We Could Be Heroes

by Mike Chen

  Two seconds.

  There was only one thing left to do. She checked the headset against her ear and adjusted the mic. This was important for Jamie to hear. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to rob a bank together,” she said.

  One second.

  “Wait, what? Zoe? Zoe?”

  She craned her neck to look at the reactor. But rather than seeing destruction-in-process hardware, she saw a bright blue mass of living electricity emerging from the ground. The frame of hulking machinery began crumbling around the reactor, and as beams of light poked out from across the space, a ball of blue enveloped her. Though no voice or face could communicate it, she knew that this tangle of electricity and sparks was the final burst of Waris. She’d sworn she’d seen something like this in a movie. Something she’d streamed a few months ago, something where the effects were surprisingly good for being made in the early 1970s, but its name refused to materialize.

  The bubble wrapped around, sealing her in silence so completely that whatever destruction was happening on the other side seemed a thousand miles away. Right before everything went black, the name of the film came back to her.

  42

  JAMIE COULDN'T GET THE words out of his head.

  I’m sorry we didn’t get to rob a bank together.

  Zoe didn’t say anything further and several seconds passed before Jamie’s eyes fixed on an indescribable sight, a wave or a ripple or something he felt more than saw pulsed outward from the facility, as if the entire building let out a sigh of finality. That moment came silently, the din of people around him still filling his ears.

  Windows lit up from behind, some breaking with flashes of explosions, some accompanied with tiny popping sounds; it moved from left to right, like a lit fuse ripping through the first and second floor of the facility. And then he heard the first moan of metal beams bending against their will. Soon followed heavy thunks of collapsing concrete and the sounds of glass shattering. All of the different individual sounds of destruction mixed together, creating a wall of white noise as devastating as it was inscrutable.

  From there, it was plain to see. The facility’s main tower, which had stood six stories high, with different balconies and exhaust pipes and communications wiring, looked like something simply removed all of its guts on the bottom floor. The second floor fell into itself, then the third, then on and on until the dirt and dust kicked up and rolled upward and outward. The clouds rolled slowly before thinning out and disappearing, leaving only a mountain of rubble about a third as high as it originally stood. It rested, like it had suddenly gained its footing, only for a massive explosion in its center to act as the knockout punch that brought it all down upon itself.

  Behind him, Jamie realized that all of the police and media chatter paused, leaving only the sound of wind interspersed with crumbling debris in the distance. Different voices soon started from behind him, and Jamie gradually tuned in enough to realize that the media storm that they’d baited into coming was doing their job.

  “Who is the woman you’ve arrested?”

  “Where is the Throwing Star? Did she cause this?”

  “Are extraordinaries out of control?”

  Jamie pushed the headset’s speaker against his ear. “Zoe? Zoe? Tell me you got out.”

  The sound of shoes grinding against dirt gradually approached until Jamie realized that someone now stood next to him.

  He didn’t have to look to know it was Chesterton.

  “I, uh...” the detective said before leaving it to silence.

  Thoughts raced, possibilities and hopes and fears and remembering to do a countdown, to breathe and ground himself until he might be able to do something.

  Not just something. The only thing he could do.

  Jamie sprinted across the parking lot to the perimeter of the debris and landed on one knee, hands outstretched. The sound of footsteps and jingling keys followed him, only Chesterton trailing him, but he kept a respectful distance. With eyes closed, Jamie searched the space—up and down, left and right, anything to lock on to the distinct mind that was Zoe Wong.

  Blank.

  Nothing at all. No hint of a mind, no shadow or echo, simply a void. Even with hands out, fingers searching, all he got was emptiness.

  He opened his eyes, the only thing left to do was to stare at the mountain of twisted debris while the morning sun poked its first rays out over the horizon. A crackling sound came from within the wreckage, and Jamie stood up, hope carrying him to his feet. Seconds later, a loud pop echoed through the air, bits of dirt and scrap landing on his face. He coughed, clearing the dust out when he realized something else was happening.

  Something extraordinary.

  He blinked several times to make sure the explosion hadn’t caused him to see things. But no, it was there: a jagged piece of metal about the size of a hand somehow hovering in the air mere inches from his head.

  Jamie turned around, mouth wide, only to find Chesterton standing still with his hand outstretched. His fingers flexed and the metal fell harmlessly to the ground, then he met Jamie’s eyes.

  “You did...” Jamie finally said. “I mean, that was...”

  “It was going to hit you. And yes.” He took a step forward. “I did that. I can do that.”

  “How...” Jamie hesitated, the implications flooding his mind with questions that tugged in every direction. “How long?”

  Chesterton glanced back at the combination of police and media across the lot behind them, though their voices still carried out to this spot. “I don’t think we’ve got time to go into that.”

  “Do they know? The police?”

  “No. And best to keep that quiet. For both of our sakes.” He brushed dirt and dust off his shirt.

  Jamie turned, blowing out all of the remaining air from his lungs, and as he did, Chesterton walked up next to him. “Did you...sense anything in there?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Power is back on the city grid. A little messy, but things should calm down.” Chesterton filled the silence by clearing his throat. “It, uh, could have been much, much worse.”

  A response failed to pop in Jamie’s mind as the blend of dust and burning odors tickled his nose. “She did it,” was all he came up with.

  “It looks like it.”

  The shouting from behind grew louder, the voices taking on more intensity.

  “You’ve arrested Kaftan?” Jamie asked.

  “Yeah,” Chesterton said.

  “I’m not sure if you’ll be able to contain her.”

  “She’s coming willingly.”

  Jamie nodded, but chose not to concern himself with the possibilities surrounding that for now.

  “I have to make a decision,” Chesterton said. “About you. You robbed banks. Those are pretty major crimes.”

  A gust of wind kicked up, blowing ashes and debris over him. It crusted on his face, in his hair, stinging his eyes. “Not the best way to make a living.”

  “On the other hand, you helped save San Delgado. I can’t even imagine the chaos if the entire grid was down for any longer. Even for a day.”

  The voices of uniformed officers shouted over the now-rabid media members, telling them to stay behind the line.

  “There’s cameras rolling,” he continued. “I’m sure this is livestreaming a dozen places. You could do that thing—” he waved his hand in front of them “—you do. But not all of us. Not at once. Not while the world is watching.” Escape was the last thing on Jamie’s mind at this moment, so much so that when the detective mentioned it, the mere idea of it caught him by surprise.

  “And handing you to them,” Chesterton said, “I don’t think that’s the best idea.” He huffed out a breath.

  Jamie wanted to ask what that meant when Chesterton suddenly straightened and moved. “Come with me. We should do this q
uick.”

  Jamie gave a solemn nod. Those words should have given him a sense of the walls closing in, of claustrophobic entrapment. But they didn’t. Instead, Jamie found that his eyes refused to stop staring at the smoldering rubble in front of him.

  “Now’s your time.”

  “Wait,” Jamie said. His palm fell flat against the ground, fingers digging in. He didn’t know why, it just seemed like the right thing to do, one final search for connection, a chance to find a light in the void. But nothing registered. “I just needed to try one more time.”

  They marched, walking stride for stride, and Jamie’s thoughts returned to the present. What did the detective expect him to do? Give a Mind Robber speech, the full flair and bravado, complete with poor American accent?

  A cacophony of sound swarmed him, voices meshing into each other until they became a single dense buzzing. Chesterton stopped next to Jamie, who was facing the line of reporters like a defendant awaiting a jury’s verdict. Jamie opened his mouth to speak when Chesterton interrupted. “Everyone! Everyone, attention please. There are many questions about what happened here today and the police still have to sort much of it out. But one thing for absolute certain is that this man, Jamie Sorenson, is not the Mind Robber. It’s true that the Throwing Star went rogue. She did some things that shouldn’t have been done. Like forcing Jamie to help her. Her motives are mixed but what we do know is that we have one person in custody, and we believe the Throwing Star perished in the facility’s collapse. Now, we’ll be bringing Jamie back in for questioning in the days and weeks ahead. But for now, I think he deserves to get some rest.”

  As if a switch flipped, the reporters turned on him in unison, more and more questions fired at both him and Jamie. “Look,” Chesterton said, “I know the conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this. But he’s not the Mind Robber. Listen to him talk, he’s got a totally different accent.”

  Jamie noted that his argument basically absolved all actors from being criminals, so it probably wasn’t the best excuse. But he gave Chesterton marks for trying. At this point, he’d take it. Chesterton gave him a gentle push and then pointed toward his car. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift home. You’ve probably got questions.”

  43

  "IT WAS—" JAMIE SUCKED in a breath “—the night of the fire. At our old meeting place. The YMCA.”

  Murmurs and nods of agreement followed that statement.

  “I know we all deal with our issue in different ways. It’s easy to hide away, question who we are or what we were meant to do. Memory loss is not an easy thing. My friend Zoe. She shared on that night. And she helped people escape the fire. She had all these extraordinary things about herself and she wouldn’t let herself recognize them. Because they were always obscured with these questions of who she was supposed to be. Because when you don’t have your memories, what defines that?

  “We both felt that way. But then we, um, took a road trip. Had a bit of an adventure together. And I watched her realize that your past doesn’t have to define your present. Or your future. It’s just your choices now that matter.”

  Three months. Three months had passed. Three months of the media dissecting that night, the security footage of the Mind Robber and the rough cell phone videos of the Throwing Star, even speculation about the intensifying rumors of extraordinaries in Hartnell City. Three months of everyone else trying to find the meaning of it all.

  But for Jamie, three months of going back to the site and hoping that something would be different. A hint or a clue or something to give him something to cling on to.

  In the end, there wasn’t a trace. Not physically. Instead, the only thing that remained of the real Zoe Wong, not the media creation of the Throwing Star, was, ironically, in the memory of the Mind Robber.

  “She’s, um, gone now. Haven’t heard from her in a bit. Because she decided to be everything that she saw in herself. Not the others. Not whatever past she presumed she did or didn’t have. I think we can all strive to be like her.”

  Jamie’s legs bumped into the chair’s as he stood up. It nearly tipped back, but he reached behind him to steady it.

  “And with that, I wanted to thank you all for being my support system. It’s time for me to go somewhere now. Don’t know when I’ll be back in San Delgado, but this group, these people. It’s where everything began for me.”

  Light applause filled the space, a private room in the local library branch—one that was more likely to be compliant with city codes than their previous spot. Jamie sat through the rest of the shares, though his attention kept wandering to the plane tickets in his bag, folded next to the pay-as-you-go phone that Chesterton gave him to stay in touch in exchange for his new official anonymity. Tickets, plural, because even though the final stop for him and Normal was Costa Rica, he had to stop somewhere first.

  * * *

  Jamie sat in the car, engine idling so the air-conditioning kept blowing. Behind him, Normal mewed in her cat carrier, standing and stretching before setting back down into a curl. He looked back to check on her, then returned his attention to the scene in front of him. Even though his white paper coffee cup was nearly empty, he still raised it up for a sip while he waited.

  Several weeks of research led to this. Getting to the facts shouldn’t have been that difficult, but the police shut down Telos almost immediately following the destruction of Project Electron. No Telos, no records. Instead, Jamie simply searched through a lot of people named Zoe Wong.

  But that was the thing about the internet—look hard enough and you’ll eventually find anyone.

  The home was as expected, a two-story house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Multiple cars parked in front. Finally, someone in a polo shirt and slacks stepped outside. Jamie squinted and came to the conclusion that it must be Zoe’s brother. They shared the same curve of their noses. Shortly behind came an older man in similar attire and an older woman in a plain blue dress that flowed past her knees.

  Zoe’s parents.

  If Zoe had been here with him, perhaps he would have showed her how to deep dive into their memories, extracting whatever bits and pieces possible to fill in her blanks. But she wasn’t there, she wasn’t anywhere, and so digging up the past for details seemed irrelevant.

  But giving the past a voice, that much he owed her.

  He stepped out of his rental car. “Excuse me,” he said, wind whipping his hair into a frenzy. The southwest sun burned his pale skin, and even the metal frames on his sunglasses felt hot. The three people in the driveway turned around, confused brows all around.

  Jamie walked across the street. “Hello,” he said when he got on the sidewalk. His feet planted still, and other than an awkward wave from Zoe’s mom, no one moved. “You don’t know me. But I was friends with your daughter. Zoe.

  “I know you all felt like she was a disappointment. Hopeless. Completely ordinary. Status quo. When I knew her, she worked in food delivery and had trouble keeping a regular schedule. Sometimes she drank too much. Sometimes she was impulsive. Sometimes she quit on things.” Jamie pointed at her dad. “You’re nodding. I see that.”

  He pulled his sunglasses off the bridge of his nose and looked each of them in the eye.

  “You shouldn’t be. Because the Zoe Wong I knew, it didn’t matter that she was sometimes impulsive or sometimes quit a little early. Because she always fought back. Do you do that?” He pointed at Zoe’s brother. “Do you come clawing back when you’ve lost everything you’ve known?”

  Months ago, someone might have mistook that question and that gesture as a snippet of the Mind Robber at a bank. This, however, was far from that.

  The Mind Robber was all for show. This was real.

  “Because Zoe did. Countless times. Against all odds. You were all wrong about her.” Jamie took in a breath, not for dramatic pause as the Mind Robber might, but to let himself
feel this moment. For her. “She may not have fit the mold of your family. But that’s the thing you don’t understand. Extraordinary comes in many forms. You never realized that, and that pushed her to find it elsewhere, and now she’s gone. But I wanted to tell you. For her. For my friend.”

  Glances exchanged between members of the Wong family, eyes looking everywhere but at the stranger confronting them. They started to say something, all of them at once, but Jamie simply held up his hand.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.”

  He turned and began walking, even while their voices echoed through the suburban neighborhood. He reached the still-idling car, the air-conditioning still keeping a comfortable temperature for Normal, and settled in. Normal mewed a greeting, and right when he clicked his seat belt into place, his phone buzzed.

  It was a text.

  From Chesterton, of all people.

  Can we talk? I could use your help.

  44

  SHE AWOKE TO VOICES.

  Not light, not heat, not touch. But voices. And the taste of dirt in her mouth.

  “I can’t believe this place is finally opening up,” a woman said. “Who knew a park took this long to build?”

  “You’d never even guess that old factory was here,” another woman said. “Too bad we have to share it with everyone next week. Did you hear the mayor’s going to do a ribbon cutting?”

  “For a park? Jesus Christ.”

  The voices continued, eventually fading away, along with the sound of a low rumble.

  Her fingers flexed, pushing through a mix of...well, everything and nothing. Nothing specific, but a cocktail of dirt, rocks, bits of metal. But not packed tight enough that they didn’t shift as she began to tense and release, ebb and flow. Soon, little bits displaced and she had enough space to move her arm. A few centimeters at first, then a few inches, and within minutes, she began to tear through, clawing at the muck and grime layer by layer. First came the packed-in pieces around her, then maneuvering around tree branches, then the loose soil that practically felt like swimming.