13.
Sienna
I don’t like traffic, as a rule. It has a lot to do with my distaste for crowds and waiting. Some people—mostly reporters—have taken this to mean I don’t like people. It’s actually the opposite. I like people, at least in the abstract. Or on an individual basis. Or as a general, whole idea.
But when you put them in crowds and unleash them around me, I get antsy. There are a few reasons for this, none of which really bear discussing right now, save for the one where being surrounded by people feels a little like bugs crawling over my skin. It’s nothing they do; it’s the fact that I can … feel them around me. Walking. Talking. Existing. Ignoring me (hopefully). They’re a presence that presses on my consciousness, and while it’s easy to tolerate a few—like molecules of water—when too many surround me, I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
They’re just … everywhere.
I’d never tested to see what would happen if I surrounded myself in a crowd in New York City for more than a half hour or so at a time, but I had a feeling it would be bad. I’d walked Times Square before on a Sunday once, when the crowds were in full force. I’d had people brush against me, push against, bump into me, talking as they walked, cell phones to their ear, arguing with their loved ones, laughing with their kids. It was a crush, a glut of humanity, and it felt so close to my consciousness it was like they were poured raw into my mind. They were there, laid bare before me, all humanity and feelings and emotions, and I felt overwhelmed.
I’d needed to retreat to my hotel room after only a few minutes, closing myself off in the closet, no light, fingers in my ears, letting the noise and feeling and talking and living recede into the distance.
“So …” Allyn Welch said, breaking the silence between us as we honked our way across the RFK Bridge between Randalls and Wards Islands and Manhattan, the whole of Manhattan laid out before us. Fortunately he’d rolled the windows up after we’d left LaGuardia, because I had a feeling, based on the number of cars in front of me belching smoke out their tailpipes, that the air quality around us had taken a precipitous drop. Talk about not being able to breathe.
“You sent for me and I am here,” I said, steeling myself for entry to the city of New York. I hoped I wouldn’t feel buried in the crowds during this assignment, but I was a big girl and occasionally I had to confront my fears and the psychological damage from being raised in isolation. Because that’s what grown-ups do in the real world. “What’s the what?”
“The … what?” Welch gave me a frown so deep his crow’s feet looked like they were opening box canyons at the ends.
“Never mind,” I said, looking out at the city through the window. “Why did you break the glass if you didn’t see an emergency?”
He got that one, and went all introspective on me, nodding and looking out at the sea of traffic ahead of us. “You ever get that feeling in your gut? The one that tells you something’s wrong?”
“Usually after I’ve had White Castle in the middle of the night, but yeah,” I said, flashing him a smile. He looked at me blankly, and I suppressed a sigh. “Cop instinct, sure,” I said, letting my brilliant joke go to waste.
“I got that feeling here,” Welch said. “And if I’m wrong when it comes up on a normal case … maybe somebody dies. Bad news, right? But the NYPD can handle the perp afterward. I get that feeling on a meta case …” He looked at me with purpose. “I break the damned glass.”
“Nicely brought around.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I get this wrong … worse happens than a little murder. Here we’ve got people with powers and all possible sorts of trouble.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I didn’t see what Captain Frost said—”
“It wasn’t anything major,” Welch said. “I’ll show you the video at the precinct, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to trip many triggers.”
“But it tripped yours?”
“Maybe I’m just an old cop in a new world,” Welch said, which I thought was a pretty brave admission, though obviously the comb-over was a good tipoff. “Not gonna lie, I’m still pretty uneasy that the Mayor’s office lets these ‘heroes’ go running through the city unchecked.”
I held my tongue, mostly because I didn’t have a well-formed opinion about this new phenomenon. Metahumans had mostly been held in check—publicly, at least, kept in secret, for thousands of years—until President Gerry Harmon decided to out us on national television. It probably wasn’t a bad call, since I was in dragon form, battling a supreme evil over Minneapolis at the moment he chose to make his announcement. That might have been hard to explain if he hadn’t come clean.
But this idea of heroes, powered people straight out of comic books, defending their cities and waging war against evil? That was new. Other than me, I meant. I’d set loose the first hero on Atlanta about a year ago, Taneshia French, and she’d done a pretty good job of improving her neighborhood and the city in general. I knew her, and I trusted her.
These other heroes, though? I knew what I’d seen of Gravity Gal, and she seemed like a low-profile, keep-her-mouth-shut-and-do-her-job type. I liked her.
Captain Frost, though? He was like Kat unchecked, and that bothered me, because I was constantly checking Kat to keep her from being a giant idiot.
“It doesn’t bother you that I’m playing Luke Cage nowadays?” I asked, and realized a second later that I’d thrown another reference at Welch that was bound to soar over his head. “I mean—”
“Hero for Hire, I got it,” Welch said, and a smile poked out as he looked over at me. “I used to read the comics as a kid.” He let the levity pass and went serious again. “I guess, maybe because of the way you started—working for the government and all that—it doesn’t bother me as much.” He gave me a slightly sour look. “But if you could keep from trashing any subway trains this time—”
“You never let that one go, jeez. I saved all the gold in the Federal Reserve, but no one remembers that.”
“Anyway,” Welch said, and I saw the end of the bridge in sight, but the FDR looked like it was packed with cars. Welch saw it, too, and another pronounced frown wrinkled him all the way to the eyes. “I just want you to hang around for a bit, like a soothing balm, in case noses get out of joint.”
I passed by the mixed metaphor and went straight to his intent. “Have you met me? Of the many things I’ve been called, soothing? … Not so much one of them.”
“Well, add it to your repertoire,” Welch said and honked his horn pointlessly before giving a massive sigh.
“Might as well try something new,” I said. “How long am I gonna be here?” He looked over at me again, and I clarified. “In New York, not on this bridge. I know, based on the traffic, that we’re going to die of old age here. You much sooner than me, obvs.”
That got me a scowl followed by a smile. “Why do you ask, so long as the money keeps flowing into your company’s account?”
“Well, the State Fair is coming up, you know,” I said, looking over at the Bronx. When he didn’t say anything, I turned back to see him looking perplexed. “It’s like a religious holiday in Minnesota. The Great Minnesota Get-Together, they call it. It’s a big deal,” I finished lamely.
“Hopefully not too long,” Welch said, turning his attention back to the immovable line of traffic in front of us. I thought about getting out, lifting the car and flying us back to the precinct, but figured that might be too much for even the city of New York to fight the FAA over, so I settled myself against the window. We inched forward a little at a time, in silence, as the sun tilted ever closer to the western horizon before us, and onward toward nightfall.