by Drew Hayes
Camille Belden wasn’t a crier anymore. She was a doer. All that remained was to figure out exactly what it was that she wanted to do.
* * *
“How is this possible?” Nicholas paced up and down the floor, wearing a rut into the tasteful carpeting. “How did we never know you two had a past?”
“I didn’t know his name, so you saying ‘Vince’ didn’t exactly ring any bells. Besides, how was I supposed to know he was at this school? When we met, he was a homeless Powered, and I didn’t even find out about your status change until this year. I thought you were just off at college, and that’s not the sort of place he’d be hanging around.” Eliza’s tone was even, but forceful. After pulling Nicholas and Jerome out of the club, she’d given them the break-down of what happened on the trip home. That had only covered the basics, however. She had no intention of telling them the story of how she and Tights, Vince, had met.
“What about the fake IDs I had commissioned?”
“I was just the delivery girl, you know that’s not the type of forging I do. Now calm the hell down, this isn’t that big of a deal.”
“Not that big of a deal?” Nicholas turned to her and glared. “Not that big of a deal? We are in a very delicate situation here. I am trying to investigate these people, reconstruct lost knowledge, fend off attacks from Nathaniel, all while courting them as allies, and you don’t think discovering one of my people has a pre-existing relationship with one of the strongest among them is a big deal? Forget it, Eliza. I’m neutralizing this right now. You’re going back to Vegas.”
“Ms. Pips—”
“Ms. Pips can talk to me about her objections. I will bear her wrath and make my case,” Nicholas replied. “Besides, Jerome can remain behind until a suitable replacement is found. You’re leaving, first thing in the morning.”
“I won’t.” Eliza stood from the soft chair and strode across the room. “I promised Vince I’d talk with him, that I wouldn’t disappear. I’m not breaking that promise.”
“You’d defy the chain of command?”
“My orders came from Ms. Pips directly, so if you want me gone, then you go get them rescinded from her. Until she gives the nod, I don’t have to leave, and I won’t.”
“This is very unlike you, Eliza,” Nicholas noted. “You’re one to play with the rules, but this smacks of true insubordination. What did Vince do that left such an impression?”
“None of your goddamned business. Besides, it’s not what he did that’s keeping me here; it’s what I did to him. So run it up the chain, or let it lie, because there is no version of this where I just meekly tuck my tail between my legs and run home.”
Eliza walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her. Nicholas stared at it for a few seconds, then walked over to his couch and flopped into a half-laying position.
“Damn you, Vince. You always make everything more complicated.” Nicholas had no idea why, but the overpowering urge to smile struck him as he spoke.
94.
When Nicholas woke in the fog-covered field, he didn’t even bother muttering a complaint. It seemed it was what it was, and no amount of protest would change it. Instead, he rose to his feet, scanned the area, and located Nick. His sunglasses-clad doppelganger was sitting in front of a medium-sized table, bright red cards dancing through his hands as he shuffled. The grin on his face said more than any greeting could.
“At least this time, it looks like we’ll play a proper game.” Nicholas took the other chair, sitting directly across from Nick. As he did, a small mound of chips shimmered into place. They were identical to the ones used in Ms. Pips’s casino, so Nicholas could tell from glancing at the colors that roughly a thousand dollars now sat before him.
“Texas Hold 'Em,” Nick replied. He set the cards down in the center of the table and motioned for Nicholas to cut.
“How touristy.” Nicholas cut the deck a little more than halfway through. He was tempted to palm a few cards, but Nick would probably catch him. Nothing was worse than being called out on cheating, even if it was by one’s own self.
“Don’t blame me.” Nick scooped up the deck and began to deal.
“Then who shall I blame?”
“Roy and Hershel.” Nick finished his deft dealing, two cards in front of him and Nicholas, with five face-down cards in the table’s center. “Roy loves this game. Every now and then, we’d play a few hands in the boys’ lounge.” He threw in the small blind, to which Nicholas countered with the necessary big blind.
“So your notes indicated.” Nicholas checked his hand, then looked across to Nick. “I realize the futility of who I’m saying this to, but I don’t suppose there’s any way you’d level with me and tell me what all this is about? You pop up every few weeks, give me cryptic sass, then leave me with a memory that I shouldn’t be able to access. It’s very annoying.”
“I know, right? No wonder no one really likes us; we’re kind of a pain in the ass.” Nick looked at his own cards, keeping the smile he’d been wearing fixed firmly in place. No need to give Nicholas any clues to what he was facing. “And honestly, I don’t know a whole lot more than you do.”
“Not a lot is still some,” Nicholas pointed out.
“Most of it is only theory at this point,” Nick warned. “But I think, right now, we’re essentially opening a combination lock in our head. These dreams? They’re clicks of the tumblers falling into place.” Nick threw a few chips into the center, which Nicholas quickly matched. That done, Nick turned the first three flop cards over.
“That theory raises an abundance of questions. Why is it here, what purpose does it serve, and most importantly: do we even want it opened?”
“Come on now, this isn’t that hard,” Nick said, shaking his head. “We know who did it: Professor Stone. Now, since she has no reason for doing such a thing, we look a step beyond that. Dean Blaine is the one who calls the shots. He’s known about my prodigious mind since freshman year, and he’s one of the few people who doesn’t underestimate me. The smart guess is that he saw all the effort I went through to get my brain purged and assumed I might be trying to bury something he’d want to know.”
“An assumption that was wholly correct,” Nicholas added. He threw in a single chip to raise the pot.
“Like I’ve said before, the staff down there is pretty quick. Anyway, that’s the ‘why’ of the lock. As for the purpose, it seems like they wanted me to have my brain back, but not automatically. I’ve got to earn it.” Nick matched the bet and raised a few chips of his own.
“Reconnecting with your old friends seems to be the current key to the system,” Nicholas noted. “Each time I meet a new one, these dreams occur.” He matched the new bet, but didn’t raise.
“Obviously. Right now, it looks like you have to get the others to trust you enough to speak with you face to face. Them caring enough to put their HCP positions on the line shows strong friendship. But we’d be idiots to assume that’s all it will take; it’s too easy. My guess is that after you meet Vince, the next phase begins. And I doubt it will be as simple.” Nick flipped the turn, leaving only the river card still face-down.
“I’ll acquiesce that your assessment seems plausible, however, you’ve left out one aspect of my question. Do we want to undo this lock in the first place? You clearly had good reason for enacting it, and just because we have the opportunity to unmake it, doesn’t mean we should.”
Nick pressed the edges of his card into his thumb, ever so lightly, feeling the tension of the force against his skin as well as the slight tingle of pain. “When you aren’t here, I don’t have form or substance. Not really. I thought the mind-wipe would be a complete reset, turning me back into the person I was before Lander, before those hopelessly wonderful idiots I call my friends, before I actually had an idea of what friendship was. I thought I could turn it all back, make myself into the old me and go back to my old life.”
“It worked,” Nicholas reminded him. “I sit here before y
ou, everything you wanted to be.”
“No, it didn’t work at all. Don’t you get that? I’m still here, Nicholas. I can still be conjured from the depths of your psyche. That means I exist somewhere within you. Only now I’m trapped, lost in the ether of our mind. I know you still feel twinges of me leaking through. You’re an incomplete reset, burdened with my emotional predilections, but not gifted by the insights they provided. And honestly, seeing you objectively like this, instead of through the pride-tinted lenses of memory, I realize how stupid an idea it was to try going backward in the first place.”
“You want to come back.”
“I do. Whatever awful thing I uncovered, those morons are better off facing it with me at their side, not stuck in a mind-prison of my own engineering.”
“And what if I don’t want you back?” Nicholas asked. “Perhaps I see things more clearly, and realize that you made the right call in creating me.”
“That’s certainly your prerogative,” Nick conceded. “But once I win this game, you’re getting another memory, and I’m getting one step closer to breaking out of here. As always in our world, it’s the victors who make the rules.”
“You overlook something. I can wake up, pack my things, and drive back to Vegas. No meeting with Vince, no setting off the next key in the lock; I could halt the entire process, and you couldn’t do a thing to stop me.”
“Except that running home without finishing the job would make it look like you were running from Nathaniel,” Nick said. “Ms. Pips might not have liked the idea of us coming out here, but there is no way in hell she’d tolerate you taking a coward’s action. Besides, even if you really could go home, it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because now other people know you’re here, and sooner or later, one of them will tell Vince. The only thing that kept him away was me asking him as a friend to respect my choice. As soon as he learns you were reaching out to old friends, nothing short of the gods themselves will stop Vince Reynolds, and even then, I’d give him decent odds.”
“You have a lot of faith in him,” Nicholas said.
“You’ll learn a bit of why when you lose. The memory I’ve got is mostly Roy and Hershel, but Vince makes some appearances too.” Nick tapped the table twice, creating a deep sound that echoed out into the foggy world. “Now, hurry up and make your bets. We’ve got a lot of poker ahead, and I want to enjoy beating you.”
Nicholas threw in a few more chips, then glared at the man whose eyes were hidden by gaudy sunglasses.
“Let’s play.”
95.
November’s first class found an unknown, but quite pretty woman waiting with Dean Blaine when the juniors showed up for gym. After Shutterbug’s speech, they quickly figured out what was going on and lined up in a half-circle around them. Once everyone was in place, Dean Blaine addressed them.
“Everyone, I would like you to meet Clarissa,” Dean Blaine said. “I will not be telling you what name she went by when she was a Hero, but you can take my word that she was an outstanding one. Clarissa has retired from Hero work and gone into private enterprise. She’s graciously agreed to come speak with you today on what life can be like after the costume is put away.”
Clarissa stepped forward as Dean Blaine stepped back, greeting the class with a shy smile. “You know, I still remember when I was standing where you are, and I know exactly what I was thinking when the person giving my speech visited us: ‘who cares about what comes after? Hero-work is all I want to learn more about.’ Maybe I was just a bad student, but I think it’s more likely that a few of you are having similar thoughts right now.”
No one was so disrespectful as to agree, or even nod; however, inwardly, more than a few students felt her sentiments echoed their own.
“The thing about retirement is: no Hero ever likes to think about it. We get on good terms with death real quick when you do what we do; you have to make peace with your mortality. But retirement, that’s a whole different monster. The idea of waking up and not putting on the mask, not going to save lives, not living in that world . . . it’s terrifying to most of us. Some are so scared that they stay active long past when they should, knowing full well what the inevitable outcome will be. They’d rather die with their cape on than live without it. We spend our whole lives doing this one thing; is it so surprising that we don’t know what to do when it’s gone? You’ve only been at this for two and a half years, but I bet, if you all became regular students tomorrow, you’d have no idea what to do with yourselves.”
This time, there were nods. Normality was a notion abandoned long ago. To be outside the HCP would be like finding themselves stuck treading open water without land in sight. It occurred to Mary for the first time that this might be part of why mind-wipes were HCP standard procedure for exiting students: you can’t miss what you don’t remember.
“Luckily, retirement doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom,” Clarissa continued. “If you start laying some groundwork during your Hero days, you can make a smooth transition. Plenty of private industries employ Supers of all types. Or, if you can’t stand giving up the chance to help people, there are ample non-profits that use us as well. Former Heroes are big gets for them, since we can still don the old costumes and make appearances. For example: Hero-Aid puts together big appearances that raise money for various causes, and DreamGranters organizes hundreds of Hero visits to dying children. Both of these companies are staffed with management consisting largely of former Heroes.”
Clarissa paused for a moment, eyes scanning the various faces of the students before her. It seemed, for the barest of moments, as if she were looking for someone. Then it was over, and she resumed her speech.
“Alternatively, lots of Heroes go into business for themselves. They use their unique abilities to offer specialized services. Since I’m at Lander, I’ll use one of your biggest alumni as an example. Hallow is a graduate from The Class of Legends with unprecedented healing abilities. He started out as one of the only Supers capable of healing someone without physical contact—an incredibly rare, and useful gift. As he grew older, he discovered his healing was so potent it could actually repair the damage caused by something as mundane as aging. These days, he runs his own business turning back the clock for people with adequate means.”
“Someone can heal . . . age?” Alex’s mouth was half open, clearly in shock at such a concept.
“Our guest has not yet begun accepting questions. Please remain silent until she is done speaking,” Dean Blaine warned.
“No, it’s fine. I was about to open the floor anyway,” Clarissa said. “I’m not one for long speeches. And yes, Hallow can effectively restore someone to their peak age. I believe he’s officially the only Super in known history to manifest healing at such a high level, so you can believe he’s in pretty high demand. Now then, if anyone else has a question, feel free to raise your hands. A warning though, I won’t talk about my own powers, or my Hero days. I like living in anonymity.”
Several hands went up, and Clarissa pointed to the one she thought had gone up the fastest.
“Do all Heroes work after they quit, or do some take a true retirement?” Rich asked.
“The vast majority do some kind of work, even if it’s volunteer,” Clarissa said. “Being a Hero is a chaotic and active lifestyle; if you’re not suited to it, then you burn out quick. For the same reason we were able to cope with being Heroes, we’re not the sort who can lounge around and do nothing.”
Clarissa pointed to another hand, this one belonging to a girl.
“I wanted to know more about private companies that recruit former Heroes,” Selena said. “Do they just look for stuff like healing and teleportation, or do some of the more unique powers get courted too?”
“Pretty much any power can be useful to someone, at least if it’s Hero-grade,” Clarisse replied. “The Super Athletics Association is a place where lots of people end up, even if it’s in a coac
hing capacity, but Blaine told me you’ve got a real specialist in the field coming to talk later in the year, so I’ll leave that to him. Some of us go on retainer for various corporations; they love collecting unique skills in case they ever need them. There’s never a shortage of work for HCP grads. That much I can promise you.”
Clarissa pointed to a new hand. The owner was a male with spiky silver hair. She empathized with the kid; off-colored hair was a trait that had to be hard to hide.
“What about emergency response?” Vince asked. “It seems like a lot of us could be useful in non-combat scenarios, when there are natural disasters and the like. Do many former Heroes get jobs like that?”
As soon as he spoke, she knew. Maybe it was the straightforward look in his eyes, maybe it was how his question was about staying in the fray and helping people . . . maybe she just saw his father in the way he held himself. Whatever it was, Clarissa knew this was the kid, as clearly as if Phil himself had been asking the question. It was a testament to her training that she held herself together as well as she did.
“Lots of former Heroes sign on with various response agencies, becoming firefighters or EMTs on a local level, pitching in when big things go wrong. A few work as consultants or liaisons with teams of corp—, um, Privately Employed Emergency Response Supers, the people who wear corporate logos and do promos while helping. That’s pretty rare, though; there’s a stigma attached and most avoid it. But have no fear, when your Hero days end, you can still make a lot of difference in the world.”
“That’s really good to know,” Vince replied.
Her gaze lingered for a moment longer before she forced herself to turn away. Clarissa fielded a few more questions, but her answers were half-assed. Her mind was stuck on the young man with the silver hair: Globe’s . . . Phil’s . . . son.