The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet Page 6

  Doc raised one eyebrow at her, playing along. "There may even be a polar bear," he said.

  "You're pulling my chain!" Emily said, thrusting and angry finger in his face.

  "You watch too much TV," Doc said. "What else do you have."

  "The Bermuda Triangle," Titus said, gesturing to Florida.

  Doc sighed heavily.

  "I hate the Bermuda Triangle. What's left?"

  Titus pointed to the remaining three locations.

  "Northern Cali, somewhere in the Appalachians, and New Mexico," Titus said.

  "That's not New Mexico, that's Nevada—oh my stars and garters is that Area 51?" Emily said.

  Doc and Titus exchanged weary looks.

  "There is no Area 51. But that's a good spot to get a signal off-world, we know that from experience. We should send a team to investigate," Doc said.

  Titus called up the California location, then zoomed in on a digital map. "I know this place. It's the Research Institute for Extra-Terrestrial Information," he said.

  "Nerd," Emily said.

  "No, seriously," Titus said. "They're not quacks. Constructed one of the largest signal structures in the world to ping out a welcome message. They're like SETI."

  "Even if they're benign, it could be that our enemies are stealing that signal structure to send out messages to their fleet," Doc said. "You and Kate should go talk to them."

  Titus nodded. "And the last location?" he asked.

  Doc inspected it for a long, pensive moment.

  "That one looks familiar to me," Doc said. "I can't place it, but we should investigate."

  "We'll be spread pretty thin," Titus said. "I assume Billy snuck off in the middle of the night."

  "Yeah," Emily said.

  "It's okay. I expected him to," Doc said. "Let's get Jane and Kate up to speed and see if can't find some backup. The five of us are going to be short-staffed and we need to check all three places simultaneously in case they're related—we can't risk spooking the others by hitting them one at a time."

  "I'll get Kate," Titus said, standing up. "And I think I know someone we can call for help."

  "That's a terrible idea," Emily said.

  "I haven't even said anything yet."

  "Doesn't matter," Emily said. "I already know who you're going to say, and it is a bad idea. Bad dog, Titus. Bad dog."

  Chapter 10:

  Journalistic integrity

  Jane hated to admit it, but she found being around Jon Broadstreet incredibly uncomfortable since returning from the future. She understood the reporter wasn't fated for the same horrible end she'd seen in that alternate timeline. They were on a different course here. He'd never infiltrate a world-destroying organization as a spy and die while trying to escape. There were a million other ways the young journalist could meet a bad end, but, Jane thought, at least we can dismiss the one I've actually seen happen.

  But still, she'd witnessed a future version of him die, and she felt sad around the present-day version of him every time they met, now. She longed for the old days when his unrequited crush on her was the main cause of her discomfort. Now during those times when he'd ask Jane out to dinner, her pained expression didn't indicate a lack of interest so much as it reflected a covert attempt to cover up her awkwardness.

  And the poor man had no idea.

  Today they met on a footbridge that crossed a river cutting through the heart of the City, an area that had, in the old days, been a crime-riddled pathway for illegal smuggling in and out of the metropolis. But before Jane lived here—really, almost before she was born—City officials had labored tirelessly to beautify it, and they'd done a magnificent job. The once grimy and dangerous section had become a walking route and bike path, frequented by joggers and families with strollers, dotted with coffee shops and restaurants with outdoor seating.

  Broadstreet showed up with coffee and handed it to Jane as she adjusted the knit cap on her head. He laughed.

  "You realize almost everyone who walks by does know who you are, hat or no hat," he said.

  "Can you at least pretend my civilian disguise works?" Jane said.

  The reporter struck a suddenly serious look, his mouth a hard straight line.

  "I barely recognized you. It's like I'm looking at another person," he said. "You know, in a certain light you kind of resemble someone. An actress or something."

  Jane sipped her coffee and leaned against the railing, stealing a quick glance up at the sky. She wondered what was in store for them. Emily ratted Billy out as soon as he left; now everyone knew he was gone. And hadn't said goodbye. Probably for the best, Jane thought. Perhaps saying goodbye is bad luck. The thought of him out there by himself in the blackness of space made her heart hurt. She could do it, or someone like Kate, but Billy couldn't stand being alone for dinner, never mind flying out into the endless sky.

  "You've got something on your mind," Broadstreet said.

  "I've always got something on my mind," Jane said, shaking off her wandering thoughts.

  "Anyone ever tell you that you worry too much?" he said.

  She gave him a hard, almost angry look, and then shook her head.

  "Can I tell you the truth? Sometimes I worry so much it physically hurts," Jane said. "I'm practically impervious to harm, and I sit here freaking myself out until I'm sick. Normal people don't do this, do they?"

  Broadstreet shrugged, then joined her by leaning against the bridge's rail.

  "You'd be surprised at how many people do," Broadstreet said. "We live in this big, beautiful, amazing world, and every day all we do is obsess about every little thing. The big picture should be a miracle and instead we're…"

  He waved a hand vaguely around, gesturing toward the bustling streets of the City.

  "Instead we let all of this bog us down," he said. "But who am I to judge. I almost got you coffee with cream instead of milk and practically had a panic attack."

  "I still would have drank it, you know," Jane said.

  "Exactly. See what I mean? Why worry about something like that?"

  "Because you care," Jane said.

  Broadstreet nodded, almost embarrassed.

  "I'm not giving you a hard time," Jane said. "I bet you're concerned if you're rude to a stranger in traffic too."

  "Happened on the way here," he said.

  "I knew it." She studied the young reporter's face, the way that beard he'd been trying to grow for months now almost seemed to be filling in—he had a spot below his jaw line where no hair would come though and it gave him an almost comedic patchy look—and then she reflected on the rumpled aesthetic of his clothes, the way he watched everything around them. It's so unfortunate you keep asking me out, Broadstreet, she thought; if you'd just be normal, we could be good friends, I think.

  "So what is today's concern, Solar," Broadstreet asked.

  "If there were ever a real emergency, like something that might require people to evacuate calmly, and we got wind of it early—what could you do to help?"

  "Me? Like, the press?" Broadstreet said.

  "The press, yeah. But starting with you," Jane said.

  "You know something I should know about now?"

  "Maybe," Jane said. "Yeah. No. Wait. Off the record."

  "We're always off the record until you tell me these days," he said. "My bosses would murder me for saying that, but you know it."

  Jane looked over her shoulder. The dark water of the river drifted by.

  "We're trying to prevent something big," Jane said. "And if we can't…"

  Broadstreet's eyes went distant for a moment, deep in thought. He let out a long, frustrated sigh.

  "This is where I betray my profession," he said, resigned. "You want to know the truth?"

  "Of course."

  "You need to control your message," he said. "You make the announcement. Distribute everything you need us to know at the same time, to everyone, immediately. That big old floating fortress of yours has to be able to broadcast a message i
n large-scale way, yeah?"

  "I think so," Jane said.

  "Make sure the right people know it's coming. Public safety. Emergency management. Disaster teams. And then do it in your voice," he said. "Because people will listen to you. We'll catch up, but it's going to need to come from you."

  "From us?" Jane said. "The team?"

  Broadstreet laughed.

  "No. From you. I know you don't like to admit it, but you're the one we trust, Solar," he said. "If the worst happens, we're not gonna want to hear it from a werewolf, or a sociopath in some mask, or from a kid who glows, or a blue-haired teenager who talks way too much. People are going to look to a full-fledged hero when something catastrophic occurs, and congratulations, kid—that means you."

  "You know how I said I worry about everything and you said I shouldn't?" Jane said.

  "I just made it a lot worse, didn't I?" Broadstreet said.

  "Yep."

  "Sorry," he said.

  And together, they watched the river drift by in silent reflection and concern of things far beyond their control.

  Chapter 11:

  A bit of Bedlam

  Kate and Titus stepped out onto the roof of a tall, aging apartment building on the edge of the City, the sort of place young professionals cram themselves into right after college graduation. Too grungy to be suburban, too far from the action of the downtown to be high-end, the type of complex ordinary people rent because they have nowhere else to go. Kate still kept a space like this on the other side of town, a bolt hole for when she needed to get away from the team, little more than a bed and a closet full of old clothes. Something that was hers and no one else's.

  Today, though, they were here on team business, to meet someone who was the furthest thing from the ordinary residents one might find walking around the City. Bedlam, the cyborg who they'd rescued from the Children of the Elder Star long ago, had agreed to meet them here, far from the bustle of the city. She insisted on a rooftop rendezvous because she wanted to see the sky.

  Kate gazed at Bedlam and understood why she preferred locations like this. There were very few places someone like Bedlam could stand under an open sky and not draw attention to herself. Her appearance had changed somewhat since their last meeting—she'd helped Kate and Titus spring the rest of the Indestructibles from the Labyrinth prison months before—and she'd been clearly upgrading her cybernetics.

  Still, she was a strange sight to behold. Both legs cybernetic replacements from the knee down, powerful machinery that had been slightly streamlined from before, appearing less blatantly robotic from a distance. Bedlam wasn't embarrassed about them, though. She stood waiting for them in a short black skirt, as if daring the world to stare at her mechanical legs.

  An entire arm was cybernetic from the shoulder down. At one time clunky and almost unfinished in appearance, with hydraulic parts visible and uncovered, it had since been rebuilt to more closely resemble human musculature, though it still gleamed silver and black, and motors became audible when she moved. Her other arm was robotic below the elbow, but that piece had always been the most elegantly crafted, smooth and silver and nearly human to look at.

  When she smiled at the Kate and Titus, the Dancer found herself, as always, taken aback more by the cyborg's face than by her limbs. Her left eye and the area around it had been replaced by cybernetics, running smoothly down her cheek, with her jaw reinforced with metallic parts as well. The transformative work performed on her made it completely impossible for Bedlam to pass for fully human in public. She didn't do much to improve that, either—not only did she proudly keep her legs bare, she wore a tank top with the British flag emblazoned on it, leaving both arms completely visible. Her neon mohawk was gone, but she still shaved her hair down to stubble on the sides and back and kept the top, which she dyed electric orange, swept back dramatically. She wore florescent green lipstick, which made her wild smile even more distracting.

  "Ninja Girl and Wolf Boy," she said, reaching a hand out to shake Titus's. "How the hell are you?"

  "Thanks for meeting us," Titus said.

  Kate found his reaction to the manic cyborg almost as strange as she found the girl's feral demeanor. Titus was comfortable around her, completely at ease, as if they were old friends. He'd explained it to Kate after the fight at the Labyrinth. They'd fought together, a pair of brawlers and berserkers. They came from the same sort of place, where you survived by losing control, where you saw red until the fight was over. He said he understood her.

  These two were, in many ways, Kate's polar opposite. But she knew that their team needed both kinds of warriors to win the coming war, berserkers and samurai, wild creatures and Zen.

  And in spite of herself, she did like the cyborg. It was hard not to admire someone who so clearly did not care what the rest of the world thought of her. Not that Kate would ever tell anyone that, of course.

  "Where's your boss?" Kate asked.

  Bedlam usually traveled with the mercenary Agent Black, who had, in the Indestructibles' earliest days, fought on the opposing side. But Kate had been the only Indestructible to speak to him during that early battle, to look him in the eye, and she respected him as well. Black was a mercenary, but the Dancer could discern honesty in a person's demeanor, and she understood he wasn't a pure villain.

  "Black? He still takes jobs he doesn't want me to be a part of," Bedlam said, looking out over the City.

  "Working for the bad guys," Titus said, his tone conversational. Bedlam shrugged.

  "Don't know, exactly. But we have to take what we can get. Not like I can walk into an Apollo's Coffee looking like this and ask for a job," Bedlam said.

  "You'd probably be a hell of a barista," Titus said.

  "You know it," Bedlam said. "Look, I don't want a lecture. Whatever he's out there doing right now, it paid for a lot of my cybernetic work. He's helped me finish the work those Children bastards started on me. I was Humpty Dumpty when you found me."

  "You're still doing work together though, yeah?" Titus said.

  "Plenty of it," Bedlam said, quirking a dastardly smile at both of them. "I do love making a mess. But some of the… nastier stuff pays better. Also I won't use a gun. That makes a difference."

  "Do you even need one?" Titus said.

  Bedlam raised her hands up, resigned.

  "Perception I guess," she said. "Merc without a gun? Not as scary. Though you drop me into a hot zone and tell me to start breaking things and I'll get the job done for you."

  "I'm not sure I really want to know," Titus said.

  "No, you don't," Bedlam said. "Then again you're a weapon of mass destruction yourself, werewolf boy. I bet you could cause some serious havoc if you ever want to take an assignment."

  Titus waved his hands dismissively.

  "I'm good, thanks," he said.

  "You're here to ask me to break things for you again, aren't you," Bedlam said.

  "If you're still in the breaking things business," Titus said.

  "Sneaking into another prison?" Bedlam said.

  "Preventing an alien invasion," Kate interrupted.

  Bedlam looked her and shrugged nonchalantly.

  "Not the reaction I was expecting," Titus said.

  "I'm half-robot and I'm talking to a werewolf. If you told me we were going to ride dragons to go fight the invading aliens, I'd be like, cool, sounds like fun," Bedlam said. "What's flyboy got to do with this? He's your alien expert, isn't he?"

  "Straylight's off-world, scouting," Kate said.

  Again, Bedlam stared, but more curious this time.

  "Off-world. Glow-stick is in outer space," she said.

  "Yeah," Titus said. "Trying to figure out what we're up against."

  "He is… coming back," Bedlam asked.

  "Hopefully," Kate said bluntly.

  Bedlam looked back out over the City, chewing on her lip.

  "I should hate this world, y'know?" Bedlam said. "Car accident takes half my body, terrible bastards use me a
s an experiment to put me back together. Can't do anything normal anymore. Can't be normal. I should hate everything about this place."

  "But you don't," Kate said.

  Bedlam studied her, more with her human eye than the robotic one.

  "You've been through some stuff too, haven't you?" Bedlam said. "You're as crazy as I am. You just hide it better."

  "She really doesn't hide it as well as you'd think," Titus said.

  Kate glared at him, but he smiled back at her, almost laughing.

  "What do you think, Bedlam," Kate said. "Ready to put your grownup pants on and become a hero? Or are you content to run around knocking buildings over for fun and profit."

  Bedlam rolled her eyes, barking out a hard, frustrated laugh.

  "Man I should hate this horrible dump of place," Bedlam said. "But it's all we've got, right? Yeah I'm in. You need help saving the world, the hell with it, I'm in."

  "Glad to have you," Titus said, a big grin on his face.

  "What's our first thing? Our first mission? Is that what you heroes call 'em? Missions?" Bedlam said.

  "We're going to make sure the bad guys can't talk to each other," Kate said.

  "Now that sounds like it involves breaking things," Bedlam said.

  "With any luck," Kate said. "With any luck at all."

  Chapter 12:

  Division of labor

  Jane watched Emily simultaneously sulk and binge on Wikipedia entries in the control room of the Tower while they waited for Kate and Titus to return. In a way it was actually impressive—she was absorbing, assessing, and retrieving information from the computer screen with part of her brain while being uncharacteristically petty with another part.

  "You, of all people, I don't understand being upset about this," Jane said as Emily scanned through doctored photos of faked alien landings on one of the larger monitors. Doc sat at the conference table as well, feigning meditation. Jane knew he was pretending because he smirked every time Emily said something off the wall.

  "All I'm saying is, there's only room on this team for one florescent-haired crazy person," Emily said. "And that's me. The position's filled."