The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (41 page)

Chapter
79:

Day
and night

Kate curled up in the escape pod,
watching stars drift by.

How do we come back from this? Kate
thought. How do we return to normal? Do I just begin the normal routine of
stopping robberies and patrolling the City? We've seen the future, and what's
out in space waiting for us. How do we ever look at the world in the same way
again?

      The pod spun slowly, and every few
minutes Kate would get a good look at Earth. I could fit it in my pocket, she
thought. I never wanted to feel this big. I belong down in the alleys and
gutters.

      Alleys. She wondered about the
Hawk, still. Missing for weeks, she thought he might resurface during this last
round of attacks, but he hadn't. She felt helpless up here, looking down on the
entire planet and didn't like it.

      As the pod continued to spin, the
sight of Jane hovering outside startled Kate. The solar-powered girl put a hand
on the escape pod, stopping its circular movement, then placed her palm on the
glass. Kate unfurled her legs and positioned her hand up against Jane's. She
felt warmth through the glass.

      "Hello in there," Jane
said.

      Kate nodded back at her. Neal, situated
in his new little robot body, spun one of his sensors around to look out the
window as well.

      "Hello, Designation: Solar,"
he said.

      Jane smiled. "You put Neal in
a can," she said.

      "Did we lose anyone?"
Kate said.

      Jane glanced out at the stars. The
sun's energy danced across her skin. Kate sometimes found herself mystified at
how different they were. Day and night, sun and moon, hope and cynicism, joy
and anger. Yet once in a while, if she wasn't paying attention, wasn't forcing
herself to think the worst about everything and everybody, Kate would realize
she couldn't possibly do this without Jane. Someone had to be optimistic. This type
of work drove you mad without hope.

      And someone has to be me, Kate
thought. Because hope can kill you just as quickly. But there were times, Kate
thought, when she could use a little bit more hope.

      She gazed past Jane, into the
stars, to the cosmos and beyond, into the blackness they knew so much more
clearly now than ever before was not nearly as empty as humanity had always
believed. Kate wondered what else was in store for them. What other terrors
might come their way. We're on the map now, Kate thought. Whatever else is out
there, they know we're here. But they've seen us fight, too, haven't they. And
we're waiting. Next time, we'll be better.

      Jane seemed to sense Kate's mood
from outside the pod. She started looking for a place to grab hold of the
escape pod, a section where she could get a good grip. She tapped on the glass
gently.

      "Doc has Titus," Jane
said. "He's alive. In bad shape but… Can I bring you home, Kate?"

      Kate pressed her head against the
glass. Tired, her body ached as if she could feel each individual bruise and
cut and scrape from the past few days.

      "Let's go home," Kate
said.

Chapter
80:

The
story

Jon Broadstreet wandered the streets of
the City, taking it all in. He snapped photos with his cheap digital camera and
searched for the story.

      This is all the story, he thought.
Invaders from another planet, a group of super-powered heroes saving the day.
Bizarre, bug-like spacecrafts zipping over the city while beings covered in
light fought them in air-to-air combat.

      The aliens on the ground tearing
the City apart at the street level, the heroes who stepped up to fight them,
Earth's own monsters standing toe to toe with monsters from other worlds.
Creatures in the sky, barely visible, winged and horrible things that seemed to
disappear as the fight subsided, yet had appeared, incongruously, to be
fighting on our side. The girl in the storm, made of clouds and lightning,
striking down a huge alien battleship, that came to rest at a location government
men were now blocking off to gawkers.

      Those government men, using
weapons that shouldn't exist. There will be stories about that, too. Was that an
example of our tax money at work? Or something more sinister?

      The story. There were casualties.
Remarkably few, all things considered. Broadstreet knew Jane and her friends
would do anything to keep the threat as far away from ordinary people as
possible. Buildings were destroyed downtown, though. Streets torn up. People
were missing. Some would turn up dead. There would be memorial stories, in the
press, on TV. Talking heads will call into question every decision made, by the
Indestructibles, by the Department, by the government, by each other.

      Always a story. Everyone needs to
find their own angle.

      Maybe I'm not cut out for this any
longer, Broadstreet thought. I'm a terrible newsman. I'm not ruthless enough.

      He found himself near a Department
staging area, men in dark suits sitting around, tending to the wounded, taking
stock of what happened. In the middle of the pack sat Sam Barren, the agent who
had been liaison to the Indestructibles as Broadstreet had been their pet
reporter. They'd crossed paths a few times. They knew each other. Sam raised a
hand at Broadstreet, who waved back. Then, the old agent beckoned him over.

      "You I'll talk to," Barren
said.

      The war appeared to have aged him Broadstreet
realized.

      "Reporters hounding you?"

      "Everyone is," Sam said.
"My own men, my own government, you people…"

      "I get lumped in with 'you
people' now?" Broadstreet said.

      "You people," Sam said
again, adjusting the battered fedora on his head. "I'll give you three
questions because I like you. Go."

      "Are they alive?"
Broadstreet said without hesitation.

      "Who?" Sam said.

      "Our mutual friends in the
flying headquarters," Broadstreet said. "Did they make it?" 

      Sam smiled and nodded.

      "No casualties," Sam
said "Barely. I'll give you more on that later, but I can say they all
came home."

      "Okay," Broadstreet
said. "Speaking of home, where'd the Tower go? It's not above the City
anymore."

      "That," Sam said, "I
really can't tell you. I think they used it in the fight. Where it ended up
afterward I don't know."

      "So when my readers ask if it's
gone…"

      Sam turned his eyes up to the sky,
his eyes on the verge of watering. Broadstreet was well-versed on the history
of the City's heroes. The Tower used to be part of a building, before it became
a floating base, but it had been here in the City for a lifetime. If it was
gone, it would mark the end of an era, one that Barren had been a part of for
decades.

      "I don't know what to tell
you on that, son," Sam said. "Sorry."

      "Last question, then,"
Broadstreet said.

      "Fire away."

      "Did we win?"

      Sam took his hat off and ran a
hand through his thinning hair.

      "We're still standing, right?"
Sam said. "I'd call that a win."

      They shook hands. Broadstreet
walked away, leaving Sam to bark orders at his agents. He had a million more
questions for the government man, but trying to parse them out overwhelmed him.
Who were these aliens? Will they come back? Why were they here? Did we know
they were coming?

      There will be stories about this
for years, Broadstreet thought. Maybe we'll never have all the answers, but we'll
ask all the questions.

      He cut through the park in the
center of the City. People had taken refuge in there of all places. Groups of
residents fled the buildings that the aliens seemed to be targeting to hide
among the green trees. Broadstreet took pictures, collated quotes from
survivors, and chatted with a five-year-old who wanted to be a werewolf when he
grew up because of something he witnessed.

      Along the way, he crossed paths
with an elegant woman shielding her eyes behind huge sunglasses, despite the
gray skies and light rain that still fell. He couldn't help but stare at her,
and when she saw him, she smiled back.

      "Quite the show today, wasn't
it?" the woman said. She had an accent. From where, Broadstreet couldn't
tell. Perhaps South Africa. Maybe somewhere else.

      "Yeah. Were you here the
whole time?"

      "I was," the woman said.
"Doing my part."

      "How so?"

      She shot him a movie star smile
and raised an eyebrow.

      "Ugliness will follow, won't
it?" the woman said.

      "How do you mean?"

      "This world. It's full of
wonders, and yet it always loves to lay blame. If there was one thing I would
change it would be for everyone to realize how lucky we are to be here,"
she said. "I've been to quite a few versions of hell. It's a shame no one
appreciates this place enough."

      Broadstreet took a slight step
back and studied the woman's face. The corners of her eyes crinkled.

      "It was nice to meet you, Jon
Broadstreet," the woman said. "Will you quote me in your story?"

      Broadstreet shrugged, not sure why
she made him uncomfortable.

      "Maybe," he said. "Can
I get your name, take a quick photo?"

      She acquiesced, letting him snap a
head and shoulders shot.

      "I'm Natasha," she told
him. "Natasha Grey."

      They shook hands, and Broadstreet
watched her walk away. Only after she was out of sight did he realized she knew
his name without his ever telling her.

      He turned his camera back on and
previewed her photo on its small monitor. When he saw the image, he nearly
dropped the camera.  Behind those huge sunglasses, her eyes burned bright, like
balls of flame.

      There is always a story, he
thought.

Chapter
81:

We're
all still here

Kate sat beside Titus's hospital bed in
a secure wing of the Labyrinth, watching him sleep.

Titus hadn't awakened since Doc got him
back to Earth. There was little any of them could do for the werewolf. Sam
Barren, with his bizarre healing powers, had offered to help despite how much
using them hurt him, but on his first attempt, Sam said there was something
about Titus's werewolf biology that made his own gifts ineffective. Sam was
still a stranger in his own body when it came to the abilities Prevention's
people had given him barely a few months before. It didn't surprise Kate that
he couldn't explain why they weren't effective.

      They tried to locate Titus's tribe
to ask for help, but that proved difficult. Finnigan turned down Titus's offer
not long ago for a satellite phone, saying that they'd survived all this time
without a cell phone and he didn't intend to start now. At the time Kate
thought it was charmingly Luddite of him to say so. Now she wanted to throttle
the red-headed werewolf for being selfish in his refusal of technology.

      Doc mentioned he could send a
message to Leto, the leader and shaman of the pack of wolves, one magician to
another, but they hadn't heard back. Perhaps they were in trouble, Kate
wondered. They wouldn't ignore a call for assistance. The pack was a strange
group, but they'd die for each other in an instant. There was no way they'd
dismiss an opportunity to help Titus if he needed them.

      Titus's wounds were improving,
though. Kate could almost watch it happen, as his werewolf healing abilities
knitted cuts and lacerations back together and transformed raw burns into pink
new skin. The explosion singed the hair on his head, and a silvery gleam of
stubble had begun to grow back. More gray than before, Kate noted. Titus had
been turning prematurely gray since they met, it seemed the more he employed
his powers, the more the color shift happened. He wasn't getting old, Kate
knew. This shift somehow indicated that he was becoming more connected to his
abilities.

      Still, he hadn't opened his eyes.
So she sat beside him, sleeping in the chair next to his bed, only leaving his
side for a few minutes at a time. The others stopped by, to bring her food or
coffee, and to check on his status. Emily spoke to him for a while, about what
happened and what was to come next. Kate felt a flash of annoyance as the
blue-haired girl chattered away, but she soon found it comforting as well, the
normalcy of it, the endless patter of Emily-speak. If Billy was Emily's best friend,
Titus was her big brother. They were all worried.

      A knock came at the door. Jane
stood in the frame. She wore the uniform of her future self, a bodysuit of
white and black and gleaming gold, the girlish costume she'd used before with
its cape and skirt cast aside, at least for now. These days, with the Tower
gone, all they had to work with was what they'd left back on Earth.

      "How is he?" Jane asked.

      "No change," Kate said
in a rough, quiet voice.

      Jane walked in, touched the back
of Titus's hand, and examined the room.

      "I hate that we had to bring
him here," she said.

      "The Labyrinth's infirmary is
built to treat superhumans," Kate said. "It was the best option. It's
my fault the Tower's infirmary was destroyed anyway. I'm the one who should be
apologizing."

      Jane shook her head. She
understood where Kate was coming from. They both had their guilt.

      "We're going to meet with
the… with Billy's… with the good aliens," Jane said. "I'm not sure
what to call them. Humans made up the name Luminae, didn't they? It seems
offensive to call them that."

      Kate shrugged.

      "Billy said a while back that
Dude's people spoke a language comprised of light," Kate said. "Luminae
is probably as good a translation as any."

      "I suppose so," Jane
said. "We're meeting with them soon. I wanted to ask if you'd like to come,
but I assume…"

      "I think you can handle this without
me," Kate said.

      Jane smiled, affection displayed
in her eyes. "Just this one time," she said.

      "Don't make a habit of it,"
Kate said.

      "I promise not to," Jane
said. Suddenly and startlingly, she leaned in to give Kate a hug, wrapping her
arms around her shoulders. The solar-powered girl's body radiated the heat of a
perfect summer day.

      And, not quite sure why or how,
Kate returned the hug. Her strong, wiry arms engulfed the other girl. She
pressed her chin into Jane's shoulder, biting back a wave of emotion she was
not at all comfortable with.

      Jane let go and stepped back. "We'll
be home soon," she said. "I'll let you know everything that happens."

      "I know," Kate said.

      She always did. Though Jane was
their leader in name, Kate had always been willing to share the burden with
her, silent and steady. Sun and moon. Day and night.

      "And you let me know if he—" 

      "I will," Kate said.

      Jane nodded again and closed the
door behind her.

      Kate sat in silence for a few
moments, setting her tablet aside, face down on a nearby table. She gazed at
Titus, still and quiet in his bed. Then she watched the closed door of the
hospital room for a few seconds, slipped her shoes off and crawled into the bed
beside Titus. Careful not to touch his burns, Kate rested her head on the
pillow beside him. After a few minutes, she started to drift, feeling the
battle's exhaustion crashing down on her. Just as her eyes grew heavy, Titus
coughed.

      "Why does everything hurt?"
he said softly, his voice gravely from disuse and smoke.

      Kate paused for a moment, unsure
if she were dreaming or if he really spoke.

      He turned his head slowly to face
her, gold eyes bloodshot but open, and offered her a weak smile.

      "You made it," he said. "What
happened?"

      Kate leaned in and kissed him
lightly on the lips.

      Titus's eyes widened at the
uncharacteristic display of affection, her unexpected gentleness.

      "Doesn't matter," she said.
"We're still here."