Cold Shouldered Reception
He flew above the St. Louis skyline, trying to silhouette the the Arch against the moon with his camera. If this shot worked, he’d make a big splash with the school paper. He hovered there for a few moments admiring the view, but decided to keep the pictures for his own private portfolio. Besides, how would he explain being a few hundred feet in the air? He was a college student- he couldn’t afford a helicopter tour at night!
Looking down at the city, he realized he had drifted across the river and away from other familiar landmarks. He floated down and landed on some rich guy’s penthouse balcony.
“At least I didn’t come down on a crackhouse,” he muttered to himself. Thinking about it, he figured out which part of town he was in. Looking down at the streets below showed an absence of any vehicle traffic. This was the Courthouse Sector, where only the city council and other officials lived. He realized that there had to be a million cameras- hopefully there weren’t any pointed at him.
Just as he was about to take off for home to study for the psych quiz, he heard a scream. It didn’t sound like a “having fun” kind of scream. He leaned over the railing to find out if he could see where the scream came from.
On the next building over, across the street, a woman climbed up onto a balcony railing and was screaming at the man who was yelling just as loud back at her. The guy grabbed her ankle as if to steady her, but then raised his other hand and swung with all his might at her thigh! “Get down, you stupid cunt!!” echoed very clearly across the space between buildings.
Even though it was an Indian Summer September night, it was also clearly heard that a number of windows slammed shut.
The man swung again, but whether she slipped on her own, or he pulled at her ankle at the same time, it was not evident.
The young student was over the railing after the woman, but he knew that he only had about a dozen stories to catch up with her. He concentrated, not knowing how fast he could fly. He also wasn’t too sure about the control he had over the two other abilities he had been experimenting with since the accident last June.
His legs strained, trying to make themselves more straight, and the heat emanating from them grew and grew, finally bursting into flames, vaporizing his tennis shoes. His speed increased, and he passed the plummeting woman.
Since his hands were flat, he balled them up and thrust them out before him. The air crackled as the temperature dropped between him and the street. A solid sheet of ice formed from the ground up, twisting and looping, angling and spinning, until it was forty feet tall and looked like, well, any water slide you see in the small towns of the Midwest.
The woman dropped as neat as you please into the mouth of the slide, and due to the twists and turns of the tunnel, she slowed to a stop right at the end, right above the pavement.
She looked at her rescuer, and he didn’t know if the expression on her face was the result of her attack, the fall, or the unexpected carnival ride.
Her face was bruised, accented with a split lip. Since she was wearing one of those catalogue nightgowns, it was easy to see that there were other marks of abuse on her.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“Call me ColdStar. Capital ‘c’, capital ‘s’,” he replied, trying to be flip so as to lighten the mood. “Are you okay? I’m gonna call 911. Stay here. Just stepping over to that pay phone right there.”
ColdStar made the call, and went back to her. “What’s your name?”
“Susie.”
She seemed to be going into shock, and ColdStar thought it would be better to keep her attention focused.
“Susie, you’re gonna be okay. The ambulance is on its way. We’re in a rich neighborhood, so it won’t be long.” He paused, not knowing if it would traumatize her further by asking about what had happened. “I hope you don’t mind... who was that asshole?”
Susie looked sharply at him. She got off the ice slide and moved over to sit on the hood of a car. “You haven’t been in town long, have you?”
ColdStar shook his head.
“That was my boyfriend. Let’s just say his name is Timmy. If you hear it again, I promise you that you will be surprised.”
“Okay. Whatever. I hope I didn’t hurt you any more by rescuing you the way I did.”
“Think about the alternative, Captain Avenger- I’m not exactly complaining over here. In fact, I need to lay down.” Susie pushed herself back on the car and lay against the windshield, grimacing. She winced and closed her eyes.
ColdStar thought enough was enough and walked over to the ice slide and started melting it down before it fell apart and onto Susie or the buildings.
A few moments later, he heard a door open, as well as sirens. “It’s about time somebody came to help out,” ColdStar said as he turned and saw the same guy from the balcony, whom he assumed to be Timmy.
Timmy was holding a gun. ColdStar got real nervous, ‘cause he didn’t know if he was bulletproof. He really, really, REALLY did not want to find out.
“Timmy, get out of here!” Susie screamed.
Timmy backhanded Susie, and with that on top of everything else, she passed out. The gun was leveled at ColdStar, the hammer was cocked.
“Oh, shit.” He squeezed his palms at the same time Timmy squeezed the trigger. The air vibrated with explosive energy as the bullet flew into a wall of ice nine inches thick.
Before Timmy could fire again, ColdStar was flying backward across the street, forming new ice barriers between himself and his assailant. Timmy was running back and forth like a linebacker between the ice shields, firing as he went.
The police and medics arrived to see the gunfire and the first superhero battle most of them had ever seen. There were a few old-timers who knew what to expect, but it had been almost two decades for them, ever since Blackout and Marathon and the other Guardians went away. Even the veterans did not know what to make of the situation. All they saw was ice and fire and bullets and an unconscious victim. Guns were drawn, but put away immediately when the fire-and-ice guy flew up and away. The police and a few medics recognized Timmy and ran toward him.
What’s going on, they asked. Who was he?
The woman on the car, all bloody and bruised, lifted her head and croaked a reply: “Timmy... ColdStar... stop... him...”
The next day, the young man known to Susie, Timmy, and the police as ColdStar woke up late for his psych test. His roommate only happened to wake him up by chance with a bout of midday sex with his girlfriend on the other side of the room; it was Trina’s hoarsely whispered “harder, harder, but don’t wake Nicky” that was the final straw.
Nicky got up and stomped out of the room he shared with Kent, muttering about how it was never too early in the morning for those two rabbits.
Munching on Pop-tarts while cramming his notes, his gaze passed over his watch.
“FUCK!!”
“We are!!” replied Kent and Trina through the door, laughing. “We are!!”
“Fuck you!!” Nick retorted as he ran out out of the apartment.
“I’m not gay, and I don’t share!” shouted Kent, causing another round of laughter between himself and Trina.
‘One o’clock classes and I still can’t make them on time,’ Nick thought to himself as he hurried across campus. ‘Class with the head of the department, and I can't make it on time. I am so toast.’
At the door to the classroom, Nick peered through the window to see if the test was still going on. Suddenly the door opened, and there was Dr. Taylor!
“Mr. Jennings! What a pleasure. Do join us. You still have approximately eight minutes to finish the exam. Have a seat. Class, I do think we own him a round of applause, so please, let us honor him.” A couple of the class wags gave him a standing ovation.
Nick’s face burned, almost literally as he grabbed an exam sheet and went to his seat. Quickly, he applied some cold bio-energy to the paper when he noticed it literally smoldering from his embarrassment.
Dr. Taylor continued. “Now, who won the pool? Robertson? Very good, you get fifty percent added to your score. You’ll make a fine detective some day.”
At the end of the class, Dr. Taylor lectured Nick on the importance of being on time, and then gave him twenty minutes to finish his exam. This made Nick late for his 3-to-6, but fortunately his teacher for that course was tardy as a matter of habit. Nick sat down two minutes ahead of the professor’s arrival.
Walking to the journalism center that evening, Nick saw some of the Womyn Firsters (Women Fisters, but not to their faces) assembled on the steps of the administration building. Unfortunately this meant he had to walk past them.
“Hey! That guy works on the paper! He has to let us in!”
Nick hoped they didn’t mean him. He just hunched his shoulders and kept walking. One of the Womyn stood in front of him. He stopped just short of colliding, and was forced to make eye contact. She was short, had a bad perm, and very large protruding eyes. Nick thought she suggested the stereotype of the woman who went gay just so she could get laid by somebody. The thought emboldened him, but he still had to look away to keep from smirking.
Looking past the Womyn’s face, he saw some of the staff from the paper standing behind the glass doors, motioning with their hands not to let the Womyn in. He rolled his eyes, and took a deep breath. After last night and Dr. Taylor, he did not want any more confrontations.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Finally, someone is paying attention to us.” The Womyn poked a finger in his chest and continued. “Your comrades,” making him feel like he was a twentieth century communist, “won’t let us in to express our rights to free speech. They’re denying us our constitutional rights.”
“No they’re not.”
“What do you mean? They won’t let us in the building to go to the paper to print this article. It’s mandatory that we get in.”
“They won’t let you in to the building? Do you know why?” She shook her head, as if daring him to come up with a nonsexist answer. “The building is locked after six o’clock. Only the administration, cleaning staff, and student employees can get into the building. That means if anything happens in there, we are are responsible. That means only responsible people on the university payroll with a key can get in. This is a private university, therefore, the buildings are all private property. What you are sayin’ is that you intend to commit a felony by trespassing. I am a journalist here, and I may very well write an article, and quote you. Do you understand?”
The Womyn were shocked. It seemed to Nick that no one with any testes, literally or figuratively, had ever stood up to them. Several passersby thought the same thing, and a crowd slowly formed around them, sensing something different was about to happen.
The Perm shook her head as if to clear it from a similar thought. “But that doesn’t matter. We have a right to free speech. Therefore you must print this article we prepared.” She pulled a sheaf of handwritten papers from her purse and thrust it in front of Nick’s face.
He was stunned. No one in Alabama behaved this way. She must be from New York or something. “Free speech! No one’s denyin’ you anything! Go shout it from the Arch! Go to the real newspapers! The last time time you had something printed in our paper the school almost got sued for sexual discrimination! What the hell do you want?!”
“Discrimination? Hah! You can’t discriminate against men! They’re on the top of the social ladder. Men are the reason there’s two pay scales.”
“There are more women employed than there are men, and most of them make more than we do! Don’t you read the Labor Department statistics?” Nick countered.
“Well, they’re bigger and stronger and take what they want!”
“That’s a function of biology!” Nick shouted back.
“Biology is a social construct! Men made it up to justify the world they made.” The Perm turned her back and glared at the crowd locked inside the building.
“What the hell are you talking about? Look at the staff in there- the entire editorial division is female! In fact, there’s more women than men on the paper. Don’t you know your history? Yeah, a lot of guys have screwed things up, but it was two MEN, Koventir and Marder, who forged the Covenant that stopped the Cold War from turning into World War Three. With out those two MEN, we probably wouldn’t be standing here arguing about free speech!”
The crowd that surrounded them burst into applause. Nick hadn’t realized they were drawing this much attention. The Womyn Firsters looked stunned, also. The Perm swore and threw her papers at Nick. She stalked off, leaving her fellow Womyn no choice but to follow. The crowd cheered. Nick picked up the papers and looked at them. He shrugged his shoulders and went inside and was congratulated by the paper’s staff.
His roommate’s girlfriend clapped him on the shoulders and grinned. “Good job. I thought I was gonna have to call security. They got turned down, you know.”
“Huh? What do you mean? Security got turned down?”
“The Fister Sisters,” corrected Trina. “After the last time they wrote for the paper, Admin. said they had to get prior approval from faculty and the editors before they could print anything here. They went to the Dispatch and the Courier first, but the real papers turned them down. They had heard about what happened on campus and wanted nothing to do with them. So they got approval from Professor Julia, and tried to get approval from us.”
Nick just shook his head and went to find an open workstation.
“By the way,” said Trina. “I’m sorry about this morning. We didn’t want to wake you, but I realized that maybe Kent and I were being assholes. I’m sorry.”
That deflated Nick. He had intended to rip on Kent when he got home, but Trina took all the inertia away from him. “Okay, whatever. Just try to keep your hormones under control. At least take it into the living room.”
Trina nodded and walked away. Nick smoothed out the crumpled papers the Womyn had thrown at him and tried to make sense of the handwriting, which he thought was the work of someone intending to go to med school.
While he tried to interpret the scrawls, Nick wondered about the woman from last night, and her attacker, Susie and Timmy. Very slowly, he realized that that was what the Womyn wanted to talk about. The article described a “vicious attempted rape by an unknown male Talent”, and that it was typical of men with power to “force their way upon women of stature”. Apparently Susie was Susan Watkins, Special Assistant to the Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Thomas (Timmy) Gianinni.
Oh, shit, thought Nick.
The “article” went on to state that even though no super heroes had been seen since the Guardians retired in 1991, they were still around, and thus posed a bigger threat in hiding than if they were working in the open. The Womyn wanted to propose a mandatory ‘outing’ of all latent Talents, villain or hero, to prevent such things from happening again.
However, they did applaud the exploits of some woman in Chicago who had just started heroing in the last couple days. It seemed to Nick that according to the Womyn, women could do no wrong. Well, he wanted to go to Chicago and find out about this “Sun Woman” who seemed to have similar powers to his, but he had better find out how Susie was doing.
An hour later, Nick arrived at the hospital, but was turned away by the police at the nurse’s station on the ICU floor. He was able to convince them to let him talk to the charge nurse about Susie, using his student I.D. to prove his credentials. As he was talking to the nurse, he heard the elevator open, and turned to see a group of suits arrive onto the floor. Nick froze, because Timmy was the first one off the elevator.
Timmy looked at Nick, and asked the guards what this kid was doing here.
They explained he was from the university paper, asking about the attack. Timmy looked at Nick and said, “Ms. Watkins needs her rest; she is still unconscious. If you have any questions, please take this card and contact my office. We can fax you a release for your school paper. Thank you.”
As Nick walked past him, Timmy grabbed his arm and asked, “Where have I seen you before?”
Nick looked at the P.A., and replied, “On campus, last month. You gave us a presentation on law careers. I was sitting in the front row. For the paper.”
Gianinni looked long and hard, as if trying to see the lie in Nick’s statement. “Okay.” He released Nick’s arm. “Good luck on the article.” He stared at the elevator doors long after the numbers counted down to one. “We can’t have outlaw Talents flying around,” he said to his female bodyguard, who merely nodded.
In her room, Susan kept her eyes shut. She listened to Gianinni’s voice get raised a few more times as the male nurse explained that “Ms. Watkins had not gained consciousness yet and no the doctor’s not here and would you please keep your voice down, sir, this is a hospital, not a courtroom.”
A moment later the nurse knocked on the frame of the glass wall. “Okay, Susie. He’s gone, and I got hospital security to make him take his goon squad with him. You can open your eyes now.”
Susie looked at him and said, “Thanks, Paul. By the way, when are you gonna grow your hair back and shave off that goatee? Home Office has got to be having a fit about your undercover integrity.”
“No way!” Paul grinned. “Why would a charmer like me try to hide my good looks?” He snapped his fingers and walked around the perimeter of the room, double checking for any possible bugs that may have been dropped while the Deputy P. A. was here. He put away the hand-held scanner and told her the room was still clean.
“Thanks again,” Susie said. “If I hadn’t been able to threaten that doctor with a lawsuit, Gianinni would have been here this morning.”
“I can't believe he was gonna call Timmy over your objections. Thank god for doctor-patient privilege.”
“Yeah. Never go up against a lawyer, huh? By the way, sorry about pulling you off assignment. I suppose I owe you one later, don’t I?”
“Yeah, but we’ll work it out, later. I needed the break anyway, this case is almost impossible.” Paul was looking out of the window at the police guards that Gianinni had stationed on the roofs of the adjacent buildings. “I hope that kid you mentioned doesn’t try to come see you. If he does, he’ll be in a whole mess of trouble- there’s local law snipers situated.”
“Oh, great. So what’s the woman’s name again, Novena?”
Paul laughed. “No, it’s Novanna. Where do these Talents come up with their names? Yeah, so far she has flight, super strength, and what looks like solar energy projection.”
“She sounds pretty powerful. I hope everything works out for you.”
A cell phone rang in Paul’s pocket, and he pulled the device out to answer it. “So do I. If it doesn’t, I wind up with a serious sunburn. Hello?”
He listened for a moment, then placed the phone back in his pocket.
“That was Home Office. They’re sending out a small spin detail: liaison, doctor, security. They’ll have you in a safe house by midnight. It took them long enough.”
Timmy was sitting in his limousine as it drove around the city. He wasn’t in the mood to go home for the night and deal with his wife just yet. Instead, he was having a council of war with his ‘lieutenants’, as he liked to call them. He confirmed that the papers would have more details in the morning edition about this dangerous new Talent and the assault against himself and Watkins. He confirmed the next day’s appointments. Finally, he interviewed his newest bodyguard, a young woman from the Los Angeles megatropolis.
“Mercedes, was it?”
“Yes, senor,” she replied.
“I understand you come highly rated from CORE Sec.” She nodded. “I can always appreciate new Talent, least wise that which I know about. What was your specialty?”
“I coordinated gang activity, and effectively united the major gangs into one unit, with myself at the top. I have a ninety-two percent success rate. That’s only because of my accident and the stay in the hospital. But I’m much better, now, senor.”
“Excellent.” Timmy turned to another aide. “Now, tell me what happened to the bugs in Watkins’ room, Raphaelli?”
“Well. sir. They were transmitting just fine while we were on the floor, but as soon as we got on the elevator they just... died.” Raphaelli shrugged his shoulders. “It’s as if someone dropped a small EMP drone in her room.”
“Never mind,” said Timmy. “We got what we needed before that male nurse showed up. Are the S.W.A.T. Units still in position on the roof? Remember, this guy is dangerous. Make sure they know to shoot to kill, Commissioner.”
The Police Commissioner was sitting across from Timmy, and nodded agreement. “I chose each of the men myself. Four snipers, ten assault, and one Nightbuzz chopper. Did you want friendly fire, also? I can arrange a hit to your left leg, if you like.”
All of a sudden the limo slowed down very quickly, and rounded a corner. The driver lowered the partition and said over his shoulder, “Mr. Gianinni, sir, a call came in from the hospital- something about a U.N. Bureau Chief. I figure you’d want to go there right now.”
“Very good. Try to keep them off the I.C.U. floor, if possible- security reasons,” Timmy responded. He looked at the other occupants of the limo. “I knew there was a reason I keep him around. And not just because he’s my sister’s brother-in-law.”
Everyone gave a polite chuckle, and got back to the business of discussing strategy.
Nick was sitting on the back patio of his apartment, debating whether or not to go out to the hospital again, but this time as ColdStar. He thought maybe he would try Susie’s window and see if she was awake, or at least alive. One thing for sure, he just about crapped his shorts when Timmy grabbed his arm.
If I do go back out, he thought, I need to make up some kind of costume, maybe with some kind of mask. Yeah, that’s it. If I wanna be a superhero, I gotta look the part.
Half an hour later, ColdStar was dressed and ready for action. A red windbreaker, a white t-shirt, and blue jeans tucked into calf-high Dr. Martens made up his uniform. To complete it he had on a wide mask made from an old white bandanna his Dad wore back in the 1980s. There would be time later to finesse the whole outfit better, maybe with some kind of symbol, but he needed to be incognito tonight. Now if he could just get out of the bathroom without Kent and Trina seeing him.
“Duh, just take off the mask!” he told himself.
Kent pounded on the door. “Dude, are you gonna be in there all night? D’ya got the shits? Are you flogging your bishop? Hurry it up!”
Nick flung open the door. “What! How about you learn about privacy, huh?” He stalked out of the apartment.
“Wow,” jeered Kent. “He stood up to a bunch of dykes and stole some of their balls back! My baby’s all grown up! Sob, sob!”
“Kent,” said Trina. “Shut up. You should be proud of your roommate.”
“What do you mean?”
Trina shook her head. “Forget it.” She tried to follow Nick, but he was gone when she got into the parking lot. But, wasn’t that his car over there?
At the hospital, Timmy was greeted by a quartet of U.N. Securite officers. Only when he produced his credentials did they let him, and only him, go up to the I.C.U. floor. Upstairs, he found Susan and her old boss from New York conferring with a couple of slightly familiar figures out of history.
Susan’s boss was named Chakha Dr’a-ng, a Nordaan who had risen quickly through the ranks of the U.N. to become the North American Security Secretary. Over six feet tall, with thick reddish fur, she looked like some sort of a giant furry South American monkey. Through certain contacts, Timmy had heard she spent some time back in the 1990s hunting down former Cold War spies.
The other two were vaguely familiar. One guy was as tall as Chakha, and had big, long blond surfer hair that was out of style at the end of the 1980s. The other was a little under six feet and had a severe military haircut and demeanor. All three wore the ‘unofficial’ fall uniform of khaki suits and dark coats, varied by individual tastes.
“Mr. Gianinni,” said Chakha in her trilling voice, the product of having a double set of vocal cords. “I am glad to see you are unharmed. I am not aware if you have met my associates, Mane and Foxfire.”
Timmy did a double take. Like everyone else, he grew up reading the comic books, or watching the movies in the theaters and the documentaries on the Biography Channel, so he knew all about them. These two guys were founding members of the Guardians, and both of them were serious players on that team. Mane’s Talent had something to do with being able to manifest different animal abilities, making him bad news as a bodyguard or a bounty hunter. Foxfire controlled fire at the elemental level, and could fly.
“Well, no,” Timmy replied. “But I certainly am happy to see them here to help us out in this time of crisis. May I ask, that is why they are here?”
“Yes and no,” said Chakha. “As a former employer in her capacity as legal counsel for the United Nations, Ms. Watkins is still entitled to protection. Due to the nature of the assault against herself and you, we felt that it was warranted to assign Mane as her bodyguard. We would like to offer Foxfire’s services to you.”
“Thank you- your offer is very generous , but I think St. Louis can adequately protect her citizens against any threat, be it criminal or one of a Talented nature, so to speak.” Timmy was thinking to himself that things would get seriously fucked up if this freak squad stuck around.
“Unfortunately, this is not only an extension of goodwill. Due to the involvement of a new super-powered individual who remains an unknown factor, the U.N. must step in and investigate. We are superseding local auth- What the hell is that noise?” Chakha turned and went to the window, with Mane close behind.
“Yeah, what the...” began Mane. He looked back at Timmy. “Are those silenced assault weapons?”
Chakha and Mane pointed. Everyone who looked saw that they were indicating a large black mass floating over the street, just above the height of the two buildings. It appeared to be a giant black wasp, and it hung there, eerily silent.
Chakha asked Gianinni why he needed a Border Patrol helicopter inside of city limits.
“Look!” shouted Timmy. “You haven’t seen what this guy can do. I have, and I think I know how to take care of my city.”
Back outside, searchlights clicked on, breaking the night into a pattern of triangles and x'es. It recreated the feel of World War II documentaries where the Allies hunted the sky for Axis airships.
Both Timmy and Chakha received radio calls stating that ColdStar had been spotted a couple of blocks way.
“He’s coming to finish me off!” Timmy shouted into his radio. “Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill! No reprisals! Self defense!”
Mane grabbed Timmy’s radio from him. “Are you nuts? Let us subdue him! We’re qualified!”
Into her own radio, Chakha spoke three words: “Protect and Serve.”
Outside, gunfire could be heard. The Nightbuzz helicopter rotated on an invisible axis and oriented itself toward a small figure looping and dodging through the searchlights and sapphire trails of tracer bullets. Even though the chopper was a stealth machine, anyone within a hundred feet could hear the whine of the chain gun powering itself up. ColdStar did not seem to be aware of it, being of course occupied with throwing up shields of ice and heat, wondering how the hell he had wound up in this war zone.
Mane said, more to himself than anyone else, “Who does he think he is, Captain Avenger?” Susan caught his eye with a smirk on her lips. Mane grinned back.
Suddenly the chopper pivoted, and Susan wondered why. Following the position of the chopper’s nose, she saw that for every sapphire trace that went up toward ColdStar, an equally precise emerald trace streaked toward the source of the shots. The Nightbuzz pilot was trying to defend the snipers on the roof from an unknown attacker by bathing the rooftops with light from its own spotlight. Susan looked at Chakha, but the Nordaan female only dipped her chin once.
A new helicopter, a gunship, floated down in front of the Nightbuzz. That chopper tried to veer off, but a second gunship flanked it, aided by another Nightbuzz.
Chakha murmured to Foxfire. “You’re on.”
Foxfire motioned everyone away from the windows. “Stand back.” He dropped his coat on the bed and stepped forward.
The sound of the flames bursting from his body was a loud “FWOOMP”, and then there was only a hole where the window was. Mane had grabbed a fire extinguisher in preparation, and put out the small green fire indicating where Foxfire had stood. “For my next trick, ladies and gentlemen, I balance the budget!”
With the stealth chopper held at bay by the U.N. military, Foxfire was able to flameburst to a high altitude and light the sky on fire, illuminating all the rooftops in that block with a green glow. Just to be on the safe side, he flicked his fingers and sent a few willow-the-wisps floating to the ground, to brighten the streets.
Now that there was no cover, the remaining assault team members stopped firing, and ColdStar hovered for a moment. Foxfire thought he looked unsure of what to do. “He’s just a kid,” he whispered. ColdStar looped around and flew off, but Foxfire was too busy keeping the sky lit to see exactly how far he went once he got past the range of the light show.
Inside the I.C.U. ward, Chakha and Susan were both holding onto Mane’s arms to prevent him from going after Timmy.
“What the hell was that? ‘Shoot to kill!’ You fucking moron!” Mane flexed his arms and shook his colleagues off. He picked up Gianinni by the shirt and lifted him. “We woulda had him!”
“Get your hands off me!” Mane pulled him close and growled in his face. “I was doing what I know is right! You stupid oaf, put me down, or so help me I’ll bust you for assault and battery, and no amount of Talent, legal or otherwise, will let you see the light of day ever again!”
“Mane,” said Chakha, gently. “Set him down. Nicely.” She positioned herself in front of Gianinni and stared him in the eyes. “I told your boss that this was now under the jurisdiction of the U.N. We were unable to reach you or the police commissioner because you two were joyriding in your limo, afraid to come in under our protection. When you arrived, I told you. You disobeyed a direct order from a superior government official. I will not press charges of insubordination, but I will not omit your actions from my report.”
The Nordaan grabbed Timmy and lifted him from the ground, daring him to protest. “Thanks to your ‘control’ of the situation, you have made a potentially dangerous situation worse. ColdStar is an unknown agent. A very powerful one.” She shook the P.A. once.
”Thanks to you, my men were injured by yours. In defense of our lives and authority, all of the St. Louis Police Specialists you ordered up there are now either dead or permanently maimed. This loss is inexcusable. As part of the Covenant, my authority is absolute over yours. Do. You. Understand?”
Timmy was set back on his feet. Despite that they believed his actions to be out of cowardice (since he wouldn’t be charged with anything), he knew it would be prudent to make his exit now. He nodded his head and walked out of the room.
Foxfire hovered outside the hospital, and floated in when Timmy left. Mane let out a long whistle when he heard the elevator door shut.
“Holy shit, boss. I thought you were gonna let loose with a howl at the end there. I see why you took him away from me.”
“Actually, Mane, his safety was the last thing on my mind. I want to let him think he got away with just a slap on the wrist.” She brushed her paws on the lapels of her coat, as if to wipe off something disagreeable.
“What do you mean?” asked Susan.
Foxfire answered for her. “We were able to neutralize most of Gianinni’s strong men in the fire fight. Now he has to rely on a smaller number of people, and since he is most likely aware of your status, Susan, his trust has to be earned by his cronies.”
“Great,” replied Susan. “I wondered if he knew I was still working for you.”
Chakha stepped forward. “The question I’m more interested in is: does Timmy know you really don’t have amnesia about last night’s events? Attempted murder carries a life sentence, but I would be willing to bargain that down for his contacts.”
“What about ColdStar?” asked Mane. “With all the cordite and exhaust fumes, I won’t be able to track the kid.”
“Foxfire?” said Chakha.
The ex-Guardian grinned. He held his hand palm up and flicked his fingers out. A small green flame hovered there, then floated over to Mane and took up orbit around his head.
In the darkness, the woman known as Mercedes watched. She and Raphaelli had seen ColdStar flee the area. Waiting so that Foxfire would not blow their cover with his fireworks, they noticed an emerald glow drift after the young Talent. Raphaelli’s unique Talent was to see things in minute detail. This meant he could pick out the same grain of sand on the beach ten out of ten times. It was simple to have Mercedes drive the convertible while he kept track of the willow-the-wisps. Only upon reaching the outskirts of campus did they finally lose sight of the glow.