Dreams of the Golden Age

TEN

WHEN Robbie insisted that Teia and her bunch had been the ones to tip off the cops about the drug dealer, Anna nearly screamed. Everything after that, she deserved a medal for self-restraint. Turned out she did care about publicity. Or at least recognition. Who knew? But she kept her mouth shut. She could lead the secret double life of a superhero vigilante, just watch her.

She practiced. She looked for Mayor Edleston after watching videos of his speeches and reading articles about him from the last campaign. Found him, but only when he was where she expected him to be—City Hall or the mayor’s mansion, for example. She attempted to track down various celebrities and found she could really do it only when she knew what part of the city they were going to be in anyway. She tried to hunt them down after only looking at a picture, but that didn’t work—she actually had to know something about them, which meant trolling celebrity gossip websites. It was a frustrating handicap. And she gave herself a headache.

She’d started searching missing children websites and reports. She hadn’t yet gotten enough information to be able to find them. But she kept trying, because if she could save just one kid she’d at least feel useful. Most of the stories just made her sad.

The next day, superteen trio made the news again, stopping a gang fight outside a convenience store late the previous night. Five guys with knives and lead pipes about to pound each other into goo, and they’d been stunned and frozen in place—obviously the calling cards of Lady Snow and Blaster. The official police statement repeated well-worn phrases about not condoning vigilante justice, even as they took the gang members into custody. The tabloids and hero groupie websites were rapturous: “Commerce City’s New Ice-Cold Supers Are Red-Hot!” The accompanying pictures were stills from black-and-white security footage, and the darling among those showed Stormbringer and Blaster high-fiving while Lady Snow looked on proudly, hands on hips. Anna could have gagged.

The trio had gotten a name, as well: the Trinity. The Super Attention Whores would have worked just as well.

Anna wasn’t ready to give up, but she and Teddy needed another plan. Another mission. So what if they didn’t get credit. They did this because it needed to be done, not because they wanted attention. They just had to keep going until people realized that there was another, subtler, more mysterious team at work in the city.

At school that day, Anna avoided Teia. The car pulled along the drive, and Anna knew Teia and the others were hanging out by the front steps like usual, probably grinning and ready to brag. Anna wasn’t up for it, so she asked Tom to continue on to the middle school. She would walk back.

“I need the exercise,” she explained. A really lame excuse, but she didn’t care.

“I’ll just nag you for five more minutes,” Bethy said. “Who are you avoiding?”

“I’m not avoiding anyone.”

“Liar.”

Tom looked at them both in the rearview mirror. He never yelled at them when they fought, like Mom and Dad and Grandma did. Which meant they actually fought less in the car than anywhere else.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Anna said finally. Amazingly, Bethy didn’t respond. At the middle school, they both piled out of the car and Anna started the trek back to the other side of the campus.

“Anna,” Bethy said, and Anna hesitated. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Anna said and kept going.

Her power was absolutely useful for avoiding people, and she made it all the way to first period without seeing anyone she’d have to talk to for more than a hello. She waited until lunch to track down Teddy, dragging him off to a table way in the back of the lunchroom to talk. From the far side of the room, Teia might have looked at her and laughed at one point. Whatever. For years, they’d eaten lunch together. They were supposed to be a team. Their separation now was an ache that Anna tried to ignore.

“We have to do something else,” Anna said. “A follow-up. We have to build up some momentum.” Like the Terrible Trio, she thought. Not that this was a competition or anything.

“I’ve got some ideas,” Teddy said, eager. “This spy thing, it’s working, I think. I mean, it will work. It’s a good idea. It worked with Scarzen, we can make it work again, if we have good intel.” He nodded sagely, obviously pleased with his use of the vocabulary. “We study police reports, right? The most wanted lists, things like that. We could go after some of those guys. Maybe not catch them—we’re not really good at catching people, I’m guessing. But even if all we do is collect evidence for the cops, it’ll help.”

“It’s not enough,” Anna said. “We can’t just keep sneaking into buildings and hope we grab the right thing, then hope the police actually do something with it. You know that Scarzen is out on bail already? Everything we went through and he’s not even in jail. You’d probably be better off joining the Threesome of Doom.”

“But I want to work with you,” he said, stretching his hand on the table, like he stopped himself from reaching out to her. “But we have to do more.” Because that was the whole point, to do something with the powers they had. “You want to feel like we’re really doing something—let’s try a patrol tonight. A real patrol. Just to see what happens.”

“So you can get beat up again?”

“I’ve gotten better,” he said, frowning. “Let’s try, just once.”

He was so eager, she couldn’t say no. That floppy hair, that innocent smile. So straight and tall he might have been a figure on a recruiting poster. I want you. “You’re such a Boy Scout,” she said. He blushed.

They made a plan to meet that night. Just to see.

Anna had math class with Sam in the afternoon. She wasn’t prepared to face his sneer and whatever so-called witty insults he came up with. So she moved to the front of the class while he went to the back, bent her head, and frowned in anticipation. Ten minutes into class, she glanced back to see him with his head down on his desk, asleep. The glamorous life of the costumed superhero—there it was, right there. She was absolutely gleeful, in a petty, vengeful way, that he was so tired. But she also felt sorry for him. Just a little.

The teacher hadn’t noticed yet, mostly because he was facing the chalkboard, writing and explaining. Quietly, Anna tore a page from her notebook, crumpled it up, took aim, and threw. Didn’t quite make it—the projectile bounced on his desk instead of hitting him directly. But he started awake anyway, blinking sleepily. She noticed the shadows under his reddened eyes. He looked around, saw the paper and her staring back at him. Figured it out, pressed his lips into a chagrined pout. She turned back to the front before the teacher noticed.

They met at the fountain in City Park and made plans from there.

Teia and the others—Anna refused to call them the Trinity, whatever the newspapers said—were also out and about that night. They were in the harbor district, though, and Anna made sure they would all stay carefully out of each other’s way. She wondered how Sam was coping, how many ultra-energy drinks he’d downed in order to be able to function tonight.

She’d had a cup of coffee from the shop around the corner from West Plaza.

Midnight at the fountain, they masked up and started a circuit that tracked around the park’s perimeter and pushed into neighboring cross streets. At the wilder corners of the park, it was easy to imagine that the place turned into a forest at night, oak and maple trees sending skeletal canopies across bike paths, surrounding buildings giving the impression that they were trapped in a canyon, traveling toward an unseen exit point. The chill on Anna’s skin came from more than the winter air. Her breath fogged.

They didn’t speak. They both looked around as if searching, but Anna didn’t see anything but rocks, trees, lawn, benches, skate park, duck pond. Only what was supposed to be there. When shrubbery rustled, it was always an animal, not a hideous criminal who’d decided the lilac bushes were a great hideout. Her mind wandered. She should probably be in better shape for this. If they were going to be spending a lot of time running around the city on foot, they probably ought to work out in the meantime. And keep up with school, and continue pretending that absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. Right.

They circled back around to the fountain after a couple of hours. Nothing had happened, not even on the bad side of the park. Not a single crime in progress or any nefarious goings-on. All they saw were some harmless street people and a stray dog. Teddy suggested that maybe they could catch the dog and leave it at an animal shelter where it could get help, but when they tried to go after it, it ran out of sight. They couldn’t even heroically save a stray dog.

They had a scare at one point. When they reached the west edge of the park, a police car turned the corner and cruised right along the sidewalk where they walked. They froze, and the car’s spotlight turned on and swung over them.

The cop definitely spotted them. The light hesitated for a second, and they stood like idiots, staring back at it. But the light passed on, and Anna was able to see into the car well enough to spot the cop talking into his radio. The next thing he’d do was come after them, tell them to stop, question them, maybe even arrest them. Well, arrest her, since Teddy could use his powers to escape. But the cop didn’t stop the car and continued down the street and out of sight.

Anna’s knees went to jelly and she almost had to sit down.

“That was close,” Teddy said, heaving a nervous breath. “Do you think he saw us?”

Yeah, Anna knew they’d been spotted. But they weren’t important enough to do anything about. Figured.

Walking patrol didn’t provide any more opportunities for immediate action than searching crime-ridden neighborhoods for evidence did.

“Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all,” Teddy said, finally breaking the silence. His voice seemed loud. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, it wasn’t a total waste. It proved I need to take up running or something to get in shape. Is it too late to join the Elmwood track team?”

“Maybe we can try again tomorrow,” Teddy said.

“Maybe.”

The routine of getting home was well practiced. She took the late bus, got off to walk the last couple of blocks. Before reaching home, though, she stopped, her gaze gone suddenly fuzzy. A presence intruded on her awareness. Someone familiar but not family. She hadn’t been looking for him, he wasn’t a part of her everyday awareness, so she noticed only when he got close. Right before he sailed out of the sky, almost on top of her, and fell to a three-point landing a few yards away. She didn’t flinch.

“Eliot,” she said. He was wearing his mask and costume tonight. “Were you following me?” She flushed, all her embarrassment at their last encounter rushing back.

“I spotted you at the park, sure.” Didn’t seem at all apologetic. She’d been so focused on Teia and the others, and looking for bad guys, she hadn’t thought to look for him. All he had to do was track the bus from the air. If he’d followed her all the way home, that would have been a disaster.

“Why not show yourself there? Why follow me?”

“Don’t get so worked up there, kid.”

He was making fun of her. She marched off, determined to be angry.

“Hey, Rose—wait a minute. I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you. Just you, not your friend.”

In spite of herself, she felt a bit of a flutter at that. Maybe he wasn’t making fun of her. No, either way, she was being stupid. But she stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Okay.”

“We can talk on the way to wherever you’re going—um, where are you going?” He looked around to the skyscrapers and office developments of the downtown business district. Not someplace she’d be expected to stroll around in the middle of the night. The glowing blue logo at the top of West Plaza glared like a beacon, the crescent shape like a half-lidded eye surveying her, judging her.

She pointed in a random direction opposite West Plaza. Some bars and all-night food stands lined the street a few blocks away; that ought to distract him. They walked.

Eliot said, “You know Commerce City better than I do, since I’m not from here—”

“Where are you from?”

He hesitated, not wanting to give up information any more than she did, and she was about to tell him it didn’t matter, but he said, “Delta. Ever been there?”

“No. Is it cool?”

“About the same—big city, with all the big city stuff. Commerce City is always better if you like superhumans.”

“Or worse if you don’t.”

He smiled. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I’ve been going out. Like you guys, not really doing anything but just looking around. And I’ve been hearing rumors. Commerce City hasn’t had a real supervillain since the Destructor. Is that right?”

Anna said, “It depends on what counts as a supervillain. There was Steelyard, the carjacker. He didn’t have powers, he was just the ringleader of all the grand larceny in town for a couple of years, and the Block Busters took care of him. Techhunter shows up every now and then, but nobody knows if he really has powers. I don’t know if he’s a real supervillain; he’s pretty small scale, robberies and pranks and stuff. He’s never tried to take over the city or anything, and no one’s been able to find him to go after him.” Every few years saw a new master criminal looking to take over the title of Commerce City’s grand archvillain, but none of them had risen to the level of fame and terror the Destructor generated. Her own family’s history with the Destructor was the stuff of legend. When Anna read the old news stories, they felt like fairy tales. She did the research on the old heroes at the school library, so no one in her family would see the books or look up her browser history.

Most commentators claimed that for whatever reason, the city’s golden age of superpowered heroes and villains had long since passed. Everything after that would necessarily blaze less brightly. All the city had now were petty criminals and clueless kids playing dress-up.

“So if I told you I was hearing rumors about a new supervillain on the rise, you’d be surprised.”

“A little, maybe. I mean, anyone can call themselves a supervillain but they’d need to prove it.”

“This one’s subtle, apparently. Works behind the scenes, gets others to do the real dirty work. Has a long-term strategy. Taking-over-the-city stuff, but doing it without anyone noticing.”

“Subtle, huh? Like what, bribing politicians, buying up property?” Because that was how she’d do it. Maybe run for office. It wouldn’t even be illegal.

“Yeah, along with powers like mind control.”

She gave him a look, her brow furrowed. “Really?”

“The thing about mind control, you wouldn’t even know it was happening, would you?”

She couldn’t tell him that she was very familiar with how mind control worked. “You think there’s a villain mind-controlling the whole city to do his bidding?” The thing was, it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility. The implications were frightening, so she wasn’t willing to latch on to the idea just yet.

They were approaching a noisy part of downtown, and she guided Eliot down another block. They were both still dressed up and would attract too much attention.

“People—the people I’m hearing the rumors from—are calling him the Executive.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be scary?”

“Ominous, I think. You have to admit, if you think about how much someone can do behind the scenes, it is pretty scary.”

“I haven’t heard anything about it. You want us to keep our eyes open for anything suspicious? Anything out of the ordinary that might suggest a mind-controlling supervillain?”

“We’re probably not ever going to catch someone like that directly, but we should be able to find the effects of his power.”

“I guess you needed help after all, didn’t you?” She grinned at him, feeling smug.

He spread his arms in a shrug. “And I let you know, just like I said I would.”

“Now it’s gotta work both ways. If you find out anything about this Executive, you’ll let me know?”

“Then I need to know where I can reach you.”

A cute guy was asking for her phone number. She didn’t even care that he wasn’t talking to her, but Compass Rose. Or that she couldn’t really give it to him. The mystery just made it all more interesting, didn’t it?

She wrote down her e-mail address, the anonymous one she’d used to send the pictures to the cops. Then he waved good-bye, stepped back, and launched himself skyward. He landed agilely on an art deco overhang of a building, and a second leap carried him out of sight.

To hear Eliot talk, this villain, the Executive, was less than a rumor. More like an idea he just came up with. If Commerce City really did have a nascent villain, surely she’d have heard about it. Rooftop Watch or one of the other superhero fan blogs would have mentioned it.

Shockingly, when she went searching, Rooftop Watch did have a few hits. The site didn’t use the name Executive, but there was speculation. A hint here, a bit of gossip there, nothing more than that. No confirmed sightings, no verified activity. Just conspiracy theories thrown into the ether. Anna read them all.

The Executive was a shadowy figure, of course. So shadowy nobody knew anything about him—or her. In fact, this supposed villain was mostly a convergence of patterns: city government made unexpected decisions that coincided with certain political scandals, that removed a specific person from office, that allowed passage of a new set of legislation, and suddenly the whole future path of the city changed.

The Executive was a villain for the conspiracy minded. The so-called clues involved shady real estate deals, buildings downtown that might or might not have been built to code, which meant they might or might not harbor deadly secrets—West Plaza was the prime example of how a seemingly ordinary building could be fitted with hangars and bunkers and fantastical gear. The Franklin Building, Horizon Tower, even City Hall was suggested as having a secret subbasement containing the evidence collected from past supervillains—a tempting target for new villains, perhaps? Were they secret supervillain lairs? And how would one tell? It was all woolgathering. Nobody could ever point to an individual behind the conspiracy, though some people tried—the mayor, the DA, and even the owner of the Commerce City Chargers baseball team, who had apparently benefited from a change of zoning laws that allowed a new stadium to be built. But commentators figured there must be someone or a cabal of someones acting as the secret masters of the city. Of course, and this was more likely, it could all just be coincidence.

Anna thought of something her mother said sometimes, with a grin and a knowing look, suggesting a joke no one else got: There’s no such thing as coincidence in a world with superhumans. The website featured occasional posts from various contributors suggesting that this news item or other indicated another piece of evidence as to the possible existence of the Executive. The recent series of city planning meetings was a popular topic of discussion. If someone like the Executive existed, certainly the planning committee would attract his attention and serve as a tempting target for interference. Someone had even done a chart of all the people who attended the meetings and which of them might be the Executive. Anna’s mother was on the list, but without any accompanying notes or evidence. Too prominent, the commentators agreed. She couldn’t possibly be a shadowy, behind-the-scenes manipulator simply because she was too well known, as the daughter of the Olympiad who had so publically rejected that part of her life.

Then again, she had that youthful association with the Destructor. Most commentators dismissed that as old news.

It was all very vague. Anna could try to track down some kind of evidence of who the Executive was and what he was really doing. But there wasn’t even enough information to start an investigation. She’d just have to do what Eliot suggested: keep her eyes open for any evidence that might present itself.

That same night, the Trinity stopped an actual, honest-to-God bank robbery. The MO was standard by now: The police arrived to find the robbers immobilized and unconscious, chilled by ice or knocked out by blasts, and the supers lingered just long enough to make sure that blurry photos were acquired. Anna was sure Teia was calling the Eye to tell them where to be. Teia was also probably keeping a scrapbook and practicing lines to use on Anna to rub her face in it.

Even if she and Teddy had stumbled across a bank robbery during their patrol, what could they have done about it? Nothing. That day at school, she avoided everybody, Teia, Lew, Sam, even Teddy. She didn’t want to talk about it, so she hid out until the bell rang and everyone else had gone to class. Being five minutes late was a small price to pay.

Maybe Eliot would e-mail her. Maybe.

The second time they went out on patrol—Teddy insisted on giving the patrol another try because he said it made him feel like a real superhero even if they didn’t actually accomplish anything—he brought his paintball gun, fully loaded.

She’d been furious. “What, we can’t actually stop bad guys so you want to just piss them off?”

“I just want to try something,” he’d insisted. At this rate, they were going to end up in jail for being public nuisances. She couldn’t talk him out of it, so there they were, in the run-down tenement neighborhoods south of downtown, Anna skulking and Teddy striding confidently, holding the paintball gun across his chest like he was in some war movie. The guy really wanted to be an action hero, and it seemed tragic that his powers were so unassuming.

He was still more powerful than she was. She wondered if she could expand her awareness to, maybe, concepts. Like she could think about “crime” or “mugging” and be able to locate something like that happening nearby. She gave herself a headache trying, but she could only ever find people, and only ones she’d already spent a lot of time thinking about. Like Eliot.

She needed to stop thinking about Eliot.

The city at night was becoming increasingly familiar, and even comfortable. The regularly spaced yellow halos of streetlamps illuminating near-empty streets, walls of shadowed buildings blocking out the sky made the whole place seem like a kind of oversized playground. As long as you knew where you were, knew where you were going, and paid attention to what was going on in between, the city at night couldn’t hurt you.

She was pretty sure they weren’t going to find anything just by walking around. The Trinity had all the luck on that score. So she was surprised when they heard an incongruous wrenching, metal on metal, and an associated string of cursing.

They slowed at the end of the block and peered around the building’s corner. Up ahead, two guys with a crowbar and bolt cutters were breaking into the steel overhead door at a loading dock. Anna didn’t know what was in the building; in this part of town, it was just as likely to be abandoned. Still, the guys were breaking and entering. This was exactly the kind of situation the Trinity would eat up. She sighed. Teia and the others were out and about, but not here.

“Here,” Teddy said, handing her a cell phone. She didn’t recognize it—it wasn’t his usual phone but a cheap pay-as-you-go model, the kind you could get at convenience stores.

“What’s this?” she whispered.

“Call nine-one-one.”

That plan was better than nothing. They might be little more than a neighborhood watch at this point, but at least it was something.

“And stay out of sight,” he said, before vanishing.

She stopped herself from calling out to him, gritted her teeth, and called the cops.

“Nine-one-one dispatch, what is your emergency?”

“Um, yeah, I’m at the corner of Vineland and Fifty-third, and there’s a couple of guys breaking into a building here. They’ve got crowbars and stuff and they’re wrenching the door open.”

The thunk of the paintgun firing sounded up ahead, right in front of the loading dock door. No sign of Teddy. Point-blank range, and they didn’t see him. He fired four or five shots, and all of them hit. The guys writhed and shouted, but when they turned to look for their assailant, they saw nothing. Anna saw nothing. Teddy fired another two shots, which hit, and the guys doubled over at the impact, straight in their guts. Had to hurt.

“Ma’am? Are you still there?” the dispatcher asked.

“Um, yeah. These guys? One’s white, one’s black. They’re dressed in black coats and stocking caps. And, um … they’re splattered with yellow paint. Really bright yellow paint.”

“Did you say paint?”

“Yeah. Like from a paintball gun.”

“I’m sending a patrol car to that location now. Are you in any danger?”

“No, I’m fine. I … I have to get going, bye.” She switched off the phone.

Unable to figure out who was attacking them with paintballs, the hoodlums ran. The problem was, they ran right toward her and would be on her in seconds. She turned and charged for the nearest likely hiding place—the stairwell down to a garden-level doorway. They probably wouldn’t take well to having a witness and were still hefting the crowbar and bolt cutters.

Hunched down on the concrete steps, she listened to their footsteps pound away. Much closer than she expected, a police siren howled. A patrol car, right in the neighborhood. One of the crooks cursed, and this was all going to get very exciting in a couple of minutes.

The actual pursuit and arrest happened a couple of blocks away, so Anna didn’t get to see it. If the guys were still holding their array of tools, they were sure to be taken in and charged. She imagined the stray yellow paint spatters would tell the cops exactly what door they’d been attacking.

She wanted to get out of the area entirely, but she didn’t feel like leaving her hiding space until she was absolutely sure she wouldn’t be spotted. Teddy had it easy.

Finally, a voice hissed above her. “Hey, you can come out now.”

As she tromped up the stairs, Teddy flashed into visibility. It was like switching on a TV.

He was grinning. “Wasn’t that cool?”

She handed the phone back to him. “You could have told me you had a plan.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

She rolled her eyes.

“So now we have a system,” he insisted.

“That isn’t a system, it’s—” She threw up her hands and glared, because she couldn’t think of what that was. “We still need the cops to do all the work, you know?”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m sorry I’m no fun.” She walked off. She was tired, frustrated, and she wanted to go home.

“Anna—I mean, Rose! Wait up!”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she said and caught her own bus home.