Dreams of the Golden Age

TWENTY-FIVE

NEWS outlets the next day were filled with stories of the shocking nervous breakdown of Delta businessman Danton Majors, who’d collected his own team of superhuman mercenaries, captured beloved Commerce City icon Celia West, and held her hostage for the outrageous ransom of West Corp itself. That wasn’t exactly what happened, of course, but that was the favorite spin. That was the sequence of events compressed into a simple, repeatable narrative. Even better were the tales of the heroic actions of Commerce City’s own selfless superhuman vigilantes who came to her rescue: Dr. Mentis, of course, but also the Trinity, the two-member team known as Espionage, and a new hero the police had dubbed Weasel. Spark, had emerged from retirement to save her granddaughters and become injured with a cracked femur in the process. The hospital had to ask people to stop sending flowers. And there was even, the Commerce Eye reported, a brief reappearance by the legendary Typhoon, who had often helped rescue Celia in the past. Few believed the accuracy of that rumor. The epic battle and its aftermath would keep a city full of reporters busy for a week. The Rooftop Watch site crashed its servers.

Despite all the news cameras that had shown up at Horizon Tower, the dozens of citizens who’d snapped cell phone pictures, the images that had been grabbed from traffic and security cameras, the only photos that appeared on any of the stories were generic shots of the building, of the glass-strewn street after the windows on the top floors had shattered, the swarm of police cars, and the aftermath: the Delta supers being led away morose and in handcuffs, Majors himself strapped to a gurney, taken away in an ambulance. Dr. Mentis gave a statement, and pictures of him appeared along with the usual quotes about Commerce City being safe once again. People observed that he was no longer the intense young man who’d been a member of the Olympiad back in the day. He was middle-aged, tired, and most concerned, he stated, with returning Celia West to her daughters.

The Trinity and Espionage remained as mysterious as ever, and some reporters murmured that police Captain Mark Paulson had a hand in that. Rumors said that unlike his predecessors, he might be working closely with the young superhumans, who might even be a new, secret arm of the police force. The idea intrigued many, who agreed that with villains like Danton Majors, the Executive, in the world, these new young superhumans might do well to protect their identities.

Majors spent a month at Elroy Asylum being treated by some of the best doctors in the world, specialists in various personality disorders related to megalomania and narcissism. Prosecutors brought charges against him and his entire team. The four members of his team, however, escaped prison when Monica Brooks—aka Sonic—shattered the walls of the city jail with her hypersonic power, freed her colleagues, and vanished. Notably, they did not try to rescue Danton Majors. Presumably, they fled back to Delta. Warrants for their arrest were issued, but no news was forthcoming.

Horizon Tower was disarmed, condemned, and torn down to make way for the city’s new development plan, recently voted on unanimously by the planning committee and spearheaded by West Corp.

Life in Commerce City goes on.

Anna steadied herself before entering Sam’s hospital room. She’d been told what to expect. She knew the sight of him would shock her, no matter how much she prepared, no matter how much she thought she knew what she was going to see.

Celia came with her and kept a hand on Anna’s arm, a comforting pressure. Anna thought about asking her mother to wait. Then she thought better of it.

“Ready?” Celia asked softly, and Anna nodded.

His parents, George and Melissa Stowe, were there, sitting near the bed, talking quietly. They looked up, blinked in confusion that never really went away, even when recognition dawned.

“Is it all right if we come in?” Celia said, courteous, always so deft in these awkward situations. She always knew exactly what to say. She’d replaced the wig and looked almost normal right now. Except that she was losing weight—Anna could see her growing skeletal. The Stowes wouldn’t notice it.

Sam’s father quickly invited them in, reached to shake Celia’s hand, thanked them for coming, et cetera. Anna drifted to the bedside.

“He’s getting better,” Mrs. Stowe said. Her smile was taut and her eyes red from sleeplessness and crying. “The ventilator came out yesterday. He’s woken up a few times since then. Now he just has to heal.”

Lew and Eliot had saved him, had cushioned his thirty-story fall enough so that it didn’t kill him. But he’d crashed into the side of the building on the way down, collapsed to the concrete below with too much force, even with Eliot breaking the fall. Eliot had been strong enough only to slow him down and catch himself, not stop them both.

Sam looked tiny lying on the bulky hospital bed, connected to what seemed like a million tubes and wires. A monitor clipped to his finger, IV tubes taped to his arms, oxygen tubes in his nose, sheets piled in messy folds around him. A plastic neck brace immobilized him, and his face was covered in cuts and bruises, swollen and purple. His left arm and leg were broken, his pelvis had cracked, his ribs had broken. His spine had survived, he wasn’t paralyzed, but several vertebrae in his neck had cracked, and once he was more healed he would need surgery to repair them. He’d arrived at the emergency room with a head injury, a cracked skull, and excess fluid in his brain, but he’d gotten there quickly enough that doctors had been able to mitigate the worst of the damage. They hoped.

Sam would get better. Everyone said so. But it would take awhile. Anna gave a heavy sigh. She’d been holding an unconscious breath. This could have been any of them. Thinking about that made her numb.

“Can I touch him?” she asked, and Mrs. Stowe nodded. Anna lightly brushed Sam’s hand, squeezing his fingers. Maybe it would help. His skin felt cooler than she expected.

“Mr. Stowe, Mrs. Stowe, I have some information that I think you need to hear,” Celia said in her steady, calming voice. “Do you have a minute?” They did, they agreed. Would here be all right? They liked to be here for the moments Sam woke up.

“Mr. Stowe—”

“Call me George, please.”

“All right. Your father is Gerald Stowe, yes? Do you remember him ever talking about a job he had when he was young, at Leyden Laboratories?”

“No—he had a lot of jobs when he was young. Kept bouncing around, you know?”

“This was a lab owned by my grandfather. The scientist in charge was Simon Sito, the Destructor, and there was an accident. A kind of radiation that affected everyone who was there, including my grandfather. Over the years we’ve found that the children of those affected have about a forty percent chance of displaying some kind of superhuman ability. I know you were probably asking yourself why this happened to Sam. Well, there’s a reason for it. I bear some of the responsibility for this, I’m afraid. I’ve been tracking the families descended from those who were in the lab. Indirectly, I’ve been encouraging some of them to use their powers. Including Sam. Including my own children.”

“Wait, what?” George Stowe furrowed his brow, baffled. “But I never—”

“No, but your nephew is Justin Raylen, yes? Breezeway? And you might ask your younger sister how much she really knows about Earth Mother.”

“Margaret?” he exclaimed. “Margaret is Earth Mother?”

Celia put a finger over her lips. “You should probably keep that quiet, since she never went public. I’m trusting you with this information, George, because of Sam. You deserve to know. But it’s not for public consumption. You understand, yes?” The Stowes nodded emphatically. “Also, all Sam’s medical bills will be paid for. It’s coming out of the Compensation Fund for Extraordinary Damages, the trust my mother established. Your family won’t have any financial concerns, if that’s all right with you.”

“Yes. Thank you, yes.”

Sam’s fingers twitched under Anna’s hand. His eyes were open, and he managed a smile with his swollen lips.

“Hey,” she said. “How are you?” What a stupid question.

“Crappy,” he murmured, his voice barely a scratch. “We won?”

“Yeah. But this … this sucks.” She blinked fast to keep the tears back.

“Yeah,” he said, the air going out of him in a sigh. He squeezed her fingers, but his eyes closed, and he slipped back into sleep.

This did, indeed, suck. But she finally believed he’d get better. Blaster would return.

Celia touched her shoulder. “We should probably get going, let him rest.”

“Okay.”

The leave-taking was awkward and drawn out. The Stowes seemed more stunned than when they arrived, not less, and Anna felt washed out. Just seeing Sam like that was exhausting. But she had to be thankful that he hadn’t died. How much more awkward, to be standing at his funeral?

She didn’t want to think about that.

They were in the elevator, descending to the lobby, when Anna felt a ping on her radar. “Mom, Eliot Majors is in the lobby.”

“Oh?” she said. “That’ll be interesting.”

They couldn’t help but meet him on their way out and his way in. Anna didn’t show any surprise at all, but Eliot’s eyes went wide, and he hesitated, as if thinking of turning tail.

“Hi, Eliot,” Anna said. Any embarrassment she might have felt had faded to trivia. “I don’t think you really had a chance to meet my mom?”

Celia smiled graciously and offered her hand. “So nice to meet you, Eliot. I never got a chance to thank you for what you did.”

He had a bouquet of tulips, which he awkwardly shifted from one hand to another so he could shake Celia’s hand. “Um. Hi. It…” His shoulders slumped. “I wish I could have done more. I wanted to come visit.”

Celia said, “He probably won’t be awake. But his parents are there, I think they’d like to meet you.” He blanched.

“So,” Anna said, jumping in to fill an awkward silence. “Are you going to stay in Commerce City, at the university, or go back to Delta?”

“I think I’m going to stay. I mean, as long as my father is here, I think I should stay.”

“A more urgent question for me, is Weasel going to stay?” Celia asked.

Eliot rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe that’s the name that stuck.”

“Told you,” Anna said. “You’d have been better off with Leapfrog.”

“My advice?” Celia said, grinning. “Since you’re never going to beat it, just own it. Put fur on your costume. Get a theme song.”

He didn’t look happy about any of those possibilities. “Ms. West, I’m sorry. For what my father did. If I’d had any idea, if I’d known what he was going to do, I’d have—”

“Eliot, it wasn’t your fault. None of it. I speak with great authority when I say that children cannot be held responsible for the actions of their parents. Now, let it go and just worry about being a good person, okay?”

Nodding, he continued on to the elevators, and Anna and Celia continued outside.

“Not a bad-looking kid,” Celia observed, smiling vaguely.

“I suppose,” Anna said, realizing she hadn’t actually thought much about Eliot over the last few days, beyond his superheroing. “We still going shopping for a prom dress tomorrow?”

“Yes. Is it all right if Bethy comes along? Girls’ day out?”

Anna’s first impulse was to argue. Bethy would talk too much and complain and she didn’t know anything about prom dresses. But she stopped herself, because really, having Bethy along might be kind of fun.

“Okay,” she agreed.

Among several news stories lost and buried amid the feverish reporting of the Executive and the battle at Horizon Tower was the report that Judge Roland had quietly resigned his position in the city court—and fled the country. The whereabouts of the criminal lowlife Jonathan Scarzen were also unknown. After his release, he, too, seemed to have fled. The Commerce Eye refrained from speculating that the two disappearances might be connected, and in refraining raised that exact possibility. The website Rooftop Watch had no such compunctions and praised the work of the superhuman vigilante Espionage in drawing attention to such activities when no one else could.

That was when Anna and Teia both realized that they had absolutely no control over what publicity they got. It was almost a relief.

Finally finally finally. West Corp won the planning committee bid, the development project was go. Contracts issued, ground broken, construction under way. The weight lifted. Celia managed to delegate most of her West Corp duties until all she had left was facing the promise she’d made.

They went on vacation.

It hardly seemed fair, though, lying on a warm beach under a bright sun and feeling cold. She wore a hat and knit gloves, and held a blanket wrapped around her. More side effects of the chemotherapy—she was always cold, always shivering. But she had only one more treatment, and the blood tests looked promising. The end was in sight, the light at the end of the tunnel was bright, and it wasn’t the light of an oncoming train. They probably should have waited to take the holiday until treatment was finished entirely, but everyone was so tired, so worn out. Not just physically but also emotionally, from all the anxiety, the long nights, the uncertainty. Celia wasn’t going to make them wait on her account. She needed this as well, and if she was going to be sitting around bundled in blankets anyway, she might as well be someplace beautiful, like Cascade Beach.

She wouldn’t have missed this for anything.

The kids had found a volleyball net in the storage closet of the beach house and set it up in the stretch of sand out front. Bethy, Suzanne—wearing a leg brace and still limping from her injury but gamely hobbling through—Teia, Lew, and even Analise had joined the current rousing match, not following any particular rules, bumping and slamming the ball back and forth accompanied by much laughter. Celia wanted so much to join in. Soon, she would. When she’d recovered. This gave her something to work for. In the meantime, their laughter warmed her.

There was a lesson here, one she reveled in: Suffering and happiness weren’t incompatible. She was in pain, but somehow she was contented, lying in her lounge chair. Happy, even. Her family was here, they loved her, and they had survived. As soon as she got some energy back, she’d shout her triumph to the skies.

Even Arthur had relaxed—as much as he ever did. He’d abandoned his jacket and shoes, rolled up his trouser cuffs and sleeves, and walked on the beach, contemplative. Celia turned from the game to watch him. He’d followed the edge of the water to an outcrop of distant rocks and was returning now, hands in pockets, looking over the sea. She couldn’t read his expression from so far away, but she could mark the line of his jaw, watch his brown hair toss in the wind. His hair had thinned but was still brushed back from his face in scruffy waves. He was still handsome, in her eyes. He was hers, she’d never had to question it. From a hundred yards away he looked up, feeling her gaze and thoughts upon him. Raised a hand in a wave, and she smiled.

He wandered back, pulled up a chair beside her.

“You look happy,” she said.

“I like it here. It’s quiet. Not many people around.”

He could lower his defenses here. He looked ten years younger. She reached for him, and he gently took her hand. He always knew exactly how firmly he could squeeze before hurting her oversensitive skin. She rested lightly against him.

The door to the beach house opened and closed, and Anna came out. Long tan legs, shorts and tank top, pure lanky youth. She stood at the edge of the porch for a moment, looking out, pensive, before dragging over another lawn chair and sitting by her parents. She should be happy, Celia thought. I should tell her to be happy, but she remembered seventeen.

“Hey there,” Celia said, deciding to keep it simple. “You decided to come out.”

Anna screwed her face up, tapped her foot. “I knew that Dad was back. I wanted to talk.” She glanced at them both, tried to smile.

Celia looked at Arthur; this might have been a first, and she was afraid to move, in case the moment passed too quickly.

“We’ve been waiting for months for you to say that,” Arthur said gently.

“Years,” Celia corrected, then hunkered into her blanket, apologetic. Arthur rested his hand on her arm, a touch of comfort.

They remained quiet, waiting for their eldest daughter to find words.

“Dad, I can’t read people like you can. But I still feel it. I don’t think I can handle it. Mom, when I thought you were gone I didn’t know how I was going to handle it, and then it turns out you’re sick, and someday you’ll be gone. And…” She looked at Arthur. “How do you keep from hurting when you lose someone?”

“You don’t. It overwhelms you, and then you move on. You must move on or you die, and there’s too much to live for for that.”

She frowned. “You make it sound easy.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t easy. But the strength comes to you.” He brushed Celia’s cheek. “Though I would very much prefer it if you waited to leave until after I’m gone.”

It would be better that way. She wouldn’t have to sit there, watching his very mind fade. She would try to last long enough to save him from that. Sighing, she said, “I’m trying.”

Anna’s face had puckered, a young woman trying very hard not to cry. She’d asked how she would ever survive one of them dying, and what did they do? Gave her a picture of both of them leaving her. I’m a terrible parent. I had nothing to do with my daughters turning out so well.

Celia reached out her other hand, the one not claimed by Arthur. Anna might just as easily have walked away from it, but she didn’t. She took it maybe just a little too hard, but Celia wasn’t going to complain.

“What’s it like for you?” Celia asked. “Knowing where we are, being able to feel us?”

“It’s hard to explain. All I have to do is think of you and you’re there, in the back of my mind. It’s like the world is full, my brain is full. But that’s okay—it felt worse when it was empty.”

“The power means you’re never alone,” Arthur added.

“Yeah, it’s like that.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Celia murmured. She turned her gaze back to the volleyball game, which had degenerated into some kind of kickball-tag mashup that traveled down the beach. The kids ran ahead, and Suzanne and Analise trailed behind at a slower pace, side by side. They were talking—Suzanne giving the younger woman advice, Celia hoped. On how to be superpowered, how to be superpowered and a mom at the same time. How to get over losing a heroic husband.

Bethy stopped in the middle of sprinting, looked over, frowned. Arthur waved at her, and she stumbled through the sand to them. With a lack of self-consciousness that probably wouldn’t last too much longer, Bethy flopped into her father’s chair, half sitting on his lap and forcing him to make room for her. He put an arm around her, anchoring her.

The whole family. My family, Celia thought fiercely, proudly.

“What’s up?” Bethy said. A loaded question that also asked: Is something wrong, is everything okay, and you’re not leaving me out, are you? A teenage girl testing out her place in the world. For the first time ever, Celia wanted her babies back. The babies were so much easier to comfort.

“Family bonding,” Celia said. Amusingly, Bethy wrinkled her nose. But she didn’t run away.

Anna studied Celia’s hand, and the screwed-up expression on her face meant another question was coming. She waited. Finally, Anna said, “Mom. Can you tell me about when Grandpa died?”

Oh, is that all … The family history that they all knew and never talked about. All those lurid biographies and exposés, and the poor kid had probably read them all, without any context. Celia never talked about it, she realized.

But she owed this to Anna. To both of them.

“I wish you could have known him. He’d have been so proud of you both—”

“Even if my power isn’t—”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “He’d have understood.”

Clearly skeptical, Anna looked at Arthur, who would obviously know the truth about what Warren West had or hadn’t thought. But Arthur was very good with other people’s secrets.

He said, “We can’t say exactly what he would or wouldn’t have done now. I will say, he knew he’d made mistakes. He simply wasn’t very good at expressing himself.”

Celia rubbed at her eyes. Her father had never been able to admit he was wrong about anything during his lifetime. But maybe she just hadn’t been paying attention. “Oh, no, he was excellent at expressing himself, as long as he could punch through a nearby wall.”

“Well, yes. He was excellent at expressing anger and frustration.”

Anna and Bethy both blinked at them in wide-eyed horror. Yeah, this stuff wasn’t in most of the biographies.

“He sounds kinda scary,” Bethy said.

“You would not be wrong,” Arthur said, his thin smile showing clear amusement.

Anna said, “So you never actually, you know, talked to him about this. Powers, or what happened with you and the Destructor, or anything?”

“Oh, no, he was right there when the chief of police questioned me about the whole thing,” Celia said, grinning.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. And no, we never really talked about it. Seems pretty typical for me. Girls, I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because I thought I was protecting you, that it would be easier for you if I didn’t tell.”

“Yeah,” Anna said. “Me, too.”

Celia smiled, and Arthur’s grip on her hand gave her the strength she needed, as he wrapped her up with the warmth of his mind.

“Anna, Bethy. We kept the command room and most of the other equipment operational for you. Just in case, whether you had powers or not. It’s yours, if you want it.”

They both looked like lemurs, processing that. Celia still didn’t know if this was the right thing to do. They were too young. But it was out of her hands now, and that was okay.

“Do you want me to? Do the vigilante thing? I know that’s what your dad wanted you to do and you didn’t—but what do you want us to do?”

Be safe, be happy …

—You’ve done all you can on that score.—

—I know.—

“It’s not up to me,” Celia told them. “To either of us. You have to decide.”

“I want it!” Bethy said, coming abruptly to her feet. “I know I don’t have powers, but the Hawk didn’t, and I can do it, I know I can!”

Celia winced. She was way too young. “You’re still on an eight o’clock curfew, my dear.”

“Anna?” Arthur prompted.

The young woman’s face was puckered in thought. “I have to think about it,” she said.

That was fair. Celia settled back in her chair. “Now, what else do you want to know about the family business?”

They talked for a couple of hours. Celia had ended up telling so much more than Anna had expected. Not just about the day Captain Olympus died, but about everything leading up to it, the years Warren and Celia West had refused to speak to each other, the fights, the reasons Celia joined with the Destructor, and why and how she left. All very sensational, and Celia told it all, only from her it was family drama, not superhero mythology. Celia had cried, some. It had happened so long ago, Anna figured it was old news to her, that all emotion would have been drained from the stories. But no.

Arthur added some commentary. Celia still partly blamed herself for the death of Captain Olympus. Arthur explained that this was a common result of the survivor’s guilt that plagued her.

Survivor’s guilt. That was what Anna had felt in Sam’s hospital room.

And then there was the rest of it. Celia gave them the command room. Anna still didn’t know what to think about that.

Telling the story had drained Celia, and she slept, right there in the lounge chair. Arthur stayed with her, Suzanne went in to start dinner, and the games ended. Thoughtful, Anna walked out to the beach to sit and watch the waves come in. She understood why her father liked it so much out here. The motion of the water cleared her mind like nothing else. She needed her mind cleared.

After a little while, Teia joined her. Two girls, sitting on the beach, staring out. Thinking too much.

“I wonder how much of it I could freeze, if I put my mind to it,” Teia said finally.

“You going to try?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I have to admit. I’m kind of scared of what would happen if I really could do it.”

“Maybe you’d better not try, then.”

“Yeah.”

The sound of it, Anna decided, the shushing and splashing, the roar that became a trickle and back again, was beautiful. Dark clouds were building on the horizon.

“Is that Lew?” Anna asked.

“No, that’s just a storm.”

Finally, Anna turned to Teia and said, “We’re going to keep doing this, right? We have to keep going.”

Teia pressed her lips together, nodded. “Yeah. We do. We will. But I think we need a new name.”

Anna thought so as well, and the new name was on the tip of her tongue. She was afraid to say it, in case Teia’s idea was different. The last thing she wanted was to argue this all over again. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“You have an idea, don’t you? You say your idea first.”

She took a deep breath and said, “The New Olympiad.”

And Teia smiled. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Anna held her hand out, and Teia clasped it.

The waves rolled on.