Dreams of the Golden Age Read online

  Teddy and the others convinced her that they needed to practice more if they were really going to do this. They’d practiced some already—they put together a “study group” with the five of them, made excuses to their parents, hid themselves in Teddy’s backyard or other unobserved corners around school where they could test their powers without drawing attention or doing damage. But those sessions had always been in daylight, and they’d always, by necessity, been small. Unambitious. The others were getting restless. So now they were going big: gathering at City Park in the middle of the night, in costume, to finally let loose. Anna was sure they were all secretly hoping for the appearance of a swarm of muggers they could take down.

  What all this meant was Anna finally had to try out her plan to get out of the building.

  West Plaza had more security and surveillance than any other building in Commerce City, and that included the jail and the criminal wing of Elroy Asylum. Anna figured most of it was left over from the old days when her grandparents were the city’s greatest superheroes, and the plaza was the headquarters of the Olympiad.

  But the Olympiad had disbanded years ago, before Anna was born. As far as she knew, her parents had dismantled most of the equipment from then—but they’d kept the building’s security up-to-date. Why, Anna couldn’t say. She’d know it if they were doing some kind of vigilante gig and needed all that tech. They weren’t, because they were always exactly where they said they were going to be, and that usually meant at work during the day and home at night. More likely, her mother was just that paranoid. That meant she watched the elevators, the entrances, the lobby, the corridors, and could track everyone coming and going not just from the penthouse but from the entire building. Which made sneaking out something of a challenge.

  The building had dozens of standard, publicly marked exits, including emergency stairs—also under surveillance. Not that she could walk down West Plaza’s hundred flights and still be good for anything by the time she reached the bottom. For weeks she’d studied building plans, blueprints, and superhero fan websites like Rooftop Watch that speculated about how the Olympiad used West Plaza to hide its headquarters. She’d worked up harebrained schemes to smuggle herself out in boxes, or to bribe the security staff that worked the front desk. She hadn’t implemented any of them because they were pretty much all crazy. Best thing would be to use the study group excuse again and tell her parents she was going to the library, but she couldn’t very well say she was going to go study with friends at midnight.

  She refused to tell them what she was really doing. She didn’t want them to know she had powers, and her mother was already too close to the truth with her guess—it had to have been a guess—about Teddy. Her mother, father, grandmother, everybody would try to pin some kind of legacy on her, and Anna didn’t want that.

  Besides, how disappointed would they be when they found out how little she could actually do with her so-called power?

  Eventually, she’d discovered one of the Olympiad’s old secret elevator chutes. It didn’t lead to the penthouse, which might have been why her mother missed it. Instead, it ran along one of the staircases in the middle of the building and let out in the basement. It might have been a contingency, a way to traverse the building if the penthouse and headquarters had been compromised. It wasn’t sealed up like the command room and other Olympiad elevators, and it didn’t seem to have any cameras watching it. No alarm triggers.

  At first, she’d been terrified to try it. The mechanism controlling the car was probably fried after going unused for so long. But no—it wasn’t electrical. Another contingency, if power to the building was ever cut off. It ran on a kind of spring-loaded clockwork, with an automatic mechanical safety break. It couldn’t fail. She experimented with it before climbing into the narrow, two-person car herself. Riveted steel, undecorated, with no-slip rubber matting on the floor. The rubber had dried out over time and was hard, cracked. She pressed the lever, pointed it down, and the car slid smoothly on its rails to the basement and a hidden door. One that wasn’t covered by security cameras.

  She still brought her cell phone, just in case she had to call for a rescue. But she didn’t. She got out of the building just after midnight. Her phone didn’t ring, and no one came after her. Mom and Dad were in their bedroom, probably asleep. Their presences glowed in her awareness, tugging at that sixth sense that was her power. If Mom had been in her office, Anna might not have risked sneaking out. But no one knew she’d left; she was safe. The others were already at the park, so she had to rush. She took the last bus to travel the few blocks to City Park; Sam had a car and could take everyone back home.

  The bus stopped at the corner, and the driver looked at her funny when she got off. Girl in the park at midnight—yeah, what did he think she was going to do? Tugging her knit cap more firmly over her ears and wrapping her coat around her, she made her way along a jogging trail to the center of the park.

  City Park was supposed to be dangerous at night, people had been telling her that her whole life. That was half the reason they wanted to practice here in the first place, not just because it was wide open and unpopulated, but because they had a chance of actually seeing crime. Maybe they could stop it. Or try to stop it, rather.

  Teddy and Lew were already at it. Lew had a paintball gun, and Teddy, in full costume, or what currently passed as his full costume—sweats, T-shirt, a bandana with eyeholes cut into it over the top half of his face—was letting Lew hit him, paint spattering in flower patterns all over him. Then going invisible. The hits looked like they hurt. Lew wore a blue cloth mask tied around his eyes, making him look more like a pirate than a superhuman vigilante.

  Wearing a matching blue mask, Teia was sitting, along with Sam, on a bench under a maple tree, watching, looking bored. Anna joined them, and they scooted over to make room for her. Teia was a shadow under the tree, dark skin and dark clothes. Sam had his arms crossed and he smirked. A tanned white guy, he wore a bandana mask like Teddy and a red leather jacket as his costume. A pretty slick look, she had to admit. He was only sixteen, but he was the strongest of the bunch, the only one with any kind of training, even if that meant tae kwon do classes that he stopped taking when he was thirteen. He had muscled shoulders and an athletic, physical presence. He fidgeted a lot. Sometimes he’d snap his fingers absently and throw sparks off his skin.

  They were badass, which seemed to be the point for them, mostly. To her, this all still felt like playing house. None of this felt real. That was why Teddy went out the other night, to finally try to do this for real. They’d talked about it long enough. And she understood how they all felt, she really did. But they weren’t ready.

  “It’s sort of entertaining,” she observed finally.

  “If you like watching grass grow,” Teia said. She called out, “Hey Teddy, the whole point is if you’re invisible, you won’t get hit.”

  Anna said, “Use the code names, someone might hear us. There’s no point in wearing masks if we don’t use the code names.”

  Teia—Lady Snow, rather—rolled her eyes. “Fine. Hey, Ghost—how about you try not getting hit?”

  Teddy paused, huffing for breath. “But I need to learn to stay invisible. To fight through the pain.” He pumped a fist.

  Smack, another of Lew’s paintballs slammed into him. Teddy’s face twisted as he cringed, right before he went invisible, and reappeared twenty feet over a couple seconds later.

  Anna shook her head. Guy was a freaking masochist. “If the school nurse flipped out at your last set of bruises, she’s going to love this.”

  Sam called out, “I thought you were supposed to freaking phase out before you get hit.”

  “I’m trying, it just happens too fast! You guys are so smart, why don’t you get out here and try not to get hit!”

  If the paintballs were too fast for him to let them pass through his phased-out body, bullets would definitely be too fast.

  “Ghost, you’d better run!” Lew raised the
paintball gun again. The sadist to go with the masochist, evidently. They had about half an hour before the cops showed up, Anna guessed. When Teddy tried hiding behind a tree, Lew held up a hand, and a fierce gust of tightly focused wind shoved him back in the open. Lew called himself Stormbringer. This time, Teddy turned invisible, and Lew’s next paintball shot missed.

  “You are not getting into my car with all that mess on you,” Sam, code name Blaster, stated.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll change,” Teddy called between shots.

  The two of them seemed to be making this way more difficult than it really needed to be.

  “He’s making me dizzy,” Anna said, watching Teddy flicker in and out of visibility.

  “I keep telling you, it’s either this or go patrolling for real,” Teia said. They bent their heads together in a conference.

  “We’re not ready,” Anna declared.

  Teia didn’t argue about that. “So how did your grandparents get started? How much did they practice before they started?”

  “I’m not really sure. The biographies kind of gloss over that part.”

  “You don’t talk to your grandma about it at all?” Teia said, disbelieving. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Teia had spent enough time with Anna’s family, she knew that nobody talked about it. Suzanne West had gotten rid of her skin-suit uniform twenty years ago and never looked back. These days, she used her power of heat and flame mostly to cook.

  “It’s not that easy, okay? The minute I start talking about it, they’ll know something’s up, and I’ll either have to tell them what we’ve been doing or figure out how to lie about it to my dad.”

  “Ugh. Yeah, that would be a problem.”

  They all understood the need for secrecy, and not just because of tradition. If nothing else, they needed to keep their parents from grounding them until graduation.

  The next time Teddy turned visible, Sam cracked his knuckles and flung an arm toward him, pointing with flat fingers. Searing red lights shot out from the gesture, snapping through the air, leaving a trail of steam behind. The laser bolts hit Teddy, popping into his back, knocking him over. Sam had used low-intensity beams this time. They’d sting a little, not burn through, though Sam could do that, too, if he wanted. During one of the small-scale practices, Sam had burned through a steel garbage can in an alley. It had taken awhile, but he’d done it.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Sam said, grinning. Sam could be a bully sometimes.

  Teddy cried out in shock and fell, and though he stumbled back to his feet quickly enough, he’d lost his focus and remained visible. He turned on Sam. “Hey! What the hell?”

  Sam laughed. “I’m just helping out. Doesn’t do any good when you know Lew’s going to hit you. You need the element of surprise.”

  “Code names,” Anna muttered futilely.

  A determined frown settled on Teddy’s features, and he clenched his hands at his sides. Anna knew what came next, and sure enough, he vanished, and the scratching of running footsteps on the gravel path followed. Sam stood and ran, but that didn’t stop invisible Teddy from tackling him. From the outside, it looked as if Sam spasmed, leaping a few inches and then smashing into the ground. He writhed, hitting and punching, yelling. A few red bolts flashed from his hands, scattering wildly. Anna, Teia, and Lew scurried behind the tree trunk for shelter.

  Sam managed to grab Teddy’s hand the next time Teddy threw a punch, which was the major drawback for an invisible guy trying to fight hand to hand. Anna kept trying to convince him of that, and he kept not listening. The two were locked together now, trying to hit each other one-handed.

  Anna moved out from behind the tree and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ghost, now’s when you’re supposed to phase out!”

  There came a grunt of effort, and suddenly Sam was batting at air, his quarry slipped out of his grasp. He sat up and stared at his hands. “Okay, that was weird.”

  He fell over, shoved aside by the figure of Teddy, who was once against flashing in and out of visibility like the image on a broken TV. Sam hollered and fired another bolt, which slammed into a tree trunk and left it smoking. Just what they needed, to set the whole park on fire.

  “Would you guys stop it!” she shouted, but it didn’t help. They kept wrestling, Sam lunging back at Teddy, who wasn’t invisible and who forgot to phase out again. Maybe because he was amazed it had worked. It was almost funny. They crashed to the ground, landing punches on each other.

  Thunder cracked, and the temperature dropped enough to make Anna hug herself and shiver. Frost gathered on grass, and on Sam’s hair and clothing. Sam stopped fighting, and footsteps shuffled away from him as Teddy backed off.

  “Teia!” Sam called, jumping up, rubbing his arms. “Lady Snow!”

  Teia knelt, hand on the ground, where a fan of frost now grew. Smiling, she blew across her fingers, raising a cluster of ice crystals that dispersed in a fog. Lew laughed. The thunder had been Lew’s—Stormbringer’s. The Arctic Twins, Anna called them sometimes, but they didn’t approve. Anna wondered if both their powers were weather related because they were twins, and she wondered if anyone else in their family had weather-related powers. They insisted their parents didn’t have any powers at all, and they were probably right. Their father had died when they were nine. Anna remembered him as a big, amiable man. Their mother didn’t seem like the superheroing type.

  Anna’s mother probably knew for sure.

  “You guys need to grow up,” Teia said.

  “You need to take this seriously,” Teddy’s disembodied voice answered.

  Teia said, “How much more practice do we need? Teddy’s gone out already and did fine. We need to do something.”

  “He didn’t do fine, he got the crap beat out of him,” Anna said.

  “Only half beat,” Teddy said defensively. “Any fight you can walk away from…”

  Anna grumbled.

  “It’s simple,” Teia said. “We go out, find a way to prove ourselves, and do it. The crime rate in this city is terrible, and everyone keeps saying we need a new superhero team, and here we are.”

  Lew hefted the paintball gun like it meant something. “And if we’re really smart, we call the papers first so they can cover the story.”

  “That’s your worst idea yet,” Anna said. But Teia would side with her brother, along with Sam. Stalemate.

  Teia said, “Anna, the five of us together? We’re powerful. Even more powerful than the Block Busters. We can do this.” Everyone agreed that the Block Busters hardly counted as a crime-fighting team because they hardly went out together anymore.

  But Anna wasn’t powerful. If she was honest, she was scared. She couldn’t defend herself, she couldn’t stop anyone. Most of the time she couldn’t prove that she had a power at all. And they all knew it.

  “Then why don’t you go do it?” Anna said, tired. She hugged herself, trying to melt away the last of Teia’s frost, but her arms were still covered in goosebumps.

  “She’s just chicken,” Sam sneered.

  Teia was the one who jumped in with, “Sam, shut up, you don’t know anything about it. She’s not afraid. She just wants us to do this her way.” She turned to Anna, eyebrow lifted. “Right?”

  “I’m just saying we have to be careful,” she said, knowing she was losing this fight.

  Teia’s thin mask across her eyes didn’t do much to hide her identity, and if Anna were that pretty she wouldn’t either. She was sixteen, striking, and she knew how to stand—hands on hips, shoulders back—to look particularly heroic. “I say we announce ourselves, stage some events, get some publicity—”

  Anna said, “You can’t do that. My mother is watching us. She ID’d Teddy off one security tape. We have to be sure we can stay secret—”

  “Why?” Teia said.

  Anna had taken it for granted and resented having to explain it yet again. “Because that’s how they get you. It’s how they got to my mother, back in the day.” Th
e argument felt stale, she’d said it so many times. As soon as her grandparents’ secret identity had been revealed—that Captain Olympus and Spark were actually socialites Warren and Suzanne West—Celia became a target. She’d been kidnapped a dozen times after that. Even the Destructor had kidnapped her, leading to the whole sordid mess that happened after that. No, you had to keep the secret so they couldn’t find you.

  Teia disagreed. She crossed her arms and glared.

  Anna soldiered on. “You don’t go vigilante for the publicity, you do it because it’s the right thing to do. Because you can help people, save lives—”

  “And for the publicity,” Lew added, a roguish glint in his eyes.

  She just couldn’t win, could she?

  Teddy pointed. “You should listen to Anna, she knows what she’s talking about better than anyone.”

  “Because of her famous grandparents?” Sam shot back. “Because of her dad? They haven’t done anything in forever. Maybe if you could knock down walls I’d be more inclined to listen to you.”

  The bad arguments tended to come back to that. The others had flashy abilities, powers you could see, that could actually do something. Powers that looked good on camera. Hers, not so much. When she tried to explain to them how useful her power really was—who was going to be the one to track them down if they ever got in trouble, after all?—she sounded lame and whiney.

  And in the end, Teia was right. All of Anna’s credibility rested on her family name, and what did that really mean in the end? She couldn’t defend herself.

  “I’m right,” Anna said. “Give it time, you’ll see that I’m right.”

  “And I say we won’t know until get out there and do something,” Teia replied, pointing into the vague darkness of the city.

  They had arrayed themselves, Teia, Lew, and Sam on one side; Teddy and Anna on the other. They’d all settled on their places in the argument, and nobody was going to change anyone else’s mind.

  “So much for teamwork,” Anna muttered and walked away.