The City That Heroes Built

by Daniel Pierce

  Jen shook her head. “The real estate money all goes back into the companies, more investing in real estate. But like I said, they haven't made any money, they just borrow it and buy more property. The gambling he reports, he's clearing several hundred thousand that he's reporting, and then giving a lot of that away and investing the rest.”

  “You think he has a power that helps him gamble?”

  “X-ray vision or something? Maybe.”

  “So, do we trust them?” I asked.

  “They're probably avoiding government regulations to some degree, but they're also just using the loopholes that are already there. I don't know if it's any different than anything other people do. I mean would you consider the Guardian Angels untrustworthy when they never paid property tax on their secret base? The difference is that they have some capability to control the environment in which their investment was made.”

  She was quiet for a few miles.

  “But maybe we should have this in the back of our minds when we work with them,” she said.

  “Right on.” We went to Murphy's. Cal was behind the bar.

  “I'm going to need to card you,” he said to Jen. She still looked underage, given her clothes and hair. She handed over her driver's license.

  “How you guys doing tonight?”

  “Busy,” Jen said.

  “Homework?”

  “Ha ha. You got a minute?”

  “Yeah. Si, you got this?”

  Simon took over behind the bar.

  We went to a table in the back with Cal. Jen broke down our Red Barber theory. Cal listened.

  “Yeah, okay, I'm in,” he said. “Any pattern to his kidnappings? Every 4 days or anything like that?”

  “Well, there was just last night, well, this morning. Other than that, there's no evidence, just people who were hanging around stopped hanging around.”

  “Right, right.” Cal drummed the table with his fingers while he thought. “So this probably calls for a search pattern out from Kids Remembered House. We'll start there, circle outward. Try all the doors on buildings, license plate numbers on cars, write them all down. Vans, too, but it's probably a car.”

  “Why are we trying doors?”

  “If you've got a kid in your hands, you don't want to be fumbling in the dark for keys, especially if you're making a getaway. First place to hide will be easy to get into, with more locked doors inside. Car will probably be modern. Automatic trunk, maybe something that looks better than the average car in the neighborhood.”

  “I'd go the opposite way,” I said. “I figure that a kidnapper wants to blend in to the area. Maybe even have a beater he can dump and not miss.”

  Cal shook his head. “You want reliable. Normal. Middle class. And he's taking this car to another neighborhood. Shitty car would stand out there. He wants to blend in at his home, not where he hunts. In his hunting ground, he's the strongest thing.”

  “Yeah, so, you said we would all go. We're not supras,” I said.

  “I've got tactical mikes for you. All you have to do is report in.”

  I didn't want to look scared so I said, “Okay.”

  “Park your car down the street in the coffee shop parking lot. We'll meet you there.”

  “We is?”

  “Simon's coming to. He's good at finding people.”

  “Then why do you need me?”

  “Four is better than three. Though, maybe she ought to stay here.”

  “I can keep the bar open,” Jen said. “You boys have fun.”

  She stayed. I parked the car. Simon and Cal met me at the car looking like Delta Force commandos, without rifles. Cal wore a patch that said O.A.F.

  “What's OAF?” I asked.

  “Operator-As-Fuck,” Cal said. He handed me a tactical radio and a coin. It was a military challenge coin, big as the circle of my index finger and thumb, a few times thicker than a silver dollar. It said OAF on one side and the number 12 on the other. “Let's do it.”

  “I feel like I should have a costume. What's the coin for?”

  “You put it on the ground when you need me and I teleport to it.”

  We walked the mile to the Kids Remembered House and split up. I was nervous as hell when they went the opposite direction. Within a minute, Simon was on the radio following the quick keying of crypto to keep the conversation private.

  “Fifth and Jackson,” he said.

  “Clear,” Cal replied.

  “Rooftop, 6th and Medina.”

  “Clear.”

  “Behind the 7-11 on 7th.”

  “Just some kids smoking.”

  And so on, spiraling outward from the Kids Remembered House. I went the opposite direction, looking for unlocked doors of unoccupied buildings, finding none. I had no business being out looking for a serial killer. I hadn't even the sense to arm myself, though I guess that would have made me a vigilante, and that was not what I am. I was an amateur investigator, and I was terrified. Basically Nancy Drew, only far more likely to have my throat cut. I was nervous and jumping at my own shadow and acutely aware of everyone else around me.

  I ended up focusing on the footsteps of someone who seemed to be following me. I turned left down an alley, then left again to make sure that I wasn't just imagining it. I wasn't. A tall shadow continued to follow me down the alley. It dead-ended at the back of another building. I tried the door. It was locked. I was too scared to notice that Simon and Cal had gone quiet on the radio.

  It sparked to life with the Red Barber 20 yards away.

  “Put the coin down, OAF up,” Cal said.

  I did, slowly. “Done,” I said.

  Something staggered the Red Barber. Cal appeared on the coin, facing the alley walls. He looked around, grabbed me, we appeared on the roof, he disappeared. The shift in time or space, or whatever it was that enabled the teleportation left me nauseous. I puked, wiped my mouth, and looked over the edge. Cal was fighting a losing battle against a tougher opponent. Cal punched and kicked, but the Barber didn't seem hurt. Something else seemed to hurt him, staggering him, slowing him as he reached for his head, then shook it off and tried to grapple Cal. Cal shoved him around into the wall. The Red Barber stood up.

  “Fuck it,” Cal said. He pulled out a pistol and double tapped shots into the Red Barber. The Barber dropped into a heap.

  “That's a kill,” Simon said.

  Cal picked up coin 12 and appeared next to me at the roof's edge.

  “Extract,” he said on the radio.

  “Coin out,” Simon called.

  Cal grabbed me and we appeared on a street I didn't recognize. Simon picked up the coin we were standing over. Cal grabbed him. We appeared in an armory. Simon grabbed a wastebasket for me to puke into. He handed me a cup of water right after.

  “You get used to it after a while,” Simon said.

  “Jesus, you killed the Red Barber.”

  “Eh,” Cal said. “I killed a Red Barber clone.”

  “Should we have searched him for keys, or an id, or something to track him back to his home or lair, or whatever?” I asked.

  “Cops can sort that out.”

  “Yeah, but how long from now?”

  Simon and Cal thought about it. Cal disappeared.

  It took five minutes for him to return. That gave me a chance to look the place over. It was a room about 40' by 40'. Half of it was an armory; there was body armor, rifles, pistols, rope, goggles, different tactical rigs, knives, and other gear. The other half had the exit, a refrigerator, leather sofas, a big screen TV and the latest Xbox.

  “Cool man cave,” I said. “May I?” I fell into the sofa before Simon could answer.

  “That worked out well,” he said. “You were good bait.”

  “I was bait?”

  “Right? I figured Jen would be bait and you'd be behind the bar. Too obvious, maybe.”

  “You can't use my girlfriend as bait!”

  “Girlfriend? That was a little fast, don't you think?”


  “Okay, she's not my girlfriend, but you can't use any girl for bait. You can't use me for bait.”

  “Bro, it's part of being on the team.”

  “Well, first of all, you need to tell me when I'm bait,” I said. “Secondly, why am I the bait? I'm not a homeless kid.”

  Simon shrugged. “You were acting weird in that neighborhood. Maybe that was enough.”

  “That was a weird coincidence and a shitty plan. It shouldn't have worked out like that at all.”

  “Look, the Barber missed the night before, if he's compelled to do this heinous crime, he was going to do it. That simple. That's how all crime is stopped.”

  “It just seems overly lucky.”

  “Really? Have you seen how many people are in prison? People are caught all the time. The first 20 some Red Barbers were caught by the regular cops, the only time heroes were required is when they responded to a massacre in progress faster than the cops.”

  “It just seems overly lucky, that's all.”

  “That's because we know what we're doing and Cal is Operator-as-Fuck.”

  “And you can find people? Specific people?”

  “It's hard to explain. I can scan for people's thoughts, I can't read them, just know that they're happening. Sometimes I can recognize the patterns, like for a specific person, and sometimes I can get a vibe on homicidal, or scared, or something like that, but it's pretty low key. It's basically as useful as body language, only I can do it for people I can't directly see.”

  Cal popped back into the armory.

  “Okay, sorted. I moved him out to the 7-11 and called the cops from the payphone. I did a quick search, but didn't come up with anything. No car keys. No house keys.”

  “Great. Well, can we head back to the bar and get Jen?”

  Cal and Simon changed into street clothes. Cal popped us out to the alley behind Murphy's. I didn't puke. We walked into the bar. Jen turned it back over to Simon. I filled her in on the night's events as we drove home. She asked me to drop her at her place and did not invite me inside.

  Wiki-entry: Catchpenny

  Catchpenny was a thief who used power armor to rob banks. He first became active in 1999 with a string of robberies on the west coast of the US. The armor allowed him to tunnel underground and into bank vaults. By mid-2000, he was simply going into banks at night, and going directly into the vaults. On occasions when police or vigilantes tried to stop him, his armor allowed him to escape unharmed. The armor could run at about 60 mph, jump 100+ yards, and survive underwater or other extreme conditions. In May 2001, Catchpenny burrowed into Fort Knox and made off with about a ton of gold. He was captured by the hero Dragonius in St Louis, but escaped prison using an automaton version of his armor to conduct the jailbreak. Returning to the west coast, he recovered another set of armor and remained free for about six months, getting captured by the Guardian Angels in Santa Maria on Thanksgiving Day, 2001. In 2004, he was transferred to the Citadel, despite being powerless without his armor. Real name: Jeremiah Runyan.

  June 14, 2021

  I started my Monday with a cup of coffee and the news. The Red Barber was killed by an unknown vigilante who alerted police and left the body at a local 7-11. No deaths were attributed to this Red Barber, though there may be a link to the death of the Kick in the same area earlier yesterday. About two hours after police reached Red Barber's body, two teenagers arrived at the police headquarters claiming to have been kidnapped and held in a nearby building. Police are investigating the building now. The teens refused to detail their escape, but damage to the building suggests that they were rescued.

  Suprastories.com was busy with speculation on the rescuer, the vigilante who killed the Red Barber and the nature of the Red Barber's crimes. I didn't browse for long. It felt weird to have the inside information, and to watch the speculation.

  The more interesting news on the site was that Skyborne was going to be doing an “Ask Me Anything” in two days. The moderators were already busy cutting out stupid and pointless questions. The requirement for correct spelling cut down the questions quickly.

  I was waiting for Jen to call or text, and finally decided to text her when the board lit up with a thread about a supra-rampage in Lompoc. I started following the thread, the news, and Twitter all at once. Everything was confused and chaotic and all anyone knew was there was a lot of violence and chaos. Someone reposted a photo showing the offending villain, a hulking mass called Suicide Prime. It had last shown up a half year before. Sentinel stopped it on the beach at Pismo. This time the rampage went on for a while.

  I turned on the TV when someone said the news helicopters were overhead. I tuned in just in time to see the Chill get bulldozed by Suicide Prime. I suspect that it's a person, but all I knew was that it's person-shaped. It stands about 15 feet tall, mostly featureless, but seemingly made of shifting molten lava, with swirling black stone and red hot lava slowly moving across the surface of its shape. It looked like a fifteen-foot tall marshmallow man that was pissed off after someone dropped it the fire.

  After it left the Chill in a person shaped hole in the concrete, Artemis showed up and tried blasting at it with her arrows of energy, seemingly doing nothing at all. It struck her with a long upper cut that sent her smashing through the windows of a storefront and out the back of the building. It carried on down the main streets, smashing cars the same way it smashed Artemis. Many of the cars caught fire as they came in contact with it, turning into heavy, exploding projectiles knocked back into buildings or other vehicles in the street.

  The cause of the rampage wasn't determined, but the point of origin was. A supra called Enigma was the first apparent victim. He dug himself out of the wreckage of the hotel where the rampage started.

  People fled from the scene as fast as they could. Police and firefighters followed behind looking for hurt bystanders and putting out burning buildings and cars. Suicide Prime tore a crooked path through the streets, and headed toward the freeway. Rush hour had ended, but the damage that would be done if Suicide Prime made it to the busy interstate would be nothing short of complete carnage. Just as it reached the Central Ave overpass, Catchpenny leapt in front of it.

  The original Catchpenny died in the Citadel a couple years ago, having become an occupant following his raid on Fort Knox. Whoever wore the armor now knew how to use it, and notably, could use it, since prior attempts to use the supra-tech failed. Only the creator could use supra-tech, and if something was built for others, it stopped working when the supra died, be it the armor King Scarab built for the military, or the zero-emission public transit in Philadelphia.

  The power-armor braced and launched a metal net at Suicide Prime. The net wrapped around and melted away. Catchpenny's right arm flipped open and closed, swapping the next launcher for a chainsaw. The chainsaw started to spin at the same time the drill at the end of the left arm whirled to life.

  Catchpenny slowed Suicide Prime, but only lasted a few seconds. The armor withstood the heat and power of the rampaging thing, but the operator must have been rattled around when he was knocked backward. Suicide Prime ignored the freeway, continuing on the bridge over it to River Park. Sentinel met him there.

  I'd seen Sentinel before, up close. I was a kid when Bazooka Joe had held up the bank in my neighborhood where I was depositing money from my paper route. Sentinel flew in, wrapped up Bazooka Joe, and flew him off to the Citadel. He'd been wearing his American flag version of his costume that day, and he was wearing it now. He usually wore white, but this version of his costume has stylized stars on blue wrapping around his torso, and red stripes breaking up the white beginning at his waist. His mask and gloves remained white.

  Suicide Prime aimed right for Sentinel, gathering speed before impacting. Sentinel dug in his heels and met the smoldering villain with his impossibly strong arms. Sentinel stopped him, though ten feet of asphalt, concrete and grass paid the price as Sentinel skidded backwards. Everything paused for a moment. Sentinel, uniform already b
urning, flew upward with Suicide Prime in his arms. Sentinel flew fast, but not jet fast. He barely outpaced the news helo, but he didn't have far to go. He passed the coastline arcing higher as he flew, and released his cargo. Suicide Prime's ballistic trajectory carried him a little further on as Sentinel pulled back. The molten creature splashed into the ocean sending steam and water blasting into the sky. Sentinel flew away. The news helo circled the spot in the ocean where Suicide Prime hit, but that was the end of the action.

  The string of supras that had been left in Suicide Prime's wake disappeared, presumably under their own power. I found out later that Cal popped in and aided the medevac efforts. The news missed on his involvement, which was just as well. Sometime after all the excitement died down, Jen answered my text and invited herself over, which did not bother me one bit.

  June 15, 2021

  We didn't have any plans so we sat around on the Internet, played video games, and I entertained Jen. The fires in Lompoc were out, and nothing else interesting was happening. The news was saying that the destruction the day before was the worst since Leonidas attacked the Sunshine Bunch.

  Jen and I just sat around and talked, and we didn't say a whole lot until we heard about Glory Knight.

  The police investigation into the suicide of Benjamin Hanes led to a press conference announcing that he was Glory Knight. Authorities discovered his body after the mailman noticed the pileup of mail. He left a note detailing his suffering from post-retirement depression. He lived alone, in a small house, in a normal neighborhood. He was self-employed as an accountant, of all things, and volunteered his services for the less fortunate members of his church.

  “That's way too elaborate of a cover,” Jen said.

  “Maybe he liked being an accountant,” I said. “Probably helped to get away from the intensity of being a superhero.”

  “Sounds like he bored himself to death.”

  “Hey, you think Fiver knew him? He was with the Guard and they teamed up with the New Powers a couple of times.” We both looked it up. She was faster.