Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer (2 page)

She tucked her fingerless yellow gloves into her sash, shook out her hair, and rested her goggles on her forehead. The former were a quirky affectation and the latter a necessity, for nothing felt worse than to have a piece of road grit or a bug hit an eye at well over a hundred miles per hour. A quick check in the full-length closet door mirror and she was satisfied with her appearance. She wondered if Rick checked her out as much as she watched him.

She turned around and found Bobby sitting up in bed, watching her.

“Oh!” She jumped in spite of herself.

He smiled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. You look great, babe.”

“Thanks.” Faith’s heart pounded. After all the dreaming and then daydreaming about Rick, she now felt guilty, like she’d been caught stealing. “Was I too loud? I tried not to wake you.”

He flicked one of his ears and grinned. “I can hear what they’re saying across the street, babe. Don’t worry about it. I’m used to the noise by now.”

“Do you want me to wait for you?”

“Nah, you’re already ready to hit the road. I’ll grab a bite and catch a cab into the city.”

“Okay.” Faith turned to go.

“Love you, babe,” said Bobby in a soft voice.

Faith crossed the room to him. “I love you too,” she said, determined to mean it with all her heart. She kissed him, morning breath and all.

She skipped to the kitchen and filled a thermos full of coffee, and then stepped out the door. In a couple steps, she accelerated to a nice and easy sixty miles per hour. She could have gone much faster, but Rick had asked her to keep her speeds down except on emergency calls. Drivers tended to panic when a pedestrian blew past them like a jet on two legs, even if those legs were as nice as hers.

Faith hurried for Manhattan; she wanted Rick’s coffee to still be hot when she arrived.

#

“Boy, you best get your lazy butt out of that bed!”

Thirteen-year-old Harlan Washington didn’t move. He laid in his bed in the Harlem tenement with his hands folded behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, not seeing the water stains in the old corkboard. Instead, he was inventing things in his mind. His teachers had called him
creative
,
inattentive
, and
prone to daydreaming
and that was why he was stuck in summer school for the second year in a row.

He hated school. It was so boring, the way he had to learn bunches of facts and numbers and formulas and dates about stuff that didn’t make any difference to him. He’d rather be tinkering in his workshop. He could learn more in an hour in a mechanic’s garage than he could in a month in that school with the busted old ceiling fans and the crabby teachers who seemed to delight in humiliating him. The desk where he was supposed to do his homework in his room was cluttered with tools, pieces of Erector sets, and miscellaneous mechanical and electrical parts that he tinkered with instead of playing outside.

He closed his eyes again, imagining a giant, like
Mechagodzilla
from the movies. He dreamed of seeing neighbor kids flee in terror before it instead of going out of their way to tease and belittle him because he was a little smaller, a little dirtier than the rest of them. In his mind, he rode within the behemoth, safe within its armor, surrounded by the switches and levers of control. It followed his directions to the letter, spreading forth destruction at his whim. Like a king surveying the destruction wrought by his armies, Harlan smiled.

His mother flew into the room like a football linebacker. She was a large woman who worked two jobs to keep food on a table and a roof over the heads of Harlan and his two sisters, and she had no patience for layabouts like him. In one fell swoop, she closed a meaty hand around Harlan’s ankle and yanked him right off his mattress. “If I told you once, I told you a thousand times to get a move on.”

“Ow, Momma.” Harlan rubbed his head where it had bounced off the floor.

“Get your clothes on and come have breakfast before you leave.” His mother flounced out of the room.

“Bitch,” Harlan muttered. He lay on the floor for a moment, trying to recapture the vision of gears and shafts he’d been imagining when he felt eyes on him. He turned to see Reggie staring at him. His younger sister wore her hair in two poofy pigtails on either side of her head. She held a dirty stuffed elephant clutched against her t-shirt.

“What?” growled Harlan.

“You done said a bad word. I’m gonna tell.” Reggie’s voice was full of glee as she skipped off toward the kitchen.

Harlan said another forbidden word under his breath, and then threw on a clean t-shirt and some grubby jeans. He jammed his feet into his Keds without bothering to tie them and trotted into the kitchen where Reggie was regaling their mother with half-truths about Harlan’s language. Momma wasn’t really listening; instead, she was fawning over Irlene, much to Harlan’s disgust. Beautiful Irlene. Brilliant Irlene.

Irlene the parahuman, who’d just become a member of Just Cause.

If Harlan disliked his mother and tolerated Reggie, he detested his older sister Irlene. She was eighteen and could shrink herself and other objects or people down to ten percent of their original size. Harlan still remembered the night in March when she’d announced to the family over the dinner table, tears streaming down her cheeks, that she had parahuman powers. Instead of being upset, Momma had been ecstatic. From then on, Irlene could do no wrong in her eyes. She’d flown about the apartment in her shrunken state and zapped dust bunnies down to the size of dust motes to Momma’s and Reggie’s great amusement. Harlan had looked on with disgust. He perpetually heard “why can’t you be more like Irlene?” from Momma and here was yet one more thing he could never aspire to.

Momma and Irlene ignored Harlan as he slipped into his chair at the stained Formica table, and that was just fine with him. They were busy making last minute adjustments to the hero costume Momma had spent all week sewing in between her day job at the bakery and her evening job cleaning up a dentist’s office. Momma had described the colors as
berry
and
dove
, but to Harlan it was just a pink and gray bodysuit with a stylized
I
on the chest and a domino mask. Irlene had teased her hair into a large stylish afro and put on lipstick and face makeup.

“I swear, you look as good as Pony Girl or that trollop Sundancer,” said Momma with conviction.

“Oh, Momma, do you really think so?” Irlene floated into the air and twirled about.

Harlan bent forward and shoveled cereal into his mouth, hoping the crackle of his corn flakes would drown out the coos of his mother and sisters.

“I think you look real pretty, Leenie.” Reggie stuck her tongue out at Harlan.

“Thanks, sweetie,” said Irlene. “What do you think, Harlan?”

Harlan glanced up and shot his older sister his most withering look. It infuriated him that as much as he couldn’t stand her, she was friendly and even kind to him. Just once, he wished she’d get angry, call him a name, scream at him. Such a display of real, human hate from her would give them common ground from where they could forge a real sibling relationship. But no, she always smiled pleasantly at him and spoke to him with love. He knew he was supposed to reciprocate, but he felt nothing, and that made him hate her even more. “You look like a strawberry slush with whipped cream,” he said in a weak attempt to be mean.

Irlene laughed it off. “That’s wonderful, Harlan. Thanks. I feel that sweet. Hey, maybe you can come with me to visit Just Cause Headquarters sometime. I bet they’ve got some really cool equipment there that you could look at.”

“For God’s sake, Irlene, don’t encourage him,” said Momma. “The fool boy spends all his time playing in repair shops and junkyards instead of learning what he ought to be in school.”

“School’s stupid,” mumbled Harlan.

Momma sighed in exasperation and turned back to Irlene. “You better be off, sweetie. You don’t want to be late on your first day.”

Irlene laughed. “Momma, I’m not punching a time clock with them. I’m a superhero, not a line worker.”

“But they are paying you?”

“Yes, Momma. The Devereaux Foundation—they’re the folks that run Just Cause—they pay us all a salary.”

Momma’s eyes glistened with tears. “I’m so proud of you, Irlene. If only your father could see you now.”

Harlan only had faint memories of his father, who’d disappeared when Harlan was only two. Most days he wore the old man’s army jacket from when he served in Korea. He often laid awake at night wondering whatever had happened him. Momma wouldn’t ever speak of it. In his active imagination, he fantasized about his father doing some kind of great work in secret, and that someday he would return to take Harlan away to a life full of adventure and excitement instead of his current miserable existence.

“You best be on your way, sweetie,” said Momma at last. She stopped fussing with Irlene’s costume and stepped back.

“Guess so. Don’t wait up, Momma. They might want me to do a night patrol or something.”

“Make me proud, Irlene.” Momma picked up a dishcloth and commenced her assault upon the prior evening’s dinner dishes that she’d been too tired to clean after her second job.

“I will, Momma.” She shrank down to the size of a pigeon, flitted around the kitchen once, and then sped out the window to head south toward the ritzy part of Manhattan.

Harlan growled deep in the pit of his throat. Momma must have heard him, and a wooden spoon cracked across the back of his hand. “Boy,” she said, “you best rethink your attitude before you leave this house today, or there will be hell to pay by the time you get home.”

Harlan hung his head just a little lower.

#

The lazy smoke from his clove cigarette curled in the breeze from the ceiling fan as Tommy lay naked amid mussed sheets in his Greenwich Village apartment. A couple of pigeons perched on the fire escape outside his window and cooed to each other over the noise of the morning commuters below. The closed bathroom door muted the hiss of the shower. André was nothing if not considerate. Tommy had met the French Canadian at the beginning of the man’s vacation, but it was ending today and André would have to return home. The thought made Tommy feel a little wistful; André had soft and delicious skin, but like so many other relationships, this one had been doomed to fail from the start.

Tommy didn’t try to sabotage his relationships on purpose. They just seemed to fall apart after a month or two, or a night or two. Sometimes he felt all he ever did was jump from the arms of one man to another. “Perpetually rebounding,” Pony Girl said to him. He supposed it was a good description. He took a long drag on the cigarette and let the fragrant blend assail his lungs from the inside. The time with André had been good. He was thoughtful, kind, generous—everything Tommy could hope to find in a long-term partner. But of course, when he did find someone who exhibited those traits, circumstances demanded it be only short-term.

The shower stopped and a moment later André stepped into the bedroom, one towel wrapped around his waist as he dried his hair with another. “
Bonjour, mon cher
,” he said in his soft tenor.

Tommy smiled. “Good morning to you too.”

André raised a finger. “Ah ah,
en français, s’il vous plaît
.”

Tommy’s smile faltered as he tried to recall some of the French André had taught him. “Uh,
bonjour. Comment ça va
? Is that right?”

André took the cigarette from Tommy and took a drag. “
Ça va bien
. Very good. You have paid attention.” He sighed. “It is a shame I must return home today.”

“You can’t stay another day?”

“
Mon cher
…” André traced a finger down Tommy’s jawline. “Truly I would love to. You have been a gracious, accommodating host, and I have enjoyed this past week. But I would never fit into your lifestyle for a long-term commitment.”

“What do you mean, my lifestyle?” Tommy gestured around at his apartment, full of Quaker-built furnishings, tasteful artwork, and track lighting.

“Please,” said André. “Do you think I was born yesterday? I know who you are. Him.
La Tornade
. Tornado. The hero of the Just Cause team.”

Tommy looked away. “So what if I am?”

André gave a sad smile. “You are a superhero. I am only a florist.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Ah, Tommy. You are a sweet man, full of love and life, but it is not for me to share. Your heart belongs to another. I could see this from the moment I met you.”

Tommy pulled away from André and slipped out of the bed, the sheet wrapped around him like a robe. He went to the window and looked out at the city beyond the fire escape. How many hours had he spent flying between those towers? How many miles had he logged with his cape flapping behind him as he tried to outrun his own feelings? “You’re wrong,” he said at last. “I’m just another swinger, André. That’s all. I’m not in love with anyone.”

André embraced him from behind, resting his cheek against Tommy’s shoulder. “
Tu es un pauvre menteur.
”

“What does that mean?”