Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  * * *

  The alarm snarling by my bed died horribly, so Galatea took over my entertainment center’s speakers.

  “Get your big grey ass out of bed!” The subwoofers shook the room. “Suit up or I’m gonna come down there and kick your ugly butt!”

  “I can twist your head off.”

  “Oh, like I can’t get a new one. They haven’t had time to smack you with the training manual yet, but you just killed a Def-1 alarm and You’re. Not. Moving!” She kept cranking the volume but by the end she was lying; I was up and pulling on my uniform (best thing about it, two easy steps).

  “What’s going on?”

  “Talk less, move faster, Assembly Room now!”

  I got out into the common room before Ozma, who emerged buckling the Magic Belt on over a silk green and white robe. Reese staggered out, pulling on sweats, and we trailed in Ozma’s wake. Mal joined us in the hall outside the elevator, looking pale. Jamal caught up with us outside the Assembly Room; obviously he’d made good time coming across town.

  Blackstone, Riptide, Galatea, and Seven waited for us. The screens opposite the doors had all been turned on and displayed overhead and up-close views of some kind of police action. Helicopter spotlights and area lights mounted on police vans lit up the scene, and open line chatter from cops and our guys filled the room.

  Someone had trashed the place. One building had a big hole in it, and it looked like someone had bombed the crap out of an empty parking lot and stretch of road. Police surrounded the battlefield, but nothing was going on. Mal pointed to icons along the side of the main screen; Watchman, Rush, Variforce, and The Harlequin were on the scene.

  “Please be seated, everyone,” Blackstone said — for our benefit, the others already were. Nobody was talking, Galatea stared, wild-eyed, at something somewhere else, and the tension I could taste was making my claws grow.

  “Less than five minutes ago,” Blackstone began once we’d settled, “an unidentified superhuman we have named Drop removed Astra from the scene of a Sentinels-CPD action. She had lost her earbug earlier, and as we have also lost telemetry from the Dispatch links to her mask-cam, her current condition and location are unknown. We are reviewing footage, and do not yet know if this was a trap. Procedure dictates that in an attack on a Sentinel, the full team complement be put on alert until we are certain it is not the opening move of a general attack.

  “We are securing the Dome, and will be pulling the field team back once Eric Ludlow, the target of tonight’s action, is deposited in the CPD’s hard-cells.”

  Mal cleared his throat. “What are we doing to find Astra?” None of the others said anything, and Galatea wasn’t hearing anyone in the room.

  “Everything we can,” Blackstone said finally, mouth tight. We’re doing everything we can: what adults said when they had no idea. When everything they could do was being done by someone else and probably wasn’t worth shit.

  “So the Wreckers have got her?” Mal asked. “We got one of theirs and they got one of ours? Why? For leverage? And we can’t do anything? That’s crap!”

  Blackstone winced.

  “The CPD investigation of the Crew is ongoing, and they are following several promising leads. We are assisting, and our first priority is to learn what we can from Dozer. In the meantime, Galatea will coordinate with you as we remain on alert. You are to consider her instruction as coming from Lei Zi or myself. Are we clear, Mr. Scott?”

  “Sure. Sir, I owe her — ”

  “We all do, young man. And we will get her back.”

  * * *

  We crowded back into our common room, and Reese found the sodas in the mini-kitchen. “Shit, nothing like this ever happens in Saint Paul!” he crowed.

  Jamal, who’d been a pretty laid-back kid at the party, looked ready to smack him. I couldn’t; if I hit anybody, it counted as seriously excessive force. Ozma heard my growl and sat beside me with a sigh.

  “He’s a gooch, the provokingest boy I’ve ever met and his heart isn’t true.” She cocked her head. “But things that aren’t can be made to are, with practice and attention.”

  Galatea sat alone, still in her silver-and-blue chrome form, ignoring the whole room. She could have been a movie prop. Mal watched her but wasn’t getting bothered by it, and Ozma took to sipping a mini-soda and humming to herself. It sounded like a limerick.

  Great start to a new team. If this was a Sentinels episode, we’d be tracking some clue the bad guys had left behind and getting ready to bust through the wall to their secret headquarters. Unless it was close to the end of the season, in which case Astra would stay kidnapped into the break as a cliffhanger. But nothing bad ever happens to the determinedly perky ingénue, right? Yeah, and they kill major characters in this series.

  Finishing her drink, Ozma set it down and capped it, whispered, “I am retiring to the lab to see if our new captain is findable. Don’t let anyone hurt Reese.”

  Sure, give me the hard job.

  Astra

  I woke from a falling nightmare because I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sit up, couldn’t see anything. No, blinking hard and trying to get a full breath, I could see shapes in the dark...barely. My face ached and, when I tried to touch it, weights held my arms down.

  A whimper escaped before I could stop it — I was back in the Dark Anarchist’s cell and if I started I wouldn’t stop screaming. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Whatever was constricting my chest was keeping me from hyperventilating, and I took a few minutes to not panic.

  Okay. What would Atlas do? Kick ass. Not an option. What would Blackstone do? Gather information. Okay. I was lying on a mattress. Sheets? Pretty good ones, smooth under my hands, not hotel-rough. I tried moving again, pulled my working right arm in until it clinked against my side. Oh. My bracers were holding my arms down, feeling like they weighed tons. Why? Breathing mystery solved anyway — it was my dented cuirass keeping me from getting all the air I wanted. But — Why couldn’t I move? Why was everything so heavy?

  Move now, think later. Don’t panic again, just, don’t, Shelly will laugh.

  I really wanted to hear her laugh.

  I dragged my right arm over my chest, found the clasps with my half-numb left hand. I’d barely been able to lift Mr. Ludlow with it after the fight, and tears ran down into my hair before the last clasp finally popped open. Right arm free, my left bracer went faster even though the clasps were shut hard. They hadn’t been damaged tonight, but my fingers still felt bruised from fighting with them.

  All my moving around hadn’t brought anybody, and I took a few minutes to stop gasping, letting the spots clear from my sight. Every shift made my left arm throb from my shoulder to my hand, and it should have been feeling better by now.

  Okay. Exploration told me the clasps on my cuirass hadn’t been bent out of shape fighting Eric, and aching fingers finally popped them. I pulled the heavy front piece away and it slid off onto the floor with a loud thud. Sitting up, I wanted to scream, and I sat and gasped through clenched teeth until my left arm settled down to throbbing agony. At least I’d left the back piece on the bed; an eternity later, my legs were free of their impossibly heavy armor and more tears fell as I painfully swung my legs off the bed. Everything hurt too much.

  I can move, that’s progress. What happened? I couldn’t remember. Grabbing Drop, incredible, head-spinning nauseating pain, an...old man? Shouting, surprised. He’d touched me. Then, just nothing. Nothing until I’d dreamed of falling.

  And now everything was too much. Too heavy, too painful, I couldn’t see right... Oh no. No no no no no. Hand over my mouth, I kept the scream down to a whimpering, breathy whine.

  I’d been de-powered.

  Don’t panic don’t panic don’t panic. The perfect mantra for mind-blowing panic, and the giggling helped, too. Crying was even better, but made my aching face throb.

  Of course I hurt — I wasn’t healing anymore.

  * * *

  It took a while to think of anyt
hing else. I didn’t think I was dying, but it might be hard to tell.

  Way back last year, Ajax had given me a series of lectures on how fragile normal people were. It had amazed him how fast super-strong breakthroughs forgot. Not just bones and stuff, insides, and they didn’t heal like I was used to doing now. His lectures had given me nightmares. Accidentally hugging one of the Bees too hard...

  Watchman had probably seriously concussed me just last week, head-slamming me into a steel-plated floor. The hypothetical concussion, which meant bleeding into the brain, went away with no symptoms beyond transient dizziness; if I’d been normal, it would have continued until alarming symptoms like blown pupils, vomiting, and death made me pay attention. The rabbit-punch Watchman had used to end the fight tonight (if it was still tonight), used by a normal person on another normal person, could easily cripple or kill; it was a hit to the medulla oblongata, the brain stem, which did not normally regenerate.

  Playing field hockey in school had cured me of any fear of aches and pains, and the fight-club beatings Ajax, now Watchman, administered had gotten me past worrying about serious injury because I healed. Fast. Now, I was shivering. I might have been concussed tonight, my head certainly hurt enough, and who knew what kind of internal bruising I’d sustained?

  I made myself cough, didn’t feel anything sharp and jabby, and didn’t taste blood. Okay. I’d had a little time for Bad Stuff to heal a bit before getting snatched away; maybe I wouldn’t pass out or stop breathing. My armor had protected my guts and ribs, and poking around there didn’t make me scream. Not like my left arm.

  Sniffling, whining experimentation with the arm told me it wasn’t broken, though I might have bruised bones, and maybe pinched nerves the way my hand felt half asleep and had zero strength. I couldn’t lift it far from my waist without serious weeping. I finally pulled together the courage to stand — falling would hurt — and almost cried again just because nothing seemed wrong with my legs.

  Okay. Okay. I needed light. Though I really wasn’t sure I wanted it; focusing on my pain was keeping me from freaking about where I was. I slid my feet, carefully avoiding pieces of armor, and found the source of the little bit of light in the room; a friendly moon-glow nightlight plugged into a socket on the other end of the bed. Giggling hurt my arm. The nightlight showed me the gleam of a doorknob — locked, but with a light switch beside it. I took a breath, flipped it on.

  The horror. Mom would never combine oranges and tans like that. I was in a hotel room. No, no windows. And hotel doors didn’t lock from the outside. And the bed wasn’t a queen, more like a single like you had at camp. Nothing bigger would have fit; it wasn’t a closet but barely qualified as a room. A bed, a small dresser, that was it. And a bathroom door. I flipped on the bright, bright bathroom light and almost jumped to see myself in the mirror. No mask (I’d forgotten I’d lost it, not that that was a problem anymore), and the right side of my face, the part that felt all hot and tight, was swelling.

  My cape had come off with my cuirass. I opened my collar, carefully washed my face and neck, checked my pupils for dilation (nope), and used the glass by the sink to take a drink. Then I went back and sat down on the bed. I was so tired, tears of denied sleep made me blink.

  But what was going on? I’d been captured by supervillains; I was supposed to wake up strapped to a table. Or something. Compared to my first experience — not that I ever wanted to repeat January, the occasional memory-nightmare was bad enough — this was surreal. I almost broke into giggles again when I realized that they’d locked me in by installing a right-hand doorknob in a left-hand door; if I had the key I could have unlocked it from the inside. Someone had improvised just for broken little me.

  Long minutes staring at the door failed to make it dramatically open, and I finally decided that nobody was going to appear to drag me off and Do Things to me any time soon. It was probably still night and they were sleeping, which sounded like a really, really good plan. Sleep now, dramatic interrogation later. No. I needed to stay up, check for dilation, be ready when someone opened the door.

  I kept my eyes on the shiny new doorknob, started counting by threes, and got to twenty-one before my eyes closed and I slumped forward off the bed. Landing on my shoulder woke me hard. You can’t scream when you can’t breathe, and by the time I got some air, I was only crying.

  Stop being a baby. Shelly’s heartless voice. You’ve hurt worse.

  Not fair — then all I’d been expected to do was lie there and get better.

  So do that. Duh.

  Okay, fine. The dresser was heavy wood, but the bed frame wasn’t and I dragged the bed painfully across the carpet and up against the door. It wouldn’t keep anyone out, but pushing it back would wake me up. Probably. Happy now? Anyway, it was my best shot at being awake and aware when they came through the door. And maybe I’d be rescued before morning. Please. I wiped my eyes and nose, climbed onto the bed, and carefully lay on my right side, curling up to take as small a space on the bed as possible.

  I didn’t make it to twenty-one.

  Chapter Twenty Three: Megaton

  “There are two kinds of asymmetrical warfare: terrorism and guerilla war. Guerilla war is aimed directly at the political, military, and supporting apparatus of a state, while terrorism is aimed at the citizens of a state. The Heroic Age has tremendously weakened the ability of states to defend against both; superhuman guerillas and terrorists often cannot be detected until they strike — they do not need to acquire or build weapons and bombs.

  Prof. Charles Gibbons, The New Heroic Age.

  * * *

  Blackstone let everyone sleep in, but that only meant we were awake enough to take more hits the next day. He delivered the hits in the morning briefing, opening with a news clip to let a fresh-faced, improbably chipper newslady incapable of frowning deliver the old news.

  “O’Hare airport remains closed today. Flights are being diverted to Chicago Midway and even Bolinbrooke’s Clow. Some airliners are refusing to risk their planes in Chicago, and tourism and business has been severely impacted. Many Chicagoans who can afford to take a vacation are doing so. The full impact of the Green Man’s campaign has yet to be determined, and will entirely depend upon how quickly and definitively he can be neutralized as a threat to this city.

  He froze the image, and from her smile, you’d have thought she was talking about the unseasonal but nice warm spell. Supervillain terrorist strikes again, economy impacted, when are the heroes going to do something about it? Blackstone, at least, looked like he hadn’t slept in a week trying to answer that question. Deep lines carved his face and shadowed his eyes, but the look he swept around the table burned. I found myself sitting straighter.

  “Beginning with yesterday morning, congratulations to everyone here, especially our newest members. Without Megaton and Tsuris’ help holding the line — ” he gave us a stiff nod “ — the attack would certainly have reached the terminals. Grendel also performed well without any backup, and of course Ozma played a key role in shutting down the attack. Which we will return to later.”

  A click brought up a new scene, this one a riot outside an office front.

  “With the Green Man attack dominating the news cycle, the first story about Astra’s brother, Toby Corrigan, didn’t hit the media until yesterday evening. Unfortunately, it got out on social networks a good deal earlier. A flash-protest by Astra fans outside the Honorable Representative Shankman’s campaign office started around four, and one or more of Mr. Shankman’s campaign security detail got rough with the protesters. Although the police are still sorting out who stepped over the line first, the protest turned into a riot that broke all the office windows and sent several participants to the hospital. None of Shankman’s campaign staff were injured.”

  Click. Sign-wavers outside a construction business.

  “On the topic of protests, news has gotten out that Dozer is indeed Eric Ludlow, Gantry, a member of the Crew. Indeed, after last night’s fight
and arrest, it was inevitable. Only police protection is keeping Humanity First protesters from picketing the Tollway repair site where the Crew is working to reopen the road as quickly as possible. They are settling for picketing the Crew’s business property.”

  “So,” Rush quipped, “half the city’s protesting and the other half is leaving town?”

  “It would seem so. And of course, with much of the CPD’s manpower being reserved for the next Green Man attack, goon vs. villain activity is spiking. And now, Astra.”

  Click. The room darkened for better viewing, and a drone’s eye-view image of last night’s battlefield came up, a digital clock in the lower corner counting up. The side of one of the buildings exploded outward, camera tracking on Astra and Dozer as they skidded across the parking lot. I wasn’t the only one who winced. Watchman came down on Dozer, and from there the footage was a series of fast-motion hits and screen freezes with digital notations; an analyst’s godlike after-action dissection of the brutal fight. It ended with a frozen shot of a prone Dozer.

  “Astra and Watchman successfully completed their part of the operation,” Blackstone reported needlessly. “Then Astra saw this man in the crowd.”

  The picture switched to a white, staring face caught in what looked like a mask-cam shot. The image split to show the same guy, the clearer image a shot of the hostage taken by Twist in the Daley Center attack.

  Reese and Brian looked blank, Ozma thoughtful, but everyone else...Rush whistled. Seven started swearing.

  “Detective Fisher has been studying our hypothetical teleporter’s MO. Based on the methods of entry and exit used in the courtroom and precinct attacks, he has concluded that Drop must be touching his targets, and may only teleport himself and others away — he cannot bring targets to him.

  “Thus, in the Daley Center attack, he teleported himself and the Wreckers to the hall behind the courtroom, then went around and inserted himself in the audience section before the attack commenced. Attacking the precinct, it now appears likely that he teleported the Wreckers from a van on the street into the cell, and they returned to the van for their getaway.