Superheroes In Denim

by Lee French

  He successfully amused her again. “Yes, that’s about right. Thanks. I hope he’s okay.”

  “Me too.” He used the slip of paper to wave at her, biting back the urge to ask if he could count on her as a backup option for tonight. He’d become a tomcat out on the prowl for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, and needed to stop that, right now. Maybe it only happened because he had nothing but a fight to look back on and nothing but more fights to look forward to.

  HHurrying out of the place, he checked the paper. On it, she’d put directions with the address, to get from here to there. Next time he saw Jayce, he actually would tell him to give Beverly a call. She deserved that much, at least. Assuming he actually managed to find Elena so he actually could see Jayce again, which dawdling here didn’t help in the slightest. He slipped behind a palm tree to cover himself breaking apart into the swarm, then swirling upwards to follow the directions from above.

  Jayce had an apartment on the top floor of a decent four-story building. He got in without a problem to find it trashed. Someone went through it without much regard for his things, and Bobby got the distinct impression it had been the cops. His rent must have been paid up for a bit to keep the landlord from sweeping it all up into a dumpster.

  Leaving the fridge alone seemed prudent—he couldn’t imagine what might have survived this long in there, and had no desire to get a whiff of what didn’t. In the cabinets, he found some cans and boxes of food. With a can of beans in one hand and fork in the other, he paced around the place, peering through the mess. He had nothing in particular to look for and only did it to not wonder later if he’d missed something by ignoring it.

  The closet had dark suits and Bobby found a motorcycle helmet. Most of the debris came from magazines, mail, and the stuffing that had been ripped out of the couch and bed. His clothing drawers had been dumped out, too, along with a small collection of kitchen utensils. It interested Bobby that Jayce kept no knickknacks or other mementos, not even pictures stuck to the fridge or mirror. Then again, the cops might have taken some of it as evidence.

  Until he headed into the bathroom to use it for its intended purpose, he thought he’d wasted his time coming here. That room had been taken apart like the rest of the place, but he found something unexpected along with the usual bathroom stuff. Sitting on the counter, someone had left a digital camera lying on its side, mostly covered by a towel. Had he found it in a different room, he would have dismissed it as unremarkable.

  Leaving the can and fork behind in the sink, he picked up the camera and turned it on. The battery had plenty of charge left, and he fiddled with it until it showed him the contents of its memory card. The pictures went backwards in time, starting with a few of various things in the apartment when it was already mussed, then a handful of pictures from before they did anything, showing it all neat and tidy. After that, he found one in a very different location, of Jayce flanked by two suits in a room that reminded Bobby of the place he’d been interrogated when he’d first been picked up.

  What struck Bobby about this picture was Jayce. He had a droopy and goofy look about him, one Bobby found weird and jarring on a man he’d never known to be a pushover or a heavy drinker. His posture entirely lack the solid, straight-backed professionalism the Native American man always had, even when he cracked jokes or batted his eyes at a pretty girl. Two suits flanked him, struggling under his weight without him resisting. One side of the frame had a sliver of another suit’s arm.

  As he stared at it, he noticed other details. That suit on the left had a familiar jawline, and had to be Privek. That guy showed up everywhere. How did he get from Vegas to Atlanta in time to pick them both up, and had he been there for Ai and Alice, too? He thought the one on the right might be Hagen, who seemed to be his favorite lackey.

  In the new picture, Jayce stood with his back straight, glowering at the suit with his back to the camera. That suit had to be the one from the previous frame, this time captured with one arm raised, a hand reaching for Jayce’s face. It took staring at the picture for nearly a minute for Bobby to decide the pose of the hand had nothing to do with slapping. The owner of that hand wanted to touch Jayce.

  He also noticed something wrong with the hand, something weird about the skin. Where the shirt under the suit jacket ended, the skin tone almost matched Jayce’s. It had some weird distortion, though. The camera had too small a screen to get detail beyond that.

  No one with a hand like that had been there when Bobby got arrested. Privek grabbed him from the police station, took him to some other jail, made him change, then loaded him into a van for the most unpleasant and boring ride in his life. As far as he could tell, he could account for every minute of that journey except for the time spent sleeping. After he’d been stationed in that weird cell, he had missing time, yeah, but not before. At least, he didn’t think so. Thinking back over the experience, though, he had to admit it had been a blur in some parts.

  Jayce hadn’t ever said anything about missing time or gaps in his memory. Did that mean it might have happened to Bobby without him realizing it? He did remember getting punched in the face by Privek. After that, he’d tried to talk to those suits, then he gave up. Maybe Jayce did more than wriggle a bit and try to chat them up, so they used a bigger gun. Or, maybe they saw him as a bigger threat to begin with because of his security guard background.

  Bobby flipped through the last two pictures of Jayce as his normal self. Neither showed the mystery hand or its owner. He knew that person had to be important, somehow. Unable to come up with any brilliant ideas, he slipped the camera into his jeans pocket.

  He’d discovered something, for sure. The trip to Vegas had been worth it. Now, he only needed to stuff his face enough to last however long he needed to in that one other dragons. Yawning, he gave the shredded bed a longing look. Later, he’d sleep. For now, he broke apart into the swarm, grateful it would keep him from noticing how much he needed to rest.

  Chapter 6

  His solo dragon had stayed in Geek Guy’s pocket, stuck there. Bobby had good timing, though. After only a few minutes of listening to him lose at whatever video game they played on company time, Geek Guy announced he needed a break. Sitting around on his ass goofing off was, apparently, hard work. As soon as he got up, the dragon climbed up the pocket to stick its head out and look around.

  The other two guys grunted. As absorbed as they seemed to be in their game, he chose not to take the risk they’d notice something small moving in their peripheral vision. This room wouldn’t be the best place to get out and find the ventilation system anyway, since he couldn’t see a vent.

  Geek Guy used a different door than last time. This one opened into a hallway with other closed doors. At the end of the hallway, he went into a break room, a kitchen sort of space with a coffee machine and a fridge and a microwave. Bobby saw a vent near the ceiling and no other people, making it a perfect place to get out of the pocket and disappear.

  The dragon flew behind Geek Guy’s back and skimmed the ceiling to reach the vent, the wriggled through it. He flitted down the tunnels, checking every access point for anything worth seeing. The ductwork felt vast and cavernous, and the place had endless strings of offices and conference rooms.

  Next, he found labs full of people in lab coats and face masks, all bent over glass tubes and big machines and microscopes. Nowhere did he find Elena. Until he checked the whole place, though, he wouldn’t give up.

  Which was why he found her. Not Elena—she definitely wasn’t here. He found her. Slim and willowy, she sat in a floral print armchair, downcast and listless, folding a piece of colored paper carefully and delicately. Her skin looked almost translucent and her dull yellow hair hung limp and straight to her chin without bangs. They had her wearing a white t-shirt with an Air Force logo on the upper left, just above her minimal breast, and a pair of blue running pants.

  He stopped and stared because of her eyes. The same as his own, as all of theirs, hers looked o
ut from a face with high cheekbones and a more angular feel than any human he ever saw. Pointy ears just poked out of the curtain of hair. This woman had to be the one he’d been told about more than once, the one who started all of this.

  His real mother.

  Not only had he found her alive, he’d found her in the custody of the US military, as a prisoner. If he had to guess her age, he’d say somewhere in her twenties, though that made no sense. He’d been told they found her in Roswell, in the 40s or 50s. Had she been stuck in a prison since then?

  Did this mean she had no unusual abilities, or did they keep her dosed up to prevent her from using them? Either way, he had to find a way to get her out of here. Even if he had nothing more in common with her than half his DNA and the military being interested in them both, he still felt that he owed her something. Blood is thicker than most anything, so the saying went, and if not for her, he wouldn’t be. Besides, no one deserved to be stuck in a box just for being different.

  He had one dragon to get her out. She wouldn’t fit into the ducts, and even if she could, they didn’t go anywhere useful that he’d found yet. As he’d suspected, this underground facility used some kind of closed system without a vent to the surface. It meant no way to get the rest of the swarm inside, which meant no way to actually break her loose. Nothing that he could think of, anyway. Leaving her here bothered him a lot, though.

  Was this really any different from leaving the others behind? In fairness, he felt horrible about that, too, so it didn’t really matter. If he could have, he would have grabbed them all and to heckbiscuits with Liam and his stupid girlfriend. But he wanted them all on the same team, he wanted not to have a rift between them all if he could help it. That led him to here, staring at his biological mother with no idea what to do about it.

  He could get the swarm to bust into the place, but he couldn’t carry a person that far, not up through that elevator shaft. No, he’d have to find a way to get someone to release her, or transfer her somewhere else, or something like that. Paul would be a big help. Or Sam—she could make fake electronically delivered orders. With the whole group, they could assault the place. Dammit, he needed backup.

  No, he didn’t. There had to be a way to get her out. Seeing her sitting there, like habit kept her going, like she’d forgotten the feel of the sun kissing her skin… It hurt him, someplace deep down. That kind of ache made no sense, yet he had it all the same.

  Before he could eagerly drop to go meet her, the dragon noticed a pair of cameras in the corners. The next room had a sink, making it a bathroom. Odds were good they didn’t let her have even a moment of privacy to use the shower, so whatever he decided to do, he needed to come up with a distraction to keep those three security guys busy watching elsewhere.

  He went back to the next closest vent and found a soldier outside her cell—no matter how cushy the chairs, he considered it a prison—sitting at a table, reading a book. If she walked out, he’d stop her, so this guy needed a distraction, too. Checking the area over, he noticed a fire alarm on the wall and wondered how the base would react if he set it off. Would they evacuate her or focus on finding the nonexistent fire?

  A real fire would cause more chaos, especially if he started several in different parts of the facility. He could do that. The dragon danced in lace, excited by the idea of actually accomplishing something and getting to her. Why did it care? Might as well ask why he cared, and he had no answer for that, either.

  This place featured concrete, hard industrial floors, and fire retardant ceiling tiles. The furniture he saw everywhere but the cell had been made of metal and hard plastic. This guard had a paperback book, which made him think of paper, leading him to recall seeing garbage cans. They had more kitchen-style break rooms scattered across the place, too. He could probably find something flammable in those.

  Now with a genuine plan, he zoomed around the base, randomly lighting up whatever would burn here and there and everywhere. Within thirty seconds of the first fire, alarms went off, then sprinklers made it rain inside. Despite the fires being small and put out almost as fast as he could start them, people shouted and screamed, grabbing up laptops and papers and running around. Since he didn’t really want to destroy the whole place or cause a genuine fire, this was perfect. The security guys would have their hands full dealing with the chaos and panic, leaving them unable to do their real jobs adequately.

  By the time he returned to her cell, he’d started more than twenty fires. The guard stationed outside set down his radio as Bobby arrived and hit the button to open the cell door. Bobby took a chance and swooped in behind him. “Asyllis, we’re going to the bunker.” He said “bunker” like it should have a capital letter. More importantly, it sounded like her name was Asyllis, which appealed to Bobby for no reason he could explain.

  She took a spiritless breath deep enough to move her head. Her eyes blinked heavily. “No.” The voice that made the one word was stale like cardboard, but he knew, somehow, that it could be musical and beautiful. It pissed him off that it wasn’t.

  The guard glared and made a fist. “It’s kind of an emergency, and I’m not asking you. Get up, we’re going. I’ll use the stun stick if I have to.” His other hand went to a baton on his belt with a button on the end of the handle.

  Bobby refused to stand by and let the guard deliver on his threat, and he needed her to get up and leave the room. Only one solution came to mind: more fire. Dropping down fast enough to avoid notice, he blew fire at one of her chairs until it caught, and kept blowing at the chair until one of them noticed.

  The guard made a wordless sound of unpleasant surprise, cuing Bobby to peer around the side. The dragon couldn’t be hurt by fire, so he didn’t care about the chair burning. Interestingly, it didn’t seem that this room had any sort of fire suppression system. He watched the guard grab Asyllis by the arm and haul her out of the chair. She didn’t resist. He wondered if she ever truly resisted anything at this point, aside from doing so to avoid moving.

  Once on her feet, Asyllis stumbled after the guard while still watching the fire. A tiny flicker of fear crossed her face, so muted he thought she might be too dead inside to feel anything. Since the guard watched ahead, Bobby had the dragon fly out where she could see it. She stared at the tiny dragon, putting a hand out to let him land. Obliging her made the dragon happier than a biscuit in gravy. Recognition lit up in her face. Either she’d somehow seen one before, or guessed it would help her gain her freedom.

  Nodding to the dragon, she closed her hand around it and moved more smoothly, like she decided to actually run with the guard instead of being dragged by him. “The Bunker is too far,” she told him, “we should use the door, go to the surface. Who knows where the next fire will break out?”

  he guard stopped running and Bobby heard them both panting. “You know you’re not allowed up there.”

  “Please, Cander, I haven’t seen the sun in so long, I’ve forgotten what it looks like. You did it for my safety, until the source of the mysterious fire could be determined. To protect the precious prize your superiors charged you with.” The more she spoke, the more Bobby could hear her light accent. It was strange, foreign in a way he couldn’t explain. Aside from the fact he figured she must be an alien, which completely explained it in every way. In light of that, she had a stellar command of English. Then again, she’d had a long time to learn it. With little else to do over several decades, he could probably master a language or five, too.

  “I don’t know, Asyllis. I could get into a lot of trouble. We should go to the Bunker.” If he knew where it was, Bobby would take off and go set a fire in this Bunker to cross it off the list of Safe Places.

  “I have no dignity left to shred for you, Cander. I beg you to just grant me this one small favor. Please.” Bobby imagined her getting to the guy’s personal space and trying her damnedest to appeal to his decency. He couldn’t have resisted her even if he wanted to, and wished he could scream at Cander to give in alr
eady.

  Cander didn’t answer for one agonizing second that stretched into an eon. “Alright, but you have to stay close to me.” They hurried on their way again.

  “Thank you, Cander. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. For all I know, this’ll make them think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

  No one accosted either of them as they moved swiftly through the halls. Bobby didn’t feel like this might really work until they ran down that blank hallway and slid into the elevator. Apparently, he’d successfully managed to thoroughly distract the security guys, because they said nothing about Cander and Asyllis walking right out the front door with the strange dragon that had officially been destroyed and unofficially still sat in Geek Guy’s pocket.

  Bobby jumped back out of the dragon, certain it would stay there and be fine. No one else had evacuated to the surface, leaving Bobby free to re-form and walk right up to punch the soldier guarding Asyllis in the face. Too stunned to react, Cander stood there and let Bobby hit him again, then follow up with a third that knocked him down enough to keep him there for a short time.

  “Asyllis, this here’s a jailbreak.”

  She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even standing there anymore when he turned to look. She’d walked out the door of the warehouse already, staring up at the sky. “It’s so blue,” she said softly.

  He hurried to her side. “If’n you want to spend more’n a few minutes looking at it, we should grab a vehicle and get the heck outta Dodge. ‘Less you can fly?”

  “Fly?” She blinked and looked at him. “No, I can’t fly.” She stood at the same height as him, putting them eye to eye. Reaching for his face, she brushed her fingertips across his cheek. “Who are you?” To his joy, her voice gained more color and melody with every moment she spent in this patch of sunshine.