Chapter Twenty Six
Hollywood makes it look like every week’s a new supervillain battle, every day you step out for a Starbuck’s something will
happen. So not true; most superhero work is patrol and rescue, and nothing you don’t expect ever happens on your days off. But
when you spend most of your time out in the thunderstorms, lightning is more likely to find you.
The Astra Interviews
* * *
I swept Yoshi behind me as the gunman hosed our table. Bullets chunked into bodies around us, and Chakra and Artemis went down.
The screams spread outward, but I was over the table as spent cartridges chimed on the dance floor. The world shrank to the skull
-masked gunman, time dilating and not in a good way; there were at least a good dozen real capes in the club tonight, and I had to
get to him first.
I caught a hand and squeezed the fingers around the grip and trigger as he shrieked, but he kept shooting past me as I flailed for
the other. Then the back of his head exploded, screams climbing the scale as his blood and bits spattered club-goers behind him.
Dropping the body, I scanned the mob. Safire yelled directions and the servers scrambled to push people towards the exits, but the
only people moving against the tide were capes I recognized. Including K-Strike, standing with another steel marble in his hand.
No more shooters.
Dropping to my knees, I rolled the corpse for a quick search, averting my eyes from the ruin above his collar. Under the shooter’
s coat and the pistol-harnesses I found only clothes. Homicidal yes, suicidal definitely, but not wearing a bomb, thank God. The
Fortress’ staff could handle him now—I abandoned him for our table and his victims.
Quin was yelling for first-aid kits. Any bullets that hit her had simply bounced, and Artemis had misted to leave the ones that
got her behind, but she held an arm close to her side as she and Quin knelt over Chakra.
Oh God. I stopped breathing and started praying.
Quin yelled into her earbug as she made a pressure-bandage out of Chakra’s hood, and I forced myself to turn away to look for
more victims. And there were more. Yoshi might have been momentarily stunned (I’d bounced him off the wall), but he knelt beside
another Fortress patron. She cried breathlessly, a high-pitched whine he ignored as he gently checked her over, and I followed his
example, triaging victims and not even bothering with Dispatch; they’d just distract and help was already on the way.
Rush arrived only heartbeats later, his arms full of field-kits he laid out in a blur, one for each of us and even for Andrew and
Safire. I focused on my work; there was enough for everybody.
We’d all cross-trained in field trauma—enough to know when bullet-wounds, broken bones, and other kinds of injuries were life-
threatening and what to do till help arrived. One victim I checked was already gone; she’d taken a bullet through the neck, bled
out arterially in seconds. Next to her a guy, probably her date, held in an abdominal wound that pumped dark blood. I applied a
pressure-bandage and wrapped it tight while telling him to lie still and count by tens, and was working on another—a contestant
with a bullet hole in her arm and a bleeding graze on her temple—when the paramedics arrived to take our place. Then it became a
race as we strapped the worst wounded onto rescue boards and it was my turn, mine and Safire’s.
Now I paid attention to Dispatch as they called instructions in my ear. Northwestern Memorial’s trauma center stood ready to
receive us as we came in, Chakra and the gut-shot victim first, to drop our cargoes on waiting gurneys. They disappeared through
the doors, whisked inside by flapping white coats, and we returned to fly every shooting victim that couldn’t walk themselves
into the back of an ambulance. The shooter’d had less than three seconds, and he’d managed to hit more than half a dozen people.
I tried not to think of my last sight of Chakra; bone-white but repeating some kind of chant to herself between painful breaths.
She hadn’t felt me squeeze her hand.
The police arrived behind the paramedics, cordoning off Rush Street while we worked to stabilize and transport everyone. Then we
were done.
* * *
“Astra?”
I looked up at Fisher and realized that I’d wandered back to our table by instinct. Blood spotted it, and I wasn’t touching the
cold tapas.
“Astra?” he repeated. Around the room, cops I recognized were taking statements or safeguarding the room till the crime-scene
examiners arrived. Phelps was talking to Yoshi and writing as he listened.
“Jeez, kid.”
“What?”
He pointed at my face. Reaching up, I felt a bump on my mask over my forehead, and picked out a bit of red bone. Back-spatter. I
set it on the table.
“He was standing kind of close.” I said carefully. “I’ll have the screaming willies later, but right now I’m in my happy
place. There are bunnies.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
I nodded and straightened up, and he set his phone on record while I talked. “Do you know who he was yet?” I asked finally.
Fisher nodded. “Got a hit off his record. He called himself Nemesis—he’s a wannabe vigilante. I’m headed to his place next.
Want to tag along? We could use you.”
Standing, I shook my head. “Now you’ve got my statement, I’m going to the hospital. Keep me in the loop?”
“Garfield won’t like it, but, sure kid. You did good.” He looked back at Nemesis’ covered remains, at the two draped bodies by
the wall.
“Jesus. Sorry, kid.”
I sighed. “S’okay.”
* * *
Once upon a time just stepping into a hospital freaked me out; the unique smells, the beeping machines, brought back Bad Stuff.
Now I didn’t even think about it. The nurse behind the desk told me Chakra was stable and directed me to the intensive care unit,
after handing me a bunch of wipes and sending me into the staff restroom to clean my face and mask.
Looking less like a horror movie extra, I found the ICU. Chakra lay sleeping behind glass, attached to wires and tubes and
surrounded by blinking and beeping equipment. Blackstone turned away from the observation window when I pushed through the doors.
I was glad to see Seven behind him, even though Blackstone wasn’t a specific target anymore. Probably.
“How did she know?” I blurted.
“Pardon?” Blackstone leaned on his cane, normally a costume-prop.
“Hecate. How did she know we’d be at The Fortress tonight?”
He actually smiled. A sad smile, but still.
“Astra,” he said. “Stop for a moment, and assume that Hecate doesn’t wear her panties on her head and talk to her flying
monkeys. Given what little we know of her goals, is there any reason you can think of for her to be behind tonight?”
“But—”
“Artemis is back at the Dome coordinating with the police, but I doubt we’ll learn he’s one of Hecate’s minions.”
“We’re attacked three times in three days and it’s a coincidence?”
“I didn’t say that.” He sighed, drawing himself up. Tap, tap, tap, his cane rhythmically beat the floor. He looked bone tired.
“Anti-superhero sentiment is rising. Shankman, the recent violence, the political battles… Quin tracks these things, but she
tells me that, while our approval numbers haven’t dropped much, our disapproval numbers have risen sharply; many people who were
personally indifferent to superhumans and superheroes are increasingly inclined against us. There has always been angry rhetoric,
but now people are listening.
“I was aware of Nemesis—he’s always been one of the few normals on our vigilante watch-list. He was a fanatic bodybuilder and
martial artist, a wannabe street-hero who’s had a hard time finding a target for his righteous anger. Last summer he got three
years probation for beating up some drug-dealers, and went inactive so far as we knew.
I couldn’t believe it. “He thought he was a Good Guy?”
“Which makes you wonder who he thought the Bad Guys were. I will not be at all surprised if the industrious Detective Fisher
finds evidence he’s been listening to Shankman and his ilk. Possibly even a confession tape in which he boasts of going down in a
glorious battle against the false icons who are corrupting society.”
“How—?” I closed my mouth, and he sighed again.
“Doubtless, Dr. Mendel will suggest he was really acting out his envy; she believes that vigilante normals like Nemesis are
generally motivated by their unconscious desire to be superhumans—or to at least to prove they can match us. He needed a better
class of enemy, and Shankman gave him one. It is unwise, my dear, to blame a known enemy for everything that happens to us.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, and in the pause the beeping machines reminded me where I was. Oh God. Chakra was lying
behind glass and maybe fighting for her life, and they never said but they were together and I hadn’t even asked how he was doing
while he stood there patiently trying to teach me an important lesson.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t be, dear child,” he said gently. “Focusing on stopping more of this doesn’t mean you don’t care what has happened
already.”
He turned back to the glass. Behind him, Seven shrugged helplessly and I wanted to scream. Chakra looked so pale, and suddenly I
couldn’t breathe as my old phobia came up to bite me.
“I, I’ll go back to The Dome,” I said. Blackstone nodded without looking away, and I fled.