CHAPTER 6
“We’ve put copies of everything we have on training methods on a gray server,” Faerie Queen said as the Lord of Time left the circuit. “Titanium will direct you there. You can use the news feed app to read them. My call is that it’s more important to the world for the United States to have at least one powerful super than one more hacker. You’re a member but if you have to take the time to work on your powers, that is more important. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Michael said.
Michael generally hated to take orders, mostly because the people giving them were morons.
He did not have a problem with orders from Gondola. The leadership was as smart as he was, far wiser, and had access to gobs of information. Often you weren’t sure what you were working on was worth the time, then it turned out, yeah, it was.
If the Faerie Queen wanted him to concentrate on powers, he’d concentrate on powers.
“The rest of it is up to you,” the Faerie Queen continued. “Your life. If The Society is going to sever you, we may interfere. Otherwise, you live your life—good, bad, hard, easy. You don’t become strong in a hothouse, it’s wind and weather that makes you strong. You certainly haven’t been coddled, but like the Corps and all supers, we all have had ‘stuff’ in our lives that drives us to do this.”
“If what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, ma’am, I be diamond,” Michael said. “My life to make and survive.”
“The MS-13 issue remains,” Faerie Queen said and sighed. “On the one hand, it’s your life and your problem. On the other hand, it’s El Cannibale. He’s been on my to-do list for being, well, El Cannibale. But it would require significant expenditure and he’s been more or less ‘if the opportunity presents’ for a few years and the opportunity has never presented. Our resources on the ground in South America are less than in Europe, Asia, and Africa.”
The Faerie Queen had the habit of referring to everything south of the US border as “South America.” It annoyed the Central Americans in the group and was a source of regular humor.
“He has sworn eternal vengeance on you for killing his grandnephew. Given his relationship with his sister, Cara De Pene might have been Cannibale’s grandson. We’re awaiting DNA.
“Bottom stretch, he’s not going to stop trying to kill you. FBI is, of course, saying the whole thing is over. Their informants lead them around by the nose. Cannibale is planning on coming to the United States to take care of the problem himself. We’ll be monitoring.”
It occurred to Michael his room was going to be freezing soon if he left the AC running strong, so he headed into the room and switched it off while listening.
“We’ve whispered in ears. You should be getting a new identity courtesy of our friends the marshals. That will reduce the likelihood of them coming after you in your secret identity. Unless, of course, they get their hands on the Supers List, which is likely.
“The damned thing is classified ‘Top Secret, anyone who wants it.’ Giving you a new identity to protect you, then telling every member of the press, every congressman and senator, every person with a net worth over a hundred million dollars, and, oh, by the way, every other country’s embassy is the usual sort of ‘we really didn’t think that through’ idiocy you see in any Society organization! But, right now, it’s the best we can do. It should slow them down.”
He returned to the bathroom and shut the door.
“Give me some time to study my powers and increase them and, well, they can bring it, ma’am,” Michael said, his voice relatively low. “I’m mostly worried about them harming others. But if Cannibale is coming here to kill me, just get me in range. He’ll be off your to-do list, ma’am. I usually don’t talk to people when I’m killing them but if I get the chance, should I say hi for you, boss?”
“Please do,” the Faerie Queen said. “Next item: We may involve you in an operation to take out a particularly intractable problem that’s been an annoyance for some time.
“Electrobolt—Madeleine Cromarty—is an active and aggressive pedophile. She is also the ‘youth outreach coordinator’ for the New York Super Corps and in charge of the Junior Super Corps. She’s one of those predators who uses her position to get close to disadvantaged youths, such as yourself, groom them, seduce them and sexually assault them. There are dozens of victims.”
“That has the stench of The Society all over it, ma’am,” Michael said.
“Which is why we haven’t been able to take her out,” Faerie Queen said. “We’ve only recently started doing operations in the US beyond tracking traffickers and child pornographers, and even then we work with law enforcement instead of handling the matter ourselves. With the FBI more or less completely corrupted by The Society, NYPD neutered by her position, and all the Society protection around her, we haven’t been able to stop her depredations. There’s a plan to use you to take her out, but it would require publicity and you know how much I love publicity.”
“Yes, ma’am. About as much as I do.”
“Keep your temper,” Faerie Queen said. “Don’t let her get to you. File written reports on every incident if any. She’s been ‘counseled’ and probably will be again. But she also feels invulnerable and has very little self-control. You’re going to have to be the one with self-control. She’s trans, by the way.”
“Sounds like the kind that makes Mama mad cause they make all trans look bad,” Michael said.
“Yes,” the Faerie Queen said. “Other than that, study your powers, keep your head down, and your profile low. Have you called your mama?”
“That was on the schedule after this call, ma’am.”
“Call your mama. See you on the flip side.”
“Okay, so much for old business,” Secretary Harris said over the video conference.
Tony DiAngelo scanned her background and always marveled at how she’d carefully crafted her office so the wall behind her displayed accolades and pictures with prominent people. The other members of the videoconference all looked away as she addressed him, presumably to pull up and work on other tabs.
“New business. Tony: The new kid. Edwards. How’s he settling in?”
Katherine Harris, aka California Girl, five feet four inches tall, Secretary of Super Affairs, was pushing sixty and looked twenty or so. She could have had the longest career in history as a supermodel. The heart-shaped face, aquiline nose, delicate though invulnerable chin, and crystal blue eyes were surrounded by a halo of golden hair. Anyone daring to comment on her torso area risked instant death.
She’d often quietly commented that if one more bastard just started babbling compliments at her and offering marriage she was going to make a knife hand, drive it into his chest, and rip out his still beating heart.
So far, she’d done exactly that three times to super-terrorists. It was not an idle threat.
Then there was that time when the ambassador from Ghana mistook “secretary” as meaning “executive assistant.” And since EA in his culture translated as “mistress” . . .
Tony considered her a decent boss most of the time, but she’d also fully committed to drinking the progressive Kool-Aid. As such, it wasn’t hard to guess what judgments Katherine had already passed on Michael, so he geared up to defend the kid.
Start with the obvious positives . . .
“Blowing through the tests,” Tony said. “Stanford missed a bet. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an untestable IQ.”
“Now you know,” the Secretary said. “There’s been some angst expressed.”
“Okay?” Tony replied.
“His background is . . . somewhat difficult,” Katherine said.
“He gave me a forty-five-minute diatribe that included that as part of it, yeah,” Tony said. “Main thing I’m worried about is public image. He says he’s going to try to just keep his mouth shut but I’ll believe it when we see it. Kid’s got a mouth on him. His foster moms clearly never washed it out with soap, and he does go on. Hate to put it this way, he’s basically an apparently white Dave Chapelle except even Chapelle would go ‘Kid, you need to dial it back a little.’”
“That’s a real issue,” Katherine said.
“Again, he said he was going to try to keep his mouth shut,” Tony replied. “And be polite. Like, from Tennessee polite, not New York polite, which I didn’t appreciate but I got what he meant. I think the kid’s got a good heart, Katherine. He’s worried about the MS-13 thing . . .”
“FBI analysis is that MS-13 is not going to target him,” Katherine said. “It’s more or less pointless targeting a super.”
“The kids aren’t hardened, Katherine,” Tony said doggedly. “They’re still growing. We’re hardened from the beginning. Junior Supers have been lost before. Hell, the Vishnu have lost a few.”
“Analysis is that he is no longer a target,” Katherine said, cutting off that line of discussion. “The other analysis is that he is a potential threat. He tends to respond to pressure with extreme levels of violence. The MS-13 incident was not his first such incident. He does not do effective deconfliction.”
“God, we’re talking about a kid growing up in the ghetto, Katherine!” Tony said, waving his hands. “Show a time when he was the aggressor. Everything I’ve read—and, yeah, I know about the thing with the gang trying to kill him—it’s when people attack him. Just the MS-13 thing, okay? When he talked about that, he was talking about the potential harm to the general public, okay? He was worried about the other junior supers, okay? He wasn’t worried about himself. The kid’s got a good heart, Katherine. To call him ‘rough around the edges’ is an understatement worthy of framing. But he’s got a good heart. And I’m standing by that.”
“The issue is he seems to have an issue with persons of color, Tony,” Katherine said tightly.
“What issues?” Tony asked, puzzled. “He grew up in a black ghetto.”
“Did you notice the race of the people he’s killed?” the Secretary asked. “Michael Edwards has been repeatedly reported in the news as being a white supremacist. We can’t have that in the Corps, Tony.”
Everyone else in the videoconference froze awkwardly and looked back toward the screen. This card was inevitable, and he was surprised Katherine had taken this long to play it. But he couldn’t exactly cut straight to the trump card. Michael deserved more defense than a surprise technicality.
“Oh, for the love of Pete, Katherine!” Tony said, exasperated. “Those people were trying to kill him! It’s not his fault they were black or brown, Katherine!”
“And their motive?” the Secretary said.
“In both cases it started as a beef with some kids at school and you can say spiraled from there,” Tony said. “I’ve talked with this kid. He’s not a white supremacist, okay? He’s supersmart, he’s funny, he’s irreverent, and politically so incorrect it’s painful, he’s PTSD and ADHD and every other kind of letters of the alphabet, but what he is not, Katherine, is a white supremacist. And even if you or your lunching friends disagree on that, what you haven’t let me do is update you on some stuff about him that may help!”
“Which is . . . ?” the Secretary said.
“He’s Native American,” Tony replied.
Apparently mollified, the others returned to their distractions.
“Really,” Katherine said. “He doesn’t look it.”
“Oh, who’s being racist now, Madame Secretary?” Tony said. “What’s a Native American look like, huh? Okay, I’ll admit he doesn’t look it. Genetics came back. One-quarter Lakota Sioux. Which makes him legally, by federal law, Native American.”
“That’s something to . . .” Katherine said, looking thoughtful.
“This is a good thing, Madame Secretary,” Tony said. “The Corps is pretty much precisely as diverse as this great land of immigrants of ours. We’ve got Asian and black and brown and white and Italian and Greek more or less in such an exact mix, Harvard eat your heart out.”
“Tony.”
“But there’s one percent of Native Americans in the US and we only had one,” Tony continued, ignoring his oldest friend. “Lightning Eagle. We should have three and a half. Since he’s a quarter, I’m not sure how that works out. Equity math. Not my strong suit. But the point is now we’ve got two, which is closer to three and a half. We approach perfection of diversity.”
“Tony,” Katherine said, shaking her head and closing her eyes.
“I don’t make the rules, Katherine,” Tony said. “I just have to live with them. This is a good thing. And it opens up some other possibilities.”
“Which are . . . ?” the Secretary asked.
“I know what you and the FBI are saying about MS-13,” Tony said, holding a hand to forestall a reply. “But. If there is an active shooting incident, it’s on my watch. And I’d like to avoid that, as well as a potential school-shooting incident . . .”
“You think he’d shoot up a school?” Katherine asked. “Then we’ve got a real . . .”
“Oh, Christ, Katherine, no!” Tony said. Deep breath. In through the nose . . . “If Michael gets detected in his secret identity. Kids are going to be on social media going ‘Oh, my God! Like, Michael Edwards, that horrible white supremacist from Baltimore is, like, totally in my school!’”
Secretary Katherine Harris, former teenage resident of Sherman Oaks, stuck her tongue in her cheek and rolled it around.
“Are you trying to imply something there, Tony?” she asked, a tad sharply.
“Yes, Madame Secretary,” Tony said, steely but calm. “That kids are stupid, and MS-13 can use social media. Also, that I’ve known you since you were seventeen and I was thirteen. FBI may say they’re not going to go after him if he’s on patrol, but what about when they find out what school he’s in? Do we need another shooting?”
“Not really,” Katherine said.
“ACS—that’s the Administration for Children’s Services—hasn’t placed him, yet,” Tony said, “but it doesn’t matter what school he’s in. Do you want a school, which is the easiest place to find him, shot up by a transnational gang? His foster home? I think the answer to that is obvious.”
“What’s the answer?” the Secretary asked.
“Get him a new identity,” Tony said. “We’ve got the marshals right here. They can literally press a couple of buttons. An email to the commandant would be nice but I could probably swing it with ‘the Secretary would appreciate it.’ I just need the Secretary to say she appreciates it. The white supremacy thing, with the exception of ‘in the know,’ goes away, the MS-13 problem goes away, and the white Dave Chapelle problem will hopefully never publicly surface.”
“So that’s that,” Katherine said, nodding. “Good talk.”
“Except there’s one more problem and I cannot fix that, only you can,” Tony said, trying not to grimace. This was, by far, his least favorite discussion point, but second most important after protecting Michael from MS-13.
“And that is . . . ?”
“Bolt.”
Now the other members carefully avoided any eye contact whatsoever with the screen, though Tony saw eyes shifting around with anxiety. Katherine stiffened defensively and sighed.
“Tony, Madeleine is incredibly popular with certain senators,” Katherine said. “I understand you have issues . . .”
“I do not have issues, Katherine,” Tony said. “Bolt has issues. Bolt has more issues than National Geographic. I’m not the problem, Katherine. The fact that Bolt is in my office, running my kids and he . . . f . . . SHE feels like she can ignore me because she is so incredibly popular with certain senators we depend upon for funding is the issue! If she is so incredibly popular in Washington, why is she my problem, Katherine?!”
“We’ve been over this, Tony,” Katherine said, getting angry. “Bolt has more public presence in New York. She is an iconic figure there and it is about presence rather than politics. So, this is not new business.”
“The new business is twofold,” Tony snapped. “One is old business that she’s hitting on Jorge. Again. Since she’s not listening to me anymore, you’re going to have to call her. Today.”
“I’ll put it on my schedule . . .” Katherine said with a sigh.
“Oh, what, not going to ask me to ask the other members of the juniors if he’s exaggerating?” Tony said. “Do an investigation? You starting to grasp that she has no control when it comes to pretty little boys?”
“Tony, Madeleine is not a pedophile, okay?” Katherine snapped. “She’s very tactile, yes. Perhaps too much so. But that does not mean she engages in pedophilia. Just because you have some lingering . . . cultural issues . . .”
“Oh, do not go there, Katherine!” Tony replied. “You remember you jumped all over me one time when I said something sort of off-color to Windstorm?”
“It was more than off-color, Tony!” the Secretary replied. “You told her she had a nice ass!”
“She does have a nice ass,” Tony said. “And that’s kind of different than, you know, rubbing your hands all over somebody when they’re trying to get changed into their costume and sexually propositioning them! And Windstorm was eighteen when I said that, and it was a slip! I didn’t rub my hands all over her, whip my dick out, and suggest she suck it! I sure as hell didn’t do that when she was thirteen!”
“Madeleine has been counseled on that,” Katherine said tightly.
“I beg to disagree, Madame Secretary,” Tony said archly.
“I wrote her a very specific counseling statement on that matter,” Katherine pointed out.
“I again beg to disagree, Madame Secretary,” Tony said. “You wrote one on Edgar. Not on Madeleine.”
“That’s splitting hairs, Tony,” the Secretary replied.
“Again, disagree,” Tony said. “When a person transitions, it’s like them Baptists and being born again! They’re new people, their sins cast off with their old names and genders! They are whole new people!”
“Tony,” Katherine said warningly. “You need to stop making fun of the trans movement.”
“I am not,” Tony said. “That is exactly what they say. That they are new people. But here’s the thing, Katherine. A leopard can change its gender, I suppose, but the spots don’t change. And Bolt has not changed. Just clothes. And did you notice that Edgar suddenly became Madeleine right after you actually called him on the carpet? Finally. Back when he was a she . . . she was a he?”
“Tony,” Katherine said, grabbing her head in her hands.
“And the second new business is, again, Michael Edwards,” Tony said. “Specifically in relation to Bolt.”
“Is he transphobic?” Katherine asked. “Not that, too.”
“Katherine,” Tony said, trying not to sigh again. “I love you like a sister. And sometimes, if it would do any good, I want to throw you out a window. But you can fly so it wouldn’t do any good.”
“And I guarantee you I wouldn’t be the one going out the window,” Katherine said. “Your point?”
“His . . . ‘mama,’” Tony said. “The lady that really raised him, the one constant in his life, she’s named Miss Cherise.”
“Point?” Katherine said.
“Miss Cherise’s ‘dead name’ is Thomas Carter,” Tony replied. “Don’t even think Michael knows her original name and she hasn’t used it since she was nine. Six-foot-four black trans street hooker and drug addict who found him in the alleyway and has been his only real mother since. So, no, he’s not transphobic. What he is is severely abused. Most of us have got stuff we acquire due to stress and trauma, right? Generally, that’s not the first serious trauma. We’ve had stuff.” He looked at her and waggled his head.
“Point?” Katherine said, her face hard. “You’re covering stuff we discussed in the nineties, Tony. And I’m a busy person.”
“Michelle called his social services file ‘the War and Peace of child abuse but with more war instead of any peace,’” Tony said. “Take any ten of us that had . . . stuff, wouldn’t add up to what Michael’s been through. Not an exaggeration. Question is how he survived it all.
“He’s a good kid,” Tony repeated. “Got a good heart. If he goes Chapelle on patrol and gets us in the hot, that’s on me. I’m vouching for him on that. What I’m not vouching for him on is Bolt. Because the kid is also a hand grenade with the pin mostly pulled. PTSD causes real anger management issues. So does TBI. Kid’s got both and his PTSD, like his brains, is off the scale.
“Michelle brought it up,” Tony said. “I don’t got a problem with you asking her direct. Michael will talk very glibly about most of it. Burned, cut, shot . . .”
“Burned?” the Secretary asked.
“He gave me a really graphic description of being in the burn ward,” Tony said. “Burned like that. Twice. When he was five.”
Several people briefly glanced away at this and visibly shuddered.
“Oh,” Katherine said, making a face.
“That stuff he can, kind of, talk about,” Tony said. “Usually babble and he just ignores what he’s saying. Michelle says he’s not going to be able to really work with it for a while and only if he’s not abused more. The one thing he can’t talk about, mentions but just goes past, is the sexual stuff. Won’t cover details at all. Michelle feels he hasn’t been able to work with it the way he can the physical stuff. Not that it wasn’t physical.
“So, thing is, Madame Secretary . . .” Tony thought about what to say for a second, then shrugged. “Kid’s already killed twenty-four people. Madeleine goes after him the way she went after Jorge, don’t be entirely surprised if it’s twenty-five.”
“Well, that would be a severance,” Katherine said.
“Not if he can reasonably plead self-defense from a pedophile,” Tony said. “And do we want that? Especially when his attorney brings up what was going on and even what had gone on in the past? You want that publicity, Katherine? Sure, nobody you know reads the Post, but people I know read the Post. You want the headline to be ‘Pedobolt’?”
“I will speak to Madeleine, Tony,” Katherine said. “Any major other new business? Because this has gone overtime.”
“No,” Tony said, shaking his head.
“I’ll talk to her,” Katherine repeated.
It was the best he was going to get.
“Roger, Madame Secretary.”
“Oh, Pretty Woman” —Roy Orbison
Michael was waiting in the lobby for Alexander of Alexandria to escort him in, which was becoming downright tedious but that’s the speed of government agencies. He hadn’t been around when the junior super-teams were coming in for patrol. They only patrolled one “school night” a month and every other Saturday. They’d done a patrol this last Saturday from what he’d picked up. Saturdays weren’t a workday. Michael had spent Saturday in his guarded hotel room doing equations, digging through the files Gondola and the Lord of Time had sent, and cautiously testing his powers.
So, it wasn’t patrol-day but the gorgeous teenage brunette in the lobby just had to be a super. Either that or a teenage supermodel had stopped by to say hi. And since the location of “Super Headquarters” was technically secret, and even then required access cards to get in, not to mention being in the Federal Building, she was probably a super.
And his future wife if he had anything to do with it.
Michael hadn’t spent much time studying supers before Acquiring but since then he had been studying and he had come to the—not new—conclusion that supers were supposed to be regarded by normals as gods or at least demigods, because they didn’t just get superpowers, the powers changed their appearance as well.
First of all, when they Acquired, they exhibited an aura. Chakra of Light. Turning off your aura was the only thing easy with superpowers. Just a thought and it went away or returned. They also reflected the power of the super. With new Acquires, the aura was there but barely beyond their skin. For supers like California Girl, it would fill a room.
Michael had been unconscious after Acquiring and his aura had remained on. After talking to the Lord of Time and reading the instructions carefully, he’d tried it in the hotel room before he went to bed. It was about as useful in the dark as a glow-worm lantern but pretty cool. Turn off all the lights and you could still make your way around. That, so far, was as far as he’d gotten on trying powers.
So, they glowed, which, even in some primitive society, would tend to make the regular people consider them godlike. Which probably was designed, by whatever was sending superpowers to the Earth all of a sudden, as a survival trait. Most adults are not going to take on a kid who has just, for example, flamed someone he was fighting and was now glowing.
Of course, if it had happened in, say, sixteenth-century Germany, they’d probably be burned at the stake. Which was what had happened at first, and still occasionally, in Islamic countries. Though it leaned more to the kid being stoned to death. Afghanistan had a notable dearth of supers.
Then there was the personal appearance aspect.
Supers still bore some superficial resemblance to their parents but tended to exhibit much greater beauty. They were all as good-looking as the highest grade of male, female, or other models. People would pay millions in plastic surgery to even be close to the looks of supers. Women tended to be larger breasted than normal with A going to C and ratios on up. Female supers who would have been naturally large breasted were . . . extreme.
With men, instead of secondary sexual characteristics being enhanced, primary sexual characteristics were enhanced. And that, too, led in some cases to ludicrous extremes.
Michael hadn’t been entirely joking about the Michelangelo’s David comparisons.
Bottom line: He was a very good-looking guy with not only street smooth but scars. Ladies dug scars. She would be his bride and they would have many children.
He put on his best player mode and sashayed over.
“Hey, babe,” he said, nodding in approval and clicking his tongue. “You be fine as Corinthian leather.”
The girl wore her jet-black hair straight down her back to butt level. An aquiline perhaps too beautiful face was barely noticeable because of the emerald-green eyes. The eyes were the eyes of a Gorgon, so beautiful they could turn a man to stone.
“Is that supposed to be a pickup line?” the girl asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Michael Edwards,” Michael said, sticking out his hand. “Your future husband.”
“I’m considering shaking that hand,” the girl replied. “But only because we have regenerative healing, and it would eventually grow back.”
“Invul, huh?” Michael said, pulling his hand back. That might create some difficulty in the relationship. But as she’d said, he had regenerative healing, and he was willing to risk having to grow back something much more important than a hand to have this incredible woman. He’d go back to the burn ward for her. “That would make you Ivory Wing.”
“Yep,” Ivory Wing said. “Sasha Nikula. Chosen a super name, yet?”
“Nah,” Michael said. “I usually make quick decisions but since it’s a pain to change I’m thinking it through. Come here often?”
“You don’t stop, do you?” Sasha asked.
“Rarely,” Michael admitted. “Seriously, I’m here to eval. What’s up with you being here? Not that I mind. At all. One bit.”
“I have to get my uniform refitted,” Sasha said. “We grow, right?”
“Absolutely,” Michael said, trying not to look down. At a guess, Sasha would have naturally been a B. A spectacularly perfect B. “Been supersonic, yet?”
“Not yet,” Sasha said. “I’m hoping to this month. It’s hard. The air gets like solid rock the faster you go!”
Do not do the physics lecture. Do not . . . Muuust suppressss Bernoulli equations . . . !
“Can I let you in on a secret?” Michael asked, trying not to say that the problem of the atmosphere wasn’t that it was getting harder, it was that the molecules were impacting on the surface at a higher speed so it was a momentum issue versus solidity . . .
“What secret would that be?” Sasha asked, bracing slightly. “Please don’t let it be about your penis. I’ve heard it.”
“Okay, given your age, that ain’t right,” Michael said, shaking his head angrily.
“You haven’t met Electrobolt yet, have you?” Sasha asked.
“No,” Michael said.
“I’ll let you enjoy the experience for yourself,” Sasha said, with a touch of ice. “What super-secret super info does the new kid on the block have?”
He motioned her toward a quieter part of the lobby and glanced around.
“It’s about when you go supersonic,” Michael said in a lower voice. “You’re still in cloth flight gear, right?”
“Yeah,” Sasha said. “You don’t get fitted for your leather flight suit ’til you join the Corps. Too expensive while we’re still growing to keep changing suits.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Michael said darkly. “When you hit super, there’s a sudden condition caused by . . .” Michael stopped before he almost made the classic nerd mistake and bored the pretty girl with a physics lecture. Alexander, sure. This goddess descended to a fallen Earth, not doing it. Close call there.
“Just . . . the physics. Trust me. When Cali was first flying, she finally hit supersonic, and her cheerleader costume blew off because of the effects. She had to fly around LA totally nude and somehow sneak home.”
“Oh, my God,” Sasha said, horrified and trying not to laugh. “You’re kidding, right? The Madame Secretary?”
“Here’s the thing, right?” Michael said carefully. “When you hit Mach One in that cloth suit, same thing is going to happen. You’re going to end up wearing only your boots, helmet and pack. You might retain your bra if you stop fast enough.”
“I have a hard time believing that,” Sasha said. “They’d tell me . . . right? Warn me at least?”
“It’s a rite of passage,” Michael said, shrugging. “Happened to Cali so it’s just . . . something they deliberately don’t tell you about.”
“That’s hard to . . .” Sasha said. “Patrick’s not that way . . .”
“Rite of passage,” Michael said. “Tight groups have ways of testing the new kids. Like in the Navy they’ll send some new guy out to get a hundred yards of flightline.”
“And the problem with that is . . . ?” Sasha asked.
“The flightline is where they line up the planes,” Michael said. “Grid squares, chemlight batteries, they’re all things that don’t exist is the point. And they’ll let you make the mistakes they made just to see how you handle them. It’s a normal thing in groups like Super Corps, cops, military, EMTs, though I think essentially stripping teenagers is probably over the line.”
“Kind of,” Sasha said, her expression a blend of disturbed and contemplative. Her superhero posture drooped defensively. “So . . . I just got to go through it, I guess?”
“Thing is this,” Michael said. “If you spot it and do something to make it lesser, it shows you’re on your toes. Makes you look better than it just happened. Suggestion?”
“Okay?”
“You’re going to retain your commo pack,” Michael said. “There’s a personal effects compartment, right?”
“Yes.”
“Throw some clothes in there,” Michael said. “Surreptitiously. Could be just a pair of boy shorts and a sports bra. That’s not much to fly back in but it’s something. What you can fit and will stay on flying low speed. Then, when you go super and are suddenly nekkid, just stop, put on your spare clothes, and fly back to the support ship. It’ll make you look supersmart and prepared. Sports bra and boy shorts is less embarrassing than ‘Oh, God, I’m naked!’ And it will impress them.”
“Makes sense,” Sasha said with a sigh. “I guess maybe that’s why the locker room is coed. Just get used to it or something?”
Michael’s mind normally sparkled and burst so fast that he had a hard time carrying on normal conversations. Despite talking with the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, other tracks of his mind were, variously:
• Wondering that a water layer, which was made up of hydrogen and oxygen, was necessary for solar fusion which was necessary for nucleosynthesis of higher-level atoms than hydrogen, like oxygen, but the Big Bang Theory stated that the universe had been formed with only primordial hydrogen with a smidgeon of helium and lithium, none of which could be used to form water so there was a chicken and egg problem. Where had the water to induce fusion to induce nucleosynthesis to make oxygen to make water come from?
• Wondering how he could con Alexander of Alexandria into getting shrimp tacos again. He probably shouldn’t have given the lecture on how people in the ghetto really felt about cops. Things were still a might chilly. Also, apparently “Michael is a white supremacist” had followed him to NYC. Joy.
• Working on the Chakra of Earth Sight, idly, not that he wanted to see what Sasha’s bone structure was like or anything. It was obviously perfect.
• Wondering what Sasha would look like in red and white. The red might clash with her eyes.
• Wondering how to convince his future fiancée that even if the red clashed with her eyes, a sexy Handmaiden outfit made a perfect wedding dress . . .
• Wondering what a one-on-one between Kobe Bryant and Wilt Chamberlain would be like.
• Doing the physics of how fast a one-hundred-ton boulder would have to be to punch 2017 Godzilla hard enough in the jaw that it would cause him to be at least knocked around if not knocked out since his ability to take a punch was unclear depending on the various movies.
• Working out the mechanics of using Earth Move and Earth Shape to lift a fully loaded shipping container and throw it at a kaiju a la Pacific Rim but without the mecha.
• Wondering if you could use Earth Move and Earth Shape to make an Earth Mecha and ride it to fight kaiju.
And various other important subjects.
The moment that Sasha, who would be coming in and changing at the same time as the other Junior Super Corps, like Michael, said that the locker room was coed—
All of those thoughts ceased in an instant. His mind stopped completely for the first time in his life that did not involve severe head trauma.
So did his breathing.
That’s it. She’d done it. She’d turned him into stone. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He was just going to die that way, standing in the lobby for all time as a stone statue.
“Are you okay?” Sasha asked, tilting her head to the side. “Hello!” she added, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Michael!”
Michael suddenly took a deep breath as his CO2 response kicked in.
“Yeah!” he said, rapid fire. “I’m fine! Never better! Just an epiphany! I was just thinking about this chicken-and-egg thing in stellar nucleosynthesis! Hahah! Nothing about the locker room at all! You need oxygen for water, right?!”
Inside Michael’s head was a little voice going “Stop! Stop! Stop!” But he just couldn’t stop.
“Dihydrogen monoxide poisoning, right?” he continued, tugging his ear furiously. “Hahahah! Like water in a shower . . . Never mind! Hahah. And it’s only primordial hydrogen! Which can’t fuse due to its high Coulomb barrier and that it forms hydrogen diamond—which, clearly, isn’t going to fuse under gravity alone with that Coulomb barrier, obviously, right?”
“What?” Sasha asked.
“And so, there’s totally going to have to be some nucleosynthesis in the expansion phase of the universe! Because otherwise the big bang theory is totally out the window, right? I mean, because obviously God didn’t create the universe with some magic finger snap!”
Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop tugging your ear!
“So, what if, and this is just blue skying which also needs oxygen obviously, hahahah, because of the very high density and heat of the early expansion phase when all the universe’s matter is squeezed into a very small space, comparatively, and that with quantum vacuum energy causing ninety percent of the matter into fifty percent of the space which you’re even going to have in the early universe, obviously, ’cause you see it in high energy plasma discharge like what we see when we Acquire and there’s lots of red do you like red?”
Stop! Stop! Stop! Quit mentioning red! Stop!
“What if and this is the important part there was nucleosynthesis but even that doesn’t work because the pressures still aren’t enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier so it would have to have some sort of catalyst and the other thing you’ve got is Hawking black holes, which, obviously, give off Hawking radiation ’cause of the matter-antimatter collisions, so what if Hawking radiation is the catalyst, right? I mean, it’s just a hypothesis but it’s better than nothing, right? Do you think red goes with your eyes? What did I say? Never mind! Hahahahah . . .”
He stood there grinning maniacally at her, tugging his ear and shifting from foot to foot, then cursed.
“Shit. I just totally blew my cover.”
“What . . . was that . . . ?” Sasha asked.
“I hereby confess to being a nerd,” Michael said with a sigh. “I do astrophysics and economics papers as a way to relax. I like calculus. I’m a nerd. Need any help with your homework? I do awesome term papers!”
“You’re the one that killed all those . . . people, though, right?” Sasha asked carefully.
“Well, yeah, that too,” Michael admitted. “But I was very nerdy in doing so. Ballistics is nerdier than you think. It’s like weaponized math. Though the whole thing with the machete was a total fluke.”
“The. What?” Sasha said, her eyes going wide.
“Sasha,” one of Kevin’s assistants said, waving to the support area corridor. “Kevin will see you now.”
“So . . . bye,” Sasha said, waggling her fingers at him.
“Byyye,” Michael said sadly, as the girl of his dreams walked away to get refitted. “I am so white and nerdy . . .”
Getting refitted meant . . .
Getting up on the laser table in a practically diaphanous skintight body suit . . .
“Michael . . . ?” Alexander said, snapping his fingers in front of the kid’s face. “Earth to Michael . . .”
“It . . . it could . . . it could be red . . .” Michael said, his eyes unseeing as he looked into the distance. “And white . . .”
“What is up with this kid . . . ?”