Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

What happened next might have been choreographed, an elegant display of what everyone who didn’t actually have superpowers thought it must be like to have them. Teia—Lady Snow—acted first, jumping into the street. Anna almost screamed at her to get out of the way of the rocketing SUV. But Teia had a plan. Kneeling, she put her hand on the ground and a sheet of ice thick enough to skate on expanded away from her, covering the street to the next sidewalk and for a block in either direction, right before the SUV careened onto it.

Stormbringer moved in. A blast of wind came from nowhere—no, it came from straight down, sliding along the side of the building behind them, hitting the ground, slamming into the street. Anna dropped to the ground to avoid getting smashed by it; they all did.

The SUV spun out. The wind shoved it, and the frictionless ice carried it to the far side of the street, where it jumped the curb, tipped sideways, and slammed into a brick façade, with the crunching of steel and a shattering of glass.

The crash didn’t stop the two guys from climbing out of the wreckage, brandishing guns. The team backed off, letting the men—typical hoodlum types in leather jackets, worn jeans, dressed up in too much attitude—scramble out of the car and step onto the ice. They held guns at the ready, and Anna figured it was already too late to run.

Blaster’s turn to step forward, arms outstretched. Both hands emitted a series of short blasts, pops of light streaming out. Each stream hit one of the guys, who fell back, sliding on the ice, slamming against the wreckage of their car. They were down.

The Trinity really was a team. They really could do anything.

Anna felt a little more useless than usual.

The two men were alive, struggling as they tried to pick themselves up off the ice, falling again, groaning in pain. Lady Snow leaned on the ground again, and another layer of ice grew across the first, thickening until sheets of it expanded and reached up for the men, encasing limbs, locking them in place. Their guns were long gone, shot out of their hands by Blaster’s lasers.

Three police cars roared up, two patrol cars and an unmarked sedan. They screeched to a stop at the edge of the ice slick.

“Guys, cops,” Lew called unnecessarily, but it drew the attention of the others.

“They ought to thank us,” Sam muttered. “Got their guys all tied up for them.”

For once, Teia didn’t seem inclined to pose for any cameras. “I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t stick around for pictures this time.”

A pair of officers from one of the cars was circling around the ice patch to the wreckage of the SUV, shouting orders at the hoodlums to freeze, which should have been hilarious, but no one was laughing. The guys had started to break out of their ice shells, which ended up being quite thin, but they didn’t struggle when the officers picked a path to them, handcuffs in hand. They were wearing cleats on their shoes, Anna noticed. Like they’d planned for it, like they’d dealt with Lady Snow’s ice slicks before.

A spotlight from the second car switched on, blasting their side of the street with light.

“Guys, scatter,” Teia hissed, and the Trinity ran down the street, away from the cops. They’d had practiced running from cops just as much as they’d practiced everything else. Splitting up, each turned a different corner, in a different direction. To catch them, the police would need manpower and a concerted plan. What they had was two guys cautiously approaching as if hoping to catch a wild animal. Instead of giving chase, they cursed and stopped.

“Anna…” Teddy started, then vanished. Turned invisible and ran. She sensed him retreating.

“Wait a minute—” But he was long gone.

She made the mistake of turning to look straight into the light when she launched her own attempt at escape. Temporarily blinded, hands shielding her face, she ran up the block, but she was well behind the others. In lieu of other targets, the cops went after her. They were calling at her to stop, but they weren’t threatening to shoot, so she kept running.

She hadn’t noticed that the unmarked sedan had left the scene, circled the block, and now sat parked at the end of the sidewalk. She pulled up, trapped by the cops behind her, the car in front of her, and the ice on the street. She gave a wordless, frustrated scream. Teddy and the rest had all just left her here. The jerks. The assholes.

The plainclothes cop leaning against the hood of the car ahead of her was Paulson, captain of the downtown precinct. She knew it before she even saw him. Thank goodness she was wearing her mask. It had been a year or so since he’d been to the house for dinner, since he’d seen her. Probably, he wouldn’t recognize her. Except he already knew, because he was working with her mother, just like everyone else in Commerce City with any kind of authority.

She’d unconsciously raised her hands, looking back and forth between Paulson and the two uniformed officers, waiting to see who would leap at her first. Neither of them did, but she still stood there, arms up, trying to catch her breath.

“Put your hands on your head,” Paulson called, approaching her with a set of handcuffs.

He was really going to arrest her. She was dizzy, her muscles went loose, and she thought she was going to pass out. This was one of the things she’d always been afraid of, this was why they weren’t ready to go out yet. Somehow, she didn’t fall over and stayed upright while Paulson turned her so she was facing the wall and took hold of her wrists, bringing them back to clamp the steel of the cuffs over them. This was ridiculous. This was a nightmare.

“So which one are you?” Paulson said. “Trinity or Espionage?”

She didn’t dare say anything. If he was working with her mother, he already knew everything. He’d take her to the police station, take off her mask, and figure it out then anyway. She had some vague notion that she ought to keep quiet until she could call a lawyer. Her mother knew lots of lawyers.

God, her mother. What was she going to say about this?

“Taking the Fifth, is it?”

Again, nothing. Paulson looked past her, to the other cops. “You two, go help Brown and Martino with those slimeballs. I’ve got this.”

The two uniformed cops returned to their cars without argument, because of course she didn’t look like any kind of a threat and hadn’t displayed anything in the way of real superpowers. Paulson took hold of her arm and steered her toward the sedan. Her feet scuffed on the sidewalk; her muscles tingled with anxiety.

“Not going to say a word, are you?”

She didn’t even shake her head. She was wilting, head bowed, back curved—and stopped herself. She was Compass Rose, and maybe her friends ditched her, but if she wanted to be a superhero maybe she should start acting like it, even in handcuffs standing next to a cop car. How would one of the old-school heroes stand in this situation? Not necessarily Captain Olympus, who’d bust out of any situation before he could get close to getting arrested, of course. But one of the others, like the Hawk, who hadn’t had powers but was clever and strong on his own. Or maybe her father, Dr. Mentis. She’d seen pictures of him when he was younger. He never wore a skin-suit uniform like the others but always appeared in a plain suit and trench coat. Everyday clothes. Maybe she ought to do something like that, fool people by appearing perfectly normal. But everyone knew he had power, and he always seemed like he was studying the people around him, looking right through them.

Rolling her shoulders, she tried to stand like she imagined they would, back straight, chin up, gaze cold, glaring at Paulson. Maybe pretending to be strong was enough.