Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (7 page)

These days more and more people are heard saying (and often shouting, cursing, or screaming inarticulately) “We need to know who they are!” Do we really?

New York is a No Privacy State, and the only breakthroughs allowed to use their powers as first-responders there are cops. They wear supercop uniforms and take codenames on the side, but their identities are public and masks are
verboten
. Illinois is a Privacy State: any breakthrough here can shield his identity with a mask and a legal codename. If he wants to work with the police or emergency services, then the state needs to know who he is, but no one else. A third of all CAI heroes are masked mystery men. Guess which state has more superheroes and less superhuman crime?

Terry Reinhold,
Citywatch
.

“Your honor, I would like to call Astra, of the Chicago Sentinels, to the stand.”

I took a deep breath and stepped past the oak rail. The courtroom was packed, and Judge Sanderson had threatened to clear the gallery if he saw another camera flash; it wasn’t often that a “mystery man” testified in court, and the newsies, wild and domesticated, smelled blood. Or hoped they did.

I smiled briefly at the judge and jury, switched Malleus to my left hand so I could take the oath on the Bible, and sat at the judge’s invitation. Putting Malleus down with an audible thud, I adjusted my fringe of a skirt. Both Legal Eagle and Dan Raffles, the fresh young assistant DA prosecuting the case, had insisted I wear the velvet sapphire blue one-piece I thought of as my “skating costume.”
I
insisted on the maul and convinced them it was a good idea.

Dan smiled at me. I smiled at him. We both smiled. I’d been
coached
.

“Can you state your legal name for the court?” Dan opened.

Smile. “My legal codename is Astra.”

“Objection, your honor.” The defense attorney stood behind his table.

“Grounds?” Judge Sanderson asked. He didn’t smile.

“My client has a constitutional right to confront his accuser, your honor. Not someone hiding behind a mask and a fake name.”

“Your honor, if I may approach the bench?” Dan had already stepped back, and when Sanderson nodded he returned with a page his assistant had ready. The judge accepted it without looking at it.

“This point has been addressed before, your honor.
Stacy v. Illinois
. The Supreme Court of Illinois has ruled that state-granted aliases are fully legal identities so long as the state knows the person’s private identity and can hold that person liable for any perjury or malfeasance for actions committed under his state-sanctioned public alias.

“As to whether or not the young lady under the mask is indeed the person legally known as Astra ... Miss, will you please stand?”

I picked up Malleus and stood.

“Did anyone here see you arrive?”

I nodded, waved. “Hi, Terry.” He waved back; the exchange got a ripple of laughter out of the jury and observers. Judge Sanderson tapped his gavel lightly.

“Order. Your point, councilor?”

“Just this, your honor. A show of hands, please? From everyone who saw her fly in?” A scattering of hands. “And if your honor and the jury will observe, the person in question is carrying a weapon formerly wielded by Ajax, one of our city’s fallen heroes. Miss, would you care to describe it?”

I nodded again. “It’s cast titanium, about one hundred pounds.” I flipped it like a baton and gently set it on the front corner rail of the witness box, handle up.

“Your honor?” Dan invited.

Sanderson waved a bailiff forward. The beefy court officer looked appropriately serious, but he gave me a friendly smile before he braced himself, wrapped both hands around Malleus, lifted with a soft grunt, and carefully put it back down. Dan looked at the defense attorney. “Would you like to give it a try?” Another laughter-wave. The man shook his head as the guard returned to his post.

“Lastly, your honor,” Dan said, “we have requested the presence of someone acquainted with our witness. The Sentinels have provided Doctor Jonathan Beth, the team physician. Doctor Beth is also a noted research scientist, but in his medical capacity he examines each of the Sentinels after any physical altercation. Doctor? Could you please stand?”

Doctor Beth stood from where he sat behind the rail, smiling and looking totally at home. Was he hiding as many butterflies as I was?

“Doctor, please consider yourself under oath. I saw you speaking with the witness before this session began. Is she, to your satisfaction, Astra?”

He smiled at me, faced the jury. “Yes, she is.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Dan turned back to the bench. “Of course, our witness may in fact be a shapeshifter, or a duplicate of some sort. But then, who isn’t these days?” Another ripple and a light tap of the judge’s mallet. The latest round of tabloid revelations claimed President Touches Clouds had been replaced with a mind-controlled clone. By Martians.

“You have made your point, councilor,” Sanderson ruled. “The court finds that it can, in good faith, accept the witness as Astra, legally recognized by the State of Illinois. The defendant will be able to confront his accuser in cross. Objection denied.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. It had mostly been a mime show for the benefit of the jury and media, but not completely. The legal principle had been firmly established, but still wasn’t universally accepted. Other state courts had ruled differently, appeals were still winding upward to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge Sanderson had never ruled on it in trial.

“Thank you, your honor.” Dan turned to me. “Astra, can you state for the record your whereabouts on the night of May twenty-fifth?”

When court adjourned, I found Seven in the private hallway outside the courtroom, talking to a pretty young woman in a pencil skirt. Seeing me, he broke off. She brushed his lapel and gave him her card before turning away. My escort these days, Seven had been in the crowd when I landed on the courthouse steps. He was really there to protect everyone around me from collateral damage if I got attacked in public.

The Paladins had taken a shot at me last spring, but nobody had been able to prove Conspiracy to Commit against the organization. So now wherever I was publically scheduled to go, outside of patrols, Seven went ahead unobtrusively. Even to my “good” stops, which this wasn’t.

He misread my look and smiled, showing his cheek-dimple. The man had too many dimples. “Thinking the goons will try something?”

The accused, Benny Larkin, was a
goon
(over-muscled, shaved head, steel-capped boots, a tattoo somewhere that said “Kill them all”). Goons had started showing up in Chicago after our takedown of the Brotherhood and Sanguinary Boys last year; organized, they’d gotten busy thinning out the villainless minions. Now, with Benny, they’d moved up to taking on the few street-villains we’d left free and the new ones creeping in to fill the void.

Goons vs. minions, now goons vs. supervillains. Did they just want to fill Chicago’s vacated ecological niche? And did we care?
I
just wanted to get back to the Dome to see how Shelly was doing on her lunch-date with Mal and find out when we got to make our pitch to Hillwood.

Dan joined us in the hall. We’d both left by the judge’s door to avoid the gallery and the newsie flock in the public hall. He shook my hand.

“Thanks, Astra. I’d have rather gotten Judge Halder, but we took it. The jury loved you. Great testimony, you’ve put Benny away.”

I squeezed back carefully and let go, just glad my part in the trial process was over.

Last May, Benny had walked up to Taipan — a D Class generic strong/fast muscle-type — on the street and shot him three times in the face (heavy caliber, armor-piercing rounds), dropped the gun, and ducked into a crowded theater-club complex. Taipan had been without minion backup that night. Drunk and surprised, he hadn’t had time to use his speed and strength at all, and Benny had been able to disappear. The only reason he hadn’t gotten away free was the single witness: me.

With villain violence way up (Blackstone said a power vacuum encouraged the survivors to take a proactive and competitive approach to filling the spots at the top), the CPD had asked us to stage random and targeted night patrols in high-violence areas. I’d been taking a break on top of a tenement building across the street.

I hadn’t been close enough, couldn’t move fast enough to stay with him, and I
couldn’t
chase suspects once contact had been lost unless they were in the process of committing a crime. But my description had led to a CPD BOLO and Benny’s arrest, and today my reading five random names — scribbled in tiny letters on an index card and flashed from across the courtroom — convinced the judge that I’d been able to read the tattoo on the back of his head from across the street and ten stories up.

Dan straightened his autumn-orange tie, cleared his throat. “Going out the back?”

I shook my head. “With all my fans out front? Never.” Much as I wished they’d all disappear. Seven laughed and Dan nodded reluctantly.

“Well then. I — my office will call you if we need you, but you were perfect in the cross. No chance Benny’s attorney is going to put you back on the stand. Good luck out there.” He juggled his briefcase, offered his hand again to both of us, and departed for his next engagement. Seven watched him go with his usual quirky smile, then crooked his arm.

“Shall we?”

I held up my hands. “You first — even your luck won’t let you blend in if we step out together.” He waved my excuse away but followed Dan, leaving me to give him a head start. I bit my lip, watching him disappear around the corner, and almost went the other way.
Coward
.

Past the guard securing the hallway’s privacy, the public hallway echoed with feet and conversation as attorneys, court officers, defendants, litigants, and court-watchers negotiated the space with the Brownian motion of busy crowds. I kept a good pace and probably some of Seven’s luck rubbed off on me, because I made my way downstairs and out of the Daley Center before anyone paid attention to me. Then, of course, the crowd got noisy.

Citizens for Constitutional Rights protesters covered half of Daley Plaza, only a police line keeping them away from the doors. I could tell it was the CCR by the placards saying things like “Uphold the Sixth Amendment!” and “What do you have to hide?” I
liked
the CCR; they weren’t politically extreme, mostly, and even had a point. But then there were the rest; Humanity First extremists were the loudest part of the crowd, the pro-registration advocates holding up slogans like “Don’t live in fear!”, “Do you know what your neighbors are?” and “We register guns, why not superpowers?” Lots of registration advocates discovered their vocations the day of the Event, and the Domestic Security Act had only been their latest try.

“
Wow
,” Shelly whispered in my ear. “
Did you know Jamal’s getting a new last name? Gee, I wonder why?
”

“Don’t.” I managed to keep my face straight. “And hush — there’s Shankman.”