by Peter Clines
The two gentlemen traded looks, and Deryl’s heart sank as he felt their skepticism. He knew it was his heart—no one else could possibly feel as desperate as he did.
“Why did you trip Barry Whitewater?” Mr. Phelps asked instead.
“What?”
Mr. Phelps just gave him a stern look. However, he saw it in his mind: Barry insisting that Deryl shoved him as he walked by; two students saying they never saw a push, but he did fall just as Deryl passed, and that Deryl hurried off right after.
“I didn’t—”
“Are you certain?”
You have an advantage your peers don’t. Use it! the Master said.
Had he?
He shook his head, but in that moment of confusion, he dropped what little guard he had, and it all came flooding in: Mr. Phelps wondering how long he could walk the tightrope between pleasing the two biggest supporters of the school; Dr. Peterson running through the next possibilities of medication; the snappy comebacks Mrs. Middleton knew she’d never have the guts to say; the jock in the cooldown room, wondering if he would get suspended and what he’d tell his parents; Barry’s swollen lip, which throbbed in time with his pulse but made him hope that maybe this time his mom would get tired of it all and send him home to his real dad; the drama class laughing over one boy’s comedy routine—it was so funny, and Deryl didn’t know why…
Inside his mind, in the small part that he knew was Deryl Stephens, he screamed. In the shell he presented to everyone else, he fought to keep himself from gibbering, to keep his tone even; but the part of him between his inner self and the outer shell was full of teenage boys with their mood swings and their doubts and the sarcasm they wore as a shield against the hurts real and imagined.
“Well, Deryl? Have you anything to say about Barry Whitewater?”
He felt himself shaking and clenched his fists on his knees in an effort to regain control. Nonetheless, words tumbled from his mouth. He prayed they were his. “Barry’s last name is Carlton. His mother remarried, but Barry doesn’t care that his stepfather adopted him—he thinks the man is a jerk and only adopted him as a power play, and every time someone calls him ‘Whitewater,’ Barry feels like he’s betraying his dad. And maybe if you talked to him about that, you could find out why he likes to push other people into the football players. All I did today was give him a taste of his own medicine in the process.”
“So you admit to doing it.”
The counselor’s feeling of triumph sent Deryl over the edge—for once with his own feelings. “I may as well! It wouldn’t help if I denied it—or even if I were innocent. The Whitewaters own half this school. Barry could lie through his teeth, and it wouldn’t matter. Principal Williams is afraid of them, and that makes you afraid. I know what I am to you: the bastard son of a mentally ill woman. My uncle has plenty of clout, which is why I’m still here, but apparently not enough that you’d actually believe me!
“Well, she was not crazy; she was psychic. But she found people to believe her—believe in her. That’s what I need: someone to believe in me and help me learn to control this! And no!" He whirled on the psychiatrist. “A new medication is not going to help!”
Without waiting to be excused, he tore from the room. He wanted to sigh. He wanted to change his name. He wanted to go buy new towels. He wanted to call his girlfriend and get her to bring some friends to the party…
Make it stop! Make it stop!
He ran out of the school building and past the fields. He wanted to make a touchdown—a real Hail Mary move—so the recruiters would be impressed and he could get his dad off his back. He wanted the weekend to come so he could go home and party with his friends; now that he was eighteen, Mom and Dad didn’t care.
My name is Deryl Stephens. I’m thirteen, and I am an orphan!
He made it to the small garden shed on the far side of the school grounds. The door creaked open to a mental command he didn’t realize he’d given. He dashed in and pushed past the rakes and tools to a small corner and tucked himself in. I am Deryl Stephens, and I am an orphan. My mother died three years, two months, and five days ago. She is dead, and no one else believes what’s happening to me, and I just hurt someone without even thinking. Grief washed over him, and it was his. He clung to it and let himself cry, real tears, his tears, until he fell asleep.
Sleep was good; it brought relief, brought oblivion, but healing was an illusion.
Sabre
Anthony Laffan
Sabre ducked low and then hooked right as the anti-matter blasts exploded around her. The wall behind her creaked and groaned as it crumbled under its own weight. With no way out, Sabre did the only thing she could: she curled into a ball and let the suit take the brunt of the blow. For the umpteenth time that night, she was glad of her suit’s contained atmosphere. It was bad enough to be engaged in a super-powered brawl with some low-level IQ reject that fate had deemed worthy of being able to shoot anti-matter energy blasts without having to deal with the fumes or the smell.
“Give it up, Hero. You’re no match for me.” Why did they always have to go for the canned dialogue? It was a dead giveaway for amateur hour, which just made Sabre’s position under the rubble, hiding from the villain’s stray blasts, all the more humiliating.
“Freeze, dickhead! Put your hands behind your head. Now!” A new voice joined the fray. A cop from the sound of it. Sabre sighed in exasperation. She appreciated the thought, but you’d think that the police in a city under the protection of over ten superheroes would understand that their standard-issue side arms just weren’t good enough when the cutting-edge, three-generations-ahead, power-armored hero was being thrown through walls like some sort of cheap toy.
So much for catching her breath.
Sabre launched herself out from under the rubble just as the villain turned to face the cop. Her timing wasn’t spot on, but it was close enough to get the job done right. She caught the villain mere moments before he could fry the cop and took him with her through the far wall and back out onto the street. A charged left straight put his head into the ground hard, and Sabre jumped back to create some distance. When she got through with this, she’d have to put some serious thought into completing the Broadsword suit.
“Get out of here. Keep the civilians out of the area. I’ll handle him,” Sabre commanded the cop. He was kind of cute. At least in an “I’m young and enthusiastic but in over my head” sort of way. Movement from the villain pulled Sabre’s attention. The time for pleasantries was over. “Go!” she called to the cop before turning back to the rising villain, “If we’re going to be doing a long dance, I think I should get your name.”
“You can call me Anti-Matter,” the villain growled before unleashing a bolt of energy from both hands. Sabre braced and shielded her chest with both arms. She couldn’t risk the bolts hitting the cop. Property damage was fine, but an officer dead in the line of duty would be a tragedy. Unfortunately, even being braced and with her suit’s shields at full, the discharge was enough to send her careening backward through yet another wall.
Flat on her back again, Sabre looked around the building she was in and smiled under her helmet. It was about time the fight had gotten here. She pulled herself back to a seated position and let her external speakers amplify her laughter. “Seriously, you call yourself Anti-Matter? I mean, sure it fits with the blasts, but you couldn’t think of something more original, more you? Here, I got one. Let’s call you Hand Job. You like that one?”
The roar of anger from Anti-Matter was almost amusing, and the villain wasted no time in charging forward. Telemetry readings popped up on Sabre’s heads-up display, tracking Anti-Matter’s progress toward her and counting down how long she should wait to get maximum effect out of her hand blasters. Sabre shifted, feinting low, and Anti-Matter jumped over a blast that never came. Sabre grinned.
“You really are stupid. Aren’t you, Hand Job?” The air filled with a dull whine before raw force erupt
ed from the blasters in both of her armored palms. The force caught Anti-Matter in the air, launching him straight up and through a hole in the crumbling ceiling, ending with the villain embedded in the wall.
Sabre, assisted by her suit’s jets, hopped up through the recently made hole and caught the villain as he fell from the wall. Perfect. Out cold just as planned. Sabre took a last look around to make sure she’d gotten the room right then grabbed Anti-Matter’s unconscious form and headed back outside. Two minutes later, she deposited the villain’s body for the gathered police to take into custody right in front of the throngs of gathered civilians and reporters.
“Sabre! Sabre! Does your presence here indicate dual sponsorship from Hildeman and Aegis? What was the criminal after? What do you have to say to others wanting to be a hero?” The questions flowed from the crowd faster than Sabre could follow, and even the suit’s audio processors were having a hard time making sense of it. Not that it mattered. The questions never changed much, and she had a script to stick to.
“Now now, I’m not taking questions at this time, nor do I want to distract from the real heroes here: your local police, EMTs, and firefighters who are all working around the clock to keep you safe. I’m just glad I could be in the area to help when help was needed.” Sabre held up her hands in placation to the crowd as she spoke. Not that the words ever did anything to calm the reporters down, but it kept the general public image up, and that was what really mattered.
“Ms. Shields, if you’re about done down there. There are reporters here gathering for a statement. Shall I postpone?” The voice came over the private radio in her helmet, and once more, Sabre found herself smiling. Several members of the press had made it a personal crusade to prove that Sabre was tied to Aegis Inc. and thus had shown up at her doorstep every time Sabre was seen doing anything in public. Postponing a meeting with them would just play into their hands even more.
“No, Max, I’ll be there in a second. Update my twitter feed to show me at home. Make a claim that I actually am a super hero or something.”
“Very good, ma’am.”
Sabre nodded to herself then looked over the crowd. “Sorry, folks; that’s all the time that I have right now. Duty calls!” There was a general air of complaint as she launched off into the sky and then cut east. The opposite direction from her office and her home.
#
“Ms. Shields? Ms. Shields!” Leandra Shields stopped just short of sliding her card through the access reader and turned to face the woman calling her name. Another reporter. The woman was wearing a power skirt and blouse that fit her well but was cut to distract her usual male prey. It was an appealing sight even if it fit an appetite that Leandra couldn’t sate right now.
“Our official statement was already given, and I don’t do personal interviews without an appointment,” Leandra said. To the woman’s credit, she was undeterred.
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that song and dance you just gave them?” The woman held up a sheaf of papers as she talked. When she gesticulated, Leandra caught sight of the picture on the top: the new exoskeleton her company had developed for the government.
“It sounds like you’ve got something to say, Ms.?”
“Pierce. Katy Pierce, with the Informer.”
“Ms. Pierce.” Leandra smiled and turned back to swipe her card through the door reader. “Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll see if I can answer a few of your questions.” Leandra pushed the door open and stepped aside for Katy to go through ahead of her. The view was more than worth the effort.
Katy walked a few paces down the hall before beginning to speak. “So you still deny any tie between your company and Sabre?”
“Only because there is no tie, yes,” Leandra responded. The reporter’s head was on a swivel as they walked, looking for anything extra she could find. Leandra smiled. She was starting to like Katy. “This way.” Leandra led Katy into an elevator then hit the button for her top floor office.
Katy didn’t wait for the ride to stop before continuing, “Then perhaps you can explain these photos?” The reporter handed over the top two pictures. One of them was the exoskeleton that Leandra had caught a glimpse of earlier, testing out the “new” shielding system that Sabre had grown out of three suits past. The other was a photo of Sabre herself with the same shielding system running.
“What am I looking at here?” Leandra looked over as she spoke. She wanted to see Katy’s reaction.
“That, as if you didn’t know, is a picture of the army’s new exoskeleton doing a field test. But what is interesting about it is that the shield system it is using looks the exact same as the one that Sabre uses.” Katy shuffled through her paperwork and handed over another pair of papers. “Then there is the fact that every time Sabre does one of her hero gigs, your stock goes up. Not a lot, no, but enough to be noticed.”
Leandra wasted time by looking over the papers and two photos. The elevator chimed and opened into her office, and she lead the way out. She didn’t speak until after she had settled into the large, leather chair behind her desk with Katy across from her. “There are several suits of power armor out there with shield units similar to these. More to the point, once an engineer sees something is possible, it is a lot easier for him to design something similar. As far as the stocks go, wouldn’t I want to admit that a hero in such good standing was tied to my company to get my stocks to go up?”
“Then what about the fact that your company’s plastics division sells to the company that makes the toy line for Sabre?” Katy fired right back. It wasn’t hard for Leandra to maintain her smile. She liked the direct approach.
“We sell plastic to a lot of places, and that company does more than just make Sabre action figures. Now, you’re just grasping at straws.” Leandra steepled her fingers in front of her face and leaned back in her chair.
“Companies don’t get as big as yours did overnight, Ms. Shields. Six years ago, you were nothing. Now, you’re one of the largest companies in the world. I’m supposed to believe that it was just luck that you showed up at the same time as all these heroes?” Katy leaned forward, on the attack.
“Shortly after, actually.”
“I’m sorry?” The response wasn’t what Katy had been expecting, apparently.
“We showed up shortly after. It’s not a secret. We existed before, yes, but as a smaller company with dreams of being bigger. Once the heroes showed up on the scene, I saw an opportunity, and we gambled. We bought in on the insurance company that protects against damage from metahuman fights. Sure, it was costly at times, but with more and more metahumans showing up, it wasn’t long before every city in the country, and then the world, wanted in on it. That makes for a lot of bank, especially for the small company looking for funding to attempt some of the projects we knew we could do.”
Katy took a few moments and shuffled through her papers. When she deflated back into her chair, Leandra knew she had her. Still, Katy was nothing if not defiant. “I know there’s more to this than that. You’re too involved. It’s just a matter of time before I find the connection.”
“I look forward to when you do. In the meantime, what are you doing tomorrow night?” The look that crossed Katy’s face would’ve been worth being caught out as Sabre right then and there. “Do you have plans? Maybe we could do dinner? My treat.”
“I…I’ll think about it,” Katy stammered as she gathered her things. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Shields. I'll see myself out.” Leandra nodded and held the smile as Katy made her way back to the elevator. As the doors closed, Leandra touched a button on her desk. A moment later, her monitor lit up with the security camera feed from the elevator. The reporter was even cuter when her face was flushed. It was a shame really.
Leandra waited for the reporter to make it back past the secured area, watched all the way by cameras, before moving from behind her desk and toward the inside wall of her office. Leandra’s hand trailed along a n
earby table as she moved and then up and over a small bust that she’d had for years. Her fingers tapped quickly over the eyes of the bust, and a panel in her wall opened up, revealing a small hallway and a more heavily secured door.
The room beyond, her real work space, was already lit up when she entered. Several previous and current versions of Sabre’s armor were stored in transparent cylinders around the room as well as a large number of tools, a multi-monitor work station, and a large work bench with the still in-progress Broadsword suit on it. The monitors caught Leandra’s eye. Several of them were showing various networks’ coverage of Sabre’s earlier fight as well as the related press conferences and speculation; the other monitors showed various internal security feeds, including one of her office and elevator.
“Should I be jealous?” Fox’s words murmured in Leandra's ear just a moment before a pair of leather-encased arms wrapped around Leandra's torso and pulled her back. Even through her clothes, Leandra could feel the texture of the leather catsuit her “uninvited guest” wore as work clothes.
Leandra turned around in the thief’s arms and struck her best innocent look. “What would you have to be jealous of?” It was impossible to pull her eyes away from the full, ruby lips of the woman holding her.
“I know you, Leandra. You're always horny enough after a fight that you’d have sex with a chair if you could figure out how. You were practically humping her leg by your standards.” The hands drifted down Leandra’s back, grabbed her ass, and lifted. Leandra purred as she sat down on the work bench, her lips stolen in a quick kiss. All thoughts of work left her mind.
#
An hour later, Leandra extracted herself from the tangle of the other woman’s limbs and climbed off her work space’s lone couch. Once free, she paused for a moment and allowed herself to appreciate the lithe form of her still-sleeping lover. Leandra’s lips curled up; it was a very pleasant sight and more than a little tempting to stretch back out and go for round two, or would it be round five at this point?
