Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

by Chris Strange

  A bell dinged, and the elevator doors slid open. The studio lights were on, aimed at the news desk on the far side of the room. Crew members screamed and hammered on the fire exit doors. It did them no good. One of the newsreaders—a middle-aged woman in a red jacket—was the only person that hadn’t fled her post. She spoke rapidly into the unmanned cameras.

  “They have reached the studio. There appears to be four, no, five of them. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, our building has been attacked by what appears to be a team of supercriminals. We can only pray that this broadcast is still transmitting, and that the police are on their way. God save us all.”

  Morgan let his blade and shield fade, and drew light around himself to make his body glow. He strode from the elevator, taking his time, and looked into the eyes of everyone with the courage to meet his gaze.

  Perception is all that matters.

  “My name is Quanta,” he said. Silence fell in the room, and all eyes turned to him. He let an easy smile cross his face. “I have a message for the people of Earth.”

  13: Gently, Gently

  Iron Justice

  Real name:

  William Hayne

  Powers:

  Super strength, able to transform skin into metal armour. Metal skin renders him impervious to small arms and low-grade explosions.

  Notes:

  Reported to have survived several direct hits from the Astral Bomber. Faced numerous accusations of physical and sexual assault, but was never formally charged. Left the Manhattan Eight under a cloud of controversy.

  —Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0003]

  Night fell on Neo-Auckland. Niobe stubbed out her cigarette in the car ashtray, readjusted her mask, and switched her goggles to high contrast.

  “Play it clean, mate,” the Carpenter said. He pulled his own mask into place and put on his wide-brimmed hat. He couldn’t come with her; there was no way to get him inside without bringing all of Met Div down on them. He’d be on the outside, guarding her escape.

  “Always do,” she said. She wouldn’t be stupid this time. No one would get another look at her face.

  The side road they’d parked in was nearly empty, so she pushed open the door and got out. The Carpenter leaned over and stuck his head out the window. “Did I ever tell you you look like Rick Blaine in that coat?”

  “Rick who?”

  “From Casablanca.”

  She shrugged.

  “You haven’t seen Casablanca?” He affected an American accent. “‘Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’ That doesn’t ring a bell?”

  She turned away, shoved her hands in her pockets, and slipped silently across the road. She didn’t have time for Solomon’s nonsense.

  His voice called out after her. “‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’”

  With a shake of her head, she disappeared into the shadows and made her way down the alley to the rear of Met Div headquarters.

  Time was ticking away, and they were no closer to finding Sam. If this was a simple kidnapping, she wouldn’t be so worried. Kidnappers who wanted ransom generally didn’t let harm come to their captives. But something weird was going on here, and every day that passed decreased the chances they’d ever find him alive. If they found him at all.

  Bloody hell, she needed another cigarette.

  The fenced-off car park at the back of the headquarters was deserted. Behind the chain-link fence, cars and vans were lined up in neat rows. She stayed in the shadows and watched for a moment, then something caught her eye. A little white box perched on the brick wall above the rear door. No, not a box. A video camera. That was new.

  She touched the side of her goggles and increased the contrast to its maximum, then tried to gauge the camera’s line of sight. It looked out over the car park, probably to stop the division’s vehicles being pinched. But there was a blind spot directly beneath it. Too easy.

  She breathed in a lungful of air, held it, and pulled darkness around her. The world flattened out as her body slid into a puddle on the concrete. The rough surface of the alley pressed against her, and her thoughts became flat.

  She slipped through the gaps in the fence and sped silently along the dark ground. There weren’t many lights around, but it was still more comfortable to move under the cars, using their shade. As she moved, she became aware of the shadows of cape coppers moving in the building’s windows. Met Div headquarters were never completely deserted, so she’d have to be cautious. Always cautious.

  Her shadow form slid up the three stairs at the rear exit and stopped in the darkness beneath the camera. Releasing her breath, she reformed her body and looked around, letting herself readjust to three dimensions. With a glance at the camera to make sure it couldn’t see her, she pressed her ear to the door. Silence. The door was heavy and well-sealed at the edges to protect against gas attacks—no one had forgotten Colonel Mustard’s assault on the New South Wales Met Div back in ’61. Unfortunately for Niobe, it also left no room for a shadow to slip under. She pulled her pick set from her jacket pocket and worked the torsion wrench and pick into the lock. Eyes closed, she let the tips of her fingers fade into shadow and dance along the length of the tools. A hazy picture of the surface of the lock’s pins formed in her mind, adding to the tactile sensations as she jiggled the pick.

  She worked the pins as swiftly as she dared. Her heart maintained a steady rhythm, keeping her alert. She’d broken in here before, but it sure as hell wasn’t a cakewalk. Even at night, the hallways were lit and coffee-fuelled coppers huddled over paperwork. Luckily, the higher-ups pulled rank, leaving many of the offices dark and empty after nightfall. If she had to hide, they were her best shot.

  The pins gave in to her touch, and she smiled into the darkness. With a twist of the torsion wrench, the lock clicked and the door opened a crack. She returned the tools to her pocket, checked through the crack for any coppers roaming the hallways, and slipped inside.

  Her shoes made no sound on the tile floor. The clatter of typewriter keys drifted from somewhere ahead, along with the mutter of quiet conversation. Nothing to concern her. So why was she so nervous? Play it clean.

  She’d memorized the building’s layout years ago. Briefly, she considered checking the prisoner manifests to confirm what Marvin told them, but decided against it. Prisoner records were kept in the south wing, near the cells. Security was tight there; never less than three armed cape coppers on duty at a time, according to standard protocol. Breaking in wasn’t impossible, but she needed to keep attention away from her investigations. If Met Div really was responsible for the kid’s abduction, she’d rather they didn’t know she was coming.

  That left the archives for her to investigate. The basement it was, then. Sticking to the wall, she made her way quickly down the hallway to the stairs. She kept both hand in her jacket pockets to stop herself reaching for her gun.

  A copper wandered past the hallway ahead of her, facing away from her and gripping a mug of coffee like his life depended on it. Niobe drew still, pressing herself into the corner. The copper wandered on without so much as glancing at her. When he passed, she pulled open the door to the stairwell and made her way downstairs.

  Even now in the beginnings of summer, the basement of the building was cold. She emerged into the dark of the archives, surrounded on all sides by row upon row of filing cabinets and file boxes. From the looks of it, the archives had started out as one large hall, but it had spilled over into the accompanying rooms. Offices and supply rooms had been commandeered as the number of meta-related cases soared in the early sixties. File boxes of old case reports were stacked nearly to the ceiling. But from the dust in the air, she’d bet most of them were at least five years old.

  She was alone down here; no one guarded the archives. The clerk who tended the records would’ve gone home at five o’clock. I wonder what that’s like, she thought.

  She pulled
the torch from her utility belt and swung the beam of light around the room. Her footsteps came quiet on the concrete floor as she walked back and forth through the rows. After a few minutes, her torch beam came to rest on a bank of filing cabinets behind the clerk’s desk. She moved closer to read the labels. It took her another minute, but then she found what she was looking for. Officers - Active.

  She picked the lock on the cabinet with ease and flipped through the files one by one, shining her light on the photograph paperclipped to the first page of each folder. If he looked like he might have the strong build of the man from her vision, she pulled the file out and examined it in detail. Each folder had a brief summary of basic information: DOB, height, weight, race, nationality. No need for gender. Every copper was male.

  It took her nearly forty-five minutes to go through the files. For each “maybe”, she compared the print she’d picked up on the boat to the fingerprint card inside the folder. On the fourth one she pulled out, she found him.

  The guy’s name was Daniel O’Connor. Caucasian, 44 years old, New Zealander. In the photograph, he sported long sideburns that didn’t suit his square face, and two cauliflower ears. His expression was hard, cold. Whoever had done the original inking on the fingerprinting was sloppy, but there was no doubt the two matched. She had her man.

  She’d give the file a proper look later, but something bothered her about it. A flip through revealed the same basic forms she’d seen in the other folders—tax records, recruitment scores, his original CV, payroll form—but it was still lighter than the others. She pulled out another file to compare. O’Connor’s had no mention of cases or operations he’d worked on. No arrest records. No commendations or accident reports. No recent evaluations.

  She frowned, her mask rubbing painfully against the scratches on her cheek. A cover-up? If so, it was sloppy. Why not just take the whole file and be done with it?

  As she returned the comparison file to the cabinet, the beam of her torch swept over something at the base of the metal drawer. A leaf of yellow paper poked out from below the rows of folders. She tucked O’Connor’s folder under her arm and retrieved the loose piece of paper.

  Daniel O’Connor: suspended from active duty, the typewritten letter read. She swept the light down. Operational reports to be delivered to Senior Sergeant Raymond Wallace and CCed to Internal Affairs.

  The signature was an unreadable scrawl. No date, but it wasn’t old or faded. The paper had probably slipped out when the clerk put it back in the cabinet.

  “Bloody hell,” she murmured. If she was back in the Carpenter’s precious golden age, she’d be able to get her hands on this sort of info easy. You didn’t say no to the Wardens. Not because they were powerful. Because they got shit done.

  She pushed up the bottom of her mask and breathed in a lungful of dusty air. The name was something, she supposed. There were people who could look into these things. Maybe the copper’s suspension had something to do with all this, or maybe he was just generally crooked, and now that he had no job, he found other ways to pay the mortgage.

  Bugger it. She tugged the mask down again, slid O’Connor’s folder into her trench coat, and closed the filing cabinet. The floors above creaked with footsteps. She kept her ear trained on the stairwell, ready to descend into shadow if someone came, but there was nothing. She couldn’t hang around here forever, though.

  She made her way through the main stacks, where evidence and case reports were collected, to the metahuman records. She’d had to come here once a couple of years back, to get a lead on a shapeshifter who was blackmailing a local politician with some “sensitive pictures”. She had a look the photos before she gave them to the politician. She’d never figured the old guy would be able to bend like that.

  Unlike the search for O’Connor, it was a piece of piss to find Avin’s file. Out of convenience, metas were listed by primary alias rather than name, since so many metas had kept their identities secret. Avin’s file was thicker than O’Connor’s. She flipped through reports and newspaper clippings from the old days. Like Niobe, Avin wasn’t officially registered, and no kill-switch frequency was recorded. No reports from the last couple of years. That wasn’t unusual; even Met Div couldn’t keep tabs on every meta. It was another pain in the arse though.

  She glanced through the summary sheet, searching for a last known address.

  Alias: Avin

  Real name: Unknown

  DOB: Unknown

  Powers: Flight (winged), enhanced strength, intrinsic weapons (talons), enhanced vision (unconfirmed)

  Affiliated Organisations: Wardens (disbanded), Patrolmen (disbanded), Heroes for Freedom (disbanded)

  Known associates: Kid Arrow, Blue Shaman, Screecher

  No address, but those were names she hadn’t heard for a while. Kid Arrow was definitely part of Heroes for Freedom. The little bugger always had an obnoxious one-liner for the papers. As for the other two heroes listed, she wasn’t sure.

  She pulled files on all three of Avin’s known associates. According to the files, Blue Shaman was sleeping the big sleep after getting hit with leukaemia. Kid Arrow had gone to the lunar colony, and Screecher was presumed dead.

  She tucked Avin’s file into her coat along with Kid Arrow’s and Screecher’s. Her trench coat was getting heavy, and the corner of the folder poked into her when she twisted. But that wasn’t nearly as frustrating as hitting another dead end. What the hell is it with this case? Everything was a black hole of information.

  On a whim, she consulted the file index and tried to find something on Frank Julius. Nothing. She’d been expecting that—the name was almost certainly fake—but it was worth a shot.

  She turned to leave, then paused. She was running low on time, but she went back to the “D”s. She searched the whole row, found nothing, and searched it again. Where’s Doll Face’s file? Doll Face hadn’t ever been sighted in New Zealand, but he was high-profile enough to warrant a file. Hell, he was high-profile enough to warrant a whole bloody police division. She checked with the index and confirmed it should be there. A date was pencilled in beside the index entry—three days ago—along with someone’s initials. RW. Raymond Wallace, she thought. She wondered if the bastard had felt the floor drop out from under him like she had when she learned Doll Face was in the country.

  She checked her watch. Half an hour until the evening shift left and the late nighters came along. She’d like to be out before then, when everyone would be moving around. But she had time, didn’t she?

  She chewed her lip and tapped her watch with her gloved finger. Bugger it. I’m here anyway. Let’s see what Senior Sergeant Wallace knows.

  Wallace’s office was on the top floor. She had to waste eight minutes getting there, avoiding the coppers that roamed the halls like caged lions. The lock on his door was solid, but that couldn’t stop her turning to shadow and sliding underneath.

  Like all the other offices on the top floor, it was empty. She switched on her torch and gave the room a quick sweep with the beam. It was big, but it seemed to be wasted on Wallace. No pictures on the walls, no pot plants, no decorations of any kind. A set of blinds covered the window on the back wall, but it must have had a good view of the Old City. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine him ever enjoying the sights.

  She padded softly over the carpet to the utilitarian desk. Except for a couple of chairs and a set of the ubiquitous filing cabinets, the desk was the only piece of furniture in the room. All his paperwork sat in neat piles, and for the first time in her life she came across an outbox that was more full than the inbox. If he had a family, there was no picture. Neither was there a memento of his service in the war. With the scar on his scalp and the bullet wound in his arse, maybe he didn’t need anything else.

  A strangely shaped machine had pride of place next to the telephone. It looked kind of like a cash register, but when she rounded the desk to get a better look at it, she saw it had a small glass screen set into it and a full keyboard, like a t
ypewriter. A Unity Corporation logo was stamped on top.

  It’s a computer, she realised. She’d never seen one outside a supercriminal’s lair before, and those had been a hundred times the size of this one. She recalled hearing that Unity Corp had been racing to ship personal computers before their competitors caught up. But what was the point in it? Probably just a way for Met Div to blow some more taxpayer money.

  She tore her eyes from the machine and checked her watch. Twenty minutes until she wanted to be gone. Maybe the computer was full of interesting information, but she didn’t have a clue how to get it out. Didn’t these things work on punch cards or something? She had no choice but to ignore it and deal with any information she could find in paper.

  Doll Face’s file was the first thing she found. It actually consisted of three thick manila folders bound together with rubber bands. She unbound the first folder and glanced through. A slideshow of horror greeted her. Crime scene after crime scene was described in meticulous detail, followed by transcripts of interviews with victims. She wrinkled her nose and snapped the rubber bands back in place. She could take the file, but none of the information appeared to be new. The pages ended with Doll Face’s supposed death in Ukraine. That wouldn’t help her now.

  Fifteen minutes. She slipped Doll Face’s file back into the pile and continued searching. O’Connor’s information wasn’t on the desk. She picked the lock on the desk drawer and started rummaging.

  She got a glimpse of O’Connor’s name under a sheaf of departmental forms when a floorboard creaked in the hall outside.

  Her breath caught. She snatched the papers from the drawer, crammed them into her inside pocket, and switched off the torch. Inside, her blood ran cold, but she kept moving.

  The shadow of feet appeared in the crack beneath the door, and someone ran a key into the lock. Niobe checked behind the blinds, but the window was sealed, not made for opening. Even as a shadow, she couldn’t pass through glass. Shit. The bare office left nowhere for her to hide. Double shit.