by J. A. Dauber
Within seconds, the crowds seemed to part around an elegantly dressed middle-aged woman, who looked at the suit without any trace of fear.
I’m not going to go through the whole conversation I had with her. I’m sure Tiffany’s has video surveillance anyway. It was a long, somewhat awkward discussion about what kind of jewelry would be nicest for a young woman, expensive but understated, that sort of thing, interrupted only when I had to pick up two overzealous security guards and gently deposit them in a heap in a corner.
She made a suggestion, somewhat grudgingly, and I asked her to wrap it up. While she did that, I smashed through some other display cases and gathered up those diamonds, too. And when the little blue box was ready, I flew out the third-floor window.
To find—with no advance notice from Mr. Jones, I should add—three NYPD SWAT helicopters hovering overhead, along with what must have been two dozen Hercules counterterrorism units on the ground.
* * *
Now, you’re thinking, That’s not so surprising, Bailey. When a giant robot breaks into Tiffany’s, they’re going to come out with everything they’ve got.
The thing is, though: I hadn’t taken that long in the bank and at Tiffany’s. Even if they had leaped into action the minute I landed, there’s no way that many police and military vehicles would have been able to get to the neighborhood in that amount of time. Which meant they’d gotten word in advance.
Which made no sense…until I heard the screaming.
I assumed it was because of me, even though, like I said before, it was usually more grumbling than screaming. But then I activated the scopes and realized what everyone was pointing at.
A car, rammed into the storefront, with the Bloody Front’s flag tied to the side, and wires and machinery sticking out the back. Oh, and three men next to it firing off machine guns every which way.
I didn’t take the time to wonder about the extraordinary coincidence of my arrival in New York City right as the Front made their latest strike. I didn’t take the time to think about much of anything. I just moved.
I could feel the diamond jewelry stuffed inside the suit dribbling down my arms and legs as I headed for the car. I’d learned from the first gig to briefly deactivate part of the suit, stuff valuables in wherever possible, then firm it up again. It caused some scratching and scuffing, but no danger of spillage.
My readouts were reporting traces of high explosives without any indication of when they would go off. Just my luck: the Front must have been using mechanical timers, rather than electronic ones that I might have been able to jam or short-circuit somehow. Still, the car was the biggest problem, so I went for it first.
The Bloody Front members looked up in surprise as I swooped down toward them. Two of them, dumb, slack-jawed, even stopped shooting. The third looked confused for only a second, then angry. I recognized the twin scars along his cheeks and the slash of red paint on those steel dog tag–like things hanging around his neck. Anyone would, from the Internet videos and news coverage. He was the Front’s leader, the one they called Assassin. I didn’t think he ever went out on missions himself.
There was no time to stop and consider it, though. The clock, or whatever was attached to the bomb, was ticking. I was afraid if I messed with it, it might go off right away. I wasn’t worried about myself, but I knew one of the Front’s favorite techniques was to pack a lot of shrapnel into their bombs—nails and spikes and pieces of rusty metal that would be thrown in all directions by the force of the explosion. There were too many people crowded around to risk that.
I remembered reading an old comic where the good guy threw a bomb into outer space so it could “explode harmlessly.” The armor wasn’t strong enough to throw anything nearly that far up, but it gave me an idea.
So I picked up the bomb—well, not so much the bomb as the car that was wrapped around it—and did my best imitation of a trash compactor. I was betting that if I didn’t give the shrapnel anywhere to go the chances of civilian spikage would go way down.
It was too big for me to get my arms around at first. So I started with the back—not grabbing it by the bumper this time, I’d learned my lesson, although, of course, this one wasn’t moving—and kind of rolled it up, like it was a wet towel at summer camp. It wanted to break apart, go in every which direction. I didn’t let it.
Glass shattered and burst outward when I got to the car windows. Most of it just bounced off my chest: maybe a little bit got away, but nothing much. And then, when it was a nice comfortable size, bear-hug ready, I pushed the suit up to full power and squeezed.
I knew the suit was strong. I’m not sure I really understood just how strong it was.
The car popped, I guess is the best way of putting it. Pockitahed and squinched and popped and then crumpled into something that looked like a scrap paper ball you’d try to shoot into a garbage-can basket from your desk chair, only made out of metal and weighing a ton or two.
Assassin was shouting something. An order. And the other two Bloody Front goons started emptying their guns directly at me. The bullets bounced off, of course. One of the shooters got hit by a ricocheted bullet and dropped to the ground screaming and bleeding. I couldn’t say I felt terrible about it, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I was still squeezing.
By the time the bomb went off three minutes later, it was lodged in the center of a large sphere about the size of a coffee table. I heard a muffled ping or two as the few nails that hadn’t been crushed together traveled an inch or so, but it was mostly phlumph.
Once that was over, I turned my attention to the Bloody Front members left standing. But there was just one, it turned out. The leader—Assassin—had slipped off somewhere while I was trash-compacting.
The goon kept shooting at me. I didn’t like that. I grabbed the gun out of his hand, and from the way he howled I might have broken a finger or two in the process. Again, the guy’d been shooting at civilians and trying to detonate a car bomb. I didn’t feel for him. Then I treated his gun to a miniversion of what I’d done to his vehicle. He was suitably impressed.
“TELL ME WHERE MY FATHER IS,” I shouted.
He looked…befuddled.
“What—what are you talking about?” he said. His teeth were chattering. Probably because, I guess I forgot to mention, I had grabbed him by his sweatshirt and flown him about three hundred feet in the air. He looked down at his dangling feet. One of them had lost a shoe.
“I WON’T ASK AGAIN,” I said.
Which was when the helicopter buzzed me.
“NYPD,” they shouted, as if I didn’t know. They ordered me to land on the nearest roof, release the suspect, then power down and remove the suit.
Call me crazy, but I didn’t think I was going to do that.
The first helicopter was joined by a second. And the second by a third.
“LOOK,” I told the terrorist. “TELL ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW OR I GIVE YOU TO THEM.”
This—as I know now, all too well—is not an appealing prospect. Maybe that was why he did what he did.
Or I wonder, was he scared of something even worse than the police?
Whatever the truth was, what happened was crazy. I don’t know if you’re going to believe me.
He started wriggling and jerking around. For a second, I thought he was trying to attack me, which seemed totally pointless. And then, just as I realized that he was trying to get out of his sweatshirt, the one thing I was holding on to, he succeeded.
I tried to grab at him, to catch him. I did. But when I did, I swiped his head, which knocked him farther away, and as I grabbed for him again, I think I broke one of his legs.
I can still hear him screaming. All the way down.
I can’t focus on that now. I have to keep powering through.
Anyway, the police helicopters opened fire on me, and I said more than a few bad words. I�
��d had this hope that maybe, maybe I’d’ve been able to skip all this trying to figure out some way of getting information out of reluctant supergenius Mr. Jones and just shake the information out of the Bloody Front.
Nope.
I gave the police helicopters a very rude gesture. And then got out of there as quickly as I could, blowing past them in seconds.
Of course, the way the news footage and the Internet put it together, everyone immediately insisted Mayhem was in league with the Bloody Front. Which makes no sense—I mean, why would I have destroyed my own partners’ bomb?—but a picture’s worth a thousand words, and that shot of me and the terrorist in midair…it kind of looks like I rescued him, then disposed of him when the police got near in order to save myself.
So that was great.
* * *
I got the shakes on the way back, once the adrenaline wore off. I even let myself cry a little bit. Not for the terrorist, at least, I don’t think so, but for…well, for whatever it all meant. I was sure that the Bloody Front were going to take it out on my dad. And the only person I could talk to about any of this was Mr. Jones, and there was definitely something weird going on there.
I kept going over and over it, long after I’d landed, gotten to the May-cave, caught my breath. I knew the attack couldn’t have been a coincidence. Mr. Jones must have been monitoring the Front’s communications and knew they were planning something in the area. But why send me there? And not tell me about it?
There’d been warning signs: he was keeping other things from me, he wanted more money, he still hadn’t shown me his face…. But this was a different level. Someone had died. It was a terrorist who had been totally fine with murdering innocent people, but still. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a killer. Not intentionally, anyway. Never.
I finally managed to get ahold of him. I said a lot of things, but I wasn’t sure exactly what they were. And then he was talking, totally calm. “It was a final test,” he said. “You see? I couldn’t tell you they were going to be there. If I had, I wouldn’t be able to observe your reaction to unforeseen conditions. And when you go on your rescue mission, those are the only conditions there are going to be.”
I have to be honest: I wanted to believe this. It did seem like a pattern of his. First the Golden Gate Bridge thing, where I’d—he’d—blown Mayhem’s cover wide open, now this.
“But that guy—what happened to him—”
“He did it to himself,” Mr. Jones said, and his voice was calm, sympathetic. “You have nothing—nothing—to feel bad about. I’m proud of you. You’ve come a long way.”
Maybe I should have stayed skeptical. Maybe I should have gotten more skeptical. I mean, it seems like Emotional Manipulation 101, right? You’ve come a long way. It sounds like the end of one of those sports movies where the kids from the wrong side of town get revved up by the coach. But I was caught up in the moment.
Mr. Jones was patient, and he listened to me sniff and snuffle, and made the right soothing noises. And then he said, “Let’s change the subject. What did you get for Rebecca?”
I hadn’t had a chance to check while flying back, but I was safe in the May-cave. The Mayhem suit’s gauntlets are more suited to big, rough work like smashing concrete than to opening tiny blue boxes, but I managed. It was a thin silver bracelet, maybe platinum, I wasn’t sure, supporting a tasteful, but not what you would call small, diamond, set off by tiny blue stones—sapphires, I think, but I wasn’t sure about that, either. Jewelry isn’t really my thing. My guess is it cost more money than my mom made in a year. Maybe in five.
“Beautiful,” Mr. Jones said. “Hold it up to the light, so I can get a better look.” I did, and I heard a whistle through the speakers.
And then we talked strategy. Although I disagreed with about half of what he said, we both felt I shouldn’t give it to Rebecca right away. Not tomorrow, anyway. But it was going to be burning a hole in my pocket until I did, that was for sure.
The glow only wore off when I had some time to think the episode over, especially Mr. Jones’s part in it. But whatever else was going on, there was one thing Mr. Jones was telling the truth about. Whatever he’d meant the encounter to be, it had been a test. Could I take on the Bloody Front? Could I deliver a you-know-what whupping?
And you know what? Yes. Yes, I really could.
I was just so freaking naive.
And also, grounded. Not a flight metaphor. Like, grounded grounded.
* * *
I’d been missing more classes than I’d thought. And averaging worse on my tests and papers than I’d calculated. And even though I thought I was bulletproof, between the nose thing and the national security crisis taking place nearby, including in and around our school, leave it to the guidance counselors to suddenly determine enough was enough. I guess report cards were maybe being compiled, and it’s all automatic or an algorithm or something.
The point is, someone called my mom. Delicately, given the circumstances. And so she sat me right down that night and started the interrogation.
I had told Caroline it was about to begin, and that I was in real trouble. She texted me back: I believe I have a solution. Stall her. I will be there in twenty minutes.
I had no idea what that meant. But I trusted her. I really trusted her. So I did what she said.
Mom was serious. She even let her cigarette burn down to her fingers, she was staring at me so intently. Asking questions about where I’d been and what I was doing, and she could tell right away I was being evasive, and, on occasion, full-fledged deceptive. Her words. Not that she was going to come up with the real reason, of course. First I assumed she thought I’d started drinking or drugging. But then she kept asking me in roundabout ways if it was Bloody Front–related stress.
I couldn’t go there. I was afraid that she’d insist on having a conversation about the Front, and something Dad-related would let loose inside me. Something I wouldn’t be able to hide.
The situation was getting desperate. So I went to Defcon 1.
I told Mom her tuna noodle casserole had disagreed with me and that I had to spend a few minutes in the bathroom.
Which, Mom, if you ever listen to this, I’m really, really sorry. For all the things I’ve done to you and for all you’re going to have to suffer for this, I should make one thing perfectly clear. You’re a great cook, and your tuna noodle casserole rocks. I just want to say that. On the record.
I knew her well enough, and she knew me well enough, to know she was extremely skeptical. But I did look flushed and sweaty and pale—being on the verge of getting unmasked as a superfelon and losing the chance to save your dad forever can do that to you—and so she chose to believe, I guess.
I hid out in the bathroom, texting back and forth with Caroline to get updates on her ETA, and emerged, drying my hands, about thirty seconds before the doorbell rang.
I bounced out of the chair that I had just slooowly sat down in and raced to fling open the door, Mom right behind me.
Which is why she was there to see Caroline throw her arms around me and kiss me straight on the mouth.
* * *
This is the point, where, if this were a teenage love story, I would say that it was the kind of kiss that made me forget about everything and everyone but her. But here’s the truth. It was awful.
I don’t think this was her fault. I wasn’t expecting it, obviously, and I had a lot of spit in my mouth from being nervous, and I think mostly she got the side of my chin with a little bit of drool thrown in. But whoever’s fault it was, it wasn’t very good. And so after the first moment of utter shock, along with the immediate worry that Caroline had gone out of her mind, all it did was make me think about how wonderful it could be with the right person. The right person being Rebecca. And how maybe, if my plan worked, I’d have a chance to find that out at winter formal.
But then I couldn�
�t think about that anymore, because Caroline kept doing it. Pushing me back, kind of awkward-walking down the hall, holding on to me, leaning in to nuzzle my neck, which was mostly ticklish. Paying absolutely no attention to my mom, standing there, openmouthed.
And then she licked my ear.
I was trying to figure out what to do—pushing her away seemed, well, unchivalrous, I guess, but I had to do something before she swallowed my face—and then she whispered, “Just follow my lead.”
Which was fine with me, although I had a whole bunch of questions.
But for my mom, apparently, this was supplying a whole bunch of answers.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked a little gleefully.
I think we did okay after that. Okay enough for me to get away with just a provisional grounding, in no small part because my mom didn’t want to discourage my “relationship” with Caroline.
It helped that over the past few weeks my mom and I had already had a bunch of talks about my relationship with Caroline. Not a relationship relationship, of course, but since our friendship had had some twists and turns lately, it had come up.
Usually the conversations had gone something like this:
Mom: “Bailey, you’re moping. Why are you moping?”
Me, not really knowing where to begin: “Well, Caroline—”
Mom, moving on: “Oh, Caroline. Well, I’m sure everything will be fine, then.”
Me, letting it drop: “Yeah. Sure. Good.”
Or:
Mom: “Bailey, you look happy.”
Me: “Yeah, well, Caroline and I—”
Mom, once more moving on: “Oh, Caroline. Well, I told you it would work out, right?”
