School for Sidekicks (23 page)

Setting my laptop aside, I asked Denmother where Foxman was. I wanted to thank him for taking me out to deal with a real bad guy—it was exactly what I'd needed to put some spine into me.

Denmother told me Rand had crashed hard and she'd had the Foxbots put him to bed, so I headed to the trophy room instead. Directly in front of Rand's chair and about halfway up the granite wall was the name
Archibald Hammer
. It was easy to find. Despite obvious efforts on the part of the cleaning bots to keep everything looking uniform, the stone there was a little more worn than the names around it, like someone had traced it over with fingertips a hundred thousand times.

Between fighting with the Fromagier and writing the note to my parents I felt way too amped to sleep. I headed for the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. Well, technically, to have Denmother make me one, but the result was the same. My first taste of real crime fighting had left me with an itch to get out there again.

So I took my sandwich and a glass of milk and carried them over to the Foxsnooper and started playing with the settings. After listening in on the local police chatter, and switching from there to FBI official dispatches, I was scanning some eyes-only CIA reports on the screen when a red flag popped up in the corner of the touch screen.

I tapped it and it opened out to show “OSIRIS priority alpha scrambled traffic, decrypt?”

I tapped yes, and a moment later, the audio portion of the monitor's traffic switched over to a woman's voice saying, “Repeat, this is Special Agent Brendan and I have eyes on subject Spartanicus.” That made me lean in toward the speaker. “Target is having a glass of wine on the patio at Merik's. I have two snipers in position and I can either take him out or take him down. Requesting firing authorization.”

“Agent Brendan, this is Hood Command. Stand down the lethal option. That's an imminent-danger-only request, and you know it. As for nonlethal takedown, I refer you to standing order 1-A re: Alpha- and Bravo-level Hood targets. In accordance with 1-A, I am forwarding your request directly to Director Backflash. I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.”

Wait, what now? None of that made any sense, not unless NightHowl's darkest suspicions about OSIRIS deliberately letting Hoods roam loose were true.

“Roger that, HC.” Agent Brendan's voice sounded more than a little resigned. “Standing down sniper team Omega. Will await further orders on team Delta.”

The monitor went silent for perhaps ten heartbeats while I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. Then it spat out a sharp burst of static before switching back to voice. I recognized Backflash's accent instantly.

“Agent Brendan, this is Backflash. Stand down Delta team as well, and close up the operation. Spartanicus is currently status free-range.” Her voice came out crisp and hard with none of the distracted vagueness of our last two encounters.

Free-range?
Did that mean what I thought it did?
Could it?

“Ma'am, two guards were killed when he escaped—OSIRIS personnel,” said Brendan.

“I'm aware of that, Agent Brendan, and I deeply regret their loss. I personally made the calls to their families, as I always have, and it never gets any easier. But I am also aware of the bigger picture. Given the ultimate goals of OSIRIS and our mandate, sacrifices are inevitable. You knew that when you accepted the promotion to special agent.”

What ultimate goals? What mandate?
It didn't sound like she was talking about any of the things I thought I knew about OSIRIS, not if letting Hoods run around loose was part of that.

While I was pondering, Brendan sighed audibly. “I understand that, Director, it's just … hard sometimes.”

“If the job were easy we wouldn't need people of your caliber to do it. And if it were any less important we wouldn't be forced to do it at all.”

“Yes, ma'am. Standing down team Delta now. Returning subject Spartanicus to free-range status. Brendan out.”

The monitor went quiet and the red flag that had opened into a dialogue box closed and vanished. But I kept right on staring at the screen until I heard a throat being cleared behind me. I turned around to find Foxman leaning on the edge of a lab table. He looked old and haggard and his eyes were threaded with blood. His silk pajamas and the jacket thing that went with them were badly rumpled.

“It's one in the morning,” he grumbled. “Shouldn't you be asleep? That is traditionally what one does at this time of night. Especially when one is a thirteen-year-old. I'm pretty sure that I remember that from being one of you, back … a really, really long time ago. I'm certain that I got more than one lecture on the subject from my mom. Not that I listened, or expect you to. But the social compact and my job as your mentor compels me to point it out. Heck, it might even be in that giant lump of paperwork Minute Man made me sign before handing you over. It being bedtime, a time for sleeping, and all that.”

“Too wired and worried and, now, confused, to sleep,” I said. “Did you hear all of that?”

“No, only the last few sentences. Maybe five, maybe six. Hard to say, grammar was never my best subject.” He met my eyes as he spoke, but something about the way he said it made me think he wasn't telling the whole truth. “Besides, I am in the middle of the sugar crash to end all sugar crashes, and my brain's gone kind of fuzzy.”

“So, what are you doing out of bed?” I asked.

“The bladder waits for no one … I got up to pee, and while I was in the bathroom Denmother let me know you were still out here. She felt that you ought to be in bed and that it was my job to see that you went there. I don't much agree, but then she piped in the audio from the Foxsnooper and I thought maybe I
should
come out and yell at you to go to bed.” He yawned enormously, growled, “Go to bed,” and turned back toward his own rooms.

“Do you know what they were talking about with that stuff about OSIRIS's goals and mandate?”

“No. Absolutely not. Even if I did, I'm pretty sure it's classified. Which, by the way, is the case for
all
OSIRIS priority alpha scrambled traffic. You can get into a lot of trouble for breaking their encryption.” He squeezed his face between his hands and frowned. “Oh, and I'm
very
sure that Minute Man's paperwork included me not giving out classified information to an unlicensed sidekick. You know, in case you were wondering.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “So, that's a yes, then.”

Rand held out his left hand and quickly counted the fingers before raising an eyebrow at me. “No, actually, I'm very sure that was a no. It even included reasons.”

“Reasons for not telling me things, you mean. Not reasons for why you didn't know what they were talking about.”

“Those aren't the same thing? No, I suppose they aren't. But the results are the same, more or less. I can't tell you anything because I don't know it, or I can't tell you anything because OSIRIS will roast me over a low fire if I do. There's no real difference from where I'm sitting. Well, except the bit where I get roasted … soooo, cancel that. See, I'm exhausted, I would never have made that kind of mistake under normal circumstances. What I meant is that there's no real difference from where
you're
sitting. No answers either way.”

“Do you seriously expect me to believe that you care enough about OSIRIS regulations and enforcement to not tell me something because that would violate them?”

“No?” He sighed and his face went deadly serious. “How about believing I won't tell you something because you're thirteen, and I'm not willing to be the one to ruin your childhood. Will you believe that? Because you're thirteen, and I think you're a good kid—well, as good as it's possible to be for anyone in the category of ‘kid' anyway—and I'm
not
willing to be the one who ruins your childhood. That's OSIRIS's job, I won't have any part of it, and I
really
need to go back to bed now.” He scratched his ribs and turned toward his rooms.

“I need to know, Rand. I may only be thirteen, but I can handle this. I
have
to handle it.”

He started to shuffle away.

“Please.”

He paused and his shoulders slumped but he still didn't turn around. “I
can't
tell you. I … don't have it in me. Denmother, increase Evan's clearance to level two.”

Denmother responded, “Noted.”

“Will
she
tell me what I need to know?” I asked.

“No,” said Foxman. “But if you dig through the level-two files, and you're as smart and mature as you think you are, you might be able to find out where to look for the real answers.” He spoke bitterly then—almost angrily, “But don't blame me when you end up in the gutter drinking mouthwash out of brown bag before your fourteenth birthday. I won't be held responsible for you screwing up your own life.” He started walking again.

“Thank you,” I said.

But he didn't answer, just shook his head and kept going.

When he was gone, I looked up and said, “Denmother, I'm going to need access to all level-two material.”

“There's a computer hookup in your rooms, Master Quick, built into the desk. You may view such material on the screen there or on your television.”

“I guess I'd better get to it then. Thanks.”

“You are welcome, Master Quick.”

*   *   *

I woke up after noon with my head pillowed on the wireless keyboard that linked to the big television screen, which was now covered top to bottom in an endless repetition of the letter
k
. My head felt stuffed full of mostly useless information, and I didn't know a lot more about OSIRIS's “mandate” than I had the night before. But I did know where to look, and that was on Deimos. There was a lot more up there than just the school. Denmother wouldn't tell me what outright, but the hints I kept finding told me I had to dig deeper.

I didn't see Foxman again until almost five when he crawled out of bed to grab some breakfast. “Good morning,” I said as he slumped at the breakfast bar.

“Go away, kid. I'm not really here. I'm really in bed. This is merely an interlude where I force some protein down my throat so that I feel less like a pile of goo when I get up tomorrow, okay? No one is home, so make like an amphibian and frog off.” He made hopping away gestures with one hand.

“I'll go in a minute. But first I wanted to thank you for what you said and did for me yesterday … and, last night.”

He turned a bloodshot glare on me. “What part of ‘frog off' do you not understand, kid? You are my revenge on Captain Commanding, not my BFF,
capisce
?”

“All right.” So, today was apparently a bad day.

I left him there and didn't see him again until Sunday morning when he acted as though he had no memory of any of our conversations this side of the fight with the Fromagier. Since I wasn't sure whether he was faking or not, I really didn't want to push things. What if he decided he'd gone too far by giving me level-two access to his files?

We went out on patrol, but it was a quiet morning in Heropolis, and we didn't actually do a whole lot of fighting evil. Before I knew it, it was afternoon and Foxman was escorting me to the
Flying Fox
.

“Did you send that e-mail to your parents?” he asked as the ramp came down.

I froze, because I hadn't. I'd actually managed to forget all about it in my obsession with the level-two materials, which maybe was a good sign. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I … I don't know. I forgot. But maybe that's because I feel like it's missing something. I need to do
this
.” I spread my hands to take in the
Flying Fox
and the Den and, well, everything. “But that's a hard message to leave them with. I…”

“You want to give them a peace offering,” he said.

That felt right. “Yeah, I think that's it.”

“Offer to fly them back here for dinner. That'll give you the home-ground advantage, and Denmother can cook up something special. We can send the
Flying Fox
. You won't even have to ride along.”

“Thanks, that seems right somehow.”

So, a few moments later, as the jet started rolling along its rails, I pulled out my laptop, added a P.S. to my e-mail, and sent it via the onboard wireless:

P.S. I know this wasn't what you wanted for me, but I'm interning with a big-name Mask now. He said that I should invite you to dinner at his secret headquarters if you're interested.

I'd finally managed to push that send button, and what I felt was mostly relief.

Considering Foxman's reputation, I wasn't at all sure how my parents would take the invite in the P.S. if they knew where they were going to dinner. Which was why I didn't mention him by name. At the same time, I did need to talk to my mom and dad face-to-face, and the Den seemed like a much better place to do it than OSIRIS headquarters in Heropolis, or worse, trying to get permission for them to visit me on Deimos.

All I had to do was imagine my mom punching some OSIRIS agent in the nose to see the sort of disaster a visit like that might turn into. Having them in the Den dealing with Foxman might be a disaster of a whole different kind, but there was much less chance of my parents getting tossed into jail for assaulting government officials that way.

Now that I'd committed to dealing with my parents, I just wanted to get it over with. As soon as I got back to my dorm room at the AMO, I opened up my laptop to see if my parents had answered my e-mail. This was all there was:

Dear Evan,

Your mother is too upset to respond right now, and I can't say that I blame her, though I do appreciate what you're trying to say with this note. We want to see you as soon as possible. When can we arrange this dinner?