We Could Be Heroes

by Harmon Cooper

  “Just like that, huh?” Zoe asked Helena.

  “Unless you have another suggestion…”

  Zoe bit her lip for a moment. “Okay, it is actually a pretty good option. I guess I’ll… No, you know what? I will crash here. Do you mind? Do you have an extra guest bedroom?”

  Helena stared at Zoe for a moment, finally nodding her chin down the hallway. “Last one on the left. Ozella, yours is the one before that, across from the study. If there are any changes that need to be made, note them, and send them to me via a mental message so I can forward it to my assistant, Bryan King. He will also arrange for items you need transported from your current dwelling. I can have anything changed in the room, or more seating added, just nothing too structural, although if you really need some structural change, please don’t hesitate to ask me.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” Ozella said, a dreamy smile on her face.

  Helena stretched both hands over her head and yawned again. “Now, let’s try to get some rest. I have this feeling that tomorrow is going to be a lot longer than any of us were anticipating. Do you get that sense, Sam?”

  “I’m not getting anything,” Sam said, inhaling through his mouth. He’d had enough of his power for one day.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Sam’s Olfactory Epithelium is Above Average Size

  (That’s what they all say…)

  “I made breakfast,” Ozella Rose said, standing before Sam Meeko’s bed with a tray in her hands. Sure enough there was toast, jam, and eggs sunny side up with a light sprinkle of pepper on top, as well as a small cup of lemon honey tea. Sam was a bit startled seeing her, mostly because of what he had noticed last night, the strange ghostlike woman sucking on her knee and then disappearing.

  “You can eat this stuff, right?” she asked, after waiting through a moment of silence.

  “Sure,” Sam told her, which was sort of a lie. But he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  Ozella brought the tray over to him as he sat up, placing it perfectly in front of him so he could enjoy it, still half under the blanket. Sam watched her leave, the strange woman still in her schoolgirl uniform, the bottom of her skirt barely covering her ass.

  Weird.

  Steeling himself for whatever he may sense, Sam lifted the jam to his nostrils, taking in a big whiff.

  He saw sunshine, a beautiful farm in the Northern Alliance, a woman picking dew covered strawberries and raspberries, mashing them together, adding ingredients that her family had passed down for generations.

  Now suddenly interested in the jam, Sam spread a little on his toast, and took a bite, savoring the flavor.

  Since his nose had kicked into high gear, he’d found it hard to eat anything other than bread. He could sense the animal suffering before they died, or the feelings of the person who made his food, that sort of thing.

  It all came to him with a single sniff, and he’d already found himself becoming pickier about what he consumed, that or trying his damnedest not to breathe while he did it.

  Not that this helped; the sense of taste was so tied to the sense of smell that even if he really focused on not breathing through his nostrils, he would still pick up some of the flavor in his nostrils, which would trigger information about what he was eating, info he definitely didn’t want to know.

  All this to say the jam was good, and that there was no way in hell Sam was going to eat the egg.

  A lot was on his mind by the time he saw the door open again, Ozella slipping back in.

  Sam was thinking about what he had sensed last night when smelling the vial that belonged to Dr. Hamza; about the children, the girl with red hair whom he could have saved; and then there was his proposal to form a team, and how quickly it was agreed upon.

  Ozella approached his bed, one of her notebooks in her hand.

  “I wasn’t tired last night,” she said softly, “so I decided to focus on you... ”

  “Focus on me?” Sam asked as she flipped through the book.

  “I want to get a better understanding of your power. I’m guessing it has improved since the police officers attacked you, but you’re still having control issues, right?”

  “The understatement of the year,” Sam said, nodding as he set his tray to the side. Ozella took a seat next to him, her legs still dangling off the bed.

  “That’s what I figured. Helena has a very big library in her study, so I was up until at least seven looking through some of her books.”

  “You stayed up that late?” Sam asked, moving a bit closer to her. She was already starting to blush, not making eye contact with him.

  “I wanted to be helpful,” she said in a soft voice.

  “Well, you don’t have to work that hard…”

  “Here!” she said, shoving her Book of Known Variables in front of him. Ozella had drawn an arrow with wavy lines above it to indicate smell. The arrow started at the word ‘smell,’ moved to nose cavity, then the olfactory epithelium, the olfactory tract, and stopped at a drawing of a brain.

  “So this is how smell works?” Sam asked, following the arrows.

  “Before we can figure your power out, we need to understand more about your nose. Do you know anything about human anatomy?”

  Sam had to bite his lip in order not to describe in detail what he knew about human anatomy, namely about how parts fit together. Yep, his mind was in that sort of place at the moment, especially seeing Ozella sitting on his bed, the fronts of her uniform parted, her curves on full display.

  “I know some things,” he finally said. “I mean, just the normal stuff, you know, whatever I learned in school. Muscles, bones, that sort of thing.”

  “So what do you think a smell is?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “A smell?” Sam’s nostrils flared wide as he thought of an answer.

  Of course he also ended up inhaling in Ozella’s direction, confirming that she really had been up until seven doing research on his nose, and smell for that matter.

  She genuinely wanted to help.

  “I never really thought about it,” he finally said.

  “A smell is made up of molecules. These molecules come into your nose cavity, and something like ninety-five percent of them stay there, blocked by nose hairs, which are used to filter out the molecules before they get to the back of your nose,” she said, her finger moving up to the bridge of her nose. “It’s here that the molecules reach the olfactory epithelium, the odor getting sucked into a layer of mucus. As they dissolve, they bind to the olfactory receptor cells, and then they are sent up the olfactory tract and directly to your brain, where they are identified.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Whoa is right!” she said almost too loudly, immediately bringing her hands to her mouth. “Sorry.”

  “No, continue, this is interesting.”

  “A normal brain, exemplar or non-exemplar, has something like forty million olfactory receptor neurons, which identify the smell and classify it. And a smell can be classified in different ways. It can trigger memories, or it can simply be just a classification that says what it is, ‘this is food,’ or ‘this is food and it’s good to eat,’ that sort of thing. Another difference between smell and another sense, like touch or something, is that smell goes directly to the brain. The other senses don’t work the same way, they have to go to relay centers first.”

  “And why is this?”

  “Well, some people believe it’s because smell came before the other senses, which is why it has a direct track.”

  Sam imagined a creature roaming around without eyes, hands, ears, or legs for that matter, simply relying on its big sniffer. Whatever it was, it would be ugly.

  “And you know that thing I was telling you about? The olfactory epithelium?” She reached for the book in his lap and turned to the next page, her arm brushing against his, and showed him a sideways diagram of a nose and a smell entering it.

  The olfactory epithelium was labeled in the drawing, and she pointed at it as she said, �
�A dog, for example, has an olfactory epithelium that is twenty times bigger than a human’s. But yours is stronger than a dog’s, clearly, well I guess it’s not quantifiable, but you get the point.”

  “But my nose is the same size…” Sam started to say.

  “That’s true, and this is where your exemplar nature comes into play. They say that all powers can somehow be broken down scientifically, which is why the Eastern Province is so good at coming up with tech that replicates exemplar abilities.”

  Sam nodded, aware of some of the crazy tech that came out of the East. There were rumors that some of the inventions in the East had never made it to Centralia, that they were able to replicate almost any power.

  “So if we break down your power scientifically, and just based on what I was able to research and cobble together last night, your superpower is actually your olfactory epithelium, that’s where your power lies. It is heightened beyond what anyone has ever seen before, at least to my knowledge.”

  “There could be others like me,” Sam started to say. “There has to be.”

  “Not documented,” said Ozella, taking her notebook back from him. “Trust me, I checked. Which means yours may be a first. As you know, they document every new power that comes into existence, and I even checked the registry using a telepath service. Not a single power. There are some Type II and III Class Cs, beast morphers, that have heightened sense, smell, hearing, whatever. But none like yours. None have been documented actually being able to get a sense of the future.”

  “Interesting…” Sam said, nodding with appreciation. “And you think that knowing where my power lies is going to help me make it stronger?”

  “Of course I do. Now that we know how it works, we can work to improve it, and maybe we can improve it to the point that you can turn it on and off, if that makes sense, almost treating it as some sort of muscle. I don’t know; that’s what’s going through my head right now, but anyway, if you could do that, not only would you be able to use your power freely, you’d be able use it smartly.”

  “All right, I’m convinced. Where do I sign up?” Sam said, offering her a dashing smile that caused her to blush.

  “Let’s start at a thrift store.”

  The door creaked open and Zoe Goa Ramone poked her head in, a frown forming on her face when she saw Ozella sitting on Sam’s bed. She was in athletic gear, a tight black number, her fists wrapped with white tape. “Whenever you two are finished doing whatever it is you’re doing in here, you may want to join us in the gym.”

  “Us?” Sam asked his dark-haired ex, not quite reading the look on her face.

  “Helena and I are going to fight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Early Morning Brawl

  (I mean, you knew this was coming, right?)

  Helena Knight started by loosening up her hands, then her arms, then her shoulders. Once she was ready, she bent forward at the waist, bowing to Zoe Goa Ramone, who stood before Helena with her tape-wrapped fists at the ready.

  Hell yes, this little spar was Helena’s idea, and it wasn’t about establishing dominance as much as it was about making Zoe stronger. The dark-haired woman’s competitive edge aside, Helena knew she would be a formidable opponent, but she also knew she would eventually win, that Zoe could learn by fighting someone like Helena.

  So a little cocky, but there were also good intentions behind it. If they were going to be on a team together, Helena needed to know Zoe’s limits, and vice versa, both of them able to play off one another in the future.

  “Okay, you’ve bowed,” Zoe said, giving Helena the wrap-it-up sign.

  As she stood, Helena took the hair tie off her wrist and pulled her gray hair into a short ponytail. She was calm and collected as she did so, her years of training with professional teachers evident to anyone stepping into the room, well, anyone except Sam and Ozella, both of whom didn’t know shit all about fighting.

  But they had other uses, Helena knew this, and this was why she was sure of the decision she’d made last night, glad to have somehow found these three strangers in her life.

  And to think it all started at a police station, and this encounter had led to a date, which had led to a cosplay engagement, their four narratives continuing to intertwine.

  “When you’re ready,” Helena said, her hands coming behind her back.

  This was the beautiful thing about combat dance: it was as much about the form and the movement, at least classically anyway, as it was about the actual strike.

  The best dancers would come so close to hitting their opponent that it appeared as if they’d actually done it, and it was no wonder that some of the practitioners of this rare art went on to become famous theater actors, selling out shows all around Centralia.

  Helena would fight this way for a moment, her hands behind her back, hoping to really get a taste of Zoe’s speed. As much as it may have seemed so on the surface, it wasn’t her intention to embarrass Zoe. While there was some tension between them, she admired Zoe’s spunk, and her ability to light a fire under someone’s ass.

  In reality, they both had that ability, Helena’s had just been refined by her upbringing.

  “Be careful,” Ozella said, her hands coming to her mouth.

  This gave Helena another opportunity to glance over at Sam, to see that the look on his face was one of both horror and interest with a sprinkle of apprehension, the man clearly breathing through his mouth, likely trying not to sniff out any of the vibes in the room.

  “We’ll be fine,” Helena said politely. “When you’re ready.”

  “You said that the first time!” Zoe ran forward with her fists ready, but rather than swing as Helena had expected her to do, Zoe spun, going for a roundhouse kick that nearly took the heiress off guard.

  Realizing she would need to use her arms, Helena ducked the kick just in time, dodging Zoe’s foot and going up onto one hand, twisting around and coming down in a way that allowed her to sweep Zoe’s feet out from beneath her.

  Zoe hit the ground with a loud thump!, but pushed off almost immediately, barely registering the impact.

  She was back on Helena in a matter of seconds, this time coming in with a few quick swipes to test the waters.

  Zoe continued to throw punches, still not able to get a hit in, but she was definitely keeping the lean woman on her toes.

  “Stop jumping around!” Zoe shouted.

  She swung again and Helena stepped aside, smacking Zoe in the back of her neck with an open palm, the percussive sound making both Ozella and Sam flinch.

  Helena skipped away again, this time through a series of backflips, Zoe trying her damndest to catch up with her. She had performed thousands of backflips in her life, to the point that it was second nature to her, which meant that she was able to think during this process.

  And as she continued to dodge Zoe’s attacks, Helena was starting to get a pretty good idea of her opponent’s fighting style.

  It was a style used in the Southern Alliance, an aggressive brawler style that the South had been using for years in competitions all around the world. Helena had never personally gone up against someone who used this style, but she got the gist of it, and she knew then, as she had assumed, that the easiest way to deal with Zoe would be to tire her out.

  Of course she could go in for a death strike as well, but it wasn’t her intention in this fight.

  Yet.

  “Stop moving!” Zoe leapt into the air and performing a double footed kick. It was a ballsy move to try, but she landed correctly, in a spin that allowed her to quickly regain her footing, another leg coming around, followed by a knee, all of which Helena nimbly blocked using her forearms.

  She could tell that Zoe was growing tired, the woman sucking in deep breaths of air, her face red, her pupils little pinpricks that darted back and forth as she tried to come up with another attack.

  A twisted smile took shape on Helena’s face as she simply dropped her shoulders, her palms open at her sides, completely p
rone.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Zoe asked, after the two had stared at each other for what felt like several minutes.

  “Would you like me to attack you?” Helena asked.

  “Yeah, and it’s about goddamn time. I’m sick of this ‘bounce around the room’ game. You’re the one that wanted to spar, so attack me.”

  “Okay,” Helena said, much faster than Zoe had anticipated.

  Helena’s trainers had spent an equal amount of time on defense and offense, and now that she had identified Zoe’s style, she was ready to make her approach, still planning to fight in a reserved way.

  Adjusting her weight on her feet, and loosening up slightly, Helena cleared the distance between Zoe and herself through a one-armed cartwheel, using her momentum to springboard herself over Zoe’s body, even as Zoe tried to punch straight up, hoping to at least catch her in the ribs.

  Helena landed behind Zoe and knocked her legs out from under her again.

  Zoe pressed off the ground and spun, lunging forward with a strike that clipped Helena’s thigh.

  With a quick exhale to ignore the pain, Helena managed to move away before Zoe could do more damage, the wannabe tiger morpher on the offensive again.

  Zoe continued trying to get another hit in on Helena, beckoning her forward every now and then, Helena staying just far enough away never to fully take a hit, letting Zoe’s ego and desire to win take over.

  In the end, it really was a waiting game, and once Zoe was gasping for air, her hands on her knees, Helena decided to finish this. She moved quickly over to Zoe and brought her leg up, tapping her knee against the side of Zoe’s head.

  “Death strike,” Helena said, a sense of finality to her voice that even Zoe didn’t question.

  “Dammit.” Zoe threw her hands into the air as she walked over to a bench along the wall. She retrieved a towel, also going for an unopened bottle of water.

  “Did you enjoy that?” Helena asked Sam, unable to resist throwing a little fuel on the fire, still ignoring the pain in her side.