Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “And with you in charge of our military, I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” Gondry said, pulling his glasses off and handing them to his aide. “Normally, I would do this in private, but I find after the last day, I’m past the point of caring. Secretary Passerini, if I could fire you right now for your intransigence and warmongering, be assured I would.”

  “Sir,” Passerini said, strangling off the rising alarm crawling up his throat.

  “You came highly recommended to me by what is apparent to me now, not the best and brightest of my cabinet,” Gondry said. “It took me a while to get a handle on everything once President Harmon … was assassinated, but now I know the score. I realize what’s happening here, and all the little fiefdoms that each of you are trying to protect. I recognize,” he wagged his finger at Passerini, “this military-industrial complex that feels the need to rear its ugly head and feed the perpetual war machine—”

  “Sir—”

  “Don’t interrupt me,” Gondry said, voice rising. “It’s plain as the nose on your face that you want a war with this Revelen, one you can expand to Russia. Your saber has been at rest too long, is that it?” He shook his head. “I will not oblige you. As soon as I can muster the support in Congress to pass through a new SecDef, I’m going to replace you. Until then … do try not to burn the place down with your … impetuousness, will you?”

  And Gondry left, secret service detail flowing out behind him. One of them shot Passerini a sympathetic look before closing the door. Half the room left with the president, the light flooding in from the hallway until they were gone, then the door closed to leave the Secretary of Defense alone with the Secretary of State and a few others in utter silence.

  “Oh, hell,” Ngo said, putting her face in her hands. Her jet-black hair flooded over her fingers. “Did that just …” She looked up at him, an expression of horror on her face. “I didn’t just have a nightmare prompted by lack of sleep, did I? Did the president just—”

  “Tell his Secretary of Defense he was fired, right as it looks like we’re heading into a war?” Passerini asked. He sounded surprisingly calm, considering what had just happened. “Yeah. Yeah, you didn’t dream it.” His scalp was chilly under the thin threads of hair that remained after a lifetime of service for his country. “You didn’t dream it at all.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sienna

  “Welcome to Bredoccia, capital city of Revelen,” “Sophie” said as she unfastened my bonds with a gentle clink, undoing a lock or something beneath the stretcher. Light streamed in through the plane windows, bright and cheerful and totally at odds with my present mood.

  “Thanks,” I said, sitting up as the tight metal bindings fell away. I felt a little like Frankenstein’s monster sitting up for the first time. An apt metaphor, since I was apparently in the nation of Dracula now. “I’d say it’s good to be here, but … well, you’d know I was lying.”

  “But it beats the hell out of prison, right?” “Owens” asked. Between Vlad, Sophie, and Owens, I realized I knew absolutely no one here’s real name. Which was good, in a way, because it was a firm reminder not to trust a damned soul in this country.

  “For the moment,” I said. “Sophie” smiled. And I’m sick of using scare quotes, so … Sophie.

  The plane came to a stop and the cockpit door opened to reveal a woman in a trench coat with a strange, oblong bulge at her sleeve. Her wavy brown hair partially covered her eyes; it looked like she’d been out in the rain and hadn’t had a chance to style it. When she spoke, it was in the same voice I’d heard on the overhead speakers, and when her dark eyes found me, she smiled, though her expression had a little edge to it. “Last stop. Everyone off.”

  “Did we make a stop in the middle while I was sleeping?” I popped to my feet, causing Sophie and Owens both to take a step back out of an abundance of caution. I didn’t come at either of them, though, so they didn’t retreat farther.

  “For fuel in New York, yes,” the pilot said. “Like old times, eh, Sienna?”

  I stared back at her. “Well … sure. I guess we did sort of cross paths at the Javits Center that one time.”

  ArcheGrey1819. That was the only name I knew her by. She was a hacker with skills so prodigious she could command fortunes for her work. I’d run across her when Jamal and I fought against a guy who had it in mind to expose the entire world’s cyber secrets. Which would be bad if for no other reason than it would be like the Fappening writ large, with every person who’d ever taken a nude selfie exposed for all the world to see. I couldn’t be the only person concerned that a Michael Moore nude would someday make the rounds. Jamal, Arche, and I had banded together to prevent that calamity from coming to pass. And won.

  The world was, thus far, safely Michael Moore nude free. Yay us. And freedom from blindness.

  Still, Arche had been in it for her own reasons, and I’d known at the time she was tied to Revelen somehow. It wasn’t surprising she was involved. Just a surprise that she’d be here and flying me out of America.

  “Do we have a greeting party?” Sophie asked, cool as ever.

  “They’re driving out now,” Arche said, putting down the ramp. The plane looked like a new model Gulfstream. I rubbed at my wrists where the bonds had been tightest.

  “So … I know you two have worked together before,” I nodded at Arche and Owens, “on that New York job, destroying the evidence against Nadine Griffin—”

  Arche and Owens exchanged a look. “We didn’t work together on that,” Owens said. “We were contracted independently.”

  “But you’re working together now?” I asked. “For Vlad?”

  Arche answered. “Yes.” So succinct. She almost put Sophie to shame.

  “And how do you fit into this puzzle?” I asked, turning to Sophie. “You a contractor, too?”

  “I pursue my own interests,” Sophie said, walking past without so much as a look.

  “You’re interested in me?” I asked. “I’m flattered, but you’re not really my type. No offense. I know I’m coming off a long stretch in prison—”

  “You were in three days.” Owens rolled her eyes.

  “Well, it felt long,” I said. “Plus, did you catch that part at trial where they tried to blame me for what you and Arche did in New York? How much were you laughing your ass off at that moment, scale of one to ten?”

  “At least a twelve,” Owens said, deadpan. She headed for the ramp behind Sophie, leaving me standing in the passenger space by my lonesome. “The irony was especially delicious, me standing right behind you as they pinned my crime on you.”

  I made a sour face. “I can’t blame you for not stepping up and saying something, really, but still … shitty.”

  Owens shrugged. “I dropped a building on people. Letting you take the blame is hardly the worst thing I’ve done.”

  Not even lately, in fact, since she’d killed Clara in prison. I forced a smile. “Right you are.” Another reminder: these were not people I could trust.

  Sophie was waiting at the exit, looking back at me. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?” I asked, planting my feet. “What if I don’t want to meet Vlad the Impaler? Who thus far seems a lot more like Vlad the Spender on lots of metahuman help?”

  “Then enjoy your stay in the plane, and when you decide you’re hungry or wish to leave, our people outside will escort you to the castle,” Sophie said, and she just walked out.

  “Dammit,” I muttered and hurried down the aisle. Because what was I going to do? Beat the hell out of their guards and escape over the border so I could return to the US and probable captivity without even meeting the guy responsible for—conservatively—60% of the shit that had come my way in the last year or two?

  Hell-to-the-no. I was going to look Vlad in the eyes and beat the ever-loving hell out of him first chance I got. Which might not be right away given that he was surrounded by Arche and Owens, whose powers I knew, and Sophie, whose powers
I didn’t. Plus whatever else he had at hand. I had suspicions on that score, having tangled with a couple vampires before.

  “Change your mind about hanging out?” Owens asked, smiling at me with a tiny hint of amusement or malice. Tough to tell which.

  “I didn’t see a minibar on the plane anywhere so, yeah,” I said.

  “Plus, you’re a recovering alcoholic,” Sophie called back to me from outside. “It’d be a shame to break your sobriety now. You’ve been doing so well.”

  “It annoys me that you all know so much about me,” I said, “but I know so little about you.” I stared at Owens. “Like your real names, for instance.”

  Another spark of snarky amusement lit Owens’s eyes. “My real name? It’s Yvonne.”

  “And your real last name?” Every little bit helped when it came to info about your potential enemies.

  She shrugged. “I don’t even remember anymore.” And headed down the stairs built into the door.

  Another lie. I had a feeling I’d be getting a lot of those here.

  Leaving the stale confines of the Gulfstream behind me, I stepped out into the open air and found myself staring up at a grey sky. Mountains waited on the horizon to the east, and the city of Bredoccia stood before me, a single mighty skyscraper rising up out of a downtown that reminded me of a mid-sized US city, or maybe Glasgow … a little bit, if you ignored the mountains.

  The castle I’d heard about from Uncle Friday was perched atop a mountainous rock that overlooked the city. It reminded me a little bit of Edinburgh Castle, save for the mountains that rose up behind it, framing it as though it were a foothill of the range beyond. It was only a couple miles away, maybe less. The airport, along with the city itself, was on the flatter ground beneath it.

  “Huh,” I muttered under my breath. Sophie, Arche, and Owens—Yvonne, I mean—were all waiting at the base of the ramp with a man in a grey suit. I took a moment to survey everything before me rather than rush down to meet them. They showed no sign of leaving, after all. Why accommodate them when I could make them accommodate me?

  It was daylight, and I had a good view of the castle’s details. It had old-school ramparts and towers, the kind constructed to protect against assault in the Middle Ages and before. I’d been in more modern castles, and they were like country estates, lacking defenses against siege. This one had been planned with siege in mind, for sure. The walls followed the edges of the rock it sat upon; if someone wanted to try and lay siege to it from below, they were going to have a hell of a climb to cope with if they didn’t go through the front gate. A thousand feet straight up, at least.

  “So that’s Dracula’s castle?” I asked, taking my sweet time as I descended the ramp. Nobody seemed to be impatient with me, but I hoped that was an act, because I was trying to infuriate them. Sophie’s uninterested gaze may have suggested I was having little effect on her, but I figured that was just window dressing. There was no way she could spend as much time as she had with me, me at full intransigence, without getting a little pissed off. She was just really good at hiding it.

  Still … something about her manner was aggravatingly familiar. I was sure she was telling the truth, that we had met before.

  I just wished I could remember it.

  “Sienna, this is the steward of the castle,” Sophie said, nodding to the man in the suit standing at the base of the ramp, waiting. He had black hair with grey streaks, slicked back, a widow’s peak making its way a good half inch down his forehead. He wore a kind of pained, long-suffering smile.

  Heh. And he’d just met me.

  “My name is Ian,” he said, with a thick accent that reeked of old Europe, offering a hand up the ramp to me. I eyed it, shook it as I descended, and walked past his smiling face onto the tarmac, where Sophie, Yvonne/Owens, and Arche all stepped back to make way for me. Ian was already out of the way, standing well to the side of the ramp in a classic display of deference to me, the guest.

  “This city looks almost modern,” I said, looking at downtown Bredoccia. I was trying to count the number of buildings over ten stories. There weren’t many, save for that tall one under construction. It didn’t look like it’d be Burj Dubai height when finished, but it was clearly aiming to be the crown jewel in their growing city. Cranes scattered across the city hinted at a construction boom, the skeletons of other new buildings rising to take part in the burgeoning skyline.

  “It’s only polite to give your name when someone is introduced to you,” Sophie said, and now the irritation bled through. I turned to find her standing at Ian’s shoulder, looking put out for the first time since we’d left the prison.

  “It’s only polite to give your real name when you’re being introduced,” I said. “None of you, except possibly Yvonne here,” I nodded at her, “have given me a real name, so …” I shrugged. “You really wanna lecture me on etiquette? Try not lying to your guest.”

  This had a definite chilling effect among my welcome party. Ian’s smile was perhaps the only thing that didn’t freeze, and that was because it faded, becoming just a faint curl of his bloodless lips at the corners. “Your Uncle Friday described me to you?”

  “Yeah, he did,” I said, staring at “Ian”—these people and their lying names and me having to overuse scare quotes—what assholes. “And I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Vlad, but given all the hell you’ve tossed my way this last couple years …” Any trace of smile vanished from my lips, as well, “… why don’t we just get down to it and start kicking each other’s asses?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dave Kory

  Brooklyn

  New York

  “Don’t you need another source before you can run this story?” Mike Darnell asked. He had wrinkles and lines stretched on top of wrinkles and lines, a face that was leathery and suntanned, like he’d really seen it, man, walked the miles of shoe leather that it took back in the pre-internet days to break stories and do real reporting.

  Dave Kory didn’t really go in for that kind of thing, but he respected it. And Mike. Because Mike was really the only old-school investigative reporter on flashforce.net’s payroll, and so it was at least worth nodding along when he said something. Like this, for instance.

  “Yeah, I know, normally,” Dave said, nodding along. “Normally I’d be all over the two-source thing, but … come on.” Dave could feel the glow in his eyes. “This is huge. Bigger than—I mean, it’s huge-normous. And no one has reported on it yet.”

  The sun was breaking over the horizon in New York, and flashforce.net’s offices in Brooklyn. Dave had, as per his habit, worked late into the night. Normally he wouldn’t be at the office for several hours yet, but this was one of those all-nighters. He’d left the office just before midnight to get a drink at his favorite bar in Williamsburg, got the text, and now he’d been back all night. Three Red Bulls later, he was not remotely interested in going home.

  Not with this story cooking, ready to hit publish on.

  “If you publish this without a second source to confirm, you’re setting yourself up to get burned,” Mike said, shading his eyes as he scanned the page.

  “I didn’t graduate J-school yesterday, okay?” Dave snapped. In fact, he hadn’t graduated journalism school at all. His focus had always been on the tech side of things. Writing articles was easy. Implementing a website with an interface that didn’t suck? Way harder.

  Flashforce.net had quickly become one of the top news sites on the internet, according to Alexa.com. Fifty million unique visitors per month. They’d displaced Buzzfeed and HuffPo in the first twenty-four months, and now Dave was looking to displace the New York Times.

  Better yet, they made money. Which was more than he could say for a lot of these stupid startup sites.

  “Look, I know you’ve got your way of doing things,” Mike said, tearing his eyes from the copy and looking straight into Dave’s. This was the conflict at the heart of everything, Mike, the old, versus Dave, the new. The young, maybe? That was probab
ly better. “But if you run with this, you’re asking to have your credibility shredded.”

  Dave plastered a stupid smile on his face. It probably looked condescending. He certainly meant it to. “Look, man, I know you’ve been at this for just short of forever, but lemme apprise you of how shit has changed—it’s not about getting one story right anymore, okay? Even though this is, for sure, right. As rain.”

  “Oh?” Mike settled back, leaning against the desk. He was really listening, so Dave laid it on. It was good to teach an old dog a new trick or two. Maybe he really could learn. “How so?”

  “See,” Dave said, “you’re right. Maybe, without the second source, this doesn’t hold up to the old-school model of reporting, the two sources thing—”

  “And we usually like people to go on the record, too,” Mike said.

  Dave tried not to roll his eyes. He failed. “Yeah, whatever. So let’s say that everything I’ve written here is wrong.” He broke into a wide smile. “So what? Our users? They’re going to keep coming back because who else are they going to go to for quick news? They’re loyal. They’ve got nowhere else to turn, really, not for this format. As long as it’s not news that’s going to seriously piss them off, they don’t care if we make a mistake. They know we’re human. And we still get the clicks to the story while it’s up, which means the advertisers still pay us, which means you,” he pointed at Mike, “get paid. While other reporters continue to get fired and laid off from these local papers and dime store blogs because they don’t drive enough traffic.” He folded his arms in front of him. “Simplicity itself. See?”

  “So that’s it, huh?” Mike asked. There was a little flicker behind his weathered eyes. He’d only been on staff for a few weeks. Learning the ropes of the new media reality, that was how Dave viewed him.

  “Yep,” Dave said, looking around. There were only a few people here. Night shift/early morning shift was shit duty. Everyone who had some seniority preferred to work noon to eight. He glanced at his story one last time and clicked the mouse button to publish it. “Clicks and views, my friend. Traffic to the site. These are the holy grails that we have discovered, the tools that allow us to thrive in a world where most of the dinosaurs are going or have already gone extinct.”