Kingfisher
Real name: Jacques Rouze
Powers: Flight, energy shield.
Notes: Pioneered Skyra, the air-based martial art for flying metahumans, which includes both unarmed and weapon-based techniques. Founding member of the Light Brigade, a supergroup that patrolled the skies over Europe from 1949-1958. Following the signing of the Seoul Accord, Rouze accompanied the Alpha League to the lunar colony. Rouze has not returned to Earth since.
—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0098]
***
Niobe kicked the van’s dented bumper. “Bloody hell.”
Empty. Abandoned. They’d missed their chance; that son of a bitch Quanta had stuck his goddamned magic sword in the car and got away clean. They’d lost two hours fixing the damage after they limped off the highway.
The Carpenter sat on the back bumper inches from where she’d kicked, silhouetted by the open doors and the empty back, idly chewing on an apple he’d brought from the car. It infuriated her to see him so calm.
The tracking device she’d shot at the van during the chase had done its job. Trouble was, by the time they got to the underground parking lot, Quanta and his henchmen were long gone. The van was free of prints, free of everything. She’d even scoured the entire car park looking for something—a tyre tread mark, a cigarette butt, anything—but they had no luck. Story of my life.
“You look pleased with yourself,” she snapped at Solomon. She was being unfair, but she was frustrated. They’d been so close.
He shrugged and smiled below his half-mask. “I got to throw a tree at them. Been a while. Never gets old.”
She scowled. The tree had taken out one of the vans, but Met Div had rounded up the metas inside before she and the Carpenter could get them to talk. Now the villains would be locked up deep in the bowels of Met Div headquarters, and getting in again right now was out of the question. The cape coppers would be doing their best to make the bastards squeal about Quanta’s location, of course, but that wasn’t much use to her. The coppers weren’t exactly going to be forthcoming with anything they learned.
“Calm down, Spook,” the Carpenter said. He patted the bumper beside him. “Take a load off.”
She ignored him and continued to pace. She had to work out how this all fitted together. Quanta dressed like he was trying to sneak into a royal wedding, but there was ruthless logic behind those cold eyes. It didn’t make sense. His demands were pure insane supervillain, but her gut told her he was neither psychotic nor a psychopath. Even those dead eyes were an act; she saw that when he leapt onto their car. Then his eyes had blazed with excitement. And admiration.
Solomon continued to munch on his apple in silence. She gave the van another kick, half-hoping something useful would dislodge. All she got was a sore toe.
“If you’re going to sit there,” she said, “at least help me think.”
He took another bite of the apple. “All right,” he said with his mouth full. “How about the timing? It’s all wrong. Sam’s what, thirteen? If his dad really was Dr Atomic, the kid should be in his twenties.”
She nodded. That had been bothering her as well. Oppenheimer’s wife and children were killed by German agents around 1950. Oppenheimer retired and disappeared from the public eye, and died a few years later. It was 1969 now. None of it added up. “But the guys in the picture are Robert and Frank Oppenheimer. No doubt about that.”
“Doesn’t make the kid Dr Atomic’s son.”
“So you think Frank Oppenheimer picked up a stray and gave the kid that picture? Why? It doesn’t make sense.”
The Carpenter grinned. “None of it makes sense. That’s what makes it so fun.”
“You’re a pain in the arse, Carpenter, you know that?”
He finished the apple, tossed the core into a rubbish bin, and rose unsteadily to his feet, leaning on the van for support. Niobe stopped pacing to watch him. The thing with the tree. It took more out of him than I thought. She made to help him, but he waved her off. Her frustration faded. He wasn’t as strong as he used to be, she realised.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I ain’t dead yet. But these questions are too hard for me. If you’re finished getting huffy, maybe it’s time we found someone to ask.”
“You have someone in mind?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said, smiling.
“Does he happen to be a balding American ex-superhero?” she said.
He tipped his hat to her. “See, this is why you’re the brains of the operation.”
They got back in the car, Niobe behind the wheel. She lit up a cigarette and drove out of the parking garage.
“I wasn’t getting huffy,” she said after a minute.
He pulled his hat over his eyes. “Drive, Sherlock.”
~~~
After an hour dodging the police cars that still roamed the streets, Niobe and Solomon found a good vantage point to check out the television studio. The place was under full lock-down. A radio broadcast they tuned into was buzzing with words like “radiation poisoning” and “suspected nuclear device”. Maybe it was true. The only people brave enough to venture into the building were dressed in full-body hazard suits, and they only stayed in for ten minutes at a time.
Whatever he was planning, this Quanta wasn’t screwing around.
The radio advised people to remain in their homes, and for the most part, it looked like the public agreed. The sun rose on a city that was remembering what it was like to be afraid.
When they figured there was nothing else they could learn from staking out the television studio, Niobe drove on. A few minutes later, they pulled into an alley near the Starlight Hotel and changed into civilian clothes before getting out of the car. Solomon had stuck on a fake beard and run some white powder through his hair to make himself look older, while Niobe had painted on a thick layer of makeup. She hated wearing makeup, but it was that or masks, and they agreed that appearing in costume in daylight was a good way to get themselves shot right now. The radio said Met Div were already conducting investigations in the Old City, trying to shake out some leads. Niobe’s mind went to Gabby, sitting alone in their apartment. If the cops came again….
No. Gabby had probably built new security measures for the apartment already. She’ll be fine, Niobe told herself for the millionth time. She almost believed it.
She activated the car’s security system and they walked the short distance back to the street. No dramatic entrance this time. She peeked in at the hotel lobby. Nearly empty except for the clerk on duty. No chance of sneaking to the lifts unnoticed. They went to the payphone just outside the hotel entrance.
“You wanna do the honours?” Solomon asked.
Niobe peeked through the hotel’s revolving door again at the reception desk. “It’s a female clerk. Middle-aged, no wedding ring. Do you still have any charm left in your old age?”
He raised an eyebrow and picked up the phone. “I think that was a challenge. Gimme the number.”
She dialled for him while he fed coins into the slot. She heard it ringing, then she ducked back to the door and watched as the hotel clerk picked up the phone. She could just make out her lips moving.
“Hello, Rose,” Solomon said in the smoothest voice she’d ever heard him use. “What a lovely name.”
Niobe snorted.
“I’m Officer Peters from the police,” he continued. “Sorry for calling so early. Is it just you on duty this morning?”
Niobe watched the woman speak into the phone.
“That’s fine,” Solomon said. “I need you to do me a favour. You’ve heard the news from last night? We’re trying to track down one of the vehicles used in the attack, and we’ve received a tip that it might be in the area. We’re a bit busy, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
She said something, and Solomon laughed good-naturedly.
“No, no, nothing like that. I just need you to go outside and check the car park for a white van with the plate E-O-nine-zero-five-four.” Silence for a moment. “Sorry, I know you’re not supposed to leave the desk. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. You could help me track down some very bad people. Tell you what, you nip outside and have a quick look, and I’ll come by tomorrow night when things have quietened down a bit and take you to dinner. It’s the least I can do.”
The woman touched her hair, and her lips spread in a smile. Niobe couldn’t believe it. She shook her head. “The world’s gone mad,” she muttered.
“You will? That’s great. Thank you very much, Rose. I’ll stay on the line.”
He let the handpiece dangle from the phone and grinned. “Done.”
“Show-off,” she said. They ducked around the side of the hotel just as the clerk came through the doors and hurried towards the car park. Her cheeks were pink.
“You’re going to break that poor woman’s heart,” Niobe whispered as they snuck through the revolving doors and crossed the hotel lobby.
“I know. I’m pure evil.” He winked. “I’ll send her some flowers.”
Niobe slipped into the lift, pressed the button for the fourth floor, and held the door while Solomon stepped in behind her. The doors slid closed and the lift began to move.
Niobe took off her glasses and pulled on her mask and goggles. Solomon put his mask and hat on as well, tearing off the fake beard as he did so. They didn’t have time for a full costume change, but hero or not, she didn’t trust Frank Oppenheimer. He’d kept too much from them.
The elevator doors opened. No one in sight, not even cleaning staff. Silently, they made their way to room 408.
She grew tenser as they approached the door. Frank Julius—or Frank Oppenheimer—had taken on a new persona in her mind. He was Omegaman, the ghost of Los Alamos. In his prime, he’d been the perfect antithesis to his brother, Dr Atomic. In his black and grey costume he went places the rest of the Manhattan Eight couldn’t reach, neutralizing Nazis or supercriminals and their minions.
Niobe inserted her pick in the door to room 408 and worked the pins. Next to her, Solomon cracked his neck and pulled back his jacket to touch the handle of the hatchet hanging there. It wouldn’t do them any more good than her gun if it came to that. If Omegaman retained even a tenth of his previous speed and power, he could best them easily. But if they knocked, they’d alert him to their presence. And if he fled before they could talk to him, they’d be left with nothing. He wasn’t going to give up information easily.
No one ever does.
The last pin gave in to her pick, and she licked her dry lips. She glanced at Solomon, nodded once. He swallowed and gave her a smile. The effect was spoiled somewhat by the twitch in his cheek.
With a twist of the torsion wrench, the lock clicked and the door swung open.
The light struck her like a bomb going off. She flinched and twisted, her hands going to her eyes. The goggles did nothing to stop the searing pain in her retinas. No chance of turning to shadow under the light’s onslaught. She heard the Carpenter grunt, but she was too blinded to see where he’d gone. Blinking away the purple afterimage, she took a step back and reached for her gun. Something moved to her right. A figure passed through the wall, like a ghost of black and silver. And then it came for her.
The figure was behind her before she could move. A strong arm embraced her almost tenderly, and something sharp pierced the side of her neck. She was falling. By the time she hit the ground, she was out.
~~~
Niobe woke to light piercing her eyelids. She could sense it all around her, leaving no room for shadows. A flex of her wrists was all it took to determine she was tied to the chair. Tight, too. They hadn’t skimped on the quality of the rope that bound each of her ankles to the chair legs. Without opening her eyes, she tested the range of movement in her hands. There was no way she’d be able to reach her utility belt, if it was still in place. Mentally, she checked herself for any signs of injury. She was still a little sore from her fight with Avin, but no new pains stabbed at her. That’s something, I suppose.
She opened her eyes into slits, still feigning unconsciousness. Her goggles were still in place; another small mercy. A dozen lamps and torches pointed at her from every direction, propped up on tables and chairs. Whatever wattage the lights were putting out, it was way above the manufacturers’ specifications. In the glare, it was difficult to see, but she’d bet good money she was in Frank Oppenheimer’s hotel room. A figure was silhouetted in the chair beside her, the brim of his hat drooping over his face.
“Carpenter,” she whispered. “You okay?”
He lifted his head an inch, and she caught the glint of his eyes in the reflected light. “You know, I’m starting to think we may not be the master tacticians we thought we were.”
She wriggled in her seat. “I think this chair’s wood. Can you get me out?”
Something moved in the corner of her vision. Silver flashed, and before she could react, the point of a thin dagger touched her throat. No, not a dagger. A sword-cane.
“Don’t try it, Carpenter,” a man’s voice said. “Who do you think is faster, you or me?”
Her body screamed at her to suck in air and turn to shadow. Not an option. She pushed the urge aside. Bugger it all, she was stuck.
“G’morning, Frank,” she said.
The blade stayed in place, but Frank Oppenheimer slowly moved into her line of vision. Squinting through the light, she saw he wore civilian clothes: a grey shirt tucked into a pair of black trousers. His movements were fluid, with none of the creakiness she’d seen last time. It had all been a damn act.
“Bit early in the day for all this, isn’t it?” the Carpenter said. His voice was thin. “We just came for a chat.”
For a moment, Frank said nothing. He leaned forwards a little, until he was close enough for her to see that his face was drawn and his forehead was creased with deep wrinkles. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Her palms grew damp.
Finally, he spoke, his voice quiet and measured. “I’ll ask you this once and once only. Do you work for him?”
Him? “You mean Quanta?” she asked.
“Funny,” the Carpenter said. “We were about to ask you something similar. To be honest, you’re not exactly doing a great job convincing us you’re not.”
Frank scowled, and the blade’s point dug into her skin.
“Carpenter, shut up,” she said. “We don’t work for Quanta. We don’t work for anyone. We’re just trying to find your nephew, Frank. Or do you still prefer Omegaman?”
If he was surprised she knew who he was, he didn’t show it. “Those days are over.”
“Not for Quanta, apparently,” she said.
“How’s the TV reception in here?” the Carpenter chipped in. He just couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut. “I take it you caught the evening news. Old buddy of yours in the cage, right?”
Frank paused, and a moment later the blade was gone from her throat and his hands were in his pockets. Still, she knew Frank could slit both their throats before either of them could react. Omegaman wasn’t a speedster—though he could still thrash any normal in a foot race—but he was agile.
“Hayne was a terrible man,” Frank said. He turned away from them. “He always was. Smarter than he looked, though. He never let his guard down when we were active.”
She tried again to get enough give in the rope to reach her utilities, but the bonds just dug into her wrists.
“We know who Sam is,” she said.
No reaction.
“Ever think some of that information might have been relevant to our investigation?” the Carpenter said.
“It was too risky to tell you,” Frank said. “It’s always been too risky. I had to protect him.”
“And a fine job of that you did,” the Carpenter said.
Frank’s back stiffened, but he didn’t raise his voice. “I still haven’t decided if I can let you walk out of here knowing what you know. Don’t test me.”
“Quanta already knows,” Niobe said, trying to suppress a growing frustration. “How much longer do you think your precious secret’s going to last?”
“I need to protect Sam,” he said again.
“No. You need us to do our jobs. I don’t care about you, Frank, and I don’t trust you. We’ve got a bunch of ex-heroes aligning themselves with that supervillain, and for all I know you might be one of them. I’m here for Sam. I don’t know what Quanta wants with him, but given what he just did to Iron Justice, I don’t think the son of Dr Atomic is going to have a long, fruitful life ahead of him. Not unless you let us go and let us do our fucking jobs.”
Her hands had formed fists so tight her nails dug into her palms. With a conscious effort, she forced herself to relax and breathe. She couldn’t let her emotions get out of control.
For a few minutes, silence filled the room. Far away, she could still hear the wail of sirens through the city. The coppers were wasting their time. Quanta was way out of Met Div’s league.
Finally, Frank turned back to face them. “I think I believe you. I heard how you went after Quanta’s people last night. There aren’t many metas who throw trees around.” He sighed. “And I suppose I don’t have any other choice.”
“Swell,” the Carpenter said. He wriggled his hand beneath the ropes. “If you don’t mind…?”
Frank nodded, and he held up the sword-cane. Her stomach clenched at the sight of it, but he just sliced through the bonds around her wrists and ankles and then moved to free the Carpenter. A thousand needles prickled her fingers as the blood rushed back. She pulled back the sleeves of her jacket and rubbed her wrists where the ropes had left purple marks.
She stood up—slowly. Oppenheimer made no move to stop her. Stretching felt good. Whatever Frank had drugged her with was potent stuff. She stepped outside the ring of lights, and for a moment she pressed herself into the darkest corner she could find, avoiding the morning light coming through the window. It was heaven to be out of the glare.
She found her gun sitting on the table. A sudden, insane urge gripped her, telling her to put a stun round in Frank Oppenheimer and get some real answers. But she just slipped the gun back into its holster beneath her jacket. She wasn’t going to solve this with violence. Not when Omegaman could kill her before she could blink.
She picked up the Carpenter’s hatchet and tossed it to him. It slowed and stopped in mid-air, then settled gently into the loop on his belt. He tipped his hat to her.
“All right, Frank,” she said, “here’s how I see it. You need us, that much is clear. If you didn’t, you would’ve already gone after Quanta yourself.”
He said nothing while he busied himself unplugging a cord from the wall socket. All the lamps and torches went out at once.
Niobe checked her pockets and utility belt to make sure he hadn’t helped himself to anything while she was out. Everything was in place. She continued.
“I figure you’re afraid to go out. You know Quanta knows too much about you.”
Silence for a moment. Then he began to speak. “It’s not fear. Twenty-five years ago, when I stopped being a physicist and became a weapon, when I found myself crawling through German bunkers in Berlin, hunting down the last of Hitler’s inner circle to put my knife in their spines, that was fear. This is logic. Pure, cold logic. Something happened, and now Quanta has a line on me. If I try to move against him, he’ll know, and he’ll kill me before I can kill him.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Sam needs me more than he knows. If I die, he’s lost. I won’t die.”
“So Quanta already tried to make a play for you,” the Carpenter said.
Frank grunted. “I came to New Zealand to meet someone. Someone I’d known for thirty years. We went to college together, for God’s sake. He’d moved out here to work in Unity Corporation’s agricultural research subsidiary. Their main work was in genetics, improving beef and milk yields, but they’d also been studying the effects of the Auckland bomb on livestock. He got a message to me through a series of old friends, saying he had something I would want to look at. Something that would keep Sam safe forever. We set sail for New Zealand the next day.”
“A trap?” Niobe asked.
He nodded, and his thick eyebrows drew down low over his eyes. “They nearly had me. Metahumans, maybe a dozen of them. They’d stunned me before I knew what was happening, before I could phase away through the walls or the floor. There was a psychic there, I think he put a trace on me.”
So that was why he couldn’t do this himself. The psychic would sense it as soon as Frank came within half a mile of him. Without surprise, even Omegaman couldn’t fight all of Quanta’s metas at once.
Frank paused for a moment, then continued. “I only got away because one of them tripped when they were putting me in the cage. I fought my way free and went straight back to the boat. I had to get Sam and get out. But something was wrong. I could tell someone was watching the boat. I got in the water a few hundred yards up and swam back, staying underwater as much as I could. Phased up through the hull of the boat. But Sam was already gone.” He scowled. “I grabbed what I needed and left.”
She was having trouble summoning sympathy for him. He’d dragged the kid halfway round the world for this crap, only to be stupid enough to walk into something like that. So much for all the cautious uncle bullshit. Sam would’ve been better on his own.
She fished out her now-crumpled cigarette pack and extracted a Pall Mall. Frank frowned at her, but he didn’t say anything when she lit up.
“All righty,” the Carpenter said. He crossed his arms and perched himself on the edge of a table. “Maybe you should explain to us kids at the back of the class how the heck Dr Atomic managed to get himself an extra son no one knew about.”
“Not to mention one apparently born years after Robert’s death,” she added.
If the subject of his brother’s death was painful to him, Frank didn’t show it. “It’s complicated.”
“Simplify it,” the Carpenter said.
Frank sighed. “The world considers Dr Atomic to be the world’s most multi-talented superhero, as well as the most powerful. Speed, flight, telekinesis, bullet-resistance. The jack of all trades, and master of them all, too. But really, all his powers were manifestations of a single ability. He was a psychic, an impossibly strong one. There was almost no limit to how he could manipulate the world around him.” He locked eyes with her. “Like I said, in those early days, we were weapons. Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project, they were military projects, and so were we. No one could kill Nazis like Dr Atomic.”
His eyes caught the glint of a lamp’s bulb, and she could tell Frank wasn’t there in the room with her. She breathed out a lungful of smoke into the silent room, and waited.
“One night in forty-five we were hiding out in a farmhouse a few miles from Berlin. I found him huddled in the corner, crying. I hadn’t seen him do that since we were children. It took a while before I could get him to tell me what was wrong. But in the end it came out. He’d been hearing voices. And not just any voices. The voices of those he’d killed. For the last two months, there had been an ever increasing chorus of babbling and screaming and begging inside his head.”
“Psychosis?” she said. “Or a tumour?”
He shook his head. “When we were stateside again, the metahuman doctor gave him a psych evaluation and brain scan. No tumour, no atrophy, no simple psychosis. But with Mr October’s psychic help, the doctor figured it out. It wasn’t a hallucination. Whenever my brother killed someone, their mind left an imprint on his hypersensitive psyche. Like voices on a gramophone record. And each new imprint fractured his mind a little more.”
She’d never heard this story. It wasn’t impossible. Psychics often had problems with mental instability. But in all the comic books and propaganda films, Dr Atomic was infallible. If there was someone standing in the way of freedom, he could always be counted on for a quip and a fast right hook. Through the haze of her cigarette smoke, Frank started to look old again.
“What do you know of Dr Atomic’s retirement?” he asked.
“His wife and kids got caught in a bomb meant for him.” It was one of the earliest events she could still remember since the Blind Man had taken her memories. The papers ran the story on Dr Atomic’s family for weeks. The assassins were never caught, though the Manhattan Eight had shaken down every major supercriminal they could get their hands on. Dr Atomic withdrew from the public limelight after that. A few years later, he was dead from throat cancer, and the world mourned.
“I never thought everyone would buy the story, but Mr October sold it. They’d left the world in our hands for years by then. They’d believe anything we told them.”
“Believe what, Frank?” she said.
“There was no assassin, no bomb,” he said. His voice was thin. “It was Robert. Dr Atomic killed his wife and children with his own hands.”
Her cigarette had almost burned down to nothing. Ash dropped onto her boots, but she barely noticed.
Frank closed his eyes. “He didn’t mean to. To this day, I believe that. My brother was a good man. He was the best of men. But the voices in his head did things to him. Those last few months, he never knew what he was doing, where he was. He screamed through the night. We all tried to help; we thought we could fix him. But after he killed his family, we knew what we had to do.
“It took all seven of us to bring him down. Protos and Mr October were in intensive care at the base for nearly three months after his psy-blast hit them. Protos left the hospital in a body bag. In the end, it came down to me and Iron Justice to bring down Robert. Hayne was the only one tough enough to take his attacks, and I was the only one quick enough to get behind him.”
“You killed him?” The Carpenter sounded incredulous. She wasn’t sure she believed it either. “You killed Dr Atomic?”
For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “Hayne wanted to. We probably could have. But when I went before the House Un-American Activities Committee and they accused me of being a Communist, Robert spoke for me. He was the one who brought me onboard at Los Alamos. We shared summers at the family cabin in New Mexico. The world loved Dr Atomic. But I loved Robert. He was my brother.”
“What did you do with him, then?” she asked.
“We imprisoned him. We built the strongest prison the world has ever seen, right in the middle of New Mexico, and we left him there. And there he stayed, out of his mind, never knowing what he had done, until the cancer got him.” He shrugged slowly. “Perhaps that was all the mercy we could hope for.”
She stubbed out the pitiful remnant of her cigarette, flicked it into the kitchenette sink, and stood awkwardly in place, hands in her pockets. She still didn’t trust Frank, but she couldn’t exactly be angry at him, either. She could barely remember her own brothers, but she tried to picture herself in Frank’s situation with Gabby or the Carpenter on the other side. The thought sent ice through her veins.
The Carpenter stepped up and put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Sorry, Frank. Really. That’s rough.” Solomon glanced at her and nodded towards the man.
“Yeah,” she said. “Condolences.”
Once more, the room was silent. She had a head full of questions, but interrogating him now seemed a tad on the insensitive side. She ran through what she knew of Dr Atomic’s deeds in her mind. It was around 1950 when he “retired”, and maybe ’53 or ’54 when he died. The accident at Los Alamos that led to the creation of the first heroes was in ’44, so Dr Atomic was active for around five or six years.
The Manhattan Eight had their share of enemies back in those days. The Russians weren’t too happy to get beaten in the race to Berlin, and there were rumours that at least some of the Manhattan Eight were sent on covert missions in the Soviet Union soon after the war. They were nearly sent to Japan as well, but Truman and his generals decided to show the world their other secret weapon, the atomic bomb. The US was making it clear that it wasn’t to be messed with.
But when the war was done, public support for military-backed superheroes waned. The Manhattan Eight—like many of the other fresh-faced heroes emerging at the time—were scientists at heart, not soldiers. Eventually, the government relented, and the Manhattan Eight became independent, dedicated to protecting the world and the innocent, not the interests of any one nation. Or so the comics went. Dozens of corrupt politicians, rogue states, supercriminals, and organised crime rings fell to them.
The Carpenter was the first to break the silence. “Question,” he said, raising his hand like a schoolboy. “If Dr Atomic killed his wife and kids, where does Sam come in?”
Frank nodded. “Kitty—Robert’s wife—figured out how sick he was long before the rest of us. When she found out she was pregnant again, she came to me. She was so scared. I don’t know what he’d done to her, and I didn’t understand then, not really, but I agreed to keep the pregnancy a secret. Robert was away for months at a time in those days, on mission after mission. Even when he was in the States, he barely visited her.” He shook his head. “God, I don’t know why it took me so long to understand how sick he was.”
He touched his fingers to his temple and continued. “Kitty had the baby alone, just her and her doctor. All she gave the child was a name before she passed him onto an old schoolfriend. Looking back, I think she knew that would be the last time she saw him.
“After Robert…after Kitty died, I tracked Sam down. Whatever had driven Robert to do those things was still driving him. I think he could sense the baby, even if he didn’t know what it was. If we failed to capture him, he’d find Sam. Future Girl had been leading the research on a cryogenics rig, and I went to her. Sam screamed his little lungs out when we put him in the machine. Ten minutes later, he was silent. Flash frozen. I didn’t unfreeze him until a couple of years after Robert’s death, when I could ensure his safety. I was worried bringing Sam out while Robert was still alive would give his broken mind the incentive he needed to mount an escape. I couldn’t risk it.”
“And since then, you’ve been on the move,” she finished for him. “Sheltering him.”
He nodded.
“You must know something about what Quanta’s up to,” the Carpenter said. “You saw him on TV. The bugger wasn’t wearing much of a mask. You must recognise him. An old enemy. Someone you lot fought back in the good old days.”
“No,” he said. His voice almost cracked. “I’ve spent the entire night searching my memory. There’s nothing. I’ve never seen that man before in my life.”
“There has to be something,” she pressed. “Anything.”
“I’ve told you everything. Everything. Only a handful of people in the world know what I’ve told you. The rest of the Manhattan Eight are dead, or lost forever, like Future Girl. Hayne and I were the last.” Pleading crept into his voice, and he took a step towards her. “Help me find Sam. My offer stands. Fifty thousand dollars. More, if you want. Please.”
Niobe met Solomon’s eyes. She could tell he was thinking the same as her. This had got more dangerous than they’d ever imagined. Quanta had tracked down Omegaman and the son of Dr Atomic. Sam was in his hands, helpless. And now Quanta knew they were after him. How long before he struck back and hit them where they lived? How long before he came for Gabby?
Gabby’s bloodied face flashed before her eyes, and her gut twisted. No. Niobe wouldn’t let him. She’d save Sam, return him to his uncle, and then get Gabby off this goddamn planet forever. She had to protect them. She had to protect everyone.
Or they were all dead.
~~~
The two of them were quiet on the drive back to the Old City. The day was growing warm as the morning wore on, but all Niobe wanted to do was sleep. Exhaustion seeped through her bones. Despite their best repair-work, the engine kept up a constant rattle. As long as she didn’t push it, she thought it would keep going all right.
The radio spouted a pair of matching statements from the Prime Minister and the Secretary-General of the AAU, claiming they would not bow to any of Quanta’s demands. After that, the early morning news reported the events at the TV station in such repetitive detail that she was nearly ready to put her boot through the damn radio. Instead, she settled for changing the station to one that dutifully played a Beatles tune every third song. Solomon stared out the side window. No jokes from him. No nothing. Probably as lost in his thoughts as she was.
They needed to regroup. Find somewhere to sit down and run through everything they knew. She still had the files from Met Div. They’d go through every page with a comb so fine a gnat couldn’t escape. There had to be something there that would lead them to Quanta. No one operated without leaving a trail.
A hiss crackled through the radio, drowning out John Lennon.
“Good morning, heroes.” The voice that came through the radio was distorted, but she recognized it instantly. She jerked upright in her seat and glanced away from the road to stare at the radio. No, it can’t be.
“I had Screecher help me connect to your radio,” the voice said. It had a strange echo to it, not like any sort of radio distortion she’d heard before. “Don’t worry, no one else can hear us. This little conversation is a private chat. Well, I say conversation, but since I’m only transmitting, I suppose I’ll be doing most of the talking.”
The Carpenter met her eyes. A beat passed, and then he was punching the button for the recording equipment while she pulled into a dark street corner. She killed the engine and a spool of magnetic tape began recording the transmission.
“I assume you both know who this is, but I should introduce myself properly. I am, of course, Quanta. I suppose we are something of adversaries at the moment.”
There was definitely something weird about the distortion. Maybe the echo wasn’t from the radio at all. Maybe it was on his end.
“Don’t worry about introducing yourselves; I know who you are. I couldn’t miss the Carpenter’s skilful use of that tree. I believe a half-dozen of my people are in police custody thanks to you. And I won’t forget you, Gloomgirl. Or is it Spook now?”
Her skin crawled.
“Marvellous work with the tracking device. I confess, I didn’t even notice it until we’d parked and one of my associates pointed it out to me. I wasn’t expecting such an enthusiastic response to my broadcast from the local meta community. Truth be told, Carpenter, I’d assumed you’d be in the ground somewhere, and as for you, Spook, you weren’t even on my radar.
“Now, I’m going to take a stab in the dark here, pardon the expression. You’re working with Oppenheimer, correct? You were at his boat, and it’s the only reason you could be onto us so soon after we hit the television station. And now I hear someone broke into the Metahuman Division’s headquarters and got into a bit of a kerfuffle with the good Senior Sergeant. My, you have been busy.”
How did he know all this? He must have people everywhere, or maybe he had a few powerful psychics under his command. He has my picture, she reminded herself. Her throat constricted at the thought. He was going to find out her name, if he didn’t already know. It was a race now. If they didn’t find Quanta before he found them, everyone they cared about was at risk.
“I just wanted to express my delight at having such worthy challengers against whom I can test my skill,” Quanta continued in his too-jovial tone. “There’s something traditional about all this, isn’t there? Like the old days. But you’d do well to remember these aren’t the old days. This is a neo-battle for a Neo-Auckland. War isn’t what it used to be.”
She could see his dead-eyed smile on the other end of the radio. I’ll make you eat that smile, you smug bastard.
He laughed like he heard her thoughts. There was a clang somewhere in the background, and then his echoing voice returned one more time. “I’ll see you soon. Try to keep up.”
Static. Then nothing.
~~~
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