Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  As Errol turned towards the classroom door, it slowly opened. Standing there was the creepy kid with the eyepatch, Travis. "What are you breaking into classrooms for?" Travis asked. Errol unshouldered his bow and nocked an arrow before Travis could react. In place of a conventional arrowhead, it was tipped with a device the size and shape of a shotgun shell with two metal prongs on the end.

  "Back off," Errol said.

  Travis raised his hands and backed up until he was against the lockers on the far side of the hall. Errol moved slowly out into the hallway, keeping his aim on Travis as he did. Once clear of the classroom, he bolted for the stairs, easing the string forward without loosing the shot. Travis, however, ran a lot faster than Errol did. Tackling the skinnier archer, Travis twisted Errol's right arm up between his shoulder blades. Planting a knee into the small of Errol's back, Travis pulled a bundle of arrows out of the quiver.

  "Where do you get electroshock arrows?" Travis asked. "More importantly, what are you doing with them here?"

  Pinned under the shorter but more well-built Travis, Errol's mind raced for options. Out-wrestling him was probably futile given the pressure on his arm. He had one free hand, one arrow nocked but not drawn, and a bow pointed at the railing over the lower flight of stairs down. An idea sprouted and his mind ran through the trajectories. Slipping his bow string between his lips, Errol clamped down with his teeth. Pushing against the bow, he couldn't manage a full draw as the pain in his canines mounted. At this distance, he didn't really need it.

  In the half second it took Travis to realize what Errol was doing, he took aim and let fly.

  The heavy electroshock arrow bounced off the wooden railing and towards Travis' head. Travis raised an arm to block it, releasing Errol's wrist as he did so. The arrow jabbed into the meat of his forearm, one prong lodging in place. Bouncing back, the arrow trailed a length of copper wire, swinging down like a pendulum to strike Travis in the side. He cried out as the device sent ten thousand volts through his core. Travis' loss of muscle control gave Errol the chance to squirm out from under him and tumble down the first flight of stairs.

  Regaining his feet, Errol ran for the parking lot exit.

  An alarm blared as Errol rammed through the door. Two girls looked up just before Errol crashed into them, too panicked to stop in time. The three went down in a heap on the salt-strewn sidewalk. "Ugh, Errol, get off!" Sarah said, shoving him over onto Amber. It was the first time in a long time she'd used his name. Amber rolled him into the snowbank. "Now I'm all wet," Sarah said. "This stuff reeks, what is it?" She looked at her hands, which were covered in a clear fluid. Despite her previous proclamation, Sarah raised a hand to her nose and sniffed. Amber likewise was trying to figure out what the malodorous chemical that had covered them was.

  Errol pulled open his jacket and looked down. The case on the synthesizer had been forced closed when Travis had tackled him. With the plug out of place, it had been forced against the output vial, cracking it wide open. The front of Errol's shirt was soaked in synthetic pheromones. Pheromones were normally dosed out by the drop. Pheromones which Sarah and Amber had just taken a big whiff of.

  As their expressions began to morph, Errol couldn't think of anything better to do than run. He took off in a spray of kicked-up snow. He had no plan, no place he was trying to get to. He was just trying to put distance between himself and the world. His lack of a plan caught up with him as he crossed the edge of the parking lot and was faced with a chain link fence. He turned and blundered through the snow along the fence. It wasn't long before he realized he'd turned the wrong way. At the back corner of the Leyden Academy lot, he found another fence. Scrambling to climb up it, he didn't get far.

  Four hands grabbed him and yanked him down to the ground. Sarah and Amber were clearly not in control of their faculties. Their pupils were dilated beyond reason, their expressions twisted unnaturally. Errol struggled to fend them off, unsure of the psychoactive effect an overdose of synthetic pheromones had. Before he found out what sort of derangement it induced, the girls were pulled back by a small crowd. The girls ignored calls for calm as they tried to break free of the crowd's grasp. Arrowwarp calmly checked on their ocular response with a penlight. It was nonexistent.

  "Careful people," Arrowwarp said. "Breath through your mouths only. And try not to inhale too deeply." Errol tried to crawl away, but Arrowwarp planted a boot on his chest. "This is an effect I haven't seen since... the nineties I think. Bending down, he pulled the pheromone synthesizer from Errol's pocket. "Ah, that looks to be the source of the problem."

  Errol sat on a bench, clutching the towel wrapped around his bare shoulders tightly. They'd been dragged into the gym showers to rinse off the excess pheromones. The last he'd seen of the still deranged-looking girls was when they were pulled to the other locker room. His pants were still wet, but he hadn't been allowed to change. His damp hair sat wild and unruly after having been toweled down. The tile floor was cold against his bare feet. The locker room felt like an odd place for an interrogation, but Arrowwarp held up a sealed plastic bag holding the pheromone synthesizer.

  "Where, pray tell, did this come from?" he asked.

  Errol remained silent. Before Arrowwarp asked another question, the door opened, and Travis stepped past the partition. He held up a fistful of electroshock arrows, one of which still trailed a length of copper wire. Arrowwarp stepped over to hear what Travis had to say, leaving only Keene watching Errol directly. Errol's mind ran through the options. The only exit was through Travis and Arrowwarp. Trying to use Keene as a hostage would only make things worse. His best option seemed to be to wait for a better opportunity.

  "Thank you," Arrowwarp said, taking the bundle of arrows. Travis gave a nod and stepped out. "Usually, archers aren't carrying these around unless they're working for us."

  "It's not like they're illegal."

  "No," Arrowwarp said, holding up the lock scrubber. "But this is when you use it to break into a locked room you don't own. And so is breaking and entering." He set them down on the next bench over and held up the plastic bag again. "So we're back to where this came from."

  "It's been decades since I've seen Aphrodite's Kiss," Keene said. "Hell, I still had two arms the last time that stuff showed up. We never could synthesize it to work on an antidote."

  "So," Arrowwarp said, "Where does an eleventh-grader get a device that automates what we couldn't do manually?"

  "I made it," Errol lied.

  "We're back to the part where the Community Fund's best chemists couldn't reproduce the stuff," Keene said. "Are you claiming to be some kind of chemical savant?"

  Errol stared pointedly at his toes.

  "And why weren't you affected?" Keene asked.

  "Twenty percent of the human population lacks the receptors to be susceptible to the effect," Errol said. "I belong to the same twenty percent you do."

  "How did you know I was immune?" Keene asked. "I didn't enter into this until you'd been rinsed off."

  Errol closed his eyes and shook his head. "I meant him."

  "Except you saw me taking precautions to avoid exposure," Arrowwarp said. "I'm not immune."

  Errol clutched his head.

  "You just had to run into the only two heroes to tangle with Mars and Venus during the brief crime spree, didn't you?" Arrowwarp asked. "Not your day, is it? I'm guessing, Mom and Dad?" He waited for a reaction before continuing. "Is that why you're with granddad? They ditched you for a non-extradition country?"

  "They're dead? Alright? Some fucking vigilante killed them!" Errol clasped him hands over his mouth, more shocked at the language he'd used than being goaded into giving away information. Only as the words filtered back into his mind did he realize what he'd given away. Errol shrank, wanting nothing more than to curl up and disappear.

  "I'm sorry to hear that," Keene said.
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  A new arrival stepped into the room. He was dressed in a hero suit whose red and gold pattern Errol did recognize. It sent a shiver down his spine almost as strong as Hephaestus' disapproval. Razordemon had arrived. Errol edged away from the infamous hero. "Did you really need me?" Razordemon asked, looking at the expression on Errol's face. "He seems compliant."

  "To be fair," Arrowwarp said. "I only asked for anyone who was on call."

  "It's Valentine's Day," Razordemon said. "Who isn't going to have plans?" A hesitant expression crossed Keene's face.

  "Okay, let me fill you in," Arrowwarp said, heading out of the locker room. Razordemon followed him. Errol and Keene both visibly relaxed the moment he was out of the room.

  "Why would it take two of you guys for one of me?" Errol asked.

  "There's two and a half of us," Keene said, cracking a smile.

  "You joke about your disability a lot," Errol said.

  "Weeping and moaning won't help. I tried it. Besides, if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?"

  "So you play both bad cop and good cop?"

  "You don't know many interview techniques, do you? You just assume all questioning involves some variant of it."

  "What happens now?"

  "That's not up to me," Keene said. "My license expired. I'm just a private citizen these days. If you noticed, I haven't touched a shred of evidence." Errol looked over at the handful of arrows, seeking some sort of inspiration. They were at least twelve feet away, and the hallway was probably well within view of Keene's associates. Errol shuddered at the thought of trying to tangle with Razordemon. He couldn't even beat one of his classmates without his bow. Errol tried to remember where he'd dropped it. Probably the snowbank outside the door. Or on the stairs. No, if it had been the stairs, Travis would have turned it over with the arrows. It had to be in the snow.

  "I see," Razordemon said. "You're holding him for breaking and entering, possession of burglary tools and assault of a fellow student. What about the pheromones?" They stood next to the judges' table, which still held the Heartstrings trophies.

  "Aphrodite's Kiss only turned up once before. No one ever bothered to ban it because no one knew how to make the stuff," Arrowwarp said. "So technically, he didn't commit a crime having it. Without intent in spreading it around, there's not even something from when he accidentally dosed the girls."

  "What's their prognosis?"

  "They'll be fine once it metabolizes. Backlash will make them hate his guts for a while before everything settles down chemically."

  "Any word on why?"

  "Best guess is that the synthesizer was a memento of his mother that he brought to school by mistake. It's easy to think the synthetic pheromones are illegal, since so many psychoactive substances are. So he tried to get it back."

  "Any confirmation on this?"

  "It's speculation," Arrowwarp said.

  "You've been in this business plenty long enough to handle the whole thing. Why did you call for backup?"

  "I wanted a second opinion, and Keene's a little biased when it comes to archers."

  "A second opinion on what?"

  "If he's the sort of juvenile offender you're looking at for that pilot program."

  "The Junior Redemptioners?"

  "The only problem would be if the kid he shot wants to press charges."

  "Who was that again?" Razordemon asked.

  "Name was Travis Colfax."

  "Let me talk to him, we've met before."

  Lucid Blue

  Part 1

  Sunlight streamed in the windows, spilling over the faux wood table. The chairs in the conference room were less than orderly, mostly from the room's occupants having trouble deciding where they wanted to sit. Edwin Wilson had given up sitting and stood by the windows. He was trying and failing to spot his house among the panorama of New Port Arthur laid out before him. As he identified streets, it became clear his house was on the other side of the tower. The teenager wore a sky blue polo shirt and khaki slacks. Both were all but brand new, and he was trying not to think of how preppy he looked. His dull brown hair was short, and somewhat spiky of its own accord.

  The other occupant of the room was slumped in the chair at the head of the table. He hadn't spoken much. His hair was a blood red, and his face was only two shades pinker than paper. He wore a ratty old flannel shirt and faded blue jeans. It looked like the sort of apparel one found in a secondhand shop. From what Ed gathered, his name was Kevan. The door opened and Ed turned to see who it was. He broke into a grin. The new arrival had on black jeans and a hooded gray sweatshirt. His hands were deep in his pockets. His brown hair was slightly lighter than Ed's and was long enough that he could almost tuck his bangs behind his ears.

  "Birdstrike, dude, what happened to your wings?"

  Lazar smiled. "I'm finally free of them. I feel so good I'm not even mad at you for calling me that." He pulled out one of the chairs and plopped down in it.

  "It figures you'd take the deal they offered up," Ed said. "Do you think Suture will be part of our little reform program too?"

  A voice, patently synthetic and monotone, spoke up. "That will be a negative," it said, the waveform appearing in a blue-white hologram near the door. "This is a boy's team."

  "Who are you?" Lazar asked.

  "I am Shiva, the building's computer."

  "Figures the Community Fund has an AI," Ed said. "Do you have to eavesdrop on us?"

  "I was asked to monitor your presence in this building," Shiva said. "Would you rather I have done so secretly?"

  "I guess not," Ed said.

  "I was wondering why they left us alone," Kevan said.

  "It speaks," Ed said. Kevan flipped him off and returned to his slump.

  "You really do have a way with people," Lazar said. "Have you met anyone who hasn't been driven to flip you the bird?"

  "None of the tights ever flipped me off," Ed said. "They have a public image to keep I guess."

  "So what's this whole Junior Redemptioner schtick about anyway?" Lazar asked.

  "Probably like the regular Redemptioners, but for juvenile delinquents instead of hardened criminals," Kevan said.

  "Who are you calling Juvenile?" Ed asked.

  Kevan ignored him. "We work for the good guys for a while, convince them we've changed our ways, then we move on."

  "What did you do to end up here?" Lazar asked. "We were caught on a B and E."

  "One morning I got woken up by someone yelling incoherently and trying to hit me with a stick. Street crazies aren't anything unusual, so I clocked him one. His buddies started shooting. It wasn't till I got outside that I realized they were cops come to roust the bums from the squat house. Really, given how trigger-happy psychotic they were, they should have been the ones locked up, not me."

  "You punched a cop?"

  "Knocked him out cold. It was self-defense."

  The door opened again and a fourth young man timidly stepped inside. He too had brown hair, though his was the lightest, and just long enough to be combed. Nervously, his eye passed between the other occupants. "Uh, hi," he said.

  "Who are you?" Ed asked.

  "What he means to say is, he's Ed, I'm Lazar, and that guy is..."

  "Kevan."

  "I'm Errol."

  "Like Flynn?" Ed asked. A sour expression crossed Errol's face. "Oh, let me guess, you've heard that one a lot?"

  "Too much, thank you very much."

  "You can sit next to Birdstrike in the 'all-hurt-over-your-names' section."

  Errol scowled and sat down.

  "Hey, he didn't flip you off," Lazar said.

  "It'd not polite," Errol said.

  "Yeah," Ed said, "That's why they call it a rude gesture."
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br />   "You know, people might like you better if you were less rude yourself," Errol said.

  "If I want your advice, I'll beat it out of you."

  "Grow up!" Kevan said.

  "I thought this was a group for juveniles."