City Without Heroes

by Tanya Lisle

  Penny and Matt. Something was wrong with them.

  Indira took a deep breath and forced herself to focus instead on Esther, who stumbled at the first wave of the psychic static coming from the other two. She hadn’t expected it or prepared for it and she fell from a small height, managing to catch herself before she hit the ground. Slowly, the scene came into view, but not before she heard them yelling at her and at each other.

  You shouldn’t have come back, Esther muttered before Indira had a clear picture of what was going on. She looked out Esther’s eyes and the vision of what was going on around them finally started to come into view.

  They were back underground in the weird hall that Matt’s magic had revealed to not be a hall at all. They had gone off into one of the strange offshoot hallways, Esther throwing open a door that felt like it was hiding something very wrong on the other side. Esther threw Penny inside of it, kicking Matt in after her and shutting it behind them as she turned back out to look around at where she was.

  It didn’t help that they were both sparkling in Indira’s mind with spells half cast that they couldn’t quite bring themselves together enough to complete. That did nothing to stop either of them from continuing to try. There was a mix in their phrases, some pleading to be allowed to go back, some words that were for spells, some saying that they should give up or leave or any number of other things that never quite became a full thought.

  “Shut up, both of you, or I’ll kill you myself,” Esther snapped back at them, kicking the door. She grabbed a pipe, though Indira didn’t know where she got it, and jammed it in the door to keep them from leaving. She was breathing heavily, though there was a bit of a smile on her face as she flicked a knife into each of her hands. She looked around for her first challenger.

  Indira, I need a way out of here.

  Why the hell are you back here at all? Indira demanded, already frantically looking around to try and figure out what was going on. There were hazmat suits coming down the hall, more of them than there had been before, as if they were well aware of their intruder.

  Esther probably had it. They’d gotten out alive once and they could do it again. But now that she was back here again, she could feel that room calling to her.

  I don’t fucking know, Esther said, jumping on the first one. Her knives worked, but would not cut through the suits like she wanted them to. It was enough to knock them over, but this time they kept getting up with tears in the suits that didn’t quite make it all the way through to whatever was underneath.

  If Esther had these guys, Indira could go take a look for herself. Who knew how long it was going to take for Penny and Matt to get themselves together again. She just wanted to know what was in there, to know if those screams were real. If Uncle Ness was really there.

  Esther was fine. Uncle Ness was not.

  Just one look. She could save him.

  We were at the car, and then those two start freaking out and head back, Esther told her as she worked her way through one of the suits and stabbed the man in the back. He made no noise at all before continuing to come after her. She kept moving, looping around the corridor to come up behind him and land on his back to stab him in the neck this time. As the knife came down on his spine, he dropped and something faint seemed to echo out of him. Those two are strong. But they’re both going a little out of their minds right now. I don’t know what’s going on with that room you sent them to but… Hey, what’s going on with you?

  Indira drifted a little closer before she stopped herself.

  Something’s wrong. Indira knew those weren’t things she would think. She couldn’t save anyone, not like this. Esther was her only chance, and she had to make sure Esther got out of here a second time. If she didn’t focus, she was going to die here. Shiraz had warned her of that. She needed to get them all out of there right now.

  But outside of Esther’s head, Indira couldn’t see very far. She couldn’t move at all. Not away from that room. She tried to pull herself away, but it held her fast in place, just inside the start of the webbing that crept down the hall. There was something else there, something trying to tell her to come closer. The same something that had tried to draw her in the first night pulled harder, yanking her mind fully into the hallway. She lost the feeling of her hands on the cool granite or the pain from her knees when she banged them into the floor. Her body faded away until she was only here.

  Though she had no physical presence, Indira wasn’t anywhere else right now. She could see Esther standing there, looking around as the connection to Penny and Matt severed in her head. She was probably thinking loudly. Behind her, Penny and Matt were still making muffled sounds in that room that made it clear that they were not happy that they had been locked inside. Now that she was completely here, Indira was almost sure there were bodies in that room with them, ones barely clinging to life.

  “Indira!” Esther yelled back at her, not knowing if it was going to work or not. She looked around, shaking her head as something else was coming at her, and went right back to business. She was getting tired, though, and Indira could tell that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up for much longer. She needed a break, but she was still keeping an eye on the door behind her.

  “Behind you!” Indira yelled at her, not knowing what else to do. She was terrified, not sure what was going on right now or how she was supposed to react to any of this. She shouldn’t be here. This couldn’t be happening. Nothing was supposed to be able to do this.

  Esther, thankfully, turned around immediately and got whoever the man was in the face, the knife going right through the glass of the mask and getting stuck there as he backed away. She didn’t dare take off, instead using the walls to run up and use to springboard off of before she came back down. She landed on his back, sending him flying into the ground. He stopped moving, though Indira wasn’t sure whether that was from a knife to the face or if she’d just actually managed to…

  Esther killed him. Indira had just seen a man die and she was unable to move.

  “Where the hell did you go?” Esther muttered, looking up and around. “Indira? You stay in my damn head and you tell me where these people are coming from or so help me…”

  “I’m not in your head anymore,” Indira told her. “Stop trying to think at me! I’m not in your head anymore! I just saw you kill a man!”

  “You need to calm the hell down,” Esther snapped at her, keeping her voice loose and leaning against a wall. “I have two magic users who are probably losing their minds that really want to go back to the crazy room or whatever it is and I can’t carry them both back on my own. And now the guards aren’t going down easy and they’re not following the easy patterns they were before. You need to calm down and help me.”

  “You… you need to get out of here,” Indira told her. She was already killing people, but worse was going to happen if Esther stayed. “You’re going to die if you stay here.”

  “It’s fine,” Esther told her. “I’m not leaving without the Wonder Twins. But I need you to calm down and be my eyes. I need to know how to get us out of here.”

  “I can’t see anything,” Indira said weakly, trying to force herself to be calm. She had no lungs to force air into, no heart to make calm down. All she had was her mind and the blind panic that threatened to consume her. “I’m stuck and I think there’s something here.”

  “There’s a lot of things here, Indira,” Esther said, clearly growing impatient with her as something else appeared at the end of the hall. “You’re not in any physical danger. These two are. We need to get them out of here. I’m not going to be able to just take people out until I build a wall tall enough that they can’t get to us anymore. Can you, I don’t know, at least calm them down or something?”

  Indira didn’t know if she could but it was something that she could focus on. She needed to do something to keep her mind off of how terrified she was. “I’ll try,” she said, pulling and stretching herself over to the door where she co
uld feel the two magic users trying to get themselves together and completely failing at it. She wasn’t able to move from her spot physically, but she could stretch her mind to the chaos that was happening at the door. She couldn’t keep herself from watching as Esther pushed back to her feet and two more people came down the hall on either side.

  She was not going to watch Esther die tonight. Esther would be fine. She would kill everyone else first.

  Indira tried to sort through the madness that consumed Penny and Matt. It was stranger than she thought it should be. They were still in there underneath it, but there was the same white stuff from the room sticking over their minds. The pair of them were close enough to the door that she could reach across and access them, though only with the barest touches of what could be her fingertips.

  She could feel something lingering over her, watching what she was doing. The same thing holding her in place, the same thing trying to pull her into the white room, it felt like it was keeping an eye on her now. She could almost feel the hot air on her face that wasn’t there, hear the sound of it breathing in her ear as it watched, the sound of a young woman delighted at everything Indira was doing.

  Indira needed to get them out of there. Now. And then figure out how to pull herself back as well. Esther would die if she didn’t hurry, and who knew what this presence was going to do to Indira. She needed to focus and get this done.

  Now that she wasn’t in their minds, Indira could tell what she was dealing with. There wasn’t so much a mess happening inside their minds as a cloud that hung over it, all of it threatening to pull her in and trap her even further if she wasn’t careful. She started pushing the clouds off of both of them, bit by bit and piece by piece, careful not to get even more of it stuck on her.

  The more she fell into the task of it, the calmer she became about it, finding herself able to relax and let herself work without thinking about their impending deaths. Esther was doing fine, as she could see for herself given that she couldn’t look away from watching her knives work. Indira’s attention was split between watching Esther as she took down the next two with more skill than she should have at her age and pushing the clouds out of Penny and Matt’s minds.

  “Left!” Indira called to Esther as someone came at her. There was a third in the fray, but Esther continued to move and weave between them, to move them against one another. More were coming, piling on slowly as she defended the door, but she wasn’t going to last much longer. They would need an exit and that would have to come from a couple sane magic users, just as soon as Indira managed to get them together again.

  She worked faster and felt Penny and Matt starting to break back through that cloud in their minds. Indira was grateful that they were finally starting to work with her as she went, but she worried over how their minds were working. They were in sync with one another, and she didn’t know if that was a good thing. Indira could tell what they were trying to do and, while she wasn’t sure combining their efforts was the best idea this time, she would take anything that gave Esther some help.

  Esther was now was fighting on a growing pile of hazmat suits and taking hits as the ammunition started to come out. From down the hall, there were people shooting first and not caring if they hit anyone on their way. And Esther wasn’t moving as quickly, getting grazed as she continued to defend herself.

  “Heads up!” Indira called to her, pulling away a little more of the white fuzz from their minds.

  Indira got the cloud off of them just enough, and Penny and Matt got through the door. They worked as one person rather than two as Indira kept picking the white off of them like lint, though it was getting harder to keep the pieces off of herself. She could barely move from how much covered her, but she let it happen. It was for the best for now, seeing the pair of them come to Esther’s side to get a look at what she was dealing with.

  Esther, bleeding from the arms and legs, armed with nothing at this point and reaching down to get a gun from one of the fallen. She hit the deck as soon as they were free. There was still gunfire being shot down the hall, strange ones that didn’t seem to have any actual bullets, but that didn’t seem to matter to either Penny or Matt.

  They joined hands and moved their other ones outward, pushing everyone else back. Esther rolled out of the way, gun in hand and trying desperately to catch her breath against the wall. Indira felt herself flicker under the onslaught, fading away from existence entirely if not for the white sticky stuff that she’d now trapped herself in. The halls rumbled around them as the spikes formed from the wall. They closed in and pushed the hazmat suited men, pinning them to one side or another and clearing a path for them to get moving out of there.

  Esther pushed herself to her feet, still leaning heavy against the wall. Indira watched as she popped a small pill into her mouth and swallowed, one she recognized from Uncle Ness’ stash that would keep her going for just a little longer. She looked exhausted and ready to drop. They needed to get out of there.

  Thanks to Penny and Matt, the way was now clear. Anyone with a hazmat suit was now trapped against a wall and unable to move, but Indira could already see where this was wrong. The way out was clear, but so was the way back to the room. And Penny and Matt were facing the wrong way for an exit.

  “Stop!” Indira tried to yell after them, but her voice was muffled as they went down the halls away from her. She didn’t dare move, feeling like any move closer to the white room would make it even harder to escape this place. She could barely move and could do nothing as Matt and Penny got away from her, their minds still laced with the white that they hadn’t completely shaken.

  Esther didn’t realize where they were going at first. She couldn’t have, otherwise she would have stopped them. The pair of them ran ahead, right back for the room. A moment later, Esther swore and followed after them.

  Indira was unable to do a thing to stop them, not even able to see if they made it as the ran away out of sight into the mess of white. She needed to do something, anything but she was stuck. If she moved closer, she wouldn’t be able to break free, but there was no moving backwards.

  And then Indira was moving. Something yanked her onward toward the room and she struggled to pull herself away. She formed a hand and then another, giving herself a physical presence in the hall so that she could at least try to claw her way away, but her hands were not real and they would not hold onto the walls as she was dragged forward.

  The pull slowed, Indira feeling curious eyes on her. How did you do that? a voice asked. It was the same one she had heard breathing before, a young woman.

  “Let me go!” Indira snapped at the voice. “I’m not going in there!”

  You can save them, the voice said. I can’t do it alone. You might be able to.

  “Who are you? Just let me go!”

  They called me Iris once. Come help me. I can’t stop them on my own.

  Indira managed to grab hold of something to stop the pull, though she was almost certain it was because Iris was letting her pause. She was surrounded by the white, but she could make out Esther catching up to Penny and Matt.

  “Wait up!” Esther said, finally grabbing both of them by the shoulder, gun holstered against her back and pulling them to a halt. “Wrong way. Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

  “She’s in there,” both of them said, their voices as in unison as their minds were. “I’m going back for her. You can go.”

  “Oh, that’s not good,” Esther said, looking around at the problems heading their way. Penny and Matt followed her gaze, another guard being swallowed up by the wall. Esther quickly turned back and used the butt of the gun over her shoulder to smack at their joined hands with enough force that Indira thought she might have broken something.

  They each fell to one side, injured hand moving to their head as their good one caught them on the ground. They took in deep breaths, not sure what was going on as the white started to swirl back over their minds and take hold. Indira tried to reach forwar
d to keep them clear, though only managed to pull the barest of wisps of the fog off of their minds as they straightened back up. Neither of them looked like they knew what was happening.

  “Come on,” Esther snapped at them. “We’re getting out of here now. Why are you here?” Her eyes fell on Indira, more angry than anything else. “You’re not actually here.”

  “I’ll get out on my own,” Indira told her. The lingering knowledge that Esther may still die in here weighed on her, and Indira knew there was nothing she could do to help.

  Esther grabbed Penny and pulled her forward. Penny snapped her arm back out of Esther’s reach and stood her ground, while Matt was looking more out of his mind than he should. He was dazed and lost and very confused about what was going on, the white much stronger on him than it had been on Penny. Penny had latched onto something for clarity, but there was nothing for him.

  “She’s in there,” Penny said. “I saw my mother in there. I’m not going back until I get her out!”

  “You’re going to die if you stick around here,” Esther snapped back at her. “And you’ve dragged me so far in that I’m going to die if I don’t use the two of you to get out of here. So how about you and your brother play nice and get us all out of here and you can pop back in after my ass is safe for your little suicide mission, okay?”

  You can save them. Stop trying to run.

  Matt barked out a word of something, though was very quickly cut off as gunfire started to echo through the halls. He got hit in the side and fell to the ground, erecting a shield around himself to keep the rest of the bullets off, the edges creeping slowly outward. The shield flickered as the impact continued to rain down on them and he tried to stretch it enough to cover them all, but there was no way he could. He was weak, half out of his mind, and bleeding out.