Red Fox Action Log 48 cont:

  “Bronze Boy is a magic hero,” I said. “If any of it runs on science, I’d be surprised.”

  “You have a keen eye,” Sir Cuthbert said. He wore a matching suit vest and trousers, with thick hornrimmed glasses, and side parted hair.

  “I’m interested in why anyone would think otherwise.”

  “Well,” Cuthbert replied, “because magic was illregarded in the 30s when the hero we would call Bronze Boy got his start. And because if your opponents couldn’t even guess at what game you were playing, they couldn’t very well match it, could they?”

  “Not intentionally,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  Sleuth leaned against the wall.

  “What do you suppose the metal parts are composed of?” Cuthbert asked.

  I looked closely at the gauntlet again. The metal parts very well could be bronze, and the lack of articulated fingers on it suggested it was from the bronze age. A more modern gauntlet would have been made of steel, or iron. Bronze was the height of metallurgy for its time. There was also the name.

  “Mycenaean Greek hoppolite armor?” I suggested.

  “Just so!” Cuthbert said with enthusiasm, his dark hair flopping on his brow.

  “How would Bronze Boy have gotten his hands on it?”

  “Well, that we don’t know. We have the first Bronze Boy’s notes on its workings, but not on its acquisition. They seemed to be under the belief the antiquities acquired were the Armor of Achilles. Now, the muscled torso motif on the chest plate suggests far newer armor than that of the Achaeans, but all the same, its durability is surprising.”

  “Why just the gauntlet right now?” I asked.

  “Oh, the rest is up for some light cleaning,” he said as an obvious lie, then glanced at his watch before saying, “But that’s all I have for the moment. First tour of the day! Join us if you’re curious, otherwise enjoy the exhibits. I recommend the Justice Jameson pistols on the second floor.”

  After he walked off, Sleuth leaned in and said, “he’s sick.”

  “Huh? How do you guess?” I asked.

  “Oh I know,” he said, tapping his nose. “Cancer.”

  I cursed. Then, looking around, I judged that maybe I could ferret out some more info if I stalked the backrooms. Maybe I could get a look at the whole thing laying around somewhere.

  Someone here must be taking it out for joyrides, and I had a pretty good suspicion who.

  “I’m gonna see what I can see while out of sight. Text me if anything exciting happens or if you change floors.”

  “Will do.”

  I disappeared. After doing a sweep of the first floor, and finding my belt in Cuthbert’s office, I grabbed some items from the belt, then left. I then found what I assumed was access to the basement, keycarded and locked tight, I popped out of invisible to hit myself with the hearing and balance attuner, pulled out a tiny penknife, and went invisible again.

  The knife stayed mostly invisible, a small portion of the top of the knife was more translucent than fully gone. This told me the field had a limit, and that it was probably several inches above my skin.

  I popped the faceplate off the keycard reader, still keeping out of view. That was interesting. Maybe it was just hostile intent that broke the field? The guts of the reader seemed fairly standard as far as card readers went.

  Most card readers had a failsafe where if it lost power, it would trip a deadswitch, using a small battery to send a signal to the door to kick the locks open. This was so you’d be able to exit in case of catastrophic failure.

  All I had to do was find the right wire, and cut it. Cut the wrong wire and the tamper alarm would go off. Not the end of the world, but more attention than I’d like.

  There it was. But just in case, I grabbed the tamper wire and cut them both at the same time.

  The audible clack of a lock being thrown open, and the distinct lack of a siren meant I’d done it.

  I smiled to myself, making sure not to laugh, and slipped through the door.

  Passing the elevator, I took the emergency stairs. I could already hear voices down below as two employees chattered about something innocuous. I think I heard something about a party. I kept going, making it to the third level basement, and another keycard.

  I got through that one as easily as the last. I checked in with the Fox Instinct, and I didn’t feel any danger, or have any sense that the invisibility was about to run out.

  This was the longest I’d ever used it.

  Once in the hallway, I saw it, the rest of the armor. From a small window in the door at the end of the hall, the shiny bronze facemask could be seen staring off at something to its left. I could see a bit of the wires poking out the back of its helm, and it was missing a paldron. Other than an ‘employees only’ sign, no further bar of my progress seemed imminent.

  I slunk in, and was face to face with Bronze Boy.

  I’d always thought he’d looked a little weird, and he was much, much shorter than I’d expected, maybe a full foot shorter than me. Interesting. Must need to be a child, or a small woman to pilot. Or maybe it just wasn’t at its full height because it was missing some parts.

  I saw newer materials like plastics, and brand new leather sections, but most of it was bronze and the original materials like wood. The bronze mimicked the flesh of a man, having individual indentions on the feet to mimic toes, and a sculpted Adam's apple around the gorget. Interestingly, the foot section, the left foot, had the most of what looked to be brand new materials.

  If this really was the Armor of Achilles, then I could guess what was up with the foot.

  I ran my finger across the enameled double B emblem. A prestigious line of Superheroes had worn this armor.

  Not being able to help myself, I took the helmet off the stand, wires dangling, and placed it on my head. I had limited vision through the eyeholes, far less than I’d imagine from such a powerful hero.

  Then I heard him, the voice. It was strong, and rang out in my head.

  Who are you? Where are we?

  I tore the helmet off my head, and placed it roughly on the stand propping up the armor.

  I felt the Fox Instinct tell me it was time to hide. I shuffled behind a table stacked high with plastic binders full of papers, and disappeared.

  The door bumped into the table as it flew open, and two people scurried through.

  “Yeah buddy,” the janitor said, “I run circles around Imperialist Academia. Do it all day, son!”

  “‘Imperialist academia’ happens to be providing you with the materials, and the education through me, necessary to galavant around in your antique copper pot, much less ‘run circles.’”

  “Oh,” she said, stopping, a look of concentration furrowing her brow. “I didn’t mean to imply that I do not hold your contributions in the highest esteem.”

  “I mean, I like it when you galavant around.”

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  The janitor had her coveralls tied around her waist, exposing her tank top and her thin frame, lean arms, and dark skin absolutely festooned with tattoos. Her smile was wide, and showed the gap in her teeth. She punched him on the shoulder. When she looked away, I saw some emotion I couldn’t place darken his face.

  “Who touched the helmet?” she asked.

  “Uh, I don’t know Bridgette, looks fine to me,” the young man in the lab coat said.

  For once, I actually knew this one, I just needed a name to make a connection.

  Bridgette Banerjee, also known as Twitch the Tattoo Witch, had a brief blip in the UK hero scene five or so years ago, before basically vanishing. Like Sleuth, she never wore a mask, and relied on the relative anonymity of the lower class London metro area to give her cover. She really only had one deed associated with her, fighting a ten foot tall monster in the London underground, but it was a doozy. She’d bound it in flaming chains she’d summoned from her tattoos.

  Bridgette didn’t say anything, just looking around suspiciously. I tried not to breathe.

  She touched first a tattoo on her arm, igniting it to glow, then the pentagram on her neck, before slapping her hands together, and bringing glowing arcane symbols to life in the air around her. They were arrayed in a circle. She touched one, then brought her fingers together, then far apart in a dramatic motion.

  A wave of red energy swept through the room. I felt the Instinct flare in my chest. I looked down, and there it was, my civilian clothes, as visible as ever.

  I cursed.

  “There you are,” she remarked with a grin.

  I leapt the desk, and ran for the door. She touched another rune in the air, and tossed a fiery chain at me. I panicked. But it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t move, but it didn’t hurt.

  I probably should have seen this coming.

  “Oh shoot! You’re not a demon, are you?”

  “No, I am not!”

  “Or, is that just what a demon disguised as a human wants me to think!” she said, tossing two more chains at me, then anchoring them to the floor.

  “It isn’t what it looks like!” I said.

  “You trying to figure out who Bronze Boy Four is?” she asked.

  “Oh, then it's exactly what it looks like, I guess.”

  She laughed. The young man in the lab coat looked horrified.

  “I’m not gonna kill him,” she said.

  “What? Cheese and fries,” he stammered. “I didn’t even — well now I’m thinking it!”

  “I’m very cool, and chill,” I added.

  “You are handsome aren’t you?” she said, then cocking her head to the side, continued, “shame about the arm though. Find it difficult to do magic that way.”

  “You’re Twitch, right? You like to be called Twitch?” I asked.

  “Twitch is fine.” She then nodded her head to the armor beside her, “or Bronze Boy if you’re nasty.”

  I sized her up. She must have been just over five feet tall. Made sense.

  “I’m here to recruit Superheroes,” I said.

  “Well, then you’re late. Bronze Boy is out of commission.”

  “Think you can let me out of this?” I asked.

  She looked to her partner, who shrugged in response, then back to me.

  “I don’t think so. Let’s start with who you are.”

  “I’m the Red Fox,” I said.

  “Hmm. I saw something on the telly about that. You were involved with that business in Kit City, yeah? Seemed awful.”

  “I was. And it was indeed awful. You met Sniffer Sleuth earlier, so that’s one point in favor of my telling the truth.”

  “Could be illusions, the both of you,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “How many times have you met someone that ended up being an illusion?” I asked.

  “Two times, three times,” she looked at her companion who nodded, then said, “yeah, three times.”

  “Well, shoot,” I said. “You got a spell that destroys illusions?”

  She snapped her fingers in recognition of the idea, then tapped two more runes. She pointed her finger at me and sent a translucent red arrow at my chest. It harmlessly passed through me with little more than a tingle.

  “Cool. Now who are you?” she asked. “Just the Red Fox?”

  “Its the only name I use.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, waving her hands to dismiss the chains.

  I could feel my body become lighter. I found a chair, and sat. The chains hadn’t hurt, but I felt weaker somehow.

  I started at the beginning of my adventure in Kit City. She stopped me halfway through.

  “Precogs don’t exist,” Bridgett said. “That’s how I know this is bullshit. Magic can’t tell the future, just the present.”

  “The government had a precog,” her partner, whose name was Wendel, said.

  “Nah, that’s just Americans trying to scare folks.”

  “Precognition isn’t magic,” I said. “It’s science, tied to a theorized hyper-metaphysical event that shifted some people’s perception of time forward or backward, just a bit.”

  She crossed her arms again.

  “You’re just saying that because I know bugger all about science.”

  “Well. I’m a T1 Precog. And White Rabbit was a T3.”

  “Continue.”

  I was just about to finish the story when she interrupted me again.

  “Wait. Who is this Amulet woman?”

  “Uh, I don’t know, they said she made the shadowbats.”

  “Did you see her do it? What did the amulet look like?”

  “Kind of a dark, purplish crystal wrapped in wire.”

  Bridgette cursed, and sat back.

  “What?” I asked, hating the feeling of being out of the loop.

  “We’ve been working on the shadowbat problem for months,” Wendel said, rubbing his stubble.

  “He thought it was a shard of the Shadegem, I thought it was an incursion from the realm of darkness. If it’s true, I owe him 20 quid.”

  “Dollars,” Wendel said, putting a pencil eraser to his lips. “I don’t take monopoly money.”

  “Wait. Like, Gem Girl’s Archvillain Shadegem?”

  “When she destroyed him,” Wendel said, “we theorized that there could be some residual energy or element leftover from the battle. As far as we know, the Emotional Starlight Gems, the thing the Gem Brigade used, it’s a cosmological constant in the universe, the Gems just focus that energy. If you shatter a gem you don’t destroy the power, you just destroy your ability to control or wield it.”

  “So you think Amulet is using a Starlight Gem?” I asked.

  Brigitte looked pensive.

  “Yes,” Wendel said.

  “Give me a sec,” I said.

  I shot off a quick text to Gem Blade explaining what I’d learned. She texted me back immediately.

  I thought to myself. I also liked tea. Me and Gem Girl had something in common. I blinked several times, and tried to focus.

  “So,” I asked, “why didn’t you join us as soon as Sniffer Sleuth reached out to the museum? The world needs a new superhero. What happened?”

  Bridgette looked to Wendel, who shrugged. She cursed.

  “Look,” she said, “here are the brass tacks. Or bronze as it were, ha. I’ve been working on a way to use the armor that is safe. We've been tinkering with the protective wards, the power draw… but the truth is that it puts a huge amount of strain on the body, on my body. At first it’s only a little bit, but then the byproducts of the suit build up more and more in your body until…” She trailed off, and looked to Wendell.

  “Until,” he said, “until it kills you. The suit has a helpful intelligence, a ghost as it were, that keeps track of the strain. He has a helpful number. Every human gets 27,000 days to live. Maybe more. But every hour spent using the suit shaves a day off of your life. Then over time, suddenly every hour sheds 2 days. And on, and on, until the user gives themselves a heart attack.”

  “So, you know how many days you have left?” I asked.

  “I’ve only done this for two or so years, and I’m at 6 days per hour now. I have 15,201 days left.”

  I did some quick math. That was fifty years?

  “It’s about 40 more years,” Wendel said. “And it’s just going to get worse.”

  How selfish. 40 years? I was lucky if I survived past the next few months. We all were.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Bridgette said. “I deserve to be happy. I deserve to have a life.”

  “But what do they deserve,” I said.

  I didn’t have to say who. We all knew who we were talking about. The kid who fears going to school. The mother who fears for her children. Those two teens stuck on the eighth floor of a burning building.

  “It’s not just about —” Wendel began.

  “I know I would give every day I had, if it meant they got to live one more day without fear.”

  “It’s not up to you,” she said.

  I glanced back at my phone and noticed that I had an unread message. A couple unread messages.

  I mashed the button that opened the list. It was from Sleuth.

  I texted him back.

  I turned to Bridgette and Wendel, and quickly scribbled my phone number down on a pad.

  “Fix the damn thing, or don’t. We need you out there.”

  I left.