Just Cause Universe 3: Day of the Destroyer by Ian Thomas Healy

inside this bus and blew in all the windows.” Faith turned to Dwayne. “You said all the tires on one side were flat?”
    “Yeah. That made me think it was pranksters or something, but when we filled them back up we didn’t find any signs of leaks.”
    “Like the air inside them had just vanished,” said Faith. “Is the driver who brought it in still here?” She felt growing concern nipping at her heels. A new, unknown parahuman was always a danger, and this one seemed powerful and had already killed someone. “We need to see if we can get any more information about this girl.”
    Dwayne shook his head. “He’s deadheading back to Chicago. Law says he can’t drive for at least eight hours. They’re a good hour away already. Want me to call the bus and hold it somewhere?” He looked eager at the idea of getting to do the kind of thing reserved for prime time cop dramas.
    He’d have to play Starsky & Hutch some other time. “No, I don’t want to inconvenience any other passengers,” said Faith. “But do tell him we’re on our way. We’ll catch him en route.”
    “But they’re thirty or forty miles away!”
    Faith grinned. “Fastest girl in the world here, remember? I’ll be there in no time.” She turned her head to look at Irlene, perched on her shoulder. “How fast can you fly?”
    Irlene shrugged. “Fast enough. If I can’t keep up, I’ll shrink myself down enough to ride in your pocket.”
    “Better do that now,” said Faith. “I’m planning on hitting three hundred.”
    “Three hundred miles per hour?” spluttered Dwayne as Irlene slipped into the pouch beside Faith’s radio. “What’s that like?”
    Faith winked at him. “It’s fast.”
     
    #
     
    Harlan stared wide-eyed at the pretty girl beside the Con Ed truck. She was a real fox, as some of the older boys in the neighborhood would have said. He could see a fading bruise beside one of her eyes that she’d tried to cover by makeup and sunglasses. Harlan felt they must have a lot in common; he’d been punched in the face lots of times.
    At thirteen, he’d never spent any time with girls. Other boys his age, or even younger, had girlfriends in the neighborhood, but Harlan didn’t like being around other people to learn what they really did with each other. He just knew what he’d seen on the television, which struck him as odd and contrived. One thing was certain, though, and that was he wanted to impress Gretchen.
    “Want to see my bike? I built a bunch of things onto it.”
    “Sure,” said Gretchen, not really looking at Harlan. She seemed distracted, like something was bothering her. He figured that at the very least he could give her something else to think about.
    “I’ll go get it.” He scampered across the street and ducked back into Gonsalvo’s shop.
    As Harlan entered the darkened shop, a glint of stray sunlight from a shelf caught his eye. Curious, he went to see what was there; perhaps it would interest Gretchen so she would talk to him more.
    It was a tin box with a fine patina of rust on its surface. A shiny stainless steel crank emerged from one side. That was what had gleamed at him in such an enticing way. Harlan picked it up in wonder, and memories flooded into him.
    When he was only eight, he’d stolen Reggie’s wind-up jack-in-the-box toy and taken it apart to see how it worked. He’d found the clever spring-powered mechanism fascinating and decided to build something else with it. He’d felt a little bad about taking one of Reggie’s favorite toys, so he built a replacement for her. When he turned the crank, the box unfolded like a flower opening to display an intricate carousel that spun, with horses that went up and down on their wire-thin poles. He’d been so proud of it that he couldn’t give it away. Reggie wouldn’t have been impressed by Harlan’s arrangement of gears, springs, hinges, and pushrods. She’d probably just have broken it playing with it.
    So Harlan had kept it, and