Junior Hero Blues

by J. K. Pendragon

  “Uh,” I said softly. “Where the hell are we?”

  The Raven glanced at me sideways. “I have no idea. Underground, I think.”

  There were no windows, and the place had a dim, sort of claustrophobic feel to it. The lights above us were buzzing fluorescents, and there was no sign of the trapdoor we’d obviously fallen through. I swallowed my rising panic and looked at the Raven, but she seemed momentarily stunned by the change of décor.

  A little boxy TV on a wooden stand in the corner came to life suddenly, it’s bulbous screen buzzing with static before an image of a thin man in a suit appeared.

  “Hello.” It was the same voice as the speaker upstairs. “I’m afraid that you are trespassing on private property. Please wait while we facilitate your arrival.” The man disappeared, replaced by static, then reappeared. “Hello. I’m afraid that you are trespassing on private property. An attendant will be with you shortly. Please wait.”

  “We’re . . . not going to wait, are we?” I asked.

  The Raven went to one of the walls and placed her hands on it. “I don’t want to use explosive force, it could trigger a collapse. But there must be a way in and out of here.”

  “Yeah, through the roof.”

  “We don’t need to go up yet,” she muttered. “Be careful what you say, they are probably watching us.”

  “Right,” I said. The Raven continued to search for a hidden door, so I did the same, feeling up the wall with my hands, and then (in a stroke of genius, I think) my echolocation. I made my way around the room, until suddenly my echolocation came back different, and I waved the Raven over. “I think this is the door.”

  She gave me a rare proud expression. “Right. Stand back. Actually, why don’t you do it?”

  “Blast through the wall?” I stared up at her with my eyes big. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Nothing like the field to test your abilities.” She stood back. “Go ahead.”

  I nodded and placed my hands on the floral wallpaper, pinpointing the door with little echolocation waves. Then I concentrated and sent a shock wave so hard that the Raven had to cover her ears. The door burst out, taking the wallpaper with it, and slid down the hallway ahead.

  “Huh.” The Raven stepped past me and out into the hallway. “Just like Tuvia.”

  “What did you say?” I rushed after her. “You worked with Tuvia? What were they like?”

  “Stay focused on the mission, please.”

  The hallway was more of the same décor. I was beginning to think this must be some sort of weird mind-games thing. If that was the case, it was certainly doing its job. I felt squicked out, and I wanted desperately to get out of there.

  We were at the end of the hallway, and on either side were more doors, these ones metal and sitting flush with the wall.

  “I imagine our prisoner is in one of these.” The Raven walked closer to examine one.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” I said. “Shouldn’t someone be attacking us by now?”

  “Yes. So let’s not waste time.”

  She handled the door this time, in a way that made it sort of implode on itself. With a glance around, she stepped into the room, her hands held up and glowing a threatening purple. I followed her warily.

  It was another old-lady room, this one with a big four-poster bed against the wall. There was a man lying on it apparently asleep.

  “It’s not Fritz.” The Raven went up to him and warily checked his vitals. “Hello, can you hear me?”

  I leaned over just as the man’s eyes snapped open. He flailed, trying and failing to hit the Raven, who caught his hand in hers. “Calm down. We’re here to help you.”

  “Get away!” he screamed, his voice strange and unearthly. “It’s a trick, it’s another trick! I won’t listen to you!”

  “Shush!” said the Raven, but the man continued to flail and attack her. “Blue, can you please—”

  I dived in to grab the man’s kicking legs, but not before he landed a good one on my cheek. Rage automatically swelled up through me at the pain, even though I knew it was probably not the guy’s fault.

  “Damn it.” She let go of the man’s hands long enough to touch her fingers to his temple. He went limp.

  “Great,” I said. “Now what?”

  The Raven grunted as she swung the man up over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Back into the hallway we went, the buzz from the fluorescent lights making my head feel numb, and the horrible wallpaper making my eyes hurt. The Raven pulled out her tablet again and frowned at it. “We’re not in the right place.”

  “Should we be going after the safe first?” I asked, and she pursed her lips.

  “No. Prisoners first. That door next, please.”

  I went and broke the next one down, blowing it off its hinges and into the room.

  “What the hell?” said a man’s voice from inside, and we rushed in. It was another floral room, but this one had what looked like a hospital bed, with a man lying, forcibly restrained on it. He lifted his head and looked at us. “Oh, thank god. This isn’t a trick, is it?”

  “Fritz.” The Raven sounded relieved and annoyed at the same time. “What happened?”

  “You’ve got to get out of here now,” said Fritz, struggling as the Raven set her unconscious passenger down and went to Fritz’s side. “It’s bigger than that safe. If they get to you—”

  “What do you mean, if they get to me?” she asked as she worked on breaking his restraints. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ivana.” Fritz sat up as she finished releasing his wrists, and gripped her forearm. “They have a Hound.”

  The Raven went stiff. “There are no Hounds in America.”

  “There’s one here. I’ve seen her. She’s been trying to get into my head. It’s only a matter of time.”

  The Raven finished breaking Fritz’s restraints, and he stood gingerly, favoring one of his legs.

  “Blue, help him.” The Raven picked up the unconscious man again, throwing him over her shoulder. “We’re leaving.”

  “But what about the other prisoners?” I asked. “The safe?”

  “Now.”

  I rushed to Fritz’s side and let him lean on me.

  “Oh, I remember you,” he said as we limped to the door. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “I didn’t really.” We hobbled through the door and came face-to-face with two Organization men in black suits, followed by a short old woman with curly gray hair and a floral dress.

  “Oh!” she said pleasantly. “Why, hello there.”

  The man over the Raven’s shoulder woke up suddenly and started jerking his body around. The Raven did her best to fight him, but he dragged his nails over her face before she could stop him, drawing blood. And then he went at her neck, like a freaking vampire, and when she threw him off him, he came rushing back at her. She could probably take him no problem normally, but he was berserk, like rabid. It was terrifying, and of course while I was staring, one of the Organization guys rammed right into me, sending Fritz toppling to the floor and me flying into the wall.

  I got up, doing my best to ignore that the wind had been knocked out of me, and rushed him, shoving him back into the other guy, who was going for the Raven. The first guy turned just in time and grabbed me by the throat, while the other one slammed his fist into my stomach. I saw stars for a moment, and then there was a flash of purple and a whumph as one of the guys was thrown away from me. The Raven’s hand was in the hair of the guy holding me, dragging his head backward while she brought a hand to his throat, incapacitating him with her powers. He dropped to the ground instantly.

  “I said we are leaving,” she growled. “We are leaving.”

  The last thing I saw was that creepy old lady coming at me, her face all distorted like some kind of animal, and her eyes pitch-black. Then there was this wall of purple fire around us, shooting up from the ground, and my stomach was doing somersaults that made that fall earlier feel
like a nice day on the beach.

  Then the fire burned down, and I dropped to my knees and puked, all over the League’s nice shiny metal floor.

  “What happened?” Captain Justice was there, rushing forward. He was waylaid by the berserk guy, who jumped him with an unearthly scream. The Raven moved quickly, pulling him off Captain Justice and knocking him out again so that he slumped to the floor.

  I managed to lift my head a little and look around. There were three people on the floor besides me. Fritz, who had fallen over and was clutching his leg, crazy scratchy guy, and the Organization guy who had been trying to choke me to death. He was properly passed out as well.

  “What just happened?” I still felt like my stomach was trying to turn itself inside out. “How did we get here?”

  “I teleported,” said the Raven gruffly. “Fail-safe. Now I need to go sit down.”

  Along with feeling nauseous, I was also kind of confused and angry. Why hadn’t Captain Justice or the Raven told me that we could have teleported out of there at any time? They’d let me freak out and think we were going to be captured. I almost wanted to yell at the two of them, but they were already glaring at each other, and I didn’t want them redirecting their wrath at me.

  “What,” said Captain Justice again, deadly serious, “happened?”

  The Raven really did look exhausted, and definitely not in the mood to be interrogated. “You want to know what happened? You sent both of us in there unprepared. You should have done your research! There was a Hound there.”

  “A Hound?” Captain Justice’s face went white. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am damn well sure. Ask him.” The Raven gestured at the man on the floor. On closer inspection, he didn’t look too good. His hair was gray and thinning, he had a scruffy beard, and his body was thin. Way too thin. “What do you think she did to him?”

  “What in the hell is going on?”

  Oh great. The Wolfhound. He and Lady Deathquake strode into the room, along with a bunch of other people, all of whom got to see me kneeling on the ground in my own puke. Great. This was worse than the bug thing.

  The Raven straightened up. “He—” she pointed viciously at Captain Justice “—is so desperate to get his bloody chip technology back, he almost sent us to our deaths. Or worse.”

  Captain Justice seemed remarkably unoffended. “Did you retrieve the safe?”

  The Raven’s nostrils flared. “No.”

  “It’s my fault,” said Fritz from the floor. “It’s my fault it got stolen in the first place.”

  “It’s not your fault!” I said, turning to him.

  “Blue, are you all right?” That was Lady Deathquake, coming to kneel next to me. She put an arm around my shoulders and helped me up. She smelled nice, and even with her mask on I could tell she was really pretty. I wondered why she was with a loser like Wolfhound.

  “I’m okay,” I said, more to reassure her than anything, because I really, really wasn’t okay.

  Captain Justice looked like he was thinking hard. “I can see that I’ve made several mistakes today.”

  “Finally you’re talking sense,” spat the Wolfhound.

  “I’m sorry I was desperate to retrieve the technology,” Captain Justice continued, ignoring Wolfhound and turning to the Raven. “I put you and Blue in danger because of my own stubbornness.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said. This was all a little unfair to the captain. But he was going along with it.

  “And I’m sorry to you too, Blue.” He turned to me. “I treated this like a training mission when it was obviously something more serious than that. I didn’t brief you fully, and I’ll understand if I’ve lost your trust.”

  “Who cares about him?” The Wolfhound snorted. “If you can’t guarantee that the Organization doesn’t have access to that technology, then I want this damn chip out of me right now.”

  “Fritz,” said the Raven. “Did you tell him the pass code?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Fritz. “But I—I don’t know, she might have gotten into my head and made me forget about it. I don’t know anything, really.”

  “Wait.” I went over to one of the sleek silver chairs and collapsed into it. “Who is she? What’s a Hound?”

  “A psychic,” said Lady Deathquake quietly. “A very powerful one, able to brainwash and manipulate people’s minds.”

  “They look human.” The Raven ground her teeth. “But they’re not. At least not anymore.”

  Captain Justice nodded stiffly. “If the Organization has a Hound on their side, they could be amassing an army. We need to be prepared for this.”

  “And we can start by not making it easy for them to track down every single one of us,” said the Wolfhound. “Chips. Out. Now.”

  “You can elect to have yours removed at any time,” said Captain Justice. “But they are a valuable resource, and the decision to have the program discontinued would have to be put to a vote.”

  The Wolfhound took a menacing step toward the captain. “And while we’re voting, they’ll get into that safe—”

  “We will attempt to retrieve the safe again,” said Captain Justice, standing his ground. “Within a couple of days, at the latest. Now that we know what we’re dealing with, I’ll put together an appropriate team for the situation.”

  “There is no appropriate way of dealing with a Hound,” said the Raven darkly. “This will not end well.”

  So Fritz and the poor brainwashed guy went to be treated by the resident psychic. All I wanted to do was go home and sleep, but I had to give a detailed statement about everything that had gone down first, and then I had to trundle over to the psychic’s office so she could check that I hadn’t been brainwashed. She took the opportunity to ask me how I was feeling. I wanted to say that I was scared, and kind of freaked out, and that Captain Justice’s decision to not “brief me fully” had left a really bad taste in my mouth, even if he had apologized. I didn’t know how to verbalize all that at the time though, so I just said, “Tired.”

  “Well, maybe you can come back in a couple of days when you’re rested up.” The psychic’s name was Chelsea, and she was actually really nice. She had brown skin and big natural hair, and she sat with her stocking feet sideways on her couch across from me, which I thought was kind of cool. “I’m actually a registered therapist too, and the service is free for you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe. I’m not really into getting my mind read though.”

  “I don’t read or tamper with anyone’s mind, not without their explicit permission.”

  “Oh.” That was a bit of a relief. “Well, maybe, but for now I should get home. I’m not, you know, brainwashed, am I?”

  “No. I’d be able to tell.”

  “So . . .” I tilted my head. “What’s the difference between you and a Hound, then?”

  “I can’t control people.” She shook her head. “All I can do is read what they’re thinking, momentarily confuse them. But Hounds . . . well, they can change a person’s mind. Make them really believe something, make them loyal, even when the Hound isn’t there physically to manipulate them. Also, I was born with my powers. Hounds are made.”

  “How?”

  “Well . . .” She shifted and brought her feet up under her. “It is possible for even low-level psychics to break into someone’s mind, if they have enough time, although it usually also breaks the person. Hounds are . . . created, I suppose, when a person resists that initial break-in. Something in them changes, they become less than human. Or more, I suppose, depending on how you look at it. They’re very dangerous, and also very rare.” She sighed. “I don’t know how the Organization ended up with one working for them, but it’s worrying. It means we can’t trust anyone.” She turned away, forcing a small smile. “I suppose this means I’ll be getting a lot of work in the near future.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be okay,” I said. “I mean, you can remove the brainwashing, right?”

  “Yes. Bu
t only if they consent to it. I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it otherwise.”

  “Right,” I said. “Morals and everything.”

  “Something has to separate us from the Organization,” she replied. “I can see you’re tired. Why don’t you head home?”

  “Yeah.” I stifled a yawn. “Okay.”

  I didn’t realize that it was four in the morning until I changed into my street clothes in the alley outside our apartment and pulled out my cell phone to check my messages There were ten missed calls from my parents, and when I got upstairs and went inside, they were sitting on the couch, still fully dressed.

  My stomach sank down into my shoes. “Um. H-hola. You guys are still up.”

  “It’s four in the morning,” said my mother. “Where were you?”

  “I got called into work, remember?”

  “Until four.”

  “We had . . . cleaning.”

  “No Pizza Hut in town is open past one,” said my father. “Javier, where were you?”

  “I . . . just . . . out.”

  “Were you with your boyfriend?” asked my mother. “Because it’s okay if you were, but we expect you to tell us.”

  “No, I wasn’t with him.”

  “Then where?” said my father. “Javier, you understand, we give you a lot of freedom, but in return we expect you to be honest with us.”

  They were both sitting there staring at me, looking upset, with their faces all lined, and I wanted so badly to just tell them. But I was so tired, and everything hurt, and I knew that there was a chip in my butt that could potentially lead a bunch of Organization people right to them, and that made me feel guilty, and worried, and scared. Some really scary stuff had gone down, and was going down, and I wasn’t ready . . . I wasn’t ready to talk about it with anyone. None of it.

  “I’m almost eighteen,” I said. “I can do what I want.”

  I hated myself as soon as I said it. It was awful, and I expected them to go off on me like they had when I’d left the fridge open overnight, or banged a hole in the bathroom wall. But instead my father just said, “Fine. Go to bed. We’ll talk about it later.” Which was, like, ten times worse.