Heroine Addiction

by Matarese, Jennifer

  There's something about the tone of her cool steady voice that's changed in the past five years, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is. When I do, I nearly stumble as I follow her to the bottom of the stairs and the comforting embrace of the open space in the garage.

  “You're in charge?” I blurt out.

  I'm terrible at hiding my surprise.

  Shadow turns on me once again, and it's the first time genuine anger flashes in her eyes. “Is that a question?”

  “Oh, no, ma'am, not even a little bit,” I bust out, and it's not. Noor is a dozen different kinds of sharp and observant, a quiet woman my own age. She trounced an entire army of Bigfoot monsters from another dimension all by herself and saved the city from one of the Scribbler's nefarious schemes while everybody else suffered through temporary blindness. I'm not sure why nobody else in the Brigade is all that keen on taking up the helm, but Noor's certainly got the chops.

  The thought briefly drifts through my head to wonder if Nate's earned that sort of defensive reaction, and I resolve to smack him upside the head whenever I find him and swap back if that's the case. Or perhaps I should leave that to Noor.

  She shoots me a dismissive look before she ascends the steps into the obscene orange luxury van that serves as the Brigade's official transport. I used to jokingly refer to it as the Juice Box, until it became blatantly apparent an overabundance of mocking wouldn't persuade the SLB to issue us another less glaring color to identify our transportation with.

  Not that it mattered much to me, of course. If one can teleport, one doesn't have to ride in a tricked-out shaggin' wagon the same color as a brand-new traffic cone.

  If only that were true right now, I think wryly.

  I climb in after Noor only to be confronted with a sea of annoyed faces hidden behind masks or cowls or, in the case of Thunder, some fairly elaborate face paint in garish lemon yellow and royal blue presumably meant to distract from his spindly arms and stick-figure legs. The conceit didn't work when I was still a member of the Brigade, and it hasn't aged well since then. He's still a spindly creep whose power can be shut down with a durable muzzle or a strong case of laryngitis.

  “How nice of you to join us, Nate,” Mom says. She sits by herself in the seat behind a new SLB-employed bus driver I've never met before. She still somehow manages to fill out her skintight uniform precisely the way she did when she was my age, her legs and arms crossed in a silent shutdown.

  The seat beside her remains empty.

  I smile and try desperately not to think about my missing body as I flop down into the seat beside her. I ignore her groan of disgust as the bus peels out of the garage, up the ramp and into the street without so much as a lick of warning to the normal traffic. Pretending everyone else isn't glaring at me as well is harder than it appears. “Where'd Everett wander off to? 'Cause you folks know damn well it ain't my turn to watch him, right?”

  Mom doesn't have the energy to be annoyed by my carefree nature today, turning to the window to track our progress through traffic with narrowed eyes. “He volunteered to go ahead and scout the area.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” I'll just bet he did. I have an uneasy feeling that's not why he arranged to place himself at the head of the pack. Whoever is in Dad's body, he's done an awful lot of arriving or vanishing at the most opportune moments and separating himself from the pack just so lately. Location, location, location, I think bitterly.

  “Well, the one we usually send in first decided he preferred an extended nap,” Shadow says from the seat across the aisle.

  Somebody chokes back laughter a few rows back.

  “That guy doesn't sound very reliable,” I say to Shadow. “Maybe you should fire his sorry ass.”

  “Don't tempt me.”

  I let loose with a Cheshire grin, unable to resist that definitively Nate expression, and relax somewhat when a soft buttery laugh emerges from underneath her cowl.

  Score one to Vera.

  The rest of the ride to what I come to realize is the city's sprawling warehouse district settles into an awkward silence, one that even I can understand has nothing to do with my late arrival or our destination. There are no silent discussions, no hushed jokes, no snide comments about the Brotherhood of Bravery flying overhead on their way to another dangerous situation elsewhere in the city.

  There are no friends to be had here. It doesn't even feel like there's a team here, riding with me on a short bus into what could be a life-threatening situation. We could have picked these people up at random off various street corners and offered them a lift, for all of the connection that exists here in this depressing vehicle.

  I can't help but ponder when the Brigade must have turned into this silent seething thing, this quiet uncomfortable handful of heroes who show up for a paycheck and little else. The brittle atmosphere stings so deeply I can't even savor Flashpoint's barely concealed sulk three rows back, his glowing hands rubbing absently at his arms to warm them.

  I push my disconcerting observations aside as the bus skids to a stop on an unpaved access road leading towards a cluster of warehouses and processing plants that appear only barely functional. I honestly don't know why the city doesn't shut down this entire area and sell it off for condos or shopping districts. The only things it regularly spawns are a majority of the unemployed masses in the area, whatever contraband items the local crime syndicates have decided to counterfeit this week, and the occasional massive mutated biology experiment.

  The bus lets us out where we are, like it or not. The SLB only allows its drivers up to a certain distance away from any suspected lair to lessen the chances of their being taken hostage and dangled over a tank of starving sharks. It happens more often than you would think.

  The walk up to the buildings, veiled from sight with just the right set-up of fences and smoke stacks, takes a bit longer than I'm used to. I itch to simply pop into the building on a thought, but that's just not happening. In this body I have to play along, need to mingle with the others as we hustle towards the abandoned toy warehouse that's our destination.

  I wish Nate was here, not the least of which because he's got my body right now.

  I'd really rather desperately like my body back.

  Hanging back as casually as I can manage, I maneuver myself to Graham's side as he tugs at his gloves. “Hey, Graham, you seen your sister around lately?”

  It's a shot in the dark, a slim hope that he might have seen Nate in my body when I was too preoccupied with reeling from the fact that I'd been abruptly evicted from it. “She's out of your league,” Graham says, not looking my way.

  I'm almost stunned silent by the unexpected compliment, but somehow keep my cool. “My league's pretty wide open.”

  Graham makes a derisive noise, then says, “She visited me at Hollyoak. That was the last time I saw her.”

  Not precisely what I was looking for. “You ain't seen her today?”

  He chuckles under his breath as he adjusts the wrist strap on his glove. “Maybe you haven't noticed, but Vera's a little hard to miss.”

  I wonder if it would be completely out of character for Nate to dislocate his testicles.

  “Master's voice is calling,” he says.

  I turn to see Shadow waving me over to where she stands at the perimeter of the complex, her gloved hand beckoning me with a subtle crook of her fingers. I steel myself for what I imagine can only be a fairly dangerous entrance plan as I walk over and bend close so our lowered voices won't be registered so well to anyone listening in from the warehouse.

  “The alarm was called in by an anonymous source who claimed that we'd find our answers in this building as to who released those robots. We can't locate Everett, but X-Ray's picking up a heat register large enough to be him in the rear of the warehouse. Everett's GPS implant is being blocked by something inside the building. So I'd call it a safe bet –“

  “– that whoever would plan far enough ahead to set up a GPS blocker rigged the joint full of
explosives while he was at it,” I say.

  It's impossible to see her lips behind the thorough covering of her cowl, but her impressed smile bleeds into her words. “Awake again, I see.”

  I shoot her a sly grin. “Where you want me, Noor?”

  She gives the sprawling building next door a pointed look. “You can reach the roof of the warehouse from the ice cream processing plant next door. I'm guessing that's probably your safest bet inside.”

  A chill settles in my stomach as I gauge the considerable distance between the two buildings. There is no convenient skywalk for me to cross. There's just a huge gap between the processing plant and the warehouse to span and Nate's daredevil reputation to rocket me across.

  “That's a twenty-foot jump,” I murmur.

  She gives me a friendly pat on the arm, barely restraining her amusement when she adds, “Try not to holler too loud when you leap.”

  I have a hard time not glaring after her as she pulls back to join the rest of the Brigade.

  “Try not to enjoy myself too much, she says,” I grumble. Just because Nate would be itching to make that jump if he were here right now doesn't mean that comment doesn't raise my hackles.

  I've never missed the ability to teleport so much in my life.

  Reaching the roof of the ice cream factory is easier than it would be for most people, but it still doesn't beat teleportation. The factory's closed, not an uncommon occurrence considering the appalling state of the current economy and the still-likely chance of more gargantuan robots invading in the near future. Popping the lock on the front door is a simple case of deft fingers and steady hands, and after that it's just a matter of finding the right staircase for access to the roof.

  I burst through the doorway to the roof eight minutes later, and I'm not even out of breath.

  I'd worry more about making a bit of a racket and alerting whoever is in the warehouse to my presence on the roof, but I have no doubt that he already realizes I'm up here. “He” being exactly who I expect to be in there.

  I hope that the man in my father's body is not keeping Dad locked away aside, captured behind bars in a body not his own. But I'm not holding my breath, even if I can do so forever in this body.

  Pausing far enough back from the edge of the roof to judge what exactly this particular leap would entail, I sigh as I notice what I thought I might find when I got up here, namely that the other rooftop is higher up than this one.

  Not only do I have to jump across a wide expanse, I also need to jump up while I'm at it.

  “Brilliant,” I whisper.

  Nate could do this. It's not even a matter of simply believing in his ability to throw himself at a possibly explosive building and stick. Nate can't fly or jump higher than average. He's no more blessed than anyone he might pass on the street. He just gets back up a lot quicker than the norm, and living and breathing that simple fact makes him mighty, at least in his own mind.

  Unfortunately, Nate's not here.

  I debate how to pull this off, whether I should make a flying leap off the edge or if I need to set up a makeshift ramp out of whatever flotsam and jetsam I can find lying around the place. But I finally throw caution to the wind and run for it.

  It turns out to be a bad decision, unsurprisingly.

  The good news is that I don't plummet to the ground. I've seen what happens when Nate doesn't quite land right and I don't covet the pleasant experience of shattering the majority of the bones in my body on impact. Of course, the bad news is that I'm still stuck high above the ground, only my terrified strength to keep me from tumbling to the ground.

  I dangle from the edge of the roof, my fingers digging frantically into the stone.

  I can let go, I think to myself, the reminder a frantic litany in my head. I can let go, it's okay, I can let go.

  It doesn't matter what this body can do. My mind doesn't want to hear it. Instinct screams at me to leap and leap now, teleport away from this place and land somewhere safe where I'm not in danger of dropping to my death.

  Logic reminds me I'm certainly not going to die from the drop. But as far as my mind is concerned, logic can go hang. No pun intended.

  I try to push myself back up onto the roof, but a quick peek over the edge doesn't reveal much for me to grab onto. I fumble for it anyway, and my fingers grasp with renewed fervor at the sun-warmed stone. Somehow I manage to catch hold, to attach myself to the roof with strength alone and haul myself up over the side with muscles I don't normally possess.

  Miracle of miracles, the damn cowboy hat doesn't even fall off.

  I can hear the sound of low mocking laughter from the ground, presumably Graham's smug chuckles. I'm tempted to flip the bird over the edge of the rooftop, but I'm still getting over the fact that I haven't yet been blown to smithereens by veiled explosives. “Yet” being the operative word, of course.

  “Nate?”

  For a moment, the soft voice in my ear startles me, and I flinch before realizing it's Noor's voice in my ear, thrown through the shadows she controls like a superhuman ventriloquist.

  “Aw, hell, give me a minute,” I growl.

  I can almost sense Shadow's consciousness stepping back with hands raised.

  I crouch as low as I dare, my only thought to crab-crawl my way across the roof to the door and enter the building without blowing us all to kingdom come. When villains of every stripe establish and assemble their lairs, they take great pains to set up as many obstacles as possible, more as a warning system than anything else. That's why immortals like Nate usually get sent in first for these sorts of gigs, so that anyone intent on dropping caped visitors into a pit full of snarling mechanical lions or dousing them in acid will have quite the tricky little cat to deal with.

  Immortals like me, I think to myself, and silently wish I could still vomit.

  “The things I get myself into,” I mutter.

  It's not quite as difficult as I imagine to get across the roof to the access door, or down the rickety metal steps to the open and dusty interior of the warehouse, or to weave my way through the moldy cardboard boxes of aged board games and musty dolls.

  In fact, it's not difficult at all. No booby traps, no sudden jets of flame, not even enough sting in the stuffy air to warrant a sneeze.

  That's never a good sign.

  It's not hard to find Dad. He's not locked up or trapped, not handcuffed to a pipe or being dissected by aliens in retaliation for Morris's sorry if long-past attempts of intergalactic domination. There are no pods or gestation containers anywhere to be seen, nothing to indicate a cloning experiment run amok, no robotic equipment or mind control devices in plain view to shout a triumphant “Aha!” over. There's not even a computer or a desk or a damn desk chair.

  There is simply my father, or the thing that's living in his body, sitting on a large box of rusty pogo sticks with one clenched fist resting on his knee.

  When Dad spots me he smiles, this wide unsettling stretch of his lips.

  I wish so hard to be someplace else I'd probably draw out a nosebleed if I were in anyone else's body.

  “How nice of you to join me, Nate,” he says, and there's something at the polite tone of his voice that forces me to take a cautious step back. “You were so distracted yesterday. I was almost afraid you'd scampered off for good to the nearest mechanical pony ride.”

  “Clearly I'm a glutton for punishment.”

  “You're certainly not the only one.”

  There's something confusing and dizzying about the entire conversation, a twirling kaleidoscope of double meanings. “The others are worrying over you, you know.”

  “Let them,” he says. “I'm still breathing and still in one piece. I haven't been possessed or chained. Quite frankly, I'm positively … peachy.”

  Peachy. Nate always calls me “peaches.” I can't help but wonder if he knows who's really in this body.

  “Then what's with the hold-up?” I finally ask. “Ain't got time to be wasting when there's bad f
olk to wrangle.”

  “Slathering it on a bit thick, aren't we?”

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other, not sure what to make of that.

  “Besides,” he says, “why start making an effort now? Ivy does quite well all on her own while I'm unavailable. And she's so very generous, don't you think?”

  I picture my mother standing behind him on the wrecked ruins of the robot, tilted just so at his side. All the newspaper photos would feature him in the forefront that way, the triumphant legendary hero. “I couldn't agree more,” I say.

  “You might try telling John Camden that,” he snaps. “It appears the poor pathetic man has developed quite the crush on Ivy. Follows us everywhere like a lost puppy. Why, the last person to focus his obsession on our family got quite the nasty surprise in the end.”

  So this is the story we're spinning, I think, and do a damn fine impression of feeling ill.

  “This ain't the forum to be airing your petty bullshit, Everett.”

  He grins. “You're right.”

  That's all the warning I get.

  In another body, in my body, I would already be out of the building if not the state, breathing a deep sigh of relief as the explosion blasts its way through the factory. I would be safe and secure and far far away, but instead I'm inside when the bombs go off in a dazzling and brilliant display, a flash of electric blue arcing in the air where my father stands. The roof collapses in a shower of broken steel and cement chunks, and before I'm given a chance to worry about Dad, everything goes a dull blinding gray.

  I hear frantic shouts almost immediately.

  It's a long tense moment before the slab of stone pressing me down and crushing various bones and internal organs is wrenched from on top of me. Within an instant that bright hot flicker shoots through me just under the skin, that pain that's not really pain at all. I'm as good as new by the time Graham bends over me and says, “You all right?”

  It's a silly question and we both know it. Graham's lip curls, and he hauls me to my feet, gripping my shoulder tight enough to keep me upright while my ankle bones quickly reset themselves.