Crawling From the Wreckage

by Michael C Bailey

  Matt’s theory is much darker than that. “I think they were taken out by a team of rogue super-heroes.”

  FIFTEEN

  And a hush falls over the crowd.

  I look around and see nothing but blank faces hanging slack in shock and disbelief (except for the Entity, of course; his face is always blank). Have to admit, I’m with them; Matt’s theory is a little out there.

  One of the Skype participants (I don’t recognize the voice) breaks the silence. “That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. Who put this kid in charge?”

  “I did,” Edison says.

  “And it’s not idiotic. I spent hours digging into this,” Matt says, a bit defensively. “Here’s what I found.”

  What he found is a compelling pattern that traces its possible beginning to an incident in Seattle. A third-rater called Killfist (who deserves third-rate status for that godawful name alone) ran afoul of local good guy Steampunk Leviathan following a bank job that went sideways in spectacular fashion. Steampunk Leviathan intervened and took Killfist down, but a Seattle cop was killed in the brawl. Killfist, alias Martin Charles, should have gone to prison for the rest of his life, but he had an ace in the hole in the form of his brother, Emilio Charles, who’s apparently some hotshot venture capitalist with deep pockets and an army of attorneys at his beck and call. Martin lawyered up, and the case was eventually dropped on a technicality. Afterward, Martin wisely retired from super-villainy and went to work for his brother. All was quiet until Martin was found dead in his home of what the coroner wrote off as a massive aneurism.

  “That was six months ago, give or take,” Matt says. “It’s also been about six months since anyone in Seattle has seen Steampunk Leviathan.”

  “That’s called circumstantial evidence, kid,” our call-in cynic says.

  “If that had been the only such incident I’d agree, but it’s not.”

  Matt pulls up a map of the US marked with the dates and locations of the other murders, and there’s a clear progression. Several deaths occurred within a few weeks of one another in the Pacific time zone, and then a series of similar incidents followed in the Mountain and then Central zones. The most recent murders are all in the Eastern time zone, culminating in Lee’s death.

  “There’s a pattern here,” Matt says. “Super-villain mixes it up with local super-hero; there’s a casualty; time passes; the bad guy shows up dead; the hometown good guy suddenly and completely drops off the radar.”

  He runs down the list of heroes who’ve gone MIA following a super-villain death: Steampunk Leviathan of Seattle, who wears an armored battlesuit with (duh) a steampunk aesthetic; the Redcap of Denver, a knife fighter with enhanced reflexes; La Rabia of El Paso, a flyer and skilled martial artist; Viscous of Minneapolis, who can generate a tarlike sludge (ew); Jane Grimm of Chicago, who’s more of a vigilante than a proper super-hero; Red Linda of Indianapolis, who believes she’s a vampire (Astrid insists she isn’t. I’m happy to take her word for it); Libby Tee of Philadelphia, one of the many patriotically themed heroes in the country; and the New York City-based duo of MTX, a speedster, and Critical, who can charge up solid matter until it explodes.

  “Another half-dozen or so heroes have gone missing here and there, but none of those disappearances were preceded by a murder,” Matt says. “For now we’re treating them as MPIs.”

  “MPIs?” Skyblazer asks.

  “Missing, presumed inactive,” Edison says, though he doesn’t explain to the Wardens that in this business, “inactive” can mean anything from retiring from the life to dying in the line of duty.

  “The MPIs aside, the evidence indicates that all these missing heroes have teamed up,” Matt says. “Influenca’s house was trashed by something huge — suggesting Steampunk Leviathan — and riddled with gunfire — suggesting Jane Grimm, who had a major grudge against Ms. Lee; Grimm’s fiancée, a Chicago cop, was killed during a big fight between the Second City Centurions and a gang of super-villains Influenca was running with at the time.”

  If there’s anyone here who isn’t buying into Matt’s theory, Edison doesn’t give them a chance to speak up. “The evidence might not be rock solid but we can’t ignore the wealth of coincidences. We’ll provide everyone with a full dossier on our suspects,” he says, addressing our Skype participants. “I want you all to review it thoroughly and keep your eyes open for — I don’t know what we’re calling them, but —”

  “Vendetta,” Matt says. “We’re calling them Vendetta.”

  “Vendetta, then. We need to find them fast and stop them cold before this gets completely out of control. It’s bad enough they’re murdering super-villains. If a civilian gets caught in the crossfire, we’re going to get blamed for failing to effectively police our own, and we cannot let that happen.”

  Oh no, certainly not. Why take responsibility for something when we could just cover it up and pretend it never happened?

  “If anyone sees anything, it gets called in to the HeroNet immediately,” Edison says. “I don’t want anyone engaging Vendetta without backup.”

  The Skypers sign off one by one. Dennis slips me another wave before his little patch of screen goes blank.

  “Good job, Matt,” I hear Edison say, “on the presentation and the research.”

  He was a research monster, wasn’t he? That gives me an idea, but if I’m going to ask him for a favor, I’m going to have to make my apology even bigger. Now serving Carrie Hauser’s Homemade Humble Pie, now with fifty percent more crow.

  “Matt,” I say, and that’s as far as I get before Matt hits me with one mother of a non sequitur.

  “You’re acting like Sara did when she was under the King of Pain’s influence.”

  What the what? Where the heck did that come from?

  Matt gestures for me to follow him out of the meeting room, away from prying eyes and ears. He doesn’t speak again until we reach the common room.

  “Sara didn’t want to say it to your face because she was afraid you’d flip out on her again,” he says, “but I’m not, and she’s right; this is the same behavior we saw in her leading up to her breakdown — the irritability, the pushing people away, the hair-trigger temper, the —”

  “So, what? You think someone’s gotten into my head or something?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on in your head because you refuse to talk to anyone. Sara thinks you’re bottling up a ton of post-traumatic stress and it’s starting to push you over the edge. She says you’re not sleeping and you’re always cranky, and now you’re blowing up at people over nothing.”

  “Getting left out of a major HeroNet alert is not nothing.”

  “No, but jumping down my throat instead of asking me about it in a calm, rational manner isn’t nothing either.”

  Not that I needed the confirmation, but when Matt Steiger is the one extolling the virtues of calm, rational behavior, I know I screwed up big-time.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Yes, I overreacted, badly, I’ll own that.”

  “But?”

  “No buts. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Matt sighs and holds his arms out. I slump against his chest and let him hug me.

  “This is killing you, Carrie,” he says. “I don’t know what happened to you out there but you need to talk about it. You need to stop shutting us all out. No secrets, remember?”

  “I know. You’re right. I’m supposed to meet with Bart in a few days. I’ll talk to him then.” Matt makes an unhappy noise. “I promise, I’ll talk to him.”

  “You better.” His embrace tightens. “We just want our Carrie back. Whatever we can do to help —”

  “You can help me right now.”

  “Anything. Name it.”

  ***

  My request isn’t what Matt was hoping for, but he honors it anyway.

  He fires up one of the terminals in the records room, which is a somewhat deceptive name. There’re no records per se in here, just the Protectorate’s personal se
rvers — and yes, they do store all the files and recordings from mission debriefings, but calling it a records room makes it sound like there should be wall-to-wall filing cabinets stuffed with manila folders. That would have some personality, some atmosphere. A room full of servers simply isn’t as cool as a room full of old paper with its awesome musty archive smell.

  “This shouldn’t be too hard,” Matt says. “Sara’s been an indexing monster all summer so everything is categorized and cross-referenced like crazy. So, what are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” I say. “Dennis told me the story of how he got his suit and I had this nagging feeling I knew something that might be relevant.”

  “But nothing specific jumped out at you?”

  I shake my head. I replay the conversation in my head, hoping to home in on a telling detail — a name, a location, a date...

  “When did Kyle Antar die?” I ask.

  “Last year, September 11,” Matt says immediately. “Easy date to remember.”

  “Try it.”

  Matt enters the date into the system. We get one hit. Matt pulls up the report, but I don’t need to read it. I know it pretty well.

  After all, I wrote it.

  SIXTEEN

  I wrestle with whether I should tell Dennis what I learned. Normally, I wouldn’t have to think twice about it. The Squad always observes the no secrets, no lies principle, but I debate long and hard whether to extend that dubious courtesy to someone outside our circle.

  Sara tells me to sleep on it, emphasizing her request by stopping at a CVS on the way home and buying me a bottle of Unisom. When we get home, she shoves the bottle into my hands and sends me to my room like I’m a little girl who needs to have bedtime forced on her. I’m honestly stunned she doesn’t watch me take the pills to make absolutely sure I honor my promise.

  She should have. I don’t take them.

  So I lie in bed, listening to the radio and staring at the ceiling and wondering whether to share my discovery with Dennis. I go back and forth for a few hours, in turns talking myself into and out of telling him.

  It’ll be hard news to hear, but he deserves to know. What right do I have to keep it from him?

  Except it’s not fact; it’s speculation. What good would be served by sending Dennis into an emotional tailspin over a theory? A sound theory, sure — Matt thought it had merit — but a theory nevertheless. Maybe I should dig around a bit more before I hit Dennis with it.

  Except there isn’t anywhere else to dig. Once Matt read through my report, he explored a few possible avenues but came up empty. He promised to keep looking and call me if he found anything.

  Maybe I should wait until he finds something so I can go to Dennis with hard intel. Why upset him unnecessarily?

  Because it’s his brother. He deserves to know.

  And he deserves to hear it from me.

  ***

  I call Dennis to arrange a face-to-face. I am not going to lay this on him over the phone or online. All I tell him is that I learned something important, that it involves him, and I want to tell him about it personally. He’s understandably wary, but he doesn’t press for details.

  The evening preceding our meeting is suitably uncomfortable. I head downstairs and sit down to dinner with Mom. Sara has a show tonight, but I put her acting chops to shame pretending I got some restful sleep. And that I’m not the least bit bothered by my mother’s new lifestyle. And that I’m perfectly fine keeping Sara and Meg’s dirty little secret after we finally got to a place in our relationship where I don’t have to lie to Mom anymore.

  Yep. Totally cool with all of it.

  After dinner, I head back upstairs, fully intending to get a for-real good night’s rest. I still can’t bring myself to take the sleeping pills but figure I don’t need to. Exhaustion is kicking in hard, and I expect natural processes to take their course.

  Except they don’t. I toss and turn, trying so desperately to get comfortable, but my pillow is a cinder block, the mattress a morgue slab.

  Screw this. Screw this.

  I jump out of bed, get dressed, throw on my headset, and sneak out of the house. I run over to my old launchpad in the woods near my house so Mom and Sara won’t see me take off, and once I’ve escaped the Earth’s atmosphere, I warp out.

  Better roll out the welcome mat, Kyros Prime, because Fargirl Hauser is coming to visit.

  ***

  “Good morning, Vanguardians. Morning announcements will begin in five minutes.”

  I roll over with a groan. Figures I came back on a training day — but once I’m fully awake and on my feet, I realize I don’t care because for the first time all week, I slept well. I actually feel rested. Amazing what sleeping in your own bed can do, huh? Excellent. I’m refreshed, clear-minded, and in a perfect headspace for giving a friend some terrible news that could turn his entire life into a dumpster fire.

  Boy, sure killed that buzz fast, didn’t I?

  After a nice, long shower (God, even the water here feels better), I throw on one of my spare uniforms and step out into a hallway alive with activity. Judging by the lack of chevrons on anyone’s uniform, I’d say I’m surrounded by fresh new cadets. I fall in with a small group of them, and we head to the elevator.

  “Good morning, Sali,” one of the cadets says to a Cestran, one of the Vanguard’s living archivists, as she scuttles along the hallway wall. I remember when I couldn’t stand the sight of them.

  “That wasn’t Sali, that was Jeni,” I say to the cadet.

  “It was? I can’t tell those things apart,” he says, and then he notices the rank on my uniform. He snaps to attention, and his skin color shifts from a pastel pink to a mottled red. “Lieutenant! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize —!”

  Yep, he’s a noob. “It’s all right, cadet, you can relax.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he says. His skin fades back to pink, but he remains ramrod straight throughout the elevator ride to the complex’s landing pad on the roof.

  I fly to Training Commons One and head to the mess hall. It’s as jam-packed as it was my first day here. I weave through the sea of cadets meeting with their friends for a good breakfast before heading out for their long, hard, unforgiving day of training. I envy them — not because they’re in training but because they’re not under the gun like I was. Under normal conditions, basic training takes the better part of a solar year. It’s a slow, methodical process that builds a cadet’s skill sets from the ground up until they’re a well-rounded, well-oiled fighting machine. Me, I had to learn and learn fast so I’d be capable of holding my own against the Black End.

  I’d like to be able to say I’m alive today because of that training. I’d like to be able to say that, but my competence as a Vanguardian had nothing to do with my survival. I’m alive because I was lucky. I’m alive because Erisia sacrificed hyerself for me.

  I know I should be grateful. Erisia didn’t die so I could go through the rest of my life as a shadow of my former self, but there are moments — dark, fleeting moments when I dearly wish we could trade places.

  “Fargirl!”

  The familiar voice snaps me out of my morbid reverie. I follow a waving hand over to a table populated by a handful of cadets and their superior officers, Lt. Commander Mells and Lt. Ylena Johr.

  “Lieutenant,” I say.

  “Lieutenant,” Johr says. “We weren’t expecting you back so soon.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to be back so soon, but don’t worry, this is just a little pit stop for me,” I say, stuffing myself in at the table.

  “Pit stop? Do you mean the crater on Nantack Island?” Mells says. “That has been filled in.”

  “God, I missed you,” I say. Mells grins. “No, I mean I’m not sticking around. I, um, had a little personal business to attend to, but I thought I’d hang around long enough to grab some breakfast and see how everyone was doing.”

  “As you can see, the council’s determined to keep us busy. Cadets
everywhere,” Johr says as though referring to cockroaches.

  Oh, wow, okay, the cadet staring at me actually looks like a giant cockroach. Someone please tell me his name is Franz Kafka.

  “You are the Fargirl?” it says. Its voice has an odd buzzing quality my translators don’t filter out.

  “I am the Fargirl,” I confirm. “You’ve heard of me?”

  “From us,” Johr says. “I tell the cadets, if a girl from a primitive, backwater world can learn our techniques, anyone can.”

  “Oh, thanks ever so much. I’ve always wanted to be an object lesson.”

  “I would say Lieutenant Johr uses you as a cautionary tale more than an object lesson,” Mells says. “Oh. You were being sarcastic.”

  “Very.”

  Attendants come by with drinks and food, and God help me, I actually kind of missed the tasteless slurry they serve here — and I definitely missed the dammas. Ohhh, that is good stuff.

  The mess hall empties out fast after breakfast. I say goodbye to Johr and Mells, who have cadets to whip into shape, but I decide I’m not ready to head home quite yet. I fly to Plaza North, which has made an astounding recovery from the Black End attack. Everything has been rebuilt, and life has returned to normal, though not everything is exactly as it was. A little sweet shop I found on my first visit to Plaza North survived, but the neighboring block was flattened, and instead of rebuilding, the shops have been replaced by a small park. I wander over, drawn by a tall stone cylinder in the center. There’s some kind of writing all around it, spiraling from the top of the pillar down to the bottom.

  “Hey, Sara,” I say, and my long-dormant virtual assistant implant comes to life.

  “Hey, Carrie,” it says in a perfect mimicry of the real Sara. “What’s up?”

  “What’s this pillar?”

  “It’s a memorial to those who died during the attack on Plaza North, including the Vanguardians who fell protecting it.”