knows me by a different name. The two who work the front desk at the motel know me, the old man who owns it and the teenage girl, with her acne and her dull stare. And the take-out delivery boy from the Chinese restaurant. I don’t know what they think I am. Anyone could guess my secret.
All night long the traffic moves outside my window. I’ve pushed all the furniture to the corners of the room, and the new, improved Power Staff is spread out on a sheet laid over the carpet, a skeletal frame clogged with wiring. It’s just a metal frame now, with circuits and wires, but I’m expecting packages. Nick Napalm will fetch me what I need, things you can’t buy at RadioShack. I redesigned it in prison, working in my head in the darkness while the guards paced back and forth outside.
I recall the last time but one, the battle-blimp listing, belching black smoke into the clear air as I strapped myself into a suborbital flight suit. My hands shook filling the tank, the stink of rocket fuel still in my nostrils. It was the last of five escape plans, the bottom end of a flowchart I’d put together back at the base.
And there was CoreFire, teamed up with the massive Battalion, two and a half tons of metal impossibly adrift on the summer breeze, uncanny. I’d thrown everything I had at them, and CoreFire looked smooth and unscarred, crisp as if he’d just stepped off a yacht. Underneath us, Queens spread out a little too close—I was losing altitude. My eye was already picking out places where it might be safe to fall. Soon I’d be going back to prison for term number ten.
“Give up yet?” he asked.
“Never!” And it is never. I’ve dreamed for so long of the day one of my plans will actually be fulfilled, the last step in place, executed to the last detail, the last ball rolling down its ramp into the last cup to pull the last lever in the grandest Rube Goldberg machine of all. When the doomsday device is unveiled, the launching laser built, the weather-controlling satellite finally aloft, the skies dancing to my whim. Sunny days when I wish them, dark, crackling storms, or late-afternoon drizzle. All these years underground, I dreamed of a land where I could live in the weather I wished.
“Surrender or be destroyed!”
On the bridge of my battle-blimp the wind rises, carrying a new scent. Autumn.
CHAPTER SIX
THE GAME IS AFOOT
Windows are shattered for blocks in every direction. The television news this morning shows Nick Napalm battling, ringed with flame. They evacuated the area early this morning, and an eerie calm has settled on the neighborhood. Damsel and I pass the first perimeter—she flashes some identification at the policemen on the barricades, who stare at our costumes as if we were brightly colored poisonous fish.
Damsel walks ahead, ignoring me. They direct us to a warehouse three blocks in, where they’re holding him. Walking through the streets in costume, I feel like a visitor from another planet. Footfalls ring in the silence. Empty facades gape, blotched with scorch marks; the air seems to hum with the impact of punches on hardened bodies. There are fire trucks parked outside the warehouse.
I start to show my temp ID again at the door, but Damsel brushes past them, and I follow. “The new girl’s with me,” she mutters. Nice of her to mention it.
Inside, the scene has a familiar look, the hasty ad hoc containment protocols that spring up around a hostile metahuman capture and have nothing to do with normal arrest procedure. Nick Napalm is lying facedown in a cleared space in the center of the concrete floor, hands cuffed behind him. A policeman is holding a hose on him, just standing there soaking him continually to keep his flame out.
They’ve marked out a circle sixteen feet around him in red paint, and eight or ten policemen in body armor stand watching him from behind a ring of stacked-up tires. They look exhausted and pissed off. They’ve
All night long the traffic moves outside my window. I’ve pushed all the furniture to the corners of the room, and the new, improved Power Staff is spread out on a sheet laid over the carpet, a skeletal frame clogged with wiring. It’s just a metal frame now, with circuits and wires, but I’m expecting packages. Nick Napalm will fetch me what I need, things you can’t buy at RadioShack. I redesigned it in prison, working in my head in the darkness while the guards paced back and forth outside.
I recall the last time but one, the battle-blimp listing, belching black smoke into the clear air as I strapped myself into a suborbital flight suit. My hands shook filling the tank, the stink of rocket fuel still in my nostrils. It was the last of five escape plans, the bottom end of a flowchart I’d put together back at the base.
And there was CoreFire, teamed up with the massive Battalion, two and a half tons of metal impossibly adrift on the summer breeze, uncanny. I’d thrown everything I had at them, and CoreFire looked smooth and unscarred, crisp as if he’d just stepped off a yacht. Underneath us, Queens spread out a little too close—I was losing altitude. My eye was already picking out places where it might be safe to fall. Soon I’d be going back to prison for term number ten.
“Give up yet?” he asked.
“Never!” And it is never. I’ve dreamed for so long of the day one of my plans will actually be fulfilled, the last step in place, executed to the last detail, the last ball rolling down its ramp into the last cup to pull the last lever in the grandest Rube Goldberg machine of all. When the doomsday device is unveiled, the launching laser built, the weather-controlling satellite finally aloft, the skies dancing to my whim. Sunny days when I wish them, dark, crackling storms, or late-afternoon drizzle. All these years underground, I dreamed of a land where I could live in the weather I wished.
“Surrender or be destroyed!”
On the bridge of my battle-blimp the wind rises, carrying a new scent. Autumn.
CHAPTER SIX
THE GAME IS AFOOT
Windows are shattered for blocks in every direction. The television news this morning shows Nick Napalm battling, ringed with flame. They evacuated the area early this morning, and an eerie calm has settled on the neighborhood. Damsel and I pass the first perimeter—she flashes some identification at the policemen on the barricades, who stare at our costumes as if we were brightly colored poisonous fish.
Damsel walks ahead, ignoring me. They direct us to a warehouse three blocks in, where they’re holding him. Walking through the streets in costume, I feel like a visitor from another planet. Footfalls ring in the silence. Empty facades gape, blotched with scorch marks; the air seems to hum with the impact of punches on hardened bodies. There are fire trucks parked outside the warehouse.
I start to show my temp ID again at the door, but Damsel brushes past them, and I follow. “The new girl’s with me,” she mutters. Nice of her to mention it.
Inside, the scene has a familiar look, the hasty ad hoc containment protocols that spring up around a hostile metahuman capture and have nothing to do with normal arrest procedure. Nick Napalm is lying facedown in a cleared space in the center of the concrete floor, hands cuffed behind him. A policeman is holding a hose on him, just standing there soaking him continually to keep his flame out.
They’ve marked out a circle sixteen feet around him in red paint, and eight or ten policemen in body armor stand watching him from behind a ring of stacked-up tires. They look exhausted and pissed off. They’ve
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