Their house is on a generous half-circle of wilderness and trees next to the manicured grounds of the Cylburn Arboretum. It would have been some soulless housing development, but instead is a beautiful piece of wilderness bordering a jogging trail.
Jared turns off Springarden to their private driveway. He waits for the gate to open, then drives slowly down the narrow road. It's nice to have as much independence from the rest of the Super Network as he can. Standard super housing for Baltimore is on the harbor and by a freeway: it's noisy and sucks. Gabe agreed with him about that part.
The super-powered, remote-controlled security equipment had gotten him Gabe and McG's approval to live out of standard housing, but it unnerves him each time they pass through the second defense line and the remote weapon stations swivel their guns and gas grenade launchers to point right at him.
Jared pulls up in front of the flat-faced, two-story house. His mentees and Vortex are already there. Madison's in the front yard, if you could call woods with a helipad a yard. And Sumon and Vortex stand on the porch chatting, their breaths puffing out white steam.
Madison whips her arm overhead and a stick flies across the circular concrete helipad and falls with a distant clatter. Her mastiff lab mix Pokeybell races after it with loping strides. Madison's long, curly dark hair skitters over her ridiculously over-sized puffy purple jacket; he needs to take her for a haircut and get her a jacket that fits. The jacket was a gift from her dad, a hand-me-down back from when he lived on the East Coast.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gabe's look and suppresses a surge of annoyance - his blood sugar must be out of balance. Gabe's nagged him more than once about getting a dog. He has good intentions, but Jared doesn't want to get one after Sadie. It hurt too much. He doesn't want to think about it.
Jared stops the car in front of the garage and gets out of the Mini, leaning his arms on top of the roof as Gabe opens the garage.
Sumon and Vortex walk up. They make an odd pair: Sumon's a short, stocky Bangladeshi guy with curly hair tangled in an uncombed mess. Vortex's a tall, skinny, pasty-white skinned super in a bright blue and white spandex costume.
"Good to see y'all," Jared says.
"Hey, good to see you," Sumon calls out.
Vortex had been a fresh-faced, preppy underclassman Jared's last semester at Super U. With Sumon commuting between New York, Baltimore, and Washington D.C., Jared gets to see Vortex more than he ever had in school. The guy has lost his fresh-faced preppiness.
Vortex goes straight for the kill. "Working on your clown car routine?"
Jared smiles. It isn't quite fair to Sumon, who hasn't joined in yet, but ..., "A couple more clowns would help the act."
Vortex looks down at the car. The roof is at the level of his lower ribs. "Let me take it for a spin?"
"No! Absolutely not. Do you know how to drive?" Jared asks with a laugh.
"Don't need to," Vortex answers. "It looks fun, driving fast, onboard theater system, a kid in the back seat. Vroom-vroom!" The guy holds up his long hands like he's holding the wheel of a car and spins it back and forth.
This, from a guy who can teleport.
"Don't watch ads, Vortex. They're made so you want to buy shit," Jared says.
Vortex looks longingly at the car.
"Go on." Jared cocks his head at the car. "Hop in." He steps back to give Vortex space to get inside.
Vortex climbs into the driver's seat, a look of hesitant curiosity on his long, thin face.
"The seat and steering wheel adjust." Jared crouches by the open door and shows Vortex how to adjust them and the mirrors.
Vortex stretches his legs and peers at the gas and brake pedals. He prods them with his feet. They make thumping noises. "Pretty nice in here. It looked a little small from the outside."
Sumon leans his arm against the roof of the car and smiles broadly down at them. When he sees Jared looking up at him, he says, "Oh, it's a very nice car, Sam. You have good taste." Sumon nods and gestures expansively with his free arm. "It's very nice."
The heavy, reinforced door to the garage and emergency bunker slides to a stop with a low boom. The eerie light from the astral warding crystals embedded in the ceiling make the inside of the garage shimmer. Gabe stands at the side of the garage, putting his keycard back in his locked walletcase. The retinal scanner access point is closed and probably locked already; Gabe is amazingly efficient.
"Yeah," Jared smiles. Vortex gets out - it looks funny watching a tall guy climb out of the car - and Jared gets back inside the car to drive it into the garage.
As soon as the food's on the kitchen counter, Vortex inhales half of the beef brisket piled on a slice of Madison's favorite olive bread and says he had to get going. A minion master-mind controller incident is coming up. Psychic supers flagged it this afternoon and it's a scramble, no ID on the supervillain.
Jared walks with Vortex to the helipad while Gabe heads to the garage to suit up and get a canister of suppression gas.
"So you should help Gabe reach the higher spots. You're taller. He's short." Vortex puts his hand out by his thigh, as if he's measuring the height of a small child, much shorter than Gabe's actual, completely average height.
Jared forces a small smile. "Gabe has a lighter hand on the sprayer. I'm … kind of clumsy. You wouldn't like teleporting back here if I used too much."
"Well if Madison's called up, she's gotten briefed-
Wait, wait, what?!
"...so, Angel might pick her up from here. Your helipad is big enough, Angel can land the plane straight down. And … you know, Sumon likes staying over at your place; he tells his niece he's doing top secret superhero stuffs when he visits you." Vortex shakes his head with deliberation. "She doesn't believe his stories anymore, asks him lots of questions and wants to see evidence. Kids these days."
"Called up?" Jared repeats stupidly.
"Yeah. She's got a good chance of getting on the team; the extraction teams always want teleporters or fliers," Vortex says.
Right, because she's signed up for a combat mission without telling him. Outwardly, Jared keeps his face calm. Madison's eighteen and legally an adult, but she's so young and indecisive. She didn't have a superhero codename because she couldn't pick a name that sounded good. She didn't have a cover identity set up before he got on her case. Her family lives in L.A. under their real identities, unprotected except by the general presence of the Super Network in California-Southwest Region and fear of retributions from Gabriel. How could any coordinator consider her for a combat mission where she would be exposed to potential supervillains?
Jared stuffs his hands into the pockets of his thick winter jacket and watches Vortex teleport out. The blue and white-clad superhero stands in the center of the helipad. Cloudy tendrils from the astral sphere circle and whirl around his tall, thin figure. The cloud grows thicker until it covers Vortex completely, then the whole thing sucks into the middle and disappears with an explosive boom. A globular cluster - pinpricks of black nothingness fill the space where the cloud had been.
Jared double checks the seals on Gabe's suit and watches Gabe spray the helipad with suppression gas, just enough to neutralize the astral emissions - in case Vortex needs to teleport back tonight.
He needs the time to cool down before talking to Madison.
Back inside, everyone converges on the kitchen. Jared calls Pokeybell with a slice of beef brisket and watches the dumb, happy guy gobble it down before he trusts himself to speak. "Vortex told me you're on call and might head out tonight."
Madison freezes for a moment, then she starts to talk fast. "Yeah. Tara Larsen's the lead Coordinator. She thinks the new super's a minion master and they'll try to call minions. Field Command narrowed it down to B.C.—"
Wonder how Field Command pinpointed it that—
"—Grace of God is in the Philippines so we won't have to worry about her. It's mostly Dr. Badass and a few supers over the border in Pac Northwest Region. Dr. Badass is a squishy living undercover in Vancouver. He's crazy powerful and controls anything running on electricity-
A super with control over any device running on electricity, a target for minionization. Listen to what you're saying!
"...and there's an undercover agent monitoring Vancouver. Tara says the rogue will head into Washington or Idaho because Pacific Northwest Region is a mess, they're way disorganized." Madison paused for a breath. "Better chance to carve out an independent territory and hold it there. And if Pac Northwest splinters it'll destabilize the Region even further, maybe even balkanize like the Northern Gravity Kingdoms."
Big words and big ideas. The world's a better place after the Super Network took over. Jared imagines her ... fighting-
Madison scowls and crosses her arms. "There's an identified supervillain who murdered thousands of people living in a town across the border in Washington ... for years. It's insane."
Does it sound sane to walk into this situation?
"An old combat super, Containment, might be a target. He's Dr. Teddy Bear's nemesis-
Them.
"...They get in fights and blow up parts of the town every month. I would be so glad to leave if I lived there—" Madison's long, curly hair shivers and she glares at Jared.
There has to be a non-combat use for Madison's superpowers.
Madison uncrosses her arms and determinedly serves salad onto plates. It's way too early to eat dinner.
She sits down at the kitchen table and Gabe, Jared, and Sumon settle at the table around her. "It's a good mission. Field Command is there personally. I'll make a name for myself if I show that I'm reliable and professional," Madison finishes in her soft, young voice. She picks up a fork and stabs determinedly at the leaves.
The childish sound of her voice should make anyone reconsider sending her on a combat mission.
He's her primary mentor; he should care, since clearly no one else does. He'd had to encourage her over and over to apply for Super U, to request tutoring on her weak subjects, get counseling about her awakening and using her superpowers and being away from her family, stuff that's a no brainer. Her grumpy, sarcastic, and cynical Coordinator, Kevin Royce, doesn't suffer fools gladly and hasn't even assigned her a handler.
"What does your handler think about this?" Jared says.
"You know I don't have one!" Madison snaps.
"Yeah, my point exactly."
No one says a word. They sit and eat quietly; the only sound - forks clinking on plates. Gabe's daughter and wife are upstairs. Jared scoops cauliflower and potato curry onto his plate; Sumon's mother or was it his sister, had made it for him. Pokeybell picks up the mood and slinks under Madison's chair. Jared hadn't meant to turn it into an argument; this wasn't about arguing or making a point.
Maybe a neutral perspective.
"What do you think about this, Gabe?" Jared asks.
"Oh. Well," Gabe glances at Madison. "Short-range rapid teleportation is a good combat power. Great for extracting agents and supers if the primary mission goes wrong. If she proves her worth, the Super Network will assign a handler."
"Wait, wait. Why doesn't she have a handler?" Jared asks. He'd thought it was because Royce thought she isn't ready to take on missions.
Madison and Gabe look at each other, both about to speak. Gabe waves his hand at her to go ahead.
"See, they changed the policy, there's way more superheroes now and not enough handlers, so I only get a handler if I need one. Of course, the major powers still get a handler: minion masters and mind-controllers and the people with unique, useful powers, you know." Madison explains, pushing a leaf around her plate and mangling it.
Right. The death and disappearance rate for newly awakened supers is a lot lower now. Come to think of it, Sumon has a minor superset and he and his family made it out of Bangladesh alive and with minimal help from the Network - and mostly diplomatic support from normals. He'd had a few close calls, but eight to ten years ago, Sumon would likely have been minionized or mind-controlled by a rogue, or his family or friends taken hostage to ensure his cooperation. The stories from awakened supers got … tame.
"Extraction is relatively safe," Gabe says. "Newer combat personnel are sent on those. And she'll get a chance to network with the combat supers and handlers … find a team. It's much safer on a team."
Newer agents, yeah. Like his own extraction team eight years ago, who'd gotten twitchy and blasted Sadie when she'd come running to him. Chunks of meat and bone, a red smear splattered over the gravel and Russ' trailer.
Honestly, Madison got on his nerves; she's bright and brash and sharp enough to take care of herself. A few more months of combat training in P.E. and at the mixed martial arts place he'd talked her into joining and he wouldn't have to care. At some point, everyone's on their own in life. It just felt wrong to let her to go on a combat mission … not now. She'd turned eighteen a couple days ago and her whole class celebrated her birthday at Super School, like little kids.
Jared stabs a piece of brisket. "I have concerns. You haven't fully explored the potential of your superpowers. It took me a few years to get a handle on what mine could do and get used to how they work. Everyone's powers are a little different."
"I know that! My superpowers are totally a clear track to the combat route. Short-range, rapid teleportation is epic for close combat and I have a full superset," Madison says. "I'm right in the mid-range of Class II."
She really didn't need to argue her case. He didn't care that much and it wasn't like he would order her to drop off the mission list. That would be crossing the line from mentoring to, to something else. "A weak superset," Jared says.
With a few years practice, the look on her face would be bitchiness personified. She doesn't speak for a while. "So, what would I do to get better ideas about my powers?"
Jared pauses and thinks. "Talk to people. People know a lot, they make connections you might not see. My classmates at Super U were the ones who suggested treating vertigo and hair loss-" the big money-maker, even though it was mostly cosmetic, "...and you can see where that led me." Oddly enough, his brother the doctor hadn't suggested it, but his brother hadn't been in the same place Jared and his classmates were, all figuring things out about their superpowers and their new lives.
Gabe cuts in. "Yes, business is great. It's very helpful to the Super Network. The money pays for resettlement for families, for many other things."
"Causing vertigo is a great nonlethal combat stopper," Jared says evenly.
"Why don't you use it?" Madison asks.
The edge in her voice, judging him for not taking the combat route.
Jared says, "I'll tell you a story. When I was seven, my family and I lived in San Antonio, near the South Texas Nuclear Generating Station. It got held up by Torment, a supervillain who took the plant workers hostage, and threatened to overload the reactor if San Antonio and the state of Texas didn't hand over some local superhero I can't remember the name of. The CIA loaned Containment to the FBI, and Containment went in, blew up the reactor, and killed the supervillain and all of the plant workers. He contained the fallout."
Jared forces his voice to stay level. "There was a radioactive exclusion zone around there for years, before supers from the Network did remediation and flew the radioactive material to the moon. You know, there's a nuclear waste storage—"
"Yeah, I know!" Madison snaps.
"Right," Jared says. "Containment's entire family disappeared. The news reports said the supervillain's team killed them in retaliation."
Jared looks Madison in the eye. "You don't have identity cloak and your cover identity is barely set up. Don't give me that shit about oh it's not as dangerous now, your whole family lives in L.A. outside of witness protection. Containment's ruthless even without being controlled by a supervillain and he's one of the superheroes. Dr. Teddy Bear is a supervillain! Teleportation isn't going to help you if a super like Containment gets minionized and is fast enough and strong enough to kill you before you can teleport out!" Something niggled at him, he couldn't remember what—
"How do you know that was him?" Madison asks querulously, ignoring the identity cloak. "I mean, I read the files for the mission and it doesn't say anything about that. It says Containment has a Class I superset, he can't contain a nuclear explosion or blow up a reactor."
If you think superpowers are necessary to blow up a-
Jared glances at Gabe; Gabe doesn't look like he knows more. "It's either above your clearance, or it's not in Atlantic's files."
You would think Chernobyl would be covered in Super School; Containment was really active back in the Cold War Era, but maybe he wasn't mentioned by name. And records and news reports from back then are unreliable - with people mind-controlled or minionized at the will of the least ethical supers around. "Key people in the CIA and FBI were mind-controlled back then. The records aren't accurate. And the older superheroes hide their powers."
"Yeah, but what's your point," Madison scoffs.
"I'm saying, it's dangerous, and you're going up against dangerous, ruthless supers and a supervillain minion master or mind controller who's not identified. Things don't always come out right. The good guys don't always win! I'd like you to take this more seriously!"
"I'm taking this seriously!" Madison bursts out.
Gabe breaks the tension, "Sumon, pass the curry please? It's delicious, I love your sister's potato curry. It's perfect, the potatoes, they're amazing."
Oh right, Sumon's sister.
"Oh sure. I'll tell her you said that. She loves to hear compliments, especially from the good-looking guys," Sumon says, as he passes the bowl. Jared doesn't know how his wife puts up with Gabe hitting on every woman in sight. The casual chauvinism still rankles.
Gabe and Sumon steer the conversation back to Sumon's classes at Super U; Sumon's struggling with the workload of the labs in his microbiology and organic chemistry classes, but he's on track to apply to Cornell's vet school for the fall, then he had a couple funny stories to tell about volunteering at Smithsonian National Zoological Park and Bronx Zoo. Jared's pretty sure the stories are wildly exaggerated. He wants Madison to hear about Sumon's awakening, but he doesn't think Madison'll believe it coming from Sumon.
After dinner, Jared washes the dishes in the kitchen. When he walks back into the living room, he catches the end of Gabe and Madison's conversation. Clearly, Gabe is sneaking around behind his back and asking Madison not to tell him her big news.
Madison flashes him a bright, triumphant smile and tucks her cell phone in her pocket. "I got called up. An FBI liaison with resistance to mind control is leading the team and Mercury's Quick and Super-screensaver are the other two supers."
Those a-holes Mercury and Super-screensaver? He'd gone on combat training missions with them in Super U and with his identity cloak as a black female, got a taste of their shitty attitudes. And it wasn't an accident that Super-screensaver's codename shortened to SS; he thought Nazi's did the world a favor, got rid of undesirables. The thought of Madison with those two on a mission where she would need them to watch her back—
Before he could think about the words, they spill out of his mouth: "I'm challenging the mission assignment. I'm taking Super-screensaver's place."
Jared doesn't know what he's saying.
Gabe looks startled, which goes down in Jared's book for most rarely seen expression on Gabe's face.
"Ah, Samantha," Gabe starts to say.
"You know it's your dream come true," Jared says with a small smile.
"Samantha…," Gabe makes his eyes wide and liquid. "If I had wanted to, I would have asked for reassignment. We're a good team, together."
As if Jared's going to be manipulated by Gabe's smooth charm. He needs Gabe on his side.
"Come on. Call McG and Coordinator Larsen, would you? Play the 'I'm her mentor card' if you have to. I need to prep my combat costume," Jared says.
"Yes, of course," Gabe says quickly. "You know that I'm always on your side."
"And Madison, your mission info," Jared asks.
"Sure, I took photos of everything." Madison's shining, excited face hardly dims as she takes her phone out of her jacket pocket.
Upstairs in his bedroom, Jared opens the bottom drawer of his bureau and yanks the pleated cotton skirt and striped, tent-like top of his superhero costume over black yoga pants, a V-neck, and a sweater. The derpy plastic poncho with clips of hair samples goes over the top. He'd never put together a winter version of his costume.
Jared opens the walk-in closet connected to the bathroom. His superhero costume's long wig made of human hair from the more common DNA lineages in North America hangs on a wig stand, covered by a clear plastic bag to keep off dust. No time to brush it or prepare properly. He'll call Jeannie for help refreshing the hair cells. He grabs a wig cap from a bag in the back corner of the top shelf, tucks his hair inside the cap, takes the wig stand to the bathroom. Double-sided tape in the bottom drawer, he pulls that out for the hairline and temples, draws the cover off the jumble of mostly dead hair and looks into the bathroom mirror to align the wig. He presses the edges of the wig firmly on the tape.
The person staring at him in the mirror isn't herself: each feature on the face is her own, but her mind is convinced that she looks at a different person, a person she can't quite place, some tall black woman, no one important or memorable. She can't remember her own face even as she stares at herself; she can't see past the cloak.
I don't make for a good looking woman even without the five o'clock shadow.
The variegated hair of the wig jumbles in irregular piles over the striped top. The stripes had been a bad choice aesthetically - they clash with the brown polka dots on the skirt.
Jared straightens the top and skirt. At least looking in the mirror isn't as bad as looking at his own body directly. The mind trip is screwy and, of course, he's always within the active range of his own dysfunctional, screwed up superpowers.
Jared grabs his cover identity's go-kit and wallet - Samantha's international driver's license, credit and debit cards, company ID badge and credit card, her passport. His iPhone goes into a locked case for McG and Samantha's iPhone goes into an inside pocket on his costume top. Years of preparation, his own and McG's paranoia, starting a business for his cover. It's really, finally happening.