Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  Game over.

  Except it wasn’t game over. Scott Byerly had brought me back from the icy jaws of death before it had barely gotten a taste of me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that a taste just wasn’t enough, though, especially given how many times since then it had come back for another nip.

  Rose.

  Rose had been Death, in her way, same as me, taking a lick here, a bite there, until it had felt like there were vast chunks hewn out of me, missing pieces I’d never get back. Dead, for all intents and purposes, an inch at a time. I was five feet, four inches tall; she’d probably killed off a solid foot or two of me, proportionally.

  Cold water flooded around me as I swept down the tunnel. I was going feet-first, which was not optimal, and I couldn’t see hardly anything. Street lamps washed in through the occasional grate. They didn’t provide much but a view of rushing bubbles in the foot or so in front of my face, but it was better than nothing.

  I curled up into a ball then unfurled myself, using my hands to catch the sides of the pipe. It stung my fingertips, and I realized I was traveling pretty darned fast. At least thirty miles an hour.

  Using my fingertips, I slowed myself—ouch—just enough to flip so that I was going headfirst. If I came crashing into something in the tunnel, like a stick, this would prove to be a terrible, terrible decision.

  It was, however, the only way I could control my direction and momentum. Lying back and letting the current carry me? That was a prescription for certain drowning and death, and I wasn’t down with that solution to my problems.

  Now, with my legs behind me and my head in front … I could swim.

  And I did, scissoring my legs to propel me along just as the current started to reverse. It must have been hitting something ahead, maybe the end of the tunnel, and doubling back, water surging as a return in this direction. It was bound to create a sort of feedback action, a nasty loop of current for me to get caught in. A great place for me to drown, if I wasn’t careful.

  I had no time for drowning. Kicking against the current, I swam, using my meta strength to push through the angry wall of water pushing back at me. I held my breath tightly in my lungs, not daring to let so much as a molecule of my precious air escape out my nose—which was bubbled, water threatening to wash in through my nostrils but held at bay by the breaths I’d taken and exhaled as I’d submerged. I kept my lips sealed, my lungs churning, trying to extract oxygen from the lungful I’d taken in before I’d dropped into the water.

  How long could I survive like this? I didn’t know an exact number, but some strong metas had survived, albeit severely brain damaged, after considerable periods with no oxygen. But they were essentially vegetables, no higher brain functions to speak of. Having no desire to go through life with the approximate intelligence of a cast member of Jersey Shore, I hoped I wouldn’t find the limits of my air supply.

  But as I kicked my legs, trying to push through the current as it washed back at me with considerable force … it did not look good.

  My lungs burned in my chest as though someone had set them on fire. It was a desperate strain, keeping the air in and the water out. It started to feel like someone had parked a semi-trailer on my chest, in my chest, somewhere in the vicinity beneath my rib cage.

  The water rushed on around me, pushing me ahead now that I’d broken free of the double-back eddy. I broke left at a fork in the pipe. The only reason I knew that was because I’d seen the sharp divide at the Y intersection of the tunnel, missing catching the splitting edge of corrugated metal by bare inches. That would have hurt.

  I surged down the rightward path, the force of the water increasing as it sought to find its exit, the pressure ratcheting up within the confinements of metal and concrete. I was starting to feel out of control, desperate for a breath even though I probably didn’t need one to survive, at least not strictly speaking, for a little while yet. The urgency remained, the hunger, the desire to feel cool air on my face as I sucked in oxygen, well … it was growing in intensity.

  But all I felt around me was the cold water, pushing me forward.

  The street lamps still shone in from above, shedding their anemic glow as I rushed forward in the jaws of the current. I felt a strong push as it doubled back on me again, water rushing back in my direction. I made myself as narrow as possible, trying to slip past. Either I was running into another Poseidon pushing back against me along this path or—

  The answer was revealed by a dim light from above, and it was not good.

  A concrete cistern waited ahead, small enough that I could see every side. The water pushed in, shoving me into this confined space and swirling in an unending whirlpool, my head caught in the center of the vortex and my legs spinning around me.

  I looked up as I twirled, caught in the roiling current. Somewhere, far above, I could see a suggestion of lamplight. Water tried to force its way into my mouth as I spun in the current. It made its way in as I thumped against a wall, hit the back of my throat and I gagged, bubbles of water blinding me for a second as the current began to spin me harder.

  It was like being trapped in an industrial washing machine, the current its own agitator. It was like a vortex running around me, up becoming down, down becoming up, all sense of direction lost in the swirling miasma. There was light from above, faint and obscured beneath a thousand gallons of water and the inky stain of night.

  Something slammed into my ribs, and I was pushed against a hard surface. It had the strength of metal, a latticework of unbending steel pushing against the bones in my back.

  My bones … were not winning.

  The water pressure was forcing me up, trying to spin me, still, but the overriding direction of the current was to force me ever upward, against the resistance of the metal guard. The sound of spray was coming from somewhere beyond, dim, like a train in the distance.

  It was the end I’d feared before I’d let go back in the tunnel.

  I was trapped against a grate, forced face down against it, water doing its best to find its level—through me.

  Water forced itself up my nose, the bubble of air in my nostrils no longer holding it at bay as the pressure increased to insane levels. I gagged and choked, my mouth opening without my intention, more water surging in and into the back of my throat.

  I was trapped, pinned, squirming, unable to find my escape. Desperation flooded me like the water, and the drowning instinct kicked in, taking over my limbs and removing all conscious thought as I flailed against unyielding steel, unable to escape as my body began to fill with water—

  And I started to drown.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Reed

  “We are thirty minutes from the Revelen border,” Greg Vansen’s voice announced over the loudspeaker, coming in clear over the rush of wind around the body of the SR-71. “Course holding steady.”

  I sat across the table from Kat and Scott, a comfortable silence enveloping us for the last twenty minutes or so. We’d been together long enough that sharing a silence wasn’t the worst thing in the world, though it was a little uncommon for Kat until recently. Scott looked a little troubled, lost in thought. Hardly a surprising thing, given what we were going into—

  “Hey,” Jamal said, popping his head in through the archway. He was lingering at the stairwell, a tablet computer in hand. “Y’all got a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said, as Kat turned her attention to him as well. Scott was still staring off into space, concentrating on … something. “What’s up?”

  Jamal slid in next to me, tablet lit up. “I did a little editing to the video. Figured I’d take the advice and make the presentation a little snappier, you know?”

  “How’s the video doing?” I asked. “Oh, right. You don’t have Wi-Fi, so—”

  “No, I got internet,” Jamal said, a sly smile appearing, showing a few teeth. “Managed to create a direct line to the towers here in Europe, do a little encryption work as I go to keep from being detected. I’ll shut it d
own when we get closer to the border, but for now … I’m uploading.” He balanced the tablet in one hand. “Almost done, too.”

  “How’s the first video doing?” Kat asked, leaning forward to look at the screen.

  “A couple hundred views,” Jamal said with a light shrug. “It’s not going to go viral like that, I’m pretty sure. Lot of the debate in the comments sections—”

  “You should never read the comments,” Kat said, shaking her head.

  “—about what’s actually happening in it,” Jamal said. “So, in the re-edit—check this out—”

  The video started playing, showing the security camera footage from Eden Prairie that I’d already watched a couple times. This time, though …

  “Here we go,” Jamal said with a little hint of pride.

  The time and date stamp expanded, a little graphical work that made it extra obvious when this happened. As if that were not enough, the words “SIENNA NEALON—THE EDEN PRAIRIE INCIDENT” were written in bold letters across the screen during a freeze-frame. They disappeared as the footage resumed.

  It sure looked like a discussion was going on. A circle of the prisoners from the Cube were gathered around her, glaring hate and death, that much obvious even through the cold security camera footage. Sienna didn’t seem to be too pleased with anything going on, and I could tell she was smarting off. A whole corps of press was waiting ahead of her, but …

  I blinked. I hadn’t really seen this before, having watched the first couple times just trying to confirm that she hadn’t done anything wrong. She certainly hadn’t yet; it was all talk, but the press … they were just standing there.

  Motionless. Not taking pictures, not shouting questions. That never happened. They were just staring like dumb animals.

  “Weird,” Scott murmured across the table, still staring into space.

  “It is weird,” I said, as the press corps surged forward, launching into a mob attack like a pack of wild dogs. “What power is that, even?”

  “Some kind of mind control that reduces people to animals?” Kat asked, watching over my shoulder. “Look at that. They are really going at her. I mean, I’ve always thought the press, especially the tabloids, were bad, but not this bad—wow, that one went right for her ankles.”

  “I think that guy is biting her on the ass,” Jamal said, pointing at a reporter for the Washington Post that was, sure enough, about waist high on Sienna as she backpedaled from the onrushing reporters. She didn’t make but a step or two before some invisible force—wind, I could tell from experience—sent her flying.

  “Hmm,” Scott said.

  “Yeah. Damn,” I said, glancing away. It was a full-blown fight now. The words, “Peaceful Protest?” popped up on the screen as it freeze framed again. I looked away as someone fired a shot and Sienna went down in a roiling torrent of hell.

  “Whoa,” Kat said, rubbing her hands along her upper arms. “This is good. Chills.”

  “I don’t know that I’d call it good,” I said as I glanced back. Sienna was now missing an arm, and surrounded by the “peaceful protesters.” “Ugh. That’s … good editing work, though.”

  I strained to watch as the prisoners let loose on Sienna, and things got even uglier. It was a full-on stomp fest with my sister at the center of it, and it was tough to watch. They were beating the hell out of her and then arguing, and even at the zoomed-in distance of the camera’s maximum range, it wasn’t hard to follow what was going on. One of them had a rifle in hand and looked like she was about to open up on my sister—

  “They’re going to kill her,” Scott murmured.

  “Yeah,” I said, little chills running up and down my arm as the words, PEACEFUL PROTESTORS? flashed again on the screen. “Look at this. She’s got a gun pointed right at Sienna. It’s amazing how close they got to actually—”

  “No,” Scott said, standing up, knees slamming into the table and making him wince as he rose. “They’re going to kill her, right now. She’s in the water, I can feel her!” His eyes were wild. “I can feel her. She’s under the city, they’re flooding it and—” His eyes met mine and it was like I could see the intensity of the ocean roiling beneath them.

  I didn’t need to ask who he was talking. “You’re sure it’s—”

  “It’s her,” he said, and his voice dropped to whisper quiet, under the noise of the aircraft around us. “She’s in the water, she’s trapped and …” his face twisted, and he looked me right in the eye as a chill flooded through me. “She’s drowning.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Sienna

  The water was in my face, in my lungs, everywhere, pushing me against the unyielding grate with such strength I could feel my bones starting to give. The cracking noise and strain was audible just under the rushing of water that had flooded my ears, the hammering of my heart a distant beat as I was flooded, drowning—

  It was a choking feeling, desperate, all conscious thought and control gone from my limbs as I struggled, madly, without any ability to think or plan or act for myself. Panic had set in, full force. There was nothing for me to brace on, so I flailed against the grating, unable to move it so much as a millimeter.

  There was nothing peaceful about drowning, just an overriding sense of panic that I hadn’t felt even when I was being beaten to death, even when I was having parts of my soul carved off. Not when I was shot nor stabbed nor even being crushed under the weight of a container once at a port.

  All I could do was fight it uselessly, to feel it flooding my body, filling up my lungs and killing my ability to concentrate and think. My limbs were getting heavy, but I moved them anyway, still fighting the suffocation that would have stopped a normal human. I was beyond normal, but also beyond thought—

  My lips sprang open, forced wide as something pushed them free. The water blew out of my lungs, out of my mouth, dragging itself from me with great force.

  This … did not help matters, because oxygen and air did not replace the water that left, exiting out my nose and ears at the same time as though dragged from my body by some sort of aquatic magnet. It left me just as oxygen-starved, just as flailing, only without the water weighing me down that had been there a moment earlier.

  Something pushed me back down, interposing itself between me and the grate. It felt like fingers, but as I twisted in the water, nothing was there. The grate began to rattle, as though it were somehow tethered to the vibration of my own body as I continued to gyrate, the drowning instinct making me its fool.

  The grate burst free and I followed, shoved out of the water, propelled as though by strong hands hidden in the chill liquid. I shot up into the air and felt the warm breath of air reach my lungs as I gasped, leaping into the dark night.

  I tumbled down on a rooftop, propelled out of the deathtrap I’d been caught in and launched forcefully sideways from out of the geyser. Somehow the water broke my fall, catching me on a cushion that deflated as soon as I was safely down, rolling out of my clothes as if commanded—

  “Scott,” I muttered, the last of the water escaping my blouse and leaving my hair completely dry, if a little stiff. I lay on a flat rooftop, and the water rolled a few feet away to rest in a sizable puddle, all the life it had seemed to take on gone now that its job was done. I rolled to my side, watching it for signs of motion.

  There were none. The spray that had carried me up here had not come from the same source as the flood that had trapped me—that had been the work of relatively unsophisticated Poseidons.

  But Scott … Scott was a freaking God of Water. And he’d just saved my life from … wherever the hell he was.

  “Thank you,” I whispered my gratitude to the puddle, as though it could carry my thoughts to him.

  It rippled slightly, though whether it was from my words or because he could hear me, there was no way to tell.

  I rolled to my back, needing just a minute to recover. I stared up at the darkening sky above Revelen, wondering what the hell I should do next, staring
into the falling night and wishing—so desperately—that I had any kind of home I could go to.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Reed

  “I got her out,” Scott said, sagging against the table, almost collapsing where he stood a moment earlier. Kat caught his arm and eased him back onto the bench. “And I got the water out of her.” He was nodding, slowly, and finally, he looked at me. “She’s … she’ll be fine. She was moving and everything, so … she’ll be fine.”

  I chewed my lip. “I’m not sure that’s so. What the hell is going on there that they’re trying to drown her?”

  He blinked a few times. “I don’t know, but there are a whole lot of Poseidon types working in Bredoccia right now. A hundred or more—”

  “Guess they’ve been putting that serum to good use,” Jamal said.

  “That’s how they did it,” Scott said. His normally ruddy skin was pale, like he’d wrung himself out saving Sienna. He probably had, doing it at this distance. “Reed … if they’ve got a hundred Poseidons there …” He leaned forward. “That can’t be all they’ve got on hand. Can you even imagine—”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling a little choked. I looked at Kat. She looked a little paler than she’d been a moment earlier, too, but she was holding it in pretty well, though she seemed to be gripping Scott’s bicep just a little harder than she had before.

  If they had a hundred Poseidons, which were not that common a type of metahuman …

  What the hell else did they have waiting for us in Revelen?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Passerini

  “What am I seeing here?” Passerini asked, reviewing the footage for the second time. It was satellite imagery, and Graves had played it back for him.

  “That was Sienna Nealon getting blown out of a sewer by a calculated effort,” Graves said, spooling it back and replaying the ten seconds or so of film. The scene repeated itself on the big screen, a vaguely human figure flipping in 2D, then getting blown sideways out of the sewer geyser to come to rest on a rooftop, where she’d stirred only after a moment’s rest. “My guess? One of her superpowered friends just saved her from that kill attempt.”