Infiltration (16 page)

Clearly frustrated at how her initial lead started diminishing, Vestibule stared at Actinic to see what he was doing. She obviously didn’t understand what was happening because — apparently thinking the answer was merely volume — she scooped up an armful of balls of various colors and dumped them into her container. Her score immediately decreased by double digits. Vestibule looked like she wanted to cry.

When the buzzer finally went off, signaling the end of the competition, the score was a lopsided 89-to-13, in favor of Actinic. However, following the exit of the competitors from the glass room, there was a heated exchange between Vestibule, some of her handlers, and the competition judges.

Actinic, obviously perplexed, simply stood to the side, enjoying the massive cheers and adoration of the crowd while those in charge tried to sort out whatever issues had arisen. After several minutes of debate, one of the judges came over and had a conversation with him. Actinic didn’t seem happy about what he was being told, but in the end he simply nodded, a little stone-faced, and shook the hand of the judge who had been talking to him. The crowd, overwhelmingly behind Actinic, could sense that something was wrong and started booing and making catcalls.

Shortly thereafter, the judges called for silence, but had to wait a few minutes for things to settle down. Then they announced that — although the rules stated that the highest point total would win — the spirit of the competition was that the highest number of actual gold balls should determine the winner. That being the case, Vestibule had prevailed.

Personally, I didn’t need to hear any more. I thought Actinic had done fantastic; it was exactly the kind of thinking and ingenuity that made someone a super worthy of the name. Moreover, he was accepting the loss (actually, being stripped, in my opinion) with good grace.

Followed by my friends, I quickly stepped down to the gym floor and over to Actinic.

“Congrats!” I said. “That was great!”

“Yeah,” Smokey added. “You’re the
real
winner here.”

Sarah and Electra added their congratulations to ours, and kissed him on the cheeks.

“Thanks, guys,” Actinic said, blushing.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to say more than that because much of the crowd, following in our footsteps, had left the bleachers and come over to congratulate Actinic as well. Smokey, Sarah, Electra, and I remained in a tight formation, but were collectively pushed away from him. Sensing that there was nothing more to say here (and noting that I had to get to my own event soon), I teleported the four of us away.

Chapter 18

We popped up at a local shipping port, the site of the competition between me and Dynamo. I had actually been here several times before to pick up some equipment with Braintrust, so I was fairly familiar with the place. In teleporting Electra and our friends here, I had simply assumed that they’d want to be present to support me. Now that we had arrived, it suddenly occurred to me that I should have queried them about it first.

“Are you kidding?” Sarah asked, pooh-poohing my concerns. “Of course we want to be here!”

“Yeah, man,” Smokey added. “I mean, you and Dynamo? This is what everybody’s been waiting for.”

It wasn’t exactly what
I
had been waiting for, but I didn’t need to hash out my concerns with anyone again. Time to just get this thing over with.

I had made us appear near the port’s main office. At the moment, most of the action was centered on an open area near one of the piers, where quite a number of cameras and lights were set up. In fact, with it being dark outside, almost the entire pier was lit up, like some deity was shining a celestial flashlight on it.

For all I knew, however, maybe it was like this all the time. This was, in fact, one of the largest and busiest ports in the country. Thousands of shipping containers — as much as forty feet in length and filled with all kinds of goods — were shipped in and out of here like clockwork twenty-four hours per day. In fact, there were thousands of them stacked atop each other all over the place — as high as small buildings in some places.

Looming overhead and spread out along the pier were at least half a dozen gigantic port cranes. I could also see lots of other equipment nearby: forklifts, toploaders, reach stackers, and more. There were also railroad tracks that led in and out of the area.

All in all, the place looked like it was far too busy to have time to host the kind of affair we were here for.

“We’re going to head on over,” Smokey said, pointing towards the area with the lights and cameras. I nodded, noting not only that there were numerous television technicians hanging around, but — as with some of the earlier events — hundreds (maybe even thousands) of spectators present. Moreover, I could make out Sylvia Gossett and Dynamo standing in the midst of the cameras, apparently waiting on me. I took a deep breath, then teleported to where they were.

Sylvia was going through some kind of sound check when I popped up, while Dynamo merely stood nearby, just idling. I hadn’t spent a lot of time in his presence, but was definitely acquainted with him. Tall, muscular, and with a noble bearing, he fit the super-strong hero archetype to a
T
.

Glancing at the spectators, I noticed for the first time that there were actually pedestrian crowd control barriers in place to keep them back, along with armed security. Presumably the steel, gate-like barriers were there for the fans’ own safety — something to keep them out of the field of play when this bout between Dynamo and me was underway. Nearby, as at events I’d seen earlier in the day, huge screens had been set up to allow those assembled to follow the action.

A second or so after I appeared, the crowd noise began to die down. Sylvia, noting the change in ambient sound, looked around and finally spied me — just as the spectators broke out into a booming cheer…for
me
. They were actually cheering for
me
.

I couldn’t help but grin slightly at that. I raised my hand and gave the crowd a friendly wave. The cheers sounded even louder.

If he was at all surprised that I didn’t look like myself, Dynamo didn’t show it. He wandered over to shake my hand, smiling. “About time you showed up.”

I reached out empathically, trying to tell if Dynamo had been speaking jovially or in irritation, but he was a jumble of conflicting emotions: excitement, annoyance, hope, dread. He was like a groom on his wedding day. That being the case, I couldn’t get a read in terms of which emotions were actually reserved for me as opposed to anything else that might be going on.

He didn’t immediately release my hand, and I thought for a second he was going to try to give it an extra hard squeeze — something you occasionally experience with jerks who have above-average strength (and often self-esteem problems) and a compulsion to project their own superiority. But when that didn’t happen, I quickly reassessed and — noting that he had his other hand raised and was looking at the crowd rather than me — realized that he was priming me for a photo op. (The thousand-watt flashbulbs that started going off were also a clue.)

“Smile,” Dynamo said between clenched teeth as he waved. “You look like someone just made you drink out of a toilet.”

I half-snickered at that, and then just mimicked him, smiling and waving as the light from numerous camera flashes washed over us.

After about twenty seconds, he released my hand and we took a step back from each other. At that moment, Sylvia stepped between us, grinning and holding a microphone.

“You took your time,” she muttered in my direction. “Could you have gotten here any later?”

She didn’t wait for the smart-aleck reply that she probably knew was coming. Instead, she flicked on the microphone and began talking.

“Thanks for staying with us, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for your generous donations up to this point,” she said. “We’ve now come to the final event of the evening…”

Sylvia then launched into a well-prepared, two-minute spiel about Dynamo and me being gifted individuals with fierce competitive spirits, humble natures, blah, blah, blah. I tuned most of it out, but thankfully remembered to wave when my name was mentioned as they called Dynamo and me forward to start the competition.

The contest between us wasn’t particularly complicated. Hidden all around the port were twenty specially-minted silver coins — ten for Dynamo and ten for me. We were each given a tracker that would lead us to the first of our respective coins. After retrieving the first coin, we were to head over to the port’s rail yard, where two modified train engines sat on parallel tracks.

At the back of each train engine was a coin slot at about eye level. We were then to deposit our coins in the slot of our designated train engine, which would cause the locomotive to start moving. Depositing the coin would also trigger the tracker to show the location of the second coin, which we would subject to the same procedure — as well as the third, fourth, and so on until we had found all ten of our respective coins. And with each coin deposited, the train engines would move further and faster down their respective tracks. The first to deposit all ten coins would win.

Obviously, any edge in this competition would probably come from the ability to get from Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time — a piece of cake for a teleporter. I was amused (and almost insulted) that they’d selected this as a “contest” for me. Then again, I’m sure Vestibule felt a little cocky before her event, and only a strict interpretation of the rules had saved her bacon. Maybe there was more here than met the eye.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any time to try to figure out what the angle might be, because a few seconds later, they handed us our trackers and then the start gun fired.

Dynamo and I flicked on our trackers. A digital map appeared, set up along the contours of a directional grid with
North
,
South
,
East
and
West
marked. A red dot appeared on the map, obviously indicating the location of the first coin.

Dynamo and I began moving out at almost the same time, although in different directions. Like a lot of supers with enhanced strength, he was far faster than a normal person. However, I’d never seen any indication that he was as fast as a true speedster, so I didn’t really have a lot of worries.

I shifted into super speed and took off. As I began to move, the map grid shifted as well, like a compass. Following the direction indicated by the tracker, I soon found myself among the stacks of shipping containers.

As I had previously noted, almost the entire port was lit up, like someone had plugged in a two-billion watt bulb overhead. I soon found out at least part of the reason for this: the whole place was practically littered with cameras. Some were strung on lines overhead, others were affixed atop shipping containers, and still more were set up at ground level.

It made sense, of course. This match between me and Dynamo was taking place live. With that in mind, they obviously needed footage of what we were doing to keep everyone who was watching — whether they were couch potatoes following the action at home or part of the crowd viewing everything on nearby jumbo screens — engaged.

I put the cameras out of my mind and focused on the tracker, which led me to a narrow opening between two containers. It was only about six inches wide, and thus far too tight for me to even shimmy into sideways in my current state.

I phased the two containers, making them insubstantial, and simply walked down the narrow corridor (if it could be called such). When I reached the point where the tracker said the coin was, I looked down; there was nothing there.

I looked at the tracker again and confirmed that I was in the right spot.

Hmmm… Maybe they buried it?

The ground in this area was actually concrete and none of it looked fresh or new, but I squatted down anyway and closed my eyes, concentrating. I focused on making my hand insubstantial enough to pass through physical matter, but solid enough to feel anything it might encounter. When I felt my hand was properly phased, I swept it back and forth through the ground. I could feel rebar, bottle caps and a mishmash of other items, but no coin.

I stood up and looked at the tracker again. There was no doubt I was in the right spot, but maybe… I rubbed my chin in thought.

The tracker was only capable of showing location in two dimensions, like a sheet of paper that only has length and width. If you lay an object — say, a coin — directly on the paper, you can pinpoint its location just using length and width. (For example, it might be resting on the paper five inches from the top and two inches from the left side.)

However, if you place the coin beneath the paper, you’ll need another dimension — depth — to figure out exactly where it is. Likewise, if the coin is above the paper, it might cast a shadow down, giving you a two-dimensional hint of where it’s located, but you still need a third dimension (height) to figure out exactly where the coin itself is.

I looked up. There, stuck to the side of one of the containers with clear packing tape, was the first coin. Of course, I had phased it along with the rest of the container, but it took a nanosecond to make it solid again, and it dropped down into my open palm.