Skye Stalwart: The Girl Who Fell To Earth #1

 Adapted from Skye Stalwart: The Girl Who Fell To Earth #1

April, 1985

by Dr. Mike Desing

She hung there for a moment, taking it all in.

A mile below, it spread out before her. Her new home. San Helios. Saint of the Sun. Founded by Ferdinando DeDestro in 1772. Home to the San Helios Bridge, the Seven Statues of Martyrs, the three-time world champion San Helios Dragons professional football team, and 2.73 million people.

She knew the numbers. Facts. Statistics. These were the easy things.

The people. She wanted to know the people. She wasn’t going to get to know them from up here. She took a breath and descended.

Immediately, the city shifted on her. The luster of distance became the harsh reality of focus. Before she could even touch down, she could feel it. Listlessness. Pain. Filth. The anger and frustration and resentment and sadness of those who had come to find the sun, but had discovered something much darker instead. Helios shimmered off of the skyscrapers, but he cast long shadows into the alleys.

In one of these alleys, a man was pulling at a woman. Taking something from her. Forcing her to do something. It was not clear. None of this was clear.

Skye was hovering now, in the alley, maybe twenty paces from the man. He had his back to her, and he had pushed the woman against a wall. The woman was crying.

“Stop.”

The man turned around. He reached into his jacket. A pistol.

Skye didn’t like weapons. She especially didn’t like pistols. She wanted to like all people, but she had already decided she did not like this man. “I want to help you, but you have to stop this. Immediately.”

A bullet ricocheted off of her shoulder. It stung a bit, but it was more surprising than painful. She took a moment to process this. Did he just try to shoot me?

Two more bullets ricocheted in succession. More stinging. Less surprise. Anger.

She realized too late that her knuckles had shattered his jaw and his nose. He would be taking all meals through a straw for the next six months, and would probably never be able to activate all 11 muscles he’d need to frown, and definitely not the 12 he’d need to smile. He would be inexpressive the rest of his life.

He was crawling away now. She picked up the pistol he had dropped and bent it in half. Then she folded it in half one more time, just for good measure. She looked about and saw a dumpster. She set the chunk of metal that was once a pistol inside. There was enough garbage in this alley already. Some of it is living. 

She didn’t like that she was thinking that way. She didn’t like the way the darkness of this place felt. It was already piercing her skin in ways the bullet never could.

She reached a hand towards the woman. “I’m Skye Stalwart. Let me help you.”

But the woman shook her head, clutched her belongings, and ran. Skye wanted to follow. She wanted to tell the woman that everything will be well, and that she knew how to help this city heal. She wanted to say that she would make sure things like this didn’t happen anymore. She wanted to help - to tell the woman that a champion had arrived who would solve all of this city’s problems.

But Skye hated to lie, so she said nothing and let the woman run. The man had run, too, leaving a trail of blood in his passage. 

“I already called 9-1-1. They’re sending an ambulance. He’ll be okay. Lots of pain but nothing critical. You need to learn to pull your punches a bit.”

Skye looked up. Perched on a cornice was a man clad in black and canary. He carried a bow.

“You must be the Twilight Archer.” She looked away. She was still thinking of going after the man. She could get him to a hospital in 34 seconds. The ambulance wouldn’t arrive for 7 minutes in this traffic. He could suffocate on blood in that timeframe. There was a 3.2% chance.

“I’m Arik to my friends.” He attached a hook to the wall and rapeled to her side.

“And I assume one of those friends is my father…” She finally looked at his direction on this last word. She had decided that a 96.8% chance of survival was statistically significant enough to trust the odds. 

He smiled, “Yes. Doc Stalwart is a great man and I am lucky to call him a friend. But he has no knowledge that I’m here.”

“Is that so?” Skye knew that her father had a reputation as the smartest man in the world, primarily because he was objectively the smartest man in the world. If he didn’t know Arik was here, he had probably guessed.

Arik might have realized what she was thinking, “or at least, he didn’t send me. I’m here of my own volition.”

Skye waited. She was good at waiting. She’d had lots of practice.

“I keep tabs on things. People. People like you. Like us.”

This was unsettling. If one person, even a well-meaning and genuinely good-hearted person like Arik the Twilight Archer was watching her, who else was? Who else was already plotting against her for reasons she might not even be able to comprehend? She didn’t like this. She attributed it to the darkness of the city. She wanted to feel the sky again. It was her name, after all.

Arik smiled, “I’d like to talk. Do you drink coffee?”

***

She had never tried coffee. Even with the two creamers and two sugars he had suggested, it was bitter. It seemed like everything here was bitter.

“Like it?”

 She shrugged. Again, she didn’t like to lie.

“Look,” Arik had removed his mask and sat down nearby, “I want to help you. Get established.” They were in a small cellar beneath a laundromat. You would never know this was even here if you didn’t know it was here. She realized that Arik must have hundreds of these sorts of safehouses located around the country. Maybe around the world.

Skye blew on her coffee. The heat didn’t bother her - she could withstand temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but a little bit cooler would be more pleasant, “I already explained to my father - I need to do things on my own. I spent nearly two decades - at least, I experienced it as two decades - living in a manufactured reality. I need to experience the real world. I need to figure it out for myself.”

“And I respect that. I do. I’m not trying to get in the way of that. But you aren’t going to be able to learn what you want to learn in a cape. You need to experience what it’s like to be a real human - as a real human.”

Skye sipped the coffee and listened. The taste was growing on her. Maybe two cream and two sugar was too much. Next time she will try it with one of each.

“You need a way to fit in. I have it.”

He handed her a card. It had a picture of her, but her hair was up in a bun, and she was wearing glasses. It said “Student ID” and “Sara Shaw.” She looked up.

“It’s an identity I’ve created for you. You’re enrolled as a freshman at San Helios State. You start next Thursday. You’re undeclared.”

“I don’t like to lie.”

Arik shifted. “It’s not a… okay, it’s a lie. Fine. You said you grew up in an idealized world. I assume that you could make it through a few decades without lying. There was nothing to lie about. Does this world seem like that one at all?”

She shook her head. 

“It’s not a lie. It’s a secret. You’re keeping a secret. Someday, you may not need to keep the secret anymore, and you can tell the world that it was a secret.”

She nodded, but that sure seemed like it was just a nice way of framing a lie.

“You’ve got an apartment on the east side, about ten blocks from the college. It’s safe and clean, but nothing fancy. You want to learn about people? Be around people. Drink coffee. Ride the bus. Join a study group. They have clubs. An engineering club. A chorus. A club that hosts roleplaying games.”

“Why would I want to play a game where I pretend to be someone else?”

“Yeah. I guess that everyday will give you enough of that.”

Something started buzzing in Arik’s pocket. He looked at it. “I need to go.”

“Problem?”

“Hope not. They are transporting Gila the Monster from Kildare Penitentiary to Morgrave Asylum. I’m just going to watch and make sure he makes it there safely. They just left.”

“Want company?”

***

They had perched atop the eastern tower of the San Helios Bridge. The sun had nearly met the water to the west. Below, traffic moved in a steady rhythm. Even here, only a few hundred feet up, Skye could smell the various odors of her new home. They were still alien to her. Uncomfortable. Part of her, most of her, would have preferred to have been up high, among the clouds. Things were cleaner and simpler up there. 

“And there it is…” Arik was looking through binoculars. He handed them to Skye. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but an armored car came into focus, bracketed by four police cars with their sirens going. Several helicopters trailed overhead. “The helicopters are police?”

“Media. Gila had a high-profile trial. He killed seven people, but managed to get a guilty by reason of insanity verdict. Getting to go to the asylum instead. It’s a big story. Everyone is watching this.” Skye handed back the binoculars.

Was her dad watching? Was he sitting on the other side of a screen right now? She hoped he wasn’t. The image of her father with a remote control in one hand and a beverage in the other had no place in the mental picture she had of him, a picture that had been unfairly influenced by twenty years of dreamstate. Maybe that was why she left. She was afraid he could never live up to the idealized version of him that was the only father she knew. He was a great man, but he was still just a man.

Arik interrupted her thoughts. “Uh oh.”

Skye didn’t need the binoculars. The caravan was within a few hundred yards of the bridge now. One of the three news helicopters was descending. Something had emerged from the bottom. “What’s happening?”

“It’s a magnetic load shifter. That’s not a news copter. Damn.”

Another lie. She was having trouble seeing how lying could ever lead to good. “But a magnetic load shifter on a helicopter that size would never be able to carry away an armored car - it could only get maybe a hundred yards before the kinetic buildup overwhelmed the magnetic–”

Arik had already loosed an arrow, but it pinged off the side of the helicopter. “Armor plating. Double Dang. They’re prepared.”

The calculator in Skye’s mind was running. “Two questions - how deep is the water here, and is Gila able to breathe underwater?”

“Over 300 feet. And yes.”

The magnetic clamp had lifted the armored car maybe ten feet over the road, but it strained against the weight. About 22 tons, Skye presumed, based on its dimensions. It was hard to know from here. That was heavy. She had to move.

She was fast, but wasn’t fast enough. By the time she was within a breath of the helicopter, it had lurched sideways and dragged the armored car a few yards past the side of the bridge. Then the magnetic system failed. Or, it did exactly what it was meant to do, and no more. The armored car splashed into the water.

Decisions. The helicopter would get away if she didn’t take it down now. Arik’s arrows were exploding against the side, but they, whoever they were, were prepared for this eventuality. She could neutralize the helicopter in maybe 15 seconds; the armored car was sinking at a rate in excess of 5 meters per second. It would hit the bottom in no more than 20 seconds. 

She drew a deep breath and splashed into the water.

She was quickly near the armored car - thinking of how to swim beneath it and slow its descent - when something exploded. The shockwave surprised and dazed her. Her mind reeled. They must have attached a charge to the top of the armored car when affixing the magnetic clamp. The armored car lurched sideways and then continued plummeting into darker and darker waters. 

Someone swam out. He was monstrous, resembling a reptile more than a man. He saw her and smiled at her. Then he saluted in her direction and started swimming away.

She could catch him in four seconds. The driver of the armored car already had less than a 30% chance of survival. Every second chipped away at that percentage.

Gila the Monster disappeared into the murky distance, and she turned her attention to the armored car. They were at a depth of maybe 200’ now, and already it would be dangerous to pull the driver out. The pressure at this depth could kill him if he was not already dead. Her only hope was to pull the entire car to the surface.

She was more confident by the moment in her estimate of 22 tons. 

Skye would have paused to take a breath, but she had already taken the only breath she would get for a while, and the explosion had forced part of that out. She wasn’t starting to struggle for air yet, but was starting to feel the discomfort in her lungs.

She got hold of the top of the car and pulled. It pulled harder. She tugged again, feeling the metal strain against her, and then it bent before breaking off. The armored car resumed its descent.

She went back to her original plan, pushing herself deeper and below it, and then trying to lift from the bottom. This immediately met with more success, and she felt that her efforts were slowing its descent. However, slowing its descent and lifting it out were two entirely different problems. At present, she was struggling with what should be the easy part.

She had almost halted its plummeting entirely when something hit her feet. She was on the bottom of the bay. She was now holding the car up, but had 300 feet of water to lift it through. Her air was compressed. Darkness pressed in on her from every side. Every part of this endeavor was running out of time.

It struck her at this moment to ask: what would dad do? Her dad was the greatest hero in the world. He was the man who could do anything. He would know the right thing to do here. But then she smiled. 

Dad would be so screwed right now. He cannot fly.

I can.

So, she started to fly. She didn’t think about the surface. That wasn’t her finish line. No. It was the sky. The clouds. She was flying to the clouds. She just happened to have a 22 ton ruined armored car in her hands as she was doing it.

It was no longer an effort. She realized that Arik had been wrong. She didn’t need to learn to pull her punches. She had pulled her punch. That was the only reason the man in the alley’s entire skull hadn’t been reduced to gelatin.

This wasn’t too much weight for her; Skye was just holding herself back. She stopped doing that now.

Amid hundreds of people who were gathered on the bridge and shore, a collective gasp met her sudden surge from the water. She was a hundred feet up now, hanging in the air, the armored car overhead. She felt the eyes and the cameras and the fingers pointing at her. 

Twilight Archer had cleared a space on the bridge, and she set the car down. A group of citizens ran to the car, pulling out the driver. He was dazed, but was coughing and alive.

Arik went to say something to her, to congratulate her or thank her or commend her, but she couldn’t hear him. The sound of the people and the cameras and the helicopters all straining to get a glimpse of her was too much. It was all too much.

She went to the clouds.

***

After nightfall, she returned to the ground. The darkness had swallowed itself, the night commingling with the other kind, bringing the illusion of peace.

The safehouse beneath the laundromat was vacated. A couch, a table, a mini-fridge with nothing in it, and a letter on the table.

Skye - I’ll be here if you need me. But I believe that you won’t. Don’t be late for class. -Arik

With the letter were her student ID and a pair of glasses. She examined them and put them on. 

Then she started to tie her hair back.