“She looks nervous,” Bells says, peering through the binoculars. He hands them to Emma. “What did you say?”
The intrepid reporter is at least twenty minutes early to their meeting. Farha adjusts her headscarf, looking around. Taking everything in, her eyes dart to the top of the roller coasters, then to the snack carts. Two small cameradrones buzz about her head while Farha speaks into her DED as if she’s recording notes for herself.
Emma likes her immediately. She’s smart, planning for a meeting with an anonymous source, looking for all the potential ways to escape should the meeting go wrong. It’s what Emma would do.
“Maybe I was a bit too cryptic,” Emma says. “But she’s here!”
It was easy enough to find Farha’s direct line; her citizen ID number was listed on the Broadcast News Network holopage. She’s scheduled today to livestream the opening of a new ride at Roaring City Adventures, one of the many theme parks in New Bright City. Emma wasn’t sure Farha would even respond to her message, but she agreed to the meeting.
Now to just talk to her.
“Should we go over there?” Christine asks.
“Let’s stick to the exact time, otherwise she might mistake us for someone else,” Emma says, handing the binoculars to Christine.
Christine hums in agreement, watching through the binoculars.
With Christine’s generous wardrobe and Bells’ shapeshifting skills, it’s easy for them to adopt any number of disguises. Today Emma is wearing a long, flowing, blonde wig, over-sized sunglasses, and a bright yellow dress Christine designed. It was fun, at first, having long hair to throw around, but the wig is itchy, and she keeps wanting to scratch her head.
“Here, lemme fix that,” Christine says, tucking one of Emma’s escaping curls under the wig cap. She also opted for a more modern look today, nixing the petticoats in favor of a long tunic and leggings.
“Thanks,” Emma says. She glances at the time on Christine’s watch; they’re still early. She adjusts her earpiece. They probably won’t need the short-range radios, but it’s always good to be prepared.
Bells pulls out his sketchbook and doodles as they wait. He’s shifted into a boy with a wide nose, an easy smile, and sandy brown hair that falls in waves across his eyes. It’s another one of the faces he’s been using, and Emma almost has to smile because, despite whatever shift he’s using, he’s still so clearly Bells. Maybe it’s the way his eyes squint in concentration or his slow, easy smirk when he realizes she’s watching him.
Emma peers over Bells’ shoulder, and he shuffles over to make more room and flips the pages for her to see.
There’s Jess’ face, her broad smile emerging from the smudged lines of Bells’ sketches, and Abby tilting her head with her eyebrows lifted at a calculating angle. The page is wrinkled and a bit torn from erasures, as if Bells has been drawing and drawing, trying to remember their faces.
“I miss them,” Bells says.
“Me too,” Emma says. “I hope they’re okay.” She looks up at the sky, at the city, and beyond. It’s strange how distinct the difference is between New Bright City and the forest that surrounds it. In the Nevada region, the desert had been a constant. The cities themselves were pockets of light and metal and people, and the wild scrub of the Joshua trees and creosote bushes and the deep reds of the canyons dominated the landscape. The countryside had been sparsely populated, even before the cities themselves were built.
But New Bright City seems surrounded by ghosts. Just outside the city, there’s another skyline of towering skyscrapers, some still standing, some crumbling and falling apart, their metal bones long picked over by recycling crews. The skeletons of the buildings remain, rising out of the new-growth forests, only memories now of the cities that were here hundreds of years ago. They’re barely visible outside of the glimmering protective shield that has been raised around New Bright City in preparation for the impending P019 impact. The projected date is still more than a month away, but the shield is activated today to show to the citizens of New Bright City the strength of its protection.
Emma wonders where Jess and Abby are, if they’re getting closer, if Brendan went with them, if the Trans and Genevieve and the other adults are okay, or if they were all captured in that attack.
“They’re gonna be fine,” Emma says, maybe more to herself than anything, as if saying the words will help make it true. “I only wish they would get here sooner, I hate this waiting.”
“Speaking of waiting, it looks like Farha isn’t,” Bells says, peering over the bush.
“What?”
Farha is running off, her cameradrones following right behind her, buzzing.
“She must have seen something!” Emma gets to her feet. “Come on!”
Christine sprints ahead, dodging through the crowd. Bells hastily shoves his sketchbook and pens and colored pencils into his bag before following suit.
Emma can barely see Farha ahead of them; her pink dress is a blur as she runs as fast as she can, dodging people left and right.
“Move, people!” Emma curses, halting in her tracks, nearly bumping into a group of people stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “What are you all staring at!”
“Oh, no, that’s so awful!”
“Where’s Starscream! Somebody call for help!”
“No, Starscream can’t fly, we need…”
“Captain Orion?”
“No, Captain Orion is a villain…”
“Those poor people!”
“What other heroes can fly?”
Emma follows their gaze and stops just short of Bells and Christine, who are also frozen, watching the sky with horror.
“Up there!” Bells points at the tallest roller coaster, where a set of cars is stalled at the top of one of the loops. Everyone has stopped to stare and hold up their DEDs.
“Oh, no,” mutters Emma, looking at the top of the roller coaster. There are people waving from the track and shouting. “We should—”
She blanks. They should do something to help, but what can they do? She racks her brain, scanning the surroundings. Bells is frozen, looking at the height. Maybe Bells could shift the nature of the track back to functional? But they don’t know what’s wrong with it, what if there’s a virus in the tech or something, what if it hurts Bells—
Bells pushes forward, and Emma follows, grabbing his hand. “What are you doing? We need a plan!”
“I can fix the track. It’s magnetic, right? Same concept. I’ve done the opposite before, so, in theory, I just need to get close enough to touch it.”
“Yes, but—”
Terrifying, high-pitched screams echo from above.
“Okay, go!” Emma says, rushing forward. They pass Farha, who is surrounded by cameradrones and a knot of anxious people.
“I’m here at Roaring City Adventures, where an electronic malfunction has stalled a car full of park-goers at the top of the COFAX Scream’N’Dream ride,” Farha says into her microphone, facing one cameradrone hovering right in front of her. The other tiny drone is speeding to record the people stuck at the top of the track.
“What went wrong?” Emma wonders as she brainstorms for potential solutions. “Maybe if we get to the control room, we could figure out how to fix it.”
“Control room is that way—”
Farha continues, her voice grim. “I’m hearing now from the technicians that there is no way to fix the Scream’N’Dream until the power comes back on. A generator was destroyed by the surge of power from the shield demonstration.”
Christine twitches. “If someone falls, I could try to catch them, but—”
“How much time do you have before you’re tapped out?”
“Five minutes,” Christine says, counting the number of people trapped. “And falling at that speed, I don’t think— I don’t know, I have to be able to see what I’m moving to concentrate, and if everyone falls, I can’t—”
Emma touches her arm. “It’s okay; hopefully it won’t come to that. Bells is almost to the track. He’s got this—”
Emma looks at the base of the roller coaster, but she doesn’t see Bells climbing it. He’s in the crowd of people behind held back by the Authorities.
“Great,” Christine mutters. “What are we going to do?”
“We need to cause a distraction,” Emma says. “Get the Authorities away.”
“Please do not exit the ride until we can get it working again,” an official shouts into a megaphone.
The crowd gasps and points, shoving closer.
“No!”
A little boy has climbed out of his seat; Emma can barely see the toddler, scrambling for a platform a few feet away, climbing along the rickety metal railing, and trying to reach for an emergency panel.
The crowd stills, and then seems to erupt in panic.
“Watch out!”
“No!”
“Now, Bells!” Emma whispers through the small headset radios. She’s glad she brought them.
Bells catches her eye and nods as he slips through the crowd and past the distracted Authorities.
Something speeds across the sky, heading right for the track.
“Oh, could that be Shockwave? He can fly!”
“No, it’s clearly a mecha-suit!”
Emma follows the pointed fingers and sees the plume of smoke trailing from a mecha-suit flying toward the roller coaster. Mecha-suits, typically used by the military or for construction, all have similar clunky designs sprawled with advertisements. Two known meta-humans wear mecha-suits, Swift Emblem and Master Mischief, and Emma knows immediately this is neither of them, or anyone else from the League, for that matter.
This particular mecha-suit has strange, colored patterns, too small to make out. A mecha-suit is prime advertisement real estate, and a corporation would make its ads splashy and large.
Christine stops and blinks. “Do those metal pieces look like they were once a…”
“Washing machine,” Emma says, recognizing the brand. The entire mecha-suit is built from different pieces of tech. Wait a minute, she’s seen this before, half-built in a cavern—
“It’s Abby!” Emma exclaims.
The boy loses his grip on the track and screams, falling toward the ground below—
Abby sweeps by, plucking him out of the air as the crowd cheers. She descends, setting the boy down on the ground just as a treacherous creak sounds from above.
Farha steps forward with her microphone. “Amazing! A child who might have plummeted to death from the malfunctioning roller coaster has just been saved by— What’s your name, hero?”
Abby doesn’t say anything, just gives the camera a jaunty salute before flying back to the top of the track.
“Emma, I need your help.” Bells’ panicked voice crackles in her earpiece. “I can’t see once I…” he trails off; the trepidation is apparent in his voice.
“I got you,” Emma says. “There’s a hold just above you. Shift and stretch your left arm two feet.”
The crowd is so intent on the mysterious hero in the mecha-suit now flying back and forth from the top of the track carrying one person down at a time that they don’t notice another figure slowly climbing up the track. Emma guides Bells until he finally reaches the top.
He’s not quite fast enough.
The track suddenly rumbles back to life as the power surges on. Lights crackle as the car plummets forward to the drop going ten times faster than it should.
Bells grabs the track and disappears.
“Please work; please work,” Emma mutters to herself.
Abby grabs the end of the cars just as they start to screech and pulls forward.
“And we see our new mysterious hero grabbing the end of the Scream’N’Dream cars and attempting to prevent the passengers from plummeting to doom! Our brave hero just moments before had been ferrying people safety— three passengers have been rescued, and the lives of twelve still hang in the hands of our unknown rescuer, who is losing their grip—”
The crowd gasps as the car screeches forward and Abby falls backward, but there’s no plummeting. Instead, the car slowly glides down the precariously steep slope and down the track to the roller coaster starting platform, where it’s greeted by park officials.
“Oh wow, good job, Bells,” Christine says, impressed.
Emma’s whole body slumps forward as some of her tension disappears. She hopes Bells will be in a safe spot when he lets go of the shift, which might be soon. Emma turns her binoculars on Abby at the top of the track, who is looking around as if she’s putting the pieces together.
Bells appears, lying prone on the track, and then he’s falling.
Abby catches him and then flies off; her rocket boosters pulse before they disappear from sight in the city skyline.
The crowd disperses; some of them trail off in that direction, where they hope to get a glimpse of the new hero. Farha is surrounded, speaking nonstop into her microphone; her eyes glitter.
“I’m Farha Rao, reporting live from Roaring City Adventures, and that was your first look at a brand-new hero who prevented what would have been a tragic disaster here in the park. Apparently New Bright City’s own Starscream was spotted golfing at the East Hopestar Resort and declined questions from my colleague at BNN. Now that brings up the question: Why wasn’t the hero tasked with protection of this city here today? Why didn’t he leave as soon as he heard about the accident and the people in danger?”
Farha tilts her head and cocks her eyebrow at the murmuring crowd around her. “It’s curious that the Heroes’ League of Heroes has not yet stepped in to comment on the nature of this new hero and where they hail from. Is the League falling behind in their social media or is this a sign of something else?”
Farha eyes the camera and grins, as if she’s putting together a piece of the puzzle. “Most similar in style and power type to our mysterious new hero is Master Mischief from the Nevada region! Master Mischief was a technopath who often wore a mecha-suit when he was orchestrating elaborate pranks. Master Mischief has not been seen since 2123—”
A man in an Authority uniform pushes past Emma, followed by another, and another.
“Hey! Excuse you!” Emma scowls up at them.
One of the Authorities snatches Farha’s cameradrone and smashes it to the ground. “You’re done here.”
“Hey!” Farha glares at them as they surround her. “You can’t— I have a BNN license.”
Oh, no. They’re closing in on her, and this can’t be good at all.
“Christine, can you change the colors of fabric or just move it—”
“Color, form, texture, anything.”
“Make me look like Chameleon!”
Christine snaps her fingers, and Emma’s dress transforms into a super-sleek, rainbow-hued supersuit. The fabric stretches up and over her head like a mask; it’s not a perfect copy, but she just needs the color.
“Hey, losers!” Emma taunts.
The Authorities whip around, staring at her.
Emma doesn’t wait for them to process what’s happening, she just bolts in the opposite direction. She can hear them shout as they follow her when she weaves around people in the park.
Christine huffs, running right behind her. “You know you’re almost out of time, right? I’m almost—”
“It’s been more than enough.” Emma exhales as her outfit returns to normal.
The Authorities run past them, shouting earnestly.
“Chameleon is worth twenty-thousand credits!”
“No way, that reward is mine!”
Christine watches them go. “Well, that was pretty brilliant,” she says.
“Thanks.” Emma glances toward the crowd at the roller coaster, but Farha is gone. Emma sighs. She’s glad Farha got away, but they missed their chance to talk to her.
“Hey,” Christine says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Things didn’t go according to plan, but—”
Emma shakes free of the gesture and looks up at Christine.
Christine pushes her hat up on her head and gives her a reassuring smile.
“Okay.” Emma pushes her feelings and frustrations away. She doesn’t want to talk about the plan that spiraled out of control and Bells narrowly escaping injury. She’s just glad Abby was here to help.
Emma squints at the sky. Now, which direction did Abby go? She and Bells must be hiding somewhere or meeting Jess—
“Hey! Miss me?”
Emma whirls around, and there’s Jess, grinning at her. She’s adopted the makeup and aesthetic of the punk movement; her hair has been chopped into asymmetrical lengths, her bright brown eyes peek out from behind orange geometric patterns painted on her face, and she’s even wearing a long trench coat with the designs and logos of popular alternative bands. Behind her, three MonRobots cheep. Emma recognizes Chả, Jess’s LR-DR model, and the other two KR-D4Rs from Abby’s house.
“Jess!” Emma shrieks. She throws herself at her friend, and Jess laughs and picks her up and spins her in a delighted circle. “I’m so glad to see you! I was so worried, did you…” she trails off, careful of where they are in the crowded park. Emma itches to know everything, but this probably isn’t the best place to talk.
“Good to see you,” Christine says. “Uh—”
Abby’s two MonRobots spin around her in circles, beeping. Chả is scanning her face and trilling in a deeper tone.
“Aw, did you get an upgrade?” Emma can’t help reaching down to pat Chả on its little round dome, and it cheeps at her. Emma laughs, looks up at her friends, and then notices that they’re drawing a few curious looks. “We should go,” she mutters, before people ask about the strange MonRobots or anything else.
“Good plan.” Jess turning around and strides forward. “Come on, I set up a meeting point with Abby. Brendan is with the van—”
“Please tell me he didn’t drive,” Emma says.
Jess snorts. “He’s gotten a lot better; Abby and I couldn’t do all the driving.”
They talk in sparse details, not giving too much away for fear of being overheard, but Emma gleans the basics: Jess, Abby, and Brendan escaped with what tech they could salvage, including Abby’s mecha-suit, and made their way to New Bright City. The rest of the Villain’s Guild is scattered. Emma wants to know more about where they went and what they’re doing, but that’ll have to wait.
Emma and Christine follow Jess and her billowing coat as she leads them through the extensive park and then down another skybridge, and then they get in a clanking lift that descends to ground level. The light completely disappears as they continue below ground level, and the noise of people and cars and monorails fades away.
Christine scoots closer to Emma and Jess; her eyes are wide. “We’re meeting them in the Underbright?”
“The what?” Emma blinks, trying to take in Christine’s reaction.
Jess shrugs. “I thought it was just abandoned pre-Collective transportation tunnels and stuff. Didn’t they have a bunch of primitive underground trains?”
“Yeah, but—” Christine’s voice drops to a whisper. “The place is overrun with criminals and giant mutated rats!”
Jess grins. “Well, I haven’t seen any rodents of unusual size yet, so I think we’ll be okay.”
The tunnels are lit with flickering lights, set there by whom, Emma doesn’t know. Occasionally she hears footsteps and faint conversations or sees flashes of light from side tunnels, but they fade away immediately.
“So does the Collective know about the Underbright?” Emma asks curiously. It seems like an endless labyrinth of tunnels, lined with pipes and tracks and wires and signs that no longer make any sense. It’s different from any of the clean, well-kept Resistance bases built from the ancient bunkers. Those had been prepared to shelter people during the Disasters; this place may have once had a purpose, but now it’s nothing but dripping water and echoes.
Christine shrugs. “I mean, the Hopestar region pretends anything below ground doesn’t exist, and for good reason. The Authorities would never come down here; they couldn’t possibly drag everyone to Corrections.” She glances around as they approach a five-way junction. “And they’d get lost.”
Jess turns back to throw a smile at them without breaking stride. “That’s not a problem if you have Compass with you!”
“Compass?” Emma can barely see Jess in the dim light of the tunnel, but the confident expression on her face, that’s new. “You’re using the name!” She smiles, remembering those meetings they had in Jess’ basement. Emma had been so enthusiastic about the Sidekick Squad, creating agendas and plans and banging that gavel.
“I am,” Jess says, blushing slightly. She’s backlit against the soft lights in the tunnel, and the geometric patterns on her face give her a commanding aura.
She looks at her friend; Jess seems taller, somehow, or maybe Emma got shorter. It seems like years when it’s only been weeks, but there’s a different air to her, a hardened one that speaks of a similar path that Emma and Bells had out there in the desolate wilds, traversing from city to city through the Unmaintained lands.
“Good,” Emma says, nearly bursting with pride for Jess, who was always timid, always careful, always too nice, too afraid to take up space. “Being a hero looks good on you.”