CHAPTER 6
“James Bond Theme” —Monty Norman
The entrance to Super Corps Headquarters that was normally used by the supers was not an easy route. First, you went to 291 Broadway. Use the third elevator and insert your CAC card to summon it. It would only work for people with the right clearance and there was an undercover US marshal to keep people from following the super, either because they were lost or because they were following them.
Mike decided it would be fun to play with his food, so he got on the subway and headed for 291.
It was the usual ruck of human vermin in the damned thing. Plenty of good people, yes, but the beasts were becoming increasingly common. When you didn’t manage the monsters, they bred.
The male hopped onto the subway car ahead of his and the female got into the one behind his.
Most of the way was what Mike thought of as the “blue line.” At the Fiftieth Street station, a group of eight “youths” boarded the train wearing hoodies and COVID masks. That would be how the Herald reported them. Youths. Not a bunch of punks looking for trouble. He could just make out that most of their weapons were shivs and small knives. The leader, though, was sporting a small-caliber handgun.
Mike was strap-hanging despite the train being lightly used but he’d noticed the pretty Latina without really looking. She was about fifteen at a guess. It was a school day and midday, so he wasn’t quite sure why she was on the train at all. Of course, the same could be said for him. And the “youths.”
The leader of the group gestured toward the girl, and they surrounded her. It was far enough away that Mike couldn’t quite pick up what they were saying but he was sure it was the usual.
Why couldn’t people just be decent to each other?
When the leader of the group grabbed the girl’s breast, Mike sighed, pulled out his earbuds, put on a COVID mask, pulled up his hoodie, and put everything breakable like his phone into his backpack.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Mike said to an elderly lady sitting on the left. “Would you mind keeping an eye on this? I have something I need to do.”
“Um . . .” the woman said.
“Just give me a moment, if you please,” Mike said.
“Well . . .”
There were people filming. With any luck they hadn’t caught his face. He wasn’t close to the “incident.”
He set the bag down by her, casually walked over behind one of the “youths,” and started by punching him as hard as he could, full super-strength, in the kidneys. He followed that up with an elbow to the back of the head that took that one out of the fight.
Then it really got started.
When supers Acquired, they didn’t just get superpowers. Even non-invulnerables like Mike got higher strength, speed and agility along with regenerative healing. When they reached around eighteen, they hardened and got skin that was resistant to knives and bullets. They were all on the order of Captain America in terms of physicality.
Mike had been raised in a hard school and unlike most of his ghetto companions, he didn’t disdain martial arts. At least if they were fighting arts and not dojo dancing. So, he’d studied videos of things like Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Krav Maga growing up and practiced them. Since the latter was just advanced and specialized street-fighting, Mike particularly enjoyed it.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu was useful for dislocating joints which definitely took someone out of the fight.
The gun was easy enough to get rid of. He’d disarmed a prepared assassin when he was eleven. The leader wasn’t all that. It was hubristic but Mike actually did the thing you only saw in movies. He grabbed the automatic and held the slide back so it couldn’t operate.
The motion was decidedly easier when one could subtly control the gunman’s hand with Earth powers.
Then he punched the guy so hard it broke his jaw and teeth went flying.
The “youths” got in a few licks, but what with Mike having been beaten on repeatedly growing up and having regenerative healing, it didn’t really matter. Compared to what he’d suffered as a kid they were love taps.
When it was over, he nodded to the young lady. The demeanor of his tails changed dramatically. Where before their postures had been casual and confident, they were now hesitant and cautious. On the one hand, he’d just confirmed they were definitely tailing the right person; on the other, they’d just learned who they were tailing.
“De nada.”
Then he walked over, picked up his backpack, and stepped off the train as it reached the Chambers Street Station.
When he reached 291, he walked in and waved at the undercover marshal on duty while half singing the Captain America theme song.
“Hey, there’s a dude following me,” Mike said. “Don’t look, male subject examining the tenants list. He’s armed. Don’t know if he’s permitted. I’m going to hop the elevator. Mind at least giving him some hassle, try to get an ID? Be advised, though—handgun.”
“I can do that,” the marshal said, frowning.
“I’ll explain later,” Mike said. He walked to the third elevator, inserted his ID card, and summoned it. The doors opened immediately, and he stepped in.
As he did, he could see in Sight that the tail walked in and over to the elevator. Since you needed a CAC to summon it, he wasn’t getting it to return.
Mike proceeded to the underground lobby, still watching in Sight. The female tail was outside the building, texting. The Gondola asset was across the street, having been warned to stay away.
The marshal got up from his security desk and approached the male subject. There was discussion. The undercover marshal was openly armed. Discussions proceeded. The male subject was getting visibly distressed. The marshal was calm.
Suddenly, the male subject reached for his gun.
The marshal was prepared and had alerted the response team. The marshal wrestled the gun away from himself as the response marshals flooded the room. In seconds, the guy was on the ground and cuffed.
Mike was prepared to use powers to prevent harm to the marshal, but it wasn’t necessary. Good, he could continue to pretend he was just a nobody kid. With superpowers.
With NYPD arriving and all the commotion, the female subject broke contact.
Mike took the steam tunnels to an alternate entrance and followed his erstwhile tail as she made her way to the City Hall subway station. He couldn’t follow her there; she’d make him in an instant if they were on the same platform.
He thought about it for a few seconds and grimaced.
He put on his COVID mask again and waited for her to get on the R line going uptown. Then, as the train left the station, he took off flying. Early on, he’d flown by lifting a rock in a tightly secured backpack, but now he’d grown capable enough to confidently lift his skeleton.
The outfit he was wearing was not the best for flying. His hoodie top kept flapping in the breeze and he was having to keep up with the subway. He couldn’t let it get ahead of him too far because he had to keep an eye on the tail. He still was only up to a few hundred meters range. He just tucked the hoodie under his backpack and kept it there to the best of his ability. He also got very watery eyes from the wind. He finally just closed his eyes and used his Sight to fly. It was a bit nerve-racking, but it worked. He didn’t hit anything. So far, so good.
She changed trains twice, possibly to avoid being tracked, and got off in Washington Heights. To minimize the odds of being seen, he worked to avoid flying outside large windows or directly past open balconies or terraces.
He landed on a roof and continued to trail her, moving from rooftop to rooftop using flight as necessary until she entered a six-floor walk-up on the corner of West 159th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. It was the heart of the Heights, so he wasn’t too sure why the hell she’d be there.
The answer arrived when she went into an apartment on the fifth floor. A man met her at the door and delayed letting her in until he’d checked the hallway and interrogated her for a bit. Mike couldn’t tell what was being said, of course, but safely assumed he was ensuring she wasn’t being followed. They sat and chatted for a bit, then she left. Neither seemed particularly agitated.
Mike waited for the man to leave as well. The woman was a disposable asset. The new mark pulled out a burner phone, sent a text, then got up and left, leaving the burner behind.
This time it was a car. That was, honestly, easier to track than the subway. Rush hour had started, and the car wasn’t going anywhere very fast. And it was headed downtown.
Mike was scanning around as he flew, keeping up and to the side so as not to be noted by the driver. But when the trip led to the East Side of Manhattan and he got into skyscrapers, he had to fly directly over the car.
Which was when he discovered a super racing up behind him. He could tell it was a flyer because, for one, they were flying, but also because of their picturesque horizontal posture with arms extended. Though there was some aerodynamic advantage, they mostly flew that way for the image. When Mike flew, he levitated upright because he was simply carrying his skeleton with Earth Move.
“Stone Tactical?” Iron Eagle blurted. He looked a little awkward as he pulled up next to Mike, as if he wasn’t used to going so slow and didn’t know which dashing superhero pose was most appropriate.
“Hey, Patrick!” Mike said. “I’m trailing a suspect!”
“A suspect in what?” Patrick asked. His head panned all around as he searched for Mike’s target.
“Long story!” Mike shouted as the car pulled out. “I’ll catch you up later! I don’t want to lose this car!”
Mike dropped and then shot forward in a burst of speed. Patrick lagged for half a heartbeat before catching back up. The car pulled into a garage on East Seventy-ninth, so Mike slowed to a hover out of view while the car eased into a parking spot. The male subject got out and headed for the street. Patrick lowered between levels to get a better look inside the structure.
“Come on,” Mike said, pulling on Patrick. “Don’t let him see you!”
“Let who see me?” Patrick asked but he nonetheless followed Mike off to the side.
Mike pulled them back over the building the guy had parked in and waved at the street.
He gave Patrick a brief rundown of the trail.
“The boss parked the car in the garage and is walking. I want to see who he meets.”
“We can’t even see the street from here, Mike,” Patrick said, reasonably.
“I’m following him with Earth Sight,” Mike said. “Can we keep that between us?”
“You’ve got Sight?” Patrick said. “Since when do you have Sight?”
“I got it right away,” Mike lied. Sight was the sort of thing supers got from training with their powers—as Mike actually had. Training with their powers was a no-no. “But most people don’t seem to get it. Dunno why. He’s headed to the street. I want to see where he goes.”
“Okay,” Patrick said. “Is this Corps business?”
“The girl’s partner followed me into Two-ninety-one,” Mike said with a shrug. “Dunno. Ask the marshals.”
The man crossed the street at the light, then went up East Seventy-ninth to a 1970s frosted-glass office building.
Mike realized they were potentially in view of the offices in the building. That wasn’t good.
“Come on,” Mike said, pulling on Patrick. “We need to move.”
Mike flew down to Second Avenue, across to the other side of the street, then up to over the building and landed.
“Why did we just do that?” Patrick asked. Where he’d seemed a little awkward flying slow, Patrick looked positively confused trying not to be seen. Flyer patrols were largely symbolic, and the primary goal was to let the populace see them flying around, giving the appearance of safety under the watchful eyes of the supers. Sure, they could be stealthy when needed for an actual mission, but Patrick didn’t seem to have made that mental transition yet.
“So if there was someone in one of the offices in this building, they wouldn’t see us,” Mike said, distantly. He’d had to reacquire the subject who, fortunately, was just getting on an elevator when they got there. The subject had broken a leg at some time in the past and various other injuries, so he was recognizable under Earth Sight. But it took a lot of focus to identify one particular bone on one particular man at a significant distance while flying. “I lost the guy for a minute and had to reacquire.”
The man went up to the ninth floor and proceeded to an office that was, fortunately, on the back side of the building. There were various people in the offices, but he went to the back to an office, knocked on the door, paused, then entered.
The man he was meeting with was also someone with rough background and definitely had been in the military from the wearing on the padding in the knees. Multiple broken bones in the past.
“What are you doing?” Patrick asked. He finally looked graceful while they hovered, though he had his hands slightly out to the sides and one leg bent. Again, it was always about the image.
“The guy I trailed from Washington Heights is meeting with his boss,” Mike said, distantly. “Can’t figure out what they’re talking about, obviously, but he’s reporting what happened. This is the guy who had someone tail me into Two-ninety-one. Was it about supers? Or was it about the inheritance? I dunno. But it’s totally legal for me to surveil people.”
“I’m not sure about the Sight thing,” Patrick said. “I’m getting a call.”
“I’ve got this,” Mike said. “Not going to confront anyone. Just curious. And please don’t bring in the Corps on my Sight. You know they’ll want to use me as a guinea pig.”
“Right,” Patrick said, looking down and grimacing. “We all hate that. Don’t get yourself in trouble.” He switched to superhero voice to say, “Iron Eagle, responding.” Then he shot into the sky.
The guy finished his verbal report and left. Mike waited on the rooftop, but the office boss didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Over the next half hour, other people came in, reported, and left. Calls came in on the phone. Mike found a good angle to see there were also reports coming in on the computer.
He could’ve surveilled the new mark until he left for the day, if he ever did, but it didn’t seem worth it. Mike could find out some other time and way what the company was. He might as well head home.
This time the normal way.
“How was your day?” Derrick asked when he walked in the condo. His father sat at his desk in front of his laptop and stretched as if he hadn’t stood in a while. There was an empty coffee mug and half a glass of water beside him.
The loft they’d rented in SoHo was, easily, the nicest home Mike had ever lived in. It was described as “bright” in the listing and it was, mostly because of the large windows and brilliant white paint of the walls. It was sometimes too bright. There were three bedrooms, one for each of them and the third for a home office for Derrick. They’d cleared just enough space in the third bedroom that Derrick could also use it for working out.
Incongruously, two of the rooms had cribs. Mike wasn’t sure what was up with that.
“Great,” Mike said. “I wandered all around New York looking at various rock formations and training my powers. Then I beat up some assholes who were hassling a cute girl on the subway, then lured one of my two tails into the marshals. I’m sure they’ll be asking him some hard questions and I’m just as sure he won’t answer. But I trailed the other one to her boss, then trailed him to his boss and found a secret Society lair on East Seventy-ninth. Also, had an amazing calzone for lunch. You?”
“Back up,” Derrick said. “What was that middle part?”
“Grandpa’s Brick Pizza Oven,” Mike said, rubbing his stomach. “Fantastic pizza! Oh, my God! And the crust is just . . . scrumptious!”
“The other middle part . . .” his father said.
“You just like playing with your food, don’t you?” Derrick asked. His eyes were very slightly narrowed in an expression that could either be disappointment or concern. The two were hard to tell apart with Derrick.
“I do, yes,” Mike said. “Patrick nearly blew my stakeout, the idiot.”
“Someone in Corps now knows you have Sight,” Derrick pointed out.
“I think he’ll be cool,” Mike said. “What I’m wondering is what the company is that the guy reported to the boss. I’m going to go with a Society Dirty Tricks Department. The guy in charge was former military. Can’t really tell for sure special operations but I’m going to go out on a limb. Thing about it is . . . something weird about his bone structure. You can’t tell nationality with bone structure but something weird. Lots of facial reconstruction surgery, that’s for sure. Not sure what the guy originally looked like. I’m going to turn in a report to Gondola, see if they have anything.”
“Right,” Derrick said.
“Also, just riding around on the subway is fantastic Earth training and I get to beat up assholes,” Mike said. “I might just spend my time riding that filthy, pestilential trash-heap. Though tomorrow I’m going to try to get a lunch date with Sasha.”
“The love interest,” Derrick said.
“I’m not sure if I should be as interested as I am,” Mike said. “But she’s right around the corner from here and she does tutoring to have more time for modeling. She’ll be free for lunch. And she can get into the building and find out what the company is. Then I’ll do some research on them.”
“Are you sure you’re not a little too into this Encyclopedia Brown Detective Agency thing?” Derrick said.
“I have no idea what that is,” Mike said, “but I can infer from context. I’m pretty sure I’m one: not going to get arrested; two, interfere with any of the lawsuits; or three, get killed. Because one: Super. We get protected by the Feds for all sorts of stuff. Two: This shouldn’t interfere except to take away one of their assets. Three: Super. We’re very hard to kill. And since I missed the beginning of the semester, I can’t take any courses right now. So, it’s train my powers, investigate the Society, and generally just be a junior superhero.”
“Right,” Derrick said.
“I’ve gotta see if I can get ahold of Sasha,” Mike said. “What’s for dinner? I’m thinking Thai.”
“Hey, Sash!” Mike said, opening his arms for a hug. “Gently!”
They had agreed to meet outside SoHo Park, a trendy burger place. It had been closed down for a while but recently reopened after a remodel. Sasha was looking as radiant as ever and was, thankfully, unaccompanied.
“Hey,” Sasha said, giving him a careful hug. “Why are you wearing a mask? We don’t catch stuff.”
“I care about others,” Mike said, pulling one out for her. “Do you mind? There’s a reason, I promise.”
“Okay,” Sasha said, shrugging. She put on the simple surgical mask. “We can’t eat in these, you realize.”
“Let’s get a table,” Mike said. “It’s a nice day. Want to sit outside?”
When they were seated and the waitress had gotten their drink order, Mike sighed.
“The reason for the mask, which we’ll be taking off in a bit, is that it’s nearly impossible to lip-read someone wearing one,” Mike said. He didn’t think he had any uninvited guests watching him this time, but it never hurt to be cautious.
“Is that a thing?” Sasha asked. “As in, someone is going to lip-read us?”
“Possibly,” Mike said. “And much as my brain goes to mush at your eyes, the real reason I asked you for this little tête-à-tête is that I need a favor.”
“Does this involve MS-13 again?” Sasha asked. She straightened a little and there was a flash of excitement in her eyes.
“I’m pretty sure they are sick of me,” Mike said. “No. Yesterday, someone followed me into Two-ninety-one.”
“I heard Two-ninety-one might have been compromised,” Sasha said. “Got a text.”
“Right,” Mike said. “But it wasn’t about the Corps. It was the inheritance thing.”
She drew in a breath, tucked her chin, and relaxed a little. “So, you’re really going to be a billionaire?”
“Really and truly,” Mike said. “There’s not much that they can do to prevent it eventually. And it’s about to become news. All the right channels will be against the little upstart from Montana or Schenectady or somewhere unimportant. How dare he claim a fortune that is old money and proper people? So much fun.”
He then succinctly summarized events of the previous day for her. She listened intently, tensing back up as she did.
“I need to find out what company is in that set of offices. I can’t go in the building. I might be spotted by security, and they’ll know I’m onto them. But you are just a famous teenage supermodel. No big deal if you wander in there and get off at the wrong floor and go to the wrong office and just look at the name of the company.”
“So, you want me to do your dirty work for you?” Sasha said playfully.
“Look, if you wanna marry a billionaire there’s things you gotta do, honey,” Mike said. “It never comes easy when you’re diggin’ for gold.”
“Oh, you son of a—”
“Oh, come on, Sasha!” Mike said. “It’s literally just going up the elevator of a building on Seventy-ninth! You want us to get our billion dollars so we can afford all those kids or not?”
“Us?” Sasha said. “Mike, there is no us.”
“Come on,” Mike said. “What else do you have to do? Some photo shoots? Flying off to Fiji to loll around in the surf half naked? Covered in saaand and oillll . . . ?” He trailed off.
“You have a very active fantasy life, Mike,” Sasha said, chuckling and shaking her head.
“Do you have the basic concept of the mission?” Mike said, recovering. “’Cause if you do, we can take off these masks. But you do not mention the mission. Roger? Just decide while we talk about cabbages and kings.”
“Okay,” Sasha said, taking off the mask. “But someone’s probably going to recognize me.”
“That’s part of this,” Mike said as he took off his own. “There will probably be pictures. You’re all over Instagram. Some passersby will tag you and probably geolocate you as well. Bastards. People will ask, ‘What in the world is Sasha Nikula doing with that admittedly handsome, well-dressed, and debonair young man?’
“And when it turns out that that well-dressed, handsome, and debonair young man is a billon-hair, the question will be answered. The real question being how Sasha Nikula knew him before his name became public.”
“Will it become public?”
“You went right past the billion-hair?” Mike said. “I thought that was rather clever.”
“Yes.”
“You and my father,” Mike said. “You’ve both had your sense of humor surgically removed. But eventually, yes. The judge will eventually make my identity public. And when Sasha Nikula is asked how she knew Mike Truesdale, she will answer, honestly, from an after-school volunteer program she’s in.”
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.
“Everyone in the know will know what that volunteer program is. And everyone will assume it’s about the money, which is fine. At least on my side. If you’re really upset by it just tell the truth. That we’re just friends. And I’m fine with being just friends, Sasha . . . liar . . . No really, I’m good with being just friends wi . . . liar . . . with Sasha! Liar! You shouldn’t be a lying liar!”
“Oh, my God, Mike,” Sasha said, chuckling.
“There,” he said. “Get ’em to laugh and you’re halfway there.”
“Halfway where?” Sasha asked.
“Probably severe bodily harm.”
“Would you two like to order?”