Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  “The media has already named the three unknowns Balz, Twist, and Dozer — short for Bulldozer, and collectively dubbed them the Wreckers.” A touch switched the picture for a close-up of “Dozer” — Eric Ludlow, Gantry, helmet ripped away, face pale and shocked. “We have not released any Sentinels footage for public consumption. Yes, Astra?”

  I lowered my hand. “Do we know anything yet?”

  “No, but based on your testimony, Detective Fisher has obtained a warrant for Mr. Ludlow’s home, and they have placed it under discreet observation. If it was Eric at the Daley Center, he hasn’t been home since. You are tasked to serve the warrant with the detective’s team after the meeting.”

  I nodded unhappily.

  “We also hypothesize at least one, possibly two more members of the team, a Verne-type and almost certainly a teleporter. They may be the same person, but we’ve named the hypothetical unknowns Phreak and Drop. This is based on the complete signals blackout, and, of course, their entrance and exit. Any reconstruction is speculative, but there is no evidence in the building’s security footage of their presence before its system was hacked and shut down along with the phones. There is less than a three-minute gap between the time everything shut down and they made their appearance through the back wall beside the judge’s bench. Since no witnesses place them anywhere else in the building, we believe they teleported into the private hall behind the courtroom.

  “According to bystander accounts, the court bailiff was an unintentional death when the wall collapsed inward under Dozer; the three went straight for Mr. Larkin. Twist snapped his neck with one of his cables while Balz’ spheres covered the scene. At that point they, might simply have been prepared to exit the way they came — witnesses generally agree that they weren’t threatening anyone else. However, Watchman and Safire entered the action before they could withdraw.”

  He reset the scene to the beginning of the fight and we watched it again. Watchman’s first move had been to fly through the doors opened by the fleeing audience and smack into Dozer, separating him from the other two and throwing him back from the bystanders and against the half-collapsed wall. Then things got busy. Blackstone froze the scene when the first flash-bang sphere went off in Safire’s face.

  “Debris analysis shows that the spheres wielded by Balz were not self-motivating or remotely directed. We hypothesize Balz to be a B or C Class telekinetic, unusually capable of multiple simultaneous levitations and manipulations. He fielded several types of spheres. Beyond the many flash-bang spheres, there were at least a dozen motion-triggered, short-ranged ‘taser spheres’ — which is how they neutralized Rush.” Skipping forward to a slowed shot of Rush appearing out of hypertime and getting zapped from three sides illustrated the point.

  Across the table, Rush actually laughed. He shrugged painfully. “They got me good, guys. Too bad I dropped Seven at the doors.”

  “Indeed. And considering the number of civilians within the combat zone, we are fortunate that no others became involved until Twist took his hostage.” The next skip took us to the moment when Twist wrapped one of his two arm-cables around the poor guy and hauled him into the middle of the fight. “We have yet to identify the hostage. Of course, there was no police cordon on the building after the fight, and not everyone remained on the scene to give their account of events to the police.”

  I tried to remember if I’d seen him after the last flash. On the floor? Watchman saw my face and shook his head; he’d have checked first thing to make sure the guy was all right. Wait. Turning back I caught Blackstone giving me the eye as well — and he wasn’t showing footage after the flash. He gave me a bland smile and moved on.

  “Your epads will have full stats for the spheres’ projected abilities once Vulcan has finished reconstruction of the bits that Watchman, Seven, and Astra left us, as well as an estimate of Dozer’s and Twist’s capabilities. Quin?”

  Blackstone yielded Quin the screen. She moved slower today, and I wondered if she’d gotten any sleep at all last night; if not for her rubberized body, she’d probably have bags under her eyes. She brought up a frame from a news clip showing Daley Plaza, focusing on the shattered Picasso sculpture and the hole in the Daley Center.

  “There has been no Internet download from the Wreckers declaring their intentions, but we are constructing a threat profile. Media reaction to our part has been mostly positive, although we are seeing the expected ‘why didn’t they respond sooner?’ buzz from anti-hero groups. The usual conspiracy theorists are claiming we arrived late and let them escape to cover our part in the ‘assassination.’

  “The fact that there was only one bystander death helps. The second, injured bailiff is expected to make a full recovery. This will sound cynical, but bystander death in this case has had the positive effect of suppressing media commentators sympathetic to vigilante actions like these. Our assessment of the Wreckers, leaving out a few things such as Dozer’s suspected identity, and our respects to Officer Johansen’s and Officer Pratt’s families, will be on our public webpage by noon.”

  That was it for Quin, and she didn’t try to end her comments with anything upbeat. Yesterday’s fight had sucked, and the only good thing to say was it hadn’t been worse. Blackstone ended the meeting by announcing Mal’s assisted success last night, and we all gave the boy a round of applause. He looked conflicted. Or constipated. Beside him, Shelly was almost as hard to read in her silver-and-blue form, but she’d spent most of the meeting in her own world. Now she dashed off without even giving me the wink she usually dropped whenever she knew I was going to meet Detective Fisher. Blackstone broke off his conversation with Lei Zi when he saw I stayed behind.

  “Walk with me, Hope?” He steered us down the hall to his office.

  “About Shelly — ” I started as soon as his door closed. He held up his hand.

  “I’m aware of her family reunion, my dear, and I hope it turns out well. Indeed, this is what I wished to speak with you about.”

  Sitting, he took a moment to collect his thoughts. What was going on?

  “Our need for secrecy presents us with a problem, my dear. Presently, outside of us two and Vulcan, everyone believes that Galatea is a remote platform — essentially a telepresence-piloted drone. It is easy enough to let everyone believe that you and the ‘pilot’ share a past — which is of course true — but I also suspect she has let Jamal, at least, in on her secret.”

  He stopped again, which didn’t help my tightening nerves.

  “I have spoken to Legal Eagle, and he tells me that creating a cover civilian identity for Shelly will not be as easy as we might have thought. Legal cover identities of the kind used by Variforce and even Seven require a real, legal identity beneath them; the person must already legally exist, the applicable agencies must know both his cover and his true identity. Creating a complete and unsubstantiated identity out of whole cloth is legal fraud.”

  “Couldn’t we tell them...oh.” My stomach sank.

  “You understand. To tell the appropriate authorities — the DSA in this case — exactly what Shelly is and why she needs a new identity would require full disclosure of her status, which is that of an artifact, not a person in the legally recognized sense.”

  He watched me carefully. “Which would also mean revealing that she’s something that doesn’t exist yet — a true artificial intelligence. And if they trace her back to the systems breach the military experienced during the Omega operation...”

  I covered my mouth and clamped down babbling panic. Sure, they were on our side, but government paranoia knew no bounds. And yes, any paranoid government agency that tried to seize her as a threat to national security or to take her apart to see how her quantum-mind ticked would have to go through me to get to her. But if they had the law on their side... How could we fight?

  “We could create a cover identity ourselves — indeed, Shelly could do it with a snap of her fingers by hacking the necessary databases and falsifying records. But it would
be thin, and itself illegal.” His face told me that was not an option he would support.

  So Mrs. B — Mrs. H — couldn’t just reclaim Shelly. Because she wasn’t real. How was I going to tell her?

  Blackstone just looked sad. “We will continue to pursue avenues of inquiry, my dear, but Shelly will not be leaving us any time soon and I thought that you should know. Perhaps now might be the time to broach another topic? Indeed, it is an observation Shelly brought me.”

  That got my attention back. He nodded when he saw I was focused.

  “If this new Dozer is, in fact, our Eric Ludlow, it is a post-quake development. One of the first things Shelly did after the action was to look in the Big Book of Contingent Prophecy. There is no previous record of his going supervillain. To be frank, before he met you, all of his contingent futures ended in ... well, in a more personal downward spiral.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You do remember that he is a veteran of the China War? It is my belief he was self-medicating his PTSD-related depression with alcohol. In his previous futures, he went in and out of rehab several times before, one way or another, ending in prison or merely ending it. When even a B Class Ajax-type goes on a rampage or commits suicide, it is rather spectacularly newsworthy. But his contingent futures changed the night he met you.”

  “Me?” I tried to remember the details of our “fight.” It had been my first fight, but not much of one.

  “You. Previously, it was Atlas who brought him down for the police that night; his encounter with you, instead, was yet one more change in events begun the day you became Astra.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “I reviewed the recording of that fight. You understand that rehab only cleans the body of drugs? Certainly there is counseling, and it gives the patient space to review his choices and build new habits and resolutions with a clear head. However, afterwards, only a true commitment to change will keep him from going back into the same choices and patterns that took him there in the first place. That is why court-ordered rehab is rarely a permanent fix. So, something changed Eric’s attitude regarding going into rehab, something that opened up new contingent outcomes that night. I believe that something was you.”

  “Now that’s just — I took him down! Put him in an armlock and sat on him! How could I have changed anything?”

  “I watched the police recording. You were quite comforting with him.”

  “I — ” Shhhh. It’s going to be all right, Eric. You’re going to be all right. My first fight, and the memory was so strong I could smell the damp grass and cracked concrete we’d lain across.

  “Atlas put you in front on that incident because he hoped that Eric would see you as less of a threat, be less confrontational. I believe your sympathy had more of an impact than we knew.”

  I shook my head. “You think I changed his life? Just by being nice?”

  “No, and yes. Doctor Mendel could explain it to you better, but the psychology of decision-making is complex. The initial motivators of any path we take don’t have to be especially strong; once momentum is imparted, each decision, each action, adds to it until it takes a great deal of force to derail it.”

  He tapped his forehead.

  “Memory is a funny thing, so we may even look back at a particular moment, relatively inconsequential by itself, and assign it great retroactive significance. I believe you had a significant impact on his attitude the night he was arrested, which made a difference in the attitude he took with him into rehab. Ultimately, he rebuilt himself through his own strength and determination, but your small act of sympathy that night may well have taken on totemic significance in his mind, a bright spot to fix on as he fought his personal demons.”

  “So he got clean just so he could go supervillain?”

  “And there we turn back to the Big Book. Between the night of his arrest by you and January 1st, the last date on which the Teatime Anarchist retrieved any future-histories, all of Eric’s contingent futures were substantially positive. Therefore, whatever has turned Eric from that path happened after January 1st. Occam’s razor dictates that it is related to whatever has boosted him from B Class to at least A Class, and since we are already dealing with power-boosted breakthroughs with Temblor and possibly the Green Man, I find his change of status significant.

  “But although this is all very important to know, we should also not lose sight of the fact that you may also have tremendous leverage with Eric, even now. If you should encounter him again in the field, I want you to keep that in mind. Can you?”

  * * *

  Wondering how I’d react if I fought Eric again kept me entertained all the way to my rendezvous with Detective Fisher.

  Since Max had the superhuman beat (not so much had as held on to it with both hands and threatened to quit when they tried to promote him after the Villains Inc. mess), most of his assignments were heater cases — crimes kept on the front-burner because of all the media attention. For this one, though, his team was keeping a low profile. When I flew down, they were waiting for me, hidden in a stakeout van around the corner from Mr. Ludlow’s.

  Max opened the back of the van when I knocked, looking his usual rumpled self. “Astra. Glad you could make it.” Officer Wyatt was with him, and a woman I didn’t know. Phelps was gone, of course; so was Max’s superior, Garfield, and the investigations and hearings that removed them went right up the chain of command. Max had a new boss and the city had a new Superintendent of Police.

  I climbed in and he closed the door. “Hi, Jimmy.” I held out my hand to the new girl. “Hi, I’m Astra.”

  She grinned with a dimple. “Jenny. Jennifer Stole.”

  “From the lab!” Jenny nodded. She wore narrow, wire-rim librarian’s glasses and kept her hay-blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Max smiled around the unlit cigarette between his lips.

  “Tell the kid what we’ve got.”

  She flushed at being put on the spot, but rallied.

  “We haven’t wanted to exercise the physical search warrant yet, but we have subpoenaed Mr. Ludlow’s financial, phone, and Internet records. We’ve also tapped his landline. We have the house under thermal drone and remote observation and even teleport detectors in place — ”

  “How did you do that without going inside?”

  “Laser sensors targeting his windows. Any teleporter popping in will raise the interior air pressure for a microsecond, which will be felt by the windows and measured by the lasers.”

  “That’s very clever. Sorry.”

  She waved it away. “We hoped he’d come home — we’d have had you guys down on him in a second.”

  I wanted to talk to him, too. I imagined facing him down on his porch again, a replay of last year. This time... How strong was he now? How had he leveled up so much? I could still hope it wasn’t really him.

  “So, now you’re here, we go in,” Max said simply. “Ready?”

  He lit up and blew a cloud the instant he was out of the van. We made a tidy procession, down the street and around the corner, and Fisher actually knocked — pure formality since the house was empty. He stubbed out his smoke beside a stack of empty flowerpots, nodded to me, and I took hold of the knob and popped the door, breaking the lock. Listening with all my super-duper might just in case, I heard no sounds in the house. We moved in off the porch, me in front with Fisher’s team stacked up behind me.

  When a quick room-to-room showed the house was clear, they holstered their guns. Fisher handed me some gloves and I snapped them on. I was really only here in case Things Happened, but the odds of Mr. Ludlow crashing through the wall were pretty long. I mostly stayed out of the way and watched them; Jenny made a beeline for the study desktop, leaving Jimmy to sort through the mail and check the phone while Max wandered through and just took it in.

  The place was tidy. Even the piles of paperbacks by the couch were stacked neatly and had been regularly dusted. His entertainment center — with the newest Playcube
and high stacks of game boxes — was just as orderly. Curiosity took me into the kitchen to check the fridge.

  “It looks like rehab was successful,” Max said behind me.

  “No alcohol, not anywhere.”

  He nodded. “And the books and games. Private entertainment to distract him, keep him from going out and being sociable where there might be temptation. I spoke to Timothy Curran, the Crew’s manager. Eric has been mostly going right from work to home since rehab. He’s been clean since last year.”

  I looked around and it all made me feel worse. He’d come home from war with issues, hit bottom, pulled himself back up and gotten it together — why had he gone supervillain? What had happened?

  I found myself whispering. “Does he have family? A girlfriend?” I’d never thought to ask.

  “Parents dead — this was their home. No siblings, no girlfriend after the war.”

  “Did he owe money?”

  Fisher flicked me a look. “Stop it, kid — don’t go getting jammed up over this. It’s nothing you could have seen when he was on the job.” He shrugged. “It could be something from his old life. He had to have some point of contact with the others, maybe they were Army buddies. We’ll find out.”

  I wondered what Fisher would think of Blackstone’s obvious theory: that the hypothetical teleporter, Drop, had been the “hostage.” If Blackstone wasn’t sharing, it had to be because he thought the CPD might still be compromised. The problem was, Drop might be Mr. Ludlow’s point of contact.

  Wandering back into the living room, I naturally drifted over to his bookshelves. Mostly cheap paperbacks, a surprising number of them superhero fiction, but there were exceptions. I frowned, looked at the neat stacks by the couch.

  “Fisher?”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “Can I take a look at these?”

  He looked around, nodded. “Leave it as you find it, but go ahead.” Carefully laying each pile down so I could pull books and put them back, I started flipping through titles.