Hero Stalker

Part Fifty-Four

Femme's lecture ran for half an hour. I didn't bother trying to squeeze in my point of view. Valerie had taught me to recognize when I wouldn't be heard. Turns out, being a Centurion was a big responsibility. My superpowers were meant for more than helping me run from my fears. Apparently, I'd been violating the oath they hadn't let me swear yet. The Worldley Fewe generally accepted that 'reject self-glorification' did not exclude Centurions from using their powers for personal reasons, but I doubted the consensus of a psi-nerd site would sway Femme Fatale.

Besides, the oath did say 'I will respect my superiors'.

"Your public persona encompasses more than your costume and powers, Shadowcat," Femme finished. "It's the narrative you create around yourself that matters. What kind of Centurion will you be? What kind of Centurion do you want people to think you are?"

"Is there such a big difference?"

Femme smiled. Her teeth shone so bright I wondered if she'd gargled with bleach. "You and I know that Slasher's an asshole. But the people of this city think he's some stoic warrior type."

"They've been drinking at the wrong bars."

"My first act as team captain was banning him from speaking in public. It's worked excellently for him. It won't work for you. Peregrine tried stoic for her first few weeks. She'd just stepped off the bus from hell, and the media labeled her a snob. Pulse flipped off a policeman after swearing the oath and half the teenage girls in Bayton fell in love with him. And you're—"

"The first black woman on the team in thirty years?" I said. Tell me something I don't know.

Femme sighed. "You and I know it's because you were in the wrong place at the right time. But to a lot of people out there, you're a symbol of hope . . . and to a lot of other people, you're a symbol of political correctness run amok. You're on a tightrope, and if you can't handle the media correctly, you will fall off."

"That's a lot to ask from me."

"We're also asking you to risk your life on a daily basis."

A nervous, strangled laugh escaped my throat. Femme looked encouraged. She continued. "If Slasher approves you, you'll swear the oath on Saturday. Then you'll have to make a speech. Let's work on that."

She made me try reading about fifty opening lines. We started with serious ones. "While Bayton's violent crime rates have fallen forty-eight percent over the last thirty years, violent psi-crime rates have stagnated." Femme thought that sounded like a bad voiceover in a movie trailer. Then she suggested I open with a joke: "Even the Cracken attack couldn't lower Waterfront property values!" I refused. Cracken had flooded nine blocks of Routaille and dozens of people had lost their homes. You didn't joke about that.

Then we tried self-deprecation. "If RandolphTower ever comes to life and starts attacking the city, I'm on the case." Femme said that made me look pathetic. We tried something inspirational. "Today is a new day in Bayton!" But I couldn't deliver that without feeling phony, and Femme's frown told me it showed.

I leant back in my high-backed leather chair and groaned. "Can't I just say, hi, I'm Shadowcat, and I'm honored to be joining the Centurions? That's what Peregrine did at her first expo." She'd turned a little areal backflip afterward.

"She was sixteen, perky, and cute."

"I can be cute." I pointed at my head. "Look, it's a scrunchie with little pink feathers on it." Valerie had given it to me as a birthday gift, two weeks after my actual birthday.

"You're Shadowcat. The name implies mystery and danger. Can you be brooding and enigmatic?"

I pouted and glared at her. She cracked up. "I quit. We're probably wasting our time. If we don't capture Harpy this week, the mayor will cancel Harbor Day. It's too tempting a target."

And if we didn't capture Harpy before Saturday, my speech wouldn't matter. "Do we have any new leads?"

"Not really. The PCD has interrogated the men you and Slasher captured, but even the ones gutsy enough to rat him out say they've never seen his true face. Slasher's shaking up every connection he has. Peregrine's supposed to be patrolling right now."

"Peregrine came here, complained about her job, and got hammered." And no one wrote editorials on why Bayton didn't need her.

"Figures," Femme said. "Peregrine's a diva. Trust me, I know divas. All because she's talented, she doesn't realize other people can be just as smart as her. She's been irritable ever since the cancer lab developed this cyrothene-based miracle drug without her input."

"What?" I sat straight up in my seat. "Cryothene?"

"It's a gel filled with nanoparticles that carry bits of DNA. They think it can carry genes into the body that would disable the ones that trigger cancer." A light flashed in her eyes. She pointed at me. "Or transmit a copy of Slasher's psi-positive mutation."

"We got it," I said.

Femme nodded. A light had gone on in her eyes. "It's a controlled substance. Peregrine needed background checks to handle it. Where could Harpy get it?"

"The Black Knives brought it in for him. One of their officials told me so."

"The Black Knives." She shook her head. "This is what comes of training with Slasher. We'll go to the hospital first thing tomorrow. Talk to the head researcher. Find out how this stuff could be weaponized. Learn if there's an antidote. Can you get out of work."

Valerie would go crazy if I skipped work without telling her. But not as crazy as the man murdering people in a robot suit. "Sure. Meet at Our Lady's Will at eight?"

"Make it nine. It's a weekday. I have to drop my kids off at school."

Even though I knew we all had other lives, I still couldn't picture Femme Fatale doing something so normal.