by Gwenda Bond
Having a family who cared about you was the ultimate in good luck, and even bad-luck-cursed me knew it.
CHAPTER 7
There were two painfully thin boys a couple of years younger than us sitting on the sidewalk as we approached.
The smallest almost flinched away when I bent to show him the flyer. “Any of these guys look familiar to you?” I asked as gently as I could.
He didn’t say a word. Instead he went pale, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” I said. “We’re not here for anything bad. We’re just looking for them to help them. We’re, uh, not cops.”
The other kid let out a guffaw. “Figured,” he said, “since cops are older. But, y’know, people—even cute girls—asking questions is never good.”
“I beg to differ,” I said. “Asking questions is a number-one good in my world.”
The front door of the shelter swung open. “Boys, who you talking to?”
The asker was a kind-faced older man who had a steel-straight spine. Despite the kind face, I wouldn’t toy with someone who had such serious posture. I’d been around enough soldiers to recognize someone who ran a tight ship.
I straightened and walked to the door. I held the flyers in one arm and offered him my other hand. A firm handshake should go a long way with someone who had posture like that. “Lois Lane, from the Daily Scoop.”
He blinked, but accepted the handshake. “A little young to be a reporter, aren’t you?”
“Apparently not,” I said. “This is Maddy. We’re looking for these four teenagers—we think they may need help. Do you mind looking at the flyer?”
“I guess not,” he said. “Jeffrey here; the kids call me Mr. Jeffrey.”
He held out his hand and motioned us inside.
The corridor inside was cool, the air conditioning on full tilt, and the citrus-chemical smell meant someone worked hard to keep the place as clean as possible. The building was old, but well kept. There was a wall of taped-up artwork, drawings and paintings, some with ages marking them as the work of the very young, but others more sophisticated, missing ages as the artists got too cool to want to include that info. Voices in conversation could be heard up the hall.
It wasn’t a home, but at least it seemed like a good place. A safe one.
Mr. Jeffrey accepted a flyer from Maddy and held it up to a light. “I can’t say they jump out at me as familiar right away,” he said, continuing to consider.
I took the opportunity to walk along and peruse the row of artwork, and stopped in front of one that hit me like a mythological lightning bolt from Zeus. The style was the same as the logo on the fast kid’s backpack. There was a woman, and above her, a winged creature—a dragon, I realized on closer look. But that wasn’t the part that had stopped me in my tracks. No, it was the woman depicted in the drawing. It took me a second to realize why she was familiar.
She wore a fancy long dress and teetering heels, her hair coiled sleekly on top of her head. It was the same woman I’d seen on the street corner after my first encounter with the silver speed demon. The one who’d asked me if I was all right with that strange lilt to her voice. I’d have bet my life on it.
I pulled down the art. There didn’t seem to be a signature.
“Excuse me!” Jeffrey said, thrusting the flyer back to Maddy. “What are you doing?”
I held the piece up where he could see. “Who did this? Is the artist still here?”
“Wait a second,” he said. “Show me your pictures again.”
Maddy handed the flyer back to him, watching me wide-eyed.
After a moment, his finger hovered over the girl with brown hair. The one who had seemed capital-O-Ordinary. “Her face is a little off,” he said. “But she does favor the girl who made this drawing. Reya. Talented.”
“Is she still here?” I asked.
“Disappeared a month or so ago,” he said. “I thought maybe her parents had found her. I try to hope for the best when our kids go missing.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said.
I imagined it was far better to be optimistic, to proceed assuming wherever you could that you had cared enough, that you’d made a difference, that you would again. Dwelling on the worst was no way to live.
“Do you know who the woman is?”
His eyes went back to the drawing, then to me. “When people donate to us anonymously, our bylaws prevent us from saying anything that might identify them. We don’t even keep names on file, assuming we have them. Which we often don’t.”
Aha. I read that loud and clear. She’d made an anonymous donation, left no details we could pry into.
“Any idea where Reya was from originally?” Maddy chimed in.
“Afraid not.”
“Reya—will you spell the name for me?” I asked. “Can we leave a flyer up here, just in case someone else has seen her?”
Maddy handed him one to write the name on, then another when he nodded. “I’ll ask the kids to let me know if they see her around,” he said. “This number’s good?”
“Yes, but ask for Lois,” I said.
Maddy made a face, but hey, I didn’t want a real lead getting lost in James’s deluge of calls transferred from upstairs. On second thought…
“Here’s my direct number. Just call me,” I said, scribbling it and my name on another of the flyers and handing it over. “Do you mind if I take the art? We want to help her. I promise.”
“I guess so,” he said, after the briefest hesitation.
“Call anytime if you think of something else,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Good luck,” he said.
I laughed. Good luck was not something I had. Ever. But we did have our first actual lead on who one of the armor- sporting gang was. Maddy and I made our way back to the door.
“Wait!” Mr. Jeffrey called out before we were quite gone. “I remember—Reya was close with a boy. They were from the same neighborhood, I think. He would never spend the night here. He might be one of your others. I didn’t ever see him up close. But his name was Todd. She told me he was like a brother—not one, but like one.”
Make that a lead on two of them.
“Floppy hair?” I asked. “On just the one side?”
He nodded.
“You’re a hero,” I said, and meant every word.
Once we got outside, I looked at Maddy. “I’m thinking we narrow our search for the others to other homeless shelters. You want to shoot James and Devin a text to that effect, and that we’re headed back?”
“Who would do this, recruit homeless teens into their lab experiment?” Maddy said, shaking her head with disgust. She pulled out her phone and started to tap out the message.
“You know who I think it is,” I told her. I held up the drawing. “I took this because I’ve seen this woman. Maybe they do have new ‘parents.’ Maybe it’s her and Donovan.”
“Who is she?” Maddy asked.
“I have absolutely no idea. Yet.”
*
The boys had beat us back to the office. James was dutifully on his desk phone when we waltzed in, probably following up on messages from way after hours the day before. And Devin was at his giant desk with its two monitors. His head swiveled between them, and he was typing and frowning, frowning and typing, as he consulted them. He didn’t even notice our entrance.
Maddy and I waved, and James waved back. She went to her desk, and I to mine.
I’d skimmed through the home page of Loose Lips on my phone on our way back and, just as SmallvilleGuy had said, the only new posts about people seeing weird stuff referred to things that had happened the day before. Our silver-armor gang seemed to have remained out of sight today.
The whole thing made me uneasy. What were they up to?
And who was
that woman?
I didn’t like not having the full story, or having to just wait for our attackers to pop back up. I was eager to debrief the boys more fully, see if they’d gotten any information we could use. But first, I had a phone call to make.
The information I’d read online about Stryker’s Island visiting requests had recommended using a landline instead of a cell phone. So I went to my desk, pulled out my notepad, and dialed the number.
“Visitor relations.” The woman on the other end was no-nonsense, with a voice that was impossible to read.
“Um, I’m a journalist—”
“We don’t permit media into the facility except by prisoner or administration request. I can transfer you to the PR department—”
“Hang on. I’d like to be added to Moxie Mannheim’s visitor list,” I said as confidently as possible after the two of us competed to interrupt each other.
No-nonsense paused. “Has he requested a visit from you?”
“Uh, no, I’m calling to ask that he permit me to visit him.”
A moment of silence. “Name.”
“Lois Lane,” I said.
“Are you a minor?”
“Yes. I’m sixteen.”
“Address and phone number.”
I rattled them off.
“Lois Lane, sixteen years old, Metropolis resident, requesting to be added to Moxie Mannheim’s visitor list.” She read back my phone number.
“That’s right. When, uh, can I expect to hear?”
“You’ll hear if it’s approved.”
And click.
Maddy was watching me when I replaced the receiver. “You gave it a shot,” she said, her giant headphones around her neck.
“We’ll see what happens.”
Why would Moxie Mannheim agree to see me? Maybe he was curious about the girl who’d sent him up the river. I hoped so.
Devin looked over at me, and I could tell by his somber expression that something was up. “Dev, what is it?”
“You want to step out into the hall?” he asked, finishing up copying something down from the monitor in front of him. Then he stared at me.
“What’s this?” Maddy asked.
“Uh, it’s private stuff,” Devin said.
There could be no doubt what it was about. Or, rather, who. TheInventor. But Maddy didn’t know that, and she raised her eyebrows.
My palms started to get clammy. That look on Devin’s face was no good. I was afraid.
“Private stuff of mine. I asked Devin to do me a favor,” I said, hearing how thin my voice was. I channeled bluster that belonged to a different moment. “You fill in James on what we found out.”
James and Maddy exchanged a glance, but didn’t object.
If Devin’s news couldn’t wait, I was certain I wouldn’t be too thrilled about whatever it was. I followed him out into the hallway. It was darker than our office; they’d turned half of the ceiling fluorescent panels off as a cost-savings measure. We were the only ones regularly down here.
“What’d he do?” I asked.
Devin’s face stayed grim. “You were right that I’d know it when I saw it.”
He handed me the piece of paper he’d been writing on. It was a list of usernames I recognized from Strange Skies, along with cities or states. But I gasped when I focused in enough to read it. There on the first line:
SmallvilleGuy – Smallville or region, Kansas
My vision swam, and his username was all I could see.
“Explain,” I said, my whole body going cold. I tore my eyes away from the page. “What is this?”
“It’s a list this dude sent to someone in the government,” Devin said. “Defense department, I think, or maybe military. I wasn’t about to breach those firewalls to find out. Lois, he didn’t even try to hide it. I think he wanted us to see. And I’m getting nothing now. He disabled the worm.”
I gaped at Devin, then put two and two together. After that private message to me, it made sense. “He figured out we were spying on him. This is retaliation.”
“Looks that way.” Devin frowned. “The context that went with that list was a list of Strange Skies users of likely interest and the cities he thinks they live in. The response from the government contact was an enthusiastic thanks for reopening communications. That was all I could see.”
“This is bad.” I didn’t know what to do first, where to go. I paced a few steps and doubled back, thinking. Then the answer hit me. “I have to go home.”
“Okay. But did you read the whole list?” he asked.
“No, I’ve seen what I need.” I started to walk past him.
“Read the whole list.”
I skimmed down the full list, seven names total, not sure what had been so urgent until I reached the last line.
SkepticGirl1 – Metropolis
My blood froze.
“I have to go.”
I started past him again, and he gently took my arm. “You want your stuff?”
“Oh, yeah,” I nodded. My thoughts were spinning a million miles an hour.
SmallvilleGuy was number one on the list. And there was my name at the end. Who knew what else TheInventor might pony up to the military? And now we wouldn’t be tipped off about it. He must have sent me that link to the Loose Lips post to get my paranoia started. He’d known that we’d discover this.
This was a disaster in the making.
When we came back into the office, James and Maddy peered over at us. Maddy got up. “What’d you do to Lois?”
Devin said, “Nothing, but she has to leave.”
“I do.” I slung my messenger bag strap over my shoulder, my brain stuck in overdrive. I texted Taxi Jack and asked him to pick me up outside. He responded immediately: Be right there.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.
“Okay,” Maddy said, frowning in concern. “Text if you need anything.”
“We’re all here for you,” James put in.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. “Right now, I just need… to get home.”
I needed to figure out how to prevent the catastrophe my snooping might have brought down on us. I didn’t know SmallvilleGuy’s reasons for holding his identity so close or exactly what his connection to the flying man was. But I knew someone snooping around his hometown wasn’t good news. He had something to hide, and I trusted his reasons. He wouldn’t take this well.
And then there was the idea of Dad looking for SkepticGirl1, aka me, and discovering that I hadn’t kept quiet about what we’d seen in Kansas that night.
I was in too much of a hurry to wait for our uber-slow elevator, so I found the stairwell door and pounded up to the lobby. Stopping myself from running to the doors wasn’t easy, but I managed to just walk extremely fast to them.
Where I stopped. Through the glass, I saw a boy waiting outside. I recognized his haircut right away. The boy Jeffrey had said was named Todd. He was leaning against the wall of the building next door, along the path I typically took to the curb. A girl stood beside him, and since her hands weren’t silver I realized she must be the laser vision girl—the fact she wore oversized sunglasses that hid her eyes was enough to confirm it.
Gotcha. I dug out my phone and texted Devin: Do you have the cell I gave you before ready? Can you bring it to the lobby ASAP? Typhon duo out front.
No one, not even Speedy Todd, was going to stop me from getting home to deal with my emergency. But I could risk a brief, hopefully profitable delay.
Devin, with Maddy and James in tow, appeared in the lobby a couple of minutes later. I stepped back to avoid us being spotted and pointed to where the boy and girl lounged. A flash of Todd’s silver foot was visible as he shifted against the wall.
“I’ll get the phone on him. You guys stay in here.” I held out my hand to Devin, palm ope
n.
He put the phone in it, but then said, “I think someone else should go with you. There are two of them and only one of you.”
Maddy nodded and said, “I can.”
“No, I should,” James said.
“No, none of you should. You guys will be right here if anything goes wrong. Just grab a security guard. I’ll… flash you a peace sign if I need help.”
James narrowed his eyes. “Why a peace sign?”
“I don’t know, because it’s the first thing I thought of.” I made sure the phone was on, then turned. “I don’t want to start a war, I want to help these guys. Here I go.”
I shoved open the door and started on my usual route across the concrete plaza toward the curb, trying to appear as normal as possible. On cue, Todd peeled away from the wall and burst toward me with uncanny quickness. He had his backpack on again.
I jerked my head back in pretend shock, but when he got close—
I dove for him. Grabbed hold of his arm.
The force of his movement pulled me with him for a moment, before he stopped. “Let go, and we’ll let you follow us. But only you,” he said. “Alone.”
I was tempted, despite this being a clear trap. What would Nellie Bly do?
The girl with the sunglasses had caught up with us, and now she took them off. “Just come with us,” she said, her voice quiet, thin. I saw a faint glow from her eyes, the silver mask molded around them like skin.
“I’ll have to pass for now,” I said, grabbing Todd tighter with my free hand. He started to grapple with me in an attempt to get loose. I glanced at the Daily Planet Building, but no one was running out.
Good job, guys.
I managed to let him twist away, to a perfect angle for me to grab for the backpack’s zipper and shove the phone into the inside pocket. The girl lingered to the side, the boy’s body blocking her view of what I’d done. We only needed them not to discover it right away.
“Get off,” he said, and pulled away.
