Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (32 page)

So I carefully showered and changed into a fresh costume, with one eye to Chicago News’ live coverage of the mess. Willis brought me a sandwich and, in my room and mask off, I filed my after-action report, called Mom (I didn’t call the Bees; the way I felt now, we’d have
words
), and then called the hospital to check on Chakra and had to reassure Blackstone I was fine. Apparently Chicago News got a beautiful shot of my encounter with unfriendly fire.

And he said Chakra was awake! Which meant that now she could speed her healing with her own powers. Just hearing that made me feel a million times better; Chakra and I didn’t have much in common, but she’d become kind of an older sister—an often embarrassing older sister. Maybe an eccentric aunt? After that I settled in and killed time studying up on the Paladins.

Apparently their founder, Daniel Nathanial Allred, started the first chapter in rural Vermont just a year after the Event. The report said they were mostly survivalists and weekend-warriors; they stocked food and weapons in their compounds against the day when we took over, and did a lot of pamphleteering and online ranting. But a recent DSA report hinted that they might be developing “action arms” (Gee, do you
think
?).

The rest of the team returned, and Lei
Zi
kept the debriefing short, reminding us to file equipment expenditures for used zip-ties and such, and stood us all down; unless something major blew up—literally—all Dispatch calls would be shared among the Guardian teams for the rest of the day. Artemis and I visited the lab to check on Shelly’s progress. The titanium-cased sphere holding her “brain” looked, wow, just spherical and spherical. Vulcan had put up a screen with a task bar for non-geniuses like us to see; the bar looked half-done, which meant about as much as a NASA launch countdown. Then we went up to her rooms. I cautiously stretched out on her big bed and admired her panda picture. She’d had it professionally framed after moving in.

She stripped off her half mask and dropped her guns and gear before gently sitting on the bed beside me. Propping her head on her knee, she looked me over. “So? Want to hear the skinny?”

“Just tell me they didn’t get arrested.”

“Not even Megan. Worst damage was Dane’s cut knuckles. Someone needs to tell that boy you don’t box without gloves.”

“
Why?
” I covered my eyes.

“Because teeth cut and you can break your hand on somebody’s skull.”

“No,
why
were they there? It’s not like they’ve ever had the urge to protest
anything
.”

“Well…” And I could tell she was smothering laughter. “I think it had something to do with being your friends.”

I puffed out a breath, giggled, and winced. I’d pay anything for a picture of
Annabeth
facing down those punks. “Okay, but this has to stop.”

“Sure. How?”

Putting my hands down, I looked up at her. “I know you said our project has to wait—but we need to do something
now
. It’s like… ice cream and murder.”

“What?”

“Every summer ice cream sales rise. So does the murder rate. Neither is causative but they’re related. It gets hotter, people buy more ice cream and tempers get shorter. All of this—” I waived a hand vaguely. “It’s like ice cream and murder.
Shankman
and this morning’s riot, it’s all really about Villains Inc. turning up the heat.
 
Atlas always said we do what we do so people would feel
safe
. They don’t feel safe. One big fight with lots of civilian casualties, and it’s all going to explode. We need to turn down the heat.”

She closed her mouth. “That’s…actually pretty much what Blackstone is saying. Without the ice cream.”

“So why can’t we—”

“I never said we couldn’t; I said I needed information. Which I’ve got. I know where you man is hiding. We can go talk to him tonight.”

There’s an art to fighting another Atlas-type. A solid hit can knock one back pretty far, but then most of the force of the hit is lost. To get the best bang for your punch you need to force the other guy to absorb the full kinetic force of the hit instead of turning most of it into motion. That means trapping him against something bigger, or getting a good grip on him so he doesn’t go anywhere when you hit him. Which can turn fights like ours into an aerial grappling match with every dirty trick of close-quarters nastiness.

Astra
, The Chicago Interviews.

The Outfit had “gone to the mattresses.” Which in this context, meant that Robert Early was sleeping on an unknown mattress should Villains Inc. want to kill him in his bed. Artemis had needed to find the mattress so we could talk to him alone, and even with her resources it had taken a bit of work.

Mr.
Early’s
mattress wasn’t even
in
Chicago. Apparently the Outfit had decided to disperse some of its associates for the duration of the war. His wife and daughter had gone to her aunt’s for a holiday, and Robert had crossed the lake; a friend of a friend owned a vacation home in Grand Beach, the little summer resort town on the Michigan side. Right on the beach, it could be reached by boat in a night trip, which made it a good hideaway across the watery state line.

After nightfall we snuck out through the bay doors, Artemis on my back since I could fly a lot faster than she could float along in mist-form, and I activated my costume’s chameleon mode before heading straight up fast enough to make my passenger complain. A normal person couldn’t have held on. At three thousand feet, we switched our
earbugs
to their receive-only settings.

On a clear night the Lake Michigan shoreline is defined by its glowing ring of cities and towns, but since towns aren’t labeled in big glowing letters Artemis steered us by a GPS unit with Mr.
Early’s
address punched in. I’d Google-Mapped it earlier so I’d recognize it from above; Mr.
Early’s
friend owned a nice piece of property right on the beach, with an unpretentious main house, a guest house, a pool, and a stairs leading down to a beach deck. Over the lake, we dropped back down to fly close to the water; we might be black holes in the sky, but on a bright and cloudless night there was no reason not to be careful.

“There!” Artemis pointed ahead and left—I’d forgotten her night-sight was actually
better
than mine. I corrected as we came in, flying just above the gentle waves. The beach deck stood out, with no neighbors. At her signal I landed in its shadow, heart racing.

“My turn,” she said, handing me another preset burner-phone with a Bluetooth
earset
. Nodding, I clipped the cell to my belt and fitted the
earset
. She tested our setup, then shifted into mist to float up to the deck and out of sight.

I waited, listening to the lazy waves on the shore, my heart in my throat. Minutes ticked by, and I jumped when my cell buzzed.

“
I’m in,
” she said when I answered. “He’s got prime security, but not from the inside out. The upstairs balcony door is open and I’ve turned the outside systems off.”

For a moment, just a moment, I opened my mouth to tell her to get out of there. We were so far off the reservation it wasn’t funny, but we
needed
this.

“I’m coming in,” I whispered, and lifted off to ghost up the scrub-covered slope separating the beach from the property’s tree-shrouded backyard. I found Artemis waiting in the doorway—the kick I got from seeing her glowing with a healthy,
living
light like everyone else still hadn’t worn off—and stepped inside.

The balcony door opened into a second-floor study, a nice room with leather furniture and shelves of leather bound books between tasteful knickknacks, figurines, even a Swiss clock. She pointed at a paneled door between bookshelves. “Bedroom,” she said softly. “Bodyguard sitting out in the hall, nobody else. How do you want to play it? This isn’t my usual kind of negotiation.”

“As politely as we can.” I’d been thinking all the way in, and hoped my instinct wasn’t wrong. She smiled. “Thought so. I unplugged the house phones and put away his cell. Left his gun—thought it might make him feel a bit better.”

I took a breath, squaring my shoulders. “
S’okay
, it might help at that.” Running through my traditional pre-meeting checklist, I stopped on
appearance
and switched off chameleon mode, reverting to my proud blue and white. At a nod, Artemis cracked the bedroom door and I entered the darkened bedroom. Not completely dark; Mr. Early had a vanity light on in the bathroom and the door open. Smart. Artemis hung back as I stepped up to the bed and cleared my throat.

Mr. Early had to have been an Outfit soldier when he was young; he swept up his piece—a businesslike .45—before he’d even sat up, got it aimed at my center of mass before his eyes were fully open, and would have fired if I hadn’t stuck the tip of my index-finger behind the trigger, my fist wrapped around the barrel.

I waited till he had time to process our positions and come down off his automatic, normally quite effective, reaction to finding an intruder in his room.

“Softly, Mr. Early,” I said earnestly. “We need to talk, and making a fight of it won’t help anybody.” Then I let go of the gun.

Hard eyes studied me, then looked past me to Artemis, and finally towards the hallway door.

When I nodded, he lowered his piece. “Carl,” he called. “I need you to come in here.”

The hall door opened, checked halfway, and eased partly shut. I held my breath.

“Are you alright, Mr. Early?” the man on the other side asked. “I see at least one other person with you.”

How—
 
Oh. A handy dresser-mirror stood against the wall to the right of the bed, and in it I could see out the door to the tall man holding it open.

“It’s fine, Carl,” his boss said. “These ladies just want to talk to me.”

The door opened all the way and Carl stepped inside. He held his gun out but pointed down, conspicuously away from us.

I exhaled silently, unutterably relieved, and put on Mom’s society smile. “I apologize for arriving unannounced, Mr. Early, and you can’t be comfortable. If we stepped into your study would you join us?”

He looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Yeah, I would. Carl, go with them.”

A good soldier, Carl holstered his piece without comment and followed us out. Artemis left the door open behind us so I could hear easily. The wardrobe door opened, closed, and a moment later Mr. Early joined us wearing bright vacation sweats and a pair of loafers without socks. He left his piece in the bedroom.

“Drinks?” he asked. When we declined he opened up the liquor cabinet and poured himself three fingers of scotch. Taking a sip, he settled and I sat across from him, straightening my cape. Artemis stood behind me, mirroring Carl’s position. With his intensely dark hair, narrow build and face, and air of restrained violence, he and Artemis could have been a matched set—though of course he couldn’t see that under her hooded mask.

“So,” I said, when Mr.
Early’s
silence passed me the opening serve. “Do you come here often? Grand Beach is beautiful in the summer. I’ve been out here many times.”

He took another sip, smiling back but still watching me with shrewd eyes. “My daughter loves it. Swims like a fish and terrorizes the local boys. Organizes everything. Sophie thinks it’s too far from the good stores. What can I do for you, Ms.
Astra
.”

And here we go
. “We appreciated your message the other day, Mr. Early, but I’m afraid it’s not enough.”