She took a moment to examine them through the glass before knocking. Chris—Switchboard—wasn’t a typical reedy psi. He was built like an Olympic wrestler, with shoulders like cantaloupes stuffed inside his polo shirt and a jaw like a lantern. He wore his brown hair in a short, athletic cut, and seemed very much at ease with Juice.
Shannon, on the other hand, appeared much more nervous the way she shuffled her feet and looked around her. Sally remembered feeling that way at her initial meeting with Juice. And pretty much every time since then, she had to admit to herself. Shannon’s dark hair was cut short in a bob. Her face looked mostly Japanese after her father, but her skin was fair with a sprinkle of freckles across her nose courtesy of her mother. She looked natural in her business suit, as if she wore one most days.
Juice wrapped up his introductory speech and motioned for Sally to enter the office. She put on her best smile and strolled in with all the confidence she could muster. Shannon’s face lit up with what Sally imagined was false pleasure. “Sally, I’m so happy it’s you going to show us around.”
“Shannon, it’s great to see you too.” Sally smiled and suffered a hug from her classmate. Shannon’s business attire concealed a body hardened by many hours of training; to Sally, her muscles felt like steel rods coated with velvet. Sally wondered if the Political Science major was just a cover.
“Hi Sally, I’m Chris Ryerson. Switchboard. Pleased to meet you.” Switchboard extended his hand and shook Sally’s.
“You’re the biggest psi I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Both Switchboard and Juice broke out in laughter.
Switchboard wiped his eyes. “I thought I’d break tradition and spend some time working on my frail body instead of being reedy and mysterious like all the other psis in the world.”
“Sally, if you’ll give them the tour, I’ll see about getting together a dinner meeting tonight.” Juice touched a few keys on his computer.
Sally made a face at that. “Staff meetings are unhealthy. We ran across the Antimatter Woman at my first meeting.” Nevertheless, she led them through the main offices and headed in the general direction of the Command Center. “So what have you been doing with yourself since the Academy, Shannon? You’re not affiliated with any teams, are you?”
“No, I’m more interested in politics. I’m majoring in it at George Washington.”
Sally showed them the Command Center from the doorway. “Mission control, right here. You’ll both get your turns at monitor duty like the rest of us.” She led them onward and looked sidelong at Shannon. “I’d think it would be pretty tough to be elected if you’re a parahuman. There are a lot of people who don’t trust us.”
“Oh, I’m not planning to run for office or anything. I thought I might look into being a campaign advisor or manager or something. I figure to work more… behind the scenes.”
“I’m sure,” said Sally. She led them through the cafeteria towards the dormitory with a desperate hope they wouldn’t run across Jason. “These are the apartments. Our supply master, Harris, is getting each of you set up in your own place. After the tour, he’ll hook you up with all the appropriate credentials and passes.”
“Pretty luxurious surroundings.” Switchboard looked over the well-appointed recreation room as Sally ushered them through. “I’m not going to want to go back to Virginia after this.”
Sally noticed with satisfaction that Switchboard had been assigned the empty room next to Jason’s, while Shannon was in the one at the end of the hall, a few doors down. She showed them the cafeteria, conference rooms, and offices; all the boring but necessary part of the bureaucratic infrastructure required to keep Just Cause running smoothly so the heroes could be free to do hero stuff. Eventually she took them to the underground training center, nicknamed The Bunker.
And that was where they ran into Jason.
Sally could have kicked herself for not realizing he’d most likely been working out. She was just taking Switchboard and Shannon into the weight room when she saw him and brought herself up short. Jason worked on one of the specialized machines which only he and Juice could operate, doing a two-ton bench press. He wore only a pair of biker shorts, his cross-trainers, and a sweat-soaked bandanna tied around his head to hold back his damp blond locks. His chest muscles quivered and creaked with his effort against the massive resistance on the machine. Not an ounce of fat resided on his powerful frame, which Sally knew because she’d spent many nights exploring every inch of him. Her breath caught in her throat at just how good he looked. If she’d been alone, she’d have jumped him right then and there.
She heard Shannon’s quiet exhalation through pursed lips. How dare she almost-whistle at him? Jason’s shaking arms folded with a ground-shaking crash as the heavy-duty springs snapped back into place. In a surge of panic, she turned to escort the others as far away from her Jason as possible. His voice froze her in her tracks.
“Hey, babe, what’s up?”
“Oh, hi.” Sally swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “Just showing the noobs around. We didn’t mean to interrupt you. We’re leaving.”
“Jason?” Shannon stepped past Sally. “Wow, look at you. You look great.”
“Hey, uh, Shannon,” said Jason, aware of Sally’s venomous expression. “Good to see you.”
“What’s it been… two years?”
“Uh, yeah. Something like that.”
Sally grimaced. She felt like an awkward teenager all over again next to the professionally-dressed, cool and confident girl who might have been the same biological age but seemed years older. In a blur, Sally interposed herself between Shannon and Jason and planted a quick kiss on his lips. “We’ll let you get back to your workout, babycakes. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Yeah, ok.” Jason blushed.
“Come on…” Sally stepped past Shannon without so much as a glance. “I’ll show you guys the Bunker. You’ll love it.”
The Bunker was a miracle of post-modern technology. Microscopic robots housed there could configure raw materials into any setting in which the team could train. The nanomachines built it up molecule by molecule. Just Cause heroes could train there at full power without concerns about collateral damage. Switchboard found the Bunker especially fascinating. The Second Team couldn’t utilize the nanomachine technology because of local zoning regulations, so they had to train in a heavily-reinforced warehouse instead.
Eventually Sally dragged the muscular psi away from the observation deck. Down below in a cavern the size of a dome stadium, several floors of a high rise were taking shape. It was like watching claymation in slow motion. Sally hated the scenarios which took place inside buildings. She couldn’t ever make the most of her speed in the enclosed corridors. But since Just Cause often had no control over the location of a potential battlefield, they had to prepare for whatever they could.
At last, she passed Switchboard and Shannon off to Harris, the little rodent-like man who handled supply details for the team. As he began to interview them about their needs for costumes and gear, Sally made a hasty excuse and ran back to her room. Once safely behind her own door, she flopped into her desk chair and rested her cheek on her folded arms. She didn’t cry, but felt like she should.
She knew Shannon had hooked up with Jason. She’d been his first, and now she’d returned like a perpetrator to the scene of a crime, and Sally felt threatened. Was she overreacting, or had she seen the spark of interest in Jason’s face when he’d seen his ex? Did Shannon already have designs on the boy Sally had admitted that she loved?
Sometime between when they’d begun dating and now, her affection for him had deepened into something she could only describe as love. Her mother, of course, would say that was ridiculous. Sally was eighteen. What could a moonstruck teen possibly know about love? Never mind the fact that her mother had been only fifteen when she’d started dating her father.
Sally had never known her father. He’d died shortly before she’d been born. The psychop
athic villain Destroyer had attacked Just Cause at a funeral for one of their own and her father had been one of the casualties. Sally looked at the carefully-framed picture of the man who looked so much like her on her desk. She’d inherited his thick blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. In a way, Jason reminded her of her father. Maybe that was why she loved him.
Her hands searched for something to keep themselves busy and began to toy with the horseshoe Jack had found amid the bones. It could have been an identical twin to her grandmother’s, which she now carried. She wondered idly if it had come from the same manufacturer. The remarkable similarity carried even down to the notch along the back of one arm.
Sally frowned. Why would that notch be there? She’d knocked a chip off one of her own horseshoes when she’d jammed it into Destroyer’s armor, short-circuiting it and avenging her father’s death. She lifted her own horseshoe and looked at it for comparison. The notch looked identical.
Impossible!
In a flash she sped across the building to Harris’s offices. He was in the middle of explaining the security procedures to Switchboard and Shannon when Sally burst in on him.
“Help you, Salena?”
“Sorry to interrupt you, Harris. I need a wire brush.”
He stepped over to a cabinet and held one up for display. “Like this one here?”
“Thanks, Harris.” Sally snatched the brush out of his hand and sped away.
“Anytime,” his voice floated down the hall after her.
Back in her room, she took the horseshoe to the kitchenette sink and earnestly scrubbed away at decades of accumulated rust. Working at a superspeed pace cleared the rust quickly. She washed the last bit of rust down the sink and patted the horseshoe dry with a paper towel. Then she took it into her bathroom, which had the brightest lights in her suite, to compare it to her current horseshoe.
As near as she could tell, it was almost perfectly identical. Scars on the metal occurred in the same place on each shoe, slightly more worn on the one that had been buried with the body, but otherwise nearly exact. The sliver of metal which had been chipped away in the fight with Destroyer was missing from each shoe.
Sally sat on the floor in her bathroom for a very long time and stared at two identical horseshoes, one of which had been found with a body that was over a hundred years deceased.
Chapter Three
From: Juice
Fewer than ten percent of the artificially-created parahumans from Guatemala are currently accounted for. Homeland Security advises us to be aware in case some of them show up in the U.S., as they represent an unknown variable.
As if we need to be told. —J
- Just Cause Internal Memo #03012004-009, March 1, 2004
May, 2004
Denver, Colorado
Just Cause Headquarters
“Time travel,” repeated Jack around a mouthful of the Reuben sandwich he’d ordered for lunch.
“Yes,” said Sally. She had dark circles under her eyes that would have shamed a raccoon. She’d barely slept for the past three nights between her fear that Shannon would move in on her relationship with Jason and her irrational uneasiness that the body she had found might have somehow been herself. She’d tossed and turned so much last night Jason had finally gone to sleep on the couch.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing outside of the scope of science fiction movies.”
Jason sat down with them, his tray piled high with enough sandwiches to feed a high-school football team’s offensive line. “Talk some sense into her, Jack. She’s becoming impossible to live with.”
“Oh, really?” Sally’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Hey, babe, relax.” Jason bent down and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll manage.” Then he winked at Jack. “She fidgets at super-speed. It’s like having Magic Fingers built into my bed.”
Jack laughed. “Seriously, Sally. As far as I know, time travel violates the laws of physics, and ye canna change the laws of physics.” He finished with a passable impression of Star Trek’s Scotty.
“Oh?” said a new voice. Shannon sat down on the other side of Jason with a small chef salad and bottle of spring water on her tray. Sally glanced at her own tray, which was loaded down with pasta, breadsticks, and cookies. It was all carb-heavy comfort food, and wished she’d chosen something more healthy to eat in front of Jason. Not that he would have noticed what she was eating until she stopped, at which point he’d ask if she wanted him to finish what she hadn’t. “Most parahuman abilities regularly violate physical laws. Doublecharge is a textbook example. Remember the law that says energy cannot be created or destroyed but only changed? So where do her lightning bolts come from then?”
Jack groaned. “You’re giving me a headache. I flunked physics.”
“I thought you were majoring in political science,” said Sally in a slight accusatory tone.
Shannon shrugged. “I like to learn a little bit of everything. Never know when it’ll come in useful.”
Sally snuggled up a little closer to Jason.
“Babe,” he said, “I’m eating here.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Jason took his food intake very seriously. Nobody who sat near him had lost any fingers yet, but it was a running joke on the team someone would sooner or later.
“Listen, Sally…” Jack wiped his mouth with his napkin. “If it’ll make you feel more comfortable, we can have the lab try to pull genetic information from those bones. It might take awhile, though. I think they’re already off the base. I’m sure we can get them back with a phone call.” Just Cause had donated the human remains Sally had found to the Colorado Historical Society.
“Sure,” said Sally. “What else do I have to do but wait?” She sighed and poked at her food without much interest.
Just at that moment all their cell phones broad cast the emergency callout signal. Red lights in the corners of the room lit up and spun, and a warning klaxon sounded.
“Well, I suppose you could respond to the alert,” said Jack.
“All available Just Cause personnel report to the launch pad,” ordered the Command Center over the base’s loudspeakers. “We have a Code Alpha situation at the Denver Mint.”
Sally’s mouth dropped open in surprise. A Code Alpha meant actively hostile parahumans with immediate threats to civilian lives. It was Just Cause’s equivalent of a lights-and-sirens response for a police department.
“Why would someone attack the Mint?” asked Jason as he disentangled himself from the table and hurried after the others toward the exit.
“Couldn’t be because there are piles of cash lying around, could it?” Jack snickered.
“No, not that. Don’t they just make coins?”
“Maybe it’s the Vending Machine Mafia,” said Jack with perfect timing, making Sally giggle in spite of her general malaise with life.
“I think what he means is why someone would choose to attack it here, right in the shadow of Just Cause,” said Shannon.
“The Vending Machine Mafia isn’t known for its smarts. All that junk food and sugar is ruining their brainpower.”
“Jack, if you don’t knock it off, you’re going to be riffing to an empty room,” said Sally. “But I’m sure you’re familiar with that sensation. I’ll meet you guys at the pad. My boots are in my room.” She stepped lithely around Jack and sped down the hallway to the dormitory to retrieve her expensive, custom footwear. She took a few seconds to change into her costume. In a moment, she was garbed in her tight-fitting red bodysuit with the stylized yellow chess knight emblem. She pulled on her breathing mask and let it dangle at her throat, then stuck her goggles up onto her forehead where they’d be ready at a moment’s notice. Once she got moving faster than seventy or eighty miles per hour, she needed them to protect her face from windburn and airborne particulates. She saw the three horseshoes on her desk and hesitated. She was being silly, she told herself. Ridiculous. Time travel. She grabbed her two horseshoes and left the imposter behind.<
br />
The team’s custom jet taxied out of its hangar. The Bettie resembled a wide-bodied, heavily-armed and armored Learjet. Its engines could rotate downward to allow it to take off vertically and hover like a helicopter.
Most of the team had already assembled inside the jet except Sondra, who was on Command Center duty and wouldn’t leave it unless the team required her assistance. Juice was at a Homeland Security meeting in Dallas and wouldn’t be back until the next day. Doublecharge made final adjustments to her black and white costume with its stylized lightning borders. She would command the mission in Juice’s absence.
“Everyone’s aboard, Reed. Launch when ready,” said Doublecharge.
The former Alaskan bush pilot at the controls acknowledged over the cabin speakers. “Roger, ma’am. Taking off now. Everyone hold on…” The Bettie’s engines rose in pitch and intensity as the jet lifted straight up from the launch pad.
Sally could see Shannon’s eyes, lids half lowered, as they constantly strayed back toward Jason. Being a speedster, she didn’t build up to a slow burn; her anger and temper were quick to ignite and inside she blazed furious.
“Okay,” said Doublecharge as she held a headset up to one ear. “We’ve got at least six, possibly seven unknown parahumans apparently intent upon robbing the Denver Mint.”
Jack chuckled. “Such asshattery. Words fail me.”
“All right,” said Doublecharge over his interruption. “I don’t want this to turn into a free-for-all since the Mint is right in the middle of downtown. Police are trying to evacuate the area, but I suspect we won’t have that much time.”
“Doesn’t the Mint here just make coins? Not much profit in robbing that.” Switchboard looked out the window at the city rolling by underneath them.
“I already said that,” said Jason, looking goofy and proud. “Who’s the dumb jock now?”
“Nobody called you a dumb jock,” said Shannon.
Sally felt like sinking into her seat, knowing she’d uttered those very words only the day before. She hadn’t meant them in a hurtful way, but bringing that up would only drive more of a wedge between her and Jason, and Shannon was like a shark circling a tired swimmer.
Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage Page 4
