Heroes Lost and Found

by Sheryl Nantus

  Room service would be a must.

  I shook myself, trying to push memories of Hunter and our hotel room in Vegas back in the box labeled To be Opened Later.

  I waved the waitress over. She swooped down like a curious vulture, probably wondering if I was going to order the steak and eggs next.

  I would have if I’d seen it first.

  “Check, please.”

  She waved me off. “Already been taken care of, hon.” With a hand she gestured towards the far end of the diner. “Seems you’ve got an admirer.”

  Chapter Three

  “Came in the back door. Didn’t want to take any chances it was someone else.” Harris Limox grinned as I approached. “Thought I’d wait until you weren’t eating everything in sight.”

  He’d put on a few pounds, his rotund belly fighting to stay tucked under the tight flannel shirt but succeeding in hanging out over his jeans. The matching jacket made him look like a disaster in plaid. The receding hairline had taken over more territory, but he’d avoided the urge to do a comb-over and make the situation worse. The hair dye from May’s camouflage attempt was gone, leaving his remaining hair a dark brown. His brown eyes twinkled like a man with a secret he couldn’t wait to share.

  I took the stool next to him, reluctantly dropping the duffle onto the floor. “A wise move.” I gestured towards the waitress, who was busy studying a tabloid magazine at the other end of the counter and ignoring our reunion. “If I hug you, will it destroy your tough-guy image?”

  “Maybe,” Harris said solemnly. “But I’m willing to risk it.” He yanked me half off the stool into a grapple I knew was sending Hunter’s blood pressure soaring. After a minute I worked my way free, gasping for air. Lucky for both of us, his hands stayed on my shoulders and didn’t wander.

  “Same old Harris.”

  “Same old Jo.” His thick fingers waggled in the air. “Refill, Bernie, when you get a chance.” He looked at me. “Coffee?”

  “I’m good for now.” I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the tense muscles start to relax just a bit. “Scared me with that postcard, dude. Wasn’t sure if it was really you.”

  “Wasn’t sure you’d come.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Figured I’d roll dem dice. It was Vegas, after all.” He waved at Bernie who advanced on us, coffee carafe in hand. “Bernie, this is Jo. I’ve told you about her. Old friend of mine.”

  She squinted. “You look familiar.”

  “I get a lot of that.” I struck a pose, tilting my head upwards in my best vogue. “One of those faces, you know.”

  “Ah.” The waitress smiled. “You packed away a lot of food.”

  “Good living. My compliments to the chef.” I tapped my stomach.

  “Let me heat that up for you, dear.” She reached for Harris’s mug and tipped the carafe.

  “That pot’s not even half-warm,” Harris groused. “Can’t you put on a new pot and dump that one out?”

  She gave me a tired, we-women-who-deal-with-whiny-men look before filling his cup to the rim, the surface tension dangerously close to breaking and slopping coffee all over the counter.

  “Call me if you need anything else.” Bernie shot me a wink before retreating.

  Harris slipped his index finger into the coffee, sloshing some of the lukewarm liquid over the sides. A second later steam rose from the reheated drink. He withdrew his finger and popped it into his mouth with a sly smile.

  “I wouldn’t do that too often.”

  Harris chuckled as he leaned down to sip the hot coffee. “Only when I need to. There’s no Starbucks for about fifty miles, and she does make mighty fine coffee.”

  I waited until Bernie was out of earshot. “Are you okay? Are you in trouble?”

  “Me?” He laughed. “In trouble? I’ve been as straight as an arrow, swear.” His eyes dropped to stare at Bernie’s backside as she studied her paper at the other end of the counter. “Honest.”

  I shook my head. “Could have just picked up the phone, dude.” I rubbed my jaw, indicating our shared link. “Jessie would have wired you up.”

  He looked back at me and shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

  “What?” I glanced around us. “What do you mean?”

  “This Controller fellow,” he whispered. “You know who I’m talking about.”

  My poker face was tried and true. “Who?”

  “The bastard who ran Lamarr after your ass. And that girl, what’s her name.” Harris’s gaze darted around the diner again. “Heard he’s got eyes and ears everywhere. Didn’t want to risk calling you through open lines. You never know who’s listening in.” He tapped his jaw. “Even on this.”

  I kept the game going. “What do you know about this guy?”

  Harris shook his head, cutting off the conversation. “Let’s get out of here. I love Bernie, but I don’t want to make her a target by talking about such stuff ’round her.” He tossed a handful of bills on the table. “My place is around the corner.”

  He didn’t offer to take my duffle bag, and I didn’t expect him to.

  The streets were empty save for an appearance by a single police car cruising around in a large, looping circle, passing by us twice. Harris lifted his hand and waved to the unseen officer who continued his patrol, leaving us alone.

  “Dave’s a fine fellow. His wife just had twins, and he’s glad to have the overnight shift.”

  We walked along the vacant sidewalk, my duffle bag slapping against my side.

  “Sleepy little town, won’t wake up until about nine or so,” he offered. “They deal mostly with tourists in the summer, so the rest of the year is spent getting ready for the visitors. Getting in the cheap toys to sell them at high prices, that sort of thing.”

  We strolled down another street, the pocket-sized stores tripping over each other in Martha Stewart levels of clichés and cuteness.

  “I’ve got the apartment up over the store here, share it with my roommate.” Harris stopped in front of a building and fumbled with the key. “Got sort of used to living over a business.”

  I peered through the window at the display of old-fashioned wooden signs and toys. A train pulling a trio of cars behind it sat on a green piece of felt, the slick varnished tracks laid out in a circle. Harris chuckled as he wrestled the lock open.

  “I do some wood burning for them, add a bit of antiquing to some of the stuff. It’s all legal, don’t worry. Tell them I have a kit upstairs, they don’t know the difference.” He wriggled his fingers in the air. “They cut me a good deal on the rent. The rest I make through doing odd jobs here in town. You’d be surprised how many people don’t like taking their trash to the dump.”

  I followed him up the wooden stairs, feeling a sense of déjà vu at climbing into a small apartment set over a store. My duffle scraped the walls as we headed for the top floor.

  “He’ll be here. Doesn’t go out much. Leaves me to buy the groceries.” The door swung open. “And beer.”

  The disapproving tone wasn’t lost on me.

  He called out as he walked in, “Told you she’d come.”

  I stepped up behind Harris, my eyes adjusting from the outside brightness. The apartment was tiny, maybe half the size of the Lair. The narrow hallway shot out into a larger open area, the kitchenette/dining room/living room/bedroom a jumbled mess of bachelorhood. Roughly stacked piles of laundry lay on the floor, creating an obstacle course along with a simple burglar alarm for unwelcome visitors. Two cases of beer, both open and one half-filled with empties, sat at the entrance to the kitchen, right beside the refrigerator. The lone window was covered with a pale blue sheet, the sunlight struggling to gain entrance from the street.

  A man looked over from the recliner set in one corner against the wall, the flickering images from the television set in front of him flashing over his face. I squinted, trying to size up Harris’s roommate.

  “I guess I owe you five bucks then.” He got to his feet, a giant of a man who easily matched Ste
ve’s size and body shape. “I assume you fed her breakfast, since I just finished off the last bag of potato chips and I think the bread’s gone bad.”

  “I’m a good host,” Harris protested. “So don’t embarrass me. I know we’ve got that full jar of peanut butter and jelly and plenty of crackers.”

  The man chuckled as he took a few steps forward. “Never let it be said that you don’t know how to entertain a guest.”

  He stumbled against a stack of newspapers lying on the floor and grabbed the edge of the table. His dirty white T-shirt flopped free of his jeans, a portable napkin if the stains and splotches were any indication of his eating habits.

  I ran towards him, ready to catch him if he fell. Harris didn’t move. Instead he took off his jacket and hung it up on a coat rack, ignoring the man’s awkward walk towards us.

  “You’ll forgive my clumsiness.” He stopped in front of me and tilted his head to one side, letting the faint fluorescent light from above the sink illuminate his features. “I’m still getting used to this.” His right hand moved up, close to touching his cheek but stopping just shy.

  I stared at the man. He had short-cropped black hair, the bad home dye job leaving some blond traces where the roots stayed virgin. His face had tanned skin with crow’s feet at the edge of his deep brown eyes, one of which had been destroyed with a long angry scar going down the left side, the skin burnt and still pink with healing. He watched me with a weariness showing his age, which had to be a good ten years on my own.

  A shiver went down my spine as he stretched out his hand, and I placed where I’d seen him before.

  On the television screen, fighting along the A-listers in a seemingly never-ending war on evil. All carefully scripted, of course.

  At official ceremonies getting the key to the city, a hundred small towns vying to give him that honor and add their names to the list. Women screaming and fainting as they stretched out towards him, eager to touch the brim of his cape or catch the sweat from his brow.

  And most recently on the screen in our Las Vegas suite next to Nicholas Dykovski, his Guardian.

  “I’m Kit Masters. Pleased to meet you.”

  My mouth hung open in the worst case of etiquette since I was four and vomited at Mass.

  Kit turned to Harris as I pulled myself together. “I was sort of hoping she’d wear the leather outfit.”

  “Sorry.” I put my hands on my hips with a smile. “Not this time.”

  “At least not for us,” Harris drawled with a grin. “I’ll get us a round of beers.” He looked at me. “Too early?”

  “Never,” I said. “As long as it’s cold and wet.”

  My stomach gave a bit of lurch at the idea of chugging a beer right after brekka, but meeting an Alpha hadn’t been anywhere on my radar when I stepped off that bus.

  Kit gestured me towards the sagging dark green couch and three wooden chairs, all very close to collapse. “It’s not the Watchtower, but it’ll do.”

  His reference to the Alpha base shocked me back into reality. I couldn’t imagine how this was going over in the Lair. Jessie would be rolling on the floor in ecstasy, given his love of supers.

  “I’m sorry.” I stretched out my hand and completed the handshake. “Forgive my bad manners.”

  “True Canadian,” he replied as he enveloped my hand in his. “Grab a seat and we’ll chat. I’m sure you’ve got a ton of questions.”

  “A few.” I nodded to Harris, taking the cold bottle of beer from him.

  Kit arched an eyebrow, the one over his dead left eye. “No glass?”

  I tipped the brown bottle towards my mouth with a grin.

  “True Canadian.” Harris settled on one of the wooden chairs. I took the center of the couch, seeing it as the best choice. Kit returned to his recliner.

  “I guess you’ve heard of me.” He rocked backwards and sighed as the chair shifted.

  “A bit.” I resisted the urge to chug the entire bottle in one go. “You were sort of the prime example of how to be a super when I was in training.”

  “Me too,” Harris chirped. “Told that we’d love to be beaten up by you.” He sniggered. “Told them I wasn’t into that sort of thing.”

  Kit nodded, the familiar smile settling on his scarred face. “The good old days. When heroes were heroes and villains villains.” He nodded towards Harris. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” Harris brushed it off. I suspected this was an old routine they’d worked to perfection.

  The little girl inside me squealed with delight at having Kit Masters here, sitting and drinking a beer with me.

  The adult woman wondered what the hell I had just gotten myself into.

  “So, I guess your first question is how am I still alive?” Kit leaned forward, pushing away the longer hair at the back of his neck. “Take a look.”

  The red, ridged skin around the plug looked like a blasted wasteland, small craters digging into the burnt and charred area. The burn spread up and over the left side, matching the rest of his injuries.

  “Atlanta.” He sat back in his chair and took a deep swig of beer.

  I waited.

  “I’m sure you know by now that Dykovski’s a bastard, a bully, a thug who got off bashing supers. I complained, did the paperwork, everything they asked, and they still kept me matched up with the jerk.” He tilted the bottle into the light, judging the amount of liquid left. “Eventually I just stopped asking.”

  Harris clicked the lip of his bottle against his bottom teeth. “Even Alphas got screwed over.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I sat there day after day and let him rant and rave, use me as a punching bag when he needed to get off on beating someone, and waited. And waited. Until the alarms went off and we were told to get our asses to Atlanta.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “You know what was waiting for us. But instead of getting worried or scared, Dykovski got all excited, said he was going to finally see what I was made of, what we were made of. He was chomping at the bit like it was something he’d been waiting for.”

  I stayed silent. The Guardians had known about the aliens, known what they trained us for.

  What they hadn’t known was how badly we’d get our asses kicked.

  “So we went into the city without any idea of what we were going up against. And all hell broke loose ’cause the aliens, they weren’t taking the falls. They weren’t going down like any of the other games we’d played.” He closed his eyes and let out a low hiss of pain. “Screaming over the links, Guardians and supers dying and not knowing why or how, except that everything we knew was a lie and now it was killing us.” The bottle went to his mouth again. “But I don’t need to tell you that. You were there. You smelled the blood, you saw the deaths.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking of New York City and of Mike.

  The yelling, the screaming, the dying, the people running for their lives and for the first time ever not being able to count on the heroes to save them.

  Because, well…we weren’t.

  “Went up against the bastard, unleashed all I had. Double fire blast from both hands, didn’t hold back a bit. Son of a bitch shrugged it off and then returned fire, some sort of energy blast like that chick, what’s her name, Evernight, used to have.”

  The beer was getting warm in my hand. I rolled the bottle between my palms, soaking in the moisture.

  “Got slammed into a building, hard—right at the foundation. Whole damned thing was coming down around me, walls, floors, office furniture crashing over my head. Fire started up ’round me, sparking wires everywhere.” His fingers twitched. “Couldn’t move, beam trapped my legs. Couldn’t see out of one eye, nothing but blood running down my face, and I couldn’t breathe ’cause my face was on fire, there was something lying against it and I couldn’t do anything but burn.” The empty bottle landed on the coffee table, digging into a well-worn circle. “Called out for help, couldn’t get anything over the link with everyone screaming and yelling. I
turned to one side, saw a hole leading out into the street, got me a front-seat view of the insanity.”

  Harris hiccupped. He’d never mentioned where he’d lost his Guardian or what he’d seen on that day.

  “Saw Dykovski standing nearby with a fat, smug smile. He could have called over the rescue trucks, could have called another super over to help dig me out. Instead he tapped in the code on his fucking bracelet and walked away. Bastard just walked away and left me to die.”

  I realized I’d been holding my breath. The back of my head throbbed as I forced fresh air into my lungs.

  “I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was a dud, maybe it went off half-cocked because I was in the middle of an inferno and the heat screwed with the explosive, maybe my power fucked something up. There was a noise and a flash and nothing happened.” He grinned, a wide smile sending a shiver up my spine. “I fucking survived. I was alive.”

  Harris mumbled something under his breath that sounded strangely like a prayer.

  “Another building fell next to me, everything rocked and shifted and I could move again, pried my legs free with part of a chair. Dug myself out and ran. Knew I wasn’t going to win that battle, and with the Agency thinking I was dead, well…” Kit spread his hands wide. “Brand-new world, baby. No plug, no hassle.”

  I fought back the urge to ask where the hell he had been when I’d asked for help in Toronto, what he had been doing when we fought that final battle, if he’d been watching television when Maybelline Andrews sacrificed herself to save us all. Instead I studied the level of beer in my own bottle.

  “But you still have the plug,” I said. “It’s still there.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t worry about it. Dykovski thinks I’m dead and gone, and no one else is gonna care about it.”

  I looked from one man to the other. “So what did you call me here for? Not that I don’t mind finding out you’re alive, Mr. Masters.”

  “Kit.” He waved me off.

  “Kit, then.” I licked my lips, trying to find the right words. “I’m glad you’re alive and survived, but why am I here?”