Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (14 page)

I like kitties in trees. They’re easy.

Astra,
Notes From a Life

“You’re alive,” Dr. Beth said with a broad smile.

Finally finished, he snapped off his gloves and sat down, patting Artemis’ knee absent-mindedly as he gave her the news.

“How?” she asked.

“No idea,” he said cheerfully. “You’re still a vampire. No surprise there since you misted home, something mere mortals don’t do. And of course,” he tapped his left canine illustratively, “you’ve still got the signature dentition. But,” he chuckled happily and waved at the screens behind him, “all metabolic processes formerly in abeyance are now functioning. You’re breathing, and not just for air to talk with. You have a healthy heartbeat, measurable brain activity, your sweat glands are working, tissue samples show living cells, I could go on. You’re a living, healthy young lady.”

I could have told him most of that. When we went out tonight she’d been room-temperature, an animated corpse; now her heartbeat was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard, a faint echo of that second, already forgotten Word, and she glowed in my infrared vision with a warm and yellow
living
light. I could hardly take my eyes off of her.

Taking stock at the apartment, we’d found we were all good, but the poor building super nearly died of shock—this time the attack left the carpet soaked in blood and a big hole where the
thing
pinned Artemis. I’d never left an incident scene so fast; Fisher hustled us out, taking Orb and Mr. Jones with him.
Officially
, he’d contacted both of them and asked them to come out and look at the scene, and Artemis and I had agreed to come along as backup. I guess he thought it was better to lie like a rug than let Chief Garfield know that my request had guided the investigation to tonight’s encounter. It didn’t feel right, but he knew his boss better than I did.

Artemis and I flew back to the Dome and, though I’d never felt so good, went right downstairs to the infirmary. Shelly had called ahead, so Dr. Beth and Blackstone waited for us there. After determining I wasn’t even scratched anymore (and
that
took a minute, with all the blood and sticky shreds of costume), Dr. Beth went to work on Jacky. He hummed to himself as he checked her pulse, respiration, heartbeat, muscle-tone, involuntary reflexes, and took samples from everywhere to feed his machines. I could have gone and changed but I’d stayed, holding Jacky’s hand while we waited for a diagnosis. She practically vibrated, ready to fly into a million pieces. Blackstone listened as we dictated our after-action reports.

“Astra,” Dr. Beth said, breaking my near-trance. “Could you come over here, please?” Taking my hand, he guided it under a high-res sonogram scanner, nodding at what he saw.

“If you’ll look here, ladies,” he said. “Astra, in your fight with
Seif
-al-Din in January you fractured nearly every bone in your body. Now, as you can see, the bones in your hand and wrist show no sign of increased density from bone remodeling. Also…” He paused, smiled gently. “How do you feel?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I am not unaware of your problem.”

“Oh.” I’d hoped only Dr. Mendel had picked up on it, but Dr. Beth examined me after every serious fight.

Jacky looked at me. “Hope?”

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The cabin? But I feel fine.” I laughed, giddy. “Better than fine—like I used to feel after a tough field hockey match.”

Dr. Beth nodded. “PTSD is caused when an overactive adrenal response triggers deep neurological changes in the brain. I’d not be surprised if the biological ‘reset’ you both seem to have experienced has erased its effects on your
neuro
-anatomy. You may even find your post-combat shakes gone completely.”

I stared, stunned as his words sank in, and then proved my new emotional health by bursting into tears. Blackstone had waited quietly throughout the examination, and now he produced a handkerchief from nowhere with a flamboyant magician’s wave. I laughed again, wiping my eyes.

“Thank you, doctor,” he said. “So you can certify them both for active duty?”

“Oh my, yes. They couldn’t possibly be healthier. Bottle whatever it was, and I’m out of a job.” Completely untroubled by the possibility, he reached into the pocket of his doctor’s coat and handed each of us a lollypop.

Blackstone disappeared to speak to Fisher and get Mr. Jones and Orb back to the Dome, but the first thing Artemis did was head for the dining room. Willis, having heard the news through Dispatch, had set out cold-cuts sandwiches for us.
Both
of us. I was fading fast, but Artemis sat and ate with me before following after Blackstone; if he was the team’s intelligence wizard, she was the wizard’s apprentice.

Just watching my friend
eat
was wonderful, though she took it in her usual
undramatic
, detached way. I fell asleep full of gleeful thoughts of all the places I could take her, how surprised the Bees would be, and slept like the dead till a ghost woke me up.

“Hope,” Shelly whispered, tickling my ear. I swatted at her virtual finger and rolled over, then almost hit the ceiling when she started on my feet.

“
Aahh
! What the hell, Shell?”

“Jacky wants you, but didn’t want to wake you up.”

“And good thinking, too! Why?” I landed and untangled from my sheets.

“She’s going out to watch the sunrise.”

I never dressed so fast in all my life.

“Are you
sure
about this?”

We stood just inside the east doors, looking out over Grant Park toward Lake Michigan in the blue pre-dawn light. Jacky wore her
daysuit
, but had her left glove off, dangling from her right fist. She turned, and I couldn’t see her eyes behind her protective mask.

“Dr. Beth said I’m alive, and if I—if I’m really alive…” The no-drama girl of last night was long gone.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need Level 5,000 sunscreen anymore,” I said desperately.

“But it might,” she whispered, naked longing in her voice.

The sky lightened as I watched, trying to think of
anything
to say. I could have dragged her back inside. Instead I took her hand as the light turned gold and the sun topped the trees.

And she didn’t burn. Her hand squeezed mine, warm and pale, and I breathed again.

“Jacky—”

She nodded, and suddenly she was tearing at her hood. Pulling it off, she unsnapped her sealed facemask and threw it to the ground, taking deep gasping breaths of morning air.

“Oh God. Oh
God
.” She couldn’t look away from the sun, even when she turned and grabbed me. And then my tough-as-nails friend was crying so hard she couldn’t stand up.
 
But that was okay; I wouldn’t let her fall.

When I dreamed of being a superhero, I imagined epic fights and daring rescues. But do you know how superheroes spend most of their time? Paperwork and meetings. Public-relations meetings, Sentinels business meetings, city-liaison meetings, coordination meetings, certification and compliance meetings. Someday I will cross over Jordan, and there will be no more meetings. But some meetings are more interesting than others.

Astra,
Notes From a Life.

I had classes, but when I got back Jacky and I wandered Grant Park for lunch. We grabbed some hot-dogs and even soaked ourselves in the wind-blown spray of Buckingham Fountain, just two girls in summer dresses out on a warm spring afternoon, and if Jacky looked Goth-girl pale the boys didn’t care.

Afterward I changed and went on patrol, but not before stopping by
Quin’s
office to talk to her about my conversation with Mom on Friday. It had absolutely dropped out of my head, with everything happening, but my promise to see what I could do for last week’s breakthrough speedster came back to pinch me.
Quin
didn’t know that there was much we
could
do, but she promised to make inquiries and get back to me soonest. That evening, we were summoned to war, all hands on deck in the Assembly Room.

Lei
Zi
and Blackstone, field and team leaders, sat at the head of the table. Lei
Zi
looked calm and inscrutable as always, but I could see the tension in Blackstone. Chakra was wound even tighter, The Harlequin, Rush, and Riptide ready to get on with it. Vulcan looked mildly distracted, and beside him Galatea had no expression at all. Seven looked up when we entered, and winked. I relaxed, taking a seat by Artemis.

Orb and Mr. Jones didn’t look at all out of place sharing a table with Chicago’s premier superheroes in all their costumed glory, but once again Fisher looked like he belonged in a different movie. He nodded to us as we took our seats. Willis finished freshening everyone’s coffee and stood back, invisibly attentive.

Once we’d settled, Blackstone stood.

“Ladies. Gentlemen.” He looked around the table. “We have mobilized tonight to engage an enemy I had hoped was gone. I am referring to Villains Inc.” He waited for the exclamations to die down.

“None of you here were on the team the first time we faced Villains Inc, although I’m sure you remember the news stories. In the wake of the Event, Chicago’s organized crime families faced a direct challenge from the first
supervillain
gang-bangers for control of the local drug trade. The Chicago Outfit responded by buying in the villains who were willing to work with them and burying the ones who weren’t. After the blood dried, the Outfit set up a cell of superhuman
hitmen
modeled after the old Murder Inc. Besides acting as mob enforcers, they accepted contracted hits from criminal organizations across the country. The public didn’t know anything about Villains Inc. until we moved to take them down.”

There were nods around the table. Nobody could have missed the huge media storm around the joint Sentinels-DSA operation and the trials—or the highly fictionalized movie made out of it. The Undertaker, Knox, Trophy, Stricture, and The Message were household names now, but with two dead and three serving life sentences they could have done without the fame.

“Most people think our takedown of Villains Inc. ended the Outfit’s venture into superhuman crime,” Blackstone continued. “That could not, however, be further from the truth. Consider this: without Villains Inc., how has the Outfit managed to resist hostile takeover? Until last year Chicago had two strong
supervillain
gangs—the Brotherhood and the Sanguinary Boys—but there was never a hint of conflict between them and the Outfit. Why?”

“Should I raise my hand?” Seven asked. “They were scared off by the Outfit’s superhuman assets.”

“Correct. And when we took down both gangs last year, not a single member tried to plea-bargain with information against the Outfit. It is my belief that the Outfit reconstructed Villains Inc. years ago, without reviving the villain-for-hire racket that brought them to our attention the first time.”

Nobody had anything to say to that. In the trials that followed the Great Roundup, a bunch of the Brothers and Boys had cut deals ratting on each other, allowing the state prosecutors to nail them for extortion, sex-trafficking, money-laundering, lots of stuff. But there hadn’t been a hint of Outfit involvement, and most of what they’d done had been pretty small scale.

“But if we’re moving tonight,” Seven said, “we know they’re back and who they are?”