Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (31 page)

Yeah, okay, that would be
bad.

Wait, what? “Unstable?” I
say. “Like, it could go
boom
unstable?”

“Nothing so dramatic,”
Edison says. “The micro-cell manufacturing process is like any other. Sometimes
the end product is imperfect, and flawed micro-cells tend to deplete much more
rapidly, produce significantly less energy, produce excessive heat, et cetera.”

“So, the micro-cells I
recovered are, what, factory seconds?”

“Basically, and our normal
process is to destroy them.”

“But if the micro-cells
hitting the black market are the junk ones, doesn’t that mean they’re
not
being destroyed?”

“Except that they
are
being destroyed. I scoured every last company file and record, and everything’s
perfectly in order.”

“Uh-huh. And in a scientific
complex stuffed full of uber-geniuses, there’s absolutely no one there who’s at
least smart enough to falsify those records?”

On the occasion I outsmart
an adult (which, I say immodestly, happens fairly often), I find myself on the
receiving end of this particular look: a sour frown that expresses extreme
annoyance. I’m never sure whether they’re irked at me for figuring out
something they couldn’t, or at themselves for missing something so obvious.
Either way, I absolutely bask in that expression, and Edison’s irk-face is
soooooo
gratifying.

“How about this: You call
your contacts,” I say, “and if you learn anything useful, let me know. The Hero
Squad will take care of Buzzkill Joy, and you can focus on fixing your
problems.”

After a long, thoughtful
pause, Edison nods.

“Deal,” he says. We shake on
it, and before he gets back into his car, before he drives away, he says to me,
as one super-hero to another, “Good luck, Lightstorm.”

I manage a small smile.
“Thank you, Concorde.”

TWENTY-SIX

It’s late, I’m exhausted on
a level I’ve never known before, and I really,
really
do not feel like eating,
but when Dad suggests we grab a late dinner so my birthday isn’t a complete
bust — how can I say no to that?

Junk Food is open late, so
we plant ourselves in a corner booth, split a pu-pu platter and some pork fried
rice, and use the time for a long-overdue catch-up chat. Dad’s been busy
despite the weather — construction on Cape Cod slows to a crawl once winter
hits in earnest — and he’s been getting out more. He has his bar trivia team,
he’s taken up bowling (he sucks at it, but he has fun), and he’s made some more
minor renovations to the old house to make it more his own (translation: He’s
purging any detail that reminds him of his failed marriage and his absent
daughter).

By no means is Dad’s life a
nonstop roller coaster of thrills, but compared to all the aspects of my life
that I can openly share with him, Brian Hauser is the Party God of North
America — but he’s cool with that. Dull equals safe, and he likes that his girl
is safe.

Daddy, I have something to
tell you. It’s not going to be easy for you to hear, but I’ve been lying to you
about something, something about me, and I can’t do it anymore. I just hope
that you’ll understand why I kept this a secret from you, and from Mom, and
accept that this is part of my life now. You know that super-hero Lightstorm?
That’s me. I’m Lightstorm.

I come so close,
so close
to spitting all that out and ridding myself of some of the load on my
shoulders. I’ve gotten good at lying. I’ve gotten to the point I can rattle off
a convincing-enough cover story without thinking about it, and Mom, who has a
pretty keen BS detector, never blinks. It’s a necessary evil, but God, it’s
exhausting.

Edison said my parents
deserve to know. He’s not wrong, but Daddy looks up from his spare ribs, a
length of bone covered by a thin layer of meat that tastes like it was
marinated in cough syrup, and smiles at me, and my resolve falters.

My father thinks I’m safe. I
can’t take that away from him.

“Happy birthday, honey,” he
says.

Yeah. Happy birthday to me.

Before I turn in for the
night, I text the others and ask them to meet me at school early. I fall asleep
as soon as I hit the pillow and I sleep through the night.

...And wake up feeling more
wiped-out than when I went to bed. Ugh. Going to be a
loooonnnnng
day.

I meet Sara at her house.
Right away she asks me how last night went. “I’ll tell you when we get to
school,” I say.

“Oh, no. Did something
happen?” Sara says.

“I’ll tell you when we get
to school.”

We converge in the
cafeteria, where we avail ourselves of the thin selection of pastries and
bagels up for grabs (except for Stuart, who grabs a half-dozen of those
god-awful breakfast slab thingies) and set up at our usual lunch table.

“So. What do you want to
hear first? The good news or the bad news?” I say.

“Bad,” Stuart says. “Rip the
band-aid off fast.”

“I never got to my birthday
hockey game last night because Concorde had me arrested and I spent most of my
night sitting in a cell in Byrne.”

It takes a few seconds for
someone to break the stunned silence. “Concorde did
what
?” Sara says.

The eating stops as I
recount my night. I know that humiliating moments, over time, lose their sting
and become amusing anecdotes that one can laugh at, but let me tell you, I’m
not going to be laughing about this until I’m collecting Social Security.

“Jeez, Carrie,” Matt says,
“unless your good news starts with ‘Hey, you know that lottery ticket I
bought?’...”

“Concorde and I had a little
talk,” I say. “Okay, a
huge
talk, but we managed to reach an accord. I
have my transponder back and the Hero Squad is officially un-grounded.”

My announcement is met with
a resounding
meh
.

“That’s something, I
suppose,” Matt says.

“Who are you and what have
you done with Matt?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy
we’re back in action, but come on. Concorde chucks you into Byrne for something
you didn’t do and he thinks bribing you with your transponder makes it right?”

“Believe me, Concorde and I
are miles away from square,” I say, “but we have to prioritize. Buzzkill Joy is
still on the loose and she’s way overdue for a hard take-down.”

“I hear that,” Stuart says,
“but we still don’t have anything to go on.”

“Maybe not. I mean,
someone
violated Kingsport’s airspace yesterday. Maybe that’s nothing but a wild coincidence,
but I have a hunch I want to play. I want to go to the police station after
school —”

“I can’t go,” Missy
interrupts. “I have to go home to take care of Dad. I don’t think Mom trusts
Dad to not fall down the stairs or something because his painkillers make him
wicked loopy, but I didn’t want to because it’s still weird between us and I
don’t know what to say with him and looking at him makes me mad.”

Nothing like another
person’s misery to take your mind off your own troubles. I feel like crap for
thinking it, but I’d happily sit in Byrne for a few hours than have to deal
with half the garbage Missy’s dealing with.

“You do what you have to,
Missy,” I say. “We’ll fill you in if we learn anything useful.”

“Yeah,” Missy says. “If.”

We’ve been in costume plenty
of times and we’ve never felt self-conscious about it before, but maybe that’s
been because we were too busy not getting killed to think about how we look.
Sitting in the lobby of the Kingsport Police Department, waiting for the chief
to meet with us, gives us plenty of time to reflect on our appearances.

“You know what I need?”
Stuart says. “Something cooler than these dopey shades. I mean, yeah, I make
them look good but they’re not, you know, intimidating or anything.”

“I’d lose the leather vest,
too,” Matt says. “You look more like a biker than a super-hero.”

“Yeah. This thing always
gets trashed anyway. Maybe I should just go bare-chested.”

“No,” Sara says. “Definitely
not.”

“You got a problem with my
big, manly pecs?”

“No, I have a problem with
you flaunting your big, manly pecs like you were a cheap male stripper.”

“I would
not
be
cheap.”

Chief Bronson (no lie, Chief
Bronson) emerges from a door in the rear of the main lobby. We stand to greet
him. We all have to look up at him because he is way tall, and he’s broader
across the chest and shoulders than Sara and I standing side-by-side. He wears
his hair in a crew cut, and his face is nothing but hard right angles.
Everything about him screams ex-Marine.

“Sorry for the wait. I know
you kids have seen some action, but I needed to know whether I could do
business with you,” he says. “Concorde vouched for your team, so consider me at
your disposal.”

Concorde vouched for us. I
take a moment to savor that one.

“Thank you, chief,” I say.
“We’re actually assisting the Protectorate with a case. Did you hear about the
incident at Worcester Superior Court last week?”

“The breakout, right?”

“Yes sir. We’ve been trying
to track the escapee, a juvenile offender named Joyce Morana, sometimes goes by
the alias Buzzkill Joy.” Listen to me. I sound so official. “We have reason to
believe she might have passed through Kingsport within the past twenty-four
hours. Have you received any missing persons reports recently? Specifically,
any reports of a runaway juvenile, maybe?”

Chief Bronson gestures for
us to follow. He leads us around a high counter and into the dispatch room.
It’s much more high-tech than I expected; each individual dispatch station
boasts multiple monitors, and a giant flatscreen bearing a map of Kingsport is
mounted on one wall. Blue dots indicate where every cruiser on the road is, and
square word balloon thingies sprouting from each dot list the names of the
officers in the cruisers. Impressive — and I wouldn’t be the least bit
surprised if all this tech sported Bose Industries logos.

“Rosie,” the chief says to
one of the dispatchers, “run me a quick search on yesterday’s dispatcher
briefs, would you? I’m looking for any juvies running off...”

“Give me a minute here,”
Rosie says. A few keystrokes and mouse clicks later, she says with a roll of
her eyes, “The Rialto boy took off again, but looks like that’s it.”

Chief Bronson grunts.
“Sorry, guys, I think this one’s a non-starter,” he says. “This kid takes off
every other week. He’s usually back a day later.”

“Wait, did you say Rialto?
Isaac Rialto, by any chance?” Matt says.

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Um...could you excuse us a
second?” When Matt speaks next, he calls in on the brainphone.
Guys, Isaac
Rialto
.

Do you know him?
I ask.

We went to school with him.
He got expelled last year after he started a big fight in the cafeteria with
Joey Meachum, this kid who hangs out with Angus and Gerry and those guys.

It was wild,
Stuart says.
Joey’d been
bullying Isaac since kindergarten, then back in, I don’t know, last April?
Isaac finally hit a boiling point and went totally apehouse on Joey.

Which was bad enough, but a
teacher tried to break the fight up and Isaac turned around and wailed the crap
out of him,
Sara
says.
That was it for Isaac. He got kicked out of school pretty much that
same day.

Isaac sounds like he and Joy
share dispositions, but that’s a weak connection; a kid lashing out at his
bully and catching a teacher in the crossfire isn’t unprecedented.

“Chief,” I say, “when was the
report filed?”

Chief Bronson nods to Rosie,
who does her thing. “Report came in at eighteen-twenty hours,” she says.
“Isaac’s mother said her son apparently left the home earlier that day with
some other kids.”

It takes me a few seconds to
translate military time to civilian: 6:20 PM, four hours after Stafford picked
up our mysterious flyer. Dammit, there goes another —