After the Golden Age

TWENTY-FOUR

THE city had become as taut as a drawn bow string, quivering, more than ready for release. People hurried on the streets, waiting for bombs to explode or runaway buses to turn the next corner. Restaurants shut down, no one was shopping. People seemed content to stay indoors, watching TV, waiting for the next big attack.

She couldn’t help but think that all these petty little crimes and attacks were merely means to an end, to hold the city in thrall to terror. And here they were. Even the Destructor had never been so calculating.

It was quick work with a phone book and Internet connection to find the location of Janet Travers, the point where the two threads of inquiry Celia had been following matched up.

Travers had an apartment at an assisted living community in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood at the edge of town, the kind with wide, tree-lined streets and signs that warned of children playing. The retirement community had a brick, neocolonial apartment building and scattered bungalows, all enclosed within walled gardens, isolated, quiet and pretty.

Celia signed in with the receptionist. “Let me call up to her room and see if she’s taking visitors. Celia, you said?”

“Yes. She won’t know me, but it’s very important I see her. I have news about her son.”

“I didn’t know she had a son,” the receptionist said as she dialed a number on her phone.

Celia smiled innocently.

The receptionist spoke on the phone for several moments, passing along the message. Celia was sure that Janet would refuse to talk to her.

Then the receptionist covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Would it be all right if she met you in the atrium?”

“Yes, of course, that’d be fine.”

“She’ll be down in a few minutes. You can wait for her, it’s just at the end of the hallway.”

Celia made her way to the atrium. The large glass room was filled with patio furniture, wicker tables, and chairs with big soft cushions. Potted trees and vines flourished, and birdsong chirped here and there. Celia suspected it was a recording. A few people played cards at a table across the way.

She waited long enough to think that Janet had changed her mind. A woman arrived then, her expression taut, frowning. She scanned the room until her gaze found Celia, who was out of place here. Celia smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging manner.

The woman’s shoulders were slightly stooped, but she managed to hold herself elegantly, her chin up. Her hair was short, permed, perfectly arranged, and she wore a fashionable blouse and trousers with confidence. She’d have looked at home anywhere. Whatever had happened to this woman in her life, she’d held on to her dignity.

Celia went to her and offered her hand. “Ms. Travers? I’m Celia West. Thank you for meeting with me.”

Janet didn’t shake her hand. “What do you want with me?”

Celia hadn’t expected this to be easy. “I just want to ask a few questions. I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I’ve got a mystery that I really need help solving, and you may be the one to do it.”

“Then why bring up a son? Because I don’t know anything about that.”

Wincing, Celia said, “Can we sit down?” She gestured to a secluded set of wicker chairs. Reluctantly, Janet joined her there.

“I originally found your name on a payroll report for West Corp. You worked at the Leyden Industrial Park building. The laboratory there was shut down after an accident. I want to know what happened.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yes. But you must remember something. Simon Sito worked there—”

“I don’t want to hear anything about him.”

“I know this must be difficult.”

“Do you? Then tell me why you mentioned a son. I wouldn’t have agreed to talk with you if you hadn’t.”

She wondered if the old woman realized who Celia was.

“I know who the father was. I assure you, I learned by accident. It’s a long story, but I only uncovered the adoption records after I had suspicions.”

The tension in Janet’s face seemed to melt, as if now that the secret was out, she could stop working so hard to hide it. As if she knew this moment had always been inevitable, but not as terrible as she’d envisioned. She rubbed her face with a bony, trembling hand.

“I should have ended the pregnancy,” Janet said. “I saw what he turned into, and I just kept thinking how I let his genes loose in the world. That evil—” Celia didn’t even have to say the name. Janet knew who she was talking about.

“Did he start out evil? Was he always like he is now? You must have seen something in him, back then.”

“No, no. He was … it was a long time ago. My memory of him is colored, I’m sure. But he was driven, and I admired him.”

A lost love? A quick fling? Celia couldn’t guess what they’d been to each other.

“Ms. Travers, I’m not here about your son, or Sito, or your relationship with him. I learned about all that by accident. But you wouldn’t talk to me when I called you a few days ago. I’m sorry if I tricked you into talking with me, but I’m running out of leads. What I really want to know is what was going on at the Leyden laboratory. Anything you can remember, no matter how insignificant, would be helpful. I’d appreciate it.”

The woman gathered herself, pursing her lips and straightening as much as she could. Her hands lay in her lap, clenched around each other.

“That day, the day of the accident, was the first major test of the equipment.”

“Equipment? What kind of equipment?”

Janet shook her head. “The project involved using radiation as a treatment for mental illness. A generator was supposed to create a specific kind of radiation. I’m afraid I don’t know any more than that. I was a technician; I prepared tissue samples and microscope slides, that was all.

“The equipment … burst, I think. It overheated, or a power surge overloaded it. I don’t think anyone ever learned what exactly happened. It was very embarrassing for Dr. Sito, because Mr. West was there observing—”

“Mr. West. Jacob West?”

“Yes— Wait a moment. Celia West. Are you related to him?”

“He was my grandfather,” Celia said. She could see the light of recognition in Janet’s eyes. Oh, that Celia West. Janet must not have recognized her instantly because she didn’t watch the news. Probably got out of the habit when the Destructor was featured regularly. As reminders of ex-boyfriends went, that had to have been bad. “Please, go on.”

“West Corp financed the whole thing. The only thing worse than failure is failure in front of your investors. But Sito insisted on showing off the experiment. At any rate, instead of focusing the energy in a beam that could be directed at specific targets—such as parts of the brain, for therapy—the entire room got a dose of the radiation. Now, the dose was weak. It was designed to be safe for use on people, of course. I don’t think anyone was hurt by it. But Mr. West shut down the project and gave everyone who was there quite generous severance payments. He decided the research was too radical to continue safely. Dr. Sito never recovered from the disappointment.

“He … he came to me that night. Drunk out of his mind, despairing. He needed comfort. I suppose I felt sorry for him. That was the night I conceived. By the time I learned I was pregnant, Sito had been institutionalized. I couldn’t keep the baby, then. I couldn’t raise it alone, with the father in an asylum—” She looked at her hands and flattened them on her legs in an effort to stop wringing them. The tendons stood out.

“I never saw Simon again,” she said. “At least, not in person. When he started making the news years later, I didn’t recognize him. I’ve avoided hearing anything about him. I must be the only person in Commerce City not following his trial.”

“He doesn’t know that he has a child,” Celia said. Janet shook her head. “You could probably sell your story to one of the tabloids for a lot of money.” She was mostly joking.

“I could,” Janet said, her smile thin and bitter. “But can you imagine if the child—my child—learned the truth about his parents? If he’s still out there—I can’t imagine how it would feel, to learn that your father was someone like that.”

Maybe a little like having Captain Olympus as a father. It would be different, of course, having a hero to look up to rather than a villain to despise. But somehow, it would also be the same.

How was she going to tell all this to Mark?

“Ms. Travers—I know who your son is. I’ve met him. Would you like to hear about him?” He’s the mayor, and you have a valiant grandson who’s a police detective—her genes had done pretty well for themselves.

She looked back, stricken. The yes sat on the verge of trembling lips. Celia regretted this whole trip. She hadn’t wanted to make an old woman cry.

Abruptly, Janet shook her head. “I put that behind me years ago. I’ve kept it secret for a very long time. If I heard about him, I would want to meet him. I’d want to know if I’m a grandmother, then I might want to be a grandmother. No, I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

“Then I’ll leave you alone. Thank you very much for speaking with me.” This time when she offered her hand, Janet shook it, lightly, fleetingly.

“You won’t tell anyone about me, will you? You’ll keep my secret?”

The photocopy of the birth certificate burned in her pocket. No one else had seen it. No one else had to. She’d get rid of it. “I’ll keep your secret. Thank you again.”

She had one last exorcism to attempt.

Elroy Asylum was one of the places people ended up when they couldn’t afford institutions like Greenbriar. Industrial and sadly out of date, the four-story cinder-block monolith had a functional sterility that made it hard not to feel a little sorry for its inhabitants. Except that one wing of the hospital was dedicated to criminals. Technically not criminal, she supposed—they’d been deemed insane. Technically, every one of them stood a chance of being cured and set loose in the world.

But some of them, Celia believed, were simply evil. If evil was a form of insanity, so be it. But those people didn’t want to be cured. Knowing what she knew now, she wasn’t sure whether Sito was sick or evil. She didn’t know if he wanted to be cured.

She only knew she never wanted to see him back in the world of the living.

Scuffed linoleum floor and fluorescent lighting were the prominent features of the asylum’s reception area. A man in the white uniform of an orderly occupied the desk and seemed deeply involved in sorting a stack of folders. Celia loomed politely until he looked up.

“Hi, I wondered if it would be possible to visit a patient.” She smiled hopefully.

“That depends on the patient’s status; let me check that for you. Who do you want to see?”

Deep breath. “Simon Sito.”

He stared at her. Her smile froze. All right, so this was rather odd. All she needed now was for him to recognize who she was, and he’d be on the phone to the police.

“I’m sorry, that won’t be possible,” the receptionist said. “He’s under strict security protocols. No visitors.”

“No exceptions?”

“I’m afraid not.” He couldn’t have been any older than she was, but he had the authority of the uniform. She couldn’t stare him down.

She didn’t have a warrant from the DA. She didn’t have permission. She didn’t have a reason for being here, except to satisfy her own curiosity.

“What if I said it’s really important and the fate of the city could rest on whether or not I see him?”

The guy chuckled. “Fate of the city? Who do you think you are? Captain Olympus?”

That didn’t even merit a response. “Well, then. Thanks for your time.”

She took a quick look around. The reception area had two doors. The one behind the desk had a security card scanner. Presumably, it was locked. A door to the left had a regular-looking handle.

She turned back to the orderly. “Do you have a public restroom?”

He nodded at the left-hand door. “Through there, third door on the right.”

“Thank you.”

She was in. Now, she just had to make her way through the maze to the secure section. She tried every door, hoping she’d stumble upon a forgotten back entrance that didn’t require a key card. Instead, she found classrooms, offices, the bathroom, and a janitor’s closet. She snooped for spare key cards lying around. No luck. But in one classroom, she found an open window looking out on an inner courtyard, hemmed in by tall gray walls. And across the courtyard was another open window.

The windows were aluminum framed, the old-fashioned kind that swiveled inward, leaving a gap at the top. Thank God she was thin. She stood on the inside sill, stepped through the opening to the outside sill, held her breath, and slid. These kinds of windows were designed to keep elementary-school children from escaping their classrooms. It was definitely a tight fit. Her shirt scooted up; she tried to hold it in place, but she had to hold her arms up to give her torso enough room to slip through. After a bit of contorting, she let her feet drop to the ground and slid the rest of the way through the window.

She stood on a narrow strip of lawn and tugged her clothes back into place.

A couple of people in bathrobes were staring at her.

A young, thin man sat on a park bench near a security-locked doorway. The other, an older man, had presumably been walking a circuit around the courtyard. He’d stopped and, like the young man, watched her, his mouth open. Patients, presumably. The low-risk kind, out for some fresh air.

This could be interesting.

She ignored them and hoped for the best, striding across the lawn like she belonged there, reaching the next open window, and hoisting herself onto the sill. Reversing the process, poking her head in through the window, she squirmed her way into the next room. Her witnesses didn’t say a word.

Once again, she straightened her clothes. This new room was a lab, long and narrow, with a workbench holding lots of microscopes and other equipment running along one side of it, cabinets and refrigerators on the other side. Fortunately, the place wasn’t currently in use. She didn’t know how long that would last, though.

She paused long enough to consult a fire-escape floor plan on the back of the door. It even had a helpful YOU ARE HERE star. A label marked the high-security section.

She borrowed a white lab coat off the back of a chair and a clipboard and pen off a desk.

The high-security section had an on-duty guard at a desk station. He monitored the wing via a half-dozen televisions connected to closed-circuit cameras, which flipped between scenes inside patients’ rooms. The patients showed the whole range of reactions to their institutionalization: some seemed entirely normal; some huddled in corners, catatonic; others ranted, screaming at the security cameras, their voices unheard; some paced; one, wearing a safety helmet, banged his head against a padded wall, over and over and over again. Celia didn’t recognize Sito among them.

“Can I help you?” the guard asked.

Celia hoped she could brazen this through. “I’m here to check on Simon Sito for Doctor Steinberg.” She remembered the supervising doctor’s name from the trial.

Inhale normally, no holding her breath, no sweating.

The guard held a clipboard out to her. “Sign in here.” He pointed to a line with boxes marked DATE, TIME, and NAME. She filled them out, signed Celia West, and handed it back.

The guard didn’t even look at the name.

“He’s in four-eighty. Six doors down.” He pressed a button and the lock on the door clicked open.

“Thank you.”

The corridor beyond the secure door echoed with her footsteps. The rooms were soundproofed. She didn’t hear anything from inside them, no screams, no insane muttering. But she heard something muffled and distant that might have been human voices in torment. Or she imagined she heard it.

She reached 480. Sito’s name was handwritten on a dry-erase nameplate under a small, round window.

Simon Sito was on suicide watch. His room was small, square, padded. There were no furnishings, no objects, nothing that could be picked up, thrown, or manipulated. He wore a T-shirt and sweatpants, and went barefoot. He sat cross-legged in a corner, his hands resting loosely in his lap, staring straight ahead at nothing. He’d always been small, but now he seemed shriveled, like he hadn’t been eating. His hair seemed translucent.

She pressed a black intercom button under the speaker by the door. Close to the intercom’s grill, she said, “Dr. Sito?”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Celia West.”

Sito looked over at the less than face-size window and a faint smile dawned.

“You are constantly drawn to me, aren’t you? Like a moth to a flame. I should be flattered.”

She waited for a flush of anger, for the defensive stiffening of her back. For the feeling that she was sixteen years old again, and nothing would change. None of that happened. Her skin felt cool. She was on a mission.

She said, “I need to know about the experiment you were running at the Leyden Industrial Park fifty years ago.”

He tsked her, shaking his head. “That part of my life is muddled, you know. The psychiatrists did a wonderful job of wiping me clean. Tabula rasa.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Then I can’t help you. You’ll believe what you believe.”

“I think I know what you and my grandfather were trying to do. I’m only here looking for confirmation. The technical reports from the lab have disappeared. All I know is who was in that room and what happened to them after. Did you ever check up on what happened to them?”

“I told you, that part of my life is murky.” He glared at a spot below the window. He wouldn’t meet her gaze, though she was desperate to see some sort of recognition in his eyes. Some sort of shock. Any expression at all beside that intense deliberation.

“Most of them had children. Jacob had a son, Warren. Anna Riley had a daughter, Suzanne. Robbie Denton’s father was the machinist who helped build the generator. One of your techs moved to England and married a man by the name of Nicholas Mentis. Their son was Arthur. Are you noticing a pattern here? I’m not finished researching the lab personnel, but I bet I could discover a few of the secret identities of Commerce City’s heroes by tracing those family trees.

“You and my grandfather were trying to create superhumans, weren’t you? You were trying to induce the physiological anomalies that lead to those powers. When your generator malfunctioned, you dosed everyone in that room. Their genes carried the anomaly to their children and their grandchildren.”

He licked his lips, but didn’t twitch a muscle otherwise. He might have been frozen in that spot for days. “If you’re right, the mutation skips generations, I can’t help but notice. You probably can’t help but notice.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Not everyone in that room developed a power. Not all their children or grandchildren developed powers. But many did.”

Sito’s cold gaze struck her hard. She remembered it, searching her, stripping her without him ever laying a hand on her. He’d kidnapped her, strapped her down, would have used his machine—based on that old research—to peel away her mind. He could do it here, just by looking at her.

She refused to flinch.

He stood in a movement so quick it shocked her. She quelled an impulse to step back.

“You’re wrong. We weren’t trying to create superhumans. I never tried to create anything. Anything I created—it was a side effect. Unintended. I should have followed up. Your grandfather might have continued my funding. That would be a project worth pursuing: a machine to create superhumans. Or—supervillains?”

He paced, his hands fidgeting, typing on air. She hadn’t thought of him as ill until now.

“Why are you here asking these questions?” he said. “Why not your father or that telepath of his?”

She said, “They’re busy.”

“Is that the reason, or are you afraid dear old Warren won’t listen to you?”

“He’ll listen to me.”

“Like he always did before? I wonder, if I’d had the chance, would I have made a better father than Captain Olympus?”

He continued. “You’ve had such a terribly hard life, poor little rich Celia West. I read the papers, you know. I saw what happened to you after your testimony. And they think I can’t destroy anything from in here. Your life is a tiny little thing to ruin, but it’s so wonderful because I can keep ruining it over and over again.”

He was on the other side of a locked door. He couldn’t hurt her. He was a pitiful old man, taunting her as if they were children in the schoolyard. That was what he was reduced to—childish taunts. She almost smiled.

“Poor little Celia. No one has ever had any faith in you, have they? No one trusts you, no one is proud of you—”

That wasn’t true. One person had always had faith in her. One person had stood by her, even at her lowest. She hadn’t had the wits to accept that trust.

“Good-bye, Mr. Sito,” she said, and turned away.

“I’m not finished!” He pressed himself to the door now, shouting at the window. “I still have plans for you. You have a boyfriend, don’t you? The mayor’s son. I’ll have a go at him next! You’ll see! I can still hurt you!”

I could tell him, she thought. I could tell him everything, about his son, his grandson. But she didn’t.

His voice faded as Celia walked away.

Four years ago, she emerged from the cave where she’d retreated to heal. She celebrated with a graduation. The diplomas were all handed out, tassels turned, and the band played. It was very nearly the happiest day of Celia West’s life.

Even if Mom and Dad hadn’t come to the ceremony, it would still be the happiest day of her life.

She waited alone by the last row of chairs, thinking they had to see her there, they would come and find her. She had to remind herself that it didn’t matter, before that sinking feeling took hold of her chest.

She’d sent her parents a graduation announcement and instantly regretted it. She didn’t know what she dreaded more: their showing up and her having to face them, or their not showing up and her admitting her disappointment at them for not showing up. She should have left town. She should have changed her name. They wouldn’t want to see her again, not after she’d ignored them for the last four years.

She saw Dr. Mentis first. He wore a trench coat even in the warm spring weather, open to show his tailored suit. He’d finished medical school and set up a psychiatry practice while she was in her cocoon, as she thought of it. He’d called her once, in the middle of her sophomore year, just wanting to see how she was doing, and she’d managed to be polite. That she could be polite to Arthur was how she’d known she was getting better, and that maybe she’d be okay. Halfway through her junior year, she’d called him, to let him know she was doing okay. He’d said he was glad, and didn’t ask her to come home, didn’t put any pressure on her. Just said he was glad.

Now, he caught her gaze and smiled a wry half smile, as much as he ever smiled, which meant he was as happy to be here as he was ever happy about anything. Her own smile broke wide and unbidden.

Beside him walked Robbie Denton, his wind-burned face grinning. And beside him, arm in arm, walked her parents.

Oh God, they were all here. They’d all made it.

She couldn’t help it. As soon as they were within reach, she lunged forward and hugged her mother.

“Thank you, thank you for coming.”

“We wouldn’t have missed it. Oh, Celia, we’re so proud of you.”

Warren pressed his lips into something that tried to look like a smile. Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder. She repressed a wince.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice muted. “You almost didn’t make it this far. I’m glad you did.”

It was as much an admission of approval as she was likely to get from him. He made no move to embrace her.

Suzanne kept her arm around her. “Come on, let’s go get some lunch.”

Robbie tousled her hair like he’d been doing since she was a kid. For a long stretch of time during her teenage years, it had annoyed her into screaming fits, which made Robbie tease her more. But now she laughed.

Arthur Mentis offered his hand. She shook it calmly.

He said, “I always knew you’d turn out all right.”

Which nearly made her cry.

When she emerged back into the asylum lobby, the orderly was talking on the phone. He glanced at her, his gaze dark and suspicious.

“Never mind, she’s back,” he said, and hung up.

Celia didn’t wait around for explanations, either his or hers. She flashed him a smile and strolled back into the street.

Michael, bless him, was still waiting with the car. She piled into the front seat.

“Now you’re going to say you don’t want me telling your parents you were here,” he said, starting the engine and preparing to pull into traffic.

“That would just worry them, don’t you think?”

“Just tell me you know what you’re doing.”

She hesitated, which made him glare at her.

“Sure,” she said. What the hell? “I know what I’m doing.”

“I suppose you’re at least making your own trouble now instead of getting wrapped up in somebody else’s.” That was a kind observation. “We’re going back to the Plaza now, right?”

“Yes. Thank you, Michael.”