School for Sidekicks (15 page)

Foxman's expression darkened. “Born to meddle, that one, or she will be anyway. Or should that be, would have been…”

Mike started a bit, then glared at Foxman. “Rand, she's the director of OSIRIS.”

There was something going on there, but I had no idea what. And I wasn't going to find out now, because Foxman looked at me, then nodded sharply.

“Right, right. Not relevant at the moment, though I'll probably have to restore the controls at some point. But not now. There's too much else to do today.” Foxman grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward the door—there was no resisting the servos of his powered suit. “Costume and colors first, then back to the Den so I can show you around and lay out your new duties.

“Can you make a decent martini—no, of course you can't. Stupid question. You're what, eleven? Can't talk to you about martinis for at least seven or eight years, not without getting all sorts of horrible questions from the press about corrupting minors. For that matter, I don't drink anymore. Not since March. That's when I got out of rehab, and this time I seem to be sticking with it. Twenty-third time is the charm. Go me. You know, let's just pretend I never said the bit about martinis.”

Before I had time to even think about what to say to any of that, Foxman had chivvied me out of Mike's office and classroom, down the hall, and through a side door that led into another hall. We soon arrived at a door marked
COSTUME LAB
. Ten seconds after that, a huge glass tube was descending from the ceiling to enclose me, clanking horribly the whole way down.

“Is this thing safe?” I asked.

“Of course it is,” replied Foxman. “I built it myself. Well, safe enough, anyway. You'll be fine. I do excellent work.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “Of course, who knows what Backflash has done to it since then. Still, not to worry, you've got that great healing thing going on if anything does go wrong.”

Not reassuring. Not one tiny bit. As the tube slid noisily down past my head, I thought about making a break for it. But somehow I didn't think that would go over well with the machine's designer. If Mike was right, and this really was my only chance at ever getting my hero license, that could be a problem. So, instead of bolting like anyone sensible would have done, I clenched my teeth and waited for the thing to close me in. I couldn't suppress a twitch at the thumping
hiss
when the tube sealed itself to the base pad.

Foxman said something to me, then turned to the control pedestal. At least, I think he said something. No sound penetrated the tube despite his lips moving. He mimed putting my cowl back on. So I did that. I couldn't see what his hands were doing, but within seconds lines of color were coiling and twisting through the walls of the clear tube. They looked like bits of colored string floating in a fish tank. It was actually kind of soothing.

Right up until the point where several of the strings shot out of the walls and latched on to my uniform to the accompaniment of a hideous crackling and sucking noise. It was the sort of sound you would expect giant electric leeches to make, if such things existed. If I'd had anywhere at all to go at that moment I would have gone there double-time. I didn't. All I could do was hold still and try not to freak out while the strings slithered back and forth over the surface of my uniform, slurping and sparking all the while.

Eventually, it was over, and the tube clanked slowly upward. It hadn't gone two feet before I grabbed the bottom and limboed my way out of the thing. A metallic gauntlet landed on my shoulder then, and I practically jumped out of my skin. But Foxman's suit was enormously strong, and his grip remained tight as he turned me first this way and then that.

“Let me look at you. Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. Form
and
function, kiddo. Who's still got the old magic touch?” Foxman tapped his chest. “This guy does. And don't you forget it.”

“What are you talking about? Huh?” Between my panic about being in the booth and my overwhelming relief after getting out, I'd entirely forgotten the why of the thing.

He shook his head despairingly. “Your uniform, Evan, your uniform. Keep up, here.” A brief pause, as he canted his head to one side. “You do remember that's what we came for, right? No short-term memory loss from the tube? Because that could be a thing if Backflash messed up. No? Good. So, your uniform. Well, it's downright dashing, if I do say so myself. And I do. Oh, I do. Thirsty work though. Hmm.”

He reached for something on his chest, and for the first time I noticed that he'd added a bandolier to his armor—a thick metal belt that ran from shoulder to hip and held a dozen canisters about a half the size of a soda can. His thumb touched the end of the third one down. It flipped open, dropping a six-ounce shorty of MaskerAde into Foxman's gauntlet and opening it in the process. The canister closed automatically as he lifted the can to his mouth and downed the energy drink in one long draft.

Foxman sighed, crushed the can, and tossed it over his shoulder. “Better! Now, march.”

He gave me a gentle shove toward a full-length mirror that hung from a nearby stainless steel rack. He followed me over and stood half behind me, striking a heroic pose with his fists on his hips and his head turned up and to one side to make his jaw look stronger. I managed not to roll my eyes, though I nearly sprained my face doing it.

“Soooo, what do you think?” he asked.

“Give me a moment to take it all in.”

Foxman had colored the bulk of my costume a deep orange-gold. The gauntlets, the boots, and the back and top of my cowl were all a dusky red, as were the stripes he'd painted across the shoulders and down the outsides of the thighs. They complemented the shinier reds of his own armor rather than duplicating them. He'd given me a sort of second mask in a black domino painted in around the eyes of the gold half mask—mirroring the natural bandit style of my new namesake.

He'd also done a stylized meerkat-head logo on my chest—basically a gold triangle with ears and a mask—all edged in red to make it stand out from the fabric around it. The symbol echoed his own fox-head logo to a degree I didn't like, but it still looked pretty seriously awesome on my chest. Or, it would have, if it weren't a tiny bit off center and slightly tilted to the left. Given time, that was going to drive me completely crazy. There were matching triangles on the backs of my gauntlets, though with less detail and better placed. I glanced at Foxman in the mirror and saw his carefully constructed heroic expression slowly deepening into a frown.

“I like it,” I said quickly, “it works.”

Apparently I didn't say it with enough enthusiasm, because the frown turned into a full-fledged scowl. “Works? Works? Visigoth! It's fabulous. Come on.” Foxman hit the button that closed his helmet, turned, and walked away without another word or so much as a glance over his shoulder.

I trailed along behind him. Because, again, what choice did I have? He led me quickly through a series of corridors and doors. Many of the latter were marked
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
, which I was beginning to think of as the AMO's unofficial motto, since nobody I'd met yet seemed to think of themselves as
unauthorized
personnel.

Eventually, we arrived at a pair of curved elevator-style doors in an otherwise unmarked moon-rock wall. Foxman pressed another of those tiny near-invisible buttons on his right gauntlet. This time, the armored plates that covered his palm and fingers slid back, exposing the skin underneath and a OSIRIS ring, worn bezel down.

He pressed that to the panel beside the doors, and the mechanical voice did the “authorizing” dance I'd already become accustomed to. Blah-blah-authorized. Blah-subject number-blah. Etc. A moment later the doors slid open, revealing another, inner set of doors, which opened as well. He stepped through, again, without looking at me, as ignoring Evan seemed to have become the order of the day.

Beyond was a small cylindrical room perhaps six feet in diameter that came to a point above—like the inside of a bullet. When Foxman reached the far wall he turned back around to face me, but his helmet hid his expression. I followed and took up a casual stance beside him as the inner doors closed, shutting us in. An instrumental version of “The Girl from Ipanema” started playing through a cheap set of speakers above the door.

I pretended to be totally cool with the situation while not knowing what the heck was supposed to happen next. Then, a sudden earth-shattering bang startled me half off my feet. It was followed by the sensation of sudden acceleration, like we were standing in the world's fastest elevator as it shot off toward the four-hundredth floor.

That feeling of acceleration continued for perhaps thirty seconds, before my stomach did an amazing flip-flop as the transport shell rotated end for end and the gravity dropped to something like one-tenth normal. That lasted for another ten minutes until the trip ended as suddenly and noisily as it had started. This time, the bang sound sort of played in reverse—not quite “gnab.” But something quite like it. I found myself torn between wishing the shell had windows and being very glad that it didn't.

The doors slid open to reveal a curved steel wall ten feet in front of us. When I trailed Foxman out the door, I nearly fell as my foot just suddenly stopped when it touched the floor. Yes, I know your foot always stops when it hits the floor, but this was different. There was no sense of resistance, no squish, or bounce, or rebound. It was like I'd put my foot into a six-inch layer of invisible Jell-O that suddenly hardened up the instant my shoe's sole hit the dull black surface.

“What the—” I mumbled to myself.

“Inertial damping field,” Foxman tossed over his shoulder. “Shoot a bullet into it, and it will simply stop without flattening or bouncing. Big machine under the floor—gargantuan, really. Takes enormous amounts of power, too—runs off a core tap.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but he kept right on moving. As I hurried to catch up, a noise from behind made me look around. A huge clawlike arm had descended from above—the noise was the sound of the claw clamping on a groove a couple of feet below the top of the bulletlike transport shell.

As the arm lifted the transport, I noticed that we were standing in the bottom of a sort of round, upside-down pyramid, like a funnel. We were at the bottom. The arm placed the shell on the step above us, where it slid slowly away, possibly on a conveyer belt of some kind. But Rand powered onward and I didn't have time to watch where it went.

He led me through a series of halls and doors out into a deep sunken plaza with small palm trees scattered around the stepped edges. The whole area lay under a thick glass roof. About halfway around the plaza from us was a curved door like the one we'd entered the shell through on Deimos. Above it a huge polished steel pipe like some metal chimney climbed up through the glass roof and continued on for another hundred feet. It cast a long shadow under the setting sun.

“Where are we?” I asked as I caught up to Foxman.

“OSIRIS headquarters, central building, Heropolis.” Foxman tossed the words over his shoulder and continued walking.

Earth! “Two weeks ago I thought I knew everything there was to know about Masks. Now…,” I said, talking more to myself than to Foxman. “Why haven't I seen pictures of this place before?”

I almost ran into Foxman as he stopped and turned to face me. “The roof is mirrored glass. It and the chimney are covered by a directional chameleon field that uses the reflective surfaces to paint a very different picture for outside observers. Brilliant little technical twist on more traditional camouflage, designed and built by Foxhammer Industries … back in the days when there was a Foxhammer Industries.” He sighed and looked unspeakably sad and distant for a moment.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The CEO and chief shareholder got distracted by, uh, other interests. The stock started to lose value, and
bam
, the board of directors turned on him. Injunctions were filed. Lawsuits ate up more of the company's value. There was a hostile takeover bid—pennies on the dollar. The CEO had the choice of selling out or taking the company into bankruptcy and hoping to salvage something from the wreckage.

“He was still distracted by those other interests, so he made the expedient decision. The wise decision. The wrong decision. The new owners sold most of the company for parts and changed the name of what was left. And, thus, a great personal fortune and corporate success story was flushed down the drain along with a lot of hopes and dreams.”

I didn't know what to say to that and a long awkward silence descended. Foxman finally broke it with a shrug.

“But that was probably more than you wanted to know. Come on, the
Flying Fox
is parked upstairs.”

The
Flying Fox
! That sent a little slither of cold spiraling down my spine. Even a hard-core Captain Commanding fan of the sort I'd been until very recently couldn't help but be thrilled at the thought of actually taking a trip in Foxman's personal jet. It had been plying the skies over Heropolis almost as long as there'd been a Heropolis.

He led me through a bunch more corridors and through at least a dozen doors, many of them marked with the near-ubiquitous
OSIRIS-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Eventually, we emerged from a building that looked like a squat ziggurat into an open campus surrounded by other buildings of equally odd shape and design. Those included the giant faux chimney of the Mars-cannon, several grain-silo-like towers, a gigantic geodesic dome, and a featureless black cube. The
Flying Fox
was parked jauntily in the middle of it all, blocking most of a main sidewalk.

As we approached the slender red wedge with its fox-head profile, the jaw suddenly opened, lowering itself to the ground and extending a short tonguelike ramp.