Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel Read online

  But his shield of light held. His own heavy breathing echoed inside his head, loud enough to drown out even the gunfire. His footfalls crunched across the courtyard, and bullets kicked up fragments of snow and packed soil all around him. The shouts became desperate. He was close enough to see how young these soldiers were.

  And then he was amongst them. He leapt, slamming his shield of light into one and kicking the rifle out of another’s hands. With another switch of energy, the light changed shape again. A sword bloomed into life in his hand. A sword with an edge the size of an electron.

  He swung in a wide arc, and blood flew. He’d learned fencing at university, but there was no art to what he did now. He slashed out again and again, relying on speed and the protection of his shield. He wasn’t cold anymore.

  The stink of death was everywhere. The three surviving soldiers pulled back into the doorway. They abandoned their rifles for their handguns in the tight quarters. He swept in after them, stepping over the bodies of their comrades and using his shield to keep the blood from staining the white fabric of his trousers.

  Tinderbox was the first of Morgan’s people to arrive. He skated in on feet of flame and projected a narrow jet of fire at a soldier. The flesh of the man’s face bubbled where it hit him. He fell, screaming. Morgan forced himself to listen. No blocking out the screams. He would live with them. He had to.

  Morgan and Tinderbox had secured the doorway by the time the others caught up. Obsidian observed the carnage with the only face she was capable of making, and said nothing, like the rest.

  “Sand Fury will cover our exit. Screecher, take B team to the upper floors and crush anyone you find. The rest of you, with me.”

  They were two floors underground, fighting one minor skirmish after another in the cramped concrete corridors, when the Russians launched a full counterattack. Morgan got his light shield up just in time to deflect a hail of bullets from a machine gun mounted behind a thick concrete wall. Rounds hammered him, sending ricochets sparking into the walls.

  “Scramble!” he ordered, and the rest of the metas scattered behind him. Obsidian kicked open a door and led the rest of his metahumans into an intersecting corridor.

  Morgan planted his feet and gritted his teeth against the oncoming barrage. The machine gun was perhaps sixty feet away, with a clear line of sight down his corridor. Behind it he could make out groups of soldiers massing, and behind them, the static purple glow of Unity Corporation shielding systems. The prison cells.

  He ducked back into the doorway Obsidian and the others had retreated into. The colourful array of metahumans crouched or stood, poised like jungle cats.

  “This is it,” he yelled, struggling to make himself heard over the gunfire echoing through the corridor. “Obsidian, a little help would be very much appreciated.”

  “As my lord says.” She jerked a nod and turned her diamond eyes on Haze. “Cover.”

  The thick-set Haze unzipped the mouth area of his full-face mask and showed his teeth. “About fuckin’ time.” Smoke trickled from his lips as he spoke.

  Morgan moved aside and made room for Haze to step up to the doorway. Tracer rounds from the machine gun flew past, tearing the corridor to shreds. Haze took a few deep breaths in and out, waiting.

  The gunfire suddenly stopped, leaving Morgan’s ears ringing. The machine gunner swore in Russian. He needed to reload.

  Haze’s eyes rolled back in his head. The meta took one last breath in, held it for a moment. Morgan could hear boots stomping on concrete and a few bursts of suppressive fire as the soldiers moved to support the machine gunner.

  And then Haze exhaled. Smoke and wind blew through the corridor. In an instant, Morgan was blinded by a wall of grey smog.

  The ground shuddered as Obsidian dashed out into the clouded corridor. He could imagine her raising her fists into the air, poised above her head.

  “Brace yourselves,” her smooth voice said.

  Morgan pressed himself against the wall as she brought her fists down on the ground. The earth screamed and shook like a meteor had hit. He heard the concrete groaning as the wave of energy flowed through the ground ahead of her.

  Haze braced himself against the doorway and sucked the smoke screen back towards his mouth. The rumbling of the earth slowly died away, leaving nothing but shouts and the tinkling of crumbling masonry.

  Morgan was first out of the corridor, racing across the cracked ground before the last shakes had vanished. Obsidian came close behind him, breathing heavily, and the others followed, whooping and shouting.

  Morgan drew up a blade of light and slashed at the machine gunner’s neck while he struggled to get back to his weapon. Without slowing, Morgan leapt over the chest-high wall. Thirty or forty Russian soldiers lay scattered across the main prison chamber, trying to regain their feet. His metahumans fanned out beside him, kicking and slashing and biting and burning the soldiers who tried to get to their guns. One soldier fell with swarms of insects crawling down his throat, choking him. Obsidian hurled another at the wall, and Morgan could hear the man’s neck crack. The throbbing in his skull grew as the soldiers died, but he pushed it aside. He couldn’t worry about that now. He wasn’t done yet.

  Behind the dying soldiers, twenty prison cells sat nestled in the walls. Twenty prisoners for this prison in the middle of nowhere. Each cell was closed over not with bars, but with purple, half-transparent shields. Behind the shields, twenty sets of eyes watched their guards being butchered.

  “Enough!” Morgan shouted. His people grew still. He glanced around the room and found a soldier still breathing in the corner, his arm broken and bleeding.

  The man watched with a grimace painted across his face. He was older than the others, with a thick black moustache resting on his upper lip. An officer.

  “Vy govorite po-angliyski?” Morgan asked.

  The man sneered. “Yes,” he said in a thick accent. “I speak English, dog.”

  Morgan crouched in front of him, careful not to get blood on his shoes. “The controls.”

  The soldier spat. Morgan suppressed a flash of anger and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the saliva from his cheek.

  “There are only two ways this ends,” Morgan said. “Both ways I get what I want. I’m trying to help you. Please. The controls.”

  The soldier’s eyes were filled with fire. Then the light dimmed, and he jerked his head to his right. Morgan glanced up and found the panel the man indicated. He pointed it out to Obsidian, then turned his attention back to the soldier.

  “Get word to your Premier. Tell him what happened here. Tell him I found your prison. Tell him I destroyed it. Tell him I took what he thought was so carefully hidden. And tell him it took me less than an hour. Vy panimayete?”

  “Da. I understand, dog. Do you?”

  Morgan stood and nodded to Obsidian. She pressed a series of buttons on the wall panel. A light blinked green, and Morgan smiled. It had been ten years since the last breakout attempt. The guards had grown complacent. They didn’t change the codes as often as they should.

  The purple shields of every cell flickered and disappeared.

  The prisoners slowly shuffled out of their cells. One man floated out a foot above the ground, his legs crossed beneath him. Another woman sniffed at the air before emerging and let a long, snake-like tongue dart from her mouth.

  Morgan stepped in front of Obsidian and his other metas and studied the prisoners. They were malnourished, and some bore old, untreated injuries. But their eyes were strong. A few of them he would need to put down, but the rest….

  He smiled.

  “My name,” he said, “is Quanta.” He paused for a moment, letting his words echo around the chamber. “I’m looking for the one who calls himself Doll Face.”

  Silence answered him. His head continued to throb, like the pulsations of a rocket engine. Despite his self-control, a crack of doubt appeared in his mind. No. It would work. It had to work.

  Something
sharp pricked his throat.

  “What does the pretty man want with me, hmmm?” a voice whispered in his ear. It was girlish, yet obviously a man’s voice. Spindly fingers wrapped around Morgan’s shoulder. He froze, trying not to breathe. He could feel a drop of blood trickling down his neck where the jagged blade pressed. “Does it want to hurt Doll Face? Or does it just want to play?”

  “Neither,” Morgan said, moving as little as possible. “I’m recruiting.”

  2: There’s No I In Hero

  Even today, after two decades of research, the mechanism behind the formation of so-called “metahumans” is unclear. There is no single mutation that causes the condition, and in many cases, multiple gene loci appear to be affected. What is clear, however, is that the nuclear radiation that leads to these mutations is a danger to all mankind. Even if only one in ten thousand exposed individuals develop superpowers, the selection pressure could well be enough to drive non-powered humans to extinction. The only solution is control of the metahuman population.

  —From the notes of Professor Gloria Becker

  The outskirts of Neo-Auckland, New Zealand (sixth member country of the Asian-Australasian Union). One month later.

  Niobe Ishii tapped out a Pall Mall cigarette, glanced around the dark, empty street, then rolled up the fabric of her mask to expose her mouth. That was the worst thing about a mask. She didn’t mind not eating or drinking until she got somewhere private, but sometimes she just needed a goddamn smoke. When she’d spent the last hour being interrogated by her girlfriend, she really needed a smoke. Her utility belt’s auto-lighter set the cigarette tip glowing, and she slowly inhaled.

  The smoke drifted through her, and the nicotine started to calm her nerves. Gabby would’ve cooled off by the time she got back. The woman just worried too much, that was all. But Niobe had work to do. It was time to get moving.

  She set off down the dark street. While she walked, she pulled her goggles over her eyes and put her bowler hat on. The goggles and utility belt were Gabby’s work, along with the heavily modified .455 Webley revolver in her shoulder holster. The rest of Niobe’s costume was already in place: a black and grey bodysuit, full-face mask, gloves, combat boots. A trench coat went over the whole thing. She could never pull off spandex alone, and she liked that the trench coat hid her shape. Anything that helped her stay anonymous was worth it.

  The night was scattered with clouds. A breeze cut through the air, washing an old newspaper down the street. To the south, a police dirigible floated. She doubted they’d be able to see anything with their spotlight off. She turned her back on it and made her way through what used to be the suburb of Epsom.

  The occasional light shone in a window, but she was the only one on the streets. She expected that. You weren’t likely to get mugged in the Old City, not with the police dirigibles and the curfews. But people here had grown afraid of the dark.

  She made her way through the shadows, passing a yowling pack of stray cats clinging to a fence. A one-eyed tortoiseshell tom twitched his ears as she slid past. She was already beginning to breathe easier. Walking the streets at night was calming. She was invisible here, just the way she liked it.

  Most of the apartment buildings she passed were simple and clean in design, just rectangles with white or grey walls. The blackened shell of a townhouse stood on the corner next to a stop sign. A long time ago, she’d known the people who lived there. The boy was her age, a friend from school. Most of her friends were boys. But his parents stopped him from seeing her because she was Japanese. It was okay. That was just the way things were in those days. Now the boy and his parents were all dead, and their house was home to rats.

  She paused for a moment, then dropped her cigarette to the concrete, stamped it out, and walked on. She didn’t want to think about the bomb, or the fire that consumed her city. Not tonight.

  Niobe stopped outside a townhouse in a cul-de-sac. In the narrow yard outside was one of the only gardens anywhere in the Old City. Even in the darkness, she could make out the tangle of wild flowers leading up the short path. A morepork called its own name twice before falling silent. She caught a glimpse of the owl’s eyes high in the tree, and then they disappeared.

  The house itself was an old weatherboard villa, one of the few that survived, sheltered from the worst of the blast by One Tree Hill. It had seen better days, but compared to the buildings on either side, it was a palace. The windows were dark. She cast another look around the street, found it empty, and made her way up to the front door. The door was a good one—thick, solid—so she reached into her pocket for her lockpicks.

  Wait. She screwed up her nose and returned her hand to her side. He’d been upset with her last time she came in uninvited. Not that she worried much about his feelings, but he’d been careful to impress upon her his annoyance. Very careful.

  Reluctantly, she tapped the frosted glass with her middle finger. There was no answer for a few minutes, but she didn’t knock again. Solomon was a light sleeper.

  She was just about to light up another smoke when she heard the squeak of footsteps on floorboards. A light came on and the door creaked open.

  “We’ve got a job,” Niobe said.

  Solomon Doherty rested his head against the door frame and squinted at her through puffy eyes. His tree-brown hair was mussed and flattened on one side. Deep crevices ran down the sides of his cheeks. On a softer man that would’ve made him look old, but on him they gave an air of dignified permanence. A kind of inevitability, maybe.

  “Good evening to you too, Spook,” he said. “You ever think of visiting during the day? Or at least calling ahead first?”

  “And wake your kids?” Niobe pulled another cigarette from her pack, adjusted her mask, and lit up. “For a family man, you sure are inconsiderate.”

  “That’s rich coming from you, mate.” Solomon wore a set of holey grey pyjamas with the Wardens logo embroidered on the breast. They’d given Niobe a pair as well, back when Battle Jack brought her into the fold and gave her the terrible alias of Gloomgirl. She never wore them. Like hell she was going to announce her supergroup membership while she slept.

  He wrinkled his nose and shot a look at her cigarette. “The doctors say that’ll kill you, you know.”

  She plucked it from her mouth. “Cancer’s coming for us metas whether we smoke or not.” She took another draw. “Might as well have fun first.”

  Something creaked inside the house. Solomon glanced back inside and lowered his voice. “So what’s this job you had to get me out of bed for?”

  “Gabrielle picked it up on the wire. Missing persons case.”

  “In the Old City?”

  She shook her head. “Neo-Auckland proper. Mangere Central.”

  Solomon’s bushy eyebrows rose and he whistled quietly. “Pay?”

  “Dunno yet. I thought we could go find out.”

  “Does our potential client know we’re visiting him at two in the morning?”

  She shrugged. “The man’s got a missing person. I’m sure he’s not sleeping too heavily.”

  “Point.”

  “So you’ll come?” she asked.

  He appeared to consider it for a moment. It wasn’t a very convincing show. She knew he’d made up his mind the moment he opened the door. He was like a kid that way, never mind that he had a good ten years on her. Something about the old days still called to him, she knew, the days of heroes and villains.

  “Lord, give me strength,” he muttered to himself, but a smile played at the corners of his eyes. “Come in and let me get changed.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette, wiped her boots carefully on the doormat, and followed him inside. The house was cluttered with books and pot plants. She liked that. It made it seem lived in. Gabby always kept everything clean and ordered. It drove her crazy.

  Solomon left her in the living room and disappeared down the hallway. She’d once made the mistake of sitting on the couch. A loose spring had sliced a hole in the thigh o
f her suit and left her needing a tetanus shot. So instead she stood and eyed the mementos scattered through the room.

  A floppy, wide-brimmed hemp hat had pride of place, mounted on the wall above the grated fireplace. One side of the hat was blackened and melted. Beneath it hung a small hatchet with a wooden handle, the blade chipped and nicked in a dozen places. A trio of front pages from old copies of the New Zealand Herald had been framed and fixed to the wall alongside, each showing the triumphant Wardens at the site of some crisis or other.

  Solomon had been one of the first generation Wardens, along with Battle Jack and Drillman. Ever since the bomb hit, New Zealand had always had more than its fair share of metas, so supergroups were always springing up. The Wardens modelled themselves after the groups springing up across America and Europe, but with a greater focus on integration with regular law enforcement.

  One of the newspaper clippings on the wall had a photo of Solomon looking bruised but smiling anyway, with a pair of giant black insects dead at his feet. NAGASAKI HORRORS CRUSHED, the headline proclaimed. That had been the group’s biggest fight, and it had taken place before Niobe’s time. The Wardens and the Maori crime-fighting group Te Taua had shipped out for Japan to push back the monsters. All those heroes—Grim, Madame Z, Battle Jack—they’d saved the world. And Solomon too, of course, but she didn’t know his real name then. To her and the rest of the world, he was simply the Carpenter.

  No one had predicted what the atomic bomb at Nagasaki might do to the fabric of our universe. When the black mantis-like creatures came crawling into our dimension seven years later, destroying everything in their path, there were a few red faces. It scared the hell out of Auckland and Warsaw. If a nuke could do that in Japan, it could do it anywhere. The rebuilding of old Auckland halted, and the construction of a new city a dozen miles south began in earnest. But Niobe and the other heroes remained in the Old City. Those were proud days. The heroes waited there, ready in case the Horrors returned. They waited for years. Until the world changed, and no one trusted superheroes to protect them anymore.