“’Course I would,” says Calamity. “I can’t fly.”
And then before I can stop her, she’s off the building, hissing into the darkness on her cable.
Chapter Thirteen
For a few minutes I only stand there blinking, trying to figure out what went wrong. I could catch up and ask, of course, but—
You know what?
Fuck you too, Sarah. I am done with shit going wrong today. You can plant your little conversational land mines in someone else’s evening.
About forty seconds later I’m ringing Charlie’s doorbell. His mom, Louise, opens the door. Charlie’s dad is a doctor, and his mom’s a homemaker who wears a lot of knit sweaters and is always quiet and friendly. She’s sort of got a black June Cleaver vibe going on. “Oh, hi, uh, Dreadnought.” Louise vaguely knows that Charlie and I were in school together before I dropped out. I don’t think she knows we met because he used to go caping with Sarah.
“Hi, Louise. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” But as I’m passing her in the hall, she catches me by the cape. “Does…does Karen have a place to stay?”
Uh, crap. I’m not sure how much Karen wants me to say. I shake my head. “She’s homeless. Charlie and I are trying to figure out how to help her with a metahuman problem.” Louise’s brow pulls in and she nods like this confirmed something for her. “If you don’t want her around, she can come stay at—”
“No, I’m going to tell her she can stay as long as she likes,” says Louise. “I’m glad you and Charlie are helping her.” She says this super seriously, like this is really hard and important stuff. I mean, I’m a superhero. Of course I’m going to help her, that’s what I’m for.
Karen is with Charlie in his room, about half a library spread out between them. Neither looks like they’ve taken a nap since I left them this morning, and between the books there is a forest of empty soda cans. Charlie’s digging it, though. Focused, intense. He doesn’t notice I’m in his room until Karen pings an empty can off his head. And that’s kind of what does it, what makes it a little too perfect for me to buy that they’ve been laser-focused on a cure since I left this morning.
Or maybe it’s the way Karen’s cherry lip balm is smeared a little bit onto her cheek.
“Oh, hey Danny I didn’t expect you so—that was fast,” Charlie says.
I suppress a smirk. “It was only subsonic.”
“Showoff,” mutters Karen. She’s lying on her stomach, wings relaxed against her back, chin in her palms. Her fingers seem to be trying to cover up the fact that she’s blushing.
“Any luck?” I ask, closing the door behind me.
“Not yet,” says Charlie, not quite meeting my eyes. “There’s still thirteen days of Christmas break left, though.”
I take a seat in midair, fold my legs up into a lotus position, and pick up a book. Basics of Counter-Magic to Mental Intrusion, says the spine. The first page jumps right into a discussion of the historical roots of psychoanalysis, and I am bored almost instantly.
“We already ruled that one out,” says Charlie.
“Oh, thank God,” I say, shutting the book and setting it aside.
There’s a sort of Hanging Cloud of Awkwardness over the room until I offer to pay for more takeout. Chinese this time, and Charlie’s mom insists we eat at the dinner table, so we all troop downstairs, and during the meal Karen explains to Louise that she’s being possessed by a dead woman, but leaves out all the complicated parent stuff. The tone of Louise’s questions suggest a woman who is only now realizing how much she doesn’t understand about her son.
When we get back up to Charlie’s room to restart our research, the whole almost-walked-in-on-you-two thing isn’t looming over the conversation anymore. We get about another twenty minutes into fruitlessly combing through Charlie’s occult library when Karen closes her book and stands up. “Look, unless we’ve got something we can actually try tonight, I don’t think I want to waste more time on this right now.”
Charlie looks up, eyebrows drawn in. “I think we’re making good progress.”
“I—thanks, for everything, Charlie, but we’ve tried one spell. Unless you have another…”
“I told you, mental magic is hard to learn about—”
“And I get that, Council of Avalon and all that,” says Karen, her voice a cross between placating and tense. “But it’s really hard holding her back right now, and there’s something else I’d like to try.”
“What did you have in mind?” I ask.
“Um.” Karen seems to psych herself up for something. The words come tumbling out on top of each other. “Actually, I was hoping you could come with me to retry one of the options I already checked out. There’s this guy with a weird sort of powerset, and he couldn’t really help me, but I was hoping that between him and you working together…” Her voice sort of trails off, and she’s not meeting anyone’s gaze.
Well, I’ve never tried mixing my powers with someone else’s before, but I know it’s theoretically possible. Some of the best cape teams of all times have figured out how to do it, so it’s worth a shot. “Sure, that sounds doable. Who is he?”
“His name’s Richard Garrison. He lives on—sort of an island thing off the coast.”
“Sort of an island?”
“You’ll see,” says Karen.
“Wait, why do I know that name?” says Charlie.
“He’s one of those people who’s so rich he’s famous just for being rich,” says Karen.
Something clicks in my head. “Right! Right, he was big in the tech scene, wasn’t he? I didn’t know he was metahuman.” It’s not entirely surprising, though. More people have powers than like to admit it, even if they wimp out and call them “special abilities” instead of full-on powers. And like I said, most people with superpowers don’t become superheroes. This is double-true of people who were already well-off before they got their powers, and triple-true of people who were actually rich. When you’ve got more to lose, the whole make-enemies-of-superpowered-psychopaths part of the gig is way, way less appealing.
Karen shrugs, shoulders pulled in tight and nervous. “Neither did I, but he emailed me after he saw something I put online asking for help. Anyway, his power only temporarily fixed it, but if we combine it with what you tried—”
I start nodding. “Yeah! Yeah, that could totally work.”
Charlie’s looking back and forth between us. “Okay, so, when were you planning on leaving?”
“Um. Now,” says Karen, looking at the floor. “Is now good?”
“You don’t want to call him?” I ask.
“It won’t be a problem,” she says quickly. “I mean, I’ll text him, but he said I could drop by anytime.”
Charlie is putting books in order, trying to hold a poker face. “Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” he says stiffly.
“No!” says Karen, suddenly urgent. “It was a help. Thank you. If this works, do you…mind if I come back?”
Charlie smiles, and I suddenly decide I need to use the restroom.
A few minutes later, Karen meets me in the front yard. Her wings are tight against her back, and her face is set. “We’re headed to a place about seven hundred miles southwest of here, but I don’t have specific—”
Her phone buzzes. “He sent me GPS coordinates. Do you know how to plug these into a phone?”
“Hold on.” I tap my forearm to bring the suit’s interface up and start inputting the numbers to my navigation computer. The color on the back of my glove melts into a high-resolution map with a line pointing from my location to someplace off the California coast, a bit north of the Bay. “How fast can you fly?”
Karen shrugs, and with visible reluctance, opens her wings. “Pretty fast, I guess. I haven’t spent a lot of time experimenting.”
“Let’s get moving.”
We power into the sky. A carpet of amber lights falls away beneath us. In a few minutes we’re over the ocean, nothing but a hard black vo
id beneath us. The coast is a line of glowing jewels far off to our left. Bits of static spark off the magic bubble Karen’s wings generate, a subtle corona in front of her and trailing behind.
We get out from under the high cloud cover, and without city lights to mute them, the stars are a brilliant spray of diamonds above us. The moon sits to the south like a fat, silver coin. It’s a beautiful night for flying, but every time I start to get into it, I glance over at Karen and see the grim set of her jaw in the moonlight.
Valkyrja betrayed her. It’s still hard to believe. We’ll make it right. Somehow. If this doesn’t work, maybe Charlie and I can get the Council of Avalon to take a closer interest.
My glove vibrates to let me know we’ve reached another waypoint. We’re maybe thirty miles out. I drift over and tap Karen on the shoulder. Where my hand intersects the flight bubble around her wings, I get a sensation of pins and needles that is gone almost as soon as I notice it.
We slow down enough to be able to speak. “We’re close. I don’t know what this place looks like, so you should take the lead.”
“Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it,” she says.
“Not so fast,” says a girl above and behind us. I flip over on my back to get a look, but spotlights clack on, obliterating the night in a wash of hard, white glare. “First, tell me who you are.”
It’s all but impossible to squint through the glare, but someone’s up here with us, and she’s somehow brought God’s own flashlights with her. Questions about how and who and why crowd my mind, confusion and surprise gumming up my thoughts, making me nervous. I shut my eyes and look in the lattice, and nearly fall out of the air in surprise.
The girl confronting us can’t be more than twelve or thirteen and is wearing a militarized pink princess dress with a gleaming silver chest plate and shoulder guards. She’s surrounded by a halo of equipment floating on invisible pedestals of antigrav—powerful spotlights, autocannons, a laser projector, and enough high-density hypertech to start and win the third world war. There’s some kind of signal I can’t make out linking all the tech to the fat red gem set within the silver tiara on her forehead, and she’s got an imperious sneer on her face that makes me think she’s never been told “no” in her life.
“Kill the lights, Lilly,” says Karen, hand up to her eyes against the glare.
“I told you, it’s Princess Panzer!” snaps the girl. She’d probably stamp her foot too, but it’s hard to do that while flying.
“Point those guns somewhere else, kid,” I say. My first big fight was with mecha armed with similar weapons. She’s got about as much firepower hanging around us as Utopia’s entire goon squad was carrying at their peak. I wasn’t strong enough to take them all on at once then, and I don’t like the idea of facing down that much firepower now.
Panzer looks at me. “How did you see them through the glare?”
“I’m not going to ask twice, Panzer.” No, I don’t really relish the idea of beating down on a twelve-year-old, but the idea of getting shot to death by hypertech death machines clarifies my priorities.
She smiles, her delight palpable in the lattice, a cascade of twitching muscles and a brief spike in heart rate. It’s a pretty weird reaction to being threatened by Dreadnought, but I get the feeling that nobody really takes her supranym seriously. The floating spotlights dim and die as the autocannons pull into themselves, fold up, and disappear into pops of fading light. Her light suite reconfigures itself in a twist and furl of metal and glass, becoming a soft cluster of track lighting, enough for us to all clearly see each other in the night sky.
“How’d you tell?” she asks again. Her boots are gleaming metal and hiss softly with antigrav jets.
“Sorry, trade secret,” I reply. “Who are you?”
“This is Lilly—” Karen begins.
“Princess Panzer,” says the girl.
“—and she’s Richard Garrison’s daughter.” Karen’s face is carefully blank, and Panzer seems oblivious enough not to notice.
“I’m the defender of virtue and champion of excellence!” says Panzer. “Pleased to meet you. Are you coming to sign a contract with my dad?”
“We’re here to see if he can help me,” says Karen evenly.
Panzer glances between us for a moment, and then a sly expression crosses her face. “Oh. All right. Well, I can guide you in. Follow me!”
She kicks her jetboots behind her and squirts between us, powering down into the night. The lights fold up into nowhere and disappear. Karen is muttering something just at the edge of hearing that’s not very complimentary.
Panzer is already a half mile out in front and pulling away fast. Her voice echoes back to us, amplified a hundredfold by some kind of hypertech bullhorn she’s pulled out of nowhere. “Are you guys coming or what?”
“I was hoping she’d be, I dunno, on vacation or something,” grumbles Karen as we fall in and begin trailing the kid. Panzer deploys big, neon Look At Me beacons behind her that get ever more insistent until we fall in beside her, and we cover the last few miles at a relatively sedate hundred miles per hour.
At first I think it’s an oil derrick. A cluster of lights in the black glass of the ocean at night. But as we get closer, I realize it’s bigger than that. A lot bigger. What I took to be a modest workers’ housing block turns out to be a glass and steel tower like I’d see downtown. Then we come close enough for the angle to shift and I see there are three of them, linked by bridges and studded with broad, hanging balconies. They sit at each point of a triangle of parkland the size of a pro soccer stadium, and then beyond that, there’s a walking promenade of smaller buildings and plazas that surrounds the towers and goes down to three full-sized small-boat marinas. Most of the berths are empty, and most of the lights are off. But there, suspended between all three towers by sky bridges, is a circular patch of lawn about as big as the city block I grew up in, and it’s lit up with powerful spotlights so the classically-styled mansion at the peak of this whole place is visible even from a mile or two out.
All of this sitting out there in the middle of the ocean, just a few dozen miles off the coast.
“This wasn’t here the last time I was down in California,” I say.
“Of course not,” says Panzer. “It was being built in Bangladesh. We just arrived off the American coast last month.” Panzer smiles at me. “I told Dad we’re coming, so he should meet us at the balcony. He’ll give you a tour if you want.”
We soar in between the towers, down under the arches that meet at the mansion grounds. Beneath the broad, grassy platform the mansion sits on, there is a hanging cluster of glass-walled offices, a small tower inverted and suspended between the other three. About midway down, a balcony with thick blue walls of glass runs around the circumference of the tower. One segment is lit up with holographic landing lights that hang in midair, beckoning us in on an approach vector. There’s a man waiting for us in front of a set of open double doors that each have a stylized crown logo printed on them.
As we come within a few yards, soft spotlights light us as we land. Panzer lands with an ostentatious hard stop, slamming from full speed to dead halt within about a half-yard to skid in between the open doors. Karen and I tap down a moment later, and she jerks her wings in tight as soon as her feet touch the floor.
“Daddy, Dreadnought’s here!” says Panzer. “And, uh, Karen too, I guess.”
The man she’s speaking to is dressed in a lightweight suit of gray silk, the jacket and top two buttons of his shirt open, his tie hanging around his neck undone, like a long blue ribbon. He’s got dark brown hair that’s starting to frost over, skipping gray and jumping straight to white. He’s got a strong face, tough and weathered with deep laugh lines and a pale raccoon tan line around his eyes. “And did you remember your manners?” he asks his daughter, gentle chiding in his voice as he reaches out to muss her hair.
Panzer goes still. “Uh…yes. I totally did.”
He looks up and locks eyes
with me. I get the strange sense that I’m being tested. “Greetings,” he says after just a sliver too long. “My name is Richard Garrison. Welcome to Cynosure.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Thanks,” I say, unsure how to take that. Who the hell says greetings? “I’m Danny, and Karen says you’ve already met.”
Garrison laughs and throws his arm out, beckoning us inside. “Yes, yes, Karen said you two were on the way. I’ve got some food ready if you’re hungry from the flight.”
Karen, Panzer, and I fall in behind him. The balcony enters into a lounge area, with low, gray leather seats everywhere, smoky glass and polished steel, a carpet so deep you could drown in it. From there we head into a hallway lit every ten yards with soft sconces of diffuse amber light that splash up the wall and across the pale ceilings. The whole place is like that, sort of a scientifically calibrated luxury, no concessions to tradition, no wood, just the latest and greatest in environmental ergonomics.
“This is a, a nice…boat?”
Panzer laughs. “It’s not a boat!”
Garrison frowns at her. “Lilly, be polite to our guests. She’s never seen something like this before. Almost nobody has.”
Panzer hangs her head. “Sorry, Dreadnought,” she mutters.
“Thank you,” says Garrison. “Now, I can see you’re tired after a big day. Why don’t you go to bed?”
She looks up at him. “But, Daddy—”
“To bed, Lilly.”
Panzer waves at me, and says, “Goodnight, Dreadnought. It was nice meeting you.”
“Goodnight, Panzer,” I say. The girl beams and damn near skips away down an intersecting hallway to an elevator. I notice she’s basically ignored Karen the whole time, and for that matter, Karen has been silent and staring at the floor since we got here.
“She’s not wrong, you know,” Garrison says. “Cynosure is not a ship. She’s a new form of vessel, a mobile seastead, the first of many. We have over forty acres of sovereign, privately owned territory here. We’re totally self-sustaining. Every window you see here is a high-efficiency transparent solar cell. When we come to a resting posture, we’re kept in place by two dozen suction anchors that hold us fast to the mud on the sea floor, and every one of those anchors is topped by a wave motion generator. With new efficiencies in design, we actually start running a surplus of electricity the moment we drop anchor, and that’s projected to hold true even when we’re at population capacity. We make our own fresh water, and we’ve got over fifty thousand square feet of high-density hydroponics bays. We can feed more people than you’d think, and let me tell you, soy is not what it used to be—we’re going to have some turkey sandwiches in a moment, and I defy you to tell me you can taste that they’re vegan.”
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