Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

by Chris Strange

  The hand relaxed, and air rushed in to fill the void in his lungs, along with the scent of Oppenheimer’s sweat. Spasms wracked Morgan’s chest, and he coughed again and again.

  “Where is he?” Frank demanded again.

  Something slammed into Morgan’s stomach, and the coughs doubled in intensity. “Frank,” he managed to gasp before another coughing fit struck him.

  “Tell me where Sam is!”

  “I will,” he choked out. “Don’t…don’t hit me again.”

  He waited for another blow, but it didn’t come. He forced himself to take deep breaths, suppressing the spasms in his throat. Frank’s hand had left him. He wanted to curl over and vomit, but he suppressed that too.

  “Sam’s safe,” he said when he could speak again. “He’s fine.”

  “Where?” The voice was coming from his other side now. Omegaman could still move silently, no matter his age.

  “I figured you’d come, Frank. I’m glad we finally have a chance to talk. I always admired you.”

  The noise that came from Morgan’s right was more of a growl than words. “Why? Why did you do this?”

  “Because someone had to.”

  He could feel Frank moving around the cell. He wondered if the man was in costume. If it still fits. Omegaman used to have goggles that let him see in the dark, but even those wouldn’t be much use down here. You couldn’t amplify a photon if it didn’t exist.

  “Did you know how powerful Sam could be?” Morgan said. The movement stopped. “You must have had some idea, or you wouldn’t have come to see your friend, the one who worked at Unity Corp.”

  Frank grunted.

  “I was surprised you fell for it so easily,” Morgan said. “But you were eager, weren’t you? A medicine to suppress metahuman powers. You couldn’t get here fast enough.”

  He said nothing.

  “Were you afraid Sam was going to go mad and try to kill you like your brother did? Or did you just want to spare him this life?” Morgan heaped scorn on the sentence. “Tell me, Frank, are you ashamed? Do you regret being Omegaman?”

  “I’m ashamed that I share an origin with you, monster. With people like you to represent us, no wonder the normals hate us.”

  Morgan laughed. “Oh, come now. You and I both know that supercriminals had nothing to do with what they did to people like us. Like many metas, I thought for a long time that it was economics. We were taking their jobs and doing them better. But it was more than that. We lost some part of ourselves. We didn’t fight this, because we didn’t believe in ourselves anymore.”

  “Stalling won’t save you.”

  Morgan prodded his sore gum again. It was becoming a compulsion. “I just want to make you understand, Frank. Do you remember that old saying? A hero’s greatest power is his mind. It turns out that’s true. Well, not the mind, but the brain. We did some research. There’s a protein that builds up in the neocortex of the brain, especially in more powerful metas, and especially in psychics. A collection of proteins, really. Your brother would have been swimming in it. Perhaps that’s what drove him mad.”

  He made out the sound of steel leaving a sheath.

  “The protein complex is incredibly elaborate, and unique to the individual. And recently, we discovered something very special. It retains an imprint of the meta’s powers, even when removed from the brain in question. Of course, this is useless for the most part, a curiosity. But there are ways of conducting a transfer. Ways of giving someone another’s powers. All you need is a powerful psychic stimulus, and a metahuman malleable enough to take the transfer. That part is the tricky one. Such a metahuman is exceedingly rare. It needs to be a tier zero meta. Someone like Sam.”

  A palm slammed into Morgan’s sternum and shoved him back against the wall.

  “Enough,” Frank said. A blade whistled as it cut the air. “Enough of your talking. You will tell me now. Where is Sam?”

  “You were a scientist,” Morgan said. “I thought that bit of information might interest you. Maybe you’re out of practice. Should we should start with something simpler? Perhaps the sort of experiments children do in school. Do you remember the chemical reaction that you get from putting zinc and copper electrodes into certain fruits and vegetables?”

  The point of a blade pricked his neck, but he didn’t stop.

  “Potatoes and tomatoes, for example.” Morgan’s hand groped to the side, until it touched the metal tray. “The zinc is oxidised, and hydrogen gas is produced. And along the way you get a nice little flow of electrons.” He prodded the spot on his gum again, where the false tooth used to sit, waiting for this day. “The whole reaction only gives less than one milliamp of current, of course. But you know, it’s just enough to generate…” He pressed the tiny bulb into the tomato’s flesh, and it began to glow. “…a little bit of light.”

  Morgan could see. And in the dim red light, he made out the realisation in Frank Oppenheimer’s eyes. Each time Morgan had done this over the last two days, he’d savoured every morsel of light he could drink up. Hoarding it. For just this occasion.

  He smiled.

  Oppenheimer was fast, but Morgan had surprise on his side. The blade of light he formed in his hand was a pitiful thing, dull, not much longer than a bread knife. But when he passed it across Frank Oppenheimer’s throat, it sliced through just the same.

  The old man toppled. His silver dagger clattered to the ground. Morgan had to dart forwards to catch Oppenheimer before he hit the ground. Gently, Morgan lowered the ex-hero the rest of the way, while the man’s wide eyes stared at him. The spluttering was awful. Again and again Frank tried to take a breath, only to draw more blood into his lungs.

  God forgive him.

  “I’m sorry, Frank,” Morgan whispered. He cradled the man’s head in his arm and used his sleeve to wipe the blood from around Frank’s mouth. “I wish you could understand. I’m going to make a better world.”

  The old man was looking at something Morgan couldn’t see. Oppenheimer’s eyes glistened in the dim light of the blade. His mouth made gulping motions, and his hands gripped helplessly at the grey and black fabric of his bodysuit. He was wearing his old Omegaman costume after all. At least he’d die as a hero. A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

  Morgan waited with Frank until the man’s eyes glazed over and blood stopped squirting. The blood was all over Morgan’s face, he knew, but for once he didn’t concern himself with his appearance. There’d be time enough for that in a few minutes, when he’d gather his captured metas and escape this prison. But first, he had something to do.

  Finally, when everything stopped moving, he laid Frank’s head on the cold concrete and shifted his weight. The headache was back, and it was trying to make up for the last two days. Morgan wouldn’t complain, though. The price was far cheaper than the one Frank Oppenheimer had paid.

  “You deserved better than this,” he said to Frank. “We all did.”

  He brought his blade down on Frank’s skullcap and began to cut.

  Part Three

  He aha te mea nui o te ao?

  He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

  What is the most important thing in the world?

  It is people, it is people, it is people.

  —Maori proverb

  26: The Long Way Home

  Battle Jack

  Real name:

  Jack Kingi

  Powers:

  Super strength, rapid healing.

  Notes:

  Noted close-quarters combatant and ranged weapons expert. Often operated as the Wardens’ shock trooper, distracting villains and keeping them occupied while the rest of the group manoeuvered into flanking positions, rescued hostages, disabled bombs, or achieved other secondary objectives. In 1957, supercriminal group the Syndicate uncovered Kingi’s secret identity and kidnapped his wife. Kingi was lured into a trap and executed.

  —Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0310]

  The Carpenter was too heavy to ca
rry, so in the end Niobe had to fashion a sled out of the bits of broken wood and drag him out of the meat works. She left Doll Face for the flies.

  Once she got him to the car, she used the first aid kit to clean and dress the wound in his chest. She stripped off his shirt and did her best to clean off the blood. When she was done, she covered him with one of his spare cloaks he kept in the car boot and laid him down in the back seat. The car was a two-door, so it took her ten minutes of awkward pushing and pulling to get him in. The sun beat down on her, but she didn’t stop to remove her stained trench coat.

  The wound in her thigh wasn’t bad. It’d stopped bleeding by the time she peeled off her bodysuit enough to expose it. She didn’t mind the stinging when she applied the rubbing alcohol. It’d leave a scar if she didn’t get stitches, but she couldn’t summon the urge to care. She covered it in gauze, wrapped a bandage around, and zipped up her bodysuit.

  She didn’t know what time it was when she finally climbed into the driver’s seat. Her watch had broken sometime during the battle, but she guessed it was mid-afternoon by the look of the sun. Solomon had been driving last. When she had to pull the seat forwards so she could reach the pedals, she nearly broke down then and there.

  She barely noticed the overgrown landscape as she drove south along the gravel roads. Every now and then she looked up at the sky, but she never spotted Sam. Logically, she knew she needed to find a phone, contact someone. People needed to know. But every time she passed through a village that looked like it might have a phone line, she kept driving.

  When the Neo-Auckland skyline came into view an hour and a half later, it was no comfort. She thought about going straight to Met Div headquarters and trashing the place. No, that wouldn’t solve anything. Something dark was building inside her, and it needed a target, that was all. She had to stay calm. Cold. A shadow.

  She turned off the northern highway and took the back streets to the Old City. Everything was quiet. A few people moved on the streets, utterly unconcerned about the world around them. They didn’t understand, none of them. Christ, she wished she was one of them.

  After ten minutes, she pulled up outside their usual phone booth. How many times had she or the Carpenter used this phone? Stop it. She closed her eyes and forced the thoughts out of her head. She fished her cigarettes out of the glove box and lit one. Not even that helped. She turned to the Carpenter. She wished she could say that he looked like he was just taking a nap in the back seat, but that would be a lie. His cheeks had gone grey, his limbs were fixed in a way that no living human could replicate.

  “I’ll be back soon,” she said around her cigarette.

  By now, she knew Senior Sergeant Wallace’s extension by heart. She stepped into the phone booth and punched in the number, expelling a lungful of smoke as she waited.

  “Yes?” a strange voice answered.

  She frowned. “Where’s Wallace?”

  “He has important business elsewhere at the moment. This is Constable Hinerau. Can I help you?”

  “Yeah. Tell him if he visits a Schuster Meat Solutions up north he’ll find the supercriminal known as Doll Face. He’s dead. But that can wait. A meta called Sam Oppen…Sam Julius may be a risk to the public. He’s just a boy, and he’s not himself, but he is extremely powerful. I don’t think he’ll be hard to find. Tell Wallace that the boy needs to be taken into custody. But if Wallace harms the kid, he’ll have me to answer to. Tell him I’ll be contacting him again. Tell him I want to help him in this.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Uh…who can I say is calling?”

  “The vigilante bitch.”

  She hung up.

  She knew what she had to do now, but her stomach clenched at the thought. After one last puff, she stubbed out the cigarette and returned to the car. The Carpenter hadn’t moved. She got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and pulled back onto the road.

  The drive was nowhere near as long as she wished it was. She’d give anything to delay the moment. But all too soon she was pulling over again in an isolated cul-de-sac. She left Solomon in the car again and walked with heavy feet up to the door of the weatherboard villa, pulling on her mask as she went. Three knocks on the frosted glass. Then she waited.

  Kate Doherty looked as beautiful as ever. Her blond hair was full-bodied, her beige dress crisp and clean. The polite smile on her face cracked the instant she saw Niobe. “What do you want?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  “Kate. I….” Her tongue felt three times its normal size.

  “What?” The annoyance in Kate’s face faded. “Where’s Solomon?”

  The words wouldn’t come. Bloody hell.

  Kate’s face dropped, and for a moment it looked like her legs would follow. But then the woman straightened. Kate took Niobe by the lapels and shook her. “Where is he?” she said, her voice sharper than Doll Face’s knife. “Where is my husband?”

  Niobe never felt the strikes that Kate landed. The woman was no fighter. She was just a girl who’d married a superhero.

  It took both of them to get his body inside. Kate broke down sobbing as soon as they had him laid out on the bed. Tears ran down Niobe’s face as well, but they were swallowed up by the fabric of the mask. Kate had nothing to hide behind. Grief and hate took turns swallowing her features. Niobe couldn’t do anything but stand by and watch.

  They say kids don’t understand death, but these ones did. Riley, the oldest at ten years, tried to be brave for his little sister and his mum. But she knew the pain in his heart. She still remembered how she felt when she found out her parents had been killed in the blast that destroyed Auckland. The Blind Man hadn’t taken those memories from her.

  After a while, she left the family she’d broken to its grief. She returned to the car and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. The street was quiet. The garden that Solomon had tended so lovingly still stood, but it seemed colourless, empty. Bloody hell, she couldn’t stand this silence. She switched on the radio, hoping for music. She got a news bulletin instead.

  “…man found murdered in the cell wearing the costume of the Manhattan Eight superhero has been confirmed as the original Omegaman, Frank Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as Dr Atomic. The Metahuman Division is refusing to offer any more details at this time.”

  For a moment, she wondered if she’d heard it wrong. It’s all a sick joke. It has to be.

  The radio droned on. “For those just joining us, the police have confirmed that the supercriminal Quanta and his gang have escaped from an undisclosed holding facility less than forty-eight hours after their apprehension by the Metahuman Division. The body of ex-Manhattan Eight superhero Omegaman was found in Quanta’s cell. Whether Omegaman was involved in the escape is still under investigation. In a press conference less than an hour ago, a Metahuman Division spokesman warned the public to stay indoors and not to use the phone lines except in the case of emergency.”

  Escaped? She and the Carpenter had served them Quanta with a bloody apple in his mouth, and Met Div let him escape?

  She slammed her fist down on the steering wheel. Again. Again. Pain shot through her, but she didn’t stop. It was all for nothing. The Carpenter was dead, Frank Oppenheimer was dead, Sam was broken and gone, Gabby had left her, and it was all for fucking nothing.

  Slowly, her rage abated. She slumped down in the seat and put her face in her bruised hands. The car wasn’t a good target for her anger. It didn’t shout, it didn’t fight back. She wanted to hurt someone, and she knew who. But she had no leads on Quanta. Doll Face had obviously killed several of Quanta’s people back at the meat works. She could drive back out, spend hours looking for Quanta’s airship. If he hadn’t already taken it and left, of course. Even if it was still there, there were miles of abandoned farmland to search, and it would undoubtedly be well hidden.

  The caffeine she’d guzzled to compensate for her three-hour sleep had faded long ago. Someo
ne had scooped out everything inside her, and now she was just an empty bag of skin. There was nothing else for her to do here.

  She took a few deep breaths to gather herself together, then drove the short distance back to her apartment. The sun slowly dropped behind the Old City’s skyline, and the world went grey.

  The apartment was as empty as she’d left it. The dirty dishes from the meal she’d shared with Solomon still sat in the sink. She ignored them and opened the refrigerator door. Her stomach protested at the sight of food, so she shut the fridge again. She tore off her mask and tossed it on the floor. For a while, she stood in the middle of the kitchen, lost. What was she even doing here?

  Finally, she limped out to the living room, pulled a chair up to the window, and lit a smoke. Gabby always made her open a window when she was smoking. She tried to smile at the memory, but her lips wouldn’t work. While the smoky cloud drifted around her, she stared out at the city. I’m staying on Earth now, I guess. Frank Oppenheimer wouldn’t be sending her a paycheque anymore. Even if she could afford the lunar rocket ticket, she couldn’t go by herself. There was nothing on the Moon for her. There was nothing here for her either.

  She took a shower. The wound on her thigh stung in the scalding water. The steam made her dozy. Slowly, ever so slowly, the aches in her body subsided. Sometimes, she and Gabby would share a shower, taking turns with the soap, laughing as they tried to manoeuver in the tight space. Most of the time they’d barely even get dry afterwards before they collapsed onto the bed and made love. If she closed her eyes, she could picture Gabby lying naked on the bed, the blinds letting shafts of sunlight fall across her curves.

  But when Niobe opened her eyes, she was alone again, and the water had gone cold. She shut off the shower, dried off, and returned to the bedroom. She could still smell Gabby’s scent in the air. Or maybe it was just her imagination. Barely able to keep her eyes open, she crawled under the covers, leaned over, and switched the bedside lamp off.