49.
Sienna
When the slow pull against the Verrazano Narrows Bridge stopped dragging me toward it, it took me a second to realize. It was such a gentle thing, the gradual reeling in of a fishing line, and I barely felt it, like a slow moving escalator.
Of course, the moment I did feel it, alarm bells started twanging in my head. It was a bad, bad sign that the person who’d made it happen might be unconscious or worse.
I could tell where the Tirragusk had sunk by the still-boiling seas around it, air bubbles escaping the sinking wreck and roiling the surface. I flew toward it in a blaze, scared witless that I was too late. Jamie was a powerful meta, but was she powerful enough to survive a drowning? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know, because if I found out and it was on the bad side of the probabilities, her troublesome teenage daughter was going to finish growing up without a mom.
I plunged into the water without thought for self or cell phone, and found myself in a world of darkness. I didn’t love swimming, ever, but if I could save a life, it would be worth it. I opened my mouth in shock at the chill, immediately wishing I hadn’t, because my mouth was filled with a nasty salty taste. I gagged and spat, but it didn’t go away even after I blew most of the invading water out of my mouth.
I sped deeper down, peering into the dark, wondering where she could possibly be. Need a little light, I thought, holding up a hand, which burst into flames. It shed some illumination, giving me a peek at the close environs as I descended. I could see the shadows of the wreck somewhere ahead, still settling, bubbles rushing up to the surface as it shed the last of its oxygen.
The problem was, I couldn’t see anything the deeper I got. My ears were threatening to pop with the pressure, and I could barely stand the sensation, even though I’d already regrown my eardrums twice today. I was trying to make out the shadows moving across the murky seabed, and then I saw motion.
Bastian, stand by in case I need you, I said, and felt a groan within.
You want to go dragon here? There are people on those shores over—
Bastian, I said, and he quieted. I’d done it in more public places than this.
Turned dragon, I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter.
I fired a burst of flame about ten feet ahead of me, and it lit the area and boiled the water nearby before I extinguished it. I could see someone swimming ahead, closer to the wreck, and I flew toward them, not even bothering to swim because I didn’t need to. I cut through the water effortlessly, like a shark. A shark with no fins. And more kills, probably. Urgh.
If Jamie was down here and still moving, why had she killed the tether to the bridge? Was she distracted? Did she lose focus? Did she—
The answer came as I shot closer. Within ten feet, the answer became clear, because I saw Jamie, limp, falling through the water, only a few feet above the seabed, and next to her, moving wildly, was Scott.
He saw me as I approached, throwing his head around like he could sense me cutting through the water toward him. I stopped, fearing the look in his eyes; I was surrounded by an element he utterly controlled, after all, and he’d been setting himself up as my enemy. I didn’t think he would attack, but then again, I hadn’t thought he would take my old job or watch me like I was a criminal, and yet here he was doing both.
His eyes met mine when I reached a distance of about five feet from him. Jamie was between the two of us, no bubbles coming out of her mouth, and I pointed at her. He nodded, grabbed her, put her under one arm, and then launched to the surface faster than I could have done it.
And he left me behind, swirling in his wake, proving, in my mind, that if he wasn’t full-on willing to crush me under the water, he still wasn’t happy enough with me to try and take me with him.
I followed a moment later, fighting against the currents he’d left behind. They were strong, strong enough to push me aside, knock me about, and I didn’t want any part of them, so I shot to the surface at a forty-five degree angle to avoid the worst of them.
When I broke out into the day, I found Scott sitting on a pillar of solid water that was rising out of the bay, his fingers extended just above Jamie’s mouth. She was lying flat on her back, an arm dangling off his makeshift water platform. Liquid was rising from between her lips, pulled slowly by Scott as he drew it from her lungs. She coughed, and it came out in a rush, absorbed into his hand as though it had never existed.
The sound of a wet cough disappeared in seconds, and Jamie was left hacking dryly, then she stopped as she sat up, her bodysuit glistening as Scott absorbed the water out of her costume. She sat up and looked at the pillar of water upon which she was perched. With mild surprise, she ran a hand over her costume and her fingers came back dry.
“That’s new,” I said, and Scott looked over at me with heavily lidded eyes. “Also, congrats on not drowning.”
“Something I figured out recently,” Scott said coolly. “I can’t drown. My powers work unconsciously to keep me alive whether I’m awake or not. Like you and soul sucking.”
“Hey,” I said, “I’m not—oh, you meant literally on the soul sucking.” He smiled, but he wasn’t amused. “How are you doing, Gravity Gal?”
“Feeling drowned but without any liquid in my lungs to show for it.” Jamie’s voice sounded scratchy. “So … the ship kinda sank.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That was a thing that happened. Thanks for not letting me die in the water, by the way. Because I can actually drown. Probably.”
“No problem,” she said, closing her eyes like she was suffering from a headache. She had been oxygen deprived, after all. “What … what do we do now?”
“Well, I need to stop by my hotel and get a new cell phone,” I said, pulling my current one out of my pocket. It dripped water out of the speakers at the bottom, and I held it out to Scott. “Unless you want to see if you can work your magic on it?”
He stared at me darkly for a second, then held out a finger and squirted it right out of my hand. It dropped into the bay below, disappearing with a plop! “Oops,” he said mildly. “Accident.”
“Whatever,” I said. I had replacements after all, and if he wanted to be a petty dick, it was no skin off my nose. That thing was fried anyway, probably even if he had sucked the water out. “What time is it?”
Jamie looked at me, then to Scott. “I … I don’t know. I don’t carry a cell phone or anything with me when I’m …” she looked down at her costume. “Well, you know.”
Scott pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and it turned right on. It looked like one of those new ones they were advertising as water-resistant. “It’s one in the afternoon,” he said to Jamie, pocketing the phone again. He looked completely dry, and so did Jamie. I was still dripping. Dripping and hovering, because the pillar of water wasn’t big enough for three.
“Did you see the registry on that ship?” I asked Scott, who seemed to have decided that now that I’d done all I could for him, he was going to do his best to ignore me, or be passive aggressive, or something. He looked at me, barely, for just a second before looking down at Jamie. “It was from Canta Morgana.”
I saw a flash of interest in his eyes that he couldn’t hide, but he didn’t say anything. Jamie did, though. “Where’s Canta Morgana?”
“Eastern Europe,” I said. “They’re in the middle of a lovey-dovey voluntary annexation by Revelen, but even now they’re sort of a clearinghouse for old Soviet tech, a wayside for mercenaries, haven for cybercriminals and other ne’er do wells. The Russian mob has mad ties up in that place, and rumor was they might be running the whole enchilada, which is really scary when you consider that right next door in Revelen they probably had nuclear silos before the Iron Curtain fell.”
“I … I’ve never heard of these places,” Jamie said, shaking her head.
“Most people haven’t,” I said. “They’re a small spot on the map, only of interest to foreign policy wonks and people who have seen some of the troubles they’ve exported land on their doorstep.” Last year, I’d had a tourist from Revelen come back to Minneapolis with super-duper-Gavrikov fire powers that he hadn’t had before he left. It had caused some problems for Reed and Augustus when they’d had to track the guy down. He’d left a bit of a mess behind him, too, and when I’d caught up on the file once it was all over, I’d thought the Revelen connection was a little strange. Especially when I saw how many mercenaries were passing through that country lately. It was a stamp that could be found on almost any gun-for-hire’s passport—assuming you got him to give up the real one instead of a fake.
“What does this have to do with what’s going on?” Scott asked, coming out of his self-imposed silence to sound impatient.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They were probably just hired out of either Revelen or Canta Morgana, these guys. Pros. Mercs. The bank job was a distraction for the FBI HQ hit.” My mind was whirring away. “There was a bigger purpose here, but I can’t think what.”
“What … what do we do now?” Jamie asked. She got to her feet, standing atop Scott’s pillar of water, and looked uneasily down at the seemingly solid surface beneath her feet like it was going to drop her at any minute.
“I should get back to the NYPD, make my report on what happened to Lieutenant Welch,” I said. I looked at the still-bubbling place where the Tirragusk had sunk. “This looks like a dead end until they … raise up the wreckage or whatever.” I glanced at Scott. “Unless you can do it.” He gave me a look that told me it wasn’t happening, either because he wasn’t that strong or because he didn’t want to, and then looked away again, toward the finger of land in the distance. “Maybe their investigation has turned something else up by now.”
“I should get home,” Jamie said, looking a little unsteady on her feet. “If our work is done for a little while.” She looked almost apologetic. “I mean, investigating is not really my … forte …”
“It’s not hers, either,” Scott muttered under his breath.
“Thanks,” I said. “And here I was actually worried about you for a few minutes.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, going from cold to harsh. “I can take care of myself.” And with that, he shot off his pillar and was zipping along on the surface of the water again, faster than before. Faster, in fact, than I would have thought he could go, probably over a hundred miles an hour, like he was riding an invisible jet ski.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Jamie, who looked at me. “Because of the awkward hostility.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m used to arguing with a teenager, so … that didn’t seem that awkward or hostile to me.”
“It’ll get better,” I said, trying to be vaguely reassuring.
She surveyed me with a wary eye as I felt her attach herself to me via a tether, like she knew the water pillar she was standing on could go at any second. “What do you know about teenagers?” she asked, not snotty, more subtle and amused, as if she really wanted to know.
“Well, is yours a pain in the ass?” I returned.
“Yes.”
“That makes her a normal teenager, then,” I said. “Trust me. I was one more recently than you. You want to hold tight to me in case—”
The pillar dropped, and Jamie activated her tether just in time; the water splashed back into the surface of the bay, and she was left hanging beneath me, the same weight around my waist as last time. “Good call,” she said.
“Want me to drop you back on Staten Island?” I asked, starting forward slowly. I didn’t want to whipsaw her head back from the sudden start.
“Sure,” she said, as I headed toward the left side of the bridge ahead of us. “I kind of … left work without saying anything to anyone. I should probably get back there … pick up the pieces …” She sounded introspective and a little sad. I’d never dealt with a secret identity, and just hearing the way she said it made me suddenly very glad I hadn’t.
I was almost to the bridge when I saw something moving quickly toward us, a white trail skating out from behind the bridge. I peered at it, staring, and saw something coming across the water, leaving a trail behind it. I thought maybe it was Scott for a moment, and then I realized I was seeing a suit.
An all too familiar suit. With yoga pants as the bottoms.
“Hey!” Captain Frost shouted as he got closer. I considered buzzing past him without a word, maybe hard enough to create a sonic boom and knock him off the ice floe he was steering around like a boat. “I heard you guys were up to some good out here, figured I’d see if I could help.”
“No good to be done here,” I said, slowing us only slightly. He gave me a slightly uneasy look that told me he hadn’t forgotten me calling him an idiot, and I wondered for a second why he would have come out here after that.
Then I saw the fleet of boats behind him, people with cameras and cell phones held high, snapping pics and video of everything. “You brought the paparazzi?” I asked, leaning my head back and staring at the sky, now clouded over with white tufts.
“Hey, they follow me because they know a good story when they see one,” Frost said with his easy grin. “How about we—”
I didn’t even wait for him to finish. I said to Jamie, “Holding tight?” and as soon as she nodded, I snapped into flight so fast that it made a sonic boom that knocked Frost off his ice. I swooped back around just to be sure.
“Ow,” Jamie said, opening her mouth and poking at her ear like she had water in it.
“Sorry,” I said, looping higher and zipping back toward Staten Island a little slower after I’d confirmed that Frost got soaked. “Your ear will heal, but that …” I looked down, and Frost was waving his fist angrily at us as the paparazzi converged. “Well, that’s the sort of magical moment that I won’t soon forget. Kinda makes the job worthwhile.” And in spite of the chill of the stinky ocean water all over my clothes, I felt surprisingly warm as I flew toward Staten Island to drop off Jamie.