“He wasn’t,” I reply. “But, you said it yourself. He might have other motives. I’m sure he wants to lure me away from the city to finish what he started. There’s less chance of the police and other people getting involved if we’re in the woods. We were just lucky that we managed to take him down in Pine Grove.”
Mae looks down at the drawing I did of my costume, studying it.
“So, where are you going to hide the Vestige?” she asks. “Are you going to sew it into your jacket like your dad did?”
I press my lips together as I think about it, considering the options.
“No,” I reply. “If I hide it in my jacket, I’ll have to wear that thing whenever I want to use my powers. I need to do something else - we need to do something else.” I nod to the shard around her neck and she reaches up to touch it.
There has to be a way to hide the Vestige without tying it down to a shirt or a jacket. Keeping it around my neck is no longer an option. It’s too easy for someone to swipe the medallion from my neck.
I look around at all the supplies scattered about the room - spools of multi-colored thread, bins of ribbon and crafting supplies - when my eyes stop on some folded stacks of fabric. I reach out to feel some of the dark fabric, pairing it with some clasps from the bucket of supplies.
“I think this will work,” I say, setting down the things in front of Mae.
“What are you thinking?” she asks, straightening out the fabric.
“What about an armband?” I say. “Think about it. We can sew the Vestige into the fabric, maybe with a slot to get it out in case we need to. But, that way we can wear the band under our clothes no matter what we’re wearing. It will look like a sports band.”
Mae grabs a pencil and starts to draw out a design on the back of my costume paper.
“This sounds like a good idea…”
Within seconds, she has a blueprint for the band, and the solution to our Vestige problem is now secured.
The bands are easy to make, and Mae finishes up mine within five minutes and starts to work on hers while I test it out. The medallion fits snugly in the pocket and the clasp is measured perfectly so that the band is snug against my bicep.
“This is perfect,” I say, showing off Mae’s handiwork. “How’s your costume turning out?”
Mae’s costume is set up against the wall, hanging from a curtain rod. She decided to copy my costume a bit, except her pants are much more form fitting. A sports jacket, the kind that you go running in, makes up her top - emerald and purple, and she has modified a hood to become a sort of mask that hides her identity. She starts to put her own costume on so that we can see what we look like together when she motions to me.
“Hey - aren’t you forgetting something?” she asks.
“What?” I reply.
She points at my backpack.
“The visor?”
I almost forgot my father’s visor, which was found by me months ago. It’s a little worn out from my battle with The Drone, but it still works. It could use a little TLC, however.
I take the visor, a dark gray see-through set of solid sunglass-looking things, out of my bag and open up the wings. There’s a little dust on them, so I blow it away. Luckily there are no cracks in it. One of the wings was loosened a bit, and because of the moisture that it came up against, it needed to be buried in a bowl of white rice to dry it off. But, when I put the visor on, my costume is complete and the thing still works. A tiny button on the side activates the electronics and a full data display appears before my eyes.
This visor would have come in handy during the attack down in Chinatown, had I thought enough to put the visor in my pocket before leaving to show Kimberly around. It might have also come in handy during our trip to the caves up north. I don’t think I’ll be leaving it home again any time soon.
“How do I look?” I ask Mae, holding my arms out to the side. “Can you recognize me?”
“With the visor on?” she replies. “Not really. Your face is pretty covered, and if you have your hair flying around in the wind, I doubt anyone will be able to say you are Shaun Boding.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I say, turning off the visor and removing it from my face. “This still needs to be tightened a bit. Do you have a tiny screw driver anywhere?”
Mae motions to a set of drawers up against the wall. This room seems to have everything she needs to be crafty. I rummage through the drawer and pull out a tiny screwdriver, walking back over to a fold-out table so that I can work on the visor without dropping any pieces on the floor.
As I tighten the minuscule screw, the light catches on some embossed lettering on one of the visor’s wings. My eyes widen as I read it.
“Of course!” I say, holding up the visor. “I can’t believe I forgot about this.”
Mae just finishes up her own arm band and looks over at me. “What are you getting so excited about?” she asks.
“Spire Tech!” I say, showing her the words on the visor. “Remember we saw the name when we found the visor at the the publisher’s archives? It’s the name of a company - it has to be. Or a tech organization. I meant to research it, but other things got in the way.”
“So, why is this important now?” asks Mae as she tries on her own armband.
“It’s important because I think I know how it’s connected to The Drone,” I say. “I think that Spire Tech is the place where The Drone got his mechanical suit of armor.” I pull over one of the folding chairs and sit beside Mae. “Didn’t you tell me that you got a vision when you touched The Drone’s armor?”
“I did,” says Mae. “It was of a facility.”
“That’s right. The facility where he got his armor - presumably. If we want to hunt down The Drone and take him out once and for all, we need to attack him at this facility when he least expects it.”
“And how do we know that the facility I saw in my vision is Spire Tech?” asks Mae, setting down her work. “It could be any tech company in the city - and you know there are tons of those.”
“We’re going to use your ability to find out for sure,” I say, setting the visor down in front of her. “I need you to touch the visor and have one of your visions.”
Mae groans.
“Shaun, you know I’m not able to summon a vision on command yet. Nothing is going to happen.”
“But, you could try,” I press on. “This will give us a leg up on our enemies. You need to try.”
She gives me a skeptical look, and I fold my hands in front of her.
“Please.”
Mae picks up the visor grudgingly and says, “Alright. I’ll give it a shot. But, no guarantees.”
Mentally I cross my fingers and watch her intently as she focuses her attention on the visor in her hands.
She closes her eyes and relaxes all the muscles in her face. I can’t see what she’s thinking, but I can tell that her eyes are moving back and forth the way they would during REM sleep beneath her eyelids.
There is a long moment where nothing seems to happen, but then Mae’s mouth slides open and she takes a sharp inhale. Then her eyes open and they are glowing like they did in the field where we trained.
The buzzing, humming sound of energy fills the room, and Mae arches her back in the chair. I hold out my hand behind her as if to catch her, but I make sure I don't touch her unless I absolutely have to. I don’t want to break the trance state that she’s lulled herself into.
This lasts about a minute, then her eyes close and reopen, back to normal. She holds out the visor to me and I take it.
“What did you see?” I ask. “Was it a facility?”
Mae nods, thankfully not as drained as she was the previous times that she accidentally used her supervision.
“It was definitely a facility,” she says. “I saw the same name on some paperwork: Spire Tech.”
“That confirms it, then,” I say, folding the visor in my hand. “It’s the same company. I don’t know how my father and The Drone got involved wit
h it, but we need to get to the bottom of it. We need to stop The Drone, and the way to stop him is to take down this mysterious company.”
“Do you think we can just Google it and find out where it’s located?” asks Mae, pulling out her phone. She types in a few things and searches. I don’t expect anything to pop up, but after clicking through a few pages of search results, Mae points at her screen. “I think I found it,” she says.
“Really?” I lean over her shoulder to look.
“Yeah.” She clicks on the link and a plain gray web page with green text appears on the screen. It’s so old that it doesn’t even have a mobile version of the site.
I scrunch up my eyebrows as Mae scrolls through the page.
“It’s very primitive for a tech company,” I mutter.
“That could be because they want to stay under the radar,” Mae replies. She continues to scroll, showing a ton of blank space and some generic pictures of technicians working with machinery, which seem to me to be stock photos. Then she reaches the bottom. “That’s it.”
“There are no other pages?” I ask, reaching over to scroll back up to the top of the page. As we just saw, there are no tabs, no other links to information. It’s as plain as a printout hung on a telephone pole. There isn’t even a phone number. “I wonder if all the information was scrubbed from the site,” I say. “After The Drone attack, they could have removed all their contact info.”
“If that’s the case, then why is there an address listed at the bottom?”
“Is there?”
We zoom in at the bottom of the page. In minuscule size five font is an address. Mae highlights it and copies it, pasting it into Google Maps. The screen reloads and the progress icon spins for a few seconds.
“Come on…” I say. Then, on the edge of my seat, the map comes up with a red pointer amidst a cluster of old-looking buildings. The place isn’t even in the heart of the city. In fact, it’s on the outskirts, just when the zoning starts to become more rural and wooded.
It looks like the cluster of buildings is a bunch of warehouses. That can’t be right, can it? This is supposed to be a tech company. I am expecting a glass building with sleek designs. This is the exact opposite of all those things.
“Click on the street view,” I say, and Mae does it.
From the street, the building in question is indeed a simple concrete structure, rectangular with barely any windows. There are two garage doors for truck deliveries, and a set of stairs leading up to a simple steel door. There is no signage that I can see.
“Do you really think that’s the place?” I ask.
“It must be!” says Mae. “That’s the address from their website. Maybe they cleared out before this was taken.”
I study the building. If there really is a bunch of crazy superhero technology being developed, it would make sense to me that the place would be so nondescript if it was dealing with The Drone. Maybe that’s why my father doesn’t mention this company in his journal. There could be bad blood between him and Spire Tech, which would explain why the only piece of technology he has from them is the visor.
I imprint the building on my memory and pull my jacket on over the lightning T-shirt.
“We need to go to this facility,” I say. “We have an address. If there really is criminal activity happening there, we can report it to the police anonymously, and when they arrive, we will have our costumes on so that nobody will know our identities. We’ll be far away from there using our flying powers before anyone can figure us out. These people need to be brought to light and handed over for stalking and terrorizing, at the least. It’s the perfect superhero mission.”
Mae folds her arms and fixes her stare on me.
“When are we going to do this sting?” she asks.
I think it over. Things like day jobs don’t seem so important now that The Drone is being backed by a company of tech gurus.
“Tomorrow night,” I say. “That gives us a whole day to get our act in gear. If we are prepared, we will be a force to reckon with.”
Mae gives me a resigned smile.
“Then let’s get ready.”
27
Spire Tech
I am just covering up my superhero costume with a sweatshirt the following evening when Mae rings the doorbell.
The house is quiet, especially in my room. I can hear my heartbeat steadily throbbing in my ears as I take one final look at myself in the mirror. I don’t look particularly different, but I feel different. I feel older. My eyes are not as bright as they were years ago when Dad was still alive. Even my head seems to hang lower on my shoulders, even though the Vestige isn’t strung there any more.
My armband is securely beneath my shirt, hiding the source of my powers.
“Here we go…” I mutter, straightening my sweatshirt before bounding out of the room and down to the front door.
Mae stands expectantly on the front stoop, equally disguised in civilian clothes. She has a bag over her shoulder which contains her face-mask. Her eyebrows raise as she sizes me up.
“Are you ready?” she asks.
I go to pull my phone out of my pocket when something occurs to me.
“Wait just a second,” I say, and head back into the house.
Mom is sitting in the living room with her feet tucked beneath herself, reading a book. It’s one of my father’s hardcover editions of Super Guy. She doesn’t notice me until I’m halfway across the room, headed right for her.
“Are you going out?” she asks, motioning to my clothes.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s Mae at the door.”
“Ah,” she says, tucking a finger between the glossy pages to keep her spot. “You’re always headed somewhere. I feel like the older you get, the less I know where you are.” She presses her lips together. “I hope that you’re not getting into any trouble.”
“Of course not,” I lie, forcing a laugh. “I’m never getting into trouble.”
Mom places both hands on the cover of her book and fixes a look at me.
“Sure. I’ll believe that in a million years.”
I stand there for a moment, our eyes locked together. Again I’m struck by how normal my life feels when I’m at home, despite all this espionage. I could sit down on the couch and watch TV, maybe have friends over. Those are things I would love to do. Those are things that I should be doing.
But, I can’t do them until I know for sure that the facility that is arming The Drone is taken down - or at least being monitored by someone else. If the police know about Spire Tech then I can get it off my mind and get back to trying to balance my normal life with its Aberrant side.
If I don’t do this for me, I need to do it for Mom. She deserves a normal son, one that she can be proud of - one that she doesn’t have to worry about.
I lean down and give her a kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll be back later,” I say, adding when I get to the living room entryway, “If I don’t show up in the morning, send out the troops looking for me.”
Mom chuckles.
“I’ll make sure I do that,” she says.
I pause at the entryway, feeling as if I’m marching off to war. As much as I like to tell myself that an operation like the one that Mae and I are attempting is safe, there’s nothing to guarantee that. If things go wrong, my chance at a normal conversation with Mom might truly be over. A somber expression settles on my face.
“I love you, Mom,” I say.
She tilts her head back.
“I love you, too,” she says. “Now, get out of here and go knock ‘em dead.”
“I’ll do my best,” I reply with a wry smile and head out with Mae.
___
We drive Mae’s car around the block and park it on the street so that we can stow our civilian clothes in her back seat without being noticed, and also so that we can leave the car there. Our approach to Spire Tech will be from the air. Flying to the facility will maintain the element of surprise. Using our powers me
ans no engine noises and no headlights.
We land at the approximate location of the facility fifteen minutes later, just outside the bustling city.
A generic concrete building sits within a tall chain-link fence, the kind that is ringed with barbed wire. That doesn’t stop us, of course.
According to the GPS on my phone, this building must be Spire Tech’s headquarters. It definitely matches the address on their website. The other buildings around the industrial park have large signs advertising their services. Spire Tech is the only one that appears to be a blank slate.
It’s as if they want to be hidden from the world.
On the front of the building are a bunch of bay doors, the kind used to unload freight shipments from trailer trucks. These doors are locked tight and stretch all the way down the face of the building with a row of warm yellow lights illuminating them.
Everything smells like warm, damp tar and heated steel. It’s a muggy, late-summer night.
Mae and I both hurry to conceal ourselves against a wall and get a better look around.
“Do you see any cameras?” Mae asks.
I adjust the visor in front of my eyes, scanning for energy signals. After a quick look up and down the row of freight doors, I come up with nothing.
“I think we’re safe for now,” I say. “There aren’t any energy spikes. It seems very flat.”
“Not even for life forms?” asks Mae.
I shake my head.
“No. There’s nothing out here.”
Mae takes in a breath and holds it, straightening her shoulders.
“That’s what scares me,” she says.
Despite the tension in the air, I have to smirk.
“Are you going to pull out the line about being too quiet?” I ask.
I think it’s pretty funny, but Mae doesn't indulge me. Instead she fixes a serious look on me that is evident, even beneath her mask.
“You don’t think it’s just a little strange?” she presses me. “There are no cars here. No trucks. The place looks deserted.”
We both pause, listening to the sounds of the night. There is the hum of traffic far off in the distance, but nothing in the immediate area. The sun is pretty much set completely, with only a hint of color in the dark clouds.
The Aberrant Series (Book 2): Super Vision Page 15
