After the Golden Age

“Ah. This is where I make an unlikely speech revealing all my plans, thereby giving you a chance to thwart me. That doesn’t happen in the real world.”

“Who says I’m trying to thwart you? You know my history. Maybe you’ve shown me where the cards are falling. Maybe I want to ask you for a job.”

“I’m curious, what exactly do you think you can offer me and my operation? What did you bring to the Destructor’s operation when you joined him?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Figures. Too bad I’m not in need of a staff accountant.”

The evil masterminds never were, more’s the pity. Accountants knew when to shred the documents.

“Then what can I do for you, Mr. Paulson?”

“Sit quietly in the corner like a good little hostage.” He smiled.

At some unseen cue, the two henchmen took a step toward her, preparing to herd her off again. As soon as they moved, she jumped.

“Don’t shoot, you’ll hit the machine!”

They’d raised their weapons; Paulson had stopped them. At least something had played out in her favor.

She jumped onto the lab table. If she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have done it. It was too far, too crazy. But she didn’t think. She jumped again—toward the radiation emitter.

She only had to knock some of the cables off, or break the glass focal points, assuming they were breakable, or throw it out of alignment. Mysterious devices always had alignments they could be thrown out of. Her heart was beating too hard, her blood rushing too fast for her to worry about what would happen to her after she crashed into the thing.

She landed awkwardly, scrabbling at narrow handholds, kicking to keep her balance. For all its bulk, the machine was delicate, spindly almost, balanced on a single-wheeled column. The column spun, the whole thing rolled, and cables came unplugged in her hands, emitting sparks and crackles. Lab workers scattered, and Celia managed to slide to the floor, stumbling but keeping her feet and clutching the machine for balance. It gave a few more sickly sputters for good measure. Static prickled along her arms. She let go, brushing her hands and wincing.

That would delay the plan. Probably even long enough for those with experience in battling evil masterminds to get here.

She assumed the Olympiad would show up. They always did, somehow.

Please, Arthur. Get here quick. God only knew if he’d pick up on her thought. Could he hear her across the city? Only if he was listening? Or would her thoughts pull at him like a fish hook? After they’d slept together, did her thoughts feel any different to him?

The two henchmen tackled her. She went limp and let them, offered no resistance, gave them no reason to start pounding her with the butts of their weapons. Or start shooting. They each took a shoulder and shoved her to the floor, facedown, then pried her arms back. It felt like they used duct tape to bind her wrists together. When they’d finished, they hoisted her to her feet.

“You do have a death wish,” the mayor observed. “You weren’t lying when you testified at Sito’s trial.”

Nobody trusted her. Not even the bad guys. She didn’t glare. She wasn’t even angry. She’d accomplished something: She’d learned what Paulson was planning, and she’d delayed him. Apart from that, let him think she was crazy. That was easy enough for most people to do.

She gave him a great, smug grin, like she didn’t care, like she thought he was an ass. And on one level she didn’t care, because this wasn’t about her. It had never been about her. When she was seventeen and thought everything should have been about her, that was when she grew angry. But now, she knew better. Commerce City ran on the blood of all its people.

His frown grew deeper, emphasizing the lines of his face, making his cheekbones hollower, and for a moment she saw in him his father, Simon Sito. She saw a bitter old man bent on chaos. Paulson’s rhetoric about the greater good aside, whatever he did would result in chaos. And she’d stopped him.

“Put her over there.” He pointed to a chair, out of the way by a bank of computers. The henchmen pulled her off her feet, dragged her over, and slammed her into it, jamming her bound arms behind the back. Her shoulders ached. Paulson regarded her with a sense of smug triumph. “Good thing I have an updated model.”

He shoved the now-broken model—a mere prototype?—out of the way.

“This is the wide area broadcast version.” He pointed up, to the end of the warehouse, where a similar device but newer looking—sleek, modern—was mounted on a platform, suspended from the roof. Instead of the focusing materials on the narrow end, however, it had a parabolic dish that would beam out radiation to as great an area as possible.

One of the lab people pulled a large knife switch on the wall. A panel in the roof slid open and, with a mechanical whine, the platform rose. Cables trailed from it, along the ceiling, secured to the wall, and leading finally to the computer banks.