Chapter 15: Research and New Developments

 

“So the kids have bonded.” Max walked back and forth through the apartment with a mug of coffee, staring at the cork board in front of her. Penny was paying more attention than she was, but Max wanted to be facing the right way for them, at least.

Sure looks like it, Penny said as they studied the photos that had been pinned up on the board. Was it more efficient to just look at stuff on the computer? Sure. But it wasn’t as effective. Sometimes you just had to pace back and forth across a cork board full of suspects. Not this one, they added, and pulled another photo down. 

Since the fire department and all NINETY-FOUR of its firehouses was technically a public service, and all of its employees civil servants, it had not been too hard to find photos of all of them. Penumbra had paid more attention to the man fleeing the scene of the fire than Max had, so they were trying to whittle down the list of potential suspects. If it had really been a deliberate attack on a police station, it was probably a good idea to get ahead of the would-be firebug before he did it again and got someone killed. 

“Tell me something,” Max said, sipping the coffee and looking at the three dozen photos still up on the wall. “Why can the kid fly? More importantly, why can’t we?!” Video footage of the reveal of a new superhero had rapidly gone viral, of course. Having a third super-powered individual in the city had certainly drawn attention. Other than one vigilante on the West Coast, there weren’t all that many people like them. 

But this one was red and had a pair of beautiful crimson wings. The phone camera footage started just as the figure caught a girl before she hit the ground and then gently put her down. The suit itself, Max had to admit, was a bit more flashy than Penumbra’s slick black outfit. 

In my defense, Penny said, we weren’t exactly trying to be seen.

“You think Amaranth has a flair for the dramatic?” Max said as she took a photo down due to a mustache she knew hadn’t been there. “You know, as opposed to–” 

Yes, yes, fine, Penny chuckled. But we have tried to avoid being seen in public and in daylight, at least. This suit is…

“It’s pretty,” Maxine said. “I like the gold trimmings. It does make Eric seem even more feminine which…” 

Yeah, Penny said. But you know better than anyone that you can’t brute force anything. And it might be nothing! They considered the possibility, the odds, and both of them came up with nothing. This was all ridiculous. Not these. Max took a few more pictures down on their behalf. Looked at the file. They’re all too short or too tall.

“So that just leaves these ten,” Max said. The door opened and closed and both of them perked up. Penny sharpened their hearing until they heard Victoria’s breathing. “Hey babe!” she shouted after a moment. 

“Hey, you two,” Victoria said as she put her bag on the table and walked over to give them a kiss. “Anything yet?” she asked, putting an arm around Max’s shoulder and stealing a sip of her coffee. 

“We’re whittling it down,” Maxine said. 

“But nothing substantial. It’s not looking good. Nobody we recognize. Just people it can’t be,” Penny added, repatriating the cup of coffee. “What did you find?”

“Well,” Victoria said, “the woman from the building – the one Eric got out? – she works for the DA’s office. Her name is Brenda Hattley. She claims had reason to be there, making sure no documents relevant to current cases had been left behind.”

“Suspicious,” Max said, “but not illegal?”

“That’s what I was thinking too. Still, could be worth following up on?” Victoria offered. “Also, what do we want to do for dinner tonight?” She grabbed her backpack and took her laptop out. “I have some work to do, so I don’t think I can help.”

“You already help plenty,” Max said as she wrapped her arms around her girlfriend from behind and gave her a little kiss on the back of the neck. She saw the little hairs stand up, and felt just the teensiest bit smug. “I think Penny wanted to do some more cooking?”

“Yes!” they said. “Best way to learn is by doing, right?” Victoria turned around and wrapped her arms around their neck and covered their face in kisses.

“Well, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to finish this paper, Penny can cook, and you can keep them from burning the house down?” 

“Hey!”

“Sounds good,” Max said, smiling into the upcoming kiss. There was a certain irony to the fact that Victoria was considered, by most people, to be the more famous of the two. Her papers on spectral analysis had been groundbreaking, and she had essentially upended both the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. Not that she was going to tell anyone she had explicit proof of aliens, of course. 

The consequences were double. On the one hand, it meant that they usually didn’t have to worry too much about money. Being a minor celebrity-scientist meant she had the kind of donors who wanted her research to provide proof of extraterrestrial life. If only they knew. The downside of course was that she didn’t have as much free time as any of them would like. Still, small price to pay. 

It only took an hour for Penny to create something edible, and Maxine only had to step in once or twice to keep things from boiling over. The pasta was a little overcooked and the cheese sauce a little too runny, but all in all, it was a success. 

“So,” Victoria said. From hell’s heart she stabbed at a reluctant meatball. “The new kid.” After a valiant battle, the meatball fell to her fork. She waved it at Max and Penny. “She can fly. You can’t fly. What’s uh… what’s with that.” She looked over her glasses. “Y’all can’t fly, can you? You have to tell me if you can fly.”

“No,” Penny said, a little regretfully. “I don’t think we could fly.”

“We’re too heavy,” Max elaborated. “I think we have the density of, what, steel?” 

“Bit less. Half? I don’t actually know how dense steel is.”

“How would we even measure how dense we are?” Max wondered as she wiped some spilled sauce and licked it off her finger. “Well, regardless, we weigh like four or five times as much as a regular person. That’s why we got these.” She tapped the steel chair. “The only direction I could fall would be down.”

“Yes,” Victoria said, “your physiology is interesting. I mean it makes sense. Penny stores a lot of mass inside of both of you. But what I don’t understand is why… Amaranth, was it?” Max nodded. “Why does Amaranth then not weigh them down?”

“Maybe it’s because they’re new?” Maxine offered. “Still need to put on the beef?”

“I don’t think so,” Penny said. “Even early on, when we were out together we put on significant bulk. But they looked really lithe. And we wouldn’t have been able to fly.”

“You think she’s just a different kind of symbiote than you? Maybe something to do with the fact that Amy split off from you?” Victoria asked. “A lighter variant, maybe, that can make her host lighter, too?”

“Anything is possible,” Penny said. “Nobody tells me nuffin’.”

“This is what I get for letting you pick what we watch for movie night,” Max groaned. “You’re a nerd. And don’t you dare bring up my old trading cards.”

“Ehehehe,” Penny said. 

“So, they can fly together,” Victoria said. “But presumably, they won’t be as sturdy as you.” She cleaned her plate with some bread. “They’re going to need help. From both of you. If everything you’ve said is true, he’s going to try to do more cape shit, and he’s going to get hurt. It’s going to be your job to keep him from killing himself.” She paused as she chewed on the bread. “Or his mom will kill you.”

“Yeahh,” Penumbra sighed. Victoria shot them an amused glare.

“You don’t have to sound that excited about it,” she chuckled. 

Maxine at least had the courtesy to blush. “Can’t help it,” she mumbled. “Anyway! Yes, we’ll protect the little tyke. They’re going to need a name when they’re out in public, too.” She grabbed the dishes. “We kind of stumbled into ours, but ‘Amaranth’ is a bit of a mouthful and ‘Amy’ doesn’t exactly scream superhero.”

“They’ll figure something out,” Victoria said. “The kids are alright, and all that.”

“His dad was a cop,” Maxine said. “But Lauren has a good head on her shoulders.”

“A pretty one, too.”

“Okay, yes, fine, his mother is attractive,” Max relented. “But that’s not the point. She sounded like she knew how to raise her kid, even if she was having some trouble with that. Oh!” She looked up. “Did we get the window thing sorted, by the way?”

Victoria nodded. “We did. She was a little reluctant to take the money but I think they need it, and pride doesn’t always survive contact with reality.” She stood up to help Max help with the dishes. “Maybe I can see about getting his mom a job with the foundation or something. If her son is bonded to a symbiote, he’s going to eat a hole through their savings.” Max passed the clean plates to her to dry. 

“Ah, I hadn’t even thought of that. What does she do again?” Max asked. 

“She’s an ASL interpreter, translator of like, three languages, and she teaches all of those as well. And she makes just a little bit above minimum wage for it,” Victoria grumbled. “I had one of my sources run a background check while I was looking into that Brenda person.”

“Your sources, huh?” Maxine said with raised eyebrows. “One of your contacts from within the CIA? Or the FBI, maybe?” She was rewarded for her glibness with a wet towel to the face.

“No, smartass,” Victoria chuckled. “Imogen works for the city records department.”

“So one of our sources, then,” Max giggled and dodged another towel. “Still, why isn’t she making more for that kind of work? Seems intense.”

“Thankless work needs doing too,” her girlfriend said with a kiss on her nose. “But the department needs to do a lot of communication, and if I’m going to be giving a lecture in Iceland next month, I can justify hiring her for double what she makes now. Should take some of the weight off of her without making her feel like she’s receiving charity.”

“You’re sweet,” Maxine said, and then frowned. “Wait, V, She speaks Icelandic?”

“It’s an international symposium, honey,” Victoria said. “Do you have any plans for tonight?” Max looked out the window.

“I’ll probably go on patrol after you’ve gone to sleep,” she said. Thanks to Penny, she only needed a few hours of sleep every night, although she tended to get four or five anyway out of sheer habit. “Half of all fatal car accidents happen at night. Since I got seen at the parade, it might be a good idea to make some more good impressions.”

It’s not something she really liked to think about. When she was helping people, it was hard not to become aware of the people she wasn’t able to save. But she had to move on and move forward. Every life saved was important to someone. 

“Sounds like a good idea,” Victoria said. “But not yet, right?”

“Not yet,” Penumbra confirmed. “We want to spend some time with you, first.”

Victoria bit her lip. “Well… I’m going to dig into that tub of ice cream while I work on this paper some more.” 

“Ah. Okay.”

“In bed.”

“Okay.”

“I’m bringing two spoons.”

“Ah!”