Sentinels

by Darius Brasher

  Truman slowed, and pulled into a parking spot on the street. We were now deep in Dog Cellar, in a part of it I had never been to before.

  “I said before I’ve been a busy beaver,” Truman said. “Speaking of busy beavers, we’re here.” He pointed to the building across the street.

  As naive about women as I still was, even I knew the building housed a strip club. I would have to be blind, stupid, and raised in a cave to think otherwise. The windowless, two-story building was painted a garish hot pink. The club’s name, Areola 51, flashed in bright neon lights right above the illuminated outline of a naked women with massive breasts and buttocks. A cluster of pink bulbs represented her areolae. Classy. “Girls, Girls, Girls,” was also lit up in flashing lights on the left front of the building, as were the words “All Nude, All the Time” on the right side. Two big beefy guys identically dressed in jeans and black leather jackets checked people’s IDs before they passed through the front door. The front of the club and the customer line extending from it were lit up like an airfield compared to the surrounding darkness.

  “That’s a strip club,” I said to Truman in disbelief.

  “It is. That’s a deduction worthy of Hercule Poirot. Are you sure you’re not a detective?”

  “If this is your idea of a joke, it’s not funny. I’m interested in finding out what Mechano has against me and how to deal with him, not in ogling a bunch of strippers.”

  “Why not do both and kill two birds with one stone? Considering all the bare breasts across the street, I almost said ‘Kill two boobies with one stone,’ but I didn’t know if you know that a booby is a type of bird in addition to a female body part. I hate to waste a booby pun on the ignorant.”

  Despite the fact Truman was a lot bigger than I, I was tempted to punch him. “I’m paying you to help me, not make stupid puns.”

  “I am helping you. The puns I throw in for free.” Truman jerked his chin toward Areola 51. “The Meta I told you about works here. Her name is Cassandra. She’s a clairvoyant whose powers allow her to answer any question asked of her. But, she can only answer one question per person, so choose your question wisely. Short of asking Mechano directly, asking her is the quickest way to find out what Mechano’s beef with you is.”

  “This Cassandra is a stripper?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “She sure ain’t a nun. If she is, she’s doing it wrong.”

  “What kind of licensed Hero works as a stripper?” The answer came to me before Truman opened his mouth to respond. “She’s not a Hero, is she?”

  “Nope.”

  “Were you drunk the day they taught you in your Heroic training that suborning the use of powers by a non-licensed Meta is a felony? If we were doing our jobs as Heroes, we’d be taking Cassandra into custody for unauthorized superpower use instead of consulting with her.”

  “This from the guy who illegally entered Antonio’s apartment and beat him up.”

  “And look how well that turned out. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes.”

  “Look,” Truman said, “I get that you were taught to follow the rules. And that’s a good thing as the rules are there for a reason, to keep those of us with powers in check. But if you follow the rules all the time, you’ll find yourself outmaneuvered by the people who aren’t as scrupulous as you are. Look at Mechano. ‘Try repeatedly to kill a young Meta named Theodore Conley’ is hardly an entry in the How To Be A Hero handbook. If you really want to find out what the deal is with a Hero as prominent and powerful as Mechano, you’re going to have to do what you’ve got to do. What was it Machiavelli wrote in The Prince? ‘Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.’ Besides, Cassandra isn’t using her powers to hurt people. If she were, I’d be the first person to turn her in to the Guild and the USDMA. She uses her powers to help people by answering their questions. Well, and to enrich herself. She readily admits the latter motivates her more than the former, but I can hardly blame her for that. She’s a businesswoman, not a Hero.”

  I sighed. I had already broken a bunch of rules since my powers manifested: using my powers without being licensed to defeat Iceburn; cheating during the Trials; and beating up Antonio. There were probably other little things here and there I’d forgotten. Though breaking the rules had seemed to be the best thing to do at the time I broke them, I wanted to get to the point where I walked the straight and narrow path. I didn’t want to do something like what I had done to Antonio that would lead to someone else getting hurt or killed. I wanted to be the kind of Hero I thought everyone with powers was when I was a kid. Maybe Truman was right, though. Maybe, to be effective, you couldn’t follow the rules all the time. But how far over the line was too far?

  I shoved the thought aside. Cassandra was the only lead I had gotten since moving to Astor City on how to find out what Mechano had against me. Tonight, I’d do what I had to do. I’d try to walk the straight and narrow path tomorrow.

  I said, “I’m not sure what to make of someone who makes a boob pun one minute, and then quotes Machiavelli the next.”

  “I’m eclectic.”

  “That’s one word for it. Weird is another. So how does this whole thing with Cassandra work? Do I just walk up to her and ask her about Mechano while trying to not stare at her breasts? That sounds way too easy. The asking part, not the staring part.” Since I had seen exactly one woman naked in person, namely Neha, not staring would probably be the hard part. I flushed at the thought. And it was likely to not be the only hard part.

  “That’s because it is too easy,” Truman said. “Cassandra will only tell you what you want to know if you’re willing to pay the price for the information. Nothing in life is free. On that note, I hope you brought the money I asked you to. Unlike me, Cassandra doesn’t take checks. She’s not as trusting as I am. Or as attractive, depending on your glandular bias.”

  “I did.” Between paying Truman and Cassandra, my savings were taking sizable hits. If the money got results, though, I didn’t mind. “Why can I only ask one question? If this lady has the power you say she does, she could tell me where Antonio is in addition to what the situation is with Mechano.”

  “For the same reason you have to move your hands when you activate your powers and I can’t turn water into wine despite how hard I’ve tried.” Truman shrugged. “Everyone’s powers have limits. I don’t know why that’s so, I just know that it is. I’m a detective, not a scientist specializing in Metahuman powers.”

  “How did you know I have to move my hands when I activate my powers? I never told you that.”

  Truman looked at me like I had asked a stupid question. “Weren’t you listening? I’m a detective. Noticing things is kinda my wheelhouse.”

  Truman reached over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a holstered handgun. He pulled his shirt up and shoved the gun down his pants so the gun rested in the small of his back.

  “Why do you carry a gun, anyway?” I asked. “You have superpowers.”

  “Why does a carpenter carry a toolbox? You never know what tool you’ll need when. It’s better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it. Besides, you can’t wave your superpowers threateningly in someone’s face. Sometimes the threat of violence is more effective than actual violence.” Truman glanced at the strip club. “Besides, we’re about to go into a building full of naked women. I’m in a committed relationship. I’ve got to keep the girls inside from mobbing me somehow.”

  “Where’s my gun, then? How am I going to keep them off me?”

  Truman made a big show of looking me up and down. His eyes came back to mine. They twinkled.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Come on, let’s go.” He opened his door, got out, made sure his untucked shirt covered his gun, and started to cross the street toward where the bouncers guarded the door to the strip club.

  I reluctantly followed him. Though Truman was in my employ, he did not seem
to have a problem making fun of me. What they said was true:

  It really was hard to find good help these days.

  CHAPTER 13

  Truman and I joined the line to get into Areola 51. Music thumped faintly from inside the building. Though the area immediately around the building was clean, beyond that the sidewalks and street were littered with trash. Maybe even the city’s street sweepers were afraid to venture into Dog Cellar.

  On either side of Areola 51 were dilapidated buildings that looked like they belonged on the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. Despite the fact it was the dead of the night, scary-looking guys swaggered in and out of view as they ambled along, many in the middle of the street, some holding up their baggy jeans with one hand. They were going God knew where to do God knew what. Maybe they were going to their late-night chess clubs or hoping to catch the last few minutes of midnight mass. I doubted it.

  “Here we are,” I murmured to Truman in a low voice so the guys ahead of us in line wouldn’t hear me, “standing in front of a hot pink building in the wee hours of the morning in the worst neighborhood I’ve ever seen to consult with a stripper-cum-clairvoyant. And who said big city life wasn’t bewitching?”

  Truman snickered. “You said cum.” I didn’t lower myself by responding. I felt low enough just standing here.

  Wielding penlights, the big bouncers checked people’s IDs before letting them in. Actually, I should say they checked each man’s ID because everyone in line was male. They were of various races, ranging in age from around my age to elderly. They looked normal enough, the kinds of guys you might see shopping at the grocery store or waiting at the doctor’s office. They didn’t look like degenerates. I for one felt like a degenerate. Nobody had ever told me there was anything wrong with going to a strip club, but the bishop who had presided over my confirmation into the Catholic church hadn’t encouraged me to rush out and start stuffing bills into a stripper’s G-string, either. I had been taught that objectifying women and reducing them to their sexuality was wrong. If a strip club wasn’t a shrine to such reduction and objectification, I didn’t know what was.

  The line surged forward. I got close enough to the front door of Areola 51 to read the sign posted there. I nudged Truman.

  “The sign on the door says no one under twenty-one is allowed inside,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, so?” Truman whispered back.

  “I’m only twenty. I don’t turn twenty-one for a few more weeks.” I felt a surge of relief at the fact I wasn’t old enough to go inside. Surely there was another way to figure out what I wanted to know about Mechano than to consult an unclothed clairvoyant called Cassandra. Maybe Truman also knew a slut with a sixth sense named Sylvia. I would not have been surprised.

  Truman sighed. “Now you tell me,” Truman murmured back. “Add twenty-one and up to the list of things you ought to be before the Guild gives you a license.” He eyed the two bouncers. One was white, the other Hispanic. Though they looked a dim-witted, what they lacked in apparent smarts they made up for in size. They peered carefully at people’s IDs, seeming serious about checking dates of birth rather than simply going through the motions. “If I’d known about this sooner, I could’ve gotten you a fake ID. Now I’ll just improvise something. If I can’t get you past these two lunkheads, I should retire, surrender my superhero secret decoder ring, and take up knitting. Wait, what are you doing?”

  “Improvising,” I said. Inspired by Truman’s fake ID remark, I had pulled out my Maryland driver’s license. Though I hadn’t had my own car since leaving South Carolina, I had gotten a Maryland license when I lived with Amazing Man in Chevy Chase as he let his Apprentices use his cars. “Stand in front of me so they can’t see what I’m doing.”

  With Truman’s big body in front of me to block my movements from the view of the bouncers and the other guys in line, I looked critically at the hard substance that comprised the license. I looked not only with my eyes but, more importantly, with my powers. I immediately discerned that the license was made of a polycarbonate plastic with a thin laminate coating on top. The information such as my photo, date of birth, and name was etched into the plastic with a laser. I had dealt with polycarbonate lots of times before. Plenty of things in our modern society were made of those plastics, such as eyeglass lenses, DVDs, smartphones, and automotive components.

  What most people don’t realize is that everything around us is made of atoms and molecules that are constantly moving. Generally speaking, the molecules of a solid move less than the molecules of the liquid form of that solid, which in turn move less than the gas form of that liquid. The more the molecules moved, the more heat there was. That was why steam was hot, but if you cooled it, it became liquid water; if you cooled it further still, it became solid ice.

  I hovered a hand over the license to help me concentrate my powers on it and, more specifically, the year of my birth. I focused on the six that was the last digit of my birth year. I shrank down in my mind’s eye, down to the barely moving lattice structure of the polycarbonate molecules that comprised the “6” on the license. With my powers, I forced those molecules to vibrate slightly more, making the polycarbonate more pliable. I simultaneously kept the molecules of the laminate above the six rigid to keep the now hot plastic underneath from burning a hole through the thin coating.

  I gently nudged the now pliable plastic of the digit, lengthening its top and reshaping its bottom, so that it looked like a “5” rather than the “6” it had started off as. Once it looked as good as I could make it, I slowed down the molecules of the plastic again, cooling and re-hardening what had been semi-liquid moments before.

  I released my powers’ hold on the plastic. My heart pounded with exertion. Though the whole process had only taken a few seconds, for some reason manipulating matter on a molecular level took a lot out of me, far more so than picking up something massively heavy did.

  According to my license, I was now a year older than I had been seconds before. Time sure flew when you were having fun waiting outside of a strip club. I ran a finger over the year of my birth. Though the once perfectly flat laminate covering the license was now a tiny bit raised over the newly formed “5,” it was barely noticeable and not visible to the naked eye.

  Truman took the license out of my hand. He looked at with a critical eye before handing it back. “Not bad,” he murmured.

  Once we got to the front of the line, Truman and I handed our IDs to the large bouncers. My doctored one passed their inspection without so much as a raised eyebrow. One of them held the door open for us. The music from inside blared louder. Truman and I stepped inside. The door closed, plunging us into relative darkness. The inside was ill-lit compared to the bright area right outside the club. I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.

  “You have a bright future as a counterfeiter ahead of you,” Truman said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the thumping music. The loudness of it made my insides vibrate.

  “Something to look forward to,” I said, suppressing a smile. I still wasn’t happy about being in a strip club, but was pleased that I had gotten past the bouncers without Truman’s help. I had screwed up the situation with Antonio and Hannah so royally that it felt good to know I wasn’t completely incompetent.

  There was a bar near the front door. Truman and I lingered near it. The song that had been playing when we came in went off, replaced by a rap song that was equally loud. I didn’t recognize it, but based on its oft-repeated refrain, it was titled Twerk Dat Booty. Nothing compares to the classics.

  My eyes had adjusted to the dim light. I peered around. This floor of the club was one giant room. It was crowded despite its size. Smoke swirled like thin fog, a violation of the city ordinance prohibiting smoking inside of businesses. Though some was cigarette smoke, much of it was marijuana. The acrid smell of the drug was one I knew all too well. Though marijuana was illegal in Maryland, there were parts of the city, including my neighborhood, where smoking a
joint on the street was as common as littering. Police didn’t bother arresting people for weed. I guess they figured they had bigger fish to fry.

  The inside of the club was a huge rectangle. The door we had just come in from was in the middle of one of the long sides of the rectangle. Directly across from us on the far side of the club were two brightly lit stages. Each had two brass poles running from the stage to the high ceiling. The stage on the left featured two women who could have been photographic negatives of one another: a very dark-skinned black woman, and a very pale, redheaded white woman. Both were thin, long-haired, attractive in a hardened way, and as naked as the day they were born. Assuming they had been born. I couldn’t imagine either of these improbably busty woman as babies. Maybe they had been manufactured fully formed by some mad scientist with a breast fetish and a surplus supply of silicone. Using the brass poles as props, both women danced, shimmied, and shook in rhythm to the song that blared from the club’s overhead speakers.

  The stage to the right featured four or five nude and semi-nude women. They writhed together so closely that it was hard to tell exactly how many there were, where one of them ended, and where another began. My face got hot as I realized what they were doing to each other. It was probably illegal in private; it was definitely illegal in public. Watching them reminded me of the time I had almost tripped over a snake ball when picking peas back on the farm. The mass of entangled, mating, wet-looking reptiles had simultaneously been both obscenely fascinating and disgusting. The mound of women was like that snake ball, only without a ball in sight. There were strap-ons, though. One out of three pieces of masculinity wasn’t bad.