The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (17 page)

      "This isn't a sphere to go around a sun," Emily said. "This sphere's designed to go around someone like me. It's a cage made just for me."

Chapter 34:

A black hole where my heart should be

      Doc Silence returned just before dawn, divining, through some minor magic, just where his companions had escaped to.
The corpse of the college building he'd left them in had filled him with dread, but somehow he knew, even without magic, that they'd survived.

      What he found in the new location was a shocked and shockingly quiet Emily, surrounded by peers trying, all without great effect, to comfort her.

      "I'm gone for one day and . . ." Doc said. "What happened?"

      Both Janes—older and younger—filled him in on Emily's discovery in Broadstreet's notes, while Annie tried to give him background on the White Shadow's role in the war.

      Doc interrupted her. "It can't be the White Shadow. Not the original one," he said.

      "Doc, we've seen the footage," Annie said.

      "I'm not saying this out of nostalgia, Annie," he said. "I mean factually. He was just a regular man, and he'd be elderly now. Not simply old. Infirmed. And none of this—giant robots, bombing cities, wiping out entire villainous organizations through lethal violence—none of this is his style. It's got to be someone else."

      "Is proving he didn't do all this that important to you?" Annie said.

      "No, but understanding who our actual enemy is, that matters to me," Doc said. "Blindly believing that in this timeline, a kind man who put his life on the line to make the world a better place turned into a dictator just doesn't cut it for me. I need to know more."

      Doc dragged a chair over to Emily and sat across from her. She looked up.

      "You really do leave at the most inconvenient times," she said.

      "I know. What did you find out?" he said.

      "Everybody said I was some kind of weapon here, right?" Emily said.

      Doc nodded.

      "Oh, big scary Emily. She sank California."

      "You did," Jessie said.

      Billy glared at her.

      "What? I'm just telling her the truth. Girl literally dragged California into the Pacific Ocean," she said

      "I'm also fueling the revolution," Emily said. She pointed at the hologram still spinning in front of Neal's computer housing. "That thing is using me as a power source."

      "I don't get it," Billy said.

      "I love you Billy Case, but you don't get a lot of things," Emily said. She looked at Doc. "You want to explain this?"

      "Go ahead, Emily," he said.

      "Okay," she said. "You know how I always say I have a black hole where my heart is?"

      "I always thought that was a figure of speech," Billy said.

      "Sorta kinda, but not really," Emily said. "You guys think I'm nuts, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about my powers the past few years. Where they come from. How they work."

      Annie shot Doc a knowing, worried look, raising one pink eyebrow.

      Doc tried to wave off her concerns with a tilt of his head.

      "My mom could fly," Emily said. "Nobody knew why. They don't know why now. She just could. My mom could defy gravity."

      "And you don't defy it, you control it," Jane said.

      "It acts funny around me. So when I say I have a black hole in here," Emily said, tapping her chest with her fist, "I don't think I've got a region of spacetime exhibiting such a strong gravitational pull that no particle or electromagnetic radiation can escape it. I just mean I'm where gravity starts to get weird."

      "Is anyone actually following this?" Billy said.

      "I am," Annie said. "Though I have a feeling we're about to lose at least ninety percent of the room's attention."

      "I named myself after the second law of black hole mechanics. This is Hawking stuff. Whether black holes have entropy or not," said Emily. "And I think I'm basically the opposite of Jane."

      "And now you lost me," Jane said.

      "No, hang on," Emily said. "You're a battery. You're solar-powered. Absorb sunlight and turn it into smash and fire and flying and can say 'look at me, I'm a superhero.'"

      "And what? You're a . . . super-villain?" younger-Jane said.

      "I really am trying to make this simple," Emily said. "Doc?"

      "You're the genius. I just perform magic," he said. He smiled, strangely proud of his youngest protégé, attempting  to explain black hole mechanics to a room packed full of aliens and werewolves.

      "Let me try to say this really simply," Emily said.

      "Oh no," Billy said.

      "Shut up Billy Case or I'll bubble of float you right out that window over there," Emily said. She took a deep breath. "Stephen Hawking. Quantum field theory. Black holes radiate blackbody energy at a constant temperature. That radiation carries away entropy. I ... I give up. I generate energy. Jane is a battery, I'm a nuclear reactor. Only I'm not nuclear, literally. I'm just a big weird source of change, and change equals power."

      "That sphere that you're talking about, in the hologram," Titus said, nodding. "You're saying that it's designed to . . . store the energy of your black hole but not the energy that a black hole gives off?"

      "Finally someone gets me!" Emily said.

      "I really didn't actually understand you," Titus said. "I was just checking to see if I was following."

      Emily jumped up and leaped into Titus's arms in a bear hug.

      "Close enough, fuzzball! Close enough!"

      Annie approached the diagram on screen, inspecting it with a scientist's eye. "So if that rambling discussion of quantum mechanics made any sense at all, what you're saying is our enemies have turned you into their own nuclear reactor," she said.

      "And if I'm interpreting the schematics correctly, I'm sitting right inside one of those things," Emily said. She looked at Doc mournfully. "And I probably have been since the day you weren't alive to find me."

      Doc pushed his red sunglasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. When he pulled his hands away, the glasses dropped back down onto the bridge of his nose. He looked around the room.

      "What do you think we should do?" Jane said.

      Doc fixed his eyes quizzically at her older counterpart. "What do
you
think?" he said.

      Both Janes glanced at each other, then the Solar spoke. "I'd like to hear your suggestions," she said.

      Doc nodded.

      "I'd like to find out more about this White Shadow," Doc said. "Kate?"

      "Me?" Kate said

      "You and I are going on a field trip," Doc said.

      "Why me?" Kate said.

      "First, because where we're going will require us to be quite stealthy," Doc said.

      "I can be stealthy," Emily said. "I'm practically an assassin."

      "And second," Doc said, allowing Emily to ramble on, "I need a detective's eyes. And you've got the instincts of a detective."

      Kate stared at Doc, not speaking, but her top lip twisted, almost hinting at approval.

      "Where are you going?" Solar said.

      "I know where the real White Shadow retired," Doc said. "Kate and I are going to go see if there's any clues left as to what happened to him."

      "And the rest of us?" Titus said.

      "Most of you should hang tight until we get back," Doc said. "But we do need to learn more about that sphere."

      "The Entropy sphere," Emily said.

      "Fair enough," he said. "The Entropy sphere. And we know where Keaton Bohr studied and worked. I'd suggest a small team investigate and see if he left any research behind that might help us dismantle that contraption."

      "Emily and I'll go," Annie said.

      "Take backup," Doc said. "Someone who can keep a low profile."

      "I volunteer as tribute," Billy said.

      "I'd rather someone who can actually keep a low profile," Doc said.

      "And the rest of us?" asked Whispering. He'd been hanging back away from the group, listening the entire time, and had remained silent until now. "We're just going to wait here and do nothing?"

      "Give us a few hours," Doc said. "Then we'll take more significant action."

Chapter 35:

It was his home

      Doc Silence and Kate Miller materialized in a dusty street in the City's Oldtown District.
The area, part of the City's original construction, felt in many ways like a throwback to an earlier era, narrow streets lined with brownstone buildings, the sidewalks paved in neglected red brick.

      "You okay?" Doc asked.

      Kate nodded her head vigorously. She didn't like teleportation at all, but Doc's magic transportation was less disorienting somehow than Annie's time travel methods. When he moved them, Kate felt out of sorts, as if she'd slept through a long car ride and was no longer sure where she was. Annie's abilities left Kate feeling like someone had taken her cells apart and then put her back together again in not quite exactly the same fashion.

      Doc walked up the front stairs of one of the brownstones—all of which appeared abandoned in this future, long uninhabited, littered with broken windows and lost hopes—and opened the front door as if he owned it. He looked over his shoulder, and Kate followed him in.

      The building's interior smelled of mothballs and the burnt, glue-like odor of drying wallpaper. Sprinkled bits of crushed drywall covered the hallway carpet. Doc led them upstairs to the third floor and stopped in front of a specific apartment.

      "The White Shadow's hideout was in a condo?" Kate asked.

      Doc shook his head.

      "Not his hideout," he said. "His home."

      Kate was prepared to kick in the locked door but watched as Doc seemed to have a quiet conversation with the lock and doorknob. The knob turned and the door opened.

      "Magic?"

      "Remembering the names of things is important," Doc said. "I know the names of locks, and can ask them to open for me. All locked doors want to be released. It's their nature, if you simply ask nicely. Doors are meant to be opened."

      "Great. You wait until we're alone to start talking like a weird hippie," Kate said. "I appreciate that."

      Doc smirked and walked in.

      The condominium was sparse, dark. It clearly had not been updated for many years, with aging wall covering, old but sturdy furniture, blinds and carpets that were out of fashion even before Kate was a little kid.

      "Look around, see if you notice anything out of sorts," Doc said.

      They wandered separately from room to room. Kate saw shoes lined up neatly by the door, a photo of a dog—so old it had started to fade to sepia tones—aged, careworn khaki trench coats, fedoras on a rack near the front door. The worn carpet felt strange beneath her feet, like moss.

      She heard Doc rambling in the kitchen. Not quite talking to himself. He was speaking to something. And not someone, but some
thing
, conversing with empty air, listening for responses. It cast a sad and strange portrait, Doc alone next to the weary and yellowing stove and dishwasher.

      Kate discovered more loose pictures that had slipped out of a tattered photograph album, the sort of faux-leather book her mother used to keep. She flipped it open. Newspaper clippings of the White Shadow, wearing his mask, meeting with celebrities and police officers, shaking the hands of kindergartners at a local school. The photos predated Kate's own birth from the looks of it.

      It seemed irresponsible to her that he might keep an album of newspaper clippings and thus jeopardize his identity. But then again, who would ever see them? This was a place where a man lived alone. Nothing hinted at anything more than a solitary bachelor's pad, a place where an aging male carelessly but with profound simplicity made a home for himself.

      She opened another album. This one was different because she saw his face. Ordinary features. Maybe even a little homely. Narrow jaw, with graying, receding hair, dark eyebrows, slightly crooked teeth. He smiled often in the photos, as if he, somehow, escaped the inevitable pall of gloom that saving lives often cloaks you with. Because saving lives, Kate thought, meant rescuing them from something, and you can't save a life without seeing that which you needed to  liberate that life from.

      The darkness is so overwhelming, she thought. But here is a man, living alone in quiet solitude, who went to work every day to make the world better. How could he smile?

      Then she flipped the album through to another page and saw why.

      Curled up in the White Shadow's arm was a little girl. Jet black hair, the same crooked smile, big eyes. The radiance of youth. The Shadow gazed at the girl with such love, such adoration. Something twinged in Kate's heart like a bending, breaking string of a bowed instrument. Fathers and daughters. Fathers and daughters always broke her heart.

      "Doc," Kate said.

      He joined her from the kitchen, glancing over her shoulder at the photo album.

      "He had a kid," Doc said after a few moments passed.

      "Apparently."

      "We never knew," he said.

      Kate studied the picture again.

      "You don't usually have families, do you?" she said.

      "Superhumans?" Doc said.

      "Yeah."

      "We really don't," he said, taking one photo of the Shadow and his daughter from the album and tucking it gently, almost reverently, in a coat pocket.

      "Because they're at risk?" Kate asked. "They have to be at risk. Of retribution by the people we put away."

      "There's that, yes," he said. They both continued searching around the condo for additional clues, but stayed close together enough to speak. "And there's the question of time. When do you meet someone? When do you raise a child? There's always someone who needs saving. Always some other battle to fight."

      "Did you ever want a family?" Kate asked.

      Doc laughed.

      "That's a strangely personal question coming from you," he said.

      "It's not personal," Kate said. "I want to know the logistics. Did your life get in the way? I know you've cared about people. That you're too soft on the Lady, so I realize there's something there, and you and Annie look at each other like there could have been something between you."

      "Annie's a funny case," Doc said, quietly thumbing through a drawer in the dining room. "All she's ever wanted was a home. But I don't think she wants the things that anchor you to a home. She drifts on the winds of time. She's impossible to hold on to."

      "Did you? Want a home?"

      Doc bowed his head as if pausing to think before answering.

      "The things I've seen in this world, Kate," he said. "If I had a family, if I brought a life into it . . . that's all I'd ever worry about. Every day. Every moment."

      "I think there's a part of that in all of us," Kate said.

      "Yeah," he said as she retraced his steps into the kitchen. "None of us had families, really. I think we all understood. We could risk our lives easier if we didn't have to worry about coming home."

      "Emily's mom was a hero for a little while," Kate said.

      "She was. One of the few who got away clean," Doc said. "But she's the exception, and wasn't in our game a long time. I'm happy for her."

      Kate opened cabinet doors in the kitchen, thumbed through ancestral silverware adorned with handle designs that appeared to be from the Victorian era.

      "Do you know who her father is?" Kate asked.

      Doc stared at her.

      "What?" she said.

      "Nothing," he said. "I have my suspicions. And if I'm right, if her father weren't such a . . . If he'd lived up to his potential, then this world never would had needed to endure what it's been subject to."

      "Who do think it is?" Kate said.

      "Someone I hope you never meet," Doc said.

      A frayed newspaper clipping clinging to the refrigerator door with a magnet from Hawaii caught Kate's eye. She picked it up, studying the text closely.

      "Doc?"

      He joined Kate in the kitchen.

      "I don't know if this helps us, but you're right about one thing," she said, handing it to him.

      "It really doesn't give us too many answers, but I'm glad I was right," Doc said. He handed the slip of paper back to her.

      The White Shadow's death notice. The obituary never referenced the old man's heroics. Instead, it was a simple note about a simple man dying quietly in his sleep, with a photo that matched the man in the album Kate found alongside it.

      "Doc, the time of this notice," Kate said. "The date is just a few days after you found me. The same year. He died in his sleep right around the period you were putting the Indestructibles together."

      "We never knew how the White Shadow died," Doc said. "No one ever told us. No one came looking. He just seemed to fade away."

      "So what does this mean?"

      "It means someone's out there destroying the world while masquerading as my friend," Doc said. "And I've got to know who that person is."