The Color of Courage

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  It was much easier that way.

  We went in different directions shortly after that, planning to meet back at HQ later. I made a verbal report to Josh’s psychologist and scored a few more referrals, which I spent a couple of hours following up on before I headed for HQ. Summer and Trace weren’t there yet and Adam’s office door was closed, so I put my duffle in my locker, found hot coffee in the break room, and tracked down Kirby, who sat sniffling in our shared office.

  “What’s wrong?” I set my coffee mug in front of her and retrieved her nearly empty one. We drank our coffee the same way, and she looked like she needed it more.

  “Thanks.” She wiped her nose with a tissue, dropped it in the trashcan, and smeared some hand sanitizer on her hands before lifting the mug to take a sip.

  “Nice try,” I said, sitting in the visitor chair. “I know you don’t have a cold. What happened?”

  She sighed. “Nothing in particular. I think I’m just tired. Chad’s dating someone else. Adam’s hurt. Tulie looked really bad when he came in. And this fucking loan”—she shoved some papers across the desk, and several fluttered to the floor—“won’t get resolved.”

  She was definitely tired. “You don’t care about Chad. He bored you.”

  “I know.” She laid her arm on the desk and dropped her head onto it.

  “Adam’s going to be fine.”

  “I know.”

  “The loan will get resolved eventually.”

  She snorted. “Not at this rate. Now the new lender is balking at sending me a copy of the canceled check to prove it was paid. I’m afraid I’ve been scammed.”

  I had no reassurances for that. I also had nothing to say about Tulie. I hadn’t seen him, and “bad” was relative.

  “I’ll get through it. I always do.” She straightened and frowned at the coffee mug. “You gave me your coffee.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You’re a good friend, Daley.” She drew in a deep breath and raised her hand. A moment later, the coffee pot zipped into the room. She grabbed it and poured me a cup, collecting a creamer and packet of sugar for me to add. “Oh, hey, speaking of friends, thanks for taking Crystal as a client.”

  “Have you talked to her?” It was rare that I knew what happened after a job was over, and I couldn’t help but be curious.

  “No, but my sister said Crystal’s husband admitted he was trying to find a new job. The woman was an employment counselor. He didn’t want to tell Crystal because he didn’t want her to worry about their finances.”

  God, people were stupid.

  “Evan says I acted unethically,” I blurted, surprising myself. Talking about Evan cracked the lids on several cans of worms. On the other hand, I had told Josh that I talked to my friends when I had problems, and they were starting to pile up to more than I could keep in my head.

  Kirby frowned. “How did you do that?”

  “I invaded Crystal’s husband’s privacy.”

  “He was in a public restaurant! And you were hired by his wife.”

  “People’s emotions aren’t normally on display, even if they are in public. Evan said reading him without his permission crosses the line.”

  “Bullshit. Wait, reading Crystal’s husband, or reading Evan?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  She nodded. “It’s still bullshit. People display their emotions all the time. Some are better at hiding them than others, and some are better at interpreting them. You just have less guesswork than normal people.”

  That made me feel even better than Evan’s apology had. It was hard to compare yourself to “normal” when you weren’t. The easing of guilt hardly put a dent in things, but it helped.

  “Thanks, friend.”

  She patted my shoulder. “Any time.”

  The front door chimed, and we could hear Summer and Trace arguing as they came through the building. Both went to the locker room, then the break room. Summer squawked to find the coffee pot gone, and Kirby and I laughed. She’d just rushed into the office to berate us when we heard Adam’s door open and all of us shut up, mood instantly changed.

  Adam, on crutches, appeared in the doorway. “Meeting room.”

  Kirby and Summer checked me when they saw the grimness on Adam’s face. I read grief and not a little fear, but didn’t have a chance to tell them. I rose to follow Adam and Tulie into the break room, where Trace now sat.

  I’d never met Tulie, though I’d seen him in online conference calls. He was about six inches shorter than Adam and Trace, and contrasted sharply with their All-American looks. I knew his family was from Columbia, and that his power was strength. With his compact body, chocolate-brown eyes, and long hair caught severely back in a ponytail, I suspected it was also sometimes seduction.

  But not today. When Kirby said he looked terrible, she hadn’t been kidding. I doubted he’d slept in a week, if not longer, and his body posture conveyed great weight on his shoulders.

  I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, if that weight was about to come down onto HQ.

  Adam introduced each of us to Tulie, who remained standing. So did Adam. Since his pain level told me he couldn’t have taken any pain pills since he left the hospital, I braced myself for something bad.

  “What do you all know about Chicago?” Tulie asked us. We all shared a significant look. Kirby responded, sounding like a newscaster.

  “The Chicago organization of superheroes responded to a call in which two heroes were killed, the rescuee was critically injured, and the organization blamed for both. They disbanded two months ago.”

  Tulie nodded. “One of the heroes, Rafe, came down and joined us. He had suspicions about what happened, but didn’t say much. Last week, half of my group was called in when animals in the zoo were released. It was a disaster. All our efforts were stymied, and again people were hurt. My— One of my heroes was killed, too. And we were blamed.”

  Not just one of his heroes. Someone he loved.

  “You think Rafe had something to do with it?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t on the op. But there were similarities. Things we did to fix the situation encountered interference.”

  “Like, sabotage?” Summer looked significantly at Kirby’s bandaged forehead, and I knew Trace had relayed my suspicions to everyone. Dread crawled through me as Adam took over for Tulie.

  “More than sabotage.” He face set in grim lines. “You were right, Daley. The building collapse was too perfect a job for us. Add that to Chicago and San Diego and the Today’s News article. It looks like there’s a faction working to undermine specific heroes and organizations with a bigger, more sinister agenda.” He tossed a four-color brochure on the table. None of us picked it up. We didn’t have to. The headline screamed at us: Death to All Superheroes! Then, in smaller letters, The Scourge of the Twenty-First Century. The high-quality cover art depicted heroes from both Chicago and San Diego. There was no way to put it politely. The pictures showed them screwing up.

  I picked up the brochure, opened to the dense text inside, and read aloud, “‘Unsavory elements have been part of the American landscape since before the country was born. But only in the last few decades have so-called superheroes emerged, real-life deformations who pretend to use their extra abilities to do good. Instead, they exacerbate tragic circumstances, increasing death tolls and injuries and destroying infrastructure. Additionally, not all such monstrosities even pretend to have noble intentions. They commit horrendous crimes with the ease of bandits in the Old West.

  “‘Citizens Against Superhero Existence believe change must occur. To keep our cities, families, and future safe, we must make it a capital offense to use superpowers for any reason.

  “‘And if the government won’t make it so, we will.’ ”

  I couldn’t read a
ny further. I wanted to vomit, and judging by the auras around me, I wasn’t alone.

  “If it was only a vocal group with a political agenda,” Tulie said, “we wouldn’t be concerned. The good we do far outweighs the bad.”

  “If you don’t believe Caitlyn’s article,” Kirby muttered.

  Tulie ignored her. “But they’re clearly more proactive than that. They want us to become our own demise.”

  “Worse,” Adam said, nodding at me. I’d just read it in the brochure. “If we fail, they’ll do it for us.”

  “Well, shit.”

  That was the second time in a week Trace had said that while sitting around this table.

  “You think they’re targeting us?” Summer asked.

  Adam’s tightened jaw was the only outward sign of his feelings, but rage and fear and helplessness surged out of him.

  “We think they have been for a while.”

  Chapter 10

  “They’re terrorists.” Trace thumped his fist on the table. “People died in the M Street building collapse.”

  “We think possibly the jewelry heist was theirs, too,” Adam said. “I don’t think that came off the way they wanted it to, but it has signs.”

  “After the zoo,” Tulie explained, “several of our heroes decommissioned.” He lifted a shoulder when we raised our eyebrows at the word. “I was military. Once. Anyway, they left. The rest were too hurt or scared to be effective. When we tried to go on an op, they worried about consequences that hobbled them. Rafe says it was the same way in Chicago. We compared notes, and we think several ops before the big one were compromised. We’re not sure how. Something just felt off.”

  “The jumper!” I interjected. Everyone looked at me. “I knew there was something wrong with him. He wanted a big crowd, remember? And things he said . . . I bet you anything he was part of it. The whole thing was planned to get us out there to fail. But we foiled that, too.”

  “Foiled,” Trace teased. “Yes, we foiled the nefarious plot of the evil villain,” he intoned, then went back to his regular voice. “But she’s probably right. So what do we do now?”

  Adam nailed us all with his ‘do or die’ expression. “We stop them.”

  Intentions were all well and good, but by Friday evening, we hadn’t come up with much of a plan to do that. The propaganda brochure gave us no hint of who CASE was or where they were located. Internet searches yielded more of the same spew I’d read, but again with no identifying information and no way to contact them. If they were recruiting new members, we couldn’t find it.

  We’d analyzed our cases going back a month and identified the ones that had oddities we’d dismissed or forgotten about. There were so many close calls, I began to have more sympathy for my mother and her fears.

  In fact, I started to wonder if she was right to want me to leave HQ.

  “They’ve been targeting us a lot longer than we thought,” Trace asserted, marking the spreadsheet Kirby had prepared. “Hard to tell when it started, since it rises so subtly.”

  Kirby muttered something under her breath about payback.

  “You know,” Summer pointed out, “the chunk of concrete that hit Kirby at the building collapse went off target.”

  Trace shrugged. “So?”

  “Someone with powers of their own had to be there. Maybe they caused the second collapse.”

  “Could have been technology,” Kirby said.

  But Summer shook her head. “Damned hypocrites. We need to find that traitor.”

  Adam didn’t say much as the others talked, but it was clear the thought of closing HQ hadn’t crossed his mind.

  But how could it not? I contributed little to the discussion as I watched Adam’s aura fluctuate with concern and determination. He was so protective of us all. With an invisible enemy actively targeting us, he should float the option of a hiatus, at the least.

  But it wasn’t his way. I knew CASE’s intent wasn’t simply to break us up. It was to destroy anyone with superpowers. And Adam couldn’t let that happen.

  I was afraid. I wasn’t ashamed to admit it. What help could I be in the quest to stop these people? My skills were reactive, not proactive, and I was the weakest. The most vulnerable. That turned me into a liability, and potential leverage against the others. As soon as CASE became aware HQ knew about them, their tactics would change.

  I couldn’t sit there thinking about this any longer. Tears threatened, so I stood to get myself more coffee, plans and ideas swirling behind me, unheard. HQ had given me so much. A place to belong, with people like me, people who understood. It gave me purpose, a way to use my gifts for good. But I had new ways to do that now. What I’d achieved with Josh had been every bit as satisfying as saving the boy in the jewelry heist or stopping Gino on the ledge. I could have a fulfilling life without HQ.

  Pain stabbed my chest. I turned and leaned against the counter, sipping my coffee and watching my friends. I didn’t want to leave them. And yet . . . No one seemed to have noticed that I’d left the table, that I wasn’t contributing. Maybe they just tolerated me. I was a tool they could do without. Or even better, replace.

  I blinked back the tears again and gulped coffee, thinking about how I’d wound up here. Summer and I had been senior roommates in college, a blessing for both of us. Summer interviewed Adam for her thesis, and after graduation talked me into going with her to meet Kirby and Trace and talk about joining. I hadn’t been convinced I had anything to offer, but Adam never questioned it. He gave a dozen examples of ways I could have helped on past jobs, and just assumed I was joining. So I did, and had been happy ever since. But maybe I’d been deluding myself.

  Leaving HQ would do more than change my employment status. The friendships would change, maybe be lost. Trace’s irrepressible humor, Kirby’s pragmatism, Summer’s care would all be things I’d mourn. I imagined going into Adam’s office and telling him I was quitting. He would hide his reaction, and I wouldn’t be able to read his emotions. He’d tell me I needed to do what was right for me, but I would know I’d disappointed him, anyway.

  Stay, and become a liability that could lead to their downfalls, but retain their friendships and the value HQ gave to my life.

  Leave, and lose everything I’d helped work toward for two years, but make them stronger, less vulnerable.

  Helluva choice.

  And not one I had to make this second. I returned to the planning, which was going nowhere by the end of the day. We needed something concrete on CASE before we could build a framework on which to hang a viable plan.

  My phone beeped at five, a reminder of my family dinner obligation. I sighed and thumbed off the chime, then started to pull up my mother’s number so I could cancel. That wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  But Trace shook his head. “Family dinner, right? Go. I’ll keep working. I don’t have anything else to do tonight.”

  “I can stay, too.” Summer sat back and yawned. “Let’s get ice cream,” she said to Trace. “I’ll think better with ice cream.”

  Trace bounced to his feet. “You’re paying.”

  “Big surprise.”

  They left, and Kirby got up to go to the bathroom. Adam grunted and shifted on his hard chair. His face was gray and drawn, and I could tell how heavily he was leaning on his elbow on the table, holding himself upright.

  “Let Kirby take you home.” I got up and went over to help him to his feet. He resisted and I stood there foolishly, my hands curved around the bulge of his biceps.

  “We haven’t gotten anywhere. There’s got to be some detail we’re missing. Some crack.” He reached for a pile of printed web pages, but I grabbed his wrist.

  “Seriously, Adam, you’re not doing anyone any good this way. Let Trace and Summer keep going and you go home and rest so you can heal.”

 
; He didn’t try to get out of my grip, but reached with his other hand, instead. I was about to call him a stubborn ass when streaks of bright red shot through his aura. I mentally soothed those patches, intending to send green calm, but tinges of lavender followed. I jerked back, startled by the evidence of the feelings I’d been trying to ignore. My knees hit the seat next to me and I fell into it.

  The red streaks had subsided. Adam smiled at me and rested his sprained arm on the table. “What was that about?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, feeling my face heat. I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I just want you to take care of yourself. We’re going to need you at full strength, and burning all your reserves won’t get you there.”

  He nodded, fatigue dragging at him again. “I know you’re right. I just can’t”—he waved a hand at the mess—“leave it. Leave you.”

  He didn’t mean me. He meant the team. But the words still sent a warmth seeping through me that was different from anything I’d ever felt before. I wanted to be more than just a team member to him. Wanted in some way to have value beyond the job.

  Kirby came back in, covering a yawn with the back of her hand.

  “Don’t sit down,” I told her. “Adam needs to go home. Will you take him?”

  “Sure. I’m brain-fried, anyway. We’ll start fresh tomorrow and I know we’ll come up with something. Come on, boss man.” She tugged Adam’s arm, and he let her.

  The room echoed with the silence once they were gone. I lingered long enough to straighten and sort all the stuff we had, and as soon as Trace and Summer got back, left to go meet my father, feeling guilty the whole way home.

  My call to Mom earlier in the week had been better than the last one, but I still wasn’t looking forward to tonight. There was no solid reason why, since she didn’t know about CASE. Just a foreboding that two dangerous ops in a row were going to be two too many for her.