Superhero Nation

by

Mike Tanier

Part One of Five

Dedications:

15 high students were shot to death in a Colorado high school the week before the first draft of this story was completed by a gang calling themselves the Trench Coat Mafia. This story is partially my meditation on the violence of youth culture, and where it could lead us. Despite all the dark elements, I wrote this as a story of optimism, and my thoughts and prayers were with the victims of youth violence as I finished the manuscript.

For Karen, forever my love and my muse, and the most dedicated teacher and ally of teenagers that I know.

For Jessica, and all the other girls who, like Alicea, dream of running away rather than dreaming of becoming superheroes.

For Daniel Cameron Wash, born the night before I finished this story. May we leave you a better world.

Superhero Nation

Part One

Chapter One: The Eyes of Their Own Little Darlings

In the news business, we call what happened down in Jersey City a "fumble", and we see it about a million times more often than we'd like to. You've watched the scenario on the news: a McCoy officer or some other chump in a battle suit flies up and rescues someone who's just fallen off a cliff or a skyscraper or something. It looks great when a professional does it. When some wannabe "superhero" tries it, more often than not the coroner gets a call.

The problem is physics, plain and simple. Say a distressed damsel, a gangsta girl or some groupie hanger-on, falls from a 40-story penthouse ledge in Manhattan. Some goon in bargain-hunter's battle armor, fresh from saucing a few gang rivals, decides that he's going to play hero by catching her. Unfortunately, free fall is fast, reactions are slow, and jump-thrusters (even good ones) take a split-second to engage and still longer to overcome inertia and get you off the ground. So by the time Joe Battlesuit rises up to meet her, if he's lucky and has great reflexes, she's already fallen about 25 stories.

The clown in the suit, cocky because he's covered in stainless steel and totally ignorant of elementary mechanics, holds out his arms to catch her. But the difference between hitting the ground after 40 stories and hitting a pair of armor-plated arms after 20 stories is nada, so the impact with the "hero" kills her just as dead as the pavement would. Better, in many cases. Most idiots catch the victim while still thrusting upwards in their battle suits, so the downward-moving victim meets a rapidly upward-moving projectile, and the differential averages out to be about the same as if the poor girl had just hit the ground at twice the speed. Worse still, two out-stretched, armor-plated arms flying upwards might as well be two dull, steel blades, for the effect that they have upon impact.

So I headed into Jersey City fully expecting to see a body in three pieces. And that's what I got.

When you see professionals pull off that move, you have to remember that you're watching months of field training and the delicate synergy between a human operator and a carefully programmed battle suit. McCoy Unit officers are trained to over-jump a falling target, drop to a safe differential velocity, catch the target on the decline, then thrust like hell to slow their decent. That's why the officers are usually only a few feet off the ground at the end of a rescue sequence, and they often wind up tumbling like tin cans if everything doesn't go perfectly. Even with the training and athleticism of a professional crime fighter, targeting computers are essential to perform the maneuver successfully. Despite all the effort, the pros often mess up. The results are so gory that even the tabloids won't show the footage.

But maybe they should. If we were to turn a few stomachs by showing what happens when morons with superhuman capabilities decide to do something stupid, I think it would be worthwhile. Even if it just prevented one scene like the one I was sent to cover in Jersey City. When one of your spotters says that he saw a fumble, you skip lunch and bring an extra handkerchief.

There were a handful of squad cars and at least a half-dozen medical teams on the scene, their beacons making a Christmas display out of the area around the power lines. The local affiliates were already shooting story introductions and cutaways. I was late, but it wasn't critical. Jersey stations would interrupt the soaps for this nonsense, but New York would run the story canned at four o'clock and the network would be happy with my account of events when six-thirty rolled around. This wasn't sensational stuff by New York standards; super teams and street gangs make chalk outlines of themselves in the Big Apple every week.

I recognized a McCoy Unit Lieutenant from New York named Danny Jenkins surveying the scene. I knew he would cut through the crap and give me a straight story, so I powered up my minicam, set it up on it's floater, and gave Danny the warmest greeting that the circumstances warranted.

"Below that high voltage tower lies the body of Amanda Douglass," he explained, pointing to three sheets lying in a heap about twenty feet away. "Once a whole person, she's now a story in three acts.

"Receiving medical assistance to our left is Aaron O'Connell." Danny continued. "Aaron endorses the Fujitana Merlyn wing-glider pack with two superconductive propulsion thrusters, safeties removed, of course. Unfortunately, that device is not recommended for airborne rescues, primarily because it offers no protection for the arms."

Aaron was on a stretcher, both arms bandaged pinkie to shoulder and jutting from his body at unnatural angles. A paramedic was applying a syringe of something that couldn't possibly be strong enough for the pain he was bearing.

"Party of the third part, resting comfortably in the back of that squad car, is the team's leader, Jeff Brady, from whom we confiscated a whole junkyard of super-powered bric-a-brac. Everything from a scope helmet to a shoulder launcher for percussion bombs and a moderate-yield CFC. All in all, a prize package worth about 30 years in a federal prison.

"Supposedly, these are college students, which means that schools must be accepting dumber kids every year."

Danny had been interviewed enough times to cut to the who-what-where, and he trusted me enough to know that his smart-ass remarks wouldn't make it onto the screen.

"We don't know much else about them," he continued. "I'm sure they had a team name, but they aren't dumb enough to admit to being a vigilante team and risk prosecution under VPA. Not that it will do them any good: we know what they are. Anyway, Jeff's mommy and daddy are sending lawyers and a strict order for Jeff to keep his fool mouth shut."

"Do we know who they were fighting against?" I asked.

"Nobody. They were practicing."

That's right. A girl was dead, and two kids were going to jail, all in the name of some overzealous practice session. Who did these kids think they were going to face off against, that they had to perform delicate airborne maneuvers? Hell, the stupid kids live in New Jersey: there are no mountains, and except for three towns, I don't think there's a building over five stories.

I asked Danny if he thought the kids would be brought up on federal charges. The presence of a McCoy officer usually meant indictment on VPA charges, although adolescent offenders were sometimes given a break, especially in Jersey, where the governor was an old Joe Bell associate who advocated rehabilitation programs and was leery of federal intervention.

Danny shook his head. "I plan to make an example of these kids."

That didn't sound like the Danny I knew, so I must have given him a funny look. "Oh, they won't be charged with murder," he explained. "I don't think the local DA would have much of a case. Manslaughter 1: that will be the state's charge, piled high with malicious mischief, possession of firearms and reckless endangerment. That comes out to about 10 years in rehab for technical juveniles, maybe 12. The ATF won't be satisfied by that, not with the hardware these kids were carrying and what they were doing with it. Think about it: where would we be if that knucklehead's shoulder launcher discharged and knocked out the power lines?"

I saw his point. "I'm going to quote you as saying that these kids 'will probably be facing federal charges.' Now, can you soundbyte for me?"

"Sure. What kind of tone do want? Angry? Outraged?"

"Try exasperated. We'll save the melodrama for the local stations."

Danny got into character. McCoy officers are not just investigators and soldiers, they're also trained actors. Charlie McCoy would have had it no other way: he wanted his branch of the ATF to have the best public relations of any bureau of the government, and it worked.

Danny gazed into my floating camera with thoughtful eyes. With his tailored gray suit, gray trench coat (the battle armor only goes on when it's needed) and handsome features, he projected the ideal image of a McCoy officer. "This is a tragic waste of human life," he said in carefully modulated tones. "If this doesn't make people recognize the terrible dangers that illegal vigilantism causes, then I don't know what will. This was just senseless." He shook his head. "Senseless."

". . . and cut!" I said, letting Danny go about his investigation. I hung around for an hour or so, finishing my story. The coroner filled in the precise, gruesome details of Amanda Douglass' death, while the local sheriff gave me some of the demographic information I needed on the kids. I programmed my floater to hover up to the top of the power lines to provide a sense of how far above the ground Amanda was when she fell; that was my only concession to sensationalism. Then I loaded the data table on the minicam with information, from the precise height of the power lines to the specs and capabilities of the weapons and gadgets found on the kids. I even established a link to a canned feature about the dangers of operating superconductive and compressed fusion devices near sources of high voltage. I uploaded a tight story to New York, ready for broadcast: interesting for the casual viewer and detailed enough to satisfy the hardcore junkies who watch the news with their net feed set to Full Enabled. That's what makes me the best reporter in the business: I always sweat the small stuff.

My critics (I do have a few) call me a cynic, focusing on a small problem in a big, beautiful world. Outside of the inner cities, I'm told, vigilante problems are minimal, and there would be fewer if media types like myself didn't blow incidents out of proportion. "Just report the news. Hold the attitude," I read about 50 times per day in my e-mail. Hey, all I do is report the news. When I do an editorial, I state my opinion. If my stories about teenage brats getting hopped-up on Ray-Tae and engaging in turf wars don't fill you with that warm feeling, change the channel, but don't ask me to change the facts. And if you look out your window, whether you're in Alphabet City or Omaha, you can see that I speak the truth: metahuman vigilantism, or "superheroics," are a major problem with both adults and young people, and the problem isn't going away.

These are the 2040's, and anyone can call himself a superhero if he (or she) is willing to spend a little money and break a few laws. You can find hunks of cheap battle equipment like the kids in Jersey City used at any chop shop in America, or you can build your own goodies with components available at your local mall. Go into any bad neighborhood, and you'll find someone selling a vial full of liquid that will make you strong enough to punch through a brick wall after about ten doses. Find the right disreputable surgeon and you can get some enhancement permanently attached to your body; if you're slick, you can even put it on your health insurance. Send your kid off to college with a credit card, and he's as likely to buy a wrist-mounted blaster, a glider, or some jump boots as he is to buy virtual games.

Anybody can buy the paraphernalia to turn himself into some sort of turbo-powered, personal-protection machine, but you can't buy the common sense that comes with the power. What's worse, the lure of muscle-bound combat always attracts the least stable segments of our society. That's why the average superhero battle consists of two armored gangs of kids duking it out for no good reason. There are very few good guys, but there are lots of guys and girls just looking for someone to punch.

It's hard to cover this scene without resorting to sarcasm, even if it's just a defense mechanism. I've seen too many people end up like Amanda Douglass, and not just kids. If I didn't crack an irreverent joke now and then, I might lose my sense of humor forever.

Am I a cynic? I don't think so. I still call these lost souls, this collection of misguided, confused people in control of such frightening power, "superheroes," and not just for irony's sake. Lost in all the senseless mayhem and its bloody consequences are some ideals which, so very rarely, peek out from the rubble: a sense of noble sacrifice, perhaps, or informed civil disobedience, or of chivalry. On those rare occasions when I can see past the drug-fueled bloodlust and see a human being struggling to do what he truly believes is right, I realize that there's a ray of hope in even the worst circumstances. I guess that makes me an optimist.

An optimist: now, that's something no one has ever accused me of being.

Amanda Douglass had been dead and buried and forgotten by the media for nearly a week when my editor called me in for the monthly staff meeting. We could have met on-line, of course, but Gus is an old-fashioned newspaper man who likes to meet his people face to face now and then. Besides, he doesn't trust us, and he shouldn't. I have a Personal Turing Machine that the guys in R&D rigged up for me. The simulation is so good on the net that it can simulate me almost perfectly in an eleven-man conference call. Gus knew that if he slacked off on the monthly meetings and let us dial in, chances are he would wind up talking to eleven computers programmed to more-or-less agree with each of his brilliant suggestions, while me and the boys enjoyed the good life at his expense.

Anyway, it was no great sacrifice for me to stop by the office; I lived in Manhattan. Jerry Coyle telecommuted from Springfield, Mass., and considered the monthly trek over the Tapen Zee Bridge some kind of personalized torture, but for me it was a chance to cruise uptown.

Most of the business of the meetings didn't involve me anyway, so I never had to sweat it out with Gus, assuming that my stories were good, complete, and on-time. I didn't have a staff, unlike the real editors, so I didn't worry about getting chewed out for using too much copy toner (as Zybinski in Metro was) or hearing about how some proofreader slug missed six typos in one story at Full Enabled Mode (Coyle's chronic problem). I was just a contributing editor, a glorified writer/reporter with a corner office I never used and a book deal that brought prestige to the affiliate and the network. All I worried about was me, myself, and that clown in the mirror.

Gus worked his way through all the budgetary and quality control gripes he was saddled with, giving most of my colleges a stiff dressing down in the process, before covering anything meaningful. "It's time to start thinking about February sweeps weeks," he announced.

The distinguished journalists around the table let out a collective groan, as nothing gives a hard-news type more fits than ratings pressure. Hell, it wasn't even Christmas yet. November sweeps had just ended, and we had gutted through every tawdry story. My tailor made contribution: a three-part expose on suburban "super-villains," which not coincidentally dovetailed with a network miniseries on the same subject. Viewers who turned the family filters off were treated to a generous dose of skin in both the fiction and the fact (not my skin, of course, but that of an SV caught by my camera with his tights down). I even used the f-word in my Full Enabled editorial, which drew a stinging reprimand from mom. I turned that story in, washed down my nausea with a hefty dose of single malt, and told myself that I would never pimp myself for another ratings point. And compared to the other guys, I got off easy.

But we all knew Gus was right. It was time to pay the bills. The network planned a mini-series around a romance novel about teenage beauty queens, so Coyle was assigned to a story about real-life teenage beauty queens; I guess there are worse fates. The mothership's top show, "Manhattan Vice", would be doing a show on cyber-porn artists downtown, so guess where Zybinski was going? Gus gave Elbert Dunbar, who had fumbled a police corruption story back in November, the sow's ear job of interviewing astronomers for some ill-conceived tie-in with the network's sci-fi snoozer, "Orion 6". Yep, it was Christmas shopping time, and Santa Gus was handing out 57 varieties of coal.

At least the other editors had staffs onto whom they could pawn off the truly disagreeable duties. I wouldn't be so fortunate, and Gus appeared to be saving me for last.

"And finally," he said, finally, "there's Randy."

"No assignment for me, boss? Sorry to hear that. You'll get four reports from the field per week, three minutes each on general enabled, or as assigned."

"Nice try. Let's talk vigilantes, Randy. Superheroes."

I rolled my eyes. "Actually, I think Schmitty said he needed some extra hands in sports, with the Giants, Bombers and Jets combining for eight wins this year."

Gus laughed. "You must be desperate to avoid an assignment if you're volunteering to cover New York football."

Was I avoiding a superhero assignment? Vigilante stories were my bread and butter; they had put me on the map. Anything gets to be a grind, but six years on the same beat and I had never thought of doing anything else until Gus cornered me.

Maybe I had been suffering from burnout, if just a little. Amanda Douglass had been the fourth corpse I filed a story on since Halloween, and each story seemed to get more gruesome and more desperate. I had been through stretches like that before; usually, the losing streak ends when some vigilante turns himself in and starts a program to help troubled kids, and I feel rejuvenated by that little glimmer of hope.

I told myself that Amanda and the others weren't bothering me any more than they should bother any sane man. It was the networks. They would saddle me with some dove-tail story tied to an insensitive, sensationalized reading of a glorified dime novel. You need a ready sense of humor to produce film and write copy for crap like that, and my sense of humor was home with the flu.

"What's it this time, Gus? 'I Married the Armorlitia?' 'Showgirl by day, Vigilante by Night?'"

Gus shook me off. "You got me all wrong. No tie-in story Randy. You get to do some real news. This assignment comes direct from the news bureau."

The others grumbled audibly. Sometimes, it's good to be the most popular kid at the prom.

"You've covered four vigilante deaths in the last two months," Gus continued.

"Thanks for the reminder, boss. By the way, how's the divorce coming?""

He scowled at me, then continued, checking with his notes. "Three of the victims were college age, one was. . . my God. . . a seventh grader?"

That was the punch-in-the-teeth story the week before the Amanda Douglass case. Ray Gunther, Jr., out on Long Island, got a hold of dad's turbo-glider. Apparently, the guys at the senior Gunther's lodge liked to dabble with illegal, high tech goodies, just for a lark. At any rate, the glider wasn't locked up, and little Ray decided to show off to his friends how good a flyer he was. He lost his balance on his window sill, fired the thrusters almost directly into the ground, and earned his classmates a day off from school just 4/10ths of a second later. As ghastly as it gets.

I explained that story to Gus, who was just too busy to keep up with my regular contributions. He winced. "Mmmm. Glad I didn't have to work that night. Anyway, that story aside, there appears to be a trend here. Vigilantes are getting younger."

"Not strictly speaking," I said. "The late teens and early 20's have always been within the typical superhero demographic." A few years ago, though, they wouldn't do anything that could get them killed. They weren't getting younger. Just stupider.

"That's irrelevant. The public is encountering more vigilante teenage deaths, therefore it's a story. I'm taking you off the four-a-week beat until King Day. I want you to produce a one-hour, prime time special. We'll run it, and if it's good, we'll give it to the network."

My colleagues were really giving me the Eye of Death now. They were stuck trying to wedge stories into the newscast. I swung my own show, which meant a big budget, reduced responsibilities to other projects, and a bigger sliver of the limelight. I still wasn't clear on the project, though.

Gus filled me in soon enough. "I want you to run with a team of teenage vigilantes for a few weeks. Notice I said 'team.' Preferably, I want guys and girls. If you find an all-girl team, all the better, but don't bother with an all-guy team. This is a plum assignment, but it's still the sweeps and cleavage must be present at all times."

That's my editor, Mr. Integrity.

"Run with these kids. Get some action footage. Get inside their heads. Let Ma and Pa American think that they're looking into the eyes of their own little darlings when they look at these kids. Tell the whole story, but save the scholarly stuff for the Full Enabled version and the web. I want an hour of crisply edited documentary footage with your Randy Stone signature sprawled wherever it's appropriate."

I rolled the assignment around in my mind. "Great story idea, boss, but it won't run."

Gus looked at me sideways. He thought I was trying to get out of the job, but I was serious.

"Let's say that, for the sake of argument, I find a bunch of kids dumb enough to admit that they're breaking the Vigilante Prevention Acts in front of a minicam. If they're over 22, forget about it. First of all, they aren't teenagers, and the story loses the angle you're looking for. Besides, over 22 and they're tried as adults, no questions asked, and nobody stupid enough to admit to a federal offense on camera is bright enough to tie a necktie, let alone operate a blaster helmet. If I do find some younger kids, they'll be juveniles, or technical juvies if they're 17-22. Either way, the story won't run without a waiver from a parent or guardian, which will take us back to square one. Or, we can run the whole hour with blurred faces and electronically altered voices, which will make the show about as interesting as The Fishing Hole."

Gus was more than a little miffed by my lecture. "We do have a legal department, Randy, which you are not a member of. If we get technical juvies with no guardians, then all we have to do is change their names and get their own signatures on a waiver. Sure, that might be tough, but if you're as good as you say you are, you'll be able to dig up some photogenic kids who aren't afraid to incriminate themselves in the name of being famous. And if they're in their early 20's, that's fine. Consider college age the limit."

I was about to balk some more, but Gus continued:

"And we do have a fall-back story if you can't make contact with a suitable subject. How does 'What really lives in the Hudson River?' grab you?"

"There's no reason for threats, boss."

"It's not a threat. Everybody's very high on this concept except you. Sales says it can block out all the advertising in five minutes as soon as you sign on. Don't rain on the parade, Randy."

So everything was settled. I was on another vigilante case. Superhero case, if you will. This would be a big one: I had an hour of multi-media to fill and a bad luck streak to break, not to mention the Olympian task of making contact with a vigilante squad which met the story specifics.

It was time to hit the pavement.

Chapter 2: Never Anyplace Nice

Tracking down vigilantes isn't much harder than tracking down a drug dealer or pimp. Sure, the stakes are higher, and there may not be a vigilante on every street corner, but after a few years on the beat, I knew all the haunts. Finding superheroes would be easy; finding superheroes that met the criteria Gus gave me would be a trick. Gus wanted suburban teens in tight costumes playing with dangerous toys, precisely the kind of people you don't find in Manhattan or the boroughs. Your urban hero is usually a gang member using Ray-Tae to get ahead on the street, or a disgruntled subway rider out to pop a few CFC-caliber caps into the next punk who hassles him for change. At best, you might run across some Bleaker Street Irregular popping Phinny-Bar as part of some protest against society. While these people can be fun to watch on the street, they don't make great television. Teams like that star-crossed bunch down in Jersey City - nice college kids with bad habits- bubble to the surface quickly and burn out fast.

I needed to hook an out-of-towner, a suburban kid who comes to the city for the best deals on drugs or hardware. This was no problem. Half the pawn shops in Manhattan trade in illicit hardware of some form or another, and plenty of larger "chop shops" do a brisk business in tech weaponry. Gold Street Electronics was just such a place: a second-hand video equipment shop in front, a warehouse of illegal weapons in back. The place was notorious; don't ask how they stayed in business, although my bet was that ownership made the same arrangements with the authorities that they made with me when I discovered them three years ago.

"Randy!" the owner said, greeting me warmly as I entered Gold Street. Mahmoud the Kurd played the part of the jolly, respectable businessman well. He led me through the legitimate store and beyond double doors, where those who have the right connections can choose from the wide selection of deadly armament and supplies strewn about on wooden benches. A pair of muscle bound monsters, obviously Rae-Tae users, browsed through a carton of cheap power gauntlets, while a scrawny kid plowed through bins of spare parts.

"What are you looking for today, sir?" Mahmoud asked as I pretended to examine some top shelf merchandise.

"I'll know when I find him," I whispered.

One of the muscleheads tightened a gauntlet around his fist and began pounding his partner across the chest with it. They were clearly just horsing around, but the punches were so hard that their impact echoed through the store. Mahmoud cursed softly in an Arabic tongue.

"Please do not test the merchandise so forcefully," he said to them. "You break it, you buy it."

The giant with the gauntlet looked angry. "How are these things supposed to make you punch harder?"

The Kurd sighed. "They are not brass knuckles, sir. They need CFC batteries to operate. The static field they generate would produce a very impressive force if you punched your companion."

The kid grunted and approached Mahmoud. I feared trouble; these guys appeared to be spoiling for a fight, as Rae-Tae users often are just after a fix. Rae-Rage, it's called on the street, and it can be lethal to anyone who gets on the addict's bad side. Mahmoud knew the drill, and began to back off; the kid at the rummage bins even fidgeted a bit.

"I don't need batteries to knock your ass back to the desert," the thug said, advancing on Mahmoud.

Negotiating with a hopped-up kid with chemical muscles would be a waste of energy, and Mahmoud knew it. He pulled a military issue CFC rifle from the wall, popped a moderate-yield CFC into the supply coupling, locked it in, powered up, and drew a bead on the main thug's temples, all in about one second.

"Don't tell me you're stupid enough to try to hurt a chop shop owner in his own chop shop," I said as Mahmoud caressed the trigger.

The thug froze.

The scrawny kid approached the other goon. He maybe came up to his shoulders. "If the Kurd gets hurt, I don't get my merchandise. You don't want to know what happens next."

"Who the hell are you?" the thug asked, ready to toss this mosquito across the store.

The little guy, hiccup-quick, sweep-kicked his opponent of his feet. He pulled a knife from his jacket, squatted over his opponent and thrust the weapon into the flesh above his shoulder blade.

"I'm the guy with the knife at your throat."

Mahmoud motioned the kid away, and they let the two goons leave without incident. Mahmoud wiped his brow quickly stripped the weapon and returned it to the wall.

Things calmed down, and the scrawny kid approached Mahmoud. He was a shaggy, gaunt little mongrel, with a pointed goatee and rings in his nose and lip and eyebrows. His arms were full of spare parts: tiny servo-motors, a few coolant rods, some unidentified circuitry, and a pair of Whizzers: razor-sharp, sickle-shaped metal pinwheels about six inches in diameter.

"Those guys had all the brains God gave a dead squirrel," the kid said, dumping his wares on the counter. "That's more action before lunch than I usually get all day. Anyhow, I found what I was looking for."

"Yes," Mahmoud replied as he added up the merchandise. "The whizzers are quite sharp. Hooked to a drill bit, they will cut through cinder block."

"I figure me and my crew can rig them to the mounts on the flight pack, open up the throttle, and cut through steel if I had to."

The Kurd adjusted his glasses and counted the surplus items. "I don't know if that will work. Anyway, I must ask that you pay in cash, as you owe me money from your last check, which the bank did not accept."

The kid smiled; he was missing a front tooth, and another was gold, imprinted with a tint hologram I couldn't make out. "I got something better, buddy. Plastic."

He drew a credit card from his back pocket. Mahmoud studied the card suspiciously. The shop did take credit: Mahmoud would ring the sale as a legitimate purchase, then cook the books later. He charged credit customers a healthy tariff for this extra effort.

"Who is this person?" Mahmoud asked.

The kid shook his head, as if irritated by the question. "She's my friend."

"How can you sign for this person? I don't know who this person is. If this person comes to the store with you I will let you have these."

"She's back home in Jersey," the kid replied, throwing his hands up in disgust. "I don't get this type of problem anywhere else."

"Perhaps you are not buying such . . . important items anywhere else. Perhaps you will want to purchase a small electronic item at a department store with this card, then offer it to me for its pawn value."

"You won't give me full value for what I buy."

Mahmoud shrugged his shoulders. "Such is the nature of business."

"This is a fucking racket," the kid said, storming out of the back room and leaving the parts on the counter.

Mahmoud smiled at me. "He is a regular. We go around and around like that all the time. His checks are no good."

"Did he say he was from Jersey?"

Mahmoud nodded. "Atlantic City, I think."

I chased after the kid. He mentioned a "crew," which meant he was probably part of a gang or team. Gus suggested that I track down suburban vigilantes, but kids from a resort town like Atlantic City would certainly do in a pinch. What's more, the credit card the kid used belonged to a woman. His mother? A stranger he robbed? Possibly, but this also was a sign that there might be women in his superhero team. Finally, he talked about a flight pack. Gang-bangers like the kids who threatened Mahmoud don't go for anything that eccentric; that meant that this kid stood a rung or two up the food chain from a common street goon.

He was only a block away when I caught up with him.

"I couldn't help overhearing your conversation with Mahmoud," I said, trying to match stride beside him.

He kept walking briskly.

"What's your name, buddy."

He smiled wryly. "JD."

"So, JD, what's a guy need all those servo-motors and cutting devices for?"

"I use them in my work."

"What kind of work?"

" I do a little demolition."

"And the girl who owns the credit card, is she part of the demolition crew?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, she's the secretary." He stopped suddenly. "Any more questions, asshole?"

It was my turn to be coy. "No reason to be like that, JD. It just so happens that I might have some work for a demolition crew like yours."

He examined me suspiciously, then shook his head. "No way. You ain't a player. You ain't a cop, either, but you ain't a player. Whatever your angle is, save it for the next fool."

He pushed me aside and walked away. I decided not to follow. If I wanted to continue the argument, I could have waited for him to return to Gold Street. There was no point, though. I had to secure a release from his whole team. Heck, I had to find out for sure if he really had a team, and if they were worth following, and I wouldn't get that information by arguing on a street corner. To do that, I would have to track this JD back to his own territory and watch him and his "crew" in action.

I returned to Gold Street. "What was the name on that credit card?" I asked.

Mahmoud shook his head. "Telling you that would extend beyond the boundaries of our agreement and endanger the trust my customers have in my services."

I laid a few bills on the table.

"Alicea," he said. "Alicea Mann."

****

Given a name and a location, a good reporter can find out almost anything. My buddies at the network hacked into the credit card records for me. The address was a postal box, but I had a record of Alicea Mann's purchases and payments dating back for a year.

I was off to Atlantic City, just a two- hour drive away. More specifically, I was planning a stakeout by an automatic banking machine on The Atoll, a machine from which Alicea Mann (or her boyfriend, or whoever has been using her credit cards) withdrew a weekend stash every Friday sometime after 4:00 PM.

The Atoll was a sight to behold from the mainland: a garish, gaudy jewel set against the stark gray of the water on a cloudy afternoon. Built on landfill just two miles off the coast of the city, it was home to five major hotel casinos as well as hundreds of smaller shops, restaurants and amusements. For a city that sold its soul to the lords of gambling nearly a century ago, she was the latest transfusion of fresh blood, the most recent last-ditch effort to attract thrill seekers from around the country and the world. It was the resort's last chance to give elderly couples from Ohio something they couldn't get at an Indian reservation, or on a riverboat, or over the web from an offshore location broadcast into the comfort of their homes. The Atoll did a brisk business, but it was hard to imagine just how many dollar slots it would take to cover the costs of the billion-dollar undertaking, and every dollar she brought off the coast came at the expense of the crumbling boardwalk and impoverished city behind it.

There were only two ways out to The Atoll, tourboat or tunnel, and bad weather kept the tourboats docked. I boarded an underground lift from the mainland, descended almost two hundred feet, and stepped onto a moving walkway, which transported me and a few dozen elderly gamblers at two miles per hour plus our walking speed. Around us, holographic promotions and advertisements kept us entertained. Comedian Derek Porter would be appearing at The Shoals on New Years Eve. Entrepreneur Stephen DeVance would be hosting a gala Christmas buffet at his El Dorado casino. Country music legend Lee Ann Rimes' week of performances were already sold out. The advertisements flanked me as I set a brisk pace through the long tunnel, ignoring concessionaires and sidestepping slow-moving tourists.

Another lift greeted me at the end of the tunnel, and I stepped into the main courtyard, a place so tacky that it was breathtaking. A ring of lasers constantly shine down on the main entrance, statues of gold and marble were at every turn, and rushing fountains flanked the elevator entrance. The retractable dome 150 feet above kept the cold weather out; in the summer, the courtyard was an open-air environment. Beyond the fountains was the clamor of eateries and shops and kiosks, as well as the entrances of three of the major casinos: the Eldorado, Windsor Castle, and the Shoals.

Security normally kept a low profile, but they spotted my carrying case as soon as I stepped off the lift. Three guards surrounded me, although they kept their cool and didn't act threatening. I instinctively flashed a press credential.

"Mr. Stone," one asked after checking my credential. "You are aware of the imaging restrictions at the Atoll?"

I was. I had done my homework. No motion imaging was permitted on the Atoll without the express consent of its administrators. Floaters and other remote-piloted recording equipment were also prohibited. Essentially, there were two reasons for this: casino owners didn't want gamblers using high-tech snooping devices to get an edge, and promoters wanted to protect their trademarks by restricting pictures of the big casinos to what the advertisers wanted tourists to see. Neither case applied to me, but I had to play by the rules: I left all my cameras in the van on the main island, which meant I didn't have an extra pair of eyes and ears for surveillance. All I was carrying was my portable.

"This portable does not contain any imaging capabilities, does it?" security asked, examining my computer.

"There are jacks for video peripherals," I said, pointing these out. "I do have a cellular modem hookup, which I believe is not prohibited."

"No sir. But I must remind you that cellular transmissions are forbidden on the casino floors."

"Not a problem. I'm here for a late lunch."

The prohibition on motion imaging meant that a traveler who wanted anything more than a still photo image of his stay on the Atoll would need to buy one: such was the beauty of trouncing on freedom of the press. Holograph and video shops lined the quarter mile thoroughfare across the narrow width of the island, as well as the longer concourse that ran parallel to the shore. Tourists could buy a travel keepsake that amounted to nothing but a commercial for the Atoll from any of a hundred kiosks for around fifty bucks. It was a rip-off, but that and the gambling kept the food and drinks cheap.

I staked out the bank machine in question, a busy one across from a trendy cognac bar with courtyard tables. I ordered a beer and logged on. One of the tech boys at the network was able to get me one-way access to the bank's systems, which meant I could watch transactions from remote locations. I selected the bank machine across the courtyard, sipped my beer, and hoped that Alicea Mann would be tapping her resources that night.

It took an hour, but bang: her name popped onto my screen, and I looked up to see a slender young woman counting her money as she left the machine. I started to load up the portable to follow her, but she came right for me. She waltzed up to the bar and laid one of her new bills on it as I strained to listen to her conversation.

"Let me get a St. Vincents."

The bartender poured her a cognac. "Another tough week?" he asked.

"And another tough weekend to follow," she replied as she took a drink from the glass.

She was not tall, and she was so narrow that her body was almost childlike. Her hair was bobbed around her face and long in the back, her eyes distant and forlorn. She was dressed in business attire, a skirt and a smart top. As she chatted with the barkeep and looked out across the ocean, I kept telling myself that she couldn't really be a vigilante: that JD character just picked this girl's pocket.

"Uh oh. Sounds like trouble with the roommates again," the bartender said.

"The roommates, the boyfriend, you name it."

"The boyfriend again? You should tell him to take you out someplace nice for all he makes you put up with."

"Oh, he takes me out." Her expression became even more distant. "But never anyplace nice."

She downed two drinks and was on the move. This was crunch time for me, and I felt naked without a floater nearby to follow her if I slipped up. She started window shopping, and I decided that following her around the Atoll was too dangerous; I would be spotted too easily. Since there was only one way off the island that day, through the elevators, I reasoned that I would be able to catch up with her at the other end of the tunnel. I could then trail her at a safer distance in the city.

So I had some time to think while I waited for her to leave the Atoll. That little exchange with the bartender told me I was on the right track. My first impression had been that the girl was just too much of a waif to be involved in the vigilante business; that JD character could stolen her card or hacked into her files without her knowledge. That would have sent me back to square one. But the business about the roommates and the boyfriend sounded right, and she was the right type for the documentary: late teens/early twenties, cute in that winsome way. Who knows: rig a moderate-yield CFC to a harness, strap it on her back, and a little thing like her would have the blast capacity to bring down the roof of the Atoll.

She appeared, and I tried to be casual as I selected the same elevator as she did. It was awkward, as not many were leaving the Atoll on an early Friday evening, and we shared the lift alone. I made a great show of minding my own business, as did she until she suddenly looked up at me.

"I know what you're after," she said. Her gaze was haunting, accusing.

Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable. She figured out I was following her. "I'm not looking to try to pick you up, or anything."

She just stared through me. "That's not what you want."

She kept her eyes on me for the rest of the ride, which seemed to take an hour. I figured that she took me for a pervert, which made me feel even worse about following her back to her apartment. I kept expecting her to turn around and acknowledge me as I tailed her from a block away. But she didn't, and I followed her through the frigid streets to a dilapidated high rise in one of the city's typically dangerous neighborhoods. It was the perfect place for a vigilante refuge: close to crime, far from the law, in a place where no one watches his neighbors too carefully.

Night had already fallen by the time I brought the van around to the alley behind the apartment building. My exchange with Alicea Mann in the lift still haunted me. Maybe she recognized me from the network. Maybe I had tipped my hand; after all, vigilantes don't last long without a healthy, suspicious nature. But maybe there was more to her than met the eye.

My assignment was suddenly even more intriguing.

****

The night wore on, and I found myself on a hard folding chair at my van's editing console, sucking down hard candies and watching the video screens for signs of my quarry. The floater was perched on my roof; it's minicam angled up for a clear shot of the fire escapes. My other camera was aimed out the van's rear window at the parking exit. I wasn't monitoring the main entrance; these kids wouldn't waltz out the front door if they were looking for action.

The stakeout only took a few hours. At precisely 10:00 PM, something resembling an enormous gull or hawk flew out the 12th story window. It was no bird; it was a man with a flying apparatus. My floater was set for motion sensing once it acquired target, and it followed the avian silhouette as it fought gravity for a perilous second, achieved lift, and climbed above the tenement rooftops.

"JD," I whispered to myself.

The floater realigned when the flyer was out of its range. It turned back to the fire escapes just in time to catch another figure, dressed in black, bounding down the exterior cages of the iron structure like he was rappelling down a cliff wall. But this character had no ropes or climbing gear. He swung from the railing on one floor, released like a gymnast on the uneven bars, then caught himself on the floor below. He looked a little large for the acrobatics though: his upper body was thick with muscles. Still, he scaled seven or eight floors in just a few seconds, climbed onto the fifth floor fire escape, took a running start, and leapt across the alleyway. He cleared a good twenty feet, although he took advantage of an altitude change between the fire escape and the rooftop. He disappeared from sight.

"Damn," I said. I was going to lose both of them if I didn't hurry. I grabbed the floater's remote programmer and began typing furiously. I set it to fly up to a bird's eye view of the city, then scan for an image match to the recording it had just made of JD in his flight pack. If the floater found nothing, it would follow a random path above the city, stopping every thousand feet and searching its surroundings for an image match. This is an imprecise method of video tracking. Even with the night scope on, JD's figure was very dark, giving the floater a very limited pixel range with which to determine matches. There were few clear scale details and just a few seconds of video to work with. If JD flew two feet away from the floater, but his body was at the wrong angle, the floater wouldn't spot the match (although it would record the image, which could be helpful to me later). Conversely, the floater could mistake a large crow for its target and follow the bird all around the city. In a perfect world, I would have had the heat sensors set, but at that distance, they would have been set to such a sensitive range that the camera would follow the exhaust pipe of cars on the Ocean Drive.

As I programmed and fretted, the distinctive growl of a motorcycle engine echoed through the alley. From the other camera, I saw two figures leaving the garage, sharing the seat of an old jalopy of a Dust Demon scooter. They, too, were hard to get a good look at, but they were young and female.

"Alicea," I muttered, then frantically finished programming my eyes in the sky. Bad girls on bikes, muscle guys bounding across rooftops, and a flyer: I had an old-fashioned Atlantic City jackpot on my hands. When the girls cleared the corner, I started the van and pursued them.

The chase, unfortunately, didn't last long. Traffic flooded the island resort on a Friday night, and I was quickly mired in it. The girls knew the city better and could swerve between lanes, so I was at a disadvantage. Trapped at stoplights, I would see them passing down cross streets, back and forth, as though they were just cruising. A patrol? Probably, but the roundabout path also kept secret their starting location.

Having lost sight of the scooter after a few glimpses, I turned on the police scanner hoping for clues. At every crowded intersection, I checked the feed from the floater. It spent several minutes puttering about the sky searching, but just as frustration was setting in, I caught a break. The floater had locked onto JD and was following from a safe distance. They were flying low over rooftops. After they passed over a few lit signs, I was able to figure out that while I was heading south, JD was cruising over the north end of the island. Presumably, the girls were heading in the same direction, as was the muscle guy. I made a U-turn.

The floater took some great images, although all I saw was the aftermath; I couldn't drive and monitor the viewer at the same time. Staying 500 feet from its target and shooting with a zoom lens, it caught JD swooping in to join a melee with muscle guy. The two of them engaged an ordinary street gang- just guns and knives, no major tech- and the they took down eight hoods without much trouble. Not having seen the incident, I nonetheless drove right into the scene a few moments later. The kids were just teenagers left in a bloodied huddle on the street corner. All of them were probably involved in something illegal, judging by their armament, but who knew if they were actually committing a crime when these vigilantes attacked them? I stopped to take a few shots of the grim scene, heard the police announce the incident on the scanner, then moved on. The trail was warm.

Every few blocks in the bayside warehouse district I stumbled into another victim: a hooker, a dealer, or maybe just a kid sucking down a forty on the wrong corner at the wrong time. They appeared to be canvassing the neighborhood, taking out anyone suspicious, which in that part of town meant nearly everyone. They even took the effort to tie up one victim; presumably, he was too dangerous or important to leave without some extra precautions. I took some shots with my second camera; he was a black kid, around twenty, writhing in a tangle of bailing wire and choking into the scarf that covered his nose and mouth. The police would be busy in this neighborhood, and I wondered if this kid would choke or freeze before they caught up with him. I figured that I should at least take the gag off (but not untie him; he was probably guilty of something), get some specifics from him, then report his plight to the police.

The warehouse district was eerie at night, even for a hard-boiled type raised in Tribeca like yours truly. Nearly all of the surrounding buildings were vacant and boarded up; most were closed for the night. The bay and marshes loomed before me like a lonesome, windswept plain as I left the van to look after the young man. All was quiet, except for the wind. I began to wonder: why tie this guy up, unless you wanted him to draw some extra attention from a passerby? It was then that I heard a distinctive whirring sound, a hum almost inaudible unless you were accustomed to always hearing it over the shoulder.

My floater.

It was looming almost overhead, hovering motionlessly. When I looked up, it whirled noiselessly away, following its program and maintaining a 500 foot distance from its target.

I turned and galloped for the nearest non-vacant building. A much louder noise approached me from behind: the sound of a flight engine in high gear. The building ahead of me was closed for the night, but some systems were still running, which gave me my only chance.

As JD closed in to catch me, I ducked beneath a ventilation unit in the building's wall. As I had hoped, it was blowing out heat: not much, but enough to create a small thermal updraft as it mixed with the frigid night air. The thermal caught my pursuer under his left wing just as he was about to piledrive me into the wall and sidewalk. He lost control for just a second, but flying as low as he was, his right wing scraped the street, sending up sparks and slowing him to the point where he lost lift. He rolled to a stop in some brush on the other end of the street.

There was no time to savor that victory. One of the girls- not Alicea, the other one- was charging down the street. She brandished some sort of power gauntlet. I climbed to my feet and ran for the bay.

I almost reached the high reeds that mark the beginning of the dunes, but then I felt a tingle at my back, and then a burst of force that knocked me off my feet. I struggled to my feet, but she zapped me again. I didn't have the good sense to stay down. I mustered the strength to rise again, only to be greeted by the sight of a black-clad figure emerging from the reeds. It was Muscles, the fire escape gymnast, smiling confidently as he watched me labor to catch my breath.

"Hold you fire, Velvet," he called to the girl, "and good job. Make sure Dangerbird isn't beaten up too bad."

He grinned at me. He was a handsome kid, in that fraternity brother way, from what I could see under his mask. He had short blond hair and a square jaw, and his smile was more serene than psychotic. I got a closer look as he pulled me to my feet. His costume was black, save for a few crimson heart-pierced-by-dagger designs on his arms. He was clearly unarmed, save for a small black buckler, the kind riot cops use, which are insulated against heat and electrical weapons.

"Now," he said, "who are you?" He slapped me so hard I almost left my feet. "A local detective?" He slapped me again. "A McCoy fed?"

"Ease up, Travis. I know who he is."

My attacker suddenly looked very irritated. I recognized the voice of the girl talking, although I was too busy checking my mouth for blood to look up at her.

"We are supposed to be using code names," he said wearily as he turned to her.

"I'm sorry- Blackheart," Alicea said with sarcasm as she approached us. "Anyway. He's Randy Stone, a New York reporter and expert on superheroes. He's following us to get documentary footage."

"When did you have a chance to read him?" Travis asked.

"I flashed him when he was tailing me at the Atoll, but that was just verification. I've seen him on the net; he's following us. It doesn't take much deduction."

Having assured myself that all teeth were present and accounted for, I looked up. Alicea wasn't masked. She wore a black turtleneck and black jeans, her hair was pinned back, and she held her scooter helmet in her arms. She looked ready for a drag down Ocean Drive, but not a spree of aggravated assaults.

"What should I do with him?" Travis asked.

I spoke up. "You might want to hear me out."

His eyes narrowed. "Give me a reason."

I tried to size this Travis kid up as best I could through the haze of pain. I saw what he did to the street punks earlier in the night: he was a thug, and a dangerous one. On the other hand, he pulled his punches with me, slapping me when it probably would have been safer for him to throw my body in the bay if I had turned out to be a cop.

"I can give you a chance to tell your story."

He thought for a moment.

Alicea sounded impatient. "Travis, this is no time to be drawing attention to ourselves. "

"This is also no time to be using my real name."

"He's already heard it. He also knows my name and probably Jeremy's, since he's been running all over New York with my credit cards. He knows where we live, too. But all we have to do is say no to him, and we're off the hook. He can't use the footage without a release from us. Unless, of course, he calls the cops and turns us in right now. He won't do that: it would ruin his street props. He'd never get his 'inside story' if other superheroes are afraid he'll turn them in."

Smart girl.

"She's right, Travis," I said, trying to sound strong and confident even though my lips were swelling and my legs were wobbling. "I know a lot about you. All it took was two days and a trace on a credit card. The only reason the authorities haven't sniffed you out is that you aren't that important."

"Yeah," Alicea said, "and I'd like to stay that unimportant."

Travis winced, turning angrily to her.

"You don't want that, do you Travis?" I said. "You want to be important. You want to matter. If you want that, then talk to me."

Sirens became audible from a few blocks away.

"Speaking of the authorities . . ." Alicea said, shifting on her feet nervously.

The other girl ran up to them. "JD is OK to fly," she said. "We need to get out of here, and the bike is three blocks away. Let me have the keys."

Alicea shook her head. "I don't want you going back, Julie. I'll get it and swing around."

Travis thumbed the bridge of his nose in pain ."There," he said to me, "that's all of our names."

"Thank you."

"There is no time, ladies," Travis said. "We go back into the marsh. We'll get the scooter later."

JD meanwhile, couldn't get his engine engaged after a cold stall.

"I can get you out of this in my van," I said.

Travis turned to me. "You would do that?"

"Consider it an act of good will. I ask only that you hear my proposal out in return."

The sirens became louder. "No time to discuss. Everybody in the van," Travis ordered.

"I don't like this," Alicea said.

Travis was already running ahead of me. "Then get caught if you want."

Alicea stewed, but she followed us. In a few moments, I was harboring four fugitives in the back of my van, helping them flee a crime scene. It wasn't the most orthodox method of getting a story, but you can't expect to keep your nose clean when dealing with a story like this. The moment you record a confession without reporting it, you're on shaky ground legally. Nobody at the office would know the shaky details; the kids sure as hell wouldn't spill the beans.

They hid in the back while we passed through the neighborhood they turned into a small war zone. Police were cuffing the victims; all of them apparently were known felons, although the VPA would guarantee that no convictions would stick to them. Travis peeked out the back window, pointing out drug dealers and pimps and thugs who would suffer about 24 hours of justice, thanks to his handiwork.

The coast was clear, and Travis removed his mask and took his place in the passenger's seat beside me. "Hello Randy," he said, shaking my hand firmly. "I'm Blackheart. We're the Goths. We fight crime."

Chapter 3: Errands

The ride home was mostly silent, with the "Goths" scowling at each other and sneaking glances out the window. I tried to make conversation.

"Let me get your code names. It's Blackheart, Velvet, Dangerbird, and . . ."

Silence.

"Alicea," Alicea finally said.

Travis' jaw hardened. "What happened to Scanner?"

Alicea stared off into the distance. "She died. A rare condition: Corny Codename Syndrome."

"Uh-oh," JD said to Travis. "If that's contagious, you're next." He laughed, alone.

We parked in an alley behind their tenement and the team silently scaled a fire escape to the top floor with me bringing up the rear. They slipped through a propped-open fire door, down a dark hallway of abandoned rooms, and into their apartment, a greasy little flat that stunk of mildew and young bodies and bad housekeeping. Some impressive audio-video equipment was stacked in one corner, but otherwise, all the furniture was junk: a threadbare couch with ground-in dirt and laundry piled on it, a couple of chairs right out of the mission house, all the things you would expect from kids who had to scrounge for everything they had. The place was lit by a fixture with exposed wires and no shade on the bulb, there were cracks in the drywall, and the floorboards creaked of dry rot.

"Is everybody OK?" Travis asked as he switched on the lights. Velvet, or Julianna, the younger girl, unstrapped the weapon from her arm. JD began removing his flight harness. "What about you, D-Bird? How's the shoulder?"

JD rubbed it and smiled his gap-toothed grin. "Nothing to sweat about."

"Good," Travis said, then his mood suddenly changed. He leapt across the room toward his friend, grabbing the much lighter JD by the front of his collar and hoisting him in the air. With a casual toss, JD was across the room, crashing hard into a virtual game unit. Travis advanced toward him. Alicea and Julianna intervened, each grabbing one of Travis' arms, although they didn't really have the strength to hold him back.

"You finally flipped, " JD said.

Travis freed one of his hands and pointed angrily at his friend. "Why the hell were you running around New York with the credit card," he demanded.

"I needed equipment," he pleaded.

"Don't you realize how easily a credit card is to track? We have a New York reporter breathing down our asses now," he said, pointing at me. "Who knows who else is outside the door?"

"What was I supposed to do? You want me to fly, don't you?"

It looked like Travis was going to lunge at JD again, but Alicea stood between them. She stared Travis down, then turned to JD. "You were supposed to take out cash here, then pay for everything in cash. We've been here before, Jeremy. It's not fusion science."

JD sneered. "I did take out cash in town, but I ran low when I hit the city."

Alicea's eyebrows arched. "Ran low? How much of my money did you spend?"

"It ain't just your money."

She flew into a rage. "Why not?" she cried. "When's the last time you worked a day toward making any of it." She dove at JD, and it was Travis' turn to restrain her, hugging her tightly and lifting her off her feet.

JD slipped passed them as Travis planted little kisses on Alicea's forehead to calm her. She wasn't too receptive though: once she composed herself, she rolled her eyes and tugged free of his embrace. "I'm calling the company and reporting the card stolen," she said. "We'll be extra thin until they issue a new one."

"We need cash for Shorty Rock tomorrow," Travis said, protesting her decision.

Alicea glanced at me before turning to him. "We have more exposure than we can handle right now," she said. "We need some deniability if others come looking for us,"

"I don't see what the problem is," JD said, resting an arm on my shoulder. "You said we weren't important enough for the McCoy Units to come after, didn't you?"

I nodded, uncomfortable with having the kid so close to me.

Alicea was already dialing the network to report her card stolen. "JD, this isn't your decision to make, so I don't want to hear shit-else from you."

JD saluted her mockingly, rolled his eyes, and took a bottle of cognac from a shelf.

Travis looked at me intently. "You don't think we'll attract their attention, after the number of hits we pulled tonight?"

I laughed, despite myself. "Hits? If you mean knocking out a few drug corners, then forget about it. The guys you took down will be out of custody as soon as a witness comes forward and claims that superheroes were involved in the attack. Then, VPA will kick in, all the evidence will be inadmissible, and they'll be back on the street. The police will file a nuisance claim against you with the McCoy Units, and that claim will go in a file with 2,000 other claims and sit there until you become a big enough problem to warrant a page on an expense account."

Travis pondered this for a second. He clearly wasn't happy that his little blitz operations didn't rate highly in the cosmic scheme of things. "So you're saying that unless we do something big, we're nobody," he said, sounding just a bit disappointed.

"Not at all," I said, taking a small pile of waiver forms from my breast pocket. "You're TV stars. All you have to do is sign the waivers and allow me to take some documentary footage,"

Alicea looked around. "Who is that speaking? Oh, Mr. Stone, you're still here. Have a good evening, and good night."

I smiled, trying to look confident. "Are you kicking me out?"

"Not as such, but since I refuse to be part of your little documentary, I'm guessing you'll be leaving soon anyway."

"You haven't heard me out . . ."

"I don't have to," she said, standing and turning to me. " I know what this is about. Let's give the audience a cheap thrill. Follow the illegal adventures of the troubled kids. If we're lucky, we'll catch the girls with their tops off. Or maybe they'll die in a bloody car wreck."

I clicked my tongue. "You're awfully good at pre-judging people."

She rested her hands on her hips. "Well, I guess I am. Part of being able to read minds is learning how to guess the way they think. You can convince the guys that this is a chance for glory, but I have no intention of seeing my life edited into a one-hour drama on the net."

She stormed into a bedroom and slammed the door.

"Where's my allen wrench?" JD asked, sifting through audio disks to find the tool. His flight harness was half removed; beneath it was a mesh shirt with openings cut in strategic places. Beneath the shirt a jumble of acid-etchings were visible: winged dragons, demons, hawks, all burned onto his flesh with acids formulated to discolor his skin in different hues. There were also piercings, apparently sewn right into the flesh on his chest.

He caught me looking at him and grinned widely. "It's the only way to fly, buddy. I had the snaps and rods installed. Good looking, and useful too." With the wrench he removed a bolt and dowel from the shoulder straps of his harness. In addition to brass snaps on his chest and back, he had two rods surgically inserted in the skin beneath his shoulder. A chrome bolt protruded from each end of the rod; JD screwed a jeweled stud into the bolts once he was free from the harness. I wondered how the kid ever got through metal detectors.

I turned back to Travis. "Well, you sound like the boss," I said. "What's the call?"

Travis turned to me. "Can we still do it?"

"That depends." I knew I had Travis hooked, but without Alicea's permission, I wouldn't be able to use her image without digitally wiping out her face and disguising her voice. There are always a few blanked images in documentaries like these, but it looks like hell when one of your primary characters has an Eraserface. I could downplay her significance, but at what cost? Her and Travis appeared to be a couple, and a stormy pair at that. Their romance would add texture to the story, but a digital disguise would ruin the effect. What's more, I didn't want to blank out the features of the prettiest girl; it doesn't make for good television.

But I couldn't just walk away. I invested some serious time in hunting down this team. Another 48-hours to find another team, and I would be up against the deadline to get enough footage shot by mid-January. Plus, where else would I find a freak show like JD? The piercings and bolts alone were worth a few ratings points. I told the others that if they all agreed, I would start rolling the next morning.

"This could get me some serious action," JD said as he took a release from my hand.

Travis turned to me, shaking his head in disgust. "He's being funny. That's not what we're about, Randy."

"What are you about?"

He smiled. "We're about making a difference. I want to do this so I can say my piece."

"You'll get your chance."

"That's all I need to hear," he said, taking the waiver from me. "I'll work on Alicea for you, but she gets stubborn. Anyway, she works tomorrow, so we can show you around town a little."

He signed the document.

I pointed to Julianna. She sat dwarfed in a ragged old easy chair, her legs crossed beneath her body. She absently swirled a glass of cognac, examining the liquid as it moved and generally ignoring us. "What about her?"

Travis took another waiver. "Julianna's my sister. She's only 17; I'm her legal guardian. I'll sign for her."

The bedroom door swung open. Alicea scowled at Travis. She must have heard him say that he would sign for his sister. She looked at the little waif in the easy chair. "Julianna? Do you want to be part of this?"

The young girl snapped out of her trance. "What?" she asked. She looked around at all of us in confusion.

"Julianna," Travis said. "We're going to be on TV. It's our big break. We're going to show the world what we're all about."

"Whatever," she replied.

Alicea scowled and shook her head with disgust. "You bastard," she cried, although I don't know if she was talking to me or Travis. Either way, she turned and slammed the door so hard that it echoed through the alley outside.

****

Do the math with me if you like, or skip this section to get back to the story. This is just a slab of boilerplate that I cleaned up and dropped into the Full Enabled version of the story:

Last year, roughly 7,000 people were convicted of violations of various articles of the Vigilante Prevention Act. That figure is up 0.5% from 2047. Almost ten times as many people were charged with federal felonies in conjunction with the Acts, only to have federal charges dropped or lessened through plea bargaining to less serious offenses. The 75,000 or so criminals in question were responsible for over 200,000 violent crimes, between $5 billion and $50 billion in property damage (whether you believe the claimants or the insurance adjusters), and at least 200 deaths.

Of those charged with VPA federal felonies, over half are males between the ages of 18 and 45. Older males make up another 20%, younger males another 10% (although males under 18 are difficult to count, as they rarely face federal charges and are often charged with lesser offenses for the same crimes that put older perpetrators away). While women comprise only about 20% of the vigilante population, they are in a growth market: nearly all the increase in vigilante crimes over the last five years has come from an increase in the female population.

These statistics tell less than half the story. Experts estimate that for every captured vigilante or other superpowered criminal, between 20 and 25 are never apprehended. There are also thousands who are initially charged with lesser offenses, due to legal expediencies and other factors. As mentioned above, Technical Juveniles, those between 16 and 22 who have not finished their education and are defined to be "partially cognizant" of their responsibilities as citizens, are extremely difficult to convict on federal charges. As a result, states and municipalities often seek quick convictions, usually throwing away the vigilante element of the crime in exchange for a few years in rehab or detention. There appears to be only a slight problem with younger offenders, but the numbers are misleading: one poll suggests that 80% of high school students know someone who owns a proscribed weapon or uses body building drugs.

Of the means of acquiring illegal superpowers, weapon acquisition is about twice as popular as drug abuse, although the ratio is closer to 50-50 with young people. Surgery and other mutilations run an infrequent third. Compressed Fusion Capacitors, usually low or moderate yield units, are the most common power source for illicit weaponry. Despite the fact that possessing any CFC with a greater than minimal output is punishable by as much as twelve years in prison, over 100,000 units have been confiscated from felons, distributors, and warehouses in the last calendar year. Most CFCs are used in conventional blaster weapons, from gauntlets and helmets to full suits with shoulder mounts. Flight packs, a less popular (but not uncommon) item, are also commonly CFC powered.

An anonymous poll of enhanced weaponry users reveal that almost half consider their actions essential for personal protection, while another large percentage admit to actively pursuing vigilante justice in some way, from superhero stunts to more conventional neighborhood watches and the like. The rest of those polled explained their actions variously as "an affirmation of identity," "an adventure/thrill seeking activity," or "a political statement." These poll respondents probably represent the same population that is inevitably prosecuted: most defendants are guilty of acts of vigilante vengeance, not theft or other traditional violent crimes.

Of course, sorting out the difference between well-intentioned, if brutal, acts of vigilante vengeance and outright thuggery is often sticky business, which is one reason that the Vigilante Prevention Acts were passed in the first place. The Vigilante Prevention Acts expressly forbid the formation of any type of neighborhood watch or other community protection group, however benign, as many of these groups are fronts for hostile vigilante bands. These "superhero teams" were initially founded to fight crime, but invariably become bogged down in elaborate turf wars and become more dangerous than the criminal element they seek to contain. Vigilante-on-vigilante violence is still the most likely type of incident to attract the attention of the McCoy Units, the division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms chartered to prevent VPA transgressions.

Establishing the difference between a conventional crime gang with hi-tech weapons and a superhero hit squad is especially difficult when dealing with juvenile and technical juvenile offenders. Kids with no prior records have been known to dispatch lethal force against their enemies over the good name and virtue of a girlfriend. Ordinary fistfights are complicated by the use of body-enhancement drugs, which many kids begin taking to increase their chances of making the football or wrestling teams. Meanwhile, there have been a few cases where high school drug dealers and gangbangers have been too well armed for the local authorities to handle. Parent action groups and other awareness agencies have done an excellent job of revealing the problems in urban schools, but suburban schools and communities often choose, regrettably, to ignore the problem. The risk, of course, is that more affluent youngsters can afford more powerful weaponry, and can inflict it upon a less prepared populace.

Demographics and data only take you so far. Superheroes are criminals; we cannot expect them to tell the truth about themselves until they are under oath, so all the information we have is fairly limited and of questionable accuracy. Police and federal agents have created profiles and archetypes, but in point of fact there are certainly a myriad of personalities and individuals who are drawn to the superhero/vigilante lifestyle. The population is probably as diverse as that of society itself, or at least the fringe element of society. The team I stumbled into fit into no comfortable niche, except perhaps my editor's requirements for age and photogenic qualities. I tend to believe that they represented a hidden populace: misguided young adults clinging to the ledge of poverty, living on the lam from a community within which they don't particularly belong. Perhaps there are hundreds of little superhero cells like this in every city in America, living in old tenements or shanties or refrigerator boxes, blowing their money on chemical muscles and weapons and fighting for some forgotten reason. They could be the next trend, or a dying breed, for all we know. But they're out there; that's for sure.

****

I slept on the air mattress I kept in the van that night, surrounded by my recording and editing equipment. It was drafty, but it beat sleeping with the cockroaches and spent beers in the apartment. Atlantic City sounds a lot like New York at night; the town treated me to a serenade of sirens and alarms and car stereos all night long. Downright restful. Factor in the shiners Travis gave me and the chafing burns from Julianna's little contraption, the cold, and the noise, and I got maybe two hours of sleep and another eight of wanting to sleep.

Lack of sleep wasn't a problem for the Goths. These kids weren't exactly early risers. It took until about 2:00 before all of them were up and out of bed and ready to hit the streets. All except Alicea, anyway: she was off to work at dawn. The others had been up drinking half the night; I heard Travis arguing with JD on the fire escape long after the corner bar closed. But by mid-afternoon they were all sobered up, dressed in some ratty old jackets and sweatshirts, and ready to hit the street.

"What's on the agenda?" I asked as I joined them. I had spent the morning in the van, rigging my hidden camera so it was ready to follow the team into places where journalists are usually unwelcome. It was a tiny battery-operated, limited acuity camera with a slow frame rate that recorded digital images of moderate quality. I tucked it into the lapel of my trench coat. The floater was also set to follow us when we were on the street.

"Errands," Travis replied. He led JD, Julianna and I through the streets toward a strip far off the path of the tourist trade, a business district dominated by pawn shops and go-go clubs. "We need to visit Shorty Rock, then do some shopping."

"Shorty Rock?" I asked.

"You'll figure it out when we get there. I don't wanna talk about it on the street."

I nodded. "Other than running errands, then, you guys don't do anything during the day. None of you has a job?"

JD stifled a coarse laugh. "Who are you, Alicea?"

The others laughed.

"Alicea's the 9-to-5 type in this operation. If the rest of us were, we would do that instead of . . . working nights," Travis said.

"I work, sometimes," Julianna added. "I work for Alicea . . ."

Travis cut her off. "Alicea sometimes has to hire temps. Julie or one of us will go in and work for a day or two when the team is on the thin. Most of the time, though, we have too many responsibilities."

"Like errands?" I asked.

"Like errands," Travis replied. "And training."

Travis held up his hand as we turned a corner. He was looking at a "gentleman's club" across the street. We're talking about a four-alarm dive here: iron bars and plywood over what once were windows, placards advertising every underground club in the city covering the walls. It was the kind of joint where the girls had no teeth and wouldn't think twice about rolling you if you fell too deep into your drink. Travis watched as a few sleezeballs negotiated with the doorman, turned over some bills, and were allowed inside.

Travis turned to JD. "Do you think they're still turning tricks in there?"

"I sure hope so."

Julianna laughed, but Travis' expression could have burned a hole in JD's face.

"What am I supposed to say?" JD asked. "It's the worst shit hole in town. Are they turning tricks in the back? Hmmm, I wonder . . ."

"Maybe we should do something about it."

"Sure. We'll bust up every strip joint in town."

"Not every one. The one three blocks from our apartment that has losers hanging around out front in the middle of the afternoon." Travis turned to me. "Am I overreacting?"

I shrugged my shoulders. We continued walking up the street.

"Tell you what," JD said. "Let me go in and do some undercover work. I'll give you a full report."

Travis shook his head in disgust. "I must look stupid," he said.

We continued down the main drag until we reached an electronics shop called "Shorty's". The place was no different than the kind you find in every city. The window displayed portables, stereo equipment, virtual toys and games, and other high tech gizmos. Anyone who shops at places like that knows the drill: some of the merchandise is stolen, some of it pawned, none of it came with a guarantee. Mahmoud's Gold Street shop in Manhattan was no different on the outside, and Mahmoud wasn't the only low rent hustler to use the electronics gig as a front for something more lucrative.

"Shorty has diversified interests, to use his lingo," Travis said. "He owns half this block. Don't do any talking, Randy, although I doubt you'll get the chance."

I agreed, as if Travis knew something about this scene that I didn't know. I was exposing pawn brokers like this Shorty Rock back when he was chasing cheerleaders.

No sooner had we entered than the proprietor, a black guy no older than 25, descended upon us. He was indeed short, a few hairs over five feet, and overdressed for the clientele in an Armani suit. He bowed low when we entered, addressing us as if we were royalty.

"Salutations, dear regular guests," he proclaimed in a round, full voice. He looked at me. ". . .And a warm welcome to a new friend. I am Shorty Rock."

"This is Randy," Travis said, pointing to me. "He's cool."

"Well, of course he is," he said, approaching me and tugging at my lapels. I pulled back, unsure if he was suspicious about a camera or just admiring my couture. That's an Alistaire Marshall Signature trench coat he's wearing, and wearing Marshall announces to the world that you are cool. My friend Randy, we carry a wide selection of Marshall coats at my haberdashery just up the road, and our prices are more than competitive."

I thought I'd ask about the off-the-truck discount, but it was better if the kids did the talking.

"We're sure they are," Travis replied, "but we aren't clothes shopping. I need my swipe card, and we need net numbers."

At first, I had guessed Shorty's racket to be superhero hardware: a New Jersey Mahmoud. Shorty turned out to be a forger: fake drivers' licenses and passports, hacked security clearances and net access numbers, and prescription swipe cards. That made sense. Travis seemed too uptight to get his chemical muscles off the street, and spending his nights pummeling would-be suppliers probably kept him from establishing good connections. Instead, he bought forged prescriptions for something less illegal and safer. That explained why Travis didn't bulk up like a gorilla, the way a Rae-Tae addict would.

As for net numbers, it figured that the team needed some privacy if they wanted to talk about their exploits on the net, and all superheroes loved to talk about their exploits on the net. There were newsgroups, sites, and channels all over the net for superheroes and vigilante teams. Kids logged on under stolen access numbers, said their piece, then disappeared before any snoopers could track them down. The sites were illegal, but nobody cared; half the kids who logged on were crackpots or just curious. Still, no superhero would dare enter a site under their real access code: they would be sitting ducks if there were an investigation.

Shorty produced an envelope for Travis. He peeked inside to confirm that it contained an exquisitely forged scannable prescription card. Shorty then began typing into his computer console. "I'm afraid I can't give you top of the line access numbers, my brother, seeing as though you haven't paid for the last round."

Hacked net numbers come in several levels of quality. The best are retired numbers that a hacker quietly reinstated. You can use them for months, the bill goes to someone who has been dead for months, and it takes the providers months to figure out what is going on and shut down the number. The next level down are group access numbers stolen from employees of companies too cheap to provide corporate access to all their personnel. You get a month, maybe two, out of these numbers before an accountant finds the problem and freezes you out. Then, there are the cheap codes, stolen from portables. Your net service will appear on the real owner's account the next time he checks, which could be twenty minutes after he logs on. You have to hope that the number was stolen from someone lazy about keeping up his account, or someone with multiple users on his service, or something, otherwise he can make one call and shut you out a few minutes after you pay for the merchandise.

From the conversation, it sounded like the team was buying cheap numbers.

"Damn it, Shorty, the last batch you gave us lasted a week," Travis said as Shorty checked his inventory for active codes. "I don't want to have to scale down my net time to make them last."

Shorty continued working. "Again, my deepest regrets. But you get what you pay for, and as you have not paid for anything, it's the best I can do. Here." He punched a series of keys, transferring an access code from his inventory to another console near Travis. "Check out the merchandise, my friend."

"I think I will," Travis said, seating himself before the computer.

JD looked around at the hi-tech equipment crowded onto the shelves behind the counter. "Business is booming," he said absently.

"Always," Shorty replied, smiling as he worked. "It's all a young entrepreneur like myself can do to keep up with his many interests."

"And how is business downstairs?"

Shorty's smile widened. "You wanna see?" he said, looking up from his work.

We left Travis to examine the network access codes. We left the shop, descending a stairway that led below street level. Shorty stopped us at the bottom of the stairs.

"JD, my friend, I guess you know that I'm not as paid as I'd like to be," he whispered, his tone suddenly serious.

"You know we're in the thin," JD replied.

"You are always in the thin. Now, the prescriptions are no problem. They only take a minute, and I don't wanna separate muscle man from his dose. Those guys can get funny."

"Not my brother," Julianna said.

Shorty's eyes softened as he turned to Julianna. "Maybe you don't see the way your brother looks at me, little lady. Shorty didn't get this far by provoking the wrong characters. That's why I've been extending credit to you people. But I'm a businessman, and my patience is wearing thin."

"We're doing what we can, Shorty. I just maxed out the old lady's credit card on other stuff. Travis, he doesn't like to accept money for some of the things we do. Otherwise. We wouldn't be so damn thin."

Shorty rolled his eyes. "Being a good neighbor isn't always being a good businessman. I don't have time for charity cases."

"Hold out a little longer. If it gets too tight, we'll work something out."

Shorty looked apprehensive. He stared all of us down, then erupted with a nervous laugh. "Hell, JD, you are good people. I'm sure we'll make some arrangements. Let's have a drink."

The lounge beneath Shorty's store was a cross between a tavern and a shooting gallery. There was no obvious drug-taking going on, but the handful of patrons were sprawled across couches and appeared more relaxed than alcohol can get a person. They were all kids, younger than Travis, maybe as young as Julianna. They were runaways and street punks, a half-step down the ladder from the Goths, screwed up kids with nothing better to do than dose and space all day. It looked like some of them slept there. Couches, futons, and beanbags dominated the décor. A bartender manned a small service area in a dark corner. A large bay window allowed a view of the adjoining room.

"Four cognacs," Shorty announced to his bartender.

"Three," I said, correcting him. He smiled suspiciously at me.

Julianna watched the action through the bay window. Inside was an etching parlor. A muscular black kid no more than seventeen years old was in the chair, stripped to his boxers. The artist plied his trade on the kid's inner thigh, applying a yin-yang symbol to his flesh.

Julianna nibbled on her thumbnail as she watched the artist at work. Shorty slipped in close to her and offered her a drink. "You like what you see?" he asked.

She smiled shyly. "I like the art."

"Hey, Shorty," JD interrupted. "Do you think Hammer can do some more work on me?"

JD stepped into their line of sight, peeling off his sweatshirt to reveal the artwork that covered his body.

"Out of the way," Julianna said, waiving him off.

JD turned to face the window. "What's that kid got that I haven't?"

"Everything."

"Yeah, JD," Shorty added. "Hammer said no more work for you until you gain some weight. He's out of room to operate."

"Sure he did," JD said, slipping away.

Shorty turned his attention to Julianna. "If you would like, we could arrange an appointment, and you can get some art like that."

"I already have one," Julianna replied. She pulled up her hair with one hand, lowering the collar of her sweatshirt with the other. The diminutive Shorty actually had to crane his neck to see the gothic "G", the team's trademark, burned just to the left of the young girl's bra strap.

Shorty took the opportunity to touch Julianna's back, running his fingers along the outline of the design. "Very nice," he said. "But nearly invisible below the hairline."

Julianna dropped her hair over the etching. "Alicea says not to get art someplace where it can't be covered when you want to, but I want to get others."

"I hear you. Not everyone wants to go to the extremes that JD does, of course, but a few adornments can enhance a woman's beauty greatly. For example," he slipped his finger beneath Julianna's sweatshirt, lifting it a few inches to reveal her navel. "A small ring around the belly button can be decorative and affordable." He ran a finger gently along her belly. "A lady with a lovely body like yours should draw attention to how trim she is."

Julianna didn't appear to mind the attention; she just smiled self-consciously as Shorty turned her to face him. "Then, of course, we have to think about summer," he continued, tugging at the pocket of her jeans until they rode low on her hips. "Something feminine on the upper thigh, near the bikini line, is always fashionable. I recommend a rose, or a butterfly, but we have a selection of a few hundred designs."

Shorty moved closer, his finger about to go somewhere it didn't belong. A second later, he was across the room, lying prone on the floor. Travis stood beside his sister, his face pink with rage. The bartender lit from his station, brandishing a chair by its legs. He was a big guy, bigger than Travis, but Travis drew in close, riddling the man's face with jabs before taking his arm and flipping him onto the floor. A patron stood to intervene, took a foot between his ribs, and fell to the floor. Hammer opened the door from the etching parlor, watched for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and returned to the yin-yang.

Travis loomed over Shorty, who was on the floor spitting and searching his saliva for blood. "What the hell were you doing," he demanded, still seething with anger.

Shorty waived his arms. "It's all cool, man, it's all cool."

"It ain't fucking cool. Don't ever touch my sister again. She's seventeen years old, you piece of shit."

JD crept up behind Travis and rested an arm on his shoulder. Travis whirled to strike, stopping himself when he saw his friend.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," he said.

Shorty tried to stand, then doubled over in pain. "No problem, my brother. Sorry. Real sorry."

"You are fucking sorry," Travis said, picking up the chair the bartended tried to use on him. He lifted the chair high over his head, but JD grabbed it before Travis could lower it on his victim.

"Let's get out of here," JD repeated.

Travis gritted his teeth, then tossed the stool into a corner. "C'mon," he said, grabbing his sister, who had stood watching the scene in stunned silence.

****

We stormed out of Shorty's speakeasy, Travis leading the way. He was seething; his breathing was labored and his fists were clenched as crossed the street and led the team toward the boardwalk. He spoke to no one, and the others stayed a few strides behind him. He was teetering on the edge of losing control, and I was surprised that he didn't go totally off. Addicts like him are known to blow a gasket on the slightest provocation, and many don't settle down until they're dragged away with cuffs on their ankles and sedatives in their bloodstream. A Phinny-Bar addict doesn't distinguish friend from foe once his nostrils are flaring, and Rae-Rage has left many a bystander in the hospital. By those standards, Travis was a Quaker.

"What the hell was that in there?" he finally said, turning and snapping at the others. The levee and the boardwalk loomed ahead of us; winter winds from the ocean rippled our clothes. He pointed a finger at his sister. "What were you doing?"

Julianna flinched as her brother pointed at her. Tears welled up as she spoke. "You . . . embarrassed me."

He threw up his hands. "Embarrassed you? In front of who? Shorty Rock? The punks who hang around that dive looking for a fix? You embarrassed me, letting trash like that touch you."

"I can take care of myself," she cried, turning his back on him.

Travis stewed for a moment, then popped JD in the ribs with the back of his hand. "What about you? I expect you to back me up on something like that."

JD rubbed the tender spot Travis just slapped. "I was keeping an eye on our interests."

"What the hell does that mean?"

JD shook his head like he was tired of explaining himself. "You shouldn't have gone off on Shorty like that,"

Travis turned to him. "Why not? Since when are you telling me to back off? Most of the time, you're the one that goes off half-lit and half-assed."

"Well, I ain't half-lit. I got about two sips of my drink before you came in saucin' people. And it's different when we're jamming on the street."

"How?"

JD rolled his eyes. "Don't be stupid. You know the fucking difference. Shorty's the only person we can get any kind of credit from. We need some friends in this town."

Travis started to speak, then realized that JD was right. He shook his head. "Bullshit," he said. He kicked the guardrail beside him, first absently, then several times with all he had. "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!" he repeated, kicking the metal rail each time until it bent under the force of his blows.

"That guardrail won't give us any more trouble," JD said.

"I'm sick, JD. I don't like having to deal like garbage like Shorty. I don't wanna make Julie or Alicea go anywhere near him. I hate playing by their rules to get . . ." he clutched the envelope that held his phony prescription card. His voice cracked. ". . . to get what I need. It's like dealing with the devil."

Travis turned to me, looking for some validation. I looked away. These were the mighty Goths, the superheroes trying to make a difference, brutalizing two-bit hustlers after begging them for illegal merchandise.

"Whatever," he continued. "I'm off to pay the piper. What do we need?"

"Cigarettes," Julianna said.

"Yeah," JD added, "and diet pills. I must be up around 130: I almost pulled myself out of the saddle last night."

"Great. We'll be broke for dinner again. Meet me at the Steel Pier for a few drills."

JD nodded, and Travis jogged off. JD leaned against the rail Travis had just abused, staring into space for a moment, and then at me. "This is the way it is," he said.

I asked him what he meant.

"This is it. This is how we do it." He held up his arms, as if he were displaying his world for me. "This is life,"

I smiled. "It's nothing I haven't seen before," I said.

JD shook his head and laughed. "I feel sorry for you."

Julianna propped herself on the rail beside him. They seemed content to just sit there while Travis went shopping for drugs and cigarettes. It was quite a contrast from the kinetic kids who attacked me with wings and blasters the night before. Their masks came off, and they turned into lazy kids hanging out near the boardwalk, waiting for something to happen.

"It seems like you guys fight with each other a lot. Do all of you ever agree on anything?" I asked, breaking the silence.

JD winced. "I guess on a day like this, we all agree that it's cold as hell. Otherwise, no. We never agree."

Julianna took her last cigarette from a pocket. Cupping her hands against the wind, she lit it and took a long drag. "I don't think it's that cold," she said.

****

They practiced on the beach after reconvening at the old ruin of The Steel Pier. They didn't practice like the Jersey City team, thankfully. There was no full armor, no heavy contact, and no airborne maneuvers. Travis taught the others a few martial arts moves: sweep kicks, flips, techniques for dealing with a bigger, stronger attacker. Wiry little JD got the hang of things quickly, but Julianna was slow and sloppy, knocking herself over when she tried to flip her brother. Calisthenics were interrupted for a cigarette break, which somehow seemed appropriate. Then they ran through some drills, with Travis drawing up attack maneuvers in the sand. It was idyllic: a bunch of young people running and tussling in the sand. For a moment, it was easy to forget how violent their lives were.

Travis spoke with me during a break. "Our best techniques are hit-and-run strategies," he explained. "We don't have the firepower to just jam face-to-face. Julianna's gauntlet is superconductor powered, so it runs out of juice pretty quickly. JD can't do much when he hits the ground. Luckily, we're smart and fast."

"What about Alicea?" I asked.

He shook his head. "She's no good in a fight. But she can read minds, which is just about the most amazing thing in the world."

I rubbed my hands for warmth. "Does she really read minds, or is she just a gleaner?"

That question earned me a dirty look. "You saying she's a con artist?"

I backed off. "Gleaners aren't con artists. Well, some of them are, but most of them are just talented kids who can read facial expressions, notice changes in breathing patterns, that sort of thing. I mean, forgive me for being a skeptic, but the only confirmed cases of telepaths I've ever heard of are autistic savants."

Travis scowled. "She's the real thing, Randy. She can tell you what you had for breakfast last Tuesday. It's a long story how she got that way, but it's for real. Maybe she'll tell you about it, after she warms up to you."

I jammed my hands into my pockets. "I wouldn't hold my breath."

"Ah, she gets used to people. She got used to me."

We watched the others duck under the pier to light their cigarettes. JD placed one in his mouth, but the wind blew it away. He took out another cigarette, and the same thing happened. He cursed loud enough for us to hear him over the waves. Travis laughed heartily.

"You've calmed down," I said to him.

"Yeah," he said. "Having to deal with people like Shorty brings out the worst in me."

"Then why do you do it?"

"I need the chemicals, and I won't buy off the street."

"I meant: why bother with any of this? The superhero gig, the danger, the work for no pay. Why do you do it?"

Travis smiled coyly. "You want the story from the top?" he asked.

****

Travis and Julianna Hood were ordinary kids from the Philly suburbs. Jeremy David "JD" Orczykowski was Travis' best buddy in high school. The Hoods weren't troublemakers, and while JD had a few scrapes with the law, there was nothing unusual about their lives until about six years ago.

Then came the crisis of 2042. Some home video jockey forged footage of four McCoy agents mercilessly beating a motorist who had already surrendered. The video led off every newscast in the country. The tape was a hoax, but no one knew it at the time, not even the feds, who turned over four agents for trial. They were quickly acquitted, which touched off violence in several major cities. According to Travis, his father was driving his mother home from work when some rioters began popping caps at everyone on the freeway. His parents weren't shot, but the driver of the car in front of them was, and the Hoods were killed in the resulting accident.

Travis called the moment of his parents' death his "moment of truth."

"I look back on the kid I was, Randy," he said. "When mom and dad were living, everything was handed to us. Julianna and I were spoiled. I hate the kid I was." An elderly aunt took care of the family, but Travis began to feel the need to do more with his life than complete high school and find a career. "My parents death served a purpose. It woke me up. It reminded me that there's a need for heroes in this world."

Always an athlete, Travis acquired a fake prescription for deodrine from a contact of JD's. Deodrine, a less-powerful drug than the more popular Rae-Tae, appealed to Travis because it was one of the few performance-enhancing chemicals to improve tendon and ligament strength along with muscle mass. As it was primarily used to rehabilitate severe injuries, forged prescriptions were not hard to come by. He began to take the drug, quitting sports teams at his high school to avoid drug tests and suspicion. "I had this idea that I could become a great crime fighter. This was at the point when we still thought the tapes of the McCoy brutality were real. They turned out to be a hoax, but does it matter? It could have been real. It could happen every day and we would never know. And, thanks to anti-vigilante laws, we wouldn't be able to do much if it was happening."

At 16, Travis was involved in his first altercation. A group of male students were posting naked images of a female student on the net. The school's administration punished the kids, but the pictures had circulated the school, and they always showed up a few days later at a new site. When rumors circulated back to Travis, he took action.

"I might have overreacted," Travis admitted. He and JD (who was yet to acquire a flight suit) jumped four older students in the school parking lot. Two of the students sustained concussions; a third needed to have his mouth wired shut for an entire semester. The fourth nearly bled to death after Travis threw him through the windshield of his car. Travis and JD were sent to an alternative school.

"People thought it was just about the pictures of that girl," Travis explained. "These four guys were really a rape gang. They'd slip girls roofies and stuff at parties. They were notorious throughout the school, but they had influential parents. So the school made them out to be victims, while we wound up in boot camp."

Alternative school was the last stop for JD, who dropped out at 18 and, with Travis' support, began experimenting with flight harnesses. Travis returned to his regular school after one year. Six months before graduation, his aunt died. Rather than bringing Julianna to live with relatives in Pittsburgh, Travis, now 18, declared himself his sister's legal guardian. Julianna and their relatives reluctantly agreed, and Travis dropped out of school to take a full-time job.

"From that point on, creating a superhero team was my ambition. That was all I worked for." While he did complete his education at night school, Travis was unsuited for regular employment. He lost several jobs, often accusing fellow workers of theft or insubordination, sometimes accosting them. At his behest, Julianna began dabbling with weapons. Several incidents landed her in alternative school. The day Julianna turned 16, she dropped out of school with her brother's blessing.

"We didn't have much direction back then. We were working, living out in the burbs, not moving ahead with our plans like we should have. Oh, we came up with our nicknames, the first versions of our costumes, and stuff like that, but we didn't see much action. That changed when we met Alicea."

Alicea met the others just two years ago, just after Julianna left school. She was a college student, unhappy with her relationship with her parents and eager to make something more of herself. "She was like me: she had too much handed to her. Her dad always tried to keep her under his thumb, and her home life was crazy. Yet she had this rare ability she was just dying to use." She and Travis fell in love, they moved to Atlantic City, and the team began fighting crime. They've lived that way ever since, moving every few months, quickly using up the money from the Hood's home on expensive hardware.

****

And that's how it all happened. At least, according to Travis.

. "Don't let him snow you," JD said. He and Julianna joined us half way through Travis' story, but didn't speak up after Travis left to run wind-sprints along the water's edge.

I asked him to tell me what was inaccurate about the story.

"Julianna, did your folks die in a car accident?"

Julianna propped herself against a pylon and lit a cigarette. "No. Travis always tells the story that way. Dad died when we were little. Mom had a brain tumor."

"Aunt Ellen did live with them while their mom was in the hospital," JD explained. When Mrs. Hood died, Travis was old enough to be independent. Aunt Ellen was supposed to be Julianna's guardian, legally, but things didn't work out."

"Aunt Ellen had boyfriends," Julianna said cryptically.

"Yeah. One of them wound up with his head in the car door for doing what Shorty Rock just did to you."

"Why does Travis lie?" I asked.

JD lit a cigarette, blowing smoke through his teeth with a slight whistle. "Travis likes exaggeration, and he loves drama. The tumor just lacks zing."

"If his parents weren't killed as a result of the riots, why did he want to become a superhero?"

"He always wanted that," Julianna said. "Since we were little kids. Since I can remember."

"That's the truth," JD said. "I used to be the one who looked out for him, before he pumped up. Hell, we've been friends since my second year of fourth grade. Long before his mom died, he talked about 'making a difference' and 'fighting for the little guy.'"

"What did you think of that?" I asked JD.

"It was an excuse to jam, to kick some ass. Those guys with the nudie picture he told you about, they had it coming. Oh, they weren't a rape gang, that's just Travis exaggerating, but they were jerks. He and I had some fun saucing guys we didn't like, but Travis always had to make sure it had a moral: every horny guy was a rapist, every kid with a blunt was a drug lord. Here in the city, it's easier to find the real thing."

I nodded. "What about you?" I asked Julianna.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Nobody liked me much in school anyway."

That was all she had to say on the matter.

And the love affair with Alicea? JD listed the parts that were true. "We did meet at a party. She was a little college rebel. She would do anything to piss her dad off. That's why she started running with Travis: she knew it would kill her dad if she got into this life. Travis did fall in love with her. They have sex a lot. Happily ever after? You aren't blind, are you Randy?"

Nah, I wasn't blind. I could see that everybody had a story to tell: Travis had his, JD his, and I had mine to tell 20 million viewers. But while Travis' story had drama and JD's had realism, mine just didn't have any focus. The Goths looked good on camera, but I needed more than bar room brawls and tussles on the beach if I wanted to keep the viewers' attention. I had a feeling that the missing piece was Alicea, the story's absent center. A telepath working the streets off-boardwalk in Atlantic City, all in the name of love? It didn't add up; I needed her side of the story. Without her cooperation, my documentary was going nowhere.

To Be Continued . . .