Heroes Lost and Found

by Sheryl Nantus

  “You’re looking for Dykovski. I’m looking for Dykovski.” Kit beamed. “Sort of got the same goal, so I figured we’d compare notes.”

  I took a sip of beer. “I’m looking for this Controller dude. What makes you think it’s the same guy?”

  “I saw the fights in Vegas. I’m no fool, I know Dykovski’s behind it and what he wants to do.” Kit reached up and touched a raw area on his cheek. “Bastard rambled on all the time about what his great plans were. When I saw Lamarr sparring with you on Fremont and the shit that went down at Cherries ’n’ Lemons, I knew he was behind it. His wet dream about owning supers like property, taking us further into slavery. Thought the Agency was too nice to us, wanted to go full-out nasty on our asses.”

  “What did Dykovski say to you?” I chose each word with care, like picking out good apples at an orchard. “What leads you to believe he’s behind this?”

  Chapter Four

  Kit cleared his throat before lurching from the recliner and getting to his feet. He put his hands behind his back and his feet apart in a parade-rest position, eyes down.

  I winced, remembering my training days.

  He lowered his voice to a dull rumble. “You supers are nothing but a fucking plague on the earth. I’d like nothing better than to pull all your plugs, you inferior genetic specimens. But since I have to work with you fucktards, I’ll make the best of it until the time comes.” Kit paused to look over at me, watching my response.

  I shifted my weight. I knew there’d been anti-super feelings here and there, both inside and outside the Agency. But it hurt like hell to hear what a Guardian supposedly said about us.

  Kit’s tone returned to his parody. “I’ll pull all your fucking plugs, except for the cute girls who I’ll screw into next Tuesday and the ones I decide are worthy enough to breed. And we’ll take over this useless cesspool of a country and create our own perfect society, where mutants like you will know your place and like it. No more parading around in tight spandex outfits and getting lobster dinners. You’ll work for your food and like it. And if not, we’ll pull your fucking plugs and move on to the next freak.”

  Harris interrupted. “A bit of a dickhead, in other words.”

  “Quite,” I croaked. “So Dykovski’s an asshole. Nothing new. But what makes you think he’s behind the rogue supers my team just dealt with?” I saw Harris’s lips twitch at the “my team” comment.

  Kit turned his single good eye on me. “You’re not stupid. You wouldn’t have beaten Lamarr if you were. He was a tough little shit and the world’s better for him leaving it.” He sat down again. “Harris, ’nother beer. Please.”

  “Sure.” Harris glanced over. “Refill?”

  I was dying for about another dozen, given the topic of conversation, but I had to stay on my toes. “No, I’m okay. Thanks.” I took another sip of the rapidly warming liquid. Tasted like typical weak-ass American beer. Thank goodness. Right now I needed to stay sharp, stay frosty. Something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what. I felt like I was in one of those optical-illusion rooms where everything was just that much too short or too long.

  “Dykovski’s been chatting up the online boards searching for more fools to follow him.” Kit looked at Harris who nodded his agreement. “Some idiots out there figure he’ll do right by them. Only a few, but it only takes a couple to ruin it for everyone, right?”

  I checked the alcohol content, unsure if I’d really gotten weak-ass American beer after all.

  “What? Online?” I stuttered through the words, hoping Hunter was screaming for Jessie and his mad computer skills to help us understand this.

  “Lamarr wasn’t the exception to the rule. He’s not the only bad egg out there,” Harris interjected, seeing my confusion. He handed another bottle to Kit. “Let me lay this out for you. You got to go back to the beginning, when this all went haywire. After Atlanta, after New York City, after that first day. Supers without Guardians, Guardians without supers and all sorts of confusion.” His voice cracked.

  Harris paused and cleared his throat before continuing. “You’re hanging off a building trying to call people to Toronto to form a new team, and there’s a lot of fear all over the links, a lot of asking questions and no one offering any answers. No one’s calling the shots, and for a lot of us that was plain old scary. We got so indoctrinated in asking what to do, when to piss and when to crap, and now we’re on our own. What do we do?” He shook his head. “We were told it’d never change, it’d never be any other way. Suddenly it is another way, a whole new way. A scary way.” He caught my eye for a second before turning away. “I ran to Canada, looking for sanctuary. Found you, found the others.”

  Kit continued. “A few supers found each other after the fights, tried to hook up with others without using the link. Didn’t trust it, why should they? Agency’s always listening.” He took a sip of beer. “So they go find one of those cyber cafés, go to a library and get online, find a chat room, start poking around, asking questions only supers could answer. Start meeting with each other to see what the truth is, who’s alive and who’s dead and what’s going on. Kinda like a support group.”

  I pressed my lips together, holding back a scream of frustration. “Would have been nice to have someone tell me about this. Especially when I’m screaming for help with my ass swinging in the wind.”

  “No one trusted anything or anyone then, Jo—not at first glance,” Harris dove in, playing peacemaker. “Heck, even Peter sent a cat into your apartment to see if you were legit before coming in from the cold. Can’t blame a lot of them for holding back, not wanting to get involved with the real thing, the real fighting when we’d all been used to playing at it. And it was natural for us or them or whoever, wanting to get in touch with old friends to try and make a new life away from being a super.” He put his hand over the top of his bottle and made a popping sound. “I know there’s not a lot of us left, but it’s sort of like family. Even the relatives you don’t want to invite to Sunday dinner, you still like to talk to about stuff. The good old days, even if they sucked supremely.”

  “Okay.” I imagined Jessie frantically banging on his keyboard, trying to find said chat rooms. I couldn’t blame him for missing it in his many sweeps for information on supers—if child molesters and their ilk could ply their disgusting trade online, it wasn’t impossible for supers to stay underground in a digital world.

  Kit smacked his lips. “Started off as nothing more than idle chat, you know—who’s still alive, who’s where and who wants to find whom.” He looked down. “A lot of heartbreak those first few days. A lot of names disappeared off the list as we figured out what happened.”

  I chewed on the bottleneck to keep my mind on business. The brown glass clinked against my bottom teeth, the sharp pain forcing me to stay focused.

  Kit took another deep swallow and fell silent, his one good eye focused on the floor.

  Harris picked up the cue and ran with it, almost bursting at the seams as he rambled. “Anyway, a few days after the big fight at Toronto, this Controller dude comes online, bragging that he’s got Agency equipment for the right supers who want to sign up with him. Join his team and see the world, get the good life. No one pays much attention to him, you know? Just a babbling old fool who’s tripped into the wrong room. Not to mention no one believes he’s got access to anything. Rumors start about whether he’s a super or an Agency plant, trying to entice us back down the rabbit hole. A few of the tough old boys get the info and go offline to find out, see if he’s serious about offering a new deal or see if he’s Agency trying to pull us back under control. They don’t come back. People stop talking about him. If they’re talking about teams, they’re talking about the Protectors, you guys being out in the open and all. No Guardians other than Hunter, and everyone agrees he’s pretty cool.”

  Harris rolled the bottle between his hands. “I watched ’em talk online, some of the old crew babbling about the past. Fighting Tiny Tinman and Fiery Brian, t
he good old days. I’m rolling through Ohio on the way out west, ask about any supers in the area I could hook up with, network and all that to maybe find a job and a couch to crash on, and Kit drops me a line, says we should hook up.”

  “Total coincidence,” Kit interjected. “I was wandering around, trying to figure out what to do with myself. Logged on to the network at a café in Columbus and saw Harris here was gonna be traveling through in a few days.”

  “You two ever fight each other?” Mentally I scrolled through past battles I’d seen and fought in.

  “Nope, not in my league. But a super’s a super,” Harris replied. “Anyway, so Kit and me get together, have a coffee and start talking, and we decide to head out of the city together. End up here doing The Odd Couple thing, ’cept we’re both sort of slobs.”

  My head was getting fuzzy, and it wasn’t just from the booze. “Wait. Back up. I’m still trying to figure out how you think Dykovski is this Controller dude.”

  Kit scratched his chin. “Surf, I ain’t no idiot. I know Dykovski’s a Guardian, I know he’s got no problem pulling shit out of Agency caves and bunkers to create his brave new world. Don’t take a genius to put two and two together and figure he’s using the name Controller to make himself sound cool.” He spread his mammoth hands. “Can’t think of anyone else who’d be trying to do that. If you’ve got another name to toss at me, do it.”

  I stayed silent.

  “Okay. So don’t try to play me by saying maybe this guy isn’t Dykovski.” A grin spread. “But you knew that already and was working me for info. Not cool, Surf. Not cool.”

  Harris put out his hand, patting down the tension. “She’s okay, Kit. She’s just being careful.”

  He nodded and attacked the bottle again before speaking. “I know that. She’s no dumb bunny, she got that team together and all. That’s why I didn’t mind playing along.”

  I wasn’t sure where I stood, so I plowed forward. “So Dykovski’s been advertising for supers to join him by offering high-tech toys. He got a few answers, but most of you, having brains, didn’t go for it.”

  “Yep,” Kit confirmed. “And when he wasn’t getting a lot of responses, I figure he started hunting. Lie low and lurk in the room, see who’s visiting who where and at what time. People are being careful, but you got the right skills, you find out the information.”

  “And he shows up in the right place at the right time to steal their codes.” I pressed the bottle to my forehead. “Agency toy. Pilfered from a cache and used to locate supers and activate their plugs if they don’t go along with his plan. Fight or die, that’s what he did with Rachael.”

  The cool chain around my neck felt thick and heavy. We’d been able to thwart Dykovski’s attempts to activate our plugs with individual jammers, each small trinket a lifesaver. It was a smaller version of the type Jessie originally created to jam the Agency’s transmissions. With the destruction of the Agency base and, so we thought, the destruction of all the codes necessary to trigger the plugs, we figured we’d never need one again.

  Now we all carried one after Dykovski’s abortive try to scan our plugs and steal the code, to put us under his control. I resisted the urge to reach up and stroke it like a religious medal.

  The words sat on my tongue for a second, the urge to tell the two men we’d figured out a defense against Dykovski’s scanning.

  Something told me to swallow the words back, keep the secret a bit longer.

  Harris chuckled. “Told you she was a smart one.”

  “But, again, why call me?” I looked at Harris. “Not that I mind hearing that you’re all happy doing the domestic bliss and all that, but what did you call me here about?”

  He giggled. “Kit here has an idea to catch Dykovski.” His eyes lit up. “We’re going to be heroes again. The Protectors, you, me and Kit.”

  I swallowed back the temptation to slap him back into reality.

  “Yep. He’s going to walk right in here, and we’ll take him out. Get the lead on the evening news, of course,” Kit added.

  “Of course,” I replied, keeping my voice just this side of sarcasm. “And why would Dykovski come here to Kensington Grove?”

  Harris shifted a bit on the wooden chair, reminding me of a little boy dying to use the bathroom. “’Cause we set it up. I told him I wanted to be one of his thugs, and he’s coming to town to get me. Personal recruitment.”

  I rolled the glass across my forehead, stealing every bit of cold I could. It held back the building rage.

  Harris continued babbling, oblivious to my less-than-enthusiastic response. “It’s a great plan, Jo. Dykovski comes here, you and the rest of the team follow him home to his base, you help Kit pop his ass, and we all get handed the key to the city. Winner winner, chicken dinner.” He rocked back in the chair with a ridiculously wide smile.

  There wasn’t enough beer in the world to hold my tongue on that.

  “And you don’t think he saw you in Toronto hanging out with us and figured out you’re part of the team? Or that no one’s ratted you out online, on purpose or accidentally?” I snapped at the older man. “He’s going to show up with a bunch of his thugs, take your code and kill you just to make an example of you. He did it with Blockhead. He killed her to show Rachael he accessed the codes.”

  “Linda’s dead?” Harris whispered. His face went deathly pale. He glanced at Kit, the previous exuberance washed away with a slap of reality.

  Kit smacked his lips again. “Nothing to worry about, kid. Whether Dykovski makes you or not, he’s still coming here, and we’ll take them out like the morning trash before he even thinks about popping your plug. We planned this without the Protectors and we can do it with or without them.”

  “Jo…” The link crackled to life. Hunter interrupted my thoughts as I watched Kit smile and take another drink. “Jo, I’m not going to say he’d be bad to have on the team. But your pulse is hitting the ceiling. What are you thinking?”

  I paused, trying to sort out my feelings. We could get Harris a jammer to protect him from Dykovski, maybe an extra one for Kit to make sure. Kit Masters was a formidable Alpha super to have on our side and would give us a lot of credibility among both the supers and civilians who might still think of the Protectors as a bunch of lucky underdogs.

  The green-eyed monster reared its head, pointing out I might be a wee bit jealous of Kit Masters showing up.

  It went without saying he’d take over the team whether I agreed or not. It’d be a race between the man’s ego and the public demanding an Alpha in charge.

  But there was something about the way he tilted his head to one side, something about the way he spoke about Dykovski…

  “So you’ve told Dykovski to come here to meet Harris and recruit him for his band of thugs.” I fiddled with the soaked paper label on the beer bottle. “Sort of like Parris Island coming to the Marines.”

  “Yes.” Kit reached up and scratched the burnt area. Flakes of skin floated down to the hardwood floor. “From what we gathered online they like to do it that way. Less chance of being found out if they go to the mountain, in other words.”

  “And after they leave with Harris, we follow them back to their base and then take them out.” I drew out the last few words, looking for a reaction.

  He frowned. The lone eye stared at me, unblinking and cold.

  Bingo.

  Harris bounced again between the two of us. “Sure. That’s the plan.” His face changed from enthusiastic to confused as he stared at Kit. “Right?”

  Kit snorted. “Guess it’s time to tell you about my little change to the plan.” He put his hands together and cracked his knuckles, the bullet shots snapping in my ears. “Dykovski’s coming here either alone or with a few of his thugs so we tag and bag him right here in Kensington Grove. I’m not letting him out of my sights. I’m not letting him get back to his base and go underground like the slimy worm he is. He gets back to his box of goodies, who knows what he’s going to pull up, toss i
n our way to escape.” He shook his head. “No. Never again.”

  The small tinkling alarm bell in the back of my head evolved into Big Ben.

  “No, we can’t.” I pointed with the neck of the beer bottle at the window. “There are people out there, civilians. I know Dykovski doesn’t give a shit about them. He was willing to kill them in Vegas to send a message. He won’t have any problem killing them here to delay or distract us.”

  “So?” Kit scratched his cheek again. “Not my problem.”

  I put the beer bottle down on the table. “It is our problem. We can’t fight in the middle of Kensington Grove. Innocent people will die.”

  Kit snorted. “Fuck that shit. No one’s innocent in this, Surf. Not the Agency and sure as hell not the people out there.” He stood up, almost knocking his head on the low ceiling. “They knew we were too good to be true and they didn’t care. They let the Agency continue to trap and enslave us, use and abuse us, and never gave a shit about our lives, our families, the people who cared about us.” His arms swung around, waving at the world outside the small apartment. “They bought the posters and books and action figures and never asked what we really wanted. They never cared as long as we gave them a good show.”

  “They didn’t know.” I stepped towards Kit. “The Agency made sure of that. You can’t put them in the middle between Dykovski and us.”

  “They’ll do fine.”

  “They’ll die.” I looked at Harris. “You really want Bernie to be on the front line? You saw what happened in Las Vegas. You think she’s going to survive that?”

  Harris shook his head, addressing Kit. “We gotta take it outside, Kit. Outside the town. You said we’d follow them out, that’s what you said when we set this up.”

  The Alpha let out a sharp laugh. “What I said and what’s going to happen are two different things. I’m not going to let Dykovski walk away because there’s a bunch of civvies in the way. I’m not saying to aim for them. But if they get in the way, I’m not going to stop and hold their hand, walk them to the other side of the street and out of the way. I’m not stopping until I’m standing on Dykovski’s cold, dead body. Someone dies, someone dies.” He shrugged. “Do your best, but shit happens.”