"He's not dead."
    "Until he shows up again, I'm not going to worry about it," I shrugged. "The usual gang stuff, that's Phoenix Talon's job."
    "Do you legitimately subdivide it that way?" he wanted to know. "Or is it merely something he excels in?"
    "He's very good at it, and it keeps him out of my hair."
    "And you should see, they have this whole base of their own," Emily interjected.
    "Please." I rolled my eyes.
    "What, it's great! You have that training room, and your own island..."
    "You have an island?"
    "Look, it's an abandoned public works building so far from the mainland that it takes us five minutes just to get there to respond to anything." I tried to downplay the base thing.
    "City gave it to you, huh?" Steel wasn't exactly warming up to me, but seemed a little less hostile than he had at first; I'll call it a victory. The five of us chatted for a while about cases we'd had to deal with, the difficulties of public relations, etc.. I didn't mention the World Crime League, though I did wonder what they would make of it. Better not to jeopardize first impressions.
    At last Cold Steel announced portentously, "The night calls. It has been... interesting meeting you."
     Fog filled the room, and he was gone.
    "Condensation all over everything...." Trent muttered irritably. "I mean, he's just walking out the door."
    Drama again.
    "D'you ever find out what happened to Promethean?" Trent inquired.
    "No," I sighed. "Somebody showed up, took care of his parents, never got a chance to talk to them before they disappeared again. He's just gone. I can't say that I actually mind this." If he does show up, it's going to be pretty unpleasant.
    "He seemed pretty stiff when I talked to him."
    I sighed again. "Sorry, I'm still a little angry about the...."
    "Don't mean to hash up old memories, that's fine."
    "I was just hoping that it would work out well. He seemed to have exactly the right background to fill in some serious holes we have, and then he had to go insane and kill a bunch of people. Thanks," I muttered to him, wherever he might be.
    "Did not go over well?"
    I shook my head. "And then the lynch mobs started."
    "Lynch mobs?" Xorn's eyebrows went up.
    "Well, okay, not 'lynch mobs.' There were protests around the city, and... you can't really blame them, a couple dozen people did die in that little..."
    "Fiasco?" he supplied.
    "That's the word I'm looking for. Thank you."
    "Well, it's been nice meeting you," the scientist said. "I have to get going."
    "Nice meeting you," I echoed.
    "Give me a call if anything major shows up," he told the others, and headed out.
    The three of us headed back to Trent's loft. Via air, of course; I hung back, partly because I didn't know the way and partly because I wanted to watch them. There's something inherently graceful about wings. I felt like a klutz.
    His place is the entire top floor of a converted warehouse, with several skylights. One of them opens with a garage-door opener device. One corner is set up as a studio, and there are some paintings on the walls that I assumed were his work. There's all the space a guy with huge wings could want. Hangings here and there serve to create temporary rooms if necessary, but overall the place is very roomy and fluid-feeling. It seemed very fitting.
    "D'you want anything to drink?"
    "No, I think I'm okay."
    He poured himself a glass of sherry while I wandered along the walls, looking at his work. There's a Georgia O'Keefe quality in the colors and the near-abstraction of the objects.
    "Nice place."
    "Thanks. There are reasons I don't use this as the team base," he added with a smile as he looked around.
    "Don't want condensation all over things?"
    "There's that. And this is... I honestly don't know how you can live and work on the base," he told me with a little shake of his head.
    "Well, it was mostly a matter of practicality at the time, I thought somebody might bomb my apartment."
    "There's always a serious threat, but... I just like having that separation between... what you do professionally and what you do at home."
    "Yeah. It's nice that way." I shrugged; I don't know if there's any difference left for me there, now, what I would do at home if I had one. "It's a little easier now that Lucky's kind of moved out. It's not her fault that she has incredibly good hearing, but it makes it kind of hard to feel private."
    "Hm. I can understand that. People complain of a similar thing about me sometimes."
    "Incredibly good hearing?" I intentionally misunderstood.
    "It's the telepathy thing."
    "Well, yes... you have ethics." I shrugged again. For whatever reason, being around him doesn't make me uncomfortable.
    "But if you're really upset about something, I can't help but pick up on the edges of it. I might not necessarily want to," he added, "but it's nonetheless there."
    "That's not that big a deal. In Maine I ran into an uncontrolled projector."
    "Jeez," he said very softly, with a visible wince. "Was he okay?"
    "She. Seems to be, kind of. Doesn't get out much." I told him about Valerie, and the rest of them.
    When I was done he let out a sigh. "What are you going to do with Steven?"
    "I don't know," I admitted. "I figured I'd go home, talk to some people, see if I can turn something up that would get him out of there, see a little bit of the world in a place where people aren't as likely to overreact. More cosmopolitan environment. I think he's maybe making too much out of it, I mean given his background I understand why...."
    "He's young, too," he observed.
    "I think if he could see a little bit more of things, he'd be a little less bitter." I shrugged. "I don't know, I'll see what I can do. There's plenty of shipping companies and so forth in Boston, you never know, they might need someone who can do aquatic work."
    "Breathe water and stuff?"
    "He's good with his hands."
    "We could almost use him out here, but... fresh water lake."

| Top |