"Back off, Billy Case. I said I got this."
He waved her off, laughing again.
"And for the record, I think of a bubble," Emily said.
"A bubble?" Jane said.
"Ya. I imagine a bubble of float surrounding me, and that's how I fly."
"A bubble of float. Do you ever listen to yourself?"
"Fight me, Billy Case," Emily said. "A bubble. Okay? I picture it and then I float in that bubble."
Jane reached out to help Emily right herself up, drifting beside her easily and grabbing hold of her shoulder. The moment she got close though, she felt her stomach drop, like on a rollercoaster.
And then suddenly it was Jane who was freefalling.
Spinning, arms flailing, brain not locking onto whatever faculties were required to get herself airborne again. Every rotation showed the Atlantic Ocean rushing up towards her, black and angry. In the back of her mind she knew it wouldn't hurt — I've been punched through a building, this is only water, calm down — but something about her sudden loss of up and down made her heart race. C'mon Jane, she thought, would you "up, up and away" already . . .
Then there was a bright light beside her, a strong grip around her wrist and she was no longer falling. Billy had a hold of her, slowing her descent.
"What are you doing?" he asked. There was, unexpectedly, real concern in his voice. "You're not doing your arm thing! Do your arm thing!"
"My arm thing?" Jane said. Then: "Oh, right."
And she pulled herself from Billy's grasp and started skyward again, toward the still pin wheeling Emily.
"What the hell was that?" Billy asked. He kept pace with her, neither of them at top speed. They wanted a moment to talk before they got within earshot of Emily.
"She thinks of a bubble," Jane said.
"A bubble of float."
"A bubble of anti-gravity," she said. "I've got an idea."
She parked herself mid-air facing Emily. Billy caught up and stopped beside her. Then strayed back a bit, watching. He seemed very glad to let Jane take the lead.
"A bubble?" Jane said.
"That's what I said. Did the fall have an adverse effect on your short term memory?"
"How big is it, Em?"
Emily shrugged.
"Five, six . . . eight-something feet wide. A big bubble. I fit in it."
"Think about a smaller one."
"Like four feet?"
"Little. A little bubble of light that you can hold in your center of gravity." Jane made a shape with her hands, like cupping a baseball. Like cupping a heart. "Think about a little ball of light in the center of you. That's the thing that carries you."
"Wasn't aware we were in yoga class," Emily said.
"You were the one practicing downward facing dog a minute ago."
"Now I'm doing 'really doubtful superhuman,'" said Emily.
"Just do it."
"Or else?"
"Or else I'll set your scarf on fire with my brain."
"Okay. I'll try."
Emily squinted, closed then opened her eyes, then rolled them at Jane, and then squinted again. She dropped a full foot and a half in elevation but stopped immediately, as if catching on a seatbelt. Then she was upright.
"Move around a little," Jane said.
"One thing at a time, Xena Warrior Princess."
But Emily complied, scooting a few feet in either direction, then drifting vertically.
"How does it feel?"
"Well I'm not seasick. Is that a good sign?"
"You're also right-side up," said Jane.
"Depends on your definition of right."
Billy looked at Jane.
She returned his glance.
"Guess there's one last thing to try out," Billy said. "Catch me if I fall?"
"Stop flirting with Thunder Girl and get it over with Billy Case," Emily said.
"Thunder Girl?" Billy and Jane asked simultaneously.
"Whatever. Do it."
Billy drifted up right next to Emily and put a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey look. No hands!"
Billy gave Emily a playful shove.
She squinted at him.
"Bubble."
Billy dropped out of the sky like a rock.
Jane and Emily exchanged glances.
"I can't make more than one," Emily said. "You probably should save him."
And Jane did.
Chapter 12:
The Failsafe
Kate found Doc in the watchtower, a room with an entire wall of windows that looked down onto a gymnasium designated for training exercises. Below them, Titus transformed back and forth repetitively — from wolf to human and then back again. Kate took up a place beside Doc to observe.
It was difficult to watch, and not because the transformation itself was so violent, with the stretching of skin and impossible growth of teeth and claws. More painful was the change back to human. Titus was still learning to control the beast within; sometimes it cooperated and he flowed back to human form like liquid. Other times, he looked like he was engaged in an argument with himself, great wolfish snout snapping at the air as he fought for control.
But then, there were instances when it was an outright brawl, the wolf-man pounding fists into the ground and walls as Titus tried to interject logic and reason on the beast.
Kate examined this inner conflict as long as she possibly could. Her heart ached. Kate's entire life was about control. Witnessing her friend battle for it over and over again was almost unbearable.
Doc observed the process impassively, but as Kate began to understand him more and more, she discerned that he watched Titus not with a scientific curiosity but rather a paternal concern. He clearly favored Jane as he would his own child, but Kate sensed his attachment to Titus and the boy's condition was much closer to empathy than curiosity.
"So I've been wondering," she said.
Doc turned away from Titus and gave Kate his full attention. He always did that. If you asked for his consideration he offered it; this unnerved Kate. She didn't like anyone's complete attention. Especially now, when she planned to ask a difficult question.
"What can I do for you?" he asked.
"Why me?"
Doc studied her for a moment, waiting for more, not responding.
"You've got a sun goddess, a werewolf, a kid with a super-powered alien parasite, and a girl with a baby black hole where her heart should be."
"Quite the party."
"Yeah," Kate said. "And then there's me."
Doc nodded. He walked away and gestured for her to follow.
He led her out of the watchtower and down into a room that Doc's old team had once used as a debriefing area. His old team. They'd all retired, or gotten themselves killed, or flown off to another galaxy to solve some other world's problems. And left him here. Doc never said why. Kate had her suspicions, however. She hoped to run her theories past him directly, but the time never felt right, and it always seemed a little accusatory. Kate wasn't above harsh tones, but everything was too new and she understood she needed him on her side, at least for now. She needed all of them on her side temporarily. Whether that was something she'd always require was still debatable, though.
Doc gestured around the table.
Emblems were affixed on the different chairs in the debriefing room — memories of the costumes and symbols of his old teammates. He lingered longer on the one shaped like an hourglass.
"You're wondering why I chose you?"
"Yeah. I can't fly. Can't lift a car over my head."
"But you were a hero before anyone else here even knew they could be one," Doc said.
"I wasn't a hero. Technically, I was assaulting people without the sanction of law enforcement."
"You put on a mask and went out to try to improve things, Kate. Doesn't matter if you can lift a car over your head. All that matters is you wanted to make the world a better place than it was yesterday."
"That's debatable."
"Debatable or not, how could I ignore that kind of initiative? Self-taught, self-motivated . . . It's the ones who do it on their own who make the biggest difference. They appreciate the work more," Doc said. "Not that there's anything wrong with those who are born into something special, or come into accidental powers. But there you were, playing the hero all alone out there. I knew I could help you, and knew you could help the others here."
"Maybe I was better off on my own," Kate said.
Doc shrugged.
"Maybe you were. Maybe someone would have gotten the drop on you in some liquor store robbery and you'd have been dead by twenty. Who knows? That's not the timeline we're following right now. We're stuck with the one we're in."
"The timeline?"
Doc waved her off.
"Stuff for later. Let's focus on this reality first."
Kate sent him her most intense stare, then shrugged.
He looked at his hands for a moment, self-consciously, then back at Kate.
"There's something else, isn't there?" Kate said.
Doc nodded.
"Back in the old days, when we — my teammates and I — when we were young, something very bad almost happened, and we realized that we needed a plan. A failsafe."
"A failsafe?"
"If we ever lost control. Someone who knew how to shut us down. Who could be trusted with our weaknesses in case — "
"In case you ever had to kill one of your own," Kate said.
He shook his head.
"We hoped it wouldn't come to that. But we knew how to incapacitate each other. One of us always did, in any event."
Kate rubbed her eyes.
"And you want me to be the failsafe."
"Yes," Doc said. "You're the most logical of the group. You assess everyone. Predict their behaviors. Analyze their quirks. You are — whether you know it or not — deeply aware of the human condition. You'd be the first to pick up on it if one of the others went off the rails."
"What if I'm the one to go off the rails."
"You couldn't stand up to the others combined. That's your failsafe."
Kate thought about it for a moment. How do you stop the solar-powered girl? Were those werewolf myths about silver bullets true? Did she really want to know any of this?
Doc sensed her hesitation.
Of course he did. He seemed to know everything, most times.
"You can say no," he said. "The information can be a burden. Wouldn't blame you if you turned it down. But if you think you're up to the task, it's yours."
A soft alarm chirped, alerting them know to activity on the rooftop — Jane and the others returning, most likely. Doc turned to leave.
"Think it over. Plenty of time to decide later," he said.
"Wait," Kate said.
He looked back.
"You were once the failsafe, weren't you?"
He confirmed it with a nod of his head.
"Did you have to kill your friends, Doc?"
And then, he did something Kate had never seen him do before. He took off those rose-tinted glasses — eyes closed, not revealing the reason why he hid behind those lenses, but still, removing them from his face for the first time — and cleaned them with the hem of his tee shirt.
He put them back on and smiled at Kate — a soft, sad smile.
"Nothing like that," he said. "Something much worse."
"Worse than killing your friends?"
Doc palmed the door open in an effort to leave the debriefing room, then glanced back at her.
"Much worse . . . we gave up."
Chapter 13:
Disaster
The first time Doc allowed Emily to leave the tower, it was for a humanitarian mission.
A storm crashed into the coast of South Carolina with virtually no warning. Jane went to bed one evening and woke the next morning to Kate shaking her arm, telling her she had to see the news reports.
The destruction was incredible. Houses uprooted, entire sections of beach and coastline washed away. Even stranger than the ferocity of the storm was the impact of the temperature — it snowed in many places, hailed in others, a bizarre wintery mix on the edge of September.
Jane surveyed the scene from above.
Emily loomed in from her right. An overturned fire truck dispatched on a rescue mission was now in need of rescue itself. A collapsed strip mall lay in the distance. "I got this," she said, unusually quiet, dropping those typical mall rat inflections. Emily extended her hand and lifted the fire truck entirely off the ground. With unexpected care, she lowered it back to the ground. The vehicle bounced on its shocks when the wheels touched down.
Out on the horizon, Jane made out the white streak of Billy's flight pattern. He worked on a nearby apartment building, surgically blasting open walls to free the people trapped inside. Nearby, on the ground, Kate scrambled inside to help victims or lead medical personnel to those she couldn't save herself.
"Jane," Emily said, pointing out over the water. A boat, some kind of trawler, listed to one side and started to sink slowly. Its crew waved at them — their arms a line of X's in orange.
"Got it," she said. Jane aimed her fist toward the ship and arrived there in seconds, trying to determine the best course of action.
"Will it float if I tip you right-side up?" she asked.
The crew didn't know what to make of her, staring blankly until one of them spoke.
"She should stay afloat," he said.
"Hang on," Jane said.
She grabbed hold of the ship and pushed, trying to nudge it back onto its belly. It was a strange process; she'd never attempted to move something of this weight without being able to use her legs to push with. She knew, logically, that she had the strength while in flight to accomplish this, but it took her a moment to figure out the best way. Finally, she got a running — or flying — start and flew at the railing. The impact of her shoulder against the highest point of the ship knocked it right side up again, though she then had to scoop up a few stray sailors who fell into the ocean with the velocity of her push.
"Who are you?" asked one of the sailors when she grabbed his wrist and flew him back onto the deck.
She smiled.
"Call me Solar," she said. It felt good to use the name. Safe. A code name was like a shield and a mask. It made her feel less like an ordinary person.
Rather than risk the ship sinking again, Jane offered them a lift, pushing the craft toward the nearest safe harbor. When they were close enough to dock on their own, she flew away, waving back to the thankful faces onboard.
Then, she heard Emily.
"Uh, help?"
It was unnerving to hear her through one of the small earbuds Doc distributed so that they could coordinate responses with each other. Emily sounded less distressed than confused, but Jane rushed to her side anyway. She found Emily holding two buildings apart, each one tipping slowly toward the other. Jane watched as the faint, heat-mirage-like shimmer of Emily's power encapsulated both buildings. She was having trouble splitting her focus.
"I've got the one on the right," said Jane. She paused before flying too close, afraid Emily's gravity bubbles would knock her out of the air again. Emily let her field drop and Jane leapt in, pushing the building back to a more stable location.
"That's not going to stay," Emily said.
"I know. I just — "
"This is insane," Billy muttered into his headphones. "I know it makes me a bad person, but I'll take fighting a guy in a super-suit over a natural disaster any day."
"Focus, Billy," Kate said. All business. Her voice reverberated. Jane thought she might be underground somewhere.
"He has a point, though," Emily said. "I can move buildings but I'm kinda not qualified to make sure they — "
Jane whipped her head around when she heard Emily cut off only to see the blue-haired teenager lift up a car with the point of a single finger. Underneath, Jane spied the squirming figure of an injured middle-aged man.
Jane rocketed down, landed beside the man, who was now bleary-eyed and unresponsive. She examined him, her solar-powered senses identifying all the injuries assaulting his body, but her very human mind, without any real medical training, at a loss for what to do next.
She launched herself back in the air and gestured towards Emily to remain with the injured man. Jane scanned the horizon searching for flashing red lights. Finally, she discovered an ambulance a few blocks away and raced toward the vehicle.
"I need help," she said, realizing how ridiculous it sounded, standing there in her super-hero costume in front of a team of EMTs. "There's a guy — "
One of the medics, a young man with prematurely receding hair, grabbed a duffel and held out a hand.
"Take me to him," he said.
Jane scooped the EMT up and transported him to the victim's side. She felt the medic's grip on her arm tighten, sensed his pulse rate skyrocket as they took to the air. When they landed, his legs wobbled, but he immediately tried to stabilize the victim. Emily, still there, sat in a childlike crouch, her steampunk goggles pulled down tight over her eyes.
"All kinds of heroes, huh Jane?"
"Yeah," Jane said. "Takes all kinds."
Titus's voice chimed in through their earpieces. They'd left the werewolf back at the tower to monitor news reports. While his strength in werewolf form might have proved helpful, the risks were too great to bring him. Jane imagined Titus sitting in front of the monitor alone. Even Doc had come to help. Earlier, she watched him turn a collapsed stretch of roadway into butterflies with a wave of his hand.
"Guys, you should see this," Titus said.
"Tell me there isn't another disaster area," Billy said.
"Report, Titus," Kate chirped in.
Titus ignored Billy and, as usual, responded to Kate. Jane saw a change in the forlorn werewolf since he'd been partnered with Kate in the field more often. He deferred to her, but Kate also spoke to him like an equal, which she rarely did with anyone else.
"You'll not believe what this," Titus said. "I'm looking at the weather patterns leading right up to the start of the storm. Have you ever seen a hurricane take a ninety degree turn?"
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