The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (25 page)

Chapter
43:

The
interview

Jane asked Broadstreet to find a place
where they could talk without pedestrians walking by. They'd done okay in the
past, quiet coffee shops or paths in the City's parks, but this time, she
wanted to make sure no one could overhear them. Broadstreet seemed put off at
first—not upset, just confused.

      "Well the newsroom is out. It's
a building layered in gossips," he said. "Best location I can think
of is the rooftop of my apartment building."

      "Your neighbors don't use it?"
Jane asked.

      "Not if I lock the door while
I'm up there," Broadstreet said, giving her the address.

      Jane sometimes wondered if she was
the only person in the City who could find her way around from above. She knew
all the streets, despite never having to walk them, but that came from
perspective—she'd been staring down at the roadways and alleys for years, a
literal bird's eye view of the metropolis. Even still, she had to look up where
the reporter lived to be sure. Apparently, with his journalist's salary, he
couldn't afford very nice accommodations. She found his apartment building in a
rundown part of the City, a place no one had gentrified yet, filled with too
many people per apartment, all living paycheck to paycheck.

      Dressed in jeans and a college
sweatshirt, Broadstreet waited on the roof. She'd called him on his day off,
but as always, he made time to see her. He was reliable that way.

      "So how much lower has your
opinion of me drpped now that you know where I live?" he asked.

      "Why would I think less of
you because of where you live in town?" she asked.

      Broadstreet chuckled.

      "You don't spend a lot of time
around regular people, do you?" he said.

      "The answer to that question is
'no time,' " Jane said.

      Broadstreet gestured out over the
City like a celebrity showing off his penthouse.

      "But look at this view! You
can almost see downtown if it weren't for the deteriorating billboards over
there," he said. "But why the secrecy? Bad news, I assume."

      "I need a favor," Jane
said.

      Broadstreet cocked his head.

      "Well that's new," he
said.

      "If I gave you something,
could you sit on it until the right time to release the information?" Jane
asked. She paced, anxiety giving her the jitters, making her unable to sit
still.

      "This is that thing you were
hinting at the other day," he said.

      "Yeah," Jane said.

      "How bad could it be? Are we
being invaded by aliens or something?" Broadstreet said, smiling.

      Jane stared at him.

      The smile faded slowly from
Broadstreet's face.

      "We are?"

      "Ayup," Jane said.

      He sat down on the lip of the
building, suddenly looking very green.

      "That's upsetting," he
said.

      "Ayup," Jane said.

      "Okay," Broadstreet
said. "So what are you doing? Giving me the story? You want me to write
something and then have it ready for when you need to start an evacuation or
something? I mean, my bosses would absolutely murder me if they knew I sat on
something like this for a few days but you can trust me to…"

      "I need you to record
something," Jane said, interrupting. "You told me last time we
talked, that we should control the message, and that it should come from me,"
Jane said.

      "That's right,"
Broadstreet said.

      "Well, I'm giving you that
message. All I'm asking is that you hold off on broadcasting it until the right
moment," Jane said.

      "Why not do it yourself? That
Tower of yours has to have transmitter capabilities," Broadstreet said.

      "It does," Jane said. "But
there's a pretty good chance I won't be here when the word needs to go out."

      "That sounds ominous,"
Broadstreet said. "So if you're not here and I'm sitting on your
announcement, how am I going to know when to release it?"

      Jane grimaced and looked out over
the City. It wasn't difficult, she thought, to picture it under attack. Her imagination
started to kick up and she wondered where the aliens would strike first, where
they'd cause the most destruction. How they'd tear the City apart. It didn't
help that she'd seen the City in ruins during their trip to the future not long
ago. She had witnessed firsthand what sort of damage could be done. This world
is remarkably fragile.

      "You'll know," Jane said
softly. "Trust me."  

      "This is when it dawns on me
that I'm a terrible reporter," Broadstreet said. "My peers would be
chomping at the bit for this. They'd lie and promise you they'd embargo your
information and then leak it the first second they could."

      "That doesn't make you a bad
reporter, it makes you a good person . . . . A friend," she said.

      "They always warn you not to
become friends with your sources," Broadstreet said.

      "There's probably a rule
about constantly asking them out, too," Jane said.

      "Yeah," Broadstreet
said. "I feel pretty bad about that now."

      "Don't," Jane said,
smiling. "It's okay."

      Broadstreet laughed at himself,
shaking his head.

      "See? A crackerjack
journalist would have figured out how to get you to spill everything about this
invasion and already would be running back to the newsroom to scoop the
competition, and I'm standing here worrying about whether or not you'll be
okay," Broadstreet said. "You'll be alright. You're always okay."

      Jane shrugged. She hadn't thought
much about it, really, whether they'd succeed in fending off the invasion.
These things are easier if you don't think much about it. Easier to face
certain death if you don't put a lot of reflection into it.

      "Again, with the ominous,"
Broadsteet said.

      "Sorry," Jane said.

      "So what do we do? Should I take
notes? Is this a formal interview?"

      "Do you have a video camera?"
Jane said.

      "Wait—you're letting me
record you?" Broadstreet said.

      "You told me the message
should come from me," Jane said. "I'm taking your advice."

      Broadstreet gave her another
worried look but picked up his messenger bag and pulled out a first generation digital
camera. He showed it to her apologetically.

      "Cheap execs won't let us
upgrade our equipment," he said.

      "Will it work?" Jane
said.

      "It'll get the job done,"
he said. "You'll make your statement and I just… publish it when the time
is right?"

      "Yes," Jane said. "In
every format possible. You're going to want the world to hear this."

      "The other papers and
networks will pick it up the second I release it," Broadstreet said.

      "That's okay. We want to
maximize reach," Jane said.

      He adjusted the settings on the
camera without ever really taking his attention off Jane.

      Jane exhaled nervously. She'd done
interviews before, with Broadstreet and others, but she'd avoided being on
camera as much as possible. She hated the sound of her voice, the hollow and
low tones she heard when played back.

      "Are you ready to start?"
he said.

      Jane sighed heavily, her stomach
fluttered with nerves. She'd been practicing what to say for days now, ever
since they last spoke. She would never be more prepared, yet she also felt she
would never truly be ready either.

      "Now's as good a time as any,"
Jane said.

      "Should I record an intro?"
Broadstreet said.

      Jane shrugged again. "I have
no idea," she said.

      "I'll just do a quick intro
for context," Broadstreet said. "Nothing self-aggrandizing."

      "You really are a terrible
reporter," Jane said, laughing a little.

      "I know," Broadstreet
said, setting up the camera on a table left behind by one of the other tenants.
He pressed record and then jumped in front of it.

      "This is Jon Broadstreet of
the
City Guardian
. I am here with Solar, leader of the superhuman team the
Indestructibles. Solar has requested the opportunity to speak directly to you,
the viewers, about a topic of utmost importance. What she has to say will speak
for itself. I think it best if I leave the rest up to her. Solar?"

      Broadstreet stepped aside and
picked up the camera, and held it steady. Jane looked to Broadstreet, who
gestured with his face to direct her attention to the lens.

      "My name is Solar," she
said. "I apologize for the cryptic nature of this message, but I ask everyone
watching to listen carefully…"

Chapter
44:

Awkward

Billy entered the control center and set
a mug of coffee down in front of Bedlam. In the room by herself, her head
placed in her hands, she looked tired and unexpectedly sad.

      The coffee cup clinked against the
tabletop and she looked up. "You," she said.

      "Of all the flying saucers on
all the planets on all the worlds, you had to walk into mine," Billy said,
offering an awkward smile.

      "That's the cheesiest thing I've
ever heard in my life. Ever."

      "Wasn't sure what to lead
with," Billy said. "Since we've never had a normal conversation
before."

      "And this is normal?"
Bedlam said. She nodded at the empty chair next to her.

      Billy slid into his chair. "And
how've you been?"

      "Oh, y'know. Not too bad.
Mostly going to the mall with Suzie and Amy, looking forward to senior prom,"
she said.

      "What did you think of McGillicuddy's
math exam? Brutal, huh?" Billy said.

      "Oh man," she said. "The
worst."

      They laughed. The sound of their
voices echoed in the oddly quiet Tower. Little footsteps clicked across the
floor and Watson arrived, the tiny dog jumped into Billy's lap. He scratched at
the dog's chin absently.

      "Do normal people have
conversations like that?" Bedlam said. "I still can't believe you
have a dog that fits in a purse."

      "He doesn't ride in a purse,
and they talk that way on TV, so it has to be true," Billy said. "I
went to real normal regular person schools for most of my life, y'know."     

      "Me too," Bedlam said.
She offered her hand to Watson, who sniffed it suspiciously, then licked her
metal fingertips. "It's not as if we've never been normal."

      "Well, I wouldn't have called
myself normal at the time," Billy said.

      "Me either," Bedlam
said. "We never did have that date we joked about."

      "It's remarkably difficult to
find time for the movies when you're a superhero," Billy said. "Did
you hear we traveled through time?"

      "A little something about
that," Bedlam said. "On a scale of one to ten, was it more, less, or
equal to the amount of fun
Back to the Future
seemed to be?"

      "I'd rate it as
Days of
Future Past
," Billy said. "With a side of the
Terminator
thrown in."

      "Sounds like a party."

      "Oh it was," Billy said.

      Bedlam sighed and sipped her
coffee.

      "Like we could've gone to the
movies," she said. "Look at us. Your eyes glow like Christmas lights
and I've got more metal in my body than a Jeep Cherokee. Normal lives are not
in the cards for us, Mr. Straylight."

      "Doesn't mean we can't try,"
Billy said. "Though it might be easier to act like we're normal people if
we had normal names. I don't actually know your real name."

      "Maybe Bedlam is my birth
name," Bedlam said. "Maybe my parents hated me."

      "You don't have to tell me,"
Billy said. He paused for a few seconds, realizing how quiet Dude had been the
past few minutes. He could sense the alien there in his mind, but withdrawn.
Giving him privacy, Billy realized. He couldn't explain how the alien was able
to accomplish it, but somehow Dude had pulled down a virtual curtain in his
mind, leaving him alone with his thoughts, and with this strange and sad girl.

      "Slippery slope, that,"
Bedlam said. "I tell you my first name, then we have to treat each other
like actual people… "

      "You know my real name,"
Billy said.

      "That's because your
teammates are horrible, horrible, horrible about using codenames. I know
all
your real names. You never stop saying them," Bedlam said.

      "And yours is?" Billy
said.

      "I'm actually pretty good at
aliases," Bedlam said.

      "You don't like it, do you?"
Billy said.

      Bedlam shot him a dirty look.

      "What?" she said.

      "You're not refusing to tell
me your first name because you're being secretive. You hate it," Billy
said.

      "Listen, William Byron Case,
just because everybody knows your secret-not-secret identity…"

      "Who told you my middle name!"
Billy said.

      "Give you three guesses and
the first two don't count," Bedlam said.

      "Emily. It's always Emily,"
Billy said.

      "Of course," Bedlam
said.

      He scowled. "This isn't
fair."

      They locked eyes for a minute, the
silence turned from charming to awkward and back to charming.

      "I know what you're thinking,"
Bedlam said.

      "And?"

      "You want to tell me I have a
pretty eye," Bedlam said.

      Billy's jaw dropped.

      Bedlam laughed, a straight on,
filled-with-happiness laugh.

      "Do you have any idea how
long I've sat on that joke?" she said.

      "That's so inappropriate!"
Billy said.

      "Not if I say it,"
Bedlam said. "Come on, what's the upside of having a cyborg eye if you can't
tell that joke."

      Billy joined in her laughter. He
put his head down on the table, his ears turned red with embarrassment. Then, he
raised his eyes back up at her 

      "I really do think you're
pretty," Billy said.

      "You're pretty too, flyboy,"
Bedlam said. "It's not much to go on though, is it? Thinking we're pretty."

      "Not really," he said.

      "How do normal people do this
stuff?" Bedlam said. "How do regular people make friends? Meet
people? I forgot how to do it. All I know is weird now."

      "Forget normal," Billy
said. "I hated it. Did you like those days?"

      Bedlam's face softened, her
expression becoming almost distant.

      "I wasn't a happy normal
person," she said. "There are days I hate this. Hate being this
thing. Can't stand what I look like and who I've become. But you know something
funny? I have more happy days now than unhappy ones."

      "Being able to punch through
brick walls must help with the unhappy days," Billy said.

      "Destruction therapy,"
Bedlam said. "It works. I highly recommend it."

      They both sipped their coffee,
didn't speak, didn't seem to feel the need and to speak. I've had worse days, Billy
thought. I really have.

      "Hey listen," Bedlam
said. "If we get through this alien invasion thing, I'm taking you out."

      "You're taking me?"
Billy said.

      "Yeah. I know a junkyard
where they let me break old cars for fun. You're coming with me and smashing
some stuff. Group therapy."

      Billy smirked and thought back to
the night Doc found him. He remembered Dude chastising him for being
destructive and shooting tin cans with light beams.

      "You do know how to make a
guy feel special," Billy said.

      "Is that a no?"

      "It's a yes," Billy
said.

      The duo laughed again, awkward and
unsure, yet warm and welcome. Bedlam's mouth broke into a grin. For just a
moment, she looked shy.    

      "Kimberly," Bedlam said.

      "What?" Billy asked.

      "Before all this,"
Bedlam said. "My name is Kimberly."

      "Never in a million years would
I have guessed Kimberly," he said.

      "Try not to tell everyone,"
she said. "I'd like to do a slightly better job at the secret identity
stuff than you guys do."

      Billy offered her a mock salute. "Aye
aye, Bedlam," he said. "Can I call you Kimberly though?"

      "Let's hang out a little bit
more first."

      "Okay," Billy said.

      Abruptly, their conversation was
interrupted by the monotone voice of Neal coming through the room's speakers.

      "I beg your pardon, Designation:
Straylight," Neal said. "But there is an incoming call from Sam
Barren. Shall I patch it through?"

      Billy looked up at the ceiling to
Neal's disembodied voice, his face a wrinkled mask of annoyance.

      "Is there anyone else who can
take the call?" he said.

      "Designation: Solar and
Designation: Dancer are both off-site and you are sitting in the control
center. You seemed like the logical choice. Mr. Barren said: 'I guess
Straylight will do.'"

      "Well that's a resounding
endorsement," Billy said. He shrugged apologetically at Bedlam.

      "I'm beginning to see why we
never met up before," she said.

      Sam Barren's face appeared,
oversized, on the main screen.

      "Hey, kid," Sam said.

      "So you calling with bad
news, worse news, or really awful news?" Billy asked.

      "Considering I just got a
call from NASA asking if the Department knew anything about the unidentified
objects someone just saw with one of their deep space telescopes, I'm going to
call it really awful news," Sam said. "Where's the rest of the gang?"

      "Everywhere," Billy
said, running a nervous hand through his hair. "I'll put out the call and
get them back here."