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.
Except for this guy.
Her hands felt cold as she picked up the phone handset and called the precinct. Once she got past the gatekeepers, Mark answered. “Captain Paulson.”
“Hi, Mark, it’s Celia. I just watched that clip you sent over.”
“And?” He sounded so eager.
She shook her head, an unconscious show of confusion. “And I don’t know who he is.”
SIX
ANNA and Bethy had been friends with Teia and Lew Fletcher since forever, because their mothers had been friends since forever. They’d spent a lot of time on the same playgrounds, and the two families had even taken a few beach vacations together when they were little. Anna hadn’t been aware of a lot of the dynamic when she was younger, but now she realized that her family, the rich family, had paid for the beach house, and there’d been a lot of mostly good-natured arguments between the adults about pulling their weight and being too generous to the point of charity. At the time, all she cared about was the fun they had. Teia and Lew’s mom had taught them all how to swim, which was great, but she spent a lot of the vacations sitting on the beach looking out at the water, kind of wistful and sad. Teia said something bad had happened to her mother in the far-gone past, something that she never talked about, and Anna wondered if it had something to do with the ocean. Or if it was just the hypnotic waves sweeping in and out that could make anyone melancholy.
Then Teia and Lew’s father died. They’d taken one more beach vacation after that, which hadn’t been the same at all, because they kept tiptoeing around the empty space where Morgan Fletcher should have been. After that came middle school, and they all got too busy, or that was what they all kept saying.
Lew had been the first of them to discover his powers. He might have had them since he was born, but who would notice if a brief thundershower happened every time a baby was cranky? It would be coincidence and slide by without comment. But in sixth grade, when a major storm causing flash flooding happened in exactly the Fletchers’ neighborhood—and only there—on the day of a test that Lew hadn’t studied for, he realized it wasn’t a coincidence. It was him. He told his sister because he told her everything, and Teia told Anna, because Anna’s family was filled with superhumans and she would know what to do about it. The only advice Anna could think of to give: Keep it secret. Practice controlling it, but keep it secret. Avoid attention and publicity. Attention had gotten them, especially her mother, in trouble.