Building a Hero: The Complete Trilogy

by Tasha Black

  West.

  Every time she let her thoughts wander, she saw his dark eyes, the hard angle of his cheekbones, and felt his warm arms around her. She could still call up his scent.

  She wondered when the sharp focus of those memories would begin to fade.

  She both dreaded and longed for that day.

  But she didn’t kid herself that West was sharing her feelings.

  He was back at the helm of the company. She hadn’t left him much of a chance when she’d walked away.

  Although, by all accounts, he wasn’t taking a very active interest in running things. Cordelia tried not to care too much, it wasn’t her company. But it smarted anyway when she thought about the ceaseless hard work and love she had lavished on Worthington Enterprises during her brief tenure as the unofficial CEO by proxy.

  If she let herself, she could get very angry again. Angry about the real stuff, not about West failing the company.

  How could he betray Jess?

  Cordelia could accept that he might have gotten bored with her. She’d seen his track record with women long enough to almost expect it.

  But Jess?

  Cordelia’s little sister was smart and hip, with a deliciously dark sense of humor that seemed to particularly tickle West’s funny bone. All of which had seemed to make her the apple of his eye.

  And when the prosthetics worked so well for West, Cordelia had thought it impossible that he wouldn’t share that tech with Jess. She was a teenager in a wheelchair. He had it in his hands to do something not just generous, but life-changing, god-like even, for a good kid who hero-worshiped him.

  Cordelia knew the tech wasn’t cheap, but she was intimately familiar with Worthington’s cash flow. Reinnervation for Jess’s legs would have been a proverbial drop in the bucket. And West had always hinted that he would be helping her soon.

  Dangled it like a carrot, just out of reach, but never in doubt.

  So when he screamed at them and kicked them out of the lab the night Cordelia decided to take matters into her own hands, both sisters were crushed.

  Cordelia had never seen Jess as down as she had been since West left. And it broke her heart that she wasn’t even sure if Jess was feeling this way because of missing out on the procedure, or losing her friend. She had clammed up like teenagers do, and Cordelia was left guessing.

  In light of everything, it was clear that Cordelia Cross should hate Westley Worthington.

  But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to, not really.

  She had an unshakable feeling that she was missing something.

  Something important.

  Some piece of the puzzle that, while it might not excuse his behavior, might at least explain it.

  Cordelia carried these feelings in her heart. Locked away. She had no one to share them with, so she bore the burden alone. And she often chastised herself for being self-indulgent and moping like a lost pup when she was fortunate to have a job to support her family and keep food on their table.

  “You’re coming with me,” Peter said as he closed his office door behind him.

  Interesting.

  Cordelia nodded and grabbed her purse.

  He held the door to the outer hall for her.

  “I thought you might like to meet the mayor,” Peter winked at her on the elevator ride down to the street level.

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  She smiled back gamely, even though she’d had lunch at the mayor’s house on more than one occasion with West.

  “Plus I thought we could go over the schedule one more time on the way,” he added.

  She nodded. Of course, that was it.

  They exited the building, where a man held open the door to a car for them. Peter indicated for Cordelia to slide in first.

  Once they were settled she slid her iPad out of her purse.

  “Should we begin with this afternoon?” she asked him.

  He opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

  “No. There’s something I have to say first. You’re a special person, Cordelia,” he told her earnestly. “I hope you know that. I appreciate the job you do every day. Sometimes your smile is the only thing keeping me grounded.”

  That was a really nice thing to say. It also felt a little bit like flirting.

  “Thank you, Peter,” she replied primly. “I feel very lucky to work for you.”

  He patted her knee, and then got out his own iPad.

  Crisis averted.

  Cordelia wasn’t interested in Peter. But the exchange did leave her to wonder if it wasn’t time to finally put everything with West behind her and just move on.

  3

  Jess watched the fire dance in the stone circle.

  Sparks leapt and flames crackled the logs merrily. They didn’t know it was all in vain. Sooner or later, the whole thing would burn out without someone adding wood.

  She looked around at the yard.

  It had been like something out of a magazine the night West brought them back here and surprised them with the outdoor room in place of the patch of dirt that had been here for so long.

  But West wasn’t around anymore.

  Weeds already sprouted between the slates of the patio, and the roses bent over the raised bed, their branches straining under the weight of the uncut blossoms.

  It smelled fantastic out here, like flowers and fire.

  But sooner or later, they would run out of wood, and the rose bushes would die, and Jess would ride the ramp down to the decayed garden to sit in darkness.

  It actually sounded kind of awesome, come to think of it.

  “Hey, Jess,” her mother’s voice floated down from the back door.

  She didn’t answer. No point.

  “I thought you might like some hot chocolate and something to read,” her mother said when she reached the fire pit.

  She offered up the cup and Jess took it. The warm pottery felt good in her hands, even though it was a muggy summer evening.

  Her mom dragged over a little table, put it next to Jess, and set the comic books on it.

  “Do you need anything else, hon?” she asked Jess. There was a plaintive note to her voice.

  “Nope, I’m great,” Jess replied. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Her mother smoothed a cool hand across Jess’s forehead and up over her hair, in an unconscious expression of concern she’d practiced ever since Jess could remember.

  Sort of like Jess was her beloved cat.

  Then she headed back into the house.

  Jesus.

  Everyone was being so nice to Jess lately. It was driving her nuts. She’d tried to speak up about it, but they only got more worried and the whole thing got worse. She’d decided to just let it run its course.

  She was upset about things, of course. But she wasn’t some fragile toy. She was a human being, and human beings were built to endure terrible shit. It was like their main evolutionary function.

  She took a sip of the chocolate. It was fantastic. Her mom had added a few grains of salt, just how she liked it.

  She grabbed a comic book and flipped through the pages.

  Old-school Superman was saving someone from a falling bridge.

  She closed the comic book.

  And tossed it into the fire.

  Boy Scout.

  The edges rolled up instantly, blackened and then glowed red.

  It felt good.

  She picked up the next one. Spiderman.

  Into the fire. Goody-goody.

  Captain America, X-Men, Green Arrow, Daredevil.

  Burn. Burn. Burn. Burn.

  There were no heroes anymore. No one was going to swoop in and save her. She was going to have to be the one to save herself.

  Jess picked up another comic.

  Punisher vs. Wolverine.

  She hesitated.

  These guys knew how to get things done. No holds barred. And they didn’t mind leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

  Jess opened to the first
page, and took another sip of hot chocolate.

  4

  West studied the ceiling of Med Pros.

  He had been lying on the table for hours, each passing moment making it harder to push thoughts of Cordelia out of his head.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw it clearly.

  She had been standing right outside this private room, pushing Jess in her chair. He’d spotted them the second he’d stepped off the elevator.

  He’d been fighting and running for his life all night. He was broken and beaten. The sight of her here with Jess was too much. Something inside him snapped.

  He had screamed.

  Her face had disintegrated.

  She had walked away.

  Even then, in the heat of his anger, he’d wanted nothing more than to follow her. To make it right.

  But his legs had glitched, refused to move, rooting him in place. Reinforcing the need to keep Jess away from this technology until he could be sure it was safe.

  It was like a nightmare that played on a constant loop in his head. So he’d done all he could to make sure he didn’t have much time alone with his thoughts.

  Much time like this.

  With each passing day he hoped it would fade, but it only got worse.

  She was with Peter now.

  Peter who had always been the better man.

  Peter who could give her a normal life.

  It made West’s blood boil.

  “I didn’t realize it was going to take this long,” he snapped at Mallory.

  She leaned slowly into his field of vision, wearing what looked like a jeweler’s loupe. It magnified her right eye, giving her an expression that was probably even sterner than she’d intended. Her hair was longer than he’d ever seen it, and dyed blue and blonde. Like a beach.

  “You know what happens when you rush a miracle worker?” she asked. “You get rotten miracles,” she answered herself before West had a chance. Then one corner of her mouth turned up slightly.

  “What?” he asked.

  “This isn’t like hooking up a car stereo. Actually, I guess it is a little bit like hooking up a car stereo. And if you want to have a boomin’ system, you need to take the time to do it right,” she told him.

  “If you say so,” he acquiesced. There was no point arguing with her, she was always right and while she talked she wasn’t working.

  “I’m almost done. The actuators we implanted along your auditory nerves are working perfectly. I just ran the last of the conductive microfilament down your arm, and connected it to the sensors we implanted there. Once I activate it, we should be all set,” she said with satisfaction.

  She turned back to her work, leaving West to stare up at the ceiling again.

  When he’d asked her for something to beef up his hearing to keep up with his eyesight, he was expecting something like a souped-up hearing aid. But of course as soon as Mallory got ahold of the idea, she ran with it.

  “All set,” she said, patting his shoulder.

  West hopped off the table, and looked down at his arm.

  He couldn’t see any difference.

  He willed his eyes to shift to the infrared spectrum, like he’d been practicing.

  A tiny trail appeared, just below the surface of the artificial skin, leading down to his wrist, then branching out to each fingertip.

  “Are you scoping it out?” Mallory asked.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

  “No. That’s totally awesome.” She grinned like a kid who just won first place at a science fair. “Are you okay with the triggers for this, or do you want to activate it manually?”

  Although manual controls might be easier to begin with, West preferred the more organic approach of visual triggering.

  When Mallory had originally explained that he would control his augmentations with his mind he had wanted to laugh. But she set him up in a room for a day, with the nerves that would operate the enhanced eye she planned to give him connected to a switch board.

  “Make the red light turn on, you’ve activated night vision. Turn it back to green, you’re back to normal,” she told him. “It’s best if you visualize something concrete in your head, like a switchboard, or a knob you’re toggling back and forth.”

  For half an hour he had squinted and stared, giving himself a pretty decent headache.

  Then at last it happened, the red lit up.

  By the end of the day, he could go back and forth pretty much seamlessly.

  In his head, he pictured the controls on the residential rail train he used to ride with his grandfather once in a while. His grandfather had once been a train conductor himself and he had loved showing little West how modern and new the controls were nowadays.

  “Very nice,” Mallory said when she returned and saw him going back and forth until the screen looked like a Christmas decoration.

  “How did I learn to do that?” West had asked. “I don’t even have the eye yet.”

  “It’s called biofeedback,” she’d explained. “You’re learning which part of your brain controls that optic nerve because of the feedback you’re getting from the lights. Biofeedback is crucial with nerve work. Especially for things you can’t control manually, like vision.”

  Now she looked up at him expectantly. Thankfully, he had practiced this one on the machine as well.

  “Trigger is great,” he told her. “I think I’ve got it.”

  “Okay then, let’s try the long range first,” she said in a pleased voice.

  West extended his hand, fingers splayed, in the direction of the clock across the room. He concentrated, flipping the toggle in his mental control room that corresponded with the nerve actuator.

  Instantly, the sound of the second hand became an axe felling a tree.

  He moved his arm slightly. It faded away.

  “It’s highly directional,” Mallory said. “Now try the short range.”

  West flipped the mental switch and waited.

  “Nothing’s happening,” he said to Mallory.

  “It won’t trigger until you make contact with a surface.”

  She nodded to the table.

  West lowered his fingertips to the cool soapstone.

  He felt it like a jolt of electricity up his arm.

  Mallory reached into her lab coat pocket and pulled out a straight pin.

  A pin. West couldn’t help but smile.

  She held it over the table with a gleeful smile of her own, then let it drop.

  The boom when it connected was like someone kicking in a door.

  West recoiled instinctively.

  “Is the level too high?” Mallory asked with some concern.

  “No, no. Just startled me a bit. Let me try again.”

  He put his hand back on the table.

  Mallory reached down and drummed her blue and gold lacquered fingernails on it.

  It sounded like someone was hammering the stone.

  He shook his head and lifted his hand off the table again.

  “Now there are many applications for this. You can listen through walls and doors, use the glass of a window to…”

  She trailed off as he approached her.

  West reached out his hand to touch her, just below the collarbone.

  The whoosh of her heart filled his head.

  He looked down at her.

  Her heart rate sped up.

  “There’s that, too,” she whispered, her voice bouncing around his skull. “With some practice, you could probably read a lot from a person, just by touching them. Shifts in heart rate and blood pressure can often be a good indicator of mental state. Maybe even a makeshift lie detector.”

  She looked up at him, wide-eyed now, instead of informative.

  He heard the waterfall of her swallow.

  He winked at her, playfully.

  Her blood pulsed faster under his hand.

  In another life, he would have seen just how far he could take things. But not today.

  Inst
ead, he smiled, and pulled away to touch the floor.

  The footsteps of everyone milling about on the floor outside flooded into him.

  Amazing.

  Though it would take a ton of practice to be able to make sense of any of that.

  A single set of footsteps stood out above the rest, thundering toward them.

  He stood in time to see a woman in a lab coat burst through the doors.

  “Mallory, you have an urgent call,” the woman gasped, handing over the phone.

  Mallory took it.

  “Pruitt here,” she said.

  West fought the urge to listen in with his new accessory. But the voice on the other end was so loud he didn’t need enhancement to hear it.

  “This is Dr. Mayfield, from Glacier City Children’s Hospital. Sean Cooper is rejecting his prosthetic. We need you to get it off. Now.”

  Mallory’s normally pale face turned ash-gray.

  “Dr. Pruitt? The boy is dying,” the voice demanded.

  “I-I’m on my way.”

  5

  West pounded the pavement under the streetlights of Cobble Slope, Dalton by his side.

  He didn’t care that the air was thick and hot, that he was sweating through his clothes, or that he’d done this so many nights in a row that he forgot which streets they had already swept tonight.

  Sean Cooper had only been stabilized by an induced coma. His nervous system was overloaded to the point that the doctors refused to make any comment about his hope of recovery. The damage from the prosthetic had compromised his whole body.

  West’s first reaction to this news had been helpless despair for the sweet little boy who had inspired his own life changes. He remembered the drawing Sean had given him, showing West as a hero. He thought about watching Sean at bat with his new arm during the little league match, Jess and Cord by his side in the stands.

  And of course, he thought about saving Sean from the psychotic clutches of Vince Palma.

  Sean had been so full of life, so ready to conquer the world. How could this have happened to him?

  But, a few hours later, West was beginning to think about the implications for himself.