We Could Be Heroes

by Mike Chen

  Jamie’s heavy sigh blew into the stale air, and he started laughing to himself. His eyes shot up to the ceiling, his head in a constant shake.

  “What is it?”

  “They’re gonna kill us,” he said with a chuckle. “Oh crap, they’re gonna kill us. His orders were ‘terminate on sight.’ I take it all back about trying to do something good. We should have run off to the Caribbean. We could be sitting on a beach. I bet Normal would like the fresh coconuts.”

  “Can you brain-stun him? Before he gets close to us?”

  “Sure. While I’m at it—” Jamie’s fingers went back up “—I’ll remove that memory of him receiving the order to kill us.” The merc’s mind synced up with his and Jamie flipped through the details like they were folders in a file cabinet, and one quick flick wiped it away.

  Or at least it should have.

  The memory remained, blurring out before snapping back into focus.

  “Shit.”

  “Good news has never started with shit.”

  He tried again. And several more times, but the memory refused to budge. Another flick should have brain-stunned the merc, but that failed to take too, and now the mind floated back and forth, signs of an agitated and pacing and very awake human being.

  “I think it’s the walls. My range is limited with this concrete. It must be dulling my abilities too. Well,” he said, turning to Zoe, “if they didn’t know we were inside before, they definitely know now. Do you see Waris?”

  Lines of concentration etched across her face as she crouched down and slowly panned her head. She took in a sharp gasp, then squinted. “There. That’s him.”

  “Okay. Let’s get to him before he gets to us. Or blows up the city.”

  The sound of boots clacking against concrete echoed in the tight hallway, and despite the lack of light, Zoe’s walk picked up in both pace and confidence. Jamie watched, and though she was several meters in front of him by now, he was pretty sure that her arm wasn’t bleeding anymore.

  37

  A HAND-SIZED HOLE stared back at Zoe.

  Seconds before, smooth dull concrete sat there, but then she formed a fist and thrust it with controlled strength and fury, puncturing the wall and sending cracks outward from the industrial wound.

  “Jesus.” Jamie turned, his eyes wide. “What—are you, I mean—”

  “Sorry,” Zoe said, shaking dust and debris off her hand. “I was just testing things.”

  “Testing how hard concrete is?”

  “Sort of. I was worried my powers were going out.” She gestured around them. “There aren’t as many heat signatures as there were five minutes ago. It’s like they’re vanishing from the map. But,” she said, “it’s not that. Some are up front with Kaftan dealing with the shit up there. Some are patrolling all over the grounds. I don’t think they realize how far in we are. And we’ve got two in front of Electron’s door.” Eyes closed, she knelt close to the ground, not to sense anything further but to assess her own state.

  “Save your strength,” Jamie said, his voice in full concerned-parent mode.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s just two guards. Besides, you can just brain-stun them.”

  In silence, she watched him, hands and face nearly all the way up against the wall closest to their eventual target. A minute passed, possibly two—which was good for her own restoring powers.

  Based on Jamie’s expression when he turned around, they were going to need them.

  “I can’t.” His knuckles tapped on the wall. “Something about this. Maybe its thickness or...something. I’m not sure. I can sense them but nothing happens when I try to stun them. I can’t even dive in. I just know they’re there.” He pulled the security card out from his back pocket and gestured at the metal door a few feet farther down the hall. “I think it’s a hallway past here. Should I?”

  Zoe considered the alternatives, but at this stage, no other bright ideas existed. The only way to Project Electron was through that door. “One second. I think this may be the one time when we do actually need a plan.”

  “Three,” Jamie said.

  Zoe nodded and leaped into the air.

  “Two.”

  As she hit the ceiling, her palms went out, keeping her hovering. She threw her legs back, bracing up against the corner wall and pressing her as flat against the overhead concrete as possible.

  “One.” Jamie swiped the badge against the card reader. A beep filled the space, followed by the clicking and whirring of locking mechanisms systematically undoing themselves. The door slid open, and though Zoe felt her strength starting to pull away from her, she fought for more. Sweat beaded across her forehead and her pulse began to race as her grip on the ether caused her hands to tremble.

  “What was that?” one voice said.

  “Check thermal.”

  Thermal detection? Zoe wondered if the technology-based stuff was any better than what she naturally saw. Jamie would be obvious, with a person-shaped marker standing straight up. Would they detect her? She supposed it depended on if they were looking up.

  “One target. Hey,” the voice yelled, “this is a restricted area. All personnel should have cleared out hours ago.”

  Jamie glanced up at Zoe. He tapped the side of his head and mouthed “no,” along with several shakes. From above, she saw him angle around the sliding door, probably debating whether to reveal himself for a clear shot at brain-stunning or to remain hidden in the corner.

  “Jamie,” she whispered. They met eyes, his containing clear panic. Which made sense, given the “terminate on sight” orders. “Stay there.”

  The footsteps came closer, and as they did, Zoe’s arms and legs were in a full shake, struggling to keep the tactical advantage above. The guard was almost there. Almost, so close that his shadow broke the threshold of the doorway.

  And first, the barrel of a gun poked through. Jamie flattened himself into the corner as much as possible, though his hands stayed up, ready to brain-stun. Could he lock on from there or did he need a clear line of sight?

  The barrel began to turn Jamie’s direction. Of course, the thermal detection. They knew he was there, hiding didn’t do anything. She kicked the wall behind her with enough force to chip away debris. It scattered below her, confusing the guard at first, and that gave her enough advantage to fall straight down on top of him.

  But without all of her strength. She gripped on to the large man’s shoulders, and he swung back and forth, trying to shake her off. The guard’s rifle went off, and she saw Jamie go down. He was either hit or using sheer survival instincts. One swift blow to the guard’s hand knocked the rifle loose. From her peripheral vision, she saw the other guard begin charging.

  Zoe locked her arms behind the man’s and kicked out his knees. “Stun him,” she yelled.

  Jamie rose up, his hands out and eyes squinting. The guard struggled and she tried to pull him back, her diminished strength still greater than his normal human strength. Not by much, but enough to hold him steady for Jamie.

  A second later, he went limp.

  Zoe let him go, and the guard dropped like an empty puppet. But right when the guard’s face smacked concrete, a flash came from the hallway and she was spun around by the impact of a bullet to her shoulder.

  “Zoe,” Jamie yelled, enough to get the charging guard’s attention. Zoe fell backward and slammed into the wall, pain starting to kick in from the bullet wound on the opposite shoulder of the one from earlier.

  One point for the San Delgado PD, one for these guys. She supposed that was karmic balance of some sort.

  The man stepped past the doorframe, and as he did, Jamie used the fallen guard’s rifle like a bat, swinging away. It didn’t do much damage, but it created enough confusion to give Zoe an opening. She charged with her remaining strength, lowering her entire shoulder, bullet wound and all, then launche
d with what speed she had left into the middle of the guard’s back.

  The guard flew past Jamie and smacked into the concrete wall, causing a dent that was not quite as large as Zoe’s test smash earlier. Jamie stepped over him and his extended fingers jabbed into the space above the man’s face. The man convulsed for a second, then went limp on the ground.

  “Zoe,” Jamie said after finally looking up. “You’re a mess.”

  “I’m fine.”

  The grimace on his face said more than any actual reply. “No, you’re hurt.” Jamie grabbed the walkie-talkies and their small single-ear headsets off both guards and handed one to Zoe.

  “I’m fine. Let’s go end this before more of these assholes try to murder us.” She marched down the hallway to Project Electron. Pain coursed through her upper body. Her legs felt like they were bogged down in cement. At the door, mechanisms whirred, releasing locks one by one, and as each piece welcomed them in, the other side of the door suddenly felt like much more than a goal.

  It was the portal to her entire life.

  * * *

  Zoe remembered.

  This room, the man in the tube. She closed her eyes and saw the exact same thing in her memory, but a lifetime ago, when she was herself but a previous revision.

  And yet something about this room, this space, this being with the fiery red glow, it suddenly came back to her, a switch flipping in her mind. The memory played with perfect detail: the way he’d looked at her, locked eyes and then let out the most horrifying inhuman sound ever to come out of a human body.

  “This is him,” Jamie said. “Waris Kaftan. Biophysicist. This is everything.” He pulled out his phone and started snapping photos. “Damn, no signal. If I can get these photos to the police, we’re good. We’re in the clear.”

  “Jamie.” Her voice was soft, almost a confession wrapped in a single word that something was happening. “Jamie, I remember. I remember how I was in this room before. With him, with all these devices. Wait,” she said, surveying the room. “That wasn’t here last time.”

  She pointed at a most unusual bit of technology that gave off a blinding glow, a brilliant blue like someone set the most perfect sky on fire. Jamie looked at it and inhaled sharply. “What is it?” Zoe asked. But she didn’t need him to answer; several seconds was all it took to revive the memory from the interrogation chamber that she’d viewed in his mind.

  “That must be what’s causing all the power fluctuations. And it has to be tied to the blue person.” Jamie gave it a close-up inspection before following the massive cables jutting out of its bottom port all the way to Waris. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “That machine. It’s connected to him.” He disappeared on the other side of the capsule as he gave it a closer look. “At the base of his neck. Jeez. How do you even do this?”

  More rhetorical questions came from Jamie, but Zoe stopped listening. Instead, she took cautious steps forward, approaching the mystery cube. Half of it appeared like any sort of fancy lab equipment, buttons and displays and blinking lights. But on the right side, the half with cables sticking out of it, its blinding light also produced a low hum that may have only been audible to her ears. She put her hand up and inched closer to it, drawn as if by magnetic force or invisible pulley or just sheer curiosity.

  And suddenly, the memories were there.

  Not just of being in the room. All of it. Waking up in the apartment. Punching the dumpster. Thwarting her first robbery. All her choices. The memories were hers, not lifted from Jamie.

  They made her whole. And she needed more.

  Layers of her life arrived, her previous revisions turning on like light switches suddenly activating throughout a dark building. In one revision, the speed and the strength were there, but without the urge to fight crime. In another, weed rather than booze was her drug of choice. In another, she somehow knew that she could take flight, instinctively jumping out the window of the same old apartment on a whim.

  But only one time did she put it all together to become the Throwing Star.

  Zoe stopped and opened her eyes, putting the massive awakening on pause. One little detail forced a smirk—how about that? In each revision, she’d tried to watch Lo-Bot: Cyborg Samurai, and each time, she turned it off halfway through, at the exact same spot. Five times, in fact, always when Lo-Bot is confronted by his former police partner about losing his humanity with a solo quest for vengeance. Every time, she’d rolled her eyes and turned her attention to something else.

  Except for that night with Jamie. And the movie turned out to be pretty good after all.

  What else lay underneath? Her fingers reached forward, index finger out—not to rob anyone’s memories but to get hers back.

  “What the hell was that? This whole thing just...surged or something.” Jamie’s face popped up and scanned back and forth until landing on Zoe. “Did you touch that?”

  “Jamie, this thing. My memories. It’s like a goddamn switch in my head.” It was as if the device, the energy radiating from it, somehow healed the gaps in her mind, reconnecting the neural pathways that held all of the data of experience. Jamie had it wrong; he hadn’t lifted or deleted people’s memories, he’d simply unplugged the connection, like a cell phone that suddenly couldn’t get service. Her eyes closed again and the flow of information short-circuited her coordination, dropping her to her knees, arms hugging herself. She forced her eyes open, breaking past the onslaught of memories, to see Jamie kneeling in front of her. “All right here. I remember,” she said. “Who I was before the Throwing Star. How many more lives are hidden?” She looked at the source of the brilliant blue glow. “How many more until I recover the truth? I’ve got at least five revisions back.”

  “Wait. Don’t touch it again,” Jamie said. “We don’t know what that’s doing to you. Touch it again and you might fry your brain.”

  “Or I could get everything back. All the way to the end. The original Zoe Wong.”

  “Zoe. You can’t. Not now. Look.” Jamie nodded to Waris, still contained within the Electron chamber. A rumble had started, shaking the floor panels and the devices around them. “Zoe, this is not the time for experiments. I need to figure out how to shut this all down. I need to get into his—” Jamie pointed at Waris “—mind. And I need you to guard us while I do that. If this thing knocks you out and guards find us, then that’ll be it. Game over for us.”

  Mere inches stood between her and a potentially whole mind. All those questions, the months staring at the detective board. It seemed so simple.

  “Please,” Jamie said. She met his pleading eyes, lines forming on his brow. “For the city. If we don’t stop this, the whole grid goes down for who knows how long.”

  The entire city without power. Once people lost any sense of control, they were likely to panic. Security systems down, traffic run amok. Zero communication, zero emergency services. Food, water, gas, all of it gone.

  They were there to try to do some good. It just took a second for Zoe to remember that.

  “Right.” She nodded. “Better get to work.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie said. He disappeared to the other side of the capsule, though his voice continued. “I’m not sure what to make of this mess underneath here. Is he responsive?”

  The whole capsule seemed to pulsate with energy, its glowing buttons and indicators going at a consistent rhythm. Zoe leaned over, nearly on top of it now, when Waris opened his eyes and looked at her.

  The facility lights dimmed and rose and back again, fighting to stay activated until they finally gave out, leaving only the flashing lights and displays of devices connected to Waris. Blue flashes whirled around the room, leaving traces of sparks that flickered into the dark. They zapped around the space, zigging and zagging until being pulled together, a shimmering pool made of electricity.

  From the pool rose the figure of a man.


  The figure stood, blue sparks raining off him.

  “Jamie,” Zoe whispered. The figure stared at her; no eyes, no face, just the shape of a head but she knew its focus landed on her.

  “I can’t get through,” Jamie said, his hands up and pointed at the blue man. “It wants something but I can’t get through. I can’t—”

  Before Jamie could finish his sentence, Zoe put her hand up, fingers out. A bolt of electricity flew out from the figure, connecting with her before everything went dark.

  38

  PITCH BLACK ENVELOPED THE ROOM. With the darkness came silence except for a quiet wheezing from Waris. Not even a backup generator hummed, which made Jamie question how well designed this place actually was.

  Either that, or how much the blue thing wanted to do...whatever it did.

  Then the silence broke—a quick thump followed by a louder clang which created an echo in the space. The whirs and rumbles of machine start-up cycles played a chorus of mechanical noises, soon followed by various beeps. Overhead, the lights flickered, breaking through the darkness to finally achieve full illumination.

  Zoe was on the floor.

  “Oh shit. Not now, not now, not now.” His knees stung as Jamie landed next to her, and though he’d read up on general first aid since the bank incident, nothing quite applied to the situation of a woman with extraordinary abilities touching a mystery being made completely of electricity. He gently nudged her shoulders, trying to stir something without snapping her too quickly awake. She was, after all, capable of throwing him across the room if she startled back to consciousness.

  How much time had passed? Was Kaftan still outside? The guards still appeared to be knocked out, but that could mean anything about the current state of things. “Come on, Zoe. Wake up, wake up, wake up,” he said, being a little more forceful on her shoulders now.

  Above him, a red light started to swirl around the room. This was different from the emergency lighting that illuminated the pathways along the floor.