We Could Be Heroes
Page 31
“Good, that gives me an hour to work out.”
***
Diner food was diner food, and this time Helena had chosen a high-end joint near her neighborhood, a place that was supposed to look like one of the various diners that you could hit if you just threw a stone in Centralia, yet made to serve a wealthier clientele, evident in the way they arranged the cutlery and the high prices.
Mixed emotions went through Zoe’s head as she watched Helena and Sam interact.
They were cute, dammit, they were really cute, and now that she had betrayed everyone, she didn’t dare say anything snide about it, nor did she comment on the simple piece of toast that Sam was eating, almost reluctantly, or Ozella, who sat next to her, chowing down on some Eastern Province stew with a dumbass look on her face.
It was way too soon for Zoe to be herself around the others.
In fact, she didn’t know if she would ever be able to be as frank with them as she had once been. Well, it would be easy to fall back into that role with Sam, but the other two not so much.
It was the grave that she had dug for herself, and even though she sat in a way that only revealed the normal side of her face, Zoe still felt the tension of being a half-breed, someone who couldn’t morph back.
And it weighed on her.
And the fact that it weighed on her also weighed on her.
While her career as a model had recently taken off, Zoe had never been that vain. She had always been obsessed with self-improvement and keeping healthy, sure, but she hadn’t been the type who would spend hours in front of the mirror, nor had she ever really worn that much makeup outside of a photoshoot.
And here she was worried about the way she looked, and what others thought of her.
The good news was that after the stunt she’d pulled, there was a part of her that was starting to come to accept her current features. And shit, there was always the chance of a cure in the future, hopefully sooner than later.
She also had the power to turn her hands into razor-sharp claws, which would likely deter most people from commenting further. This thought did eventually lead her to speak, asking what had happened to Dr. Hamza.
“I blasted him, and we left him there,” Sam said.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
The sound of the spoon hitting the table next to her made Zoe’s ears twitch.
“I don’t know if I did,” said Sam.
“Don’t you think we should go finish the job?” she asked in a low voice.
“I don’t believe that’s the type of team we should be,” Helena said. “Unless the three of you have other ideas about how we should go about doing our business…”
“Most exemplar teams try not to kill unless it is absolutely necessary,” Sam said. “I know we are totally new at this, but maybe there’s a day that we will be considered one of those teams, registered or not. I mean, that’s what the ‘anonymous’ part of Heroes Anonymous kind of covers.”
“Still not sold on that name…” Helena said.
“Well, you haven’t come up with a better one yet,” Zoe told her, immediately jumping back into her docile mode. “I mean, I can live with what we have now, the ‘not killing unless absolutely necessary’ part. But we should have done something, right? I’m not crazy in thinking that, am I?”
Ozella shook her head. “Dr. Hamza will probably come after us again. He knows who we are.”
“Then let him come,” said Helena firmly. “All exemplar teams have enemies they have to contend with, some of them recurring. It seems almost like a rite of passage for us to get our first.”
“I never really thought about it like that,” said Sam as he warily eyed his last piece of toast. “I guess it does kind of make us official, you know, having an official archnemesis.”
“And there is the woman with the wings, the one who attacked him.”
“Mia,” said Sam. “So our archnemesis has his own archnemesis. Maybe she’ll be back, maybe she won’t, but hopefully we won’t be around to know about it. Wait, that sounds like I’m trying to say we’re going to die. What I meant to say is that hopefully we won’t be around when she comes back to finish the job.”
“She did cripple him…” Zoe reminded the group.
“And he would have stayed crippled too,” Helena snapped back. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. Check, please,” she told the waiter, who just so happened to be walking by.
Zoe let the comment slide as they left the boujee diner, the teleporter she’d ordered stepping out of a spiral that had appeared in the air.
The teleporter, a thin man with an exposed Adam’s apple and stringy hair, wore the official Centralian teleporter uniform, his cut in a way that made him look even lankier. As they approached, a spiral began to move over them, their forms reappearing in front of a bodega.
“This is the place?” Helena asked, glancing around at the neighborhood, the rich heiress clearly out of place.
She was in her sexy tomboy getup as usual, a pressed, button-up shirt with a few of the buttons undone, tucked into a pair of high-waisted gray pants, which were rolled up at her ankles, ballet flats on her feet. She had her gray hair in two tight pigtails at the back of her head, and wore a pair of gray glasses that matched her trousers (and her hair, for that matter).
“It’s not the kind of place that a good girl like yourself would normally come to,” Zoe said, “unless she was looking for a weapon or drugs.”
“Or hookers,” Ozella said, nodding to the entrance of a red-light district.
These were ubiquitous across Centralia, and just about the only place where they didn’t exist was in the richer neighborhoods. Sex wasn’t so taboo here, and people didn’t mind if there was a red-light district in a shopping area, as long as it wasn’t along the main thoroughfare.
“Just let me do the talking,” Zoe said as they entered the bodega, which looked like it hadn’t been shopped in for years.
A layer of dust covered every corner of the space, all the food expired aside from a few boxes of tea. The smell of rotting meat in the air, Sam brought his hand to his mouth, mostly so he could cover the fact that he was pinching his nostrils.
“Hi,” Zoe said as she approached the cockroach of a man standing behind the counter.
“What are you here for?” he asked, eyeing the four of them suspiciously.
“Four telepath bands; three wrist guards that have shield capabilities and anything else that you can recommend; smoke and frag bombs, cherry-sized; and if you have it, something I could wear on my belt that activates a shield.”
“That’s a lot of cash…” the man behind the counter mumbled.
“We also have this to trade,” Ozella said as she opened her red backpack and pulled the wrist guard out. The man’s hand slipped under the counter, likely reaching for a weapon just in case this was supposed to be a threat.
“Ozella,” Zoe said under her breath. “Don’t mind her; she’s never been in a place like this before. Put it down. Aim it at the ground,” Zoe quickly told Ozella.
“What happened to your face?” the man said, just now noticing that Zoe was half tiger. It was a dimly lit space, and the way she had approached hadn’t allowed light to hit the tiger side.
“Long story,” Zoe said, “and I will no longer be needing claws. Let’s just put it at that.”
“Anyway, that’s lot of money we’re talking about here,” the man said again.
“Money is not an issue,” Helena told him, looking at him over the rims of her glasses. “Just tell me the damage, and I will have it delivered in cash.”
“All right, but you’re not getting anything until I have my cash,” the man said as he pressed the button, a bell chiming behind him and the door popping open.
“You’ve never taken me back here before,” Zoe said as the shopkeeper led them to a back room which was a lot larger than she had expected.
The storefront was just that, a front, something that Zoe already knew.
The man moved behind another counter and told them to approach. Once they did, he started detailing the various wrist guards that he had in stock and their functions.
To make things simple, Sam and Ozella chose the wrist guards that Zoe had suggested, which had energy weapon capabilities, as well as a button-activated shield.
“Go ahead and step over here to the firing range so you can test them out,” the weapons dealer said, nodding to an area of the room that was set up with curved pieces of steel on a metal frame, in a shape which almost reminded Zoe of a goalie’s net.
“What do we do?” Sam asked, the wrist guard now affixed to his wrist and just below his elbow.
“Simple, you can cycle through your various energy settings using either the palm trigger or your other hand,” the man explained. “Once you’ve decided on the setting you’d like to test, simply aim it at the center of the shield.”
“And it won’t destroy the place?” Sam asked.
“That’s kind of the point,” the man said, stepping aside.
Sam did as instructed, shooting his first blast into the shield.
Just as the shop owner had said, there was absolutely no evidence of an energy weapon having been used in the space, aside from the initial sizzle. Sam tested his other settings, noticing that one produced a thin beam of energy, the other producing a much wider one.
Ozella was up next.
“Always keep your eyes on the target,” the weapons dealer said, explaining to her how she should be aiming the weapon.
Ozella listened intently, and then fired off a few test blasts, one going a bit wide and hitting the outer edge of the shield, causing everyone’s hearts to jump a bit.
“Is there any way we can get one of the shields as well?” Helena asked. “And are there larger options? We have a space we will be using these, um, weapons.”
“There are larger options, and I can help you get some, but they will have to be special ordered. These come in from the East, and they can take a day or so to get here once they’ve been paid for.”
Helena nodded. “Great, add that to our tally as well.”
“You guys are racking up quite the bill,” he said as he turned back to his counter.
She looked at him curiously. “What’s your name again?”
“You can call me Dave,” he told Helena, “but don’t call me Dirty Dave. The shop is a front, as you can see, but I’m a clean guy, and I want a clean business, albeit an illegal business, and I don’t want anyone calling me dirty.”
“Trust me, Clean Dave, you will get paid immediately after we’ve finished deciding what we’d like,” Helena said firmly.
“Did someone call you dirty before?” Zoe asked the weapons dealer.
“Not for long,” he said as he brought another wrist guard onto the counter. “You wanted one as well, right?” Dave asked Helena.
“I’m less interested in energy weapons than I am in just being able to have a shield,” she explained.
“Well, there are lots of options, and not all of them have an energy weapon. There are ones with energy blades too, but those are a little rare right now. Recent legislation limits the number that they can import per year. But I have a few, and it might be something you’re interested in.”
“An energy blade?” Helena asked, looking to Sam with a smile.
Zoe cleared her throat, interrupting their moment. “I think a blade would be perfect for you to have, Helena. You can still use the shield function, but if you’re in a situation where you need something sharp, you also have an energy blade.”
“Yes, I believe you’re right. We’ll take one of those as well,” Helena said, her tone of voice indicating that she did not care what the price was, nor did she care to discuss it, nor was she going to negotiate.
She was simply going to pay for it, whatever the total turned out to be.
“As for cherry bombs, I got plenty, so take your pick,” Dave said, nodding to another counter. “And as for a shield that can be projected in front of your body, I did recently get a shield attachment in. It’s supposed to clip to your front shirt pocket, but I don’t see why it couldn’t clip to your belt. Take a look at the bombs while I get it,” Dave said, going behind a row of perfectly stacked boxes.
Zoe quickly made her selection of cherry bombs as Dave approached, carrying five boxes with him, each about five inches long and three inches wide. “Your telepath bands,” he said. “And then there’s the pocket shield.”
“I think this could work,” Zoe said as she clipped it to her belt loop instead of her shirt pocket.
Dave grunted. “And don’t worry about your hand moving through it or whatever, the shield is a one-way street only, if you get my drift. Only limitation is that it doesn’t have a whole lot of juice, so use it sparingly.”
A green shield made of energy now formed a half cone around Zoe, and as she turned, it followed her.
“Good, then that’s everything,” Helena said. “Unless there’s something else you think we could use…”
“It depends on what kind of mayhem you’re trying to get into, but this is some pretty good gear you’re buying today, and there’s always tomorrow to buy more,” Dave said. “Give me a moment to get your bill together. I’ll deduct the two you’re trading in once I check them out,” he told Ozella, who placed the wrist guards on the counter. “And call your people.”
“I already have,” Helena informed him.
Chapter Fifty-Two: Hurry Up and Wait
(The calm before the vampires.)
Damn they looked official.
The four would-be heroes were suited up, wearing their new tech, each of them with a thin band around their wrists to prevent telepathy, Zoe in a tight belt that allowed for her cherry bombs as well as her clip-on shield.
They looked good, they looked like a real exemplar team, and it pained Sam Meeko to think that they were just about as far from official as a group could get, three of them one strike away from serving hard time or entering a lengthy legal battle.
But he couldn’t let these thoughts distract them from their mission.
Whatever forces had led them to meet each other, even if they had almost disbanded, had made them stronger. Or at least Sam was telling himself this when Lance appeared, the teleporter with golden clothing and energy chuckling at the four and their exemplar uniforms.
“Are you guys going to a costume party?” he asked in a bitchy tone. “Because if you are, you should have told me. I love costume parties.”
“We didn’t ask for your comments,” Helena told him, “so you needn’t make any more.”
Sam glanced between the two of them, figuring that Lance had a clever comeback for this, but quickly found out that Lance knew his place in the hierarchy when it came to dealing with someone like Helena Knight.
After a momentary pause, the teleporter cleared his throat, and asked her politely to verbally confirm the location.
“So you were serious about that?” he asked, once Helena mentioned the abandoned mixed residential and commercial development.
“Yes, and I need you to be on call for when we have to leave the same location,” she said.
Zoe was behind Helena, the hood on her uniform up, her ears poking out the slits in the top. Sam was to her left, his hood also on, and Ozella to his right, the woman in the schoolgirl superhero uniform admiring her wrist guard.
Golden sparkles filled the air as they disappeared with Lance, reappearing in a shell of a home, the walls on the western side of the building knocked down.
“Have fun,” Lance said as he faded away again.
“Why do you employ him?” Zoe asked as soon as he was gone.
“He can be a bit of an ass, but he’s reliable, incredibly fast, and while he
may give us some flak, he will take us anywhere we need to go.” Helena shrugged. “Plus he signed an NDA.”
“Makes sense,” Sam said as he walked to an opening that was meant for a window. Looking out, he saw what he figured was the drop-off location, which was confirmed by Helena a moment later.
“That is the facility my family purchased because of its direct access to a waterway that cuts through southern Centralia,” she said, gesturing with her hand. “It isn’t as big as some of our others, but it does bring in quite a bit of revenue, especially around harvest seasons in the Southern Alliance.”
Zoe joined Sam, looking out.
“What do you think?” he asked her as Helena continued to explain the history of the place to Ozella, who seemed interested.
“I think that we are way too close to the action to not be spotted,” said Zoe.
They were on the second floor of a building, not even half a block away from the main entrance of the shipping facility.
It would have been a weird place to have a home, but Sam figured the people that were supposed to live here would be people who worked at the facility, or in offices around the main location. He didn’t ask why the development was abandoned, but he figured it had something to do with financials falling through, and probably not on the Knight Corporation’s end.
“So you’re saying the children are being shipped from Centralia to elsewhere?” Ozella asked.
“Actually, I believe based on the contracts with Fang that the reverse is happening, they are shipping children in to make consumption harder to track.”
“Now hold on,” said Sam, “that doesn’t mesh with what Ozella, Zoe, and I discovered a few days back, when we found the crate full of dead kids. One of them was a girl with red hair that I had seen on the trolley earlier that same day. I had sensed on the trolley that she was going to die, and then I found her along with the others…”
“I remember,” Helena told him. “It’s riskier taking Centralian children, but they may have been hungry, and there are always exceptions to the rules. But my point remains: by shipping people up from the South, or perhaps down from the West, it becomes a lot harder to track the bodies.”