City Without Heroes

by Tanya Lisle

  She turned the screen off, but Penny was already looking over. “It’s fine, you know,” she said. “You’re allowed phones in class so long as it’s not during the lecture.” She gestured around the room where a lot of people were either on their phones or they had phones next to them on the desk.

  Indira turned the screen on to respond. No shit.

  Chapter 5

  The Grand Tour

  Penny was at her side as soon as lunch rolled around, stopping her at a classroom at the end of the hall without any explanation. It made more sense a moment later when she pulled one of the students aside, a tall Asian boy that looked surprisingly like her. In his wake was someone that Indira recognized.

  “Penelope Choi,” Kyle said, looking not surprised at all to see Penny there. “To what do we owe the pleasu- Oh. Hi.” He smiled awkwardly as he noticed Indira standing next to her. “Indira, right?”

  “You’ve met?” Penny asked.

  “He showed me to class.” At least Penny didn’t seem that upset about it, but Indira did get a sense of discomfort off of her. “I guess I got a little lost before. Sorry if I made you late.”

  “Oh, it’s no problem.”

  “So this is my brother, Matt,” Penny said, shoving her brother between the two of them. Matt had a wide grin on his face and a look in his eyes like he knew just what was going on, even if Indira wasn’t entirely clear on it. He offered his hand and Indira took it, finding he sent out a similar jolt as his sister did. He winked and smiled. “So you’re the one Kyle mentioned.”

  Indira smirked at the look on Kyle’s face, but let it settle into a smile. “Only good things, I hope.”

  “Only good things.” Matt smiled wider, though the colour rose across Kyle’s face. Matt didn’t even look as Kyle shifted away, his attention drifting back to Penny. “I’m guessing I’m getting drafted into helping with the tour.”

  “And that’s why you’re the smart one,” Penny said, giving him a pat on the arm. “I just can’t compare.”

  “You couldn’t just wait until we got the Welcoming Committee set up?” he asked. Indira could tell he was already resigned to his sister’s plan, Matt leading the way down the hall. “Are we even going to have time to show her around? She probably wants to eat. I want to eat.”

  “I could eat,” Indira offered. “I also have no idea where your cafeteria is, so maybe just point at things on the way there?”

  Matt regarded her before leaning back to Kyle. “You’re right. I do like her.”

  “Oh my god, shut up,” Kyle muttered, falling back and trying furiously to avoid her eyes. Indira offered him a smile, finding that she still liked looking at him when he was bright red.

  Penny and Matt settled into being tour guides on the way down to the cafeteria, helped by Penny snatching Indira’s schedule so that they could point out her exact classes where they could. Though she tried to follow, Indira took more comfort in knowing that after lunch, she could just follow Matt and Kyle to Chemistry, since she was not going to remember where it was in the next few minutes.

  No one mentioned the black specks that seemed to be embedded into every surface of the school.

  They were stopped several times in the halls on the way down, many people needing Penny’s attention on seemingly trivial matters that only required a nod from her. Indira noticed many of them had the habit of physical contact, catching her by the arm and speaking so quietly that they didn’t always seem to actually form words. She said nothing, instead making a habit of sliding in next to Kyle and chatting with him and Matt while they waited to continue.

  The cafeteria was on the first level of the school and nothing unexpected, except for how short the line for food was and how loud a school that was nowhere near capacity could be. Despite the many empty chairs and scattered tables that looked like they had never been used, Penny led them outside. Indira didn’t argue, not minding the cool, early autumn air if it meant being able to talk without raising her voice. The sun provided warmth as they took their seats, Penny next to her and Matt across with Kyle.

  “Looks like cafeteria food is the same everywhere,” Indira said as she looked down at her burger and fries. She started picking at the fries, still not entirely certain about what made up the meat of the burger or just how long the lettuce had been out before it made it onto the bun.

  “So, Kyle said you came from some city somewhere,” Matt said, glancing over at Kyle before meeting Indira’s grey eyes.

  “Yeah, my family moved here from Iverson,” Indira told him. “It’s really similar to here, actually. Like, just without all the weird black specks everywhere.”

  “Have you heard the story of where they came from?”

  “Kyle started to tell me before, but I get the feeling that we were cut a little short on that one.”

  “That’s okay,” Penny said. “He’s crappy at telling the story anyway.”

  “I rock with that story.”

  “You know the name Doctor Dalus?”

  “There was a guy named Doctor Daedalus in the nineties,” Indira said. She knew him more from her uncle’s stories about how he terrorized the west coast. “I think he had a son or something?”

  “It was before that,” Penny said. “Before him was his father, Doctor Dalus. That was actually their last name originally, but Daedalus thought he needed to spice it up when he moved to an actual city. Doctor Dalus started out in radio transmission towers back in the sixties, or whenever radio was a thing. Back then, he just wanted to get revenge on Whitten for not approving some of his research, so he decided to do something really unexpected – he put up all the radio towers around the city for free.”

  “And everything was great,” Matt said. “They were great and people loved them. There was a really popular local radio guy who everyone listened to and there was a lot of industry that came in for some reason because of the radio. Everything was great.”

  “But there was a problem under it all.”

  “Do you have to do the twin thing?” Kyle asked, rolling his eyes. It earned him a laugh from both of them.

  “What fun is it without it?” Penny asked. “Anyway, so there was a problem under it all. One that no one expected. These little black spheres started showing up all over town. No one was ever really sure when they started showing up. It was like they all suddenly appeared one day, but no one really thought anything of them. Just the side effect of a dust storm or something.”

  “Or it was the sixties and they were starting to experiment with the drugs that the seventies were famous for,” Matt offered.

  “But no one thinks anything of these little things for the longest time. That is, until the local radio guy starts talking about stuff that’s just a little off. Little things like children walking backwards on their way to school as the newest fad. All ties are now red. Little things at first. And whatever this guy says, it starts actually happening. And at first, everyone is okay with it. It’s a little off, but most people get used to it pretty quick and it becomes perfectly normal for Whitten.”

  “Until the heroes get involved,” Kyle chimed in, letting his already low voice dip lower.

  “When they come in, they realize that Doctor Dalus is controlling the city, but they can’t figure out how. Nothing seemed that strange or out of place. And they didn’t know that it was Doctor Dalus at first until they went digging and found a guy in town who had a funding proposal for animal mind control experiments that had been rejected. Well, not mind control, but it was something like that.”

  “But I thought the specks were inert,” Indira said.

  Matt let out a small laugh and gestured for her to wait. “That’s coming,” he said. “So impatient.”

  “So we come to the interesting part,” Penny continued. “The heroes finally get a lead with the specks. They find out that they’re everywhere in the city and that they’ve been doing something to keep the place docile and hallucinating. Like, everyone thinks they are living in the most family
friendly eldritch horror ever and they are smiling and happy about it. They keep going to their jobs and communicating perfectly normally with the outside world, but they think that the sky is nothing but an endless void that will eventually swallow you whole if you look at it for too long, and they swear that they have seen people commit suicide by looking up into it for too long. It’s freaky.”

  “So they take a speck. They take a bunch of them, because they grow on the city like a fungus. And they go back to the labs, only to find that they don’t do anything. There’s machinery in them, but the machinery doesn’t do anything. There’s no magic in it to make this happen. It’s like if you just took a bunch of parts and stuck them together and put them into a ball. Random wires and gears, but they don’t actually do anything.”

  “Their next target was the radio guy, but they literally can’t find him. Everyone keeps saying he’s the voice of Whitten. No one can say what he looks like and they laughed when they were asked. He was literally the voice of Whitten. He was only a voice. Nothing but a voice. It turned into a dead end, but they were narrowing down their options. Because there had to be someone controlling the thing that didn’t exist, right?

  “And that’s when they found Dalus. Apparently it was the radio towers doing it, but they couldn’t just take them down. That would cut Whitten down to nothing. Whitten was a radio town back then. The towers were used for a lot of other things besides brainwashing the town and taking them out would have destroyed a lot of livelihoods. So they just dismantled Dalus’ meddling in them and the mind control hallucinations instead. He went to jail for life and was never heard from again. Until his son broke him out and I’m guessing you know the rest of that.”

  “And that, Indira, is the story of the weird black specks everywhere,” Kyle finished. He blinked and looked to the now vacant spot next to him. “Where’s Matt?”

  “Washroom?” Penny offered. She looked around as well, unsure quite when he’d disappeared.

  Indira’s eyes drifted across the courtyard to where Matt had been cornered by two other girls. She pointed. “Looks like he found better company.”

  “Not again,” Penny groaned, clearly annoyed as she glared at the three of them. She let out a breath and started to apologize when Kyle stood up.

  “I got him,” Kyle offered, heading over to them before Penny got the chance.

  “Problem?” Indira asked.

  Penny shook her head, pushing the annoyance off her face with a final glare in their direction. “Nothing you have to worry about,” she insisted.. “But while I have you, can you…” Penny gestured vaguely at her head with her fork before shoving the fry on the end of it into her mouth.

  So the specks and the radio towers? Indira asked. She eyed her burger before she picked it up.

  Yeah, Penny said. Is this thing two way?

  You’ve never met a telepath before, have you?

  Penny rolled her eyes and turned her attention to her own plate. Look, having powers in Whitten is dangerous. You need to be really careful about getting caught. If you get caught, you just disappear. A lot of people who transfer in don’t make it past a week.

  How? Indira asked. Someone should notice that.

  Penny shook her head. It’s hard to remember them once they’re gone. They run away or move back to where they came from, but after a while you can’t even remember them. We think the towers are doing stuff again, but…

  Penny trailed off as Matt and Kyle came back, Indira shooting her a sidelong glare before she turned back to the pair of them. “Back already?” she asked them.

  But… Indira said, imploring Penny to continue. Come on, don’t leave me on that.

  A flash of panic spread across Penny’s face and she closed her mouth from whatever she was about to say, looking down at her food and focusing on it again. But our mother’s already disappeared looking into it. Dad just thinks she ran off. We think she got captured in one of the towers.

  “They just wanted a hand with something,” Matt said. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “But we have practice. And you need to learn to say no sometimes, dude.”

  Or she actually did run off? Indira asked Penny. If she’s a witch, someone might have summoned her for something.

  “Practice for what?” Indira asked, eyes flickering back and forth between Matt and Kyle.

  “Basketball,” Kyle said. “But we’re going to be helping out with the Welcoming Committee when the season’s over. Penny’s actually heading that up.”

  She’s not the sort that you summon for things, Indira. She disappeared looking into this. We just want to keep anyone else from getting taken too.

  Well, I have no intention of going and showing off, so no problem there.

  Kyle looked expectantly at Penny for confirmation, but Penny continued to keep her head down. Indira glanced over at her, but she had already learned that Penny wasn’t nearly as good at splitting her focus.

  “I’ve never been much good at anything but volleyball,” Indira offered, bringing his attention back to her. “I played a little while in elementary, but once high school came...”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Kyle said, looking awkwardly away and not knowing how to continue.

  Just be careful. Don’t even talk about it at home. I don’t know how, but somehow even talking about heroes too much can trigger whatever is in this place and make you disappear. There’re these guys in an unmarked white van that show up sometimes and whenever they do, someone disappears. But that’s only after something else detains you for them. No talking about heroes or villains. No going out and trying to be one yourself.

  I got it, Indira assured her. Wasn’t planning on it.

  “So what were you saying about Chemistry before?” Indira asked. “You’d see me there?”

  “Yeah.” Kyle didn’t quite meet her eyes, a little colour rising in his cheeks. “I looked at your schedule and we’re in the same class.”

  “Please tell me you’re decent at Chemistry,” Matt said, nearly pleading with her.

  “I’m pretty good with it,” she said. “Why?”

  “Because he doesn’t have a lab partner,” Kyle told her. “And his last one nearly blew him up.”

  “Twice. Nearly blew me up twice.”

  “Where did he go, anyway?” Kyle asked. “What was his name?”

  There was a moment of silence as Matt opened his mouth, but a name didn’t end up coming to him. Penny finally perked up and got to her feet beside them. “Okay, since we’re all done here, let’s continue the tour before lunch is over,” she said.

  Chapter 6

  Foreboding

  The rest of her day at Larkdale Secondary fell into a blur of classes peppered with a number of people paying more attention to her than she wanted. The teachers she had expected, many of them lamenting that she hadn’t waited until that Welcoming Committee had been put in place to help with the transition, but she hadn’t expected the attention from her peers as well. She knew she was new, but some of their eyes lingered a little longer than usual, giving off a feeling of fatigue at just the sight of her.

  More than anything, Indira wanted to head home to be alone after the day. Shiraz declined a ride in favour of hanging out with new friends and she was happy for the empty car followed by the empty house. It may still smell like paint, but there were no minds here that she felt compelled to peer into, and far fewer black specks watching her from the walls.

  Though she could have used her time to finish painting her room, she opted to try and talk to her friends back home instead. Both her phone and her computer seemed to think this was a bad idea, delivering only a few of the messages she sent and Indira only getting a handful of responses before she gave up. It was almost a blessing, really, Indira quickly finding that she didn’t want to hear how they’d moved on without her, and she didn’t particularly want to talk about how her new school was going anyway.

  It wasn’t until she wandered downstairs that she started to wo
nder why she was so alone in the house. While she didn’t make a habit of reading her family’s minds, she generally knew when they were home, and Uncle Ness was not home. He was probably out looking for that friend of his that had gone missing, though given what she had now heard about the city, it worried her.

  The front door opened and closed as she emptied a bag of popcorn into a bowl, followed by the sound of a backpack getting thrown against the stairs. She wandered over, popcorn forgotten, as Raz let out a loud breath and closed the door behind himself.

  Indira knew her brother well enough to know when he was frustrated. Normally, it resulted in him quietly brooding and not making any eye contact until the situation was resolved. It was rare that he ever threw something, but when he did, it was always for the same reason.

  “Who’s dying?” she asked. There was no hint of a joke in her voice.

  He stared at her, eyes wide like she’d just ratted him out. His eyes darted around until they finally settled back on her, silently imploring her to shut up. “Why would you say that?” he asked a little too loudly. “No one’s dying. That’s stupid.”

  What’s going on? Indira asked. They told you to be careful what you say too?

  Shiraz nodded. There’s so many people, Indi. Everywhere. There was a guy who pointed out that there were five of us new in the year. And three of them aren’t going to make it. There was a teacher too. And other people, I don’t even know who they are, but they’re all going to… I don’t know. Some will die, but I don’t know what this other thing is. It isn’t dying, but it’s not staying alive. It’s something else. I’ve never felt it before. What kind of place is this?

  Despite his panicked words circling through her mind, Shiraz relaxed. He shook his head, running a hand over his face before letting out a breath. All he needed was a chance to talk it out, and it seemed that he still had a lot left to say on the matter.