Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City)

by Petit, Blake M.

  STAT shook him again. “Come on, buddy, you’ve got nothing to say for yourself?”

  “Just goodbye,” Ethan said. He kicked out and hit STAT in the kneecap. The sudden pain made the Cape drop him and Ethan rolled away. It was a gamble, but STAT didn’t see a lot of combat, mostly spending his time in the field healing up other heroes who got shot, stabbed, Karate’d, whatever. He could use his bioelectric shocks offensively too, obviously, but his attacks weren’t nearly as strong as his defensive powers. Back on his feet, and with STAT bending over to clutch his knee, Ethan punched him in the face, sending him onto his back and holding his chin. He felt bad about brutalizing the good doctor, but just a little. STAT had interrupted him, after all. He wasn’t there to steal anything… at least nothing they would need.

  He rushed down the hall, easily evading the few nurses and orderlies roaming the halls at this hour. There was a security guard at the entrance who waved a Billy club in his direction, but Ethan whipped out a telescoping staff he’d kept strapped to his thigh. With the flick of a wrist, he swatted the club out of the guard’s hand. With a second swing, he’d connected to the guard’s forehead and put him down. He felt worse about him than STAT, to be frank, but he wasn’t going to let either of them put him in jail for trespassing in the hospital after hours.

  He pulled out a Hawaiian shirt from his backpack and put it on as he ran, peeling off his black ski mask and gloves and throwing them in a dumpster. It may not be the greatest camouflage in the world, but at least anyone who saw him leave the hospital wouldn’t automatically connect him to the man in black. The Hawaiian shirt also neatly covered his energy reservoir, although if you looked closely at his chest, you could still see a small, blue glow.

  The next pieces of his device snapped onto the energy reservoir easily. And why not, hadn’t he designed them that way? The hard part was disguising all of the pieces under his clothing – a few plastic cases the size of a pack of cigarettes weren’t that hard to disguise, but other pieces were a little bigger. No big deal when he was on his own, hiding in the Clinic or sneaking up to the roof of Simon Tower after hours. This was different. It was taking a risk, going out in public for this next attempt, but there would be no better time to try to test it on Lifespeed than at this charity race. The super-speedster from Siegel City was racing Centerville’s resident racing guru, Speedburn. Actually, studying her powers might work too, but Ethan had spent more time studying Lifespeed and felt he had a better understanding of just how his powers worked. Speedburn would be a wild card, and if her running speed didn’t come from the same place as Lifespeed’s, he could be putting himself at terrible risk if the two were incompatible.

  The race track was laid out in a circle between Siegel City and Centerville. Either of the heroes could traverse the distance between cities almost faster than it takes to tell, so they were going to do a 500-lap race, tracked and verified by the Swiss timer company that was sponsoring the event. The start and finish lines were both in Lee Park, and Ethan had to get there two days ahead of time to ensure a spot close to the track. V3OL of the Spectacle Six was there to serve as the starting pistol for the race, literally, as he had a cap gun attachment in his huge arsenal of weaponry. The advantages of being a combat android, Ethan supposed. He knew the robot could also detect weapons, and as he came out to the starting line he was clearly looking over the crowd. Ethan wasn’t wearing anything that could be used offensively, though, and he’d have to hope V3OL’s sensors wouldn’t register the rest of the advanced tech on his body.

  The two speedsters stood at the starting line, leaning over and waiting for the signal to begin. As they did so, Ethan slipped a hand into his pocket and touched a switch that activated his device. V3OL fired his starter pistol and the two racers vanished in the blink of an eye. A few seconds later there was a tremendous wooshing sound, signaling that the first lap had been completed already, followed by another woosh seconds later still. According to the timer, the split from which was displayed on a huge plasma screen set up in the park, Speedburn was ahead of Lifespeed by 0.0000007 microseconds. To someone who moved as fast as they did, Ethan supposed, that was a huge margin.

  By lap 50, the energy reservoir was already beginning to tick away underneath Ethan’s shirt. He dared a peek down and saw a red light glowing close to his chest. That was no good – for the sort of energy he was trying to pick up from Lifespeed, it should be glowing orange. He would need to get closer. Shaking his head, preparing himself for something that would severely suck if it went wrong, Ethan shoved his way through the crowd and flipped over the safety rail onto the track.

  “Hey, somebody get that guy out of there!”

  Ethan timed it so that he made it into the track between the gusts of wind and streaks of color that signaled the passing speedsters. He made it into the air tunnel that had developed in the gutter in the middle of the racers. There were a few gasps of surprise, a few people yelling at him, but nobody moved to pull him out and the streaks that marked the paths of the speedsters continued their race. Against his chest, the energy reservoir began to glow and spark yellow. He didn’t feel anything, of course, he’d shielded himself too well for that, but he could almost sense the batteries charging, filling up, and—

  He broke free from his trance when a hand grabbed the back of his shirt. There was a whirlwind around him, and the world didn’t stop spinning when the wind ended. He almost couldn’t tell that Speedburn was holding him up, and although she was wearing a full face-mask, there was something about the shape of the jaw and brow beneath that suggested extreme agitation.

  “Look, buddy, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this is a race. Even if we’re really just playing for bragging rights, I get kind of irritated when somebody stumbles onto my track.”

  “I – I fell down,” he said, sounding dazed. “What happened? Where am I?” He hoped that the vertigo from Speedburn’s “rescue” would make him sound convincingly perplexed about how he got there.

  Lifespeed stood next to Speedburn, arms folded. “What’s that fancy box he’s holding? It looks like something Particle would put together with Legos.”

  “It’s nothing! It’s—“

  Ethan tried to tighten his grip on the device, but even if his head wasn’t still spinning, he couldn’t have matched the woman’s liquid motions. He didn’t even know how it happened, but soon she was holding him in one hand and his invention in the other, dangling it from the handle like a dead fish. If he couldn’t get it back from her and get away, everything he’d done so far would be wasted. It was time for a desperate ploy – he would tell the truth. Or at least as much of it as he could.

  “It’s an energy sampler,” he said. “I’m trying to study superhuman abilities. Trying to figure out how they work.”

  Lifespeed drew Ethan’s face close into his own. “And why would you want to know something like that?”

  “You’re a whole new field of science! I just want to know where the power comes from, how you generate it, how you control it! The guy who figures out how super powers work is going to go down in the history books next to Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin. Who wouldn’t try to figure it out?”

  The two Capes looked at each other, then Speedburn gestured towards the assembled viewers. From out of the mob, another Cape appeared – this one in a dark coat and black mask. His eyes were shielded, but the expression on his face was intense. “Have you met my partner?” Speedburn asked. “His name is Sleuth. And he can tell a few things about you. Sleuth, is this guy holding any weapons?”

  Sleuth looked Ethan over, and then turned his gaze towards the device. As he did so, Ethan saw a small bubble of light blue appear in the energy reservoir. Sleuth looked back at Speedburn. “Nothing here.”

  “Anything that could be used as a weapon?”

  Another few moments of scrutiny, another blue spark. “I don’t think so.”

  Speedburn looked at Ethan, then put him down. “I still don’t trust you. I’m goin
g to take this little toy down to Particle. If he says it’s okay, you’ll get it back. Until then, just sit tight. We’ll be in touch with you soon.”

  “In touch?” Ethan tried not to show the panic on his face. He didn’t know if his explanation would satisfy Particle or not, but the thought of letting his work in the hands of one of the city’s most well-known scientific minds was horrifying. “How are you going to be in touch?”

  Speedburn smiled and held up Ethan’s wallet, handing it over to him. She really did have fast hands. “I’ve got your contact info,” she said. “Don’t worry, you won’t be needing mine.”

  He was not terribly surprised later that day when he got a phone call that told him, without any trace of ambiguity, he was to report to Simon Tower at exactly 5 p.m. He wasn’t wild about going back there, to the heart of the city’s Cape population, but if he didn’t get the device back he would have to start all over again, and he’d put entirely too much work into this to do that.

  He was surprised, though, when he saw who was waiting for him when he stepped into the mostly-empty lobby: the flag-draped Dr. Noble, looking just as pleased as he did the last time Ethan encountered him. “Lookie lookie who’s back at the Tower. I thought I told you to drop this superhero stuff, pal.”

  “Did you?” Ethan asked. “Sorry, I guess I was preoccupied with my little toys.”

  Noble rolled his eyes and ushered Ethan into an elevator. Instead of turning to push a button, he spoke a command that started the vehicle: “Laboratory.” Then, instead of feeling a slight tug down as the elevator moved up, Ethan was startled to feel his stomach leap into his throat as the car plunged into the earth.

  The doors opened and Noble practically shoved Ethan out into an enormous room full of computers, monitors, scanners, half-constructed devices of a thousand potential uses, and a small, smiling black man in a blue-and-red suit. His costume, unlike the tights most heroes wore, was plated with body armor, and equipped with more gadgets and doodads than Ethan had ever seen before. On the table in front of him was Ethan’s device.

  “Ethan Hellig!” he said gregariously. “So nice to meet you. They call me Particle.”

  “I know,” Ethan replied. With the Tin Man retired, Particle was the undisputed tech king of Siegel City’s Cape population. And he was studying Ethan’s device. Ethan’s hands started twitching.

  “Calm down, Ethan, you’re not in any trouble.”

  “Don’t tell him that,” Noble snapped.

  “Relax, Doctor. So, this is an interesting little apparatus Speedburn brought in. You told her it was an energy sampler. That’s not quite right, is it?”

  As sincere as Particle sounded, Ethan didn’t feel much better being told he wasn’t in trouble. Still, he decided it was best to stick to the truth. “No, it’s not. It’s actually an energy collector.”

  “That’s what I thought. And that’s why you’ve been walking all over the city, having encounters with as many different Capes as possible. This thing is designed to gather different energy types and synthesize them into something else. You want to use this to figure out how to give yourself our super powers.”

  Ethan didn’t answer. That was close enough to the truth that he knew Particle would never surrender the device.

  “Moron,” Noble said, and Ethan didn’t think he was directing his ire towards Particle. Again, the pristine public image was gone, and Ethan felt like he was in the presence of a schoolyard bully. “What did I tell you about trying something stupid like this?”

  “Now, Doctor Noble, let’s try to be understanding here. Don’t you remember what it was like before you got your powers? You can hardly blame the man for trying to aspire to great things. But Ethan, here’s the thing I don’t understand. This device of yours is designed to collect several different forms of energy, but there’s only one kind in here.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not sure who you’ve tried using this on, but I’m not detecting different signatures in the energy reservoir. So either this thing has a leak, or the most recent type it’s encountered has overtaken and neutralized the rest.”

  “What’s the most recent type it’s showing?”

  “Well, Speedburn didn’t know how to shut it off, so it kept collecting different energy samples until it got to my lab. And since I don’t have any powers myself – I’m strictly a techie, you understand – that means the last person whose energy readout it detected was the man in the room with me at the time. That would be Doctor Noble here.”

  Ethan had to fight back a smile.

  “I like your elevator,” Ethan said. “Voice activated tech is a lot of fun, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ethan barked out one word: “DEFENSE!”

  From its perch on the table, Ethan’s energy collector suddenly sparked. A jolt of energy struck Particle in the chest and shocked him unconscious. Ethan broke into a run, dodging a few jolts from Dr. Noble as he ran. He made it to the device, but Noble sent a searing blast into the table, right where Ethan’s hand would have been if he hadn’t pulled it away. Noble let fly with a few more shocks. “Sneaky little bastard. Keep your hands off that thing!”

  “SHIELD!” Ethan shouted, and the device threw up a cube of energy around both itself and Ethan. Noble’s next attack sparked against the cube, but it had no effect on either Ethan or his prize. The cube lasted only for a second, but it was long enough for Ethan to get a hand on the device and dive down behind Particle’s table. Another jolt of energy burned the air above him, and he smelled an electric tinge in the air.

  Noble started to hurl blasts above the table and to both sides, blocking any possible escape route Ethan could have used, but that was okay. He turned around so that he was facing Noble, keeping the table in-between them of course, and put both hands on his device. The hidden grips on either side fit his fingers just as he’d designed them, and both thumbs rested on the triggers that, to Particle, had probably looked like valves. He faced the front display away from his chest and, holding his breath, stood up so that he was facing Noble directly.

  “Guess what this little toy is going to do next, Doc.”

  Noble didn’t answer, but instead trained his energy directly against the device, aiming at the blinking readout like a dartboard. When Noble’s next bolt struck, the device did exactly what Ethan wanted it to do. The device tugged on Noble, leeching more energy out of his body and mingling it with the power already contained in the reservoir. It kept tugging the energy like a vacuum until Ethan let go of the left trigger. Noble, literally drained, fell to the floor in a heap.

  The glow on the energy collector was white now. It was time to hit the trigger on the right side.

  All of the energy contained in the device turned backwards, pouring into Ethan’s body. The copper mesh wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable since he found a way to weave it into a body stocking, but it was just as effective. The energy spread out through the mesh and into his skin. It felt like he was being stung by a thousand bees, everywhere at once. The bees didn’t stop at a sting, though, they were almost burrowing into his skin. He held on to the device as long as he could, even falling to his knees to keep the strength in his hands, but after torturous minutes, he released the trigger and the pain stopped. The device clattered to the floor and he slumped over, his body crackling.

  It worked. Oh, he would run the tests, he would go through the trials he had set up back in his own lab, but he could tell. It worked.

  He was ready to test it when he felt the kick in his gut. Noble was standing over him, face twisted into an expression of rage, a slight glow in his eyes to indicate where his power used to be. It would come back, Ethan knew, Noble generated it from within, but it had served its purpose.

  Noble kicked him again, spitting on Ethan’s cheek when the blow made him roll onto his back. “Nice try, Tinker Toy. Looks like your little Trojan Horse backfired, though.”

  Ethan laughed, wiping the saliva from his cheek w
ith a sleeve. “Oh, Noble, don’t you wish?”

  The energy – not exactly the same as Noble’s, but close enough – brimmed inside of him and erupted from his hands, lancing out and consuming the Cape in tendrils of pure white light. Noble shrieked and fell down. Ethan was on his feet before Noble could look up, and he hit him with another blast, then one more just to keep him down.

  “Don’t worry, Doc, I’m not here to kill you. Not worth it to have an entire city full of Capes hunting for my blood. No, I’m actually gonna do you a favor.”

  “Favor?”

  “Well sure. You want everyone in Siegel to recognize you as the top hero, right? Well how do you ever expect to get that status without a good, old-fashioned arch enemy?” Ethan laughed, picking up his device, then another wire-covered cube from Particle’s work table. “No idea what this is, but I’ll bet it’s worth something. Remember how you told me to use my brain to make money? Pal, I was way ahead of you.”

  Ethan walked over to the elevator, forcing the doors open with a burst of energy, then using another burst to force the car down below him. Stepping into the empty shaft, he hovered in the air and began to glow.

  “Money’s not everything, of course. Sometimes it’s just about proving you’re the smartest guy in the room.”

  “We know your name… We know your address…”

  Ethan shrugged. “Neither of them matter to me anymore. I’m going to do things Ethan Hellig never could. Call me… call me… Oh, damn, I was supposed to have a good exit line, wasn’t I? Oh… call me Photon Man, I guess. Not exactly accurate, but it has the right theatrical ring to it. Have a good one!”