We Could Be Heroes

by Mike Chen

  Jamie used a tablet to fill out—bullshit—a registration form, complete with selfie photo. A badge was printed out on a small counter console, and Jamie turned to see a pleasant woman, tanned face and close-cropped hair, in a white doctor’s coat. “I’m sorry about the scheduling issues. I’m happy to show you around.” The massive door opened with several clicks and beeps.

  “Please,” Jamie said, shaking her hand. “I’m very curious about this place.”

  * * *

  Dr. Waterfield’s sheer niceness unnerved Jamie. “We have patients from all over the country. Even international,” she said. “We’re only five years old but we’re developing quite a reputation. I’m sorry I can’t give you a proper tour. There are a lot of rules around that.”

  Jamie nodded, his eyes drawn down to the scar on his hand. It traveled from right below the forefinger all the way to the opposing wrist, an exact line in a clean diagonal. Was it the result of a cooking accident? A car crash? As he studied it, a low nausea started in his gut and he looked away, focused elsewhere to reset everything.

  In the end, maybe it didn’t matter. The whole life before this life stayed safely put aside except for being on the rooftop with Zoe that night. Why would he be leading those soldiers?

  The best bet for that answer, for Zoe’s past, for all of it, sat in the computer on the desk. From the reflection in Dr. Waterfield’s glasses, the screen still appeared dim. He needed data and access, some way in front of the keyboard, then a path past whatever security protected the data. “Since I can’t tour the facility, can you tell me about some of your patients? I get that there’s patient confidentiality. But just keeping their anonymity, what kinds of people come here? How long they stayed, their successes, beyond what’s on the website.”

  “Sure. I understand that this is a big life decision.” She tapped a key in rapid fire and finally the screen came to life. She hit a few more keys, then poised her hands to type before striking Enter. The reflection changed again. “Let’s see what I can tell you about.”

  “I appreciate it. My sister, it’ll take a lot to convince her to come here. We’ll need all of the reasons we can get.”

  “Of course. And we have coordinated with families to prepare for imminent arrivals. Our programs range from weekend intensive therapy to three-week facility stays, and those include some overnights out in our beautiful redwood forests. There’s little that’s better for the soul...” As she continued, her attention focused on the screen, enough that Jamie’s subtle hand movements went unnoticed. She was halfway through insurance coverage details when her eyes grew wide and her expression went blank.

  Jamie had done probably fifty or so brain-stuns by this point, enough that the process was old hat. But given the stakes here, the strange normalness of the facility and its security, he didn’t take anything for granted. One hand waved in front of Dr. Waterfield’s face, then another. With nary a blink in reaction, he ran to the keyboard before it could time out.

  She was in. Thus, he was in.

  Every brain-stun was a little different. And usually he didn’t stay on scene to gauge how long the victims stayed stunned. For the purposes of digging up confidential patient info, those metrics would have helped.

  The clock showed a quarter past four, and an internal deadline of ten minutes seemed like a safe bet. Simply stunning her again was feasible if necessary, but given that he’d never stunned anyone multiple times, best not to start experimenting now. Instead, he wheeled her static body several feet over, the chair squeaking with each inch, and he hunched over the keyboard.

  She was in a patient database. A list of names sorted by check-in time. There were other fields: a line for conditions, discharge date, current status.

  And next to all of that, some of the patients had photos.

  Think, think, think. He’d woken up in the apartment nearly, what was it...twenty-two months ago.

  He used that as a starting point, then started sorting beyond that time range. The little wheel on the mouse clicked as he scrolled, pictures flying by of different faces.

  And there it was, about two and a half years prior.

  The hair was different, it was nearly shaved off. The eyes weren’t focused; in fact, they looked tired, defeated. But he knew that face, the wide chin, thin mouth, and deep eyes.

  He saw that face every morning. And he tried not to think about it.

  He was here. But how did that lead to him joining a commando group that hunted down an unleashed extraordinary patient?

  Urges pulled at Jamie to shut it down, leave it behind, leave Zoe’s crusade and run off. But the guilt gnawed at him, always the guilt slowing things down until no other thoughts entered. Maybe guilt was an additional ability of his.

  Forget the guilt, he told himself, mentally pushing the rooftop away. Instead, he imagined a tropical beach, the peace and quiet attainable only when stability deemed the Mind Robber unnecessary. Once he helped Zoe, then he’d get his money and he could disappear to a warm, sunny place where that rooftop, that moment, really didn’t matter.

  He double-clicked the profile and forced himself to read the name, a tremble rippling through his fingers.

  Frazer Troughton.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected, like if a thousand light bulbs were to activate in his memory. But they didn’t. Nothing budged, not even random memory snapshots like what he’d unearthed for Zoe.

  He counted down, and he told himself it was fine.

  He scanned through the profile fields and saw nothing surprising, but at least it was specific. A birthday, an address. And a strange status: Sent to Reconditioning Facility.

  Could that be the place from Zoe’s memory? At this point, she might have been either soaring among the rooftops or off the wagon at the closest liquor store. He clicked open a web browser but the immediate page was a reminder that only the Telos internal network was available for patient safety purposes. With no external web and no phone, digging deeper into the mystery reconditioning facility would have to wait.

  A quick time check showed six minutes had passed. The clock was ticking, and a glance back showed Dr. Waterfield remained stunned, though he didn’t know for how long. He was about to scroll through other profiles when he noticed a tab labeled Intake Comments.

  A quick click revealed a thumbnail image of himself, apparently seated at a desk not unlike this one, a small triangle icon indicating it was a playable video.

  Leave the past behind. That’s what he told himself. Even seeing his old name and other tidbits from his old life, it conjured zero emotion. He was fine being Jamie, he didn’t have a big gap to fill, no burning desire like Zoe fought.

  But maybe there’d be a piece of the truth there. The truth that mattered, anyway. Jamie’s finger rested on the mouse button, the cursor lingering over the play icon. Questions and doubts dug in, preventing him from moving, even the tiny twitch of a finger needed to click a button.

  13

  ZOE OPTED TO WATCH a movie.

  At first, it was because twenty minutes passed and her surveillance proved to be dull. Seriously, how did people do stakeouts for hours on end? She opened HorrorDomain and loaded a movie with a werewolf, whose foam head barely stayed on, fighting zombies who were just people in ratty clothes and green makeup. She kept it going, half watching while moving from place to place, as her amplified hearing caught snapshots of employee and patient conversations from balconies and open windows and courtyards. All benign. Someone’s kid had a hockey game soon. Someone’s spouse forgot dinner last night. Someone complained about his car having a rattling sound. A group of patients discussed what it really meant to make amends, and that held her interest for a few seconds until the werewolf found herself in a graveyard against an army of zombies.

  Even though people walked the grounds in everyday clothes, they all wore lanyards—patients at this facility, she assumed.
She vaulted to the Telos building rooftop, occasionally stopping at a ventilation unit and pretending to mess with the access panel on it in case anyone caught a glimpse of her and wondered why she was there.

  It wasn’t until she got to the very back of the structure that she noticed a separate entrance, fenced off from the rest of the seemingly friendly and professional facility. It led to a small driveway that descended into what appeared to be an underground level. A white van, unmarked other than several numbers on the side and a license plate, sat idling by.

  Next to it stood two security guards.

  Their vests, the position of a radio on their shoulders, the curved edge of the helmet brim and holsters with pistols hanging on shoulders, all seemed a bit much for a therapeutic retreat.

  She paused the movie.

  Adrenaline pumped, a momentum pushing so hard that she needed to steady herself. Zoe crept down the side of the building, hovering while grabbing ledges and vents for balance. She remained a good fifteen or twenty feet above them, then wedged herself into a corner, as covered in shadows as possible. She zeroed in with her hearing, trying to pick up anything from the guards or their walkie-talkies. One leaned against the truck until the sound of a heavy gate rumbled, then the squeaking of wheels.

  Zoe hunched over, hands clinging against the corner of the building’s facade, nails digging so hard that the brick started to crumble under the pressure.

  Her ears picked up some unintelligible mumbling. If she’d been closer, she might have been able to put a face to the sound. Instead, it got masked by the opening of the van’s back doors. More walkie-talkie chatter cut through, and while describing drive times came one repeated word. A name? A code word? She wasn’t sure.

  Reconditioning.

  Her pocket buzzed, and she hung on with one hand while checking her phone. Going in, the text read. Will be off-line for a bit.

  Jamie was in but couldn’t help her right now. She considered breaking into this place, kicking down doors and punching out security until she found a firm answer. But given the dashes of violence from her memory, the decision for stealth won out.

  And Jamie said winging it wasn’t a good plan.

  Zoe waited. One guard got in the passenger side while the other circled the perimeter before climbing into the back. The doors slammed shut and the van roared to life. Zoe weighed her options and how much time she had to choose.

  Fuck it. At least this was going somewhere.

  She leaped off the ledge, then hovered down over the vehicle’s roof. She touched down with the slightest of impact, hopefully a noise no bigger than a bump in the road, then lay flat on the roof. She pulled her phone out to send a message to Jamie.

  This might take a while.

  * * *

  The last time Zoe had hung on top of a moving vehicle was nearly a year ago. Back then, she’d merely been exploring the range of her abilities, but no one had heard of the Throwing Star yet—not even her.

  That night began like most of her nights. She’d finished with her FoodFast deliveries and was rewarding herself the only way she knew how: with two plastic bottles of the cheapest possible vodka in her arms. She fumbled in her back pocket for the twenty-dollar bill she knew she’d put there earlier.

  “Go ahead of me.” She sighed as she motioned the pair of men behind her to the counter. She’d almost given up her search, but was trying one last chance through all her pockets when she realized one of the men was staring at her.

  The other had a gun pointed at the cashier.

  “You,” the armed man said to the cashier, whose arms were held straight up. “Empty the register. Fast. No tricks.”

  The words triggered a realization in her: even though she only watched horror movies, she still knew that the thug’s words were as cliché as it got. That triggered a laugh, first stifled, then a snort too loud to ignore, prompting all three men to turn her way.

  “Something funny?” the triggerman said. “You, keep filling the bag. And you, you wanna say something?”

  Maybe it was her lack of a past. Or the urge to do more than just be a FoodFast delivery person—a good one, for sure, but still just a delivery person.

  Or maybe it was just funny.

  “Sorry. It’s just what you said. It’s super cheesy. Couldn’t you at least, you know, be original?”

  The gunman’s eyes widened. His partner, though, started snickering, which prompted a daggered look from the man with the firearm.

  “She’s kind of right, bro,” the other man said.

  “Shut up—”

  “I just mean—”

  “SHUT UP—”

  In that split second, Zoe recognized that the two men took their focus off the robbery and instead turned to each other.

  They were distracted.

  Zoe made a single firm decision to change her life. She sprung forward faster than anyone in the small shop had likely seen a human move before. The gun dropped to the floor and Zoe spun on her heel, her arm extending into the now-disarmed gunman. He flew into a display of six-packs, the whole thing collapsing on him. He lay prone, breathing, but only a low groan coming from him.

  “Oh fuck!” yelled his partner, and he dashed out the door.

  Behind the counter, the cashier hammered the alarm button. Zoe turned, her eyes tracking the heat signature as it sprinted away, growing smaller and smaller. It stopped, then the outline knelt down—hesitating or hiding or possibly something else. Whatever the reason, he froze.

  Meaning if Zoe really, really wanted to go after him, she could.

  She turned, focus cycling between the cashier and the knocked-out robber and the one halfway to escape. If she let him go, would he do it again? If he was capable of this kind of violent crime, what else would he do?

  Her instincts told her to get her shit, go home, forget all this. But a scream and a yell came from the street, amplified by her heightened hearing.

  She had a choice here. Even though it fought against her instinct to take the easy way out, she still had to make a choice.

  “Keep an eye on him,” Zoe said to the cashier, pointing at the incapacitated man before running out the door.

  At that time of night, the streets saw little activity, the sidewalks even less. Zoe’s heightened hearing picked up panicked footsteps across the street. She dashed, suddenly feeling vibrant and alive in a way that had seemed impossible before, and looked to both sides.

  A heat signature showed up across the street.

  Then footsteps, followed by the slam of a car door.

  The alley.

  Zoe took three giant steps forward, then a hard turn as she propelled herself down the garbage-scented alleyway. Headlights popped on; though blinded, she still tracked the man’s heat signature. The engine revved, and Zoe grabbed a garbage bin, its bottom scraping against the pavement as she lifted it with one hand and hurled it at the car like a pitcher tossing the worst-smelling baseball of all time. The bin crashed on the windshield, cracking it and splattering filled plastic bags around. The car lurched forward with a tire squeal; Zoe jumped up, and out of instinct her hands went palm down, a strange magnetic bounce pushing against them.

  And suddenly she was hovering. Not for long, just a flash, but enough for her to notice that the usual rise and fall of physics weren’t applying. She let go, and landed knee-first on top of the shitty sedan. The front edge of its decade-old sunroof was propped open a sliver, enough for a handhold, but as the driver punched it and turned hard, momentum nearly tossed Zoe off. The instinct that told her to put palms out to hover fired again, prompting her to do a similar gesture to balance herself from flying off the car roof.

  They sped down one block, then two, then three, all the while Zoe’s hearing picking up an endless spew of cursing over the engine’s chugga-chugga. She looked ahead at an otherwise empty street, not even headlights b
earing down on the opposite side. Her mind clicked, figuring out all sorts of dangerous—but cool—possibilities, and the opening was clear.

  Metal and plastic ground and bent as she twisted at the sunroof until it sheared off in her hands. She reached down for the man, who fortunately—unfortunately, really—forgot to buckle his seat belt. Holding him by the scruff of his jacket, she leaped off, kicking the car as she did to barrel it onto its side. It rolled, crunching glass and metal and plastic with each rotation, and the geriatric engine mercifully pumped its last breath.

  Her feet landed together and she held the man up against the gated front of an electronics shop, his trembling mouth a mix of spittle and lost syllables. “Stop stealing shit,” she yelled, and when he didn’t respond, she did it again at twice the volume. “Stop. Stealing. Shit. Okay?”

  He barely got a response out when she slugged him across the chin, her control of the punch a tad bit looser than she would have liked. But still. No permanent damage, and she got the point across.

  That first night, the sheer thrill of taking on the bad guys—no, punching the bad guys—had been her gateway into becoming San Delgado’s hero. And if not hero, then at least headline-making vigilante, when time allowed.

  Until recently, that was. This hero biz was starting to get into her blood.

  And while this trip on the van rooftop wasn’t quite as eventful yet, something was about to unfold. Because straight down a deserted two-lane road was a row of chain-link fences and guard stations, and beyond it sat an industrial mess of lights, concrete and steam.

  14

  FOUR MINUTES LEFT. ALTHOUGH, Jamie had made the estimate with some degree of safety built in, so probably five or six minutes to go. But he couldn’t push it much further than that, especially because Dr. Waterfield’s phone had already rung twice.

  Still, the video taunted him. He told himself that the past didn’t matter, and he certainly believed it.