Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (35 page)

Flying over the line of cameras on the shore, I still felt pretty good.

Astra

Everything was
heavy
. My muscles hadn’t atrophied or anything, but when I’d gained my powers, I’d lost my sense of the weight and solidness of things. I’d had to learn to touch the world lightly. Even when I’d been hurting, put back together by surgeons after breaking nearly every bone in my body and traumatizing every organ, just standing up, making myself move, hadn’t made me hurt worse. Now, dressing to leave the hospital left me wiped and shaking, remembering how much fighting pain took out of a normal person and grateful again for Chakra’s magic hands.

They took me out through a side exit, where fans and paparazzi couldn’t see me and spot which car I got into. New Tom held the door while Seven kept his hands free. Rush had replaced Variforce before they let me check out (he could carry me out of any bad situation before it had time to
get
bad, I supposed), and he helped me into the car. The armored sedan’s tinted windows meant I didn’t have to wear shades Hollywood celebrity style, though I could have used a pair to help hide the bruising. New Tom drove carefully, like I was fragile, but got us to the hidden parking entrance to the Dome without incident.

Seven stayed with me, and Blackstone and Jacky were waiting for me in the Assembly Room. Blackstone stood when I came through the door. He took my good hand and kissed it.

“How are you, my dear?”

A lump rose in my. “I’m okay. I — I’m okay.”

“Good. We won’t keep you long, but we really must debrief you, understand everything you went through yesterday. Are you up to it?”

This time I just nodded, and he pulled out a chair. Seven sat with me and Willis appeared from nowhere with coffee, obviously Jacky creations this time. It felt so normal I could have cried as I sipped from my mug. I cupped it for the warmth and started at the beginning. “Teleporting with Drop leaves you disoriented...”

Blackstone’s usual procedure meant recording and listening to the full story, beginning to end any way you wanted to tell it, then going back and digging into moments of interest, looking for details. He let me talk, and not talk when I needed a minute to collect myself for the hard stuff, nodding to show his attention. Jacky stayed quiet, sitting statue-still through most of it.

He didn’t ask for descriptions of anyone, but he focused on the dining room, the platform I’d seen, and every remembered detail of my dinner conversation with Dr. Pellegrini while I wilted under the effort of not forgetting anything.

I still didn’t know what to think of yesterday. I’d been captured and held prisoner
again
(the second time in one year, which at least gave our television writers plenty of “real” peril to use), but this time, once the terror of helplessness wore off, I really had felt more like a nuisance — except to Dr. Pellegrini, who’d been
delighted
. And Pellegrini had sounded more like a scholar and humanitarian than a mass-murderer.

Blackstone picked up on my confusion, but was too professional to offer any perspectives; he’d call them guesses and they might have biased my reporting. He’d listen to the recordings of the session later, pick my statements apart for meaning and nuance and pull out more solid extrapolations than I ever could, but even I knew there was something there I should
see
. There was
something
I wasn’t getting but couldn’t forget. It was like staring at one of those computer-generated pictures that looked like a flat surface of dense black-and-white squiggles that transformed into a 3-D silhouette when you squinted just right: you knew it held meaning, you just couldn’t see it.

Head pounding, I gave up before he did, but he let me go before my voice started shaking with fatigue. Jacky followed me out. Silly me, I thought she was just taking me to my new rooms.

The staff had finished moving my rooms, along with Shelly’s and Jamal’s, to the “new” wing set aside for the cadet team, and extreme fatigue kept me from really noticing the big gold ‘YS’ covering the common room’s double doors. The applause that burst out when they opened startled me, but Jacky kept me moving.

Everyone was waiting for me and in uniform, even Jamal who wasn’t spending much time here yet. I almost didn’t spot all the parentals (and a blonde civilian I didn’t recognize) behind all the color; the room had turned into a serious fashion show for our newbies, and I stared.

Reese looked superhero-standard in a
good
way in a gray and white leather armor-stiffened bodysuit and helmet, and Ozma looked royal and ethereal in a strapless white catsuit and Magic Belt under a gauzy open-front overdress. It was gathered at her breasts by a huge jade Z-inside-an-O brooch and floated around her like an under-the-arms cloak, with long white opera gloves to match.
Brian
looked like Frankenstein’s monster gone GQ.
Casually
GQ, hulking muscles, tight dreadlock mane, fangs, and all. It was like looking at a Siberian tiger — he still looked like he could eat you, but he was beautiful.

Galatea, Crash, Megaton, Tsuris, Grendel, Ozma —
my
team, and I realized only now, the team that had come to get me last night.

So of course I cried, and thanked everybody, and got hugs from Shelly and the parentals including Shelly’s mom. There was
cake
, and a happy flying fairy, and eventually Jacky got me through the room with last hugs and into my new bedroom and into bed.

And sometime in the night Atlas sat down for dinner with Dr. Pellegrini and me to point out the obvious: we’d captured Eric and outed the Foundation. And Pellegrini didn’t care.

“There is a reason why you train all the time, solo and as a team; you’ve got to know what you can do, what the others can do, and what you can do together. Most supervillain ‘teams’ are not a serious threat to most CAI teams because, whatever the power imbalance might be, CAI teams
train
.
”

Blackstone, 9th annual Crisis Aid and Intervention Conference address.

Jacky was the worst correspondent in the
world
and still hadn’t told me everything about her first New Orleans trip, so we had serious catching up to do.

The blonde from last night was Acacia, and Jacky had brought her along to keep her out of trouble. She was also the nicest vampire I’d ever met (admittedly out of two, and I only got minutes to meet her before she went to sleep with the dawn, but Jacky had described lots of others), and she matched every blonde joke I’d ever
heard
. Hanging with the Bees, I’d heard a lot.

Not that she was a ditz, but she made it hard to tell; she was a
fan
. From what Jacky said while whipping up some Jacky Creations (I’d seriously missed her coffee, too), the girl had grown up in a one-church Louisiana town and had somehow become a goth and a fang fan in a community that didn’t consider
black
an appropriate color except at funerals. Trying to picture her as a goth hurt my brain, but apparently she’d found a sick monster in New Orleans who thought it worked for her. He’d drunk her blood, tortured her, brainwashed her, and triggered a vampire breakthrough somehow (and Jacky couldn’t talk about that except to say he hadn’t been like Psycho-Vlad).

Jacky told me the story over breakfast, after I’d called my parents to check up on Toby. She didn’t say
exactly
what happened to Acacia’s sire — apparently the whole thing was serious, deep, cut-your-throat classified — but I guessed that decapitation and fire was involved. Jacky’d used her evil vampiric mind-enslaving powers to make Acacia forget all the bad stuff that had happened to her, but the girl had sworn off goth.
Now
she embraced a wardrobe of bright colors, frills, skirts, and lace. Bows and even silk flowers were involved; it was like a florist’s shop had exploded.

But she was still a fan, just a Jacky-fan and by extension a superhero fan. All this had happened during Jacky’s
first
trip to New Orleans, and now the two of them were — and here I couldn’t stop laughing — living together in a haunted French Quarter property Jacky was converting into a coffee shop and
detective agency
! Apparently decapitating a few vampires bought you respect, and she was working with her voodoo queen grandmother, a too-good-looking-to-be-real lawyer, a werewolf police detective, and a vampire godfather to police the Big Easy’s supernatural community.

Oh. My. God.

“You’re getting too much fun out of this,” Jacky said as I giggled helplessly into my hand (I’d already spit my morning coffee across the breakfast table). I shook my head desperately, tears streaming. It would never do for the Young Sentinels’ new fearless leader to laugh until she fell out of her chair. Mal and Brian looked our way between bites of Willis-served omelet (in Brian’s case, a
stack
). Reese stayed focused on his epad.

“Please please
please
tell me you’re making this up,” I finally gasped, snorting with complete inelegance. “I can’t — I can’t, believe this. So is she your new sidekick?”

“
No
.” That came out with her Voice of Doom, which
I
could never manage without sounding ridiculous, the voice that said
We shall not speak of this again
. She sighed. “Seriously, I brought her along because she’s pretty helpless for a vampire. She panics when she’s alone.”

Still traumatized. Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. I reached over and squeezed Jacky’s hand. “She couldn’t have a better friend. So, when are you going back?” She looked at her mug and I was instantly suspicious — Jacky didn’t
deflect
.

She shrugged. “I’ve got some hunting to do, and I want to show Acacia a couple of my Chicago safehouses just in case New Orleans ever turns vampire-hostile. And your mom has invited me to Friday dinner.” Her lips twitched. “Demanded I show up, actually.”

“Yes! You need to meet Shelly’s mom, she’ll probably still be in town. And we need to — ”

“ALL SENTINELS! ALL SENTINELS! REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO THE LAUNCH BAY! ALL SENTINELS! ALL SENTINELS! — ”

My earbug practically vibrated, but they weren’t taking chances — the alert came through every speaker in the room too — and the reflexes of endless drilling pulled me out of my chair. Mal half-stood, wide eyed, Brian started to bulk up but wasn’t sure either, and Reese didn’t move.

“Move it, guys!” I shouted on the run. “Young Sentinels means Sentinels! Shelly! Get everybody!” When I wobbled off-balance with my brace, Jacky grabbed my good elbow to help me go faster.

In the starship-base that is the Dome, even our elevators are wicked smart; they opened when we got to them and snapped closed the instant sensors told them there was nobody immediately behind us in the hallway. Brian made it a tight squeeze for the rest of us and the emergency speed of our ride almost threw us to the ceiling at the end, but we didn’t beat everyone — Blackstone and Quin had probably come from Dispatch. All the rest except Shelly and Vulcan arrived within a minute, even Chakra.

“Breakout at Detroit Supermax,” Blackstone said once the last of the older heroes arrived. “All duty-listed Sentinels are going; all Young Sentinels remain on base and on call. Watchman — ”

“Take Grendel,” Ozma said — an instruction, not a suggestion. Blackstone looked at me and I froze up before nodding.

“And Grendel. Watchman will be towing the floater, no time to catch a jet. Astra, the Dome is yours. Move, people!”

Only superheroes would accessorize an aircraft with outside grips. Watchman showed Grendel a pair on top to hold on to as the floater lifted, Variforce shaping his fields for a ride-along as the sleek flyer rose through the bay doors and out of sight. Streamlined for high speed, the floater couldn’t go faster than a helicopter without an Atlas-type assist; Watchman would get them there faster than anything non-military could fly.

Tsuris shrugged. “Guess we’re not Sentinels after all, huh?” Ozma raised an eyebrow, looked over at me, and the question unstuck my frozen brain. I took a breath.

“Section One of your Operations and Procedures Manual? Superhumans under eighteen may not be knowingly deployed into military or police operations?” Not the complete story; Shelly hadn’t gone either, hadn’t even come to the bay, which meant Blackstone considered her job with Vulcan too important to take her away.

“So why
Brian
?”

Why? I opened my mouth, but Ozma answered first. “Few in that prison can hurt or stop Brian, and fewer can kill him.”

It’s still going to make a mess
. I didn’t say it. We were down one heavy because of me, and maybe we could get away with it. Last night’s operation had been legally iffy — Blackstone had explained that they hadn’t sent the under-eighteens into direct contact with the Wreckers, so they’d probably get a pass on it. But it was a terrible risk — the legal fallout of fielding Brian in a
prison break
could kill the Young Sentinels before we really started, and Blackstone had to be seriously worried to chance it. I hugged myself, cold. The Brotherhood and the Sanguinary Boys we’d put away were there. The survivors of
Villains Inc
. were there. What were they flying into?

And why was I trying to remember a dream... Oh,
no
.

“Shelly! I need to talk to Blackstone. Now!”

Grendel

A guy could get used to this
. I held on as Watchman towed our little wagon train, Variforce trailing behind on his glowing force-field tethers.

“
Grendel
,” Blackstone said in my ear. “
How are you doing
?”

“It’s a nice day out. Sir.”

“
Good. Attention, everyone. Less than five minutes ago, Detroit Supermax went silent. Fortunately, the installation security system includes an outside trigger which trips in just such cases. This brought its independent and shielded secondary DSA system online, and we are getting some information
.

“
The separate cell blocks appear to have switched into isolation mode, which is good. We’re not getting feed from inside several of them, which is bad. The Detroit Guardians are going in before us along with the local DSA response unit to secure the situation, and it may all be over before we arrive. However, given the nature of Detroit Supermax’s guests, we will not be counting on this.”

He went silent, came back.

“
Also, be apprised that it is Astra’s opinion, and I concur, that we may be facing the Wreckers — Dozer’s capture may very well have been a Trojan Horse gambit. If this is the case, we may be facing the known Wreckers as well as Redback, a psi apparently now capable of seizing control of your body, and Dr. Pellegrini, whom we believe capable of boosting and suppressing breakthrough powers. You all read this morning’s tactical summaries. Lei Zi?”

Lei Zi took over.

“
We form three groups and will make our entry to the prison through one of the emergency entry shafts and attempt to link up with the Detroit Guardians. Watchman and Grendel will take point and secure the bottom of the shaft. I, Seven, Rush, Artemis, Variforce, and Riptide will descend second as the reaction team. Blackstone and Chakra will remain upstairs in support. Questions?
”

“
What’s our objective?
” Rush asked.

“
That will depend on what we find downstairs. The entry shaft will put us on the edge of the dark zone. Whatever we find, our job is to throw them out of Beta Block if they’re there and to secure its cells. There is a good chance they are there after
Temblor
. And yes, he is still alive. People, we will not be down there alone. The prison garrison is already present, and more CAI teams are coming in. Regardless, we may find ourselves dropping into a complete Charlie Foxtrot.
”

So, no pressure...just dropping blind into a pit full of superhumans with criminal tendencies, who might be free-range already. I felt my fangs growing and was glad nobody could see my smile.