Now

          Gary sat cross-legged on the floor, his head stooped to avoid clipping the ceiling fan.

          Sophia’s entry hall was nice, albeit a little cramped for the triage that was currently taking place.  The unknown woman she’d rescued had promptly fallen to her knees, racked with nausea; Apollo had collided with Hailey and, even though his flight countered much of his momentum, the impact was still sufficient to send her staggering into a glass table, overturning and shattering it against the tile floor.

          Sophia had come into the room, Sadie trailing after her, and immediately moved to check on her sister.  Hailey waved her away.

          “I’ll be fine,” she mumbled, “check on Network.”

          “I don’t like her,” Gary confided to his charge, “she sees us.  Please, Mistress Sadie- she’s dangerous.  Let me kill her, now, while she’s weak-”

          Sadie cut him off with a stubborn shake of her head.  “No,” she whispered, “she helps us- and her sister gave us ice cream and cake!”

          Gary grated his fangs together.  Influencing children was supposed to be easy for him- he was a prince of Hell, after all, and childish desire was the thing- the one thing- demons were supernaturally adept at manipulating and twisting.

          And the witch-woman’s sister had bought the girl with sugary sweets.

          Apollo had regained his feet, dazed but apparently unharmed.  “Ow,” he remarked, “I really don’t like her.  Is Network okay?”

          Network rolled over onto her side.  Her skin seemed pale and slightly greenish and she was panting as if she were having trouble catching her breath.

          Gary looked over at her.  “Can I have that one, at least?” he wheedled, “she’s dying anyways.”

*****

Anne Friedland, code name: Network
Then

          Minerva was very coy, at first, about revealing who and what she was.  She says that she was maintaining reasonable caution about disclosing her nature to a clinically depressed and self-destructive retired military officer; I say she was just being a bitch.

          Minnie started speaking with me more frequently over the months following her big reveal.  She wasn’t always there, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to be looking something up and, out of nowhere, to receive an anonymous email message with precisely the information I needed.  A bit less frequently, she passed on information regarding emergencies in progress that police or local heroes were needed to intervene in; it became my duty, sort of by default, to find ways to contact the available operatives and point them in the right direction.

          “Why don’t you contact them directly,” I asked her after a particularly harrowing near disaster.

          “I’m sorry, Anne,” she said.  To my amusement, she sounded genuinely contrite.  “I can’t do that.”

          I snorted.  “Ah- yes,” she said after a very brief pause, “I understand; you believe I was making a reference to HAL 9000.  I was not.”

          I filed that away for later.  “Okay- so, you can’t.  Why not?  You contacted me, directly.”

          “I was able to contact you through an open query at the Veteran’s Assistance Administration,” she explained.  “Very few metahumans or emergency personnel have similar security breaches.  Those that do are insufficiently security conscious for me to risk exposure.”

          “So, wait- you hacked my VA file… and I’m the safe one?”

          “Your circumstances made you specifically vulnerable,” she informed me.  “It was not a failure on your part.”

          “That’s comforting,” I grumbled.

          “I am glad to hear it.”

          I paused.  “You… completely missed the sarcasm, didn’t you?”

          “Yes, I did.”

          “What the Hell?  Are you a robot?”

          “No.”

          “That wasn’t a serious question,” I blinked.

          “I’m sorry, Anne.”

          “Just… just give me a moment, okay?” I asked.  My mind was racing, now.

          “As you wish,” she replied and lapsed into silence.

          She could be extremely literal, but that wasn’t conclusive in itself.  She was also capable of detecting conversational nuance, although she was somewhat imprecise, like a child learning the behaviors of the adult world by watching television.  She was incredibly intelligent- no, I corrected myself, she had access to an incredible amount of data; her ability to access it was almost unimaginably fast, but her ability to choose exactly the correct data at any given time seemed to be, again, somewhat scattered.

          “Are you…” I groped for words- the only thing that made sense was, “an artificial intelligence?”

          “I estimate that over ninety percent of all observers would conclude that I am,” she answered.

          “But you wouldn’t?” I prodded.

          “Not in the way your scientists and science fiction authors mean, no.”

*****

Now

          Sadie pushed her way across the floor to Network.  The older woman’s breath was ragged and her pupils were contracted to mere pinpricks.

          “I think she’s hurt bad,” Sadie announced as Sophia knelt down beside her.  Sophia put her fingers against Network’s neck.

          “I’m not getting a pulse,” Sophia yelled, “Hailey, get over here!”

          Apollo got there first.  “I’ll compress,” he said, “you do mouth-to-mouth.”

          Sophia nodded.  “Hailey, do something!”

          The sorceress looked at the prone woman and the two kneeling next to her.  Do something, she wondered, like what?

          Someone pounded at the entrance.

          “Nine-one-one emergency- somebody called?” came a muffled voice and Hailey scrambled to tear open the heavy door.

          Two burly paramedics pushed their way inside.  Seeing Network on the floor, they got to work.

          “Whichever of you called this in,” one said, “I think you saved her life.”

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

One of my ongoing pet-peeves is that super-battles almost never seem to have consequences.  A close second to that is that heroes always seem to know exactly what to do.  Don't get me wrong, heroes ought to react better to stress than people who've never been challenged before in their lives, but nobody reacts well to unexpected stress.  I think what I like best about this scene is the way that Hailey reacts, and I really appreciate that allowed me to give her a moment of real weakness.

This scene was pretty challenging because of how much was happening with so little action to be seen- fortunately, knows a bit about CPR, so she was capable of giving a faithful depiction, here, all the way down to Apollo's head tilt.  This picture- and all the artwork for Shooting stars- is brought to you by the amazingly talented and lovely .

Shooting Stars is an epic tale (okay, maybe that's pushing it, but I've always wanted to call something I wrote an epic) taking place in  and will feature characters by , , and an appearance of Esau by .

Apollo, Will-O-Wisp, Network, Minerva, Sadie, and Gary the Demon all belong to .
The Storm sisters, Hailey and Sophia, belong to .

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