44.
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge loomed ahead, wide and sweeping, stretching from Staten Island over to Brooklyn. I followed Scott under the enormous span, about a hundred yards behind him. I heard Jamie make a shocked sound, followed by a pained sigh. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said, and it was plainly not nothing. “I just … had a busy day ahead of me before all … all this.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty much a job, this hero business,” I said, like I was old hand. Which I was. “You know, if you wanted to, you could probably go full time like ol’ Captain Frost did—”
“Pass.”
I chuckled under my breath, a few flecks of spray left behind by Scott’s water trail catching me on the forehead. It felt good. “What, you don’t think a hero should be directly responsible to their fans?”
“I think a hero probably ought to do the right thing,” Jamie said with obvious distaste. “Full stop. And the idea of being beholden to … whoever he’s beholden to … doesn’t appeal to me.”
“Yeah, I’m not super clear exactly how all that works,” I said. “Crowdsourcing or funding or something? The gist I got was that people pay him to be a hero. Tip him when he saves a squirrel or something, I dunno.”
“I guess I was under the old-fashioned assumption that being a hero was a public service,” Jamie said drily.
“I probably shouldn’t talk, since I’m on the payroll of an organization that basically makes me a law enforcement officer for hire, huh?”
“That’s a little different,” Jamie said, sounding like she was backpedaling. “I think, anyway. I assume if you got a call for help that didn’t involve—”
“Yeah, I help the local departments in Minneapolis and St. Paul out where I can,” I said. “And people, individually, where I can. Some pro bono type work, though that gets a little dicier now, since a lot of states are not necessarily on board with me helping them.”
“Run into that problem a lot?”
“Ohio gave me some static when I offered to help them with a meta criminal last month,” I said. “He was an armed robber that was getting bolder, using his powers to—”
“I heard about that,” Jamie said with a cringe. “How many did he—”
“Twelve officers,” I said, suddenly a little scratchy in the throat. “Before they brought him down with a police sniper. This job … I think sometimes people either underestimate or overestimate what a meta can do, though when they go over, at least it’s the safer path.”
“Are we heading toward that boat? Out there past Breezy Point?” Jamie asked as Scott started a lazy turn to the left, a massive container ship the only thing nearby.
“Ship,” I corrected her. I frowned in the distance, but I couldn’t see a designation on the hull. “And yeah, I think that might be it.”
It was only a few hundred yards away, probably about a mile out to sea past the bridge. Our approach had slowed, presumably because Scott had sensed the submarine reducing speed in the water. I’d never really thought about his ability to feel things under the water, but then he’d always been a font of creativity in the ways he’d used his powers.
“Scott,” I said, drawing closer to him so as to avoid shouting over the open waters, “you might want to—”
Before I could tell him to back off, I heard shouts over the side of the vessel ahead. Sentries appeared from behind the containers on the deck like ants swarming out of a hill, and I immediately broke skyward, figuring that I’d split any fire they sent our way. I saw the submarine break the surface just ahead, cozying up to the side of the ship as Scott zoomed toward it to attack.
The gunfire peppered the water below as half a dozen rifles opened up over the side. I caught a glimpse of the bow of the ship and a faded name—Tirragusk, Canta Morgana. I recognized the name of the country at least; Canta Morgana was a country in Eastern Europe, and when last I checked, the haven of more than a few soldiers of fortune.
“You want me to drop you on the deck?” I asked Jamie as I accelerated up. I planned to drop down myself, engage these clowns one on one. I was mourning the loss of the Sig Sauer P226, but I must have left it in the bank after the explosion.
“I’ll follow you down,” Jamie said, and she swung like a chain above me as I started my plunge from five hundred feet up. I could see Scott with a wall of water in front of him like a shield as he rose to the side of the ship. He swept five gunmen off their feet and then doused the top of the mini-sub with a hard spray as it opened up. Jamie was just behind me, and I felt her tether release from my waist as she got a new anchor on the boat. I figured I’d be joining Scott in the fight in less than two seconds, and Jamie probably a few seconds after—
A sudden, compressive detonation caused the Tirragusk to explode beneath me, and the shockwave hit me like a god slapping a fly out of the air. I didn’t even have time to see the ship disintegrate before I was knocked unconscious in the air, that weightless sensation of falling trailing me into the darkness of my dreams.