Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (41 page)

“The vigilante bitch.”

She hung up.

She knew what she had to do now, but her stomach clenched at the thought. After one last puff, she stubbed out the cigarette and returned to the car. The Carpenter hadn’t moved. She got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and pulled back onto the road.

The drive was nowhere near as long as she wished it was. She’d give anything to delay the moment. But all too soon she was pulling over again in an isolated cul-de-sac. She left Solomon in the car again and walked with heavy feet up to the door of the weatherboard villa, pulling on her mask as she went. Three knocks on the frosted glass. Then she waited.

Kate Doherty looked as beautiful as ever. Her blond hair was full-bodied, her beige dress crisp and clean. The polite smile on her face cracked the instant she saw Niobe. “What do you want?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“Kate. I….” Her tongue felt three times its normal size.

“What?” The annoyance in Kate’s face faded. “Where’s Solomon?”

The words wouldn’t come.
Bloody hell
.

Kate’s face dropped, and for a moment it looked like her legs would follow. But then the woman straightened. Kate took Niobe by the lapels and shook her. “Where is he?” she said, her voice sharper than Doll Face’s knife. “Where is my husband?”

Niobe never felt the strikes that Kate landed. The woman was no fighter. She was just a girl who’d married a superhero.

It took both of them to get his body inside. Kate broke down sobbing as soon as they had him laid out on the bed. Tears ran down Niobe’s face as well, but they were swallowed up by the fabric of the mask. Kate had nothing to hide behind. Grief and hate took turns swallowing her features. Niobe couldn’t do anything but stand by and watch.

They say kids don’t understand death, but these ones did. Riley, the oldest at ten years, tried to be brave for his little sister and his mum. But she knew the pain in his heart. She still remembered how she felt when she found out her parents had been killed in the blast that destroyed Auckland. The Blind Man hadn’t taken those memories from her.

After a while, she left the family she’d broken to its grief. She returned to the car and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. The street was quiet. The garden that Solomon had tended so lovingly still stood, but it seemed colourless, empty. Bloody hell, she couldn’t stand this silence. She switched on the radio, hoping for music. She got a news bulletin instead.

“…man found murdered in the cell wearing the costume of the Manhattan Eight superhero has been confirmed as the original Omegaman, Frank Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as Dr Atomic. The Metahuman Division is refusing to offer any more details at this time.”

For a moment, she wondered if she’d heard it wrong.
It’s all a sick joke. It has to be.

The radio droned on. “For those just joining us, the police have confirmed that the supercriminal Quanta and his gang have escaped from an undisclosed holding facility less than forty-eight hours after their apprehension by the Metahuman Division. The body of ex-Manhattan Eight superhero Omegaman was found in Quanta’s cell. Whether Omegaman was involved in the escape is still under investigation. In a press conference less than an hour ago, a Metahuman Division spokesman warned the public to stay indoors and not to use the phone lines except in the case of emergency.”

Escaped?
She and the Carpenter had served them Quanta with a bloody apple in his mouth, and Met Div let him escape?

She slammed her fist down on the steering wheel. Again. Again. Pain shot through her, but she didn’t stop. It was all for nothing. The Carpenter was dead, Frank Oppenheimer was dead, Sam was broken and gone, Gabby had left her, and it was all for fucking nothing.

Slowly, her rage abated. She slumped down in the seat and put her face in her bruised hands. The car wasn’t a good target for her anger. It didn’t shout, it didn’t fight back. She wanted to hurt someone, and she knew who. But she had no leads on Quanta. Doll Face had obviously killed several of Quanta’s people back at the meat works. She could drive back out, spend hours looking for Quanta’s airship. If he hadn’t already taken it and left, of course. Even if it was still there, there were miles of abandoned farmland to search, and it would undoubtedly be well hidden.

The caffeine she’d guzzled to compensate for her three-hour sleep had faded long ago. Someone had scooped out everything inside her, and now she was just an empty bag of skin. There was nothing else for her to do here.

She took a few deep breaths to gather herself together, then drove the short distance back to her apartment. The sun slowly dropped behind the Old City’s skyline, and the world went grey.

The apartment was as empty as she’d left it. The dirty dishes from the meal she’d shared with Solomon still sat in the sink. She ignored them and opened the refrigerator door. Her stomach protested at the sight of food, so she shut the fridge again. She tore off her mask and tossed it on the floor. For a while, she stood in the middle of the kitchen, lost. What was she even doing here?

Finally, she limped out to the living room, pulled a chair up to the window, and lit a smoke. Gabby always made her open a window when she was smoking. She tried to smile at the memory, but her lips wouldn’t work. While the smoky cloud drifted around her, she stared out at the city.
I’m staying on Earth now, I guess.
Frank Oppenheimer wouldn’t be sending her a paycheque anymore. Even if she could afford the lunar rocket ticket, she couldn’t go by herself. There was nothing on the Moon for her. There was nothing here for her either.

She took a shower. The wound on her thigh stung in the scalding water. The steam made her dozy. Slowly, ever so slowly, the aches in her body subsided. Sometimes, she and Gabby would share a shower, taking turns with the soap, laughing as they tried to manoeuver in the tight space. Most of the time they’d barely even get dry afterwards before they collapsed onto the bed and made love. If she closed her eyes, she could picture Gabby lying naked on the bed, the blinds letting shafts of sunlight fall across her curves.

But when Niobe opened her eyes, she was alone again, and the water had gone cold. She shut off the shower, dried off, and returned to the bedroom. She could still smell Gabby’s scent in the air. Or maybe it was just her imagination. Barely able to keep her eyes open, she crawled under the covers, leaned over, and switched the bedside lamp off.

She switched the light back on. Something had been poking out from under the bed, something that had taken her mind a moment to register. She blinked at it, trying to get her vision in focus. Then she realised what it was. A sheet of paper from the file on Quanta.

For a good ten minutes she stared at the paper, and it stared back. She should just turn off the light and go to sleep. Maybe things would be clearer in the morning. But the paper had a hook in her mind, and it was tugging her.

“Oh, bugger it,” she said. She clambered out of bed and picked up the paper. Most of the other bits were still behind the bed where she’d thrown them. Ignoring the pain in her leg, she put her back against the bed and shoved it aside.

The pages were numbered, so it didn’t take her long to gather them together and put them in order. Without bothering to return the bed to its place, she climbed back under the covers and started reading.

Morgan Shepherd had a short rap sheet, but it was bloody. Wanted for a riot at the University of Cambridge in 1958 where he murdered twenty-six anti-metahuman squad officers, with another nineteen dead at the hands of the metahuman mob he’d incited. According to all reports, that was the first time anyone was aware he was a meta. There were a few more counts of assault and wounding with intent throughout Europe, mostly involving police and special agents sent to capture him. The list ended with the murder of his lover, Lisa Neve, in Spain. After that, he vanished into the ether. The son of a bitch should’ve stayed there.

His biography was sparse: a few sentences about his family and early life in a town near Birmingham. Did extremely well at school. Accepted into Cambridge University. There was no psychological report, nothing to suggest madness. The report laid the riot at Cambridge squarely at his feet, but she could remember the way the world was turning in those days. If the anti-metahuman squad didn’t open fire first, they were itching for the excuse.

But why was he here? And why had he taken Sam? Had he meant to unleash that power in Sam when he inflicted Doll Face upon him? “Why did you do this, you bastard?” she asked the picture of the young Morgan Shepherd.

Her eyes were drooping again, but she kept flicking through. The rest of the document consisted of reports by the teams that had tracked him through Europe. Interpol had taken a special interest in him. They’d been tracking him for two years before Shepherd’s lover sold him out to them. But when they went to arrest him, Shepherd escaped, leaving half the team dead. Along with Lisa.

She skimmed past the list of Interpol officers involved in the operation. Then she paused. Gabby had underlined two names: the lead investigator and the squad leader. She went back, forcing her tired eyes to read. She knew the names. One Daniel O’Connor, and Met Div’s beloved Senior Sergeant, Raymond Wallace.

“You knew,” she said to Wallace’s name. She didn’t feel tired anymore. “You knew who he was all along, didn’t you? You fucking arsehole. He’s here for you, isn’t he?”

The paper didn’t respond. She threw back the covers and got dressed. She had places to be.

27: No Light Without Darkness

There are two main ways to become a superhero: through a supergroup, or through an apprenticeship. Many young metas wish to be accepted for a training position in one of the world’s prestigious supergroups, such as the Light Brigade or the Alpha League. But spots are highly limited and usually only open to tier two or higher metahumans. Therefore, for many superhero hopefuls, the best way to learn the ropes is to take an apprenticeship as an existing hero’s sidekick. Trying to become a superhero without supervision or training is not advised. Every year, dozens of young, solo metas are killed when they take on a threat they are not equipped to handle.

—Educational pamphlet from the Metahuman Advisory Board, 1954

Niobe pressed her palm against the wall of the phone booth. “What do you mean he’s not there?” she said into the phone. “You have supercriminals running around free out there, and he’s taking a sick day?”

“I can take a—”

“I don’t want to leave a damn message,” she said. “I need to talk to Senior Sergeant Wallace. Now.”

She could practically hear the constable grinding his teeth. “The senior sergeant went home to take care of an urgent matter. If you have information for us, I will pass it on to Sergeant Hawthorne.”

“Sergeant Hawthorne can go….” She paused. “He’s at home? Wallace is at home?”

“Yes, but I can’t give you his home number.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know his address.” She slammed the receiver down before she could get the constable in any more trouble with his superiors.