Ever The Hero (Book 1): Ever The Hero

by Harn, Darby

  Falling.

  I claw at my chest. This bleeding thing. The Myriad. I thought it would be the answer to all my problems, and all it’s done is spread misery and pain and fucking death. What have I done? What was I thinking? Why didn’t I just leave it there? Get it out. Burn it out. I grab a chunk of loose concrete from the street and I bash it against my heart. Dumb thing shreds like cabbage against Vidette’s suit. I zip down the side and I pierce my own soap bubble skin with my fingers to break this bulb and a dozen snakes of magenta fire slither out of me, nipping at the inferno rendering what’s left of The Derelicts to ashes.

  I look up, as I always do. Responders make silhouettes against the kilned sky on the border of the river. The wraithlike profile of The Interdictor among them. I activate the emergency beacon on my Great Power app. They don’t move.

  “Do something,” I say.

  Thick, heavy smoke clots the sky. Jet fuel soaks the damp, cool air. I spit out my disgust. My guilt. My anger. I get back on my feet. Don’t think. Don’t feel.

  Do something.

  Fierce winds off the lake carry the fire through The Derelicts as fast it does me on my bike. Flames bloom in the upper floors of the old Rook Building on the corner of Peter and David. Hundreds live there. A fair number of them pace the roof. Some stand on ledges outside windows belching smoke. A rusted street lamp stretches across Delaney, toppled from jumpers. A woman in just her underwear begs a fire hydrant for more than the trickle left in the valve. Skinny boys shoot rusted fire extinguishers into the blaze from inside the main entrance. Another shouts through the flames – “The door is this way!” The only answer is the crackle of fire on dry wood. The inhale and exhale of a monster that taunts me; teases me.

  So much fire.

  So much energy. A city of flame. A world of kindle to ignite me. Flames lick the lid of smoke over the city and the hunger inside me lunges after each one. I’m all over the shop, my focus disintegrating with every new fire and every person running past me, looking for help. My hands rattle. I can’t control this. I can’t stop this. I don’t have the strength, I don’t have the fucking sense, evidently and I don’t fear.

  I don’t spark.

  Embers die on the impregnable fabric of my suit. Hunger twists up inside me, tendrils coiling back to the surface of the Myriad like solar prominences in the magnetic web of the sun.

  I don’t ignite.

  I brush the ash off my PEAL. “Call Abi.”

  Big hazel moons appear in the wrinkled screen. “I’ve been calling you – dude. What happened?”

  “It just came down. It had to have just taken off… I saw them, Abi.” A hand pressed against the flickering window somewhere in the middle. I bite my lip. “I saw them.”

  “I’m on my way,” Abi says.

  “No, don’t. Don’t come here. Everything is burning.”

  “You need help.”

  Embers rain down on Six Corners. Everything here is going to burn unless someone puts this fire out.

  “We need water, Abi. There’s no water out here.”

  All the busted pipes and mains in the city no one gets round to fixing make water on the island a challenge. Usually, the river is the only option but there aren’t enough buckets in Break Pointe to make any kind of dent in the conflagration.

  “We need all the water we can get. We need rain,” I say, remembering. The ionizers. Test after test, they failed to produce rain inside the lab, but that was in the alien, replicated conditions of the Martian atmosphere. In the damp air blowing in off the lake, they won’t have any problem.

  “I’ll meet you at the lab,” Abi says.

  “There’s no time.”

  “Like I’m already here.” The fluorescent lights of the lab flicker on in the background behind her. “I’ll get the ionizers. I’ll meet up with you. Just give me like five minutes, ok?”

  The Blackwood Building flashes like a torch concealed in a thick veil of smoke across the river. “You’re already there?”

  Her nose wrinkles. “I might have been a little bit ahead of you on the ionizer thing. But no worries. This will totally work. You fly up to 10,000 feet, and generate a ton of rain.”

  I step onto the triangular pedestrian island between Peter and David streets, reeling from the horror around me. Within me. “Ok… let’s say I can. Not that I will, but I can. What about the static discharge? That’s still a problem.”

  “I’m pretty sure the alien – you – you know – can absorb the lightning you'll generate,” Abi says. “It will counteract the problems we’ve had in the lab. Theoretically.”

  “You want to turn me into a lightning rod?”

  “You kind of already are, Kit.”

  The alien absorbed all energy directed at them; so far as I know, lightning won’t be any different. That’s not main concern, anyways. It’s taking all I’ve got right now just to hold the hunger inside back. Do I want to feed it lightning?

  “I don’t know…”

  “You can totally do it. Goddess of thunder.”

  What choice do I have? If I do nothing, the city burns. Thousands die. That’s not happening.

  “Ok,” I say.

  “I’m on my way. Stay on your PEAL. Be careful.”

  “She says, after encouraging me to be hit by lightning.”

  “Goddess.”

  I touch Abi’s cheek in the screen. “You be careful.”

  “I’ll be fine. Bet you ten bucks.”

  “You’re a cheap date.”

  “You have no idea,” Abi says, and I end the call.

  I cross the intersection, running through just how I’m supposed to do everything I need to do and Frankie’s cameraman stands in the middle of the street, hand at his mouth.

  “Kit? What… are you… this is fucked up, right?”

  “That’s an understatement. Where’s Frankie?”

  He gazes up into the Rook. “I told her not to. I was behind her, I was, but… the flames… I was behind her.”

  “She went in there?”

  “She wanted the story,” he says, and twists around in an awkward pirouette. “Hey. I’m kind of… hey, man. I’m Ben. We haven’t met. But I like you, man. You’re cool.”

  I help him over to the curb. “You’re suffering from smoke inhalation. You’ve got to get out of here. Is your truck close?”

  Ben snorts. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t go looking for it. Just head west.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Something stupid,” I say, and walk into the fire.

  The last time anything was up to code in the Rook, Lyndon Johnson was President. Too much of the building is wood, the gutted interior divided further into living spaces crafted from plywood sheets salvaged from the ruins of lesser buildings. I follow a garden hose up to a young man heaped on the landing of the second floor. I hold my hand just over his mouth. He isn’t breathing. Energy resides in his body still, undaunted and part of me wants to acquire him, to somehow preserve him.

  We must continue the work.

  No. This isn’t me. Not my voice. Keep moving. You’ve got to keep moving. Thick, dark smoke makes it impossible to see the way forward. I don’t need my eyes anymore. I charge ahead into the dark, guiding myself by the energy of the fires above, ghosts fading in and out of my perception as they exhaust and discover fuel. Walls bulge, whining, groaning under the strain of the burning floors above until I find the ceiling collapsed on the fifth floor, pinning a number of people behind it.

  Waves of flame swirl around the residents, picking up speed and intensity with each passing moment. The fire takes on a leering quality; the flames peer out of the cavity in the upper wall of the crumbled building, stalking, testing and then disappearing. They come back stronger. Bolder. Less shy.

  “We’re dead,” someone in the hall says.

  For the others, their faces say it all: something like this was always going to happen. Life in The Derelicts is waiting for the banal cruelty
of your death. I scrape at the piled debris, unafraid of being burned, though the flames chase after me fierce as they do oxygen. Fire licks my exposed, diaphanous cheek and my hair ignites into a burning bush. I cough flame. A flash fire explodes under the suit, a lampshade on an atomic bomb and I turn away, a blowtorch in the hallway.

  Paint and plaster melt away. The fabric of Vidette’s suit doesn’t burn, so it becomes this container. This rocket. I crash to the floor, venting the fire I consume. A vicious feedback loop heats the air, the wood, the skin of people warming to my temperature and I have to control this. How.

  Fire.

  Put out the fire. No. Consume it. Acquire it. I peel off my gloves and fire leeches out of wood. My fingertips the heads of cigarette lighters. Fire sinks into the infinite abyss of the Myriad, broken and fragmented, until its devoured. Smoke clears out of the corridor. The only fire now burns in my chest.

  Can I consume all the fire this way? I bet I can. I peel back my gloves. Fire streams into my hands, the Myriad a vacuum cleaner, until it just stops. Nothing happens.

  No, the voice says. The ship. The alien. I don’t know.

  Why?

  This isn’t the work. We must finish the work.

  What’s the work?

  Acquire unique power signatures, the voice says, and hunger growls within me for the distinctive clouds of energy hidden in the steam shrouding the roof. Redundancies will be rejected.

  We have to save people.

  Acquire them.

  Bleeding backseat drivers. I slip my gloves back on and break down the debris trapping the residents. “This way,” I say, but they remain huddled together, the knives they tried to cut through their burning cage trembling in their hands.

  “It’s the alien,” someone says.

  “No – ”

  A man swings at me with a butcher knife. The blade breaks against the fabric of my suit. The instinct – the hunger – to acquire the man ripples through me. I deny it.

  “You did this,” the man says. “You’re causing the fire.”

  “Literally just put it out,” I say, but I don’t have time to argue with him. People cluster at the edges of the roof above; their energy signatures strobe through the ethereal scrim of wood and brick and smoke, separate and distinct from the currents of flame swirling through the building above. I fly through the charred opening in the ceiling. I search the roof for survivors. People stagger out of the haze toward me.

  “You’re going to be ok,” I say. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Frankie emerges from the smog. “Who is that? Who are you?”

  I linger in the veil of smoke. “You don’t know?”

  “Your voice sounds familiar, but your face…”

  “My face?”

  I swipe quick at my PEAL. With a touch, I activate the camera and reverse the lens. Instead of my face appearing in the screen, I see the blank visage of the Ever.

  “No…”

  Frankie steps toward me. “Who are you?”

  I don’t fear, but fear is energy same as any other and it greases through me now. This is what I didn’t want. Using the power. The knowledge. Burning myself away and leaving the alien.

  “I’m me,” I say, reeling.

  My fingers stumble across my PEAL. Abi. Where are you?

  I’m here. That u on top of the building?

  I’ll come down, I text and turn to drop off the roof back to the street and someone who knows me. Right as I do, The Uniform bounds out of the smoke, fists bearing right down on me.

  This must be what taking off in a rocket is like.

  One second I’m on the roof. The next I’m a mile down range, smoke like clouds racing past me as I arrow into total darkness. Thanks to the suit, I don’t feel a thing. Well. Indignation.

  Birds corkscrew around me as I crawl out of the rubble I made of the rubble. “That’s no way to say hello.”

  The ground shakes as The Uniform lands before me. “You’re right. I was raised better than that. Hi. You’re under arrest.”

  “Can’t you see I’m trying to help?”

  The Uniform glances back at The Rook, shrouded in smoke, the same as I am in the dust I made of the ruins. “I don’t know what’s going on exactly. Except I have a job to do.”

  “Then go do it. Help people.”

  “I am,” he says, and stomps his foot on the ground. A sword manifests in his hands, transparent and rippling. Vibrating.

  The sword breaks against my suit.

  He looks down at his empty hands. “That’s no good.”

  I seize the rusted steel veining a chunk of concrete and hurl at him. He claps his hands together, and a broad, oval shield blunts the impact of the concrete. The Uniform stomps his foot again, like he’s some wrestler in the ring, making that sound right as he hits someone to sell the impact, and a bow appears in his hands. He notches an arrow, and fires.

  The arrow bends into orbit around me, like the birds and all other energy. I grab it out of the air. Some kind of kinetic force, generated from those claps and stomps he does. It dissolves in my hand. Temporary. That’s how he’s jumping. Springs of kinetic force and oh shit now he’s got some kind of giant man hammer and my legs go out from under me.

  His knees pin my arms against the ground and he holds his hands on either side of my head. “Had enough?”

  “What are you going to do? Bash my brains in?”

  He squints. “You’re talkative for an alien.”

  “Is that what you see?”

  His hands relax. The Uniform looks down. He zips down my jacket a little, exposing the Vanguard logo beneath. In the dark, in the dust and smoke, he must not have seen before.

  “Halloween,” he says. “Baldwin?”

  I wiggle out from under him. “I’m just playing dress up.”

  “Aren’t we all.” The Uniform stands. “You’re the alien?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  He crooks his head. “How would I know?”

  “You didn’t report the alien was here?”

  He grits his teeth. “I reported negative on any alien activity. That wasn’t me. That was Washington.”

  “Washington?”

  The Uniform’s face hardens in frustration. “Professor Blackwood has a lot of paid sponsorship on The Hill.”

  “At least you get to be the hero.”

  “I didn’t want any of this to happen,” he says.

  “Neither did I.”

  He nods. “I believe you.”

  “So. Are we going to keep doing this?”

  His jaw clenches. “I have my orders.”

  “Can they wait until I put out the fire?”

  He shakes his head. “You can’t put this out. We have to get people out of here. Get them off the island.”

  “I can do this,” I say.

  “How?”

  An ionizer floats through the air between us, into a gentle arc around me. Half a dozen others follow, a line leading back to Abi as she runs out of the dark, her backpack half open.

  “Oh, wow. You’re still alive, Soldier Dude?”

  His eyes narrow. “Some of us are sturdier than others.”

  The ionizers spin around me. “Some of us.”

  “It’ll work,” Abi says. “You can do it.”

  I squeeze her hand. “What do you see right now? Who?”

  She smiles, easy. “My hero.”

  I don’t know what to say. But she knows what I mean. I feel it, as strong as I do the pull of the ship, the heat of the fire, the anxious crackle in my chest, ready to get gone.

  The Uniform clears his throat. “What will work?”

  “These are experimental ionizers from – “

  Abi puts her hand on mine. “I kind of want to keep my sentence as light as possible.”

  “They’re just something I made,” I say, staring at the ground. “Let’s hope they work. But if they don’t…”

  “Affirmative,” The Uniform says. “Get everybody off the island. Good
luck, Baldwin.”

  “Call me Kit,” I say. “What do I call you?”

  He smiles. “Classified.”

  “Don’t let anything happen to Abi, Classified.”

  She crosses her arms. “I’ll keep him safe.”

  With a magnetic push against the ground, I take off into the sky. The fire raging across The Derelicts recedes to the magmatic folds of a lava field. Static electricity sparks around me. Ionizers spin so fast they blur. Conical bands of moisture hug my body. My skin ripples with the pelt of freezing, fierce rain and despite all the horror and the grief and the inconvenient fear launching me higher even now, I let out a rapturous shriek of triumph right as lightning hits me.

  Branches of lightning fork across the sky into me, attacking mercilessly, repeatedly, hitting the suit like a freight train and for a moment I’m 10,000 volts of pure energy.

  I’m power.

  And then I’m falling, as fast as I rose, unable to maintain my altitude, my bearings and least of all, myself. The tight lid I kept on the power within, the swift, impersonal currents of will within the Myriad flies off with the last, brutal surge of lightning and I’m not Kit as I plummet back to earth but the police officer thinking of Mary still, the warrior avenging Destos, the birds spiraling to their deaths straight into the panes of glass they don’t know are there and I slam back to earth into a darkened street somewhere north of the dying fire.

  My hand trembles with the aftershock. Or maybe it’s a text. The screen of her PEAL flashes with a notification.

  It worked!

  WTF!

  R U OK?

  Pulverized earth spills down the slope of the crater I made, burying me. Birds pile on to finish the job. Hundreds of them. Thousands. The birds swarm my body, spasming between the alien, me, the warrior, the police officer, channels clicking without stopping. I am adrift within myself, clinging to the debris of millions of acquired lives poking me, clawing me, grabbing at me from beneath the surface of a sea I can’t fathom. Birds vanish into me, blue iridescence, jade phosphorus and cardinal red infinitely fracturing and reorganizing until I emerge from the crater on gossamer wings. The rains whimper to an end. The last traces of fire fade. All that remains is the gutted ruin of what had been, unrecognizable.