#Herofail

by Lexie Dunne

  Freed from the rubble, I shot my grappling hook at the edge of the sinkhole, and let myself be yanked up by the belaying cable. It almost wrenched my arm from its socket, but I managed to pull myself out of the sinkhole.

  I hunkered down to gather my bearings, my ears ringing. I’d made it three blocks from Davenport. Around me, chaos reigned. People rushed to safety, tripping and stumbling over each other in their haste to get away. A few gawkers gummed up the works as they rubbernecked at the sinkhole, phones out to record the sights. A few swung in my direction.

  I was going to start trending again if I didn’t move.

  Jessie would’ve rappelled up the side of the building and vanished from sight, but I’d used my belaying cord already. So I slapped on the navigation matrix—it took a couple times thumping my damaged mask to get it working—and began to phase through the crowd, trusting the blue line overlaid on my eyepiece to guide me. My chest burned as I sprinted back toward Davenport Tower. I had to get back to the Complex. I had to find Jeremy.

  Static exploded in my left ear right before I reached the Tower, making me cry out. Annoyed, I smacked my palm into the side of my helmet. The static abruptly cut off in a whine, and Angélica’s voice broke through. “—this is Eagle Eye. Raptor, report in. Over.”

  The sewer collapse must have knocked out my communications. I hit the side of my helmet again—a caveman fix that would no doubt make Jessie’s lead R & D developer wince—to steady out the comms. “Eagle Eye, this is Raptor. I think my comms got knocked out for a bit.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  Hopefully my tracker still worked. I pinged her with my location. “I got a little buried in the rubble in the explosion. I’m at the Davenport east entrance, across the street. Looks like the supervillains called it a day.” I didn’t see any of them around, not even the downed Wrestling Maniac. “Do we have any reports from inside?”

  “Stay put,” Angélica said, cutting me off.

  “What?”

  “Stay in location. I’m coming to you.”

  “What? No, I need to be in there. I’m fine, I can help. Jeremy—”

  “Orders,” Angélica said, and the line cut off.

  I nearly smacked the side of my helmet again to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. HEX protocols called for all able-bodied heroes to assist in disaster situations. And yet Angélica wanted me to simply stay there? What the hell was that? Orders? From whom? Jessie was still in her coma in—

  I looked toward the building.

  Oh, hell. Jessie.

  Before the thought even fully percolated in my head, I was sprinting across the street, aiming for the nearest grate. I didn’t know what situation I’d find under there—likely the bomb had collapsed those tunnels as well, but I had to know.

  Twenty feet from the tunnel, I was blown back by a gust of exhaust. The Raptorjet dropped the cloaking, hovering three feet off the ground. Angélica opened the hatch. “Get in!”

  “Jessie—”

  “She’s fine. They moved her hours ago. Get in.”

  Feeling helpless, I obeyed. The door hissed closed behind me, and I drew up short at the sight of the copilot’s seat. “Kiki!”

  “Hey.” Blood trickled from a cut on her hairline, making her skin look even paler by comparison, and she hugged her arm to her side. “Guessing you didn’t entirely get away from the blast either,” she said, nodding at my armor.

  Since the normally dark bronze armor had gone gray with rubble dust, it was a pretty solid guess.

  “Jeremy’s body is still inside,” I said as Angélica pointed the nose of the jet toward the sky. “You can’t just expect me to leave him—”

  “There are rescue teams.” Angélica’s voice had gone hard. “They’ll find him. You can’t stay on sight in your Raptor armor, they’re worried Rita will find you and cause more damage trying to kill you.”

  “We’ll get word the second they find him, Gail,” Kiki said in a much less brusque voice.

  I sat down hard in the jump seat. “Is your arm okay?” I asked.

  “Probably not.”

  “I’m taking you both to the Nest,” Angélica said. “Gail, get out of the armor.”

  “What?”

  “It’s damaged. Get back into your regular gear.”

  “That’s damaged, too.” The panel I’d lost while fighting Freezer Burn was still missing. But Angélica gave me her why-are-we-still-arguing-about-this? look. Feeling like I was an unwitting participant in the weirdest game of musical chairs ever, I stepped out of the Raptor armor. Kiki let out a whimper, but other than that, the jet remained absolutely silent until Angélica lowered it into the hangar at the Nest. Before she opened the door, though, she pointed at the Raptorlet armor.

  “All right, all right,” I said, stepping into it.

  I understood why when the door opened. With the Davenport Complex bombed and in who-knew-what shape, the HEX group had moved to the Nest. It made sense: Jessie had sunk so much money into her base that it was probably the most technologically advanced spot in the city. But after a year of being sworn to secrecy about the place so much as existing, seeing it full of Davenport personnel manning a control center made my skin crawl with a sense of wrongness.

  Jessie would hate this.

  In the center of it all, looking like he hadn’t slept, Eddie Davenport calmly handed out instructions, signed off tablets, and generally directed traffic. Aside from the dark circles beneath his eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that his twin sister had been shot and his company blown up in the last twenty-four hours. He scrawled off on a tablet and gestured for another round of coffee to be brought out.

  Eddie turned, his eyes falling on Kiki. “There you are,” he said in a perfunctory voice. No relief that his niece had survived an explosion, apparently. God, some people. “The evacuation crews need a liaison to deal with Singh Memorial and all local hospitals, you take point on that.”

  Angélica shook her head and marched Kiki past him. “Nope. Infirmary for her. Raptorlet can handle that until we’ve checked her arm.”

  “I believe letting Raptorlet talk to the hospitals would end with one of them mysteriously in shambles, so I believe I’ll pass on that,” Eddie said, his voice dripping with acid.

  I was too tired and too worried over Jeremy to shoot him the finger. “Fine. I’ll go back in the field. Get me set up with comms, I can assist a team.”

  “That also won’t be happening. Find a corner, stay in it. Out of the way, preferably.”

  I bit my tongue. “You’re wasting a good asset. I could be out there.”

  “Bridget,” Eddie said as Angélica, clearly using our argument to her advantage, pulled Kiki away. A young woman stepped over and handed him a tablet. “Thanks. Handle the nearby hospitals, will you?”

  I took the tablet, and groaned at the photograph of me falling flat on my ass at the Davenport gala. “This was an accident,” I said, shoving the tablet back with a little more force than necessary.

  “If anything, it was a sign that you are still an untrained novice and frankly, a bigger pain in the ass than you’re worth. Given the not inconsiderable history between the Raptor and Fearless, I’d rather not hand my mother our highest-profile hero on a platter. You’re staying out of the way.”

  “I can’t just sit back and do nothing.”

  “Wrong. This whole situation is your fault in the first place, so that is precisely what you will do. Find a corner, sit there, and stay put. Until further notice, the Raptor and the Raptorlet are both grounded. Now, I have work to do.” And he stalked off into the mess of Davenport personnel.

  I nearly followed him to keep arguing, but his words finally caught up to me. “Wait! How is this my fault?”

  Eddie only kept walking.

  I had no intention of finding whichever corner Eddie had picked out for me—not when Jeremy was in danger—but before I could figure out how to sneak out of the Nest, Angélica did one of her magical appearing tr
icks and showed up by my elbow, which she grabbed. She pulled me into the infirmary.

  “I’m fine,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure that was the case.

  “The world’s first supervillain did something to you that had you ʼporting into walls. Even if I didn’t think this was necessary, Kiki’s insisting on it.” Angélica’s grip never lessened. “She says your mental connection is mysteriously stronger.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that, too.” I allowed myself to be pulled into the infirmary suite.

  Kiki’s arm had been bound in a sling and a white butterfly bandage had been applied to the cut on her hairline. She frowned when I stripped out of the armor. “You’re white as a ghost,” she said. “I’m not sure you should have been out in the field in the first place.”

  “I did just survive getting buried alive,” I said, sitting on the cot.

  “Yes, I can understand th—Was that your stomach?”

  “I’m really hungry,” I said, putting an arm over my grumbling midsection. “I already burned through the crap-cakes I ate in the field.”

  Both women stared at me. “You ate those willingly?” Kiki said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Can I have one now?”

  Angélica wordlessly pulled one from the drawer, and I frowned. If I’d known they were in the room the entire time earlier, I probably wouldn’t have dented the wall. I eyed that same dent as I chewed, making a face at the taste.

  Kiki followed my gaze to the wall and stepped over, tracing the fingers of her good hand along the dents. “I think it’s time you walked me through what’s going on with your powers,” she said. “Start from the beginning. Did this happen before or after you got dosed with nanobots at the gala last night?”

  “It started after Detmer.” I chewed my way through a second crap-cake while I relayed the details of what had happened. By now, some of it was coming back to me: I remembered Brook’s warnings about staying away from Rita. I remembered my ribs breaking. I remembered the torture chamber, and a loud, overwhelming wall of noise. And of course waking up to find Brook’s pain ray dripping from my palms like acid, and that I couldn’t stop myself from ʼporting and phasing at random.

  “And you have no idea what Rita did to you in that room?” Kiki asked me.

  I held my water glass out to Angélica. She refilled it a third time. “No idea,” I said. “It’s hazy, but Rita said something about Brook—who doesn’t seem to be involved in any of this, by the way. She was super fed up when I talked to her at the prison, and I didn’t see her in the HEX briefing room.”

  “Hold up,” Angélica said. “What’s this about the HEX briefing room?”

  “Rita and her cronies were up there. They were looking for something.”

  “Did they say what it was?” Kiki asked.

  “If they’d said what it was, I wouldn’t have said ‘something,’ would I?” I asked.

  “Okay.” Angélica held up a hand for peace, and I realized how snarky my last sentence had sounded. I sagged forward, shrugging in apology. “So Rita definitely had a reason for attacking Davenport today beyond simple revenge,” Angélica said.

  “That’s the point of Villain Syndrome, isn’t it?” I asked. “Even when they’re batshit insane, they’re batshit for a reason.”

  “Really, you should write medical textbooks.” Kiki’s voice sounded impossibly dry and tired. She picked up her tablet and frowned. “Did you know you’re a hundred pounds lighter?”

  “I am?”

  “She is?”

  Kiki flipped the tablet around so I could look at my weight. Just as she said: 96.7 pounds lighter. Huh. “How is that even possible?” I asked.

  Kiki tabbed through the pages, frown deepening. “I’d need to run some more tests but it seems the Mobium might have restructured itself to be lighter and yet just as strong. Think of it like steel as opposed to the armor of the knights of old.”

  The word knights made me frown. “Excalibur,” I said, and Kiki and Angélica gave me blank looks. “Tamara Diesel said that name earlier. I only just now remembered.”

  “When the hell did you see Tamara Diesel?” Angélica looked close to pulling her hair out.

  “She was watching the fight at Davenport Tower. Lady Danger, too. Look, I’ll write up all of this, I promise. But I’d rather focus on the Mobium. It’s different?”

  “Your being lighter might account for some of the phasing and ʼporting difficulties. But your stronger mental signature wouldn’t—unless . . .” Kiki trailed off and stared at the ceiling for a minute, clearly lost in thought. “It’s as though whatever Rita did in that room optimized you.”

  “That makes no sense,” I said. “I was clearly there to stop her, which makes me an enemy. Optimizing me helps me out. That’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do to enemies.”

  Angélica and Kiki exchanged shrugs. “It also knocked you out of commission long enough to get out of her way,” Kiki said. “It appears she was on a timetable of sorts. And if you’d been unconscious even two minutes longer, you’d have been trapped in Detmer when it collapsed.”

  “Let’s not forget the part where you were unconscious for hours afterward,” Angélica added.

  “And the ʼporting into walls. So, what? She gambled that I wouldn’t wake up in time, and lost?” I asked.

  “It kind of looks that way, yes.”

  “Great,” was all I could say to that.

  “I need to analyze these results,” Kiki said, “but it’ll have to wait now that we know you’re probably not in any immediate mortal danger.”

  The word immediate didn’t sound as comforting as she probably meant it to. Neither did probably.

  “But first, I should help my uncle and check in on Jessie’s medical team. Why don’t you two go to the obstacle course and see if you can get to the bottom of this?” Kiki looked from Angélica to me.

  When I opened my mouth to protest that we could both be more help than that, Angélica clamped a hand on my shoulder. “You know where to find us,” she said to Kiki, and dragged me from the room. To me, she said, “Let’s go figure out what’s wrong with you now, shall we?”

  Angélica wore me out on the obstacle course—or she gave it her best shot. I’d apparently begun to adjust for my lighter weight, but it still affected the way I phased. And the harder I phased, the harder it hurt it to hit the wall. Angélica ran me through one obstacle course after the next until we were both reasonably certain I’d stopped overshooting whenever I phased.

  The ʼporting remained a nightmare. At least it wasn’t giving me migraines like it first had.

  As we trained, I filled her in on what I’d overheard while spying on Tamara Diesel and Lady Danger. Focusing on them would have to take a backburner while Rita ran rampant on the city, as she was easily the bigger threat, and I hated it. All of those people infected with the nanobots would have to live in fear of an attack being triggered remotely. The main base of all superhero operations had been damaged, if not destroyed.

  And for some reason, Eddie saw that as my fault.

  There still wasn’t any word on Jeremy when Angélica, covered in sweat, finally declared the training session over. “Take a shower. Rest. They may change their minds about needing you,” she said.

  I had no choice but to obey. If I tried to wear the Raptorlet armor out of the base, Angélica probably had a way of disabling it on the spot. Or she’d come after me in the Raptorjet like the mother of a misbehaving toddler.

  Frustrated, I called Guy—voice mail—and then followed Angélica’s advice and took a shower.

  My usual room in the Nest had been taken over by operations, and they needed the infirmary for the patients who trickled in with injuries. So after repairing my armor in the workshop, I grabbed a camping kit from inventory, climbed up on top of the large supply shelves in the closet, and stretched out in the sleeping bag. Technically not a corner, but as long as I was out of the way, Eddie probably didn’t give a damn. If any
body needed me, they could call my phone. Questions swirled through my mind as I laid my head down. Fear for Jeremy—why wasn’t there word yet?—gnawed away at me.

  Both the questions and the fear chased me into sleep.

  Chapter 13

  A door clicked open. For a split second, I thought it was Guy finally coming to bed, and nearly rolled over to mutter something at him. Before I could, it hit me: that didn’t sound like our bedroom door. My eyes flew open and I tensed, ready for a fight.

  Not my bedroom at all. Unless my bedroom had magically transformed into the storage locker at the Nest in New York. And I didn’t typically sleep in my mask or armor either. I raised my head slightly to look over the side of the shelf, wondering who had come in.

  Great. Eddie Davenport, my least favorite person in the world, with Rodrigo and a third man. I started to sit up, but the third man began speaking immediately.

  “You have to do something about her,” he said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. My mask ID’d him as Wilbur Scott, head of R & D at Davenport Industries. Right. He’d introduced Eddie’s speech at the gala.

  I quietly lay back down. Who was the “her” they were talking about? Was it me? What had I done now?

  “Scott,” Eddie said, sounding like his infinite wells of patience were becoming a great deal more finite. “You’re out of line.”

  “I know she’s your niece, but this isn’t the time for nepotism!”

  Oh. The “her” in question was Kiki. Any chance that I might reveal I was there flew out the window. Jessie would be proud of my detective instincts lately, I rationalized.

  “Frankly, you’re right,” Eddie said to Scott. “This isn’t the time for nepotism. Or for this insubordination either. In case you gentlemen haven’t noticed, we’re dealing with not one but two crises at the moment. I don’t have time for accusations and finger-pointing right now.”