Hero Status

by Kristen Brand

  I hesitated and then wiped the same place under mine.

  “Missed it.” She licked her forefinger and rubbed the spot in question on my face. When she pulled back, her finger was stained red. “There. Got it for you.”

  I stared at her for a moment, at a complete loss.

  “Let’s find Dr. Sweet,” I said.

  “After you.”

  We made it to the top of the stairs and found ourselves in some sort of abandoned factory. Sunlight fought its way through dirty windows crossed with electrical tape, illuminating dust particles swirling in the air. The machinery was all rusted, from the pipes to the support beams, and construction debris littered the floor: wooden boards, concrete slabs, ratty tarps—but more recently, crumpled beer cans and empty bags of chips. Everything was covered in graffiti. I wondered how the basement had escaped vandalism. The way the staircase rose out of a square cut into the floor, it had probably been hidden beneath a trap door. Just what kind of factory had this place been, exactly?

  The machinery hadn’t been used in ages, but something was humming. Lights flickered from a doorway in the corner. Val and I looked at one another.

  I went in first.

  What can I say? When you’ve seen one mad scientist’s laboratory, you’ve seen them all. I didn’t know what all the technology did, besides the obvious that it was nothing good. There were cables and computer screens, freezers and scanners, old cobbled together with the new. The place wasn’t any cleaner than the rest of the building, sterilization apparently something that only other scientists found important. Squalid tanks held mice, dogs, and fish, and the operating tables were stained with dried blood. Soiled metal tools dripped onto crumpled papers and label-less vials. The acrid stench of chemicals made my eyes water and my throat burn.

  “White Knight, Ms. Belmonte, right on time.”

  Dr. Sweet was bent distractedly over a computer screen. He was old—or what I’d thought of as old at the time, so a little over half a century. He wore khaki pants, a Hawaiian shirt, and a stained lab coat. His oily gray hair reached his shoulders, and he wasn’t quite fat, but something about his skin was flaccid and buttery. I wasn’t looking forward to touching him, even to punch him.

  A clever retort would have been appropriate under the circumstances, but I just wanted to take him out and be done with it. Val had the same idea. Before I’d taken more than a step, she shot him.

  Or at least she tried to.

  The bullet slowed, and at first, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. I had buddies who swore the same thing happened to them in the field, that suddenly their reaction time would speed up and they’d be seeing the world in slow motion as the shots sailed by. But then Val’s bullet came to a complete stop, becoming a tiny bit of metal hovering motionlessly in the air. A moment later, it dropped to the floor with a metal clink, rolled a few feet, and went still.

  Val stared. To put it scientifically, she had observed the phenomena in action and now proceeded to determine whether it could be replicated. In layman’s terms, she shot off half a dozen more bullets to see if Dr. Sweet could stop them all.

  They stopped, but they didn’t fall. Instead they tore through the air right back at her.

  I threw myself in front of her and got hit. Again. It was really getting old by this point.

  “I can’t tell you how excited I am,” said Dr. Sweet. “You two are a wonderful test.”

  One of the machines by the wall, a big metal thing about the size of a refrigerator, began to shake and groan. It rose into the air, tearing out the cords and cables behind it, and launched at me. I dove aside, but it wasn’t a normal projectile. It altered course and slammed into me.

  The world flashed white, and something cracked; I couldn’t tell if it was the machine or my head. I soared and tumbled like an action figure an angry child had thrown across the floor. I didn’t know where it had hit me; not a single spot of my body escaped the pain. When my vision cleared, I realized I was lying in the rubble of a wall I’d smashed through. I gasped and coughed, sucking in more of the acrid air. The world spun. I tried to move, but my arms and legs weren’t speaking to me.

  Dr. Sweet was saying something.

  “—nice, don’t you think? When I got him, he could barely move a pen across a table. I’m quite pleased with his progress.”

  He patted a piece of equipment proudly, and I realized in horror that it wasn’t equipment—it was a child. I could barely see him. He was strapped into a chair, head completely covered by some sort of helmet, sensors strapped all over his body. But I could make out the tiny sneakers on the floor, bright red and blue with race car designs. They wouldn’t have fit anyone above kindergarten age.

  Sheer rage gave me the strength to push myself to my feet. I wobbled, pain making me see stars, but stayed up. My brain was muddy and slow, but some things were just instinct. I knew I had to save the kid. He could move things with his mind, and Dr. Sweet was playing with his powers like a video game. I had to help him, but how?

  Can you stop whatever Dr. Sweet is doing to control the kid’s mind? I asked Val.

  She flinched, picking up my pain as well as my words. Not without a huge risk of brain damage to the boy.

  Wait. Why don’t you just mind-control Dr. Sweet?

  Don’t you think I’ve been trying? He’s protected himself somehow. Can you—

  She cut off as both of us were lifted into the air. It was like someone had stuck a hook inside my stomach and was pulling me up. Val screamed. The only reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t breathe. The pressure inside me was crushing my lungs.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten the chance to study a telepath of your caliber.” Dr. Sweet looked up at Val with scientific interest, seeming impossibly far away. I tried to inhale. With all these superpowered muscles in my body that could kill another human if I so much as sneezed wrong, you’d think I’d be strong enough to take a breath. But I wasn’t.

  Dr. Sweet turned to me. “And your abilities should prove very—”

  Val and I dropped to the floor. I welcomed the chemical sting in my throat as air finally reached my lungs.

  “Damn.” Dr. Sweet squinted as he looked at the computer screen. Val was still on the ground coughing, and for the moment our mad scientist seemed to have forgotten us, engrossed in whatever had gone wrong. The “mad” in mad scientist came with its disadvantages.

  I crept slowly to my feet and made my way toward him. If I could get him away from all those buttons messing with the kid’s brain, the threat would be over. Hell, if I could just get my hands on him, I could end this right now.

  “He’s rejecting the modifications,” Dr. Sweet muttered. “And I’d been so sure—”

  He noticed me; I broke into a run.

  “I’ll kill him!”

  He poised his hand over the keyboard, and I jerked to a halt.

  “Total brain death,” he said. “All it takes is the push of a button.”

  His pale lips split into a mad grin, and I wanted to strangle him. I judged the distance between us and debated whether or not I could tackle him faster than he could put a finger on the keyboard. My legs felt stiff and heavy, like they could never move fast enough.

  He looked from me to Val and around the room, his shoulders slumping as he must have estimated his chances of getting out alive. Then he chuckled. “On second thought, what the hell.” He reached for the keyboard.

  “No!” I shouted.

  Shots fired, punching holes in his Hawaiian shirt. It wasn’t like on TV; the bullets didn’t send him flying backward, causing instant death. But they did stop him long enough for me to knock him to the floor before he could touch the key.

  I let out a long breath, and Val lowered her gun. The doctor’s body was limp beneath me, eyes closed, mouth open. I pushed myself off of him and checked for a pulse, the skin of his neck doughy and greasy under my fingers. I found no evidence that his heart was still beating, and when blood pooled out fr
om under his head, I flipped him over. His skull had cracked against the floor when I took him down. I couldn’t say I felt particularly sorry.

  “The boy?” Val asked.

  I knelt down beside him and looked. It was hard to tell with so much of him covered, but he was breathing, and the machines he was plugged into didn’t seem to be flat-lining.

  “He’s alive,” I said. “I don’t know what all this stuff is that he’s hooked up to, but the DSA will have someone who knows how to get him out.”

  She tossed the gun to the floor. “Then I better leave before they show up.”

  I stiffened. I’d almost forgotten she was the bad guy, too.

  “Assuming you’ll keep your end of the deal, that is,” she said.

  I was insulted. “Of course.”

  She smiled. “Then I’ll see you around.”

  She turned to leave, and I watched her go, unable to explain to myself why I felt so unsatisfied.

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked.

  She stopped and glanced back at me. “What? Kill Sweet? I already told you.”

  I shook my head. “You could’ve done that easily if you’d let the kid die. Why did you save him?”

  “He’s a little boy. What kind of sociopath do you think I am?”

  “Someone who would’ve blown out an innocent man’s brains to get away with stolen gold,” I answered promptly.

  “That’s different.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Where’s the cut-off age for people it’s okay to kill? Is it eighteen? Twenty-one?”

  She drew herself up, and for a second, I thought she was going to start shouting, but then the anger drained from her face. “I wouldn’t have killed that man,” she said.

  “You had a gun to his head.”

  “And that’s all it took to make you back off. I knew that. I would’ve never had to kill him.”

  Mind-reading sure would be a handy power now and then. I had no idea if she was telling the truth. All I could do was study her expression, hoping to spot some sort of sign. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I thought I found it.

  “It was a bluff,” I said.

  She shrugged, not denying it. “You’re White Knight. You wouldn’t risk a person’s life if there was even the smallest chance I’d go through with it.”

  I let that sink into my head.

  “Now that you’ve told me, it won’t work again,” I said.

  “No, I guess not.” She smiled. “I’ll just have to think of something else next time.”

  And with that, she walked away.

  If you said that was the moment I fell in love with her, well, then you’d be wrong. My feelings didn’t change from hate to love in that one instant, but they went from hate to a grudging respect, and that was a start.

  If you’d told me then that in twenty some odd years, I’d be married to her and sitting in a DSA holding cell awaiting charges, I’d have called it a load of bull before you even finished the sentence. Yet here I was. Funny thing, life.

  The sound of brisk footsteps drew closer from down the hall, and I sat up on the cot just as the door to my cell opened. In walked a man who’d lost any respect he had for me years ago.

  Walter looked me up and down, his lip curling in disgust, and barked one word.

  “Out.”

  Chapter 9

  Walter put me in handcuffs again, but this time, he didn’t seem to think DSA agents were enough to handle a dangerous criminal such as myself. So he gave me a bona fide superhero guard.

  Shield Maiden could be as strong as I was when she wanted to be. Her powers had something to do with redirecting energy, whether into physical strength or a bright, hot force that could knock you across the room. She carried—you guessed it—a shield, and her costume made her look something like a valkyrie. She was stout and muscular, with blonde hair and a friendly smile. Unfortunately, she’d never been a particularly famous hero, owing mainly to the fact that only actresses suffered under a narrower standard of beauty than superheroines.

  Time-Out didn't have what one might consider mainstream superpowers. He didn’t technically stop time but rather slowed it to a crawl, and he couldn’t do it indefinitely. While he was immune to the effects of his own abilities, they did funny things to air and light particles and had other scientific limitations I didn’t understand. It was too complicated a power-set for him to achieve mainstream popularity, but he had a cool costume. It was a slick, old-fashioned gray suit, complete with pocket watch and chain. And if that alone didn’t get across the time theme, then he also had several watches on each wrist, a small, working clock pinned to his tie, and clock-shaped cuff links.

  It wasn’t a hard strategy to understand. If I tried to escape and Time-Out didn’t immediately stop me in the space between two seconds, Shield Maiden could at least slow me down, if not take me out entirely. She was over a decade my junior and didn’t have a bad knee or a set of handcuffs to impede her.

  The two of them took my arms, half to escort me and half to support me, because my cane had been confiscated and my knee was the worst it had been in years. Asking where we were going was a waste of breath, so I let them lead me through the gray halls in silence. For a moment, I hoped I’d see Val, but it was a foolish hope. If I was being moved to an interrogation room, they weren’t going to give the two of us a chance to get our stories straight beforehand. Not that we had stories to get straight, so the joke was on them. A small bit of optimism welled in my chest at the prospect of being questioned. Walter might not believe a word that came out of my mouth, but maybe someone else would.

  It was dark when we emerged outside, and the night air was filled with the sounds of distant police sirens. I wondered if it was evening or early morning. Then I glanced at Time-Out. His clocks all read a quarter past eight. I guess I hadn’t been locked up as long as I’d thought.

  An unmarked black van pulled up, and my escorts pushed me inside. The interior wasn’t standard. The driver’s section was blocked off from the back compartment by a metal divider, and the seats lined the walls so that they faced each other. Shield Maiden and Time-Out sat down on either side of me, and I was surprised when Walter climbed in and plopped himself directly across us.

  “Do all prisoners get a private van, or are you giving me special treatment?” I asked when I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.

  “Shut up,” said Walter, as the doors slammed closed and the engine started up.

  We rode in silence, and I settled in for a long wait. At this point, there was nothing I could do that would make any difference. When we got to wherever we were going, I’d convince my interrogators of the truth. For now… Well, these seats weren’t horribly uncomfortable. Maybe I could get some rest.

  “You’re being taken to an airport,” Walter said. “Don’t ask where.”

  I had just closed my eyes and almost asked “Where?” just to make him angry.

  “Then you’ll be flown to Washington for questioning,” he said.

  My stomach twisted into a knot. That was much too far from Elisa. Then again, that was assuming Elisa was still in Miami, which I had no way of knowing.

  “There are no DSA agents in Miami who know how to ask questions?” I said. “You really need to take me all the way to DC?”

  I watched Walter’s face but couldn’t decipher his emotions beyond him being furious with me.

  “It’s out of my hands, Del Toro,” he said. “You’re in deep shit now.”

  “So you’re just here to say goodbye?”

  He slammed his fist into the leather seat, eyes bulging. “I’m here to give you one last chance to tell us what the hell is going on.”

  I regarded him calmly, part of me strangely jealous. I’d love to be able to slam my fists around like that without consequences.

  “I already told you,” I said, “Val was framed. I’ve tracked it to two telepaths called Trick and Treat—”

  “Stop feeding me this bullshit!”

  His v
oice was so loud and so venomous that Time-Out flinched. In the silence that followed, I could hear everything going on outside: cars honking, people talking over one another, and the low beat of music. The van was stuck in stop-and-go traffic. They’d picked a heck of a night to try and move me.

  “While we’re sitting here,” I said, “the people who killed Harris and Benita are out there—”

  “Shut up. You don’t get to speak their names. Not after what you did.”

  “You really think I killed them?”

  “No. You don’t have the guts to kill them yourself, do you? You sat back and let the bitch do all the work.”

  I took a deep, slow breath, my heart pounding in my ears like a bass drum. He had to realize what I could do to him from here. Did he have so much faith in Shield Maiden and Time-Out that he thought they could stop me if I just kicked out my leg? I could kill him so easily.

  He leaned forward, tempting fate even more, and got right in my face until I could have counted every whisker of his stubble.

  “I’m only going to ask this once,” he said in low voice that was almost calm. “Where is the Black Valentine?”

  Seconds ticked by, and I wondered if I’d heard him right. I glanced at Shield Maiden and Time-Out, as if they could give me answers. Then I looked back at Walter.

  “What do you mean ‘where is she?’ You arrested her.”

  “And someone broke her out mid-transit. Who?”

  I felt dizzy. My thoughts stumbled over themselves as they tried to catch up. “The Belmontes?” I asked.

  “Pick a better lie,” Walter spat. “I know a mob hit when I see one. This was different. Who were they?”

  He was glaring at me with the righteous fury of a religious zealot. But he should have been cowering in fear, because my thoughts had finally caught up with the information I’d just been given.

  “You let someone take her.” I went perfectly still, the muscles of my stomach tightening. “You drugged her, took away all her defenses, and then you just let someone take her?”

  My tone of voice didn’t bother Walter. If anything, it seemed to give him a sort of savage pleasure. “Look at you,” he said. “Covering up for a murderer. You’re scum, Del Toro. Worse than scum. We should have locked you up the moment we found out you'd fucked her.”