Super: Origins (32 page)

Lou smiled. “I remember her calling out to me from the kitchen, asking if I liked tea. Of course I said yes, even though I’m not a big fan, and the next thing I knew, she handed me a cup and told me to be careful because it was hot. As I grabbed it, I could feel her hand in mine for a second, and then something else. I didn't know how much they kept an eye on you all, but I did remember being suspicious when we found some camera equipment as we worked on repairing an inner wall, so I figured there was probably a good reason for what she did. I thanked her, went away drinking my tea, and slipped the paper into my pocket as I stuck my hand in there, hoping it looked like I was doing it because I was cold.”

“What I'd asked him was to meet me at this bar the following Friday,” Casey continued, with a smile at Lou. “So, being that it was early in the week, I had a lot of time to worry about whether he would or not, and figured that he probably wouldn't. The next day, though, when I saw Lou, the first thing he did was to smile and nod. I was hoping it meant what I thought it did.”

“I waited until I got home to get the piece of paper out of my pocket,” Lou added. “When I saw what she wanted I nearly cheered, and I tried to let her know the next day that I’d be there.”

“I’d asked him to meet me here at 8, so I dressed up and came out. I remember how nervous I felt, and how foolish, thinking that he probably wouldn’t come, but when I got here and walked in, he’d already gotten a table.”

“Didn’t want you to get here early and think I wasn’t coming,” Lou said with another smile at Casey.

Casey smiled back and then looked at Lex again. “We’ve been together ever since.”

Lex couldn't help smiling at the two of them as well. “That's a great story.”

“Well, I think you're one of the first people we've had a chance to tell it to,” Casey replied with a rueful shake of her head.

Lou shrugged as if to say life’s just like that sometimes, and then turned to Lex. “Tell me about yourself. Casey’s only mentioned a couple of things, and then told me she wanted me to meet you since you’re friends. So, you're a local girl?”

Lex launched into the story of her past and a little about her family. After that, the conversation went in many different directions, including more about Lou's background, the construction industry in DC, the difficult business climate in general, politics, and the unending wars, among other things. Finally, after turning to buy another round, Lex noticed that the clock over the bar said it was getting late. She turned back to the table apologetically.

“I've really loved meeting you, Lou, and hanging out with the two of you, but I should be getting back. I have some work I need to do tomorrow before we go out with Serena. I'll call a cab—”

Lou shook his head. “I drove, so I can drop you off along the way.”

Lex looked at Casey and Lou in turn. “Is that OK?”

Casey nodded, looking back at Lou. “We'll just have to make sure to drop her a few blocks away.”

“Are you sure that's going to work? This isn't a great neighborhood,” Lou replied, gazing back at Casey.

“I may be a lot smaller than the two of you, but I can take care of myself,” Lex interjected.

Casey nodded at Lou and he shrugged in return but didn't argue. Lex had been surprised to see when they all got up that Lou stood about a head taller than Casey, who Lex was certain stood around seven feet tall. The three of them left the bar and got into a heavy-looking truck outside, Lex getting into the tiny back seat. The evening had gotten brighter and a bit colder and the moon had risen, shining brightly and nearly full. Lex amused herself by gluing her head to the side window and trying to identify constellations overhead as her companions spoke softly in the front. After a few minutes, they stopped and Casey got out to let Lex onto the sidewalk. Lex shook Lou's hand again before jumping out of his truck.

Lex nodded once she stood in front of Casey on the sidewalk. She smiled up at her big friend, who returned it with a grin.

“I had fun tonight,” Lex said, moving to hug Casey. “You look very happy. I think you two make a great match.”

“Thanks, Lex,” Casey said as she pulled back. “Keep an eye out going home, but no one should bother you from here. I'm glad you could come out.”

Lex waved at the two of them from the sidewalk, then turned before their taillights disappeared. She looked up at the moon for another moment, and then walked the few short blocks back to headquarters without incident.

The figures in black surrounded her. For some reason, however, they didn't pay her any attention. Lex looked down at her arms, which seemed visible to her. She gazed back up at the vaguely human-looking figures, trying to see what she might be able to tell about them, but they didn't have individual faces that she could discern, or any way to tell one from the other. They almost seemed to be shadows that had gone missing from their owners.

Lex noticed then that they seemed to be hard at work. All of them stood in some sort of darkened tunnel and they seemed to be disassembling everything and recreating it. Examining it more closely, Lex felt the wall of the tunnel away from the figures, and noticed that it was soft, pulsing periodically as if alive. She moved through the area where the figures worked, walking through some of them as if either they or she were ghosts, and examined what they’d done. The rebuilt section of tunnel felt more unyielding, oddly plastic-like with a strange, artificial smell. It still pulsed, but she could feel it more weakly, as if it had been damaged as a result of the rebuilding.

Lex sat up suddenly in bed with a gasp, her mouth tasting of dust. She saw only darkness, and a look at her clock told her it was now after two in the morning. She became aware that she felt afraid, but couldn’t figure why. Trying to settle back into sleep, Lex realized to her distress that this sort of thing had become more common. Her dreams used to be something she could understand and draw guidance from, but lately they’d become scarier and murkier. Closing her eyes and reminding herself that she had to get some rest to work with Riss and go out with Casey and Serena later that day, Lex went back to sleep, having several more familiar dreams that felt no more comfortable, where Kurt turned away and left her again and again.

Chapter 13: Deeper

Lex's time settled quickly into a routine, despite the fact that she'd only had her job several weeks. She generally worked with Mr. Chen every day during the week, but she'd also been devoting a couple of afternoons a week as well as a number of hours on the weekends to working with Riss. Also, since she'd had the terrible migraine, the doctors had demanded a few hours a week to run tests on her. Additionally she’d continued work reviewing the strategy texts she’d been given, and had begun to pull together some ideas for her paper. On the weekends Lex could leave the building, she usually went out with Casey or with Casey and Serena at least once.

Everything seemed to be going well, but despite all of that, Lex felt uneasy and restless. Her dream world used to be something she could depend on for support and guidance, but now her dreams seemed inaccessible and frightening. She could remember one dream in particular where she stood in a grey mist and then started walking to try to find something, anything, only to see more mist everywhere. Lex had woken up that day with a sneeze, surrounded by the smell of dust, which seemed a constant in her room no matter what she tried to keep it at bay. She’d also felt oppressed by how infrequently she’d been able to get out into the natural world, one outing to Rock Creek Park every two weeks not being really enough. Lex had begun waking up early so she could get to the roof to watch the sunrise and at least see out over the river, but to her frustration she found the roof access inexplicably locked half the time.

After working together with Riss for over a month, the two of them had made it approximately halfway through their building inventory. Lex had pulled a document together outlining the computer security strategy Riss had planned, but since the inventory and the strategy needed to be presented together, she’d held onto it. She’d ordered and received the sniffing tools Riss wanted, and they’d found out as a consequence that a number of seemingly unauthorized outside machines had been accessing the network, which Lex duly noted. She found she liked working with Riss, the two of them comfortably silent for the most part, except when asking for or calling out information, but Lex had managed to draw Riss out a bit on a few occasions, and as a result worried that Riss spent too much time alone.

She thought about it for a while one day, coming up with several ideas that she dismissed, and finally one that she liked but that she’d need cooperation for. Later that day, when she and Casey were eating dinner, sitting opposite one another at the kitchen island, Lex asked, “Casey, would you mind if I invited Riss to eat with us sometimes?”

Casey happened to be chewing some pasta salad at that moment, but Lex could almost see her friend considering the question, and Casey answered once she’d swallowed her bite of food. “No. I'd like to have a chance to get to know her. Do you think she'll go for it?”

Shrugging, Lex replied, “I don't know. I figure I might be able to get her to agree after a while, though, if I keep asking.”

“Sounds good. I'd look forward to talking with her,” Casey said with a nod.

So the next afternoon, after Riss and Lex had finished their work together for the day and were climbing the stairs from the lower levels, Lex asked Riss if she would like to join the two of them for dinner.

“It's Casey's turn to cook today, and she's much better at it than I am. She said she was going to make her vegan lasagna today. I've only had it once, but I'm dying to eat it again.”

Riss turned to her for a moment, the skepticism clear on her face. “How would you make vegan lasagna?”

Lex shrugged. “I don’t know what the recipe is, but I'm sure you could get it from Casey. All I know is that once I had it, it seemed like all of the other lasagna I'd ever tasted paled in comparison. You'll like it, trust me.”

Pausing for a moment on a landing, Riss looked down at her hands. Lex knew that Riss was thinking and waited, gripping the cold metal stair rail to ground herself as she waited for an answer. After a few moments, Riss looked back at Lex with an odd expression, and then almost immediately looked away.

“I don't think so, Lex. I've got a lot of other stuff to do.”

“OK. Another time, then.” Lex didn't state it as a question.

Riss nodded, and Lex felt inwardly celebratory, considering Riss had actually agreed to join them sometime later.
Maybe I'll break her down yet
, Lex thought, inwardly smiling and resolved to ask again the following week.

However, the following week, on the first day she and Riss usually worked together, Lex was awakened in the middle of her sleep cycle by a strange noise. As she sat up on her futon, Lex tried to place it. It sounded like some sort of alarm or siren, and seemed to be coming from outside her room. Slowly getting out of bed, since the clock had reached sometime after three in the morning, Lex stepped into her slippers and grabbed her robe from the closet.

Lex sleepily poked her head out of her door to see Joan in the hallway, hurrying towards the stairs. She cleared her throat before calling out to get the other woman's attention.

“Joan? What's going on?”

Joan stopped for a moment to stare at Lex. “Don't you know? They're sending us out on a job. That's what the alarm’s for. Get suited and get to the situation room as fast as you can.”

“Situation room? Where's that again?” Lex asked, trying to stifle a yawn.

“Three doors down, on your side of the hall,” Joan said, with a look that seemed to say “Don't you know
anything
?” before she disappeared down the stairs. Still staring at the spot where Joan had been standing, Lex broke her reverie when Casey's door opened shortly afterwards. Lex looked to her right to see Casey picking up a dark bundle off the floor. The taller woman smiled at her, and then gazed at the t-shirt Lex wore with a raised eyebrow.

“Who's that?”

Lex looked down at her shirt to remind herself what she’d worn to bed. She grinned as she saw the picture of a broad-shouldered shirtless man with a sword in one hand, back turned. The play of light and shadow in the picture seemed to highlight the man’s tribal tattoos, especially the two dark fangs that ran beside his spine. His blood red hair hung loose over well-muscled shoulders. “That's a character from one of the animes I follow. I have a terrible crush on him.”

“Well, at least you got to sleep with him all over you last night,” Casey said with a smirk. “Come on, we've got to get dressed and get going.”

“Do you know what's going on?” Lex asked, her eyes searching the floor and finding a bundle next to her door as well. She picked it up and the boots that stood beside it and looked back up at Casey expectantly.

Casey was shaking her head. “No, but we'll find out soon enough. See you down the hall in a few.”

Lex went back into her room and shook the bundle out. It turned out to be a jumpsuit of some sort of heavy, black material, the color only broken at the shoulders by a wide stripe of bright green. She washed quickly, then dressed and made her way to the situation room, still trying to clear out the sleepy fog in her mind.

Realizing she'd never been in that particular room before as her hand reached the knob, Lex pushed the door open and walked inside. Casey and Riss had already arrived, sitting in chairs around a large conference table, Riss with her head in her hand, looking as if she was trying to rub the sleep away. Lex waved hello to both of them as she crossed the room to a small table in the back. Rummaging through the items there, she found a tea bag (with pretty inferior tea), figured out which carafe held hot water, and carried the resulting cup and a donut with her to the table. She wondered how anyone could live on such a poor excuse for food, but didn't see any point in complaining since she knew she couldn’t function without tea or anything to eat.