On the west coast, it was still early. Dawn was breaking.
Cassie Cassowitz sat in her deserted office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in L.A., tensely watching the live news from Washington, D.C. Her shift, the night shift, was almost over.
Cassie watched the decapitation of the Washington Monument with more horror than the average American citizen. And that was saying something.
On the TV, the commentators were speaking rapidly:
‘—After the sad death of Cobalt last week and the funeral yesterday, it didn’t take long for the Russians to strike—’
‘—He said he would do it and now he has. Cobalt’s long-time rival, the Fury of Russia, declared last Tuesday that when Cobalt was in the ground, he would attack America “immediately and without remorse”. He hit Washington, D.C. this morning at 9:00 a.m. local time—’
‘—The President has been moved to an undisclosed location after Air Force defences proved useless against the Fury—’
‘—the Vice President issued a statement from San Francisco where he was scheduled to attend a private fundraising dinner tonight: “I urge all Americans to pray for our brave heroes. May God give them the strength to save us from this evil man—”’
Cassie stared slack-jawed at the television. The Fury hadn’t even waited one whole day.
The great Cobalt’s funeral had only been yesterday.
Of course, it had been an enormous affair, a full state funeral with a horse-drawn carriage bearing the mighty hero’s coffin down the centre of D.C., flanked by hundreds of military personnel.
Cassie Cassowitz was 29 and an aerospace engineer working in J.P.L.’s satellite division. It was classified government work—spy sats—which made it perfect for her.
It kept her out of sight. It was also literally illegal for anyone to ask her questions. In addition, she worked the night shift, to keep her extra hidden from the world.
Today, like most days, she wore blue jeans and a white zippered pullover with the J.P.L. logo embroidered on the chest.
Just then, one of the TV commentators said something that seized Cassie’s attention.
‘—All eyes are now watching to see if D.C.’s resident hero, Cobalt Green, will appear—’
Her cell phone rang, making her jump. The screen read: TREY.
Cassie answered it. ‘Hey.’
‘You watching this?’ her husband asked.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Is Green in D.C.?’
‘Yeah.’
‘At the White House?’ Trey asked.
‘Pentagon,’ Cassie said. ‘Last I heard. You still at home?’
Trey said, ‘Yes, I woke up to see all this on the news.’
Then one of the newsreaders on the television exclaimed, ‘Wait! Wait! We have a visual on the Fury!’
And there he was on the TV, standing outside the Pentagon.
Dressed in Kremlin red from head to toe, his ballistic mesh bodysuit and Kevlar armour covering his enormous muscular frame.
The yellow hammer-and-sickle of his country’s past empire stood out proudly on his left breast and right shoulderplate.
He was a gigantic specimen of a man, at least six foot six, hulking, huge, like a professional wrestler. He’d been big before the incident in the Arctic had given him his powers, but he seemed even bigger now.
His head was covered by a dark maroon hood and a savage-looking carbon-ceramic facemask that doubled as an oxygen breather for high-altitude flying.
Right now, his mask’s visor was up, allowing the world to see his eyes, eyes that bulged with rage.
His name had once been Sergeant Nikolai Furin but for the last thirty-odd years he had been known by another name.
The Fury of Russia.
‘Come and face me, children of my rival!’ he bellowed at the front doors of the Pentagon. ‘The Fury of Russia has arrived and with me the day of your doom!’
Cassie watched the TV in silence, her cell phone still pressed dumbly to her ear.
What will Green do? she wondered.
Will he come out—
On the television, a figure dressed in Army fatigues emerged on foot from the Pentagon.
His uniform was augmented with lime-green armoured plates on the shoulders and chest. His helmet had a custom-made green-tinted visor.
Clean-cut and handsome, with a square jaw and movie-star eyes, his face was known across America: he’d featured in television ads for military recruitment, including a famous one that had screened during the Superbowl.
And even though he was six feet tall, broad-shouldered and prodigiously fit, he looked tiny compared to the Fury.
‘I’m here, asshole,’ Cobalt Green said evenly.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Cassie sat in her modest kitchen with Cobalt Green, both of them sipping cheap instant coffee.
His olive t-shirt, emblazoned with the word ARMY, barely contained his bulging biceps. To the world he might have been Cobalt Green, but to Cassie he had always been her eldest brother, Greg.
‘You always were the smartest of the lot of us,’ he said.
‘Black is way smarter than me,’ Cassie said.
‘He may be. He’s also insane.’ Greg scanned the little house and nodded approvingly. ‘I like this place.’
That was a lie but at least it was a sweet one. The house was a small two-bedroom bungalow in a ratty street in L.A. not far from the 10 freeway.
Weeds sprouted in the drive. The concrete sidewalk out the front was cracked and buckled from numerous tiny quakes over the years. The house was painted beige but under the blazing southern California sun, the paint had faded. The furniture was plain and it bore all the usual household stuff, like a calendar on the fridge with some coloured Sharpies dangling from it.
‘It’s perfect for you,’ he added.
‘It’s boring,’ Cassie said.
‘Inconspicuous.’
‘It’s ordinary.’
‘It’s you,’ Greg said kindly.
Cassie nodded. He was right about that. ‘Golden Gary wants to give the whole house a makeover, but the WITSEC people won’t let him. Gotta fade into the background.’
‘What we do is very public and that’s never been you.’
‘I’m sorry, Greg—’
‘Don’t be. Everyone needs home turf. Especially folks like us. This life of ours is a constant battle and the best place to fight a battle is on home turf.’
‘I’m still sorry.’
‘You had to do this. No matter what happens with the famous Cobalt, the rest of us will have things covered. And we all love our little sister.’
Cassie smiled, bowing her head. ‘Thanks, Greg.’
Cobalt Green took in the quaint kitchen and nodded again.
‘Like I said, you always were the smartest of us all.’
* * *
Cobalt Green was the pride of the U.S. Army, the soldier of soldiers. His skin was impenetrable, his strength unmatched, his leadership skills topnotch.
Perhaps most admirable of all, he had always submitted to the idea of rank: ascending to the rank of major through the regular process, saluting every officer who outranked him and obeying their commands, even though he could have killed them all in a second.
The Fury’s first punch cracked his superstrong skull.
His second blow, to Green’s lower back, broke his spine.
Then the Fury hurled Cobalt Green into the outer wall of the Pentagon.
A shocking impact.
Windows shattered.
Concrete pillars cracked.
Green fell to the grass beneath the wall and lay there slumped and moaning.
The Fury stomped over to him, grabbed his helmet and twisted it fiercely, wrenching Cobalt Green’s head and part of his spinal column from his body.
A TV news crew captured the whole grisly encounter on film—a collection of fearful, running handheld images—and when it was all over, the Fury stood before their camera, holding up Cobalt Green’s severed head, still wearing its helmet, the ragged skin at the throat dripping blood.
The shocking image made Cassie’s blood run cold.
‘Oh, Greg . . .’ she whispered.
She could only imagine what the rest of America thought.
‘He died on his knees!’ the Fury bellowed. ‘The green one! The poster child for your Army. Is he the best you can do, America?’
He threw Green’s head to the ground and glared right down the lens of the camera.
‘I am coming for you, children of Cobalt. I am coming to kill you all!’
And then he tore the Pentagon apart, storming through it, blasting through each of its concentric rings, destroying command centres and war-rooms and server farms and killing every officer and official he found.
When he was done, hundreds were dead and the gigantic five-sided building was left a smoking, broken ruin.
Then he flew north.
The children of Cobalt, Cassie thought.
There were eight of them in total: an elite group of heroes, each possessing superpowers like flight, strength, hearing and sight, but at only half the level of their mighty parent, Cobalt.
From birth they had been assigned military codenames: Green, Gold, Red, Purple, White, Silver and Black.
But because of a decision made ten years ago, the world was aware of only seven of them.
Cassie was the eighth.
And although she never used it, she had a codename, too.
Cobalt Blue.
Cassie swallowed deeply. How had it come to this?
For thirty years, international relations had existed in a state of balance if not exactly a state of peace and harmony.
In a state of Cold War.
Two rival superpowers, the United States and Russia, each with their own superhero.
But then the most unexpected thing happened, an event that had brought about this terrible day.
At the age of 79, the great American hero, Cobalt, had died of heart failure.
From: ‘The Origins of the Super Cold War’ by Lynda Marren (Extract from The Atlantic magazine)
THE JOINT MISSION
Ironically, it all started with an effort at peace: a joint U.S.–Russian space mission.
The old Cold War between the two superpowers, America and the U.S.S.R., had just ended and the Soviet Union was breaking apart.
Chaos reigned.
Breakaway republics claimed independence every week: Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Crimea, Georgia.
But Russia—always the central force behind the old Soviet Union—still had its nuclear arsenal and its space program, and in an effort to calm things, America and NASA proposed a joint mission to Venus.
Or, more precisely, to Venus’s atmosphere.
* * *
Venus is unique in our solar system.
Its surface is a fiery hellscape with active volcanoes stretching to every horizon, constantly belching all manner of gaseous fumes into its atmosphere.
This makes that atmosphere a raging maelstrom of speeding winds, toxic gases, crushing pressure and exotic elements. It is hot, dense and nasty, entirely hostile to life.
It was this atmosphere with its unique elements that attracted Earth’s two major powers.
America and Russia wanted to collect samples of those elements, so they joined forces for the fateful mission.
Heading the U.S. team for NASA was an astrophysicist named Dr Chris Cobalt.
INFECTED AND EMPOWERED
As everyone now knows, on its return to Earth, the Venus probe landed in the Arctic and was found by a team led by Dr Cobalt and a Russian special forces unit commanded by Sergeant Nikolai Furin.
Cobalt and Furin were standing right next to the probe when one of the satellite’s superhot panels abruptly sprang open.
But something had attached itself to the probe’s exterior—a tiny lifeform from the roiling atmosphere of Venus, no larger than a penny—and the sudden snapping open of the panel broke the organism open and from its tiny body sprang a cloud of strange gas that engulfed Cobalt’s and Furin’s faces.
Both collapsed instantly.
Both were then whisked away to secret, high-security containment facilities in their homelands.
And when, three months later, they both awoke, their DNA had been altered . . .
. . . and they had powers.
TWO SUPERHUMANS
The strength to lift an entire building.
High-frequency hearing.
The ability to see clearly for dozens of miles.
To hold their breath for over an hour.
To withstand a superheated blast.
And to fly at supersonic speed.
(The Fury was once clocked at Mach 2.1. He could chase down a fighter jet and outpace a commercial airliner.)
The thing was, Cobalt and Furin were perfectly matched, possessing exactly the same powers.
And thus a new Cold War began.
Cobalt chose a neutral uniform, sky-blue on white, with a small American flag on the shoulder.
The Russians resurrected an old symbol from their former days as a superpower: their hero wore dark red, with the yellow hammer and sickle of the old Soviet Union emblazoned on his chest and shoulder.
And he would take on a new name, one that suited the pent-up rage and frustration of an empire that had been humiliated and which would not be humiliated again.
INVASIONS AND AN UNSTABLE HERO
The new hero of Russia was the embodiment of terror.
He wasted no time restoring his country’s wounded pride, one invasion at a time.
With the Fury at their head, Russian forces retook all the old Soviet republics.
And the Fury quickly showed that his brand of conquest was uncompromisingly pitiless.
He killed opposing troops when they surrendered.
He murdered the political leaders of beaten nations.
And he was particularly harsh on any resistance fighters he caught. He executed them—men, women, even children—by tearing their heads off in front of their loved ones. Then he killed those loved ones as well.
With his six-foot-six frame and deep-red hooded mask, his fearsome image became known across the world.
Sometimes he would remove the visor of his mask, revealing angry yellow-rimmed eyes.
It turned out that Sergeant Nikolai Furin was not a nice man to begin with.
His military records found their way to the American media and the story they told was unnerving.
Before entering the Russian Army at age 20, Furin had already been incarcerated twice, both times for hooligan-related violence.
Joining the Army, it turned out, had not been his choice: it was either that or another stint in prison.
Once in the Army, he’d been the subject of multiple disciplinary actions for disorderly conduct: fighting, insubordination—including biting a superior—plus three allegations of rape at three different training towns in outer Russia. All three charges had been dismissed when the women involved had all inexplicably died before they could testify.
Nikolai Furin had been 24 years old when he’d been infected, a volatile young man, barely in control.
And now he had unlimited power.
Russia didn’t care.
The old K.G.B. agents who had elbowed their way into positions of power as their state had teetered on the brink of collapse now used him to further their own ambitions.
And the Russian people loved him.
They wore t-shirts with his face on them. Children played with Fury of Russia toys.
He was their hero.
Because he’d made their country a superpower again.
AMERICA’S HERO
Cobalt couldn’t have been more different.
For one thing, Dr Chris Cobalt had been 44 at the time of their infection, twenty years older than Furin, and a highly respected astrophysicist. Where the Fury was all strength and rage, Cobalt was thoughtful and reserved. Curious about the extraterrestrial infection, Cobalt submitted to all manner of tests and physical examinations.
Cobalt wanted to learn, to know the cause and extent of these incredible new powers.
There was one other key difference between Cobalt and the Fury.
Dr Chris Cobalt was Dr Christine Cobalt. America’s hero was a woman.
THE ‘INVICIBLE PERSON’ EXPERIMENT
And so the world got to watch, firsthand, a unique experiment: If someone is invincible, if someone can do whatever they want without anyone to stop them, what will they do?
Cobalt collaborated with the U.S. Government, the armed forces and NASA.
She lectured at universities, sharing what she had learned about herself.
She remained happily married to her husband, a bookish history professor named Arnold Cobalt. They had no children at the time she was infected.
Even when she became world famous—a superstar whose mere presence at an event would dwarf that of the President or any celebrity—she’d kept living for many years in the same modest home in north Texas she shared with her husband (until, of course, the notorious incident that had precipitated their move to Montana).
The Fury, on the other hand, did whatever he pleased.
If he admired a woman in a bar, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her husband or boyfriend and just take her home with him.
He killed Russian Army officers who disagreed with him.
He once flew to his old boot camp in Siberia to murder a drill sergeant he felt had treated him poorly when he’d first joined the Army.
The Russian Government scrambled to placate him.
Mansions. Cars. Women.
Anything to calm his vicious temper and keep him content.
THE NEXT GENERATION
Naturally, during those heady times both America and Russia engaged in secret programs to create offspring from their superheroes.
They embarked on their programs immediately and in characteristically different ways.
The Russians put out a call for women to mate with the Fury.
Thousands volunteered.
Women from all over Russia converged on Moscow, hoping to be impregnated by the Fury.
The Fury loved it.
He had a voracious sexual appetite and he happily bedded six women a night. He reportedly killed twenty of them during the act.
Thirty-seven pregnancies resulted but ultimately—because of irregularities in his sperm or perhaps because only women with suitably strong ova could contain his seed—only six children were successfully born.
All were male.
And all had powers.
Although, interestingly, they had precisely half the powers of their father. Half his strength. Half his speed.
They were named after Soviet cities or regions:
The Fury of Moscow.
The Fury of Leningrad.
The Fury of Stalingrad.
The Fury of Sevastopol.
The Fury of Odessa.
The Fury of Kazan.
America tried a different method: they extracted some of Cobalt’s eggs and, using the sperm of carefully selected males—men from the worlds of science or the military or professional sport—used I.V.F. and surrogacy to bring any offspring to term.
Seven viable offspring were produced over the next four years: five males and two females.
They received these codenames:
COBALT GOLD.
COBALT RED.
COBALT PURPLE and WHITE (the twins).
COBALT SILVER.
COBALT BLACK.
And then, a full seven years after her initial infection, in secret, at the age of 51, Cobalt did something no-one expected.
She gave birth to a natural child, born to her and her husband, Arnold.
Of course, eventually word got out about the birth but no-one outside of the other Cobalt children and a few key government officials knew this child’s actual name.
It was only a slip of the tongue by an ambitious junior member of the House Intelligence Committee trying to show off during a hearing that inadvertently revealed to the world the eighth child’s codename:
COBALT BLUE.
THE HEROES AND THEIR CITIES
CONCLUSION: THE LOOMING AMERICAN FEAR
Three decades passed.
Flashpoints occurred, but in every instance Cobalt and the Fury defended their nations’ interests and the precarious balance of their powers ensured a grudging peace between their two countries.
America prospered.
Russia did not.
And the children grew to adulthood.
The six Russian demi-heroes were forced into the military and the Russian Government kept them and their activities hidden.
In America, Cobalt’s seven superchildren grew up together in a purpose-built home close to Cobalt’s house in Texas. They didn’t know it, but it was always under 24-hour armed military guard. And their skills and talents were monitored.
Up until their teens, they saw their mother almost every day for breakfast and dinner. She had insisted on that. She wanted their childhoods to be as ‘normal’ as possible. They were, after all, half-brothers and sisters, and she wanted them to form the usual sibling relationships that siblings developed. As with all siblings, some became very close and others didn’t.
Cobalt had also insisted that, as teenagers, they attend local public high schools. If they were going to grow up to be American superheroes, she reasoned, she wanted them to socialise with regular American kids and know their hopes and dreams. It’d also be good for them, she said.
And so it went until they all finished high school, at which point each of the seven superchildren were allowed to choose both their occupations and their home towns, and they took up a variety of roles in various cities.
Of course, they became instant celebrities, the heroes of their adopted cities.
Cobalt Green, the eldest, joined the U.S. Army and became a boon for enlistment.
Cobalt Gold, the second-oldest and the only homosexual of the litter, watched over Las Vegas and became a spokesman for gay and LGBTQ issues.
Cobalt Red joined the Chicago Police Department, insisting on going through the regular training program for new recruits.
The twins, Cobalts Purple and White, took up residence in New York City, where they became fixtures on the social calendar, in between helping the N.Y.P.D. foil armed robberies.
Cobalt Silver lay low for her own reasons, reasons no-one readily knew. She lived quietly in Salt Lake City.
And then there was the troublesome Cobalt Black.
He did not have all the physical powers of his super-siblings, but that was not to say he wasn’t powerful.
Due to his particular abilities, he experienced singular difficulties both at high school and afterward, so he was shifted out of public view to a military installation in Nevada.
Last of all, to this day, the eighth and youngest child, Cobalt Blue, remains a tantalising mystery, which only makes interested parties more curious about her, especially Russia. With its army of spies and internet farms, it is always trying to learn more about the last child of Cobalt, the natural one.
When all is said and done, however, a looming fear now hangs over America.
At the time they were infected, Cobalt was twenty years older than the Fury.
And despite their superhuman abilities, both have aged as regular humans do.
At the time of writing, Cobalt is 79 and will turn 80 this year. The Fury, on the other hand, is only 59, and still fit and healthy.
Cobalt will, in all likelihood, die of old age before the Fury does.
And when she does, it is only a question of how long the Russians and the Fury will wait to unleash their vengeance on America.
Cassie was still at her desk at J.P.L., staring in silent horror at her TV.
It was switching between images of the Fury holding the head of her half-brother Cobalt Green in one of his massive fists and the smoking ruins of the Pentagon.
A voice spoke in her ear.
‘Cassie? Babe? You still there?’
Trey was still on the phone. She’d forgotten she was holding it.
‘I’m here,’ Cassie said flatly.
‘You okay?’
‘He waited one day. He came one day after the funeral.’
Trey said, ‘This is gonna be a slaughter. On a national scale.’
Cassie stood up. ‘I’m coming home.’
In the time it took for Cassie to drive home in L.A., the Fury of Russia flew from D.C. to New York City.
When he arrived there, he decapitated the Statue of Liberty—flew right through her neck—and impaled her head on top of One World Trade Center.
New Yorkers screamed in terror and fled the streets.
The Fury landed outside a trendy apartment building in SoHo. It was a well-known building, for it was the Manhattan residence of New York’s heroes, the twins Cobalts Purple and White.
The Fury’s voice boomed.
‘I know this is where you live, Cobalt Purple and Cobalt White! Where you indulge in a life of play and frivolity. So I say again: COME AND FACE ME, CHILDREN OF MY RIVAL! THE FURY OF RUSSIA HAS ARRIVED AND WITH ME THE DAY OF YOUR DOOM!’
* * *
Inside that apartment building, two people dressed in superhero garb—one male, one female—stared down at the Russian behemoth.
‘What do we do?’ the woman, Cobalt White, gasped.
‘Damn,’ Cobalt Purple said.
PURPLE & WHITE
NEW YORK CITY
TWO YEARS AGO
Funky music played as Cassie sat on a plush velvet couch in Purple and White’s ultra-cool New York pad.
Her handler at WITSEC, a no-nonsense U.S. Marshal by the name of Connie-Anne Walters, hadn’t wanted her to visit her half-siblings in New York, but since Purple and White had a secret private elevator that ran direct to their heavily secured apartment, the Marshal had relented.
‘Is this one of your songs, Winnie?’ Cassie asked White.
Cobalt White—Winnie to family members—was 31 and jaw-droppingly beautiful, with spiked-up peroxide-blonde hair and gorgeous Eurasian features. Her and Purple’s father had been an Asian American Army sniper whose sperm had connected with an egg donated by their mother.
In addition to her formal law-enforcement duties in New York City, White had done some modelling. She had also taken to DJ-ing lately and had been an instant hit. Every club wanted her to perform.
‘Sure is,’ she said. ‘I love what you’ve done with your hair, Cassie.’
Cassie touched her hair self-consciously. It was plain mousy brown, totally unlike Winnie’s electric white colouring, but she had cut it a little shorter during her last haircut.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Saw you in Vanity Fair. You looked amazing, especially in all those fight poses.’
‘Annie Leibovitz did it. She can make anyone look amazing.’
That was White’s modesty talking.
Modelling and DJ-ing aside, Cobalt White was mainly known for her incredible fighting skills. An expert in martial arts, she was a black belt in everything from karate and jiu-jitsu to kickboxing.
She was also more flexible than anyone Cassie had ever known. The ten-page Vanity Fair spread—plus the cover, of course—had shown her in a range of fight poses, her legs and arms extended at all kinds of extreme angles.
It had been the biggest-selling and most-downloaded issue of the year.
Cassie turned to White’s twin brother, Purple. ‘And you, Paul. You’re everywhere, too. So what is Cobalt Purple’s secret to great abs?’
‘Genetics,’ Purple said with a grin.
He was also Asian American and wore his hair spiked up with gel, the tips coloured hot purple.
He was his sister’s equal at martial arts. His disciplines were taekwondo and Krav Maga and he was so good, he’d been a judge at tournaments, including once at the Olympics for taekwondo.
Both twins wore form-fitting hero suits that allowed for maximum movement and that were accented with the colours of their codenames.
‘What’s tonight’s party?’ Cassie asked.
‘Tonight’s the pre-Met Gala,’ Purple said. ‘Tomorrow’s the Gala. And after that’s the afterparty which is always the best—’
At that moment, the back door burst open, and in walked someone Cassie could only describe as a joyous human whirlwind.
It was Cobalt Gold, a.k.a. Golden Gary.
With his thickly muscled arms and long bleached-blond hair that made him look like a 1980s rock drummer, he was big, loud and very, very gay.
Among all her superpowered siblings, he was Cassie’s favourite.
Gary was the second-oldest of the eight of them, a few months younger than Cobalt Green, yet he and Green couldn’t have been more different.
Where Green was all measured and composed, the very embodiment of the Army values he treasured, Gary was flamboyance personified.
The two of them actually got along great—which was not always the case with the Cobalt children. Green and Red, for instance, often clashed, and everyone had trouble with the prickly Cobalt Black.
Friendly and gregarious as he was, Gary was not to be trifled with.
Perhaps in response to the inevitable anti-gay taunts he’d received as a teenager, he’d thrown himself into martial arts. It was he who, at the age of 13, had first instructed Purple and White, then both 10, in fighting skills, and he still coached them to this day.
That said, it should be mentioned that Cobalt Green and Golden Gary did have one singular thing in common.
They had both always—always—acted as fiercely protective older brothers to Cassie.
‘Hey-ho, funsters!’ Golden Gary called.
‘Double G!’ White squealed with delight.
‘The Golden Gay Man from Vegas is in da house!’ Purple shouted.
Purple threw some playful karate swings at Gary who, equally playfully, ducked them.
Then Gary dropped to one knee before the twins and said in a comical British accent, ‘My noble brother, Knight of the Purple! My dear sister, Mistress of the White. It is so good to see you both!’
He turned to Cassie.
‘And you. The most gorgeous one of all.’ He smiled warmly and gently kissed her hand.
Cassie nodded. ‘Hey, Gary. How’re you doing?’
‘In between keeping the streets of Vegas safe and being a gay icon? I’m gold, I’m gay and I’m fabulous. How ’bout you? How’s that cute little boyfriend of yours?’
‘I married him.’
‘Wait. You what—!’ Gary began.
White looked dismayed. ‘Oh, Cassie, I love weddings!’
‘It was just us and a judge,’ Cassie said.
‘Oh, girl,’ Gary said. ‘I woulda given you the bachelorette weekend to end all bachelorette weekends!’
‘Witness Protection kinda frowns on those . . . and your famous superhero half-siblings coming to your wedding. They only let me come here because you guys have that elevator in the back.’
‘Comes in handy,’ White said.
Purple said, ‘Your man’s really smart, too, isn’t he?’
Golden Gary answered for her. ‘He’s an aerospace engineer, dumbass, so yeah.’
Cassie said, ‘Trey works at SpaceX. They collaborate with us a lot at J.P.L.’
‘He’s sweet,’ White said. ‘When I met him, I liked how he was always noting down his thoughts on his Voice Memos app.’
‘That’s Trey,’ Cassie nodded. It was true, he loved the voice recording app, especially late at night in bed when he’d reach for his phone in the darkness and whisper some thought or idea into it. (‘I always forget those ideas by morning and I hate doing that!’ he’d say.)
‘So he’s literally a rocket scientist?’ Purple asked.
Cassie nodded.
White said, ‘And you’re so clever, too. You two will have the smartest babies.’
‘And you work hard, Cassie,’ Purple added. ‘You stick at things, more than we do, anyway. And I’m not a dumbass.’
‘You so are,’ Gary said.
‘Shhh, you two!’ White said. ‘I like hearing about young engineers in love.’
‘Thank you, Winnie,’ Cassie said. ‘Hey, not all of us can have our dating lives covered in the tabloids. Look at you all. This is what you were born for. Big. Loud. Heroes.’
She jerked her chin at Golden Gary.
‘Especially you.’
‘Oh, please. You’ll make me blush,’ he said impishly.