Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  Carefully positioning myself between the soldier and his two comrades, I yanked him a step forward, always working to keep him as a shield so his buddies wouldn’t riddle me with holes while I was disarming him. He lost his balance and staggered, loosing a few more rounds with a thundering series of gunshots. The barrel was hot in my hand, but I didn’t dare let go.

  I brought around an elbow and jacked the dude in the jaw, hearing a satisfying crack as he wobbled and started to lose consciousness. His knees failed him, and he began to sag down.

  Uh oh. That was my shield. I was short and all, but even I couldn’t hide behind him if he hit the ground.

  So I kicked him in the gut and sent him flying into the dudes behind him by applying a little shove and spin at the point of my foot. I held onto his gun as he went sailing, and he let it go because he was fully out. By the time he smashed into his two buddies and they went tumbling across the floor in a conjoined pile of limbs, his eyes were closed and he was evidencing no reaction to the bump, boom, slam that his body was making as he rolled with them.

  Not content to watch them roll, I ran after them, delivering a hard rifle butt to the jaw of one of the soldiers as he started to fight his way back to his feet. The other got his sling tangled in the mass of limbs and tried to raise his gun to shoot me but snagged it, discharging a burst into the ceiling.

  I didn’t want to chance getting shot, and I wasn’t quite to the point where I was ready to start killing these Revelen soldiers, so I dove for cover behind a nearby end table. It was lousy cover, but honestly, I wasn’t thinking super hard and I was probably just going to launch it at him anyway rather than risk killing him by shooting back.

  Reaching the table, I sent it flying at him with a kick, and it clanged against his rifle, knocking it free and sending a few more shots in various directions. I heard the muffled thump of bullets burying themselves in the ceiling, in the wall past me, even a couple shattering the massive windows that looked out over Bredoccia. The crinkling glass panes fell out as though someone had tossed something through them, twinkling with the reflection of the city lights as they fell out of sight.

  I rose as the soldier’s rifle clattered, bringing my own to my shoulder. He had a pretty pissed-off look on his face, but his hands were squarely at his side.

  “Don’t,” I said, eyeing the pistol he had on his belt. One of his hands was inches away—

  He went for it.

  “Dammit, I said don’t!” I fired my rifle, aiming over the sights at his shoulder. It was not among the smartest ideas, shooting someone you didn’t want to kill, because bullets had a way of ignoring your intent and just fulfilling their mission, which was to rip through whatever you pointed them at, to hell with the consequences. Fortunately for him, I missed. Aiming for the outside of your target in a life or death battle? Dumb move.

  The soldier did a drop to his knees, spinning and pirouetting as he drew his pistol. It would have been a cool move if it had been in a John Woo movie.

  Here, it just looked stupid, and while he was doing it, I took a couple steps closer and heaved my rifle at him, butt-first, like a javelin.

  Yeah, throwing away your rifle is stupid, too, especially when your opponent is shooting at you. I was just full of idiocy today, trying to save the lives of these soldiers. It felt stupidly noble, with heavy emphasis on the “stupid” part. Trying not to kill people who were killing me … well, it was a good way to get dead, and I really struggled with why I was doing it.

  Oh, right. Because they probably wouldn’t have chosen, “Go after Sienna Nealon,” from the mission list if they’d been given a choice. Orders were orders, though, and I could respect that. It was only when people voluntarily chose to come after me that I lost all respect for their intelligence.

  As he came around and started to aim at me, my rifle crashed into his nose and broke it, doing some pretty severe damage to his face in the process. He dropped his pistol, because remembering to shoot someone when you’ve just had your maxilla broken is tough. Blood was squirting down his upper lip and down onto his chin, and he tipped his head back, apparently forgetting he was mid-fight.

  I clocked him, finishing things up, then slid his insensate body across the floor once I was sure he didn’t have any other guns secreted on his person. I sent his buddies after him once I’d checked them for weapons and consciousness and contented myself they had neither by the time I was through. They were out because I’d clobbered them before, and they were weaponless after I finished my search because I confiscated their pistols, gun belts, rifles and knives.

  Taking a quick assessment, I found I had three rifles of the German G-36 variety and three Glock 17 variant pistols. Which was fortunate, because I was well schooled with all of them. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world if Revelen’s army had gone the Russian route, with Makarov pistols and the new AK-74M, but I was less fond of them, especially the Makarovs.

  “You couldn’t have been on the cutting edge, Hades, and upgraded to the new HK416,” I muttered under my breath as I pondered the next part of my plan, which involved waking one of these yahoos up with gentle slaps to the cheek and forcing him to do my evil bidding. I played with the G-36 sling in my hands as I squatted, the rifle on the ground, adjusting the strap length, trying to decide whether I needed to tighten it to the point where if I got washed through the sewers, I wouldn’t lose it. Not that I’d get washed through sewers again, but you just never knew what—

  The explosion was loud and long, and shook the floor beneath my feet. I reached to stabilize myself as the ground beneath me shifted at a subtle angle, the G-36 I’d just been playing with sliding out of reach, along with the other two. The Glocks went, too, except for the one I’d put in a holster on my belt.

  Balance shifted again, the floor dropping a few feet. I let out a little cry; I didn’t have time to be self-conscious, because I realized what had happened—

  That asshat General Krall had just blown up the tower.

  The ground rumbled and pitched, and everything tilted sideways in a sick and sudden twisting of the world around me. The building was collapsing on itself, but it was also going sideways, and I started to slide toward the busted windows along with the three soldiers who had tried to clobber me. They were coming to in various states of panic as the building came down.

  “Oh—” one of them said, spitting out an exclamation, probably some choice local profanity and grabbing his closest bud. They swept out the open window as the ground lurched into view outside, the entire structure toppling in that direction.

  He disappeared, flying up and out of sight, leaving me behind with one guy who was just coming out of it, nothing to arrest my slide toward the busted windows. The ground was rushing up at us; the top of the tower where we were had apparently dropped off. We were gaining speed, hurtling toward a series of apartment buildings whose rooftops I could see with increasing clarity.

  “SHIT!” the last remaining soldier said as we free-falled. My right hand was the last thing that had even a tentative grasp on anything, and it was basically just touching the slick, glass tile floor, no leverage or grip to amount to anything. I could maybe shove off, but that wasn’t going to do me one lick of good.

  “Hey, you mind—” I shouted, trying to be heard over the rumble of the building coming down around our ears.

  He didn’t hear me. If he saw me, it was with wide, panicked eyes as he came back to himself and realized he was about five seconds from slamming into the earth at terminal velocity, the kind of speed that guarantees even a metahuman is going to splatter like a bug under a boot on impact.

  The last soldier—my last damned hope—shot up and out the window visible beyond the elevator corridor in which I’d been standing, bursting through the residual glass windows like they weren’t even there. I caught a little glittering of shards as he shot through, thought maybe I heard a curse of pain, and then that sucker was gone, disappearing into the night.

  “Wel
l, shit,” I said, turning my attention back down to the narrowing view of Bredoccia’s rooftops as the top of the Dauntless Tower came rushing down to impact. It had to be a twenty-story fall, and not the sort of thing I could survive. Even still, I wrapped my arms around myself and tucked my legs in, going full into the fetal position as I plummeted the last few hundred feet, nothing but air surrounding me—

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Reed

  “They’ve got Sienna cornered,” Jamal said, frowning as he stared at his phone. “Pulling from a few reports here, but it’s all being broadcast live. Some kind of pirate takeover of the networks. Someone’s hijacking the feed and deciding which security vids to show.” He frowned. “Hang on. It’s delayed a little. I’ve got a finger on the source. Let me switch to live—”

  The screen changed up, and suddenly I was looking at an office building, where Sienna was kneeling over some military rifles, a few crumpled soldiers about twenty feet from her in a pile. She looked like she was gun shopping or something, messing around with a sling—

  “That’s our girl,” Kat said under her breath. “I shop designer handbags, she shops designer weapons.”

  “Tools of your respective trades,” Scott said with a wistful smile. That got a short laugh out of Kat.

  “What the hell happened that’s got her on the run is my question,” I said. “First we get Scott’s drowning thing, now—”

  “Uh oh,” Jamal said, and the feed flickered out as the entire camera lurched, then went black.

  It snapped back to the view of the tower, the exterior shot, and …

  The tower was coming down. A cloud of dust and demolition waste was billowing out, and the building lurched at the bottom, the first ten stories collapsing in on themselves.

  “Holy shit,” Scott breathed.

  The rest of the tower didn’t follow that pattern, though. About halfway up, the supports snapped, and the top half started to tilt, radically, to the right. It broke away from the rest of the building, falling sideways like it was London Bridge, falling down.

  “Dear God,” Kat said.

  I didn’t even realize I was on my feet. “Where is she in there, Jamal?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, finger flashing with electricity into the port of his phone. “Trying to narrow it—third floor from top!”

  Scott was ashen, staring up at me with wide-eyes. “Can you feel her from here?”

  I swallowed, ignoring him. I was going to really have to concentrate in order to even have a chance to—

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Dave Kory

  “Wow,” Caden said as the tower came crashing down in Bredoccia, the cloud of dusting billowing up on the screen as they watched through this pirate broadcast, “I guess that kinda kills the point of the, ‘Sienna Nealon is Fighting Her Way Through Eastern Europe and People on the Internet Are Not Having It,’” article, huh?”

  “No, keep going with it,” Dave said, watching the dust cloud rise over the city. The broadcast had switched to a camera a mile or more away. They’d watched the top of the building come off and slam down, and Dave had gotten a vaguely sick feeling in his stomach seeing it. It was like a natural disaster, only one with an unnatural cause: Sienna Nealon. “I mean, we might as well run it since it’s almost done. Just make sure you get at least six tweets pulled into the story to substantiate the ‘people on the internet are not having it’ part of the lede.”

  “Am I the only one that thinks this is kind of a shame?” Holly said, eyes glued to the TV. She had a face that was too small for her head. “I mean, I was just starting to respect the hell out of her. She was really fighting—”

  Actual boos came from her co-workers, causing Dave to blink, then smile. Holly shrugged, but her face was beet red. Someone even hissed. “This is Sienna Nealon we’re talking about,” Dave said, still smiling. These reporters were mostly kids. A lot of them didn’t know shit, and it often showed. “Don’t go feeling sorry for her. Look at all the people she’s done shit to. Oppressed. She’s not worth your pity.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Holly said, looking around with genuine contrition. “Still … story over.”

  “That’s the real shame in this,” Dave said, taking a deep breath. The dust cloud was a little less pronounced over Bredoccia, spreading out from the point of impact. “Along with the civilian casualties, I guess. We should write something up about that at some point, since it looks like this is Sienna Nealon’s fault. Add it to her total.” He snapped his fingers. “We need a death tally for her. Someone get to work on that. I wish we’d had it live during the chase, that would have been great, add to it as she—”

  “DO NOT ADJUST YOUR TELEVISION SETS,” the mechanical voice came again. “STAY TUNED … FOR MORE.”

  “More?” Dave asked, leaning forward, his chair squeaking beneath him. “More what? Are they going to launch into funeral coverage now? Because no one could survive that shit right there, not even her.” He just smiled, shook his head. This was what he was here for, to provide leadership, guidance, and occasionally call bullshit when he saw it. “She’s dead. Write it up. I want it on the front page in ten minutes. No—five.”

  There was a stir at that, the spell of TV broken, as they started to get back to their jobs. Dave watched them go, and realized—they’d just seen a moment of history made.

  And now they needed to explain what just happened to the world … because that was the job.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Sienna

  “Ouch.”

  Yeah.

  Didn’t die.

  I came to in the middle of the fallen building’s debris field, not hurting too bad considering the Dauntless Tower had come around my damned ears. And after a fifty-story plunge, too.

  The answer to how I was alive seemed obvious, given what had happened to me tonight already:

  “Reed,” I breathed. “Thanks, bro.”

  The wind didn’t whisper to me in answer, but I didn’t need it to.

  Still … ouch. My back had a little ache to it where I lay across a mound of shattered concrete and rebar. An enormous pillar lay to my right, crushed pieces of concrete and sections of torn-up carpet dotting the ruin. I lay in the middle of it all, not so much as a stray piece of rubble across me thanks to my brother.

  I spared a thought for Reed, who must be somewhere relatively close if he’d just spared me a deadly fall. Scott, too, saving me from that drain trap the way he had.

  They were coming for me.

  Again.

  I pushed a piece of rebar away from my leg and it clanged, making a little more noise than I wanted it to. My ears were ringing, so I couldn’t tell how loud it actually was, but I didn’t really want to draw attention to myself. Shit.

  “Did you hear something?” A voice came from not far off, and I froze, looking around with darting eyes to find some sort of cover. There was a pretty large section of concrete sticking up at a low angle about a dozen feet away and resting on a huge girder, creating a little pocket of open space. I rolled swiftly under it, moving a couple chunks of block and a piece of stray carpet out of my way. That done, I propped the carpet up so that I could look out of a little gap from beneath the concrete pillar.

  A non-English response filtered down to me, followed by laughter.

  “I’m never going to adapt to speaking your language,” the first voice said, still positively shaking with mirth. He had an Aussie accent. Or maybe Kiwi. I had a hard time differentiating them but definitely one of the two. “I may have come here as a refugee during the war, mate, but I’m still not planning on staying.” Okay, Aussie. “No need to beg, Kloskiewicz. I know you love me and all—”

  A hard, local curse must have hit him, cuz the Aussie broke out laughing again. “I don’t see anything, mate, do you?”

  A man floated into my field of view. It wasn’t the Aussie; it was his companion, and he said something under his breath in the guttural local language.

  “I don�
�t know,” the Aussie said. Now he floated into view. Both flyers, both wearing the local army uniform. “Seems like we might have to start digging if we’re going to need to find—”

  “No need to dig,” General Krall’s voice came from somewhere behind my pillar. Now she was speaking English, lucky for me. Must have wanted to impress something upon the Aussie. “She’s weak. She would not survive this.”

  The Aussie drifted around, and I could see he had a blond head of hair and a lantern jaw. “You sure? We could set some people to digging, confirm the kill?”

  “No time for that,” Krall said. “We have a war at our borders. She lacks her old invulnerability. The fall has killed her, and if not … the tower surely did. Come. We must pursue other tasks.” She clapped her hands. “Leave her with the dead. The rescuers will turn her up … sooner or later.”

  I raised an eyebrow. I was going to take delirious joy in making Krall eat those damned words. And my fist.

  Just … not right this second.

  “You’re the boss, boss,” the Aussie said, and off he went, drifting out of my field of view, along with Krall and his companion, disappearing over top of my shelter.

  So … Krall had dropped a building on the damned city just to kill me.

  Whether she was acting on Hades and Lethe’s orders or not, she’d just shown me exactly who she was.

  “You’re going to die for that,” I whispered, hiding in the dark, plotting my next move. I didn’t dare even crack my knuckles, but I knew I’d have to get out of here soon, probably as soon as I was sure she was gone.

  Now I had a mission again. And woe betide General Krall when I got in front of her again.

  Because if it was the last thing I did—and I didn’t rule out that it might be—I was going to make her pay for what she’d done to the people of Bredoccia, dropping a building on them just to get to me. My face felt heated as I lay there in the darkness, steaming. Some old words came back to me, ones that fit the situation perfectly.