Superheroes In Denim

by Lee French

  Of course, he’d been created by a top secret cross-species breeding program, and had no idea what kind of facility the actual process had been carried out in. His mind supplied a darkened room full of men wearing glasses and surgical masks, playing with medical equipment and shipping the engineered embryos out for implantation in special orange coolers labeled live organs or biohazard, or whatever else would keep anyone from opening them up for inspection. In this fantasy, the room existed inside a decrepit old warehouse, one easy to ignore as another example of urban blight. Atlanta had places like that.

  The dragons wanted him to quit it. Letting his imagination run with the idea distracted and irritated them. Time to focus on searching for Elena. He sent the swarm in to infiltrate the place, looking for her and for anything else interesting, though he had low expectations. It surprised him when one dragon vibrated with excitement.

  He threw himself into that dragon to see what it found. It had buzzed into a site building. From the outside, it appeared to be an ordinary storage warehouse. Inside, as expected, it had rows of shelving full of boxes and crates. The dragon directed him to the back corner, where he found an elevator. Its housing had no room to go up, only down.

  This certainly qualified as something interesting. Why didn’t any of the other dragons find anything for an underground facility? It should have ventilation, their favorite way to get into places.

  If it had originally been set up as a nuclear fallout shelter, something he remembered seeing crappy videos about in school, it might be sealed and not vent to the surface. Though he had no idea how that might work, it seemed plausible.

  He grumbled, not sure how to breach such a place without being noticed. The elevator doors had a keypad next to them, which meant a code, and he had no way to guess, hack, or otherwise get around that. The dragons flew all around the housing for the elevator, looking for ways inside it without finding even so much as a tiny crack. There must be some way to service the thing, but he didn’t see anything like an access panel.

  So far as he could figure, he had two options. One, he could sit around and wait for someone to either come in or leave. The other involved a lot of trying to disguise himself and convince someone to escort him down there.

  By the time he’d given up on the idea of faking his way in, the sun had crept up, making the waiting option seem perfectly reasonable. People working at a place like this probably got started pretty early in the morning. He remembered his Daddy—when he’d been stateside—having to be at work by six, so he got up much earlier than Momma did. Bobby sometimes got up early so he could spend five minutes with the man while he ate his breakfast and packed his lunch, then he’d watch him drive away and go back to bed.

  Should he take the whole swarm, though, or just bring the one dragon? With one dragon, getting caught seemed less likely. On the downside, he wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone. Though that might work in his favor, he had a feeling he might want to chat with Elena when he found her. At the very least, she’d recognize him as…the guy with that vampire who knocked her unconscious by drinking her blood. Suddenly, he felt confident this would go sideways no matter what he chose. Might as well drag the whole swarm down there, so he had as many options as possible when he got an opportunity.

  It only took a few minutes for the swarm to converge, and he tried not to think too hard about how much he would like to have his Army desert camouflage uniform right now. He could have gone to the farm first and picked it up. But if he had, he wouldn’t be here now, he’d be here at lunchtime instead. These folks might not leave until late in the day; who knew how dedicated they were to their jobs or when they actually all went down there.

  A few minutes later, he appreciated his choice more, as a group of three men walked in and headed for the elevator. Two wore regular Air Force uniforms. At least, he thought they were Air Force. His Daddy was a Marine and he knew those uniforms. He sometimes got the other branches’ uniforms mixed up.

  As for the other guy, Bobby didn’t consider himself a fashion expert, but he was pretty sure no one wore ties that wide anymore, and he thought slacks ought to reach all the way to your shoes. Light blue and blood red argyle socks clashed horribly with the brown of his suit. His graying dark hair hung long and loose and, combined with his somewhat scraggly beard and thick rimmed glasses, made him seem averse to the concept of a mirror, and of personal grooming in general.

  All three men had ID cards on lanyards around their necks. When they reached the elevator, chatting about the weather forecast for the weekend, the guy in the suit punched a six digit code in, which made a panel slide to the side. He held up his ID card to the new black panel and bent enough to let it examine his eye. A little light went green, a little bing announced the arrival of the elevator, and the doors slid open.

  He saw no space between the doors and the shaft, and he’d never get more than one or two into that elevator without them being noticed. So much for sending in the whole swarm. He picked one dragon, jumped into it, and flew it into the elevator. The rest got instructions to stay nearby and out of sight.

  One of the two uniform guys stuck his hand out to stop the elevator doors from closing. “Did you see that?”

  Bobby’s dragon froze, hoping the carpet and brushed silver walls provided enough camouflage.

  “See what?” The other man in uniform put his hand on the gun belted at his waist and peered around.

  The man in the suit looked serious as he asked, “Was it a UFO?” He barely managed to get the words out of his mouth before he cracked a grin.

  First Uniform gave Ugly Suit a sour look. “I saw something flash in the light.”

  Second Uniform poked his head out through the doors and looked all around. “I didn’t see anything, and I still don’t.”

  Ugly Suit chuckled with a weird, snorting laugh. “Maybe it was nanobot aliens, trying desperately to communicate with us.”

  First Uniform let out an aggrieved sigh. “You know, Doctor, this is why no one likes you.” He pulled his hand back and waved to Second Uniform, who shrugged and stepped back in, letting the doors shut. The elevator moved downwards without them doing anything else. It had buttons, but none of them got pushed or lit up. Likewise, it had a display over the door that showed nothing.

  “Ouch, that’s not a nice thing to say.” Ugly Suit didn’t seem perturbed, just amused. “Seriously, though, what could you possibly have seen that the scanner won’t pick up?”

  Scanner? Bobby didn’t like the sound of that. If they scanned the elevator for anything, they’d probably notice him in this one dragon. Without knowing what it would actually scan for, he couldn’t say if climbing onto the nearest pant leg would do him any good.

  The only way out here might be sacrificing this one dragon. He wanted to avoid that. Aside from how the dragon wouldn’t like it much, he’d be left with an aching hand and no way down. He got the dragon to slowly inch its way to where the doors would open in the hopes it would be able to zip out before anyone or anything noticed him.

  First Uniform huffed, then shrugged and crossed his arms. Second Uniform rolled his eyes. Ugly Suit continued to smile cheerfully. The elevator trundled downwards in silence for over a minute. From his distance to the rest of the swarm, Bobby guessed they’d gone ten or twelve floors underground when it finally stopped and the doors slid open. The dragon grabbed the bottom of the door and rode it open. It waited for the three people to walk past, then grabbed the pant leg of Second Uniform and held on for the ride.

  He couldn’t think of anything else he could do to defeat an unknown scanner, especially without being able to open the door at the other end of this brightly lit, blank white corridor. This strange, short, empty hallway actually reminded him of some movies he’d seen. In them, the hallway or room had hidden cameras all over the place, and that’s where the scanning equipment was. Someone on the other end of those would check the people over and be able to kill or stun an unwanted intruder.

  “B
arnes, there’s something on your left ankle.” The voice came from nowhere in particular, with a bit of distortion, enough to make it clear the owner used some kind of device to get it into the hallway.

  Bobby focused on not panicking while the dragon let go, darted up to the man’s belt, and grabbed the edge. Barnes bent down and checked the hem of his pants.

  “It’s moved to your belt,” the voice said, “in the back.”

  Before the dragon could decide where to go next, a hand smacked it. “I’ve got something,” Barnes said as he managed to grab the dragon and pulled it around in front of himself.

  Afraid the dragon would be crushed, Bobby took over and refused to allow it to struggle, bite, or burn. Appearing harmless seemed like the best way to avoid disaster here. He hoped Barnes had kids or found himself around kids frequently. Under his orders, the dragon stayed still as Barnes used both hands to keep it contained. An eye peered inside the dark space.

  “It looks kind of like a toy.” Barnes sounded confused. “I have no idea how it got there.”

  “You’ll have to be detained, Barnes. Put it in the box.”

  “Seriously? I really have no idea what this thing is, or where—”

  The voice cut him off again. “You know the rules.”

  Barnes sighed heavily and dumped Bobby into some kind of glass or clear plastic box. It slid into the wall and a cover blocked out the light and his sight of Barnes. The box kept moving in the darkness. Bobby had the dragon knock on the side and scratch at it, finding it to be solid and stronger than he could affect.

  The last time he’d felt this completely trapped had happened years ago, when some kids beat him up for no reason other than being scrawny. That time, he’d crawled away with two cracked ribs, more bruises than a body could shake a barrel of hissing cats at, and a bunch of bleeding cuts all over the place. He had a rather strong feeling the likely outcome of failing to escape this situation would be at least as unpleasant.

  The box slid out on the other side, into a less harshly lit room with computers and screens and people with earpiece headsets. Peering at him through the box, he saw a slightly overweight man with glasses in uniform, the chunky kind of guy Bobby would peg as a computer geek.

  “Well, well, what do we have here? Hey, guys, take a look at this thing.” At his gesture, two other men, also in uniform, rolled their chairs over and peered at the dragon. Bobby kept it still, figuring performing for them would only earn this dragon a dissection. It was a little surprising he could hear them through the box—even though their voices were muffled, they were still perfectly understandable.

  “A dragon bug? Freaky. And awesome.”

  “Why bother making it all detailed like that?”

  “It looks more like a mini than a bug. What’s a douche like Barnes doing with a mini?”

  “Maybe it’s supposed to throw us off.”

  “Crack it open and let’s see if it’s a bug or not.”

  The original geek appeared to weigh the options and shrugged. “I’m gonna go scan the bejeezus out of it.” Geek Guy picked up the box and carted it elsewhere.

  Bobby had no worries about where he’d wind up. What Geek Guy did with him when he got there mattered a lot more. He needed the box to get opened in a situation that allowed him to escape unnoticed.

  Geek Guy stuck the box into a machine. For an eternity, Bobby saw lights of every color and heard a wide variety of sounds. He figured something on the other end would use whatever it collected from all that to decide what kind of animal, vegetable, or mineral the dragon should be categorized as. Though he doubted he’d understand any of it, he kind of wanted to see the readouts and reports.

  Eventually, Geek Guy took the box out and set it on a table. Bending down, he peered at Bobby, his nose less than an inch away. “What are you, little dragon?” He shook his head and tapped the side of the box with one corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Not giving you back, little dragon, but I don’t think I’ll turn you in, either. If you can keep a secret, so can I, and we’ll just say you were destroyed.”

  It sounded like Bobby would get an opening to make a break for it at some point. It could wind up being long enough for his stomach to hate him. With the rest of the swarm up in that warehouse, though, he could easily go take care of himself. He only needed to have the dragon put into a situation where he’d have no reason to worry about it.

  Geek Guy opened up the box and grabbed the dragon, which Bobby let him do, and stuffed it into his pants pocket. “It was nothing,” Geek Guy told his coworkers as he returned to his post and sat down. The pocket got tight enough the dragon had to go flat to avoid potentially losing a wing, and couldn’t wriggle out without alerting Geek Guy to its movement.

  “Are you keeping it?”

  “That would be against regulations.”

  “Uh-huh.” The other guy sounded unconvinced, but didn’t press the subject. From there, the conversation turned to their job, which apparently consisted of monitoring cameras and other things, as well as playing some sort of computer game involving shooting and blowing things up. It sounded positively boring to Bobby, so he left the dragon behind with instructions to stay still until he got back.

  Returning to the swarm, he took stock of his options. This military base had nothing around it for miles and miles. He could either chance finding and not getting apprehended in the mess hall, or take off and leave his one dragon behind for a couple of hours.

  He thought he remembered Jayce being from Las Vegas, which wasn’t far from here. If he could find it, maybe Jayce’s stuff would all still be at his place. Finding people hadn’t been too hard when he’d done it before, and “Jayce Westbrook” sounded like an uncommon enough name to make it doable.

  Determined, he left the base behind, flying up high enough to not be noticed, and spent the next hour heading for Las Vegas. There, he walked around, grabbing food out of the garbage and fending off weariness as he looked for a way to find Jayce’s address. Once upon a time, he spent a few bucks to use an internet cafe for stuff like this. He didn’t have a few bucks right now. He even checked all his pockets to make sure Kaitlin hadn’t stuffed some money in them, anticipating his needs. She didn’t see everything coming.

  After spending a half hour walking around, he found himself in front of the Monte Carlo hotel and wandered inside in search of a drinking fountain and some relief from the heat. While there, he decided to try the “aw shucks” approach with an employee. No need to at being a hick, because he’d never seen a place as ritzy as this one before, and he naturally gawked all around at everything, from the marble floors to the glass chandeliers to the heavy wood and plush velvet furniture.

  The front desk, made of polished dark wood, had him sticking his hands in his pockets to keep from accidentally touching and sullying it. It took him off guard that the cute girl standing behind it in the crisp uniform with her brown hair tied up neatly in some kind of bun smiled pleasantly at him, like he must be an honored guest. He guessed her to be about his age, probably a college student working her way through school.

  “Hello and welcome to the Monte Carlo. Do you have a reservation?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t. Um, actually, I’m kinda lost. My buddy says to stop by if’n I’m ever in town, but I done lost my phone someplace ‘tween home and here, and I ain’t got no idea where to go. Any way you could maybe look up an address here in town for me? I’d bug someone else, but I got let out nearby and ain’t got no clue where nothing else is.”

  Her polite smile crinkled, becoming more genuine. “Sure, I can do that.” Leaning towards him, she lowered her voice. “Just don’t tell anyone.” She winked.

  “I sure won’t,” he nodded with his own answering smile and echoing her volume, “and thank ya kindly. His name’s Jayce Westbrook.”

  Her eyebrows jumped up. “Oh, you know Jayce?”

  “Um, yeah,” he answered warily, not expecting such a reaction. “That a bad thing ‘round these parts?”<
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  “No, not at all. He works here. Or, he did, anyway, until he got arrested. I’m supposed to call the police if anyone comes asking for him. But, you know, I don’t really believe what they said, and…” She bit her lip. “You don’t look like a terrorist.”

  Five hundred hotels in this town, and he managed to pick the one where Jayce had worked. “Huh. Weird. No, I ain’t no terrorist. My Momma says I’m kinda a pain in the ass, though.”

  She flashed him a grin. “Sorry I have to be the one to tell you that.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. Guess I’m in Vegas with purt near nothing and knowing nobody.” Why in the heckbiscuits was he hitting on this girl? He could feel himself putting on a kind of pout, trying to get a pity date. Lily did make it clear she wasn’t interested. He still hoped and wished and wanted, and couldn’t make himself give up yet. “I don’t suppose you could look up his address anyway? If he done got out and just ain’t ready to see about getting his job back yet, I can maybe still get a place to crash for the night.”

  “Well,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t need to.” She grabbed a piece of paper, scribbled something on it, and offered it to him. “Look, if he’s there, would you tell him—” She sighed again. “I know it was just a casual thing to him, but we had a really good time, and I thought maybe— I just— Would you ask him to call me?” Tapping her name tag, which read Beverly, she gave him a pleading look. “I’ll listen, even if whatever happened while he was gone was really bad.”

  Bobby blinked and took the paper. Heck, even Greg managed better than him. Except Bobby, always except him. Everyone else got all the looks, everyone else smiled and got girls to shed clothes, everyone else didn’t get into half as much trouble as he seemed to wander his damned fool head into. “Yeah, sure, I can tell him. Beverly at the Monte Carlo says to get offa your ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself and give her a call. That about right?”