Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (24 page)

Nos
Praestolor
:
We Stand Ready
.

The Motto of the Chicago Sentinels.

A fresh costume does wonders, and by unspoken agreement we all changed before joining each other in the Assembly Room four hours later. Once more Guardians arrived from their precincts, I’d spent my time flying critically injured to waiting trauma centers and then cleaning up the heavier pieces of Tin Man’s contribution. Only two civilians had been killed in the battle in the Atrium, but lots more had been hurt, some badly. The Harlequin, a crackerjack EMT, had saved lives; Rush and his new sidekick—Crash, aka Jamal, the second blur I’d seen and the breakthrough-speedster from the Puccini’s fight last week—had both been amazing, pulling the crowd out of the Atrium before we sealed it off.

Standing beside Rush, Crash (and what kind of name was
Crash
?) looked jazzed to be surrounded by
supercelebrities
. The night of the fight the only impression I’d gotten had been
young
,
black
,
cool corn-rows
. I’d been busy. Seeing him now, he looked like a half grown puppy-dog; lean, angular, hands and feet still a bit too big, with the ropy muscles of a runner. He wore a blue cotton jumpsuit, presumably till Andrew could do up a sidekick costume, and if the fight had shaken him I couldn’t tell. Rush had taken the time to
thank
me—apparently
Quin
had considered my request and come to him with the idea of mentoring Jamal as an alternative to the academy. I didn’t say how the deal was going to work, but maybe the new, more serious Rush could do it. I hoped so.

Artemis looked cool and together as ever, her cuts already gone; obviously being alive again hadn’t compromised her ability to shrug off injuries. Where did she find a ‘blood-donor’ in all the chaos? Lei
Zi
wore ointment on her burns; she’d gone head to head with Furnace, the psychotic and now deceased
pyrokinetic
villain who’d tried to burn down the place using bystanders as fuel.

Beside Vulcan, a banged-up Galatea
grinned
at me. She’d given me a broad wink when I came in. “
Just wait,
” Shell had giggled in my ear, and I
so
wanted to know how she’d convinced Vulcan to let her
cybernetically
possess his favorite toy.

“Thank you, everyone,” Blackstone said, nodding to include Dr. Cornelius and Orb in his greetings as we all sat down.

“As an update, you’ll be happy to know that the most critically injured are now listed as stable. Thanks to the efforts of The Harlequin, Rush, and Crash”—he didn’t stumble over the name at all—“there will not be more fatalities. Thanks to Astra, our attackers were unable to attain their goal; the removal of a new guest from our custody.

“Unfortunately,” and now he lost his smile, “our guest’s stay was short-lived. When Willis evacuated the residential levels, she made her departure.”

We sat in stunned silence, and he sighed, folding his hands.

“While it is highly probable that
Kitsune
was the bank-
robber
who’s successful heist last week precipitated events, we are not the police; without a warrant, we
cannot
detain an individual who is not caught in commission of a crime or a clear and present danger. She was free to go, and she did.”

Rush swore. “So she waltzes in here, we kick the crap out of the scumbags after her, and she waltzes back out?”

“At least now we know what she looks… Well,
hell
,” Seven said, and we all laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh, but it helped.

“The good news,” Blackstone continued, “is that although Villain-X, the unknown Atlas-type escaped, we did capture two of the new Villains Inc.: Warp and
Ginsu
. The clay monster turned out to be a magic construct, a golem according to Dr. Cornelius, more of Dr.
Millibrand’s
work. Although some here—” he looked at me and everyone chuckled—“refer to her as the Wicked Witch, I have decided to designate her
Hecate.
Both Warp and
Ginsu
are talking to the police at this moment, but Detective Fisher has let me know that they appear to be low-level soldiers at best and won’t be able to tell us much we don’t already know beyond the location of a “lair” that is now empty.”

“So what do we know?” Seven asked.

“We know they’re desperate, and they’re less a “
supervillain
team” than they are a master-villain and a bunch of
supervillain
henchmen recruited and kept loyal by money and threats. At this point, I believe I can piece together the chain of events.
Kitsune
, whoever she is, got far enough inside the Outfit to learn the identity of the ‘rogue associate’ Mr. Early informed us about. The heist alerted this associate of his danger, at which point he precipitously dispatched Hecate to tie up all loose ends—which included the unfortunate Mr. Moffat since they couldn’t be sure how involved he was. I suspect that, but for the invaluable intelligence provided by Dr. Cornelius, an untroubled Hecate would have been able to capture
Kitsune
and wring the identity of any contacts out of her. One of those contacts would have been
me
, so I am eternally grateful that members of this team were proactive on my behalf.” His look took in me, Artemis, Seven, and even Galatea.

Vulcan looked lost. “So, if you’re a contact, why doesn’t she turn herself in to you? Or at least pass along what she knows?” Heads nodded around the table.

“I can only assume
Kitsune
is playing her own game. Fortunately it seems to include the destruction of the newest incarnation of Villains Inc.. And today was a disastrous move for them.”

“Why?” Vulcan shook his head. “They lost two goons. So what?”

Blackstone smiled coldly. “This isn’t the movies. Are you familiar with the classic song,
The Night Chicago Died
?”

“My geek-
cred
doesn’t cover music.”

“It’s a 70’s pop song about the all-out shooting war between Al Capone’s mob and the Chicago police,” Blackstone explained patiently. “Great song, never happened. Capone was never crazy enough to go to war with the CPD—after all, how could he win? And say he did win that night. He’d be facing the state police, the US Marshalls, the
US Army
, however much firepower it took to restore order and bring him and his gang in. So he bought or blackmailed cops and judges, worked around the law or made the law work for him, but he
never
went to war with it.”

Lei
Zi
nodded and looked around. “We’re not the police, but we’re the
law
, the super-powered arm of it, and attacking us head-on, they’ve brought the storm. The CPD, the DSA,
all
the Guardian teams are making themselves available. When the time comes, we’ll be able to bring a hammer as big as it needs to be. First we’ve got to find them, but one by one or all together, we will. And we’ll bring them down.” Echoes of hard agreement rose around the table, and I felt my spirits rise.

My mask itched, my wig flattened my hair, and now I was wearing them all the time. I couldn’t see my friends—I’d thought Dane had at
least
been safe in the Dome, but five minutes more and he could have been in the morgue. They’d attacked us, scattered bodies around, made war in our own home. But now it was our turn.

“Light is both a particle and a wave. All futures are both contingent and destined. It’s temporal physics as Zen.”

The Teatime Anarchist

Even with everything that was happening, the fact that my BFF was now a
gynoid
robot was still kind of a big deal. Lei
Zi
kept us for an action review, but I grabbed Galatea-Shelly as we left the Assembly Room, prying her away from Vulcan’s side.

“Isn’t Crash a cute one?” she asked.

I closed my eyes. “Shelly, you—
dammit
, Shell!”

“Hey! First, he’s only a year older than I am, and, second, I’m not staying this way.”

“That’s right,” Vulcan said, following us. “Shelly as she is now is a ‘proof of concept.’ When your friend introduced herself to me and suggested this, I didn’t know if 22
^nd
Century tech could interface with the polymorphic neural net that Galatea used.”

I turned on him. “
Used
?”

He grimaced. “I’m beginning to think that even with my poly-neural system, a true AI isn’t achievable. It does well enough around the lab, so when I get Shelly’s new body built I’ll return this one to autonomous function and keep it as a lab assistant.”

I ground my teeth, but held it in. “And then what?”

Shelly laughed. “And then to everyone else I’ll be Teen Galatea.”

“Shell—”

“Um,” Vulcan cleared his throat,
finally
getting a clue. “I’ll just be down in the lab. You girls go ahead and talk.” Watching him go, I tried to swallow my dislike. Shelly watched
me
, which felt utterly weird since she did it from two feet up. Vulcan had built Galatea tall and leggy.

Artemis touched my arm and leaned in. “Let’s take this downstairs,” she suggested softly, trying not to laugh, turning us towards the elevators. When we got to my rooms, Shelly started on her list before we’d closed to door.

“First, I
really
—”

“Shell, stop.” I turned and hugged her. “I get it, and I’m sorry. So, how’s this going to work?”

“Really? You’re okay?”

I forced a smile. “You just surprised me, is all.”

“Great!” She spun around. “Vulcan’s auto-molding a younger body from my old sketches—remember the
Robotica
character I designed?”

I groaned and she giggled happily; the sketch had looked like a Japanese anime robot: cute, big-eyes, but with visible seams and machine joints.

“Thing is,” she said, suddenly serious, “I’ll have to
transfer
myself into Teen Galatea. I’ll be able to keep up my Dispatch links, but not the part of me dedicated to our neural link. So when I’m the new me, I won’t be able to be
with you
, know what I mean?”

So, not a copy: a real
move
. Somehow I kept my smile.

“You won’t be Shelly the Teenage Ghost? So no more one-sided tickle fights. I can live with that—you’re still my wingman.”

She threw her arms around me and I held on.
A brain transplant. What could possibly go wrong?
I tried not to think about it, and caught Artemis watching me carefully.