“Well, it wasn’t a total waste. It proved I need to take up running or something to get in shape. Is it too late to join the Elmwood track team?”
“Maybe we can try again tomorrow,” Teddy said.
“Maybe.”
The routine of getting home was well practiced. She took the late bus, got off to walk the last couple of blocks. Before reaching home, though, she stopped, her gaze gone suddenly fuzzy. A presence intruded on her awareness. Someone familiar but not family. She hadn’t been looking for him, he wasn’t a part of her everyday awareness, so she noticed only when he got close. Right before he sailed out of the sky, almost on top of her, and fell to a three-point landing a few yards away. She didn’t flinch.
“Eliot,” she said. He was wearing his mask and costume tonight. “Were you following me?” She flushed, all her embarrassment at their last encounter rushing back.
“I spotted you at the park, sure.” Didn’t seem at all apologetic. She’d been so focused on Teia and the others, and looking for bad guys, she hadn’t thought to look for him. All he had to do was track the bus from the air. If he’d followed her all the way home, that would have been a disaster.
“Why not show yourself there? Why follow me?”
“Don’t get so worked up there, kid.”
He was making fun of her. She marched off, determined to be angry.
“Hey, Rose—wait a minute. I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you. Just you, not your friend.”
In spite of herself, she felt a bit of a flutter at that. Maybe he wasn’t making fun of her. No, either way, she was being stupid. But she stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Okay.”
“We can talk on the way to wherever you’re going—um, where are you going?” He looked around to the skyscrapers and office developments of the downtown business district. Not someplace she’d be expected to stroll around in the middle of the night. The glowing blue logo at the top of West Plaza glared like a beacon, the crescent shape like a half-lidded eye surveying her, judging her.
She pointed in a random direction opposite West Plaza. Some bars and all-night food stands lined the street a few blocks away; that ought to distract him. They walked.
Eliot said, “You know Commerce City better than I do, since I’m not from here—”
“Where are you from?”
He hesitated, not wanting to give up information any more than she did, and she was about to tell him it didn’t matter, but he said, “Delta. Ever been there?”
“No. Is it cool?”
“About the same—big city, with all the big city stuff. Commerce City is always better if you like superhumans.”
“Or worse if you don’t.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I’ve been going out. Like you guys, not really doing anything but just looking around. And I’ve been hearing rumors. Commerce City hasn’t had a real supervillain since the Destructor. Is that right?”
Anna said, “It depends on what counts as a supervillain. There was Steelyard, the carjacker. He didn’t have powers, he was just the ringleader of all the grand larceny in town for a couple of years, and the Block Busters took care of him. Techhunter shows up every now and then, but nobody knows if he really has powers. I don’t know if he’s a real supervillain; he’s pretty small scale, robberies and pranks and stuff. He’s never tried to take over the city or anything, and no one’s been able to find him to go after him.” Every few years saw a new master criminal looking to take over the title of Commerce City’s grand archvillain, but none of them had risen to the level of fame and terror the Destructor generated. Her own family’s history with the Destructor was the stuff of legend. When Anna read the old news stories, they felt like fairy tales. She did the research on the old heroes at the school library, so no one in her family would see the books or look up her browser history.
Most commentators claimed that for whatever reason, the city’s golden age of superpowered heroes and villains had long since passed. Everything after that would necessarily blaze less brightly. All the city had now were petty criminals and clueless kids playing dress-up.
“So if I told you I was hearing rumors about a new supervillain on the rise, you’d be surprised.”
“A little, maybe. I mean, anyone can call themselves a supervillain but they’d need to prove it.”
“This one’s subtle, apparently. Works behind the scenes, gets others to do the real dirty work. Has a long-term strategy. Taking-over-the-city stuff, but doing it without anyone noticing.”
“Subtle, huh? Like what, bribing politicians, buying up property?” Because that was how she’d do it. Maybe run for office. It wouldn’t even be illegal.
“Yeah, along with powers like mind control.”
She gave him a look, her brow furrowed. “Really?”
“The thing about mind control, you wouldn’t even know it was happening, would you?”
She couldn’t tell him that she was very familiar with how mind control worked. “You think there’s a villain mind-controlling the whole city to do his bidding?” The thing was, it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility. The implications were frightening, so she wasn’t willing to latch on to the idea just yet.
They were approaching a noisy part of downtown, and she guided Eliot down another block. They were both still dressed up and would attract too much attention.
“People—the people I’m hearing the rumors from—are calling him the Executive.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be scary?”
“Ominous, I think. You have to admit, if you think about how much someone can do behind the scenes, it is pretty scary.”
“I haven’t heard anything about it. You want us to keep our eyes open for anything suspicious? Anything out of the ordinary that might suggest a mind-controlling supervillain?”
“We’re probably not ever going to catch someone like that directly, but we should be able to find the effects of his power.”
“I guess you needed help after all, didn’t you?” She grinned at him, feeling smug.
He spread his arms in a shrug. “And I let you know, just like I said I would.”
“Now it’s gotta work both ways. If you find out anything about this Executive, you’ll let me know?”
“Then I need to know where I can reach you.”
A cute guy was asking for her phone number. She didn’t even care that he wasn’t talking to her, but Compass Rose. Or that she couldn’t really give it to him. The mystery just made it all more interesting, didn’t it?
She wrote down her e-mail address, the anonymous one she’d used to send the pictures to the cops. Then he waved good-bye, stepped back, and launched himself skyward. He landed agilely on an art deco overhang of a building, and a second leap carried him out of sight.
To hear Eliot talk, this villain, the Executive, was less than a rumor. More like an idea he just came up with. If Commerce City really did have a nascent villain, surely she’d have heard about it. Rooftop Watch or one of the other superhero fan blogs would have mentioned it.
Shockingly, when she went searching, Rooftop Watch did have a few hits. The site didn’t use the name Executive, but there was speculation. A hint here, a bit of gossip there, nothing more than that. No confirmed sightings, no verified activity. Just conspiracy theories thrown into the ether. Anna read them all.
The Executive was a shadowy figure, of course. So shadowy nobody knew anything about him—or her. In fact, this supposed villain was mostly a convergence of patterns: city government made unexpected decisions that coincided with certain political scandals, that removed a specific person from office, that allowed passage of a new set of legislation, and suddenly the whole future path of the city changed.