Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (30 page)

“Crash. Megaton,” he acknowledged.

Jamal kicked down his bike-stand as I peeled myself off the back. “Have they landed yet?”

“They have.” He pointed out to the field, where a twin-engine business jet was taxiing toward the terminal. Crash took his helmet off and played with his cornrows.

“Right. Right. Dude... Just, be cool, okay?”

“Be what?”

“Seriously. She’s not as scary as she seems. Well, she is but — ” He shrugged helplessly. What the hell was I missing?

The plane coasted to a stop and the cabin door opened, steps swinging down. Reese had told me they’d rated a deluxe cabin with a flight attendant, but this one had to be smaller; the pilot got off first, then helped someone else hand down their luggage. Then two more people stepped down and headed our way.

One of them was a bouncy blonde, seriously pale but dressed for summer, almost dancing on the tarmac as she pulled her luggage. The other walked at a fast clip, not in a hurry, just moving along. Her midnight-black hair was pulled into a tight tail and her pale skin stood out against all the black. Black leather jacket, black jeans, black boots, black carry-on — the only luggage she had — and absolutely zero smile.

Over the curb and crossing the parking lot, she stopped in front of us and handed Bob her bag.

“Bob, this is Acacia. She’s on a liquid diet.”

“Good evening, Artemis. It’s good to have you home.”

“Not yet. But it will be.”

A breakthrough is nothing more than an awakened soul, a monad that has deepened its connection with the universal oversoul. The ancients used to think of the night sky as a black dome and stars as holes through which the light of Heaven shown; so it is with each incarnate soul, and breakthroughs shine the most brightly of all. Each of us has it in himself and herself to awaken, to make that connection and burn with the light of Heaven.

Dr. Simon Pellegrini,
The Sleeper Must Awaken
.

It had to be the most surreal day of my life. After careful consideration, I dubbed the neuralkinetic Puppetman. Puppeteer was already taken, and Geppetto sounded too clever. It was an important decision; if he wasn’t already a known supervillain and I reported him first, I got naming rights. That out of the way, I actually fell asleep again — amazing, I know, but if I didn’t move it didn’t hurt
too
bad, and in the absence of terror my poor abused body wanted to sleep and heal; I could have used some serious painkillers, but the Sandman was willing to work without them.

They didn’t come back until lunch, so I missed a beautiful opportunity to carve the Gettysburg Address in the wall. We repeated the scene; they pushed on the door, I woke up, got up. Puppetman didn’t take his eyes off me as they replaced the cart, but he didn’t freeze me in place either. He probably didn’t want to share my pain again.

As soon as they left, I retrieved the knife and, careful of my arm, pulled out the dresser and carved as fast as I could while keeping it readable
.
Astra
Depowered Old Whitehair Guy/ Drop/ Neuralkinetic.
Not great, but the best I could think of. If they moved me and if the team ever tracked me this far, then at least it was
something
.

After eating the sandwiches they’d brought this time (Willis’s sandwiches were
much
better but these looked professionally cut and served, which had to be A Clue), I checked my arm again. It didn’t feel
worse
anywhere, and my left hand had more feeling in it, but I was sniffling and tearing by the time I pulled my collar closed. I pushed the bed back against the door and got horizontal again.

I wasn’t trying to be all plucky and fearless — it was just that nobody was
threatening
me. The room, the food, the fact they didn’t talk (Drop hadn’t even made
eye contact
), it was all very unvillainous. I mean, sure they obviously hadn’t planned to capture me, but they had me and were acting like they didn’t
want
me. Like I’d come along and spoiled their plans. Shelly would have been banging on the door and demanding to know what was going on, and it said something about me that I didn’t even try and listen at the door. I really didn’t want to know. If I didn’t think about it, I wasn’t back
there
, in the Dark Anarchist’s cell. And these guys definitely weren’t Ripper, which didn’t mean I was safe but was still a lot.

Which left me time to obsess on the rest of my situation. Now that my head was clearer, I knew the old man from last night — I’d seen him in the author’s picture on the back cover of Eric’s books. Doctor Simon Pellegrini, and it was no wonder they were ignoring me now; he’d killed Astra with a touch and I was just little Hope Corrigan again, no threat to anybody. And since I wasn’t wearing Blacklock’s finest titanium accessories right now, they obviously didn’t expect my powers to come flooding back any time soon.

Was it permanent? Did I
want
it to be? I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around the possibility. If the team busted through the wall and rescued me, then what? Surgery and physical therapy for my arm and then... Back to school? A normal life? All I had to do was get through this last adventure and eventually the public would forget about Astra. No more training, no more fights, no more bad accident scenes or disasters to clean up after. No more nightmare-fuel. Would one less cape make a difference?

I tried to picture living with the Bees in Palevsky Commons. Pledging, hanging out, having a
life
again. Would that be wrong?

And, making it not all about
me
, what did it mean?

It seemed like a hundred years ago Blackstone had been talking about the California quake, the Green Man attacks, and Mr. Ludlow, and wondering if there was a process for boosting breakthrough powers. Well, duh, if Dr. Pellegrini could steal my powers then I was willing to bet a lot of money he could
boost
powers too. Were all the Wreckers boosted? It would explain a lot.

But if Dr. Pellegrini could reliably boost powers, then why wasn’t he busy making himself obscenely rich the legal and easy way? Forget about his cult; national governments would pay billions for him to boost their supersoldiers like he’d done Eric. And was it a stretch to jump from Eric to linking the man to Temblor and Green Man? If he
was
behind everything, what was he trying to do? What did the California quake
and
the Green Man attacks
and
killing goons and Paladins have in common?

My mind went round and round it all, like a kitten chasing its own tail until it fell over from vertigo.

The third time they pushed the door open, they were cartless and had Twist with them, wearing his armor so I couldn’t see his face. My heart sank and turned into a lump of ice in my gut; obviously the Pollyanna part of my brain that had silently hoped my benign neglect would continue was wrong.

Twist led the way and the others followed behind me. I managed to walk straight and not shiver as they took me down a long hall of doors just like mine but with locks on the outside and most of them open, through a pair of doors into an empty dining room. A
big
dining room, with the look of a place used for conventions or seminars. One wall was all bay windows so I could see it was night outside, and three big chandeliers hung ready to light the place. Only one was dimly lit. Years of working for Mom made it easy to recognize the function of the place, and if it wasn’t for the weird bedrooms I’d have thought I was in a big hotel. Some big abandoned hotel.

And they were making use of the space, too; the room had been cleared of tables to leave space for a steel platform with a raised chair in the middle of it. A bunch of boxes had been stacked on the platform, like they used it to move stuff, but I didn’t see any wheels.

Trying to soak in all the clues I could, it took me a moment to realize the room wasn’t completely cleared; a table by the windows had been set with covered plates, and Dr. Pellegrini waited for me there.

Twist took me straight to him.

“Good evening, Miss Corrigan.” He stood and removed the dish covers as I carefully sat and waited for the spots in front of my eyes to clear. Puppetman actually pushed my chair in for me, and my trio of keepers retreated across the room to take up stations at what I assumed was the kitchen doors.

I arranged the dinner napkin in my lap, took the opportunity to examine him as he filled our water glasses.

Except for his eyes, he could have been one of my university professors — he even had the regulation tweed blazer with leather elbow patches, and he sounded and looked like the kind of older professor whose father or grandfather had made a big pile of money so he could ignore it in pursuit of higher knowledge. But there was nothing absentminded or preoccupied in his silver-gray eyes, and he looked at me like I was his next fascinating thesis subject.

He sat and arranged his own napkin, and only Mom’s social training let me pick up my soup spoon and taste the basil-sprinkled cream of tomato. He carried the small talk while we ate our way through the soup and salad courses, let silence rule the fish course, and got more personal with the dinner and dessert courses. He inquired after Toby’s condition and apologized for not letting my arm heal a little before “suppressing my gift.”

The boggling weirdness of the whole thing had me nearly seeing double. Laying his dessert fork beside the remains of his cheesecake, he finally laughed.

“Miss Corrigan, you should see your face. I am sorry; this isn’t supposed to be how it goes, is it?” He smiled, putting his hand over his heart. “When a supervillain mastermind captures a brave and beautiful young superhero, certain things are expected, aren’t they? Threats, bondage, tedious monologuing. Well, I thought we should make you comfortable while we could.”

“They won’t trade Mr. Ludlow for me, you know.” My right hand joined my left in my lap so he couldn’t see it was shaking.

“Of course not, and I am more than happy with the way things fell out last night. Even if you have forced a degree of improvisation on our plans.”

“So are you going to kill me?”

He actually looked shocked. “Perish the thought! I would never snuff out a light as bright as yours.”

“A — What?”

“Have you read my books? No? They are often poetic, but less than metaphorical. When I close my eyes, you are one of the brightest lights I see, shining with all the power of the Oversoul. Beautiful. With all that I do to awaken more souls, ending your light would be the blackest crime.”

“But my powers are — ”

“Occluded, Miss Corrigan, merely occluded. They will return in time. Again, I apologize for the physical discomfort it leaves you in now but, considering my plans, it is entirely likely that our paths will cross again and so for me it has been a fortuitous opportunity to meet you. ‘Know your enemy,’ as Sun Tsu said. The Teatime Anarchist quite failed to do so, didn’t he?”

My face felt like ice and I wondered if I was going to faint. My inside voice decided it was time to start screaming and crying incoherently, but I didn’t give it a vote. The fight in Reno was classified big-time, and even the
government
didn’t know what really happened.

“Yes, he did,” I managed. “Were you allies?”

“Allies? No.” He shook his head. “The man was too obsessed with politics. But we were both useful to each other — indeed he advanced my research by at least a decade. I will always wonder how he knew what he knew.”

He refilled my water glass, giving me a moment. His aesthetic hands had age spots on their knuckles.

“So. I know the official story is that a DSA team tracked the Teatime Anarchist to Reno and deputized an Army supersoldier team to take him out, but I know that he had acquired you, and I don’t believe he could have been taken that way. Will you satisfy an old man’s curiosity?”

I swallowed. “He killed himself.”

He raised an eyebrow, studying me. “I see. Well. I am sure it must be an upsetting topic for you, and I assure you that there will be none of that here. Are you quite finished? Is there anything you would like?”

We dipped into the end-of-night conversation prescribed for winding up a social engagement — something I could do on autopilot while keeping the panicked babbling inside my head. When my escort trio took me back to my room and locked me in, I pushed the bed back against the door and threw up in the toilet.