We Could Be Heroes

by Mike Chen

  The guards lined up against the glass capsule and called clear.

  The lights in the outer room flickered, just as they had minutes earlier. This time, it bathed Zoe in a strobe light, while the instrument panels by the capsule surged. Zoe sidestepped away from the door and now had a clear view of everyone—including the encapsulated man.

  His body spasmed, fingers vibrating at a rapid frequency and heels kicking at the table beneath, and the lights in his immediate space intensified even more than when she’d approached it. The flickering around her stopped, leaving it only pitch-black. She squinted, questioning what she saw.

  Was he opening his mouth?

  A voice boomed, half shriek and half language, cutting through as if it were a death howl issuing a command.

  She couldn’t quite decipher it, but if she had to guess, the word was “Now.”

  Heads turned in confusion, and Zoe examined their positions, identifying the best order to pick them all off. The lights strobed. She steadied her back leg to launch her assault on the team when she noticed that the man had turned his head. He locked eyes with her.

  It lasted for a split second. There may not have even been a message involved. But in that moment, Zoe turned in the other direction and sprinted down the hallway at a pace that none of the guards could match, so fast that it tore her pants at the knees. She punched through door after door, and suddenly the layout of the space came back to her. She knew when to turn left, when to turn right, when to make it to the stairwell, so much that when she heard another set of footsteps coming by, she opened the door to the stairs as wide as possible, letting the gradual hydraulics close it slowly for the appearance of escape.

  When four more sentries followed her false trail, she took two steps back and rammed her shoulder as hard as she could into a thinner metal door, one that didn’t guard experimental human projects or advanced glass capsules that did whatever, but a simple break room with a refrigerator, table and a newspaper on the counter.

  And a window.

  Zoe took a metal chair by two hands and rammed it through the glass, then cleared out the edges. She peered out. Six stories up? Whatever.

  It was fine. This would be fine. This is why she could hover. Winging it.

  She took four steps back when a voice called out.

  “Zoe. Zoe Wong.”

  In the hallway stood a lone figure, a single woman in a lab coat. “Welcome back, Zoe. You’ve been busy.”

  Zoe walked to the woman, someone who looked too put together with her heels and coiffed hair and pleasant smile. She took cautious step after cautious step until they were only a few feet apart.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going on here. Let’s go have a talk. I think you’ll—”

  Before the woman could finish the sentence, Zoe punched her across the mouth. She flew back into the wall, letting out an “oof.” Zoe nearly leaped over with an urge to give her adversary one more hit. Just to make sure.

  Except the woman didn’t even drop, instead giving her jaw a quick rub and steadying herself. She stood, her feet stable and her stare focused, as though it had been a mere nuisance rather than a full-bodied smash from the Throwing Star.

  That wasn’t good.

  Violent urges could wait.

  The woman started to speak. She didn’t get a complete word out when Zoe charged full speed toward the broken window and jumped.

  18

  AS FAR AS JAMIE could tell, no one else followed their car. He got dropped off right within the city limits at the Metro station right alongside Dock 4, then promptly removed the driver’s memory of their whole interaction. He tuned the car’s stereo to the new age Zen station; hopefully the driver would figure he pulled over from fatigue and was having a forgetful moment.

  With each push forward, his senses reached out, scanning for signs of being followed. It wasn’t an exact system; identification this way was mostly guesswork, suspect at best, but at least he felt better doing it, all the way through the Metro station and onto the first train. To be safe, he overshot his stop by two exits before boarding another train and returning, all while doing his share of spy-film trickery with waiting at the door, getting off, then getting back on.

  If anyone tailed him, at least Jamie did his best to make it difficult.

  After all of that, some two hours had passed since the highway. He half expected Zoe to already be at his place, maybe lingering on his building’s roof or up the tallest tree lining the parking lot. But there was no trace of her, and as he put his key in the apartment lock, Normal mewed and pawed at the door. That was a good sign; if anyone was waiting to ambush him, Normal would have hidden rather than ask for dinner.

  Jamie stepped in and turned on the lights. In return, Normal greeted him by walking back and forth between his legs, her gray tail wrapping around his ankles. “I know, I know. You must be hungry.”

  The cat replied in staccato mews, and they only intensified when he pulled out a can of cat food. As he did, the power fluctuated, spooking Normal and putting Jamie on high alert. Yet nothing came from it, not guards crashing through windows or writing mysteriously turning up on mirrors or counters. He peeled open Normal’s dinner then considered his options.

  But there were no options. With no phone and no means of contacting Zoe, waiting was the only option. How he waited was another story. The coffee mug in his hand trembled while his laptop connected to his neighbor’s Wi-Fi, everything he’d seen at Telos piping back through his memory.

  He could try to figure out who that mystery doctor was. Or dig up more about Telos. Or even see if more information about Zoe was available somewhere.

  But no, his mind remained fixated on the video he’d seen. Who was Frazer Troughton and how did he wind up hurting the people around him? How did he go from there to erasing Zoe’s memory?

  As the computer screen came to life, he settled in and forced himself to push aside urges to run off, and instead the most unexpected epiphany arrived.

  Frazer was the key to that rooftop.

  Jamie’s fingers trembled as he punched in the name, one character at a time. His pounding heart pressed against his chest, as if it might just shatter the bone and muscle holding it in place. He didn’t have a big detective board like Zoe. He didn’t agonize over it like Zoe. And yet, now he had the opportunity Zoe craved.

  She’d seriously punch him if he didn’t take it.

  Jamie hit Enter.

  The screen went black as it began the loading process, digital ones and zeroes reaching into the past to inform him who he was.

  He figured it’d be a few results. Probably the odd mention in a local newspaper, maybe an old bit of social media. What he got, though, were dozens of results, articles and posts made by Frazer Troughton bloviating on the future of technology and other such bullshit. In some cases, the byline identified him as a thought leader and an innovator; in others, it called him cofounder of CyberController Limited.

  But for the volume of results, none seemed more than that of an industry blowhard. He hadn’t been a celebrity or person of cultural significance. Instead, he was a guy who made some software and because of that, he wrote in some industry blogs. And that was it. Some two dozen articles skimmed, all of which espoused seemingly important ideas about secure and transparent decentralized database technology, all filled with the same repeated buzzwords. None of it meant anything to him, Jamie, and there were no mentions of any personal life, not even if he liked sports or films or anything along those lines. His social media accounts still existed, untouched in several years but with the same breadcrumbs of faux innovator speak and very little personality.

  He clicked through, eventually piecing together a timeline that showed that he’d been in tech for about ten years before a larger company bought out his company. Then he seemingly dropped off the planet. Only one forum post peeled back a lay
er of truth.

  That guy? I heard through the industry grapevine that he got bored and started drinking after the buyout, then his husband/boyfriend/whatever left him. He’s probably hiding on some island now.

  Six or seven pages in, one small paragraph mentioned an official death notice.

  He was a mouthy person who made something that got bought out by someone else, then disappeared with an addiction problem. Then he died, officially.

  And now he robbed banks. With, ironically, the goal of hiding on some island.

  Jamie leaned back in his chair, and he realized that the brilliant purples of dusk had now shifted into the deep and dark blues of night. His fingers itched to move, wanting to tell someone the whole story, the how and why it all happened.

  But he couldn’t. He had an identity to protect, a truth to safeguard from everyone else.

  Suddenly, the single lamp in the living room flickered, then went out, only the laptop’s battery-powered screen providing illumination. Outside, the rest of the world fared much better. From upstairs, he could hear a neighbor’s TV, the hurried voice of a sports announcer doing play-by-play coming through the thin ceiling. Out the window, the building’s exterior lamps still operated, sending in the harsh yellow-orange glow of wholesale lighting.

  It was as if the power grid singled out his specific apartment.

  Given the past two years, coincidences stopped being coincidences.

  From behind, the light from the laptop dimmed, then intensified, a brilliant blue bathing the nooks and crannies of the apartment. Jamie turned to see if the computer displayed the blue error screen, only to find a person standing in front of it.

  A person made up entirely of blue electricity.

  The figure lurched forward, a living neon silhouette with brilliant tiny flecks sparking off it and burning out to orange-yellow before disappearing in tiny trails of smoke. Details gradually came into view as Jamie’s eyes adjusted: distinctly masculine eyes and nose and cheekbones, all blurred out in crackling electricity, like a digital photo with the filter sliders turned all the way up.

  And a mouth. A mouth that moved, and when it did, a voice escaped. Not a voice in the truest sense, audible soundwaves powered by air and vocal cords, but a distorted screech that somehow formed words.

  “Stop her.”

  The figure approached, limbs moving with a smooth, almost unreal detachment, like its image was simply cut and pasted into this world.

  “Who?” Jamie asked. “Who is she? Give me a name, show me something? Is it Zoe? Why do you want me to stop her?”

  Its feet stepped forward, despite floating inches above the ground. It approached in slow motion, a neon puppet caught in ethereal molasses, and as it inched forward, it raised one hand, a finger tapping its own forehead and causing sparks to shoot off upon contact.

  Then it pointed at Jamie.

  Several seconds passed before the message crystalized. Jamie set his fingers out, reaching to see what secrets lurked.

  The connection offered an unusual clarity, and instead of sneaking into the photo gallery of someone else’s mind, this felt more like a live feed. But rather than being filled with the brilliant radiant blue of the figure in front of him, he only had a static point of view that made little sense. Hardware of some kind, buttons and displays, some wires poking out of panels, all of it in perfect re-creation but zero context. And silence, other than the rhythmic hum of various machines. The visuals sharpened, brightened, came more alive, and in doing so, the background light seemed to dim. The field of vision moved, ever so slightly and a voice—no, a thought—came through with piercing clarity.

  There.

  Jamie snapped back into his own mind and body, only to see the figure begin to flicker, blue light flashing throughout his apartment. Its mouth opened, and as its body began to wither from existence, a final distorted voice arrived, but any message got buried under the sheer density of scratching distorted noise.

  A moment later, the lights returned. The refrigerator began humming again, the ceiling fan whirred back to life, the microwave beeped. All of the ambient noises that provided the soundtrack of modern living returned to their regular rhythm, providing a hypnotic comfort for those that found silence too eerie.

  But the peace only lasted for ten or fifteen seconds. From outside, footsteps pounded before a loud bang caused the door to visibly vibrate. “Jamie! Open the door!”

  19

  ZOE HAD BARELY MADE it there.

  She ran all the time for work, dashing across rooftops and jumping over alleys, using her momentum to propel forward. She’d chased down muggers and thieves as well, tracking them via heat signatures, then sprinting at extraordinary speeds to cut even the most considerable leads down.

  The past two hours, though, had been different. After leaping out the window, she’d hovered down, only to encounter a mass of guards with weapons trained on her. Her hearing picked up orders through their headsets—they were specifically told not to kill her.

  Incapacitate her, fine. Injure her, fine.

  But kill her? That was a definite no-no.

  Still Zoe preferred to avoid getting shot in any capacity. And trusting those guards to not murder her, well, she felt a wee bit skeptical. Zoe gripped the frame of a parked motorcycle and held it in front of her as she crouch-walked behind it. Bullets bounced off it, ricocheting off nearby cars and walls. From her thermal view, a group of five rushed in, all running at maximum adrenaline.

  These guys were trained. Whatever happened to the “do not kill” order, she wasn’t sure, because discharges peppered the dark evening parking lot. She made it behind a car and waited until the sentries recalibrated to her position. That single breath was all the time she needed; she flew above them, hurling the motorcycle as hard as she could. It smashed into the concrete, tearing into another car while splintering off metal and plastic in a spray of debris.

  In the commotion, she sprinted and jumped over the barbed wire fence, then began moving through fields and off road, a sheer blanket of black encroaching as she made it farther and farther away from the facility’s lights. The empty stretches of dirt and weeds gave way to a wooded area, enough cover to obscure any potential tracking. Her legs pounded with each frantic step, her direction somewhat aimless except away, until she came across a one-lane road and a car pulling out of a driveway.

  There weren’t many options here.

  The car screeched to a halt as she dashed in front of it, both hands up. Skid burns wafted into the air, the odor of rubber filling the country road, and the vehicle’s sudden stop wasn’t enough. The bumper tapped into her knees; most people would have been knocked down, but Zoe pushed back a step, then adjusted.

  “Oh my God,” the man yelled through the windshield. “Are you okay?”

  “I need your car.” Zoe marched over and met him face-to-face, his eyes wide and mouth open. She craned her neck to see any signs of pursuit—something was there, but from where and how many, she wasn’t sure.

  “Wait, are you okay? Slow down.”

  “No,” she said. Her hands gripped the bottom of the front driver-side tire, the rubber still warm. She lifted, as easily as someone might lift a carton of milk. The man gasped loud enough to be heard through the closed car door. “I. Need. Your. Car. Step aside.”

  The man nodded as the car collapsed down. As Zoe grabbed the door handle, he let out a tiny question. “Are you the Throwing Star?”

  It was a reasonable question given her body type and what she’d just done. But answering put her anonymity at risk. Zoe bit down on her lip, considering the possibilities, then went with the easiest answer: ignore. “I really need your car. Get out. Now.” She didn’t need Jamie’s powers to understand the fear the guy felt, but he could go to counseling about this later. Zoe had to move. Her arm curled back to do something—she hadn’t quite figured that part out
yet—when the man’s mouth shifted. It lasted a fraction of a second, though its very existence was a problem.

  He knew something bad was going down.

  In the distance, her enhanced hearing picked up rumbles, vibrations, shouts and walkie-talkie squawks. An indeterminate number, an imprecise distance, but they were coming—and Zoe didn’t have time to play the hero. At a core level, the whole extraordinary vigilante thing was about scratching some sort of emotional itch. She knew that, despite having never gone to therapy (at least that she knew of). But generally being good to people sat right with her, or at least not doing harm.

  This would be harm. Or at least expensive. But making it to another day so she could help more people, that was doing good, right?

  Yeah. She went with that for now.

  The man’s eyes grew wide, his expression changing in almost slow motion as she formed a fist and pulled her arm back. Faster-than-normal healing, tougher skin and muscles, all that was normal for her by now. But she still wasn’t sure what might come out of this.

  The quiet of the night broke as a loud clang cut through, the sound repeating in softer and softer echoes—only to be absorbed by the whip of helicopter blades. Zoe turned to catch the thinnest of lights shining down between tree leaves. She pulled her hand out of the mangled hole in the car door, and looked the man in the eye.

  “Get out.”

  His shaking hands took several seconds to undo the seat belt and open the door; he exited the car, more of a stumble-and-fall on the way out, a move that left him on his knees, dirt clouds rising around him.

  The noise crept closer. She needed to get onto the main highway. Now.

  Her leg swung into the still-idling car and as she settled in, his uneasy voice cut through the air. “You saved my sister. Two weeks ago.”

  Two weeks ago—Zoe actually had those memories except they existed as a jumbled mess, a blur of nighttime running and colliding fists. Countless people thanked her, hugged her, shook her hand, yet those interactions registered as ephemeral, disappearing as quickly as they came. She changed people’s lives, and the only thing that remained came in the form of a rush of heat signatures and the satisfaction that came with punching someone.