Hero

by Perry Moore

  This was the moment of my death. Ruth had foreseen it, and I had failed to prevent it. Get the ring or help my dad. I had chosen to help my father, and the choice had sealed my fate.

  But suddenly the pain stopped. I opened my eyes and I could see again. Justice's fingers were gone. He dropped me and whirled around to face a new threat.

  Dad stood behind him, two perfect new hands raised in fists.

  "Get— "

  He smashed Justice's jaw with his right fist.

  "Your— "

  He slammed him across the head with his left hook.

  "Hands—"

  A deep punch to the gut.

  "Off— "

  He brought Justice's face down to his knee and jammed it into his nose.

  "My—"

  He head butted him.

  "SON!"

  With that, Dad pulled the purple ring from his pocket and plunged it into Justice's chest, where his heart should have been.

  The death of Justice was anything but peaceful. His body convulsed and broke apart, and bright violet lasers shot out of him in all directions as the life poured out of his body. I saw a dazzling purple ray blow a hole wide open through the crystal floor in front of me. Beams of light tore out of him and ripped into the surrounding buildings. He gurgled and shook and wailed as his thunderous life surged into the world and dissipated.

  I dropped to the floor to dodge the destructive force of the beams. Dad ignored them and held on to Justice tightly with one hand, while still pressing the ring into his chest with the other. The world depended on it.

  With an ear-piercing shriek and a final giant blast of his life's essence shooting up into the Memorial steeple, Justice collapsed into a lifeless heap on the shiny crystal floor, his body a husk held together by powerless atoms. Dad finally let go of Justice and slumped to the deck. He grabbed his abdomen and struggled to catch his breath.

  The steeple had suffered a crushing blow from Justice's final blasts of life, and it rocked and moaned and began to fall. I watched its shadow creep over my father. I felt the crackle of energy in my spine ignite every molecule in my body as my powers grew within me, and I leaped up and flew to the base of the steeple and propped the towering structure up with my back, like Atlas with the weight of the universe on his shoulders.

  Not only did I have enough strength to keep the building up, but I could hear things, see things, like I'd never been able to before. Down below, I could actually see hordes of people

  staring up and pointing. I could see the details of their faces, their fingers. Photographers and cameramen documented every action. I wanted to tell them to move, to get out of the way. If the steeple came down, thousands would die. My thigh muscles shook, and suddenly I wished I wasn't alone, that there was another hulking hero standing beside me, someone else to shoulder the burden. I looked at my bad knee and prayed the joint would hold together. My legs bounced up and down with tremors. I couldn't let go, not now.

  Dad pushed himself off the ground with his hand, one arm still wrapped around his stomach. He stumbled a little, held himself up on the ledge, and then stood up straight.

  "Well, I'll be," Dad muttered when he saw me. His eyes moved from me up to the top of the steeple. It was so high that his pupils almost disappeared up into his head. "Nice catch."

  "Dad, I—I don't think I can hold it."

  "Of course you can," he said. "You're my son."

  It was a matter of fact. Dad believed in me. And if he believed in me, I believed, too. He looked at me in that moment the way he had when I'd won each basketball game, when I was named citywide volunteer of the year, when I got second place in the forensics tournament, when I made him my first Father's Day card with construction paper, safety scissors, and glue.

  My legs stopped shaking.

  In front of Dad's feet lay Justice's body. Justice's index finger shook with a tiny twitch, a tremor. Dad and I stared and waited a tense beat to see if this was significant. Then Justice's entire hand twitched with spasms of life. Its fingers scraped at the crystal, looking for traction, a way to push the body up.

  He was reanimating himself.

  Dad's demeanor darkened, and he staggered with weariness, but he held his head high, his jaw resolute and strong.

  He walked over to a spot on the floor and picked up the old gloves and mask from his costume. He wedged the gloves back into his belt. He used both hands to put the old mask back on his face, which had grown slightly too large for it over the years. When he raised his hands to put on the mask, I saw what he'd been clutching.

  A crimson hole gaped wide open in his abdomen. He hadn't been able to avoid the blasts that shot out of Justice, at least not all of them.

  "Dad?"

  The pressure from the building on my back was enormous. It felt like it would snap me in two.

  Dad walked over to Justice. Thick, dark blood leaked in waves from his stomach with each step, but he moved like it was nothing more than a hangnail.

  "Dad!" I shouted, desperate. "Let me help you!"

  He crouched down beside Justice and looked up at me. He knew as well as I did that I couldn't let go of the building.

  He hoisted Justice by the back of his neck and dragged him over to the rocket. Then he turned to me with a sad smile.

  "This is what we do, son—we save people."

  He tossed Justice up onto the rocket, punched in the code with his fresh, new fingers.

  "Dad." I began to cry.

  He strapped on his old gloves, one at a time, and straddled the rocket alongside Justice. He pulled the belt over his shoulder and fastened them both in.

  "I will always be proud of you."

  "Dad!"

  "Promise me one thing, Thorn."

  "DAD!"

  "Promise me"—he snapped Justice's neck out of joint. Then he took his wedding ring and thrust it down Justice's throat the way you force-feed a dog a pill—"that you will love as much as you can."

  He looked up at me and waited for an answer. He wasn't going anywhere until he knew I wouldn't make the same mistakes he had. Justice's neck slumped over his collarbone.

  My legs felt like they would buckle any minute. I struggled and strained, and tears trickled down my face. This was the real choice Ruth had warned me about. I wanted to save my father; I thought it was the only thing that mattered in the universe. But he and I both knew it wasn't.

  I felt the air escape my lips. "I promise."

  With that, Dad punched in the final numbers on the pad.

  "Dad, please don't—" I begged and shifted my weight and tried to reach out to him with one hand. The building lurched, and I propped my back up against it. I couldn't move.

  My whole life I had been convinced that my father didn't know me, didn't understand me. But the truth was that he knew me better than anybody, and he loved me more than anybody in the universe. He even knew what to say in his last moment.

  "It will be all right, Thorn." His eyes were fixed on me, strong but gentle, and his voice was firm but assuring. I looked into his face and saw only truth.

  I tried not to weep. I didn't want him to think I was a baby, that I wasn't strong enough to bear the hardest choices in life. But he could always see right through me, and this our last moment together was no exception. He said it one last time to make sure I knew it would be true. The first time he said it partly to convince himself. This time he said it to convince me.

  "It will be all right."

  The last thing I remember before the rocket fired was that he took off his mask, tossed it aside, and he smiled at me. The proudest look I've ever seen.

  The rocket launched, and he graced across the heavens, and then he exploded like a million rounds of fireworks put on for everyone around the world to see. I watched the glorious display of light envelop the planet, and then waited breathlessly for them to fade. I stared into the nova where my father had been, and I quietly said good-bye.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I KNEW IT
MUST have been important when Uberman asked me to meet him on top of the observation deck of the Wilson Memorial. I hadn't been there since we'd saved the world.

  "It's good to see you, Thorn." Uberman flashed me a half-smile. I hadn't seen him smile since before the news coverage of the heroes' possession at the hands of one of their own, and the death and destruction they had unwittingly caused. Their names had been cleared ultimately, but their bravado had eroded along with the world's confidence in them. After she recovered from her injuries, Warrior Woman had returned to her island and vowed never to visit Man's world again.

  I'd ridden a wind current down to the observation deck and spotted Uberman sitting on the ledge with his legs dangling off the side. He stared off in the distance, his mind somewhere else. It was strange to see him slouch.

  "I have something to ask," he said. He kept his eyes on his hands, folded in his lap, and he picked at dead skin around the nails. "It hasn't been easy ever since, well, you know. I don't think people have much faith in us anymore."

  His muscles had grown noticeably softer in the stomach and around his neck. He wiped a greasy streak of blond hair from his forehead.

  "What I'm getting at is we really need you, Thorn. People know what you did, what your father did, and well, you'd really help us out here if we could add you to our permanent roster. Now that you're A-level."

  His nose started to drip. Jeez, what a mess. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and handed it to him. He blew his nose, loud as a foghorn, and tossed the wadded tissue off the side of the building. A draft caught the tissue and carried it up. Uberman incinerated it with a weak blast of heat vision.

  "Can't be seen littering," he said.

  I thought about what he was asking, what it really meant. There was a time when all I'd dreamed of was an offer to join the League, when all I'd wanted was for the world to think I was special.

  But everything had changed, and I was becoming more and more of who I really was, and less of this person I had thought I wanted to be.

  "I can't join permanently." I tried to let him down easy. "I have plans, commitments."

  He slumped even more and sighed.

  "But I'd be honored to be included as a permanent reserve member."

  He perked up, even smiled a little. They could use this with the public, with the media. And while I was in good standing I was happy to let them use me. But I didn't delude myself that it would last. Wheel of fortune, round and round and all that. The trick for me was to keep it in perspective, to know in my heart what was really important. I had my eyes fixed on new things. There was so much to do.

  Then I raised my index finger and told him, "On one condition."

  The doorbell rang as I carried the last box downstairs. I'd been packing all through the night, and I was glad that it was almost finished. I opened the door, and Scarlett handed me a cup of green tea and a bag of fast-food breakfast. She walked in, grabbed the bag back, and pulled out an Egg McMuffin.

  "Look at you," I said, and pointed at her new costume.

  "Hell," she said, chewing with her mouth open, "this is nothing; you oughta see the benefits."

  New uniforms were part of the League's revamped image, and Scarlett looked great in clean threads that fit her. They'd even arranged for a celebrity hairstylist to come in and give free-bies to the new members. Scarlett had been reluctant to let the stylist see under her wig, but to her pleasant surprise, her hair had started to grow back.

  "I'm curly now, who knew?" She pulled a layered piece over her ear.

  She wore an oversize League jacket over her costume, though. Some things never changed.

  "Why don't you take your coat off," I said. "Stay awhile."

  "Can't," she said. "I've got practice."

  "So what'd I miss?" I asked.

  I'd been out of commission for over a month while I was recovering in the hospital from having strained my powers so much. Patching up the tower, healing Scarlett, Golden Boy, and Dark Hero had taken a real toll on my system. The final straw that had broken my back, though, had been putting Larry back together after Golden Boy had raced around to find all his pieces.

  One day when Golden Boy came by, I had gathered up my courage to ask him something that had been on my mind. "Did you find anything else when you were looking for Larry?"

  "What do you mean?" Golden Boy asked. "Like what?"

  "Like maybe . . . anyone?" I was reaching, and he knew it. "Like my mom," I finally admitted.

  Golden Boy shook his head. "I'm sorry, Thorn."

  A body is very difficult to recover when it's invisible. Or atomized. I know my father would never have stopped looking for her, but she's been gone from my life for so long with so many unanswered questions, I've accepted that I simply may never know. She may be gone forever, or one day I'll smell a hint of gardenia and maybe it will be her.

  "I don't know about what you missed," Scarlett said. "But I'll tell you what I missed." Scarlett reached into the bag and pulled out a hash brown and stuffed it in her mouth. "My period."

  "You're kidding."

  "The doctors said my remission is nothing short of a miracle. But this ... if it's true, I can't wait to see the look on their faces."

  I sipped on my tea and thought about how I had hugged Scarlett so tightly that day, the way she'd let my warmth envelop her.

  "I never thought I'd have another chance at life." She reached for my hand and squeezed it tight. "Thank you," she said in a quiet voice.

  "I've got to go." Scarlett glanced at her watch. "Golden Boy said if I'm late for practice I'll get demerits, no exceptions, especially for his girlfriend. Can you believe him? He's such a tight-ass." Scarlett threw her empty wrappers in the bag and balled it up. She stood to leave.

  "By the way, if I really am late, you're the godfather."

  I watched Scarlett heat up and lift off of the driveway. I called out to her in the sky.

  "So what would you name my godchild?"

  "Someone once told me I'd have a girl. I thought she was full of shit at the time."

  She flashed me a proud grin over her shoulder and shouted back in midair.

  "I'd name her Ruth."

  "Do you think she could really be pregnant?" I asked Goran.

  "I don't know," he said. "Anything's possible."

  I'd learned that much was true.

  Goran reached into the cooler and dug through the ice. He fished out a Pabst Blue Ribbon and tossed it to me. I felt the can and it wasn't very cold.

  "How about a cold one?" I said. Without thinking, I shook the tepid can and tossed it back in the cooler. I wished Dad had been there to open it, to spray it everywhere.

  Goran shoved a deviled egg in my mouth and shut me up. He made great deviled eggs. I watched him dig down deeper into the cooler. His jersey traveled up his back and revealed the very top of his butt, firmly muscled and peeking out from his jeans.

  "Keep looking." I leaned back on top of the picnic table to bask in the warm sun and enjoy the view.

  He reached behind the cooler into his backpack and tossed something at me. I put my hand in front of my face and grabbed it. Goran could really throw, and whatever it was had edges.

  I looked in my hand and saw that I'd caught a carefully wrapped gift. It had been Goran's idea to stop for a picnic lunch on the way out to visit Dad's memorial site. He'd prepared all the food, and even bought flowers for the monument.

  It had been my idea to have the picnic in the park by the railroad tracks where my dad used to take me to watch the trains when I was a boy. I wanted Goran to know everything about my dad.

  "Go on," Goran said. "Open it."

  I tore the paper open and found a simple box. I lifted the top and couldn't believe what I saw inside.

  Goran smiled at me.

  I pulled my father's mask out of the box and held it in my hands.

  "You'll carry on his legacy," Goran said.

  I carefully set the gift down, hopped off the picnic table, walked ove
r to him, and placed my hands on his face. I had to make sure he was really there. With one palm over his forehead and the other palm over his nose and mouth, I looked into those deep, dark pupils and saw the way he used to look at me when he was Dark Hero, when I didn't know. Goran took my hand off his mouth and held it. He raised it to his mouth, placed his warm lips in the middle of my palm and kissed it. Everything I love about Goran was in that kiss. Equal parts soft and strong, tender and scary. Infinite.

  I heard the whistle of a train as it approached the crossing. I reached my arms around Goran, pulled him in, and our lips met.

  It felt like flying.