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“Capes die young.”
Addison lifted his head from his homework, taken aback. He hadn’t heard his dad come back into the room, too engrossed in some challenging algebra. He turned to the door of his room, seeing the man there half-illuminated by the fading light from his bedroom window.
His dad - Dauntless, and that was still a really weird thought to have - had got back about an hour ago, but he was still wearing the underlayer of his costume. Without his arclance, shield and breastplate, much of the bulk that comprised Dauntless’ PR-approved silhouette was missing, and the concealing helmet was off to reveal his face. The undersuit was mostly a nondescript white, with metallic lines added to accentuate the burnished gold of his armour. The effect was undermined by the fact that the Grecian-style helmet was tucked under his arm like a football, and by the fluffy Star Wars-branded slippers he’d bought his dad as a jokey birthday present last year.
His eyes, though, held the look of a man who was weighed down with sorrow, and his voice was soft and heavy.
“We tend to, at least. There’s not many capes that get old enough to retire. I can’t remember the details, but -”
“Is that a thing you can do? Retire, I mean?”
Addison knew that sometimes it helped if he interrupted his dad’s train of thought, could spur on a conversation rather than circling around a single point. It seemed like he’d made the right call, as his dad’s eyes refocused on him and he adjusted his grip on the helmet.
“There’s people who’ve tried it, yeah. The Protectorate pays well enough that most heroes could afford to retire, keep a decent amount saved up for their families. It doesn’t usually stick, though. They stay on call, get brought back in when the department’s understaffed or there’s a crisis situation.” He looked away again, the distant look coming back into his eyes. “More than that, though… powers like to be used. They want to be used.”
They talked about his dad’s job quite often - the mundane details of patrols, the special assignments, even the latest office gossip from time to time. This was heavier, and Addison felt anxiety curdling in his stomach.
His dad seemed to steady himself again, and spoke. “Challenger was killed in action last night.”
Addison felt his eyes go wide, as the sick feeling in his stomach turned to a sensation of falling.
“She’d been going out on unsanctioned patrols, after her shift. Last night, she ran into the Chorus gang. We’re not sure exactly what happened, but… there was a chase.” He grimaced. “She always pushed her bike as fast as it would go, took risks. This time, there was a mechanical failure. Maybe it took a hit during the fight, maybe something was faulty…” His eyes were damp, now, his blinks fast-paced. “It was over in a moment.”
Addison knew his dad told him the truth wherever possible - a byproduct of whatever Addison’s grandparents had been like when dad was growing up, from the hints he’d overheard and put together over the years. For a moment, he felt a spike of resentment - some truths you didn’t feel any better for hearing. It took a moment, but he let it fade - he’d rather he heard this from his dad than saw it on the news tomorrow, or whenever it was released. Even if it hurt.
He’d met Challenger a couple of times - once years ago, before he’d had any idea of his personal connection to the world of capes, and once about a month after his dad had told him the real nature of his job. The first time, she’d been patrolling the Boardwalk, stopping for photos and showing off the oversized axe that featured in all of her posters. She’d been a force of nature, laughing uproariously and maintaining a picture-perfect smile. The second time had been more serious, her and his dad going out on a real patrol, going to the areas where the enforcers and the police didn’t have as tight a grip. She’d laughed then, too, but it had been harder and harsher.
“She’d been getting restless,” his dad continued. “Her power pushed at her, kept her pushing boundaries. And she let it.”
Addison shook himself out of his memories, intrigued despite himself. “You mean your powers talk to you? Like - like with mom?”
His dad gave a short exhale, too stressed and distant to be called a laugh. “Not really, no. But we can communicate, at least a little. It’s part of how I decide what gear to boost each day - my power chooses the form that takes, but I can direct it, guide it a little. I’ve been able to do that, since right at the beginning.” He looked pensive now, his mind not dwelling as much on Challenger but still grappling with something difficult. “Maybe you’ll know yourself, one day.”
With that he smiled, stepped forward to ruffle Addison’s hair. “Hopefully not, though. And hopefully not for a long time, at least.” He leant back again, looked Addison right in the eyes. “You OK? You can hold off on the homework, come watch some TV before dinner?” He followed quickly with “If you need some time to yourself, that’s fine too.”
Addison considered it for a moment, before nodding his head. “All right. I’ll just sort out my desk, then I’ll come down.” He turned away, considering the papers in front of him for a moment, before craning his neck back around. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
His dad smiled, placing the Dauntless helmet back on his head to free up another hand. “I’ll do what I can. And my power will, too.”
It wasn’t the promise he’d wanted, really, but it would have to be enough.
————-
There was too much. Too muchtoomuchtoomuch all at once, no time to process and react to one revelation before the next arrived and drove it out of his head. Brockton Bay - the real one, the ash-choked ruins back on Bet - had been attacked, they said. A cape named March, the name unknown to him but the picture vaguely familiar. She'd gone after the time bubble with a full team of cluster capes, fought and blasted her way through to his dad’s final resting place.
He hadn’t even been the target, apparently. One of the other two trapped with him, one of the old Empire’s capes, had been. But they’d burst the bubble, and the giant had exploded out. A vast figure in Grecian armour, a pillar of static lightning extending into the clouds. Even here, it dominated the horizon - it dominated every horizon.
Before Scion’s rampage, even when he and Jennifer had moved away from Brockton, Addison had agonised over the question of visiting the site of his father’s death. At first, the city had been too much of a mess, and the area deemed unsafe. Then, his step-mom had decided to move out of the city permanently, rather than waiting for the rebuilding efforts that seemed so up in the air. He’d mourned, in his own way, but visiting Dauntless’ time-locked remains hadn’t felt necessary, or even seemed like it would help at all. His dad was in his thoughts every day, but he built a new life with Jennifer and with Jean, the neighbour who’d got him safely to the shelter in the day Leviathan attacked. He’d even tracked down his birth mother, Kelly. She hadn’t been a mother to him, really - hadn’t entirely trusted herself to try - but she’d told him about dad, all the little things they might have talked about when Addison was old enough.
Now, the spectre of his father loomed over the entire city he’d once called home, over its echo in Gimel, over the same bay and low hills in every world they knew of. He and Lina had been bundled into a car by the Wardens staff who’d picked him up, headed towards the impossible figure. On the way there, they’d met with Miss Militia, another former member of the Protectorate East-Northeast. She’d made halting conversation with Lina, his girlfriend polite and more together than he could manage at the moment. She’d known who his dad was before now, but they’d only met after he’d been gone.
While they were still over an hour away from the foot of the Dauntless titan, the cape turned to more serious topics. “A while after the giant first appeared, there was a wide-frequency energy burst recorded across every electronic device in Bet and Gimel capable of receiving any kind of signal. It burnt out infrastructure across most of New Brockton, and we’re still dealing with the damage now.” She turned to address Addison directly, her eyes shrewd over her flag-pattern scarf. “Thinkers say he was asking for you.”
“Was anyone hurt?” Addison’s voice sounded raspy, thin.
“Nothing major, as far as I’ve heard. Minor injuries, some caused by devices overloading, more by the panic when it appeared.”
He nodded. “Makes sense.” Still, he was glad to hear it. Dad would’ve hated if anyone had been hurt. “Do you know why this happened?”
The heroine shook her head, eyebrows furrowing. “We’ve had reports for years that breaking time distortion effects could be dangerous. The Thinkers could never say why exactly, but the risk was serious enough that PRT protocol was to avoid any interference with them. It’s possible that explosions of power like this are what happens when parahumans are taken out of the natural flow of time, only to be snapped back into it. We simply can’t be sure.”
“Dad talked to me once, about powers,” Addison said, as much to say anything at all as to continue this thread of conversation. “He talked about them like they’re something separate from the person who has them. Not part of them, or - not just part of them.”
Militia was eyeing him seriously now, focussed sharply on him. She didn’t respond verbally, but it was clear that she was waiting for him to continue.
“And since Scion died, things have been breaking down. There were always rumours about powers going bad, people being lost. The para part of parahuman.” He felt almost giddy now, caught up in the current of his emotions. “I’m not sure I ever really believed it before Gold Morning, but I believe it now.”
There was no time to deal with the hysterical edge to my voice. “I had a friend, worked in construction. Did shit jobs for shit money, but at least there was a chance he’d get a place to live at the end of it.” Was there a hint of recognition on Militia’s face? “At least, that was the deal. Things turned sour along the way. They sent in capes to control it, shut it all down, but something went wrong.”
He could still picture Jay’s expression as recounted what he’d seen, firelight reflecting off the sheen of sweat covering his pale face. “Someone got powers, and they started spreading. Like it was infectious. Like it was alive. It killed dozens of them before it stopped.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Lina. “Take a breath, Addi.”
Half-baked, unhelpful instincts told him to shrug her off, to double down. She must have known, because she started tracing a pattern on the top of his arm. A simple signal. Trust me.
He took a breath, looked out of the window. Away from the giant. When he turned back to Miss Militia, he felt calmer.
“You know how my dad’s power worked, right? Being teammates with him?”
Militia nodded. “I do. Daily charges, placed into armour or weapons.”
“Yeah. He explained it to me, when I was younger. He chose where to put the power, but the power decided how it would work. Every day, a little change. Tiny increments, but they added up.”
“Yes,” the heroine replied. “The local media found it very inspiring. Brockton Bay’s rising star, destined for greatness.”
“And when the time bubble popped… well, you can see what he looks like. That’s his power. That’s hundreds of days of his power, all hitting at once. What do you think that would do to him? To any cape? What happens when you’re more power than human?”
Miss Militia stared across the vehicle at me impassively for a moment, before reaching up and unwinding her scarf from about her neck. She took a moment, her now-visible mouth pursed in thought.
“I don’t have answers for you, Addison. This latest crisis is unlike anything we’ve seen before, and even the best Thinkers are struggling to figure out the implications.” There was a moment of silence. “What I do know is that your father loved you very much, more than anything. And I know that this titan reached out, asking for you. I can’t say for sure what happens next, but there’s a chance that your father is still aware somehow. How you react to that possibility is entirely up to you.”
With that, the truck went silent. Addison was deep in thought, now looking out of the window towards their incandescent destination. Lina fidgeted nervously. Miss Militia re-secured her scarf and shot periodic glances at the inhuman edifice that was the final manifestation of a man she had fought beside.
In time, the truck arrived at the titan’s base, near the column of blinding white energy that extended higher than the tallest of buildings. Three people disembarked - two women and a man - and were escorted the for final stretch.
At the end of their walk, one of them spoke.
“Hi, dad.”