Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (13 page)

I twisted around. Dan Raffles hadn’t made it out of the courtroom, and he’d risked dragging Rush out of the aisle and between two benches while I’d been getting knocked through walls. The man was totally freaked; he stared at me, eyes wide, and flinched at each gunshot.

“I think — I think he’s stunned. He hit his head on a bench when he fell.”

“Thank you.” I couldn’t believe he’d done it. “Are you hurt?”

When he shook his head, I quickly examined Rush.
Bad
bump on his head, but no obvious spine trauma, breathing and pulse regular. How had he lost his helmet? Was he safe to move again? Then I
knew
, feeling the warm certainty of Chakra’s mental presence like a wind of blossoms.
Okay
.

“Stay down,” I said. “Crawl to the back, you’ll be all right. Seven is there.”

Raffles nodded spastically, started crawling. I slid Rush out and onto the door in one smooth heave, grabbed the edges on either side of his body, and
flew
, low and fast and holding him so close between me and the door that, if he were awake, he’d be making improper suggestions. Out of the courtroom, through Safire’s exit, and down onto the plaza by Shelly and Crash, who’d obviously arrived while I was busy.

“
Astra
,” Lei Zi spoke in my ear, confirming I’d cleared the dead zone. “
Chakra reports severe injuries inside. We’re inbound, but we need you to get it done as quickly as you can
.” I laid Rush down and the two equipment-laden paramedics with Crash got to work. Safire was already gone.

I nodded automatically. “On it. Galatea?”

“
Stays on post. Go
.”

I launched, not looking at Shelly — this time I knew the route, and used it.
Get it done
. The walls and broken doors blew by at blurring speed as I went in hard.

The spheres might have been able to knock me down, but they had to be directed; I blew through the wrecked courtroom without slowing and into Big Guy, going for the clinch. We crashed past Watchman and through the remains of the judge’s bench. Wrapping my legs around his armored waist, I hammer-punched him with the base of my fist. His battered helmet crumpled with a tin-can
crunch
, tore away on my second hit — and I stared, paralyzed.

No.
It wasn’t — It couldn’t
possibly
be —

“Nobody move or the hostage gets it!” Tentacle-Guy had dragged a business-suited victim from the benches. Spheres surrounded the poor man as he hung wrapped in the animated cable, loafers kicking uselessly. Watchman froze, stood back, and I didn’t — I couldn’t —

Tentacle Guy shook his victim. “Back up! I mean it!”

I let go of Mr. Ludlow and the three armored villains moved in together, Tentacle Guy dangling his hostage between him and us. “Look,” he said, sounding calmer through his voice-distorting helmet. “We did what we came to do, no need to wreck the building. We’re leaving now.”

“Put the hostage down, and nobody else dies.” Watchman said it like he was talking about the weather.
It’s raining; you should wear a coat
. The depleted sphere-swarm gathered in around the three.

“You’re right,” Tentacle Guy said just as reasonably, and the hostage’s loafers touched the floor.
FLASH!
I threw up my arms as at least five spheres exploded, blinked, blinked again to clear tearing eyes. Horribly abused, my ears barely registered the panicked bystander screams and the rain of thumps as the remaining spheres hit the floor. When my ocular and aural nerves unfroze — lots faster than any normal person’s would — I wanted to swear. Or cry.

They were gone.

One thing you get used to fast, is going into situations that are “developing,” when you have only half an idea what’s going on — and that’s if you’re lucky. Which makes it nice that you usually get to bring friends, lots of them. In shows and movies, superheroes go one-on-one with supervillains all the time; in real life, there’s no such thing as too much backup.

Astra,
Notes from A Life.

Back out on the balcony with The Harlequin and Andrew, the City Room was totally different than it had been when I’d passed through on my way upstairs. They’d dimmed the lights, and the atmosphere on the Dispatch floor felt tight, intense. The big screens showed the Daley Center, flanked by rows of icons I guessed represented different heroes. Lei Zi arrived quickly, followed by Blackstone and Chakra. Lei Zi and Blackstone conferred and studied the screens.

“Roster check,” The Harlequin explained quietly. Leaning against the railing beside me, she pointed to two bright icons as they came up: a circle in an inverted triangle and a pink “S” in purple flames. Both were crossed by diagonal yellow bars. “Watchman and Safire are heading for the scene. The steady icons show who’s on-site. The flashing icons show who’s available, relative brightness indicating who can respond most quickly. The yellow bars mean they’re out of contact. Someone’s made the Daley Center an electronic dead zone.”

Rush’s angled “R” and Seven’s “7” started flashing before she finished explaining. Then their icons yellow-barred too.

The City Room doors opened and Astra and Galatea came through them. Galatea almost skipped, obviously impatient, but Astra moved through the dispatch stations like — I wasn’t sure
what
, but in armor and absently holding Ajax’s maul, I couldn’t see the peppy and earnest kid who’d swung her legs from the Assembly Room table and then practically cried for me. She stopped at a colorfully decorated station to talk to the guy there, not taking her eyes off the screens. He answered back, shrugged, obviously frustrated.

Lei Zi started giving instructions.

“Doors!” the guy with Astra shouted as a mob erupted from the Daley Center’s glass doors, pushing and shoving to escape the building. Suits, mostly, but nobody looked businesslike now. Then Safire burst through the windows, practically destroying the ugly Picasso sculpture in front of the building.

“Astra, Galatea, go!” Lei Zi snapped. “No loads!”

Galatea started to say something, but Astra grabbed her by what looked like a
handle
that popped up between her shoulder blades and they were gone, through a hatch I hadn’t seen. One of the screens switched to a dizzying picture marked with Galatea’s symbol, gears and a lightning bolt. A mounted camera? It took us down a street, up and over a high building too fast for me to catch which one it was, and down to the plaza.

“Drop Galatea outside,” Lei Zi instructed. The view dropped, then steadied as we watched Astra fly through the hole Safire had made. Astra’s icon yellow-barred, but Lei Zi was already calling out more orders. “Riptide, Variforce, Quin to the bay, now. Blackstone, Dispatch is yours.” Then she was gone, too, through the same hatch taken by Astra and Galatea, and The Harlequin went over the railing to bounce after her.

The tension didn’t die when they left — if anything it ratcheted higher. Chakra said something to Blackstone, then stepped away and headed for the stairs. Taking them quickly, she brushed by us to turn into the next office over, closing the door.

“I don’t get it.” I wasn’t really asking a question, but Andrew answered anyway, not taking his eyes off the icons on the main screen..

“They don’t know what’s in there, but if the fight’s inside then there are hundreds of trapped civilians on the floors above it. They’re going in blind with everything they’ve got. It’s what they do.” He looked at the closed office door. “And in a minute they won’t be
totally
blind.”

What? Oh
. Chakra. The hero news sites speculated endlessly about what the psychic hottie did for the team.

Crash’s icon lit up, joined by another one — a yin-yang symbol I didn’t recognize.

“Crash does civilian evac and delivers paramedics and other first-responders to the scene,” Andrew explained. “It looks like Sifu is helping him.” Wow. The kid was, what, sixteen? How did they get away with that? Whatever I thought about fielding kids younger than I was, he and a paramedic were waiting by the ugly sculpture when Astra flew out carrying Rush on what looked like part of a
door
. Rush’s icon lit up, with a bright red bar across it.

“Red bars mean a hero’s down, red X’s mean dead.” Andrew whispered.

So he was alive. I let out a relieved breath. Astra only stayed for a couple of words before flying up and back through the hole. The room wound tighter, Blackstone conferring and watching the screens while everyone else did whatever they did. A second screen came up, showing a zooming scene — the team floater? — following Astra’s original route. I looked over at Andrew, but he stayed focused on the screens. Watching The Harlequin’s status icon?

“
Zone in sight
,” Lei Zi’s voice came over a room-wide broadcast. “
Galatea reports sounds of at least two physical altercations in-zone, stood down. Preparing to shake out and enter
.”

Then all the yellow bars vanished and the main screen view split into multiple pictures, info-bars scrolling across their bottoms. Watchman’s voice filled the room. “
Dispatch, hostilities have ended, repeat, ended. Rush is down, civilian fatalities and casualties. Request all available medical assistance
.”

Sighs of relief, scattered cheers, even cut-off applause ran through the stations.

“Hostilities ended, Watchman,” Blackstone acknowledged. “The Harlequin, all other field Sentinels incoming. Secure the situation until the CPD relieves you, expedite civilian aid.”

“
Secure, aid, understood. Watchman out
.” The lights came back up to normal office brightness, and that was it. Blackstone looked up, gave us a nod. Andrew returned it, clapped me on the shoulder.

“That’s the show, sport. They’ll be out there awhile, until everyone hurt is helped and in the ER and the cops have yellow-taped the scene. Give it an hour, they’ll be back for after-action debriefings — analysis and evaluation to follow when Blackstone and Lei Zi have had a chance to go over everything.”

“That’s... What the hell
was
that?”

“The glamorous life of a superhero. See you around the Dome.” He went down to the floor, said a few words to Blackstone, and left at a trot. I stayed on the balcony, trying to figure out what I’d just seen, until the office door behind me opened. Chakra stepped out, drooping but eyes bright.

“Uh,” I stuttered. “You okay?”

She looked me over from head to toe, drew in a deep breath, smiled wide, and reached up to pat my cheek. Heat flashed through me, and her eyes got bigger. She laughed.

“Yes. Yes, I am. And you’re adorable. Come see me after dinner. Doctor’s orders.” A final stroke and she turned, leaving me frozen. Gathering her skirts, she turned and proceeded down the stairs.

What the hell was
that
?

Astra

Dispatch came online the instant the wrecking crew disappeared, my frantic call for medical assistance got a “Can do,” from Lei Zi before I’d finished making it, and less than a
minute
later Variforce floated himself and The Harlequin, wrapped in a rolling cocoon of glowing fields, through the courtroom doors. Lei Zi really had mobilized the team behind us — another minute and every Sentinel would have come down on the bad guys like the wrath of God.

Shaken court attendees trapped by the fight climbed out of their refuges, coughing in the drywall dust that floated in the air and covered everything. In the beams of the emergency lights, the courtroom looked like contractors had started an unscheduled demolition without getting everyone out first. Already under Chakra’s remote guidance, The Harlequin went to work on an unconscious bailiff while I stood there. My cheek was bleeding again, copper on my tongue, and I needed to
move
.

So why did I feel like the whole scene was far, far away?

“Shelly?” I whispered. “Get Blackstone, please? Private?”

“
Yes, my dear?
” he answered.

“Sir? I unmasked one of the attackers. It was Eric Ludlow. And he was standing up to
Watchman
.” I didn’t know which was worse.

“
You’re certain?
”

“Yes, sir. But he’s only a
B Class
— I pinned him
easy
last year —
Dad
works with him and the rest of The Crew on cleanup emergencies. He cried, he’s cleaned up — I mean — ”

“
I understand
.”

“I can’t believe he’d — ”

“
Of course not. I’ll alert the proper people, and we will find out what has happened to our Mr. Ludlow. It may be that he is being used, even controlled. Are you all right, my dear?
”

I heard his subtext:
Can you do your job?
Taking a deep breath, I let it out. “Yes.”

“
Then we will speak more of this at the Dome
.
Try not to be concerned
.”

I got busy, flying paramedics and their equipment up from the plaza as Chakra directed them by psychic triage, then flying their strapped-down patients out. Benny Larkin was dead, along with one of the bailiffs — the nice one who’d tested Malleus’ heft just yesterday. I read the name above his badge: Officer Travis Delcort. It looked like he’d just been in the wrong place when they came through the wall. I dusted him off, closed his eyes, straightened his blood-matted hair — a useless gesture, he was just going to go into a bag — and whispered his name so I could retrieve it from Dispatch if I forgot. The luckier bailiff looked like he’d been thrown, and nobody else who’d been trapped in here was more than battered and shaken, in shock or suffering transient tinnitus from the repeated flash-bangs of the stun spheres. Even Safire would be fine, according to Dispatch.

Our part of the cleanup didn’t take long and, before we finished, we got word that Rush would be fine, too; he’d been shocked and concussed, but he’d been lots worse.

Getting back to the Dome meant writing up a report and going through a quick one-on-one debriefing while my memories were still fresh. The report was for the action review board and I was getting pretty good at those, but the debriefing was for our own benefit — Lei Zi and Watchman used them to analyze our encounters and tactical responses and to shape our ongoing drills and training. Also, dumping my experience and impressions onto those paid to think about them left me free to remember my earlier, happy resolution this morning.

I caught Seven after his debriefing and invited him home for Friday Night Dinner. He accepted as casually as he did everything else, which gave me a beautiful opening for carrying out my fiendish plan.