Catalyst: A Superhero Urban Fantasy Thrillride (Steel City Heroes Book 1)

by CM Raymond

  Turning the shower on full-heat, he stepped off the cold tile floor and into the steaming water. The spray made his torn body sting. Blood, mixed with dirt, made a brackish whirlpool over the drain. He let the water pour over him until he had exhausted the hot-water tank.

  Carefully, he eased himself into the loosest-fitting clothes he could find. Agony filled each movement, especially when the shirt touched his chest.

  He picked up his phone, ready to call Rex, but thought twice about it. His questions would brand him unstable, and there was no doubt that the henchman returned detailed reports to his boss—Elijah’s benefactor. Not wanting to suggest insanity to his new employer, he instead pulled up Brooke’s number and noticed four texts from her that he had yet to reply to. He tapped out a message: Going to spend the day at Hillman. I’ll keep you posted.

  If he could keep them at bay for a day or two he could try and figure out what the hell happened, and why he couldn’t remember. First, he had to take care of his body. A small stack of business cards had piled up on his makeshift dresser. Conference attendance and new positions always added a few to his collection. Mostly he used them as bookmarks. The things were nearly useless in the age of the Internet. Little paper dinosaurs just waiting for extinction. He could find almost anybody he wanted to online, and they could do the same. But that day the dinosaurs would serve their intended purpose. Sifting through them he found the card of the man from the coffee shop.

  Percival Carver Scott, Chemical Research

  He tapped the number into his messaging app and stared at the empty text box.

  How do you start this text message?

  Hey, it’s Elijah from the coffee shop. The new guy. Got a minute? I might need your professional opinion on something medically related.

  He sent the text and shoved the phone in his pocket. Easing into the rest of his clothes, he grabbed his bag and turned toward the door. The phone buzzed. He pulled it out and saw that it wasn’t a text, but a call.

  “Shit.” It was Brooke Alarawn.

  He thought about ignoring her—blame it on being in the library. But in the first few weeks of his position, he feared disappointing his boss. Elijah tapped the green circle next to Brooke’s name. “Hello?.”

  “Elijah, it’s Brooke.”

  “Hey,” Elijah said, thinking on his feet. “I’m just getting to the library now.”

  There was a pause. He had never been much of a liar. “Sounds quiet pretty quiet for the streets of Oakland,” Brooke said.

  Elijah wasn’t even sure why he’d decided to lie. “Not really. Must be this new phone.” He considered making more excuses but figured he would quit while he was behind.

  “Anyway,” Brooke said, “I was hoping that you would want to get dinner tonight.”

  Elijah was speechless.

  She continued. “You know, get to know each other a bit more. But most importantly I want to hear about your trip to the mill.”

  The hair on Elijah’s neck raised, and he fought down the paranoid thought that she knew something he didn’t. But her tone was warm. She probably just wanted research updates.

  The timing couldn’t be worse.

  “Sure. Let me check my social calendar.” Elijah paused. “Looks free between now and June. I should be able to work you in.”

  Something close to a laugh came across the line. “Great. I’ll have Mr. Bertoldo pick you up at six. Library or your apartment?”

  Rex…

  The thought of the large man filled Elijah with dread, but he couldn’t tell why.

  “Not sure where I’ll be. Tell him I’ll text him around 5:30.”

  “Sounds good. See you soon.”

  The line went silent. Brooke Alarawn had just asked him to dinner. His life couldn’t get much stranger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The bus ride across town to Oakland was pure hell. Elijah thought the transit was going to shake loose every bone in his body. His Subaru still sat idle in the parking garage of Alarawn Industries. The cost to the company to store it probably outpaced his pay by now. With a decent bus system and Rex at his beck and call, Elijah had decided to save some cash, and stow his ride. As the bus hit a pothole, Elijah cursed his own thrift.

  The librarian, usually friendly, gave him a sideways glance as he walked past the front desk. With the scar on his face and a full-body limp, he looked like he’d been hit by a truck. For all Elijah knew, he had been.

  He eased his aching frame into the study carrel he frequented. The wooden chair felt harder than usual. A historic archive held his attention as the lone piece of research that day. He grabbed every text he could find relating to Alarawn Industries and the old mill, hoping that on-site pictures might break open his memory loss and help him recall exactly what had happened last night.

  If worse came to worst, he would hint around with Rex on the way to dinner. Maybe he could get some information without disclosing too much.

  Flipping the pages, Elijah took in pictures of a worker’s strike at the old site. Men, with arms draped around one another, glared at the camera. Cigarettes hung from dirty lips. The soot on their faces and the surrounding rubble gave the prints a look more like old war photographs than anything else. In some ways that’s exactly what they were.

  Photos from a labor war, with more than a few casualties.

  Elijah pulled a magnifying glass from his bag. It was a trusty tool of the historian, as archival photos, more often than not, lacked clarity.

  Staring into faces from the past, Elijah felt strangely nostalgic. He could hear the sounds of the mill, feel the heat coming off the furnace, and taste the carbon soot in his mouth. He felt a kinship with the workers. While his research failed to knock loose any of the previous night’s details, it did fill him with emotions unfamiliar to him—homesickness and loss.

  That’s when he noticed the medallion hanging around the neck of one of the men.

  My friends, a soft voice whispered behind him.

  Elijah jumped at the sound and turned around, but there was no one there.

  “Keep it together man,” Elijah said to himself and turned back to the book. But still, the thought was strange. Why was this random steelworker wearing the Alarawn medal?

  Thirty pages later, he felt anxiousness. His concentration waned and his fingers fidgeted with the pen. Unusual for a man who spent his nights and days focused on dense reading. After five minutes of scanning pages that his brain didn’t absorb, he decided to give himself a break.

  Rising from the desk, he remembered just how sore his body was. It had tightened during his time in the study carrel. He worked his way down to the main floor of the library, cringing all the way, and stepped through the front doors.

  As usual, a huddled mass of smokers stood twenty feet from the entrance. Elijah always threw a smug, judgmental glance their way. He could think of a thousand more enjoyable ways for a guy to kill himself—nearly all of them cheaper. His first and only experience with tobacco was as an undergrad. It involved way too much cheap whiskey, a cigar, vomit, and endless jokes from his buddies.

  He walked past the group, drawing second-hand smoke into his lungs. He didn’t experience his usual revulsion, but rather satisfaction—as if a little edge of his anxiety was sanded smooth. He took a step closer, intentionally drawing from their thick clouds.

  Three of the four students left the crowd, leaving a girl alone, fishing her second cigarette from the pack.

  American Spirits—of course.

  The co-ed had dyed black hair, which fell over the shoulders of her thrift store jean jacket. It was covered in patches—but he couldn’t tell if they were for bands or anarchist groups. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her. That didn’t matter. She had what he needed.

  Elijah ambled over, his hands pushed in his pockets. “Can I, um, bum one of those?” That line usually worked in the movies.

  The girl looked up. “Oh, hey, Dr. Branton.” She paused, waiting for a response.
He just stared at her. “It’s Julie, from Research Methods.”

  Elijah’s face broke into a grin. Toe to toe with his one of the students in his new class, he said, “Of course. Sorry. You know, out of context and all.”

  She nodded. “Damn. What happened to your face?”

  His eyes kept dropping to the pack of cigarettes. A reasonable lie would be helpful—but he could barely focus on standing, let alone subterfuge. He shrugged, nonchalantly. “Don’t know.”

  The girl’s lips curled into a mischievous grin. “Must have been a crazy night—I’ve had a few of those.”

  She pulled a smoke from the hard pack and passed it over. Elijah smelled it, as though it were the last thing on earth. He accepted the lighter. The butt between his lips felt oddly familiar, like he had smoked a pack of cigarette every day. He drew deeply.

  Da, that’s good.

  Elijah turned around at the whisper, but once again, no one was there.

  He was going mad, but he fought the urge to run. All he cared about at the moment was drawing in more of the rich tobacco. His body revolted in coughs. Smoke shot from his mouth and nose in an uneven staccato, burning all the way.

  “Easy there, Professor,” the student said.

  He nodded but kept quiet.

  “I have been meaning to tell you,” she said, pausing to draw on her cigarette, “your lecture that opened the semester was actually pretty interesting. Jimmy, one of those guys in the back, talked about how terrible you were. But he’s a douche. Everyone knows it.”

  “Thanks, Jen.”

  “Julie.”

  “What?” the professor asked, paying far more attention to the nicotine coursing through his veins.

  “My name. It’s Julie.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  The phone in his pocket buzzed. Elijah pulled it out and unlocked the screen. Chem.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Julie.” She smiled.

  “Right. I need to take care of this.” He motioned to his phone. “I’ll see you in class.”

  “No problem. And take care of your face. You should rub some vitamin E on that thing, it will help it not to scar. Not to mention you could…”

  Julie continued talking at the empty space that Elijah left behind him.

  Yeah. No problem. I was just taking care of some things. Let me know what you need.

  Great, he typed with his left hand, his right hanging limply at his side. You know, with the adjunct health benefits.

  He drew on the cigarette, smoking it down to the filter. Tapping his foot, he waited for a response. The sun sank over the tree line to the southwest; he’d have just enough time to make it over to the failed doctor before needing to text Rex for a ride.

  I’m at the lab. Just give me a buzz when you get here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Day-um, man.”

  “You should see the other guy,” Elijah said, contorting his body to remove his shirt with as little pain as possible. The pain kept him from drawing in his stomach—as was his custom since grad school.

  “Looks to me like you are the other guy.” Chem pulled a pair of gloves out of an open doctor’s bag balanced on a lab stool. “You’re not allergic to latex, are you?” the chemist asked.

  “That’s quite a pickup line,” Elijah said, drawing a laugh from Chem. “You always carry that thing around with you?” Elijah’s eyes cut to the open bag.

  “Never know when you need to play Good Samaritan. Though this wasn’t quite what I expected when you said you had a personal problem.”

  The historian winced as Chem pressed on his rib.

  “Hurts, don’t it?” The man gave a grin as he continued up and down Elijah’s side. “Just one little crunchy spot, right here.”

  Something between a scream and a yelp emerged from the patient’s throat. He bit his lip and tried to regain his composure. Chem moved from the rib cage to Elijah’s lacerated cheek.

  “Yikes. This thing looks like a cat took a dump in there.”

  “Think I need stitches?”

  “I think you needed stitches,” he said. “After eight hours they’re not much use. Let me clean it up. Then I’m going to have you take these for the pain.” He turned to his medical bag and pulled out a prescription bottle. “You didn’t get these from me, right?”

  “Who are you? I feel like I’m in a mob movie.”

  “Let’s not go overboard. But it was a safe move calling me. I don’t ask as many questions as the hospital.” Chem cleaned the wound and pulled it together with butterfly closures. “These will do just about nothing at this point. Scars kind of make you look badass though.”

  “I get that a lot. You have a lot of stuff in that bag, Mary Poppins. You play doctor a lot?”

  “Ever since little Susie Swanson in the second grade.” Chem inspected his handiwork. “I have a lot of clumsy friends. How’d this happen, anyway?”

  The image of the man in the mask came back to him and with it the feeling of falling.

  Elijah shook his head. “You’re going to find this hard to believe, but I have no idea. I woke up this way.”

  “Hard to believe?” Chem asked. “Hell, forgotten battle wounds are an Oakland specialty. I didn’t take you as the Jager shots kind of guy.”

  He reached into his bag and pulled out a needle and an empty vial. “When was your last tetanus shot?”

  “Five years ago. But I’ve been saying that for ten years.” Elijah hated needles.

  “All right, since you’re on the Adjuncts United Health Plan, I’m going to take some blood and run it for you. Let’s make sure your cholesterol is good and all that shit.”

  “You’ve got some bedside manner.”

  “Yeah. Shocking they kicked me to the curb, right?”

  After watching Chem draw his blood, Elijah wiggled back into his shirt. “Hey, man, thanks. I have a dinner to run to up on Mount Washington. Let’s hang out, though—you know, with my shirt on.”

  “Drop me a text. Nights like yours seem like a wild time. I’ll see if I can keep up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The cat moved its head from side to side, watching as Willa paced around her apartment like a woman bent on doing something stupid. Which was precisely her situation.

  Last night she faced down a monster, some sort of demonic creation ripped from a nightmare. The image of it, smoldering as if it was burning from the inside, wouldn’t leave her mind.

  She had managed to carry herself home, despite her bruised ankle and rising panic. It wasn’t until she was behind her door—with both locks engaged and a chair backing them up—that she let the realization of what just happened to sink in. But once in, the truth of it wouldn’t let her be.

  She spent a sleepless night imaging her skin melting away.

  As morning rose, she had enough presence of mind to email her class—canceling the day’s lecture. She could barely sit still, let alone lead a seminar. The only questions she could ask revolved around molten steel and terror.

  The Internet provided no answers of worth about the creature she had encountered. Neither did the news. But she knew it was real, could still feel the fear as she laid their, moments away from her death.

  The thing almost killed her. It would have killed her, if not for the man in the mask.

  “Who was he?” she said out loud. Her cat stared at her, but if he had an opinion on the matter, he kept it to himself.

  Something strange was going down in Pittsburgh, that was evident.

  Despite Edwin’s reassurances, Willa couldn’t escape the fear that something terrible was about to happen. And there was no one to stop this. Not the cops. Not The Guild.

  No one but her.

  She thought about going to her grandfather, telling him what she saw. But she’d been down that road before. If she went to him again, there was no telling how he’d respond. He was just as likely to stop her as he was to help.

  And Willa couldn’t be stopped. He
r student had gone missing. The connection between Sean Moretti, the man in the ski mask, and the burning man of Pittsburgh eluded her. Chalking up the masked brute’s presence at both of these moments to a coincidence didn’t satisfy her. But for the life of her, Willa couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation.

  The mystery man had gotten the drop on her twice. She wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  Suddenly, her path forward became clear.

  The cat stared as she grabbed her bag and ran from the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Elijah felt more at ease than he had since coming to Pittsburgh, but he wasn’t sure why.

  Brooke Alarawn sat across the table from him in a corner restaurant on Mount Washington. The room—warmly lit by hanging lamps—was small enough to feel homey, but large enough to afford some privacy.

  The smells of the Eastern European cuisine wafting through the room were strangely familiar and comforting. He smoothed the tablecloth in front of him with his left hand and looked up at Brooke. Unlike during their previous meetings, she looked like a normal twenty-eight-year-old. She was even more stunning dressed down in jeans and a casual blouse.

  Elijah was pleased the table was set for only two. Rex had dropped him at the curb. The drive over from Oakland took some time, which Elijah had hoped would be useful. But his driver said nothing about the day at the mill. As soon as he picked Elijah up at Chem’s lab, the taciturn man turned on the radio and addressed only the voices coming in over the air. If he knew anything, he was keeping it to himself.

  “Do you know what you’re having?” The server looked like a retired KGB agent, dressed up as a waiter.

  “Would you order the lady an appetizer?” Brooke asked Elijah.

  Elijah scanned the menu; unfamiliar names jumped from the page. But when he ordered the Pastrmajlija the words came out as if he were a native speaker.