Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (4 page)

The US Senate voted on the Domestic Security Act today, securing passage by only nine votes. President Touches Clouds vetoed the bill, which leaves it dead in Congress unless its advocates can somehow muster eight additional votes. If passed, the law will require all
superhumans
to register with the Department of Superhuman Affairs and place all superhuman crimes under federal jurisdiction. Inspired by the catastrophic loss of life during the California earthquake deliberately triggered by a mentally unstable
terrakinetic
, the bill is tremendously popular with large parts of the American public. It is also loudly opposed by many superheroes, notably including Astra of the Chicago Sentinels. Critics of the bill argue that it detracts from the effort to secure the country against another attack by The Ring, the transnational super-terrorist group that attacked the President at Whittier Base in the wake of the California quake.

The Chicago Times

For me Spring Quarter at the University of Chicago meant three classes and a lab. I maintained a true secret identity, which meant that unlike most superheroes I could still take off my mask and disappear into plain Hope Corrigan. No emergencies, no cameras or
newsies
, pure bliss. Getting out of class Wednesday evening, I dropped by the Bee’s rooms in
Palevsky
Commons. Julie and Megan were out, but
Annabeth
answered the door.

“Hope, hi! Keep going, girls!”

She dragged me past the other girls, putting together favors in the common room, as I laughed and juggled the box I carried. C
losing the door behind us, she flopped on her bed.
 
As always, her bedroom looked like her wardrobe had exploded, and she’d completely changed the wall décor
again
, leaving only The Dane—the huge poster of Dane
Dorweiler
(her surprisingly long-lasting boyfriend, former captain of our high school soccer team and now
UofC’s
rising star). It was a good picture: Dane poised mid-kick, a look of dismay on his opponent’s face as he took the ball away from him.
 
The poster had been a gift from me and the other Bees.

“So let’s see!”
 
She held out her hands.

“Grabby, much?” I teased, but handed her the box.
 
She tore the lid off and gasped.

“They’re beautiful!”
 
She pulled the top sheet out.
 
Two hundred near-parchment quality invitations, raised print protected by fine laminate. The Bees had pledged Phi Mu last fall, and were already helping organize sorority events. The invitations were for the Spring Social, to be sent out to two hundred high school seniors, the scholastic cream of the incoming crop who’d already won acceptance by College Admissions.
 
They wanted to have most of the sorority’s new sisters in hand long before next fall’s Pledge Week, and had trusted me with the invitation design.

“The Foundation paid for the printing,” I said, laughing again when she leaped up and hugged me.
 
Annabeth
was as generous with her emotions as she was with everything else, showering them freely on all around her.

“They’re perfect!”
 
She looked at the one she still held, and her eyes went a bit misty.

“Hey,” I said.
 
“I didn’t do
that
good a job.”

“You did.” She sniffed.
 
“I was just wishing you’d pledged with us.”

“I spend too much time in a mask.”

That got a giggle and she smiled. We’d all intended to live together in
Palevsky
Commons and rule the school—or at least the sorority—but my breakthrough last fall had changed all my plans. I’d had to disappear till I learned to be safe with my super-strength, and hadn’t been able to start school with them. Now I lived off-campus so others wouldn’t notice how often I had to duck out. I looked over her shoulder at The Dane.

Even Dane’s plans were changing; he’d gotten an offer to go pro already, and if he signed a contract and left Chicago that would be it for him and
Annabeth
.
 
She loved him like she breathed—every moment and without thought—but if he was her air, she could never hold her breath that long.

I worried about what would happen then.

“And stop that,” I said. Rising on my toes I kissed her cheek
en passant
.
 
“We’re texting and
facebooking
, doing kamikaze lunches at least three times a week, and
Brennan, Bauman, and Brock
will be on every Foundation guest list
forever
.”
 
I nudge her towards the door.
 
“And you’d better get back out there before you have to redo half of the job yourself, you’re so picky.”

“Detail-oriented.”
 
She sniffed again, but with a real smile.
 
“And we could use your help—”

My cell-phone launched into the William Tell Overture, and she sighed.
 
“Better see what they want.”

I flipped it open and looked at the screen.
 
911-Yellow.
 
That meant, “Emergency, don’t kill yourself getting here.”
 
Orange would have meant “Get Here Now!”, and red—which I’d never seen yet—”Don’t Bother Changing.”

I closed it with a sigh of my own.
 
“Emergency.
 
Race you out.”
 
She started first, but I won.

I parked in the garage on Wabash and Jackson to take the “back door” in to the Dome.
 
I was currently the only Sentinel besides Artemis to keep a secret identity, but the Dome’s designers had planned on it and included several sneaky backdoors. Personally, I thought they’d just succumbed to their inner child and went crazy—we had an honest-to-God
telephone booth
entrance. Stepping out of the sideways elevator, I caught Blackstone and Chakra arm in arm on their way through the lobby, Blackstone in a coat and tails as usual, Chakra in a beautiful satin sari. I guessed dinner and the opera.

The crisis of the past year had pulled him and Chakra even closer, and they didn’t even bother hiding their relationship anymore. I’d been grateful; it took some of the media-heat off my “affair.”

Now the tantric sorceress looked me over, probably reading my chakras. She smiled.

“Good evening, my dear,” Blackstone said.
 
“What brings you to the Dome tonight?”

“A yellow 911.
 
What’s going on?”

He looked nonplussed.
 
“Bob?”

Bob glanced up from his station screen.
 
“Code CPD1; superhuman homicide call.”

Blackstone grimaced.
 
“How long ago?”

“Fifteen minutes.
 
Details?”

“Through Dispatch, please.”
 
He turned to me, tapping his shoe with his cane.
 
“I’m sorry, my dear.
 
We’ll switch out your days, and in the future we’ll send Galatea when you’re off—Vulcan has her forensic analysis routines close to
fieldable
.”

I rolled my eyes.
 
“Oh yeah, she’d be
so
reassuring.
 
It’s okay boss, really.”

Chakra covered her mouth with a henna-decorated hand.

Galatea was a
gynoid
(female android) robot, the work of our team’s new Verne-type mad scientist.
 
Vulcan had made her out of The Stuff—polymorphic molecules, his specialty—and he was a true artist; she moved like a human being, even looked like one from a distance, but human expression was beyond her.

“If you’re sure,” Blackstone said.
 
“Carry on then.”
 
He gave me a mock-salute and I scampered.
 
Five minutes later I was changed and in the air headed west.

“Shell?” I said as I flew over Michigan Avenue.
 
“I don’t want you to use our neural link at the scene.”

“
Why not?”
 
She’d passed the address to me, with no comments about the cute Detective Fisher this time.

“Because this could be really messy.”

The quantum-ghost of my best friend, Shelly had been left to me by the Teatime Anarchist when he arranged his own murder-suicide. He’d gone back in my past, made a quantum-copy of Shelly just before she stupidly killed herself origin-chasing, and plugged her into the operating system of his future-tech computer system. Our
bioneural
link let Shelly experience the world through all my senses, and even appear and talk to me by direct stimulation of my aural and ocular nerves. Yes, I heard voices in my head.
 
They told me to eat Skittles.

Blackstone had arranged for Shelly to become my Dispatch wingman (the fact that our neural link couldn’t be interfered with, and that Shell could multitask like the fastest supercomputer, was a huge factor in his decision-making). But, super-genius computer brain or not, she died when we were both fifteen and emotionally she still was.
 
No way was I letting a kid too young to get into an R-rated movie see a homicide scene.
 
Especially a
superhuman
homicide scene.

“
It’s not like I haven’t seen bodies before
,” she objected.

“I know, but you don’t have to. I don’t
want
to.
 
So, no link. Only the
earbug
.”

“
But—”

“No.”

Silence.

“Shelly?”

“
Okay
…” she sighed. She had to accept it; the Anarchist had made it part of her privacy protocols. But though I heard token sulking I could tell she wasn’t too disappointed.
 
Like me, she’d already seen things that made her want to bleach her brain.

The address for the call took us to one of the luxury condo towers on Ohio and Dearborn.
 
Detective Fisher simply had one of the uniforms, Officer Wyatt, stand out on the fifteenth floor balcony where I could see him as I came in.
 
Landing and peering inside, I whistled.

It looked like someone had gone through the condo and fed every piece of furniture into a wood-chipper; bits and pieces of frame and upholstery covered the floor.
 
A hardwood box about the size of a wine crate sat in the center of the mess.
 
Fisher stood in the separated kitchen, talking to Phelps.
 
Though thankfully I couldn’t see evidence of anything beyond extreme vandalism, I could smell the copper tang of blood.
 
Lots of it. Maybe in the bedroom?

“Detective?”

He cut off his argument with Phelps and waved me in.
 
Carefully picking his way through the mess, he handed me some foot covers to slip on.
 
I was getting too used to them.

An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth.
 
He looked uncomfortable, and I realized
he
might have the same problem with my viewing the crime scene as I did with Shelly.
 
He might actually be more comfortable with Galatea for scenes like this.

“What are we looking at?” I asked quietly.

“Ralph
Moffat’s
apartment.”

“Ralph—the banker?”

He nodded.
 
“You were right about the lady in the vault footage being his date; he confirmed it when we questioned him.
 
Never seen her before, brought her home for coffee, woke up when we knocked on his door the next morning.
 
She
roofied
him.”

“Then why—”

“The enhanced vault footage gave us the contents of the document case.
 
Bearer bonds. Japanese treasuries, hundred thousand dollar denominations.”

“Oh.”
 
I wanted to sit down.
 
It had been a thick document case.
 
Assuming at least a hundred sheets…
 
“How much, do you think?”

“Jenny figures, assuming all the bonds are the same, close to ten million dollars.
 
That’s a big
if
, but regardless we’re still talking about millions.”