“I don’t know what to do,” he says miserably.
“You bide your time,” I say. “You use it to train and become the best flyer and best fighter you possibly can be. You use it to learn everything there is to know about Manticore. You use it to stack the deck as much as possible so that when the time is right, you and me and Concorde and anyone else with a grudge against him can work together to take him down — and then we drag his sorry ass to Byrne so he can rot in a cell for the rest of his life.”
He nods. “I can do that.”
I fix him with a look. “Can you?”
“I can do that,” he says, like it’s a solemn oath. “I won’t go after him on my own. I won’t make a move unless you say so. You’re calling the shots.”
“All right.”
He risks a small smile. “Apology accepted?”
“It’s under consideration.”
“Okay,” he sighs. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this, but I guess I’ll have to wheel out the big guns. I wrote a song for you.”
“You…wrote a song?”
“To apologize for everything. I call it ‘Contrition for Carrie.’ I think you’ll like it. I almost went with a sort of low-key, mellow tempo, but then I decided to write it to a salsa beat to give it a little zest, you know?”
“Uhhhh...”
“I even have musical accompaniment for it,” he says before, I kid you not, pulling a red and green plastic kazoo out of his pocket. “Ready? Here we go. And a-one, and a-two…”
He raises the kazoo to his lips, and I brace for the shrill, nasal impact of the first note.
“You really think I’m going to do this, don’t you?” Dennis says with an impish grin.
“You were messing with me?”
“Yeah.”
“You jerk!” I say, backhanding him across the arm.
“I mean, if you want a kazoo serenade, I can —”
“No!” I snatch the kazoo out of his hand. “You are such an ass. That wasn’t funny.”
“You’re laughing,” he points out.
“Am not,” I say, but the fact I am laughing hysterically rather undermines my protest. “That’s going to cost you, mister.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, it is. I was ready to forgive and forget before you went all merry prankster on me, but now? Now I’m going to take full advantage of the conciliatory dinner I was promised.” I make a show of opening my menu. “Hmm. Filet mignon stuffed with lobster Thermidore sounds divine.”
“Sounds expensive is what it sounds like.”
“It does, doesn’t it? Guess it’s a good thing I’m only messing with you back,” I smirk. “I am getting dessert, though. Their bread pudding is amazing.”
“Go for it. Dessert your brains out.”
“Done and done.”
“Hey.”
“What?”
Dennis gives me a warm smile. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“Everything. Training me. Keeping me grounded. Talking me down from my ledge of stupidity. Giving me a chance to atone. Being my friend. For being an awesome person. Thank you.”
A wave of warm fuzzies ripples through my chest. Haven’t experienced that sensation in a long time. Too long.
The feeling lingers throughout a very nice, quiet, low-key dinner. With the elephant in the room acknowledged, we’re able to enjoy each other’s company like normal people. We don’t discuss anything important or heavy or depressing or annoying — unless you count Dennis’s phone vibrating every ten minutes (which I do).
“Rando is persistent, I’ll give her that,” I say as I take a cursory look at the dessert menu, just in case there’s something on there more enticing than the bread pudding (there isn’t).
“You have no idea,” Dennis says. “She can be a stubborn, stubborn girl. If she gave you half a chance, I think you two could get along famously.”
“You think I’m stubborn?”
“I know you are. Every single woman in my family is the same way, so I know stubborn when I see it,” he says, but it’s not a criticism. His phone buzzes again. “For example.”
“Maybe you should answer it.”
“I should shut it off is what I should do,” he says, taking his phone out. He glances at the screen. “Yeah, I’m turning it off. Eight calls in the last fifteen minutes is a bit much.”
“Pick up,” I say, a nervous tickle creeping into my belly. “Dennis, pick up.”
“Why, what’s —?”
“Answer your phone.”
“All right. Jeez,” Dennis mutters, offering an apologetic grin to the frowning couple at the neighboring table. “All right, what’s so im— Rando? What’s happening? Rando? Misha? Misha!” he says with escalating panic. “Carrie, something’s wrong.”
“Call the Protectorate,” I say. “Now.”
I sprint across the restaurant, nearly taking out two waiters in the process, run out to the parking lot, and hit Mach one seconds after lifting off. I slip on my headset and lay in a course for Manchester.
I’m way overreacting, I tell myself. I’m freaking out over nothing — and yet, every instinct screams at me to hurry.
Hurry.
***
I tap into Manchester’s first responders channels as soon as I’m within range. Chaos roars in my ears. Gunshots pop like firecrackers. Men and women scream in fear, in pain. A loud, deep whump — an explosion — briefly swallows the cries.
My headset pinpoints the center of the mayhem and throws it up on my HUD. I’m pulling Mach three as I nosedive into the center of the city, zeroing in on a rising plume of black smoke. My brain sorts out the details as they come into focus: an improvised barricade of police cruisers draws a crooked line across an intersection; pops of muzzle flash come from a quartet of cops hunkered down behind their vehicles; cars sit scattered along the city street, two of them engulfed in flames. As I swoop in, a massive figure, his silvery armor gleaming in the pre-dusk sun, grabs one of the flaming wrecks, lifts it above his head, and hurls it toward the cruisers. The police officers shrink into balls and brace for impact.
I throw a focused gravity pulse at the flying car — something I can only do at short range, which means I have to get into the thick of this mess, but the unacceptable alternative is a stack of police pancakes. The car abruptly changes course mid-flight and crashes to earth. I fire a concussion blast at the human catapult. He looks double-tough, so I don’t hold back. My shot bowls him over.
“Typhon!” a woman screams. She’s armored up too, though her suit isn’t as bulky. A cluster of metallic spheres hover nearby, orbiting her. I’m curious what they can do, but not that curious. She gets a concussion blast too, right in the gut. She squeals and crumples to the street.
Whether she meant to or not, she made for a good distraction. I never see the arrow coming. It sinks into my left shoulder, sending a jolt of pain down my arm.
The good news is, in my energy form I’m mostly mimicking a human body. I’m nothing but a mass of condensed, supercharged plasma in the shape of Carrie Hauser, so I don’t do natural human things like breathe or bleed. The bad news: that doesn’t automatically protect me from all forms of harm. Most energy attacks are useless, but I’m still a physical object that responds to physical stimuli. In theory, you could shoot me in the head with a perfectly normal gun, and the disruption might be severe enough to kill me (for the record, I am not at all interested in testing that theory). Long story short, the arrow hurts like a mother going in and even worse when I pull it free, but I’m not at risk of bleeding out.
Since I don’t want to go through that again, I generate a tight force field — and just in time, too; I narrowly avoid getting an unwanted arrow tracheotomy, courtesy of a woman dressed in an ice-blue-and-white outfit with a distinct Nordic vibe, like a Viking huntress or something. Her bow, however, is totally modern. With impressive, if not superhuman speed she draws an arrow from a quiver on her back, nocks it, and fires. It’s
a perfect shot, right for my heart. This one, however, is some kind of trick arrow that explodes on contact. I barely feel it.
I can’t say the same about whatever hits me from behind. The impact knocks me out of the sky. I manage to land on my feet, but none too steadily. The follow-up is less impressive. A bolt of lightning streaks toward me, thrown by a man in an electric blue unitard — who, I can’t help but notice, is holding hands with another guy in a slate gray unitard. What, am I getting attacked by a WWE tag team now?
They split apart, barely dodging my matching his-and-his blasts. My new friend the archer tags me from behind with another exploding arrow. I swing around to zap her and hopefully get her out of my hair. She’s more of an annoyance than a threat, but five-on-one odds are never strategically sound. She moves like greased lightning. My blast misses her by inches.
Again, I realize almost too late she’s not out to hurt me; she’s out to distract me. I twist around and open up on a flying motorcycle, blowing it out of the air before it can take my head off — and guess what? It was another freakin’ distraction. Typhon barrels into me like a jet-propelled rhino. My force field takes the worst of it, but the impact launches me. I bounce off an SUV that, until this moment, somehow succeeded in making it through this catastrophe without a scratch. I slump to the ground, my head swimming.
“It’s not him!” Typhon says. He backs away, keeping a respectful distance between us, and I get my first good look at his armor. It’s smaller and a little less bulky, but the overall resemblance to a Thrasher battlesuit is too striking to dismiss as coincidence.
“Yeah, I think we already figured that out,” the archer says, nocking a fresh arrow.
“We have to go!” the armored woman says, pleading.
“Where is he, girl?” Typhon says. “Where’s Skyblazer?”
What?
Pure white flames erupt from Typhon’s hands. They have a bizarre, almost liquid quality; the flames drip down instead of flickering up. The asphalt sizzles and smokes where droplets of the water-fire fall. It’s unlike any fire I’ve ever seen before — on this planet, that is. How in the world did someone figure out how to generate supercharged plasma?
“Tell me where he is,” he says, “or I’ll kill you too.”
“No, please!” the armored woman wails. “Please don’t, she’s just a kid!”
“She’s a dead kid if she doesn’t start talking!”
“Drake!”
“Dammit, Echidna! Code names!” Typhon barks at his partner, and in doing so, he takes his eyes off me for a split-second.
That’s all I need.
My concussion blast blows Typhon across the street, through a front of a small clothing boutique, the boutique itself, and right out the back. One of the tag team twins, the elemental, drops a startled F-bomb before laying into me again. It’s a pretty light show, but it’s totally ineffective. His partner, however, is more substance than style. He hits me with a burst of pure force that staggers me. I respond in kind, taking him off his feet.
“We need to get out here! Now!” the archer shouts.
Before I can take her down, the boutique erupts with all the fury of Krakatoa. A wall of white flame sweeps through what’s left of the shop, eating everything in its path before spilling out onto the street like a wave breaking on the shore. The armored woman, Echidna, runs for cover as the plasma wave cascades across the street, turning the asphalt to molten slag. Typhon emerges from the holocaust, completely unscathed.
“Little bitch,” he spits.
I brace for an attack, but he doesn’t aim at me. Instead, he turns his insane flamethrower hands on every car within sight. They catch immediately, paint blistering and flaking off, tires bursting from the heat before melting into acrid black puddles, windshields dripping free of their frames like they were made of wax.
Oh, crap. The gas tanks.
Something hisses, a low, guttural sound. I expand my force field and brace myself.
Six cars go off like bombs in rapid succession, spraying flaming shrapnel. Shards of steel and glass ricochet off my force field. A moment later, all the debris propelled skyward by the blasts rains down. Typhon’s freaky water-fire, its job done, dissipates and the natural fires it started take over, spreading to wooden benches and small trees planted along the sidewalks, to more cars, to buildings, until the street looks like Hell itself has burst through the ground.
I hit the sky, rising above the growing pyre to reacquire my targets, but they’re nowhere to be seen. They couldn’t have gotten far. They have to be hiding somewhere, waiting for —
My heart skips a beat as I catch a glimpse of a neon orange shape lying in the middle of a side street, next to a car flipped onto its roof. My brain can’t quite make sense of it. The shape is clearly a person, but the limbs are all wrong; they have more bends than they have joints. Another human form lies nearby, dark and motionless. This one is wearing a leather jacket. A few feet away from that, a pair of legs peek out from behind an SUV rolled onto its side.
I become distantly aware of a cacophony of voices buzzing in my ears. Police are moving in, cautiously, weapons drawn. Staties are on their way in to assist. Firefighters want an update. Someone asks if it’s safe for them to move in yet. Buried in the din is Concorde telling me he’s airborne and en route. The Protectorate is scrambling the Pelican now and will be right behind him. He demands a situation report. I can’t answer. I’ve gone numb — mind, heart, and soul.
Dennis comes on. He’s finally on his way. He wants to know what happened. He asks if his friends are okay. I force myself to speak. The words come out rough and raw.
“Dennis. I’m sorry...”
PART TWO: WITH GREAT VENGEANCE AND FURIOUS ANGER
NINETEEN
The Pelican’s cargo bay door slides open. Concorde, his posture weary, closes the door behind him and takes his helmet off. I’ve seen Edison angry more times than I can count. I’ve seen him annoyed, frustrated, occasionally demoralized, but I’ve never seen him look outright defeated — not until this very moment.
“How is he?” Edison says as though Dennis wasn’t sitting right there. In a sense, he isn’t. I’ve been with him for, I don’t know — an hour, maybe? He hasn’t moved or spoken at all. I tried holding his hand. His fist wouldn’t unclench. I tried hugging him. It was like embracing a department store mannequin.
How is he? There’s no answer to that.
Edison hunkers down. “Dennis. Your friends. Their parents don’t know about their secret identities, do they?”
Dennis gives a tiny shake of his head.
“Then we need to make a very important decision. In situations like this, when a super-hero is —” Edison stops himself. “In situations like this, we’ve taken steps to maintain a super-hero’s secret identity. We can do that for your friends, but that isn’t my call to make; it’s yours.”
“What?” Dennis says, so softly he’s almost inaudible.
“I hate to burden you with this but they’re your friends. It’s your call.”
Dennis stares at Edison without really seeing him. His mouth moves but no sound comes out.
“Give us a minute?” I say.
Edison nods. He slips his helmet back on and steps outside. The cargo bay door shuts with a soft click.
“I don’t know what to do,” Dennis says.
I try to take his hand again. My fingers close around a chunk of granite. He looks at me, a desperate plea somewhere deep in his cold, empty eyes.
“I think their parents deserve to know the truth,” I say. “Nothing will make this easier on them. There’s no way in the world to soften a blow like this, but maybe, someday, they’ll be able to take some comfort in knowing their children died doing something noble.”
Dennis nods. “I should tell my parents, too.”
“No,” I say with such force that it even surprises me. “Dennis, you cannot tell them. You have to keep your identity a secret from them — from everybody.”
“Please, just do it. You have to trust me.”
“Why?” he presses.
God, no, Dennis, please do what I tell you. Please don’t make me say it. I can’t bear to hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt.
“Why?” he says. He’s not going to let it go.
“The people who killed your friends were looking for you,” I say. “For Skyblazer.”
“...They were what?”
“I think they were sent to retrieve the Skyblazer armor. When they couldn’t find you, they tried to draw you out by going on a rampage.”
“This was my fault?” Dennis says, cracking.
“No. Dennis, listen to me. This is not your fault. Do not blame yourself for this.”
“But they were looking for me! If I had been here, I —”
“If you’d been here you would have been killed along with your friends.”
“You don’t know that! I could have helped! I could have saved them! I could have — ohh, God...”
When my grandfather died, I shut down emotionally. I built a dam to keep my grief in check and spent a few days on auto-pilot before it all got to be too much. When the dam finally burst, it was ugly. I’m forever grateful to Stuart for being there when it happened. I needed someone, anyone to keep me from falling apart so completely that I’d never be able to put myself back together. Stuart was that someone for me.
All I can do now is be that someone for Dennis.
***
Once he composes himself well enough, I give Dennis his cover story, following Edison’s cardinal rules for effective lying.
Dennis and I met online through a mutual friend. We decided to get together and meet in real life. Dennis drove down to Kingsport for a dinner date. We had a good time. During the drive home, he heard about the incident in Manchester on the radio and curiosity got the better of him. He went to check it out and caught a glimpse of Rando — of Misha being zipped into a body bag. As of tonight, he doesn’t know what happened to them and can only assume she was an innocent bystander. When the truth about Rando, Zip, and Magnum Hand’s secret lives becomes public knowledge, Dennis will be completely floored and claim total ignorance of their alter egos — and because the Wardens in their daily lives weren’t a tight, insular little clique like the Hero Squad was back in the day, that part of the story should come off as sufficiently plausible. His parents should be too shocked and saddened to examine the lie too closely.
Crawling From the Wreckage Page 16
