by Hayes, Drew
Chad, however, suffered from no such faltering of conscience. He’d known from the very beginning what he was signing up for. Killing wasn’t pretty or easy, but if he didn’t do it, innocent lives would be lost instead. That was not an exchange he was willing to make.
Dashing around another clumsy swing of the light pole, Chad took a blade from his armband and jabbed it into the spinal column of the attacking Sim. Ideally, it would paralyze the faux-man until a healer and more jailers could get to the scene. Just because Chad could take life didn’t mean he would do so needlessly. That, too, was part of what made a Hero.
Turning around, prepared to aid the rest of his team, Chad was surprised to find that the remainder of the criminal Sims had been effectively neutralized. Amber was staring in shock at Shane, whose eyes were just beginning to fade back to normal as the sclera lost its inky coloration. Taking a quick glance at the nearby area, Chad noted that most of the Sims had been cut in the spine, although one was in pieces and another looked as though it had taken too deep a blow to survive. From near Shane, Britney shimmered into view.
“Holy shit,” she whispered, surveying the wreckage. “You took those things apart.”
“I hesitated once before, and it nearly cost me my life.” Shane’s tone was anything but apologetic. “I was determined not to make the same mistake again.”
“Looks like you did a good job.” Chad walked over, eyes still trained on the fallen opponents, just in case they had any fight left in them. “Though the one in bits is sloppier than your usual work.”
“That was actually me.” Amber raised her hand, perhaps a touch sheepish as she fully took in her handiwork. At least when broken, the Sims were nothing more than scattered parts. If they’d been stuffed with fake blood and organs, Chad had a feeling some classmates might not have recovered from their first “kill.” “Shane couldn’t cut that one, and it started to charge us, so I panicked and hit it with a powerful sound bomb. Though I might have overdone it.”
“Absolutely not,” Chad told her. “If it was able to withstand attacks from Shane, using high levels of force was unquestionably necessary. While this Sim may have shown some restraint, a real opponent wouldn’t have. They will kill you, if you don’t stop them first. Never forget that, and try not to burden yourself with guilt over surviving.”
He turned from his team, looking toward the city, the sounds of combat drifting in from far away. Elsewhere, the others had probably learned what they were facing, though he would still relay the information over the comms just in case. It was all he could do to help them, for now.
* * *
As Will drove his staff into the sternum of the Sim with lifelike green eyes that fluttered shut before collapsing to the floor, he realized that perhaps he should have hesitated. The rest of his team had, surprised by the human-like opponents, but Will had expected this for a long while. It had been inevitable. So when the moment arrived, he’d raced forward to deal with a Sim on the sidelines, away from the other four. If his team had acted in concert, it would have been a tactically sound decision. Violet, Thomas, and Jill could have attacked the central mass of opponents while Camille alternated between healing and dealing damage as needed. That hadn’t happened, though. In the heat of battle, Will had made a miscalculation and overextended himself.
Now, while the others still struggled to kick into gear, the rest of the Sims advanced on him. Aside from the downed Sim at Will’s feet, only one of them wore a prison jumpsuit, which meant the others were part of the team that had stopped the transport. That in itself wouldn’t have mattered, except that the Dispatch woman had been unable to give them any information on their abilities.
The biggest of the lot, a woman nearly seven feet tall with wide shoulders and broad arms, led the charge toward him. If the physical clues could be trusted, which wasn’t always the case, she’d be some manner of strongman. Will flipped the staff over in his hands; the electrical end he’d used to bring down his first opponent wouldn’t be as much use if this one had enhanced endurance. From the corner of his eye, Will saw movement in his team, but it was too little too late. He’d have to withstand the initial assault on his own before they’d be in a position to lend aid.
As it turned out, Will underestimated his bloodline and his own technology. Jill bolted forward, the augmented suit around her body pushing her speed well beyond its normal limits, and leapt atop the back of the giant Sim advancing on Will. Without a moment of delay, she pressed the palms of her hands against the Sim’s ears, and just like that, the attacker’s steps began to falter.
“Sonic Taser, Version Three,” Jill announced, pushing her hands as hard into the synthetic ears as she could. “Even the tough ones have eardrums, and this’ll make them bleed. That’s what you get for messing—”
The Sim, in a desperate, fierce motion, whipped its arm around. Though just barely, it managed to get a hand on Jill’s shoulder. That was, unfortunately, all it took. The Sim ripped her off its back, hurling Jill through the air until she slammed into a nearby building with a crack that dropped the bottom out of Will’s stomach.
She slid limply to the ground and laid there. No cursing. No yelling. Jill had gone completely still.
70.
As the fog swallowed his team, Alex’s mind raced through the possible options they had for dispelling the dense white mist. Roy was useless; muscles weren’t going to help with this issue. The same went for Vince. Unless the fog was flammable his energy attacks wouldn’t matter, and if Vince did set it aflame then they’d have much bigger concerns. Mary and Alice both had abilities that could, in theory, affect fog so long as it had some mass, but the power would impact the team long before it managed to clear away the mist. This only left Alex himself to try and do something about their predicament.
Were this their junior year, he would have become nearly overwhelmed by doubt and anxiety. Being the second-tier telepath in the class and failing to carve out many wins had left Alex unsure of how useful his abilities sometimes were. But that was an Alex who had not yet seen what happened when he truly failed, who didn’t understand what it meant to have people depending on him. The doubt and fear were both still there as Alex reached deep inside and concentrated his focus; he just paid them no mind. He couldn’t—his team couldn’t—afford for him to fail. Do or do not, there was no try.
Even Alex didn’t entirely understand how he’d done it. The fog was driven away, a circle of unobstructed air that started from Alex and rapidly radiated outward clearing the vision of both his teammates and their opponent Sims. The best way he’d eventually think to describe it was that he had focused on moving the fog and just the fog, which had somehow worked. Pushing out one element selectively was something he’d never done before, but as the mist cleared, Alex made a mental note to start adding this training to his drills. It seemed like one that could come in quite handy.
Around him, movement could be heard as, suddenly, the other Supers could see their targets once more. Heavy footsteps signaled a fresh charge from Vince and Roy. Alex was almost certain he heard something whooshing through the air—probably Alice getting into position to launch a gravity attack. It was hard to tell, because the fog was demanding so much of his attention. More of it kept pouring out, though now Alex could see the hidden vents along the landscape, explaining how the Sim’s “power” was spreading so rapidly. Fast as the fog rose, it was no match for Alex, who continued driving it off until it was out of their way and slowly beginning to dissolve. To anyone looking in from the outside, it probably seemed like a giant white bubble had simply appeared on the battlefield. Even if the effort pulled him out of the melee, that was fine; so long as his friends could see, that was all that mattered. He trusted his teammates, and, deep down, Alex suspected that taking on this role might have made him more useful than he’d have been in actual combat.
Unfortunately, Alex was concentrating so hard on clearing the field that he wasn’t able to properly take it in. Otherwise, he�
��d have noticed the Sim with acid dripping from its hands had circled around and was sneaking up on Mary.
* * *
“Jill Murray. Heart rate is steady; blood pressure is elevated, and just from what the system can tell there are several broken bones.” Dr. Moran read stats from the screen monitoring all the students’ vitals into a communicator that fed directly to Dean Blaine and Professor Fletcher. While the dean was standing in the room with almost all of the watching Heroes, Professor Fletcher was tucked away in the shadows of the cityscape, ready to step in at a moment’s notice if called upon.
Though they’d never made a point of broadcasting it, the student uniforms were designed to do more than just mark the passage of years and each student’s class; basic health monitoring technology was woven into the fabric of every one. It was a feature designed exactly for moments like these, so that the staff could decide whether or not to make a forced extraction or allow the students to handle the issue themselves. That was also why the monitoring capabilities were kept secret; it was better if the kids didn’t know about the safety net. Experience had taught the educators that their charges made smarter decisions when they thought they might have to live with the consequences.
“What’s your recommendation?” Dean Blaine asked, not quite whispering but still keeping his voice low.
“The impact didn’t appear to center on her head, but without examining her I can’t be certain,” Dr. Moran replied. “Were Jill on one of the other teams, I’d say she needs to be pulled immediately, just in case. However, with Camille on the scene, she might be able to heal Jill faster than Professor Fletcher could bring her to me. We’d have to cut through all the tech on her suit as well, and I’m assuming Will can do that more quickly.”
Dean Blaine was silent on the line for only a few seconds; he understood as well as anyone that time was of the essence in these moments. “We’ll give them a window. One minute, or until her vitals start dropping. Carl, be ready to get Ms. Murray to the good doctor as soon as I give the word. But as long as Jill is stable, this is a good opportunity for them to learn about healing on the battlefield.”
To an outsider, the decision likely would have seemed cruel, but Dr. Moran made no protest. She was the one who’d pointed out that Camille might be able to respond faster in the first place. And besides, Dean Blaine wasn’t wrong about the training opportunity. Healing in a nice, clinical setting was a lot different than trying to patch people up while dealing with enemy attacks. If Camille Belden wanted to be a healer in the Hero world, she had to be able to perform in moments like these.
Otherwise, she’d end up the one who needed saving.
71.
It was only a glance: one swift movement of the eyes to scout the battlefield and be sure he wasn’t getting snuck up on. Roy could see Alice hovering above, pinning down the nearest cluster of Sims. Vince was letting out repeated shocks to one off on its own, though why he wasn’t just knocking it clean out was a mystery. Maybe the thing had electrical resistance. Behind Vince, Alex was focusing so hard that a thin film of sweat was on his forehead as he somehow kept the fog at bay in spite of how impossible that seemed. Mary was near Alex, eyes trained on the group Alice had downed, hands raised as she readied some manner of telekinetic blast. In that fleeting moment, Roy’s eyes caught a slight ripple in the shadows of the alley behind Mary, but he didn’t have time to process the anomaly as he turned to help Vince.
However, somewhere in his brain another, more analytical part, also took notice of the shadow, and it was better than Roy at math. Good enough to realize that one of their opponents was still unaccounted for.
There’s a Sim sneaking up on Mary!
Roy’s eyes widened as he swung back around. Sure enough, just a few feet away from their tiny telepath was the Sim with the acid hands, skulking up on her in a surprise attack. It saw him just as he saw it, and suddenly there was no more time for thought. Bursting off the ground so hard he broke the pavement, Roy leapt through the air, swinging his bat with a fury he didn’t recognize as his own, smashing directly into the Sim’s center of mass.
The Sim didn’t break so much as explode into shrapnel; had it been made of flesh, there would have been a streak of red stretching out behind it along with a fine bloody mist drifting to the ground. Disconcerting as it was to see the effect of his strength on things not built with enhanced endurance, the broken bot before him was nowhere near the top of Roy’s list of concerns. Slowly, he turned around and met Mary’s eyes, which were wide with shock. That alone might have answered his question normally, but since she’d nearly just been attacked by a sneaking Sim, there was more than one potential cause for her surprise. Roy needed to know if they were on the same page, and it wasn’t something he could wait around to find out.
“Tell me you heard that, too.”
An inch at a time, Mary began to nod her head. A wave of relief crashed through Roy. He wasn’t crazy, at least. No matter what might be going on, if nothing else, he didn’t have to waste time debating with himself about what he’d heard. Because the voice in Roy’s mind hadn’t been his own. He hadn’t seen the Sim, not consciously, and it wasn’t some intruding telepath either.
Though he’d never gotten to hear it in person, there was no mistaking whose voice that was. The one who’d warned him to save Mary was none other than her boyfriend, Roy’s brother, and someone who absolutely shouldn’t have been able to speak.
The voice had belonged to Hershel.
* * *
Will was fuming. He was beyond furious at the sight of his sister’s collapsed form. Worse than the rage though, so much worse, was the feeling of complete impotence to vent his anger. Will’s technique, his battle skill, all of it was built around playing smart: working the edges, finding the angles, using wits over brawn to make a difference. No amount of rage made it possible for him to charge in and start knocking down Supers, not even if they were just Sims with fake powers. Furious or not, they’d make short work of him in straight-out combat. Will had to swallow the white-hot cinder of anger trying to claw its way from his heart to his brain. He couldn’t afford to lose his head, and more importantly, Jill couldn’t afford it either.
“Thomas! Make Jill some fucking cover. Camille, get over to her. I’m going to pop a hatch on her suit to give you access to her skin. Violet, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to buy us some time by fighting the entire group. Thomas, help her if you can, but the priority is keeping Jill shielded until she’s out of danger. Now move!”
Whatever fugue state seeing the anthropomorphic opponents had put the others in, watching one of their own get dropped proved to be far more compelling. With a guttural scream that sent shivers down Will’s spine, Violet leapt into the fray, swinging that spiked chain like the blades of a helicopter and trying to chop the head off every Sim she could get near. Camille was already running, and Will hurried to join her. No sooner had they arrived at Jill’s body than a glowing orange dome formed around them, an energy barrier extended from Thomas’s right hand even as his left was forming energy tendrils to strike at the Sims.
Dropping his staff, Will carefully flipped his sister over. There was a chance he was doing spinal damage by moving her at all, but Camille should be able to heal that with the rest, so it was a necessary risk. As he reached for the panel on the back of her neck, Will noticed that his hands were shaking. The anger tried to bubble up again, but this time it wasn’t directed at the Sim who’d thrown her. No, this time Will was angry at himself. For getting into a position where Jill had needed to try and save him. For not making a suit strong enough to protect her. And now, for his cowardly fingers trembling instead of getting the goddamned job done.
Camille’s hand was resting on his shoulder for several seconds before Will noticed it, and even then she had to give him a squeeze. “Will, just focus on what’s right in front of you. Jill is tough; it’s going to take more than that to stop her. All she needs now is a quick patch-up.”
Ta
king a deep breath, Will gave a curt nod and put every bit of focus he had into stopping those traitorous shaking fingers. Mercifully, they calmed down—not stopping entirely, but enough to give him control to work the delicate mechanism where Jill’s suit joined to the helmet. Pulling aside a small panel, he revealed a rectangle of exposed skin wide enough for Camille to rest three of her slender fingers on. As soon as contact was made, a soft white light began to glow on Jill’s skin, and had he not already been crouched Will’s knees would have given out in relief.
“It’s not too bad,” Camille reported. “Broken bones, a concussion, and slight internal damage. I’ll have her fixed in less than a minute, though she’s going to be pretty worn out.”
“Thank you.” Will’s voice was barely higher than a whisper. “We just have to hope Thomas and Violet can hold out that long.”
Camille chuckled, though there was nothing mirthful about the dark noise that rose from her chest. “They just watched their friend get seriously hurt, and neither of them know that she’s going to be okay yet. The more relevant concern here is whether or not the Sims can hold out for the next thirty seconds.”
When the bubble over them vanished a short while later, it turned out the answer had been no: the broken rubble of utterly crushed Sims scattered around a panting Violet and dour Thomas made that outcome abundantly clear.
