Chapter 19
*(The second half of this chapter is more of a brief interlude to tell you a bit about Chase and Mecha Man. These segments will appear more frequently going forward — roughly every few chapters — to give secondary characters more room to breathe.)*
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"No idea, we usually meet an hour later. Something must have come up." I was already answering Colm's question while digging in my pocket for my phone, but didn't get the chance to finish. I shoved it back in hastily, not even sure whether I'd locked it or put it on silent.
"All right, listen up, you goddamn degenerates." Chase blew through the door and immediately began his customary verbal assault — this was essentially his default mode of communication, with rare exceptions that still featured generous profanity. "I've had it with your nonsense, so today we're getting a special dispatcher. And if your criminal faces pull anything stupid, I swear on my old bones I will personally—" He described exactly what he intended to do, in terms that would have gotten him thrown out of most workplaces.
"I wasn't in prison," Invidiva responded first, as always. She raised her hand like a school student, blew an enormous bubble, and popped it in the silence following his speech, making Chase flinch. "And kneading clay isn't my thing. I prefer the oral track."
"I enjoy anal." Golem announced this from his seat directly behind Invidiva, and it appeared to serve as a starting pistol. Going clockwise from him, the confessions began.
"Down for anything." Flambé had his hands behind his head and was directing a suggestive smile at the women present, when he abruptly raised both hands in front of himself as if expecting an immediate attack. "Except scat. That's too far."
"BDSM. Either role." Coupé stroked an embarrassed Colm on top of his head, smiling the way a shark smiles when it's already committed.
"Classic, plus I enjoy standing on men." Prizm winked at me. Something in my lower body made a small, frightened retreating motion.
"Dominance, but nothing extreme." Malevola leaned one elbow on the table from the seat to my right, swaying her tail. "Maybe a little kink."
A few seconds of silence. I lifted my eyes from the table and looked around, and everyone — except a visibly boiling Chase, who appeared to be fighting an internal battle with his own vocabulary — was looking at me.
"Erm, what?"
"Come on, Herm, spill it." Malevola pushed off the floor with her tail and rolled her chair into mine, the squeak of the wheels unpleasant but immediately forgotten when she put her arm around me and pulled me against her. "Tell us your dirty little secrets—"
"I'm a virgin."
"Ma-boy! Mama wishes she'd locked that down sooner." Prizm's voice cut through the room with a clarity that was almost physically refreshing, and she ran her tongue across her lips with such deliberate intent that even in my current state, I registered an involuntary response in the relevant anatomy.
"Oh, Herman, you did buy yourself a sword." The demoness holding me glanced downward, which turned my face a deep red. I resisted the urge to cover myself like a flustered teenager. I just had to outlast this. "Or are you just happy to see me?"
"Handsome," Invidiva whispered, giving me a thumbs up.
"My turn?" Sonar was genuinely about to stand up and deliver a prepared statement. "At Harvard I developed a deep appreciation for—"
"Have you all completely lost your minds?!" Chase's internal resistance finally collapsed, and the explosion rattled the glass. His fist hit the table, and through it the faces of other confused dispatchers were visible. "I don't care what you stick where, or what you do with your pathetic little sausages—"
"Well, for the record, whether in bat form or human form, no one has ever complained about the—"
"*Shut it.* Or I will beat you with this mop—" He grabbed it from the corner, made a specific threat for each person present, then added the punchline about Sonar's ceiling sleeping arrangements. "No more of your terrifying stunts up there!"
There had been incidents. Sonar had stayed overnight at the office three times — arriving high and drunk on Sunday and passing out in the building. Each time the SDS morning began with impressive female screaming and thorough male profanity while people debated the optimal method of removing the cursed vampire from the ceiling.
"All right, enough." Chase ran a hand through his grey dreads, settling unexpectedly fast. "The new dispatcher arrives in a couple of hours. Behave like functioning adults. Finding new people for your team gets harder every time, and if you don't want to keep listening to me enumerate your moral failures, then act like you're actually in the Phoenix Program. Clear?"
As he spoke, Blazer entered the room. Her usual ten out of ten, returning the greeting smile as Chase gestured her toward the head of the table.
"Team Z. Your twelfth dispatcher arrives today." She moved her gaze around the room with a quietly reproachful expression, pausing longest on the most egregious offenders, who sank slightly in their chairs. "I hope this person can stay for at least a few months, because the main office has started asking questions about our situation—"
Before she or anyone else could respond, my phone erupted.
A long, drawn-out female moan filled the meeting room.
The silence that followed was the kind that exists in nature just before something catches fire.
Then another. Then another.
Anyone passing in the hallway would have had a very specific interpretation of what was happening inside.
"Herman, would you mind—" Blazer began, with her usual tact.
"TURN IT OFF."
"I'm so sorry—" My ears were generating their own heat. Other anatomical structures were also being unhelpful. And I needed the bathroom. Three simultaneous problems, which felt cosmically unfair. "It's just messages—"
"Virgin, you said?" A helpful reminder from the floor.
"What in the— kid!" Even Chase had lost his original aggressive momentum, apparently just as thrown as everyone else. "Why is Swety Fox your ringtone?"
"It's a notification. And I didn't set it! This was Sonar!" My hands were shaking as I tried to kill the sound, and I caught a glimpse of several messages from Amanda — we usually texted in the mornings during my commute, but today's early start had thrown off the schedule. "He hacked the phone and deleted the option to change it, and I don't understand any of that, so I've been stuck with it—"
"And how did your phone end up with him?" Blazer's voice was entirely pleasant. Her eyes were slightly narrowed. Moisture appeared along my spine.
"We were sitting together—" This, remarkably, was rescued by Sonar. He turned toward Blazer with the flat, calm delivery of someone who had no concept of what information was appropriate to share in what context. "...In the Red Sparrow. Waterboy was getting—"
I threw myself over the armrest of my chair and got my hand over the bat's mouth before the sentence could continue. Smiling with the innocence of a man who had definitely not just committed a small crime, I whispered as pleasantly as I was capable of.
"Let's be quiet now, Victor." The panic was doing something to my hands — moisture starting to flow — which produced a fairly effective accidental waterboarding situation for my friend. "Nod when you understand."
The nodding was extremely enthusiastic, which I recognized as the same motion Sonar used when meth was affecting his motor control and he was whipping his head around trying to catch a stable image of anything.
"*Kha-kha—* We were sitting together," the werebat repeated hoarsely, which no one appeared to believe, based on the expressions around the room, particularly the skeptical-but-diplomatic look on Blazer's face. "In prison."
"Let's move on from that." Blazer accepted the exit with the grace of someone who had become excellent at changing subjects. She stood, looking briefly uncertain about how to regain the thread of a morning that had thoroughly derailed, and headed for the door. "Be ready."
Once the blonde had left under our collective watching eyes, everyone turned to me. Only Chase spoke.
"God help you, kid."
He waved at me and also left, leaving me with a room full of people who each felt it was their personal responsibility to address my situation at length. Invidiva had somehow slipped out during the confusion.
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In the archive, Chase moved through personal files with the low-grade grumbling of a man who has accepted aging as an insult but isn't going to stop mentioning it. He was looking for the Team Z information to have ready for the new dispatcher — who was supposed to arrive with a standard briefing on the computer, same as the last eleven. The last eleven who had fled at a speed suggesting self-preservation instincts in excellent working order.
But today's dispatcher was different. Different in all the ways that mattered, and most importantly different for Chase personally. The son of his friend and team captain of the Brave Brigade. Son and heir to the legacy of the Second Mecha Man — the small white troublemaker he'd watched over for years while the grown-up supers handled the actual crises.
And now his protégé was going to manage the very same variety of disaster, which had apparently decided to turn over a new leaf and become something more than it was.
"Hell's sake."
The former superhero paused, pulled briefly into memories. Those years felt distant now, especially when he looked in the mirror and saw how much had accumulated on him. There had been a time when he was one of the fastest people alive. Now he was a productive ruin.
The archive door opened. Slightly cautious, slightly uncertain what to expect — Robert Robertson III, son of Robert, grandson of Robert.
*Damn white people and their aristocratic naming conventions.*
Chase smiled to himself and called out to the young man, wondering if he'd be recognized. It had been a very long time. Since the boy's father had died at the hands of a former teammate, their connection had gone quiet — but Chase believed the kid hadn't become a pompous ass, and would respect the old man.
"You look good, short stuff." He climbed down from the step-ladder and walked toward his student-friend-ward-younger-brother, all of those things at once and impossible to reduce to just one. "Skinny little soybean, boy — you're practically a skeleton."
"Ah, I'm not quite sure—" The young man hadn't placed him yet. Still holding the shoulder, Chase stepped back and took a full look. Office clothes, plain shirt — none of it hiding what was underneath. Direct gaze, scars from hundreds of fights, dry muscle evident throughout. A real superhero. "I haven't been hugged in a while. Could we maybe not?"
He extracted himself from the grip and looked to Blond Blazer, who was standing in the archive doorway with a warm smile. Before recommending the kid for this role, Chase had told her quite a bit about Robert — about the person behind the mask.
"I'm not groping you." Chase let the smile show. "Give it a second—"
He stepped back and took the stance. The one that preceded sprinting at several hundred — sometimes several thousand — kilometers per hour. One instant of recognition was all it needed.
"Trackstar?! What the—" Now the kid launched himself forward, wrapping the old bones in a grip that applied serious structural pressure. "How long has it been?"
"Ten, fifteen years?" Chase looked toward Blazer, who had been watching with affectionate amusement. "Little bastard was dodging me like I was a debt collector when I tried to reach out after his father died."
"Wow, that long?"
"Yep." Robert looked away briefly, but when he answered it was clear and direct — he owned it. "I was in a bad place. Did a lot of stupid things."
"Understood, kid." Chase reached his shoulder and held it. "None of us had it easy."
"Right... Hey, how long have you looked like an aging Black Einstein?"
Blazer laughed from the doorway. Chase gave them both a flat look and turned toward the computer.
"Comedian," he muttered, walking over and pulling out the data disc. "You're about two months late with that joke. Tiny water-soaked little—"
"So." Robert moved to stand beside him, watching the ancient machine consider starting. "What happened to you, seriously?"
"The ability, obviously. Running fifty times faster than normal humans is great — unfortunately you also age fifty times faster." Chase shrugged with the complete ease of someone who had processed this long ago. "At least I walk without a cane. Small mercies."
"So I shouldn't complain about losing my suit?"
"Correct, or I'll resurrect your father specifically to kill him in front of you—"
"Chase!" Blazer attempted to intervene.
Their synchronized laughter cut her off.
"He was always like this." Robert confirmed this to the room, then sat in the chair Chase indicated. "All right. Let me see them."
"Not complaining," Chase said, inserting the disc. "Just getting you up to speed. Welcome to your team of garbage people."
"I suppose if it were my choice I'd just send them all back—"
"That option isn't off the table," Blazer said from Robert's other side, arms folded. "They're not at rock bottom, but they're close. No meaningful progress and the program gets cancelled."
"At least they're doing something," Chase grumbled. "I genuinely feared they'd just eat our cafeteria budget and refuse to leave the building—"
"Let's get into it."
What followed was a rapid orientation in which Robert was introduced to Team Z. Even on first exposure, his reaction was charitable at best.
"So. Summary." His tone grew progressively grimmer as the file proceeded, to the quiet enjoyment of the other two. "A knockoff Batman with a drug problem. A contract killer with social processing issues. A circus leprechaun. An ambulatory pile of construction debris. A demon. A pop star. An invisible voyeur who has already watched me change. A pyromaniac with anger issues who I have personally imprisoned before." He paused. "Anyone I missed?"
"Hit the right arrow, rookie." Chase pointed at the edge of the screen and delivered a symbolic tap to the back of the head. "One more didn't fit."
"God, where did you find that word? Two thousand and seven?"
"Zip it."
"All right, what have we got here. Herman Herby. Twenty-four. Can produce and control water in significant quantities. Social skills assessed as low, multiple documented phobias and anxieties per therapeutic evaluation. Empathetic, moderately shy but—" He scrolled down, clearly reaching the added notes in the expanded file. His voice changed slightly. "Demonstrates excellent self-improvement progress. Exemplary conduct during incarceration." He glanced up. "That doesn't sound bad?"
"Keep reading." Chase knew exactly where this was going — he'd made the same mistake himself, skimmed the surface and been fooled by a bashful face. The photo didn't help. Taken maybe a couple of months ago, the kid was scratching the back of his head while a red tail crept in from the edge of the frame.
"List of violations." The voice dropped incrementally. "Vigilantism. Involvement in an unintentional death. Grievous bodily harm. Property damage of exceptional scale, both public and private." Robert turned to look at Chase, then at Blazer. He pointed at the photograph — the standard booking shot, orange prison uniform, identification number, height chart behind him. "This D&D enthusiast?"
"Surprises you, right?" Blazer spoke with an expression Chase found difficult to read. "I recently broke up a fight between him and Flambé. Entire intersection reduced to rubble — windows, buildings, cars. Two minutes."
"Wonderful."
"In general he's cooperative and genuinely shy, at least around me—"
"Well obviously." Chase turned off the computer and stepped aside to let Mecha Man out of the chair. "He's your fan. Give him an autograph and he'll bring you coffee and newspapers every morning. The funny part being that you're the one who arrested him."
This last was addressed directly to Robert, who received it by closing his eyes briefly with the expression of a man realizing the day is going to be longer than anticipated.
"Excellent. The candidates are just superb."
"Don't stress." Chase clapped him on the shoulder and led both of them toward the archive exit. "He lists you in his personal heroes too, so if anything, I'd be more concerned about that."
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