Superheroes Anonymous

by Lexie Dunne

  “Two full hits,” I said before I remembered my motto of never telling captors more than they need to know. Vicki, Raymond, and especially Cooper didn’t look like any villain I’d ever faced, but they hadn’t mentioned anything about sending me on my way. I paused and decided to downplay it until I knew more. “It hurt. A bit.”

  “A bit.” Cooper’s gaze was now no longer curiously amused but direct and assessing. “You took a hit—­two hits—­and the only thing you have to say is, ‘It hurt. A bit.’ ”

  “Claims to have no powers,” Raymond said.

  “Hmm.” Cooper crossed his arms, displaying perfect forearms and even more glorious biceps.

  From behind him, I heard a voice call out, “All right, Coop. Room’s cleared for your possible threat. Bring him in.”

  “Her. And you’re not going to believe her size.” With a surprising amount of grace for somebody so massive, Cooper abandoned the doorway and gestured to me. “After you, my nameless subject. Are either of you coming in, Vick? Ray?”

  “My trainees will be back shortly. I should go.” Raymond aimed a pointed look up at Vicki.

  She seemed to get the message. “Not today, Coop, but if she’s cleared, I’ll come back for her. Later, doll.” She turned to me. “See you when it’s over.”

  Cooper flexed two fingers in a hybrid between “peace” and “bye,” and turned to me. “All right. C’mon in. Time to begin the torture.”

  I immediately took a step back. Ray and Vicki had gone one way, but if I went the other, maybe there was an exit—­

  “Whoa,” Cooper said. “That was a joke. We don’t torture ­people at Davenport.”

  “D-­Davenport?”

  Cooper made a noise in the back of his throat and nudged me forward.

  Warily, I stepped inside. The room was a bright, stunning white, lit by white lamps. Everything gleamed with chrome: the three desks, the white polo shirts on the men and women behind them, expensive silver equipment with odd gadgets and gizmos on platforms around the room. An eye chart like the ones they make you stand in front of with a spoon over your eye was hung on one wall, over a scale. Silver and white clipboards were piled on desks and hung from hooks on the purely white walls.

  On the main wall across from the door, dominating the entire wall, was a sign with the letters “DI.”

  DI? Oh. Davenport Industries. I’d been carried by a supermodel who was somehow a superhero into a medical branch of Davenport Industries. Except Davenport Industries didn’t have medical branches. They pretty much invested in real estate, electronics, mining, the stock market. They didn’t have private hospitals like the one I’d just entered.

  So what the hell was going on?

  “Welcome to Medical.” Cooper steered me forward, between two of the desks and into a hallway. “We’ve got the room all ready for you.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” I asked.

  “Figure out how somebody who claims to be a Class D can withstand energy blasts.”

  There was that class thing again. We stopped by a nondescript door down the hall. “Well, it’s kind of a long story.”

  “It usually is. You’re lucky to have escaped with your life. Now”—­and Cooper tapped the panel—­“let’s find out why you did.”

  HE LEFT ME alone in a testing room after running my handprint on a screen. The door clicked shut after he left, with the same sort of finality I’d experienced while staying in Dr. Mobius’s “care.” With him, however, I’d had some idea of my standing—­I was a hostage, a bargaining chip, and possibly collateral if all of that didn’t work.

  The room wasn’t large—­enough space for a bare white desk and a medical cot. No eye charts in here, I noted as I sat on the cot. I had no idea who these ­people were. Since when did Davenport Industries have facilities like this? I figured we were underground, as I’d yet to see a window. But underground where? And why was Victoria Burroughs suddenly a superhero, and I didn’t know about it?

  And if she was a superhero, why had she needed rescuing by Blaze, anyway?

  The questions—­and my ever-­present hunger—­threatened to drive me mad before the Davenport ­people came back for me. It wasn’t Cooper, but a woman closer to my size and height, her eyes as hazel as my own. That didn’t reassure me in the slightest. For some reason, she felt more dangerous though I couldn’t fathom why. I rose to my feet, wary now.

  “Hi. I’m Kiki. How are you doing?”

  Kiki? And Lemuel Cooper? What was up with the names in this place?

  “Um, I’m okay. But . . . where am I? And what is this place?”

  “Oh.” Kiki looked puzzled as we both sat down, her at the desk, me on the cot. “You weren’t brought here by your own consent?”

  “I was unconscious.” Like I would be soon if I didn’t eat, I thought. “I woke up here.”

  Kiki set a clipboard on the desk and clicked her pen—­silver, I noted. “Yes, I heard you had a run-­in with some energy blasts. Which would explain the unconscious part.”

  I shrugged. “It’s becoming a habit.”

  “You’ve been blacking out?” she asked.

  “Constantly.”

  “Hmm. We’ll come back to that. I need to get some basics out of the way so that we can get the evaluation done properly. Let’s see if we’ve got the facts correct, first. Full name is Gail Olivia Godwin, age, twenty-­six . . . weight is . . .” She frowned down at her clipboard and back at me. “That can’t be right.”

  “How do you know all of that?” I said, going cold. I pushed myself to my feet. I hadn’t been weighed. That was private information, so how the hell were they getting it?

  “We scanned your fingerprints and pulled your DMV records. Your last listed weight is dramatically different from your weight now.” She frowned again. “And sit down.” There was a suggestion, a hint to her voice that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

  “You’re telepathic?” I asked, not sitting down.

  “Very minor.” She waved her hand flippantly. “Nothing serious. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried.” Though I was. I’d never met a psychic villain who wasn’t an absolute psychopath. I’d yet to meet any of the psychic heroes. Blaze had mostly had a monopoly on rescuing me.

  “Stoic. I like it.” Kiki nodded her approval and turned back to her clipboard. “Tell me,” she said without looking up, “why are your listed weight and your physical weight so different?”

  “It has to do with that blacking-­out problem I’ve been having, I think. I’m not sure. I’m having a hard time concentrating. Is there any food? I’m kind of hungry.”

  On cue, my stomach rumbled loudly enough that Kiki’s pen stopped. She swiveled in her chair to look at me.

  “Okay, I’m really hungry.” I sighed. “It’s been a crazy month.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  I sighed again. The hell of it was, I did want to tell her. I wanted to unload on somebody, even if it was a complete stranger like Kiki. So I told her about running into Naomi and how I’d woken up strapped to a metal table. I detailed what I could remember about my time with Dr. Mobius—­the flashbacks, the hallucinations, all of it. How I’d mysteriously been able to do over five hundred push-­ups. How I was always hungry.

  “He said I was radioactive,” I said, “and that in a ­couple of months, I’d start to crave more of this solution, whatever it was. I’m an addict. And then he pushed me out of the car and there’s not anything about him in the newspaper and I don’t know what to do.”

  “That would explain the radiation level in the room when we scanned it,” Kiki said, mostly to herself. On my panicked look, she smiled a bit. “Don’t worry, we damp it down. I’ll take a sample of your blood, of course, to confirm your story. For the record, I believe you. Dr. Mobius was in Detmer for mo
nths. We’re not sure how he escaped, honestly. He may have had help—­and wasn’t aware that you and Blaze were no longer, um, a thing. So his kidnapping you doesn’t surprise me. His turning you into at least a Class C does.”

  “I don’t think he meant to. He wanted something to hold over Blaze’s head.”

  “Hmm.” Kiki set the clipboard down. “And how does that explain the muscles? You’re quite built.”

  “They came in overnight.” I remembered the five hundred push-­ups (well, six hundred if we were being technical), and barely resisted shuddering. “I’m told I was awake for the injection, but I don’t remember any of it, so I don’t know when, you know, I got these.” I flexed and watched my own biceps in fascination. It still felt a bit like my body belonged to a stranger.

  “I see. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got the testing room prepped for you now, so I’m going to take you inside and draw some of your blood so that we can analyze it. Then we’ll do the physical tests. It won’t hurt, but you’ll be tired later.”

  “Um, okay,” I said. “But can you feed me first?”

  On cue, my stomach rumbled again.

  Kiki laughed. “We can do that. Come this way.”

  Chapter Nine

  TRUE TO KIKI’S word, they fed me. Kiki and Cooper sat down with me at a white table in the equally silver-­and-­white large testing room. Once I got over my nerves at Cooper being there—­he was just so gorgeous, but, I sensed after a while, completely taken. By Kiki—­I plowed through three turkey sandwiches and four bags of chips before Kiki went to get more.

  “When did this change of metabolism start?” Cooper asked, as I reached for a dill pickle though I hated pickles.

  “Since I woke up fully in Dr. Mobius’s lair. I’ve been starving.” I bit into the pickle so emphatically that Cooper laughed.

  After they’d fetched me enough food to tide me over, the tests began. They checked my heart rate and blood pressure, murmuring back and forth. I didn’t bother to tell them I could hear them clearly.

  When the usual tests had been completed (my leg kicked sky-­high during the reflexes test; Kiki had wisely stayed out of the way), Cooper crossed to the opposite wall and pressed a panel. A flat platform with a conveyor belt on it slid from the wall. Computer readings popped up on the wall in front of it, followed by a screen larger than my TV.

  “We need to test your cardiovascular endurance,” Cooper said.

  I looked from the treadmill to my boots. Hours ago, when I’d been about to explain to my coworkers why I hadn’t been to work, they’d seemed like a good idea. If I’d known I would be fighting henchmen or running on a treadmill in an underground medical facility, I’d have picked something a little more comfortable. If preparedness was a virtue, I made for terrible Girl Scout material.

  Kiki handed me a white sack embossed with the Davenport Industries logo in silver. “There’s a changing room through there,” she said, pointing at the corner. “Just touch the wall panel: it’ll open.”

  When I emerged from the little box of the room, holding my own clothes and wearing the baggy Davenport T-­shirt and blue shorts, I felt like I was back in gym class. Even down to the whiteness of the sneakers on my feet.

  “So what now?” I asked, eyeing the treadmill.

  Cooper handed me a thin plastic strip with a cloth strap attached. “Go ahead and slip that under your shirt.”

  “Just under your bra line,” Kiki added helpfully.

  Shrugging, I gripped the hem of my shirt in my teeth while I followed instructions, trying not to flinch at the cool plastic (they’d wet it down).

  When it was in place, Cooper gestured at the treadmill. “We’ll start you off easy, and when I say go, I want you to press that button.” He gestured at a button on the panel in front of me.

  I eyed it. “What’s it do?”

  “It makes you work harder. If you’re anywhere near as masochistic as the rest of us, you’ll learn to love it.”

  Though I didn’t think that was ever going to be the case—­I loathed running even more than I hated my job—­I nodded. And the test began. It started with an easy walk. The first push of the button changed that to a faster walk, then to a slow jog.

  Cooper kept making me push the button until I was nearly sprinting to keep up with the treadmill. My breath scraped the insides of my lungs. The feeling of not being able to draw a deep enough breath always terrified me, which meant I’d never understood the runner’s high. How could runners get past that numbing terror of what if the next breath wasn’t going to be deep enough? What if the oxygen wasn’t ever coming again?

  I felt that terror and desperation pressing insistently against my chest and was about to call off the test, make it stop, make it stop. And something odd happened.

  I took a deep breath.

  I don’t know if it was my lungs expanding or just the area in the back of my throat relaxing. But I took a breath, and another. My breathing began to match the pace. In through the nose, forceful exhalation out through the mouth. Repeat. Focused on that rhythm, I grew aware of other things about me.

  The way my feet were hitting the treadmill, for instance. Stomping was more like it. Maybe I could vary my step, move more on the balls of my feet so that I didn’t have to expend so much energy . . .

  I felt my breath deepen even at that little change.

  “Your heart rate has leveled,” I heard Cooper say, which put a hitch in my stride. I’d been so focused on my rhythm that I’d kind of forgotten he was there. “I figure you’ll want some entertainment for this part.”

  The screen in front of me lit up and seemed to expand and curl toward me. It surrounded me on three sides, like I was in a little running stall. When it activated, I raised my eyebrows. It really looked like I was running on the actual road.

  “Neat,” I said.

  “We’ll be at this a while. Got any preferences?”

  “For what?”

  “Terrain. We’ve got sunrise in the desert, gritty urban scenes, cornfields, suburbs, beaches.” Cooper sounded amused.

  “Uh, surprise me.”

  Immediately, a sunrise began to paint the sky with streaks of pink and purple, to my left. I was running down a gloomily lit road in the middle of the desert, surrounded by miles and miles of gorgeous red sand. In the distance, there were shadows that I supposed were mesas though I’d never seen one in person before. The sun nudged its way up in the sky.

  “Hydrate.” The bottle seemed to appear from nowhere. I grabbed it and took a long drink.

  I noticed an immediate change. My body liked the water.

  I don’t know how much time passed, but I finally experienced my first runner’s high, where I wanted to go faster and faster, and never stop. But the screen unfurled and moved back to the wall, and the treadmill began to slow. I blinked and slowed my stride to match.

  “That’s probably enough time to prove you’ve got endurance, Gail,” Cooper said, appearing at my side. “We’ll bring you in sometime for a longer run and see how long you can go.”

  “All right.” I shook my head to clear it. “What now? Three hours of weight lifting?”

  “Not quite.” Cooper moved to where he could get a better look at the monitor, absently waving me off the treadmill. “Heart rate’s good. You’ve adjusted to running better than any seasoned marathoner I’ve known. And you say you haven’t run since . . . high school?”

  “Since I had to get through the mile to pass gym,” I confirmed, swiping at my brow. “And even then, I barely earned that C.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Is there any food?”

  Cooper turned, surprised. “Already?”

  “I’m like a human furnace on high.” I said it sheepishly.

  Over at the desk, Kiki nodded and began tapping away at the keyboard. Click, click, click. I scratched my e
ars at the noise. Had they always sounded that individual?

  “This time,” Kiki said, “we’ll go high on the protein. You’ll need your strength, and plenty of energy.”

  “Oh, goody. More running?”

  “Not exactly. Food’s on its way.”

  Kiki rose and collected a black apron from its peg on the wall and helped Cooper into it. Though I wondered why he would possibly need an apron that looked like the lead covers dentists put on their patients during X-­rays, I didn’t ask. I just wondered when the food was going to show. Standing still after my run was also proving to be a problem. I wanted to keep moving. I had liked the freedom.

  “All right.” With the apron strapped around his impressive frame, Cooper moved to stand in front of me. Well away from Kiki and her desk, I noted. He spaced his feet hip-­distance apart, bracing himself. “Now,” he said, “this may freak you out a bit, but it’s okay, I promise. I want you to hit me. Right here.”

  He tapped a hand the size of a Christmas ham on his midsection.

  “Um, I think that might break my hand.”

  “My theory tells me that no, it won’t break your hand.”

  I looked hard at him. The apron he wore wasn’t Kevlar. It looked like it was just heavy black cloth. But I was under no pretensions about the body beneath that polo shirt. “Dude, you’re built like a rock.”

  “Gail, you won’t hurt yourself. Just go ahead and hit me, right here. As hard as you can. No pulling your punches.”

  I thought fleetingly of the stunned look on Gary’s face, his hand over his bleeding nose. A new fear began to nibble, not for my hand, but for Cooper.

  So I looked up at him. “I hurt Chelsea’s henchmen, and I wasn’t even trying.”

  “This is a little different.”

  “It’s okay, Gail,” Kiki said. “You can hit him.”

  I swung my head to look at her. “I’m not going to hit your boyfriend, Kiki.”