Dreams of the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

  Analise sat back in the booth and smiled. “But it’s totally outside your control, and that drives you nuts.”

  This was why she and Analise had been having lunch almost every week for two decades. “Bingo.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m sure my kids are up to something, too. Creeping around like spies, not saying a word they don’t have to.”

  “Powers?” Celia questioned, even though she already knew the answer.

  “Probably. But it’s the same problem you have with Anna—if they’ve got powers, why won’t they just tell me?”

  Celia picked at the lettuce on her plate and smiled. “Because they don’t know who you are—were—and they don’t think you’ll understand. Because they have to protect their secret identities if they’re going to go fight crime.”

  Analise looked at her as if the concept had never occurred to her, which had to be a supreme case of cognitive dissonance. Then she slumped. “Oh, God, I hope not.”

  Back in the day, Analise had been Typhoon. She hadn’t worn her costume or used her powers since she’d accidentally killed a cop with a flood of water through the streets downtown. Guilt had shut her down. Celia constantly wanted to ask if she’d tried using her powers since then, if she ever hoped that she would get them back. But Celia didn’t have the courage to open that old wound.

  “I’d hoped whatever it was that got me would pass them over. Like it did you, you know? I figured you were proof that I couldn’t pass my powers on to my kids.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I just—” Analise leaned her elbow on the table, her brow furrowed. She worked hard to appear calm and in control, but this worried her. “They’d better not do anything to lose their scholarships. I don’t know how they managed to swing them in the first place, but they’d better not screw it up. It’s too big a chance for them.”

  They wouldn’t lose their scholarships to Elmwood Academy, not unless they did something to get kicked out of the school entirely. Celia had given them their scholarships anonymously, through a charity that assisted the children of firefighters who’d been killed in the line of duty, as Analise’s husband had been.

  “They’ll be fine,” Celia said. “They’re good kids.” Because that was what you said to your best friend about her offspring.

  Analise shook the thought away. “Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen, whether we like it or not.”

  The conversation turned to other topics, normal topics, like jobs, politics, school schedules, and the tragedy of aging.

  Analise seemed happy, Celia reflected. But as she often did, her expression held a sadness. A resignation. Such mundane domesticity was not where the original trajectory of her life had aimed her. As a young woman, she’d never planned on being the widowed mother of twins.

  Once again, Celia was on the verge of asking. Pushing her water glass forward, casually suggesting that Analise try to spill it with only her mind.

  “You are thinking deep thoughts, my friend,” the woman said finally.

  Celia smiled. “Oh, not so much. Just the usual.”

  “You might think about taking a vacation,” Analise said. “We haven’t all gone to the beach house since the kids started middle school, and you’re looking tired.”

  “I can’t look any more tired than I normally do.”

  “Yeah, you do, actually.”

  Great. Just what she needed, to start looking like crap as well as feeling like crap. “I’ll see what I can do. I keep thinking maybe once the kids are out of school.”

  “That’s years away. Go on vacation and take them with you. You used to be able to manage a trip every summer.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  They could all make the trip together. Sit around stewing about why their kids wouldn’t talk to them, and didn’t that sound like fun? Still, it was nice to know she wasn’t the only one who worried.

  Didn’t a vacation sound lovely? Someday soon, she promised herself.

  * * *

  The city planning committee initiative, and her determination to make sure West Corp’s bid was the one the committee picked, was the culmination of some five years of work, of reviewing civil engineering surveys, ordering a dozen or so studies of population and community patterns, making countless projections of all possible plans and outcomes to find the one that didn’t just work, that didn’t just make money, but that made Commerce City better. This drive, this loyalty to the city, wasn’t entirely hers, Celia knew that. She worked for this plan for the same reason her parents had donned skin suits and battled villains for most of her childhood: It was in the blood. The powers written into their DNA had to be used for the protection of the city. She didn’t have powers, but ultimately she had that need. She didn’t argue with it.

  The city had a process for getting things done, and she was adept at operating in its bureaucracies to make her plans work. She wasn’t worried that the West Corp proposal would lose out. But the arrival of Danton Majors was a variable she hadn’t expected. The most prominent outside participant in this dance, of unknown reach and resources, he made her nervous, and she wanted to know more.

  She searched online databases and news services for every reference she could find on Danton Majors. A native of Delta, comparable to Commerce City in population and resources, but inland. Proud citizen, et cetera. The articles she found were mostly shiny puff pieces in financial publications, extolling his genius and virtues. She read between the lines, decided he’d had a couple of lucky breaks but had parlayed that luck into a substantial business. Publicly, he did what self-made men usually did with their money: attended society functions, patronized the right charities. He was married—twenty-two years, impressive—had two college-age kids, though his family stayed out of the public eye. The man was careful with his image.

  She’d have to dig somewhere else to find any dirt on him, so she called a contact at the Commerce Eye. Over the years, the onetime tabloid rag had turned respectable by scooping its rival, the Banner, on a string of big stories. In the meantime, the Banner had gone stodgy and eventually folded.

  “Hello, Mary? It’s Celia West. I need a favor.”

  She could almost hear the reporter sputtering on the other end of the line. Celia had done her a few favors over the last couple of years—an exclusive interview, some on-the-record quotes about West Corp, and even a statement for a memorial retrospective about her father. Mary Danforth owed her big-time but probably never thought Celia would actually call her on it.

  Mary managed to recover some kind of enthusiastic demeanor. “Certainly, Celia, whatever I can do to help.”

  “Have you ever heard of a guy named Danton Majors? From Delta, rich real estate tycoon, he’s in town for that city planning meeting. You have anything unofficial on him?”

  She hesitated. “You know, that’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Well…” The reporter didn’t want to tell her.

  “Out with it, Mary. It’s no big deal. If he’s going to bid on the development initiative, I just want to know more about him.”

  “The thing is, I spoke with Majors a day or so ago. He was asking me for information about you.”

  That wasn’t a shock. Guy was smart, covered his bases. “What did you tell him?”

  “That’s just it. I started to tell him all about West Corp—nothing serious, you know, just all the public record stuff. I mean, that’s all I really know.”

  “But?”

  “He wanted to know about the Olympiad and whether or not you had powers.”

  “I don’t have powers, everyone knows that.”

  “Yeah, but … he seemed to think that maybe you’d hidden it. I told him that was silly. You’ve publicly distanced yourself from superhuman vigilantes your whole life. And you know what he said?”

  “That the very fact I’ve distanced myself suggests I’m hiding something.”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much it. Celia
, I have to tell you, and my instincts are pretty good on this sort of thing—I started wondering if he’s got his sights on you. From a business perspective, I mean.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Thanks a lot, Mary. I owe you one.”

  “Then how about giving me an early look at your annual report for last year?”

  “We’ll talk. Later.” She said farewell and hung up before Mary could do any more cajoling.

  The message light on her phone was flashing, and she picked up the line. “Celia, it’s Mark. I’m sending you a file. Let me know what you think.”

  She checked the encrypted e-mail account she and Mark had set up for this sort of thing.

  * * *

  This new video came from a traffic camera. In color this time, a little better quality, but still no sound. Didn’t matter, because there wasn’t much to the clip anyway. The scene showed a deserted intersection, half an hour after midnight. She double-checked the location—near City Park. She knew the place.

  A figure darted into the frame—straight down into the frame. A flyer, then? No—he descended at speed, landed in the middle of the intersection, absorbing the shock of impact in his knees, ending in a crouch. Straightening, he looked around, then gathered himself, pulling his arms close, bunching his legs. He launched himself into an epic leap that took him once again out of the frame of the camera, straight up. Not a flyer but a jumper. Celia was impressed in spite of herself.

  She isolated a frame of film that gave the best view of his figure and features. He had a confidence in his movements that pinned him as just a bit older than teenager. He was lean and muscular and had a determined set to his angular jaw, the thin frown that jutted out under his helmetlike mask. He had a good-looking outfit, a green skin suit that showed off his physique, as was tradition, and that slick helmet. He’d put some thought into this, even if he hadn’t gotten a whole lot of publicity out of it. Yet.

  But something about him wasn’t right. She took out her list of the Leyden Lab employees, the points of origin for them all. Studied the names, though by this time she had most of them memorized. She knew them all, and that was what bothered her. This new guy wasn’t the right age. Justin Raylen’s and Ed Crane Jr.’s kids were elementary school age; next oldest came the slew of them currently in middle and high school. The few descendants who hit in between that younger generation and her own hadn’t shown any sign of powers. Everyone older than Arthur was retired.

  This guy didn’t match anyone on her list.

  Which was impossible, or should have been impossible. She’d spent hundreds of hours and almost twenty years tracking down every single descendant of every single person who had been present in Leyden Laboratories when Simon Sito’s experiment failed. Every single person who had even a hint of potential. She’d pulled strings and broken laws to get access to adoption records, to track down secret affairs and illegitimate children. Every time a new superhero appeared, she’d been able to trace them back to one of these families, and she’d learned the secret identity of every superhuman who’d ever gone vigilante in Commerce City. She knew.

  Except for this guy.

  Her hands felt cold as she picked up the phone handset and called the precinct. Once she got past the gatekeepers, Mark answered. “Captain Paulson.”

  “Hi, Mark, it’s Celia. I just watched that clip you sent over.”

  “And?” He sounded so eager.

  She shook her head, an unconscious show of confusion. “And I don’t know who he is.”

  SIX

  ANNA and Bethy had been friends with Teia and Lew Fletcher since forever, because their mothers had been friends since forever. They’d spent a lot of time on the same playgrounds, and the two families had even taken a few beach vacations together when they were little. Anna hadn’t been aware of a lot of the dynamic when she was younger, but now she realized that her family, the rich family, had paid for the beach house, and there’d been a lot of mostly good-natured arguments between the adults about pulling their weight and being too generous to the point of charity. At the time, all she cared about was the fun they had. Teia and Lew’s mom had taught them all how to swim, which was great, but she spent a lot of the vacations sitting on the beach looking out at the water, kind of wistful and sad. Teia said something bad had happened to her mother in the far-gone past, something that she never talked about, and Anna wondered if it had something to do with the ocean. Or if it was just the hypnotic waves sweeping in and out that could make anyone melancholy.

  Then Teia and Lew’s father died. They’d taken one more beach vacation after that, which hadn’t been the same at all, because they kept tiptoeing around the empty space where Morgan Fletcher should have been. After that came middle school, and they all got too busy, or that was what they all kept saying.

  Lew had been the first of them to discover his powers. He might have had them since he was born, but who would notice if a brief thundershower happened every time a baby was cranky? It would be coincidence and slide by without comment. But in sixth grade, when a major storm causing flash flooding happened in exactly the Fletchers’ neighborhood—and only there—on the day of a test that Lew hadn’t studied for, he realized it wasn’t a coincidence. It was him. He told his sister because he told her everything, and Teia told Anna, because Anna’s family was filled with superhumans and she would know what to do about it. The only advice Anna could think of to give: Keep it secret. Practice controlling it, but keep it secret. Avoid attention and publicity. Attention had gotten them, especially her mother, in trouble.

  As if determined to keep her twin from showing her up, Teia learned to freeze with a touch soon after. She described it as a “popping” sensation—one day, she just knew she could do it, like a lock had broken and released her power. From then on, her sodas were always cold.

  After that, Anna began to suspect that supers were everywhere, she just had to know what to look for. That was how she caught Teddy disappearing when their English teacher asked for volunteers to read parts out of Romeo and Juliet. He always sat in the back, slouching in his seat and hiding behind the people around him as much as he could. He didn’t want to be noticed, obviously, but not because he was shy. It was because, sometimes, he really didn’t want to be noticed. At first he freaked that Anna wanted to talk to him at all—his eyes bugged out, looking back and forth for a place to escape. Clearly, he wanted to go invisible but couldn’t while she was looking right at him. But she explained: He wasn’t alone. He relaxed, as if the rods that had been holding him upright vanished. Later, Teddy figured out he could do more than turn invisible. The next step: turning insubstantial. He’d wanted to impress Teia and Anna with the new ability but didn’t think too far ahead when he passed through walls to follow them into the girls’ bathroom. They hustled him out quickly and gave him a lecture on being subtle.

  Anna found Sam zapping flies in the courtyard during class. Like Teddy, he seemed relieved rather than angry that someone had discovered his secret. Happy that he wasn’t alone in the world with his power and wondering what came next.

  That was their club. They’d found each other, and while they didn’t always get along, their desire for secrecy kept them together. Out of the whole world, they were the only ones who understood each other and what it meant to have powers.

  * * *

  After school, Anna went to the kitchen, where she knew she’d find her grandmother involved in some food-related project. Mom kept threatening to hire a cook—it wasn’t like the family couldn’t afford a cook, for goodness sake. But Grandma argued every time. She liked to cook, let her cook. Even Mom backed down from that.

  “Grandma, can I talk to you?”

  Suzanne looked over her shoulder. “Sure! You mind hanging out while I make cookies?”

  Mind a chance to grab some cookie dough before it went into the oven? Oh hell no. Suzanne wouldn’t even complain when Anna sat on the counter, out of the way of the mixer and cookie sheets.
/>   “Gingersnaps sound good to you?” her grandmother asked.

  Of course they did. Anna barely fit on the edge of the counter anymore, without running into the cabinets overhead. But the seat gave her a sense of nostalgia. It was habit, sitting on the counter while waiting to test the cookie dough. And sometimes, when her parents weren’t around, Anna didn’t mind feeling like a kid.

  Still slim in her jeans and sweater, her grandmother always seemed to be moving, bustling, promoting her charities, working in the kitchen. Suzanne’s roan hair, red fading to gray, was braided in a tail down her back. She certainly didn’t look like someone who could warm up a pot of soup by touching it or shoot fire bolts out of her hands. Or like someone who would run around after dark in a skin suit, fighting crime.

  Anna had a hard time thinking of her grandmother as the superhuman crime fighter Spark, but she’d seen the pictures of a young, svelte woman in a black suit, brilliant red hair showering across her shoulders and down her back, launching jets of fire from her hands.

  She’d put away the suit after Captain Olympus was killed. That period was a bit murky in the family lore. No one talked about it much. They talked about Warren, they talked about the Olympiad. They still got together with Uncle Robbie, who’d been the Bullet back in the day but had also eventually retired when arthritis began affecting his hips. But no one ever talked about how it had all ended, and Anna had been hesitant to ask. The dark cloud lingered in the distance, and she didn’t want to be the one to drag it close.

  “I thought you said you wanted to talk,” Suzanne said with a smile.

  “I was just thinking,” Anna said. Figuring out how to start, really. She took a deep breath and dived in. “What was it like, with the Olympiad?”

  Suzanne raised a brow, cracked eggs into a bowl. “What do you mean, ‘what was it like’?”