“That’s not…” The fat man gulped. “How?”
“That information is not for sale.”
“It could be for sale,” said the black-haired cat girl next to the one named Turquoise.
How odd to have two cat girls in one’s employ, Dr. Hamza thought as he looked at her.
“Keep your toxic excretions to yourself,” he finally told her. “Or use them for your man over here. Scarlett brought the three of you to me for one reason, and one reason only. And it involves this woman. So let me do my job, and Scarlett, please make sure these three don’t disturb me in any way.”
“Kevin,” Scarlett said. “This is important.”
“Yes, yes it is,” Kevin told her as he moved away from Dr. Hamza, the two cat girls following him.
Dr. Hamza had already set out the equipment that he would need on a side table. It wouldn’t be very much, just a couple vials of her blood would do the trick.
He also wanted to see how she healed, so he would need to injure himself and then have the woman heal him up, which was why there was a knife sitting on the table.
“This will only take a moment,” he assured the dying healer as he placed his hand on her head again. Dr. Hamza helped move her up in a way that would let the blood flow to her arm, and once she was set, he took three small vials of her blood.
“Careful,” the man named Kevin started to say.
“Just let me get what I need to get,” Dr. Hamza told him as he finished filling the third vial. “And there’s one more part of this test.”
Once the vials were capped and secure, Dr. Hamza reached for the knife.
“I need her to heal me; is one of you able to communicate with her? Can one of you get her to heal me?”
“I think I can,” Kevin said as he came forward.
Kevin went to the old woman, the lady wheezing as he helped her sit up.
Dr. Hamza rolled up the sleeve of his lab coat and looked down at his arm. He pressed the tip of the knife into his flesh and brought it all the way down to his wrist, opening up a line of blood.
“Here,” he said, ignoring the pain as he turned his arm toward the woman.
Her eyes clouded over, strands of gray hair in her face, the woman lifted both hands as energy radiated off her fingers. She started hacking as Kevin patted her on the back. Once she finished, the old woman nodded as she waved her hands over Dr. Hamza’s wound.
It was miraculous.
Dr. Hamza saw the chemicals she was using to do this, the wound healing almost instantly, Hamza feeling like he was going to vomit.
“Getting a stomach sickness?” Kevin asked.
“Yes, it’s quite strong.”
“It seems to be a side effect of her power.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dr. Hamza said, taking a few steps back. He knew how this could work, and it might take him a day or so, but he would definitely be able to replicate the power and put it into a liquid form.
He also had a subject ready, a human guinea pig desperately in need of healing. If that didn’t work out, he could always get Scarlett to pick up a random person for him run tests on.
“Fascinating,” Dr. Hamza said, “fascinating.”
“How long will it take you?” Kevin asked.
“Why? Do you have somewhere to be?”
Kevin looked to the two cat girls and nodded. “We’re going West, soon.”
“Give me a day, maybe two tops. If you do so, I will have a lovely parting gift for you.”
Chapter Thirty: Better to Forget
(The best way to forget a memory is not to have it in the first place.)
“Let’s start with a market,” Sam Meeko said as he came to the dining room table. He wore the clothing Zoe had selected for him, the jeans a bit loose.
“A market sounds wonderful,” said the old woman as she looked up at Sam, fondness in her eyes.
“Why a market?” asked Zoe. Now in vintage Southern Alliance wear, the tiger girl was spooning yogurt into her mouth with an indiscernible look on her face.
“I’ll explain once we get there. Is it easy to get to Argoze from here?” he asked the old woman.
She gave him a funny look as he sat down. “Through which means?”
“Well, there’s a city near here, so I’m guessing a trolley connects, right?”
The woman shook her head. “No, no, you don’t want to go there by trolley. That will take at least twelve hours, and you’ve already missed the morning one, so you’d have to take the night one. Teleporter will suffice.”
“We don’t have any money,” Sam said. “Power-up, touch,” he whispered under his breath. From there, he carefully lifted the spoon and started working on the yogurt. “Not Southern Alliance currency, anyway.”
“You managed to slip some Centralian money into your tights?” Zoe asked Sam.
“I guess you’re right,” Sam said. “We are technically broke.”
“And how are you planning to get money when you get to town?” the woman asked.
“We have our ways…”
“No, let’s not go down that path,” Sam told Zoe. “We are already in a foreign country, it’s best not to break the rules here.”
“Then how will we get to the capital city?”
The old woman looked at Zoe like she was dumb. “I will arrange for teleportation, that’s how. It’s the least I can do. Were you referring to stealing earlier?”
“No!” Sam and Zoe said at the same time.
“It’s fine, you’ve already done enough,” Zoe started to tell the Southern Alliance woman.
“Nonsense. I was friends with your grandfather, Paak Ramone, and he would have done the same for one of my grandchildren if they had just appeared out of the blue.”
“We will get money to you as soon as we can,” Zoe said.
“No, that’s not necessary.”
“Trust me, lady,” said Zoe. “We recently ran into a lot of money. Just write down your contact info before we go.”
“That’s not how this is supposed to work,” Sam started to tell Zoe, a spoonful of yogurt in his mouth.
“What do you mean? Helena will gladly pay for allowing us to stay here for a night, and that pay can cover our teleportation to the city. No sense in arguing about it. It’s something I will take care of when we meet our friend.”
“A rich friend, huh?” the old woman asked with a sly smile on her face.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Zoe said. “We live in a giant mansion with her. And by giant, I mean it’s like twenty-seven times the size of this place, and this place isn’t small. If I’m not mistaken, she probably has several mansions in Centralia.”
“I see,” said the old woman. “Well in that case, the bathroom in my bedroom needs remodeling. I’m getting older, and it’s hard to get in and out of the tub. So I’ve been saving to have it remodeled. Do you think you can add that to the tab as well?”
“What is going on here?” Sam asked, looking between the two women.
“What?” The old woman shrugged. “She says you have a really rich friend, a rich friend who clearly would pay me for letting you two stay here for the night, what would she know about the cost of a simple bathroom renovation? I know those two things don’t sound connected, but trust me, this could totally work.”
“Deal,” Zoe said, reaching over the table to shake hands with the old woman.
“We don’t shake hands down here,” the woman reminded her.
“That’s right,” Zoe said, bowing her head and bringing both hands up to her shoulders.
Sam copied Zoe, not sure why he was going along with this. Even if Helena was filthy rich, it wasn’t right for Zoe just to promise her money away.
Just another thing that annoyed Sam about Zoe.
Things like this that made him question her loyalty. He still felt that if any of them were in a bind, Zoe would be the first to arrive and help them in whatever way she could.
But she had also betrayed them onc
e already; had taken advantage of him last night (which he really couldn’t remember much of; he wasn’t faking it in the bedroom when Zoe confronted him about it); and now she was promising to renovate the woman’s bathroom.
“Why don’t you pay?” Sam asked. “I’m sure this would only take you a couple modeling gigs.”
“You’re a model?” the old woman asked. “You know, your grandfather was a model. Did your granny ever tell you that?”
“He was?”
“He sure was, just a few small things. But one of his images, a silhouette, was used in pamphlets printed by the military. He got a lot of tail because of that image. That may have been how he met your grandmother, although I would guess she didn’t tell that story the same way.”
“No, she didn’t,” Zoe said. “And we will get some fundage to you, count on it,” she said, giving Sam a dirty look.
The old woman reminisced for another twenty minutes or so, plenty of time for Sam to finish eating and then reactivate his sniffer. It was another twenty minutes or so until the teleporter appeared, this one a middle-aged dude with a handlebar mustache that stretched halfway to his stomach.
Zoe and Sam gathered around the man, a knapsack thrown over Sam’s shoulder which contained their uniforms. After clearing his throat the man started twisting the ends of his handlebar mustache. The teleporter’s hair grew down to his feet, instantly forming a cocoon around the three and fading into nothingness.
Their forms took shape, still in his cocoon of hair which rapidly pulled back, slithering up the teleporter’s body and returning to its normal place as his mustache.
“We’re in Argoze?” Sam asked, looking around at a bustling street market that stretched as far as the eye could see.
There were buildings along its perimeter, people moving about, a few women with baskets balanced on their heads and men standing around, conversing over small glasses of tea. It was cold too, and Sam was glad to be wearing a sweater. There was also fresh layer of snow on the ground, all the sidewalks already salted.
“Argoze,” said the teleporter. “Market.”
And with that, he vanished in the same crazy fucking way he’d appeared.
“Care to tell me why we are at a market?” Zoe asked.
She had a little purse now, one that Sam found to be quite impractical. There was no strap, she simply held it in her hand like it was a book. He was pretty sure it was called a clutch, but he didn’t want to say anything, just in case he sounded dumb.
At least the old woman had given them a little money as well, money that Helena would be paying back tenfold, but it would prove useful in what he wanted to do next.
“They always have someone like this at these markets,” Sam said. “At least in Centralia they do, but I’m guessing the Southern Alliance is no different.”
“Someone like what?” Zoe asked as she followed Sam, who was already several steps ahead of her.
It wasn’t the best usage of the little money they had, but it was something he needed to take care of, something that would make this easier going forward.
“Just trust me,” he told her as she caught up. They wound their way through the market, Zoe stopping occasionally to comment on some of the wares, Sam listening, but still trying to find the particular booth he was looking for.
“Not so many people are staring at me down here,” Zoe informed Sam. “Or maybe they are, I just don’t notice it as much. I notice it in Centralia…”
“I am sure you do,” Sam told her as they moved deeper into the market, walking to the left of the fountain that was surrounded by food carts.
Fat pigeons hopped around, waiting for someone to throw them a treat. Sam watched as a child stepped forward with a piece of bread in his hand. One of the pigeons flew up to his arm, landed and snatched the bread, flying away. His mother scolded him for a moment, the kid crying instantly.
“So glad we don’t have one of those,” Zoe said.
“We?”
“I meant me, and you, but not necessarily together. You know what I’m trying to say. It would just be one more thing to take care of.”
“That’s definitely one way to put it,” Sam said as he saw the booth he was looking for. “Follow me.”
“What’s this about?” Zoe asked as soon as they neared the booth Sam had been searching for.
A man sat behind a low table, red tattoos under his eyes, his skin the color of the snow that rested on the ground between his booth and the person next to him. An uncomfortable white, unlike most of the people he had seen so far in the South, their skin a shade darker than your average Centralian.
“I need to forget the last twelve hours,” Sam told the man. “Also, hi.”
“Well, hello. Did you say forget?” the man asked, looking up at Sam and raising an eyebrow.
“You’re going to blow the money we have on getting a telepathic scrub?” Zoe asked, lightly shoving Sam.
“Hell yes, I am,” he told his ex. “I cannot have this stuff on the surface of my mind, not around her. She’ll find out. I won’t be able to look at her without her knowing.”
“Dammit,” Zoe said, reaching into her clutch (or tiny purse, Sam still didn’t quite know the difference), and retrieving a small roll of cash.
“Is this enough?” Sam asked. “Sorry, I’m being hasty. How much to scrub my mind?”
“That should cover it,” the telepath said, standing and using his leg to bring his stool to the side.
He beckoned Sam into his booth, and once Sam was in, Zoe on the other side of a curtain, the telepath drew the curtain and instructed Sam to lie down.
“I think what you are doing here in the South is a good thing,” the telepath began to say, “I only hope that you can accomplish it.”
“Those aren’t the thoughts that I need you to scrub.” Sam was now on the cot, which was covered in plush satin blankets, topped by a pillow made of seeds.
He rested his head on the pillow, noticing the weird crunch due to the seeds inside the pillowcase. His nostrils flared, and Sam instantly knew more about the telepath, the bed he was lying on, the space in general, and how it had been blessed with a few runes.
That was the weirdest part of the info his nose uncovered—he didn’t know exactly what the runes had done, but they had definitely left their mark on the small booth.
The telepath smoothed his hands over his robes. “I’m not permitted to share what I find in someone’s mind, even if it is incriminating. I have taken the telepathic oath, as have many in my profession. But I wish you luck, and I hope you find your friend soon. Now, you said the last twelve hours?”
“Yes,” Sam told the man. “I don’t want to remember any of it. I just want to remember that we got to a woman’s house, this nice older woman that somehow knew Zoe’s grandfather. We stayed the night there, in separate rooms, had breakfast, and then we came here. I also hit my head. So…”
“I see. You already are having trouble remembering what happened, you just want me to adjust it a little, correct?” the telepath asked.
“That’s right.”
“How would you like this particularly illicit memory to seem in the future? If it ever comes back to you, do you want to know that you had something scrubbed, or do you want to think of it as a dream?”
“I don’t know…” Sam said, not so stoked about how the telepath had labeled the memory ‘particularly illicit.’
“May I recommend that you know you had something scrubbed? Sometimes, it’s just better that way. It gives you avenues to process the information if it ever comes back to you, and with your power, it very well could come back.”
“All right,” Sam said as he closed his eyes, waiting for that telepath to do the deed.
“I will also have a word with your friend, because she is not to mention what happened after this point. If she does, it’ll make you argumentative. Imagine being accused of doing something with someone when you know for a fact that it didn’t happen. That’s what I mean by
argumentative. It’s best that she doesn’t pry away the telepathic bandage I’m placing over this wound.”
“It wasn’t really a wound…” Sam said.
“Just relax for another moment, I will speak with her, and once I return, we’ll get this memory scrubbed.”
Chapter Thirty-One: Round up!
(The team never gets back together. Sorry. Book ends here. But keep reading anyway.)
“Did you sleep at all last night?” Helena asked Ozella the next morning. They were sharing a room with two single beds, Helena’s request, as her friend Juniper definitely had separate rooms available.
But Helena had wanted to work with Ozella on her statkeeping ability, which she had done until well past midnight, the two of them going over Ozella’s new classification system. There would be changes in the future, but Helena was happy with what she had helped Ozella put together.
It had been relatively easy in the end, mostly just requiring a change in conceptualization. And if all went smoothly, Ozella’s new classification style would be something that fundamentally changed how Vigilante Justice collected data, and more importantly, how they exploited this data.
“I don’t sleep very much,” Ozella reminded Helena. “A year or two ago, a few people I lived with said I was like a succubus, or maybe even a vampire, because of the hours I kept. I tried cosplaying as a succubus once, but I found the tail attachment annoying, and in the end, it really wasn’t my style.”
“Good to know,” Helena said as she continued stretching.
You bet your ass Helena was up early stretching, loosening up her muscles, going through the routine that she used when she travelled.
“Want to stretch with me?” Helena asked.
“I don’t know if I’m really that flexible,” said Ozella. She was sitting up in the bed still tucked under the covers and wearing borrowed pajamas, her hair in a bun.
“I’m sure you are.”
Helena got to her knees, motioning Ozella over. The group’s statkeeper got out of the bed, avoiding eye contact with Helena as she approached, also getting on her knees on the carpeted floor.
We Could Be Heroes 2 Page 24
