Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

Analise frowned, making her whole face pucker. She wasn’t used to taking orders or listening to advice. She wasn’t used to waiting. But she nodded now, no wind left in her sails. She was broken. Celia hated seeing her like that.

The men had retreated to the command room, waiting for the next crisis. Celia didn’t think anything would happen during the day. The explosions always came at night. She wondered how Arthur and her father were getting along. Probably ignoring it, pretending like nothing had happened.

Robbie suddenly appeared in the kitchen. He’d run from the command room, followed by his trademark wind, which ruffled the women’s hair. To them, however, he just appeared.

“The Strad Brothers aren’t finished yet. Or maybe not the Strad Brothers. It’s a new MO. It could be somebody brand-new. It isn’t robberies this time—it’s bombs.”

Celia stood. Suzanne was already on her feet, but she stepped forward, an intent look on her face.

Leaving another breeze behind him, Robbie disappeared, back to the command room.

“It is the Destructor,” Suzanne said softly. “We should have known, no jail can hold him—”

But Celia knew that wasn’t right. She’d seen the Destructor, Simon Sito, a shriveled old man ranting in his cell. The three women followed Robbie to the command room.

On the view screens in the darkened room, Celia saw the nightmare her parents had always dreaded, the vision of what would happen if they failed to stop the Destructor or any of the other ultraambitious villains who’d come along: fires burning, the city in ruins. Their city, her home.

One screen showed a map of the city. A half-dozen flashing red dots marked trouble spots. They lay scattered all over the city: one by the harbor, another by the university, a couple in the south end—one of them only a few blocks from her apartment. None of them was in the downtown area, near West Plaza. And none of them was in the northeast warehouse district. Those areas showed dark.

The other screens flashed between images captured on security cameras or broadcast by news teams. Fires burned everywhere. Flames engulfing buildings filled up the screens. Firefighters ran, lugging hoses. Water and fire retardant sprayed and arced toward the blazes, seemingly futile. The liquid droplets were so tiny.

“The bombs went off simultaneously,” Robbie explained, his voice steady and somber. “Incendiary, rather than explosive. Like whoever did this wanted to set half the city on fire, to keep us fighting all day rather than causing one round of damage and letting us pick up the pieces. This is about chaos.”

“We’ll help,” Warren said. “Suzanne, do you think—”

Her lips turned up wryly. “Fighting fire with fire? Maybe. Find out where the flames are spreading fastest and I can try to create firebreaks.”

“Me, too,” Robbie said. “Scare up a little wind, steer the flames back on themselves.”

Warren turned to Arthur. “Doctor?”

“I’m sure I can think of something.”

Typhoon stared at the screens without blinking. “I should go. This was made for me—”

Suzanne touched her shoulder. “No. You’re hurt, and you’re wanted by the police. Stay here, monitor the situation, stay by the radio. If we need your help, we’ll call you.”

Celia was shocked when, instead of arguing, Analise nodded and sank into the chair by the computer.

Warren had already marched to the hangar elevator.

Suzanne quickly smoothed back Celia’s hair. “Hopefully this won’t take too long.”

“Just be careful,” Celia said.

Suzanne and Robbie—no, Spark and the Bullet—joined her father, Captain Olympus.

Arthur hesitated. Without a word—without even a thought for once—he gripped the back of Celia’s neck and kissed her on the lips, quick and heartfelt. He drew away quickly, looking in her eyes before he turned to join the others.

The Bullet was sputtering. “Hey—what? What the hell was that—”

The elevator doors closed on the quartet before Celia heard the others’ response.

Her lips were still tingling.

“What happened to the cop?” Analise said.

“I don’t know,” Celia said, and she didn’t. At the moment, Mark was out in the city somewhere, dealing with the bombings, with the fires and chaos. Saving the city. “Are you okay? I mean, really okay. I know you want to be out there—”

“No,” Analise said. “I should. I should want to, but … Do you have a glass of water? Is there a glass of water somewhere?”

“The kitchen.”

Analise stood and ran from the command room. Celia followed more slowly. She still had a headache.

When she arrived in the kitchen, Analise was filling a glass from the faucet. When it was full, she set it on the counter by the sink and glared at it. Both hands braced on the edge of the counter, her back bent, her face puckered in concentration, she watched the glass like she expected it to get up and dance.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Analise said, with a strange calm. “I ought to be able to make that water jump out of there. I ought to be able to soak the whole kitchen with it. I can’t do it.”

Celia didn’t know what to say. She managed to choke out, “You’re just tired. You’ve had a shock. You’ll get it back.”

“What if I don’t want it back, Celia?”

Would Analise be Analise without the part of her that was also Typhoon?

Analise picked up the glass and drank all the water out of it. She finished, wiped her mouth, and gave Celia a bitter smile. “Guess I’d better keep an ear on the radio like your parents asked.”

Head bent, she went back to the hallway that led to the command room.

Celia didn’t know what to think.

She went to the living room and the windows. From here, she could see the smoke rising from three of the fires. The two on the south end were close together, the harbor fire a ways off to the right. Pillars of black rose into the washed-out sky, pulsing as they grew and shrank, as new flames fed them or other flames were put out. A gray haze filtered the sun, bathing the city in pale orange light. News and police helicopters swarmed like moths.

The whole city could burn to the ground in hours, if no one was there to fight it.

Her phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Celia? It’s Mark. I don’t know who else to go to. You’re in the middle of this as much as I am. You seem to know more about it than I do.”

He sounded panicked, as if the Destructor was breaking down his door then and there. “Mark, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“This is all a distraction, isn’t it? Like the kidnapping plots, like all the crime sprees. Something else is at the heart of it. I think I’ve found it. There’s a place, a building, the Leyden Industrial Park.”

Celia’s nerves stretched, as if they all waited to snap at once. She stared out at the burning city.

Mark continued. “The place was supposedly mothballed fifty years ago, turned over to the city for urban development. It was slated to be demolished for the highway plan, but that got held up. Celia, the place is active. My father’s been channeling money out of his office. Embezzling.”

Embezzling. That spoke to her line of work, and the professional side of her interrupted him. “Mark, how do you know? What evidence—”

He kept talking, like he had to get it all out at once before he lost his nerve. “Phony payroll, phony contracts, grant money to nonprofits that don’t exist.” All rote stuff, downright mundane. Paulson deflected attention from such activity with smoke and mirrors—with an orchestrated crime wave. “There’s more. I found evidence of payoffs to all the robbery suspects, and the bus hijacker. The rest of the money is going to this Leyden Industrial Park.”