Hero (27 page)

“Fuck you.”

I snatch her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “I’ve had enough of your smart mouth. Another word, and I will beat that attitude right out of you.”

“Calvin,” Norman exclaims.

“Shut up. She knows what she got herself into. This is your fault for coddling her all the time.”

“I don’t care if you beat me half to death,” Cataline says as if she were commenting on the weather. “Just tell me why. Why are you wearing Hero’s armor, Calvin?”

I release her chin and raise my hand. Norman latches onto my arm, knowing full well he could never stop me.

“You’re a disgrace to that suit,” she says. “You’re not even worth the dirt under Hero’s shoe.”

My palm connects hard with her face, and she takes two steps back.

Her face is turned away, her hand covering her cheek. She looks at me in slow motion. “Why are you wearing that? Why am I here?”

My hands dive into my hair and pull. “I can’t tell you. Stop asking.”

“I’ve done everything you’ve asked,” she says through gritted teeth. “You’ve taken everything from me. Give me this. Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me there’s been a mistake. Tell me—”

“I can’t,” I say.

“When can you?”

“Never.”

She stares at me as the room is sucked into a deafening silence. The incredulity in her face melts away until there’s nothing there. “Never?” she repeats in a choked whisper.

“No. Information is a privilege you haven’t earned. Even if you had, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

She takes more steps away until her back collides with the wall. She stands there silently quaking with a blank expression until bolting from the room.

As her bare feet slap down the hallway, I shake my head and look at Norman. “Watch her closely while I’m gone tonight.”

“Master Parish, don’t you see what you’re doing? I beg you, tell her the truth. You’re causing more damage than the Cartel ever could.”

I snort. “You don’t know the lengths they’d go through to get to me. They’re the enemy. Not me.”

“You hit her.”

I glare at him, the asteroid of anger burning through me again. My ears prick when I hear a dense thud. “What was that?”

Norman’s head tilts. “What?”

“That noise.”

“I don’t hear anything, sir.”

It comes again, and I walk toward the door. “What the . . . ?”

The sound of shattering glass has me sprinting down the hallway, flying down the steps two at a time. Cataline’s door is locked, so I burst through it, sending splintered wood all over the floor. The room is black and freezing. My eyes sharpen on her immediately. Through the broken window, wind swirls white gauze curtains around her as she drags a shard of glass up her forearm, a bloody trail in its wake.

“Cataline, what—”

“Stop. Stay away from me.” She switches hands, and red drops spill over her glowing white skin. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. I’m so done.”

I step toward her.

“Stop,” she says. “Or I will drive this into my heart right now.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. Put that down, and we can talk.”

She throws the shard on the ground and screams, “I want to die. As long as I’m here, I’m already dead. Just let me do it!”

“You don’t want that,” I say with as much calm as I can muster. My heart is in my ears, and my blood is pumping as I take more steps. “You’re in shock.”

She tears at her hair with disjointed claws, smearing blood over her face. Glass crunches under her feet as she backs up against the windowsill. “I’d rather be dead than stay here another minute with no answers.”

“Cataline, my Sparrow, I will give you your answers. Just come to me.”

“Are you Hero?” she asks.

I suddenly understand the fear of all my victims. It combines into a mass in my chest and grows inside me. Fear that she’ll jump. Fear of the truth. If I tell her, her hate for me will be a living, breathing thing. I swallow it down. “Yes.”

“Oh, God,” she moans up at the ceiling. “Why? He was supposed to save me. Why?”

She climbs backward onto the cushioned seat with her palm out. “Stay back. You've done enough. You can’t fuck with me anymore.”

I ignore her, sprinting as she falls backward out the window.

My skin is sucked around my bones like shrink-wrap. I’m dry, like I’ve cried and bled everything from myself. I can’t escape the overpowering smell of blood, the metal-in-my-mouth taste, the thickness of it smeared over my hands and in my hair. Every choice that mattered was taken away from me. Only one was ever truly mine.

My decision ensures I’ll never see Calvin again, and the pain is so acute that I think I’m dying all over again. None of it was fair, least of all that I should be the one left with a broken heart.

“Calvin.”

“Cataline.”

I raise my chin toward the voice. He’s here. Calvin is with me, and wherever I’m going, I hope he’s coming. He speaks again, and I know if Hell is the final destination for what I’ve done, I’m not there yet.

“I know you’re awake. I can see you smiling.”

I frown. There’s black now, whereas before I saw nothing. Light is trying to get in, but I reject it. I’m supposed to be dead, but I’m only lying down. My skin is so tight, it suffocates.

“Open your eyes.”

And just like that, I do. Calvin is there, standing over me, looking terrible but still handsome. Scruff covers his normally smooth jawline, but all I can think is I could wrap myself up in him and live and be happy in his beauty. “Calvin?”

He nods.

“Am I dead?”

He shakes his head.

“No?” I choke out. My cheeks tickle, and I want to scrape at them, but my hands are heavy. “I don’t even have that choice?”

He runs his hand over his forehead and through his disheveled hair. “Fuck, Cataline. I know you don’t mean that.”

I nod that I do.

He lowers himself onto the edge of the bed. “Norman gave you something for the pain, so you might feel a little out of it.”

“What’s broken?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how I survived that fall, but I must’ve broken some bones.”

“The medication’s for your arms.”

My bandaged wrists. I can feel the stretch of the wounds underneath, trying to reopen and swallow me whole.

“You didn’t fall,” he informs me slowly. “I caught you. You won’t remember. You were out of your mind.”

“No. That’s impossible. You were across the room.”

“I’m fast. I’m Hero.”

I shake my head as I struggle to sit up against the headboard of Calvin’s bed. “You can’t be. Hero is good. He’s a protector. He doesn’t hurt or kidnap or rape.
You
can’t be Hero. You’re the enemy.”

His face is passive. “I know. But it’s the truth.”

Everything is wrong. I hold my scratchy, bandaged wrist under my eyes to stem the tears. This can’t be happening. There were nights I prayed for Hero to rescue me. I sat by the window, waiting, hoping, silently screaming for him. But I’ve been living under his control all along. I bury my face deeper in my hands and weep as Calvin watches, motionless and rigid. “You bastard,” I say.

When the crying finally subsides, I wipe my nose and look up at him. There’s still nothing in his expression. I’m that way now too. I transfer the wetness from my cheeks to my forearm and take a deep breath. “Tell me everything.”

Cataline’s crushing grief comes with hollow, expectant eyes. There’s only one option left. Perhaps the truth will liberate her. Perhaps she’ll hate me after. She’s given me more than I can handle, and right now, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to fix the look in her grayish eyes. They sparkle but with nothing more than unshed tears. Behind the gloss, they’re just blank.

I pull a chair to her side and sit, pushing a hand through my hair and leaning my elbows on my knees. I start at the beginning.

“I told you my mother was a doctor, my father a scientist. They met while serving food at a homeless shelter in New Rhone. They were drawn to each other because they were both science-minded, but in their hearts, they were humanitarians.

“When my mom got pregnant with me, her mom came to visit. She went into the city one day to shop while my parents were at work. She was stabbed and mugged in broad daylight. After some time in the hospital, she was desperate to return home. My parents left the mansion to be with her while she recovered, but she died shortly after. My mom refused to leave, so they decided to stay in Fenndale, and that’s where I was raised.”

Cataline inhales a sharp breath. “So was I.”

“I know. My parents . . . smartest people you’ve ever met. They were experts in their respective fields with all kinds of awards. Until I was born, they had assignments all over the world. But what set them apart was that they wanted to do good. My mother loved being a doctor because she genuinely wanted to help.

“After school I always had activities—karate, tutoring, volunteering, baseball, and more. It wasn’t unusual, my friends did that stuff, but mine were nonstop. I didn’t know at the time that each hobby was selected with a greater purpose.

“Everything changed on my sixteenth birthday. I learned that during my mother’s pregnancy, my parents began developing a formula to take the human body to the next level. My mom was heartbroken over my grandmother, and my father, who loved her more than anything, didn’t know how to fix it. He blamed New Rhone, though he never said it out loud.

“They called the formula K-36 because that’s the number of processes it took until it was right. A few weeks after I turned sixteen, I got my first injection.”

“Your parents just injected you with some random formula?”

“It wasn’t random, Cataline. They spent almost two decades modifying it. We started with small dosages to ease me into it. My body responded well and essentially, I became superhuman. My senses are enhanced to an unnatural degree. My vision, for instance, is precise, day or night. I can get by on minimal sleep. I exercise to maintain stamina, but I’m more powerful than your average man. And it’s not only my body; my intuition is also honed.”

“The woods?” she asks, and I nod.

“It’s how I found you.”

“That doesn’t explain how you can survive getting shot.”

“My skin is dense.” I pinch my side as if to demonstrate. “It slows down bullets enough that they don’t fatally damage internal organs. The shooter has to be close for one to penetrate, and if it does, I heal quickly so I don’t bleed out.”

“You can’t be killed?”

“I can. It would take a lot, but I can. My reflexes ensure I’ve never been shot in the head, so that hasn’t been tested. And gunpowder, for whatever reason, is like poison to my system. Something about the way it reacts to the K-36. It would likely take days to kill me though, and bullets are always removed before it gets to that.”

“This is . . . I never realized Hero was different from us.”

I clear my throat. “That’s not all. The activities and extra classes were to turn me into the man I needed to be. I became a black belt to learn how to fight. Sports taught me coordination and teamwork. Volunteering showed me the rewards of selflessness. My parents, whether they realized it or not, instilled in me that the world needed this at any cost—even myself. But the supplement never promised to turn me into a hero. It only gave me the tools to become one.

“The injections have a downside. Above all, I’m human just like you. I have cravings, needs, urges. Those things are amplified. My senses get overloaded and as a teenager, I couldn’t control that part of it. I was often unstable—temperamental and angry one minute, emotional and sensitive the next. The stimulation to my hypothalamus makes me more predatory, aggressive, and sexual than what’s healthy.

“My parents worked with me tirelessly to manage my reactions to the never-ending stimuli. They believed in this fanatically. Almost obsessively. Together, we adapted, and at the same time, I learned of their intentions and expectations.

“When I was ready, I would be a guardian. I would serve justice for those who couldn’t. I’d protect, eliminate danger, keep the streets safe. It’s my duty. It’s what I was born to do.”

Cataline is watching me closely, but her expression gives me nothing. I glance at my hands. “They died in an unrelated lab explosion when I was seventeen. We’d been working for over a year, but I wasn’t ready. I needed more help. Suddenly I was on my own. One thing they’d drilled into me was that nobody could ever know my secret. It would turn into something ugly. I’d be condemned for it. I was to help, selflessly, without recognition, and that was all.