Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  "Well?" Jennifer asked. "What is it?"

  "I've been suspended from active duty since before this team formed. Not officially, mind you, but... The short of it is, I'm a licensed hero. I'm just not very heroic."

  "That's not much of a revelation," Jennifer said. "We tend to be fairly common in the Community Fund."

  "I'm not entirely done. When I was active, I went by the codename Photovolt. I was on an operation that went south, and Neutrino has been pissed at me ever since."

  "That would explain the whole 'Assigned to Eight-Beta' thing," I said.

  "Do you want to share what went wrong?" Ixa asked, "Or keep that to yourself?"

  "There's not much to it," Arch said. "Jake Bray, also known as the Bio-Bombardier, did a stint in prison that ended a few years back, and was let out when he finished the sentence. During his time on the inside, his wife divorced him and remarried. When Bray bought tickets for a cruise, Neutrino did some checking and found that Bray's ex and her new husband would be on the same boat. He sent three of us to get the couple to safety before anything untoward happened. We couldn't seize Bray because so far he hadn't done anything illegal. We met the boat while it was at sea, and snuck on board. I was tasked with keeping an eye on Bray while the others tracked down his ex. I found him moping at a bar on board and took up a position where I could keep him in sight."

  Arch sighed. "He sat there for hours, doing nothing. At one point I garnered the attentions of a somewhat inebriated passenger, and made the mistake of flirting back. While my back was turned, Bray got up and walked out. He may have made me and was waiting until I was distracted. Anyway, I called ahead and tried to run him down. He didn't even bother to be subtle. He blasted his ex's stateroom from the hallway, taking a huge chunk out of the ship. His ex and her husband were fried, one of my teammates was badly hurt, and the other almost drowned fishing her out of the ocean. Bray didn't put up a fight when I took him down, and they sent him right back to prison. Neutrino blamed me for the whole screw-up."

  "I see," I said. "And you think you were judged unfairly?"

  "I might have been too obvious in my surveillance, and I definitely took my eyes off the target." He paused. "People died because of it, but no one has ever told me why they were still in the stateroom hours after we made contact. I mean, when you get told by two costumed heroes that your known powered criminal ex-husband is on board, potentially looking for you, why would you stick around?"

  "I don't think we're beyond giving second chances," I said.

  "So, what can you do?" Pam asked.

  Arch gave her a weak smile. "I can manipulate light, and it's actually even less impressive than it sounds."

  "Given that light includes radio waves, microwaves, x-rays..." I started.

  "Visible light," Arch said. "I've tried outside the visible spectrum, and it hasn't worked." He shook his head. "Anyway, I should get going," he mumbled, backing out of the mess hall, an awkward expression on his face.

  "Well, that was unexpected," Nick said.

  "Not really," I muttered.

  "To bring everyone up to speed," Ixa said, "Special Agent Overton has given a couple of press conferences about taking over the bomb investigation, but seems to be butting heads with Major Crimes. As such, neither the Feds nor the MPD have come looking for what information we may have at this time. Which is good, because if they ask, we'd have to tell them about Dekker. I don't know what possessed you guys to tell him we could keep him secret from the police. He is wanted for his role in the 722 Walker takeover." Ixa glared at me.

  "Once we figure out who the Morlocks' contact on the force is, there's no problem turning Dekker in," I said. "But the pattern still says there's someone on the force acting against us."

  "Shouldn't the serial number from Dekker's gun narrow that down?" Nick asked. "Someone bought it for them."

  Most of the team turned to look at me. Admittedly, I hadn't passed off the task of tracing the gun to anyone else. "I've been a bit distracted," I muttered.

  "Since Baker's flown, why don't you and Nick run that down today?" Ixa asked. "In the meantime, fill us in on how the sidekick search is going."

  "I'm only about halfway through the applicants who live in this area," I said, pulling the information from the forgotten corner of my mind where I'd stashed it. The two candidates I haven't ruled out can be summed up as the cronyist and the redemptionist option."

  "Stop being vague," Jennifer said.

  "Mind you, I haven't gotten to half the pile yet-"

  "Spit it out."

  "The two I haven't ruled out are Ersatz and Birdstrike."

  "Never heard of either," Jennifer said.

  "Birdstrike?" Ben asked. "You mean that kid who kicked my ass at Angry Earls' when we tried to break up their burglary?"

  "Yes," I said. "But he wouldn't be the first to meet you that way." My half-smirk reminded him of our own introductory brawl. I only lost because I'd been fighting both him and his mentor at the time. Though admittedly, they ambushed me in a twisted sort of lesson about expecting the unexpected.

  "What makes you think he's changed?" Pam asked.

  "His sole expressed reason for working for Byrd was to get enough money to have his wings amputated. They were evidently unrelated to his ability to fly, and had hollow bones that were prone to fracturing into artery cutting slivers. They've since been removed."

  "And this other one you mentioned," Jennifer said. "Who's Ersatz?"

  "She's Neutrino's current sidekick. They've been looking for a team for her to join since, well..."

  "Since Neutrino is a stick in the mud," Jennifer said. "Don't look at me like that, it's Grandpa's assessment." Given their vast differences in appearance, powers and personality, it's hard to think of Jennifer as Torquespiral's granddaughter. But we were a legacy team - all of our full members were descended from other members of the community. Some of us from more than one.

  "Anyway, I don't think we should debate the matter until I've at least gotten to the end of the stack. There might be other candidates in there."

  "Seconded," Nick said.

  "This isn't a formal meeting, there aren't any motions," Nora said.

  "I wish I had an update on the shadow problem," Ixa said, "But Razordemon's only been on the matter for a few hours."

  "He'll find it," Xiv said with a smile. There were still some signs of his blue eye, but it was starting to fade.

  "There's also the matter of Irvin Keyes," Ixa said. She relayed the board's proposal to house him here, along with the risks in keeping a telepath around. I'd heard it all, and made half the arguments myself, so I only half listened while she spoke.

  "As someone who lives on-site full time," Nick said, "I can't say I'm thrilled with the idea."

  "The board isn't requiring that we house him, just asking."

  "That sounds a whole lot like putting us on the spot if something goes wrong either way," Pam said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Say efforts to help him fail and he goes rogue. Either we took him in and didn't do enough to keep him on the right path, or we turned him away when he needed us. Sounds like a catch twenty two to me."

  "We should help him," Xiv said. "It'd be wrong not to try."

  "This isn't like pulling someone out of a hole, kid," Pam said. "This is a twenty-four-seven job for at least the next couple of years. And that's just if nothing goes horribly wrong."

  "Jen, you've actually met him," Nick said. "What's he like?"

  "Quiet, scared, confused. Not malicious, but he doesn't know the extent of his own power." A silence fell over the table as people mulled it over.

  "We don't have to reach a decision today. We can't actually," Ixa said. "Taking him in has to be unanimous, and a few others who get a say in the matter are abse
nt. So think it over, we'll discuss the matter again later."

  "I don't like it," Pam said.

  "No one will hold it against you if you vote no."

  "Let's not make anything final right now," Ixa said. "We have other matters to attend to. This evening is the retirement celebration for the Seventh Baron Mortis. It's drawn a lot of community members to town. The first half appears to be pretty formal and structured. One of the scheduled speakers is Cold Case - A senior member of the All-Star Elementals. I don't know if he's brought any of his teammates with him, or if he plans any extracurricular activities while he's in town."

  "And if he's just here because an anchor of the community is retiring?" Jennifer said.

  "If that's the case, we have nothing to worry about. It's all of the other possibilities that bug me," I said.

  "Yeah, but you're paranoid."

  "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

  Part 17

  We were checking Donny out of Vanguard when I first saw Agent Overton's face. It was on the television overlooking the waiting room. He was giving a press conference to the local media drones who refused to do any actual investigative reporting. He had a narrow face and light brown eyes, resembling in many ways a hawk. His hair was dark brown but riddled with grays. He spoke with an accusative, angry tone.

  "These attacks by the Morlock Society will not go unpunished. We will hunt them down and bring the lot of them to justice!" As he brought his fist down on the podium, the image froze and sheared. Blocks of distorted pixels in bright, painful colors appeared across the screen. A few people in the waiting room who'd been watching the news groaned and grumbled.

  The image blanked and text rolled up from the bottom. "Agent Overton accuses the Morlocks of these bombings. Yet, by his own admission, two were carried out using Variable-Yield Plasma Charges. What is a Variable-Yield Plasma Charge? Rare, expensive and hard to come by. The Morlocks are the common man. Where would we get our hands on such technology?"

  The question mark scrolled up on a line by itself, large enough to fill the whole screen as it passed.

  "Answer: We can't. Do you know who can?"

  The image stopped being plain black, instead showing the black and white feed from a security camera in a parking lot. In an empty space sat an object about the size of a portable tool box. The middle section of it was transparent and emitted a sickly glow. Kneeling next to it was Arclight. He poked at the control panel on top for a while, stood, and vanished in a bolt of lightning. A moment later, light engulfed the image and it went blank.

  "The Community Fund," the text read as it scrolled up. "And who was at the Darjeeling?"

  The image switched to a grainy color view of the Darjeeling lobby. The first loop showed Arclight's arrival, the second - my own.

  "Who owns Vanguard? Don't you wonder why it was so lightly damaged when everywhere else was devastated? Did they tell you how the Morlocks did not attempt to escape when the Jail was bombed, but were instead 'disappeared' in transit to Stone Ridge? Of course they didn't. Perhaps it is time to ask - what are they hiding? What do they stand to gain from this destruction? Can't you tell? They want off the leash, and want to terrify you into cutting them loose. The Feds would be only too happy to let the Community Fund handle their dirty work. After all, they're not 'Agents of the Government', despite official license and sanction. So Agent Overton throws the blame at us, the real defenders of the common man. The question now is, are you going to let them get away with it? We now return you to your regularly scheduled Agitprop."

  "...you can count on it," Agent Overton said, finishing a response to an unheard question. An awkward silence fell over the people in the waiting room. Part of me thought they were staring at me, but I wasn't in costume. I was, however, close to the TV. But the weight of their stares was an irrational thing, it defied my attempts to apply reason to it as my skin crawled. I shook my head and stepped away, moving to the hallway. I dredged up information from last year. The Morlocks had managed to open a channel of communication with the Ygnaza, implying someone with broadcast expertise of some sort. It was such a broad qualification that it didn't implicate anyone in particular. The part of me that specialized in intuitive leaps was saying that the same person was probably the one who'd hacked the signal to insert their broadcast. Analytical me insisted that there was no evidence that it was the same person.

  "What's the matter with you?" Donny asked before I'd noticed his approach.

  "The Morlocks hacked at least some of the TV channels. They're trying to spin the facts to throw the blame for all of the bombings on the Community Fund."

  "Nobody's going to buy that."

  "Maybe, maybe not."

  "Let's get on the road," Dad said. We headed out of the building and meandered through the parking lot towards our car. I did my best to hold my anger in check. I wanted to hit somebody, particularly the Morlock who'd put that video together. But, damn it, I was thinking the same thing about Arclight. Wasn't the footage from the Leyden Regency garage enough to condemn? Not really. There wasn't a good view of what he was doing on the control panel. He could have been attempting to disarm it for all that footage showed. Teleporting away just before it went off was a neutral fact. If that camera showed him placing the bomb there, wouldn't the Morlocks have used that footage? The camera had to have caught whoever did plant it.

  "We need the security footage from the Leyden Regency's parking garage," I said. Not having been privy to my train of thought, Dad and Donny gave me a perplexed look. I explained what had run through my head.

  "All right," Dad said. "I'll see if I can get it for you. But if you had suspicions about the Elementals, why did you come to me?"

  "They're still only suspicions," Donny said. "But Travis is right, if that camera caught who put the device in the garage, that could settle the matter one way or another."

  "Why didn't we think of checking for cameras?" I asked. Donny shrugged at me. We piled into the car and Dad started driving.

  "Whatever you do, don't make me miss tonight," Donny said. "I know it's only a formality, but, if I'm going to take on a big name like Baron Mortis, I want to do it right."

  "Don't worry, all I've got on my schedule is a records search."

  "What kind of records?" Dad asked.

  "We have serial numbers from guns taken off the Morlocks. We want to figure out where they came from."

  "Shiva should be able to help with that. That's the sort of task we built it for."

  "Am I even allowed to use Shiva?"

  "If not, I am. After I drop you off at Gruefield, get the information and bring it to Sterling Towers. We'll see what Shiva says." I wasn't used to crossing the first street bridge to get to Gruefield. But it was a straight shot from Vanguard, assuming you weren't too bothered by red lights along the way. Or by the prospect of driving between Riverside and the Bricks. While there was a light commercial district right along 1st street, it wasn't exactly an economically vibrant section of the city. The anchor businesses appeared to be a pair of used car dealerships - probably with close ties to repo men. Even though the closest were a block away, the towers of the Riverside projects loomed over 1st street. Their concrete faces and chain link enclosed balconies looked more like a prison than Stone Ridge Penitentiary did. A general unease crept over me staring up at them. Probably the same reason I tended to take Shining Future over the river. There was something malignant about that housing project.

  The unease left me as we sped up the Gruefield highway towards our turn off. Route fourteen was not a limited access road, so we had to wait for traffic to clear to make our left onto the grounds. Swiping through the gates, Dad parked in the visitor lot. It was closer to the building proper. Donny and I got out, letting Dad head off. As we walked towards the side door, I heard a rather unexpected and unwelc
ome call.

  "Let me see your badges," Nikki Greeler said. I turned to face her. She was dressed in a dark purple pantsuit and a black blouse. In flats she was taller than I was. In heels, she positively loomed. The security badge for TNT Research clipped to her lapel read 'Nicole Greeler - Intern'.

  "How did you get a job here?"

  "I applied, interviewed and accepted the offer," she said. "Badges."

  I pulled out my wallet and carefully extracted only the TNT Research ID from the stack. Sure, Nikki knew there was a BHA card in there, but there was no point in showing her. I held it up. 'Travis Colfax - Employee'. She pointed at Donny. "What about him?"