Dreams of the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn Page A

vigilantes—the Block Busters, Earth Mother, Breezeway—when she needed to. Mostly to avoid them, when she and the others were out practicing.
    But she had one specific person she wanted to find tonight. Since she’d met him only the one time, she didn’t know if she could. But she wanted to try.
    She held a picture of the green-suited super in her mind. His costume, his voice, the slope of his chin. The way he perched on the fountain, the way he moved. Where she’d seen him last, where he might have gone next after making that epic leap.
    She didn’t have any trouble ignoring most of the lights and presences she encountered on her search. If she wasn’t looking for them, they faded to the background. It was like searching for friends in a crowd: you knew what defining traits to look for, if they were tall or short or redheaded or always wore a certain leather jacket. You scanned the crowd, and those details snagged your attention. Same thing.
    A spark flared in her mind. East, on the university campus. A young man, fit and agile, with a sharp gaze and calm demeanor. It was him. She’d found him.
    The secret Olympiad elevator hadn’t been shut down or closed off after her talk with her father. Which meant he didn’t know about it. Or he didn’t care if she used it, which meant letting her have access to it was part of her parents’ plans, and they were watching her anyway, despite how hard she worked to avoid the building’s surveillance. She was an interesting rat in their maze. Which meant she shouldn’t use it anymore if she didn’t want them tracking her. But what choice did she have?
    She could go crazy thinking of it.
    Once outside, she made her way two blocks over to the main east-west bus line, the one that stopped right on the university campus, where she disembarked and walked on. Her target, the mysterious superhuman, drew her forward. Now that she’d focused on him, his presence grew brighter. She could follow the map in her mind right to his location. He was stationary, she thought. In a room—not the dorms but in one of the buildings near the auditorium. Maybe he was a student. As she closed in on him, her heart pounded. She felt strong, all-knowing. Times like this, her power thrilled her. She could do anything.
    Here she was, doing something exciting and powerful. If only the others could see her.
    He was close. The knowledge of his location was just there, like knowing where the corner store was, or the placement of the sofa in your own living room. The paved bike path she followed curved around a grassy lawn, past a big square cinder-block building. Even this late at night, a few students were out, keeping to the well-lit paths, walking back to the dorms from the library or coffee shops. The assumption in the family was that Anna would be a student here in a couple of years. Anna couldn’t picture it. She knew her way around because she’d grown up in the city, but the university still felt like another world.
    When she passed the cinder-block building, the spark brightened—there, he was inside there. It was the university gym. A student at the front desk asked to see her ID. Startled, she patted her pockets, shook her jacket, and muttered, “Shit, I forgot it. Look, my friend Eliot’s here, I just need to talk to him a second and I’ll come right back out.”
    “Eliot Majors?”
    “Yeah,” Anna said, bemused.
    “Okay, go on in, he’s in the weight room,” the guy said and went back to slouching over his textbook.
    Late at night, the glaring fluorescent lights seemed incongruous. They made the place seem too bright, when her body felt more like going to bed. But around her, university students seemed to be at peak energy. She rounded a corner, walked past a gym where a group was playing volleyball, and followed signs to a weight room at the end of the hall.
    The room was small, with whitewashed walls and hardwood floors. A variety of machines and benches sat in the middle, racks