Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

“Yeah, you do, actually.”

Great. Just what she needed, to start looking like crap as well as feeling like crap. “I’ll see what I can do. I keep thinking maybe once the kids are out of school.”

“That’s years away. Go on vacation and take them with you. You used to be able to manage a trip every summer.”

“I’ll think about it.”

They could all make the trip together. Sit around stewing about why their kids wouldn’t talk to them, and didn’t that sound like fun? Still, it was nice to know she wasn’t the only one who worried.

Didn’t a vacation sound lovely? Someday soon, she promised herself.

The city planning committee initiative, and her determination to make sure West Corp’s bid was the one the committee picked, was the culmination of some five years of work, of reviewing civil engineering surveys, ordering a dozen or so studies of population and community patterns, making countless projections of all possible plans and outcomes to find the one that didn’t just work, that didn’t just make money, but that made Commerce City better. This drive, this loyalty to the city, wasn’t entirely hers, Celia knew that. She worked for this plan for the same reason her parents had donned skin suits and battled villains for most of her childhood: It was in the blood. The powers written into their DNA had to be used for the protection of the city. She didn’t have powers, but ultimately she had that need. She didn’t argue with it.

The city had a process for getting things done, and she was adept at operating in its bureaucracies to make her plans work. She wasn’t worried that the West Corp proposal would lose out. But the arrival of Danton Majors was a variable she hadn’t expected. The most prominent outside participant in this dance, of unknown reach and resources, he made her nervous, and she wanted to know more.

She searched online databases and news services for every reference she could find on Danton Majors. A native of Delta, comparable to Commerce City in population and resources, but inland. Proud citizen, et cetera. The articles she found were mostly shiny puff pieces in financial publications, extolling his genius and virtues. She read between the lines, decided he’d had a couple of lucky breaks but had parlayed that luck into a substantial business. Publicly, he did what self-made men usually did with their money: attended society functions, patronized the right charities. He was married—twenty-two years, impressive—had two college-age kids, though his family stayed out of the public eye. The man was careful with his image.

She’d have to dig somewhere else to find any dirt on him, so she called a contact at the Commerce Eye . Over the years, the onetime tabloid rag had turned respectable by scooping its rival, the Banner, on a string of big stories. In the meantime, the Banner had gone stodgy and eventually folded.

“Hello, Mary? It’s Celia West. I need a favor.”

She could almost hear the reporter sputtering on the other end of the line. Celia had done her a few favors over the last couple of years—an exclusive interview, some on-the-record quotes about West Corp, and even a statement for a memorial retrospective about her father. Mary Danforth owed her big-time but probably never thought Celia would actually call her on it.

Mary managed to recover some kind of enthusiastic demeanor. “Certainly, Celia, whatever I can do to help.”

“Have you ever heard of a guy named Danton Majors? From Delta, rich real estate tycoon, he’s in town for that city planning meeting. You have anything unofficial on him?”

She hesitated. “You know, that’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“Well…” The reporter didn’t want to tell her.

“Out with it, Mary. It’s no big deal. If he’s going to bid on the development initiative, I just want to know more about him.”

“The thing is, I spoke with Majors a day or so ago. He was asking me for information about you.”

That wasn’t a shock. Guy was smart, covered his bases. “What did you tell him?”

“That’s just it. I started to tell him all about West Corp—nothing serious, you know, just all the public record stuff. I mean, that’s all I really know.”

“But?”

“He wanted to know about the Olympiad and whether or not you had powers.”

“I don’t have powers, everyone knows that.”

“Yeah, but … he seemed to think that maybe you’d hidden it. I told him that was silly. You’ve publicly distanced yourself from superhuman vigilantes your whole life. And you know what he said?”

“That the very fact I’ve distanced myself suggests I’m hiding something.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much it. Celia, I have to tell you, and my instincts are pretty good on this sort of thing—I started wondering if he’s got his sights on you. From a business perspective, I mean.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Thanks a lot, Mary. I owe you one.”

“Then how about giving me an early look at your annual report for last year?”

“We’ll talk. Later.” She said farewell and hung up before Mary could do any more cajoling.

The message light on her phone was flashing, and she picked up the line. “Celia, it’s Mark. I’m sending you a file. Let me know what you think.”

She checked the encrypted e-mail account she and Mark had set up for this sort of thing.

This new video came from a traffic camera. In color this time, a little better quality, but still no sound. Didn’t matter, because there wasn’t much to the clip anyway. The scene showed a deserted intersection, half an hour after midnight. She double-checked the location—near City Park. She knew the place.

A figure darted into the frame—straight down into the frame. A flyer, then? No—he descended at speed, landed in the middle of the intersection, absorbing the shock of impact in his knees, ending in a crouch. Straightening, he looked around, then gathered himself, pulling his arms close, bunching his legs. He launched himself into an epic leap that took him once again out of the frame of the camera, straight up. Not a flyer but a jumper. Celia was impressed in spite of herself.

She isolated a frame of film that gave the best view of his figure and features. He had a confidence in his movements that pinned him as just a bit older than teenager. He was lean and muscular and had a determined set to his angular jaw, the thin frown that jutted out under his helmetlike mask. He had a good-looking outfit, a green skin suit that showed off his physique, as was tradition, and that slick helmet. He’d put some thought into this, even if he hadn’t gotten a whole lot of publicity out of it. Yet.

But something about him wasn’t right. She took out her list of the Leyden Lab employees, the points of origin for them all. Studied the names, though by this time she had most of them memorized. She knew them all, and that was what bothered her. This new guy wasn’t the right age. Justin Raylen’s and Ed Crane Jr.’s kids were elementary school age; next oldest came the slew of them currently in middle and high school. The few descendants who hit in between that younger generation and her own hadn’t shown any sign of powers. Everyone older than Arthur was retired.

This guy didn’t match anyone on her list.

Which was impossible, or should have been impossible. She’d spent hundreds of hours and almost twenty years tracking down every single descendant of every single person who had been present in Leyden Laboratories when Simon Sito’s experiment failed. Every single person who had even a hint of potential. She’d pulled strings and broken laws to get access to adoption records, to track down secret affairs and illegitimate children. Every time a new superhero appeared, she’d been able to trace them back to one of these families, and she’d learned the secret identity of every superhuman who’d ever gone vigilante in Commerce City. She knew.