Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “That’s called a mixed metaphor,” Mike said. “It’s sloppy writing.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Dave said. The story was published, and he flicked his browser to the main page of flashforce.net.

  There it was, in all its glory, top of the page.

  SIENNA NEALON ESCAPES FROM PRISON

  “What about the truth?” Mike asked as Dave brought up the TIMES VIEWED counter. He always liked to watch once something went up on the main page. How many times his article was viewed determined whether he wrote a follow-up or moved on to something more interesting to their audience.

  Sienna Nealon? She was always good for clicks.

  Clicks meant traffic to the site.

  Traffic to the sight meant eyeballs on the ads.

  Ads meant money.

  “Yeah, yeah, the truth,” Dave said. The counter was climbing. A thousand clicks in less than a minute! Hell yes, this story had legs. He was going to have to write a follow-up for sure. Even without anything fresh … no new sources … where could he take the story? “Top Five Places Sienna Nealon might have fled,” he muttered under his breath.

  “You don’t even know for sure she’s escaped,” Mike said, “and you’re already speculating about where she might have fled?”

  “Gotta feed the beast, bud,” Dave said, spinning around in his chair and grinning at Mike. This guy was going to be a project. Maybe you really couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. “You’ll get it,” Dave said anyway. Better to avoid conflict. He had a follow-up story to write anyway.

  “Thanks for the tips,” Mike said, nodding. He folded his arms in front of him and off he went. He’d showed up about an hour ago. Early shift, and he hadn’t even been asked to cover this morning. Wow. Crazy that anyone would voluntarily be up at this hour.

  Dave turned his gaze back to the counter. Five thousand clicks already! Boom. Yeah, this was going to be a good day. And he needed to get that follow-up going NOW NOW NOW. He’d make it a listicle, a slideshow, making each possible destination into its own page with a little background coverage, come up a reason she’d go there. Each page of the listicle was good for a click each. That’d really drive the page traffic numbers up … and if he could make it ten locations … hell, fifteen? She’d been enough places in her storied career—yeah, that’d really rack up the page counts.

  He started making his list, keeping one eye on the counter as he began to compose the follow-up. Damn, this was going to be great.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sienna

  Vlad smiled at me, a toothy grin that didn’t show the abnormally long canines you might have expected from the inspiration for Dracula. “Well, I must say, it is a pleasure to meet you after all these years. As you might imagine, I have heard so much about you. From the news … from my spies …”

  “I bet almost 12% was true,” I said, staring into his sky-blue eyes. There were flecks of grey in there, and they were quite striking. I was assessing him for danger, from the top of his pointed widow’s peak down to his tasteful black shoes. His hands were neatly clasped behind him, and he didn’t exude the aura of menace that Friday had described. When Friday had met Vlad, he’d experienced something so horrifying that he was left catatonic for two weeks afterward.

  There was none of that present. In fact, Vlad was almost … chipper.

  “It is interesting how reputation works, is it not?” His accent sounded like it had been dragged through Europe until it had picked up stray sounds from every language on the continent. “I hear about you, you hear about me, but neither of us truly knows the other. We only know what we have been told, in some cases by … less than reputable sources, yes? Why, I am impressed you even recognized me, based solely on your uncle’s description.”

  “I’ve also seen you with my own eyes, once before.” I tossed that out there, and it prompted Vlad to raise his dark brows. I didn’t explain it, because that would end the torture.

  “Interesting,” Vlad said, trading a look with Sophie. “Because I have not been in your presence before, and you have never been here before.”

  “It is interesting, isn’t it?” I walked past, nodding at the city of Bredoccia beyond him. “So … why here? Of all the gin joints in all the world?” I came up alongside his shoulder, but faced in the opposite direction, like we were passing one another and stopped for a little chat.

  He smiled, either because my question had tickled him or he liked that I’d rebuffed his inquiry about how I’d seen him when we’d never met. He didn’t need to know that it had been in a time-travel vision when I’d clashed with Akiyama a few months prior.

  “It was a quiet place in an unquiet world,” Vlad said, doing a fine job of controlling his curiosity. Old school.

  “Translation: there was no one here with enough power to oppose you,” I said, looking at the skyline. “How long have you had this place in your stranglehold?”

  “It is hardly being strangled,” Vlad said, and Sophie shifted behind him. She was offended; he was not. Interesting. “Revelen is in the middle of a renaissance of power. Last year, we peacefully annexed Canta Morgana, a jewel of the Baltic Sea. This year we have concluded a pact with the Russian Federation that will allow us unprecedented access to their resources, military and economy.” He stretched a hand around, encompassing the city. “Talk to the citizens. You will find they are pleased with their fortunes of late.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on those man-on-the-street interviews,” I said, “right after I learn to speak … uh … whatever the local language is.”

  “Almost everyone here speaks English,” Sophie said. “It’s taught in schools alongside the native language.”

  “Smart,” I said, letting my gaze drift over Arche and Yvonne. “Were you two educated locally?”

  Arche didn’t even bother to answer. Yvonne shook her head. “I’m not from here.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me that?” Sophie focused her attention on me. The sun was making her squint.

  “You predate public education systems,” I said. “By a considerable margin, I’d guess.”

  Vlad looked at her. “She’s calling you old.”

  Sophie’s face showed a flicker of something, but it was too quick to register. “I got that.”

  “Look, I’m kinda … I was gonna say tired, but even well-rested, my tolerance for bullshit is really low—” I started.

  “That, I have heard,” Vlad said, nodding.

  “Because I told you,” Sophie said.

  “—but standing here, surrounded by liars, fresh off a prison sentence and breakout?” I looked at each of them in turn. “My patience is ultra-thin. Like the level of thin that condom manufacturers only wish they could get to without totally losing structural integrity.”

  Vlad looked at Sophie. “Was that subtext about her boyfriend and their struggles with intimacy, do you think?”

  “She’s standing right there. Ask her yourself,” Sophie said.

  “I am not—my boyfriend has nothing to do with this,” I said, my face burning. “And I don’t have one anymore.” Vlad’s left eyebrow rose. “Don’t get any ideas there, old guy. I’m not interested in becoming someone’s child bride, especially not to some terror legend of the Carpathian Mountains, Vigo.”

  “That … oh, that was excellent,” Vlad said, nodding at Sophie. “See, she tied in both Ghostbusters—Sigourney Weaver, see?— and my reputation.” He actually clapped. “Well done.”

  “Oh, you get me, you really get me,” I said dryly. “Still not marrying you, if that’s what you’ve got in mind. Sovereign tried that, he ended up—”

  “Yes, we are all aware of the fearsome way in which you handled him,” Vlad said, nodding. “Far be it from me to become your new nemesis. This is not why I have brought you here.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I eyed Vlad. The fact that he hadn’t delivered a coup de grâce from afar suggested that maybe this was the truth. But he’d still sent an awful lot of trouble my way that had no explanati
on—thus far—and required one. “Then why did you bring me here?”

  “That … is the question, isn’t it?” Vlad smiled again. It wasn’t reassuring, by any means, but it also wasn’t sinister. “And I am prepared to explain, in great detail, should you choose to come further.” He pointed to the castle in the distance. “Come with me and I will tell you … everything.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Reed

  “We’ve got three views on the video so far,” Jamal said as I stepped out of the Concorde and into the sunlit day, suddenly embiggened by Greg Vansen to full size. Jamal was holding up his phone, brandishing it with its blank screen as though I could read the free passage of electrons the way he did. “Three whole views.”

  I frowned. This was the surveillance video proving Sienna’s innocence we were talking about. “Okay. How do we get it out to more people?”

  Our office building was just a step away. I reached for the door as Angel popped into full-size view a step behind me, returned to her usual stature by Vansen after our epically fast trip in the Concorde. His travel system beat the hell out of using private jets or dealing with the TSA. It involved him firing up his plane in miniature, then stepping in and out a half dozen times to bring everyone onboard, which took less than a minute, then bringing us up into the sky at gradually increasing size, then throttling up to supersonic speeds and growing the plane to full size. All told, it took less than ten minutes to be up and flying and maybe three hours to cross the entire country. Faster if he deigned to use his SR-71 Blackbird.

  “You make it go viral,” Augustus Coleman said as he popped into existence with Greg. Vansen disappeared again immediately after letting go of him.

  “You cannot make a video go viral any more than you can just walk into Mordor, okay?” Jamal stared him down. “There are mountains in the way.”

  “Come on,” I said, pulling us into the door as Greg reappeared outside with our prisoner. His name was Andy Custis, and he was lacking shackles for transport, much to my thinly veiled annoyance. “You too, Andy.”

  “Okay,” Andy said, walking like an automaton, following my orders only with a little resistance. That made sense, though, since he was compelled to do so against his will. Doubtful he would have listened to me if he had any say about it.

  Eilish popped into view behind him. “Is he listening like a good boy?” she asked, strawberry blond hair gleaming in the light, Irish accent in full force.

  “Well enough,” I said. “Come on. Let’s brief the others.”

  Our office building was not ours alone, but it was quiet at this time of day. The sun was barely up, and the crew seemed to be keeping to themselves, because I couldn’t hear them out here as I went up the stairs to the second floor. The whole place had a rough look that predated our occupancy. Pipes rattled, drywall needed smoothing and patching, and there was even the occasional hole in the wall. We fit right in.

  I breezed in through the door into our office suite and found Casey manning the desk, looking up as we came in. Casey, dark of hair and small of stature, had seen some shit go down in the previous iteration of our office and was thus probably pleased that it was me and not a meta villain crashing through the door.

  “Morning, boss,” she said, barely sparing me a look before turning back to the magazine she had splayed across the front desk. I caught a glimpse of “18 SEX TIPS THAT WILL BLOW HIS MIND” as I passed, and wished I hadn’t. “Gang’s all here.”

  “Good,” I said, “cuz we’re about to have a brainstorming session.” I stepped into the bullpen and found a quiet crew waiting. Some of them were sleeping on the floor, a few on bare carpet, a few with blankets that had come from … “Hey, that pillow looks like one I have in my living room.”

  “It is from your living room,” came a calm voice from the corner, accented with Italian, sleepy, the way she sounded in the middle of the night whenever my phone went off with an emergency call.

  Isabella.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, taking her in my arms as she came up to me. We kissed, just a brief peck on the lips, then broke.

  “It was all hands on deck,” she said. “You expect me to stay below?”

  No, I did not expect that, would have been the smart thing to say. But I did expect her to stay out of danger, though I would not wish to say that aloud either. So instead I just furrowed my brow, and looked at her. “No.”

  Simple. Easy. Not too much of a lie.

  “You are not telling me the whole truth,” she said, her brown eyes narrowed at me. Uh oh. I knew that look. It was not a good one.

  “I just … there’s a lot of danger out there,” I said softly. “Don’t want you in the path of it, whenever possible.”

  Her beautiful eyes flashed. “And I don’t want you in it, either, but off you go all the time, throwing yourself into it.”

  “We caught the guy,” I said, anxious to change the subject, as Andy marched in robotically, under his own power.

  Everyone caught it, or at least those that were awake. Those who were sleeping stirred. Olivia Brackett jerked to consciousness in a heavy chair that she’d pulled out of the conference room, and it shot out from underneath her, propelled by her powers into the wall at high speed. It buried itself into the baseboard and drywall, and she hit the ground and then flashed up into the air to nearly the ceiling. Landed on her feet, though, and fully awake by that time.

  “Whoa,” Augustus said. “Does that happen every morning?”

  Olivia stretched, gingerly, like she was testing her balance, her blond hair a mess from sleeping and multiple slingshots around the room. “More often than not.”

  “I’m guessing a relationship is going to be somewhat difficult for you,” Augustus said, causing Olivia to draw her light eyebrows together in a tightly knitted frown. “Man goes to give you a hug, gets jetted into the next county, boom.”

  She maintained the ireful look a second, then it faded. “You’re not wrong.”

  “So good to have you back, boss,” Tracy Brisco said, making his way through the cubicles and stopping just in front of me. Tracy was a good head taller than I was, but he stooped and hugged me around the ribs before awkwardly pulling back. “We tried to carry out your orders as best we could in your absence.”

  “Oh?” I looked around, everyone stirring to life. Some slower than others. Chase, for instance, still had the imprint of the carpet imbedded in her cheek from where she’d fallen asleep on it, no pillow or blanket. She was a tough lady, and as she rose the red faded thanks to her metahuman skin plasticity. “Where are we on … everything?”

  “We’ve been waiting and watching,” Scott Byerly said, slipping out into the gap of cubicles where I was standing. His dirty blond hair looked more brunette in the weak light making its way through the windows. Friday lurked a step behind him, only partially hulked, arms folded across his bulging chest like a bodyguard. “Nothing from the prison yet to indicate a problem,” Scott said. He took in Andy Custis with a look. “Who’s the prisoner? And does he need restraints?”

  “Oh, no, he’s being a good lad,” Eilish said, patting Andy on the shoulder. “Aren’t you now, Andrew?”

  “I am being a good boy,” Andy said mechanically.

  “That’s creepy, Irish,” Veronika Acheron said. “Is this your sex puppet?”

  “I don’t have one of those,” Eilish said, blushing furiously.

  “Oh, you do, don’t you?” Veronika asked with a laugh, doing a little stretching as she padded into our little impromptu circle, lacking shoes, socks, pants and …

  “Good grief, Veronika,” I said. “If we had an HR department, they’d be all over you for … lack of clothing.”

  She stretched, hands over her head, mismatched bra and panties suggesting to me that she was just being immodest, not purposely provocative. “It’s hot in here, and I sweat in my sleep. I don’t care who looks, either, so long as you don’t touch. I’m a little old to be all horrified that some of you might se
e me wearing roughly the same thing you’d see me in if we went to a swimming pool together.” She put her hands in front of her perfect abs and raised her voice mockingly high. “Oh, no, what if they see my belly? Heavens, what will I do?”

  “Hey, Reed?” came a voice from the corner. It was J.J., parked in front of his computer. “I’m getting a whisper of something across the net—”

  “Whoa,” Jamal said. “The whisper just became a flood.” He must have picked up on it, too.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “It’s—”

  “AHHHHHHHHH!” Casey’s scream was loud, echoing down the short hallway into the bullpen. Greg Vansen was closest to the exit, along with Angel, and they both turned immediately—

  But not fast enough to head off the person who came running in.

  She was blond, hair tangled, pale skin beaded with sweat across her face. I could smell the aroma of a long run through warm air. Her eyes were darting, dark and furtive under the shadowy lighting in the bullpen, but she found me, anchored her gaze there, and her hands fell to her side, bare, tattooed arms at odds with her …

  Orange pants? And a jumpsuit that was tied, neatly, around her thin waist, a dirty and soaked tank top covering her upper body.

  “Make ready, everybody,” Scott said, stepping forward, distortions around his hands as he summoned water out of the air, as well as out of the cups around the office. “That’s June Randall.”

  I knew that name. “What the hell is she doing here?” I asked, my voice dropped to low, anger bleeding in. Isabella laid a reassuring hand on my right arm. It was fine; nowadays I could blow June Randall through the roof without displacing Isabella, and she knew that. Plus, I could step between them if Randall presented any hint of trouble.

  “Why don’t you ask her, the person who would know, instead of us, the people who don’t,” Veronika said. “She’s a human. Worthy of a word.”