Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  I get it. I do, honestly. We’re their children; they’re terrified for our safety. I don’t fault them for that, but it’d be nice if we could get some understanding flowing back our way. We’re trying here. I’m trying.

  But that’s all I can do, isn’t it? All I can do is try. The rest is up to Christina.

  Speaking of whom, I haven’t seen her all morning. It’s almost nine, and there’s been no sign of her. I haven’t even heard her shuffling around upstairs.

  After finishing off my coffee, I head to my room to pack my uniform, just in case, and then I go listen at Christina’s door for a minute. Nothing. I knock softly and call her name.

  “What?” she slurs.

  “I’m sorry, did I wake you up?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Um, I’m heading out. The Squad’s having a debriefing meeting with the Protectorate. It’s a standard procedure, nothing serious.”

  I barely make out a rustle of sheets being tossed aside, followed by muted footsteps approaching the door. Christina cracks it open. She looks awful. Her skin is pale, blackish-purple circles ring her bloodshot eyes, and her hair is a frazzled, flyaway nest.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she says. “Are you asking me for permission to go?”

  “Um, no. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Now I know.”

  She starts to close the door in my face. “Hey,” I say. She pauses. “You haven’t seen Ben all week. Maybe you should spend the day with him. Might help you take your mind off things.”

  “My daughter is missing. Nothing is going to take my mind off of that. And what am I supposed to tell Ben anyway?” Christina says, her agitation growing. “I can’t tell him the truth, can I? Can I?”

  “No, you can’t — but that’s why we have the cover story. You just tell him that you and Carrie had a big fight and she moved in with her dad.”

  Christina laughs bitterly. “You make it sound so easy. I can’t lie to Ben like that. I’m not you,” she says, her words stabbing me in the heart. “I don’t know how to live this life you’ve thrown me into, Sara. I don’t know what to do or what to say to anybody...I have no one I can talk to about this, no one who understands what I’m dealing with.”

  “You have the Steigers now, and the Lumleys,” I offer.

  “What, you think they have things figured out? You think they can offer me advice on how to cope with everything you’ve dumped on me?”

  “Dr. Hamill might —”

  “Ken Hamill played mad scientist with his own child and kept it from his wife. You think I’d want to confide in a man like that?”

  I stammer and stumble, vainly searching for an answer that’ll satisfy her. She waves me away and disappears back into her bedroom.

  “Go to your meeting,” she says. “See you whenever.”

  ***

  I head outside and sit on the porch to wait for Matt. He pulls up a few minutes later with Missy in the passenger’s seat.

  I climb into the back seat of Matt’s poor shot-up car. He glances over his shoulder at me. “Looks like the rest of your night sucks as much as ours did.”

  “Good guess,” I say, “although I bet mine involved a lot less yelling and a lot more moping.”

  “Also a good guess. The way they screamed at me, you’d’ve thought I’d confessed to knocking over liquor stores to buy meth.”

  “I almost wish Mom had yelled at me,” Missy says. “Me and Dad got home and she’d locked herself in the bedroom. She wouldn’t come out and talk to either of us. Dad had to sleep on the couch.”

  We drive over to pick up Stuart, who tells us his night was much, much different than ours were. “They didn’t yell at me at all,” he says. “I mean, they were upset about it, but they were more like wicked apologetic. Mom said she was sorry for stuff she said to me after Jeff died, and she and Dad were sorry for how they’ve been treating me since then...it was like they thought they drove me to become a super-hero.”

  “Huh. That’s a weird reaction,” Matt says.

  “Shyeah.”

  “Maybe not,” I say. “They might be seeing your decision to become a super-hero as self-destructive behavior, like drinking or doing drugs.”

  “But it’s not,” Stuart argues. “It’s totally not. I help people.”

  “I know. I didn’t say it was self-destructive behavior, I said that was how they perceived it. We know you’re trying to atone by helping others, but they see it as you trying to atone by putting yourself at risk.”

  “Out of morbid curiosity,” Matt says, “how did Gordon take the news?”

  “No idea, dude. He hasn’t said a word to me,” Stuart says. “He spent all morning staring at me like he doesn’t recognize me anymore.” He sighs. “You know what sucks? We’d been getting along lately. Now I don’t know what’s going on with us.”

  “I hear that. Dad and I had finally gotten back to normal, too, but I think that glorious era may have come to a fast and ugly end. I’m starting to think telling our parents was the wrong call.”

  I shrink in my seat. Matt isn’t blaming me, not directly or consciously, but I feel like crap anyway. He might be right.

  The ride to Protectorate HQ passes in silence.

  We drive in through the front gate, which is a novel experience after months of going in through the Wonkavator via the Main Street office. Once inside we head straight up to the conference room. Dr. Quentin and Meg are here, along with Tisha and the entire Protectorate. We’re the last to arrive.

  “Hold on,” I say. The Entity is sitting at the table like a normal person — another new experience. “Aren’t you supposed to be lurking in a corner waiting to scare the bejesus out of us?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. Is he messing with me?

  “Hey, you,” Matt says to Natalie. She pushes up out of her seat with a grunt. Out of the hospital for all of a day, and she’s right back to it. Woman is tough. “How’re you doing?”

  “Matt,” she says, beckoning to him with a finger. Once he’s within range, she snaps a jab into his stomach. “Smart-ass.”

  Matt laughs breathlessly. “You figured it out, huh?”

  “Yes I did, smart-ass,” she says, jabbing him again.

  “Why are you hitting him?” Bart asks.

  “She had nothing to do in the hospital but watch movies, so I gave her a list of suggestions,” Matt says. “There was a theme and I challenged her to figure out what it was.”

  “Reservoir Dogs, RED, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and an obscure number called The Invisible — all of which feature characters who get shot in the stomach,” Natalie says, laying in a third punch.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Smart-ass,” Natalie says with a grin.

  These are my friends.

  Meg pats the empty seat next to hers. “Saved you a spot,” she says. I sit and immediately grab her hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “We had our big coming-out party last night,” I say. “Matt, Stuart, and Missy gave up their secret identities to their parents. It blew up all over them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Meg, I feel awful. I’m the one who convinced them to do it.” I slump against her. “I think I made a stupid call.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You didn’t know it would go badly.”

  “Didn’t I? It’s not like Christina took the news well. If anything, she’s been getting more and more depressed and I don’t know what to do to fix it.”

  “Hey.” I look up from the floor. Meg smiles. “We’ll figure it out.”

  She doesn’t make that an explicit promise, but she doesn’t have to. My girl won’t let me down.

  I love you. The words are on my lips, on the tip of my tongue, begging to be spoken.

  Thankfully, Edison saves me from making another potentially very stupid decision. “All right, everyone. Let’s get started,” he says.

  We spend the next hour or so r
evisiting the events of the past week — a mass debriefing instead of the usual individual interviews. We were all there so making each of us rehash the same details over and over is pointless. Dr. Quentin submits written reports on behalf of Joe and Kilroy, who are home with Farley enjoying a much-needed and richly deserved boys’ day together — mostly for Farley’s benefit. Seeing his father banged up was scary enough for the little guy, and then Dr. Quentin broke the news about Carrie. It crushed him. He’s grown up around super-heroes, so he’s aware of the risks, despite his age, but this is the first time he’s actually lost someone to the life.

  “This is where things get a little fuzzy,” Edison says as we reach Thursday in the timeline. “Here’s what we know for sure: around two AM, six ‘big black robots’ infiltrated a secure zone, entered the Nightwind, stripped it of alien technology, and cleared the area before approximately five AM. I checked in with local military and civilian air traffic control and they insist there was no radar contact with any unidentified aircraft within that three-hour window.”

  “Which suggests they literally flew in under the radar or employed some highly sophisticated stealth technology,” Tisha says.

  “Or both. You found stealth tech in that Thrasher you gutted last year,” Matt says to Edison.

  “You’re assuming the quote-unquote robots were indeed Thrashers,” Dr. Quentin says.

  “It’s a reasonable assumption. I recovered several rounds from the bodies and the vehicles,” Edison says. “When I examined them, I found no traces of gunpowder or evidence of rifling, but I did detect a residual electrostatic charge. Those are all hallmarks of an electromagnetic railgun, and the only place I’ve only seen that level of tech outside of a lab is in a Thrasher.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” Tisha asks. “You’ve thrown that name around a lot but I don’t know what a Thrasher is.”

  “It’s a big honkin’ mech is what it is,” Stuart says. “Opa Gundam style.”

  “Think your suit on a larger scale,” Matt says to Tisha. “The Squad took a bunch of them down as part of our first case. Edison has one of them in the basement.”

  “Ohhh, I want to see that,” Tisha says.

  “Yes you do,” Dr. Quentin says. “It’s impressive.”

  “Anyway,” Astrid says.

  “Anyway,” Edison says, “let’s take the Thrashers as fact. We know they belong to someone — someone who got away from us once before.”

  The Foreman.

  It’s been — wow, it’s been almost a year since we encountered him. We’d been hunting for Archimedes, our very first adversary, and we found him inside a secret base on the outskirts of Boston. The Foreman, as the name suggests, was the man in charge. We had him dead to rights, but he weaseled past us and escaped, and he’s been off the grid ever since.

  “If the Foreman has in fact set up shop again, I want to know where,” Edison says. “I want to find him before he has a chance to make sense of the tech he stole and put it to use.”

  “Hope this isn’t the part of the meeting where you open it up to suggestions,” Natalie says, “‘cause I ain’t got none. It was dumb luck we found him the first time.”

  “I have an idea,” Matt says, “but I don’t think you’ll like it. I sure don’t.”

  “It’s probably the same idea I have,” Edison says.

  And the same idea I have, and no, I do not like it one bit.

  “You’re thinking of talking to Archimedes,” Bart says.

  “He’s our best bet. He might be our only bet. He’s the one solid connection we have to the Foreman and his operation,” Edison says.

  “He’s not going to cooperate with us, not without charging a hefty price.”

  “Considering we’re the reason he’s in Byrne, he might refuse to help us out of pure spite,” I say.

  “He might,” Natalie says, settling into her chair as a thoughtful look crosses her face, “but if I recall correctly, the man has an almost pathological hatred of captivity. He’d cut vital organs out of his body and hand them over on a silver platter if it’d get him out of prison.”

  “If only,” Edison says. “My concern is he’ll ask for clemency.”

  I see where he’s going. Archimedes has been sitting in Byrne Penitentiary more or less since we captured him, awaiting trial — a trial that has been pushed back several times for one reason or another but is, last I heard, set to proceed in a few weeks. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. There’s a remote possibility he could beat the charges, but if we gave him an opportunity to circumvent the trial entirely and walk out of Byrne a free man, he’d likely jump on it in a heartbeat.

  The problem is, once he’s out, what’s to stop him from going job-hunting with the same man who put him to use before?

  “Asking is not getting,” Dr. Quentin says.

  “Nevertheless, I’d rather not explore that option until we’ve exhausted every other possible means of tracking the Thrashers back to their home base,” Edison says. “That’s your homework, people. No idea is too crazy.”

  Edison adjourns the meeting. We start to file out of the room.

  “Now that you’ve talked it up so much, I want to see this Thrasher of yours,” Tisha says to Edison.

  “Sorry, I have to suit up and head to DC. I have a meeting with the president,” he says.

  “The president?” I say. “As in, the president?”

  “Mm-hm. I promised I’d brief him about the Nightwind incident first chance I got.” He groans. “God, between the government and the military and the scientific community, I’m going to be talking about this bloody invasion for the rest of my life.”

  “Who knew indisputable proof of alien life would be such a big deal?” I sass.

  “Funny. Anyway, Tisha, the suit’s down in the workshop. If you want to go poke around, help yourself.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Tisha says.

  Dr. Quentin stands and stretches out her back. “Think I’ll join you. I don’t want to break up the day of male bonding at home and I imagine you girls would like some time together,” she says to Meg and me.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Meg says. Dr. Quentin gives her a smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder, and I feel a little twinge of envy. I used to have that kind of relationship with Christina. I’m starting to worry I’ll never get it back. I don’t know how to fix us.

  I don’t...

  “Hey, Dr. Quentin?” I say. She pauses. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

  ELEVEN

  Christina doesn’t look at me as I enter. She’s slumped into the couch, still in her pajamas, a mug of something resting on her stomach. On the upside, she’s out of bed so, you know. Progress.

  “I’m back,” I say. Christina grunts.

  “Hi, Ms. Hauser,” Meg says. She normally calls her Christina, but in light of current conditions, she’s erring on the side of respect.

  Christina furrows her brow at my other guest. “Who’s that?”

  “This is Meg’s mom, Dr. Gwendolyn Quentin,” I say. “You might know her better as Doc Quantum.”

  “Hello, Christina,” Dr. Quentin says.

  Christina squints at me, a question in her eyes. “You said you felt like you had no one to talk to who understands what you’re dealing with,” I say. “I asked Dr. Quentin to come over and...well, talk.”

  Christina doesn’t tell me to get this strange woman out of her house. That’s promising.

  “We’ll go hang out at the coffee shop for a couple hours,” Meg says to her mother.

  “All right. Have fun. Stay out of trouble,” Dr. Quentin says. “And if trouble finds you —”

  “Call for backup,” Meg says. “I know.”

  We head out. Meg slides her hand around my waist and gently pulls me close. Everything will be all right, the gesture says.

  Please be right.

  ***

  “I like them together,” Dr. Quentin says. “They’re good for each other.”

/>   Christina passes a critical eye over Dr. Quentin. Nothing about her, from her dreary gray slacks and her conservative white blouse to her glasses and her blond hair pulled back into a loose bun strikes Christina as particularly super-heroic.

  “Doc Quantum, huh?” she says. “You’re really a super-hero?”

  “My reputation in that field is somewhat overstated,” Dr. Quentin says. “Aside from my nom de guerre there’s nothing about me that fits the archetype. I generally spend more time acting as a consultant to those more active in the life than engaging in fieldwork myself. Even then I mostly consider myself a scientist, a wife, a mother...”

  “And is that what passes for normal conversation with your children?” Christina says, depositing her cold, untouched mug of morning coffee on the coffee table. “‘Have fun, stay out of trouble, don’t forget to call for backup’?”

  “It isn’t any different than advice you might give Sara, is it? Stay safe and don’t be afraid to ask for help — fairly universal parental wisdom. And it’s not what passes for normal conversation in my family; it is normal conversation. Normalcy is subjective, after all.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, it’s normal for me to offer guests a drink,” Christina says, grudgingly peeling herself off the couch. “Coffee? Tea? Do you people drink tea?”

  “Tea would be lovely, as long as it’s not herbal tea. Herbal tea is disgusting.”

  “Look at that — common ground.” Christina shuffles into the kitchen to fill the kettle. “Guess we’re not so different after all.”

  “We aren’t, actually. We’re both mothers. We both have children who’ve made some highly unorthodox and dangerous life choices.”

  “And that’s where the similarities end,” Christina says, slamming the kettle onto the cold burner. “You don’t seem to care one bit that your daughter is doing something so stupid.”

  “Megan is far from stupid,” Dr. Quentin says, bristling, “and I do care about her. I care very much.”

  “Then how the hell could you let her do it?” Christina demands. “Did you push her into it?”