Just Cause: Revised & Expanded Edition (16 page)

“Pause it,” said Doublecharge. Jack complied. “Look at her. Look at her eyes. She’s not conscious at all, but she’s still preparing to run. If Juice hadn’t caught her right after, who knows how far she’d have run in reflex.”

“I’ve never seen that happen in anyone,” said Juice. “It’s like your super-speed is controlled at a fundamental level of your brain, like respiration and heartbeat.”

“Like sleepwalking,” said Glimmer. “You ever do that?”

Unpleasant memories surfaced in Sally’s mind. “Uh, once or twice, I guess.”

“How far did you get out of the house?” Jack asked.

“Tucson,” Sally said.

“All right,” said the medical technician. “Enough. She needs some peace and quiet. You can question her tonight if we’ve cleared her to leave by then.”

Juice motioned to the others. “All right, guys, you heard the doc. Out. Jason, you can stick around until afternoon training if you want to and Sally says it’s okay.”

Sally smiled, causing her whole face to hurt, and closed her eyes. “It’s okay.” She felt Jason’s hand around hers and hoped it would still be there when she awoke.

Chapter Twelve

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

-
Woodrow T. Wilson, 28th President of the United States
 

January, 2004

Denver, Colorado

“Do you feel any pain?” The doctor worked Sally’s head to one side and the other with gentle motions.

“No.” The truth was that her whole body felt like a truck had hit her. At least a more generalized body ache had replaced the acute head pain, but she didn’t want the doctor to know that. She tended to heal from injuries at a rapid rate thanks to her parahuman abilities, so if she was still exhibiting symptoms, she must have really gotten her bell rung.

“Hmmm,” said the doctor the way doctors do when they know someone is lying to them. He took a penlight and shined it into her eyes.

Two days spent anywhere with little to no activity for a speedster ought to count as cruel and unusual punishment in most jurisdictions. At least Jason had spent most of the first day with her. They played Uno and he brought in his iPod so she could hear some tracks from his band’s CD. The next day he had monitor duty and couldn’t come see her. Juice and Sondra had stopped in to check on her. The wait for medical clearance was stretching out into hours of interminable boredom. Channel-surfing was bad enough when she had the attention span of a goldfish, but when it was all she was permitted to do, it nearly drove her crazy.

“Well,” said the doctor at last, “I’m going to release you. But…” He held up a warning finger and glared at her over his bifocals. “Light duty for a week. No training sessions or deployment before I check you over again next week. And keep the super-sprinting to a minimum. Concussions are funny and we still don’t know how they’ll affect parahuman abilities.”

“Thanks, Doc!” Sally grinned and gathered up her things.

“One week,” he said. “Light duty until then.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sally skipped out of Medical. She felt like she could fly as she scampered up to her room. She was so lost in her happy feelings she nearly bowled over Harris as he came out of the elevator.

“Oh, hey, there you are.” He picked up the boxes he had dropped in their near-collision. “I just heard from the Doc that he cut you loose and I figured you’d wanna see this.”

“What is it?”

“Your new costume—redesigned to official Just Cause specs.” He opened the first box with a flourish and showed off a pair of shiny yellow boots.

“Ooooh!” Sally reached out to touch the smooth polymer with such low friction coefficient that it felt greasy. She started to peek into the other box, but then paused and glanced at Harris. “This is really for me? You’re just giving it to me?”

“Yep, that’s right,” he said. “Tell you what… you go and try it on real quick and then I’ll come in and you can give me any notes about problems you need to have resolved. I’ll take them back to the Costumes department and let them wrangle ‘em for you. We can’t have you running around in a substandard outfit when you’re out and about town at your charity functions.”

“Charity functions?” Even with her advanced perceptions, Sally found it tough to keep up with Harris’ sudden subject changes.

He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t anybody tell you? Well, part of your job with Just Cause is to keep up a good relationship with the public. And the way we do that is by associating ourselves with various charitable foundations. You’ll need to pick a couple and spend some time volunteering with them. Keeps us looking good in the public eye, and these days that’s critical, since many government stooges don’t like parahumans too much. Wouldn’t take too much negative publicity for ‘em to re-enact the PRA all over again.”

“The Parahuman Registration Act,” said Sally, nodding. After his retirement, her grandfather had devoted much of his time to his fight against the laws enacted in the paranoid Fifties that had kept parahumans from enjoying the same rights as other citizens.

“So anyway, get yourself dressed up and let me know if there are any problems. I’ll wait here for you. I figure you probably don’t take more than a minute to get dressed. Unlike my wife. I tell ya, that woman can spend an entire day just futzing with her hair.” Harris laughed.

Sally took the packages and went into her room. She opened the boxes, spread out the costume on her bed and looked at it in wonder. The costumiers had duplicated the look of her old costume but had still managed to make this new model look fresher and more contemporary. It was shinier and smoother. Like the boots, the body suit had a slick feel to it. It was thicker than her old suit, but not noticeably heavier. The extra thickness came from two new layers: an interior liner to provide insulation from heat and wick away moisture from her skin, and an unusual material that Sally figured could only be some sort of flexible body armor. The new suit was easier to get into and out of, which would make the inevitable bathroom break much less of a major operation.

The boots had soft cushiony interiors that were so comfortable she considered violating the doctor’s orders and go sprint for a while. Unlike her old boots, these were adjustable along both the shin and calf. The soles were thicker too, which added an inch to her height and made her feel like she would tower over everyone. Well, she’d tower over anyone under five feet tall, she thought.

The new goggles and breather mask fit her face without feeling as if the edges were biting into her skin. More importantly, they were less clunky than her originals, making her head much more streamlined than before. She could only barely feel the throat microphone and knew she’d quickly forget it was even there.

She examined herself in the bathroom mirror for a few minutes before she remembered Harris waited outside for her. She went to her door and opened it.

“Oh, hey.” He looked up from his tablet PC. “Any problems with the new threads?”

“No,” Sally said. “They’re really great. Is it armored?”

“Yep. Artificial spider silk. It has better tensile strength than steel. Our techs developed it using nanotech from the Bunker. Pretty cool, huh?”

“I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

“Well, it’s kind of our own little secret,” said Harris. “Lawmakers get all funny about nanotechnology. They think it’s a stepping stone to super-soldier programs and tailored viruses and stuff. Of course, that wouldn’t stop ‘em from co-opting the technology for strict military use.”

“Wouldn’t soldiers like to have armor like this? It feels like I’m wearing hardly anything.”

“I dunno. I’m just a glorified quartermaster here. I figure the fewer people who know about the armor, the better. Look at it like this… as soon as somebody knows you’ve got better armor, they figure out a way to shoot through it. You’re in Just Cause, you already got a target on you. Better if they’re shootin’ at you with popguns and peashooters, know what I mean?”

“Oh, I guess I never thought about it like that.”

“Anyway, you got any issues you need me to take back to the Costume shop?”

“No, I guess not. Can I let you know after I’ve taken it out for a test drive?”

“Sure thing.” Harris beamed. “But I know you’re on light duty, so I’ll check with you after the doc clears you.”

“Sounds good.”

Sally went to visit Jason in the Command Center. She strutted through the halls like a preening supermodel. She couldn’t help it; she felt sexy and powerful, like a superhero ought to. She strolled into the Command Center and watched from behind her goggles as every head turned to look at her. Some women glared with open hatred at her slender body. Some men turned away but watched her nevertheless out of the corners of their eyes. It almost made her giggle.

Jason’s mouth hung open as she walked up to him. “I got my new costume,” she said, and twirled around once in front of him with an audacity that surprised her. “What do you think?”

“Wow,” he said. “It’s… wow. You look great.”

“That’s sweet.” She pushed her goggles up onto her forehead and pulled the breather mask down to dangle at her throat. “I don’t get to break it in for a week though. Doctor’s orders.”

“Oh. That sucks.”

She stepped around behind him to peek over his massive shoulder at the monitor before him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing much,” he said. “Working on my band’s website. It’s slow going. I’m no code monkey.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure.” He opened a new window, clicked on the link, and showed off the Velma’s Glasses site to her. He pointed out the features, demo tracks, and some pictures of the three members as they goofed off with each other or rocked out onstage.

“What time are you off?” she asked.

“Six. Then I’m spending a couple of hours down at the Foundation. I’m free after that.”

“Foundation?”

“The Devereaux Foundation. It’s a center for underprivileged children that Just Cause sponsors. I go down there a couple times a week and hang around with the kids.”

Sally raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You do?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got two brothers and about twenty cousins, all younger than me,. They grow families big down south where I’m from. I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by kids.”

“I bet the kids just love you,” said Sally. “You’re like a great big huggy bear.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “But I just like going down there. I think I’d want to keep working with kids after I retire.”

“Retire?”

“Sure. We can’t do this forever, you know. Everybody leaves the life one way or another. Look at all the staffers at the Academy. They’re mostly retired heroes.”

“I guess I never really thought about it.”

“So did you want to do something after I get back?”

“Sure,” said Sally. “Only…”

“What?”

“Harris said I need to get involved with some charities and stuff. Could I come to the Foundation with you and check it out?”

Jason’s face split in a wide grin. “I’d like that.”

“Do I need to bring anything?”

“Only your smile. Oh, and a coat. It’s going to be pretty cold by tonight.”

“I can do that. Should I wear my costume?”

“Definitely. The kids’ll love it.”

“Then I’ll see you at six, Jason.”

“That’s a date.”

“Yes,” Sally said. “It is.”

The Control Center techs grinned at one another as she walked out of the room. She could feel Jason’s eyes following her all the way to the door.

Her sense of invulnerability lasted long enough for her to stop by the cafeteria and get a bowl of chicken tortilla soup. She didn’t feel like being around people, so she carried it back to her room and ate it in silence in front of her terminal reading news reports. Suddenly she set down her spoon, leaned back, and stared up at the ceiling.

“What the heck are you doing?” she asked herself aloud. “You don’t know anything about kids.”

For the next forty-five minutes she tried to think of a way she could gracefully bow out from going to the Foundation. She’d survived three years of the toughest tests the Hero Academy could throw at her; she’d faced Destroyer and not flinched; but to volunteer to surround herself with hundreds or thousands of screaming kids, with their runny noses and grabby hands and grubby faces, made her shake in real terror.

She was about to go ask Sondra to break one of her legs when she heard Jason’s knuckles rap on her door. Her knees turned to water and she wondered if she could maybe give herself a convenient heart attack. Or develop a sudden virulent case of bronchitis. She tried to cough. Nothing.

Then, from outside, Jason’s soft tenor with its Southern twang: “Sally, are you in there?”

All her resistance melted away at the thought of getting to spend a little more time with him. He’d protect her from the hordes of screaming toddlers. She found her voice. “Just a minute… finding my overcoat.” She swept it off the back of her chair and slipped into it. Her low-friction bodysuit slid easily into the lining like a second skin. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

Jason smelled good. He must have just showered and shaved; his normal chin stubble was missing. He wore a long dark trenchcoat, which must have been the size of a tent to provide enough space for his massive shoulders. His gray and brown costume gleamed underneath it in the warm hall lighting. “Ready to go?”

Sally slipped her arm around his. “As much as I’ll ever be. Those kids… do they bite?”

“Only if they don’t like you. Be brave, for they can sense fear and ticklishness.”

Sally poked him. “I’m not ticklish.”

“Everyone says that.”

“I’m not!”

“Of course you aren’t.”

Jason led her out to where he’d parked the Bronco. The air was cold and had a damp chill that froze Sally to her bones. She squealed as she shivered in the passenger seat. “People shouldn’t live where it gets this cold!”