St. George stood on the water tower and looked out across the darkened city. The sky was getting brighter but the night still held its ground in places. Some of the exes had wandered away, but thousands still mobbed the walls of the Mount. He could hear their teeth echoing in the air.
“I imagine this view was impressive in the years before.”
Stealth stood behind him, one leg raised on the steep cone of the tower’s top.
“It was,” he said. “I came here once or twice.”
He stepped off to the side, taking the antenna in his hand for balance. She took a few lunging steps up to stand next to him and nodded at his sling. “I was under the impression you were confined to bed.”
“One of the joys of super-powers. You can almost always go somewhere the doctor can’t chase you.”
“Are you going to recover?”
“Yeah.” He lifted his bandaged arm. “The wounds weren’t that bad. Well, all things considered.”
“And the virus?”
St. George shook his head. “Doc Connolly’s amazed. She’s wanted a blood sample from me for a year now. Apparently my immune system’s so powerful it’s killing everything Cairax dumped into me. My white blood cells are a cure for hepatitis, malaria, HIV, pretty much anything you can think of.”
“I am not surprised.”
The hero nodded. “It just sucks there’s no way to get at them once I’m healed.”
“Always the giver,” she said. “Always the saint.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Perhaps.”
“I guess today’s a miracle on several levels, then.”
The mountains to the east burned red. They watched the shadows shrink. Automatic lights flickered and went out across the Mount, and over on stage Four Zzzap relaxed a little in the electric chair.
“So,” the tall hero said, “what are you going to do with Josh?”
Stealth bowed her head to examine the dark gardens below the water tower. “I do not know,” she admitted. “Word of what he did will leak to the populace, yet I am no longer confident I can decide the punishment for a crime of such scale.”
“And he can’t be killed,” added St. George.
“Yes. Which limits our options. Cerberus has locked him in a cell for now. I believe she wants to starve him.”
He lifted his chin. “We shouldn’t do that.”
“I agree.”
“Thank you.”
“There are larger issues to consider,” said the hooded woman. “The Seventeens are broken. We are now the only significant force left in Los Angeles.”
“How many people are still back at their little kingdom?”
“Almost nineteen thousand. Now with minimal protection and resources.”
“No way we can fit them all in the Mount.”
“None at all.”
The tallest buildings in the city were already glowing. St. George looked at the distant cluster of Century City and imagined the work crews he’d seen. “Zzzap and Cerberus could head down there,” he said. “Give them power for a while, and she’s a definite morale boost. We could get by with the generators and solar cells.”
“An adequate temporary solution. We will need a long-term one, however.”
He smiled. “If you’re saying that, it means you already have one.”
“Gower Street Studios is six blocks north of us. Ren-Mar is four blocks to the west. They are substantially smaller, but it would be possible to adapt the stages there into housing much as we did here. We could do the same with Raleigh Studios.”
“You always said Raleigh was too hard to defend. And it’s still not enough room.”
“It is a start.”
He looked at the roads outside the Mount’s walls. “You know,” he said, “we could do what they did. Use cars to block off streets. We could expand our perimeter, get all four stages inside one wall. One safe zone. It’d take some work, but we could do Sunset to Beverly, Vine to Western.”
“That would be almost a square mile. Difficult to patrol.”
“Not with another nineteen thousand people.”
“It would take close to a year.”
“Probably.”
Stealth looked out over the lot. “Do you think the general populace would be willing to begin such a project?”
“To have some hope,” he said. “A real purpose? Yeah, I think they’d all be up for that. I think they’d do almost anything so they can think the future’s going to be better.”
To the west, the night was concentrating its darkness for one last hurrah. In the east, the black had faded to dark blue and now light blue. Across the Mount a few birds chirped and sang.
“Will it be?”
“What?”
“I am not an optimist by nature, George. Will the future be better?”
He looked down at their home. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? We can sit in here and worry about what might happen or we can go out and do what we can to make a difference.” He shrugged. “We’re superheroes. We’ll make it better. That’s what we do.”
She followed his gaze and nodded. “Karen.”
“Sorry?”
The cloaked woman continued to look across the Mount as the shadows faded away. “My name is Karen.”
St. George started to open his mouth and thought better. He gave her a nod as the sun broke over the distant mountains.
“All right, then,” he said, stepping into the air. “We’ve got work to do.”