The Marvels

Ep. 41 | Everything Falls Apart

It was the day of the banquet.

In a few hours, Vidya would be sitting with the other Marvels in a hall full of two hundred guests she'd never met and nodding along as they all patted themselves and each other on the back. For now, she roamed the building in the same dress she'd worn at the resignation, the only difference being that if Flamethrower called her trash again, Vidya would say it back this time.

With everything going according to plan, there was nothing more to do and no way to take advantage of the spare time she had, so she just walked. She visited the floors she hadn't seen, taking time to admire the nuances in design and the views from the windows because she knew that once the future fiasco was initiated and she quit, she would never step foot in this building again.

The Marvels were sitting around in their meeting room, Lady Marvel fidgeting with her dress and Phase staring out the window, Echo nodding along but absolutely confused by some story Flamethrower was telling him. Vidya didn't understand why Fox wanted them all to be ready and present four whole hours before the banquet; maybe there was just nothing else they should be doing, or maybe there was still prepping to do, which rarely involved Frostbite, so she'd stuck around with them for only twenty minutes before leaving and going on her little side-quest to roam the building, and no one had stopped her.

Juggernaut hadn't been with them, and she didn't know where he was now, but she'd passed by him in the hallway. Like everyone else, he was all dressed and ready, knotting a tie that sort of looked like it was the same color as Lady Marvel's dress, but he'd looked irritated, walking fast to who knew where. Emika was following at his side and asking, How long will it take?, but that was all Vidya heard before they turned the corner. That was several minutes ago, and she hadn't seen them since.

She tapped her foot while waiting for the elevator, but there was no point in being impatient. The banquet was at nine in the evening, and it was only five-thirty. At this rate, she could catch a movie and still be back with time to spare.

The elevator doors were halfway closed when someone yelled to hold it. Vidya pushed the button to reopen them and waited as the approaching footsteps grew louder. A man walked in, so she took her finger off the button, but he didn't press for a floor.

"Hello, Frostbite," he said. "I've been meaning to talk to you."

Huh. So he'd asked her to hold the elevator because she was in it, not because he was in a rush. Who was he, though, and since when did anyone need to talk to lowly Marvel #6?

"I'm Michael Forrester," he said, "head of intelligence. I need to see your pager."

SHIT.

Vidya handed over her pager with a deceptively calm nod. She was so sure she'd done a good job of scaring Anna's mouth shut, but if she was wrong, if Anna had told Michael that she'd seen Frostbite in intelligence...was this a trap? When the elevator doors opened, would a dozen supers and security with guns be waiting for her?

Vidya didn't dare lean over to see what Michael was doing on her pager, so she looked at the reflections in his glasses instead. He was entering a very, very long password into a lock she didn't even know was there, moving through screens faster than she could keep up with. She held her breath, waiting.

"Now that you're eighteen," he explained without looking up from the screen, "we're going to increase your permissions. You now have access to a majority of our contacts, including River, our primary source, and you can request information from anyone on this list as well as me, the police, and, as needed, any state or federal departments."

Vidya nodded.

"You're also no longer restricted to Greater Los Angeles. That means you may receive assignments in the rest of California and out-of-state, and you can choose to travel by yourself and undertake hero work, so long as it's nothing the local authorities don't want you to do. Puerto Rico and the US territories are still restricted unless specified in an assignment."