Hero Status

by Kristen Brand

  And if she was telling the truth, then who was the other man? No, that was none of my business. Val and I were long over; I had no right to be jealous. But I was, and I wondered if the only reason I was so suspicious was because I secretly wanted the child to be mine.

  I pushed the thoughts from my head. It didn’t matter, and now wasn’t the time for distractions. Dr. Sweet had kidnapped a young girl, and he would cut her open if we didn’t stop him. Figuring out her parentage wasn’t important; I only had to save her life.

  • • •

  Longwood Medical Area in Boston is full of health centers, hospitals, med schools, and laboratories. Having all the doctors around would probably come in handy with the way Val was driving. I gripped the door handle and did my best not to crush it, but in a way, I was grateful to have my life flash before my eyes every time she made a turn. It kept me from being overwhelmed by the bigger situation.

  “I think that’s it.”

  The research facility had a new, modern sign, but the building itself was historically old, like much of Boston. It was big and brick, with four stories and lots of windows, and looked like something that belonged on a college campus. The parking lot was empty this early in the morning, but Val ignored the lined spaces and pulled up right in front of the door. She jumped out immediately with a cry.

  “Val—wait!”

  She spun to face me. “She’s here! I can feel her.”

  “Backup—”

  “I’m not waiting for backup!”

  “No,” I agreed. “But we should at least call them in. If we don’t make it, someone else has to save her.”

  I kept my voice gentle, but I was thinking that if she didn’t get a hold of herself, she was going to get her daughter killed. She must have heard me, because she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and finally seemed to calm down.

  “Okay.” She took out a cell phone, pressed two buttons, and put it to her ear. “Dad, it’s me. I found her.”

  I looked at my own cell phone, it feeling unusually heavy in my hand. If I called the DSA… I wasn’t sure I could lie away this one. I was helping the Black Valentine against direct orders, and I was doing it to rescue a daughter she’d kept hidden. If the child was mine, someone was bound to put two and two together. And even if she wasn’t, people were still going to ask questions. All the secrets and deception, the treason I’d committed to be with Val, it would finally come out. I could only imagine the reactions of my friends and colleagues, the actions my superiors would take. The life I led would be over.

  I made the call. It wasn’t a choice, not really.

  When I finished, I tossed the phone into the car after Val’s. “Talk to me,” I said. “Where in there is she? How many guards?”

  Val looked back at the building, her eyes going out of focus. “Six human security. They don’t know what they’re guarding. Elisa’s in the basement with…” She shook her head. “I can’t tell. I’ve never been able to sense Dr. Sweet or his No-Men.” Her eyes came back into focus, and she looked at me.

  “Her name’s Elisa?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  Val undid her coat, pulling it off to reveal a shoulder holster loaded with two pistols. “Elisa Lucrezia Belmonte.”

  “Lucrezia?” I made a face. “You really are evil.”

  She gave me a dirty look and walked around to the car’s trunk. She opened it, pulling out an Uzi submachine gun.

  “You want anything?”

  There was a veritable armory inside. It was a good thing she didn’t have to worry about the cops pulling her over and searching the car, because if they found this…

  I took a Beretta. “I’ll go first, like old times.”

  She nodded, turned, and opened fire on the glass doors, shattering them and setting off an ear-splitting alarm.

  “And apparently, your middle name is Overkill,” I said.

  She gestured at the door with the gun. “After you.”

  My shoes crunched over broken glass as I stepped inside. Beneath the wailing of the alarm, I heard running footsteps, and a second later, two security guards came barreling down the hall.

  “Hey, you! Sto—”

  They stopped, their faces going slack. Then they collapsed.

  “Stairs are that way,” said Val, pointing.

  I led the way, and when the next pair of security guards arrived, Val knocked them out before they could even open their mouths. I found the stairs and hurried down them, Val at my heels. With the noise the alarm was making, there was no way Dr. Sweet couldn’t know we were here. He probably had cameras and telepathic sensors and had known before we even pulled into the parking lot. What if he cut his losses and ran? What if he killed her?

  I jumped the last three stairs. The basement was lined with long tables and shelves full of textbooks, machinery, and labeled plastic tubes. Black cords ran everywhere, and the air was unusually cool. I saw no sign of anyone, least of all Dr. Sweet.

  Val walked past me and put her hand on the clean white wall. “She’s behind here… but the guards think this is the only room. There must be a hidden entrance. Do you see—”

  “Stand back.”

  She backed up, and I kicked the wall. My foot cracked right through it, coming out in a room on the other side amid chunks of rubble. I took three steps back, put my head down and my arms up, and ran into it, shoulder first.

  I broke through with a crash, sending dust and stone flying, and looked around. It was a cell like the one Val and I had been put in when Dr. Sweet had captured us all those years ago, but its current inhabitant hadn’t been so lucky. She… Her skin was gone, like it had been melted off. My stomach lurched, and I swallowed to keep down my dinner.

  That wasn’t Val’s daughter. The body was an adult, and besides, Val had sensed her.

  I walked to the cell door and tore it off its hinges—and something hard and strong decked me in the face. It knocked me back into Val, and we both crashed to the floor. The gun slipped from my hand and skidded several feet away.

  Val.

  I rolled off of her, and she didn’t move. Her eyes were closed. Was she—

  The thing hit me again before I could check. Lights flashed in my vision, and I slammed into the wall, cracking it. I shook my head, trying to clear my sight, and looked at what was attacking.

  It was a No-Man. It stood in its white mask and black suit, but something was… wrong underneath. Even more wrong than usual. One of its shoulders was bigger than the other, swollen and high, like it was stuck permanently in half a shrug, and its mask was askew, as if it didn’t quite fit over what was beneath. It walked toward me, and its gait was stiff and unnatural.

  It shouldn’t have been able to hit me like that. No-Men were made from normal people. Enough of their brains had been carved out that they were little more than zombies, but they were still baseline human. They didn’t have super-strength.

  Or at least they hadn’t, up until now.

  The element of surprise had worn off, and when it attacked again, I introduced my fist to its face.

  It was like punching a brick wall—or at least what I imagined punching a brick wall must feel like for everyone else in the world. I shouted in both pain and surprise and pulled back my hand. The No-Man hadn’t so much as flinched. All I’d managed to do was knock off its mask.

  It had been human once. He’d probably had a family, a job, a life, though I doubted anyone who’d known him would recognize him now. His eyelids had been cut off, giving him a look of permanent surprise, and blood had turned the whites of his eyes red. His lips had been removed as well, revealing black, rotting teeth in a mockery of a smile. Whatever Dr. Sweet had done to his brain had left a twisted, hideous scar across his head, stitched up carelessly and not kept clean. But I’d seen all that before; they were the features of every No-Man.

  Where this one started to differ was the skin. Most No-Men were so pale you could see the outline of every blue blood vessel, oily and dead-looking but still
human. This guy’s skin looked like something off an elephant. It was thick and wrinkled with the texture of a car tire. And what it covered was deformed. There was some sort of tumor-like growth around his left eye, a bulge that seemed like it had been formed by the bone of his skull. I didn’t want to see what the rest of him looked like under that poorly-fitting suit.

  He—it rushed me, and I stood my ground and forced myself to wait. At the last second, I flung myself out of the way, and it smacked into the wall with a crunching sound, denting it. Solid earth must have been behind the wall, otherwise the No-Man would have gone right through it. I’d gotten used to fighting opponents weaker than I was; at my strength level, there simply wasn’t much out there that could match me.

  This thing was stronger.

  That was the last time I could sidestep its attacks. The cell was small, and Val was only a foot behind me. If this new and improved No-Man could hit me like that, it could completely crush her without even noticing. If she was even still alive.

  I didn’t have time to worry, because the No-Man charged like a rampaging bull, feral and mad. It might have been strong, but it certainly wasn’t fighting with any sort of technique; it just didn’t have the brains. I dodged just enough that it hit me at a glancing angle instead of a head-on blow, moved with it, and used its own momentum to throw it. It hit the floor with a force that shook the walls and cracked the concrete.

  Val was too close. It jolted her, and she groaned.

  She was alive.

  Warm elation spread through my chest—and then the No-Man tackled me. It knocked the breath from my lungs and took us both to the floor. My head smashed into concrete, and I tried to roll away from Val. I was an idiot. No-Men didn’t feel pain. I couldn’t count on my attacks dazing it or hurting it enough to make it stop; I would have to take out the brain or the spine to bring it down.

  The realization took place under the weight of a raging monster. What the No-Man lacked in combat knowledge, it made up for with wild savagery. It pounded me with blow after blow, trying to scream, but its vocal cords had been cut, so all that came out was a muted whine. It was hard to attack something you pitied, but I managed. I hit and kicked, but it was like punching a building that had fallen on you; it didn’t make a difference. Gloved fists like rocks hit my face, my throat, my collarbone. Drool from its lipless mouth splattered onto my face.

  I grabbed one of its wrists. It belted me in the eye with the other hand, but I focused on the one I had and twisted. My muscles burned and my arms trembled, and the No-Man just kept hitting me. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and turned from it, curling into a protective position and wrenching its wrist around with everything I had.

  Finally, it snapped.

  The No-Man didn’t notice. It just kept drilling its free hand into my back. I couldn’t take much more punishment. I rolled, put my feet on its chest, and kicked.

  It pitched backward, landing in a heap in front of the open door. If I could force it out of the small cell and away from Val…

  With only one working arm, the No-Man lost precious seconds getting back on its feet. By the time it did, I was there. I swept its legs in another take-down, and this time I flung it out the door of the cell. It hit the floor so hard it left a small crater, and the sound was like a firework going off.

  I had a split second to take in my new surroundings. It was another lab, pretty much the same as Dr. Sweet’s last one. The only difference was that here the operating tables were occupied. The first held a middle-aged woman, and it was too late for her. The top of her skull had been removed, revealing her brain tissue slick with wetness. There was blood everywhere. She was strapped down, and I hoped to God it had just been a precaution, that Dr. Sweet had knocked her out with something before cutting open her head. But I knew better.

  On the table next to the dead woman was a young girl. Elisa.

  Her head had been shaved, her clothes stripped. She was strapped down, and some sort of metal thing was clamped around her head, holding it still. Sensors were stuck all over her body, clustering on her head, and their cords connected to the surrounding machinery. The tubes up her nose and down her throat muffled her screams.

  My own scream caught partway up, and I choked.

  Dr. Sweet was standing nearby, unscrewing the cap off a blue plastic container. He showed no signs of lasting injury from what Val and I had done to him; he looked like he had barely aged a day. He was even wearing the same Hawaiian shirt.

  He looked up at me. “Oh. White Knight. Hello.”

  I’d never wanted to kill someone so much in all my life. I charged toward him, but the No-Man lunged at me. I dodged and danced around it. The broken wrist was a definite handicap for it, but my chest hurt every time I breathed, and my vision was fuzzy from it punching me in the eye. I would break each of its limbs one by one if that’s what it took to get it to stop moving, but Elisa—Dr. Sweet could kill her at any moment. And heaven above, I didn’t want the girl to spend a second longer on that operating table.

  The No-Man made another go for me. I parried, and as it stumbled past me, I stepped on the back of its shin, dropping it to its knees. Then I grabbed its head and twisted.

  It was like trying to hold onto a thunderstorm. The No-Man jerked and flailed, and I struggled to get enough leverage to snap its neck. My hands tore its lobotomy scars, covering its head with slippery blood. I could barely keep my grip. Its spine felt like it must have been titanium. My muscles burned, and I screwed up my face, but it fought me for every second. It was starting to stand up and shake me off. I was one of the strongest people on the planet, but this thing was just—

  It kicked my knee, and something popped.

  I screamed. The world flashed white, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor. The pain was worse than anything I’d ever felt. I clutched at my knee, my eyes closed, still screaming, and remembered I was in the middle of a fight.

  I tensed for the blow, but it never came.

  I opened my eyes. The No-Man had backed up and was standing motionlessly. Directly in front of me were Dr. Sweet’s khaki-covered legs and brown loafers.

  My hand shot out, but he hopped back, laughing. I tried to stand, to lunge at him, to kill him, but my injured leg gave out from under me. Fresh waves of pain shot out from my knee, nauseating me. I grunted and rolled on the floor.

  “Quite a piece of work, isn’t he?” Dr. Sweet patted the No-man’s deformed shoulder with an amiable smile. “You really should appreciate your gifts, White Knight. Super-strength is so hard to replicate. Juicing up the muscles is easy enough, but then you’ve got to make sure the bones can hold up underneath them and the skin won’t just tear. It’s a pain in the neck, let me tell you.”

  I tried to crawl toward him, but he glanced at the No-Man, who kicked me back. I hit one of the shelves, upending it with a crash, and surgical instruments clattered to the floor around me.

  “True, my experiments so far aren’t exactly…” Dr. Sweet surveyed the No-Man’s mangled form with a frown. “…elegant. But it’s the results that count, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Let her go,” I gasped. “The DSA is on the way. You can’t do anything more. Just… let her go.”

  “You mean Elisa? A remarkable subject, your daughter. You should be very proud. Her genetics are just fascinating. But you’re right. I don’t have much time.”

  My daughter. He’d said—no, I didn’t have time to think about that. The blue container was still in Dr. Sweet’s hands, and he poured its contents onto me. It was kerosene; the smell was overwhelming.

  “The last time you and the Black Valentine interrupted my work, the DSA got their grubby little hands all over my research. I won’t let that happen again.” He sloshed the kerosene onto the floor and the machines, glancing into the cell where Val lay unconscious. “I do hope she wakes up in time to see her daughter burn to death.”

  He finished that bottle and took another one down from the shelf.

  “Fire
won’t kill me,” I said.

  “No, but asphyxiation from smoke and carbon monoxide will.”

  He spread the bottle’s contents all over the laboratory, humming a tune that didn’t cover the sound of Elisa’s sobs. Elisa. I wanted to tell her it would be okay, that I’d save her, but I was afraid I’d be lying. What I wouldn’t give for the gun I’d dropped in the cell with Val. I just wanted to kill Sweet, to rip his limbs off one by one, to make him suffer every bit as much as all the people he’d tortured and killed. I wanted to—

  Calm down and figure out how to deal with the No-Man. I had to get Elisa and Val out of here, and the No-Man was my biggest obstacle. Dr. Sweet I could kill easily, and it wouldn’t be hard to free Elisa once I got to her. The No-Man was the problem. I’d barely managed to hold my own against it when I could stand. How on earth could I manage to take it out crippled like this?

  Come on, Del Toro. You have super-strength; you know its weaknesses. Now think.

  I cast my gaze desperately around the lab for something that could help. Some of the chemicals on the shelves had poison warnings on the bottles. Super-strength didn’t help against that. But I’d have to crawl all the way across the room, get one off the shelf somehow, and then force it down the No-Man’s throat. It wasn’t feasible. I’d never make it in time.

  My hands brushed the dirty surgical blades all around me. Those wouldn’t work; they’d never pierce the No-Man’s skin.

  I paused. Not the skin. Maybe…

  It was my only chance. I grabbed a long, thin blade from the floor, the sturdiest-looking of the bunch. Then I pushed myself forward and kicked the No-man’s feet out from under it with my working leg.

  It toppled, and I pounced. Before it could attack, I plunged the blade into its eye.

  Super-strength didn’t affect all parts of the body equally, not even in someone who had it naturally, like me. Dr. Sweet said he hadn’t perfected the No-Man yet, and he hadn’t reinforced its eyes. The blade pierced it easily, gushing up thick red blood, and I stabbed through to the soft brain tissue behind. The No-Man jerked with a muted cry. I spun the handle around, scrambling what was left of its brains.