Urban Renewal - 16 -   by Erin Halfelven Art by Heather Rose Brown

 
"It's always midnight," thought Johnny. He doodled with his finger on the glass of the jet window six miles above France. He hadn't seen the sun since Dr. Meridien had taken him captive two years before. "What would it be like to be the night?" he wondered. "Covering the Earth from horizon to horizon, seeing what everyone does when they think no one is watching."

He leaned his forehead against the glass so he could catch a glimpse of the land below. "Crazy idea," he thought.

Johnny sat in the smaller forward lounge of the plane, Dr. Meridien being busy with business in the larger "office" further back. With Spartako gone on a mission, the colorless man called Joshua None took over watching him when the famous doctor had other things to do. Spartako scared Johnny but the cyborg warrior told stories, laughed at silly stuff and seemed much more alive than his replacement, despite being only half-human.

As if cued by Johnny's thoughts, Joshua got up, opened a cabinet and brought the boy a small case. "Your flute," he said. "You looked bored."

Surprised, Johnny assembled the instrument, a pure silver gift from Dr. Meridien. "Do you like music?" he asked.

Joshua nodded, sitting back down by the door to the back of the plane.

"Do you play?"

Joshua nodded then shrugged. "Cello, violin," he said before Johnny could ask. "Anything with strings."

Johnny considered. "What do you want to hear?"

* * *

Leo strapped his fighting claws onto his wrists and ankles while Kendra tried to reason with Tessie. "We're doing all this to protect you. Someone tried to kidnap you, y'know."

"Yeah," said Tessie. "And I saved myself, didn't I?" She looked adorably smug.

Leo turned around to admire the little girl's spunk. "She's got you there." He grinned at them, liking Tessie at that moment more than he had ever liked anyone else's kid.

Kay frowned at Tessie. "You did have help."

"Just to get away; I took care of the kidnappers all by myself. Um," she looked momentarily confused. Referring to herself before Urban and after Urban in the same sentence rather shook the integration of her two personalities. "And--and now, I'm just me and twice as dangerouth. Dangerous." She used her tongue to feel the place where her new front tooth was coming in.

Leo didn't help Kay's attempts at persuasion much by laughing his ass off just then.

* * *

Yup, thought Billy. At better than 700 mph, water was just like concrete. Very, very slick concrete. Or better, ice. If he fell, he'd probably slide right into one of these damn flood control weirs still going about 400.

He ran up another of the convenient salmon ladders to get around a dam and back onto the river. The confluence with the Wenatchee couldn't be more than fifteen minutes away and the Marshalldale airport was just a mile or two this side of the branch.

He couldn't spare the attention to look at the sky to see if he could see Spartako's jetcopter. He probably couldn't anyway, not yet, and it took all his concentration to run at this speed without hitting anything. His flames took care of small objects like bugs but even something only as large as a remote-control airplane or an inconvenient mudhen could be a disaster.

He shortened one stride slightly to avoid tripping on the head of some swimming rodent; a beaver he supposed though it was actually a nutria. He hoped he'd jumped enough to not scorch the poor animal's ears. Oops, another bad landing like that and he might end up part of one of these damn dams or weird weirs.

He smiled. Stars and comets, he loved to run. The map in his head showed one long straightaway remaining, the top of a lake behind one of the dams. Maybe he'd try to break the sound barrier again, this time on the "ice" where conditions might be more favorable.