Hero Worship (10 page)

Eliza grabs my hand and pulls me toward the door. “Let's go.”

As she unlocks the deadbolts and security chains, McKay rolls back and forth. “I'm gonna kill you, you little bitch!”

We step outside. The last thing we hear before slamming the door is McKay howling, which sounds more animal than human.

SIXTEEN

I feel dirty when I get home and take a long shower, lathering up three separate times and rinsing off in scalding water. When I walk back to my room, there's a note resting on my pillow. I pick it up and see Kent's horrible handwriting. It's hard to decipher, but I manage to piece it together:
Meet me at school.

I pass the living room on my way out. “Hey,” Yvonne's voice calls out to me. She sits up and rests her chin on the back of the sofa. “How are you?”

“Good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You were kind of strange after work last night.”

“Yeah, sorry. I've kind of got some stuff going on right now.”

“What's her name?”

“What?”

“Do you like her?”

I don't know what to say, so I just stand there awkwardly, feeling like a student being interrogated in the principal's office.

Yvonne makes a face and says, “What's so complicated about liking someone or not?”

“I don't know, you tell me,” I say.

“You're heading out again?”

I hold up the note. “Kent wants me to meet him at school.”

We stand there looking at each other.

“Well, happy birthday,” she says, turning away from me and flipping the channel on the television, signaling the end of our little chat.

The Loganstin Central High School football team hasn't won a game this season. This being the last game of the year, hopes are high that the team can avoid a sweep. But when the opposing team receives the opening kickoff and promptly runs it all the way down the field for a touchdown, the promise of victory on the Loganstin side bursts like a hard-tossed water balloon. Even the cheerleaders have lost interest, rarely turning their heads to the gridiron. Plopping down on the ground, the girls talk amongst themselves, giggling and flipping their hair away from their faces.

A handsome boy, lean and long, walks confidently toward the cheerleaders. One of them, a blonde with bright red lipstick, spots the boy approaching. Her face lights up. Her friends follow her stare and giggle as the boy walks up to them. The boy apparently says something funny, because the cheerleaders laugh like he just told the best joke ever. The blond girl gets up and walks off with the boy. Their bodies touch as they walk side by side, and the cheerleader seems to curl up against him. The couple strolls under the bleachers.

I hope Kent hurries up and makes his move. He won't have much time before his molded face loses its shape.

Kent periodically pours himself into zone-compression underwear, which is just a fancy way of saying that he stuffs himself into a girdle. The restrictive undergarments keep his body in shape, kind of like how chunky people try to appear slim. The displacement of his hefty body mass makes him three inches taller—a bonus, of course—but he says he has a hard time breathing because it's so tight. But he sucks it up, both literally and figuratively, and molds his face. He then cruises for girls, hitting school dances, sporting events, and local hangouts. Kent usually has an hour or so to pick up a girl and try to get to second base before he loses control of the flesh around his face, which is an immediate deal-breaker. He's like Cinderella at midnight—the magic disappears and everything goes back to normal, or as normal as it's ever going to get for Kent.

A shriek comes from beneath the bleachers. I race down the stairs and hurry along the front of the stands. The teary-eyed and terrified blonde passes me. Under the aluminum seating, I spot Kent glumly heading away from the football field.

“Kent,” I say, running to catch up to him.

His face is sagging like a wrinkly dog. “Hey, Marvin.”

I follow him toward the darkened school. “Do you want to go grab a bite to eat or something?” I ask.

“I wanna go into the school.” Kent glances around to make sure nobody is watching, then tugs on the door. It's locked. He cups his palm over the lock, and his hand dissolves over it like cheese over chips. The liquid moves into the lock. There's a clicking sound, and he turns his wrist counterclockwise. The liquid oozes back out, reshaping into his hand. He tests his fingers, wiggling all five, then tugs on the door again. It opens wide and he motions me inside. “After you.”

I hesitate before stepping through the open door.

The building is dark and still. The trophy case has an
assortment of awards for athletic and academic achieve
ments, with photos of students from decades past.

“Do you do this often?” I ask. “Break into the high school?”

“Sometimes.”

We walk down the hall. There's a computer lab, and the door is open. I pop my head inside. “Do you think it's okay if I use a computer?” I ask.

“Who's going to care?” Kent says. “You're not going to get in any more trouble than you would for breaking and entering.”

I sit down at one of the computers and jostle the mouse. The monitor turns on. I click on the Internet browser, type in “McKay+Belize,” and hit
enter
.

“What're you looking up?” Kent asks.

I didn't realize he was right next to me. “Um … nothing.”

The search results come up. There's not much. I scroll through the pages and finally see the link to a Spanish-language newspaper. I click on the link. The article pops up on the screen.

“You don't speak Spanish, do you?” Kent asks.

“No.”

I don't recognize a word in the entire article. I scroll to the bottom and find one photo. There are five men in uniform struggling to restrain an enormous lizard—McKay. They have ropes around his neck and legs and are trying to pull him toward a police van. There's a large crowd of onlookers watching in horror.

Kent leans in over my shoulder. “I remember that. This giant lizard murdered an entire cartel in Mexico or somewhere.”

“Belize.”

“Yeah, that's it,” Kent says. “Belize. Tore them all to shreds. Grisly. Millions and millions of dollars in drugs vanished.”

“Really?”

I'm about ready to close out of the browser, but something in the photo catches my attention. I zoom in on it. The image is grainy, and she's standing far back in the crowd, but Eliza is there. She's watching McKay being led away. She looks like an American tourist, in a tank top and shorts. There's nothing about her appearance that's out of the ordinary—
certainly nothing to suggest that she's a member of the Core.

“Kent, if I tell you something, you have to promise me that you won't say anything to Yvonne.”

“Okay,” he says.

“No, dude, I mean it,” I say. “You've got to swear on your life.”

“All right. I swear on my life. What's going on?”

“I met a member of the Core.”

Kent dismisses me with a wave of the hand. “Right.”

“I'm serious.”

“Who?”

“Roisin.”

He stares blankly at me, then starts massaging his sagging face. “You're not joking?”

“No.”

“You're being serious?”

“Yes.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“She tracked me down after I saved that family.” I point to the screen. “That's her.”

Kent leans in and looks at the photo. “She's cute.”

I log off of the computer and stand up. “Yeah.”

He follows me into the hall, bouncing behind me like an excited dog. “Dude, what's she like? Have you met anyone else? Can I meet her? Bring her by the pad.”

“If you could try out for the Core, would you?”

He stops in his tracks. “Are you trying out for the Core?”

I shush him, which I immediately feel stupid for doing because there's nobody around.

“Oh, shit, you are!” he says. “That's freakin' awesome!”

“Kent, seriously, keep it down. I'm not supposed to tell anyone.”

“Does Yvonne know?”

It feels like hundreds of pins stab my stomach at the same time. I hear Eliza's voice in my head asking McKay if he knows Yvonne McCalmon, reading that name off her list of possible suspects.

“No, Yvonne doesn't know,” I say.

“I'm really stoked for you,” Kent says. We stand there a minute in the dark staring at each other, apparently neither one of us knowing what to say next. Kent's smile slowly fades from his face and his shoulders hunker forward like an old man's. He shuffles into a dark classroom. I stand in the doorway as my friend sits down at a desk in the middle of the room. In the darkness, he looks like just another normal teenager. But he's not. I know it, and he knows it. Kent will never be normal.

I take a seat next to him. “Are you okay?”

“I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life,” he says.

“You'll figure it out.”

He scoffs. “What the three of us have now is as good as it's going to get for me. And it can't last forever.”

I want to tell Kent that he has a bright future. I want to tell him that the world is going to open up to him like a flower. I want to tell him that he can do anything that he puts his mind to.

But I don't. I can't. I respect him too much to lie.

He nudges me in the shoulder and says, “I'm thinking about saving up to have DNA modification. Become normal.”

A flashlight clicks on and shines into the classroom. “What're you kids doing in here?” a gruff voice says. The beam of light is in my eyes, and all I can see is a silhouette of a man standing in the doorway. The dozen keys hooked to his belt jangle as he steps into the room. “How'd you get in here?”

Kent gets up and raises his hands. “We were—”

The flashlight moves from me to Kent, and the sight of Kent's melting face elicits a “What the hell?!” from the janitor.

Kent takes a couple of steps toward the man, who backs out of the room, never taking his eyes off him. “Lemme explain,” Kent says.

“Keep away from me!” the janitor commands.

“This is just a big misunderstanding.” Kent removes his shirt, revealing his mushy and sagging body.

The man unhooks a walkie-talkie from a holster on his belt and presses a button. “Carl, get down to room—”

But before the janitor can finish his sentence, Kent's torso fans out like a cobra and swooshes down on the terrified man, completely enveloping him like plastic wrap over leftovers. His body muffles the man's screams as he struggles to break free. The janitor's hands bulge from beneath Kent's body, but he's unable to break through. My friend's face is stretched out, and his eyes are as big as dinner plates. The janitor's struggling finally subsides, and his muffled pleading for help softens, until he's still.

“You didn't kill him, did you?” I ask.

“I might look grotesque, but I ain't no monster,” Kent says, unwrapping himself from around the man, who collapses to the floor, the flashlight and walkie-talkie dropping out of his hands. “Just choked the air outta him.” His form returns to its original shape and he takes off down the hall, his flesh jiggling like a Jell-O Surprise.

Standing over the unconscious janitor, I see his chest move up and down. Relief washes over me that he's not seriously hurt.

“Marvin, come on,” Kent yells.

I turn and chase after my friend, who's swallowed by the darkness at the end of the hall.

SEVENTEEN

The next evening, Eliza and I are in her car. She turns into a shopping mall parking garage. I hear people refer to this shopping center as Murder Mall. There have been a number of homicides here. One in particular was committed with a plastic fork from the food court. People's resourcefulness when it comes to evil never ceases to amaze me.

The mall has closed for the night. With the exception of a few abandoned vehicles, the garage is empty. We drive up the circular ramp to the top floor and come to a stop at the far side of the structure, which is the size of a football field. There is an open parking spot between some of the mall security and maintenance vehicles, and Eliza pulls her car into the space. She turns off the vehicle and looks at the dashboard clock. “They should be here any minute,” she mumbles.

“Who?”

“Don't worry your pretty little head about it,” Eliza says. “We're just backup, but if anything goes down, follow my lead.”

“What's going to go down?” I ask.

I don't know if she didn't hear me or if she's just ignoring me, but she leans her head back and gazes up at the dark sky through the sunroof. “The only thing I miss from back home is being able to see the stars. On a crisp winter night, you can see all of the Milky Way.”

“Are … are you from up … there?”

“Huh?”

I point up to space.

She rolls her eyes. “You've got to stop believing everything you read in the paper.”

We sit in silence as we stare up through the sunroof.

“Hey, did Dr. Klaus get those results from my tests?” I ask.

“No, not—”

A roar at the other end of the parking structure interrupts her as three identical black street racers launch into the air off the lip of the ramp, landing on the top level. The vehicles skid to a stop. Three sets of blue headlights appear like sinister eyes looking for prey. From this distance, it's impossible to see who's behind the wheels of the cars. “Who are they?” I ask.

“Gamblers who just had their bluff called.”

Something's not right. It takes me a second to put a finger on it, but when it occurs to me, it sends a shiver up my spine—fear. Eliza's fear bubbles to the surface. I can't imagine what would make a member of the Core afraid. And if she's afraid, then I should be terrified.

“… Eliza?”

“There he is,” she says.

Sling approaches the vehicles. I don't know where he came from. He appeared out of nowhere. Sling is a member of the Core. His costume is an exaggerated version of a weightlifter's outfit, a one-piece leotard that hugs the contours of his bulging body. A little too tightly, if you ask me. It's the most ridiculous costume ever. The blue headlights wash over him as he faces down the three
speedsters.

The driver's side door of the car nearest to Sling opens. A black biker boot plants firmly on the ground. A fat, balding man with a comb-over steps out of the car. He's the kind of guy who leaves greasy fingerprints on his drinking glass. While we can't hear what's being discussed, it's apparent by their body language that the man and Sling are arguing. Sling takes a step toward the man, who immediately pulls out a gun. He levels it at the member of the Core.

“Be cool,” Eliza mutters. I don't know if she's saying it for my benefit or her own.

A woman wearing a skintight red racing suit and sporting a shaved head gets out of another car, and she aims some sort of weapon at Sling.

“This just went from bad to baby bad bitch,” Eliza says.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone in the rearview mirror. Rocket is standing behind our vehicle, surveying the scene at the other end of the parking structure. As far as I know, Rocket's only power is that he can fly. And while his monochromatic brown costume might suggest that he's dull and drab, nothing could be further from the truth. I've seen some of his interviews, and I think he's the smartest member of the Core. He speaks like a professor—people grumble that they have to use a dictionary to even understand what he's saying. Over the last couple of years, he's cut back on giving interviews, and the rumor is that he refuses to dumb down what he says and would rather not saying anything at all.

Eliza rolls down her window as Rocket approaches. “I'm here if you need me,” she says.

He doesn't say anything, just stands there watching the situation unfold, until he shoots into the air and disappears from sight. Then he swoops down and grabs the woman with the gun. Both disappear into the sky. The woman's weapon drops to the ground. A moment later, she crashes down on the hood of her car, denting the metal and shattering the windshield.

“What the hell?!” I say.

His gun never wavering from Sling, the balding man glances at the woman's motionless body. He glances toward the sky. Apparently spotting Rocket, he lifts his gun and fires it repeatedly into the air.

Taking the opportunity while the man's distracted, Sling runs toward him like a charging bull. Realizing he's about to get run over, the man aims the gun back at Sling, but it's too late. He's knocked off his feet and flies through the air, smacking the side of his car with the force of a wrecking ball. His unconscious body is wedged into the crumpled metal door.

The tires squeal on the remaining car, kicking up smoke as the driver attempts to get away.

“We're up,” Eliza says, turning the key in the ignition. But the engine doesn't turn over. She tries again, but the car doesn't start. “Goddammit!”

The black car speeds off, heading toward the ramp.

Eliza tries the car again, but with the same sputtering result. “What're you waiting for?!” she yells. “Go after that car!”

She shoots up fear like a geyser. I drink it in, fueling myself.

I speed after the fleeing car. The high-pitched whir from the engine winds up the circular ramp below me, like some deranged audible snake. Exiting the parking garage, I find myself on a one-way street, which takes the guesswork out of which way the vehicle went.

As I blur through an intersection, I glance left and see the black car, two blocks down. It's too late to change direction, so I keep going straight, but I take the first left I come to, which leads me through an alley that runs parallel to the surface street.

The alley runs into another street, but a street sweeper running a night route blocks me. I dig in and race toward the vehicle as fast as I can. Just before I'd slam into it, I leap up, propelling myself over the hulking machine. Sailing through the air, I scan the area, spotting the black car a block farther down. Landing on the other side of the street sweeper, I continue through the alley. Hitting the surface street, I take a hard left, then a right, gaining on the car ahead. I swerve in and out of traffic.

I come up beside the car, slowing down just enough to peer in through the window. Behind the wheel sits a young man with black racing clothes. Beads of sweat cover his brow like pimples. His eyes dart from the road to the rearview mirror and back again. My fingers slide under the door handle. He has one hand on the wheel and one resting on the stick shift. I yank the door open and reach inside, straining to reach across him. I take hold of the emergency brake and pull it. Right as the car's tires lock up, I rest the full weight of my body on the guy's lap, lifting my feet up as the car spins wildly out of control before skidding to a stop.

I rip open the guy's seat belt and hoist him out of the car. He dangles above the ground. It takes a moment for him to realize what's just happened. “You can have it! Take it!” he yells, struggling to put something in my hand. “It's yours. I told them blackmail was a bad idea.”

With one hand holding the guy up, his feet dangling over the ground, I open my other hand and look at the smiley-
face sticker he gave me. It's about the size of a quarter.

“The data sticker. It's all in there. Take it. I don't want it. Don't worry 'bout the money,” he says.

“Data sticker?” I ask.

“The video,” he says. “It's yours. Let's just forget any of this happened, okay? I won't say a word. Promise.”

“What video?”

Terror registers on the guy's face. “They're coming! Hurry! They're going to kill me!”

“Who is?”

He looks right at me and screams, “The Core!”

“The Core?” I say. “They're the good guys.”

I hear a car come up behind us, rolling to a stop. The guy freaks out, trying desperately to tear away from my grasp. “Lemme go!” he cries.

A hand rests gently on my shoulder. It's Eliza. “You can set him down,” she says.

I lower the guy to his feet and suddenly feel incredibly tired. “Roisin …” And that's all I manage to croak before collapsing to the ground.

I don't know how long I'm out, but I wake up just as Eliza removes a needle from my leg. “You all right?” she asks.

The stuff works quickly. I get to my feet and say, “Was that the blue stuf
f
?”

“Yep,” she says.

We're in the middle of the street where I caught up with the car, but now the black speedster and its frightened driver are nowhere to be found. “Where's the car?”

“What car?”

“The car I chased down,” I say.

She stares blankly at me.

I point to where he skidded to a stop. “The car was right there. See? The tire skid marks? The black street racer was right there. Where'd it go?”

“It was towed.”

“How long was I out?” I ask.

She shrugs and says, “Oh, I don't know. About an hour I guess.”

“Why didn't you inject me sooner?”

She walks toward her car. “There was no need to.”

“What happened to the guy?”

“He was arrested.” We get into her car and she starts it.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“The people at the parking garage?” I say. “What did they do?”

“That's classified.” She puts the car in gear and steps on the gas.

“Did they die?” I ask. “The balding guy and the lady? Were they—”

“Marvin, you've got to stop asking so many questions.”

“But—”

“Asking questions seriously puts in doubt your application to the Core,” Eliza says.

After merging onto the freeway, we drive in silence for a while. “As a recruit, you're on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know,” she adds.

I can't allow myself to think that I just witnessed the murder of those people, but there's no way a normie could survive a fall from that height or walk away from being slammed into that car. Maybe they were dirties. Perhaps they just got a little banged up but walked away unharmed. That's what I want to believe.

Desperately trying to think about something else, I wonder what happened to the smiley-face data sticker, because it was gone when I woke up.