“But Mommy—”
“No buts, young lady.”
Robin looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Can I still ride the carousel?”
“Of course you can.”
Robin took her mother’s hand. She skipped along towards the carousel, her stuffed unicorn Snowmane pressed to her chest. So far the carnival had been so much fun, even if she could only go on the baby rides. She got to eat cotton candy and elephant ears and corn dogs. A clown had even painted her face to look like a pretty tiger.
The carousel had stopped by the time they got up to it. Robin broke away from her mother to find the prettiest horse, a white unicorn like Snowmane. She tried to get on the unicorn, but she was too little to do it by herself. Instead she pointed frantically at it and stamped her feet. “Mommy, Mommy, this one!”
“I’m coming, sweetie.”
Mommy pretended to groan as she helped Robin onto the carousel. “You want me to hold Snowmane for you?”
“No. She wants to ride with me.”
“I think you should use both hands to hold onto the pole.”
“But Mommy—” Mommy cleared her throat to cut Robin off. She handed over her stuffed toy. “Be careful with her.”
“I will.” Mommy tousled Robin’s hair. “You be a good girl now.”
“Yes, Mommy.”
Other kids began to board the carousel. An older girl with her face painted like a kitty sat on the horse across from her. “Hi,” Robin said.
“Hi.”
“I’m Robin. It’s a bird.”
“I know,” the girl snapped. She grinned slightly to say, “I’m Kitty, like a kitty.”
Robin giggled at this. “Tigers are kitties too, but they’re big kitties.”
“That’s true.”
The carousel started to move, organ music playing loudly. Robin didn’t like the music; it was so loud she couldn’t talk to her new friend. She wished she could have Snowmane with her; she would like the carousel.
As the carousel made its first circle, Robin waved to Mommy and Snowmane. With the second circle, the ride began to speed up. She decided it took only two-thirds the time as the first circle, using the fractions Daddy had taught her with flashcards. She waved again to Mommy and Snowmane.
Again the carousel sped up. Robin had to keep both hands on the pole now like Mommy had warned her about. She looked over at Kitty, whose face had begun to turn green on the edges. She looked ready to barf at any second. “Are you all right?” Robin shouted. The music was too loud for her to hear what Kitty said.
It took another pass for Kitty to barf. The worst part was it splattered all over her, staining her pretty dress and smearing the whiskers on her cheek. Kitty started to cry. Robin wanted to say something comforting, but she couldn’t with this loud music. Her stomach was beginning to churn from all this spinning. How much longer until the ride ended?
The next time they came around, she shouted, “I want off, Mommy!” She couldn’t be sure if Mommy heard her or not. The ride got even faster. Next to her, Kitty was spitting up yellow stuff while she sobbed.
“I wanna get off!” Kitty shrieked.
“You can’t,” Robin said. “It’s going too fast.”
Kitty didn’t hear her. She let go of the pole and then rolled off the horse. She was thrown backwards, into the nose of a brown horse. Kitty went down on her knees. She crawled towards the edge. “No!” Robin shouted. The girl still didn’t hear her. Robin thought about letting go to try to save Kitty, but she couldn’t. If she let go, she would get hurt too.
She could only watch as Kitty reached the edge of the carousel. She rolled off the edge, but not fast enough to escape. For a horrible instant Robin watched as her new friend was sucked beneath the ride. The carousel bumped a few times. Smoke came from underneath it. Finally it came to a stop.
Robin needed a few moments for her head to stop swimming. Then she launched herself from the unicorn. She landed hard on her knees, but she didn’t care. “Kitty!” she wailed.
She started to jump from the carousel, but rough hands seized her. She was swung up to face a terrifying clown dressed in black with equally black hair. The nasty clown grinned at her with gross yellow teeth. “Looks like curiosity killed the Kitty,” she said and then began to cackle.
“Mommy!” Robin shrieked. She squirmed in the mean clown’s grip until she finally put Robin down. Robin ran sobbing into Mommy’s arms.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“Kitty died.”
“Who’s Kitty?”
“My friend. She was on the horsy next to me. Then the carousel kept going faster and faster until she jumped off and got pulled under. And then a mean clown told me curiosity killed Kitty and laughed.”
“Now, sweetheart, you shouldn’t make up stories like that.”
“It’s not a story! It really happened.” Robin pointed to the carousel. “She’s under there!”
“Don’t be silly. No one’s under there.”
Robin pointed again, but now she saw people getting on the carousel as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing. She continued to think that until she saw the nasty clown in black. The mean girl winked at her and put a finger to her lips. Then she cackled again, prompting Robin to bury her face against Mommy’s shoulder.
***
It took Allison and Sally five seconds to get from Redoubt City to Detroit, but it would take Midnight Spectre much longer. Until then, they had the place to themselves, so long as no more “hunters” showed up for them. If so, they were going to be in big trouble.
To pass the time, they walked along a path by the river. Allison had visited Detroit once for a conference back when she had been a grown man. She hadn’t strayed far from the casino hotel that was hosting the conference. Not because she had liked to gamble, but because Sally had been seven months pregnant. Any minute Allison had expected a call saying Sally had gone into labor or something terrible had happened to the baby.
“I guess there wasn’t much here for Omega to destroy,” Sally said.
“I guess not.”
“You really believe all that stuff about a killer planet eating everyone on Earth?”
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
“No more than a ray that can change your sex, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It doesn’t make sense why we ended up here.”
“It was probably the ion charge he hit us with.”
“And that sent us twenty years into the future?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that combined with our superspeed opened a hole in space-time.”
“Sounds like a decent theory.”
Sally stopped to lean against a railing. Across the still water was Ontario, which didn’t look any livelier than Detroit. Allison turned to Sally only to see she was crying. “What’s wrong?”
“I was thinking of Jenny. She must have been so scared. She was all alone and here the world was ending around her. There was no one there to hold her hand or tell her it would be OK.”
“Sally—”
“We were supposed to protect her. She’s our daughter. Instead we were being beamed into the future by some criminal.”
“If Midnight Spectre is right, we can go back. We can save her this time.”
“Even if we do, so what? We’ll still be leaving her alone at night or with a babysitter so we can play superhero.”
“Sally—”
“You don’t understand. Jenny came from my body. I carried her for nine months inside me. When I looked into her eyes the first time I promised I would take care of her. But when she really needed me, I wasn’t there.”
“We’ll save her. I promise.”
“What about the next time we’re called away on some mission? What happens then?”
“Are you saying you want to quit?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Sally, please. The world
needs you.”
“Jenny needs me.”
“How about if I quit? I can stay home with her at night. I’m just the sidekick.”
“I couldn’t let you do that.” Sally sighed and then forced a smile to her face. “I suppose I’m putting the cart before the horse. We haven’t even gotten back yet.”
“We will.”
“I hope so. I don’t think I could live with myself knowing I abandoned my little girl.”
“Me either.”
They continued to walk around the city. Allison kept looking up for any sign of the hunters they’d run into in Denver. How long would it take for them to figure out there were humans in Detroit? Had Omega left any satellites behind to watch the surface? She really should have asked Robin those questions.
Their communicators came to life. “I’m about ten minutes out. Should give you girls plenty of time to beat me there.”
“We’ll be there,” Allison said.
They sped across the city, into the suburbs. They stopped in front of a mechanic’s shop. Allison ducked before a missile could take her head off. She rolled to her feet, her fists clenched. “Enough of this bullshit!”
“Ally, no!”
Allison raced forward to punch the hunter in the chest. She accelerated the molecules of her fist enough that it went through the armor plating, into the robot’s innards. Allison yanked out a handful of circuits she hoped would be important. The robot sputtered, its red eyes blinking. Then it finally sagged forward.
Sally did the same to another hunter. It collapsed next to its fellow. They looked around, but there weren’t any others. Sally grinned at her. “Maybe now you’ll believe you’re the one in charge.”
Allison’s face turned warm. “I was just mad.”
“You should get mad more often.”
“Yeah, I might,” she said as Midnight Spectre’s plane came to a stop on a roof across the street. Before the old woman had reached the ground, Allison grabbed her by the front of her costume. She hurled the old woman down to the roof, where she gasped with pain. “You son of a bitch! You tricked us!”
“I didn’t.”
“How else did they know we were coming here?”
“They must have listened—”
Allison kicked the old woman in the ribs. “Bullshit! We never said our location. The only way they could have been here waiting for us was if someone told them. And since there are only three of us and I know Sally isn’t that stupid, process of elimination leaves you.”
“All right! Stop kicking me. I’m an old woman for Christ’s sake.”
“Start talking.”
“Omega and I had an understanding. I could live so long as I stayed here—by myself. If he found out there were others, he’d have me killed.”
“So you set us up,” Sally said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice. They’ve already seen you. Someone will report back to him soon. If you’re not gone, I’ll be dead.”
“Why’d you save us then?” Sally asked.
“I needed to know where you came from. If there were more of you.”
“Now that you’re sure, you created this little trap for us.”
“Yes.”
Tears bubbled up in Sally’s eyes. “We can’t go back, can we? You lied to us.” It was her turn to kick the old woman. She unleashed a flurry of superspeed kicks that had Midnight Spectre coughing up blood.
“No! Stop! I didn’t…I didn’t lie.”
“If you didn’t lie, then why try to kill us?”
“Because that would guarantee my safety. This other way, if it doesn’t work—”
“How can we trust you?” Allison asked. “You’ve already betrayed us twice. You betrayed this whole planet!”
“You’re a scientist. You decide if it can work or not. I’m just a feeble old woman.” Allison noted the “feeble” old woman’s hand going down to her belt; Allison grabbed it before it could find whatever it was aiming for.
“You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“You don’t understand!” Midnight Spectre wailed. “I’ve been here so long. I don’t want to live, but I don’t want to die either.”
“This is a waste of time,” Sally said. “Let’s throw her off the roof already.”
“We can’t do that. Then we aren’t any better than her. Find some rope or something.”
While Sally searched for something to bind Midnight Spectre with, Allison had the unpleasant job of stripping the old woman. She was horrified to see the woman beneath the costume was as wrinkled and liver-spotted as Allison’s grandma had been when she had broken out of the old folk’s home naked as a newborn.
“Oh God,” Sally said and gagged. She tied the old woman’s hands behind her back with a length of chain, followed by her legs.
“Let’s see you get out of that.”
They left the old woman sobbing on the rooftop while they went to inspect Ion Man’s workshop.
***
The lock was easy enough to break even without superspeed after all these years in the elements. Sally pushed the door up to let them inside. “Are you sure about leaving her there? She might have a transmitter in her teeth or something.”
“Let’s hope not.” They fanned out to search the building. There were the hydraulic lifts and other equipment native to a mechanic’s shop. In what was supposed to be a storage room they found the real workshop, where Ion Man had worked on his combat armor.
There were still chunks of metal on the floor from the last time he’d been here. Stranger yet was the halo of blue paint on the floor. Allison didn’t remember any blue on Ion Man’s suit. Had he built another one after they disappeared?
“I don’t see anything here that’s going to help,” Sally said. “There’s not a gun like the one he zapped us with.”
Allison looked around. Sally was right. There was no sign of his gun or anything that looked like pieces of it. “Maybe he left some blueprints somewhere,” she suggested. They tore apart the file cabinets to no avail. “That son of a bitch lied to us.”
“There’s a shock,” Sally said, rolling her eyes. “What now?”
“There’s one thing left to try.”
Allison led the way back up to the rooftop across the street where Midnight Spectre’s disgusting body was still tied up. Allison tried not to look too hard at the old woman as she said, “What happened to Ion Man after we left?”
“She joined Melanie’s Super Squad Auxiliary. They were doing a pretty good job getting things back on track—until Omega showed up to ruin the party. They didn’t have a chance against that. No one did.”
“I can see that. Where did she die?”
“Back home in Redoubt City. They made their last stand on Finger Island.”
“And you watched, right?”
“Like it would have made a difference. Can you let me go now?”
“You can get yourself out. You’re Midnight Spectre.”
Allison and Sally left Midnight Spectre to scream after them. “That was cold,” Sally said.
“She had it coming.”
“You really think we’ll find anything there?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
They came to a stop on Finger Island, in the midst of what had once been an amusement park. Most of it was overgrown with weeds now. Allison’s stomach churned as she saw the bones lying on a muddy plain. She had seen dead bodies before, but never this many.
“It was a massacre,” Sally whispered.
Allison could only nod. She stepped among the bodies, getting sicker with every step. Why hadn’t that lazy old bitch ever done something about this? Why had she left them here to turn to dust? Melanie especially deserved better than that; she had always been such a sweetheart, so kind and gentle—
Allison dropped to her knees. Sally knelt down beside her. “It’s all right. Let it out.”
“You were right,” Allison whispered.
“About what?”
/> “Everyone died and we weren’t here. Jenny. Melanie. They’re dead.”
“I know, honey. I know.”
Through her tear-filled eyes, Allison noted a streak of blue like that of the paint on the floor. She lurched out of Sally’s grip to stumble over to the spot. She sank down beside another corpse, this one dressed in metal armor that was mostly intact. Allison wiped furiously at her eyes so she could make sure.
“It’s her,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.” Allison hefted the corpse’s right arm; in the hand was clutched the weapon Ion Man had used on them, the one that had sent them to the future. “Here it is.”
“We’d better get it and go before someone finds us.”
“Right.” Allison felt like a ghoul as the girl’s hand snapped off at the wrist, the gun still clutched in her fingers. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she accelerated her molecules to snap the woman’s fingers off. Then she hefted the rifle and turned away.
Chapter 18
The jetcopter landed by the reflecting pool at the National Mall. Tonya had already bailed out, carrying an enraged Garlak in a cargo net. Melanie didn’t envy Icicle if she was still there; a pissed-off cavewoman was not much fun to deal with.
“Let’s hope this works,” Diane muttered as they stepped out of the jetcopter.
“We’ll find out,” Melanie said. She strapped the hologram projector, disguised as an ordinary backpack, to her back. She waited until she was down the ramp before she triggered the projector. Behind her, an image of Ion Girl appeared. It seemed lifelike enough to Melanie. How long it could fool Geiger she had no idea.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to find Geiger at the top of the Lincoln Memorial steps. Where she’d found the brass band, Melanie didn’t want to know. The band launched into a chaotic version of “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
“Is she serious?” Diane asked.
“I suppose so. Let’s keep going.” Paul walked ahead of them, his bulkier body helping to shield the hologram projectors. As they started up the steps, Melanie felt her knees quiver. There was no way this would work. Even someone as delusional as Geiger could see through a ruse this obvious.
Girl Power Omnibus (Gender Swap Superhero Fiction) Page 61
