Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women (2 page)

Sure could use some of that fun and happy now. I know this is for my own good, but I am not looking forward to this.

“How were your holidays? Do anything special?” Mindforce says. We’re in Protectorate HQ’s common room instead of in the interview room, an attempt to create a relaxed atmosphere; the interview room, all bare walls and hard chairs, is built for interrogation, while the common room has a big TV, comfy furniture, a small kitchen area — all the comforts of home. Mindforce hands me a bottle of cream soda, ice-cold, my preferred brand and everything. He sits across from me, crosses his legs, steeples his fingers, and a couple seconds later undoes it all, as though he realizes he looks too much like a psychologist (which is, in fact, his day job). He’s trying so hard to make this feel like something other than what it is. Maybe too hard.

“Are you asking because you want to know about my holidays,” I say, “or is this mindless small talk to put me at ease before we get into the heavy stuff?”

Mindforce smiles gently. “A little of both.”

Called it. But he’s trying, and I should try to, or else what’s the point of being here?

“Christmas was good. My dad came by for a while. That was a nice surprise. I got this awesome pair of shades and some cool clothes from some friends of mine.”

“You earned it. You proved yourself and then some.” He pauses. Unable to think of a smooth segue, he says, “How have you been sleeping?”

Here we go. “Okay, I guess.”

“Still having the nightmares?”

“I...I think so.” The nightmares in question, mental horror movies in which I’m the victim and Manticore is the unstoppable psycho, haven’t been as vivid or distinct as they were the first couple of weeks, but, “I’ve been waking up a lot in the middle of the night, and I feel like...I feel like I just got off a roller coaster — breathing heavy, heart racing, shaking, sweating. I screamed once, woke up Mom and Granddad. I don’t remember anything, though.”

“Night terrors. They’re not unheard of in people suffering from...” Mindforce hesitates, clears his throat. “Post-traumatic stress disorder. That isn’t an official diagnosis,” he adds quickly, “but there’s no question you suffered severe psychological trauma.”

“Well,
duh
.” It slips out. Mindforce takes it in stride. “How do I get un-traumatized?”

“The traditional approach is extensive therapy. Medication, in extreme cases, but I consider that a last resort. I dislike medicating people unnecessarily. Don’t worry, I don’t think we’re anywhere near that option.”

Good. I don’t want to spend my high school years doped up. “When you say
extensive therapy
...”

“I mean sessions like this, for one. I also mean finding ways to take back your power.”

Take back my power? I wouldn’t have taken Mindforce for a Dr. Phil pop-psychology type.

Mindforce leans in, folds his hands on the table. “Manticore. What he did to you. He made you feel helpless.” It’s not a question. I nod anyway. I take a huge gulp of soda, but it doesn’t wash away the desert that’s sprung up in my throat. “And you’re scared — terrified — on a profound level, of feeling helpless again. Part of your recovery needs to be finding ways to make you feel in control again.”

“Train me,” I blurt out. “Teach me how to use my powers. Teach me how to fight.”

“Carrie, I —”

“Manticore took me down because I didn’t know how to fight back. I was running on pure instinct, and it wasn’t enough. You want to help me take back my power? Then teach me how to
use
my power.”

I brace for some pushback, line up some counter-arguments. Mindforce isn’t Concorde, so he’s not going to refuse me without thinking about it first, but I am asking a lot. This isn’t a
help me with my math
request, this is a
let me borrow your Lamborghini so I can learn how to drive
for my big NASCAR race
request.

“I thought you might say that,” he says. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

As it turns out, Mindforce was not offering to train me, not quite yet. We need to “address some preliminaries” first.

“Preliminaries?” Sara asks. “What does he mean by preliminaries? By the way, Noxious Ghoul coming at you.”

“He wants me — all of us to undergo some testing,” I say. “And I’m blocking with my Killer Bees.” Sara eyes my seven untapped forests, wrinkles her nose at me.

“Like, school tests or medical tests or IQ tests or what?” Missy says.

“Mindforce wants to test our powers, find out exactly what we can do, how they work, what our limits are.”

“Are there going to be needles? I don’t like needles.”

“I don’t know, Muppet.”

“Not what I had in mind for our Saturday, but I’ll take it,” Matt says. “I’m going for another soda, anyone want anything from the kitchen?”

“Got more Doritos?” asks Stuart, who has already pounded down two bags in as many hours.

“Yeah, Mom knew you were coming.”

“Sweet.”

Having sampled all four of my friends’ parents’ hospitality, I have to say Matt’s parents win for Best Hosts. The parental units at Casas de Danvers, Hamill, and Lumley embrace the philosophy of retreating to a far corner of the house and leaving their young guests alone. My mom likes to float through on occasion to see how everything is (which is annoying), but, because Mom is a cookaholic, there are almost always yummy leftovers in the fridge. This goes over extremely well with Stuart the Bottomless Pit. Matt’s folks tend to leave us be, but whenever they know we’re coming over for games or movies or whatever, they’ll stock up on munchies. Speaking of the parents...

“Passing through, don’t mind me, kids,” Matt’s dad says. “Have to run to the office for a few hours.”

“It’s New Year’s Day, Dad,” Matt says. He tosses a fresh bag of Doritos to Stuart.

“And here I thought I had too much to drink last night celebrating Arbor Day,” Mr. Steiger says.

“No, if it was Arbor Day, you’d still be drunk.”

“I do love trees. I’m like the Lorax. Without the Wilford Brimley mustache.”

“Or the Wilford Brimley diabeetus,” Matt says, Brimleyesque.

“That’s ‘cause I eat my oatmeal,” Mr. Steiger says in his own spot-on Wilford Brimley impression. Matt is definitely his father’s son. “I’ll be home for dinner. Bye, kids.”

“Working on a major holiday?” I say to Matt. “That blows.”

“Such is the thrilling life of a certified public accountant at the start of tax season,” Matt says. “Anyway, back to our business: when do we have to be at Protectorate HQ?”

“Mindforce said eight if we can make it,” I say, “but we’re not going to be tested there. They’re going to take us to the Quantum Compound out in —”

“The Quantum Compound? For real? Awesome!”

“Yeah, that’s about the reaction I expected,” Sara says. She slaps down a Dark Ritual and then a Feeding Frenzy. “Target creature loses X power and X toughness for every zombie I have in play, which is ten.”

“And I...crap, I die,” I say, and I toss my very dead Killer Bees into my discard pile.

“I hate your zombie deck,” Missy says.

“We all hate her zombie deck,” Stuart says.

“Which is why I love my zombie deck,” Sara says. “My zombie deck feeds on your hate.”

“Is Doc Quantum going to be there?” Matt says. “Is Doc Quantum going to test us personally?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know, and it’s your turn,” I say.

“Would I look like a huge fanboy if I asked Doc Quantum to autograph my copy of
Discover
with her on the cover?”

“Probably,” Sara says. “C’mon, play your turn so I can kill you horribly.”

“Should we dress up? I mean, like, in our costumes?”

“You shouldn’t, your costume sucks,” Stuart says. “Will you pay attention to the game?”

Alas, the game is a lost cause; Matt has shifted into full-tilt super-hero geek mode. There is no coming back.

He’s still geeking out the next morning when we converge on the Protectorate’s office on Main Street (however, in an impressive show of restraint, he did not bring his magazine for autographing purposes).

Natalie is there to let us in and escort us to HQ via the Wonkavator, which I’ve decided is the official name for the Protectorate’s secret subway elevator mash-up thingy. Natalie is in her full Nina Nitro regalia, which prompts me to ask, “Should we change into our costumes for this?”

She shrugs. “Your call. The Quantums are cool — you don’t have to worry about secret identities around them, but if you’re more comfortable putting on the outfits, go ahead.”

Matt, eager to impress, suggests we go in costume. I hate to say it, but I’m with him. The Quantum Quintet is one of the top super-teams in the country, and showing up in street clothes feels...I don’t know. Unprofessional, I guess.

We change after we get to HQ. I step out of the bathroom, all super-heroed up, and Matt’s face drops. I totally forgot, he doesn’t know about the new costume.

“Where’d you get that?”

Natalie — I mean, Nina (she’s on-duty now) — answers for me. “Looking sharp there, kiddo,” she says. “Looks like it fits perfectly. Concorde thought it would be too small, but what does he know about women’s clothing sizes?”

“Concorde gave that to you?”

“It was a group gift,” I say, which doesn’t help. “It came with the transponder goggles,” I add, but it’s way too little, way too late. Matt glances down at his sad quote-unquote super-hero outfit, the BMX facemask-and-trench coat combo we’ve told him so many times looks lamety-lame-lame, and I swear he’s one step away from stripping naked in front of everyone. The others are less put out, thankfully; I can handle only so much guilt at a whack.

“That’s how cool I want to look,” Sara says.

“That’s how cool I already look,” Stuart says, striking a pose in his sleeveless leather vest (which, honestly, isn’t that much better than Matt’s get-up, but I don’t have the heart to say it).

“Mm, almost. You need something better than the shades.”

“Yeah, maybe. But it’d be a crime to hide this handsome face from the world.”

Concorde and Mindforce are waiting for us at the Pelican landing pad behind HQ. Concorde steers me away from the airship, closes the rest of the team in, and slaps the cockpit window. Mindforce flashes a thumbs-up before firing up the Pelican. A low-frequency note, the hum of its maglev system, ripples through me as the ship lifts off.

“You’ve been going up a lot,” Concorde says. There’s nothing judgmental in his tone, but everything he says to me feels disapproving.

“How do you know that?”

He taps my goggles. “Our systems record your flight activity.”

“You’re tracking me?”

“Don’t take it personally. My activity’s logged too, as is every registered flyer’s. It’s all part of doing business.” He doesn’t explain further. “Right. Time for your first test. Show me what you got.”

“What do you mean?”

Concorde activates his suit. “Let’s race.”

THREE

I follow Concorde into the sky. We climb higher, higher. I steal a glance at the ground beneath me. Fine details become patches of texture and color, and those merge to become large blocks of muted greens and grays and browns. God, I love that.

My headset’s heads-up display ticks off our altitude. Five thousand feet. We punch through the ceiling of dark clouds. Ten thousand feet. Fifteen thousand. Twenty thousand. We’re in commercial airplane territory now. The sky is crystal blue, like the waters of a Caribbean beach. It’s gorgeous up here.

“How are you doing?” Concorde asks.

“Fine. How much higher are we going?”

Concorde stops. “Here should be good.”

Here
is 29,853 feet above sea level. Holy crap. Have I ever been this high before?

Concorde is staring at me. “What?” I say.

“You think you’re good to go?”

“Yeah, sure. Ready when you are.”

“Then try to keep up,” Concorde says, and off he goes. He breaks the sound barrier almost immediately.

I hit mach one immediately, no
almost
about it. I catch up to him within seconds. He lets me keep pace for a little while, then races away. My display switches from measuring my speed in miles per hour to increments of mach — as in, I am moving at M1.5 and rising. The display reads M2 when I catch up to Concorde. He pulls away again. I match him again at M3.

“Still okay?” he says.

“Fine and dandy.”

He grunts. “We’re almost there. Let’s take it down.”

We descend. My headset tells us we’re in (or rather, above) Stockbridge. By car, the trip would take more than two hours, and that’s in favorable traffic. We’ve been in the air less than ten minutes.

“Quantum Compound, this is Concorde, on final approach, ETA one minute.”

A woman responds. “Copy that. Someone will meet you on the pad.”

“Copy that.”

We zero in on a sprawling facility in the middle of a heavily wooded slope overlooking the town of Stockbridge. From above, it looks like a flying saucer parked atop a small industrial park. A circular landing pad marked with bright yellow paint, a giant bull’s-eye, sits at one corner of the complex.