Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  What was the Archer’s codename? Eros I think. Before Steyrs could close the gap, a pair of glowing wings emerged from Eros’ back, and he launched skywards. ‘Little Piggy’ raged at the heavens as his fists met nothing but air. His expression contorted from rage into pain, and he clutched the sides of his head. Steyrs stumbled about, looking dizzy and disoriented. I was confused about what happened until I saw the outstretched arm of the one in sky blue. Earworm. I didn’t know he’d gotten new sonic stunners. Steyrs’ almost drunken-looking staggering reminded me of my own run-in with those obnoxious devices. That reminder dredged up the awkward fact that I’d participated in the initial capture of three of the four ‘heroes’ trying to bring in the criminal who’d been my sister’s first solo capture. The last of the four hit Steyrs with a short stick. It was visually unimpressive, but from his reaction, the stick was an electroshock weapon of some kind.

  Falling to his knees, Steyrs swatted at the last of the four, Birdstrike. The nimble man in gray wove out of the path of the strike. Having regained his feet, Ranger Roy powered in with the same sort of two-fisted smash that had laid him out moments before. The hit left Steyrs reeling. A follow-up punch finally toppled him. When it was apparent Steyrs had given up and wasn’t trying to rise from where he lay, Arrowwarp casually strode in. The archer’s mostly white outfit had a pair of navy blue stripes running down the middle that looked black on the feed. He brought out restraints suitable for someone with Steyrs’ enhanced strength and locked him into them.

  Arrowwarp took out his phone and dialed. Not long afterwards, Shiva chimed in.

  “Incoming call, Identity verified, Arrowwarp.”

  “Put him on speaker,” Saito said.

  “Connected to Sterling Towers command center, on speaker,” Shiva said.

  “I’d like to report the apprehension of one of our escapees, Marc Steyrs,” Arrowwarp said.

  “We saw,” Saito said.

  Arrowwarp looked around until he spotted the camera drone. He gave a slight wave which caused the Junior Redemptioners to look at the drone as well.

  “What possessed you to bring out four very green sidekicks who are still in a prison diversion program?” Saito asked. “We cannot afford the optics of criminals brawling in the streets, even if one pack is working for us.”

  “I made a judgment call,” Arrowwarp said. “The result was a much cleaner takedown with less collateral damage than there might have been. Certainly less damage than last time he was captured.”

  My pause didn’t interrupt the conversation, but I started trying to remember if I’d ever found out how Nora had taken down Steyrs. She certainly didn’t hit hard enough to brawl him into submission.

  “We will discuss the matter further at a later date,” Saito said. “We will send the feds to pick up Steyrs. Then the Junior Redemptioners are to return to the Halfway House and remain there.”

  “Copy,” Arrowwarp said.

  A voice, almost inaudible in the background of Arrowwarp’s call, spoke up, “He sounds pissed.”

  “Dude, this is one of those times where you need to keep your mouth shut, or you’ll get us in trouble,” another said.

  Arrowwarp glared at Earworm and Birdstrike.

  “Anything else?” Arrowwarp asked.

  “Not at this time.”

  “Ending call.” Arrowwarp hung up.

  As I watched the five of them standing about Steyrs, a nagging feeling crawled around the back of my mind. The feeling that there was an answer back there, half-formed. The thought that I had found a missing piece to a puzzle, but that I’d forgotten what the puzzle even was. A connection that I should have made. Why was it Earworm’s obnoxious voice that triggered it? The frustration had my head running in futile circles with the wrong answers. My brain was telling me there was something important here, but I didn’t know what I was overlooking.

  Part 19

  For lack of anything better to do, I ran errands. I refueled the car. I restocked the base kitchen. I collected the Colfax family mail from our PO Box. I groaned as I spotted a letter to me from the city. The return address and the letterhead inside was never good news. Unsurprisingly, it was about the bridge they were trying to build on Twenty-First Street. The one whose pylon was slated to go through the roof of my hideout. Surprisingly, it was cryptic in tone and requested a meeting ‘to discuss the matter further’. I called the number provided.

  “Mister Colfax, I was starting to think I wasn’t going to hear from you.”

  “Your letter must have gotten delayed in the mail,” I checked the sender again. “Is this Shane Horsfall?”

  “Yes, yes this is. As I said, we would like to further discuss the issue of the building you have on Twenty-First Street.”

  “Can we talk about it over the phone?”

  “I suppose we could, but it’s really a matter of the structural irregularities in the construction of that building we wanted to talk about.”

  “Am I going to get fined for code violations on a building you want to tear down?” I asked.

  “No,” Horsfall said. “We were doing a preliminary review in preparation for the next stages of the project. And since your building only recently went up, we had the original plans to reference. What struck us was the abnormally durable nature of the construction. Why do you have a hardened bunker on the river bank?”

  “Does it really matter?” I asked.

  “Well, our engineers have said it is going to cost something on the order of five to seven million dollars to demolish the thing, and set us back by at least three to six months, if not a year.”

  “Not my problem,” I said.

  “We want you to clear the site before we take possession.”

  “You’re the ones who want to build a bridge on it. I’m the one who doesn’t want to sell.”

  “There are only so many reasons why someone would build a bomb-proof bunker.”

  “There is nothing illegal about having a really durable building,” I said.

  “If you don’t clear the site, we’re going to have to investigate what the property was used for in order to assist in determining the best approach to demolitions. Do you really want us prying into your business, Mister Colfax?” Horsfall asked.

  “If you regret where you decided to put your bridge, it’s not too late to just let me keep my building. You haven’t broken ground yet.”

  “Redesigning the bridge is also an inordinately expensive proposition.”

  “Well, you’re not going to bully me into demolishing it. I don’t want the building knocked down, and I don’t have five to seven million.” I hung up before Horsfall could say anything else. Did he really think that would work? Of course, poking around into the comings and goings at the hideout could lead them to realize it had been a team base until Gruefield Eighteen had been purchased. That would out me in a very public manner, as there’s no way in hell the city department of transportation can keep that a secret. My mind went to Molbrech and his digital breadcrumbs. Publicly outing one hero in this day and age could potentially lead to discerning the identities of dozens more. The cascade from there would leave very few secret identities. And then we would be back to the bad old days when criminals got ugly with their methods.

  Unbidden, my mind went back to the night Michelangelo murdered Mom and Jeremy. Colt was right. Real names have power. And the hero community is so very intertwined. I had to head off Horsfall before he went down that road. But how? What did I know about diverting the bureaucracy? Somebody had to know what could be done.

  Everyone I could ask was busy chasing down escapees. I shook my head, trying to clear it. The stray thoughts landed in a pattern. It was an answer to a question I’d forgotten I’d asked. It was less of a chain than a messy web of linked thoughts, but it pointed me to the pieces. Michelangelo had at
tacked the house in order to hurt Dad. Dad had only married Mom and become a licensed hero after a stint in the Redemptioners expunged his criminal record. As a criminal, he’d worked as a henchman for Hymnomancer, Norman Wilson. Hymnomancer had been an expert in the use and manipulation of sound. It was sound that carried the Litanies of Dread and Despair giving the Red Death such a potent advantage over us.

  I didn’t know where Norman was, but his son Ed was also known as Earworm, and I knew where he was.

  The halfway house was a white building with a long veranda and a partial third floor. It was literally just a house. Freshly repainted siding, burglar bars on the windows, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary for the neighborhood it was in. My knock on the door was answered by a young man with almost blood red hair and a very pale face. Kevan was the one Junior Redemptioner I hadn’t helped apprehend, and associated my presence with a trip to Mars. Admittedly, a trip to Mars where we’d been shot at by alien robots, but still. He smiled.

  “What brings you here?” Kevan asked, stepping inside and letting me in. Since they only officially knew me as Shadowdemon, I was in full kit. Through the archway to my right, I spotted a brown-haired young man in a blue polo shirt seated on the living room couch. He groaned at the sight of me.

  “Look, if we’re going to get lectured because we followed the instructions of someone who didn’t follow instructions, can we at least hear it from someone who isn’t from your team?” Ed asked.

  “I’m not here for that,” I said. The furnishings within the house were all old and modest, but still sturdy despite the wear. As I approached the arch, I spotted the rest of their quartet on the other couch. Lazar was quite pointedly trying to not look in my direction. Errol sat in the corner, his usual reserved self, white button-down shirt buttoned all the way to the collar. He had the advantage of not realizing the role I’d played in his arrest, and was less perturbed by Shadowdemon than when he ran into Travis at school.

  “Then what are you here for?” Ed asked. “We’re not exactly part of your social circle.”

  “I came to see you.”

  “You want me to waste my merit points on profanity, don’t you?”

  “No, honestly, I just want to ask your help with a problem.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What would I gain from pestering you?”

  “Why are people trolls?” Ed asked. I presumed his response was rhetorical.

  “I am here to find out if you can help neutralize a sound-based attack.”

  “Have you tried earplugs?”

  “I was hoping to be able to hear everything else,” I said.

  Ed shook his head and sighed. “Look, if you’re really serious, then you came to the wrong guy. If you’re not throwing the problem to Future Products, that says you’re in a hurry. It would take me a while to come up with something for you. I mean months to years. Who you really want to talk to is my dad. If he doesn’t already have something that can do the job, he could put something together in a snap.”

  An awkward silence hung on the room for a long couple of seconds.

  “You’re avoiding talking to him, aren’t you?” Ed asked.

  “It looks bad for the Community Fund to be begging a costumed criminal for help cleaning up its mess,” Errol said quietly. “Even one already caught, convicted, and paroled.”

  “If you can swallow enough of your pride to go talk to him, he’s working nights at Dreadmere Plaza,” Ed said. Given how few people were willing to employ a parolee, and the way Ed had avoided mentioning his actual job title, I had a sneaking suspicion that Norman’s job was janitorial in nature.

  “I came to ask you because I don’t actually speak for the Community Fund in this matter.”

  “Translation - you can’t offer any kind of deal,” Lazar said.

  “Oh, that will get you far,” Ed said. “Besides, aren’t you literally one of their poster boys these days? That reminds me, I always wondered. How much money does the Fund rake in from merchandising?”

  “I wouldn’t know the number off the top of my head,” I said.

  “Are we on any posters?” Kevan asked.

  “No,” Errol said.

  “That’s only partially true,” I said. “Ranger Roy appeared on one of the ‘Legacies’ series.”

  “Really?” Kevan asked, his tone brightening.

  “Isn’t that the line they launched because people kept bitching about the new Baron Mortis being a white guy?” Ed asked.

  “Ed-” Lazar said.

  “Oh, sh-” Ed glanced over his shoulder towards the kitchen and the stairs. “Did he hear that?” There was quiet for a moment. “I guess not.”

  “I should probably be going,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to burn through your merit points on profanity.”

  When I got back to Gruefield, Xiv was lounging in the rec room, playing on a tablet. I left him there and went up to my room to change into civilian attire. The residential dome was deathly quiet these days. I hadn’t seen Pam since taking Nora to college. Ersatz was at home with her family, given the stand-down order for sidekicks. Most of the rest were off dealing with fugitives. I wasn’t sure if Nick was around. I began staging ingredients for dinner. While I started my prep work, Xiv wandered out of the rec room and held out the tablet.

  “What does this mean?” he asked. I looked down at the screen. It was the ‘restricted site’ page from the Fund’s proxy. The page being blocked was one of the sites created in the orbit of Hero Watchers for content not permitted on that site proper.

  “There are a lot of awful places online,” I said. “Some of which are very disturbing. The Fund blocks them as a matter of course.” I didn’t want to get into the argument over the problem the Community Fund would run into if it let minors use their systems to access adult content. Of course, the ‘fan art’ got pretty disturbing even without wondering if you or someone you knew was the subject of the ‘art’.

  Xiv frowned. I wasn’t sure what was going through his head, but he did wander off before asking anything else. I resumed preparing dinner, though the sound of the door made me pause. Xiv peering out from the door to the rec room ruled out him trying to leave. Stepping over to the arch between the kitchen and mess hall, I saw Nick stepping in. Without preamble, he said, “The powers that be would like to talk to us in the command center. You may want to get suited up.”

  I looked at the ingredients I’d been staging for dinner and put them back where I’d gotten them. As I closed the fridge, I heard a yelp from the rec room and the thump of a tablet landing on the floor. Rushing to the door, I found Xiv huddled in the back corner of the ceiling, hiding behind his wings, physically in no peril. The tablet sat face-down where he’d dropped it. I picked it up and squelched the upwelling of disgust and revulsion at what was on the screen.

  “There’s a reason those sites are blocked,” I said, killing the browser. I wasn’t sure how Xiv had gotten past the proxy, but I doubted he’d try it again anytime soon.

  “Why would anyone draw that?” Xiv asked.

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. Tossing the tablet on the couch, I looked up at Xiv. “I got rid of the image, you can come down from there.”

  Cautiously, Xiv climbed down the wall and stood up.

  “I don’t know if you were listening, but we’ve got a call. Are you going to be all right?”

  Xiv nodded slowly, “Yea,” he said. Though his tone did not convey much confidence.

  “I’ll be back afterwards.” Xiv nodded again, and I headed upstairs to get changed. It didn’t take terribly long as I left off most of my incidental gear, and I met Icerazor in the command center. Two of the three big screens were lit up. One was Sterling Towers command center, the other showed the back room of Grandpa Walker’s farmhouse. He was there in his Rookhound attire.


  “Are we waiting on anyone else?” I asked.

  “Yes, me,” Grandpa Walker said. “This projector always did like to cause trouble.”

  “Projector?” I asked.

  “This was among the pile of stuff I got from the first Rookhound when I took over the name,” he said, holding up a metal disk. The paper label on the side read ‘Thedron’. After a moment, I realized it was the lid of a film can. He moved out of the field of view of the camera and the room went dark. A moment later, a square of white light appeared with a click and hum. A few more mechanical sounds followed before settling down to a clatter, and an image appeared in place of the light. Another click and the clattering stopped. The image was in black and white, and showed two men, one standing, the other seated. The sitting man was the original Ranger Roy, younger than I’d seen him before, but the distinctive uniform made it obvious. He was clearly tied to the chair. The standing man had a ramrod straight posture, enforced by the brace around his torso. Air pumps on his back fed through hoses to the respirator mask covering his mouth and nose. Round-lensed glasses sat below neatly combed, stark white hair. He was built much like the walking stick his left hand rested upon.

  “How’s the picture?” Grandpa Walker asked.

  “The background is not getting picked up very well,” Saito said.