The girl looked Agent Black right in the eyes.
His stomach clenched and he reached for the high-tech sidearm strapped to his thigh, knowing full well he couldn't kill a storm with it. Reflex. Fight or flight. A life spent battling and killing, and now he stood staring into the eyes of a teenage girl with a thunderstorm invading her veins.
The girl, the storm, the combination of the two slammed into the glass, palms outstretched, streams of electric light lashed out in all directions, her eyes filled with it, her body surrounded by fog. It began to rain in the chamber then, really rain, a pounding, unyielding downpour.
"Looks like your lucky day, Doctor. You get to live," Rose said.
Then the lights went out.
Black dropped into a crouch, the millions of dollars of combat cybernetics in his body taking over, finding safe cover, looking for an enemy, the targeting systems in his one fake eye kicking in, compensating for the darkness. Wegener had ducked beneath the terminal; the two guards had their weapons raised, while Rose stood, legs akimbo, waiting patiently.
The glass shattered. Not simply shattering, but, exploding, a storm of broken glass and rainwater crashed over them like a flood. One of the guards screamed. He heard Wegener praying. Cold air — the storm, Black realized, it, the living sentient storm — washed over them, pounding at walls, finding an exit, and, with the bending and creaking of metal, making a way out when one couldn't be found. Black, knocked off his feet, tumbled across the broken glass, thankful it was designed to break like safety glass — rounded edges instead of a million skin-tearing points.
Light returned, dim at first, and Black wondered if the emergency lights had kicked on, until he saw the opening in the ceiling. The storm, the girl, tore a gaping hole in the roof. Rain filtered in. He couldn't tell if it came from the creature or from nature.
It didn't seem to much matter.
He looked around. The guard who screamed lay dead on the floor, blood running thin in the puddling water. The other one nursed a broken arm, rifle beside him. The doctor was a soaking mess, hair plastered to his face, one lens of his eyeglasses cracked.
Rose remained standing, gazing up through the hole, appearing for all the world as if nothing had happened.
"Are we supposed to go after her?" Agent Black asked. He had no idea how they could, but it was the only question he could reasonably think of at that moment.
"No," Rose said. "No, this just changes the game a little."
And then she smiled at him again.
The cyborg felt his blood run cold. Professionals, maniacs, and the merciless.
Thinking of a sentient storm in the body of a comatose girl flying across the night sky, Agent Black began to wonder which of the three were the ones he and Rose were working for.
Chapter 2:
The Tower, The City
Jane loved to fly.
Everything else had begun to feel normal to her a couple of years after Doc took her from the farm. Learning to control the fires she created with her hands had been a challenge, as had mastering the developing power of her own senses — with each passing week, she seemed to hear further, to see further. Discovering that she was nearly invulnerable was much scarier than it was reassuring, and the tests she put herself through to check her own limits still frightened her. But flying, learning to leap off the pavement and into the blue sky, to feel the sun filtering through her skin and giving her strength, never got old, never felt scary.
To fly is to be free, she thought, just above the cloud cover, able to see miles away, skimming the clouds like a seabird skims the surf.
She flew straight up, made a figure eight, and plunged through a cumulus group.
Below, reality set in, but only slightly. The city, the silver and gray urban sprawl she'd come to call home, crept out in every direction. Millions of people going about their daily business, and here Jane was, flying fifteen thousand feet above them. She heard the blare of car horns, the sounds of music and television — even from above. If she listened carefully, she could hear babies crying, lovers fighting, street vendors handing out lunch to businessmen and businesswomen taking a break from the office.
So ordinary, she thought. I wonder if everyone wishes they could fly?
She dropped lower still, racing toward the Tower, the blue-silver building she and Doc called home. According to Doc, the first twenty stories were unoccupied, a façade to hide the nature of the building itself, which had, he told her, been home to three generations of super-powered heroes. It wasn't a building he explained, not really, but they'd always needed a place to hide, a place to look ordinary, a place to seem nonthreatening, and so they built the Tower.
A helicopter landing pad bristled out on one side far above street level. Doc said you could land a real copter there if you wanted to, but it had served for many years as the easiest access for flying heroes to come and go where pedestrians below couldn't see them. Jane landed, the thin soles of her sneakers squeaked on the strange asphalt-but-not-quite substance so much of the building was made of, and headed inside.
She found Doc in the "command center," a wide, sterile room dominated on one side by a monitor so large it felt like a home Imax screen. Several ergonomic, right out of a sci-fi movie chairs were lined up below, in front of computers ranging from so advanced that NASA would be jealous, to incomprehensible, inhuman designs Doc all but assured her did not originate on this planet. Her mentor was leaning back, his feet kicked out in front of him, very still. It took a moment for her to determine that he was, in fact, napping.
"Doc?"
Only the slightest of movements indicated she'd startled him. He smiled, worked his shoulders to stretch out the knots, rubbed his eyes beneath his lenses.
"Have a good flight?"
"Yeah. Have a good nap?"
"Didn't mean to. Got caught up in — well, you're going to see it all anyway. Might as well tell you now."
Jane waited for him to finish. He sat up and tapped out a few commands on the keyboard in front of him, one of the consoles that looked clearly human in origin. Perhaps a time in human history that had not happened yet, but human in origin, certainly.
A series of faces appeared on screen, biographical information glimmered into existence beside each.
"How would you feel about some new folks in the Tower?" Doc asked.
"New folks?"
"You sick of only having me for company around here?"
"Heck yeah, you're crazy boring, Doc," she said.
He laughed.
The truth was, if she were going to be stuck learning how to control her powers with anyone, Doc was a great person to be stuck with — gregarious when she needed the company, quick to give her space when she wanted it, pushing her to try new things when she required encouragement — but, almost preternaturally aware of her limits. He knew when not to keep pushing.
But, if Jane were honest, she would admit she was lonely.
"It's too quiet in here. In the old days if we had fewer than five members at the table this place would feel empty."
Jane plopped down on a chair, one of the strangely curved alien designs Doc told her had germinated as coral on another planet. Not particularly comfortable, but she loved the look of it, how the surface felt beneath her hands, and so it became her favorite in the command center.
"Are they all like me?"
"No," said Doc. "All unique. Only thing they have in common is that they were all worth watching, mostly for their own safety. Most of them are very new to their abilities. They're going to be — "
"Like I was when I got here."
"Actually, you were, whether you knew it or not, already being groomed for this lifestyle. John and Doris couldn't teach you how to fly, but they instilled good things in you."
"Like knowing right and wrong?"
"That, but other things too. Empathy. A sense of responsibility. They just helped you become a good kid, Jane. And from there, a good person."
"So what yo
u're trying to say is, some of these guys might not be good people?"
Doc let out a small huffing laugh.
"They're good people, at heart. We've been watching them long enough to know they're not bad apples, but let's just say some of them are rough around the edges."
"And you think you need to warn me."
"Let's put it this way," he said. "When I was first starting out, I would've appreciated the warning too."
Jane nodded.
"Do I get to come with you on your college recruitment missions to Hero University?"
"Sometimes," Doc said. "But this first one I think I should approach on my own."
Chapter 3:
The dancer
The girl is seven. She's known as Kathy Miller. She glides across the studio floor in perfect form, a tiny dancer on pencil-thin legs, her frail frame pale and hard.
She spins and spins. Her teacher looks on, impassive, arms folded across her chest. Suddenly, Kathy turns an ankle and falls to the floor, uttering a small cry.
"Ballet is perfection," the instructor says, her accent thick and from some faraway place. "You must be better."
"I am better than this," the little girl, the dancer, says. She rises to her feet, and begins to dance again.
The girl is now eleven and known as Katie Miller. Her parents look on from the audience as she performs, partnered with a young boy of surprising grace and strength. During the performance there are flaws — she can sense them, as all dancers can, as they happen, tiny imperfections her parents would not see, but her teachers would — but she powers through, on sheer will, the old ankle injury aching as it always does. It should seem odd for an eleven-year-old to have old injuries, odd that there should be anything old about her, but in her world, children grow old before their time.
The performance ends. She and her partner thank the audience, in the graceful way ballet dancers do. Katie's certain she can see her parents. This makes her heart swell.
Backstage, the teacher is upset.
"You will never be accepted to one of the great dance companies unless you are perfect, Miss Miller," she says. "You must do better."
"I'm better than this," she says, under her breath.
The girl is thirteen. Now calls herself Katherine Miller. She believes this makes her sound older. Her parents are driving her home from an audition for a school in Manhattan. They have high hopes. The instructor she auditioned with took her aside at the end of the audition.
"You have a lot of potential," she said.
"I am better than this," Katherine said, in return.
The car pauses at a red light. One moment, the street is dark and empty in front of them; in another, a moment of heart-stopping silence, before it is filled with men in masks. Three, five, it's difficult to tell in the shadows. They have guns.
"Step out of the car," the leader says. He has blond hair. Katherine will never forget this small fact. The mask muffles his voice. Katherine's father looks to his wife, then to his daughter.
"Duck," he says.
Her father slams on the gas, plowing through the men in the street. Bodies hammer out of control against the cheap metal walls of the car. Blood, black as pitch, sprays across the windshield. There's gunfire; Katherine covers her head, crawls down to the floor and hides. She looks up once, just once, the very moment a bullet pierces her father's head. She'll never forget the image of her father, alive just moments ago, suddenly nothing more than a husk, an empty shell.
The car stops violently. A moment later, so do Katherine, and her mother.
Now fourteen, she calls herself Kate — doesn't have time for extra syllables. She spends her days in rehab, regaining control of her body. The crash broke her like a vase thrown against a wall; but she lived, her mother did not, and Kate often wonders which was the better fate.
She tires. The physical therapist tells her she can rest.
"You did good today," she says.
"I'm better than this," Kate says, and picks herself up to walk again.
Two days before her sixteenth birthday, she no longer cares what anyone calls her. Her scars have healed well, both because of what doctors call an unconquerable desire to get better, and because her parents left her with their fortune, and there was money enough for plastic surgery to hide the ugliness the accident left on her skin.
She's in a studio. For a different kind of dance these days. In rare moments of peace, she still attempts ballet, but these efforts are far more focused on mixed martial arts. She's thrown herself into combat with an animal ferocity. Her teachers though proud of her, advise she must temper anger.
"Nobody has ever won a fight in a rage," one tells her, an aging instructor who teaches her muay thai. "You've come a long way."
"I'm better than this," she tells him, and launches herself, again, at the red heavy bag.
The girl born Katherine Miller, now eighteen, calls herself the Dancer. She rarely rests. At night, she takes to the streets, behind a mask, claiming to be fighting crime. In truth, she's chasing ghosts.
Tonight, she fights a group of gang members, boys her own age, who play at being older, who act like children. The battered bodies of her adversaries lay splayed on the floor behind her, bones broken, eyes closed. Their leader's still almost a boy himself, the street's made him old before his time. He locks eyes with Katherine and can't see her face. She wears a mask now. It looks like a costume she might have worn on stage.
"You're going to need to do better than that to take me out, little girl," the man says. He flexes his hands. He has blond hair.
"I am better than this," she says. She feels the small, delicate bones in his neck crack when she lands a kick to the side of his head. She stares at his body, watches the small trickle of blood drip from his mouth to the filthy warehouse floor.
Katherine pauses, just a moment, confused that there is no satisfaction in this. She expected something more. Expected to feel complete. Instead, she feels empty.
"I'm better than this," the Dancer says. Suddenly, she's like a child again, like Katie Miller the ballerina, afraid of everything, afraid of nothing.
"You are better than this," a voice says. A man steps from the shadows behind her. He wears rose-tinted glasses and a long black coat. His hair is blue-white. He smiles at her — a smile so very sad that it makes her believe, for a moment that she's not alone.
"Who are you?" the Dancer asks.
The man steps forward, takes his hands out of his pockets.
"Doc Silence," he says. "I'd like to help you be better."
He offers his hand.
She accepts.
Chapter 4:
The parasite
Billy Case had a problem.
And not some regular one, either. His friends — rather, the other delinquents he spent most of his time with, all had problems. But, they didn't have an alien living in their body.
If Billy Case — who was, on the exterior, one of the most ordinary teenage boys you might encounter, one part naïve, two parts petulant, a dash of self-absorption thrown in for good measure — were to tell you that he had an alien living inside him, you might laugh at first. He's pulling your chain, after all. And if he persisted, then perhaps you might begin to worry. Maybe he's chemically unbalanced. This must be a cry for help.
But if, by chance, you came across Billy Case in a back alley blowing up tin cans and cardboard boxes with small blasts of blue light flashing out of the palms of his hands like baseballs, then you might begin to wonder.
For Billy Case did indeed have an alien living inside him. And worse yet, the alien talked. A lot.
I don't understand why you insist on being needlessly destructive, the alien said.
It didn't have a name. Or rather, Billy asked the alien its name, and the combination of sounds and empathic thoughts that were returned was something he wasn't able to repeat. So Billy took to calling the alien Dude.
Dude didn't seem to mind.
You goin' to lecture me
again, Dude? Really?
What did these inanimate objects ever do to you?
They offend me. The tin can is my nemesis.
You have no idea who your nemesis is.
Oh? I have a nemesis now? Billy asked.
He used to talk out loud when Dude wanted to chat, but Dude told him all he had to do was think the thoughts he wanted to say. Billy found this very disconcerting. Dude said he couldn't read all of Billy's thoughts, but he assumed Dude was lying. Particularly when it came to his ideas about Jennie Furtado at school. If Dude could hear Billy's thoughts, Billy figured his feelings about Jennie Furtado were pretty loud, and they were opinions he'd rather keep silent.
We have a nemesis, Billy Case. You and I, together.
This was news to Billy. After he got past the fact that he wasn't going completely bugnuts and there really was an alien inhabiting his brain — and that the alien had somehow granted Billy some pretty cool powers, like explosive light beams — they'd developed a decent working relationship. Dude could be a bit of a nag, but he was less annoying than most of his friends, and definitely less annoying than his mom, and Billy never asked why Dude had taken up residence in his brain.
I'm not sure I like the idea of a nemesis. Can we give him to someone else? Drop him off at the pound?
We will discuss this later. Your enemies approach.
This was something that Dude did that Billy appreciated. He seemed to have a clairvoyant ability to detect incoming trouble. He wouldn't warn Billy about the small stuff, like if he was running late for class, but things that threatened him with bodily harm were fair game.
Billy stopped blasting tin cans and leaned against the nearest wall. He thought he cut an imposing figure that way.
He didn't.
Three boys came around the corner. The Bender brothers were typical bullies: one too big for his age, the other undersized. One of them had been held back a year, but it happened so long ago everyone assumed they were fraternal twins. Their sidekick, a moon-faced kid named Nick Carney, followed on their heels like a loyal dog.
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