Dreams of the Golden Age (Golden Age 2)

“Ominous, I think. You have to admit, if you think about how much someone can do behind the scenes, it is pretty scary.”

“I haven’t heard anything about it. You want us to keep our eyes open for anything suspicious? Anything out of the ordinary that might suggest a mind-controlling supervillain?”

“We’re probably not ever going to catch someone like that directly, but we should be able to find the effects of his power.”

“I guess you needed help after all, didn’t you?” She grinned at him, feeling smug.

He spread his arms in a shrug. “And I let you know, just like I said I would.”

“Now it’s gotta work both ways. If you find out anything about this Executive, you’ll let me know?”

“Then I need to know where I can reach you.”

A cute guy was asking for her phone number. She didn’t even care that he wasn’t talking to her, but Compass Rose. Or that she couldn’t really give it to him. The mystery just made it all more interesting, didn’t it?

She wrote down her e-mail address, the anonymous one she’d used to send the pictures to the cops. Then he waved good-bye, stepped back, and launched himself skyward. He landed agilely on an art deco overhang of a building, and a second leap carried him out of sight.

* * *

To hear Eliot talk, this villain, the Executive, was less than a rumor. More like an idea he just came up with. If Commerce City really did have a nascent villain, surely she’d have heard about it. Rooftop Watch or one of the other superhero fan blogs would have mentioned it.

Shockingly, when she went searching, Rooftop Watch did have a few hits. The site didn’t use the name Executive, but there was speculation. A hint here, a bit of gossip there, nothing more than that. No confirmed sightings, no verified activity. Just conspiracy theories thrown into the ether. Anna read them all.

The Executive was a shadowy figure, of course. So shadowy nobody knew anything about him—or her. In fact, this supposed villain was mostly a convergence of patterns: city government made unexpected decisions that coincided with certain political scandals, that removed a specific person from office, that allowed passage of a new set of legislation, and suddenly the whole future path of the city changed.

The Executive was a villain for the conspiracy minded. The so-called clues involved shady real estate deals, buildings downtown that might or might not have been built to code, which meant they might or might not harbor deadly secrets—West Plaza was the prime example of how a seemingly ordinary building could be fitted with hangars and bunkers and fantastical gear. The Franklin Building, Horizon Tower, even City Hall was suggested as having a secret subbasement containing the evidence collected from past supervillains—a tempting target for new villains, perhaps? Were they secret supervillain lairs? And how would one tell? It was all woolgathering. Nobody could ever point to an individual behind the conspiracy, though some people tried—the mayor, the DA, and even the owner of the Commerce City Chargers baseball team, who had apparently benefited from a change of zoning laws that allowed a new stadium to be built. But commentators figured there must be someone or a cabal of someones acting as the secret masters of the city. Of course, and this was more likely, it could all just be coincidence.

Anna thought of something her mother said sometimes, with a grin and a knowing look, suggesting a joke no one else got: There’s no such thing as coincidence in a world with superhumans. The website featured occasional posts from various contributors suggesting that this news item or other indicated another piece of evidence as to the possible existence of the Executive. The recent series of city planning meetings was

a popular topic of discussion. If someone like the Executive existed, certainly the planning committee would attract his attention and serve as a tempting target for interference. Someone had even done a chart of all the people who attended the meetings and which of them might be the Executive. Anna’s mother was on the list, but without any accompanying notes or evidence. Too prominent, the commentators agreed. She couldn’t possibly be a shadowy, behind-the-scenes manipulator simply because she was too well known, as the daughter of the Olympiad who had so publically rejected that part of her life.

Then again, she had that youthful association with the Destructor. Most commentators dismissed that as old news.

It was all very vague. Anna could try to track down some kind of evidence of who the Executive was and what he was really doing. But there wasn’t even enough information to start an investigation. She’d just have to do what Eliot suggested: keep her eyes open for any evidence that might present itself.

* * *

That same night, the Trinity stopped an actual, honest-to-God bank robbery. The MO was standard by now: The police arrived to find the robbers immobilized and unconscious, chilled by ice or knocked out by blasts, and the supers lingered just long enough to make sure that blurry photos were acquired. Anna was sure Teia was calling the Eye to tell them where to be. Teia was also probably keeping a scrapbook and practicing lines to use on Anna to rub her face in it.

Even if she and Teddy had stumbled across a bank robbery during their patrol, what could they have done about it? Nothing. That day at school, she avoided everybody, Teia, Lew, Sam, even Teddy. She didn’t want to talk about it, so she hid out until the bell rang and everyone else had gone to class. Being five minutes late was a small price to pay.

Maybe Eliot would e-mail her. Maybe.

* * *

The second time they went out on patrol—Teddy insisted on giving the patrol another try because he said it made him feel like a real superhero even if they didn’t actually accomplish anything—he brought his paintball gun, fully loaded.

She’d been furious. “What, we can’t actually stop bad guys so you want to just piss them off?”

“I just want to try something,” he’d insisted. At this rate, they were going to end up in jail for being public nuisances. She couldn’t talk him out of it, so there they were, in the run-down tenement neighborhoods south of downtown, Anna skulking and Teddy striding confidently, holding the paintball gun across his chest like he was in some war movie. The guy really wanted to be an action hero, and it seemed tragic that his powers were so unassuming.

He was still more powerful than she was. She wondered if she could expand her awareness to, maybe, concepts. Like she could think about “crime” or “mugging” and be able to locate something like that happening nearby. She gave herself a headache trying, but she could only ever find people, and only ones she’d already spent a lot of time thinking about. Like Eliot.

She needed to stop thinking about Eliot.

The city at night was becoming increasingly familiar, and even comfortable. The regularly spaced yellow halos of streetlamps illuminating near-empty streets, walls of shadowed buildings blocking out the sky made the whole place seem like a kind of oversized playground. As long as you knew where you were, knew where you were going, and paid attention to what was going on in between, the city at night couldn’t hurt you.

She was pretty sure they weren’t going to find anything just by walking around. The Trinity had all the luck on that score. So she was surprised when they heard an incongruous wrenching, metal on metal, and an associated string of cursing.