After the Golden Age (Golden Age 1)

Maybe she could audit it to death.

Then again maybe, just maybe, she could limit the danger. Contain it. Save something. Hope Mark put the pieces together and brought his

father to justice. What a mess. And how terrible that she had time to think about it. To consider. To decide.

Her life had brought her to this moment. She had practiced for it. She didn’t hesitate.

Hands still bound, tucked to her chest, she ran to the knife switch that controlled the platform. With her luck, the power to it would be fried, sucked into the radiation emitter. Maybe it was on a different circuit.

How much time did she have? Minutes, seconds—

Holding her breath, forgetting to inhale, she reached the wall, crashing into it because she hadn’t thought to slow down—it would take too long, slowing down. She grabbed the switch with both hands, got under it, shoved it up.

Another spark flashed, a hiss like the circuit was failing—then gears creaked. The platform mechanism groaned to life. Slowly, the device sank below the roof, and the steel roof panel slid closed. The device, now enclosed inside the metal and concrete warehouse, glowed like a sun.

Next, she went to the computers. She’d fight it; right to the last moment when she didn’t have any time left, she’d try to stop it. Because if the radiation could penetrate walls, she hadn’t saved anything. At random, she toggled switches, hit keys, pulled cords.

The emitter’s noise changed, the whine rising in pitch. The light faded to orange—the color of something overheating, not the color of deadly energy. A shower of sparks flew, raining down on her like burning snow.

She laughed. She didn’t know if what she’d done would help anything. But she’d done something. Maybe it had helped. She’d tried, and that had to count for something. So she laughed, because the weight of something she couldn’t quite identify lifted from her. Elation made her lighter than air.

This was what her parents felt every time they saved the city, every time they battled evil and won. It was a high, addictive, they couldn’t stop. Something like that thrill she got when she found a lost piece of data, but so much more. Infinitely greater. As big as the world. Superhuman.

“Celia!”

Captain Olympus stood in the doorway that led to the loading dock. His fists were clenched, arms bent in his fighting pose.

“Dad!”

He ran to her. He wasn’t fast, not like the Bullet. He seemed to take forever to cross the distance. She wanted to meet him halfway, but her legs had turned to butter. She was melting in place. The room was getting hotter.

Then, he was right in front of her. He ripped the tape off her hands, gripped her shoulders, so full of intensity she could barely look at him.

“We have to get out of here, the thing’s going to blow up, Paulson said it’s radiation, going to kill everyone. I tried to stop it—”

“Shh, Celia, it’s okay, you did okay.”

The ambient noise shaking the room—electrical, mechanical, vibrational, pervasive—increased in pitch again, sliding upward in anticipation.

There wasn’t time to do anything.

“Get down!” Her father pulled her to the floor, hunched over her, gripped her in a rib-crushing embrace. She curled up like a little child, fetal, as small as she could make herself, huddled in the shelter of his body.

A boom rocked the building, the steel girders, sheet metal, and concrete. The pulse lasted only a second, but the vibrations continued. The trembling of the floor traveled to the marrow of her bones. The sound, like an electric shock, but larger, slower, lingered in her ears. Her whole body shook.

The air smelled of ozone. Of burning.

A weight pressed down on her, like something had fallen on her. She was hurt, all her skin tingling—part of what was burning. Pushing up, she struggled to get out from under what trapped her.

Her father fell over.

He was burned. The invincible Captain Olympus had lost most of the hair on the back of his head. The scalp underneath was blistered. Most of his uniform had melted away. Strands of it melded into blackened skin.

Around her, the whole room was black, scorched. The platform, which had sunk halfway to the floor, had disappeared. The struts that had held it swung, flames trailing up their length. The device itself had fallen to the floor, and was now melted to an unrecognizable lump. The computers and equipment were smashed and burning, weak yellow flames licking and spitting from crumpled plastic and steel. The walls were scorched, the floor was black with soot—except for a circle around her, a body-size shape where she had been sheltered by her father. The fire had only reached her extremities: the bottom half of her jeans were blackened and torn, the skin underneath red and tender; her arms had also burned to a cooked lobster shade; her hair had singed. She was hurt, but she was alive, and she could move.

Her father wasn’t moving.

“Dad,” she whispered.