Battlecry

by Emerald Dodge

  I pushed open the door of the computer room and sat down at a computer terminal, my fingers trembling. Was it really this simple? Could I actually access the whole internet? Even Patrick couldn’t do that, I was pretty sure. From what I’d been told, the elders only approved a few dozen websites, and they received a monthly report about where Patrick went online.

  The computer’s screen had a picture of a globe with the word Internet underneath. I clicked that one, holding my breath.

  Please Enter Patron ID

  I swore so loudly, a young mother nearby threw me a dark look and covered her toddler’s ears.

  I stormed out of the computer room and over to the young woman at a round desk marked Information. “I need a patron ID.”

  The young woman, engrossed in her data entry work, jumped in her chair. She stared at me from behind thick-framed glasses similar to the ones I used to have for disguise. “A patron ID?”

  “Yes. I need one.” Screw politeness.

  She looked left and right around her desk for something, then fished out a piece of paper from a pile of folders and pamphlets next to her mug of coffee. “This is the application. Fill it out and bring it to circulation desk downstairs. They’ll issue you a library card, which will have your patron ID on the back.”

  I grabbed the application from her and scanned it, immediately noticing a huge problem. “This says I need a piece of mail or government-issued ID.”

  “Of course. We use it to verify your address.”

  “What if I don’t have one of those?”

  She eyed me warily. “You’re free to browse our selection, then. You just can’t use a computer or check something out.”

  I slammed the application down on the counter, not caring that I was acting like a child. Resisting the urge to stomp, I wandered over to an empty table and threw myself into a chair. Within moments I’d slumped down in my chair and shut my eyes.

  What a stupid day.

  Focusing on the hum of the air conditioning system, I willed my frustration to ebb away. “Be like Marco,” I murmured to myself. He was always so darn cheerful, except when I screwed up and basically dared Patrick to try to kill us.

  A woman’s scream shattered the silence.

  I bolted to my feet, my eyes darting wildly for the civilian in trouble. After a second, I relaxed my stance. The few patrons on the second floor hadn’t moved, though the woman at the information desk was glaring at me.

  Dang it. I’d fallen asleep and gotten worked up over a dream.

  Sitting down again, I began making a list of priorities for my time here. Since I couldn’t research the superhero forums, I had to make use of the library some other way. Were there any books about my ancestors?

  I craned my neck to peer over the balcony and see if I could see a section in the stacks labeled Superheroes. I located it, but scowled when I saw that the shelf was in a small area sectioned off by caution tape. The piece of paper hanging from the tape read PARDON OUR DUST.

  A man wearing thick gloves was digging around a hole in the wall, a large spool of electrical wire next to him.

  I fell back into my chair and grabbed the lone book on the table, no doubt left there by some lazy patron. It was a children’s introduction to science, and before long I had flipped to the chapter about electricity in an effort to determine what the thick-gloved man was doing to the wall. After just ten minutes of reading I knew more about electricity than my entire former team combined.

  “Jillian? Is that you?” The sweet, lilting voice made me look to my left.

  Benjamin’s sister Eleanor strode towards me, her arms full of books. When I met her gaze, she broke into a wide grin so much like Benjamin’s that my stomach fluttered. “Jillian!”

  “Hi, Eleanor!” I hurried to meet her. Though she was probably a criminal, she had never been anything but polite and gracious to me, and I took some of her load out of her arms. “Here, let me help you with those.”

  “Oh, thank you so much.” Her eyes were sparkling. She tilted her head towards one of the reading rooms. “I’m taking these in there.”

  “Are you, uh, here by yourself?”

  A mischievous gleam replaced her usual twinkle. “I think Benjamin’s downstairs. Would you like me to go find him?”

  “No!” My voice was far too loud, and she raised her eyebrows. “No, thank you,” I said, more genially. “That’s really not necessary.”

  “I won’t, then.” She smiled. “But I was sorry to hear that you and Benny had an argument. He’s been unhappy for weeks.” We were at the reading room she’d indicated. “Let me get the door for us.” She turned the knob and pushed the door open and grinned again. “Well, I guess I was wrong about that.”

  Unsure of what she was talking about, I walked past her into the reading room, stopping mid-step.

  Benjamin sat at the little table, absorbed in a textbook. Note cards were scattered around him. “El, do you have another pencil? Mine broke.” He glanced up at his sister.

  Our eyes met.

  I dumped the books onto the table with a crash and turned to dash out of the room, down the stairwell, and possibly several miles down the street. Benjamin stood up so fast his chair fell over. “Jillian, wait.”

  He reached for me, but I flinched back.

  Eleanor took this all in, still smiling. “How about I leave you two to smooth things over.” To my shock, she winked at Benjamin and walked out, closing the door behind her with a sharp bang.

  I backed into the wall, not daring to blink. Bile rose in my throat—Eleanor had known he was here. Of course she had. She’d known and she’d lured me into a trap because she was one of them.

  Benjamin held up his hands, palms out. “Jillian, I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”

  “Is your brother here?” I hissed.

  “No. I swear, it’s just me and Eleanor. She insisted that we had to study here because it has the best reading rooms or something like that, though now I see what her real purpose was.” He wrinkled his nose. “God, I hate it when she does this.”

  “Does what?”

  He sighed. “She’s a probability manipulator. A powerful one. She must have sensed some kind of possibility that you’d be here today and done whatever voodoo it took to make sure we’d meet.” He righted his chair and slouched in it. “I wonder if she made it so we’d meet that day in the park, too. Damn, I hate her sometimes.” He covered his eyes with his hand.

  “I’m going to go now.” I groped behind me for the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. “What? Hey!” I jiggled the doorknob.

  “Oh, come on, Eleanor,” he grumbled, staring up at the ceiling. When I kept jiggling the doorknob, he looked sidelong at me. “Don’t bother. Even if you broke the lock, I guarantee you she’s ready and waiting with some other highly unlikely hijinks to inflict on us so we’ll have to talk.”

  “Talk? There’s nothing to talk about. You’re a criminal. No, you’re a supervillain. I’m a superhero. I have nothing to say to you.”

  Benjamin learned forward on the table, resting his head on his hands. “Did Atropos give you the black eye?”

  My hand fell from the doorknob. “Boy, you don’t let stuff go, do you?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No, Atropos didn’t give me the black eye. There, happy?”

  “No.” He gestured at the empty chair across from him. “I have a few more questions, and seeing that Eleanor will keep us in here until we, I dunno, make out or something, we might as well start talking.”

  I didn’t move.

  Benjamin ran a hand through his hair and looked away, his hard features melting into uncertainty. “Look, things went wrong a few weeks ago, and I just…I want to start over. I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about me and my family, and I don’t think they’re all accurate. I met a girl in a café and I really liked her. I still do. I just want to talk to that girl again.”

  I crossed my arms. “Why do you care about that girl if you kn
ow she’s a superhero?”

  Benjamin did a double take. “Am I not allowed to have a soul? That girl was bruised, wearing a sling, and obviously being beat up by someone, possibly her boss. I don’t know what kind of monster you think I am, but I didn’t stop caring just because I find out that your boss, Patrick, is actually Atropos. And don’t you dare try to tell me that you got hurt fighting crime, because your face turned white when you talked about Patrick.”

  My mouth fell open. “You’re a criminal. You’re not supposed to care about…about abused women, especially superheroes. You’re not supposed to be nice and kind and buy me coffee. You’re not supposed to heal me when I’m dying. You’re not—”

  “Yeah, well, Atropos isn’t supposed to be a violent dickhead.” He stood abruptly, his jaw clenched.

  My hand reflexively went for my favorite knife on my thigh, but was met with blank denim.

  “And you know what?” Benjamin continued, his voice growing louder. “Superheroes aren’t supposed to hide in cafes, so depressed about their horrible life that they’ll tell the first ‘nice’ person they meet about how scared of their boss they are. Superheroes aren’t supposed to call me when their teammate gets shot, but let themselves die on a cement floor when my punk brother slices their neck open!” He was yelling now, his hands balled into fists.

  “What the hell do you know about us?” I screamed back, traitorous tears overflowing onto my cheeks. “You have no idea what we’re like!”

  His nostrils flared while he took a deep breath. “You’re right, I don’t. Like every other American, I used to think that all of you were virtuous do-gooders who deserved the praise we’ve heaped on you for a century.” He snorted. “Now I’m beginning to see that we’ve all been duped.”

  “We may not be everything you expected, but you didn’t catch me stealing from Bell Enterprises that night,” I hissed.

  His eyes narrowed. “Fine, you got me. What are you going to do about it, hero? Call the cops? Fight me? Have Atropos come and give me a black eye and a sprained shoulder?”

  I ignored his jibe and instead let his epithet roll around in my head. Hero.

  It’s what he’d called Marco and me when we encountered him and Beau stealing from the barrels. He made the innocuous word sound like a slur. Just like you do with “criminal”, I realized. The similarity struck me as significant, though I couldn’t explain why.

  My anger receded like a wave on the shore.

  “I won’t call Patrick or the police,” I said softly, my arms falling to my sides. “I’m not on the team anymore, and I don’t want to fight you.” The old lump returned to my throat. “I’m sorry for yelling.”

  He dropped into his chair. “I’m sorry for yelling, too. I’m sure we scared some library patrons out there.” He nodded towards the door. “Can we just talk for a while? At a normal volume?”

  I slid into the chair across from him and put my hands on the table, and he copied me. All was quiet for a few moments, and then Benjamin spoke. “Is your name really Jillian? Or is your real name Battlecry, and Jillian is the codename?”

  “My name really is Jillian. Jillian Johnson, actually. Battlecry is the codename I inherited from my grandmother.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You’re related to that Battlecry? Whoa. I, uh, learned about her in school.”

  That gave me pause. What did civilians like Benjamin learn about superheroes in school? Propaganda, probably. Would I have to correct some twisted version of reality for him?

  “Is your name really Benjamin?”

  “Yep. Benjamin Trent.”

  I chuckled with dark humor. “Did you know that if you’d told me your surname on the day we met, I’d have never talked to you again?”

  “Why?”

  “The Trents are one of the six forbidden families that declared themselves to be enemies of superheroes decades ago. If Patrick ever found out that I’d not only met you, but had coffee with you, he’d have—”

  “—beaten you until you couldn’t walk?” Benjamin finished for me, somber. His fingertips brushed mine. “I read the post online. Did he give you those injuries, that day that we met?”

  “Actually, no. Those were from a fight earlier that day. Remember the guy who blew up downtown? Although, during that fight I disobeyed Patrick. When we got home he tossed me around his office with his powers, which didn’t help. It could’ve been worse, though. He could’ve broken a bottle over my head like he did right after the shooting at the convenience store.” I swallowed bile. “That’s why your brother was able to best me. I’m not a crap fighter. I was just whacked out on painkillers I took for the pain in my head.”

  Benjamin gaped at me. “What happened after that night at the warehouse?”

  Ashamed of the true course of events immediately after I left the warehouse, I skipped to the showdown. “When I returned home Patrick started in on me and I snapped. I’ve been on the run ever since. Marco—you call him Helios—joined me a few days later.”

  Strangely, Benjamin looked relieved. “Atro…Patrick didn’t hurt you after the warehouse fight? For knowing me?”

  “He slapped me, but only because I ran off and left Marco by himself. He doesn’t know about you. Why?”

  “There’s been some rumors online about him. A lot of people, um…a lot of people said that when you and Helios disappeared, it was because Patrick had hurt you. After I read the post everyone’s talking about, I put the pieces together and realized that you and Helios disappeared right after you fought me and Beau.” He blinked quickly. “I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking that maybe Patrick…did something because you knew me, or didn’t stop us, or…”

  I reached out and squeezed Benjamin’s hand. He stopped talking and gave me a weak smile.

  I smiled back. “I won’t say I’m fine, but that night, Patrick was afraid of me for a change.”

  Benjamin’s face lit up. “You kicked his ass? Isn’t he telekinetic or something? You must actually be a pretty great fighter to beat him.”

  “I’m awesome. The whole team is. Well, awesome in different ways. Ember isn’t so great at close quarters combat, but she’s the strongest telepath you’ll ever meet. She can even talk to animals.” My enthusiasm waned as I thought of her final message to me from the previous night. “She and Reid are still with Patrick,” I mumbled.

  “Ember’s a telepath?” He leaned forward. “Can she hear all thoughts?”

  “If she listens in, yeah. She doesn’t try to eavesdrop, but she says fantasies and emotions get through a lot.”

  He looked thoughtful. “That must get annoying. For you, I mean. And for her, I guess.”

  I shrugged. “At some point I just accepted that she’ll eventually know all my secrets.”

  An unnamable emotion passed over his face. “Ember and Reid are Firelight and Tank, right? Why haven’t they given Patrick the finger?” Benjamin screwed up his face. “What’s his hold on you guys, anyway? Is it blackmail? Does he have dirt on you? Is he threatening you?”

  “He’s the leader.”

  Benjamin gave his head a little shake. “No, I get that. Why don’t they fight back like you did?”

  “He’s the leader.” I didn’t see what was so difficult about this.

  Benjamin studied me. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  He drummed his fingers on the table, still looking at me oddly. “You changed when you said that. Your whole demeanor, your voice, everything.”

  I’d changed? I stroked my hair, self-conscious under his scrutiny.

  Benjamin continued to gaze at me, wheels turning in his head. “I’m curious. Why is your hair so long? Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful. But it has to be a liability on the battlefield.”

  I couldn’t help but preen when he said “beautiful.” “Superheroines wear their hair long because it’s beautiful. Beauty commands respect and makes civilians trust us more.”

  “Uh…huh. Can you tell me some more about b
eing a superhero?”

  I racked my brain. Now that it was put to me, the many and varied rules I’d grown up with were hard to name. “Um, let’s see. Well, only men in elder lines can be leaders.”

  “Elder lines?”

  “Descendants of the people who founded our camps back in the 1930s.”

  “Why only men? I’ll wager that you’d be a better leader than Patrick.”

  “Women are more emotional and prone to making poor battlefield decisions.”

  Benjamin squinted at me. “You just did it again. You went all weird and robotic.”

  “Robotic? I did not.”

  “Yeah, you did.” He shook his head, chuckling without humor. “I wonder if it’s brainwashing,” he murmured, more to himself than me.

  I’d never heard that word before, but I didn’t like it. “Well, if I’m brainwashed, I like having a clean brain.”

  Benjamin stared at me, then burst into laughter. He doubled over, nearly wheezing. “Oh my God,” he said between laughs. “Oh my God. Clean brain.”

  I glared at him. “What’s so funny?”

  He sat up, grinning. “You. You’re funny, and you don’t know why. I’m not telling you, though.” He wiped away a tear, mouthing “clean brain” and grinning again.

  “I don’t understand why you find this funny. I know we’re different than civilians, but our rules have produced every superhero in America. I get that you might not be so fond of superheroes, but we are a valuable part of American society. Tell me you understand that, at least.”

  Benjamin’s hand fell on the table with a thud. “What I understand is that America knows nothing about what their bright, shining heroes are actually like and actually believe. Seriously, tell me more about your way of life. No matter what you’ll say, I’ll owe myself five dollars.”

  I crossed my arms. “I don’t care for your tone.”

  He straightened and raised his hand in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. Please tell me more about your culture.”

  “Just so you know, I don’t expect you to grasp any of this.”

  “Agreed.” He smirked.

  I huffed. “You asked me out to the movies, that day at the park. You’d probably call it a date. Well, we don’t date. We court.”