Ever The Hero (Book 1): Ever The Hero

by Harn, Darby

  Shit. I step back behind Vidette, terrified that The Interdictor can see right through me. I should have gone before. I shouldn’t have come here at all.

  Vidette crosses her arms. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing here.”

  “What am I doing, Dr. Rizzo?”

  “Pushing me around.”

  The Interdictor takes a heavy, jangling step toward her. “It was said you were once the strongest woman on earth.”

  She clenches her fists. “Person. Strongest person.”

  “Strength diminishes with age.”

  “So does one’s tolerance for bullshit.”

  Neither of them are going to back down. A push. A shove. A punch and a battle between the two strongest people on earth will break out, with the entire Derelicts as their arena.

  I reach for Vidette’s hand. “Vi.”

  He takes another step toward her. “Do not think you are above the law, Dr. Rizzo.”

  She holds her ground. “Is it a guys-only thing?”

  “It is the world of men you serve now. You should return to us, and take your rightful place among gods.”

  Vidette snorts a derisive laugh. “I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

  “Among derelicts?”

  “Don’t push me, buddy.”

  He touches his finger to her shoulder. “Or what?”

  Anger vibrates in Vidette’s fists. This is it. She’s going to punch those chains right through his face but Vidette’s eyes scan the crowd, the waiting and the ready, the angry and the desperate, and like that, she retreats to the clinic. The diesel engine of the van rumbles to life, to the disappointment of those waiting outside, and to my surprise. I expected war.

  Maybe I wanted it; some kind of release.

  I hurry in after her, and hold on to a handlebar as the clinic pulls away hard and fast from Six Corners.

  “Vi. Are you ok?”

  Vidette leans against the countertop opposite the exam table. Formica crumbles in her grip. “Fine.” Her smile is undaunted. “They have to sleep sometime. We’ll come back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shakes her head. “All this started a long time ago.”

  “This is all my fault…”

  “You didn’t cause any of this, but you can end it.”

  I leave the window. “End it?”

  “I know you think you’re cursed with these powers, but they’re a gift, too. You can use them, Kit. For good.”

  “I told you, I’m not a hero.”

  She smiles. “It wasn’t a hero who saved people down at the bank? It wasn’t a hero trying to find a way to cure her of her curse? Heroes usually get medals. Parades. Girls. You got screwed. But you’ve still got that instinct in you, Kit. You’ve still got that compass for right and wrong, even if the needles here are all screwy. She’s gone. You’re here. Stand up.”

  I turn away. “I have to leave.”

  “You think you’ve lost everything. Your life. Your identity. Take it back. Go on TV, on the net, and say, This is me. This is what happened. Take back control of your story. Don’t let Frankie or GP or anyone dictate it to you.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “People are afraid,” Vidette says. “They don’t think anyone hears them. Sees them. They think they’re invisible. The real kind of invisible. Not that the kind privilege buys you. People are calling for help. For something to believe in. Someone.”

  Valene’s lips brushed my ear. I hear you.

  That’s all I wanted. To be heard. Understood. Loved. Valene would understand; Valene would hear the cry of the city. Valene would help everyone, once she came back to the world. She’s the hero the city needs, not me. I’m no one. I don’t know who I am.

  What I am.

  “I just want…” Power catches a free ride on the propellant of my emotions. I hold them in check, afraid of giving the alien any opening. “I just want to be with her again. I want to make her well and just live our lives. Be normal. Be free.”

  Vidette smiles, sad. “Heroes aren’t free.”

  The mobile clinic comes to a stop at a corner. Fraught faces cluster outside, waiting for help that won’t come.

  The Botticino marble of the lobby inside City Hall moves with the hurried shadows of fall clouds. A memorial spirals upwards into the atrium beneath the glass dome capping the building, a constellation of stars sculpted in red glass, one each for the 88,319 dead. None of the people that died years later of cancer get a star. No glass twinkles for fools like me that lost their lives just trying to live in the ruins of 1968, picking up things they shouldn’t. Stumbling on an unexploded bomb. Falling down a sinkhole in the unstable earth. The crash of the ship generates casualties, even now. So long as there are Empowered, imposing their will in the world, it always will.

  Johnny Albertine takes a seat on the bench directly behind me. “Pick up the paper.”

  I pick up the folded paper resting on the bench next to me. “Why, I’m just fine. Thank you for asking.”

  “The crossword section, love.”

  I open the paper to its middle. Someone filled out the crossword section, but with letters that don’t correspond to the clues. 18 Across: DELMONTHARBOR. 9 Down: MIDNIGHT.

  “You liked what you saw, then,” I say.

  “Keep reading.”

  29 Across: SLIP4

  “I understand.”

  He sniffs back his cold. “Every precaution will be taken.”

  “Didn’t bring your friend today?”

  “Oh, she’s close. She’s like my shadow, really.”

  I don’t see the armored woman among the protesters camped out in the atrium. Some of them call for the city to vote down the resolution. Another faction shouts for the others to quit their bitching, like at the mobile clinic.

  “You don’t have anything to fear from me,” I say.

  “How about from Dr. Rizzo?”

  I can’t even be bothered. “Still spying on me?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I can’t stay here. I put too many people in danger.”

  “And why is that?”

  Birds funnel in the sky above the dome, drawing a giant moving arrow right over City Hall.

  “I just do.”

  He settles back in the bench, arm across the back, not buying any of my bullshit. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with this business of the dreaded alien menace, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Or maybe you want me to think you do, so I’m more prone to take a flyer on you than I otherwise would be.”

  I roll my eyes. “You don’t think GP would lure you into a trap by making up a story about the alien coming back?”

  “All of this, for my benefit? No. Not mine. Want to know what I think? I think Great Power would like to maintain its propriety over all things alien and Empowered. I think Great Power would like to extend its reach beyond America.” He looks across the atrium. “If you can call this America any more.”

  A disheveled woman circles the atrium with a paper cup for change. She drifts past the Albertine’s side of the bench. He snaps the shield of his paper straight. The woman moves on, jangling her cup to others. No one has any money.

  “So, now he will have everything,” Albertine says. “Complete access to the wreck. His own private city. The capitol of his corporate superpower, with more money, influence and let us not forget, weapons, than any nation on earth.”

  “It will be different when Valene’s in charge,” I say. “That’s why I have to get out of here and finish the suit.”

  “Most people think she’s in charge now. Look at these signs. Look at their advertising. Take a poll, a majority will tell you they think she runs the company. She’s the face. She’s the puppet he strings around, orchestrating all of this.”

  The woman with the paper cup completes her turn around the atrium and returns to her two small children, waiting on a bench. None of them have coats. Pro-GP protestors push fur
ther into the atrium, their voices rising, their anger escalating and they push the woman and her kids out of their spot. They occupy the center of the atrium, ringing the monument, forming a wall around the memory of the dead they claim to fight for now. Light flutters across the floor, disrupted by the shadows of anxious birds and it’s like there are light bulbs in here, flickering.

  “None of these people have power,” Albertine says, his voice lowering into a conspiratorial whisper. “In fact, they have less every day. But what they have is the fantasy they do. Or they will, once all the freeloaders are evicted from the city, because of course it’s their fault Break Pointe remains in ruins. And then, when Blackwood has evicted them, too, it will still be someone else’s fault. He’ll still be pointing the finger at the people holding up the progress of the future, even as he extends that wall out to the city limits.”

  “Or, Found would like people to think so,” I say.

  He smiles. “So hard to tell these days, isn’t it? What’s true and what’s not. Who’s sincere.”

  “I’m for real. I’m me.”

  “Tonight, then.”

  His footsteps diminish into the roar of chants and shouts. I wait a few minutes and then leave. Voices well from the corridor beyond. The mayor nearly runs ahead of a throng of reporters, Frankie included. Voices chase him. Anger. Fear. Signs bob on a swelling stream of protesters overflowing from the street. BREAK POINTE IS NOT FOR SALE. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. I pull my hood tight down around my face, and hurry back to the entrance down into the pedway beneath the building.

  “’Oh, no, not my eyes and stuff.’”

  I peek over the back of the couch into the kitchen of Vidette’s apartment. “What are you doing in there?”

  Abi holds up a pan dotted with chocolate chip cookie dough, arranged in the smashed and splattered shape of a person. Toothpicks stab the eyes of what I assume is the cookie Frankie. “I’m making a voodoo doll out of Lying Bitch Face.”

  “Clearly, I formed my opinion about you too soon.”

  Abi sets the pan in the oven. “No take backs. Twelve minutes and I’m gonna eat a bitch.”

  She hurries into the living room and plops down on the far end of the couch. I curl up on my end. The suit Vidette gave me protects Abi and me from any of what happened before, but it doesn’t insulate against the hunger of the Myriad. For some reason, it’s stronger whenever I’m around Abi. Everything is sharper around her. My focus, for one. When I’m with her, I’m not chasing the tail of every source of energy around me. All my attention fixes on her, magnetic in her own easy way.

  Abi tugs at the faded print on her T-shirt. “Did Rizzo say when they’d be back?”

  Responders and news crews still linger around Abi’s apartment building, so we came here. Smart thing would have been to avoid Abi completely, but I didn’t want to go without seeing her again. I didn’t want to leave without thanking her.

  “She just said later,” I say. “I think she’s trying to convince Dr. Piller of something. I don’t know what.”

  “You think they’re doing it?”

  “I think they would have stayed here.”

  Abi shakes her head. “They’re totally hotel sex people.”

  “How do you determine if someone is a hotel sex people?”

  “Like, do they have a hotel key card in their wallet or purse for no reason? Do they go out and you’re like, ‘Where did you go?’ and they’re super vague? Is their favorite place to eat breakfast a hotel restaurant? That’s how you tell.”

  “Who was she, Abi? Who was it that hurt you?”

  Her nose wrinkles. “She was out of my league. Like all the good ones.” Her fingers drum against her thigh. “We got like ten minutes before the cookies are done. Want to make out?”

  I ball up even more.

  “I’m kidding,” Abi says. “I’m – forget it. It’s like tense and stuff. It wasn’t and now it is.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just somewhere else right now.”

  “Yeah. No, I know. You look so tired. Why don’t you lay down?” Abi scoots closer. “Just put your head down in my lap.”

  “Abi, I can’t.”

  She pinches the fabric of my suit. “Yeah, you can.”

  I want to. I want so much and I grip the spongy fabric of Vidette’s suit, twisting it out of shape.

  My PEAL buzzes. “It’s Vi. She’s just checking in.”

  “What are they doing?” Abi says.

  I type a response back. “She didn’t really say.”

  “Busted.”

  I smile. “At least someone is getting some.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I didn’t – I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Abi checks the stove. “Find us a movie to watch.”

  I tab through the entertainment menu on my PEAL, stuck on the clumsiness of what I said. What did I mean?

  “Abi, really.”

  Fresh baked cookies sweeten the air as Abi comes back with a plate piled high. She sets it on the couch between us.

  “We’ll let her cool a bit,” Abi says. “Harden up like the bitch she is. And then we break her. One piece at a time.”

  I reach for her hand. “Abi…”

  “You can have first dibs.”

  “You know I have to go.”

  Abi laces her fingers in mine. “Don’t.”

  “It’s just a matter of time before they find me.”

  “I’ll protect you. I’ll take care of you.”

  Ba-dumm, ba-dumm, ba-dumm. This want. This hunger pulses through me, and I don’t know. I don’t know if this is the Myriad wanting for her, or this is me, needing to be wanted.

  “I don’t know if I can trust myself, one moment to the next,” I say. “I don’t know who I am. What I am.”

  “You’re a VHS tape.”

  “What’s VHS?”

  Abi gives me a vicious side-eye. “Are you fucking with me?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Wow, ok. Um, so like before digital stuff, movies were on tape. Well, at home. Like a cassette tape, but bigger. So, if you had cable, you could record all the movies and watch them whenever you wanted. Sometimes you recorded over old movies. Like, you didn’t have a new tape, or something. I feel like you’re fucking with me. I feel like you know this.”

  “I’m not,” I say, with a smile.

  “Ok – whatever – so you had the new movie, but sometimes the picture would get weird. The old movie would like ghost into the new one. This weird, slow wavy thing would start to happen. The old movie was still there, under the new one.”

  “So I’m the new movie?”

  “Right. And the alien is the old movie. It’s still there, and maybe sometimes the picture gets fuzzy, but it’s gone. It’s written over. No one is ever going to see it again.”

  I squeeze her hand. “But it’s still there.”

  “Kit… you don’t always know what to say. That’s ok. But I always know what you mean. I know you.”

  I brush Abi’s cheek with my gloved hand. Trace the soft line of her jaw. The brim of her lip. Abi’s pulse throbs in her hand, ba-dumm, ba-dumm, ba-dumm and I hunger for her touch as much as I do her energy. This hunger is more than flesh. More than blood. More than a soul. I crave the power within Abi, bound between her cells and atoms, between her and the universe they share with everyone and everything else in existence.

  “You’re looking at me funny,” Abi says.

  “Shh.”

  I touch Abi’s lips, to stop myself from being drawn in any further. My want is greater than my sense. That’s always been true. But now it’s greater than my own understanding. My every waking moment has been Valene. It still is. It has to be.

  “I wish things were different,” I say.

  “I hope she knows.” Abi kisses the inside of my wrist, and something like a stellar eruption illuminates the fabric of my suit. “I hope she knows what you’ve given up for her.”

  Valene will never
know. No one will ever understand what I’ve done and why, least of all myself. Doesn’t matter now, besides. It’s done. Nothing I can do will change it. I can’t fix any of it, except to leave. Finish the job. Bring the hero everyone wants and needs home.

  I zip up my jacket. I don’t need clothes beyond what I’ve got on. Food. Drink. I don’t need to think. I’ve made my decision. It’s the right one, for everyone. Delmont Harbor is only a mile away, quick on the bike. I just go, fighting the pull of guilt, duty, cookies and sugar lips and a savage magnetic power seizes me like an unseen current beneath a river.

  You will not leave.

  I sink to my knees. Leave me alone…

  The ship tugs on me, unrepentant. The work must continue.

  A star brightens in the south, low and uncertain. Most planes coming out of Kirby International give the alien wreck the widest berth possible to avoid the magnetic field it generates. This plane doesn’t follow the normal track west most flights do, but drifts north over The Derelicts. Toward me. The landing lights flicker. The axis of the plane shifts.

  “No… not again.”

  The plane plunges toward the ground. I reach out, as if I can catch it, and I almost do; the plane snares in the magnetic field I generate. Its tail swings around 180 degrees in the whiplash and wings snap. Fuel sprays. Fire splashes across the neighborhood. The Derelicts spark, and come alive in flame.

  Fourteen

  Vacant lots pulse with volcanic rhythm. Wings of flame flutter into rocket plumes of smoke. One dormant house flints another and by the time I bike into the evolving perdition at the intersection of Powell and Bell, it seems all of The Derelicts is on fire. A crumpled airplane engine smolders in the street. Luggage scatters like buckshot. Torn clothes string naked trees. Ash mounts on still bodies, their heat radiating out of them in shimmering mirages I perceive all across the neighborhood. I half expect to find Valene in the wreckage, waiting to be rescued. I half expect to find a door back to the decision that undid my entire life in a single instant, but there’s no door. There’s just falling, always. This is Hell.