Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

CELIA West sat alone in her office, a corner suite in the family penthouse at West Plaza. She kept her wide, preternaturally slick desk neat, the few files stacked in a corner, pens lined up, computer screen conveniently placed, laptop dock accessible. Everything else was put away in drawers and filing cabinets. Anyone standing before her wouldnt be able to tell a thing about her, except that she kept her office tidy. People might make assumptions based on that. They might even be right about some of them.

On the computer, she clicked on an encrypted file shed been sent.

A video played, dark and grainy feed from a security camera outside a jewelry store on the south side of downtown. The camera looked down at the front doors from a corner of the building, creating a foreshortened image, as if the walls had shrunk. Time stamp read 1:23 a.m. A trio approached: men in ski masks, overcoats, baggy jeans, shit-kicking boots. Hoodlums of one flavor or another. One carried a backpack, one carried a baseball bat, the third a crowbar. Standard smash and grab.

Before they could get started on the window and grating, though, a masked vigilante walked into the frame. Words were probably exchanged, but the camera didnt record audio.

The vigilante was just a kid. Male, tall in that impossibly lanky way of teenage boys. All limbs and chaotic movement. He wore a black T-shirt and sweatpants and a homemade mask, probably a bandana with eyeholes cut out, covering most of his hair and the top half of his face. His chin was smooth, youthful. He stood with his fists clenched at his sides, bouncing a little on worn sneakers. He was nervous, excitedthis was obviously a first outing. Too young and stupid not to know he couldnt save the world.

The robbers didnt have any patience for this. They stood back a moment, glancing at one another as if confirming this was really happening. Then the guy with the baseball bat stepped forward and swung, aiming for the kids head.

The vigilante vanished. Blinked out of existence, there and then not.

Celia used the laptops touch pad to back up the video and leaned forward to watch the scene again. The average person might think the trick was a special effect, some editing cut made on the video. But the frame didnt skip, nothing else in the image changed. The boy was there one frame, gone the next.

The guy with the baseball bat stumbled, thrown off balance when his blow didnt connect. All three crooks looked around in obvious confusion. Then the baseball bat jerked out of the guys hands, swung apparently of its own volition, and caught its former owner on the chin. He fell back and lay writhing on the concrete sidewalk.

The kid hadnt vanished, theninvisible, along with what he was wearing.

The other two lunged at the bat hanging in midair. The bat fellwisely, the kid dropped it and wasnt there when the two crooks attacked the spot he should have been. One of them bent double, from what looked like a kick in the crotch. The other stumbled at a strike to his knees. Kid wasnt doing too badly, really.

It couldnt last, however much Celia might want it to. The guy with the crowbar might have just gotten lucky, but he swung in a likely spot, and connected. The kid flickered back to visibility, cringing and holding his shoulder. Pain, maybe any distraction, interrupted his powers. He had to focus to stay invisible.

Now that he had a target, the guy with the crowbar punched him, fist connecting to cheek. The kids head whipped around, and he stumbled, his chest heaving to catch his breath. Still visiblehe hadnt pulled himself back together.

Celia had a sinking feeling about how the rest of this was going to go, but the kid turned out to be smarter than she expected. He picked up the bat and shoved it through the bars of the security grating to smash the window of the jewelry store. Celia could tell the alarm went off by the way the crooks flinched. The two still standing hauled up their fallen partner and ran. The kid hesitated a moment, rubbing his face where hed been struck, shaking his head as if to clear it. He looked down the streetat the approaching police sirens, Celia guessed. He disappeared, turning invisible again before presumably running away. Preserving his secret identity.

As a first outing for a vigilante went, it wasnt an unmitigated success, but it wasnt a disaster, either. More interesting to her, thoughhe was a new guy. She didnt know who he was. But she had a good guess.

Celia kept a file folder in a locked safe that lived underneath her desk. Inside the folder was a list of a dozen names. The people the names belonged to were all dead, but most of them had descendants who lived on, and she kept a list of those names as well. A third generation was coming up. If she traced down the family trees of that original list of names, shed find the invisible kid. She wondered what he called himselfnot the Invisible Kid, she was pretty sure.

And there it wasseveral teenage boys on the list, all but one of whom she was already tracking. The remaining one had a question mark by his name: Theodore Donaldson. Grandson of Lawrence Donaldson, whose son hadnt exhibited any sign of superhuman abilities, which didnt mean anything. The trait often skipped generations, as she very well knew. But his son

She crossed out the question mark, wrote a note, and put the file back in the safe. Then she picked up her phone and made a call. A standard receptionist voice answered.

Id like to speak to Captain Paulson, please, Celia said.

Im sorry, hes in a meeting now.

Tell him its Celia West.

The receptionist didnt say anything to that, which made Celia smile. That one name had so much power didnt seem right, somehow. How had it come to this, again? Once upon a time, shed just wanted to stay anonymous.

Captain Paulson will speak to you now, the receptionist said curtly, maybe even offended. Gatekeeper duties overridden. Sorry, honey.

Marks voice came on the line. Celia?

Hi, Mark. I watched that video you sent over.

Yeah? What did you think?

I think hes one to keep an eye on.

Do you know who he is?

Lets give the kid some room, okay?

Celia

Did you catch the three crooks?

No, but were canvassing the neighborhood and weve got a few leads.

You canvassing for the kid, too?

The police captain sighed. I cant discuss an ongoing investigation with you.

Why dont you drop it and let me keep an eye on him? You wouldnt have sent me the video if you didnt want me to know about him, right?

I just thought you might have a name.

I can get it if we need it. But lets see what he does next. This may have shaken him up, he may back off.

Not likelyI know how these guys operate.

So do I, Mark. Better than you.

Yeah. Well. He cleared his throat, avoiding an uncomfortable change of subject. Youll let me know if you hear anything through the grapevine?

You know Im always here for you, she said.

Thats exactly what I need, for people to think Im in the pocket of the president of West Corp.

No, theyll know better than that. Take care of yourself, Mark.

You, too.

The complicated phone unitthe thing had more controls than a jet fighterbeeped an incoming call. She punched the button, which summoned her own receptionist to the line.

Ms. West? Theres a call from Elmwood Academy on line three.

She suppressed a groan. This was about one of the girls. But which one, and was it good news or bad? She could just make the caller leave a message