by Nick Svolos
IV
As I tentatively tested the controls of the suddenly-airborne Angelmobile to see how they worked, one thought filled my mind. Superheroes got the coolest toys.
Piloting the vehicle proved to be easier than I would have thought. The accelerator still worked like an accelerator, turning the wheel right or left had the expected effect on our direction, and I could control our upward or downward momentum by pulling the steering wheel out or pushing it into the dashboard. I had no idea how to land the thing, but as long as we stayed aloft and away from other aircraft, I felt reasonably sure I could avoid catastrophe.
“Ok, so you have a flying car. Good to know. Herculene, I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you not using this all the freakin’ time?”
She chuckled. “The FAA’s pretty strict about this. I think they figure if people find out we have them, pretty soon everyone will want one.”
“Heck yeah. I want one. Tell them they can have all my money. How is this even possible?”
“Galestorm Tech gives us a lot of experimental tech to test out. This one has some sort of anti-gravity system. I guess they figure if a rambunctious bunch of superpowered vigilantes can’t break it, it’s probably ready to sell to the military.”
“Awesome. So, how do I land this thing without killing us?”
“You don’t. It takes a bit of practice. We’re gonna need to switch seats. Gently hit the brakes and take your hands off the wheel.”
I did as instructed and the next generation Chitty Chitty Bang Bang came to a halt, calmly hovering over the city. A few awkward, but rather fun, moments followed as we switched positions. Once we were strapped in, Herculene took the controls and, with the assistance of a monitor in the dashboard, found a quiet, empty section of street and set the car down with a gentle bump.
Herculene looked at me and smiled like nothing particularly mind-bending had just happened, “So, where to next?”
Now that we were safely on the ground, I was able to think clearly again and remembered the bag of camera pieces in my sling. I pulled it out and started sifting through it for the memory card. “What time is it,” I asked as I continued my search.
She glanced at the dashboard clock, “Almost six.”
“OK, we got a couple of hours to kill. Our next stop is up in Compton at about eight. What do you think, drive around or find a place to sit?” Both possibilities had their advantages. Driving around increased our odds of contact with the cops, but people sitting in parked cars were more likely to raise suspicion from civilians.
She thought about it for a moment. “I’ll find a place to park. I wanna see what you got on that card.”
I found the piece of camera I was looking for and popped the memory card out into my hand. I put the former camera in back in the bag, pulled out my laptop and turned it on. It was an old laptop, well past its prime, and it took forever to boot up. I should have replaced it a long time ago, gotten myself one of those sleek new laptops the guys in the art department used, but quite frankly, it had all my stuff on it, and the thought of spending a few days re-installing all the software I used, transferring files and getting things to work the way I was used to deterred me. I guess I’m just lazy that way. Besides, I pretty much only used it for writing and research when I was out of the office. So, I just lived with it.
Once the ancient machine finished booting, I popped in the memory card and started loading the file in the viewer. By the time it was done loading, we were parked across the street from a donut shop at the corner of Avalon and Sepulveda. I turned the laptop so we could both watch and hit play. We saw an image of the refinery as it was before the first explosion. The scene was quiet and well-lit by the facility’s floodlights. The doomed storage tanks occupied the lower right corner of the screen. A maintenance truck entered the scene from somewhere off to the right of the screen, passed the tanks and continued on to exit the frame on the left. I sped the playback up a notch. There was probably twenty minutes of footage from when I set up the camera to the first explosion. The time ticked by, more vehicles came and went, and then Herculene said, “Stop!” I hit the pause button. “I think I saw something by the tanks. Back it up a couple of minutes. Can you zoom in on them?”
“On this thing? We should be so lucky.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a promotional credit card-sized plastic magnifier that I had picked up at a trade show years before. The logo on the card was for some long-defunct tech startup. I handed it to her and started the playback again, this time at half-speed.
She watched the screen intently. “Almost there...stop!” I hit pause and she put the magnifier up closer to the screen. “Gotcha!” she said in triumph. I looked at the image, and something had moved out of the shadows and was doing something next to one of the storage tanks. The resolution on the laptop’s screen was at least five years out-of-date, however, and even with the magnifier, I could barely make out the form as human.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “The camera’s resolution is much better, but the video on this thing just can’t handle it.”
“That’s OK,” she said with a grin, “If you’re willing, we can enhance the heck out of it back at the Tower. We just might have found our saboteur.” Her brown eyes positively sparkled as she thumped me playfully on the shoulder, “Nice work, Rube!”
I smiled. I kind of liked it when she called me “Rube”. I jotted down the time on the recording in my notebook.
“Just doin’ mah job, Ma’am,” I drawled as I started the playback again. I sped through about ten more minutes of footage until the screen bloomed as the first explosion tore through the storage tank. The recorded image degenerated into jumbled images as the camera tumbled through the air and came to rest on its side. I paused the playback and reversed it to just before the explosion, noted the time and continued on. The recording showed the surface of the roof until last night’s Reuben righted the camera and trained it on a blinding white light. The image was entirely white until the light-dampening adjustments I made at the time took effect.
Once the image resolved, we could see Phoenix Fire hovering in mid-air and drawing the flames from the storage tanks into her body. She was beautiful, in an eerie, flaming sort of way. I don’t mean just that she had a gorgeous body and movie-star quality looks—which she did—or that she was stark naked, which she was and you should really get your mind out of the gutter. It was in the way the flames covered her like a second skin, the way her face was set in a mask of intense, focused effort as she extended her arms in an arc towards the flames, like she was embracing an invisible Buddha. There was an unexplainable, almost erotic, beauty in the way the flames obeyed her indomitable will.
I left the video player app running and noted the time of her arrival. I saw that there was about five minutes left on the video. I looked at Herculene. Her gaze was flat, but the tension in her posture betrayed her building emotions. I said, “You don’t have to watch the rest of this, you know.”
Her eyes remained glued to the screen. “Yes I do,” she said matter-of-factly.
We watched the remainder of the video in tense silence. Phoenix Fire’s face was a vision of passion and agony as she struggled to draw in the intense heat from the raging fire and convert it to light. She was facing North when the end came. Playing at normal speed, it was over in an instant, the playback dissolving into static and coming to an abrupt halt. I backed it up about fifteen seconds, noted the time on the playback and advanced it frame by frame. I came to a point where Phoenix Fire’s body suddenly jerked. The next few steps showed her flame-clad form doubling over as her hands moved to clutch her upper abdomen. For the next ten or so frames we could see her head looking from side to side, an anguished look of desperation on her glowing face. Her abdomen was growing, her slim, athletic build expanding to the point where she looked to be about nine months pregnant. A few frames later, she had reoriented herself to point her torso towards the ground below, her face set i
n a determined glare. Her hands came away from her belly. And then she burst. The final images my camera caught before being cast into oblivion was that of a beam of pure energy being directed downward to suffocate the conflagration at the storage tanks beneath the flaming hero.
I stared into the static of the final frame. I could hardly comprehend what I had just seen. In those final instants, Phoenix Fire overcame the initial shock of the impact of the bullet and somehow managed to maintain the presence of mind to direct the blast in the only direction that wouldn’t have resulted in even more death and destruction. Her last act was one of sacrifice, and she had saved God only knows how many lives.
My God, where does courage like that come from?
I felt something running down my cheek and realized it was a tear. I wiped it away with my thumb and looked at Herculene. Tears streamed down her face and her lips were quivering. Her left hand had been resting on the steering wheel and at some point the top of the steering wheel had become crushed and slightly twisted. Her right hand was clenched into a tight fist on the seat beside me and I turned toward her and reached over awkwardly and set my right hand upon it.
“I’m sorry, I just…” she said and then she pushed her face into my left shoulder and the floodgates opened. My left arm barked, but I ignored the pain and just held her. I’m embarrassed to admit that some part of me took solace that she couldn’t see my own tears.
After a minute or so, she regained control of herself and pulled away. Her eyes were red and I think she was blushing. She wiped at her face with her hands and looked about for something. I popped open the Lincoln’s glove compartment and, strangely enough, actually found a pair of gloves. They were black and gray and in a woman’s size, they might have belonged to Mentalia. Under those, were some fast-food napkins. I pulled out the napkins and handed them to Herculine, palming one for myself. I gave her some time to pull herself together and blew my nose, surreptitiously clearing the tears from my face as I did so.
I needed something normal to do. Something very normal, that didn’t involve any of this madness. Something that would give me a chance to regain my composure. I glanced into the coffee shop. No cops were visible. “You want some coffee?” I asked. She nodded, still dabbing at her eyes. “I’ll be right back.” I emerged into the already excessive August heat. It was only about seven in the morning, and I estimated that it was already well into the high seventies. It felt like this heat wave was never going to end.
***
The air inside the donut shop was cool, and the smell of coffee and freshly-baked donuts cleared the fog from my head. A teenager behind the counter packed up the half-dozen donuts I selected as I filled two large Styrofoam cups with coffee, adding lots of sugar and milk to one. The teen offered a little box to help me carry it all. I paid the kid, dropped some coins into the tip jar and returned to the Lincoln.
As I climbed back into the passenger seat, Herculene was just putting the finishing touches on bending the steering wheel back into something resembling a circle. I set the box with the coffee and donuts on the seat between us. I reached into the bag and pulled out my personal favorite, cinnamon crumb, took a bite and washed it down with a sip of java.
Herculene was sipping on her coffee and munching her way through one of the donuts. She stared straight ahead and quietly said, “You know, there’s one thing I always wanted to ask her. Never seemed to get a chance.”
“What’s that?”
“Her name. Phoenix Fire. It just never sounded right to me. I mean, why not ‘Phoenix’ or ‘Fire Girl’ or something?”
“Ah. I actually know that one. She said it sounded better in French. Fenix Feu. She thought it was cute.”
She perked up a bit, actually smiling. “No kidding?” She chuckled and tried it out, “Fenix Feu. Yeah, I guess it does.” She held up her coffee cup, “To Fenix Feu.”
I bumped my cup into hers, “To Fenix Feu.”
She fell silent after that, and I let her have the time. I felt like I needed to get back to work. I updated my agenda to include getting the video footage to The Angels. It was a good lead, and if Herculene was right, the equipment at the Tower could be the key to unlocking the identity of the bomber. The original would eventually have to go to the cops, but I wasn’t ready to turn it over just yet. I didn’t want to withhold evidence, but if the cops and I were running down the same lead, we’d be bound to run into each other again. We’d gotten away pretty easy at the parking garage, but I didn’t like my odds of doing that twice.
There was also the matter of the assassin on the warehouse roof. If Herculene was right and he was after me, the most likely scenario, it had to mean I was on to something. The video recording had to be the key. Herculene said he was using a rifle, and I wondered if it might be the same shooter that killed Phoenix Fire. One thing was clear, however, it wasn’t Omega. They didn’t have any snipers, not that I knew of, at least. They could have hired one, but it didn’t fit with their MO. They preferred things up close and personal. I decided to burn a copy of the video for the Beacon, too, just in case they caught me before this was all done.
I opened the laptop again and for once, it emerged from sleep mode without any issues. Usually, it got cranky after a nap and I had to do a full reboot, but I got lucky for a change. I terminated the video application and looked at the size of the file itself. It was about two hundred megabytes. I did some quick calculations and figured it would take about fifteen minutes to upload the file if I connected the laptop to my phone. That would work, but I wondered if there was a better solution. I remembered watching the news in the back seat with Herculene earlier.
I looked over at Herculene. “Is this car hooked up to your network? I need to get this file uploaded.”
“Sure,” she said, and reopened the dashboard’s GPS navigation screen. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the back of the screen had a little keyboard and the monitor she used to land the car doubled as a computer screen. A login appeared under the familiar Angel’s logo. Next to the screen were a variety of ports. In addition to the ones I recognized, like the USB and normal network ports, there were quite a few that I had never seen before. There was even a standard household three-pronged electrical outlet. I ejected the memory card from my laptop, found the correct slot on the console and popped it in. It seated with a tidy little click.
She made a copy of the file and uploaded it to the tech staff at the Angel Tower. I gave her the email address of my editor at the paper and my personal cloud storage, but she hesitated.
“Reuben, are you sure about this? I thought you and Ultiman agreed that this shouldn’t get out to the public yet.”
“I’m going to call my editor and make sure he knows to sit on this for a day or two. It was filmed on my personal equipment, so they can’t use it without my permission. Mainly, I want the Beacon to have a copy as insurance. If this really goes south, they can still get the story out.”
Herculene shrugged and pressed the send button. “OK, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I. Can I use this thing to call my editor? I don’t want to turn on my phone if I can avoid it.” She nodded and turned the keyboard so I could access it. I keyed in the number and soon after, the voice of Harold Praeger, my editor came on.
“City desk, Praeger speaking.” His voice sounded gruff and distracted.
“Harry, it’s Reuben. Got a minute?”
“Conway! I got half the staff following up on your story and the other half busy taking messages for you. Your voicemail’s full, by the way. And, oh yeah, I’ve got the FBI calling me every fifteen minutes and a cop down in the lobby, waiting for you to show up. What the hell have you gotten yourself into?” After taking a breath, he added, “Your story’s not bad, though.” Coming from Harry, that amounted to him personally awarding me a Pulitzer. He was one of those old school guys who figured as soon as you accepted a subordinate’s work as satisfactory, they would get lazy and never improve beyond that point. I
t was a management style that didn’t fly in most newsrooms those days, but I gotta say, if my work was any good, it was probably due to the constant rewrites he imposed on me.
“Gee, thanks, Harry. Careful, or I might get all choked up. Livia wrote the story, though. I busted my arm and couldn’t type it up.”
“Aw, that explains it. I thought something was strange when I didn’t have to spend half the day editing it.” He sounded grumpy, but I could hear the grin behind the bluster. You work with a guy long enough, and you learn to recognize the signs.
“Listen, Harry. I went back this morning and found my video camera. I’ve got some footage of Phoenix Fire from last night. We’ve just sent you the file. This is not for publication at this time, OK? I need you to sit on this for a bit. A day or two. I’m running down an angle on this story that goes with the file, but if the video gets out, people are going to clam up. That OK with you?”
“Sure, but you gotta give me something, here. What are you working on?”
I considered how much to let my boss know, and decided to go with what we knew last night. “I don’t think the refinery thing was an ambush. It was an assassination. I can’t afford to spend a day in police custody, answering questions I don’t have the answers to. I gotta stay off the grid to pull this off. Are you in?”
“Alright. I’ll sit on this for now. See what you can find out. Hey, wait a minute, you just said, ‘We’ve sent you a file.’ Who’re you working with?” One thing about Harry, he doesn’t miss a thing.
I looked questioningly at Herculene and she nodded. “I’m working with Herculene from The Angels. The email’s going to be coming from her, so keep an eye out for it.” I paused for a second. “Oh, and there’s one more thing. I’m probably going to have to turn the original media over to the police, but I’d like to talk it over with Legal, first. Are they in yet?”
“No, they don’t come in until at least nine.” I looked at the digital clock in the corner of the screen. It was almost 7:30 AM.
