Troy makes a face. “I hate this metaphor already.”
All right, so he isn't the only one, then
, I think sullenly.
A thought darts through my mind, distinct and insistent. “They paid you to leave the business, didn't they?”
He gives me an impressed look. “Lucky guess?”
“You have no job and I've seen your house. I know what a lazy subsidy looks like.”
Troy grimaces but doesn't deny it, a small blessing. At least he respects me enough at the moment not to make lousy excuses as to where his money really originates.
Lazy subsidies aren't common, and they aren't advertised from the rooftops by the powers that be. The less powerful you are, the less likely it is you may have even ever heard of them. It's not much of a loss. If you've never heard of them, chances are you'll never be powerful enough to qualify for one anyway.
My mother has never been able to qualify for one, no matter how non-existent her physical limitations are, but Dad has, and presumably would have started receiving hefty checks in a private deposit if he didn't have the Noble name to keep him in costume for as long as he might like to stay there. Graham's chances are slim, and mine are nonexistent. But Troy lives off one.
Scruffy, frayed Troy Lampwick. It really is always the quiet ones, I suppose.
The SLB hustled him off to a little town in the middle of nowhere bereft of other superheroes or former superheroes (other than me, of course) and for good reason. Troy gets paid by the SLB to stay home, eat spontaneously concocted sandwich monstrosities, watch game shows and – above all else –
not
use his powers. Powers which, considering what it would take to entitle oneself to a fat weekly paycheck for life to do nothing, would have to be substantial.
Since removing someone's abilities has never had the best of success rates, you get a choice. If you're not suicidal, you get to spend the rest of your life carefree and financially sound, and in exchange you're leashed, ordered never to use your powers again, constantly monitored by the SLB's ever-vigilant faraway watchdogs. One false move, one wiggle of your fingers, and you'll be wiped out of existence so thoroughly your own mother won't recall your birth.
They only fund your carefully monitored early retirement in a bid to keep you honest and docile.
And Troy's been very docile indeed.
Well, for someone with superhuman abilities, at any rate.
Curiosity tempts me to ask what he can do, what such a scrawny unkempt mess of a man might be able to do that would frighten the SLB enough to hide him away like this, but I should know as well as anyone that looks mean nothing when you're estimating someone's power. Once you save Boston from a mind-controlling tantrum-throwing toddler who enslaves the entire city for an enforced game of Duck, Duck, Goose, you learn your lesson on books and covers, and fast.
Sighing, I tilt my head until I snag his uneasy gaze once again. “I'm not trying to get you to do all my work for me, for heaven's sake,” I assure him.
He nods at that, distracted and disbelieving, a jerky bob of the head more than anything else. “Then what am I?”
It takes me a moment to dredge up an appropriate comparison. My crush on him isn't exactly something I'm interested in advertising, and neither is it the reason I've latched onto him more tightly than usual since this whole thing started. “You're training wheels,” I hear myself say, and while I don't know where the analogy came from it fits quite nicely in my head. “I don't need you to take over, I'm just going this alone and I need to know there's someone else around who knows what's going on and isn't going to start an argument with me every step of the way.”
“So I'm a crutch.”
“Oh, no. You'd be a lousy crutch.” I give him an assessing look, the corners of my lips tugging upwards of their own accord, unable to completely conceal my amusement. “Definitely training wheels. Lightweight, easy to remove, but fondly remembered.”
Troy grimaces, his mouth a grim twist, but it's impossible to hide the color rising in his cheeks or the twinkle in his eyes. “You could put that in a Hallmark card.”
“Oh, shut up,” I say, but my words have no heat, and we're both smiling when I steer him back into the cafe.
16.
The sky is clogged with sickly gray clouds that threaten to burst forth with a good cleansing rainstorm when I pop onto the sidewalk outside of the Rafters a little later that afternoon. A sandwich and a quick power nap did nothing to refresh me, although I suppose it doesn't help that I haven't bothered to change out of my party dress. I still smell a bit like a campfire, alas, but it's a small price to pay for making a dent in the Dad enigma.
After the past two days, I'm done knocking. I shove open the door, tensed and ready to leap out of the way should the security systems decide I'm threatening enough to microwave.
My breath shudders out of me in thinly veiled relief when nothing happens.
“Miss Noble, I see you haven't been blown to smithereens by explosive devices,” John's familiar voice says. He stalks towards me from the kitchen entrance under the staircase, and for a moment I'm sure he's going to sweep me into his arms and give me a relieved hug, but he catches himself and stops a few feet away from me. “How nice of you to come and inform some of us you're not flat enough to slide under doors.”
I blush at the reminder. “Sorry.” I murmur. “Are you all right?”
John cocks an eyebrow. He turns towards the kitchen entrance and walks towards it without comment. I take the silent cue for what it is and trail after him. Tucked away the way it is, the kitchen's never been a large room with much space for anyone bigger than a teenage underwear model to navigate, but everyone who's on the Brigade or has been in the past learns to make do. I always thought the kitchen had its own fantastic abilities when I was little, the quick and precise way John would manage to make everything from a cheese sandwich to a six-course meal for visiting dignitaries appear from its depths in the blink of an eye. I still do even now, as John sweeps through the place gathering a glass from a cupboard, ice and grape juice from the fridge, a tiny vial of bright green liquid from his pocket.
We exchange a long and steady look before he pulls forward the blender and sets to the task of whipping up my favorite smoothie.
Attempting to be casual about the whole thing, I lean against the counter next to him and cross my arms. “Where is everybody?”
“Meeting in the conference room about the robot wreckage recovery,” he says, dumping the beverage's ingredients into the blender one by one. “There's no news or clues about who might have programmed the robots to attack the city just yet, but the teams have plans to venture into the warehouse district later based on an anonymous tip.”
I shoot John a sly look as he starts the blender, then wait for it to stop before saying, “Should you be telling me quite so much about what's going on in there?”
“Probably not.” He grins before pouring the blender's contents into the glass and handing it over. “Down the hatch,” he says softly.
I sigh, then down the drink.
John stares at me, oddly satisfied. For a moment, I suspect that he almost appears to be proud of me for some reason, possibly because I've gone from shilling coffee to bouncing around the east coast like a kangaroo high on sugar all in the space of two lousy days. I almost feel the urge to inform him I'm not actually making a permanent return to professional superhero work, or at least attempt to ask him once again what his place in all this is even though I know I won't get a straight answer.
As soon as I finish the drink, I pass the empty glass back to him as the thin fog crawls through my brain once again, tinged with an unwelcome wave of brain freeze from the ice in the smoothie.
Grinning, he gifts me with a respectful nod, and in a moment he's gone so quickly I nearly question if he was ever there at all.
Teleporting has turned right back into the bad habit it's always been, it seems, as I pop out of the kitchen and up into the common room before I can bring myself to worry whether or not someone will spot me and cry foul. The lights have been dimmed already when I materialize just outside of the conference room, hiding my appearance as I peer into the room through the slim window along the doorway.
Inside, the Fairness Brigade sits around a long meeting table, their collective gazes focused on the round serious face of the woman talking to them over an enormous flatscreen. Dolores Downes runs the Superhero Licensing Bureau, every invasive arm of the damn thing, from the original organization which licenses and insures superheroes against lawsuits and medical bills to the registered seamstresses who make our costumes. She's also my godmother. She's not reliable when it comes to birthday cards or Christmas presents, but if I ever want to have tea with the President in the Oval Office, she's an even better access point than either one of my parents.
I recognize all of my former teammates around the table, the past five years apparently thin on the ground when it comes to new recruits, presumably due to the Brigade's remarkably stringent standards. If you can't plug a supervolcano, organize a rioting crowd, and perform intergalactic glad-handing with the three-headed ambassador from New Atlantica, possibly all at the same time, the Brigade doesn't have much use for you.
Most of the members appear to be paying rapt attention, including my parents. Everett Noble sits near the front, Mom in the chair next to him holding his hand, her fingers threaded through his. His uneven smile rings a little too smug, even for Dad. My mom's mouth is set in a tight frown, and if I had to place bets I'd wager she's pulling away from the man wearing my father, shooting him the occasional veiled heat that no one else in the room appears to recognize for what it is.
The rest don't notice me, too busy with the web meeting in progress. Loose Screw staves off boredom wiggling his fingers at his cellphone, disassembling the pieces and weaving them back together again with a thought. The Muse absently sketches another superhero into existence in yet another of the hardcover unlined journals she fills and hoards in her office for future use, the pictures ready to be coerced from the paper and hauled into the real world for one brief display of power. On the opposite side of the table from my parents, Shadow speaks to Dolores in her low lyrical voice, giving her account of the robot invasion, her enveloping cowl pulled away and replaced by the hijab she wears during her off hours.
Graham sits at the end of the table, presumably called in for overtime, his boots propped up on the corner of the table as he nurses a large glass of Mountain Dew.
I wonder briefly if John's been slipping Graham baconyl as well, but figure it would be a futile effort to even bother asking.
With a quick scan to ensure that either no one's noticed me or cares to acknowledge me, I close my eyes and aim for my father's office.
Where I land, however, is in the lightly decorated common area outside the ten offices for the current team members of the Brigade. Or, I should say, on the carpeted floor of the common area, tumbling onto my rear end as though I've run directly into a brick wall and recoiled backwards in a clumsy pinwheel before landing on the floor. I haven't, of course, but it feels like I have, every muscle in my body wracked with a sudden and inexplicable soreness.
I glare at the door to my father's office, and the
WAVELENGTH (Everett Noble)
inscribed there in particular.
Hell's bells. The bastard installed a blocking device.
Blocking devices are expensive, durable, and potentially deadly to even the strongest teleporter. Only a rare few even bother installing the complex set-ups in whatever secret compartment or hidden lair they want to remain safe. Even most supervillains don't stoop that low. Of course, most of them think their precious lairs will never be found, mostly because they disguise them as – oh, say, pathetic rundown trailer homes with uncut lawns in the middle of the boondocks.
Whoever is in my father, he suspected I'd be coming.
“I suppose I can't blame him for that one,” I say to myself, wincing as I get to my feet and set myself to rights.
Frustrated, I teleport to the lab at the rear of the third floor. Any identifiable bits and bobs from the invading robots would be there, already in the process of being dismantled by Loose Screw or waiting to be examined by Dad for psychic residue.
Assuming whoever's in my father has grasped enough of a handle over his abilities to pull off that particular move, that is.
The lab is in the permanent state of organized chaos I remember fondly. Walking into the brightly-lit and well-stocked laboratory here is an assault on the senses, a definite lack of storage leading to evidence clogging the backlog like a broken toilet. Everything in the room from the bent leg struts propped up against the far wall to the small mound of screws and bolts on the exam table in the center of the room is labeled and isolated. But that doesn't keep the crowded space from feeling a bit claustrophobic.
I stare at the table of disassembled parts removed from the impenetrable guts of the robots, my gaze catching on an eerily familiar piece of technology. Taking a quick look around to make sure there's not some curious intern sporting a white lab coat hovering nearby, I bite my bottom lip and pick up the small rack of cracked syringes, bound together in an even row by a metal casing twisted during the battle. I'm not sure what it's for, my grasp on the internal mechanics of these things woefully out of date and sparse even when it wasn't.
But a little more shredded metal and broken plastic and glass …
Well, it looks almost exactly like the damaged contraption I saw in Morris's lair.
“Popping up all over the place these days, ain't ya?”
I hastily put the gadget aside and turn to face Nate as he ambles into the room. Nate's not one for spandex and leather. A repetitive cycle of worn jeans and faded T-shirts is as far as he's willing to move towards an actual uniform. His cowboy hat must have been abandoned in the cluttered depths of his office, his shaven head starting to shadow with a hint of uneven patchy stubble. Somebody needs a visit with a razor.
Nate lets loose a low whistle as his impressed gaze takes in the determined set of my mouth. “Itchin' for an ass-kickin', are we?”
That's one way of putting it, I suppose.
“I think my dad's been bodyswapped with someone else,” I state. No time for anything other than the blunt nasty truth.
He stills, and I know I'm not going to enjoy what he's about to say when he gives the area a furtive once-over before leading me into a dark area I can only presume is out of range of security cameras, listening devices, and certain hijab-sporting teammates who travel through shadows. “You know what's the funniest thing about that statement?” he drawls, lowering his voice. “Ain't the first time in my life someone's said that to me and meant it. I'm thinking I may been needing a less paranoid circle of friends.”
“You don't think he's behaving the least bit strangely lately?”
“You mean aside from being all over your mama like a wet T-shirt?”
I grimace at that. I know it's common not to like to think that on occasion your parents have something that is in uncertain terms a sex life, but there hasn't been any such occasion in the past five years for my mom and dad, and somehow that just makes the thought of it even more off-putting. “That is a more revolting mental image than I care to contemplate, but thanks.”
“Vera, you've been out in the weeds for five years,” he says, tilting his head to look me in the eyes, the gesture so condescending my hackles rise in self-defense. “There ain't no shame in it.”
My lips draw into a thin stiff line. It's not as though Everett Noble is just some neighbor I passed in my apartment building on occasion or one of those notorious attention-seeking professional victims every superhero team in the city has been pressed into rescuing on more than one occasion. He's my
father
, for heaven's sake. “You don't seriously believe I'm just imagining things because I haven't spoken to Dad in years.”
Nate's smile is heartbreaking, soft around the edges. “People do change, peaches.”
“Dad never changes.”
“I know,” he says, his words a bit more pointed than I expect.
I gape as I restrain myself from starting an argument by asking what that's supposed to mean, but an odd tug in my stomach distracts me. It's disorienting enough for me to pause, like the bob and pull of a loaded fishing line but with the end of the taut line secured to a spot just under my ribs.
“You feel that?” I blurt out, pressing a hand to my belly.
I don't know why I ask, but even as Nate asks, “Feel what?”, his eyes cloud in confusion, and his lips twist in discomfort as he lift a hand to hold against his abs.
He's holding himself in,
I think, the thought popping into my head out of nowhere.
And that's precisely when the invisible line pulling at both of us snaps.
It starts as an icy-hot pinprick in my stomach, a miniature spot of pure sensation that crackles and writhes deep within me. I only barely register its existence before it explodes outward, shuddering through me like a thundering elephant released from unwanted bonds. I fall to my knees at the same time that my eyes slam shut, and in that instant the heat swallows me, engulfs my body and sweeps my consciousness away in a cleansing painless flush.