City Without Heroes

by Tanya Lisle

  “You want popcorn and trash television?” Indira offered.

  “I pick what we watch.”

  Shiraz followed her to the rec room in the basement. Unlike Penny, Shiraz could split his attention if he needed to, but Indira was pretty sure he had no intention of paying any attention to the cooking shows he flipped to. She set the popcorn between them and they leaned back into opposite ends of the couch.

  Did they warn you about talking about stuff too? Indira asked.

  Not me, he said. There was another kid. One that’s going to die soon. Chris. I went to his place to try and see why.

  Raz...

  Ronnie, this other guy, he told him not to talk about heroes so much. Or villains. Like, he was scared when it came up. Chris didn’t like moving here because he wanted to be a hero and kept saying he might be one already. I don’t know. Maybe he’ll just have a heart attack. I think he used to be a hero, though, and he kept going on about how there’s still crime. Just because there’s no heroes or villains, that doesn’t mean it’s crimeless, and if Whitten had a hero…

  You don’t know how he’s going yet, Indira told him. She could feel the eye roll even if his eyes didn’t move. It might be natural things. It’s probably nothing you can stop, whatever it is.

  I have a bad feeling about this place, Indi. Can you feel it? There’s something wrong here.

  If you’re getting that people are going to do something other than die, I’m wondering if it’s this place or you.

  Shiraz shot a glare at her and shook his head. They’re still going to die. It’s just… different. I don’t know what it is.

  Have you talked to Uncle Ness? Maybe he knows something. Or he can talk some sense into this friend of yours.

  “Where is Uncle Ness?” Shiraz asked aloud, his attention turning to the stairs up into the house. Did he go back to Iverson already?

  “Probably out. He should be back for dinner.”

  “Better be,” Shriaz muttered. He got to his feet and headed back to the stairs, looking much more relaxed. Indira knew the tension would not go away, but the promise of Uncle Ness seemed to have helped. She watched him go, trying not to let anything he had said get to her.

  So a lot of people were going to die. Or basically die. She wondered if would be more or less than back in Iverson, where heroes left plenty of collateral damage in their wake. There wasn’t supposed to be anything like that here, though. Maybe it was just going to be an accident at school, something tragic and not suspicious.

  Indira was starting to think staying in town was a bad idea.

  “Indi!” Shiraz called from the top of the stairs. “Dinner!”

  Letting out a breath, Indira turned off the television and made her way upstairs to find two boxes of pizza open on the kitchen counter. A moment later, she was helping her mother get out plates and cups for everyone to help themselves with. Once they had gathered their fill, they headed to the dining room.

  Her father slipped around to her mother’s side, a grin on his face. “This doesn’t look like a home cooked meal,” her father said.

  Her mother immediately smacked him on the arm for the comment, though Shiraz wouldn’t stop laughing. “You want home cooked, you do it yourself!”

  “You be careful,” Uncle Ness said. “One day, she might find a way to make you pay for it and you’ll never know until it’s too late.”

  “You assume she’s not going to make me pay for it much sooner,” her father said. “You underestimate Avabai. She can be–”

  “That’s enough,” her mother said, smacking her father one more time before sitting down.

  Indira took her seat and didn’t bother to hide her smile as she relaxed. When she looked around, she could still see the black spots, some embedded into the floor between the dark wood planks, and some painted over on the walls. She knew there was something wrong with this, but she was already starting to forget to look for them. For right now, there didn’t need to be anything weird about this place.

  “Well,” their father said, “how were my wonderful children’s first day at their new school?”

  “Fine,” Shiraz said, almost automatically, before he shoved the first slice of pizza in his mouth. He was definitely calmer, but clearly didn’t want to talk about the death omens he was getting all day. Not yet. He swallowed. “They have a technology lab that’s got some robotics stuff in it. They said I had to wait until next year to take the course, though.”

  “Never stopped you,” Indira said. “I met some people who warned me about talking about superheroes and stuff like that while we’re here. And I think my history teacher thinks I’m Muslim.”

  Uncle Ness laughed at that. “You correct him,” he said. “Not everyone from England is Muslim.”

  “I’m sure it’s just going to take a bit of time to adjust,” her father assured her. “It’s a growing city. The kids here, they don’t have heroes or villains, so they probably aren’t as comfortable with them as we are. Think about it. If you came from a place that had no one with superpowers, don’t you think the ability to see the future or read minds would freak you out a little? It would be weird.”

  “You really think no one in this place has powers, Byram?” Uncle Ness chimed in. “They only enacted the anti-heroes and villains law here for five years. There were probably kids discovering powers before that. And with so many people moving here to escape the super destruction in the cities and bring their kids to a safe place, do you think none of them are also heroes looking for a quiet place to retire to.”

  “Or villains,” her mother said darkly. “The woman down the street, she is going to get a very unfortunate call back to her old calling in a few days. The house is going to be on sale in a couple weeks if you know anyone who might want to move into town.”

  “I thought you wanted me gone.”

  “It’s not an invitation to stay. I thought Paul might be able to move in, since he’s been doing so much work for you lately. I know how high his insurance is living that deep in the city.”

  Her father laughed and Shiraz shuffled nervously next to her. “Why would you ever want him gone, Ava?” her father asked. “Ness has been very helpful so far with the move and the painting.”

  “Only because you don’t want to do it,” her mother said. “If you would help, I wouldn’t need to keep him. But he will be gone soon, one way or another.”

  “Are you still on about that?” Uncle Ness asked. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You are going somewhere that is not here,” Ava said. “I only hope that it means you’re going back home to give me some peace! I have work to do during the day, Ness. I can’t be watching you too.”

  “Really, you always make it sound so ominous. I’m not planning on staying that much longer. Disappearing forever, like I’m going to vanish into thin air or something. You’re going to make me paranoid talking like that. How long do you think it will be before I’m going away forever, anyway?”

  “I can’t tell,” Ava said, her eyes clouding over as if she were really considering it for a moment before they cleared up to their normal brilliant silver. “But it isn’t soon enough. Really, if you’re going to be freeloading off of us, then the least you can do is clean up after yourself! How do you live like this? You don’t cook, you don’t clean.”

  “And then I disappear, never to be found again!” he laughed. “Really, Ava, I’m going in a couple weeks. And I’m working during the day. You’ve seen me working.”

  “Playing on the computer.”

  “It’s work!”

  “If you’re going to be here,” Shiraz started, “Could you…”

  Shiraz stopped, his eyes clouding over as he rethought his words. “Maybe you could…” he started again, though trailed off as he struggled to get the words out. Indira could sense his panic growing as he tried out the different phrases in his head, a cacophony echoing off of him, though he was still trying them out to see if any of them would work.

&nbs
p; “Raz…” Indira started, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop him.

  “Keep an… Look out for… There’s a…” He stopped, panic tingling in his eyes and his shoulders slumped forward. The words and sentiment he wanted to convey were gone, replaced by a terrified defeat. “Maybe you should go,” he said instead at last, his eyes looking at specific spots on the floor and on the wall as he spoke. “Yeah. You should probably leave.”

  Shiraz left the table, the rest of them watching him go and making no move to stop him. Attention moved from him to Uncle Ness, who was shaking his head with a wry smile as he watched Raz leave.

  “Well, I guess I’ll pack up and head out tonight then,” he said, not even shaken.

  Her father looked from the hall to Uncle Ness and shook his head. “What the hell were you going to do here?” he asked. “Indi, go check on your brother.”

  Indira nodded and left the table after Shiraz, grateful to escape the adults and their issues they had with one another. She let the sound of their voices fade into the background as she headed up the stairs to the door of Shiraz’s room. She knocked quietly, though he didn’t respond, and she had no desire to push him any further than that.

  “They’re right,” Uncle Ness said as Indira came back to the stairs. She took a seat on them, listening before going back down to her dinner. “There’s something weird here. There is no way a city like this wouldn’t have attracted at least one person who wanted to do something. One person who wants the inventions that happen here or the science or the money that comes through because of it. Too much happens here without someone wanting to take a shortcut and take it for themselves. You’re a smart man, Byram, but if you don’t see that something is strange to keep all the villains away, then you are blind.”

  “You should go back to the city, then,” her father said. “There’s plenty of villains there, if that’s what you’re looking for. Finally, there’s a place where we don’t have to worry about any of that and you want there to be something wrong with it. Finally, I can work and not worry about someone trying to take me hostage or threatening to blow up my research. I’m not going to stand for you trying to take that away from me.”

  “But you’re going to let Raz continue to worry like he’s been. Or haven’t you noticed that something is wrong?”

  A flash of red caught her attention, though when she looked there was nothing there but yellow walls and the black specks that they had yet to get out. With a deep breath, she got back to her feet and went to rejoin the rest of her family for dinner.

  Chapter 7

  Welcoming Committee

  Uncle Ness had left by the morning, leaving the house feeling tense for the next week. None of them spoke of what happened, instead falling back into the routines they had back in Iverson when they knew Uncle Ness was embroiled in something dangerous. Work, school, and very carefully avoiding certain topics of conversation as they pretended everything was perfectly normal.

  Indira wanted to avoid the matter all together. Her father was clearly still mad about what had been said that night, while her mother was overly cheerful that she no longer had her brother freeloading off of them anymore. Shiraz spent most of his time with new friends or locked in his room tinkering with something, so Indira decided to follow suit and throw herself into assimilating to Larkdale Secondary.

  After the strangeness of the first day, everything was positively normal. Penny didn’t try breaking into her head or issue any additional warnings, though she did remain close by. Not that Indira minded, since the girl was starting to grow on her when she wasn’t working on plans for this Welcoming Committee project she was so adamant about, and hanging out with Penny meant that she had plenty of opportunity to also see Kyle between classes.

  At some point over the week, she had agreed to check out Penny’s pet project. She came to the first open meeting once classes were done for the day. This first official meeting of the Welcoming Committee was designed to let people know what they were doing and get people to volunteer to give students an orientation to the school rather than throwing them into the mix and hope they picked it up.

  Her first instinct on entering the room was to find Kyle or Penny but, looking at the crowd that the meeting had drawn, her attention went to the short boy with dark curly hair and the ability to handle the spice that her mother put in dinner over the past week, and the taller blond boy who asked for seconds.

  “Ronnie? Chris?” Indira asked, tapping him on the shoulder. “You two got dragged into this?”

  “Yeah,” Ronnie said slowly, looking Indira over very carefully and failing at any attempt to be subtle about it. Shiraz had mentioned that he was the one who warned him about talking too much about superheroes. And right now he was mentally screaming out a question: Are you one of us?

  “I might be new in town, but I’m not going to turn down a chance to help people,” Chris said, flashing a smile. Indira had zero doubts about Chris owning at least one piece of colourful spandex that he kept hidden from his parents. “This place could use more… helpers.”

  “You realize all you’re going to do is show people around the school, right?”

  Chris looked discouraged and his thoughts reflected it. “Every little bit helps. Whatever is in our means.”

  “Is Shiraz here too?” Ronnie asked.

  “Not unless you guys decided to drag him here,” Indira told him. “It’s actually kind of weird that you didn’t. Why?”

  “Oh, I just… if you’re here, then maybe…”

  Indira gave him a look, watching him stumble over the words as his eyes darted around the room. He was trying so hard to carefully put together what he meant and Indira did nothing to alleviate his anxiety. Instead, she caught sight of Kyle and smiled at him.

  Excusing herself with a nod, she made her way over to Kyle, glad for a familiar face as she looked around. There were some people who seemed to be more nervous than others. Some of them were much more aware of the new presences in the room, and Indira was careful to note who was giving off the same feelings as Ronnie. She was starting to suspect that it would be easy to figure out which of the people in this school had powers.

  “Hey,” she said as she took a seat next to Kyle. “Lot of people showed up. Are all the meetings like this?”

  Kyle laughed and shook his head. “People show up, but a lot of them aren’t actually interested,” he said. “Like, we want people from every grade, right? So Penny asked them to bring as many people who might be interested as possible, and it looks like they managed to actually do it now that we have approval.”

  “So this is the first official meeting of this? Not just the first open one?”

  “Pretty much,” Kyle said. “We just got the full approval to do it since apparently there’s even more people transferring in pretty much constantly for the rest of the year.”

  “So say goodbye to small class sizes!” A new girl appeared between the two of them with a broad smile and her arms across the back of both of their chairs as she leaned in. Her thick, dark hair had streaks of red and blue and purple, though Indira noted that they showed no signs of fading. Her clothing was just as bright, and she seemed to have no problem with any attention she might draw. She looked Indira over and smiled at her through the bright red lipstick. “So you’re the new one Penny found,” she said.

  “This is Esther,” Kyle said, shifting away from her.

  Esther offered her hand. “Always nice to have new blood,” she said. “Better to not spill it too much, though,” she added with a wink.

  Indira smiled and took it. “Indira,” she said. “Not intending on spilling any.”

  “Good.” It was clear that she wanted to say more, but one glance at Kyle made her stop. There was something else in her expression, one that she’d just seen in Ronnie. For people trying to lay low, Indira was having a very easy time picking them out.

  “So how is this supposed to work, exactly?” Indira asked. “Like, it’s a welcoming com
mittee, I get that. But it’s not like there’s a lot to high school.”

  “It’s not so much that,” Kyle said. “It’s more just to get people comfortable. So many people keep transferring in and there’s no way they’re going to get comfortable right away, so we’d be, like, their first friends once they got here to help them settle in. Show them the ropes.”

  “Warn them of the pitfalls of stepping out of line,” Esther added helpfully, taking a seat on the table beside Kyle. Kyle inched closer to Indira to get away from her, though she leaned over to keep herself in the conversation.

  “I’m guessing I was a bit of a test run,” Indira said.

  “Do you mind?” Kyle asked. The nervous smile on his face made her smile encouragingly in response, but she kept herself from doing any more than that. Esther was still watching and Indira didn’t want to give into those urges until she knew what her deal was.

  “I hope I was an excellent training opportunity.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you will be if you keep this up.”

  Kyle blushed and looked away, but Indira let out a laugh. Esther joined her, both of them fully amused as Esther knocked Kyle lightly in the arm and smiled at Indira. “I think I like you,” she said. “Just don’t go sweeping this one up too fast. He’s probably the only reason we have half this turnout. And here comes the other half.”

  Indira looked where Esther nodded, seeing Penny and Matt walk into the room with arms full of sheets. Penny found them soon enough, letting Matt go off to talk to a group of other students as she made her way over. “Hey,” Penny said. “I’m glad you could make it.”

  “I like this one,” Esther told Penny, giving Indira a quick wink. “Don’t go scaring her off, now.”

  “If you aren’t busy, could you hand these out to everyone?” she asked, handing Esther the stack of pages.

  Esther sighed dramatically and took them, miming them as much heavier than they actually were. “Such a slave driver,” she said as she walked off, but there was laughter in her voice and she stepped lightly as she shoved the pages into the hands of everyone she came across.