Super: Origins (33 page)

As she found a place at the conference table, she looked around the room a little more. One wall had been lined with computers, and a couple of people she didn’t recognize worked at them. On the opposite wall, where the windows would normally be, someone had hung a huge flat screen monitor that took up most of the space. It currently showed a tall burning building against a dark sky, and Lex watched for a few minutes as she finished steeping her tea. She threw the tea bag away, the returned to the table to take a few bites of the cinnamon donut she’d chosen, disappointed that it tasted stale.

Turning to Riss a couple of seats away, she said mostly under her breath, “I wonder if I could get one of those for my room.”

“No. I asked,” Riss replied in a deadpan voice, but Lex thought that maybe she’d been hanging around the other woman too long, since she could swear she almost heard a smile in Riss’ tone.

A woman at one of the computers near the front of the room who had been looking at something over someone else's shoulder suddenly straightened up. When she turned towards the conference table, Lex realized why she’d looked familiar once she stood up. It was Clara, and she made her way over to the conference table to sit in a position that told Lex she’d be running the show. Clara seemed to count those at the table, then glared impatiently at the door, but stopped a moment later as Serena simply appeared near the table with the refreshments and silently began pouring herself coffee. Sighing with a tone that sounded slightly annoyed, Clara turned a glance towards the ceiling.

“Joan, can you hear me? Are you suited up yet?” she asked.

“I'm in the process. I can hear what you say and pick up what’s on the screen through my helmet feed, though, so please proceed.”

“All right, ladies, thank you all for joining us so early in the day,” Clara began, glaring at Serena's turned back. “I'll fill you in on what's going on. Someone called the fire department about this building,” she gestured to the burning one on the huge screen, “around two this morning. From what anyone can tell so far, it seems that at some point in the past few days, some electrical wires overheated and unfortunately seem to have ignited things inside the walls: parts of the structure and insulation. Also, several years ago, the windows in the place were replaced, and the new frames are made of flammable materials, so the fire has been running through the walls and catching everything around the windows on fire as well.

“Because the fire wasn't discovered until the middle of the night, most everyone in the building was home. The firefighters evacuated people from the lower floors quickly, but during the evacuation discovered that the stairs had collapsed between the tenth and eleventh floors on one side of the building, and between the twelfth and thirteenth floors on the other. So, the people on the top eighteen stories of the building have become trapped. The heat was too intense for ladder rescues, so helicopters were called for, but because the flames and heat are greatest around the outer walls of the building, they couldn’t get very close, and the second person they tried to rescue got badly injured due to the unpredictable thermal winds surrounding the building. The helicopter itself nearly crashed during the incident. The building engineer declared it too risky to try landing a helicopter on the roof, since it wasn't designed for it and because she thought it might further weaken the structure. They’re already worried that if the heat of the fire in the walls gets too high, the structural steel beams may start to lose their original temper and be unable to hold up the floors and ceilings. The firefighters are doing their best to stop the blaze, but their efforts don’t seem to be working at the moment.”

Lex looked at Clara for a moment, then up at the building on the screen. Outlined in flames against the dark sky, Lex could almost see it collapsing in her mind's eye. She’d been about to ask what they planned to do when Clara started speaking again.

“The Alpha team specifically requested our help,” she said, then continued with her voice slightly raised. “They'll be in charge on the scene.”

Clara had been forced to speak up to compete with the sounds of annoyance and disgust Lex’s teammates had begun making as soon as Clara had mentioned the Alpha team. Riss had made a dismissive noise, rolled her eyes, and then continued paying attention to her coffee. Casey let out a cry of what sounded like dismay and had avoided Lex's eyes when she'd looked over in concern. Lex felt a flutter of worry in her gut as she looked down to see Casey’s hand clutching her chair’s armrest hard enough to bend it.

“They’re assholes!” Serena shouted. “I don't want to work with them!”

“All right, that's enough!” something close to Joan's voice boomed out of the speakers overhead. “We
will
work with them, and you will finish listening to this briefing so that we can get going. Do you understand?”

A number of people exchanged looks denoting annoyance or disgust, but finally Serena rolled her eyes and shouted at the ceiling, “Yes, OK, whatever. Can we get this over with so we can get out of here?”

“That's all of the information I had to share with you at this point. Were there any questions?” Clara asked smoothly.

“Yes,” Lex piped up, “What are we supposed to do once we get there? How are we going to get everyone out of the building?”

Clara gave Lex a veiled glance before she answered. “I don't have any information about that yet. The Alpha team should fill you in on what they want you to do once we get there.”

“What about Lily?” Casey asked.

Lex turned towards her, almost surprised, since it had been the first thing she'd heard Casey say since she came into the situation room. Clara answered, however, which caused Lex to turn back in her direction.

“She called earlier. She said that she was closer to the scene than to headquarters, so she's going to meet us on site.”

After a moment of silence, Clara asked, “Any more questions? No? Please grab a folder, which contains everything we know about the building so far, and let's get going. The site is just across the Potomac in Rosslyn, Virginia.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Serena said. “What about something to eat? How are we supposed to do anything running out in the middle of the night before we can even drink a cup of coffee?”

Clara raised an eyebrow and looked at Serena. “We'll have some food brought out to the scene.” She paused a moment, looking around once at everyone in the room. “If there's nothing else, then let's go.”

She didn't look behind her as she headed out the door. The other four women exchanged looks before getting up to follow. Lex, still half-convinced she was dreaming, tossed the rest of her refreshments, grabbed a folder, and sleepily walked with the others down to the garage level. As they entered the main garage area, however, Lex jumped back as she saw
something
emerge from a doorway on the right hand wall.

“Holy crap, what is that?” she asked nervously, taking a step back from what looked like a cross between a robot and a weapon shaped like a person. It stood almost as tall as Casey, and broader. The thing's body had been painted mostly black and silver, topped off by what looked like a black glass faceplate intersected with crosshairs in silver; it appeared to have guns of some type on its arms, back, and shoulders, and what looked like some sort of sidearm on its right side. It turned in Lex's direction and spoke.

“It's me, Joan. Come on, all of you. Stop messing around and let's get going.”

Lex wilted a little and shook her head as Casey and Riss looked studiously in other directions and Serena snorted with laughter.

“It would have been nice if someone could have mentioned that beforehand,” Lex muttered, mostly to herself, but didn’t feel too surprised when Serena answered.

“Sorry, sorry. I'm only laughing because my reaction was even worse.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I wasn't really paying attention just before I saw her, so I got really surprised and did something horribly undignified like shriek and fall on my ass. I didn't think it was funny at the time, but…”

She chuckled softly to herself as they headed for a large white van. Joan got in through the back, and when she’d finally climbed inside, the van sank on its shocks.

“Looks like you need to lose a little weight there, Joan,” Serena said as she and Lex got into the van. Lex tried to choke back her laughter while Serena continued to laugh openly. When they’d both settled down, Lex noticed that Casey and Riss sat on opposite sides of the front bench, so she headed to the second one and sat by Serena. The rest of the open area in back had been taken up by Joan in her suit. Moments later they pulled away, and Lex could see the beginnings of the day starting to show in the sky as they left the garage.

Lex had wanted to ask Casey once they got underway why the team seemed to have a problem with the Alpha group, but after looking at the seating arrangements and failing to catch Casey's eye again, Lex decided to try something else. So she turned to Serena and began talking quietly.

“Serena, what's up with this Alpha team? Everyone seemed really upset when Clara mentioned them.”

Serena grumbled under her breath, and then answered in a murmur. “We've worked with them before. Or, should I say, they've requested us before. Every time we go out on a job with them, usually what happens is that they have something they want Casey to do and the rest of us end up sitting on our asses. And something else…Casey always acts really weird when we have to work with them. Sometimes she won't talk to anyone for days afterwards. The guy who I guess runs the team tries to boss all of us around, especially Casey, and is a real jerk. I just hate everything about these jobs.”

Lex nodded and then looked out the window as Serena quietly drank her coffee, gazing out the opposite window. Everyone in the van seemed tense, down to Clara and two support people up in the driver’s bench. Lex felt apprehensive and a little depressed. Sighing, she decided to rest her eyes for a little while and laid her head against the window, just until they arrived at their destination.

“Lex, wake up,” she heard a moment later. Opening her eyes, Lex sat up and looked over at Serena, a little confused. Serena smiled at her.

“You fell back asleep,” she continued. “We're here, by the way. Come on out with the rest of us.”

Lex followed her outside, yawning widely and then coughing at the acrid taste of smoke. The sky had lightened to the point that good outlines of things could now be seen, and Lex thought it would probably be a warm day but stay overcast. Blinking away the sleep, Lex began to look around. They’d parked on a street corner in front of an apartment building that spanned most of the block. It had two wings branching off a central tower, and Lex took a moment to absorb the gaping hole in the middle where the front doors had been, the smoke coming out of the front and from windows that had broken in the heat, and the gouts of fire coming from the occasional window or at various points around the edge of the roof. Lex and her team stood on a small lawn in front of the apartment block, watching. She sighed and looked back at the building, trying to figure out what to do until her attention got distracted by a large man who appeared in the doorway. He headed in their direction and stopped in front of Lex’s group, dropping a prone person in the grass and taking a mobile person off his shoulders to put them down rather roughly.

“So you finally bothered to show up,” the man said, his voice harsh. Lex studied him for a moment since he stood under a streetlight. Some people probably would have admired his blond hair, blue eyes, and athletic build, but something in his face, something petty and dangerous, prevented Lex from finding him attractive. On the contrary, she felt repelled by him, suddenly recalling her father's face for some reason. She turned to one side then as she heard Casey move, and frowned in concern as she saw her friend drop her head and shrink back from the man.

“All right,” he continued, “Casey, you come with me. We're going to use both sets of stairs to bring people out. I've been jumping over the broken stairs to get up to the next floor, and I think I'm done with the thirteenth. Come on, let's go.”

He tried to grab Casey's arm, but she shied away from him, a shudder running down her arm as she pulled it out of reach. She did follow him a moment later when he took off, although her movements seemed uncharacteristically slow.

Lex stood there for a moment, watching them disappear back into the building, feeling her stomach turn over nervously. After a moment, something occurred to her. “Wait a minute, what are we supposed to do?”

“Well, the idiot said he wanted us to help the medics, despite the fact that none of us have any medical training.”

Looking over at who'd spoken, Lex saw a woman who looked somewhat older than her and wore a jumpsuit similar to the one Lex had on. The woman stood with a group of people in front of a van parked on the corner of the street intersecting with the one Lex’s team had parked on, so that the two groups almost faced each other. She had a solid build with long, curly dark hair tied into a loose ponytail. Lex sucked her breath in as she spotted a short scar on the woman’s cheek that seemed to travel upwards until it disappeared underneath a black eye patch over her left eye. Lex looked at the woman for a moment, lost, as she shrugged, her arms crossed over her chest.

“You've got to be kidding,” Lex said, almost to herself. She looked down at the person who'd been deposited in front of her, an elderly gentleman. He stirred and began to cough weakly as she watched. Lex looked back at Serena and Clara, but neither of them seemed inclined to do anything, so she picked the man up in her arms, bridal style. He felt like mostly bones. Lex looked at the other person the blond man had been carrying. The teenage girl appeared to be in shock, just standing and staring off into space.

“Hey, come on, let's go,” said Lex to the girl, trying to get her attention. She just looked mutely over at Lex, who suggested, “Why don't you take my arm and we'll get you some help.”

Once the girl took hold of her, Lex turned to the woman who'd spoken before and asked, “Where are the medics?”