your costume sensors say they just lit you up with military lidar. Smile, I’m talking to them.”

  I tried to look unthreatening—not that hard for me—while wondering where the plane’s hidden metal-storm gun might pop out from if they didn’t like what they heard; laser targeted metal-storm machine guns that could empty their hundred-thousand round barrel magazines in seconds were the military’s preferred defense against ground-to-air missiles and hostile fliers these days.

  “You’re cleared, and Dispatch is handing you off. See you!” Coming from her, the cheerful handoff was a coded promise; she’d still be with me through our neural link, a silent ghost.

  Closing with the unmarked plane, I spotted its non-standard hatch—a sliding hatch instead of hinged. Etiquette dictated I match course and drift forward to where the pilot could see me, but the hatch opened first in obvious invitation. I accepted.

  Pulling myself into the snug “airlock”, a tight fit for me and my bag, I closed and dogged the outer hatch. The inner hatch, this one hinged, opened before I could undog it.

  “Hello, Astra.” Veritas held the door, greeting me in his usual uninflected near-monotone even as our ride banked into a hard left. Even on a plane he wore his ubiquitous shades, and I never had figured out if they were Verne-tech or fashion statement. “Glad you could join us.”

  “Us?”

  Stepping by him, I lowered my go-bag to the floor with a heavy clank. That elicited a raised eyebrow (like he thought I’d leave my armor and maul at home?). He dogged the hatch and stood back, and he hadn’t changed a bit in the time since I’d last seen him; hands on hips and halfway into his pockets, head cocked, he looked at me like I was something very interesting but probably inconvenient.

  “Us. Right this way.” He pointed us down the short hall leading away from the hatch and cockpit. The oak-paneled door at the end stood open, and he ushered me through ahead of him. I nearly backed right back out.

  The executive’s cabin was crowded, half the space taken up by five helmeted US Marshals in full blue and gray body armor. The guns they cradled had to be Verne-tech; obviously designed to be able to put a dent in me if they needed to, I’d never seen anything remotely like them outside a blockbuster sci-fi movie. If they missed, they’d probably blow big holes in the jet; if they didn’t miss, I’d probably put a big hole in the jet. The guns pointed down, but that wasn’t very reassuring because the man sitting across from them could order them used with one word.

  I was sharing my ride with Director Kayle, head of the Department of Superhuman Affairs. And he didn’t look happy.

  “Hello, Ms. Corrigan. Won’t you sit down?”

  And just like that I felt like a fraud in a stupid costume. It had been awhile since I’d last felt awkward wearing my superhero outfit—especially since I’d gotten Andrew to redesign it without the wedgy-inducing thong butt—but here everyone was in a suit or a battlesuit and I was just the girl in primary colors.

  But the Director didn’t look like a man who made conspiracy theorists salivate like Pavlov’s Dog in a cathedral bell choir. He could have disappeared into any crowd. Thin face, high receding hairline, he looked like a fussy corporate suit except that he watched me with eyes that weren’t vague at all.

  And they wouldn’t be. As President, the man had successfully led the country for six years, through the aftermath of the Event and everything that went with it plus two short wars; he was sharp.

  “Please,” he said, pointing to the seat across from him. Next to it, a steel bucket filled with ice offered bottled water and sodas. I sat, tucking my cape back.

  He watched me settle, smiling at something. Reaching over, he selected a bottle of spring water and opened it for me.

  “When was the last time you were called to the principal’s office?”

  “What?” came out before I could stop it, and I flushed hotly.

  He opened a bottle for himself, took a sip.

  “I have a daughter not much older than you, and she didn’t have your sterling school record. She was summoned to the principal’s office a number of times, and I imagine she wore a face much like yours—wondering which of her crimes she’d been caught at and sent up for.

  He gave me what he probably supposed was a reassuring smile. “You haven’t been ‘sent up’.”

  “Oh. Okay,” was all I could think to say.

  “Not that there aren’t some consequences of your being here. Have you heard from your friend since you boarded the plane?”

  “My— Shell? How do you know—? Shell!” She should have been in my ear with a whispered Great googly moogly! the instant she saw the Director through my eyes. “Shell?” Complete and thought-numbing silence.

  The Director waited for me to un-panic and I took deep breaths, remembered I was holding a bottle, and gulped down cold water. I focused hard on not destroying the bottle. Was this the day they came for Shell and I became a supervillain?

  He seemed to read my mind.

  “Perhaps I should also tell you that your friend is not being called to the principal’s office, either. We are aware of many people whose actions are not always strictly legal, who nonetheless are useful to us or to people useful to us. Your other friend Jacky, for example. So long as they follow some form of Hippocrates’ dictum ‘Do no harm’ and do not publicly flout the law, we are mostly content to leave them to their own devises. Even my department’s resources are not bottomless, after all.”

  “So Shell is safe?” I asked, not believing it.

  “As long as she does not do anything which would make it necessary to commit resources to find her, yes. And as long as you are somewhere in the picture, I do not think that is likely to happen. Apparently, you are a moderating influence.”

&nbs
p; Okay. Okay. I could live with that. They knew. They knew and they had countermeasures, but if they’d always known then we were alright, right? I took another breath, made myself relax. “But she can’t be here? She— she’ll be going crazy not knowing what’s happening to me.”

  “A good opportunity to see how she behaves without you to check her. Considering what we believe her to be capable of, that in itself pays for this trip. But no, she can’t be here because she won’t be able to be there, either. And while we are aware that your link and her access to your memories makes it impossible for you to keep any of this from her afterwards, you will not share any classified details of your trip with anyone else. In fact… Veritas?”

  Veritas had taken a seat beside the bodyguards, and now he produced a leather-bound file for his boss. The Director handed it to me.

  “Sign it.”

  I opened the file. It held a stapled set of pages spelling out that Camp Necessity and all operations associated with it came under the heading of “secrets vital to national security.” By signing I acknowledged that any further unauthorized disclosure of what I now knew or might learn regarding said base would be considered an act of espionage and quite possibly treason.

  I signed.

  “Thank you.” He handed the file to Veritas and sat back. “Now tell me about your recent communication from Kitsune, in every detail.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take long, even with my good dream recall. When I finished, he sat silently tapping his chin for what seemed like forever, and I almost hiccupped on a sudden thought. I never did get Chakra to check my head. Now didn’t seem the time to say that.

  Finally, he sighed. “I won’t ask how you got from a dream of a burning town to knowing about Camp Necessity.” He ignored my wince. “But I do need to ask why you feel that you need to become more involved in this. Surely your previous communications from this Kitsune were also merely informational? Do you think that he expects you to act directly on this one, seeing that it is rather distant and in no way affects you or anyone you know personally?”