Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  The winds felt a hell of a lot bigger than usual, presumably because I was presently Ant-Man sized, no larger than an insect. Still, for a man who had commanded hurricanes to knock their shit off …

  “Steady,” I breathed and took the winds in hand. It was like taking the reins of a wild horse, but one the size of a tractor trailer, and angry at that. An angry, bucking tractor trailer. With no steering wheel.

  I created a pocket of calm, running the winds around us, then created an updraft powerful enough to keep us aloft. The last thing we needed was to plummet to our deaths—well, for everyone else to, anyway, I’d probably be fine, other than being invisible to anyone not using a microscope.

  “Thanks,” Greg said, appearing out of nowhere in our midst. Kat let out a yelp of surprise; she was holding onto the leg of the table, which was bolted to the ground, and seemed fine except for Greg’s startling appearance. “The SR-71 was crushed from without.”

  “You mean someone fired a missile at us?” Jamal rubbed the top of his head as he picked himself up off the ground. He held up his tablet; the screen was shattered, and he shook his head, electricity flaring into the port. He probably didn’t need the screen working anyway.

  “No,” Greg said in his clipped way. “The metal collapsed, as though we were being snatched out of the air by a giant.”

  “A Magneto, then,” I said. “Metal-controlling meta.”

  “That would be my guess,” Greg said.

  “You guys okay up there?” Augustus called from somewhere below.

  “Fine,” I said. “Are you—”

  “Anybody need a healing hand?” Kat asked, getting to her feet. She brushed a hand over my shoulder. “You’ve got this, right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, lowering my hands from where I’d thrust them out while taking initial control over the winds. Once upon a time it would have taken a lot more will to manage it.

  “We have some minor injuries, yeah,” Augustus called up.

  “On it,” Kat said and disappeared down the stairs.

  “This house isn’t metal, is it?” Scott asked, rising to his feet and dusting himself off.

  “Synthetics … mostly,” Greg said. “And fortunately pressurized, so we can stay here for quite some time, if need be, though I’d suggest we get closer to the ground. The drain on the power system will be the first thing to cause a problem, but we likely have hours, and I do have backup equipment shrunk and stored in one of the cupboards that will allow us to continue without issue for months.”

  “What do you think happens if we move forward?” I asked, straightening my lapel. My suit had taken a beating in the crash into the wall.

  “Nothing good, I would think,” Greg said. “There is a definite concentration of metals within this unit. I had the SR-71 shrunk to smaller than drone proportions. If this Magneto could detect it at that size …”

  “You think he’ll be able to pick this place out,” Jamal said, “even if we’re just riding in on the wind.”

  Greg nodded. “The closer we get, the deeper into his sphere of control, the more likely detection becomes.”

  I let out a low breath. “So what you’re saying is … we can’t get to her.”

  He shook his head. “Not like this. Not in this, or any of my other aircraft. I don’t have any plastic planes on hand.”

  I closed my eyes. “They just dropped a building on her.”

  “And tried to drown her,” Scott whispered.

  “And yet … we remain out of reach,” Greg said, “unless you want to risk detection. All our lives versus—”

  “I know the arithmetic, Greg,” I said. “And … no. I’m not going to throw us forward. Not like this. Not at these odds, not at the cost of everyone’s lives.” I opened my eyes.

  We were out of the game.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Sienna

  Time to stew, time to think, time to breathe and time to plan.

  That was what I finally had while I waited for the military presence around the ruin of the tower to dissipate.

  When I really broke down what I was dealing with into its basic elements, I realized that things were not as bad as I’d originally thought. Every task was extra daunting when you viewed it as a whole thing, especially something as mind-blowingly crazy as keeping an entire country of superpowered people from crushing me under its collective boot.

  But, when broken down into its component tasks, there were only a few things to actually deal with. 1) I had to beat the living hell out of the Revelen army, at least in Bredoccia. That was to clear the way to 2) Kill the shit out of Krall. Which would in turn allow me to 3) Storm the castle and face off with Arche, Yvonne, Lethe, and Hades. Some of them might not want to kill me, some of them might decide to back off and not fight, but just in case, I was including them all and planning for killing all of them, which led to step 4) Deal with the US government.

  So, really, there were only four things I had to do at this point in my life. Easy peasy.

  Okay, none of those things was especially easy, but if I let myself get hung up on little details like the local army in Revelen was probably hundreds of combat-ready metas, armed and able to kill me, I’d just curl up into a ball, become useless, and wait around to die like a coward.

  To hell with that. I was no chickenshit. I was a mean, mo-fo’ing killer of men and women. Cuddling up with a piece of rock in the ruins of this tower and waiting to be found/killed?

  That was for other people. Not Sienna Nealon.

  “Four little things,” I whispered to myself as I left my hiding place beneath the rubble, crawling across the ruin bent over, trying to keep a low profile in the literal sense of the word. The place was crawling with rescuers, but I was in the middle of a little crater of debris that shielded me from immediate view. They wouldn’t go stomping through the wreckage like I was, nossir. They’d have to be careful. They’d need to follow safety protocols. I was, after all, walking on the ruin of one building that had come down on multiple other ones, smashing them. There was no part of this ruin that was particularly stable for me to put my weight on, at least for long.

  Which was why I hustled, metahuman-speed, as I crossed it, keeping my head down to avoid being spotted and with a wary eye on the sky in case they’d deployed drones to assist with rescue efforts. Thus far, I saw nothing, but I still kept my eyes peeled for movement skyward—and earthward, though I didn’t see anything around me.

  Also notable by their absence? The flyers who’d so menaced me during my recent pursuit. I’d hoped that my hiding time had given them a chance to go get involved in something else, like protecting a perimeter somewhere, or going back to their base to get chow and hold a circle jerk while bragging about how they took me out. Or whatever they did to celebrate success.

  Reaching the edge of this little crater, which I realized probably was a street, a little valley of rubble that had been formed when my super tall tower had come crashing down on the buildings on either side of the avenue, I climbed, taking great care in the selection of my footholds and handholds. A few gave way; I shifted quickly, using my meta speed to avoid taking a nasty tumble on at least five occasions.

  When I reached the top of the nearest little mountain ridge, I peered over into the next valley. The wreckage was a hell of a mess, and I had proven to be right. The tower had hit another building where I presently hung, and I was actually holding on to part of the exposed structure of said building. The facade had been partially ripped off in the collapse, but it was still mostly standing, and beyond it was a debris field that nearly took my breath away.

  A nearby avenue was partially clogged, but a few army Humvees waited there, along with a couple of ambulances, about a hundred yards from my position. There weren’t many searchers there and they were really paying attention to one of the standing buildings on that street, one that had taken an indirect hit during the collapse. People were still flowing in and out, mostly in the out direction, and injured in a
lot of cases, paramedics and other first-responders taking them for care under the watchful eye of a few army guys with guns who were much more interested in what was going on in the rescue than keeping watch on the ruin.

  Yay, me.

  I skittered down across the field in front of me like spider-monkey Krall, on my hands and knees and trying to distribute my weight so that it wasn’t resting on any one thing. It served me well as I made my way down the slope of the building in front of me, and I soon found myself at its edge, the back corner of the roof collapsed by a stray beam into the floor below.

  With a careful peek around, I dropped down to the floor below. The rubble creaked, and one of my feet found a section of roof that crunched in, sucking up my foot to the knee.

  I cringed. It hadn’t hurt much, but the sound had been kinda loud. I waited, listening.

  Nothing. Some moans in the distance, but that was it.

  “Damn you, Krall,” I said under my breath as I pulled my foot out. If anyone had been in this apartment when the tower came down, they’d gotten crushed under the collapse of the ceiling. There wasn’t much I could do for them, but I listened anyway.

  No sound. At least, not nearby. The shouts of the searchers on the next street I could hear just fine.

  Picking my way through the debris field, I made it to the edge of the floor, where a three-story drop waited for me. Again, I turned it into a couple of jumps, breaking up the fall so it didn’t kill me. I landed on a rubble-strewn street a few seconds later, letting out a sharp breath from the impact that my knees, fortunately, soaked up as I hit pavement.

  This avenue wasn’t in very good shape. It looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, a few cars smashed under the falling facade of the building behind me. There was rubble everywhere, and one major pillar of the tower had neatly bisected the building across the street. No one was moving inside; hopefully they’d gotten out. The fact that this street wasn’t swarming with people suggested to me that the damage had been considerable in the buildings behind me, and that people had followed a logical path the hell away from the chaos long before now.

  A sound down the street made me leap behind a car that had caught a giant block of rubble, the roof smashed down and all four tires rendered flat by the weight. There wasn’t a body shop on the planet that could have fixed this one, and I doubted anyone would try as I ducked behind the bumper and slowly, slowly peeked out.

  There was a soldier with a rifle about half a block away, looking around. He must have heard me, because he was keeping a very sharp lookout, and as he walked, he shouted in his native language, which was—

  Russian?

  I blinked. I definitely recognized the language, which was weird. They didn’t speak Russian in Revelen. I’d been listening; they spoke a local pig Latin, some Slavic language that had no common roots with my English. Russian didn’t exactly, either, but I knew it when I heard it, having had a native Russian speaker in my head for several years.

  He called out again, picking up his pace. As he got closer, I took another look at his rifle—

  It wasn’t a G-36.

  It was an AK-74M.

  I frowned. Had the Revelen army actually switched to the Russian standard? I looked at his uniform, careful to keep still behind that bumper so as not to draw his eye with sudden movement.

  He wasn’t wearing the standard Revelen army uniform, exactly—or at least not the one I’d seen in the palace. I squinted at the uniform patches, and didn’t recognize it. His BDU was an urban camo pattern. Definitely not Russian army, though …

  The soldier drew closer, scanning around, calling out as he walked. He wasn’t apprehensive about running into me; he was doing rescue op stuff, looking for survivors. As soon as his head was turned, I snaked mine back behind the bumper and closed my eyes, listening to his footfalls.

  He wasn’t being cautious. He was prioritizing covering ground over watching his ass, probably because he thought he was hunting for a survivor to help, not a Sienna Nealon, who was clearly dead. I drifted a little lower, looked under the car and caught sight of his boots. He was less than a foot from the vehicle, coming up the side at a brisk walk—

  I held my breath, readied myself, focused on his footsteps, and as soon as I heard him get close enough—

  I lunged out and caught the barrel of his rifle, yanking and twisting it off-line from my body. The sudden violence I applied to it shocked him, and he let out a small cry of surprise as I swung the grip around and took hold of it.

  Following in the natural spin I’d created while disarming him, I whirled into a back-kick, aiming straight for his gut. I caught him flat-footed and drove all the air out of him before he could shout. He made an “OOF!” sound and flew across the street, crashing into a pile of concrete and rebar with enough force that a miniature cloud puffed out from his point of impact.

  I ran after him, coming up on him just as he started to rise. Slinging the rifle over my body, I checked that it was safetied—it was, stupid on his part—and swung it out of my way as I dropped my knee onto his stomach, driving the air out of him a second time. He gasped, and before he could suck in a breath, I raised my fist—

  And cold-cocked him. Once.

  Twice.

  Three times … not so much a lady.

  Once I was sure he was out, I disarmed him of his belt, which included a pistol and some grenades. This time, I wasn’t frigging losing mine, I was determined. The Glock I’d been carrying during the fall had pretty much been rendered inoperable by … well, the fall. Barrel bent, shooting anything out of it would have been an exercise in potential suicide.

  But now I had—what the hell?

  He was carrying the new-ish Russian Grach, which I gave a cursory glance to before strapping on his belt and buckling it around my waist. Grenades, pistol, some other stuff. Okay. All Russian equipment.

  I looked at his face. I’d probably fractured his skull, which didn’t trouble me all that much given he was a meta and would heal. Besides, I had a more pressing concern.

  Cracking my knuckles, I sunk a palm onto his face and braced myself, counting the seconds as I looked left, then right down the street.

  No one was there. Whew.

  It didn’t take long to feel the burn as my powers started to work. If my four-part (would that be considered quad-partite?) plan was to work, I had to start on phase one immediately and that meant getting some active intel on this army that was running around Bredoccia. I needed to know their numbers, their disposition, in order to hamstring them—because killing was probably right out—

  Hang on.

  I burst into the soldier’s mind with all the grace of an unsupervised kid into a birthday cake that had been left out. His whole life was open to me, and while I usually operated with a modicum of control so as to avoid damaging the brains I jacked, something popped out at me that was so damned apparent after a second within that it obviated my need for caution.

  This dude … this yelling, incautious mf’er …

  Was a mercenary.

  In fact, Revelen’s entire 1st Division, the army group that was currently spread out through Bredoccia …

  They were all mercenaries. Every last one of them.

  These were not gentle citizen soldiers defending their homeland against the tyranny of the evil invader Sienna Nealon. These were mercenaries pulled from the four corners of the earth, drawn here by the fact that Revelen was becoming the capitol for merc activity in Europe, a bunch of swarming assholes seeking payment and willing to do murder in exchange for it.

  Visions of what this man had done in his career, which had started at the age of eighteen in the Russian army and then continued in a variety of places around the globe, put to the lie any illusions I might have had about the nobility of the trade. I dipped into a few memories about what he’d done to locals, to villagers in other countries, his laughing joy as he perpetrated evil—

  And I just drained what I needed and broke his neck.
He twitched, once, as he died.

  I rose, a few details of specialized knowledge gleaned from his career in the army added to my repertory. I’d picked him dry, getting all the juicy things I felt I could use, adding his experience to my own without bothering with his power, which was near useless, some kind of luminescence in the darkness, or his blackened soul. I didn’t need that in my head. I barely wanted the small dip into his history that I’d taken.

  “Mercenaries,” I said under my breath, a little smile cracking my steely facade like it was a building on this street about two hours ago, when the tower came down. All Bredoccia was swimming in them. Not a local soldier to be found.

  That changed the game.

  A lot.

  I looked at the body at my feet, and smiled as I turned, leaving him behind in the mess he and his brethren had made at General Krall’s order.

  Mercenaries … mercenaries I could kill without feeling a damned thing.

  And it was time to go to work doing just that.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  If I had a calling in life, it seemed to be to be a purveyor of death to the deserving.

  It was all part of the same grand game, the same purposeful end, which was to deal all manner of hell to those who were bringing their own hell down on the undeserving.

  Like the people of Bredoccia. Not one of them had asked for General Spider-Monkey to drop a building on their heads as they went about their everyday lives.

  It wasn’t clear to me how many people had died. It wasn’t clear to anyone yet, and probably wouldn’t be for months.

  I couldn’t do anything about that, though. Trying to aid in rescue efforts would be a really good way to insure that the Revelen army’s 1st Division would stop rescuing and move all their efforts into killing me again, to hell with the civilian consequences.

  Well, to hell with that, and to hell with them. I was done letting them kill civilians in the name of wiping me out, of me running and keeping the kid gloves on rather than engaging them. I’d pulled my punches before because I thought I was facing the real army of Revelen, not a bunch of for-hire killers who were in the same trade as me, without the moral compass.