Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins (26 page)

We both go rigid. After all that’s happened lately, you can understand why a perfect stranger addressing us by name might cause my Paranoia-o-meter to redline.

“Yes...”

She leans in. “Hi. I’m Nina,” she says at a half-whisper, “but you can call me Natalie when we’re in public.”

Insert huge sigh of relief here. “Oh! Hi! Yeah, I’m Carrie, she’s Sara. Sorry, I thought we were going to meet you over at the office.”

“Needed a caffeine fix first. I’m normally not up this early on the weekend.”

Her comment reinforces my initial impression that Nina can’t be that much older than us. Her jetblack hair is cut in an awesomely funky asymmetrical bob that accentuates her youthful face, and if I were to pass this woman in the halls at school, I wouldn’t question whether she belonged there.

“I guess I should apologize to you too, then,” I say.

“Like she said,” Nina says, nodding at Sara, “it’s not your fault flyboy is such a butt-munch. Of course he called you in on a Saturday to make you miserable. That’s what he does. I could tell you such stories...”

Nina reaches the counter and insists on buying our coffees. She dislikes Concorde and she’s springing for our caffeine; two points in her favor. Three if you count the very cool head of hair. Which I do.

Coffee in hand, we hike down to the Protector
ate’s office. Nina walks with a bounce in her step that is two or three notches short of a skip.

“Okay, I have to ask,” I say. “How old are you?”

“Turned twenty-two a couple weeks ago,” she says. “Why?”

“You seem very young is all.”

“Like, too young to be in the Protectorate,” Sara says.

“By Concorde’s standards, I was. I was barely seventeen when we teamed up,” Nina says.

“And he let you stay on the team?”

“
Let
me? Ha! No, I forced my way on. I earned my spot as much as he did. Not that that stopped him from giving me a hard time.”

“But he doesn’t anymore?” I ask hopefully.

We reach the office. Nina opens the door for us. “For the most part.”

Once inside, Nina slides out of her coat. She’s wearing most of her costume underneath: a leather sleeveless top, tight leather pants, and a pair of boots with steel toe caps that could withstand drop-kicking a cinder block. She completes the ensemble with a pair of heavy knee pads and thick leather elbow-length gauntlets, and then slips a red bandana and a pair of welder’s goggles around her neck.

“You don’t seem too hung up on the whole secret identity thing,” I remark.

“Not as much as some people,” she says. “I keep it quiet around civilians, but I’m not one of these uptight twits—I’ll mention no names—Concorde—who won’t even let other super-heroes know who they really are.”

Without meaning to, Nina—
Natalie—
pays us a
huge compliment. She doesn’t see us as annoying kids with foolish delusions but as peers, if not equals. Even if it’s only sympathy because she went through the same crap herself, it’s flattering.

A knock on the door announces the others’ arrival. Matt and Stuart see Nina and I can practically smell the resulting flood of teenage hormones.

“Nina, this is Matt, Stuart, and Missy. Guys, this is Nina Nitro,” I say.

“Natalie when we’re off the clock,” she says.

“A pleasure,” Matt says.

“An honor,” Stuart says.

An embarrassment.

“Let’s get this over with,” I say.

“Word of advice,” Nina says. “Concorde might not act like the kind of guy who respects others, but he does. You have to fight like crazy to earn it, and part of that is showing him the respect he thinks he deserves. Sass-mouthing him will do you no good. Trust me on that one.”

“Easier said than done,” I say.

“True that. Hang in there. He’ll come around.”

“Sure, when we’re old enough to vote.”

“That’s when he started easing up on me.”

“So Concorde flat-out hates kids, is what you’re saying?” Matt says.

Nina pauses, considering her next words. “He hates kids putting themselves in danger. That’s why he rode me so hard at first.” She shrugs. “To be fair, I deserved it. I was a clueless little girl playing super-hero for cheap thrills.”

“And now?” I say.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving lives, helping people, fighting the good fight, yada yada.” Nina smirks mischievously. “I’m still all about the thrills.”

“And that’s why Concorde gives you a hard time.”

“Again, to be fair, he’s very serious about this job and he has little patience for super-heroes who don’t take the gig as seriously as he does. He’s old school. But hey, everyone has their own reasons for doing this, and they’re not always going to meet his high standards. I say if you’re being true to yourself, that’s all that counts.”

She finishes the sentiment in the dark. The secret subway thingy lurches to a stop.

“What the...?” I power up to give us some light. “Thank you.” Nina checks the car’s control panel, taps it to no effect. “Something’s wrong. HQ’s back-up generator should have kicked in the second we lost power from the grid. Hold on.”

Nina presses two fingers to her temple and narrows her eyes, the pose you see psychics in movies striking whenever they use their powers. It looks dumb in real life.

“What? What?!” she says, but she’s not speaking to us. “No, I’m in the transport, with the Hero Squad...yeah, hold tight. We’re coming.”

“We are?” I say. “What’s happening?”

Nina runs her fingers along the edge of the control panel. It springs open to reveal a shallow recess. She pulls a handle and the doors open with a pop. “HQ is under attack.”

“Under attack? By who?”

“They’re called the Bestiary. Manticore and a bunch of costumed mercs he rustles up for big jobs.”

Matt, super-hero nerd supreme, jumps in to give us the infodump as we cover the final quarter-mile on foot. Manticore, we’ve met. Minotaur is big and brawny, your garden-variety super-strong thug. On the other end of the size spectrum is a dwarf (little person? I don’t know what the right P.C. term is) called Kobold, who’s fast and agile—their version of Missy. Hydra wears an apparatus on his back sprouting four mechanical arms, each one packing a high-intensity heat ray. Their token female, Harpy, flies and has cybernetically enhanced vocal chords that make her a walking sonic cannon, which Matt assures me is plenty dangerous.

“Very good.” Nina says. “You know your baddies. That’ll help.”

She pulls the goggles over her eyes and the bandana over her face. The bandana has a crooked grin drawn on it in white, graffiti-style. Young, bouncy Natalie is gone. Nina Nitro is in charge and, no lie, Nina Nitro a little scary.

“All right. Let’s suit up and go kick their asses.”

We can hear the mayhem as soon as we enter the subbasement. Concorde’s sonic booms rattle the foundation beneath our feet.

“The workshop is on the other side of the level,” Nina says. “Come on.”

En route Nina feeds us a strategy: Stuart goes for Minotaur, Missy takes Kobold, Matt and Sara get Hydra and Harpy, and lucky me, I get Manticore. We’re not to engage them in a stand-up fight; we hit and run and let the Protectorate land the knockout blows.

Brilliant in its simplicity? Common sense? Or just plain desperate? Guess we’ll find out, because we’re coming up on Concorde’s workshop.

“Ready to rock and roll?” Nina says.

“Kind of,” Matt says.

“No,” Missy says.

“Not remotely,” Sara says.

Nina laughs. “Perfect. Stuart? Be a love and get the door.”

Stuart charges, wrenching the heavy steel door off its hinges, and we barrel headlong into a warzone.

It strikes me that our plan might be a little useless, because in addition to the Bestiary there are four Thrasher suits on their feet and spraying hypervelocity rounds in a concentrated assault on Concorde and Mindforce, whose telekinetic shield is the only thing keeping them from getting Swiss-cheesed. The air is lethal. I don’t dare go airborne.

“Fire in the hole, suckers!” A twisting column of white-hot fire leaps from Nina’s hand and explodes in the center of the scrum of bad guys. The effect is confusion more than damage, but it’ll have to do.

Minotaur, a giant musclehead in nothing but leather pants (ew) and a metal helmet sprouting ridiculous horns is the least phased of the bunch. Stuart rectifies that by hurling the door at him. It ricochets off his dumb ugly helmet. He reels. Stuart nails Minotaur with a low tackle and drives him into the wall, by which I mean
into
the solid brick wall. Stuart throws hands to keep him there, each punch landing with the force of a wrecking ball.

Manticore spits a curse at us and orders the Thrashers to—get the hell out of here? Wait, what?

Without hesitation, the Thrashers back out of a gaping hole that used to be a garage-style door as tall and as wide as the workshop. Manticore and Hydra cut loose with a barrage of energy blasts. The beams fragment a few feet in front of Sara, spraying sparks in every direction, outlining the edge of an otherwise invisible dome. It’s a temporary reprieve; Sara, overwhelmed, falls to her knees. Matt grabs her and we scatter for cover behind workbenches and tool cabinets. I expect Manticore to follow up, but instead he pivots and blasts Stuart. He goes sailing. Minotaur unfolds himself from the crater in the wall.

“Where’d that punk go?!” he roars, “I’m going to tear that kid’s—”

“You’re not doing anything except getting out of here,” Manticore says. “Bestiary! We are leaving! Now! Harpy!”

Harpy, who wears a feather motif lamé bodysuit that says
I moonlight as a stripper
, opens her mouth and fills the workshop with a shriek that rattles my teeth. A wave of sound causes the air to ripple as it picks up and hurls every little scrap of debris, turning rubble, nuts and bolts, spent Thrasher ammo into deadly shrapnel that pings off our makeshift barricades.

By the time the dust settles and our ears stop ringing, Manticore and the Bestiary—and the Thrashers—are gone.

TWENTY-FIVE

By all accounts, Concorde is a normal man in a fancy suit, but I am starting to suspect he has an actual power: super-stubbornness.

“I’m fine,” he grunts through his helmet, which he refuses to take off so Nina, the least-battered member of the Protectorate, can check him out properly. I’m not positive, but I think I see tiny spatters of blood on the inside of his faceplate.

“You sound like you got dragged down ten miles of bad road,” she says. “Take your helmet off.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” I say. “Come on, guys, let’s give him some privacy.”

“You’re making me move?” Stuart whines, with good reason. His chest had barely healed from our first run-in with Manticore and now it’s raw and blistered again.

“I think Natalie will be more impressed if you show her how tough you are,” I say softly. I hate to manipulate the male ego like this, but it’s the easiest way to clear the medical bay. Predictably, Stuart puts on his brave face, slides off the examination table, and
marches out. Nina throws me a wink of approval as I herd the others through the door.

“Do me a favor and see how Mindforce is doing,” she says.

We find Mindforce in the break room, one hand holding an icebag to his head, the other shoveling forkfuls of steamed spinach into his mouth. His complexion is Sara-level pasty.

“How’s Concorde?” he asks.

“Irritable and stubborn. So, you know, fine,” I say. Mindforce nods and downs half a bottle of Gatorade in a single gulp. “How about you? You look rough.”

“I’ll be all right. Nothing a steak dinner and fistful of Tylenol won’t cure. What about you?”

“I got zapped again,” Stuart says.

“My ears hurt,” Missy says.

“Got any more spinach?” Sara says. Mindforce points with his fork to the refrigerator and tells her to help herself. The freezer is loaded with boxes of microwavable steam-in-bag spinach.

I sit across from Mindforce. “What happened?”

Mindforce shakes his head. “Aside from the obvious, I don’t know. Concorde and I were in the interview room, waiting for you, going over our notes, and the power quit on us. The whole complex went dead and the genny didn’t kick in. There was an explosion, we ran down to the workshop...”

“There was no warning at all?”

“There should have been. We keep the property zipped up tight specifically in case of an attack. The perimeter is fenced off, we have ground-level motion sensors, we’re networked with military and civilian air
control so we know whenever anyone passes within five miles of our airspace.” He drums his fork on the table, brow wrinkled in thought, as though saying all this aloud has made him realize “There’s no way they should have gotten close to us.”

“But,” Matt says, “you said you lost power.”

“Yes, but less than a minute before the attack. The early-warning system should have—it’s as if someone overrode—” Mindforce drops his fork and his icebag and buries his face in his hands. “Oh, damn it.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Where’s Archimedes?” I say. It comes out like an accusation.

“He’s in Byrne,” Matt says.

“Mindforce.
Where is Archimedes?
”

“He’s in Byrne,” Matt insists.

“No he’s not,” Mindforce says.

“He escaped?” Sara says.

“He was released. I don’t know how. He shouldn’t have been. We’re looking into it.”

“Maybe you should start looking a little faster,” Matt says.

“Matt,” I say, “not helping.”

“Carrie, Archimedes has seen our faces. He could find out who we are.”

“How? Knowing our faces doesn’t mean he knows our names.”

“Facial recognition software, cross-referenced through existing electronic records. Don’t tell me Archimedes can’t access that stuff.”

“We’re fifteen, Matt,” Sara says. “None of us have any records like that, nothing with our pictures attached.”

“One word: Facebook.”

Well, crap.

“Take a breath, everyone,” Mindforce says. “There’s no need to stir yourselves into a panic.”

“Says you.”

“Archimedes is involved somehow, that much is a safe assumption, but I don’t think this was his doing.” Mindforce recaps the key events leading up to today’s incident: Archimedes steals the first Thrasher; someone hires Manticore to find Archimedes; en route to Byrne (the first time), Manticore shows up to finish the job, but Archimedes turns the tables and takes off with four more Thrashers; we beat Archimedes (again) and, for realsies this time, he’s shipped off to Byrne; where someone with serious connections springs him; Archimedes drops off the radar completely; a few days later, Manticore and his goons lay siege to HQ for the express purpose of reclaiming the Thrashers (leaving behind, I noticed, the one Concorde completely pulled apart) after sliding past the Protectorate’s security and killing the power to its defense systems—something only Archimedes could swing.