Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

by Chris Strange

  Gabby’s lips twitched in a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  —That coffee smells terrible, she signed.

  “Bourgeois pig.” Niobe spoke slowly, signing at the same time. Gabby gave the smile another try, but Niobe couldn’t bring herself to return it.

  —What’s wrong? Gabby signed.

  Niobe shook her head and said nothing. She couldn’t see how she could explain it. She couldn’t even explain how she felt to herself. Was it really a loss when you couldn’t remember it anyway?

  Gabby waited and watched, but Niobe didn’t meet her eyes. After a few minutes, Gabby reached across the table and took Niobe’s hand. Niobe returned the squeeze. For her, she thought. I’m doing this for her.

  With a final squeeze, Gabby released her hand and pointed to the newspaper.

  —Did you see that?

  Niobe nodded, glad for the change of subject. Splashed across the front page was a blurred photograph from at least eight years ago of a man in a plastic mask.

  NOTORIOUS SUPERCRIMINAL DOLL FACE ALIVE!

  Soviets Admit Breakout

  She wasn’t sure whether to believe it. Everyone was sure the psychopath was killed after a few hundred Soviet soldiers cornered him in Ukraine. They even had a body to prove it. He’d single-handedly taken a school hostage and turned the place into his own personal house of horrors. It was never reported in the media, but she heard through the Wardens that most of the surviving children were missing their ears and noses. The investigators found those missing body parts in the stomachs of the kids who’d died. The soldiers had shown no mercy when they got a clear shot at Doll Face.

  She’d never gone toe-to-toe with Doll Face. No one in the Wardens had. For the best part of a decade he’d terrorised Europe and parts of Asia. Vindictive parents would tell their children that if they didn’t behave, Doll Face would get them. He was a psychopath, maybe, but no one could cause that much devastation and evade capture for so long without some kind of twisted, instinctive intelligence.

  She shook her head, dismissing the thoughts. “Even if he is running around, the Reds can deal with him,” she said. “Serves the stupid bastards right for keeping him alive all these years.”

  She stood and tipped the coffee down the sink. It was lukewarm now anyway, and it hadn’t helped her remember a single damn thing. She had to focus. Find Sam, get him back to his uncle. Make this damn hole in her head worth it.

  Gabby followed her back to the bedroom and sat on the bed, hugging herself. Niobe tried to pretend she couldn’t feel Gabby’s eyes on her while she dressed. She was too restless for a shower, and besides, the hot water had been acting up in the old building lately.

  —Where are you going? Gabby signed.

  —Out, she replied, and clipped her utility belt on. She wasn’t going out in full costume, not in the daylight. Today was strictly detective work. Still, she strapped her gun on and covered it with a pale, loose-fitting jacket that she picked up at a seconds sale in Neo-Auckland a couple of seasons ago.

  Gabby frowned. Her nose always wrinkled when she did that.

  —It’s not even seven yet. Have breakfast with me.

  —Can’t, Niobe signed. I have work to do.

  Gabby grabbed her arm as she tried to brush past out of the room. “Please.” Her voice came out quiet, distorted. It embarrassed her, so she didn’t speak often.

  Niobe stopped, looked at her feet, then met Gabby’s eyes. They shifted colour in the light, but now they were grey and rough like a stone wall. Niobe hadn’t forgotten the first time she saw those eyes. The coppers had raided her place back in ’61, trying to force her into the metahuman registration programme. She had to make a run for it, abandoning her cash and all the equipment she had. As a parting gift, the coppers kindly gave her a bullet in the upper arm. In the days that followed, she slept where she could, avoiding patrols, trying to stay clear of trouble, hoping the infection in her wound didn’t kill her. But then she heard a rumour about a master gadgeteer operating in the outskirts of the Old City. If she was going to survive, Niobe needed supplies, equipment. Maybe the gadgeteer could help.

  It took her a week, but she found the gadgeteer’s workshop. She scoped the place out, waited for nightfall, then tried to sneak in. But she was so sick and starved by then she didn’t notice she’d triggered the silent alarm. Not until she felt the barrel of a pulse rifle pressed against the back of her head.

  And when she turned around, she found those silver eyes looking down at her, and those cheeks tinged with pink, and that soft golden hair. Over time, they became friends. And then more than friends.

  It was strange. She’d had relationships before, but she’d always thought she was too cynical to feel like this.

  They’d been through so much together. They’d watched the world change. But she knew it upset Gabby when she went out, just like Solomon’s wife worried about him. She couldn’t quit this job, but she loved Gabby, and she wanted her to be happy. Niobe couldn’t let the best thing in her life slip away.

  She touched Gabby’s cheeks with both hands. Then she slowly pulled her close, close enough to make out the little downy hairs at the edge of her hairline. She kissed her. Gabby’s lips were hard for a moment, but they softened, and her tongue slipped out to touch Niobe’s. Niobe breathed in the scent of her.

  Gabby melted into her arms. Niobe’s hands drifted down over her back, down to the sash of her robe. She wanted to untie it, let the robe fall from Gabby’s shoulders, run her fingers over her. The first few times they’d had sex it had been a nervous exploration, each touch like a little electric shock, each inch of flesh new and exciting and scary. But over time they’d become comfortable with each other’s bodies. She’d learned the spots that made Gabby sigh and the ones that made her gasp. She’d learned how Gabby’s back would arch when Niobe let her fingers turn to half-shadow and creep along the crease where her leg met her pelvis.

  But she couldn’t do those things now. There was a thirteen-year-old boy out there somewhere, in the hands of God knows who. She’d wasted too much time already. When their kiss ended and Niobe opened her eyes again, she returned her hands to Gabby’s cheeks. Gabby’s face was flushed with pink. Niobe drew her close again, kissed each of her eyelids in turn, and released her.

  —I have to go, Niobe signed, but we’ll talk tonight. We’ll go up to the roof, look up at the Moon, and we’ll work this out together.

  The colour slowly faded from Gabby’s face. She smiled, but it was strained.

  —I promise, Niobe added. She kissed Gabby one more time, took her hand, and squeezed. “Love you.”

  She buttoned her jacket over her gun and went out of the room, ignoring the tightness in her chest.

  She thought about contacting the Carpenter and bringing him along, but in the end she decided not to. They were due to meet with his informer at Met Div on the guy’s lunch break. Solomon might as well sleep in and spend some time with his family. Besides, her mind was a mess right now. What she really wanted was to throw herself into the investigation and forget the past and relationships and Doll Face and the Moon.

  She slipped on a pair of over-sized sunglasses to conceal her black eyes. The traffic was light as she drove towards Waitemata Harbour. Most of the people who worked the ports would already be there, and few other normals travelled so close to the Old City. In the old days, metas with minor strength or technology-related powers could make a good living loading and unloading the ships that came here. The more powerful metas usually set their sights higher, preferring to build entire structures or design machines so advanced they ran competing industries into the ground. But now the ports were run on a skeleton crew, with a large proportion of incoming cargo ships diverted to Tauranga and other parts of the country.

  She wound down the window and let the sea breeze blow the swirling thoughts from her head. The few scattered cargo ships rolled past, crawling with workers while cranes shuddered and turned. She kept on driving until t
hey fell behind and the private marinas emerged near Herne Bay. Most were new, built in the last couple of years. If Neo-Auckland residents took the Northwestern Highway, they could get there while bypassing the Old City completely, but this part of the city was still out of the way and suffering from neglect. Still, there were a lot of rich folks in Neo-Auckland, and having your own boat had become the new status symbol. It’d probably stay that way until the Germans finally made personal rocket-planes commercially viable.

  She slowed the car, keeping one eye on the boats and the other on the surrounding streets and buildings. Her mind automatically started comparing the scene to the images burned into her retinas. Spatial and visual inputs were what her mind liked best. When she was a kid, she loved solving her dad’s mechanical puzzles, the ones where you had to work out how to assemble or disassemble the wooden pieces. She begged her dad to give her a new one for her tenth birthday, she remembered. Had she ever gotten it? The date was sheared off in her mind by the Blind Man, neatly excised like a tumour under a surgeon’s knife.

  She shook her head and returned her attention to the marina. There. She spotted the houseboat rocking in the water, in the same place it had been in her vision. She looked around at the streets to confirm her position. A row of abandoned shops and offices faced the sea. Yes. This was definitely it.

  She drove on, watching the surroundings, but there was no one to be seen. No cars parked on the side of the road, no one out for a stroll. It made her uneasy. She wouldn’t look so out of place if she wasn’t the only one here. She parked around the corner, activated the car’s security measures, and walked back to the marina.

  No gates or security guards protected the marina. She lit up a cigarette and tried to look like a tourist while she used the time to analyse the place. The marina consisted of four long floating walkways with refuelling stations at the end. Seagulls squawked atop yachts’ masts.

  Exits were limited. Either take the platform back to shore or jump into the sea. Maybe steal a boat, if necessary. It’d have to do. Satisfied that no one was around, Niobe took a long drag of her cigarette, plucked it from her mouth, and made her way to the old man’s boat.

  She wasn’t much of a boat person, but it looked expensive. The motorboat was white, maybe forty foot long, with a tall cabin that didn’t look very aerodynamic. The name Wanderer was painted on the side.

  If Sam’s attacker had left any obvious signs of his presence on deck, they’d been cleared away. A pair of plastic deck chairs were folded up neatly near the entrance to the cabin, and a coil of rope sat next to the ladder. Niobe gave one more glance around and stepped down onto the deck. She stayed near the edge of the boat and gave it a quick sweep. No obvious bloodstains, and no stray hairs. She couldn’t see any damp shoe-prints, but it was hot enough that any sea spray quickly dried.

  Satisfied there was nothing to see on deck, she worked the handle on the heavy door and stepped into the cabin. Sam had been upstairs when he was attacked. She felt a sense of déjà vu as she ascended the same narrow stairs as in her vision. She took off her sunglasses and emerged into a small kitchen and living area. A mirror hung on one wall, and a fridge and kitchenette unit occupied the opposite wall. But Niobe’s focus went straight to the centre of the room, where the boy had been standing when the man incapacitated him.

  She crouched and inspected the linoleum floor. A single speck of blood was all that remained of Sam. The blood had gone brown and hard in the last few days. Maybe the kid had scraped his knee when he fell, or maybe he spat up some blood after the hit to the throat. Niobe’s vision had been so filled with pain and fear that the details after the first strike didn’t register. It didn’t matter. She breathed a sigh of relief that there wasn’t more blood.

  She sniffed the air, but detected no scent of gunpowder. A glance at the walls and ceiling revealed no bullet holes either. Good. The kid had most likely been alive when he left the boat. Something loosened in her chest.

  Sam was okay, but his attacker had been careful. She took her time, inspecting every inch of the kitchen floor, but again, no shoe-prints. He hadn’t left so much as a hair. No plates or cutlery had been left out on the kitchen bench. A worn paperback copy of The Count of Monte Cristo sat in a chair in the corner. There were two exits from the kitchen: the door she came through, and another stairway leading down on the opposite side of the room.

  She went and followed the other staircase down. It had a kink halfway down, turning back on itself. It was narrower than the other stairway and led out to starboard, away from where the boat nestled against the marina walkway. The attacker probably wouldn’t have used this staircase to take the kid out.

  She returned to the kitchen and examined the stairs leading down the other side. The guy was big, so it would’ve been easiest to carry Sam over his shoulder down the narrow stairway. She closed her eyes and pictured the events she’d seen in the Blind Man’s vision. The man had been holding his gun in his right hand, making him right-handed, so she’d assume he had Sam over his right shoulder. The stairs were steep; maybe he’d need to grip the handrail to steady himself. Was he wearing gloves? They weren’t part of the Met Div uniform, but it had been too dark to see in the Blind Man’s vision.

  She pulled her powder and brush from her utility belt and gave the whole handrail a light dusting. Nothing, not even prints from Sam or Frank. Wiped clean. So was the door handle. She chewed her lip and looked around. Okay, he came down the stairs, put Sam down outside, came back in and wiped the handrail and the door handle. Sam must’ve been unconscious, but the man couldn’t leave him for long. It was daylight; someone might see.

  Her eyes fell upon the doorway. It was small, with the bottom raised nearly a foot to keep water from getting in. Sam’s attacker was big. Maybe….

  She got out her powder again and dusted the metal door frame on both sides, starting at about shoulder height. She worked slowly, methodically, enjoying the work. This was honest, down-to-earth investigation, with not a psychic in sight. Then she smiled to herself.

  “Gotcha,” she said.

  The two fingerprints were almost perfect. Judging from their position and size, she’d guess index and middle fingers. A partial palm print accompanied them, but it was too distorted to be much use. They were on the top left-hand corner of the door frame. Frank Julius wouldn’t be likely to reach up there, not with his walking stick and shuffling gait, and the palm looked far too big to be Sam’s. Perhaps the attacker had tripped on the raised lip of the doorway and had to steady himself, or maybe he was just manoeuvering himself through the tight space with Sam over his shoulder. She put away her powder, got out some clean plastic tape, and carefully retrieved the fingerprints.

  Technically, she didn’t have access to any fingerprint records. But she’d learnt long ago that technicalities were just excuses for people who didn’t know where to look. If the guy was a cape copper, his prints would be on file. The coppers were meticulous about that sort of thing. If a doppelgänger was impersonating a copper, prints might be the only way to confirm it. Doppelgängers struggled with details like that.

  Of course, the records would be at Met Div headquarters, surrounded by a few dozen coppers. She should probably wait until nightfall if she didn’t want to catch a bullet or ten.

  She continued her inspection of the attacker’s probable exit, but he’d made no more mistakes. No prints on the rail on deck, no clothing fibres. All right, that was as good as she was going to get on that front.

  But there were still questions surrounding Frank Julius and his part in all this. Who was he really? Someone had gone to a lot of effort to kidnap his nephew, and then they’d forgotten to make any ransom demands.

  She went down into the sleeping cabin where the Blind Man’s vision had begun. It looked as she remembered it: a set of bunk beds, some shelves with a few old paperbacks, and some drawers.

  Strange, using a boat as home and transport. Why not just take a rocket-plane like everyone else who wanted
to travel internationally? The most obvious answer was to stay under the radar. Policing the oceans was like trying to stop kids smoking pot. No matter how hard you tried, you’d never do anything but scrape the surface.

  She tried to imagine spending weeks at a time confined to this boat. She couldn’t handle it.

  She did a walk-through of the room and came up empty. The top bunk appeared to be Sam’s, and the bottom Frank’s. No cash under the mattress. She found a few folded wads of assorted currency—American dollars, British pounds, a few pesos—in Frank’s underwear drawer. Probably just day-to-day money, since it wasn’t enough to live on long-term. He’d mentioned bank accounts when she talked to him at the hotel, but she couldn’t find any bank statements or account numbers. Maybe he committed them to memory. Or maybe he’d cleared them out when he found Sam missing. Either way, it wasn’t really the mark of someone with nothing to hide.

  A search of Frank’s drawers revealed clothes and little else. The only thing of note was an address book, but each entry was only signified by initials and a phone number. At a quick flick through she guessed there was nearly a hundred numbers there, most of them international. It didn’t take a genius to work out that anyone unwilling to be listed by their full name wouldn’t reveal information over the phone. She pocketed the address book, but her gut told her it was another dead end.

  Sam’s drawers painted a similar picture. She was about to give up—she’d be meeting Solomon soon—when the corner of a slip of paper caught her eye sticking out from under a pile of T-shirts. No, not paper, she realised as she pulled it free. A photograph. Now that she thought about it, it was the only photo she’d found on the whole boat. If Frank had any copies of the photo he’d given her, he kept them well-hidden.