We Could Be Heroes

by Mike Chen

  “What are you grinning at?”

  That voice.

  Jamie spun around, eyes and every other sense on high alert. No one at the abandoned factory to his left. And no on at the empty adult school on his right. Nothing behind him, nothing straight ahead, nowhere for the voice to come from—

  Nowhere but up.

  Of course.

  A three-story office building across the street, a place that probably didn’t look so unfriendly during the daytime. There, at the very top, he saw the silhouette of a woman standing at attention. He waved before he thought better of it, and as he checked his surroundings again for anyone or anything that might have caught the gesture, she leaped off the rooftop, hands extended and palms flat. She descended to the ground at a soft speed, landing with barely a clack of her shoes.

  Jamie jogged forward, one foot landing ungracefully in a puddle as he went to meet her. The backpack on his shoulders bounced up and down with each step, and the now-soaked bottom of his left pant leg sprayed dribbles with each movement. It didn’t matter, though. She was here. She made it. Jamie wasn’t much of a hugger, though maybe he simply didn’t have the opportunity due to the whole avoiding people thing. In any case, this felt like an arms-wide-open moment. “Zoe!” That came out louder than it probably should have, and his legs nearly tangled between themselves as he dashed across the street without looking both ways.

  Except she didn’t return the gesture. Both of her hands went up in a defensive posture, though not quite as crisp as he’d seen before. Her body probably retained some of the muscle memory from all those Throwing Star hours prior to the erasure, though he guessed that whatever specific training and experience she had must have reset too. Jamie stopped several feet from the curb. “You made it.” He tugged at the wool around his neck, “Did the scarf help? It seemed kind of silly but I thought something visual might help.”

  An oncoming rumble made Jamie suddenly realize that if a car came zipping by, he’d be a goner. He took two steps forward, only for Zoe to dash backward at a frighteningly instant speed, her fists still ready.

  “Wait, wait, wait. I’m just trying to not get killed by that,” he said, thumbing at the truck rolling by them. “You’re here. It actually worked.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Jamie and I’m—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got that. But who are you?”

  Jamie’s hands shot up, palms out. Zoe’s eyes were wide but focused and she inched toward him before angling off to the side. He tried to meet her gaze but she refused to look at him. “You’ve rediscovered your abilities,” he said, searching for something to break through with her. “This is good.”

  “You’re in my memory,” she said with a sneer. “Why?”

  “Okay. Okay, look, let me fill you in. I laid clues in there for you with the hopes that you’d put them together. Where did they stash you this time?”

  “Answer the question. Who are you?”

  “My name is Jamie,” he repeated, “and I’m your friend.” Urgency pushed the words out at an accelerated clip. Though he didn’t have Zoe’s emotional detection, tension clearly escalated in her. “I’m like you. Not exactly like you but I have abilities. Yours are physical. Mine are mental. Look, I—”

  Before he got the words out, Zoe grabbed him by the collar and launched upward. Air stung Jamie’s cheeks, the already cold night breeze suddenly a hundred times more intense for a sprinkle of seconds. Jamie’s stomach dropped as they hit the peak of ascent and landed on the rooftop of the adult trade school. Zoe’s boots crunched into gravel and Jamie gasped for any oxygen that might restore everything that was just knocked out of him.

  “There,” Zoe said. “Out of sight. So, Jamie, you left all those clues for me. How do I know it’s not a trap? Why don’t I just throw you into the bay from here? What’s in the bag? A weapon? Poison? Something to block my abilities?”

  “No. No, no, it’s not that at all.” Jesus, becoming friends with Zoe had been hard enough the first time. He had to break through her suspicion again? “Look, let me just show you—”

  “Slowly. Back away.”

  “Zoe. Listen to my voice. Think about the memories. Can’t you tell I’m being honest?” He locked eyes with her; there had to be some connection there. “And a little, you know, terrified?”

  “If we’re friends, why did you tie me up?”

  “Tie you—no, that wasn’t me. But they sent me in to, um...” Probably not the best thing to lead with. “Look. It’s complicated. Can I please show you what’s in this bag?”

  Zoe didn’t respond. Her whole body remained a coiled trap, and if he said the wrong thing, it would trigger, which probably would lead to him flying off this building.

  “I’m gonna open this bag really slowly.” Jamie undid the straps across the backpack’s top flap. Weeks ago, the very same backpack lay strapped to his shoulders, piles of cash bouncing around inside while he’d run as fast as he could from the Throwing Star.

  And now, he reached in for something of much higher value.

  “Is that...” Zoe leaned forward, her posture suddenly halfway to relaxed. “Is that a binder?”

  “It is.” The now-empty backpack landed at Jamie’s feet and he held the binder out with both hands. “Okay, there’s this scientist named Kaftan who’s experimenting with people. Giving them powers and observing them. It’s a long story. Kaftan just reset your memories a little while back. This binder, I know it’s not the same as having your memories. And there’s only so far I could go back. But as far as Zoe Wong, the Throwing Star, this is everything I could figure out about who you were. From what you told me, what we did together, what we researched.”

  Though the binder was filled to capacity with sheets and sheets of paper, Zoe lifted it out of his hand as if it were a single sheet from a newspaper. “Why didn’t they reset you?”

  “My guess is that Kaftan thinks I’m cornered. That I’m not a threat. And they didn’t foresee my whole Mind Robber fiasco last time around, so it was easier to keep tabs on me this way.” Jamie thought of all his research, all his plans—the saved money, the possible beach locations, maybe even temping again if he had to.

  He supposed Kaftan was right.

  “This,” she said, holding it close and opening it up, “looks like a lot.”

  “Yeah. Well, when you don’t have a day job, you find time to do stuff like this.” Jamie chuckled to himself, breath rolling into the night. “You could say I’m pretty good with memory.”

  Zoe’s face twisted, lips pursed and eyes shut. A convulsion whipped through her body and she handed the binder back to Jamie.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What is it?” he asked. “What did they do to you?”

  “I don’t...” Zoe said before her nose twitched again. “I don’t,” she tried again before exploding out a sneeze, one that echoed across the night.

  Jamie looked at Zoe, then the binder, then back again. “Oh shit.”

  “What did you lace that with?” Zoe said between coughs, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s cat hair. Normal must have rubbed on the binder. I left it on the coffee table, sometimes she lies down on random flat surfaces and—”

  “Your cat is named Normal?”

  “Yeah. And you’re allergic to her. Sorry about that.”

  Zoe nodded, wiping her nose. Jamie tried not to look at the unsightly drip that dangled seemingly without Zoe’s notice. “I, um...” He patted his pockets, then opened up the front backpack pouch for his usual stash of emergency napkins taken from coffee shops. “Here. They’re a little rough on the nose but they get the job done.”

  “Thanks.” Zoe took the napkin, leaving Jamie to wonder if extraordinary nose blowing cleared out sinuses more effectively than for regular humans. “Hey,” she said. “You wrote all this from m
emory?”

  “Yeah, why do...”

  Jamie stopped midsentence. He didn’t need an answer. The way Zoe held her hand up, index finger out, told him everything he needed to know.

  “Holy shit, Zoe. You can...”

  “Yeah,” she said with a grin. “I can.”

  Was that her next evolution? Kaftan had mentioned something about needing the serum to work on both a physical and mental level. What was the word Kaftan used? Revision? Perhaps this revision represented the next step, the final goal in the process. Possibilities exploded, but they hung counterbalanced with his own urges to safely pack up Normal and run. One look at Zoe, though, showed that her grin pushed even wider, her eyes glowing with excitement. Except for one quick glance at the scarf around his neck, her focus locked in, confidence practically dripping off of her.

  It couldn’t hurt to try, could it? He just needed one thing.

  “Okay.” His head began to bob up and down in a rhythm of nods. “Okay, then. If we’re gonna do this, I just have one request. Can we go somewhere with coffee?”

  “Sure. By the way,” she said, “the scarf kind of works for the Mind Robber. Looks cooler than a hood.”

  25

  JAMIE HAD LIED TO HER.

  That night, when he first helped Zoe break through the wall of blankness protecting her memories, he’d seen something and he’d lied to her about it. Now she knew.

  And yet, she wasn’t mad about it.

  Back then, he didn’t have the proper context for it. And maybe he still didn’t, other than the fact that at some point during his employment under Telos, he grew a conscience and then was reset himself. But when he—the version of Jamie currently sitting with her—discovered that memory fragment, he felt immediate guilt. She knew this, the guilt so powerful in his memory that it colored her reading of that moment.

  It was a lie. But done for a purpose. And the anguish he felt over that decision ate at him enough that she opted not to bring it up. Instead, she chose to gloss over that moment for now.

  So much else was there.

  Not everything. But thumbing through all of Jamie’s memories told Zoe enough.

  Enough about who the Throwing Star was.

  Enough about who Zoe was. Some things seemed to be universal about her, even down to the free movie app she still used on her phone.

  Enough about who the Mind Robber was.

  Enough about Jamie’s cat. Actually a bit too much. He really spoiled that cat.

  And enough about Telos, Kaftan, Project Electron. At least she didn’t make Jamie regurgitate Kaftan’s whole speech trying to justify experimenting on desperate people to save the world in a really, really roundabout way. And who wanted to eat electricity anyway? That sounded terrible. Even if it was in the form of electric tacos.

  The worst part was apparently she’d done some really, really cool stuff. Breaking into Kaftan’s facility, taking out guards, jumping out a high window while being shot at. But the only thing she’d seen was herself telling the story, no cool first-person experience of it all. But the secondhand tale would have to be enough to boost her confidence.

  Zoe Wong was a total badass. She liked that.

  “Are you, um, done?” Jamie asked. They’d settled into the all-night café where they had been not that long ago, only a few miles from Jamie’s house. Seriously, Jamie drank a lot of coffee. For a moment, Zoe stopped thinking about the bigger picture and wondered just how Jamie wasn’t jittery all the time given his level of coffee consumption.

  “I think so. I might need to fill in the blanks later.”

  “Do you... I mean...” He paused, then glanced around with a worried grimace. She tracked his eyes, matching his scans of the place. It was late—past midnight—and other than one person on her laptop, earbuds in, only a pair of employees lingered behind the counter. “You’re good with everything you saw?”

  The rooftop. He had to be dancing around the whole rooftop topic. But that wasn’t a conversation for now; plenty of questions still needed answers, but they could wait till later. “Yeah. What’s next?”

  “You know what I can do now,” Jamie said. “Have you ever tried anything like that?”

  “No. I mean, I just figured out this whole memory viewing thing this morning. So it’s been a bit of a crash course.” A grin took over, Zoe’s mind alive with possibilities. “Hey, you can teach me. I mean, maybe we’ll even unlock new possibilities for you. Think about it.”

  Jamie took a sip from his mug, holding it at his face. His look gave away the fact that this wasn’t exactly lighting a spark of enthusiasm. In fact, it seemed quite the opposite; everything about him appeared frozen. Zoe glanced around to make sure the world still moved around them, in case she’d developed the ability to pause time over the past few minutes.

  Given everything that had happened, it wouldn’t totally be out of the question.

  Zoe’s elbows landed on the table, her left index finger pointed at Jamie.

  “Whoa, hey, what are you doing?” Jamie asked with a sudden jerk.

  “Heh. Got your attention. Come on, let’s get excited,” Zoe said with a light smack of the table. “It’s you and me. Back together. We broke into Telos, you know? You got in their computer system. I rode on top of a truck. I threw a freakin’ motorcycle at armed guards.”

  “That has yet to be confirmed. You may have been exaggerating. I don’t know. But,” Jamie said, draining his mug of coffee, “I wouldn’t put it past you. Trying to impress me.”

  “I’ve tested my abilities. I’m pretty sure I pulled it off. Full stop.”

  “Okay, then. Mark me impressed.”

  “Right? See? We make an awesome team.” Sleep would be impossible tonight after discovering all this. Every night opened up to new possibilities. Zoe wondered why the old her chose a FoodFast job and occasionally drinking too much. That version and her current self didn’t seem to diverge too much other than developing memory powers. So what was different? What nudged the needle this time?

  The question paused her momentum, freezing her until she caught Jamie staring at her.

  That simple, huh?

  “I’m slightly terrified of your sudden confidence,” he said. “That’s new.”

  “Come on.” Jamie winced at her near giddiness, so much that she told herself to rein it in a little bit. “Look, Kaftan and her team, they may have already figured out that we reconnected. They could be spying on us right now. First strike, you know?” She was glowing. She couldn’t help it. This was way better than discovering her powers on her own. This was knowing that beating the shit out of any adversary, that being able to launch out of sight and hover out of reach, she could go bolder and better than she even imagined.

  Who wouldn’t be happy about that?

  Jamie, apparently. He shook his head and his voice kept low. “No one’s here. I’ve been monitoring the café. Everyone here is legit.”

  “You know what I mean. Maybe not here here—” her arms swooped around “—but around. Watching. How else do you think they tracked us down before? But if we go in now, boom, element of surprise.”

  “I’m sure they are watching. Kaftan wants your abilities to evolve. But that doesn’t even matter.” Jamie’s head shook again, this time accompanied by a frown. “No, no, no. My coded message for you wasn’t about trying any sort of frontal assault on Kaftan. It was restoring who you are. So you didn’t wonder. That’s all I wanted to do. Normal and I are going to go somewhere. I keep thinking about the Caribbean. Have you ever tried coffee beans imported from there? The real stuff? It sounds like a dream. Working in a little café. Quiet. Reading a lot of books. That was my plan B if we didn’t reconnect. And now it can be plan A.”

  The wistful glint in his eyes betrayed that he probably visualized reading books around his allergy-bomb of a cat while sipping strong coffee on the beach
right now.

  She supposed that sounded appealing to some. But not her.

  “Zoe. You are my friend. I don’t...” His mouth formed a thin line while he paused. “I don’t make friends easily. So it was important that I bring you back. But now that I have, I can say goodbye.”

  “You can’t give me all of this and then take off. Jamie, listen. Isn’t Kaftan going to hurt more people?”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yes we do. She needs the power grid to do whatever she needs to do. You take that out, lots of bad things happen. Look at all the crimes that happened during the rolling blackouts. That was, I dunno, half of the dudes I beat up. Think of the people in this city, all at risk. Like...” A flash of one of Jamie’s co-opted memories came to Zoe, perfect for this type of convincing. “Like that nice old couple who live across the courtyard from you. They’re the people who’d be vulnerable during a blackout. And for how long? An hour is bad. More than that...” The true consequences all seemed theoretical at this point,

  “No, look. You’re the hero, not me.” He pointed at her, his look way too serious and solemn for this moment. “I wasn’t even that good of a villain. True villains are, like, sociopaths who don’t care. I don’t know what the word is for ‘extremely pragmatic bank robber,’ but that’s me. That was me. And that’s not me anymore. Now? I’m just...” He looked up, straight up, and blew a sigh into the air. “I’m just done with it all.”

  “You’re scared,” she said after a pause. “You’re scared of her?”

  “Given the fact that I can’t fly or throw motorcycles at people, yes. I am terrified of her.”

  “You’re selling yourself short.” Zoe spoke with brightness in her tone, like a life coach more than someone trying to coax a partner into highly illegal but morally justified crimes. “You broke into Telos—”

  “Because you bribed me.”

  “Because you cared. See, here’s the thing. Yeah, I can read memories now, but it’s easier than that. You don’t risk everything you did because you don’t care. There are better, safer ways. You wanted to help. And look at how you broke into Telos, that’s like some real spy movie shit right there.”