After the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

  The evil masterminds never were, more’s the pity. Accountants knew when to shred the documents.

  “Then what can I do for you, Mr. Paulson?”

  “Sit quietly in the corner like a good little hostage.” He smiled.

  At some unseen cue, the two henchmen took a step toward her, preparing to herd her off again. As soon as they moved, she jumped.

  “Don’t shoot, you’ll hit the machine!”

  They’d raised their weapons; Paulson had stopped them. At least something had played out in her favor.

  She jumped onto the lab table. If she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have done it. It was too far, too crazy. But she didn’t think. She jumped again—toward the radiation emitter.

  She only had to knock some of the cables off, or break the glass focal points, assuming they were breakable, or throw it out of alignment. Mysterious devices always had alignments they could be thrown out of. Her heart was beating too hard, her blood rushing too fast for her to worry about what would happen to her after she crashed into the thing.

  She landed awkwardly, scrabbling at narrow handholds, kicking to keep her balance. For all its bulk, the machine was delicate, spindly almost, balanced on a single-wheeled column. The column spun, the whole thing rolled, and cables came unplugged in her hands, emitting sparks and crackles. Lab workers scattered, and Celia managed to slide to the floor, stumbling but keeping her feet and clutching the machine for balance. It gave a few more sickly sputters for good measure. Static prickled along her arms. She let go, brushing her hands and wincing.

  That would delay the plan. Probably even long enough for those with experience in battling evil masterminds to get here.

  She assumed the Olympiad would show up. They always did, somehow.

  Please, Arthur. Get here quick. God only knew if he’d pick up on her thought. Could he hear her across the city? Only if he was listening? Or would her thoughts pull at him like a fish hook? After they’d slept together, did her thoughts feel any different to him?

  The two henchmen tackled her. She went limp and let them, offered no resistance, gave them no reason to start pounding her with the butts of their weapons. Or start shooting. They each took a shoulder and shoved her to the floor, facedown, then pried her arms back. It felt like they used duct tape to bind her wrists together. When they’d finished, they hoisted her to her feet.

  “You do have a death wish,” the mayor observed. “You weren’t lying when you testified at Sito’s trial.”

  Nobody trusted her. Not even the bad guys. She didn’t glare. She wasn’t even angry. She’d accomplished something: She’d learned what Paulson was planning, and she’d delayed him. Apart from that, let him think she was crazy. That was easy enough for most people to do.

  She gave him a great, smug grin, like she didn’t care, like she thought he was an ass. And on one level she didn’t care, because this wasn’t about her. It had never been about her. When she was seventeen and thought everything should have been about her, that was when she grew angry. But now, she knew better. Commerce City ran on the blood of all its people.

  His frown grew deeper, emphasizing the lines of his face, making his cheekbones hollower, and for a moment she saw in him his father, Simon Sito. She saw a bitter old man bent on chaos. Paulson’s rhetoric about the greater good aside, whatever he did would result in chaos. And she’d stopped him.

  “Put her over there.” He pointed to a chair, out of the way by a bank of computers. The henchmen pulled her off her feet, dragged her over, and slammed her into it, jamming her bound arms behind the back. Her shoulders ached. Paulson regarded her with a sense of smug triumph. “Good thing I have an updated model.”

  He shoved the now-broken model—a mere prototype?—out of the way.

  “This is the wide area broadcast version.” He pointed up, to the end of the warehouse, where a similar device but newer looking—sleek, modern—was mounted on a platform, suspended from the roof. Instead of the focusing materials on the narrow end, however, it had a parabolic dish that would beam out radiation to as great an area as possible.

  One of the lab people pulled a large knife switch on the wall. A panel in the roof slid open and, with a mechanical whine, the platform rose. Cables trailed from it, along the ceiling, secured to the wall, and leading finally to the computer banks.

  He wasn’t going to use the machine on his underlings, or his political opponents, or the prisons. That wasn’t his plan.

  “You’re going to use it on everyone. The whole city.”

  “Think of it: every citizen working for the common good. Everybody feeling a deep emotional connection to every other citizen. There’d be no more crime, no more selfishness—”

  The communist ideal obtained through the wonders of modern technology.

  “What about free will?”

  “What about it? What has free will done for you in your life, except brought you trouble and heartache? Commerce City doesn’t need free will, it needs direction.”

  “Your direction,” she said.

  “Of course. Who else has the vision to lead this city? Your grandfather might have had it, once. But your father surely doesn’t.”

  The place, the situation he described, was no longer Commerce City. Celia could act like she didn’t care—that holdover from her teenage personality filled her so easily. Maybe she hadn’t changed so much after all. But in the end, she did care about at least one thing. There was a reason she’d never moved away.

  “You just did it, you know,” she said.

  “Did what?”

  “Told me your plan.”

  “So what? You’re tied up.”

  Celia couldn’t pretend not to be appalled. She had run out of tricks, and she’d run out of attitude. “My parents will stop you. The Olympiad will stop you.”

  “Oh, they will? Because they always stop the villain? They may try, and they might even believe they’re doing the right thing. But they’ll have to realize that I’m the one working for the greater good here. And they’ll have to get through you to get to me.”

  “That’s never worked for anyone else.”

  “I’m not anyone else, am I?”

  She wriggled her hands, strained her arms, but the tape held tight, pinching her skin in the process. This was wrong, all wrong, like some kind of tabloid headline gone astray. The son of the Destructor and the daughter of Captain Olympus—but Paulson didn’t know. She had to assume that the mayor had never learned who his father was. He was as wrapped up in the history of this experiment as she was.

  She shook her head. “You’re just like everyone else. I’ve heard this all before. I’ve seen it all before. No one who’s ever tried to destroy Commerce City like this has ever succeeded.”

  “I’m not trying to destroy the city—”

  “But you might succeed anyway. Your father would be so proud. He was always trying the direct approach.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your biological mother was a technician in this lab fifty years ago. She was present when the accident happened. Your father, Simon Sito, was also present. It begs the question: What mutation did their genes pass on to you?”

  He laughed nervously. “I think you’ve just crossed the line into madness.”

  “I looked up the adoption records.”

  He stopped his pacing, his gloating over his accomplishment, and stared at her. She might have played the card too early. Distracted him at the wrong moment. But she had to buy time. She had to trust that someone would come get her. Her lack of fear, all the times she’d been in situations like this and been able to hide her fear—it hadn’t been out of indifference, or boredom.

  She’d always believed her family would rescue her.

  Nothing to do but keep on. “Haven’t you ever wondered about your real parents? Haven’t you ever wanted to find the records? You’re the mayor, you could have seen the files whenever you wanted.” When he didn’t reply, she kept on. “You’
re like me. You inherited the mutation from both sides of the family. But what did it do to you? You have to ask yourself that now, don’t you? What has the mutation done to Mark?”

  He went to the table, found the roll of duct tape, and cut off a piece. Returning to her, he slapped it over her mouth. Didn’t bother securing it all the way. It didn’t matter—she couldn’t open her mouth at all.

  She couldn’t gasp through her nose; she tried catch her breath and to stay calm. Maybe she could scoot the chair over to the electrical outlet and pull the cord out with her feet.

  Her cell phone rang. It was still in her front pocket. She hadn’t turned it off. She’d done stupider things in her life, she supposed.

  Everyone in the room—except Paulson—checked pockets and belts. Paulson looked at her, then came over. Checked her out, found the pocket. Moving to stand behind the chair, he reached forward, almost embracing her, and worked his hand into that pocket. He didn’t bother trying to be quick about it, or gentle. He moved slowly, searching, kneading along her hip. If her phone hadn’t been in the way, he’d have done more, reaching as far as the pocket would allow. Her skin crawled. She looked over her shoulder at him. Glared, trying to catch his gaze. The bastard was groping her and wouldn’t even look her in the eye.

  He finally pulled out the phone, with enough time to answer before the ringing stopped.

  “Hello? Who is this? Mark, hi! This is your father. Yes, she’s here, but she’s a little tied up at the moment.”

  Why did people think that was funny?

  Celia wished she could hear Mark’s reply. He wasn’t shouting, which was probably good. Was he here? Outside the building? Had he found the car, traced it to West Corp, and guessed it was hers?

  Paulson continued his side of the conversation. “No, I haven’t hurt her, except maybe her pride. Hopefully the situation will stay that way—”

  He lowered the phone, regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, then clicked it off and tossed it on a nearby table. “Oh well. Weber, how close are we?”

  “I’m still not sure we can draw enough power—”

  “You’ve been working on that problem for weeks.”

  “Yes, I know sir, and I swear we’ve done everything we can—”

  “It’ll have to be enough, won’t it? We’ll probably have some unwelcome visitors shortly. We have to do this now.”

  Now. Now the Olympiad would crash through the doors, flames bursting and a wind buffeting in their wake. Her mother would come to her first, rip off the duct tape, and start crying.

  The mechanical grinding of a generator motor started. The computers whined, ramping to a higher level of activity. The floodlights overhead flickered and dimmed.

  Above them, the device started a low, electrical throbbing. It threw off a shower of sparks. This sent the technicians into something of a frenzy, running to monitors and checking cables.

  “Weber?” Paulson asked.

  “Systems nominal, sir.”

  The device sat just below the roofline, visible over the lip of the platform. The parabolic dish, the emitter, protruded above the roof at an angle, westward, toward the center of Commerce City.

  Paulson watched her staring at it. “The dish will emit a pulse of low-grade radiation. Not harmful in any way. But it’s designed to leave people disoriented, open to suggestion. Ready to be led. Ready to be loyal. Then, as the dutiful mayor, I’ll step forward and offer my guidance.”

  His voice had to compete with an increasing volume of noise. The generator was screaming now. The device crackled, and more sparks arced away from it. Some of its cables glowed white.

  One of the computers in the work area caught fire. A henchman rushed forward brandishing an extinguisher. The odor of chemicals and burning plastic became overwhelming.

  “What’s happening, Weber?” Paulson said.

  “A circuit breaker’s malfunctioned. We can’t regulate the flow of power.”

  “But the device will still work?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so. It may work a little too well—”

  Celia wasn’t strapped directly to the chair. Theoretically, she could get up and … throw herself at something. Kick a computer or knock Paulson over, maybe. Before somebody shot her.

  “Weber!” Paulson had stormed forward to grab the scientist by the collar of his lab coat. He hauled Weber around and held him so they were face-to-face. Weber was pale, bloodless, just a shade lighter than his coat. His eyes were wide and shocked. The man was trembling in Paulson’s grip. “What’s happening, Weber?”

  “It’s out of control! We were having trouble finding enough power, but I think we overcompensated, reducing the resistance in the fuses … it’s caused an overload, but the device is still online, it’s still—”

  “What are you saying? Will it work? That’s all I care about.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, we’re using the circuit breakers from the original equipment—fifty-year-old equipment—and they can’t handle this kind of power. The surge has overwhelmed them all. The emitter still works, but the power flowing into it is completely unregulated. The radiation burst will be equivalent to that produced by a hydrogen bomb.”

  “The radiation. Not the explosion?”

  “Yes, nothing will be destroyed, but the people—”

  A hydrogen bomb going off in the middle of the city. Millions affected. Radiation poisoning would burn them all. He’d stop it, the mayor would stop it, now that he knew it wouldn’t work. Celia worked her mouth, trying to loosen the duct tape so she could shout at him. Her fingers were tingling; she’d cut off circulation in her hands in her struggles.

  “Can we stop it?” Paulson asked.

  Weber shook his head. “Not in time. The building’s circuit breakers are shot, we’d have to get the power company to shut down the entire grid in this area. The emitter’s cycle has already started. It’ll launch the radiation burst in minutes!”

  At the roof, the device hummed, like a continuous spark of static. Many of its parts were glowing now, including the parabolic dish. It was spliced directly into the building’s electrical wiring. There wasn’t a cord to unplug.

  Paulson stared at it a moment. At this stage, the criminal masterminds, the ones like Sito, would rant about their imminent failure, scream about how close they’d come, carry on about the general unfairness of the universe, then they’d escape through whatever back door they’d made for themselves. Had Paulson built himself a back door?

  He said, “We’ll have to get underground. That should protect us, shouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes,” Weber said. “But the city—”

  “The city will need a steady hand at the helm after a disaster of this magnitude. I’ll have to make sure it has one, won’t I?” He raised his hand and signaled to the rest of his technicians and henchmen. They gathered and followed Paulson as he marched out of the room, to the corridor that led to the loading dock. Presumably the building had a basement. Presumably it would protect them from the blast.

  No one even looked at her as they left.

  She threw herself sideways, tipping herself and the chair over. Kicking the chair away, she extricated her arms from around the back. Partially free. With a bit of contorting, she tucked her legs up and pulled her arms under them, so her hands were now bound in front. She ripped the duct tape off her mouth and took several deep, heaving breaths. She could breathe again. She’d thought she was going to faint.

  Lying on her back, she stared up at the roof, at Paulson’s doomsday device. The thing glowed white-hot, searing her eyes as the rest of the room’s lights flickered. No cord to unplug, no way to shut down the power. No way to get up there and break it. No way to throw herself on that grenade. She couldn’t fly, she couldn’t send a lightning bolt to destroy it.

  Maybe she could audit it to death.

  Then again maybe, just maybe, she could limit the danger. Contain it. Save something. Hope Mark put the pieces together and brought his
father to justice. What a mess. And how terrible that she had time to think about it. To consider. To decide.

  Her life had brought her to this moment. She had practiced for it. She didn’t hesitate.

  Hands still bound, tucked to her chest, she ran to the knife switch that controlled the platform. With her luck, the power to it would be fried, sucked into the radiation emitter. Maybe it was on a different circuit.

  How much time did she have? Minutes, seconds—

  Holding her breath, forgetting to inhale, she reached the wall, crashing into it because she hadn’t thought to slow down—it would take too long, slowing down. She grabbed the switch with both hands, got under it, shoved it up.

  Another spark flashed, a hiss like the circuit was failing—then gears creaked. The platform mechanism groaned to life. Slowly, the device sank below the roof, and the steel roof panel slid closed. The device, now enclosed inside the metal and concrete warehouse, glowed like a sun.

  Next, she went to the computers. She’d fight it; right to the last moment when she didn’t have any time left, she’d try to stop it. Because if the radiation could penetrate walls, she hadn’t saved anything. At random, she toggled switches, hit keys, pulled cords.

  The emitter’s noise changed, the whine rising in pitch. The light faded to orange—the color of something overheating, not the color of deadly energy. A shower of sparks flew, raining down on her like burning snow.

  She laughed. She didn’t know if what she’d done would help anything. But she’d done something. Maybe it had helped. She’d tried, and that had to count for something. So she laughed, because the weight of something she couldn’t quite identify lifted from her. Elation made her lighter than air.

  This was what her parents felt every time they saved the city, every time they battled evil and won. It was a high, addictive, they couldn’t stop. Something like that thrill she got when she found a lost piece of data, but so much more. Infinitely greater. As big as the world. Superhuman.

  “Celia!”

  Captain Olympus stood in the doorway that led to the loading dock. His fists were clenched, arms bent in his fighting pose.