Seven Wonders (54 page)

  The cash.

  He tore a little more of the door open and reached through the gap until he could get a grip on one of the cartridges. He yanked, and the thin metal box shot out of the safe, Tony tumbling onto his back. The cartridge hit him in the face, and he swore again; blinking in surprise, he looked at the box sitting in his lap. He smiled, and ripped the thin lid off.

  Cash. Twenties, stacked high. He laughed and fngered a wedge of bills, leaving dark indelible marks.

  "What the fuck?"

  Jeannie moved closer to get a better look.

  "Shit!"

  "What?"

  Jeannie looked down her own front. She was splattered with thick blue ink. The ink covered the interior of the safe. Tony's front was almost entirely covered, and it was splashed up on his face. His hands were completely blue, leaving stains on the ATM cartridge and the bills inside.

  "What the fuck is this… is this ink?" He wiped his hands on his shirt, but it made no difference, only spreading the security dye further. Jeannie saw the pavement shine in the streetlight. The pavers around the crushed ATM were slick with it.

  "Some kind of security thing, marks the bills," she said. "Fuck, I didn't think."

  Tony laughed, but it had a nasty, ragged edge. "You didn't think? Well, great. Now what?"

  "Any bills clean?"

  Tony dropped to his knees and fipped the cartridge upside down. Green paper spilled out, those that were not already smeared in the ink landing in the spreading ooze on the ground.

  "Not anymore."

  Jeannie stood and looked around. The street was empty, but… was that a car coming? Tony saw her eyes widen in panic; following her gaze, he saw something fashing on the lip of the bank's overhanging frontage. A square alarm box, blue light rendered grey in the yellow streetlight. Flashing, silently.

  "Gotta go, lover boy." She grabbed Tony's shirt at the shoulder, a half-hearted attempt to pull him up that was symbolic rather than practical. He got to his feet, slid a little in the pool of thick ink, then righted himself. He held his hands out in front of them like they were injured or contaminated. He looked at the wrecked money machine and the half empty cartridge. There were a few twenty dollar bills stuck to his jeans.

  "What about all this?"

  "Gotta leave it. No one will touch the bills now. Even if we can clean it off that shit will glow under UV or something, marking it as stolen."

  "Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo."

  The pair turned, ignoring the wreckage left behind − the rectangular hole in the bank wall much larger than the square machine itself, which lay on the ground, split and bent like an old trash can − and ran for somewhere, anywhere, that was off the main road.

  Too late. The car Jeannie had heard earlier pulled up at the corner ahead of them. A police cruiser. Tony saw it frst and swore, too loudly, and pulled Jeannie into the shadows of a narrow alley at the side of the bank.

  Also too late. Two offcers leapt from the car, torches on and handguns held at the ready. The offcers approached at a run, then slowed as the searched for the felons, torchlight playing over the dark alley between buildings. One spotlight fell on the wall of bank, and the offcer holding the torch let out a low whistle.

  Tony made a break for it, mistimed. The second policeman shouted, the frst spun the fashlight towards the alley, both trained their weapons on the retreating forms of Jeannie and Tony. Tony almost tripped as he shot towards a street across from the alley, slowing their escape. Jeannie didn't wait for him.

  The frst cop was now radioing in for help. While he waited for dispatch to squawk through on the radio clipped to his shoulder, he nodded to his partner, who immediately took off in pursuit.

  Reaching the other street, Tony saw Jeannie had fnally paused to let him catch up. As he approached, he stopped, confused. He wasn't quite sure this was the right direction. Covered in security ink, he and Jeannie would leave an obvious trail for anyone to follow. Clothes, shoes, everything would need to be ditched. If they could get to the park, maybe the worst of the ink would come off in the fountain, at least enough that they could be confdent they wouldn't track it all through the city.

  "Freeze! Get on the ground! On the ground! Now!"

  Jeannie turned frst. Tony turned and stumbled as he was dazzled by the fashlight shining into his face. The policeman repeated his order. Tony could just see the man behind the light, legs braced in a shooting stance, fashlight held expertly along the barrel of his gun.

  Tony began to raise his arms, but the look from Jeannie gave him cause to stop, just halfway. He glanced down and saw she her arms were still frmly by her sides, fsts clenched.

  "What?"

  The corner of Jeannie's mouth crawled up into an unpleasant smile. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm doing what the nice policeman wants."

  The nice policeman took a step further. The fashlight ficked between Jeannie and Tony's faces. He shouted something else, but neither Jeannie or Tony were listening.

  "He's just a cop, Tony. You're bulletproof." Jeannie's curled lip made Tony feel uncomfortable. This night wasn't going how he imagined it. Nor was this the most prodigious start to a career fghting crime.

  "So," Jeannie continued, "what are you doing?"

  Tony thought of his future career again. So, this was a mistake, but he could fx it. He could get them out of this and they could start again. He was strong, bulletproof, a goddamn superhero. What was one cop against him? One policeman with a gun, against a superman?

  Tony lowered his arms and smiled. Well, there was no harm in having fun, right? He ficked Jeannie's hair around her forehead, leaving light blue marks from the ink on his fngers. He smiled, and she laughed, and he launched himself at the offcer.

  The policeman was just quick enough to see the initial movement, and fred his weapon. By the time the bullet had reached the end of the gun's barrel, Tony's had cupped the muzzle with his palm. The barrel fash lit his hand, and the strong stench of black powder flled the air, far stronger than was usual after a gunshot. The policeman had already squeezed the trigger a second time. The second bullet collided with the frst in Tony's hand, splitting the gun's barrel and backfring the shot into chamber. The gun kicked as the mechanism jammed and the hot combustion gas tore the weapon apart at the seams. The cop screamed in pain as half his hand was blown off, his cry vanishing in a wet choke as Tony reached through the man's chest with his other hand, tearing a hole clean through the torso. The cop looked down in disbelief, an action movie cliché, then his head didn't rise. Tony slid his arm back, almost shaking the cop off.

  Shit.

  He hadn't meant to do that. He heard Jeannie's boots pounding the pavement as she ran towards him, then felt her hands on his back as she came to stop and looked down at the corpse. The policeman's radio popped a few times as his partner tried to make contact.

  "Nice."

  "What?" Tony tore his eyes from the body and looked at Jeannie. She was smiling. "Nice? I just killed a guy. Killed a policeman. Holy fucking shit Jeannie, we're in it."

  Jeannie punched his shoulder. The gesture was almost playful and Tony felt the world go fuzzy at the edges. What the hell had this night turned into?

  "It's nice work, is what it is," said Jeannie. "Congratulations, you're a supervillain."

  Running in the distance, more cars. More police. Tony bounced on his heels, eager to run but unsure if that was the right thing to do. He was a cop killer. A
cop killer
. He was
in
it.

  But… what could they do? He was strong, invulnerable, fast. A superhero.

  No. Not a super
hero
. Jeannie had said it. A super
villain
. Something stirred in Tony's chest. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the shock, the realization that he had gone too far and that there was no going back.

  Tony shook his head and found himself smiling.

  A super
villain?

  Well…

  If he was going to clean up the city, working within the rules, within the law, was a hindrance. You couldn't get anything done, always had to be careful, had to operate within the insect-like boundaries of normal people so nobody got hurt. It was a waste of time. He had power, potential, ability, but couldn't use it.

  Unless… unless he actually got to work, turned the city around. Turned the city around to his way. That would solve the problem, wouldn't it? No more corruption, no more superhero games. The city would be his. Jeannie was right. It was the best way.

  Tony wobbled on his feet and he rubbed blue stain over his forehead.

  And what was a supervillain anyway, except a superhero who actually got stuff done?

  He smiled, picked Jeannie up in his arms, and together they few up, out of the range of the police and out of sight of the city. He wasn't worried about the ink, or the dead cop, or the Seven Wonders.

  The city didn't have a new superhero. It had a new supervillain.

#2: THE START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

Author's note: This scene is a fashback that was originally placed as the book's epilogue, but it was just a little confusing to jump back so far in time, having just seen Blackbird rescue Tony from the superprison. But it does give a little hint about how deep the Seven Wonders were in it – was Aurora planning to use the MIC-N on the Cowl, or did he have a more sinister purpose? And what hand did he have in the secret origin of Blackbird, anyway? Perhaps we will never know!

The laboratory was ship-shape and Bristol fashion. So said Frank Cane anyway. The aged scientist had been imported from Britain especially for the occasion. Jeannie had only been there a week, but she bet the lab hadn't looked this tidy since it had frst opened. On that occasion they'd had the mayor and some charitable big wig, Geoffrey Conroy, cutting the ribbon. Jeannie had seen the photos. She suspected that Frank Cane had been shipped in for that too. He was at that rarefed level of academia where he didn't actually do any work, he just toured universities and institutes the world over to frown over expensive equipment and drink brandy with deans. Not to mention put his name as the frst author on scientifc papers, even though Jeannie was sure he had no idea who she was or that she was the one not only doing all of the work but writing up the results for publication.

  But so it goes. That was how academia, how science worked. She accepted that. It was the price she paid, and at least she knew that one day that would be her. By the time she reached Frank's age, she hoped to be driving a solid gold car, thanks to the proceeds of electronics patents. And this baby was the biggie, the one that the whole event had been organised for. The shindig would eclipse the lab opening too. Aurora's Light was here with a posse from the Seven Wonders.

  Jeannie straightened her lab coat and adjusted her glasses, instantly feeling like a heel. For the occasion she'd even tamed her short black hair from its usual vertical position to something resembling a fringe and parting. She'd even gone so far as to swap the gemmed stud in her nose to a subtle pewter button.

  Aurora and the Seven Wonders was big news. Even back home in Albuquerque she knew who they were. While the rest of the superheroes of the world had either retired (White Nancy), vanished (the aptly named Secret Sin), or gone into the cosmetics business (hello, Doctor Litewave), the Seven Wonders still held San Ventura, protecting it from the Cowl. Everyone in the country knew that, and not a week went by without a news report about the latest diabolical scheme foiled by the all-powerful Aurora and his team. Of course, if he really was all-powered and the Seven Wonders really were the world's last-standing super-team, then surely the Cowl would have been disposed of long ago, like every other supervillain in the world.

  She pushed the doubts to the back of her mind and sucked her teeth as a distraction. She was nervous. Aurora was a celebrity, his wife and co-leader Bluebell a famous beauty. Not only that, they were here to talk to her about the big project. Okay, Frank Cane would do the talking (and take the credit), but it was all down to her. That's what she'd been hired for after fnishing her post-doc at the University of New Mexico and…

  Someone nudged her in the ribs on the left, and someone said something on her right. She half-turned to ask the speaker to repeat, but Frank Cane was too busy shaking Aurora's hand to answer. Making her way down the row of scientists and offcials next to her husband was Bluebell.

  Aurora. Tall, broad, handsome even though only the lower half of his face was visible, but the jaw was chiselled and the mouth was set into an expression that at frst looked like a smile, but it was slight and raised at one end more than the other. A smirk, but not an impolite one. It was confdent, bold.
Superheroic.

  And then he was past her, and she realised she'd shaken his hand and said something nice and friendly and hadn't even registered. Her hand was grasped by Bluebell's. Jeannie smiled and said hello, but there was something behind Bluebell's perfect smile she didn't like. Maybe it was just Bluebell herself, perfect in every way and from every angle, her short blonde hair expertly coiffured and tousled just like she did with her own when she wasn't trying to look more like a scientist and less like, well, a vaguely cool person. Jeannie's smile tightened and she felt even more stupid.

  No, there was something else. Bluebell was looking into her eyes but it felt like she was looking past them somehow. The moment passed, Bluebell smiled, and moved on.

It was later. The drinks were out. The only time you can ever drink actually inside a laboratory is when there is a party, or an opening, or royalty comes to say hello. This occasion defnitely fell into the latter category.

  Frank Cane held court as Jeannie chatted to a lab tech, joking about the defnition of interstitial time. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Aurora and Bluebell. They stuck together throughout, Aurora doing all the talking and Bluebell laughing at the appropriate points. But there is was again, that look, that intense… look, that wasn't a stare and it wasn't rude, but there was something else. When Bluebell met her eye with a smile the back of Jeannie's scalp would itch.