Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Remember the guy that tore up Minneapolis back in January? He killed Eric Simmons, ripped up the Chesapeake Bay Bridge after Simmons destroyed the USS Enterprise in its graving dock?”

  “Ah … That was us,” Vlad said. “The Enterprise thing.”

  “Well, the guy—I called him the Predator,” I said, “he was terrified of you. Warned me about you. Said you experimented on him.”

  Vlad shrugged. “Not exactly, but we certainly empowered him. His name was Stepane.”

  “I know. Why was he so scared of you?” I asked, staring Vlad down. “Why was Friday so frightened of you? I’m sitting here and you’re offering me cotton candy?” I looked at the takeout box next to me. “And thanks for the sandwich.” I tore open the box and hefted half the Reuben. It was still warm, tasted great. Fresh sauerkraut.

  “I bought that,” Sophie said, sounding more irritated about the sandwich than she had at anything else so far. “That was my money.”

  “I will reimburse you if you like,” Vlad said, smiling, clearly getting a kick out of this. “Present the receipt to the accounting department and—”

  “In four to seven years I’ll get my money back,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes, then fixing on me. “Fine. My gift to you.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, mouth full. “This is way better than that prison food. Probably better than the food before that, too, though it’s hard to remember that far back …” I took another bite.

  “It’s been all of four days,” Sophie said.

  “A lot’s happened since then,” I said, “and I had a really trying night before the whole prison ordeal, okay?”

  “Indeed,” Vlad said. “I hear they are still removing bodies from that quarry in Minnesota.”

  “That was lit,” Yvonne said.

  “Yes,” Vlad said, “Very … lit. Now, you asked a question, and I think it is time that you receive an answer.” Then he clammed up.

  I paused chewing for a second. “And the answer is …?”

  “Not here,” Vlad said, as the limo cruised through the streets of Bredoccia. “For this, some classic rules must be observed. I will tell you in my lair.” His eyes gleamed, and he let loose with a cackle that made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “How was that for a maniacal laugh? I have been practicing, you see, in front of the mirror sometimes. For my own amusement exclusively, I assure you.”

  “It was pretty good,” I said, the Reuben paused in front of my lips. “Please don’t do it again while I’m eating, because it’s very creepy and put me off my food for a second. Oh, wait, here comes the ravening hunger again.” I took another huge bite. “Seriously, though … don’t do that. It’s terrible. Very Dracula.”

  “As you wish,” Vlad said. “But the explanation, it will come very soon. And I think it will answer so very many questions you have had. Perhaps …” His smile actually reached his eyes, and for the first time—and in spite of that horrifying laugh—he seemed rather paternal. “Perhaps it will even allow you to see me … differently.”

  We lapsed into silence, the limo quietly humming as we made our way back to his dark and spooky castle lair, and I finished my Reuben in the silence.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dave Kory

  Brooklyn

  “Oh, man,” Dave Kory said. The clicks. His Sienna Nealon story and the listicle follow-up were churning traffic through the flashforce website at higher volume than he could ever recall seeing. The counter was spinning up by the millisecond, zooming higher and higher—

  “Dude,” Steve Fills said, walking past with a kombucha in hand, “you’re gonna crash the site if you keep writing articles that bring the heat like that.”

  “That’s my goal,” Dave called after him. “Bring it down, baby. I mean, not really, though.” The site going down meant no money for clicks. That would be bad. He had to manage the server load so as to avoid that, and it might require a little extra bandwidth on a day like today. There were probably parts of the country where flashforce was currently loading very slowly. Not optimal.

  Dave dashed off an email to web services, making sure they knew to keep things rolling. He was halfway through writing another follow-up story, this one even thinner on substance, and he’d shot a couple requests for comment to contacts he had in the government: the White House Press Corps, the Justice Department—hell, even Director Chalke’s office over at the FBI. That one was just a formality, though.

  Bzzzt. Dave’s phone buzzed, and he picked it up off the white plastic desk. It had an alert on the notifications—from what looked like a game app, Escapade. It read: IT’S TIME TO PLAY!

  “Ooh,” Dave said and looked around. The office was getting pretty full, so he took his phone and headed for the bathroom. The entire office was just one big open bullpen, to allow for better collaboration. There were a few conference tables around the edges of the room on two sides. A bank of windows filled the other, giving a nice view of Manhattan in the distance, past the East River. The exit covered the fourth wall, and the bathrooms were this way.

  Dave popped into the “Executive Washroom,” clearing the locked door with a keycard. The exec washroom was the sole privilege accorded to him and a couple other high-ups here, and it had a little secret inside, where no one could really see it …

  A couple privacy booths that locked when you were inside. Opaque black glass, floor to ceiling, just around the corner from the entry. Not for when you wanted to take a dump, but for when you needed the privacy that open bullpen couldn’t provide.

  Dave entered one and shut the door, clicking the lock. Now he was in a soundproof, witness-proof space. The light above was faint; it shone down right on him, but dimly. He unlocked his phone and touched the Escapade app.

  It popped onscreen, requesting a sequenced code entry. Twelve characters, including caps, lower case, numbers, and special characters. It had been annoying to memorize, but he had it down now, and it was soooo worth it.

  The app flared to life once unlocked, presenting him with—in this case—a text string. A conversation with a half-dozen participants, each denoted by name.

  RUSS BILSON: Hey Dave

  HEATHER CHALKE: Nice work today, Dave. Don’t expect a comment from my office.

  Dave typed his own reply, ignoring the other salutations of greeting in favor of talking to Heather: Didn’t figure I’d get one, but I have to cover the bases, you know.

  HEATHER CHALKE: I know how the game is played.

  RUSS BILSON: This is not exactly going how we planned. Sienna Nealon was supposed to be dead by now.

  HEATHER CHALKE: Our contact, Berenger, over at the Bureau of Prisons failed. So did the warden in the Cube. The whole place is a disaster area, but it looks like Nealon got out by way of an old air duct—do not print that, Dave, or anybody else.

  A few “Understoods,” or their equivalent popped into the conversation string. Dave added his own, just to cover his ass. He added: “You’ve got to give us something. To stir the pot, you know.”

  RUSS BILSON: The pot is pretty damned stirred already.

  JAIME CHAPMAN: I’ve got a little rumored something, but can’t confirm. DoD has spotted Nealon from overhead satellite imagery in Revelen.

  TYRUS FLANAGAN: Whoa.

  RUSS BILSON: That’s problematic.

  HEATHER CHALKE: That’s way outside our conventional reach. But can confirm. Off record. She is in Revelen.

  RUSS BILSON: And you didn’t lead with that when we all logged on?

  HEATHER CHALKE: Would have gotten to it eventually.

  Dave snorted in the soundproof booth. No she wouldn’t have. Chalke was always a half-hearted participant in this information-sharing exercise. She fed them stuff when she wanted to, or when it was convenient. But Dave wasn’t going to call out the FBI director, because her stories had personally driven a ton of traffic to his site. You didn’t shoot the golden goose until it stopped producing eggs. Then it could be dinner. Or in thi
s case, she could be the story.

  DAVE KORY: No problem. Will note as anonymous source in the CIA. They’d have this, right?

  HEATHER CHALKE: Yes, but be careful. Was considering bringing their director in on this. Do not want to alienate the agency.

  Dave thought about it. Came up with another answer.

  DAVE KORY: NCTC?

  That was the National Counterterrorism Center. They were cleared pretty high up.

  HEATHER CHALKE: Better still, Pentagon. And you can add this—SecDef Passerini is on his way out the door, at the pleasure of the president. Big blowup in the Situation Room, Gondry told him he was fired as soon as a replacement could be found. I wasn’t there, but heard about it. Sounded amazing.

  Dave chuckled. He wasn’t a fan of Passerini, either. The guy was a no-brain military knuckledragger. But whatever dim opinion he had of the man, it was generic; Chalke’s was colored with some kind of deep loathing that Dave didn’t know the source of. He must have really peed in her cornflakes, because she hated the Secretary of Defense the way Dave hated people who mocked kombuchas and soy lattes.

  DAVE KORY: Pentagon, got it. Anything else you want to add? Or anybody else want to confirm this? I could use a second source.

  He waited, but no one stuck their neck out. That was fine; anonymous sourcing didn’t bother him. It got him the news, allowed him to get it out before anyone else. Got clicks, got traffic. And especially on this story, being so far out in front was going to paaaaaaay.

  HEATHER CHALKE: I can push someone your way that you can confirm with. That Bureau of Prisons clown Berenger owes us after the Cube screwup.

  Dave blinked, then typed his reply: Was she there for it?

  HEATHER CHALKE: No, but she’ll confirm anyway, and then you can run it with a clear conscience.

  Dave shuddered, but only for a second. Two single-sourced stories in a day. He may have protested to Mike Darnell that it didn’t matter, but it did matter to him, at least a little. He wanted this one, but … he needed to be a little careful about stepping out on this limb constantly.

  He’d met Chalke on a few occasions and could imagine her grinning as she typed all this. He started to reply with a question, something that might push her in the direction of getting him a legit second source, but—

  Really, did he want that? This little horse-swapping thing they had going on here … it was designed to fly way below the radar. If he made her bird-dog a second source for him, a truly legit one, not this Bureau of Prisons patsy who was basically just going to confirm what she said without having seen or probably even heard it herself—it would probably blow up the story. Or at least delay it.

  Chalke had seen what she was telling him about, Kory knew that. She didn’t put stuff out to him without making sure it was legit, which meant if she said Nealon was in Revelen, she was in Revelen. Digging up another person in that classified loop that was in the know, just to confirm what he already knew, that Chalke was telling him the truth? It’d put someone else’s ass on the line and jeopardize the good thing they had going on here.

  Nealon was in Revelen. There wasn’t a doubt in Dave’s mind about it. Getting a second source was just covering his ass, however it was played. Talking to the Bureau of Prisons source would cover his ass just fine, because he could plausibly deny, in a court of law, in front of a jury of his peers, that he was being played. And who would know differently?

  Not a damned soul, that was who.

  Decision made.

  DAVE KORY: Okay, I’ll break it as soon as I get back to my desk and write it up. Have your contact call me.

  RUSS BILSON: Awesome. Get it done. We’ve got a new narrative to shape. Stir the dogs up against Sienna Nealon again. I think we can all see how maybe this goes, if we do it right. And we’ll all find ways to make out like bandits from this situation.

  Dave just nodded, locking his phone and standing up in the darkened privacy booth. He certainly would be making out like a bandit. If the click counter had moved up like it was propelled by a rocket thus far, imagine how it’d move once he broke the exclusive story that Sienna Nealon was hiding out in a place no one had even heard of?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sienna

  “Welcome to my humble abode,” Vlad said once the limo had made its way up the curving switchbacks, up the mountainous hill to his castle, across a wide tarmac-like space, and pulled into his underground hangar beneath the castle. There was no other way to describe it besides that. Military equipment was pretty much everywhere, and included T-72 main battle tanks from Russia, a whole boatload of army trucks, a couple Bradley Fighting Vehicles from the US alongside a plethora of Humvees. Some of them even had turret-mounted weapons like Mk 19 grenade launchers and Ma Deuce 50-cal machine guns, which was not something you typically saw on the ones that cruised around in US cities. Though they might have been useful in LA traffic, especially the grenade launcher.

  Also … the dude had cars. Cars enough to make Reed and Scott jealous. Mercedes, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and even some classic Fords, Chevys and Dodges were represented in Vlad’s car collection.

  “Compensating for something, Vladimir?” I asked as I stepped out of the limo next to a 1970s-era Dodge Charger. American muscle, Transylvanian vampire. It didn’t quite make sense to me, but there it was.

  “Yes,” Vlad said, nodding. “I am compensating for the fact that I cannot fly and sometimes wish to get places very quickly.” His eyes sparkled again, and he strode past me, a slight limp slowing his movement. I hadn’t noticed it before. “Come, and I will explain all.”

  “About overcompensating?” I asked. “You can go ahead and leave that part out.”

  Sophie elbowed me, lightly, in the back, and I looked back to see her staring at me with thinly pursed lips and narrowed eyes. “Enough.”

  “Am I finally getting to you, ‘Sophie’?” I asked.

  “Nothing ‘final’ about it—yet,” she said.

  Ooh, menace. I liked that. I made a kissy face at her, and she steamed, though she barely showed it.

  “This way,” Vlad said, leading me through the strange hangar deck of a garage. It was massive and reminded me of Greg Vansen’s enormous garage/hangar that he had built into the wall of his house. Though technically it was smaller than an electrical socket, the treasures it housed were incredibly impressive.

  “Your lair is beginning to look more and more like either a James Bond villain’s digs or a third world king’s palace,” I said as he led us to an elevator in the corner of the room. I looked up. Stalactites reached down from a hundred feet above, the cavern’s natural ceiling hemming us in there. “Or the Batcave, possibly. You’re like an Eastern European dictator Bruce Wayne, maybe. With pointier hair.”

  “I like that one best,” Vlad said with a smile. He pushed the elevator button himself after I got in with the rest of them. There were a few people walking around doing things in the garage, servicing vehicles and whatnot. I even caught sight of a few guards with G36s and AK-74s, doing their rounds.

  “Are there any bats hanging out in the stalactites?” I asked. “Because then you’d definitely have a better claim. Unless they’re vampire friends of yours, in which case …”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any shifters here in my employ,” Vlad said, “though I have known a few.”

  The elevator thrummed, moving fast. We’d entered through a massive garage door in the side of the cliff. It was big enough to pull a plane through, though there were none nearby and no runway near enough to use, though that expansive tarmac would have made a pretty nice helicopter landing zone.

  The castle itself was up a cliff face a few hundred feet, meaning this whole ground level was excavated later, long after the castle was constructed. Again, I was reminded of Edinburgh Castle. Built on a huge rock, they’d tunneled into it to build basements and whatnot, though Vlad had clearly gone much farther here than the Scots ever had there.

  After a few seconds the elevator whooshe
d to a stop. It dinged and opened on a floor that looked like it could have been torn out of any office building the world over, save for the lack of windows. “This is us,” Yvonne said and moved past me. Arche followed her, shooting me a sly look as she passed. She bumped me with her right arm, and I felt the stiff, unyielding sensation of something thick and metallic wrapped around her right arm.

  When last we’d met, she’d had a neato mechanical retractable arm up the sleeve of her trench coat. She controlled it directly with her electrical powers and could use it to choke a bitch, as Dave Chapelle would say. Or like a grappling hook.

  Clearly she was still wearing it, and apparently she wanted me to know, because she gave me a thin smile after bumping me with it. “Nice to see you again, too, Arche,” I said as she got off the elevator, leaving me alone with Sophie and Vlad as the doors closed.

  “They’re very good employees,” Vlad said, “especially at what they do best.”

  “Destruction, right?” I asked, starting to get a possible picture of what he was talking to me for. “That’s what they’re best at.”

  “They get the job done,” Vlad said. “Whatever the job is. Like Sigourney here.”

  I blinked, and Sophie’s face hardened. “Did you seriously just forget her made-up name?”

  “It is, as you said, made up,” Vlad shrugged. “How am I to remember these things? I am … very old.” He waved a hand around his head.

  “You going to tell me the reason for all these lies yet?” I asked, as the elevator hummed again. It seemed to be really moving, like a skyscraper elevator.

  “In moments,” Vlad said, holding up a single, thin, long finger.

  “Fine, let me ask this while we wait—why have your people try and kill Friday a year ago?” I asked. “And why spare his life when he came here?”

  Vlad nodded thoughtfully. “That is a longer story, and one which I am more than glad to answer, but perhaps the other truths first?” The elevator dinged again and opened onto a hallway with dim lighting, solitary bulbs strung one after another like runway lights from the ceiling. The hallway stretched for some distance, all stone and medieval construction. This was the older part of the castle, clearly one of the classics of Europe. Rooms lined either side of the hallway, and Vlad indicated I could step off the elevator first if I so chose.