School for Sidekicks (32 page)

“I can't believe I'm sitting with you losers,” she said finally.

“So, don't,” snapped NightHowl. “Go find yourself a place at the borderline-psychos table.”

Burnish clenched one copper-colored fist. “I am so going to enjoy beating the living daylights out of you at some point, 'Howl.”

I found myself rubbing my forehead. “Could we save all the posturing for some other time? We've got much more important things to worry about.”

“Like what?” demanded Blurshift. “Foxman was right. There's nothing we can do with all the stuff we learned that won't make things worse. It's too much for us.”

“Don't you think people should know about the aliens and the Hero Bomb? Or why it's so easy for Hoods to bust out of jail?” I asked.

“No.” Blindmark spoke for the first time, his voice flat and angry. “Are you any happier for knowing all that stuff, Evan? Knowing it, and knowing that there's nothing you can do about it? Because I'm sure not any happier. “

I looked down at my plate. He had a point. I
wasn't
any happier. Things were all screwed up and I had no idea what to do about any of it. I shook my head. “I guess not.”

Blindmark picked up his tray—he hadn't touched the main dish. “See you around.” He walked away.

“I'm out of here, too,” said Blurshift. “It's been fun, but not really worth it.”

Emberdown followed. “Next time you have a smart idea about breaking into a top-secret OSIRIS facility, leave me out of it, Quick. One pointless, potential black mark on my record is more than enough.”

Burnish shook her head, but she got up, too. “Later, losers. I'm glad we did it, and I'm glad I know. I've always known my dad was a rat, and it's nice to know just how big of one, but, well, I don't actually like any of you. Look me up if you learn anything new or if you want to try cracking more of the system. Otherwise, expect me to push your face in if you get in my space.”

I looked at NightHowl and Speedslick. “You two gonna bail on me as well?”

'Howl shrugged. “Nah. Interesting stuff seems to happen around you. I like interesting.”

Speedslick leaned over and punched my shoulder companionably, but didn't say anything. I looked down at my plate again, but for a different reason this time. I'd never really had friends before, and I was actually a little choked up about having them now.

*   *   *

It was weird, considering that I knew the answers to some of the biggest mysteries in the Mask world, but things kind of settled into a routine over the next couple of weeks. You can only worry about invading aliens and possibly villainous time-traveling Masks from the future for so long before it becomes just another thing you know and have to deal with.

In the short term, it didn't matter nearly as much as doing well in my classes and internship, or hanging with my newfound friends, or trying to repair my relationship with my parents—I was now spending Sunday and Monday nights at home.

I didn't tell my parents about the aliens or Backflash and the Hero Bomb either. It would only have made them worry about me and my future even more. It was weird having such a big secret from my parents, but after the huge blowup when I became a Mask I didn't want to put any more strain on them.

Things
definitely
weren't back to normal there. My mother kept looking at me worriedly whenever I turned away, and my dad … Well, it was like someone had flipped a switch. Before our dinner with Foxman, he'd been angry with OSIRIS and with me. After? Well, he never said it where my mom could hear him, but I think he was secretly proud to have a Mask in the family.

Things with Foxman continued pretty much the same way as they had from day one. He drank tons of MaskerAde, stayed awake, and ran around like a maniac for days at a time, then sugar crashed and slept the clock around. On the days he was awake we snuck out and busted ordinary criminals and the occasional minor Hood. In addition to the Fromagier, we took down the Rugsucker, Master Mosquito, Chinchilla, and the Haberdasher. Rand actually felt pretty bad about that last one, since he'd gone to private school with the guy. He told me the Haberdasher's real name was Michael Damian, or something like that, and he insisted we offer him a running start.

I spent hours and hours learning all the Foxgear because Rand wanted me to be able to operate every last bit of equipment, or at least all of it that would work for anyone that wasn't him. Even at 32 percent efficiency, things like the Foxblaster packed a heck of a wallop, and he didn't want me caught off guard if I had to use them. He also made me a set of cybernetically augmented Meerkat armor.

I was no technokinetic, so it couldn't do nearly as much as his did. No flying, no built-in sonic blaster, no cutting lasers. But it did give me about six hundred pounds of hyper-dense poly-ceramic armor, and enough of a strength boost to move around with it on when my own superstrength–lite happened to be working properly.

I wasn't nearly as agile as I was in my normal suit, and that didn't thrill me. Also, if my metamuscles cut out on me while I had the armor on, it pretty much turned me into the world's fanciest turtle. That wasn't any fun at all and it happened more than once. But I kept at it. After catching a direct blast in the face from Spartanicus without any protection and spending the next week in a cocoon, the idea of armor that could soak up the worst of that kind of damage had real appeal.

I actually spent a lot of time thinking about Spartanicus. Mostly because reports about him and his little band of Hoods kept popping up on the Foxsnooper—both on regular law enforcement bands and the secret OSIRIS scrambled channels. The latter were especially tantalizing, as they included the occasional eyes-on report.

It was clear Spartanicus was planning something big, but nobody seemed to know what. Sometimes, though, I felt like I was the only one who cared. When I mentioned it to Minute Man, he shrugged and said, “Spartanicus is always planning something big. It's what he does.” Foxman actually seemed to semi-admire his old adversary and told me, “It's probably another plot to kill Captain Commanding. The man's obsessed. And, frankly, more power to him. I won't kill Captain Commanding, but I'll sure pay for an open bar and a dance band at the funeral.”

I couldn't let it go that easily. Spartanicus scared me. There's something about having someone kill you that really leaves an impression. So I paid special attention to those reports, and I started putting together an electronic chart with all the sightings and news linked together by little lines of light and hypertexted to summaries of the reports. I kept it on the new secure laptop Foxman built for me. It had a secret second drive and operating system that tied directly into Denmother and the Foxservers.

That's pretty much where things sat as the days ticked slowly by. Well, right up until the morning of Metamorphosis Day, when everything went kablooie.

M-Day started like most school mornings, with all of us kids slouching off to the cafeteria for breakfast. That's where the normal ended though, because we weren't alone. The Masks and Hoods had already started to arrive. We'd known to expect them, of course. But being told that every Mask and most Hoods were coming your way was entirely different from seeing Sprintcess Speed having a quiet cup of coffee in your lunchroom with Minute Man and the Haberdasher.

“I thought you said that you and Foxman caught him,” Speedslick whispered to me, as I pointed out the Haberdasher.

“We did, I don't know what he's doing here.”

NightHowl joined us then. “I asked Mike about that, because the Manchurian Mambo's right over there,” she pointed. “He was arrested two days ago in my hometown. Even knowing what we do, I didn't think metamaxes were quite that easy to get out of.”

“What did Mike say?” I asked.

“Any Hood who asks for an M-Day release in order to come up for the ceremony will probably get one. The main exceptions are the genuine psychopaths—Hoods like Cannibal Carnie who can't be trusted outside of a padded cell without a muzzle and leash.”

“Isn't he the guy who tried to bite off Captain Commanding's ear a couple years ago?” asked Speedslick.

“That's him,” said 'Howl.

“I wonder who all will be here?” I said as my inner Mask nerd realized it had died and gone to heaven.

“Everybody,” said Burnish, who had slipped up behind us without any of us noticing. “That's the point, mushbrain.”

I barely noticed the insult, as I was too busy mentally ticking names off my big list of Masks and Hoods. I felt like a bird watcher who realizes they're about to knock off most of their life list in a single morning. I insisted we move to one of the tables along a wall facing the door so I could see everyone come in.

After breakfast, the others got bored, but I wasn't going anywhere for anything. Not even when we had the whole day off to do whatever we liked. Nope. I settled in for the
long
haul. The memorial happened at four, and I wasn't planning on moving one minute before I had to.

At least, that was my initial plan, but when the lunch crowd came in, I realized something. There were a
lot
of missing Hoods. Hoods that I knew were in prison, either from my hours with the Foxsnooper, or from the time I spent noodling around on Mask sites on the Web. At first, that didn't seem too odd even with the release day. Prison, after all. But I couldn't help but notice that it was disproportionately the smarter and more powerful Hoods who were missing. Something about that bothered me.

I decided I'd better go see what I could find out. There were a ton of strangers in the halls of the AMO. Well, strangers in the sense of being people I didn't personally know, though I recognized most of the uniforms. The more I wandered the school, the more certain I became that a lot of important Hoods were missing. High on that list were Spartanicus and his crew.

I would have liked to talk with Mike about it, but he'd left the lunchroom before I had and he wasn't in his office or anywhere else I could find him. I eventually headed back to my dorm to see if Denmother might be able to help out. The room was empty when I arrived, so I grabbed my laptop and hopped onto my bunk where I typed in a quick query about meta traffic through OSIRIS headquarters.

Denmother told me that the information I wanted was restricted and that it would take several minutes for her to attempt to retrieve it for me. As I was waiting, Speedslick came in swearing.

“What's up?” I asked.

“Spilled soda all over my best uniform,” he said disgustedly. “I need to change back into civvies while I clean it up.” He started yanking on his shoulder tabs.

He was about half peeled out of his shirt when the holographic projector on my laptop blinked on, putting a glowing, translucent Foxman in the center of the room.

“Evan, I noticed that subroutine you had Denmother running and took a look myself. There's something hinky about the footage I'm getting out of OSIRIS's security camera system. That worries me. I wonder if you'd be willing to nab a ride down on one of the returning transport shells and walk around in front of a couple of the cameras for me. I'd do it myself, but I can make adjustments to the tap line program much better from this end where I have direct access to Denmother. Besides, if I go in and don't get directly on the first available shell, people are likely to take notice—given my ambiguous security clearance status.”

“Uh, sure, I guess. Won't anybody notice me shuttling down?”

“Not today. There are only a half-dozen shells for the gravitometric accelerator transport system. With all the traffic going up, they're going to be cycling as fast as the system will let them fire the empties back to Earth. Just hop into one as it unloads a pile of metas. You won't even need to use your ring for travel authorization. And as long as you don't go beyond the transport depot, nobody will pay any attention to one more uniform going up for the M-Day memorial either when you come back.”

“
Two
more uniforms.” Speedslick blurred out of his good uniform and into a ratty-looking older one. “That sounds way more interesting than hanging around here with all the geezeroids complaining about how we don't measure up to the old standards.”

Foxman's projected figure turned its head. “You must be Speedslick. I do wish Evan had mentioned he wasn't alone
before
I blabbed about illegal taps into OSIRIS's systems. Bad form, Meerkat. However, since he didn't, I might as well get the best use out of you. With two of you and your speed powers, I should be able to calibrate off multiple cameras simultaneously. That'll give me a much better read on the data. Now, get moving, I don't like that I can't trust what I'm seeing out of OSIRIS.”

A few minutes later, Jeda and I were slipping quietly along one of the utility access halls on our way to the transport station. One big benefit of our efforts to map the station was that we knew more about its back ways than probably anybody but Backflash and the aliens who built it. The plan was to hide out on the utility side of the ventilation grill just across from the transport arrival platform. We could wait there until a likely shell came along. We were about to round the last corner before climbing into the ductwork when I heard a couple of girls' voices ahead.

The first sounded angry and maybe a little scared. “I have well and truly had it with you, Burnish. Let's settle this.”

“If that's really the way you want it, 'Howl, I'm not going to keep saying no.” Burnish seemed more resigned than pissed off, though, which struck me as really strange. “But remember when you're in traction that it was your idea to meet me here for a callout.”

“We'd better stop them,” Jeda whispered. “'Howl's my friend and way tough, but Burnish will tear her to pieces.”