Ever The Hero (Book 1): Ever The Hero

by Harn, Darby

  “This is city property,” a man says.

  “This isn’t your city.”

  Words and rocks sling past me, the anger of the crowd propelling me forward to the feet of the Interdictor. He looks down on me, his expression inscrutable. Bottles smash against his armor. A rock crushes to powder in his hand. The crowd breaks. Most Empowered only have one attribute. Not only can the Interdictor fly, he can punch through solid titanium. If for some reason, you needed to do that. The receding tide of protesters leaves a young woman on the curb. She crawls across the pavement, bloody and trampled in the retreat of the crowd.

  “I’ll get help.” I turn to the gate. The Interdictor blocks my path. I swipe at the screen of her PEAL. My work ID appears on the screen. I hold up my hand. “I work here!”

  His voice slithers out between the tightly woven links in his chains. “I know who you are, Baldwin.”

  “You do?”

  “You’re no one. A powerless token of Valene’s generosity.”

  I wipe the spit off my cheek. “This woman needs help.”

  “That ID opens doors for you, it’s true. It doesn’t give you license to hold them open for others.”

  The Interdictor rises back into the air, joining the link of Responders chaining the sky. The woman disappears into the morphing crowd, and I’m left in the no man’s land between the protestors and the front gate. I brush the dust off my jacket, and maybe the anger and embarrassment, and go back for my bike. Sounds of strife and struggle fade as I go through the metal detectors. Red lights flash. The conveyor belt stops. The guard glances at the screen revealing the contents of my bag.

  He points to a dark, square shape buried at the bottom of the bag, under all my other things. “What’s this?”

  “My lunch.”

  He scrutinizes the image. “Like a thermos or something?”

  “Right.”

  The guard continues to study the X-ray. Rocks rain down on the security station from over the gate.

  “Ok,” he says, and my bag trundles down the belt. I pick it up and walk through, misread every time.

  Techs gather in a tight circle around the transparent test chamber at the heart of the lab in Applied Sciences, though I can’t be bothered with the fortieth or fiftieth test – I’ve no idea – of the ionizers. A cluster of miniaturized ionizers, shaped like stripped down lampshades, spiral around inside and the new sonic suit weaves out of my thoughts. A cloud of mist develops around the swarm. Drops of water streak the glass. An electrical discharge erupts in the chamber. Power. I need power.

  What can’t I see?

  A stern voice disrupts the current of my thoughts. “Ms. Baldwin. What do you think?”

  The cloud clears. “Sorry, what?”

  Steam gushes out into the lab as the door of the test chamber slides open. Ronald Piller, the head of Applied Sciences, picks up one of the golf ball sized ionizers off the chamber floor and sets it in my hand. His low-lidded eyes give off this sleepy vibe, but he’s perpetually tense.

  “Why can’t we make these work?”

  On the other side of the chamber, one of the other techs stares back at me, her eyes big and sincere. They balloon and I look away, afraid I’ve been staring at – what’s her name? Abi. Ali. Something like that – the whole time without realizing it.

  “Um…”

  Adam Dibinsky leaps at his opportunity to remind us all he’s by far the most qualified – and opportunistic – tech in the group. “What Baldwin is struggling with is we can't insulate the ionizers against the static electricity in the cloud, without also preventing them from generating fields of negatively charged particles to create the rain in the first place.”

  “The quantity of dust in the Martian atmosphere is like way higher than any approximate environment on Earth,” Ali – Abi? says, tugging at her blouse. “The ionizers will generate all this static electricity and get fried out of the sky. Also – just curious – why are we trying to make it rain on Mars again?”

  Piller’s hands run through his crop of salt-and-pepper curls on their way to a stop on the back of his neck. An answer proves difficult for him. It always does. The lab operates a little like my brain, sometimes. I can see how everything goes together. I just struggle with making it all work.

  “We need to ground the ionizers somehow,” I say.

  Piller nods. “Uh huh.”

  “The ionizers generate enough energy to attract the positive ions to the negatively-charged surfaces of the devices, and I was looking at this the other day and… it’s like a computer. Computers run hot. We use a cooling system but there’s still a lot of dust accumulation you get from static cling.”

  Dibinsky grins. “We know all this.”

  “But when operating in an environment with lower air pressure like an airplane cabin here on Earth, the cooling capacity has to be de-rated compared to that of sea level or else the device fails. We’re not taking that into account.”

  Dibinsky’s grin vanishes.

  “Calculate the correct cooling capacity, Mr. Dibinsky,” Piller says. “Glad you could join us, Ms. Baldwin.”

  Snickers ricochet around the lab. I sink into my seat.

  Dibinsky leans toward me. “Did she email you that?”

  “She attached a reminder you’re recalibrating the test.”

  He goes red as the EXIT sign over the door. All I want to do is get out of here, but I think I have the rest of the shift. All my hours are confused. I used to stay out night and day, waiting the storm out with Ma, and now I’m up all the time, trying to block the sound and Abi scoots her chair next to me.

  She slides a chocolate chip cookie on a napkin across the desk to me. “I baked this just now.”

  “Are you hiding a stove under your desk?”

  “Nah. I just used the residual heat from when Dibinksy got burnt.” She breaks the cookie in half. “Eat it. You need some sugar. We’ve got like seven more hours to go.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and she smiles.

  Someone always stays late, to finish a project or earn credit with Piller by logging hours. Abi occasionally, though she acts more interested in what I’m working on than anything she is. After Abi leaves for the night, it’s just Dibinsky. Hours pass in a silent staring match to see who will leave first and finally around eight, I win out.

  I minimize the ionizer test results and take my bag out from under my desk. Makeup, though I’ve never been one for makeup; a wad of receipts, going back years; a clean shirt. I’ve gotten to where I don’t mind all the jingle-jangle of things inside the bag as it bounces off my hip. Sometimes, I enjoy taking on the attributes of a normal girl. The performance. A thermos rests heavy under everything at the bottom of the bag, but I’ve never been one for coffee. I remove the cap.

  The Myriad rattles around at the bottom.

  I’ve tried everything. Electrical wire. Jumper cables. A stick of dynamite strapped to a loaded gas can. None of it worked. The Myriad, as part of the Ever anyways, absorbed energy. You’d think just normal sunlight would turn it on. This magnetic field the Ever emanated; it’s like the Earth’s or the Sun’s. A cellular membrane. Only some things get through. Everything else gets deflected or destroyed. Why? It wasn’t until we started the trials we’ve been running on the ionizers that I realized I might be going about this all wrong.

  I place the crystal inside the test chamber, and implement an MRI scan. The Myriad is inherently magnetic. Faraday’s Law says I can move it through a conducting coil and generate an electric current. The scan completes. Nothing. I rub my head, pounding ba-dumm, ba-dumm, ba-dumm and up the field intensity.

  INITIATE SCAN?

  A hum builds inside the lab. Light becomes fluid inside the crystal. Magmatic. Something crashes hard against glass. I look up, expecting the alien to be pounding on the walls of the chamber, but there’s nothing. Ba-dumm. With one eye on the lab doors, I go to the window. Birds drum along the glass. Hundreds of them clot the sky beyond and I run back to the laptop
.

  C’mon.

  I up the power, again. I have to be careful. Most experiments in the lab involve benign technologies. Sometimes, one requires extra precautions. Worse comes to worse, like say, I accidentally wake up the Ever, the chamber serves another purpose: the floor is a trap door. A push of a button and anything inside drops into impregnable vault directly beneath the lab, designed to house the most dangerous objects, and the most dangerous Empowered, in the world. Anything goes sideways right now, I lose the Myriad and my only chance to help Val.

  Probably I end up with a poor end of year performance review, too. The rain of birds becomes a hailstorm. Crystal morphs into something softer. Stranger. C’mon. Fire.

  Nothing.

  The Myriad just sits there, a hot rock on the floor of the chamber. Damn it. I end the test. The birds end their assault on the windows. Strong magnetic fields induce a reaction within the Myriad, but the generator inside the test chamber isn’t powerful enough to bring the device out of its slumber. I doubt any hospital grade MRI scanner will, either. Nothing man made will do the trick. I need something stronger. The history of every project in Applied Sciences scrolls through my screen. Skyward 71. Project: Canary. Reverse Dawn. In all the years the lab has been riffing off of recovered alien tech, GP has never once developed anything replicating its power. Maybe the power of the alien doesn’t operate in any way we understand. Maybe this is all hopeless, and all I’m doing is killing a bunch of birds.

  Something moves out the corner of my eye. “Hello?”

  No one’s there. Shadows of birds. I scrub the results from the test chamber. Delete my activity log. I place the Myriad back in the thermos, the thermos back in the bag, back beneath all the things I carry around with me. My passport. Ma’s. Some of her jewelry. Pictures inside a sandwich bag. My third birthday, Dad in his coveralls, stained in grease, Ma in her nurses scrubs, both of them with this surprise on their face; Look. Look what we found. I bury the pictures deep in the bag, and trudge out of the lab, to the elevators. In my head, the Myriad fires from within the power pack of Valene’s new sonic suit. A static repulsion field surrounds her, impregnable. I work the problem. No other thought gets through.

  The foam-clad Responders posted outside the residence always unnerve me. Their faceless masks render them statues. Every time I approach, I expect to be denied, but every time, they barely move at all, acknowledging me only with a subtle tilt of their opaque helmets. The door slides open and right away the lab pulls on me. The work. All I want is to be here and I don’t want to be here. Every day is worse than the last.

  Dozens of people I don’t know, doctors, technicians, suits huddle in the penthouse, quiet as they would be in a church. Their paranoia shadows me around the residence. They whisper their fear that it will get out, what’s happening. None of these people are her father. I suppose he could be here. Rumors of the Evanescent Man stalking the patent corridors of the tower, spying on his employees, keeps everyone’s head on a swivel.

  Her voice tracks around the penthouse so fast it burns. Leave. All the attendants shuffle out, holding their ears. A minute later, it’s just me, a rock in the stream of her sound.

  “Valene…”

  The dome of the chamber doesn’t slide back this time. Instead, it becomes transparent like the rest of the tower. Inside, Valene unfolds out of the corner like a wadded up piece of paper. Very little of the splendid, heroic figure Valene made in her posters remains now. Still, she makes an effort to claw her unkempt hair into something presentable, to smooth out the wrinkles in her nightgown, but there’s no point and I don’t need any sanitized version of her, besides. I only need Valene.

  I put my hand to the glass. “Val, open the door.”

  Her attention fragments. “It’s too much… WRKO in Boston… live traffic updates…” Valene claws at her ears. “There’s this sound, Kitty. Do you hear it? Tac. Tac a tac. Like that.”

  Too much. I know what she means. I think that’s why I’m like this. Switched off. Otherwise there’s too much power in the lines. Too much feeling. I hold my words. My tears. My heart. I bury my pain, down and down, until I lose it among all the other things I’ve carried for so long I’ve forgotten them. But I don’t need to say anything. I just need to do something.

  “I’m close, Val. I’m really close.”

  Valene puts her hand against mine. “Always working… I hear you… you never stop. You never sleep. You never eat.”

  I want, and I deny myself, afraid to accept or enjoy any of the unlikely gifts I’ve received since meeting Valene. Bargains define my life now. I only spend a few nights a week in the penthouse with Valene, working the others. At first, I thought I’d leave the Halfway Hotel. With the job, I can afford a better place, but I’d never be there, like I’m never home and moving the furniture, the boxes, the bulbs, none of it makes sense right now. I’ve just been so busy with the suit. I haven’t had time to go back, or really even think about it.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “I know you miss her.”

  I bite my lip. “I’m fine.”

  Valene doesn’t really sigh; if she’s not speaking, she avoids making a sound at all. Exhalation becomes a compressed smile, the dented exterior of something imploded.

  “I can help you,” I say. “Let me in.”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing helps now.”

  “Let me try.”

  The dome slides back, soundlessly. I ease into the chamber, careful not to rush into any noise.

  “Give me your hand.”

  Sometimes this takes minutes; sometimes hours. I wait, this new universe of fear within me expanding and contracting until Valene puts her hands, cold and clammy, in mine.

  “Focus on me,” I say.

  My pulse throbs through my hands, into Valene’s, into a rhythm her heart matches. Valene closes her eyes, struggling to focus on the sound to the exclusion of all others like she’s done since we met. I fight the anxious exhaust of my breath to keep the peace between us, the space that’s ours, quiet of all intrusion and I give only a steady, determined heart to Valene

  ba-dumm

  ba-DUMM

  BA-DUMM

  Valene abandons me and scrambles back to the far corner of the chamber, hands clamped over her ears as soon as she’s back secure in the ball she had made before.

  “Make it stop… make it stop…”

  I go to her, wanting to hold her, to shield her from the world but Valene shrivels. My hands ball into fists. I bite my lip so hard I strike copper. I hold back my hurt. My heartbreak.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, but Valene touches my lips. Shh.

  Her fingers trail down my chin, my neck, over the drum of my misfiring heart, ba-dumm, ba-dumm, ba-dumm.

  Mannequins dressed in the costumes of a pre-ERA Empowered stand at attention throughout the anniversary exhibit on the 38th floor. Some heroes. Some villains. I can’t really tell them apart. These ruins don’t have near as much anxiety as those across the river. At least until I wander into them. Trumpets bellow, the opening fanfare of a black and white newsreel projected on the wall. A burning Break Pointe fades into view as the sober voice of the announcer crackles out of the speakers.

  “Break Pointe… ground zero of humanity’s greatest tragedy…”

  Buildings crumble into clouds of dust. People evaporate in beams of unnatural light, again and again.

  “From across the stars the invader came, without warning or provocation…”

  Tendrils of energy whip out of the Ever, snaring every living thing. Birds disappear. Dogs. People. In most cases, the person vanishes into the well of energy churning within the alien. In others – particularly in a famous episode, caught on camera on Cockrum, behind the wall now – a number of civilians run to a police officer, only to witness as he burns away, transforming into the Ever. The alien always reverts back to their original, featureless form. No evidence I’m aware of suggests anything remains of the people the alien acquired, be
yond a face the creature could take on and off at will.

  “Only with our best and brightest does the world avoid the same fate. Leading the way – Evander Blackwood, brilliant inventor, fearless in his quest of knowledge…”

  A boyish Evander Blackwood appears on screen, self conscious among a dense clutch of soldiers and scientists.

  “Blackwood and his stout band breach the heart of the alien craft, and disable the main reactor and thus the vile invader… but not before the alien exposes the heroes, and millions of others, to unknown cosmic radiation…”

  The triumphant panache of the music turns maudlin. The clips from wonder to horror. Soldiers lie in hospital beds, burned and deformed. Civilians in ruined streets, skin hanging off their limbs. Dead birds falling from the branches of trees.

  “For some, the effects are deadly. For others, the mysterious cosmic radiation alters their very being…” The young Blackwood twists around his hospital room for the ever-present camera, disappearing and reappearing as he does. “And with death of the alien, we have the dawn of… the Age of Empowerment!”

  A quick succession of footage segues out of the newsreel, and the 1960s. Black and white becomes color. Film becomes video. The Men At Arms become The Vanguard. Dr. Piller is as tall and thin in the 80s as he is thirty years later, setting aside the garish government-issue costume he wore as Think Piece. His hands rest softly on the shoulders of Vidette Rizzo, codenamed Stamina, as she twists a solid steel beam into a knot. In the back, dark and out of focus, lurks the future exile known as Overlook. Framing the group are the android ALPHA, a walking 1948 Buick Streamliner in his sleek, chrome lines, and his inventor, Evander Blackwood, caked in makeup.

  I expect some mention of the ERA, the disasters that precipitated it, but footage of the Vanguard fighting other Empowered in the streets rolls seamlessly into the advancements Blackwood gleaned from reverse engineering the alien technology: advanced robots; unlikely spacecraft; medical advancements; the end of wars. Headlines flick past. HEROES FOR HIRE! VALENE BLACKWOOD TARGETED BY KIDNAPPER. COLD WAR ENDS IN FIRE. Logos display next. Ads. Posters. Valene, at the head of a parade in her honor in San Francisco, after she alerted the city to an earthquake rumbling underground, days before it struck. I’m surprised they included this, but this is why people love her.