The City That Heroes Built

by Daniel Pierce

  “Nah, shots.” He pulled the collar of his shirt down to show the scar on his neck. “Right into the neck. Better than the spine or the brain. They monitor you pretty intensely. First couple of days you get it strapped to a table. They've got to check to see which combo they need to use on you. Wrong mix it doesn't work. Too much will poison you.”

  “What do you mean, 'poison'? Like a drug overdose?”

  “Call it whatever you want. The right mix of chemicals is designed to damage your body and brain, alter your mind. What do you think happens when they make a mistake?”

  “Nothing good, I'd imagine,” I said.

  “If anyone would even realize it at all. How do you know if someone in there is drugged the right amount or not? Look, that's all I said to Ben, that's all I'm saying to you.”

  “Thanks,” Calliope said. “We appreciate it.”

  “Don't come back,” Cortez said to me. “I see you around, I won't wait to guess about your threats.”

  We walked back to the car.

  “Didn't know you had that much going on,” Calliope said. “Be nice to know you were going to flip out before we got here.”

  “I didn't realize that I was going to,” I said. “I never even think about that stuff. I'm sorry.”

  “No worries. You want to keep going down the list? San Diego or the north will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “I think we've confirmed that he was interested in Leonidas and the Citadel. Not sure that's connected with his death, though. I'd like to do some more research before we spend any more time traveling.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Let's head back.”

  We did. I drove. On the way, I asked her, “Why are you helping me?”

  She was slow to respond. “I figure I owe you for helping me. Your cause is noble, if ultimately pointless. I've got the time. It's interesting work.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I've got other things to do, but maybe you can get your teleporting pal to help you out.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said.

  “So, you going to explain that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “How you've got someone like that on speed-dial? You a supra, too?”

  “No, just met him through a friend of a friend.”

  “You better be careful. You hang around people like that, people will assume that you've got powers as well. Could make life difficult.”

  “I'll be careful.”

  “Famous last words,” Calliope said.

  I left her unlocking her office, and continued walking up to my apartment. Something occurred to me and I stopped and turned back to Calliope.

  “Everyone that Glory Knight talked to was a supra. Everyone probably knows other supras. None of his contact cared if he was asking about the Citadel, but what if someone else did? If they knew he wasn't asking about the conditions because he cared about the humane treatment of prisoners, they'd have to figure out that he was asking about a jailbreak, right?”

  “Stands to reason.”

  Something else occurred to me. I went cold.

  “That's all I've got,” I said. “Good night.” I hurried to my apartment. I speed dialed Cal.

  “Coin out,” I said. “I need an extract.”

  Like that, he appeared, grabbed me, we appeared in the armory. I take pride in not puking. I sat on the couch.

  “What's up?” he asked.

  “I know who killed Glory Knight,” I said.

  “Should we get the others?”

  “Yeah, Fiver and Jen. No one else.”

  “Simon?”

  “Is he in?”

  “He's a consulting supra.”

  “Yeah, Simon, if he's around,” I said.

  Cal got on the phone, and then popped out. I worked out the problem in my head. He popped back in with Jen and Fiver. Simon walked down the stairs. I stood. I started pacing before I started talking. Jen and Fiver took the couch, Simon stood, Cal pulled up a chair, A.C. Slater style.

  “I spent the day following in Glory Knight's footsteps. Calliope got the same list of ex-Citadel residents that he had, she says from the same guy. He had coffee in my building before he started his visits. I thought he must have visited her. She denied it. I'm not convinced.

  “We met with Salute, the Nillionaire, and Full Tilt. Black Feather slammed her door in our face. The three that talked to us told us the same story. He said he was working for Supra Rights Watch, wanted to know about the conditions in the Citadel, how they were drugged, confined, and so forth. They didn't know he was Glory Knight. None had a reason not to talk to him; none had a reason to lie. Since they believed he was interested in the conditions in the Citadel, there was nothing suspicious about his questions.

  “But if you knew he wasn't part of the Supra Rights Watch, what would you think? Jailbreak. Why else ask the questions? Why else lie about who you are? If he was killed because of this, it wouldn't have been a bad guy that killed him. It'd be someone who wanted to prevent the jailbreak. That means either someone from the Citadel, or someone who put a lot of people into the Citadel. Maybe some ones.

  “I let it slip that someone hacked Glory Knight's hard drive for me and that's how I knew he was involved with Leonidas' sister. Calliope said they'd kill to keep their encryption capability out of other people's hands. Maybe they'd kill to stop a jailbreak. Maybe it was an accident. Full Tilt said that the wrong combination of power dampening drugs could kill. What if someone slipped the drugs to Glory Knight to try to stop him? They used the wrong amount, and it killed him. Or maybe they've got enough influence to get the cops to call it a poisoning, even if it wasn't. I don't know, we might not ever know, but it had to be a good guy that did it. I think it was the Guardian Angels. It had to be someone active, and someone Glory Knight would let in to his house. I figured that out, and I realized that I was standing a couple of feet away from an ex-Guardian Angel. She was helping me because she wanted to figure out who I was working with and what I knew.”

  That's all I had. I stopped talking and stopped moving. Everyone took it in. I think they figured things the same as I did.

  “Thin,” Cal said.

  Fiver said, “It's a good theory, except for the lack of evidence.”

  “Everything fits in that story,” I said.

  “Everything fits in the original story about an old supra's suicide,” Fiver said.

  I said, “Glory Knight had been poisoned by Bride of Scorpions. It nearly killed him, but he survived. If that didn't kill him, what poison could? Why would he even try to poison himself?”

  “How do you know that?” Jen asked.

  “Nillionaire knew. Calliope checked with someone, I'm guessing Sunday who she seems to keep in touch with still. You guys heard the story from Cal, right?”

  “Yeah, we heard,” Jen said.

  “You've got a theory,” Fiver said. “You need to prove the theory. That means evidence not explanations. Right now, the only thing you have is the police report and what Cal and Jen told you. You need to gather more evidence. And stop being paranoid. If Guardian Angels were going to kill Glory Knight, they wouldn't have faked a suicide. You're overthinking this.”

  I felt properly chastised. I picked up my coin when Cal came to get me, so he didn't have a teleport location at my place. He was kind enough to drive me home. He invited himself in.

  “No point in going through all this stuff by yourself,” he said. “Order a pizza and I'll start looking through it. Beers, too, if you've got any, I think better that way.”

  “I thought Fiver was the functional alcoholic in the group,” I said.

  “He's not really that functional,” Cal said. “Anyway, I don't do the thinking stuff very well. Cold beer helps me focus and read.”

  I handed him a beer. He started reading. He went right through until the pizza arrived.

  “I thought my theory was pretty good when it popped into my head,” I said. “Sherlock Holmes moment, you know, just in time to help me
escape Calliope's treachery, the big reveal. Sorry for wasting your time.”

  “No worries,” Cal said. “Good instincts. Might keep you alive one day. But your problem is that you're the wrong kind of smart.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You think you're going to solve a problem by thinking about it, instead of working on it. You're banking on inspiration.”

  “Not perspiration.”

  “Yeah, like people that read about fitness, but never get to the gym. You'll like a fat kid who is suddenly going to discover the right combination of almonds and broccoli, spend three weeks working out, and get fit in time for spring break.”

  “I just spent all day driving around chasing Glory Knight's last days.”

  “Almonds and broccoli,” Cal said. He tapped the pile of police reports. “The gym.”

  He started reading. He took notes. He searched the Internet. He read for an hour. He stood up. “I'll be right back.” I looked over the things he had been reading, the inventory of things at the house, things taken for evidence, notes from the interview of Marissa Courtney, coroner's report. He wasn't right back, but after an hour he called me.

  “Coin out,” he said.

  I put the coin on the floor. “Coin is out.”

  He appeared and put away his phone. He was wearing his combat gear, all black, web gear holding equipment, flashlights and smoke grenades.

  “Where'd you go?” I asked.

  “The gym,” he said. He held up a wine glass with dark purple lipstick on it.

  “From the dishwasher?”

  “Wasn't on the evidence list, and we found it after the cops were done. They didn't dust for prints. They didn't find it. How did they identify Marissa? Latent prints,” Cal said. “Those are the hard to find prints, randoms on tables and doorknobs. Read the report, read the interview. She wasn't there the night he died. She was interviewed because she was the only other person in the house. They didn't ask her if she did it, they did ask when the last time she saw him alive was, her answer was that day. The cop wrote 'Last one to see him alive' with a question mark, albeit a sloppy one. The electronic report left the question mark as a period, treated it like a fact. There's also no statement from her entered into evidence. If she had discovered the body, or been a witness, they would have taken a statement. The cops didn't put her at the scene of the crime. She was simply one person they could contact about him. They also interviewed a bunch of people at his golf club, but you missed that.”

  “His encrypted hard drive had emails to Marissa,” I said. “It's not like we made her up. It's that stack of print outs you ignored.”

  “You're looking for motive,” Cal said. “Look for the killer instead.” He held up the glass. “I missed this in the dark. So did Jen.”

  “Purple lipstick,” I said.

  “And no prints on the bowl.”

  “Fancy lady like Marissa Courtney wouldn't wear purple lipstick.”

  “Women's fashion is weird. But she's definitely wouldn't drink. She's a devout Mormon.”

  “No fingerprints at all means gloves,” I said.

  “It means a social meeting with someone who Glory Knight would not be surprised to see wearing gloves.”

  “A hero.”

  “A killer,” Cal said.

  “Doesn't exonerate the Guardian Angels, either.”

  “It's not Sentinel's style. Sunday didn't wear gloves when she came here.”

  “Oubliette would have just evaporated him,” I said

  “Ravelin? Seems too defensive.”

  “Persephone.”

  “Only shows up in the summer, drains the life out of people,” Cal said. “Possibly some sort of death-power.”

  “I've got a file on her,” I said. “But no one really knows a lot about her. Most people think she's a teacher. Hence the summers.”

  “Makes sense if she's gone rogue from the Guardian Angels,” Cal said. “It explains the fake suicide. This is what you need to ask Calliope about. And get find out if there is a link between her and Glory Knight. Get back into his email and see if there is a connection.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But do I invite Calliope in on this? What if she warns off Persephone or covers for her?”

  “Find the link first. Research her, research him. Research them.”

  “Okay.”

  “I'll get Fiver to check into the Bio-Citadel. See if we can't rattle the same cage as Glory Knight.”

  “I can keep after the people he interviewed,” I said. “If that's what did the rattling, they might poke their heads out again.”

  Cal checked his phone. “Jen. Calling a meeting, soonest. Club House. You coming?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  July 29, 2021

  We made it into the armory just after midnight. Skyborne and Slowburn were there with Fiver and Jen. It was Skyborne's turn to pace and rant.

  “Someone came after my family. Found them in San Diego. They had a message, I leave California, or they kill my family. They knocked my dad out of his wheelchair, shoved my mom to the ground, kicked in the TV and all that.”

  “You got anything to go on?” Fiver asked.

  “Yeah.” Skyborne pulled out his phone. “Security video uploads into the cloud. You know these guys?”

  “I will. Screencap those and send them to me. You got a place for your family to go?”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “On the road, heading for Phoenix.”

  “Tell them to head to Vegas. Figure they can blend in there. I'll get them a room in my name. I'll put a team together to guard them.”

  “Who?”

  “The Chill. Simon. You'll hire Calliope. Chances are they don't get used, but they give us a hard target and a varied skill set. Leaves the five of us to sort out these two clowns.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tom, you want to hire Calliope?”

  “I think it's better if Skyborne goes direct. I don't want her to connect me to you guys.”

  “Okay, I'll text the Chill on my way to locate our targets. You guys talk Simon into it.” Fiver headed up the stairs with Skyborne. Cal disappeared.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “I've got something you can help out with,” Jen said. “I'm switching to the King Scarab armor. It's a lot less robust, with the sensors, and comms, and all that. It's got datalink capability and I'm able to upload real time video and comms, totally encrypted. Let's give it a go next time I'm out. There's no internal display, so I can push a location, but I can't use any navigation. I can't interface with any computers. Eventually, I'll try to build a computer and keyboard in, maybe a voice recognition system, but I have no idea how I'll get that to work.”

  “So basically you need me to give directions.”

  “And do any research we need spur of the moment. And update me on the Laker scores, but that's not until next season.”

  “No baseball scores?”

  “Meh.”

  “I guess I should be happy I can be useful.”

  “You also get this,” Jen said. She handed me a laptop form her bag. “It's a beast, battery won't last long.”

  “It's heavy as hell. How old is this?”

  “It's the best thing you can buy, loaded with all of my keys and defenses. The browser is custom with bookmarks to the power company, city traffic department and a few other important places. This will let us shape the battlespace a little better.”

  She opened it up and showed me around. “When I transmit video, it'll show in this program. Boxes here, here and here. GPS and mapping is here. It's pretty intuitive, just like Google maps.” She went through how to manipulate traffic lights and the power grids. “We won't actually do it, because their alarms will go off and it'll cause a lot of problems. I don't know how many repeat performances we'll get out of this.”

  “Can't someone find the frequency and monitor this information?”

  “Nope. The
military call it Havequick. It's a frequency hopper. But that means we need to set the mickey each time we use it.”

  “What's that and how do we do it?”

  “It's the baseline so that the armor and the computer hop at the same time. They need to be in the same room, or at least line of sight when we turn it on, and we can't drop sync or it's shot. If that happens we can choose to go uncovered, but I recommend we use that only for emergencies.”

  “This seems expensive.”

  “It is. It's very expensive.”

  “Who paid for it?”

  “I don't know. Cal got it. He and Fiver have voice comms that link in as well. Skyborne and Slowburn have throat mikes they are trying out. They stay hidden under their costumes.”

  Slowburn perked up. “It's like a little massage for my throat. Helps the muscles relax. Might be useful if I ever need to swallow anything massive.” He looked at me. “What's up, buddy?”

  Skyborne just angry paced. Jen put me through the paces on the computer, the King Scarab armor, and the new technology. Skyborne returned to report Calliope had signed on. Simon and Cal walked down the stairs and packed a bag of tactical gear including a pair of MP-5 sub-machineguns, and dozens of magazines.

  “Sure you want to go 9mm?” Cal asked.

  “I'm not going to use them against anyone who is bulletproof in the first place,” Simon said. He checked his phone. “Fiver says the Chill is in.”

  “You guys going to carpool?”

  “Sounds like a great road trip to me.”

  “Calliope will meet you there,” Skyborne said. “How long for Fiver to figure out who these guys are?”

  Cal said, “Faster than most people.”

  It was 20 more minutes before Cal's phone rang. He put it on speaker and set it on the coffee table.

  “Everyone can hear me? Okay, guy in the hoodie goes by the name Killswitch. The albino chick is called the Pale Child. Tom, you got anything on them?”

  “Never heard of them,” I said. “Nothing in my files.”

  “They're mob assassins. Been in town awhile, looking for Bikini Kill, seems like they picked up some extra work. Killswitch is supposed to be able to kill with a touch, some sort of shock to the system. Pale Child is some sort of cryokinetic, drops the temperature until it drops you. No word on who hired them for this, but a guy called Roger Jolly hired them for the Bikini Kill job. I'm going to go talk to him now. You all ready to roll out if I need back up?”