Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “You boys might want to move, because I’m not sure how long I can carry it like this,” I said, weight really straining at my fingertips. “It’s not exactly a Captain America shield, if you know what I mean, but having the engine block in front of my face makes me feel a lot safer than anything you guys could do.”

  “We are not here to make you feel safe!” the lead guy shouted again, from somewhere behind the Humvee.

  “Same,” I said, and walked a little sideways, tilted the Humvee, and sent it crashing down across the mouth of the alley longways.

  It was almost a perfect fit, bumpers just about touching the brick on either side. They’d have a hell of a time squeezing between it and the alley walls.

  “Oh, boys?” I called. “None of you are standing between this Hummer and the front of your truck, are you?” I asked sweetly.

  “No, why—” their captain started to ask.

  I buried my shoulder in the roof and shoved, hard, skidding the Humvee forward. After a few seconds of pushing I crashed into the front of the army truck, and man, did it make a nasty sound. Metal bending, glass shattering.

  “No reason,” I said, gasping from the exertion, looking back toward the dead-end alley behind me. This wouldn’t keep them off me for long at all. The manhole cover waited, a black circle in the dimness, and I needed to get out of here before the next wave of soldiers arrived and made everything so much worse.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The manhole led into the storm drains, which, fortunately, were not the sewers, but nonetheless they had a stench that felt like a metahuman punching me in the nose.

  The stink of mildew and stagnant water took my breath away and made me wonder if there was something more than storm water going through down here. The piping was pretty decently large, I reflected as I slid the manhole cover back on. Not quite as big as you see in the movies, but high enough that I could walk while stooped over without worrying too much about bumping my head.

  Into these concrete tunnels I went, hauling ass into the dark with only the occasional storm drain overhead to light my way. Daylight slipped in through these grates and fell over corrugated metal side tunnels that were more like pipes, ones that I couldn’t possibly squeeze into given my hips, so I stuck to the main tunnel and hoped it would run somewhere useful.

  The silence was a little unnerving, broken only occasionally as I passed a curbside drain that led back up to the world above. Once I happened to pass one as a big army truck rattled by overhead. I froze and sat in the semi-darkness with only my thundering heartbeat as company until I was sure by the sound of the rumble that they’d gone by. I gave a quick look up after it was gone and saw that the sun was getting low in the sky.

  “‘Come to Revelen,’” I said, aping one of the countless tourist advertisements that had popped up on billboards around the US the last few years, ‘where the vistas command and the skies are endless.’” I looked up at the concrete ceiling that fenced me in from the so-called endless skies. “Hell of a vista, guys.” They were definitely not getting the crown princess’s endorsement for their next ad, not after this bullshit.

  I needed a plan beyond ‘run,’ having learned the lack of utility of that one during my sojourn in Scotland last year. “I am so sick of getting chased around European countries,” I muttered under my breath as another truck rattled by overhead and I clicked off my light and waited for it to go by. I could see nothing of the sky but a sliver of orange light through the slit of the storm drain, suggestions of the setting sun, but the last thing I needed was somebody to look out the back of the truck and see motion in a drain and decide to investigate. “Actually, I’m pretty sick of being chased everywhere. I want to go back to being the chaser. That would be fun, running people down for a change.”

  I sighed. Too bad I didn’t see a way back to that from here. That part of my life seemed like a distant memory, something so far back in the recesses of time it might as well be my entirely forgotten childhood. Actually, I wondered if this was how most people felt about their childhoods, since I couldn’t really remember mine at all until age six or so, once I was locked in my house. Just distant memories, things that felt like they emerged from the mists every now and again before sliding back under the surface and disappearing beneath the events of everyday life.

  I mopped my brow, sweat trickling down into my eyes. How could it be hotter down here than it was above? I was not going to be able to navigate too much longer down here without a light, because the sun had apparently moved behind the buildings out in Bredoccia, the long shadows preventing the grates from casting much light. It had to be early evening by now. Once the sun set, I was going to be navigating these tunnels by whatever minimal light came from the street lamps into these drains, and while my night vision was good, it was not effective in total darkness.

  “Manhole cover,” I said under my breath. Cassidy had given me only that guidance, plus some ideas about how to dispatch my pursuers. Well, I’d showed her. I hadn’t even needed her stupid suggestions. Though I was beginning to wonder if maybe taking the high road and going up the fire escape would have been a better escape route than the storm drain.

  Probably not. All it’d take was one flyer out of the castle and they’d be on me again. Or a helicopter, though I hadn’t heard any of those buzzing around yet.

  Another truck rattled by overhead, and I was left with the feeling that this moment of peace wasn’t going to last. The guys back in the alley had probably gotten over the car by now, and even if they hadn’t seen me go into the storm drains, they’d be narrowing my escape options down. Sooner or later, they’d be coming this way.

  If they weren’t already.

  I listened for boots tromping along behind me. Didn’t hear any, but my own footsteps were pretty loud, echoing off the walls as I hustled down the concrete passage bent nearly double. I was starting to become immune to the smell, which was good, because I couldn’t really afford to stop off and toss my cookies. It’d leave a nice, fresh sign that someone had been this way.

  The screech of tires in the distance was not a pleasant noise. It was far enough off, though, that I figured I was probably safe for the moment. I paused, stopping to listen, perched in the darkness about ten feet off the nearest drain. If someone shone a light down, I was far enough back they wouldn’t see me, but I could hear—very quietly—a little of what was going on up there.

  It sounded like a few voices, some shouting. An engine idling on a big diesel truck. Someone was being told to do something, in clipped, loud tones. A crackle of radio static as someone—Krall—spoke, giving someone their marching orders.

  “Do it,” I heard, a bare snatch of English, and then …

  … A hiss?

  No. It wasn’t quite a hiss. It was a familiar noise, but one I couldn’t place right off. It sounded like something moving down the passageway, rushing this direction.

  Something touched my boots and I barely held in a gasp. Something wet and cool, shockingly so in the damned heat. It splashed as it touched me, and I sniffed, worried it was something terrible or toxic. It washed past my ankles and kept running down the pipe, into the light coming down from outside.

  I reached down to touch it, though I already had a sinking feeling I knew exactly what it was. Bringing my wetted fingers to my nose, I sniffed.

  Water. Running past me, already to my ankles.

  “Shit,” I muttered, and hustled forward. It was rising, and ahead I saw a little rippling wave as another rush of it came from the opposite direction, colliding with the flow that had just run past me. Near instantly it went to mid-calf on me, soaking my pants legs as it continued to rise, now feeding in from both directions. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  They’d turned loose their Poseidons to flood the storm drains to flush me out. It seemed incredibly obvious as a strategy now that I was almost up to my knees in running water, the flow washing from both directions and getting heavier by the minute.

  This was going to
force me to either get my ass back to the surface where they could more easily track me, or else risk my drowning as the water continued to rise.

  I swore again under my breath, deciding quickly that this situation was not going to be a tenable one for me. The flow was already strong enough that it was threatening my footing; another minute or two and the water would be over my head. I’d heard a foot of running water could float a two-thousand-pound car, and I definitely didn’t weigh anywhere close to that, no matter what the assholes on the internet had said about my ass.

  “Worst vacation ever,” I said, trying to fight my way to the grate and reaching it just as the water passed my knee. “Worst family reunion ever—unless you count Rose as my family. And I don’t, that ginger whore.” I reached up and grabbed the grate, pulling myself up.

  Now the water was at my waist, and I pushed my way up against the storm drain. It had a metal cover designed to keep people from shoving their way down here, the kind of grate that had clearly been exposed to the elements for quite a while, the rust visible in the light of the nearest street lamp. I braced against the bottom of the drain, both hands on the bars, and readied myself. The current was getting incredibly intense, and I needed to get out of here before it got any worse.

  I shoved, expecting the grate to pop off so I could drag myself out onto the Revelen street, but …

  It didn’t move. At all.

  “Uhmm …” I braced myself, foot slipping in the rising strength of the current. What the hell? These things were only supposed to be normal metal, not—

  Aw, shit.

  It occurred to me, just a little too late, that in a country where everyone was a metahuman, including, presumably, the children, child- and idiot-proofing would necessarily have to be escalated a step or two.

  In this case, in order to keep people from lifting off a storm drain grate with their meta strength and hopping down to do who-knows-what kind of mischief, they’d probably taken the extra step of bolting the damned things down. Being former Eastern bloc, they also probably lacked the rather exhaustive US regulations that made sure someone couldn’t get stuck in a refrigerator, let alone a storm drain.

  So when I shoved against the grate, braced even harder, water rushing at my waist, unsteadying me … it didn’t move.

  “Oh, man,” I said, the current threatening to rip my legs from beneath me. There was a sort of S-curve of water washing around my body—heavy pull to the left coming around my waist, a strong one to the right dragging at my ankles as the currents of water coming from both directions met and created a washing machine effect about where I was standing.

  The main problem as I saw it was that with this impromptu whirlpool, the current wasn’t really going anywhere. It was just spinning in the close confines of the tunnel as the water pressure tried to equalize, filling every square inch of the tunnel, at which point it’d start welling out of the very drain hole I was trying to use as an escape route. Depending on how fast the Poseidons were pouring it in, it’d probably start geysering, pushing me up into the bars as the water sought to escape the pressurizing pipe.

  That … was not going to be an optimal solution, because I’d end up like one of those lumps of Play-Doh forced into a grated press. Squish goes Sienna.

  I didn’t see any easy outs, but I couldn’t stay here or I’d definitely die, so I lifted myself out of the water and pressed my face against the metal bars. I took three deep breaths through the grate …

  And let go, splashing into the water, hoping one of the currents would win and carry me free of here before I got killed by the pressure of the rising water.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Passerini

  “That was live?” Bruno Passerini asked. The signal had now ceased, returning to a news program in studio, a confused anchor interviewing his panelist about the strange interruption to broadcast that they’d just experienced.

  “We don’t know, sir,” a weathered colonel named Murdock said, most of his attention on the screen—and the lieutenant working at it—in front of him. “Preliminary report from the NSA suggests it was on all channels. Total interruption of cable and satellite service.”

  “It had to be live, sir, or near to it,” Graves said, tapping away at a computer console. “In the background of the video, it looked like it was getting close to sunset, and it’s that time right now in Revelen. The alleyway they were in—we might be able to find it on the satellite if we looked—ah, here.”

  Passerini moved closer to Graves and his console. He’d found himself standing during the video, watching the “fight” unfold and unable to keep his seat. Passerini had been in a scrap or two in his life, but seeing Sienna Nealon pick up a Humvee and use it as first a shield and then a battering ram to keep those Revelen soldiers off her?

  Well, that was a hell of a thing to watch. It certainly wasn’t the kind of fight Passerini would have liked to find himself in.

  Graves zoomed the big screen down to show an alleyway in Bredoccia, truck parked at the entrance, and a Humvee on its side crushed against it. Soldiers swarmed around it and over it like tiny ants, gathered around an open manhole in the depths of the alley. One, in particular, was leaning over it, a blur of something coming out of his hand—

  “What is that, colonel?” Passerini asked. He squinted, trying to make it out. The resolution on the satellite feed was just not up to the task, though. Or else Passerini’s eyes weren’t. Hard to tell which, these days.

  He looked back at Graves, but the colonel had paled a shade, staring at the screen. “It’s, uh,” Graves started, looking like he was trying real hard to compose himself for some reason. “I believe that’s a metahuman with water powers, sir. A Poseidon, they call them.”

  “A what?” Passerini turned to look again. Sure enough, now that Graves had said it, it did look a little like the guy was spraying a fountain of water out of his hand and down into the manhole.

  Graves zoomed the picture out, then back in a couple blocks away. Here was another soldier, this time standing over a grate built into the curb, same rippling effect coming from his hands—both of them, in this case, water rushing out into the storm drain.

  “What does this look like to you, colonel?” Passerini asked, folding his arms in front of him. He glanced at Graves. Graves was still pale, eyes flitting around, like he was stuck in his own thoughts. “Graves?” Passerini asked.

  “Sorry, sir,” Graves said, shaking it off, his pallor not quite returning to normal. That was understandable; Graves had been present for quite a while now, and Passerini was certainly feeling the effects of this Revelen crisis dragging on. “Looks to me like they’re either going to drown her or flush her into the open.”

  Passerini nodded. “Yeah, I got that. I meant on the broader scale. Does it seem to you like Revelen has turned on Sienna Nealon?”

  Graves’s voice sounded a little scratchy. “It certainly looks that way, sir.”

  “Well, I guess this isn’t any of our business,” Passerini said, thinking out loud. “Though it certainly does seem like a radical swing, given that not two hours ago Hades was vowing murder on us if we tried to get at his granddaughter.” Passerini shook his head. “Now it looks like he’s trying to do the job himself. Unless she’s immune to drowning …?” He looked at Graves.

  Graves shook his head. “No, sir. She is, uh …” He swallowed, obviously, again. “… Vulnerable to that.”

  “Well,” Passerini shrugged, “nothing we can do from here except watch. Especially since we have our own tasks to be working on.” He turned his attention to General Kelly, USAF, who was hunched over a planning table halfway across the room. “General, how goes it?”

  “We’ll have air options in play in the next hour, so,” Kelly called back. He was a balding man with reddish-graying hair wrapped around the sides and back of his skull. Looked a little like a bulldog and fought like one, too.

  “Keep me apprised, general,” Passerini said, looking back at the screen. Water
was starting to well out of one of the grates visible on the street. “The president is probably going to be calling again soon, wondering what we can bring to the party.” A geyser was forming from the pressure, blasting out into the street like a flower blooming in the overhead shot of the satellite. He tossed a look back to Graves, who was still white as a sheet. Probably just needed a break after all the intensity of the night. Well, maybe he’d get one soon, once they got things rolling here. Passerini turned back to the screen, watching the water just spray, wondering how hard it was blowing out now. “Though it sure is starting to look like our job vis-à-vis Sienna Nealon might be done by the time we get anything in position. Right, colonel?”

  Graves didn’t answer, but Passerini didn’t really expect him to. The colonel was focused on the screen, too, eyes moving like he was reading a page in front of him, hands white-knuckled as he balled them into fists above the keyboard. Passerini shrugged, and went back to watching the screen. He doubted he’d see anything noteworthy happen, but hey, there was nothing else to do unless he wanted to micromanage the planners, so he watched the water flow out into the streets of Bredoccia and wondered if his job was going to be done before he even got the forces in place to do it himself.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Sienna

  Drowning was always my least favorite way to die.

  I’d contemplated death quite a bit. You can’t be in my line of work, constantly throwing your life onto the table as the ante to get into the game, to raise the stakes, to end things out—without anticipating death. And not my great-grandfather Death, either, but the real deal, the one that had caught up to me in that subway tunnel in LA when I’d gotten zapped to death. Heart stop.