by Hayes, Drew
“I’m the one who failed, Will.” Jill pulled herself a little higher off the bed, meeting her brother’s eyes. “Not you, and not your tech. I made an impulsive call and didn’t pay enough attention to my opponent’s counterattack. I’m the one who got myself hurt. I’m the one who slowed down the team; I’m the one who made a mistake. You and your tech were both great.”
Will shook his head. “That’s not true. If I’d just planned a little better, worked harder on your suit, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“Heroes get hurt. It’s part of the job,” Jill told him. “I know you want to keep protecting me like you did when we were kids. Hell, I have a hunch that you’ve stuck an interfering hand in my dating life a time or two as well. But Will, if I graduate from this program, you can’t constantly be there to look after me. Our jobs won’t always be together, and if they are, you can’t split your focus between worrying about me and your own tasks. You have to accept that if I become a Hero, I might get hurt, or worse, and you won’t be able to stop it.”
“There are many things I have had to accept in this life. Mom’s mental issues, having a power that no one thought counted, and my own physical frailty in a world of unstoppable Supers just to name a few. But—and hear me well, Jill—I will never stop trying to look after and protect you.” Will lowered his head, not wanting her to see his eyes grow moist. “Since the beginning, you were the only one who understood what it was like to be different. You were always there for me, forcing me to participate in the world, reminding me that we were as much human as we were Super. Without you, I’d be a half-crazed shut-in locked away in some basement, surrounded only by technology and inventions I saw no reason to share with the world. You’ve saved me at least as much as I have you, and I don’t intend to stop, ever. We watch over one another. That’s what family is supposed to do.”
“I guess you’re right.” Though Will couldn’t see her move, he felt his sister’s hand gently settle on the top of his head, mussing his brown hair with an affectionate scratch. “But I don’t agree that our scorecards are even, Will—from the stuff I know about to the things I only suspect you’ve done. All this time, you’ve easily taken on the lion’s share of the burden. I think it’s about time I stole some of it from your shoulders.”
Will raised his eyes, inadvertently causing Jill to drop her hand. “What are you talking about?”
Jill said nothing at first, merely lowered herself back into a resting position on her cot. “Between the two of us, who do you think will make the better Hero?”
“Your martial capacity exceeds mine by quite a ways.”
“That’s just fighting,” Jill snapped. “And by this point, we both know Hero work is about more than throwing punches. So, be honest. You with your tech and trickery, me with a suit: who among us do you think is going to do more cumulative good in the world?”
“There’s no way to know.” Will had a firm idea of where she was leading the conversation, and he refused to play along.
“Bullshit. I’m middle of the pack in my fields, and that’s being pretty generous. Meanwhile, you’re kicking ass at Subtlety all day, every day. Having you on a team means your Heroes will get access to gear and tech that most people could only dream of. You’ll make the better Hero, between the two of us, Will. And it’s okay to admit that.”
“It’s possible,” Will said, words still hesitant. “But I suppose we’ll have to wait and see when we’re a few years into the job.”
“No, we won’t.” Jill didn’t turn away from him, but she also made no effort to reestablish eye contact. “I’m quitting the program.”
“Jill, I know today was traumatic, but after I improve the suit—”
Jill’s head spun around, eyes filled with fiery determination that Will had rarely seen in her outside of a battlefield. “No, Will. There is no tech you can invent, no gear you can make, that will somehow keep me safe from everything. But if I keep going with this, you’ll never stop trying. You just said so yourself. And the world needs you as a dedicated, non-distracted Hero. Way more than it needs someone like me—at least, in the field. So I think it’s better for everyone if you don’t have to worry anymore.”
“I won’t… you can’t quit just for me,” Will stammered.
“You mean a lot to me, and this is the final nail in the coffin, but it’s about more than just you.” Jill’s ferocity ebbed and her body relaxed as sorrow appeared behind her eyes. “Ever since last May, since Sasha’s funeral, I’ve been wondering if this is really the life for me. I thought I knew what I was getting into, but, shit—I was eighteen and had no real perspective of how dangerous the Hero world really was when we started. After that it was all about the competition; momentum kept carrying me through, making me skim past whatever doubts and fears were cropping up. Sasha’s death brought it all to the surface, though. My own mortality, that of my friends… I don’t want to spend my life burying the people I love. And I don’t want to die because some asshole with super strength got in a lucky punch. And… and I don’t think I want to kill people, Will. Even if it’s for the greater good. Even if it’s in self-defense at the time. Those Sims today looked so real; that’s why I went for the stun rather than the drop. Maybe it’s something I can fight my way through and grow past, but I’m not sure I’d like who comes out the other side.”
Jill extended her hand from over the side of the cot, and Will carefully grasped it with his own.
“I love you, Will, but I’m not like you. I can’t go to the places you can in order to get things done. I’ll always have your back, I’ll always be in your life, and I’ll always be there for you. Just maybe not in the same profession. So don’t feel guilty about this or obligated to join me. Being a Hero is your dream. It has been since before you even knew it was possible. I want to see you realize it. I want you to be the best damn Subtlety Hero this world has ever seen.”
“But no pressure or anything, right?” Will wasn’t expecting to get a laugh from such a weak joke, but Jill’s chuckle still echoed through the room. They sat like that for a long while, neither quite sure what next step to take on this new path toward the future.
The one thing they did know was that neither would have to walk it alone.
75.
By the time Friday’s dust had settled, the senior class of the Lander HCP was two smaller than it had been in the morning. Jill Murray and Allen Wells both officially put in their resignations within a few hours after the completion of the trial, and none of their peers could blame them for it. Fighting human-like enemies, watching as faux-civilians fell while the Supers were unable to save them, had been a hard, jarring experience to say the least. Memory-fogging sessions were scheduled for Jill and Allen, and each was given time to make new housing arrangements if they so chose. Really, that matter was up to the HCP members they shared living space with, and whether those students trusted Jill or Allen enough to expose their identities to them after the memory wipe. It would be a hard choice that would no doubt demand serious discussion, but since both were leaving the program voluntarily, they were at least extended some time to figure things out.
Mercifully, this trial hadn’t ended with a meet-and-greet among the Heroes who had come to watch. Though Dean Blaine couldn’t tell them that at the outset, at least without betraying why they would feel so taxed once the exam was over, afterward he’d explained that since this step in the training process was notoriously draining, no one expected them to mingle afterward. Instead, everyone was dismissed for the weekend, and they all headed back to their respective homes and dorms.
Melbrook was unusually solemn as Alice entered the common room, having forgone a quick shower below ground in favor of a long, stress-draining bath in her actual home. Vince and Camille were both sitting on a couch, and Mary rested in a chair, watching a news program without paying much attention to it. Neither Roy nor Hershel was anywhere to be seen, though Alice was hardly taken aback by that; they often trained even after class
was done. What did surprise her was Chad’s presence, as even after exams he tended to log more hours in the gym than anyone. He also seemed the least down of the lot, or maybe it was impossible to spot any negative changes through his general stoicism. Overall, the tone was low, and Alice understood why. By her own count, she’d personally “killed” four Sims during the day’s test, and there were at least three civilian lives she couldn’t help wondering if she could have saved. The ones where it was impossible were easier to reconcile, but those near-misses…
“Here’s a thought: maybe today counts for our annual Halloween curse. I mean, it’s a day early, but it feels like a solid contender.” Alice spoke as quickly as the words formed in her mind, forcefully redirecting her train of thought from obsessing about the civilians lost. Learning from it was one thing, but that kind of spiraling could lead to dark, useless places; if she wanted to be able to cope when real lives were lost, she had to practice now, when her failures were nothing more than broken circuits.
“Oh, wow, I actually managed to forget tomorrow was the Halloween party,” Vince said. “Are we still going to try and do that?”
“While I’m sure Nick is eager to expose us to terrible movies, Vince might be right. I don’t think any of us are going to be in the partying mood for a while,” Mary said. “Today was rough on a lot of people, in all sorts of different ways. We might need a while before we feel like going out again.”
“We’re the ones throwing the party. We can’t bail on it,” Alice protested. While it would make meeting with the mysterious Galina easier, tearing away the party also removed the cover they’d planned to work under. DVA agents weren’t going to care about a bunch of senior college students drinking and watching movies, but if certain members of the Melbrook gang gathered without adequate reason, there was a chance it could catch the wrong sort of attention. To her surprise, Alice found an unlikely ally in her pro-party stance.
“It also bears mentioning that this, too, is training.” It was Chad who spoke, looking up from his phone to hop into the conversation.
“Training at bad movies and drinking?” Camille asked.
“No. Well, technically yes, but not what I was driving at,” Chad replied. “In the Hero world, battles like what we just experienced are going to be regular, if perhaps not frequent. But life—and criminals—do not work on our schedules, which means we will not often have the luxury of time to process and recover from such experiences. We may be called on to keep a meeting with a charity organization, or pulled away to another conflict as soon as the first is over. We may even be going home to our families. Regardless, the ability to recover from these situations is important. Time does not stop, even for Heroes, and the world will keep needing us whether we feel ready for it or not. While there is certainly time allocated for vacations and mental treatment, if we can’t deal with the day-to-day battles then it’s unlikely we will last very long.”
“You think what we dealt with was day-to-day?” Vince said. “We lost a fair amount of civilians.”
“And that was tragic, but it doesn’t justify letting down others who need us because we are too deep in mourning,” Chad countered. “Besides which, today was optimal in one respect: no one was pulled from the field before the exercise ended. By my understanding of how these tests work, that means no one “died” among the Heroes. Hard as this trial seemed, imagine going through it after losing one of your friends and still having to do a proper job.”
“Is this the kind of stuff you think about?” Alice asked. She didn’t disagree; Chad was bringing up points that they all probably should have been considering. Still, there was something so matter-of-fact about the way he said it all, like he’d made peace with these hard truths so long ago they no longer bothered him.
“Every day.” Chad was as inscrutable as ever, but something in Alice’s gut told her that he was a bit more passionate about this subject than his expression let on. “My power requires ample planning, forethought, and strategy. I can’t afford to be taken off guard, so I’ve had to face every aspect of what I’d be walking into since the day I decided to be a Hero. Much of it isn’t pleasant or fair, but there is a reason so few people can do this job properly. Like it or not, fights like these can’t slow us down, be it from helping people, stopping criminals, or simply living our lives with what time we have.”
“I guess that means the Halloween party is still on,” Vince said. “Might be a pretty small one, though. I’m not sure how many others will show up without getting that speech to kick them in the butt.”
Chad offered a small smile before turning his attention back to his phone. “I think you will be surprised. Sooner or later, you would have reached the same conclusion, and everyone else will, too. If they couldn’t, they never would have lasted this long in the program.”
76.
“Only losing two, that’s a tough class you’ve trained.” Owen sat in Dean Blaine’s office, along with Mr. Numbers, Mr. Transport, and Professor Stone. He noted that it was bigger than Dean Jackson’s office back at Sizemore, a place he’d been called into an equal number of times for scolding and congratulations. Then again, Dean Jackson had been in the position for a long while, and he wasn’t the sort to make frivolous improvements for himself. When Sizemore finally got a new dean, they would no doubt make the office, and the program itself, their own in multiple ways.
“They are especially hardy,” Dean Blaine agreed. “Though we may lose others as the situations grow more and more realistic. Thinking one can do this work and actually having the ability to do so are very different things. One never really knows what side of the line they fall on until the pivotal moment arrives. Still, at least this gives them some insight so there’s time to choose a better path.”
“From the way Roy sprayed that Sim’s innards across the street, I’ve got a hunch I know which camp he falls into.” Owen tilted his head, remembering the ferocious attack his son had launched at the Sim sneaking up on Mary. It hadn’t been the wrong move; in moments like that, when choosing between the life of a confirmed criminal and a teammate, a good Hero always picked the teammate. But it had been more ruthless than Owen had expected to see in a student, especially his son. Though he tried to hide it, Roy was softer inside than he let most people know, and Owen was keenly aware of that. Yet there had been no guilt or hesitation in his swing. All Roy had seen in that moment was the destruction of his opponent. It had been a confusing situation for Owen, until he was called in to consult on the newest development in his sons’ abilities.
“Or maybe I should say the way Hershel sprayed the Sim,” Owen amended. “Something tells me that, in that moment, he was pushing more than Roy.”
“I looked into the memory, and as far as Roy could tell, it was just the warning,” Professor Stone said. “It doesn’t appear that either brother has the ability to take control from the other, yet.”
“No, I didn’t mean that Hershel was the one pulling the strings. I meant…” Owen racked his brain, trying to figure out how to explain it. “When Roy was telling you about the experience and the ones prior, he mentioned that early on it felt like hunches and instincts. Feelings, in other words. Well, my bet is that Hershel didn’t just send over a warning to save Mary, he also included the anger he felt at seeing the woman he loved in danger. That’s what made Roy swing so hard. He’s not used to dealing with that kind of fury.”
Owen didn’t bother pretending not to notice the skeptical glances as everyone else in the room tried to think of a polite way to disagree with him; he knew better than anyone the way his sons appeared to handle things. To his surprise, however, one head began nodding in agreement, and it was Professor Stone’s.
“With respect, Hershel is the far more restrained of the two.” Dean Blaine hadn’t yet noticed that one of his own staff telepath was backing Owen’s claim. “Roy has a much longer history of giving in to his anger and acting out, though he’s gotten a much greater level of control over it since he first st
arted here.”
“Roy is his mother’s son,” Owen replied. “He lets his anger out when he feels it, speaks his mind, and throws a punch if someone needs punching. Hershel takes after me. He tends to keep his feelings, at least the negative ones, tucked away inside where they only grow stronger. Roy can be moved to anger more easily, but when Hershel does have reason to go off, he goes a lot further. The first time Roy came to see me after I left home, he ended up leaving without saying a word. Hershel, on the other hand, slugged me in the jaw on his first visit.”
Despite how humorous the image of Hershel uselessly punching Owen’s nigh-invulnerable face was, not a single chuckle slipped through the room. They all appreciated what it said: that in a moment like that, when emotion was completely overrunning logic, Hershel’s first act had been one of violence. And, privy to the family’s history, no one could entirely fault Hershel for the reaction, least of all Owen.
“That’s something to watch then,” Dean Blaine said at last. “It worked out well this time, but Roy can’t suddenly swing harder than he intended or hold back at an unexpected moment based on Hershel’s feelings. Especially at the rate his strength is growing. The wrong move at the wrong time could come with a cost weighed in blood.”
“Couldn’t agree more.” Owen looked over to Professor Stone. “Do you folks have some sort of idea for how to help my boys get a handle on this?”
“We must look at the whole picture. If we choose to ignore the fact that they were formerly Powered and that the process to convert them may have had unknown effects, the likeliest conclusion here is that all the training has allowed them to access an aspect of their abilities previously beyond their reach,” Professor Stone said. “Such things do happen on occasion, especially in the HCP where limits are constantly tested and Supers have to reach further and further to understand what they can do. From there, the logical step is to begin having Roy and Hershel both do some mental training. Whatever is happening, their connection seems to be the root of it, so the better they can understand it and develop their own self-awareness, the more likely they’ll be to find a degree of control.”
