by Nick Svolos
“Alright. Who is the second candidate?” Ultiman asked.
I tabbed over to the next dossier. “This guy’s a real game-changer,” I said, as a man in a brightly colored poncho and trousers appeared on the screen. A traditional Peruvian outfit, finished off with a red domino mask. “Milagro. Let’s say you want a big rock to materialize out of thin air right over something you need to squish. He can make it happen.”
On the screen, a window showed some footage of him in action, helping the Policia Nacional take down a large, well-armed force of drug cartel thugs. The bad guys suddenly found their weapons replaced with squirming fishes. A getaway car containing the cartel’s Patron tried to get away, but a spike strip materialized in front of it, shredding its tires and bringing it to a halt, where it was swarmed by Peruvian cops.
“¡Increíble!” Suave exclaimed. “What is he doing? Matter transmutation?”
“Nope.” I braced myself to deliver the scary part. This might be a bitter pill. “When his powers first kicked in, he worked as a faith healer. Whether you had a broken arm or cancer, he could heal you.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that. Had a one-hundred percent cure rate. Then, he found out how his powers really work. You remember that so-called ‘alien invasion’ in Lima a few years back?”
“Si. I thought that was just a hoax, though.”
“That’s the government story. Turns out it wasn’t aliens. They were normal humans, but from a parallel dimension.” I let the team boggle at that for a moment before continuing. “Milagro’s powers are proof of the multiverse theory. He never knew it, but when he used them, he was swapping something in our universe with something in another one. So, if your liver was bad, his abilities found a healthy version of you somewhere in the multiverse and simply swapped them out.”
“Oh my God.” Mentalia’s hands went to her mouth. “And he never knew?”
“Nope. He thought he had a gift from God. But, eventually, he healed a woman whose doppelgänger just happened to be in a universe where they knew about inter-dimensional travel and tracked it back to the source. That incursion was them putting a stop to it.”
“What happened?”
“Well, he turned himself in, of course. Once everything got sorted out, he did some time in the other reality’s prison, and once they were satisfied, they sent him back here. Needless to say, he’s a lot more careful with how he uses his powers now. He taught himself to only draw things from our own world and puts everything back once he’s done.”
“You’re not kidding,” Helen mused. “That’s a radical ability. Having someone like that on the team would be amazing.”
Bill shook his head. “Feels like a liability. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with bringing that kind of power to our town.”
“Afraid he’ll make us redundant?” SpeedDamon jibed.
“More like I’m worried about what could happen if he loses control. I’m not sure we could stop him.”
“Isn’t that true of any of us?” I asked.
“Well, not you, maybe,” Damon poked me in the ribs. “Still, there’s something to be said for keeping him close, where we can keep an eye on him.”
“If that’s our reason, I vote no,” said Herculene, her face as serious as I’ve ever seen. “We operate on trust here. Bringing this guy on under false pretenses is flat-out wrong.”
“I’m with Herculene. This is a line we can never cross,” Suave agreed.
“I should meet this man. Can you arrange it?” Ultiman asked.
I didn’t like his grim tone and started to regret pitching this guy. I might have just put Milagro at the top of Ultiman’s list of potential world-ending threats. He didn’t deserve that. I mulled it over and finally came to the conclusion that maybe Ultiman was right. It wouldn’t hurt to have a second assessment of him. “Uh, sure. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.” He turned to the rest of the team. “If there’s no further discussion, I move we put the matter to a vote.”
Bill seconded the motion, and after few moments, we decided to extend an offer to Pixel. I took the decision with a half-measure of relief. I was hoping to get them a heavy-hitter, someone who could take up some of the slack when I left the team. A mite was more of a finesse play. But, she’d have to do. At least she was experienced. A solid hero. I had hope.
“Very well. We should move on to new business before it gets too late. Herculene, I understand we have our first student for the Institute.”
As Herculene took the floor, my focus drifted away from the meeting. The flameslinger, Mechanista, even Jezebel all came before the center of my mind and wandered off again as problems I couldn’t do anything about. If I was to be honest with myself, I’d have to admit I was avoiding thinking about the other topic. The one I could actually do something about, and in fact, had to.
I looked around the table, studying the faces of each Angel in turn. These were my heroes. I remembered when Ultiman formed this team, back during my senior year in college. Omega more or less owned this city then. Over the previous three years, the villain collective had run off all their competition, good and bad guys alike, and held the underworld in their iron fists. Then, one day this new guy in a blue suit, a dude nobody had ever heard of, showed up. Like a marshal in one of those old westerns, he vowed publicly to put a stop to Omega’s reign. Most people thought he was crazy. But, as Ultiman frustrated Omega time and time again, the tide started to turn. Heroes came back, rallying to this madman’s cause, and joined the fight. The Angels were born. It took twelve more years to finally put Omega behind bars, but in the interim, they did more than just save this city. They inspired it. They gave it hope.
How could I leave them?
My attention snapped back to the meeting as Mentalia finished up sharing the details of a plan to allow her school to send a field trip to the Tower.
“Any other new business?” Ultiman asked.
Nobody responded, and I knew it was time. I’d put it off long enough. “I got one more thing. My boss is wise to my night job. I have two weeks to hang up my mask.”
“What?” SpeedDamon spat. He turned to Bill. “Can he do that? Isn’t that discrimination or something?”
Three Dollar Bill, a civil-rights lawyer in one of his many day jobs, shrugged. “Depends. Technically, genetic deviation is protected in California. A case like Reuben’s would be different, because he didn’t come by his abilities naturally—”
“It doesn’t matter, Sensei,” I interrupted. “The fact is, it’s been affecting my work. Harry’s right. I can’t keep doing this and my job.”
“I do not understand,” Suave commented.
“I had to cover up my involvement in a story to protect my ID,” I explained. The weight of shame felt like somebody set an anvil on my heart.
“Well, that’s understandable, hon,” Mentalia replied. “Nobody can expect you to reveal your identity.”
“If I had almost any other job, I’d agree with you, but not mine. Haven't you ever wondered why Ultiman let me run around this place for so long? Long before I ever got powers or joined the team? He turned a reporter loose in the headquarters of the most powerful superteam in the county. Didn’t that strike you as odd?”
She looked at Ultiman in confusion and then back at me. “Not really. I just figured he liked having you around as much as we do. You’re a good man.”
I felt my face break out in a blush. It’s not every day one of your heroes says something like that about you.
“Thanks, Taaliah. That means a lot to me. The feeling’s mutual. But, Ultiman’s too practical for that.” I took a breath before saying what had to be said. “I’m the canary in your coal mine.”
“Mr. Conway is correct,” the team’s leader added as the little assembly of gods and goddesses turned to him. “Power like ours must be checked. Despite his personal feelings, if we ever cross the line, he would expose us to his readers. His reputation as an honest observer allows the population of this cit
y to trust us not to abuse our power. That lets us operate freely. Our freedom relies on the knowledge that he is here to watch the watchmen, so to speak.”
“So, you’ve been using him?” Mentalia responded, making an effort to control her anger. A plastic water bottle on the table shuddered a little.
“That is a blunt assessment, but one I cannot deny.”
“Hey, he’s not the bad guy here,” I said. “You all know what I do. Herculene said this team is built on trust. You trust me, and I trust you. That’s how this place works. But my readers also trust me. If you guys ever went rogue, it’d be my job to warn them. It would break my heart, but I’d do it.”
I caught Taaliah Stewart’s gaze and held it. The schoolteacher looked on the verge of bursting into either tears or a flurry of telekinetic terror. “I know you’ll never put me in that situation.”
“How?” she asked, calming down at last.
I smiled. “Simple. I trust you.”
She smiled back, but I could see it was forced. The look was shared by the rest of the team, with the exception of Ultiman, whose face held back any display of emotion like a self-conscious Vulcan. They didn’t want to give me up. Not in two weeks, maybe not ever.
A lump formed in my throat as I realized the truth I didn’t want to confront earlier. I didn’t want to give them up, either.
But, we don’t always get what we want.
***
By Thursday afternoon, my little crew at the Beacon had sifted through about three-quarters of the news reports. One of the interns suggested we add in another mountain of unexplained blaze reports from Mexico and Canada. It was a good idea, one I should have thought of myself, but it increased our workload quite a bit. Harry cajoled a guy from IT to help us out, and by the end of the day he’d set up a visualization map on an overhead projector that showed each incident as a red dot. It updated in real time as we digested each dispatch and added it to our spreadsheet.
It looked pretty cool. It gave the whole place a “war room” feel, but it also made our task look more hopeless, like we were planning D-Day on an Etch a Sketch. It looked like the continent of North America had broken out with a case of chicken pox. What I didn’t see was a big blotchy sore that stood out from the rest. Just a bunch of tiny ones, spread out all over the place, leading us nowhere.
We were playing around with the settings the programmer set up for us, adjusting the dataset to different time-frames, severity ratings, number of witnesses, and so forth, when my phone rang. A phone number without an accompanying name displayed on the screen. I knew who it was, but he wasn’t the sort of guy you added to your contact list if you knew what was good for you. I excused myself and stepped off to a vacant office to take the call.
“Got somethin’ for ya, Conway,” Reggie Burns’ deep voice said.
“I’m listening.”
“The guy you’re looking for goes by the name of Backdraft. Workin’ with a crew out of Tucson. Word is, he’s hitting another target tomorrow night.” He gave me an address in Santa Fe Springs. “Listen, this one comes with a bonus. From The Mouse hisself. He wants you to pass this one on to the cops. Angels, too, if you still got an in with them.”
I almost dropped the phone. Mickey wanted me to alert the law?
“That sounds a little out of character.” That was putting it mildly. It broke every agreement I had, spoken or otherwise, with the underworld. You didn’t take something like that lightly.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s legit. Check it out with him if ya want. Long as I get paid.”
“I get my story, you get your cash. I’ll be in touch.” I hung up and stood pondering for a moment. This didn’t feel right. Was Reggie setting me up? Was Mickey? If so, why? Burning me wouldn’t really do much for either of them. To them, I was just a useful bug, like the spider in your garage that deals with stuff you’d rather not have to deal with yourself. A source of Dodgers tickets and payoffs. My survival around those guys always relied on me not being worth the trouble of killing. A different angle, maybe? Could this be another one of Jezebel’s schemes? She’d have to be close for her abilities to make these guys act against their personal interests.
Paranoia wasn’t getting me anywhere. I decided to run it down before making any potentially life-jeopardizing moves. I went back to the conference room.
“Zoom in on Tucson,” I said to one of the interns.
She clicked on Arizona and the area expanded. Another click and we were looking at Tucson. Roads appeared, dividing up the town. Little red dots covered the screen, heavier toward the heart of town and more sparse on the outskirts. Too many to make any sense out of.
“Okay, break it down by year. Step through them one at a time.”
The young woman adjusted the settings. The dots disappeared. She advanced to the next year. Nothing. Click. Two dots appeared in 1987, too far apart to be what we were looking for. Another click. Nothing in ‘88. One in the next year and another two in the year after that. She moved on to 1991 and seven red dots greeted us, clustered around Sunnyside High School, Barreras Park, and a suburban neighborhood to the west.
Gotcha.
We cycled through the rest of the years, just to be thorough, but didn’t find anything better than 1991. I leaned back with a big grin. I wished for a cigar so I could comment on how much I loved it when a plan came together.
“Ratna, see if you can find us some yearbooks from that school. Three years on either side, if you can swing it.”
“On it, boss.” She sprang to work.
I turned to the interns. “I need you two to access the Lexis database for the same time period and start pulling down stories.”
“Got it,” the one with the soul patch answered. “We’re looking for kids brought in for arson, right?”
“No, that’ll be a dead end. Look for runaways, missing teenagers, and juvenile delinquents—petty thefts, break-ins, burglaries. Our guy is a thief. Arson’s just how he’s covering his tracks now that he’s turned pro. Papers don’t generally publish names of juvenile offenders, so don’t let that throw you. Get arresting officers and stuff like that, and we’ll follow up the old-fashioned way.” The youngsters looked as excited as I was as they got to work. This was a hell of a lot more interesting than the usual drudgery interns got stuck with.
“Where’re you going?” Ratna asked as I got up to leave the room.
“I’ve gotta go see a mouse about a man. I might know where this guy’s gonna strike next.”
V
The eighteen-wheeler drove down the road, breaking the silence with squealing air brakes as it stopped at the locked chain-link gate. A man hopped out of the passenger seat, clipped the lock off the gate, and rolled it out of the way. The truck’s gears ground against each other as the driver started it forward. The man hopped onto the running boards while the truck backed up to the loading dock.
I shook the tension out of my shoulders, relieved to learn my intel was correct. Mickey confirmed Reggie’s story, but even so, I wasn’t sure I could trust it. The barkeep was a bit evasive, but that’s how he always was. It was enough to act on, however, and freed from my usual constraints, I spent most of Thursday evening and Friday on the phone or in meetings. An interdepartmental bust like this has a lot of moving parts, and it takes a lot of planning.
Now, all I had to do was not screw it up.
It was well after eleven, and I'd been hovering over this warehouse complex since sundown. Once the last employees locked the place up and left for the night, the only movement I spotted was the guy in the cowboy hat hiding behind a stack of shipping containers.
Speaking of which, it was probably time to deal with him. More men got out of the truck and set about the breaking part of their breaking-and-entering scheme. With their focus thusly directed, I drifted down to land behind the cover of the containers, a respectful distance from the cowboy. He wasn’t the sort of guy you wanted to spook.
I clicked my jaw to kick in the voice modulator.
It was a cool little gadget, attached to one of my wisdom teeth, that dropped my voice from my normal tenor to a rich baritone.
“Hey, Peacemaker,” I ventured in a quiet voice that could have made Sam Elliot jealous.
The modern-day gunslinger spun, his hands a blur. A pair of silver-plated .357 magnum Colts regarded my center of mass in an unwavering stare. The move was almost faster than a normal human should have been able to pull off. Not like a speedster, mind you, but more like a guy who'd been doing this for so long he made it seem unnatural.
At least he didn't shoot me. I smiled and drawled, “Easy there, partner. Ya got the drop on me.”
His eyes widened in recognition over the red bandanna obscuring the lower half of his face. Then he twirled his weapons, decocking them and returning them to their holsters, slung low on his hips. “What the hell you doing here, Cap? Santa Fe Springs is a little outta your turf, ain't it?”
“Got a lead on this crew. They've been hitting warehouses all over the county. Same MO each time. They clean the place out, then burn it to cover their tracks. LAPD’s been spinning their wheels on this for a couple of weeks.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Why’d they call in a super for a caper like this? Seems like burglary and arson’s a bit below your pay grade.”
“Well, the arson squad hasn't been able to find any accelerants.”
Peacemaker’s face—what I could see of it—went a few shades paler. “A firefly, huh? Damn.” He started replacing some of the cartridges in his left revolver. “How'd you find out about these guys?”
“His crew is all out-of-town talent. The local henchmen took that personally.”
The crime-fighting gunslinger chuckled. “Nice to know LA’s still a union town.” He replaced his weapon in its holster and fixed me with a no-nonsense stare. “You guys ain’t thinkin’ of cutting me out, are you?”
“Hell, no. I wanna see what you can do with those things.”
“Fair enough. So, what's the play?”
