Dreams of the Golden Age

  “Really? Holy cow.”

  “That reminds me—here.” She gave them the extra headsets Suzanne had retrieved from the cupboard. “We’ll be able to stay in touch. Bethy’s coordinating from the Olympiad mainframe.”

  “Cool,” Teddy murmured, without sufficient gravity or respect for the situation, Anna thought.

  “The pipsqueak can do that?” Sam said.

  “Yeah. She’s the smart one.”

  They didn’t argue with that.

  Eventually, after interminable minutes, they reached a police cordon surrounding Horizon Tower. A block in every direction appeared to be shut down with barriers and patrol cars, roof lights flashing. Yellow police tape fluttered, reporters pressed close with cameras and shouted questions, and even a few superhero groupies mingled among the usual onlookers and passersby. A man in a ratty coat held a beat-up sign reading CAPTAIN OLYMPUS: OUR ALIEN SAVIOR WILL RETURN. Anna got a little queasy reading that.

  “Great,” Sam muttered. “How do we talk them into letting us through?”

  Any sane cop would look at them—three teens in a car wearing masks and homemade superhero costumes—and laugh, not let them past a serious cordon.

  “My dad and Captain Paulson are just around the corner, we can call them over—”

  The nearest officer came over and tapped on the window as Sam slowed. Dutifully, Sam rolled it down.

  “You guys the Trinity? The captain said you’d be showing up. Park there, meet Captain Paulson at the front of the building. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Anna replied.

  Sam complied, and Ms. Baker slid their car to the curb behind the sedan. The boys all piled out and ran up the block. Anna hung back to walk with Teia and her mother. The cops just waved them all on through. Dr. Mentis must have talked them into making this easy. Anna started to get excited in spite of herself. This—the crowds, the orders delivered through a scratching bullhorn, the rabid sense of anticipation—must have been what it was like in the old days.

  “This is the most fucked-up field trip I’ve ever chaperoned,” Ms. Baker said, shaking her head.

  “Mom!” Teia exclaimed.

  Her mother rolled her eyes. “Oh, hon, calm down.”

  Anna sidled close to Teia and said, “Your mom seems to be taking this very calmly.”

  “Yeah, that’s because it turns out my mom was Typhoon. Should have known, right?”

  “What? Holy shit!”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Anna took a surreptitious glance at Analise Baker. Aka Typhoon? She tried to picture it—plenty of photos of the superhuman existed: an athletic black woman with hair in cornrows tucked back by a sleek blue-green mask that matched her liquidlike skin suit. She’d been one of the premier supers in her day, but she’d vanished from public view when a warrant was issued for her arrest on suspicion of murder, after one of her tidal waves drowned a cop. The debate about whether that drowning was accidental or intentional still raged. The Ms. Baker Anna was walking next to now was … old. As old as her own mother, and kind of soft, with short halolike hair tied back with a red headband. And she didn’t have any powers, not that anyone knew about. Did she? Typhoon could telekinetically control water and summon rain—storms, in fact, much like Lew did. And Teia’s manipulation of ice was just another form of controlling water, wasn’t it? Teia was right, they should have guessed.

  “Why didn’t you ever go public?” Anna asked, blushing at the rudeness of it.

  “Because that was a long time ago and it all happened to another person.”

  “Well … thank you. For coming out now, to help get Mom back.”

  Analise shook her head and seemed sad, full of regret. “I won’t be able to help. I’m here to look out for my kids.”

  Anna didn’t press further. She glanced up in time to see a green-garbed figure sailing overhead, as if leaping from one ledge to Horizon Tower’s familiar thirtieth-floor patio. And how had he found out about this? She expected to feel an embarrassed flush at the thought of talking to Eliot again. But she didn’t have time for that right now.

  Arthur and Captain Paulson were waiting at the front of the building. A dozen police cars and a SWAT van fanned out in the street, and the place hummed with the tension of a coming battle. Radios crackled with static and orders, and uniformed men and women arrayed themselves like soldiers before a giant.

  “You should have stayed home,” Arthur said.

  Anna said, “You’re going to need help. They have their own superhumans. People nobody knows about, who’ve never gone public before now.”

  “And I’m betting they’re not on Celia’s list,” Analise said, crossing her arms.

  Anna furrowed her brow. “List, what list?”

  “Never mind,” Paulson said. “There’s a team of supers holed up in there, and I want them out. You guys have any ideas before my people bust in there?”

  For the first time, Anna had a chance to study the building. It looked different in daylight, the glass and bronze of it reflecting light and the overcast sky. On the ground floor, solid steel walls were bolted down in front of every available access point, instead of the glass doors, windows, and shop fronts that should have been there. The place was locked down.

  “You’ve noticed the building’s modifications,” Arthur observed. “A squad of hired security are waiting inside.”

  “You can sense them?” Anna asked.

  “If whatever’s blocking our powers is in there, I imagine we’ll be able to tell exactly how far the range of it is when we start ascending. I can take out the security contingent, but that won’t do us any good if we can’t find a way in.”

  “And I’d like to avoid a firefight,” Paulson said. He suddenly seemed old, his hair finally more salt than pepper, his frown sagging. His intense glare focused on the building like it was his enemy.

  This was their chance. This was why they had to be there. Anna said, “Teddy … I mean Ghost, can you go in and check things out? Maybe figure out how to open those doors?”

  “I’ll still trip anything like an infrared detector if they’re set up for that. But sure, I’ll give it a try.”

  “Radio’s on?”

  He fiddled with the bud hooked over his ear and smiled. “Yup.”

  “Good luck.”

  He smiled, took off running, and vanished on his third stride.

  Paulson whistled low. “You never get used to something like that, do you?”

  Anna didn’t know if the radio would still work while it was invisible. She didn’t want to try it until she knew he was in a safe place, so she held her hands over her ears and listened.

  A click sounded in her earbud—the channel switching, and Bethy came on. “Anna? I’m trying to dig up information on the building, like some kind of floor plan, but I’m not having any luck. It’s like nothing was ever filed on it.”

  “If you can find anything on how to … I don’t know, shut down the power maybe? The front of the building has these steel doors we have to open.”

  Bethy blew out a breath that hissed over the speaker. “I’ll try. This computer is crazy powerful—did you know I can hack into classified city records from here?”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Another click, and Teddy spoke in a whisper. “Rose, there’s like thirty guys here. They all have guns, like they’re expecting a war or something.”

  “Then please stay quiet and out of sight!”

  “I’m fine. But the controls for the doors—I think they’re on an upper floor, with the rest of the bad guys. I think the whole building might be set up with defenses.”

  Anna glanced at her father. “Did you get that?”

  “I did. Captain Paulson, perhaps we can use helicopters to reach the upper stories?”

  “My spotters say there’s some kind of weaponry on the roof and patios. It’ll take time to get past all that, and I don’t want to spook these guys too bad.”

  Arthur said, “Oh, it’s too l
ate for that. What we have to do now is show them they can’t beat us.”

  Nearby, Teia was cracking her fingers. “Blaster, you think we can take this?”

  For the first time in months, Sam seemed uncertain, his lips pursed and his gaze darting across the dozens of square feet of steel they had to get through. “I don’t know. Maybe if we focus everything on one spot. Can steel even freeze?”

  “Anything can freeze if you get it cold enough.”

  Anna whispered into her microphone, “Ghost, I think we’re going to try breaking in. You’d better get out of the way.”

  “Okay. I found some stairs, I’m going to scout ahead and let you know what I find.”

  Lady Snow and Blaster approached the blast doors.

  Teia held her hands apart as if she were lifting a giant beach ball, gathering her power to her like it was something light and airy. Frost began to dust her sleeves, her mask, the tips of her escaping hair. Her breath fogged in a space around her that had become a deep, cold winter. The air shimmered with ice crystals. Bringing her hands together, she crouched in front of the door and slammed her hands to the concrete.

  A noise cracked across the street, the sound of falling icicles amplified. A reflective sheen spread out from her, covered the pavement, crawled up the blast door and surrounding wall. The sheet of ice hardened, frosted, and a wall of cold pressed out from the building as even the air froze. Teia seemed immune to the drop in temperature. Anna wondered how cold the doors actually were now; the frost formed streaks across the surface, looping patterns, feathered tendrils, beautiful crystalline shapes.

  Teia backed out of the way, and Sam stepped forward. In the background, Paulson shouted at his people to back up and take cover.

  “Anna, here,” her father said, an anxious edge to his voice as he gestured her behind a nearby patrol car.

  Sam brought both hands together in a joined fist and aimed. A doubled force of energy, bronzed rays of light, blasted away from him and hit the doors, which shattered. Shards of frozen steel radiated out in a cloud of water vapor, leaving behind a jagged space where the doors used to be. The guards on the inside probably got the worst of it. Peeled, warped edges of steel folded inward, pointing toward a path of ripped floor and steaming debris.

  Arthur strode toward the mess.

  “Dad!” Anna waited for the gunfire that would mow him down when the guards stormed through the breach in the wall.

  His hand was on his head, and he was glaring. This wasn’t Anna’s father anymore—this was the Dr. Mentis she’d read about in books. Paulson shouted again at his people to stand back.

  A silent minute ticked over. And another. Dr. Mentis turned around. “Captain, I believe the ground floor is clear.”

  The police captain rolled his eyes before waving a SWAT unit forward. The black-garbed and helmeted group of officers held their guns ready as they streamed forward in a military formation, past a nonchalant Dr. Mentis. They peered carefully through the hole before trickling into the building, leading with their guns.

  “What did you do?” Anna asked him.

  “I cleared the ground floor,” he said simply.

  The radio in Paulson’s hand crackled on. “Sir,” a voice scratched, “we’ve got something like thirty bodies here. Mercenary unit, I’m guessing. Lots of body armor, automatic weapons.”

  “Bodies,” Paulson said, glaring at Mentis. “Are they dead?”

  A brief pause, then, “No … it looks like they’re asleep.”

  “The usual trick,” Arthur said, putting his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, shrugging.

  Anna pressed the headset to her face. “Teddy? Ghost? Can you hear me?” No answer. “Teddy, where are you?”

  “I can’t really make exceptions when I’m trying to drop a whole room like that,” he said, not sounding the least bit apologetic.

  “We have to find him,” Anna said.

  Ms. Baker stepped forward, staring thoughtfully at the hole her daughter had helped make. A mist hung in the air, vaporized particles still settling out. “Damn,” she murmured.

  Teia flexed her hands nervously, looking like she wanted to say something. Yearning for approval. Her mother just smiled.

  Arthur said, “Analise, if I could suggest that you wait someplace safe—”

  “I’m keeping an eye on my kids. I’m not even a telepath and I know what you’re thinking—my powers are gone, I’m all washed up. Well, if they’re blocking your powers, we’re in the same boat, right? Handicapped and useless? I’m staying.”

  Teia, Lew, and Sam—the Trinity—were already running through the breached blast doors, ignoring Paulson’s orders for them to stand down. Arthur followed at a more leisurely place, with Analise not far behind, a resigned set to her shoulders and crossed arms.

  Anna hesitated a moment, overwhelmed. The hole in the blast door suddenly gaped like a mouth, and the darkness inside loomed. Lights glowed within, but they seemed ominous. She felt small next to the towering skyscraper and the ignorance of what lay within. The old stories of her grandparents and Commerce City’s other heroes had seemed so … epic. This—believing her mother was inside but not knowing for sure, hoping she was still alive and unhurt—it didn’t feel epic, it felt desperate. Necessary. Like getting a cavity filled. You hunkered down and did it because you had to, and no one could do it for you.

  She reminded herself: She wasn’t alone in this—in fact, the whole city seemed to be here to help, because anyone who could hurt Celia could hurt everybody. They had to win. Anna repeated to herself: “I am superhuman. I am a West and a Mentis, and this is what I was always meant to do.”

  She ran to catch up to the others.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THEIR plan to snatch the girls had obviously gone horribly, spectacularly—and, Celia hoped, hilariously—wrong. She wished she could have seen it, especially if it involved Sam Stowe’s laser blasts. Or maybe an invisible Teddy Donaldson pantsing them both. The possibilities were endless and gorgeous. At any rate, the two hench-fiends had been thwarted and were returning home. The girls were safe.

  “How can they be on to us already?” said the mentalist in response to Majors’s bad news. “There’s no way she could have warned the telepath—we were supposed to have hours of lead time before anyone found out.”

  “The telepath must be stronger than we thought,” Majors said thoughtfully. “Even with you blocking, he must have known as soon as we took her.” The man looked sidelong at her, reassessing.

  No, Celia thought. Anna was the one who realized what had happened immediately. The mental block must have erased Celia from her daughter’s awareness, and she raised the alarm. Which meant things around here were going to get noisy in short order. She directed a placid smile at Majors.

  “Don’t think this means you’ll be rescued anytime soon,” he shot back at her.

  “You believe I’m this powerful archvillain—don’t you think I had a plan in place for just this event? My people are coming, Majors.”

  “Your people are deluded.”

  She turned to Mindwall, who kept throwing worried glances toward the windows. “And what are yours?” she said.

  “This building is a fortress. Unless they can fly—and I know they can’t—they’ll never get here. I hope you enjoy your stay at Elroy Asylum.”

  “Hmm, I’ve been wanting to take a vacation. But I was hoping for a beach.”

  He was just like every other two-bit hack who’d ever kidnapped her in the old days. Expecting her to be fearful and cowering in the presence of his awesome might, he was instead discomfited by her amusement, by her lack of concern. Instead of ignoring her as he should, he struggled to impress her with his strength. The more he struggled, the more foolish he appeared. They never pinged to this.

  His expression turned cruel. “Every elevator shaft is trapped. All the staircases have countermeasures. The exterior of the building has antiaircraft weapons that will target anything larger than a human body. No
one reaches this space without my permission. But if you give up now, if you agree to sign over West Corp, I can end it all. This doesn’t have to be a battle.”

  —Arthur, I wish you could hear me, so I could warn you.—

  “You don’t know a damn thing about Commerce City, do you?”

  An explosion sounded, a rumble from street level resembling the force of heavy-duty construction. Majors stalked to the window and looked down. The mentalist fidgeted, acting like he wanted to flee. Celia imagined saying “boo” might set him off.

  “Should I go check it out?” said the thug, Majors’s remaining guard.

  “No,” Majors commanded, returning from the window. “Sonic and Shark should be back any second. They can scout it out. Steel, you watch her.” The thug leered at her.

  “Steel? Is that supposed to be the noun or the verb?”

  His smile vanished.

  “Ignore her,” Majors commanded. “She’s baiting you.”

  A flash of motion to Celia’s left caught her attention. She resisted focusing on that space to avoid drawing Majors’s interest. Letting her vision go soft, she kept her head still while looking out the corner of her eye.

  A figure crouched at the edge of the wall, lurking just at the doorway. Obvious, not real good at staying out of sight. But the others were too preoccupied to notice, and the mentalist’s powers obviously had no active component—he didn’t have a clue that the room held an extra person. The newcomer had a mask and a dark green skin suit—the strange super, the one she couldn’t ID. Just like the rest of them. She should have known he’d turn up here. At least he wasn’t working for Majors.

  This rescue was going to get very complicated.

  She decided to help Majors stay distracted. Plus, she wanted to see how far she could push him before he really got pissed off. Arthur would say that was her old self-destructive inner teenager talking. Some habits died hard, didn’t they?