Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (16 page)

—A Concise History of Metahumans, George Walters, PhD

Niobe greeted the dawn by pulling the curtains of her apartment’s kitchen shut and sitting in darkness. She couldn’t think clearly with sunlight streaming down on her. Everything became clearer in the shade.

She wore an old blank T-shirt and the same panties she’d slept in. A mug of instant coffee sat in front of her alongside a newspaper, but she made no move to drink it. The bitter aroma was all she wanted, really. Gabby had built a machine like the ones in new Neo-Auckland cafés, one that brewed fresh coffee directly from beans, but Niobe never used it. The smooth liquid it produced didn’t taste like coffee should.

She’d woken half an hour before dawn and slipped out of bed without waking Gabby. Her sleep—or what passed for it—had done nothing to leave her refreshed. All night she was tormented by images of uniformed figures striking at her throat and shoving bags over her head. Other shapeless creatures crept through her mind, stealing away with her memories. Again and again she woke drenched in sweat, until she finally gave up. She was probably just overtired. That was all it was.

She sighed and inhaled the scent of the coffee on the table. What she really wanted was a photo album. That was what other people had, right? Photos of their families and themselves growing up. Maybe if she had something like that she could patch over the hole left in her memories. The memories the Blind Man took had been the clearest ones she had of her parents. Now she could barely remember their faces. All she had was the smell of the coffee her mum used to make for her dad before he went to see his patients.

Bugger it. She pushed the coffee away from her and folded her arms. She’d made the trade willingly. She had a lead on the kid, no matter how small. If she could get him back, maybe it’d be worth it. Maybe.

Solomon had made a call to the bloke he knew at the cape coppers’ headquarters. The guy wasn’t a meta; all he did was mop the floors. But the coppers had a habit of flapping their jaws when he was around. A cleaning guy was invisible to them, she guessed. Piss-poor security. That sort of thing wouldn’t have been tolerated in the Wardens. But those days were different. You could never be sure someone wasn’t a doppelgänger or the mind-controlled slave of some psychic supercriminal. It was a matter of survival to make sure no one was eavesdropping on a sensitive conversation.

Solomon’s man hadn’t heard any goings on about a kid being subdued on a boat in the harbour. No prisoners that matched Sam’s description were being held there either, as far as he knew. It was what she expected. The man she saw in the vision was acting outside normal protocols. Either he really was a copper, and he’d been wearing the uniform to get close enough to the Juliuses without attracting attention, or he was an impostor, and the uniform was designed to throw her off the trail.

She’d put out her own feelers, but nothing had come back yet. There weren’t many people willing to work with her and Solomon, but if metas were being snatched, maybe there were rumours her informants could trace. The information would cost.
But not as much as the Blind Man
, she thought. She scowled into the darkness and wiped her resentment away.

Soft footsteps padded behind her, and a second later the kitchen light clicked on. She didn’t turn around, so Gabby came and sat at the table opposite her. Niobe’s stomach clenched when she saw the bloodstains on the shoulder of Gabby’s robe. The cut on her forehead had begun to scab over, but the purple, raised bruise disappearing beneath her frizzy blond hair was still vivid. Niobe’s mood softened. Gabby’s eyes were puffy and tired, but she still looked beautiful. She was always beautiful.
You should have protected her better
, a voice in her heart whispered.

Gabby’s lips twitched in a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

—
That coffee smells terrible,
she signed.

“Bourgeois pig.” Niobe spoke slowly, signing at the same time. Gabby gave the smile another try, but Niobe couldn’t bring herself to return it.

—
What’s wrong?
Gabby signed.

Niobe shook her head and said nothing. She couldn’t see how she could explain it. She couldn’t even explain how she felt to herself. Was it really a loss when you couldn’t remember it anyway?

Gabby waited and watched, but Niobe didn’t meet her eyes. After a few minutes, Gabby reached across the table and took Niobe’s hand. Niobe returned the squeeze.
For her,
she thought.
I’m doing this for her.

With a final squeeze, Gabby released her hand and pointed to the newspaper.

—
Did you see that?

Niobe nodded, glad for the change of subject. Splashed across the front page was a blurred photograph from at least eight years ago of a man in a plastic mask.

NOTORIOUS SUPERCRIMINAL DOLL FACE ALIVE!

Soviets Admit Breakout

She wasn’t sure whether to believe it. Everyone was sure the psychopath was killed after a few hundred Soviet soldiers cornered him in Ukraine. They even had a body to prove it. He’d single-handedly taken a school hostage and turned the place into his own personal house of horrors. It was never reported in the media, but she heard through the Wardens that most of the surviving children were missing their ears and noses. The investigators found those missing body parts in the stomachs of the kids who’d died. The soldiers had shown no mercy when they got a clear shot at Doll Face.

She’d never gone toe-to-toe with Doll Face. No one in the Wardens had. For the best part of a decade he’d terrorised Europe and parts of Asia. Vindictive parents would tell their children that if they didn’t behave, Doll Face would get them. He was a psychopath, maybe, but no one could cause that much devastation and evade capture for so long without some kind of twisted, instinctive intelligence.

She shook her head, dismissing the thoughts. “Even if he is running around, the Reds can deal with him,” she said. “Serves the stupid bastards right for keeping him alive all these years.”

She stood and tipped the coffee down the sink. It was lukewarm now anyway, and it hadn’t helped her remember a single damn thing. She had to focus. Find Sam, get him back to his uncle. Make this damn hole in her head worth it.

Gabby followed her back to the bedroom and sat on the bed, hugging herself. Niobe tried to pretend she couldn’t feel Gabby’s eyes on her while she dressed. She was too restless for a shower, and besides, the hot water had been acting up in the old building lately.

—
Where are you going?
Gabby signed.

—
Out,
she replied, and clipped her utility belt on. She wasn’t going out in full costume, not in the daylight. Today was strictly detective work. Still, she strapped her gun on and covered it with a pale, loose-fitting jacket that she picked up at a seconds sale in Neo-Auckland a couple of seasons ago.

Gabby frowned. Her nose always wrinkled when she did that.

—
It’s not even seven yet. Have breakfast with me.

—
Can’t,
Niobe signed.
I have work to do.

Gabby grabbed her arm as she tried to brush past out of the room. “Please.” Her voice came out quiet, distorted. It embarrassed her, so she didn’t speak often.

Niobe stopped, looked at her feet, then met Gabby’s eyes. They shifted colour in the light, but now they were grey and rough like a stone wall. Niobe hadn’t forgotten the first time she saw those eyes. The coppers had raided her place back in ’61, trying to force her into the metahuman registration programme. She had to make a run for it, abandoning her cash and all the equipment she had. As a parting gift, the coppers kindly gave her a bullet in the upper arm. In the days that followed, she slept where she could, avoiding patrols, trying to stay clear of trouble, hoping the infection in her wound didn’t kill her. But then she heard a rumour about a master gadgeteer operating in the outskirts of the Old City. If she was going to survive, Niobe needed supplies, equipment. Maybe the gadgeteer could help.

It took her a week, but she found the gadgeteer’s workshop. She scoped the place out, waited for nightfall, then tried to sneak in. But she was so sick and starved by then she didn’t notice she’d triggered the silent alarm. Not until she felt the barrel of a pulse rifle pressed against the back of her head.

And when she turned around, she found those silver eyes looking down at her, and those cheeks tinged with pink, and that soft golden hair. Over time, they became friends. And then more than friends.

It was strange. She’d had relationships before, but she’d always thought she was too cynical to feel like this.

They’d been through so much together. They’d watched the world change. But she knew it upset Gabby when she went out, just like Solomon’s wife worried about him. She couldn’t quit this job, but she loved Gabby, and she wanted her to be happy. Niobe couldn’t let the best thing in her life slip away.

She touched Gabby’s cheeks with both hands. Then she slowly pulled her close, close enough to make out the little downy hairs at the edge of her hairline. She kissed her. Gabby’s lips were hard for a moment, but they softened, and her tongue slipped out to touch Niobe’s. Niobe breathed in the scent of her.

Gabby melted into her arms. Niobe’s hands drifted down over her back, down to the sash of her robe. She wanted to untie it, let the robe fall from Gabby’s shoulders, run her fingers over her. The first few times they’d had sex it had been a nervous exploration, each touch like a little electric shock, each inch of flesh new and exciting and scary. But over time they’d become comfortable with each other’s bodies. She’d learned the spots that made Gabby sigh and the ones that made her gasp. She’d learned how Gabby’s back would arch when Niobe let her fingers turn to half-shadow and creep along the crease where her leg met her pelvis.

But she couldn’t do those things now. There was a thirteen-year-old boy out there somewhere, in the hands of God knows who. She’d wasted too much time already. When their kiss ended and Niobe opened her eyes again, she returned her hands to Gabby’s cheeks. Gabby’s face was flushed with pink. Niobe drew her close again, kissed each of her eyelids in turn, and released her.

—
I have to go,
Niobe signed,
but we’ll talk tonight. We’ll go up to the roof, look up at the Moon, and we’ll work this out together.

The colour slowly faded from Gabby’s face. She smiled, but it was strained.

—
I promise
, Niobe added. She kissed Gabby one more time, took her hand, and squeezed. “Love you.”

She buttoned her jacket over her gun and went out of the room, ignoring the tightness in her chest.

She thought about contacting the Carpenter and bringing him along, but in the end she decided not to. They were due to meet with his informer at Met Div on the guy’s lunch break. Solomon might as well sleep in and spend some time with his family. Besides, her mind was a mess right now. What she really wanted was to throw herself into the investigation and forget the past and relationships and Doll Face and the Moon.

She slipped on a pair of over-sized sunglasses to conceal her black eyes. The traffic was light as she drove towards Waitemata Harbour. Most of the people who worked the ports would already be there, and few other normals travelled so close to the Old City. In the old days, metas with minor strength or technology-related powers could make a good living loading and unloading the ships that came here. The more powerful metas usually set their sights higher, preferring to build entire structures or design machines so advanced they ran competing industries into the ground. But now the ports were run on a skeleton crew, with a large proportion of incoming cargo ships diverted to Tauranga and other parts of the country.

She wound down the window and let the sea breeze blow the swirling thoughts from her head. The few scattered cargo ships rolled past, crawling with workers while cranes shuddered and turned. She kept on driving until they fell behind and the private marinas emerged near Herne Bay. Most were new, built in the last couple of years. If Neo-Auckland residents took the Northwestern Highway, they could get there while bypassing the Old City completely, but this part of the city was still out of the way and suffering from neglect. Still, there were a lot of rich folks in Neo-Auckland, and having your own boat had become the new status symbol. It’d probably stay that way until the Germans finally made personal rocket-planes commercially viable.