Seven Wonders (12 page)

  "Off you go, big boy. Hey, you still free Tuesday?"

  "I think you might need to ask Detective Millar about that."

  Sam laughed and headed off, Joe stalking behind her, the pair leaving Jacqueline to continue her work long into the night.

Evidence.

  Goddamn solid, concrete,
real
evidence.

  Sam felt like her grin was a thousand miles wide as she tripped down the alley towards the police cars.

  Screw the Seven Wonders. Leave Gillespie to blow them off, there was no time to go back for their meeting at the hotel. She didn't check her watch but it must have been after eleven now anyway.

  Detective Sam Millar had evidence. She was going to solve this case herself, and catch the Cowl.

  She was going to save the city.

CHAPTER TEN

The black woman in the brown dress brought the champagne to her lips, but didn't drink. It was a pretense, a charade to satisfy curious glances, nothing more. Even if she wasn't here undercover, Sand Cat would have acted the same. This society was not hers, and it still confused her. All the city's most important and most wealthy people, each with their own conceits and vices, secrets and affairs, tax dodges and off-shore accounts, gathered in artificial celebration of a law enforcement service that none of them would dream of relying upon, of trusting. It was ridiculous. Pretending to drink champagne was nothing. Everybody in the whole room was pretending.

  But this was the way of the world. Aurora and Bluebell had taught her that, and she accepted the fact that as an outsider she could never understand, and importantly, never take part. She had an honorbound duty to uphold the law and defend the city, and for her this was more important than her own life. And if, occasionally, she took pause from her mission to observe the city's inhabitants in their natural environment – specimens to be examined,
studied
– then this was all part of her ongoing education. Aurora would be pleased.

  "I know that look."

  Aurora's arrival at her side surprised her, lost as she was in her own thoughts, but she did not allow herself to show it. With instincts honed to virtually supernatural levels, her body remained entirely still in the casual pose she had copied from another woman in a similar dress on the other side of the ballroom. Sand Cat held her glass to her chin, gazing out across the crowd with a knowing smile. This she had also copied. Inside, she cursed herself for letting her guard down. Aurora was a walking nuclear reactor. To not notice him walking up behind her was unacceptable. She was a warrior like no other.

  She repented her failings to the Goddess, and vowed never to let it happen again. She continued to scan the room in front of her.

  "I too received the alert. What did SMART report?"

  Aurora moved closer, standing by Sand Cat's side and casting a smile across the room. To anyone watching, it was just the city's most famous superhero having a casual chat with just one of the many beautiful women in the room. Although Sand Cat's face was never obscured by a mask, with the dress, hair and make-up, she was unrecognizable to anyone who didn't know her personally.

  He dropped his voice to a whisper.

  "The Angel Vault is offline. We must assume the worst."

  Sand Cat flinched at the news, her previous vow temporarily forgotten. The vaults were hidden, scattered throughout the city. It had been Bluebell's greatest achievement. If someone had been able to not only identify the vaults, but breach them, it… well, it was unthinkable.

  "The Cowl?"

  "There is no one else."

  Sand Cat placed her still-full glass down on the edge of a table behind her.

  "Understood. We need to head back to the Citadel."

  Aurora nodded. "Agreed."

  Sand Cat stalked off, her powerful stride cutting a path directly across the packed ballroom.

Aurora watched Sand Cat leave, then clicked a control on his belt again. There was no need to worry about drawing undue attention now. The city needed its protectors, and there was no harm in letting the assembled guests see the call to arms.

  Aurora's halo pulsed and changed from yellow to red. Several nearby guests gasped and stared, in awe of the powerful superhero and his fiery aura.

  Aurora raised a hand in apology. He clicked the communicator on his belt again, and this time spoke with a voice loud and clear, a voice known to everybody in the room from the television news and, for some, from seeing Aurora battling the Cowl out in the streets of the city.

  "Seven Wonders, unite!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tony remembered the first day the powers manifested.

  It had been a hot night, and Tony had drifted in and out of sleep. He turned over and frowned into his pillow. He'd dreamed of a bus ride home and the night he'd met Jeannie. He'd been dreaming about the recent past more and more frequently. Maybe, he thought, it was a side effect of his new situation, of being happy and of feeling safe. It was all new to him.

  He screwed his eyelids tight, but it did nothing to block the brightness of the morning light. He sighed and rolled to the left, then curled to the right, then turned onto his stomach and pushed his face into the pillow, drawing the edge of it over the back of his head. But no matter what position, the day was a red glow that told him he needed to get up, that it was very late, and that the day was being wasted. A Saturday too. Tony hated sleeping in at the weekend − weekends were a precious gift that only came once a week, and every hour had to be savored. But it
had
been a late night… so maybe just another five minutes… maybe ten… maybe…

  The red light pulsed painfully. Had he left the curtain open in his tiny bedroom? It was so bright, it had to be nearly midday. Shit.

  "Um… Tony? Tony, wake up."

  Tony's body jolted at the voice, and he swung up onto one elbow. Jeannie was sitting up in the bed beside him, under the covers but with the sheet drawn fully to her chin. He noticed first her clenched hands holding the sheet up, almost like a shield. Then he noticed the look of fear on her tired face. She looked like she'd only just woken as well.

  Tony reached a hand towards her. "Jeannie? What's wrong?" She backed away farther against the bedstead, eyes fixed on Tony's outstretched hand. Tony stopped, and raised his hand to his face.

  It was glowing bright yellow.

  His skin hadn't changed color; he could see his hand and bare arm quite clearly. But they were surrounded by a bright aura, a shimmering corona of pale yellow light. Tony gawped, and raised his other, glowing arm.

  "Tony?"

  Tony leapt off the bed. "What the fuck? Shit.
Shit shit shit shit
."

  His entire body shone with light, illuminating the room in the yellow-white glare of a midsummer's day. Tony saw that the curtain on the one window in the room had indeed been left open, the square window beyond nothing but a black mirror, reflecting Tony's image back at him. It was still the middle of the night.

  "What's the time?"

  Jeannie scrambled for the clock on the dresser with one hand while the other kept the sheet taut at her neck.

  "4.23." She let the clock clatter back to the bedside table. "Are you OK? What the fuck is going on?"

  Tony walked around the bed to the full-length mirror that was propped up against the bare patch of wall by his built-in closet. He stared at himself, turning his body experimentally to get a good look.

  "What the hell is this?" he whispered, half to himself. His entire body was surrounded by a white-gold halo. The aura didn't seem to touch his skin, it
surrounded
him, starting at about two inches out from his body, extending for another six, and flaring out to a moving, ragged edge. As he moved his hands, arms, legs, head, the aura moved with him, flaring slightly at sudden motion but otherwise remaining a near-perfect, encapsulating field.

  Behind him he heard Jeannie shuffle in the bed, then heard her bare feet on the carpet and the pulling of fabric as she came to stand behind him, wrapped in the bed sheet. She appeared in the mirror over his shoulder, standing outside the range of his glow, but close enough to touch. Their reflected eyes met.

  "Well, this is San Ventura," she said. "City of fucking weird shit. Do you feel OK? Does it hurt?"

  Tony swung his arm back and forth across his front, mesmerized by the reflected glow in the mirror. It was a few seconds before he answered.

  "No… no, it feels… it feels good. I feel fine, I mean… Welcome to the Shining City…" he breathed. In the mirror he saw Jeannie reaching out to gingerly touch his shoulder. When she did, her worried face cracked with a hesitant smile.

  "It tingles, like putting your tongue on a battery."

  Tony smiled. San Ventura, city of fucking weird shit?

  "You think something is going on? The Seven Wonders up to something? Like that time all the grass and leaves in the city turned orange for a day?"

  Jeannie stroked his shoulder and bit her bottom lip. In the mirror Tony saw the hairs on her arm stand on end, and Tony thought he could smell the smell of the ground after a thunderstorm.

  "I don't know," she said. "This city is fucked up. But… I kinda like it."

  Tony turned around. He felt good, refreshed somehow. Who the fuck knew what the glow was, but it lit the room like an aurora, and his girlfriend liked it.

  "Well now, that a fact?" Tony grabbed Jeannie's rear through the thin sheet, and drew her close to him. She yelped and he felt her quiver involuntarily as their bodies touched. He pulled the sheet that separated their naked bodies away.

  Jeannie smiled and laughed as Tony pushed her back to the bed. He reached over and closed the curtain, cutting out the San Ventura night.

  Jeannie turned the bedside clock around so the display faced away from the bed. "I'd say we should do it with the lights off, but I don't think we have much choice tonight."

  Tony laughed. "I think I love you."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Four-four-seven-four-four.

  The Cowl tapped at the numeric keypad. Gloveless and maskless, he was nonetheless clad in his combat suit − it wasn't a
costume
, its design was purely practical, but hell, if the lowlifes of the city got a fright whenever they saw him, then fine. And by lowlifes, he meant everyone in San Ventura. But it felt good to be wearing it again, now that his arm and ribs had healed. The Black Angel had given him quite a beating and it had taken two days for his body to repair itself. He'd been working all night, and it was nearly dawn.

  His fingers flew over the keyboard, transcribing the complex pulses of static-laced code that pumped into his ears. The transmissions were automated and repeated, and once he had been taught the pattern it was easy enough to transcode into something usable. Hell, it was too easy. He could have set up a script on the Lair's computer, but he wanted to do this himself, to check the code as it came in, to analyze the blueprints and instructions as they were assembled, to make sure (of course) that he wasn't being tricked. But he wasn't, and in the end the manual encoding was a real chore.

  So he let himself listen and type on autopilot − the computer would check it later − and with the other half of his brain (the half that was easily bored), he scanned three large LCD displays in front of him. Two were tuned to news channels, one local, one national, while the other showed a web browser. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, but he leafed through a few websites of electrical component manufacturers and research institutes. He wasn't changing targets − he and Blackbird had firmed up the final hit list just the other night − but it paid to shop around.

  He paused a couple of times as items of interest popped into view, but tabbed on through when he saw they were not suitable. On the news screens above,
San Ventura Today Tonight
was doing a background filler on the Draconid meteors which made him smile, while the national channel was showing fluff about an amazing new wonder drug that could cure pancreatic cancer. In rats. Fascinating stuff. The Cowl stifled a yawn. Not long until the final transmission was transcribed, then he could run the verification algorithm on it while he grabbed some breakfast. Blackbird was due in half an hour or so, or at least she'd said so when she'd called the previous night.

  He paused the incoming data stream, leaving the computer to timeshift the transmission while he cycled back through. Maybe this was why he insisted on doing it manually. He pulled the earbuds from the side of his head and muted the news channels. Rotating a finger around the touch-sensitive panel above the numeric keypad, he ran the transmission back fifteen seconds and replayed. With his left hand, he stretched thumb and forefinger across the main keyboard, calling up a series of shortcuts to display data analysis and recent input.

  There it was. A repeated pattern, corresponding to a new section of blueprint. Weeks of half-listening to alien garbage had attuned him to the code, and with a little effort he could translate it, slowly, as he read.

  Interesting. This new section, describing some kind of coupling cradle, required a very specific kind of component. And there was only one place in the world where one could come from, and he knew about it only because his girlfriend had invented the damn thing. He rocked the touchpad back and forth a few times, double-checking the message, while he highlighted the visual representation of the signal on the main monitor and started the computer verification. He normally left it to the end, but he had to be sure of this part now.

  He kept working until a discreet double bleep announced Blackbird's arrival. Moments later, she was walking along the bridge that linked the outer ring and main doors of the Lair to the towering control area. The Cowl smiled, listening with superpowered hearing to the thick, spongy softness of boots on the tiled floor.