Chicago, Now
Inez, Rachel, and I had a tradition after a successful job. Spend a night on the town. No matter where we were, unless it was a complete hellscape or the middle of nowhere – but even then, there was probably a town or a city nearby and something worthwhile to do.
There were some caveats. The older I got, the more I had to get some post-mission rest. After taking Rose and Joseph back, I slept for twelve straight hours, and still felt tired afterward.
The pain of my cuts in the shower woke me right back up, though. After that, ready to party. Stiffness and muscle aches be damned.
Rebecca Munoz hadn’t had all the money she’d needed to cover our bill. No surprise. And, the last time I’d seen her, she’d had bigger things on her mind. I wasn’t going to press her on it.
So, yes, there were caveats, but I tried never to make any exceptions. It was important to live our lives. Remind ourselves why we got in this business. No sense in saving for a rainy day if every day was a storm.
But, this time, I had a stop to make first.
We had to get up to the rooftops the hard way. It was never good manners to take any kind of airship, Wakandan or not, this close to a city. Shoon’kwa and I still needed to have our talk about that. The buildings around the Church of the Sacred Heart seemed to get taller every time I visited. On the upside, that meant that the view they offered got a little better, and a little less obtrusive, too.
But the winter wind sure seemed worse. The buildings upwind of us made a perfect wind tunnel. Black Window hugged her arms to herself. “You take us to all the best places.”
“You all didn’t have to follow me here.” I was actually a little irked that they had.
“And miss the chance to see where so much of our money goes?” Black Widow asked.
Whenever I made a good payday, something that would keep my friends and me on our feet for quite a while, I always set a part of it aside. Any merc in the business has a number of ways to anonymize a check. I cut one and sent it directly to the Church of the Sacred Heart. Every mission. Always.
Father Boschelli didn’t need to know it was me. If he’d known, that might have jeopardized the help I’d sent. I’d gotten involved in some pretty questionable things in my past. And us mutants were always a political hot potato. Even if Father Boschelli’s superiors accepted money from me now, that might change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
Today, that didn’t bother me as much as it usually did.
There was still lots of clean-up work to do in and around Dallas Bader Pearson’s compound. His people were terrified and scattered. Some were injured. No one, other than Pearson, had died. The Chicago PD had even opened a desultory investigation to search for his killer. But that was small in comparison to the now-massive investigations into his church’s financial crimes, abuses, kidnappings, tortures, and killings. Three bodies had been discovered so far, cemented into iron drums, buried under the compound. I was sure they wouldn’t be the only ones.
Cults didn’t die easy. There would be splinter groups. Recriminations. Lawsuits. Trials. Some of Pearson’s followers would idolize him in death. A lot of them must have put two and two together, realized that the bloodied-and-wild-looking woman who’d kept them calm during the police raid must have had something to do with his killing. They wouldn’t forgive me any more than Lazarus had.
The police weren’t going to spend much time looking for me. Few of the stories about the raid on Pearson’s compound even mentioned a Wakandan airship. Black Widow’s Avengers connections went a long way.
But it would be best for everyone if our involvement ended here. I had done what needed doing. More people hated me for it than not. Only a few people knew the truth, understood the choices I’d made.
It would have to be enough.
Inez had brought her tray of peanut-butter-chocolate bars to share. The vegan café’s staff had looked at her slack-jawed when she’d come back, wading through the police cars and their wailing sirens, to collect them. White Fox chewed thoughtfully. Shoon’kwa and Black Widow had turned them down. Their loss. The bars were good.
“Just let us know when you’re done having your fun,” Black Widow said. She didn’t bother to hide her impatience.
“Not all of us get to be the stars of our own movie all the time,” I told her. “Let me have this one.”
White Fox looked at Inez. “You must be cold now. Right?” she asked.
Inez snorted and didn’t answer. Just like any of the times I hassled her about the same.
I had made Inez sleep in that apartment last night. Told her to find the problems with it. She’d come back looking fresh and ready, and dressing just as light as ever. Sleeveless up to her shoulders, and jean shorts that rode higher than looked comfortable.
But, when I looked out of the corner of my eye, I saw goosebumps prickle along her skin.
Victory. It was gonna be fun to see how long she could keep up the act.
She was committed now. Maybe the next job could take us to the Arctic. Sometime she’d slip up and start shivering.
Rachel, as always, dressed up to the occasion. Bright, heavy, violet jacket. Fur-lined boots. And a scarf to match, whipping in the wind. “As much as I appreciate dramatic posing on rooftops, I hope you’re not going to keep us up here for long.”
“You really didn’t have to come up here,” I repeated.
“Dear,” she said. “Would you really rather be alone?”
When I’d started up the staircase, I’d thought so. Now I was glad as much for the distractions and for the company. Distractions are underrated.
“I’ll never get used to this,” Shoon’kwa muttered. She folded her arms. She went on nights out with the rest of us, but she was the only one who never showed any sign of enjoying it. She never refused them either. She was, for lack of a better term, our designated driver. Too young to drink. And, knowing her, she would have turned down the offer.
But she still cared enough to want to spend time with us. She was getting more and more adapted to this lifestyle.
“Never get used to what, darling?” Inez asked. “The weather? Or us?”
“This,” Shoon’kwa said, and nothing else.
As the neighborhood around the Church of the Sacred Heart had grown up and gotten harder for small folks to live in, the church had stayed exactly where it was. And looked exactly the same, at least on the outside. I hadn’t seen the inside since I’d left, but I knew, thanks to some of the articles I’d dug up about the church, that things had changed there, too. Expanded classrooms. Better sanitation. Better food. More adult volunteers and even paid staff. Wider access to Chicago’s schools. And every kid that came through the Church of the Sacred Heart, whether they found adoption or a foster family or not, had college tuition paid for and a stipend to keep them on their feet through their twenties.
It wasn’t all down to me. Plenty of the orphanage’s other alumni, who’d beaten their own odds, sent money back too. But I helped. By a lot. I was gonna make sure that, no matter what Lazarus wanted to do with his life, he had the option to do it.
Some day, he might even figure out that I’d contributed. But I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.
Below, a line of schoolkids filed out of the church’s main doors. Nice and orderly. A far cry from when I’d been there, but the church had more adult staff available now. Two of them stood beside the doors, ushering the kids onto the sidewalk, toward their bus stop. Kids in freshly laundered, neatly ironed clothes.
And, at the end of the line, Lazarus.
He’d chosen a different name now. Zachary. Still nice and Biblical, and kept many of the same sounds. Lazarus was a little too unwieldy for the modern world, raised too many questions.
His pitch-black hair made him easy to spot from above. He still kept it cut in the same style he had back at Project Armageddon.
I kept an eye on him not just because I loved him. But also because he still had his song, his powers. He remained Project Armageddon’s ultimate weapon. It would have been irresponsible of me not to check up on him, and to make sure someone hadn’t found out who and what he was.
My read on his character remained the same. I didn’t think he would abuse his powers. He was a good kid, and I was sure he would always try to be a good kid. But I couldn’t trust my judgment absolutely. There were a lot of innocents around him. He’d grown up a lot, and he still had a lot of growing up to do.
He’d grown fast. The last time I’d seen him, he’d hardly been as tall as my stomach. Now, side-by-side, he would have come up a little below my shoulder.
He was at the end of the line of kids. He stopped. Hesitated. Seemed uncertain for a moment.
Looked directly up at me.
I didn’t step back, or try to hide myself. Just looked back.
Then he turned deliberately away from me, and kept walking. Nice and calm. And plainly dismissive.
The others on the rooftop stayed silent. I hadn’t told all of them the full story about Lazarus, or even about where I’d come from. Only Inez and Rachel. Even they only knew bits and pieces.
Rachel set a hand on my shoulder. “Have you seen enough, dear?”
I remembered every second in that break room, with Lazarus and Beatrice, as freshly as if it had happened just an hour ago. On the night I killed Dallas Bader Pearson, nothing had changed for me. Yet now, looking down at Lazarus, my story felt like it had a different ending.
“Yeah,” I said. Plenty of other days, I’d been on a rooftop just like this one, seen the same thing. On any of those other times, I’m not sure I could have said that. I certainly couldn’t have meant it. “For now.”
I turned around. Faced my people.
“Let’s go make our day.”