School for Sidekicks (13 page)

“Is that Mars?” I whispered.

'Howl nodded. “Welcome to the moon of Deimos.”

 

11

Be Careful What You Wish For

“But the gravity feels normal and…,” I mumbled, barely coherent in the face of the sheer glory of the warrior planet hanging above us. “How is that even possible?”

“Don't ask me,” said 'Howl.

“Some
very
super-Mask with gravity powers probably,” answered Speedslick.

“But how did we
get
here?” I asked.

“Oh, right, you missed that step by arriving in a cocoon,” said Speedslick. “There's a big steel tube thing at OSIRIS headquarters in Heropolis, looks like a giant cannon complete with shells as big as an elevator compartment. You step into one on Earth, there's a mondo-big noise and ten minutes of elevator music, and then you step out in the arrival well here on Deimos.”

“OSIRIS built this place?” I still couldn't get my knees to let me stand back up. “On one of the moons of Mars?” I suppose that explained the weird lack of any smell to the place—constantly recycled air.

“Yep,” said 'Howl. “As a freakin'
high school
. And they've kept it completely secret for twenty years or more. Now do you see why even most Hoods don't want to seriously piss off OSIRIS?”

I looked up at Mars and slowly nodded. “But I'm still confused about one thing. I thought OSIRIS was supposed to keep the Hoods under control.”

“Officially, sure,” said Speedslick.

“And unofficially?”

He did one of his high-speed shrugs. “That's a harder question. Sometimes, from the inside, it looks an awful lot like they
want
all those Hoods running around wild.”

“Why would they want that?”

“Nobody knows,” said 'Howl. “Nobody knows.”

“But that's what you believe?”

She nodded.

What had I gotten myself into?

*   *   *

When I got back to my room after my Monday classes, I pulled my laptop out of its bag and climbed up onto my bunk. It took a little while to hook up to the wireless, and even longer to open my webmail account, but then what could you expect … Mars! Freaking Mars.

There were about fifty messages from my mom and dad, and a dozen or more from reporters, but not one from classmates back at my old school. Still invisible, I guess. I moused over the most recent e-mail from my mom four or five times without opening it, then shifted to a different window in my browser to noodle around on the Web. But that didn't last long.

Somehow, playing around on my favorite Mask news and gossip sites seemed silly when I was sitting on a bunk at the School for Sidekicks. How fresh could all their insider news really be when they didn't even know this place existed? Didn't even know how it all
really
worked, with stupid hero licenses and Mask internships, and, well, everything!

I went back to my mail. The heading on my mom's most recent message said, “Please.” That's all, “Please.”

I closed my eyes as I clicked on it, trying to imagine what I wanted it to say. But I didn't even know. Somewhere in the past couple of days I had lost touch with the part of me that wanted things. I guess that wasn't surprising considering that if you'd asked me two weeks ago what I wanted most in the world I would have said
this.
What I had right now.

I was living my dream. Powers, other Masks my own age to hang out with, saving the life of Captain Commanding. More than my dream really. Mars. I was going to school on one of the moons of Mars!
That
was beyond anything I had even imagined wanting, but I felt almost numb when I tried to think about it. There was too much at once.

But I knew that no matter how weird I felt right now about the break with my parents and well, everything, that I wouldn't give any of it up if you gave me the chance to make it never have been.

Stay.

I
had
to stay.

I opened my eyes and started reading my mom's e-mail with the subject line that simply said, “Please”:

Evan,

I don't know if you've read my other messages or not, and it doesn't matter. My message is the same as it's been from the first moment, though I hope I can express it better now that I've had more time to think.

I love you. I'm frightened for you. I want you home.

When we talked last, you said that you were a Mask now, that nothing could change that, and that you had to find out what that meant. I didn't take that well. Neither did your father. I said some things I shouldn't have. You're not a freak. You're my son.

No matter what else is true about you, you're my son and I love you.

I'm not going to say that I'm all right with you becoming a Mask. I'm not. I never will be. It's simply too dangerous for me to accept. Yes, you're metahuman. There's no denying that. But that doesn't mean you have to put on a costume and battle evil. We can fight the Franklin Act, I'm sure we can. We just have to find a brave enough lawyer. You can still live a normal life … a safe life. No one even has to know you have powers. Not yet, maybe not ever.

You're too young to be making these kinds of decisions. Come home to us. Put it aside for a few years, and then we can talk about it again.

I just want my boy back. Is that so terrible a thing that you won't even answer my e-mail?

Oh, please, come home, Evan. Please.

Mom

I closed my laptop and slid it under my pillow where I didn't have to look at it. Then I climbed down from my bunk and walked out into the hall. I didn't know where I was going, I only knew that I needed to move. Couldn't they see how important this was to me?

I must have walked for a couple of hours without paying attention to much of anything before I finally ended up standing and staring absently at what looked like a giant bank-vault door somewhere down in one of the deep basements. I had encountered several similar places in my wanderings without really paying much attention, but something about this one brought me back up to the surface for some reason. It felt vaguely familiar, if you can say that about your umpteenth blank vault door in a featureless fused-moon-rock hallway.

There was no handle for opening the vault, just a hand scanner and a microphone like the high-security setup Mike had used to open the door from Backflash's superweird lab space. It might even be the same door. I really hadn't been paying enough attention to my path to know where I was.

The AMO was really, really big. Huge even. I'd seen some of that when I arrived, but in the days since I started classes I'd barely left the areas around the dorms and main classrooms, except to go down to the battle simulators for practice or up to the sky dome to look at Mars. There was plenty of weird to see just doing that, but basically it was an area only about twice the size of my big urban junior high back home. This was the first time I'd wandered farther afield since bouncing back from my Captain Commanding letdown, and now I knew that there were miles of tunnels in the deeps as well as at least four more of the big sky domes.

I also suspected that gravity did some very strange things in the depths. I had never once felt pulled in any direction but down toward the floor, but I was pretty sure that at least two of the domes I'd been in had floors at pretty severe angles to each other—though you couldn't see one from another. For that matter, some of the deepest passages had floors that visibly curved downward in both directions.

“What the plan,
Quick
?” The question came in a female voice, silky and smooth, yet somehow a bit snippish at the same time.

“Huh?” I looked around to see who'd spoken. I was alone. “Is … is someone there?”

A patch of empty space about three feet in front of the vault door suddenly lit up with purple flashes like one of those plasma balls. A hundred little arcs of lightning connected it to a thick cable running along the wall, nearly blinding me with their brightness. A moment later it vanished, leaving behind a girl at least a year or two older than I was.

She was tall and slender with long black hair and metallic skin the color of freshly polished copper. Her eyes were a deep mossy green with huge pupils, and she wore a black-and-green uniform that mirrored her hair and eyes. She was simultaneously alien and beautiful, and I couldn't help but swallow.

Flailing around for some response, I stammered, “Do … do I know you?” Not that I had any doubts that I'd have remembered it if I'd met her earlier. I simply didn't know what else to say to the prettiest girl I'd ever seen.

Her only reply was a slight lift of her eyebrows and a tightening of her lips—somehow managing to convey with that subtle change of expression that I'd asked her the stupidest question in the history of stupid questions. I blushed all the way down to my toenails.

I looked away. “I guess not. I'm Evan Quick.”

“I know.” Nothing more, just a flat declaration that made me feel even stupider.

“Ah, you, that is … uhm…” I couldn't think of a graceful way to either exit the conversation or go any further, so I blurted, “Who are you?”

“You really don't know?” I shook my head. “They call me Burnish.”

“Nice to meet you.” I extended my hand, but she ignored it.

“What are you doing here, Quick?” She held up one hand to indicate the vault door. Lightning arced from it to the polished metal surface. Her skin shifted from copper to mirror-bright stainless steel—and I suddenly realized she might be the silver girl I'd seen earlier.

“I don't know,” I said. “I was just walking. I don't even really know where here is.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Her lips tightened again.

She took a long step toward me and, without thinking, I moved backward. She smiled a grim smile and I suddenly felt very alone and more than a little bit threatened.

“Have I done something to offend you?” I asked.

She nodded, but didn't say a word as her hands tightened into fists. I was bracing myself to get the stuffing beat out of me when the vault door made a harsh metallic clunk. Burnish reached out to touch the nearby conduit. Lightning arced at the contact and her skin shifted back to copper. For a moment, purple plasma danced its way down her arm to touch her neck and chest, but then she swore and pulled her hand away and it faded. Behind her the vault opened.

As it swung aside, a woman came forward to the threshold. I recognized her immediately, though I hadn't seen her since my first day at the AMO—Backflash. There was something about her that didn't invite forgetting. So, it
was
the same door.

“What are you children doing down here at the school-side door to my lab?” she asked, her tone vague and almost sweet.

“I'm kind of lost,” I said. “I was walking and I forgot to keep track of where I was going.”

Burnish didn't answer, and the woman didn't press, though I had no doubt she noticed. “What are your names?” she asked.

“I'm Evan Quick.”

“Oh, right, the new one,” said the woman, “from the museum. We met last week, didn't we? The cocoon boy. Case number FLR871. Healing powers as well as intermittent bursts of heightened strength and speed.”

She smiled at me. “The latter are pretty much par for the metahuman course, and are present to some degree in most cases. But your healing factor is unusual both in type and apparent strength. I look forward to seeing what happens with it when you enter stage-two development. What about you?” She turned to Burnish as the vault door closed behind her.

“Comendelia Waters,” she mumbled.

“Ah, yes, HNL932. I knew I recognized you—catalytic metalempath. Very interesting power. Or powers really, since they change as you shift metals. Very strong too, and so different from your mother's … or your father's, for that matter.” The woman nodded to herself. “And that explains the two of you wandering around together as well. I'd wondered, considering the clear difference in your ages and relative training. Obvious connection, really.”

“What is?” I asked, deeply confused.

“You saving her father's life, of course. I'm sure she has very strong feelings about the boy who saved Captain Commanding.” A look of concern passed across her face. “You do remember that you saved him, right? I saw from the initial report that you had suffered moderate brain damage from the blast, but its placement and the thoroughness of your regeneration suggested it wouldn't significantly affect memory. Was the estimate in error?”

“No, no, my memory is fine.”
Brain damage?
“It's only…” I glanced over at Burnish, whose lips had now tightened themselves practically out of existence, and I trailed off. Somehow I didn't think that any strong feelings Captain Commanding's daughter had about me at the moment were good ones.

“Excellent,” said the woman. “Excellent, it's always nice to verify metahuman theory with actual physical results where possible. Speaking of which, I should probably get on to my next task.”

She started to push past us, and I realized I was about to be left alone with Burnish. “Wait!” She paused and gave me an expectant look. I stammered out the first thing that came to mind, “Stage-two development? What does that mean?”

“You don't know?” Then she shook her head. “No, of course you don't. No reason for it. Not this side of getting your Mask licenses and full security clearances anyway.” She paused thoughtfully before finally nodding. “I think I'll wait to let you find that out for yourselves. If your powers fail and you flunk out before it happens they'll have to scrub all of your classified memories, and it's always better to minimize how much they have to wipe. Now, if you two will excuse me, I really do need to get to my next meeting. Good-bye.”