Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (20 page)

Astra

I’d never wanted to be a time-traveler so badly in my
life
, and it had to be a sin how happy I was for the possibly bad situation going down with the Paladins.

Watchman could have taken Mal flying as easily — should have, but he and Riptide, Seven, Rush, and Variforce were out of town dealing with a major tanker-truck spill and fire, and Blackstone was already looking ahead to my leadership position with the cadet team. The Hillwood picks would be here tonight.

And I’ve started so well
.

Mal had been a surprisingly fun break from obsessing about my own problems (I’d missed Sunday Mass for the first time in months because I was scared to show my face at Saint Chris). Fun right up to the moment I jumped in where it wasn’t my business.

I filled Shelly in as we flew, since otherwise she’d be back on him about it as soon as she got over the distraction of trying to track down whoever had outed me so we could wreak hot, hot vengeance — her words.

Guessing from the emptiness of its parking lots, pre-lunchtime on a Monday, the business park the Paladins leased their building from had seen better days. Detective Fisher and his joint team timed their approach so that they pulled into the lot outside the office as we landed.

“
The CPD thermal drone shows five occupants in the building
,” Shelly whispered in my ear as we dropped to join Fisher’s team and the ten Platoons the DSA had sent. Platoon wore dark-visored helmets so you couldn’t tell at a glance that all ten were the same person, but if you knew a Bob or a Tom long enough, you could tell. Were they part of the same Platoon team that had helped us in the spring?

I put on my game-face and gave everyone a nod. “Fisher, Jenny, Wyatt, Bobs. Galatea says five in the building. How are we going to play it?”

“Agents Robbins?” Fisher waved the Platoons ahead. Armored like a SWAT team expecting to dance, five peeled away and the rest stepped around me as we walked so I found myself behind their wall as we advanced on the door. One opened and the other four moved in behind, still paired to keep me out of line of sight of any cameras.

The front lobby was a secure room — no inside windows or easy access to the rest of the office, just a thick door, waiting chairs, and a phone. One Bob blocked the camera in the corner with his badge while another picked up the phone and punched the receptionist button.

“Ma’am,” he said to whoever answered. “This is Agent Robbins and Detective Fisher of the DSA and the Chicago Police Department. We have warrants to search these premises and detain members of your organization. You have ten seconds to open the inside door or we will make a breach.” He hung up, looked at me, and counted down curling his fingers into a fist.

Right
. At “ten” I gripped the doorknob and
pushed
. The heavy lock snapped with a loud pop and the agents went through ahead of everyone, guns up and yelling “Down, down, down!” Nobody was taking chances with the Paladins deciding their war with superhumans extended to the government.

The hall on the other side of the door opened into offices and a large bare meeting room, folding chairs set up for maybe fifty. The place was all threadbare carpets and water-stained ceiling tiles. Framed posters lined the walls, anti-cape stuff mixed in with motivational posters — which was just weird, like finding a cute cat picture at an Aryan Brotherhood hangout.

“‘Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.’” Shelly read. “Now that’s
seriously
wrong.”

I laughed, but at least the accompanying picture was just a rock-musician waling on his axe, not any of a half-dozen absolutely awful images my Shelly-corrupted sense of humor conjured up.

“Storm troopers! You have no right!”

“
Debra Gardner
,” Shelly whispered through my earbug. “
Office administrator and agitprop writer
.”

Aaand there went the fun.

A Bob talked the hysterical lady down and his team pulled our catch together in the meeting room. I set up five folding chairs so they could at least have their backs to a wall and see each other while we waited, all the Bobs facing outward and Agent Robbins talking on his earbug to the outside team. Detective Fisher’s team pulled the hard drives from the office computers, dumped their phone logs, looked for anything stupidly incriminating to take with us on the first sweep.

I
watched our suspects, trusting the Bobs to alert me to anything incoming like the Wreckers. And they watched me. Ms. Gardner looked like she wanted to spit.

“The great Astra.” The handcuffs made her lean forward, but she kept her back straight, ignoring Galatea. “So now you don’t even
pretend
you’re not the government’s bitch.”

I rested Malleus on my shoulder. “Funny. Go on and poke me some more — nothing can hurt as much as a missile. You
do
know that if superhumans ever take over the government and put all of you
patriots
in camps, I and my friends will be dead, right? Because they’ll have to go
through
us to do it.”

She actually managed a sneer, more than any of the rest seemed up to. “So you believe their lies.”

And just like that I was tired of it. Last year, Ajax had tried to give me some historical context for the anti-superhuman groups, and I thought I understood them, but the lens of the Paladin worldview would never let her see me as anything but the enemy.

And am I any different
?

“I know all about acting as your conscience requires, Ms. Gardner. And I’m not here
for
you — Galatea and I are here in case somebody tries to
kill
you. So you do what you do, and we’ll do what we do, and we’ll trust God to sort us out. Can I get anyone a drink of water?”

Fisher’s team moved
fast
, and we were only there for fifteen minutes. We used the DSA vans to transport the Paladin staff downtown to the CPD hardcells, the cells normally used for keeping superhuman detainees
in
. Vulcan met us there with cases of gear and he and Shelly got to work making the cells even tougher.

I followed Fisher out to where he could light up. “What are you going to do now?”

“We’re done, here.” He took a deep drag. “We’ve got closers to handle the interrogations, and my team doesn’t do normal-on-superhuman cases, which is what this is; their only connection to our case is someone in their office conspiring with the shooter.”

He looked back at the doors. “If they’re smart, they’ll throw us the guilty one. He’s the only one we want and the only one we need to protect — if the Wreckers were just going after anyone with a loud hate on for superhumans, they’d be wading in blood already.”

Ugh. An image I
so
didn’t need. “Think they’re that smart?”

“No, but we’re good. Don’t worry, we’ll nail the bastard who sicced the café shooter on your friend, maybe more than one. So we file everything, get back to working on the Wreckers. I’m going to want you with us in the next couple of days; we need to pay a call on the Foundation of Awakened Theosophy — we’re just waiting for the warrants.”

What?
I’d completely forgotten about our search of Mr. Ludlow’s place and it took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about.

“You think this foundation is part of it?”

A shrug. “No idea. More likely Ludlow met fellow travelers there — which means we want to see membership records, that kind of thing. It might be nothing, but that’s detective work; pull on every string until something pulls back.”

He stubbed out his cig. “Kid? FYI?”

“Hmm?”

“Sorry about your getting outed. I thought you should know, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed story chasers are already interviewing your old schoolmates going back to preschool.” He shrugged. “They know about your friend’s origin-chaser ‘suicide’ and it’s going to be in every background piece on you along with her memorial portrait. The footage from the café shooting isn’t public, but you might want to tell Galatea to be more careful in the future.”

Celebrity superheroes are like Hollywood stars: we have entourages, agents, image and publicity people, legions of fans, and we get into trouble any time we don’t speak from a script.

Astra,
Notes From a Life
.

My life had become an after-school special, and any moment now people were going to break into
song
. The whole Best Friend Dies Origin-Chasing and You Got the Breakthrough story had filled the Internet with a collective “Aaaaw!” Quin was fielding multimillion-dollar offers for the rights to my biography, and letting Shell take over the Internet was sounding better and better. Together we could bring down civilization and they would
stop talking about me
.

Nobody was talking
to
me — Quin wasn’t letting me near any newsies after Sunday’s interesting session with Terry. It hadn’t gone
badly
, exactly, but only because Terry was cool — his first question, off the record, had been what I’d like to do to the person who’d outed me, assuming we ever found out who.

The Bees were texting me messages of support, which was nice even if Annabeth’s included bloodcurdling suggestions I could have used to answer Terry’s question. She’d become my most vocal advocate; according to Julie, she almost made one opportunistic journalist eat his recorder. Megan just insulted the guy in ways he only vaguely understood.

I finished my one patrol of the day before returning to the Dome, ignoring the crowd of protesters outside as I flew in. This morning they mostly looked like Shankman’s partisans — word of the investigation into his office had got out and his pet-newsies were spinning it as persecution.

They needed
something
; their attempts to blame us for his taking a bullet weren’t gaining any traction, and since he’d come through surgery fine and would be out of the hospital in days, that story was going to go away too.

Since Willis had prepared rooms for tonight’s new arrivals and I was off-duty, I changed into civvies, put my hair in a tail, and decided to take my mind off the media frenzy and my pending responsibilities by studying up on the Foundation of Awakened Theosophy. Everything — and I meant
everything
— really had conspired to drive it out of my mind. But Fisher was right; the Paladins were a sideshow. We needed to know what had changed things for Mr. Ludlow, and if Fisher was looking at the FAT (Shelly’d gotten a kick out of the acronym), then I needed to learn all about it.

Five minutes after opening my epad and looking up
The Sleeper Must Awake
, I wanted some good swear words. Blackstone should have learned about this last
week
.

The Foundation of Awakened Theosophy was a
cult
.

“Yes, my dear?”

Blackstone’s eyebrows rose when I made a slashing motion across my throat. His always-open door closed, and I handed him my epad.

“Have you seen this?”

He scanned the page, looked up. “I am aware of the Foundation. It’s a two-year-old fad among origin-chasers. Has it become important?”

I nodded. “Mr. Ludlow may be a member, and it’s about more than breakthroughs.”

“I think you had better sit down and tell me about it.”

I sat, took a breath and opened my mouth, thought again.
Organize
.

“Last weekend, before I went with Fisher to exercise the warrant, you suggested that whatever had turned Mr. Ludlow happened after January.”

“Yes.”

“Eric’s been reading FAT books and I just called Jenny and she says that they won’t know until they get a look at the Foundation’s membership records but from his emails it looks like he’s been a member since early February.”
Breathe, Hope, breathe.
“A serious one.”

Blackstone sat back, rubbed his nose. “Indeed. That
is
interesting.”

I’d
never heard of it, but it didn’t surprise me that Blackstone knew about the Foundation. He tapped his desk phone. “Chakra, please.”

“
Dear to my heart?
” It was late morning but she sounded like she’d crawled out of bed to answer the phone, and wanted to crawl right back
in
.

My expression made Blackstone smile. “Good morning, my dear. I am with Astra right now and wondered if you might join us?” Chakra responded with an easy laugh and an entendre-filled promise to be quick while I tried to pretend I hadn’t been there to hear
anything
. My ears were red, but I wasn’t stupid — she did it because I made it fun, and Seven had been right; when I wasn’t blushing, I was laughing. I wasn’t judgy, really, just mortified.

And I really needed to grow up. Last night Chakra had found me to talk about my feelings about Eric going to the dark side, even apologized for not being able to warn me of all the drama she’d seen coming with her precognitive gift. She’d been nice and
not embarrassing
.

Blackstone made small talk until she swept in, dressed like a gypsy dancer. One look at our faces and she sat and adjusted her skirts, back poker-straight. Blackstone always dressed ready for the stage, so I was the only one not in “uniform.”

“Yes?” No archness, no play, just
what’s going on?

“The Foundation of Awakened Theosophy. Our Mr. Ludlow may be a member. What can you tell us about it?”

It was like she’d slipped on invisible schoolteacher glasses.

“It’s one of the newer breakthrough-trigger fads, based on the theosophical enlightenment movement. After the Event, a lot of people started claiming they knew how to reliably trigger breakthroughs. Statistically, their results have varied, but never very far from the baseline of random incidents of extreme physical or mental stress.”

“That is what I understood,” Blackstone concurred. “The government has always been extremely interested in discovering a reliable breakthrough-generator to address our national superhuman deficit.”

I blinked. “Our what?”

“Breakthroughs are caused by trauma, my dear, and despite our own supervillains, here in the U.S. we have less of that than the Chinese states, for example. Or the Middle East. Fewer mass-deaths. Fewer disasters. Certainly no civil wars. The downside of peace and prosperity is fewer events which tend to create superhumans.” He was back to rubbing his nose. “We make up for that by better mobilization and support and by attracting superhuman immigration — Lei Zi being the perfect example. She was twenty when she brought her family here from Beijing at the start of the China War.”

“She’s an immigrant? I didn’t know.” She’d come on the team during the bad months right after Atlas’ death, when I hadn’t been paying attention to much of anything. Now she was just
there
, solid, professional, distant in a leaderly way.

He raised an eyebrow at that. “She comes from a diplomatic Communist Party family, and probably learned English while counting blocks in the nursery. Apparently they were considered less than reliable by the party leadership when the purges began. But we’re wandering afield now.”

I had a sudden burning desire to know
that
story, but I nodded. Chakra’s eyes were focused on something else, and she hummed thoughtfully.

“Actually, I think I can see the attraction of the FAT for Eric.” She made sure she had our attention, smiled. “As I said, it’s based on the theosophical enlightenment, particularly on the version of theosophy preached by Helena Blavatsky. It builds on three propositions: the universe as we experience it is an illusion surrounding an unchanging Truth she called the Absolute; outside of the Absolute, everything is in flux, forever uncreated and recreated; all souls are monads, units of individual consciousness which are discrete parts of the universal oversoul, the part of the Absolute that is conscious of itself. Monads are eternal, but also constantly in flux with the rest of the universe.”

She stopped to let us catch up and I ran it through my poor little brain.

“So...reincarnation? Nirvana?”

“Oh, yes, Blavatsky’s theosophy was strongly influenced by Buddhist philosophy. More important, the Foundation of Awakened Theosophy has updated her system to explain breakthroughs. According to the FAT, Monads also experience spiritual evolution — the Event was caused by the first Awakened Soul, which recreated the world. The Foundation doesn’t say who that blessed soul is, but it strongly hints he is its founder, Doctor Simon Pellegrini.”

“I see.” Blackstone considered for a moment. “And Mr. Ludlow?”

Chakra shrugged. “The Foundation teaches a system of study, meditation, and initiation that is supposed to ‘awaken’ a disciple who becomes sufficiently spiritually advanced, which is what makes it attractive to origin-chasers who don’t want to risk injury or death to achieve a breakthrough. But it also claims it is able to strengthen breakthroughs — a draw for weak breakthroughs whose powers are at or below D Class.”

“Wow.” I thought of how easily Shelly might have been sucked into that if it had been around four years ago. Or maybe not — Shelly liked
quick
solutions. “But Eric is a
B Class
Ajax-type.”

Blackstone shook his head. “But not the strongest, my dear. Perhaps his war experiences convinced him that he needed to be stronger. Which is not necessarily his motive now...”

“Could he have met the other Wreckers through the FAT?”

“Or been introduced to the FAT by a Wrecker. The Crew mixed with a lot of CAI and support teams during the cleanup in California.” He nodded significantly without elaborating. Chakra wasn’t part of the charmed circle with the need-to-know scoop on the Teatime Anarchist or the Big Book.

I needed to call Jenny back, suggest they look into the Crew’s California adventure.

Chakra filled us in on more about the FAT than I’d absorbed before I’d run to Blackstone, but by the time I got back in my rooms I realized I couldn’t tell Jenny anything. Or ask her anything else that might make her wonder. Asking whether Mr. Ludlow had joined FAT had probably been okay — since I’d been there, it was natural enough to ask about if I was at all interested in the case. But I was a cape, not a cop; investigation was
their
job, and if I started displaying a deep interest in a specific part of their investigation, they’d wonder
why
, which would be bad for The Secret.

Which sucked; Fisher had his own secrets, which he knew I knew, but that wouldn’t keep him from coming after
my
secrets if he thought they might be important to Solving the Case. I trusted Fisher, but that wasn’t the point; when Shell and I had given Blackstone the Big Book — till then he hadn’t known how
big
it was or that I was its “guardian” — he’d sat us down to find out who else knew about it (Dr. Cornelius and Orb, who knew about the Big Book but didn’t know what it was, and Jacky, who could keep secrets like nobody’s business). Then he’d explained the secret to successful conspiracies: they remained
secret
. The ideal number of conspirators was two (one just wasn’t a conspiracy), and each conspirator above that number increased the chance of the secret being blown.