Dreams Of The Golden Age Part 7

But he paused and set the weights on the floor. "How'd you find me?"

"I told you last night, that's what I do," she said. "Wasn't sure I'd be able to, since we only met that once. But I wanted to try."

He was definitely college age, she thought, now that she could study him without the mask and costume. Older than she was. Too cool to go to prom with her, at any rate. Not that she wanted to go to prom with him ...

"Okay, you found me, you know who I am, now what?"

"I don't know who you are. Not really. You're just a guy with a superpower. I was curious." Really, she didn't know what she'd expected. That he'd at least want to talk. That he'd be curious about her and the others. That he'd see what they all had in common. That he'd see it the way she did.

"I'm sorry, I'm sure you mean well, but I'm not going to get all open and sharing just because you managed to find me. I don't want to be part of your team."

She couldn't blame him for that, given how the team was shaping up, or rather how it wasn't. "That wasn't what I was going to ask."

"You just wanted to see if you could find me."

She looked away, fully aware that he was basically right, and that she hadn't thought at all about what she was going to say if she actually found him. She should have just peeked around the corner, confirmed it was him, and left. She scuffed her feet. "So. Working out. That's a good idea."

"You might try it, if you're going to be fighting crime and all." He smirked at her, and she felt even more dumb.

And still, she didn't turn around and walk out. "I also wanted to tell you ... to ask ... you know, if you ever need ... I don't know. Help or something." She blushed, because the thought sounded stupid once she said it out loud.

He didn't need her help, and they both knew it. His tone was amused when he said, "I'll let you know. You should probably get on home." He retrieved the weights and started the curls again.

"Yeah, right," she muttered, turning and walking out. The guy at the front desk waved at her when she left.

The cool air outside soothed her mortified and blushing cheeks. Walking fast helped, too. She felt like an idiot. He probably thought she was an idiot. She wondered why she even cared.

Because he was powerful. Because they could use his help. And he was cute. Maybe not hot, but definitely cute.

She huffed, disgusted with herself. If she could at all help it, she was going to avoid him from here out. And since she had his full name now, and his presence firmly lodged in her mind, she'd always know where he was and she could avoid him easily.

SEVEN.

CELIA hadn't been able to sleep, again. She dragged herself to her desk in the morning and wanted nothing more than to lay her head on the surface and sleep some more. Her head was throbbing and that crick in her neck hadn't gone away. Four aspirin hadn't done the trick.

Arthur came into her office, hefting a rolled-up newspaper. "You'll want to see this."

It couldn't be good. She took a deep breath and braced herself. "What do I want to see?"

He straightened the paper and set it in front of her. It seemed to hit the desk with a thunk that rattled her head; she had to squint to read. It was the Commerce Eye, harkening back to its histrionic roots with a headline blazing in inch-high letters: "Commerce City's Newest Crime-Fighting Team Makes Its Mark!"

Celia should not have been surprised when, like some powerful exothermic reaction, the subjects of her experiment spun out of control on their own trajectories. It was the natural order of things. A better person-someone who knew what they were doing-would be pleased that the kids seemed to be not just learning to use their powers, but forming the kind of team that had made her own parents so effective. Instead, she felt nascent ulcers blooming in her gut.

The whole thing happened by chance. a.n.a.lise had had her twins a year after Anna was born, then Bethy came along, so naturally they scheduled playdates. At one time Celia would have stabbed herself over the idea of doing something so predictably maternal as playdates. But it was a great excuse to dump the kids on the playground while she and a.n.a.lise sat on a park bench and caught up over coffee. It was also a great excuse to watch Teia and Lew without seeming like she was scrutinizing them for the odd case of superstrength or telekinesis. a.n.a.lise had superpowers, after all. Never mind that she hadn't used them in twenty years, she still had them, theoretically. If her children had powers at all, they'd likely manifest them at p.u.b.erty rather than have them from birth. Of the nearly two dozen supers Commerce City had produced, only six had manifested powers at birth. Her father had been one of those.

Arthur and Mark Paulson were the only other people who knew about the list in her safe. According to that list, a whole cl.u.s.ter of Leyden descendants had been born around the same time. Celia's kids, a.n.a.lise's kids, the Stowe grandchildren, Donaldson's grandson, a couple of others from the Masters line-cousins of Barry Quinn, aka Plasma, who had been inst.i.tutionalized for schizophrenia, so Celia kept an especially close eye on them. Before this generation, supers had been scattered, appearing alone or in pairs. But this was different. It seemed like the most efficient plan in the world to secretly grant them all scholarships to Elmwood, to get them all in one place where she could better watch them. With a good education in a safe, stable environment, they would be better able to manage their powers if they had them, yes? That was what she told herself. It certainly couldn't hurt, and maybe some good would come of it.

But once they were all together, she couldn't stop tweaking: subtle suggestions to the school guidance counselor, anonymous hacks into the computer database, and she'd gotten the kids of the same grades into the same homerooms, the same gym periods, the same intramural sports programs, the same lunch hours. Nothing overt, simply increasing the odds that they would spend time together. Find each other.

And it had worked.

Her parents had met at Elmwood Academy. They'd discovered each other, shared their abilities, learned how to use them. Taught each other. For good or ill, the Olympiad had been born at Elmwood. Maybe, for good or ill, it would happen again. Celia wanted to see, and she'd turned the school into her petri dish without anyone knowing.

Arthur would stop her, she kept thinking. If she ever went too far, Arthur would tell her. He hadn't yet, so she kept watching, and waiting.

Finally, here it was, and she could stop waiting.

The Eye's story even had a picture, a major coup for a newspaper covering new vigilantes, who usually kept to the shadows and loathed publicity. Not these guys. In the photo, three of them stood in the middle of a downtown street, hands on hips and chins lifted proudly. They were in shadows-the picture had been taken without a flash, which made them seem like ghosts-masked and shrouded in costumes so their ident.i.ties weren't apparent. But they were definitely posing, and they were obviously a team, all in black shirts and jeans and jaunty masks made with bandanas with cut-out eyeholes. The first formal superhero team in twenty years was what it looked like.

She was absolutely sure that when she studied those figures, she'd find Anna under one of the masks. But she didn't. In fact, she had a pretty good idea who these kids were. She continued on to the story.

The fire at the south side tenement block would have been a tragic disaster, if not for the arrival of the three superhuman heroes- Celia looked up from the page. "They went after a burning building their first time out? Very traditional."

"Indeed. Keep reading." Arthur seemed to be enjoying this. He wouldn't have been if Anna had been one of the trio. But then, he probably would have known about it ahead of time. And he wouldn't have told Celia. Was it too late to lock Anna in her room for the rest of her life?

The article was breezy and admiring. Our young crime fighters, it called the trio, arrived shortly after the firefighters. While the firefighters were busy attaching hoses to water supplies, raising ladders, and whatever else firefighters did at the scene of burning buildings, the heroes had gotten to work: One had caused a rainstorm that soaked the fire, another had frozen the building to keep the fire from spreading, and the third had had some kind of explosive power that broke down walls and allowed people to escape. The fire department mostly stood around watching. Of course, someone called the newspaper, and the reporter and photographer arrived to snap pictures of the team before a backdrop of smoking brick facade. No one had died, no one had been hurt. They'd been smart, staying out of the building, stopping the fire first and not trying to rescue people directly from the blaze.

But she wished they hadn't done it at all. They weren't ready, not yet.

"Just trying to help," said one of the intrepid heroes, before the team disappeared into the night.

These stories never changed, not once in her whole life.

"Lady Snow, Stormbringer, and Blaster," Celia read off the names the vigilantes had given themselves.

"Teia and Lewis Fletcher and Sam Stowe, aren't they?"

Sam Stowe was sixteen, one of the many grandchildren of Gerald Stowe. The Stowe family had produced more superhumans than any of the others from the laboratory accident-his oldest grandson was Justin Raylen, aka Breezeway, and his second daughter, Margaret Lee, had a career as the vigilante Earth Mother before retiring to have kids. Margaret's son Cody was ten now. She wondered if any of the Stowes had ever sat down and figured out just how many cousins donned masks and fought crime. Probably not, that was what the masks were for. But Raylen had gone public years ago; Margaret Lee and other Stowes with powers had to be wondering. At some point, someone else had to make the genetic connections that Celia was keeping secret in her files.

And then there were the other two in the photo. Out fighting fires at age sixteen, just like their dead father. They might have waited specifically for a fire to come along, so they could swoop in for a rescue in some kind of tribute to him. They must have thought they were following in his footsteps, not their mother's. G.o.d.

Celia sat back and sighed. "I need to call a.n.a.lise."

"Probably," Arthur said. "If she doesn't call you first."

She studied the picture further, looking for other figures hiding in the shadows. Theodore Donaldson, maybe. Anna, who was sneaking out at night to do G.o.d knew what. She closed her eyes, squeezed the bridge of her nose, futilely willing the headache to go away.

Arthur sat on the edge of her desk. "Celia, are you all right?"

"I just ... it's just shocking to see the picture. They're so young." Ridiculously young.

"I thought this was what you wanted."

"I wanted them to meet each other, to practice with each other so they wouldn't feel lost, so they wouldn't grow up alone, like you and Robbie and a.n.a.lise and my parents did until you all met each other."

"You hoped they would work together."

A superhero team, even better than the Olympiad had been. "Yes, eventually. Not before they've even graduated."

"But the experiment is out of your control now. Alas." He was laughing at her, quietly, at least. Nothing overt, just a wry smile and a flash in his eye.

She leaned back in the chair. Was she getting a migraine? Was this what a migraine felt like? When she finally opened her eyes again, Arthur wasn't smiling. That worried tension in his mouth had returned.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"I've been working too hard. I need a vacation."

"So we'll take one."

Easier said than done. As soon as the development plan went through the committee. She kept saying that, didn't she?

"Celia-"

Her cell phone rang. Her personal phone, with a.n.a.lise's name on the caller ID. Too early to be facing this call. She hadn't worked out what she was going to say. Arthur merely gazed innocently at the ceiling; he wasn't going to be any help.

Carefully, like handling dynamite, she answered the call.

"Celia?"

She tried to judge a.n.a.lise's mood by her voice-stressed, certainly. Sharp, edged with anger. And panic. Celia could guess her emotional state because she'd been living in that state herself the last week or so.

"Hi, a.n.a.lise," she said, sighing.

"Have you seen the Eye this morning? Are those my kids? Tell me those are not my kids."

She spoke slowly, trying to give so very little away. "Yes, I've seen the Eye. I don't know if they're your kids, they're wearing masks."

"Don't give me that bulls.h.i.t, the masks don't mean anything to you."

Celia first met a.n.a.lise precisely because she'd recognized the woman in her civilian guise, without Typhoon's mask. "Really, you'd know better than I would-have they been sneaking out at odd hours?" Like my kid has ...

"I don't know, they're being ... sneaky!"

"a.n.a.lise, do you want to go get lunch? We should have lunch."

"No, I don't think we should, because I need to yell, and I'm not going to yell at you in a restaurant."

I should have told her sooner, Celia realized. Right from the start, I should have told her. We should have been doing this together. "Have you asked them? Show them the paper and see what they say-"

"I did, and you know what they said? 'Mom, that's crazy.' In stereo, like they'd been practicing. But I'm not asking them right now, I'm asking you."

"a.n.a.lise- "Back in my day I was the only black superhero in Commerce City, and now two black kids show up in costumes fighting crime and you're going to tell me they're not mine?"

"Fine. You're right. It's Teia and Lew."

A long pause. a.n.a.lise probably hadn't expected her to admit it. Celia wanted to crawl under the desk. Arthur stood by, being very quiet, looking sympathetic.

"You knew," a.n.a.lise said finally. During the pause, she'd obviously figured it out. "You knew they had powers, that they were planning something like this, this whole time."

"I didn't know they were planning something, honest, I only thought ... I guess I hoped that if any of them did have powers, they'd be there for each other. Help each other."

"They-this isn't just about my kids, is it? My kids, your kids-that other kid in the picture. And who else? And they were only ever going to help each other if ... The scholarships. That was you, wasn't it? So you could put them right where you wanted them. Putting together your own little Olympiad."

"No, that isn't-"

"And you couldn't tell me? Why couldn't you tell me?"

Keeping it secret seemed like a good idea at the time was a very lame excuse. "a.n.a.lise, I'm-"

"I can't talk to you right now," she said, fl.u.s.tered, and the phone clicked off.

Celia tossed the gadget onto the desk and glared. The gnawing hole in her stomach seemed to be getting bigger. She probably could have handled that better. Starting about five years ago, when she put together this crazy scheme.

"That didn't go particularly well," Arthur observed helpfully. As if she needed it spelled out.

"It'll be okay. She's been p.i.s.sed off at me before. This is exactly how she reacted when she found out about me joining the Destructor. It'll pa.s.s." Eventually ... Celia would call her later this afternoon, after she had time to settle down. After Celia figured out what she was going to do next.

Arthur's own worry grew strong enough to be evident, pressing out past his usual carefully maintained mental shields. All of it was directed at her.

"What?" Celia asked.

"Get your things together. We're going for a ride."

"I don't have time for a ride-"

"Yes, you do. I'm clearing your schedule for the rest of the day, and I'm taking you to a doctor."

"What?"

He repeated, offhand, "I'm clearing your schedule and we're going to the doctor. Tom will have the car outside in a minute."

"But he's supposed to be dropping off the girls-"

"Soren can drop off the girls today. Tom is driving us to the doctor."

"Arthur-"

"Celia, you're not well."

"I'm fine-"

"You don't believe that. You're worried. You're ignoring it, but you're worried."