Ever The Hero (Book 1): Ever The Hero

by Harn, Darby

  “Maybe a odd question for you: do you only flirt with people you have no intention of asking out?”

  I bite my lip. “Am I flirting?”

  “Could be interpreted that way.”

  “I have no idea what I’m doing. If I like someone, I tend to not say anything. At all. You’re a guy and an authority figure, and… now that I think about it, I’m discovering I react a bit differently around you than I do other people. Huh.”

  “It’s ok. I react differently around you, too.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He smiles. “I’ve heard about you.”

  “In the news?”

  “Valene.”

  “You know Val?”

  “Just in passing.” He looks up, into the stars like buckshot over The Derelicts. “She was an amazing woman.”

  “Why aren’t you a Responder, like her?”

  “Long story.”

  Most Empowered get a job with GP, or Found. Both companies own ancillaries in numerous fields that allow Empowered to work where their particular ability makes sense. Few end up in the military anymore, unless it’s for some secret group like Yankee Company that isn’t supposed to exist, but everyone knows does.

  “Did you volunteer, or get drafted?”

  He smiles. “A bit of both.”

  “How does that work?”

  “It’s like being born. You don’t really have any choice in it, but you’re not exactly going to pass up the opportunity.”

  “Interesting visual if you did,” I say. I lean on the bike. “I know the alien has everyone freaked out, but still, why is the military here? GP has the contract in – the strike.”

  He nods. “The law is the law. With the contract in limbo, federal authority takes precedence. That’s one reason they keep people like me around. Fill in all the cracks and seams.”

  “That sounds nice, but GP hasn’t been doing their job in the city for going on a year. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been wondering where I’m at, too,” he says, eyes falling across the husks of tenement houses in the seams of gutted factories and warehouses. “I don’t make the decisions. They tell me where to go, and I go. Anywhere. Any time.”

  “You’re here now.”

  “The alien threat is most likely another false alarm.” He sound even more rehearsed now. Don’t worry, folks. Nothing to see here. “Like the others over the years. Once I’ve determined the validity of the threat, they’ll recall me to headquarters.”

  Figures. Make an appearance. Pose for some pictures. Leave everyone cheering. “So until then, you’re just going to walk around the ruins and what, recon? On foot?”

  “I like to get a feel for a place.” The Uniform considers my jacket. “Old, too, right? Vintage. You like old things.”

  I grasp the zipper. “I guess.”

  “I do, too. Believe it or not, I’m a history buff. What I know of it. Like your – what is that underneath there? I’ve seen that before. Vanguard costume. Has to be from the 80s or 90s.”

  “It’s for Halloween.”

  “That was weeks ago,” he says.

  “I’m getting ready for next year. Trial runs.”

  “Aren’t you a bit old for trick or treat?”

  “That’s ageist.”

  “Guess I’m just old fashioned,” he says.

  “It’s cute, in a maintain your distance kind of way.”

  He puts his helmet back on. “I’m one of the good guys.”

  “Who can tell?”

  “Tell you what. I’ll walk you home. Even if you don’t end up asking me to the dance.”

  I get back on the bike. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. Well, you already have.”

  The Uniform smiles, and runs and then leaps across the ruins, blocks and blocks into the dark, out of sight. Little avalanches set off from the piled rubble as he comes to ground somewhere near Simon. He leaps again, bounding across The Derelicts, covering the entire island in a few jumps.

  That was weird.

  My PEAL buzzes. I swipe at the screen, expecting a text from Gennady with the time of the meet, but it’s Abi again.

  Where are u?

  Why won’t u answer?

  HR wants to talk to me. I won’t say anything.

  They’re probably monitoring my texts. Shit.

  I DON’T GIVE U PERMISSION TO SPY ON ME DUDES!!!

  Call me. Please.

  I don’t answer. What would I say; what could I say? This is too much. I can’t. I pull up my hood, and get back on the bike, meandering into a world that feels less and less human.

  Another texts buzzes in. Gennady, finally. Tomorrow night.

  All this waiting isn’t so strange. This wandering the day out. How many times did I do this with Ma? She’d go into one of her fits, and I’d leave, roaming the neglected grief around Six Corners for hours. Days, sometimes. I just couldn’t be there. Sometimes the medicine didn’t help. Sometimes, there wasn’t any.

  That’s how I got started scavenging. Out in the ruins, wandering, I’d find things. Most people in The Derelicts are in a hurry to just get through. All the ruin and blight bleeds together after a while. What’s the difference between one pile of brick and another, anyways? Me, I stop and think about those piles, those ruins, what they had been and how they’d go back together. I see everything, even the bits that don’t belong.

  I’d go down to the swap. Loiter around. The movies, when the Starlight was still running. Museums. Bookstores. Libraries. I spent hours losing my days, my troubles waiting back at the apartment in other worlds and other lives. I wished I could live all the lives of the writer, able to take on and off the face of so many disparate characters but I didn’t have the facility for words I needed. My writing was in wire. Conduit. Cable. I made things and for a long time I thought that fitting. I didn’t have the soul to make lives, just the knowledge. I could make a life. I just needed the spark. That bit of fire from heaven.

  Now all of life opens to me and I can only deny it. All I have to do is give over to the unknown power worming inside me. With the Myriad, I can become anyone and anything, even, finally, Kitsie Baldwin. The Kitsie Dad expected. The Kitsie Ma denied. The Kitsie I imagined I’d be, between the lines.

  But I fight. I deny. I hold on, with all I’ve got.

  I hurry through a gap in the gate bordering the grounds of the old Break Pointe Zoo. A light blinks on and off inside the stately, domed visitor’s center. I flash my PEAL, and run through the dead stalks of wild brush into the building. Living energy and all the information contained within it coils within a man like solar prominences in the magnetic field of the sun.

  “It’s Kitsie, isn’t it?”

  I tug down my hood a little more. “Kit is fine.”

  “I didn't think you'd make it,” he says, with a rakish grin. He’s rock star thin, a walking line of sinew painted in a black suit, the lines so slim as to be imperceptible. His red hair wisps into a flame-like quiff that belies his age.

  I swear, some people try too hard. “I said I would.”

  Airships make lazy stars over downtown as he looks out the window. “Your choice of the zoo leaves little margin for error.”

  Birds swirl above, twisting back to the domed cage of the aviary just beyond the center. The aviary was the only part of Break Pointe Zoo to remain inhabited after 1968.

  “We’re safe here,” I say.

  “A gambler. I like you already.”

  A woman comes out of the shadows behind him, face hidden behind something like a motorcycle helmet, though the visor curves down her neck in the fashion of a medieval sallet. A white circle emblazons the heart of her black body armor.

  “You don’t need any muscle,” I say.

  “I love gamblers,” he says. “But I don’t trust them.”

  My hand closes around the thumb drive in my pocket. “I’m supposed to trust you? I don’t know what Gennady told you, but I have one rule at the swap. I don�
�t deal with Brits.”

  “You can trust me, Kit. I’m famous. Or, I was.”

  All the files and photos I studied of 1968 flick through my mind. “You’re Johnny Albertine,” I say.

  “Good on you. I’m a little ahead of your time, though.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  Albertine nudges his silent, still guard. “She’s buttering me up. Must have something she’s desperate to get rid of. I should be wary, but flattery will get you everywhere. Well. Anywhere except on the Circus Line. They’ll never sort that out. But I appreciate the compliment, Kit. I rather think the radiation did wonders for my complexion, don’t you? At least someone benefitted. There were plenty that didn’t.”

  Bleeding Jesus. It’s really Johnny Albertine. He was part of the NATO response team dispatched to Break Pointe to assist the States against the alien invasion. Most of his unit perished battling the Ever. He became one of the first Empowered.

  “You’re with Found?” I say.

  “And featured prominently in the advertising,” he says. “Johnny Albertine, Veteran of 1968. It’s a bit like watching telly and you see an ad for life insurance starring some old star from the 50s or 60s, and you just kind of feel good, you know? Like you can trust them. That’s the idea, anyways. You have to admire their stones making a man from Perfidious Albion the face of the company, especially after Molly Swift, but people like a good face. So here I am. Back where it all started. Speaking of. Not sure I trust you, sweet as you are.”

  I bite my lip. “Gennady vouched for me, didn’t he?”

  “The man has only been reliable, but you can imagine the concern back at Found.”

  “Concern?”

  Albertine looks out on the darkened city. “Martial law… curious, don’t you think? The reward for GP’s abdication of authority is to be granted unlimited power.”

  “The government is here. GP doesn’t have a contract.”

  “Oh, you haven’t heard.” He grins. “Your man The Uniform, he’s determined there is some concern regarding this ‘alien menace’ they claim to have discovered. So the President has granted GP special sanction to operate here, strictly to apprehend the alien. Nothing else. A bit of backroom maneuvering, you know. People feel safe, GP looks like it’s doing something, Washington gets to pretend they’re still in control. This alien is all rather convenient, if you ask me.”

  My jacket has always proven reliable in providing me something to squeeze out my stress; all the zippers. The strings of the hood. The dangling belt. My hands cycle through each one of them now. Did The Uniform suspect something about me?

  Does he know I’m here?

  “And I’m sure once they’ve apprehended this ‘alien,’ the sanction will be lifted,” Albertine says. “Along with the curfew they’ve imposed. Do you suppose they’ll release the people they’ve detained for violating it? Will they let them go back to their homes? Probably won’t be their homes anymore, if the resolution before the city council goes through. I’m not a betting man, but I’d wager it will. Break Pointe can’t afford to roll the dice with GP anymore, not with aliens running around.”

  My fear becomes catalytic. What did I do, taking the Myriad out of the wreck? I almost killed Valene. I’ve handed the city over to Blackwood. I’ve become a monster, in every way.

  “Chin up,” he says. “If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that you can’t expect anything. Though to be honest, I did think you would come to us a little sooner.”

  “What? Why?”

  His grin warps across the helmet of his bodyguard. “We’ve watched your career with great interest, Kitsie.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?”

  His grin gets bigger. “People say, if you can’t beat them, join them. Really, it’s just easier to look over their shoulder. So. What secrets from Blackwood’s lair do you have for me?”

  The thumb drive digs into my palm. “I have information.”

  “What sort of information? I don’t have any interest in gossip on Valene. I already have people for that.”

  “Plans. Inventions. Products.”

  Albertine shrugs. “I have people for that, too.”

  “Alien tech,” I say, and take the drive out of my pocket so he can see. “Alien knowledge.”

  “Which you have access to… how?”

  He’ll have to pay me to find out. “The thumb drive is just a taste. There’s a lot more. No one has this.”

  His eyes narrow. “And this isn’t some ploy?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Just look at it from my perspective a moment, if you’d be so kind. The lover of Valene Blackwood comes calling, with the secrets of Great Power in hand? Hard to pass up, but this drive you’re offering could be poisoned with malware. I could upload a virus into the Found intranet and open our vault to Evander Blackwood, instead of the other way around.”

  I eye the armored woman. “This isn’t a trap.”

  He smiles. “It’s always a trap.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  “Indeed.” Albertine’s head bends back a little. He looks at me down his nose, like he’s appraising me. “It’s tough being number two. Isn’t it? You can offer the same products, better products, at better prices, and no matter how hard you try, when someone hands over their money, they’re wishing it was for ‘the real thing.’ So, tell me. Kitsie. You the real thing?”

  The thumb drive turns in my hand like a key. “Do you want to be number one? Get me out of town. I’ll finish the suit I was building for Valene. And it will come out of your lab.”

  He grins. “I have questions.”

  “You get the answers when I’m gone.”

  Searchlights scatter the birds. I step back into the shadows. Albertine, he becomes them. He melds right into the dark, thin and yet deep, there and not there. The airship passes overhead. He comes back with the pallor of the moonlight.

  He opens his hand. I hand him the thumb drive.

  He pockets the drive. “We’ll see if you check out, Kitsie. We’ll see if you’re worth it. I’ll be in touch.”

  He fades into the dark. The armored woman holds her position until he’s gone, and then, with a pointed nod, leaves. Albertine radiates a heat signature far into the dark, a fuzzy orange blob. She gives none. The airships cast a net in light over the ruins. I wait for them to pass, sure I’m in the clear.

  Thirteen

  In front of the shuttered train station on Delaney, kitty corner of the Halfway Hotel, a small group of people marches with signs. GREAT POWER FOR ALL. NO MORE HANDOUTS. A hail of rocks drum against the side of the mobile clinic parked outside on Shelley. Protesters drift into the intersection, yelling obscenities, their anger increasing with every step.

  Get a job, someone shouts. If you don’t like it, leave.

  What is this? Rocks bounce off Vidette as she shields the people in line. She catches a piece of jagged concrete chunked off the foundation of some building, and crushes it to dust, just like the Interdictor did that day in front of the gate.

  I pull up my hood and cross the street. “Vi.”

  Vidette dusts her hands as the hail of rocks peters out. “I was hoping you’d turn up.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just some good old fashion scapegoating.”

  “They know it’s me,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “This isn’t about you.”

  “What’s it about?”

  The street rolls up in a shadow. A GP patrol ship glides over the intersection. Birds swirl around me, circling the target and I shoo them again with a magnetic pulse. I can’t keep doing this. These pulses probably blip on radar. I do. I’ve got to get the hell out of here. Vidette grabs my hand as the patrol ship hovers directly above. The Interdictor stands tall on the needled prow of the sleek, compact dirigible, surveying the scene below. The fraying line of people seeking treatment scatters as the Responder Commander drops to the street.

  His
scrim-net armor clanks across the rutted concrete of the street. The Interdictor towers a foot and a half over Vidette, a shadow that lengthens the closer he gets.

  “The Interdictor,” she says. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “I assure you, Dr. Rizzo. The honor is mine.” I can’t see any of the man behind all those chains. “Baldwin. I see you found something to grab hold of on the way down.”

  “I see you’re still running at peak BDEs,” I say.

  “BDEs?”

  “Big Dick Energy.”

  Vidette snorts, and then tries, hopelessly, to recover. “What are you doing here, Nathan?”

  “I am here to maintain the peace.”

  “Great,” Vidette says. “Kindly ask these folks over here to stop throwing rocks at us, then? We’re trying to do our jobs.”

  “So long as they remain peaceful, they are free to assemble where and when the law permits.”

  “Does it look like they’re peaceful?”

  Boos and heckles rain down on us from across the street as the viciousness of the protestors grows louder. Angrier.

  “The emergency sanction the President authorized GP permits me only to find and capture the alien fugitive.”

  I tug my zipper up, as sly as I can.

  “Outside of that directive, I am still subject to the limitations of the ERA. You are as well, Dr. Rizzo.” The Interdictor sorts through the powdered debris of the rock she crushed. “You are not to use your powers in any capacity.”

  “So you just stepped down for my benefit,” Vidette says.

  “I look out for my own.”

  She smiles. “How thoughtful of you.”

  “For your safety, I suggest you vacate this area to a more suitable location. Perhaps across the river.”

  That smile becomes tighter, stretching until I think it’s going to break. “We’re a non-profit with a valid charter,” Vidette says. “We have every right to be here.”

  The Interdictor glances at the people huddled on the sidewalk. “The alien fugitive is said to be impersonating a human. No doubt it has been hiding among the nameless here in The Derelicts for some time. It could even be one of these… people. Perhaps I should question you and your staff, just to be sure you have not unwittingly crossed paths with this imposter.”