Book II Chapter 2

Tom could see right away that the Copely House had once been a beautiful place to live. It had the type of architecture that San Francisco was famous for, one of those hotels built around a hundred years ago that looked like the trim on a wedding cake. For its day it must have been huge, especially for the earthquake-prone city, although its measly nine story height had long ago been dwarfed by newer buildings. Yet still its elegance and gentility could be seen, even through the smoke and flames that now engulfed its top three floors.

Tom hovered for a while, watching the bustling firefighters below. Diminutive figures in helmets and raincoats that swarmed the area in front of the building, dragging their hoses and carrying bundles of equipment in what could only be described as a tightly controlled confusion. Several of them had yellow air tanks strapped to their backs, and had obviously already been inside the blazing structure. Beyond the area they were working, the SFPD had started crowd control to keep back the throngs of the morbidly curious.

As Tom hovered over the crowds he slowly panned his head back and forth, letting the camera mounted on his goggles pick up the images he was seeing, and beam then them back to the computer in the warehouse loft. After awhile he asked, “So what do you think, Pablo?”

“I think San Francisco is about to lose another landmark. The seventh floor looks completely gutted, and then the eighth will probably be an inferno soon, too. The hose and ladder teams can’t get up that high. They might be able to save everything below that, but those top three floors are as good as gone.”

Murray’s words were said with an air of professional certainty that Tom never thought about questioning. His friend may not have been a recognized expert in structural fires, but a quarter century as a top special effects man had given him an equivalent knowledge of the science.

“Anybody left inside?”

“No data on that, Flyboy. We can monitor the police bands, but we haven’t gotten around to finding out the frequencies for the fire department. Hang on, see that guy to your right, about 4 o’clock, the one with the white helmet? I think he’s a battalion chief or something. See if you can get close enough to mike him, maybe we can find out something that way.”

Tom looked to where Murray had indicated and spotted the white helmet right away. The man was the only firefighter down there who wasn’t running around urgently, instead he stood to the side watching the burning structure and speaking into a handheld radio. Every couple of minutes another firefighter would come up to him and hold a hurried conversation, then speed off after receiving his orders. The man was also standing at the corner of a convenient three story building with a darkened roof, a fact which Tom quickly took advantage of.

Once he had settled into the shadows of the rooftop, Tom retrieved a short, rod shaped piece of equipment from one of the pockets of his equipment belt. The small directional microphone was quickly attached to a cable sown into the left sleeve of his uniform, the signal from the powerful little receiver being routed to the earpiece in his hood. After a few adjustments, he and Murray were soon listening into the one sided conversation from the battalion chief three stories below.

A picture of the situation soon became apparent. The fire had started on the seventh floor, on the north side of the old hotel, probably in an apartment that was being redecorated. Several other apartments in that area were engulfed by the time the first firefighters had arrived, and they had wasted no time in evacuating the upper floors. Their swift action had obviously saved many lives, as proved by the disheveled and sometimes half-clothed appearance of some of those huddled behind the police lines. Although you couldn’t see it now in the shattered faces that gazed numbly at the loss of their homes and belongings, come the next morning most of them would be counting themselves so very blessed at still being alive.

It seemed like between them the San Francisco Fire Department and the SFPD had control of the situation, and didn’t need Tom’s particular brand of help after all. He had just decided to take his leave, when he saw a disturbance from behind the police lines. A handsome couple in evening dress, the man in a tuxedo and the woman wearing a floor length gown with a fur wrap, were trying to push there way past the police cordon. When a uniformed cop tried to restrain them, the couple stopped their efforts long enough to hold an urgent conversation with the officer. Tom was just about to turn the directional mic onto the three when it became unnecessary, as the policeman suddenly turned around and gestured the couple through the lines. He led them hurriedly across the open space of the street, right for the white helmeted figure standing directly below the flying man.

“Chief, I got a couple here that say their kid is missing. They live on the top floor. Did any of your people find a four year-old boy in one of those apartments?”

The distraught couple scanned his face anxiously, but the battalion chief could only shake his head and dash their fragile hopes. “I’m sorry, but no. The only people we took out of the penthouses were two older couples.”

“Th- the Harkers and the Braunsteins,” the woman answered, quickly. “We know them! Could one of them have gotten Jordan out?”

“In an evacuation like this, we’re always extra aware about children. It’s too easy for them to become lost and confused. But my men checked every apartment on that floor; they shouted and pounded on the doors. Believe me, if your son was up there, they would have found him.”

“You don’t understand,” the father said, stepping forward. Anxiety and fear had carved deep lines into his face, and it was obvious that he was barely holding on more than his wife. “Jordan was alone! We found his babysitter over there; she snuck down to the third floor to see her boyfriend after she put him to bed.”

His wife stepped up, her hands reaching out as if to plead with the man. “He wouldn’t have answered the door! We-we always told him, don’t open the door to strangers. You don’t understand, he’s only four years old!” The last sentence was said in a choked out sob, as the terrified woman buried her face in her husband’s shoulder.

Oscar McKay had worn the uniform of the SFFD for twenty-three years, and underneath it he had the burn scars to show for it. Like his father before him he was a fireman through and through, and it cut him to his very soul at what he now had to tell these two distraught parents. If there had been the slightest chance in hell to save that boy, he would have picked up an axe himself and charged right in, and he knew he wouldn’t have been alone. Every man and woman out here now who wore the helmet would have been by his side. But there was no such chance, and now he had to tell Jordan’s parents that.

“I’m sorry…” he began, but was suddenly cut off. In the burning building across the street, part of the eighth floor had finally given way. It crashed down onto the floor below, sending out a rush of superheated gas that exploded out of the windows in a ball of flame. The deafening roar of the explosion was followed by the scream of the woman in the disheveled gown, the wail of a mother whose heart had just been ripped apart.

“JORDAN!!!”

No one noticed the shadow that flitted from the rooftop above them, to disappear amidst the smoke and cinders.

*****

“Tom, this is insane, you know that, right?”

The tinny voice whispered in Tom Blackwood’s ear, but he paid it only scant mind. His attention was already split between fishing equipment out of his web belt, and trying to plot a course through the currents of hot rising air. It was going to be tricky; smoke was boiling from all four sides of the building now, making a wall of heat around the perimeter of the top floor apartment. But maybe if he rose another couple of hundred feet, to where the heat had dissipated, and then dropped down from the center like it was a well…

“Dammit, Tom, you’ve got a freakin’ BOMB imbedded in your back, remember? And that place is an inferno! At a hundred and twenty degrees, you become a walking hand-grenade. And at a hundred and six, you don’t fly anymore; you drop like a damned rock. What the hell good are you going to do if that happens? You going to hold the kid’s hand while you both die? Is that your big plan, Tom?”

The tension in his friend’s voice was as thick as the smoke Tom was now rising above. When it thinned out to the point that he could clearly see the stars through it he stopped his upwards momentum, and then willed himself forward. After about fifty feet he stopped, and then started to sink slowly towards the roof far below. For a moment he wished that his brother had been available to monitor him tonight. It wasn’t that he was angry at Murray’s attitude, or that he didn’t trust his friend. But Murray could never really know what Tom was feeling right now. Mike would have understood.

Mike was a father.

“Flyboy, are you even listening to me? What about Benny? Your son, the one who’s flying in to see you tomorrow. Who’s going to tell him that his old man is dead? Dammit, you can’t do that to me! You stupid, selfish idiot…”

“He’s four years old, Pablo,” Tom said, calmly.

There was silence from his headset, as he dropped closer to the rooftop apartments below. He could see now that the units were large, probably close to two thousand square feet each, with a huge patio shouldering each one on two sides. The patios had also been heavily landscaped, with shrubbery and even small trees in planters around the edge. It looked like it must have been a great place to live at one time, but tomorrow it was all going to be rubble.

Tom blinked, as the view before his eyes altered. A series of red-glowing numbers appeared across the top of his goggles, in the heads-up display that Murray and Mike had installed.

“The display on the left is the outside temperature; the one on the right is from the sensors along the spine of your shirt. Keep a close eye on that last one. The bullet resistant cloth in your outfit will offer a lot of protection from flames and even falling debris, but it won’t be able to shed any accumulated heat. Do you got your gas filter in?”

“Yeah, I do. I also changed gloves,” he replied. He had slipped the charcoal filter into the breathing pouch of his mask while he was descending, and had also exchanged the skin-tight batting gloves he usually wore for a pair of heavy leather gauntlets from one of his back pockets. “I’m also uncovering the lens array. What’s going to do me the most good down there?”

They had found through trial and error that mounting more than the one pinhole camera at the center of the goggles made for an uncomfortable and bulky mass. It also made for a jolting, blurry picture when the action started. So instead all the specialty lenses had been mounted into the pouch in the center of the web belt that crossed the flying man’s chest. To use the lenses, a cover with a Velcro tab had only to be pulled back, and the array itself was monitored and controlled from Pablo Murray’s workshop over a hundred miles away. Even as Tom’s feet finally touched down on the northeast patio, a small glowing display appeared in the lower left corner of his goggles.

“The power might be down, and the place is probably filled with smoke. IR won’t be worth crap in there, neither will ultra violet. Low light is the only thing that can help right now. Damn, I wish we’d thought to include a freakin’ flashlight in that union suit of yours. Hey, how are you going to figure out which apartment this kid is in? These people are probably all unlisted.”

“Already got it, this is the place. See the kids toys over in the corner? Aw, for—-! Who the hell locks their patio doors on the ninth floor?!”

Tom tugged on the handle to the sliding glass door that let out onto the patio, but it wouldn’t budge. Stepping back, he reached over his shoulder and pulled the crook-headed cane from its holster on his back. He grabbed it by the bottom in both hands, then grunted with the effort as he swung it like a baseball bat at the door. But instead of shattering into a million pieces as he expected it too, the heavy glass barely shook as the wooden club bounced off. Again and again Tom struck the door, without causing so much as a single crack to appear on its smooth, transparent surface. Snarling now in his frustration, he raised his leg and kicked as hard as he could at the stubborn barrier, but with the same lack of results.

“Dammit, Murray! What the hell is this stuff made out of?”

“Glass and a polycarbonate called Lexan. It’s shatterproof, Tom, probably the same grade as they use in skyscrapers. Look, you won’t be able to break it; the best you can do is punch a hole in it, and then pull the whole thing out of its frame. Get something heavy and made out of metal. And you better hurry, the temperature is rising damned fast.”

Tom glanced at the overhead readout which he hadn’t been watching, and felt his stomach clench. He and Murray had tested his skin temperature in experiments many times, and they knew that it was normally much cooler than his internal body temperature, usually in the mid eighties. Even after heavy exercise, evaporating sweat usually kept his skim temperature barely over ninety.

But the baking heat on the rooftop of the enflamed building had completely destroyed that safety zone. According to the sensors in his suit, the particles imbedded in his back had now reached an alarming ninety-nine degrees! Just seven degrees more and his flying ability would disappear, and both Tom and the boy he was trying to rescue would have no way off of the high-rise inferno. Desperate now, he looked around the shadowed expanse of the ninth floor patio, the shifting light of the flames reflecting off the smoke, painting an eerie scene right out of a Dante’s hell.

There! Over in the corner, a set of cast iron patio furniture. An image of Jordan’s family flashed through Tom’s mind, sitting around the black metal table in the morning, enjoying the bird’s-eye view of San Francisco while they had their morning breakfast. He rushed across the open space and grabbed at one of the chairs, sweeping a green cushion off of it even as he hefted it in his arms. He grunted, estimating that the chair must have weighed in at a good twenty-five or thirty pounds. He shifted it high and braced it against his shoulder, then turned and ran straight at the glass doors that stood between him and a little boy who was about to die. By the time he was halfway there his feet had already left the ground, and an instant later his improvised battering ram struck the sturdy glass like a missile.

Tom heard a shattering sound that cracked like thunder over the roar of the fire, and felt the painful jolt of impact even through the padded shoulder of his suit. He bounced off the door like a rubber ball, stunned, to land bonelessly against the hard clay tiles of the patio. For several long seconds he lay there, trying to gather his rattled wits, able only to think about how much this was going to hurt when the shock wore off. The sound of Murray in his ear screaming his name finally brought him to his knees. He looked up at the glass door, blinking, to see the metal chair he had just held about five feet off the ground, now imbedded halfway into the sheet of glass.

Tom shook his head to clear it as he scrambled to his feet, absently noticing that the tiles were now hot enough to burn even through the heavy gloves he wore. He grabbed the chair with both hands and pulled, seeing that all the glass in the door had shattered, the duel panes now sagging and held together only by the layer of flexible plastic sandwiched in between. As his friend had predicted, the whole sheet now popped out of its frame, along with the cast iron chair.

Tom kicked his way past the frame and into the apartment, and then gasped as a wall of blistering air suddenly hit him. It was hotter inside than it was outside! The enclosed space had trapped the heat, making the apartment into an oversized oven. Tom stumbled, an unexpected heaviness abruptly coming to his body, telling him that his powers had abandoned him.

“Christ! Tom, your skin temperature is now one-oh-seven—crap, one-oh-eight! You’ve gotta find a way to cool down, find a shower or something, and then get the hell out of there. Tom, are you listening to me?”

“Jordan..!” Tom called, ignoring his friend, his voice a dry croak. He stumbled his way farther into the apartment, swallowing to wet his throat. The smoke was thick, but fortunately the electricity was still up and the lights were on so he didn’t need the low light camera of his suit. He made his way to the back, and followed a hallway that looked like it would lead to the bedrooms, calling the boy’s name as he went.

“JORDAN!” he shouted, damning the way the filter muffled his voice but not daring to take it off. He glanced through a pair of double doors, saw a king sized bed in the light cast from the bathroom, and continued on. At the end of the hallway he found a smaller room, the door cracked open and light spilling out from the inside. He pushed the door open and struck paydirt, a small unmade bed with rumpled sheets, covered with a print of cartoon characters. There were tiny clothes and toys tossed carelessly about, and the walls were painted with scenes of children and small furry animals playing in a park-like setting.

But there was no sign of Jordan.

Tom searched frantically about the room, under the bed and in the closet, calling the boy’s name, but soon gave it up. There was just nowhere for him to hide there. He stumbled out into the hallway, trying to think. Where would a terrified four year old go? Not out into the hallway, not with strange men banging on the door and shouting. So where…?

… a king sized bed in the light cast from the bathroom…

A frightened child would go looking for his parents!

Tom raced through the parents’ room and into the bath, taking it all in with one frantic glance. His eyes came to rest on the white porcelain tub, and a flash of color in its depths. He moved closer, almost hesitant, afraid of what he might find. The outside heat was incredible, already almost a hundred and fifteen. How could something as frail as a four year old child have possibly survived…?

Then tom saw the glint of water. The boy had filled the bathtub with a good ten inches of it! He lay there now, completely immersed up to his chin, against his face he was pressing a battered and wet Teddy bear. Even as Tom watched Jordan looked up at him and coughed, blinking his eyes against the blurring smoke.

“M-mommie?”

“Get ‘im outta there, Tom, the temperature is spiking! One six—no, one seventeen! Hurry!”

But Tom was already moving. Quickly he grabbed the boy under the arms and drew his dripping body from the tub, setting him to stand on shaky feet. Jordan just looked at him with wide eyes, as he snatched two large towels from a wall rack and wrapped the little boy in them, being careful to also cover his head. Tom called him by name as he did so, telling him reassuringly that he was going to take him out of there and get him back to his parents real soon.

“Yeah, don’t worry, Jordan. It’s almost over. We’ll be getting out of here real soon, and then we’ll take a little trip and you’ll be back with your Mom in no time, alright? Soon, now—Damn!”

The lights had abruptly failed, as the fire had finally reached the apartments wiring. The smoke-filled bathroom was now plunged into pitch darkness. Somewhere in front of him, Jordan made a whimpering sound.

“I’m on it,” came Pablo’s reply, and in another second the ghostly green image of the low light camera on his chest appeared in a window at the bottom of Tom’s goggles. The image was disorienting, but they had practiced maneuvering in the dark with the light magnifying camera before, and he quickly adapted. He started to reach for the boy but hesitated, then turned towards the counter. He found a large tumbler there, picked up the glass and turned towards the tub, pulling the hood of his shirt off as he did. The Velcro that attached the hood to his mask gave way, as he scooped water from the tub and poured it down his back. He did it again, and had just finished with the second tumbler when Murray spoke again.

“Great idea, Tom! Your back temp is already going down. One eleven, one ten, one oh eight…. Okay, Flyboy, time to haul ass. Grab the kid and let’s go.”

Tom didn’t waste time replying, he dropped the tumbler as he stood and re-affixed his hood. He turned to Jordan, who had stood frozen in one spot ever since the lights went out, but who now gasped and threw himself into his arms as soon as Tom touched him. He picked the boy up and bundled him against his shoulder, awkwardly trying to keep from covering the lens array. In seconds they were out of the room that had given the boy haven, and out into the roaring hell that was the rest of the apartment.

In the smoke and confusion the spacious apartment had become a crowded maze, filled with obstacles that attempted to snag and trip him at every step. The special lenses cut through the smoke but only barely, and it was a struggle just to stay upright as he and the boy stumbled across the room. But eventually they got there, passing through the smoldering curtains and outside to the relative safety of the patio.

“You made it! Damn, Tom, I didn’t think…Okay, okay, your spinal temperature is still dropping. It’s at a hundred and eight. Just two degrees more, and then we can get you and the kid out of there. We got time now, buddy. All we have to do is hang tight—”

Suddenly Murray’s words were lost, drowned out in an earth shattering roar. The red-tiled surface beneath Tom’s feet buckled, sending him to one knee, as a huge crack suddenly opened in the middle of the patio. Sparks and a pitching red light burst from the crack, as a ten foot section of the patio collapsed into the floor below with a thunderous hiiisssst!

Tommy scrambled to his feet, clutching the boy to his chest, looking around frantically. Murray’s voice was lost in the sudden, ear pounding din, but he already knew what his friend must be shouting. The temperature around the disappearing patio had suddenly skyrocketed, the heat now pounding on his body in waves. There was no more time to wait, no chance to allow his body to cool off. He and the boy had to take the most insane risk of their lives, or face a certain and horrible death.

Without allowing himself anymore time to think about it, Tom turned to his left and ran, covering the distance in pumping strides. He reached the edge of the patio and leaped to one of the stone planters and pushed himself and Jordan through a gap in the closely packed bushes. Without hesitation, he threw himself over the edge and out into the night, nine stories below.

Cold wind whistled past their forms, blowing the last lingering tendrils of smoke behind them. Tom felt the rush of it past his face, as he fought the urge to curl himself around the tiny body in his arms and turn over, in an insane instinct to somehow protect Jordan from the crushing impact that was coming. Instead he stretched his own body out as far as it would go, creating as much drag as possible, trying to give himself every last fraction of a second he could. He raised his head back, arching his neck, letting the wide hood flop open to scoop the wind. The hood acted just as it had been designed, channeling the air through the aerohump on his shoulders and down his back, in a blast that evaporated all the moisture there, to hopefully drop the temperature faster than their two already falling bodies.

And the desperate act was working! Almost immediately Tom felt a familiar tingling along his spine, and saw again the tine gold sparks appear at the corner of his eyes. The strange sense of balance his powers gave him, that instinctive awareness of the flow of gravity had returned, and with it an overwhelming feeling of relief. With his mind Tom reached out and grabbed the flow, splitting it and its affects on his body, channeling it away and behind him to slow their crazy descent to the street.

Instinctively Tom used his power to alter their course, trying to turn their vertical trajectory into a horizontal one until they could bleed off some of the excess speed. He knew that their velocity was already too great to halt before they hit the ground, and even if he somehow could the momentum of their plunge would have probably pulled Jordan right out of his arms. He still ended up cutting it fine, leveling out and speeding down the street less than fifteen feet above the ground. They sped down the darkened way for two blocks, a faintly glimpsed shadow barely higher than the heads of the people below, before finally pulling up and climbing.

Tom finally slowed to a halt about two thousand feet above the city where he hovered, gasping for breath. He shifted Jordan to one arm and used his free hand to fumble at his mask, pulling the gas filter free and letting it tumble away to the ground far below. Desperately he wheezed, pulling in huge drafts of the cold clean air into his oxygen starved lungs, forcing away the haze that had been clouding his brain.

Murray was yammering in his ear but Tom ignored it, instead finally taking the time to check on his young passenger. He peeked under the towel and found a pair of wide brown eyes looking back at him, and for the first time he thought about the frightening image he must be presenting. A hulking black figure that came storming out of the fire, to haul an already terrified child out of his home to fly off into the night. Great, just what they needed, the stuff of life long nightmares! Belatedly, he made an attempt to reassure the boy.

“Umm, look, Jordan? I know you’re scared, I know that a lot of scary things have just happened to you. The fire, and your parents being gone. And me, too, right? Well, you don’t have to be afraid of me, because even though you don’t know me, I’m a friend. Okay? I just want to help you. That’s why I got you out of that fire, and now I’m going to take you to find your parents. Because I’m a friend. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jordan?”

The boy looked at him for awhile, and for a moment Tom feared he hadn’t been able to get through to the boy. But then Jordan nodded, and gave Tom a look of trust that sent a wave of relief rushing through him. It was going to be tricky enough getting the four year old back with his parents, without worrying about him having hysterics a half mile above the ground.

“Ca-cold,” Jordan murmured, and it was then that Tom first noticed that the boy was shivering.

Silently he cursed himself for an idiot, even as he hugged Jordan to himself and started a slow descent. Of course the boy was cold, he was two thousand feet up wearing soaking wet pajamas! What a stupid thing to do, saving the four year old from a blazing inferno, only to let him freeze to death ten minutes later. Dumb, Blackwood, real dumb.

As they lowered he looked around, noticing that they had already drifted quiet a ways south. They were lowering over a section of apartment houses when he finally spotted what he was looking for. There, a flat rooftop with several laundry lines, their contents hanging limply in the still night air. He settled down lightly on the roof, then snatched a blanket from one of the lines to wrap around Jordan before he set the boy down, letting the old wet towels fall into a soggy pile at their feet. For the first time, he noticed that Jordan was still clutching the bedraggled Teddy bear to his skinny chest.

Fortunately the laundry seemed to have been out there for sometime, and was no longer wet. Tom thought a silent prayer of thanks for that, they would have been in trouble if he couldn’t have found the boy some dry clothing.

“You’d better take your P.J.’s off, Jordan, they’re wet. Here, you can wear this, okay?” Tom pulled a small sized t-shirt from off the line, one that was probably made for a woman. Still too big, but it would do. There was a logo on there from a local bar, and he grinned when he thought about the parents’ reaction when they found Jordan wearing it. “Yes, it was the most terrible night of our lives! Our home burned down, but fortunately our son was rescued by an unknown bartender.” Tom also confiscated three pairs of socks, also a woman’s, but he figured if he doubled them up they would fit.

When Tom turned around he found Jordan standing on the blanket, trying hard to remove his wet clothing with hands that were shaking too hard for the job. His parenting instincts immediately took over, and Tom quickly knelt by the boy to help finish the job. He had to take off the heavy leather gloves to do so, which made him think of something else. After he had helped the shivering boy into the dry clothing Tom rolled back onto his haunches and started to undo his mask. First with a slight tearing sound of Velcro he pulled the hood down, and then raised the goggles off his eyes. He heard Murray’s protest squawk in his ear, but cut it off in mid sentence by deftly unsnapping the electronic connections to the rest of the suit, and pulling the mask completely off. Briefly he ran his fingers through the short, tousled hair, then gave Jordan his most charming grin, and was rewarded by seeing the child smile timidly back at him for the first time.

“There. Not quite so scary now, am I?”

Jordan shook his head, then asked, “Ahh you Soo’pahman?”

Tom laughed. “Nope, I’m not Superman. He’s bigger than me. But, yeah, I am kind of in the same business as him. I guess you noticed that we were flying, didn’t you?” Jordan nodded, this time grinning enthusiastically.

“Yeah! We wuh flyin’, jus’ like Soo’pahman! Can we do it ‘gain?”

“Yeah, you bet. In fact, as soon as you’ve warmed up a little, we’re going to go find your parents. But Jordan, there’s something we have to talk about, okay?

“Look, I know you like superheroes,” he began, gesturing at the discarded red and blue pajamas lying on the rooftop. “Especially Spider-Man, right? Well, you know all the superheroes you see on TV and in the comics, they all wear masks to hide who they are, don’t they?”

Jordan was nodding, looking up at him solemnly. For a second Tom couldn’t help but remember Benny at that age. The same intensity, the same look of complete trust. Tom felt his heart skip a beat, at the sudden longing for his own son. Soon, he told himself. Just one more day…

“Umm, yeah. Well, anyway, the masks are to prevent anyone from knowing who they are, see? That’s because it’s a secret. Nobody is supposed to know who a superhero really is. Do you understand?” A vigorous nod this time. Of course, everybody knew that. “Okay, Jordan, you now know my secret, that I’m a superhero and I can fly. But you can’t ever tell anybody, not anybody, ever! Not your Mom, not your Dad, not your best friend in the whole world. You have to promise me that, okay?”

“Okay. Can we go fly now? An’ nan see Mommy and Daddy?”

Tommy laughed out loud, then ruffled the boy’s hair. This kid sure had his own priorities!

“Yeah, sure, Jordan. We’ll go flying right now. Just let me put my mask on, okay?”

Tom rose to his feet and turned around, walking a few feet away. He pulled the mask down over his face and snapped the multi-connection for it into the matching connection on his collar. As he slipped the earpiece back into his left ear he murmured into the microphone. “Murray, can you read me?”

“Oh, yeah, NOW he wants to talk to me! Blackwood, when you get back here I’m going to beat you so bad your grandkids will be born bruised! What the hell kind of crap was that?”

“Sorry, pal, but you were shouting in my ear while I was holding the kid. I couldn’t take the chance that he’d hear you, could I? We don’t want him to have too much information on us.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you took your freakin’ mask off, Flyboy,” Murray snapped back, but the retort lacked its usual conviction. Tom knew that his friend agreed with his decision to expose his face to the frightened boy, but he also knew that Pablo would gnaw off his own arm rather than admit he had been wrong. Underneath the mask he was grinning as he turned around.

“Well,” he asked, as he pulled the hood back on. He carefully left the goggles up on his forehead, so that Jordan could still see his eyes. “How do I look?”

“Scary. Real scary.” Jordan said, and then ruined it by grinning. He held out his arms to be picked up and Tom did so, laughing, carefully bundling the little boy into the blanket as he did so. When he was done he looked him in the eye and asked, “So, hotshot. Do you know a lot about Superman?”

“Yeah. I know all about Soopahman.”

“Oh, yeah? Well then, tell me something. What does Superman say when he takes off? Can you remember it?”

For a second Jordan frowned, but then a light seemed to click on behind his eyes. He nodded his head, grinning in anticipation.

“Okay, so say it,” Tom said, as he and Jordan slowly began to rise in the air. The little boy in his arms, so much like Benny, laughed and pumped his hand in the air as they rose into the skies.

“Up, up, and awaa-ay!”

*****

Tom and Jordan hovered over the crowd scarcely a hundred feet below, scanning them for any sign of Jordan’s mother and father. He finally found them, tucked to the side by a group of emergency vehicles. Their evening clothes, once elegant, were now disheveled and dirty with soot. The woman’s carefully coiffed hair had come undone, as she buried her face into her husband’s jacket. Waves of grief seemed to radiate from them, causing the passing rescue workers to steer around them, a tiny island of pain and loss in the see of bustling activity. Tom felt reluctant to point them out to Jordan, he knew the sight of his parents in that state would distress him, but he had no choice. He couldn’t just drop down from out of the sky and hand the child over, he’d have to set Jordan down somewhere and let him walk the rest of the way. Tom began to drop slowly, heading for an alley near the distraught couple. He pointed them out to Jordan as they got closer.

The little boy watched his parents as they slowly descended, then turned to Tom and said, “Mommy crying?”

“Yeah, champ, it looks like she is.”

“Why?”

How do you explain grief and loss on that scale to a four year old? “Umm, I think it’s because they’re afraid. See, they don’t know yet what happened to you, they think you’re still up inside your old apartment. Inside the fire, see?”

“Oh. All burned up? Dead?”

In his ear Tom heard Murray snort. “Geeze, this kid is sharp! First he figures out how to save himself in that fire, something most grownups wouldn’t have the presence of mind to do, and now he understands the concept of his own death. Are you sure he’s only four years old?”

Tom cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, I think that’s what they think. They’re afraid that you’re, uh, dead. C’mon, let’s go show them that you’re alright.”

Tom dropped the rest of the way to the back of the darkened alley, setting Jordan down at his feet. He crouched down so his face was level with the little boy’s and spoke softly, knowing that this was most likely the last time he would ever see him again.

“Okay, Jordan, just remember our deal, okay? I’m a secret, the biggest secret you’ve ever had to keep. And you can’t ever tell anybody about me, not even your parents. Do you promise?”

Jordan nodded solemnly, and then surprised him by sticking out his hand. Tom grinned, and then with the same seriousness that the boy had shown he shook hands, sealing the deal. Then he turned Jordan around by the shoulders and pushed him in the right direction. The four year old needed no more prompting than that, and was running down the alley before the blanket he had been wrapped in hit the ground.

Tom picked up the blanket and rose into the air, pausing when he had gotten high enough to watch the heartbreaking reunion below. He saw Jordan running across the street, dodging his way through a sea of legs, shouting for his mother at the top of his lungs. He saw Jordan’s mother jerked upright by the sound, to whirl around and fling herself from her startled husband’s side, unmindful of the impossibility of the miracle she had just heard. She threw herself to her knees and took her son into her arms, sobbing, to be quickly joined there by her husband.

“You getting all this, Pablo?” he asked the night softly.

“Yeah, Tom. I’m recording every second.”

“Good. That’s good, Pablo.” And it was more than good that his friend was recording all this. The fire, the rescue, the tearful reunion. If ever they doubted why they were doing these insane things…

Tom rose into the night, feeling the fatigue like a lead suit, pulling at his body even as it defied gravity. He ached in every weary bone, and the outfit he wore smelled like the inside of a chimney. The only question in his mind was whether or not he would have the strength to take a shower before he collapsed on his bed.

“Hey, don’t fade on me now, Flyboy. You’ve got to stop back on that rooftop and pick up those towels and the kid’s wet pajamas. You can’t go leaving evidence like that lying around; if anybody ever connects it to the kid they’ll wonder how they and him got up there! And you should probably leave some money on the line to pay for those clothes you gave the kid. After all, if you’re going to be a role model for millions, you can’t go around committing petty theft in the middle of the night—”

Tom cursed, then flipped off the switch that controlled the radio. But even as Murray’s voice vanished he groaned, and was altering his course to head back towards the building with the lines of laundry.