CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tony laughed at the thought but found himself gasping almost instantly as the breath was snatched from his lungs. His heart raced, not from exertion, but from the sheer thrill of it. It really wasn't hard − if you could run this fast, then your brain was also capable of navigating around the obstacles registered even fleetingly by your optic nerves. People, animals, trees, park benches, skyscrapers. The rocks on the hillside south of the city. He hadn't meant to cut straight down from his dad's lodge, but he couldn't help himself. It had been the most direct route back to the city, and he was still buzzing a little after reducing a pile of dry logs stacked against the house to neatly split firewood. He knew his dad wasn't going to go anywhere near the lodge until the winter, and by that time he wouldn't remember whether he'd cut the logs himself or not.

Tony slowed enough to suck in a proper, full breath, his chest tight. That was interesting. Was it an insurmountable problem? Back when the railroad first opened America to high-speed travel, people thought you wouldn't be able to breathe at thirty miles per hour, and be dead at sixty. Perhaps they had the right idea, born out of fear and superstition rather than science, but they were off by a factor of ten. Tony could only guess his speed, of course. Maybe Jeannie had some gadget he could carry, some kind of pedometer or speedometer that would give him an actual reading. As part of her training regimen, as she had called it, it would make sense to actually collect some kind of data.

He slowed, then stopped. The wide sidewalk stretched ahead of him, curving along the back of East Bay and the famous golden sands. He jogged a little, momentarily just one of many, carefully checking around him as discreetly as possible before coming to a stop at a bench. Nothing. Nobody had seen him virtually pop into existence out of thin air. He sat and watched bathers on the beach, and joggers on the walkway. Everything was OK. Situation normal.

He felt… well, he felt fine, although his feet were hot. He crossed one foot over his knee to examine his old shoes. The rubber, amazingly, hadn't melted, but the soles were worn. That was probably going to be the limiting factor. Footwear. He'd have to mention that to Jeannie, get her to program it into her design.

Tony leaned back, enjoying the morning sun, and laughed then tempered his humor, glancing self-consciously to the left and right. For years, he'd felt apart, distanced from his home town. The Cowl held court, the Seven Wonders were never there, the city government was corrupt, the police force impotent.

And then he'd woken up as the most powerful man in the city. Well… one of the most powerful, although he didn't really know what powers each of the Seven Wonders had. How this had happened to him, he had no fucking clue. It didn't matter. What did matter was that in the last week he felt part of San Ventura in a way he never had. No fear, no regrets. No limits.

Feet restless and quadriceps pinging pleasantly, Tony stood. No limits? He looked across the beach, separated from the walkway by a concrete retaining wall and some elegantly arranged palm trees. The beach itself was deep yellow sand for maybe fifty feet, turning to harder wet sand for the next fifty before the breakers licked land. On his right, the great North Beach suspension bridge, based on the grand design of the Golden Gate of San Francisco far to the north. The sun glinted off the swanky North Beach suburbs that studded the hills across the bay, maybe a forty-minute drive away by car if you stuck to the coastline.

But directly across the harbor it wasn't so far. A couple of miles? Maybe a bit more. And the harbor wasn't exactly deep. San Ventura was a pretty spot and a popular tourist destination, but the channel wasn't capable of letting cruise ships of any size into the port. And Tony could swim, and there was coastguard, and plenty of people around.

Could he do it? Could he run fast enough across the water? Skip over it like a stone, and reach the other side? If he got across and then back he could meet up with Jeannie at the coffee shop like they'd agreed, only he'd have to step on the gas even more so he wouldn't be late. Even better, an incentive. And Tony hated being late, hated it. And he had time to spare. He needed to go to the bank, but he could run that errand tomorrow. Thanks to a change of shifts at Big Deal he had Thursday off too.