“Why not show yourself there? Why follow me?”
“Don’t get so worked up there, kid.”
He was making fun of her. She marched off, determined to be angry.
“Hey, Rose—wait a minute. I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you. Just you, not your friend.”
In spite of herself, she felt a bit of a flutter at that. Maybe he wasn’t making fun of her. No, either way, she was being stupid. But she stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Okay.”
“We can talk on the way to wherever you’re going—um, where are you going?” He looked around to the skyscrapers and office developments of the downtown business district. Not someplace she’d be expected to stroll around in the middle of the night. The glowing blue logo at the top of West Plaza glared like a beacon, the crescent shape like a half-lidded eye surveying her, judging her.
She pointed in a random direction opposite West Plaza. Some bars and all-night food stands lined the street a few blocks away; that ought to distract him. They walked.
Eliot said, “You know Commerce City better than I do, since I’m not from here—”
“Where are you from?”
He hesitated, not wanting to give up information any more than she did, and she was about to tell him it didn’t matter, but he said, “Delta. Ever been there?”
“No. Is it cool?”
“About the same—big city, with all the big city stuff. Commerce City is always better if you like superhumans.”
“Or worse if you don’t.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I’ve been going out. Like you guys, not really doing anything but just looking around. And I’ve been hearing rumors. Commerce City hasn’t had a real supervillain since the Destructor. Is that right?”
Anna said, “It depends on what counts as a supervillain. There was Steelyard, the carjacker. He didn’t have powers, he was just the ringleader of all the grand larceny in town for a couple of years, and the Block Busters took care of him. Techhunter shows up every now and then, but nobody knows if he really has powers. I don’t know if he’s a real supervillain; he’s pretty small scale, robberies and pranks and stuff. He’s never tried to take over the city or anything, and no one’s been able to find him to go after him.” Every few years saw a new master criminal looking to take over the title of Commerce City’s grand archvillain, but none of them had risen to the level of fame and terror the Destructor generated. Her own family’s history with the Destructor was the stuff of legend. When Anna read the old news stories, they felt like fairy tales. She did the research on the old heroes at the school library, so no one in her family would see the books or look up her browser history.
Most commentators claimed that for whatever reason, the city’s golden age of superpowered heroes and villains had long since passed. Everything after that would necessarily blaze less brightly. All the city had now were petty criminals and clueless kids playing dress-up.
“So if I told you I was hearing rumors about a new supervillain on the rise, you’d be surprised.”
“A little, maybe. I mean, anyone can call themselves a supervillain but they’d need to prove it.”
“This one’s subtle, apparently. Works behind the scenes, gets others to do the real dirty work. Has a long-term strategy. Taking-over-the-city stuff, but doing it without anyone noticing.”
“Subtle, huh? Like what, bribing politicians, buying up property?” Because that was how she’d do it. Maybe run for office. It wouldn’t even be illegal.
“Yeah, along with powers like mind control.”
She gave him a look, her brow furrowed. “Really?”
“The thing about mind control, you wouldn’t even know it was happening, would you?”
She couldn’t tell him that she was very familiar with how mind control worked. “You think there’s a villain mind-controlling the whole city to do his bidding?” The thing was, it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility. The implications were frightening, so she wasn’t willing to latch on to the idea just yet.
They were approaching a noisy part of downtown, and she guided Eliot down another block. They were both still dressed up and would attract too much attention.
“People—the people I’m hearing the rumors from—are calling him the Executive.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be scary?”
“Ominous, I think. You have to admit, if you think about how much someone can do behind the scenes, it is pretty scary.”
“I haven’t heard anything about it. You want us to keep our eyes open for anything suspicious? Anything out of the ordinary that might suggest a mind-controlling supervillain?”
“We’re probably not ever going to catch someone like that directly, but we should be able to find the effects of his power.”
“I guess you needed help after all, didn’t you?” She grinned at him, feeling smug.
He spread his arms in a shrug. “And I let you know, just like I said I would.”
“Now it’s gotta work both ways. If you find out anything about this Executive, you’ll let me know?”
“Then I need to know where I can reach you.”
A cute guy was asking for her phone number. She didn’t even care that he wasn’t talking to her, but Compass Rose. Or that she couldn’t really give it to him. The mystery just made it all more interesting, didn’t it?
She wrote down her e-mail address, the anonymous one she’d used to send the pictures to the cops. Then he waved good-bye, stepped back, and launched himself skyward. He landed agilely on an art deco overhang of a building, and a second leap carried him out of sight.
* * *
To hear Eliot talk, this villain, the Executive, was less than a rumor. More like an idea he just came up with. If Commerce City really did have a nascent villain, surely she’d have heard about it. Rooftop Watch or one of the other superhero fan blogs would have mentioned it.
Shockingly, when she went searching, Rooftop Watch did have a few hits. The site didn’t use the name Executive, but there was speculation. A hint here, a bit of gossip there, nothing more than that. No confirmed sightings, no verified activity. Just conspiracy theories thrown into the ether. Anna read them all.
The Executive was a shadowy figure, of course. So shadowy nobody knew anything about him—or her. In fact, this supposed villain was mostly a convergence of patterns: city government made unexpected decisions that coincided with certain political scandals, that removed a specific person from office, that allowed passage of a new set of legislation, and suddenly the whole future path of the city changed.
The Executive was a villain for the conspiracy minded. The so-called clues involved shady real estate deals, buildings downtown that might or might not have been built to code, which meant they might or might not harbor deadly secrets—West Plaza was the prime example of how a seemingly ordinary building could be fitted with hangars and bunkers and fantastical gear. The Franklin Building, Horizon Tower, even City Hall was suggested as having a secret subbasement containing the evidence collected from past supervillains—a tempting target for new villains, perhaps? Were they secret supervillain lairs? And how would one tell? It was all woolgathering. Nobody could ever point to an individual behind the conspiracy, though some people tried—the mayor, the DA, and even the owner of the Commerce City Chargers baseball team, who had apparently benefited from a change of zoning laws that allowed a new stadium to be built. But commentators figured there must be someone or a cabal of someones acting as the secret masters of the city. Of course, and this was more likely, it could all just be coincidence.
Anna thought of something her mother said sometimes, with a grin and a knowing look, suggesting a joke no one else got: There’s no such thing as coincidence in a world with superhumans. The website featured occasional posts from various contributors suggesting that this news item or other indicated another piece of evidence as to the possible existence of the Executive. The recent series of city planning meetings was
a popular topic of discussion. If someone like the Executive existed, certainly the planning committee would attract his attention and serve as a tempting target for interference. Someone had even done a chart of all the people who attended the meetings and which of them might be the Executive. Anna’s mother was on the list, but without any accompanying notes or evidence. Too prominent, the commentators agreed. She couldn’t possibly be a shadowy, behind-the-scenes manipulator simply because she was too well known, as the daughter of the Olympiad who had so publically rejected that part of her life.
Then again, she had that youthful association with the Destructor. Most commentators dismissed that as old news.
It was all very vague. Anna could try to track down some kind of evidence of who the Executive was and what he was really doing. But there wasn’t even enough information to start an investigation. She’d just have to do what Eliot suggested: keep her eyes open for any evidence that might present itself.
* * *
That same night, the Trinity stopped an actual, honest-to-God bank robbery. The MO was standard by now: The police arrived to find the robbers immobilized and unconscious, chilled by ice or knocked out by blasts, and the supers lingered just long enough to make sure that blurry photos were acquired. Anna was sure Teia was calling the Eye to tell them where to be. Teia was also probably keeping a scrapbook and practicing lines to use on Anna to rub her face in it.
Even if she and Teddy had stumbled across a bank robbery during their patrol, what could they have done about it? Nothing. That day at school, she avoided everybody, Teia, Lew, Sam, even Teddy. She didn’t want to talk about it, so she hid out until the bell rang and everyone else had gone to class. Being five minutes late was a small price to pay.
Maybe Eliot would e-mail her. Maybe.
* * *
The second time they went out on patrol—Teddy insisted on giving the patrol another try because he said it made him feel like a real superhero even if they didn’t actually accomplish anything—he brought his paintball gun, fully loaded.
She’d been furious. “What, we can’t actually stop bad guys so you want to just piss them off?”
“I just want to try something,” he’d insisted. At this rate, they were going to end up in jail for being public nuisances. She couldn’t talk him out of it, so there they were, in the run-down tenement neighborhoods south of downtown, Anna skulking and Teddy striding confidently, holding the paintball gun across his chest like he was in some war movie. The guy really wanted to be an action hero, and it seemed tragic that his powers were so unassuming.
He was still more powerful than she was. She wondered if she could expand her awareness to, maybe, concepts. Like she could think about “crime” or “mugging” and be able to locate something like that happening nearby. She gave herself a headache trying, but she could only ever find people, and only ones she’d already spent a lot of time thinking about. Like Eliot.
She needed to stop thinking about Eliot.
The city at night was becoming increasingly familiar, and even comfortable. The regularly spaced yellow halos of streetlamps illuminating near-empty streets, walls of shadowed buildings blocking out the sky made the whole place seem like a kind of oversized playground. As long as you knew where you were, knew where you were going, and paid attention to what was going on in between, the city at night couldn’t hurt you.
She was pretty sure they weren’t going to find anything just by walking around. The Trinity had all the luck on that score. So she was surprised when they heard an incongruous wrenching, metal on metal, and an associated string of cursing.
They slowed at the end of the block and peered around the building’s corner. Up ahead, two guys with a crowbar and bolt cutters were breaking into the steel overhead door at a loading dock. Anna didn’t know what was in the building; in this part of town, it was just as likely to be abandoned. Still, the guys were breaking and entering. This was exactly the kind of situation the Trinity would eat up. She sighed. Teia and the others were out and about, but not here.
“Here,” Teddy said, handing her a cell phone. She didn’t recognize it—it wasn’t his usual phone but a cheap pay-as-you-go model, the kind you could get at convenience stores.
“What’s this?” she whispered.
“Call nine-one-one.”
That plan was better than nothing. They might be little more than a neighborhood watch at this point, but at least it was something.
“And stay out of sight,” he said, before vanishing.
She stopped herself from calling out to him, gritted her teeth, and called the cops.
“Nine-one-one dispatch, what is your emergency?”
“Um, yeah, I’m at the corner of Vineland and Fifty-third, and there’s a couple of guys breaking into a building here. They’ve got crowbars and stuff and they’re wrenching the door open.”
The thunk of the paintgun firing sounded up ahead, right in front of the loading dock door. No sign of Teddy. Point-blank range, and they didn’t see him. He fired four or five shots, and all of them hit. The guys writhed and shouted, but when they turned to look for their assailant, they saw nothing. Anna saw nothing. Teddy fired another two shots, which hit, and the guys doubled over at the impact, straight in their guts. Had to hurt.
“Ma’am? Are you still there?” the dispatcher asked.
“Um, yeah. These guys? One’s white, one’s black. They’re dressed in black coats and stocking caps. And, um … they’re splattered with yellow paint. Really bright yellow paint.”
“Did you say paint?”
“Yeah. Like from a paintball gun.”
“I’m sending a patrol car to that location now. Are you in any danger?”
“No, I’m fine. I … I have to get going, bye.” She switched off the phone.
Unable to figure out who was attacking them with paintballs, the hoodlums ran. The problem was, they ran right toward her and would be on her in seconds. She turned and charged for the nearest likely hiding place—the stairwell down to a garden-level doorway. They probably wouldn’t take well to having a witness and were still hefting the crowbar and bolt cutters.
Hunched down on the concrete steps, she listened to their footsteps pound away. Much closer than she expected, a police siren howled. A patrol car, right in the neighborhood. One of the crooks cursed, and this was all going to get very exciting in a couple of minutes.
The actual pursuit and arrest happened a couple of blocks away, so Anna didn’t get to see it. If the guys were still holding their array of tools, they were sure to be taken in and charged. She imagined the stray yellow paint spatters would tell the cops exactly what door they’d been attacking.
She wanted to get out of the area entirely, but she didn’t feel like leaving her hiding space until she was absolutely sure she wouldn’t be spotted. Teddy had it easy.
Finally, a voice hissed above her. “Hey, you can come out now.”
As she tromped up the stairs, Teddy flashed into visibility. It was like switching on a TV.
He was grinning. “Wasn’t that cool?”
She handed the phone back to him. “You could have told me you had a plan.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
She rolled her eyes.
“So now we have a system,” he insisted.
“That isn’t a system, it’s—” She threw up her hands and glared, because she couldn’t think of what that was. “We still need the cops to do all the work, you know?”
“You’re no fun.”
“I’m sorry I’m no fun.” She walked off. She was tired, frustrated, and she wanted to go home.
“Anna—I mean, Rose! Wait up!”
“I’ll talk to you later,” she said and caught her own bus home.
ELEVEN
CELIA’S schedule was full. She liked it that way, now more than ever.
Second and third opinions on the leukemia diagnosis were acquired, confirming the first diagnosis. She and Arthur spent an afternoon po
ring over treatment options and survival statistics. The prognosis was generally good. If the chemotherapy worked, she’d probably be fine. If it didn’t, treatment options remained, but her odds decreased. It felt like rolling dice. Nothing to do then but roll and get it over with. Arthur made discreet phone calls and they arranged for her to receive treatments in one of the penthouse’s unused guest rooms. She hired a nurse and paid very well for her secrecy. Celia would receive her first round of chemotherapy by infusion on Friday afternoon, have the weekend to deal with side effects, and do everything she could to be back on her feet by Monday. No one would ever know, not until she was good and ready to let them know.
In the meantime, she had a company to run.
At the next city planning meeting, the committee would vote on which contract to award: West Corp’s downtown development project or one of the sprawling suburban expansion plans, including the one backed by Danton Majors’s company.
The meeting itself looked much like the previous one—same people, same room, same bitter coffee smell, same political subtexts. The vote didn’t cause much tension because the outcome was predictable. She’d worked hard for this, on behalf of the company and the city, and the committee wouldn’t award the contract to an outsider with a misguided agenda. This vote was just a formality. Celia hoped.
When she entered the room, she noticed Danton Majors right off. It might have been her imagination, but he seemed to be watching for her. His face was turned to the doorway, and his dark eyes lit up when she entered. He gave her a moment to exchange pleasantries with the deputy mayor’s assistant and chair of the city planning committee before he strolled over to have his own words with her.
“Mr. Majors,” she said. “One might think you’ve decided to move permanently to Commerce City.”
“I confess, I’m tempted,” he answered, his smile charming, his gaze predatory. “I had no idea there were so many opportunities here.”