Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (19 page)

“About this Julius kid,” Solomon said after a couple of minutes. “Has anything come up?”

Marvin shook his head. “Not on our end. After you called, I managed to sneak a peek at the prisoner logs and transfer requests. No one younger than twenty-five. We don’t have him.”

“Could it be off-record?” Niobe asked. “Something too secret for the foot soldiers?”

“I don’t think so,” Marvin said. “Ol’ Wallace is a hard-arse, but he’s pretty straight-laced. I don’t think he could keep something like that a secret.”

“All right,” Solomon said, “so maybe our kidnapper is a copper who found himself a part-time job. Moonlighting, you know? Using his uniform to give him credibility and get close enough to nab the kid.”

Marvin shrugged. “Could be. Pay’s not that flash for a sworn officer, considering the risks. I hear them sometimes, grumbling about it. It’s getting worse lately. A bunch of them got knocked about in their last raid, so I hear. And it’s not the only thing making them jumpy.”

Once more, her mind was filled with the image of McClellan’s super-stretched body hardening, his brains splattered over the concrete.

“Say,” she said, a thought occurring to her, “No one’s mentioned Avin lately, have they?”

He screwed up his face in thought, and his cheek twitched again. “Is that the harpy lady?”

“That’s the one,” Solomon said.

Marvin spread his hands and shook his head. “Not that I know of. I haven’t heard that name in years.”

Damn it. When were they going to catch a break?

There was a pause, and Niobe found herself thinking about Hine-nui-te-po’s words again.
Violence is coming
, she said. She wasn’t wrong. Anyone could see the signs.

“You said the coppers have been getting nervous lately,” she said. “What about?”

“You’ve seen the papers?” he asked. “This Doll Face thing has got every joker talking. There’d been rumours going around headquarters for a week or two before the story hit the news. Apparently this was no ordinary breakout. One of the guards survived. Said a meta named Quanta led the attack.”

“Quanta?” She frowned and glanced at Solomon, but he shrugged and shook his head. The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Yeah. The word is he attacked from a zeppelin.”

“Bit theatrical, isn’t it?” Solomon said.

Marvin nodded, twitching. “Thing is, the coppers in Thailand started picking up rumours of an airship near Bangkok a couple of weeks later. Some Thai farmers thought they saw it for a moment, but then it suddenly disappeared.”

“Coincidence?” Solomon said.

“Not likely. And that’s not the worst part.”

He opened his mouth to say more, but the words seemed to be stuck in his throat. A gust of wind blew through, and the sparrows left their dust bath to flutter away.

“Don’t string us along,” Solomon said. “You know how I hate suspense.”

Marvin’s smile wasn’t so big now, and something in his eyes made Niobe’s stomach tense.

“I shouldn’t know this,” he said. “But I saw the report on Wallace’s desk.” He didn’t seem to be able to keep his hands still. “There was another sighting of the airship a few days ago. A fisherman was out in his boat when he spotted it.”

“Where?” Niobe said.

Marvin licked his lips. “The west coast. A few miles out from Muriwai. The coppers think it…they think it’s….”

She met the Carpenter’s eyes, and she saw the realisation go through him.

“He’s here,” she said.

Marvin nodded. Her spine turned to ice. Maybe it had nothing to do with Sam. Maybe it was nothing more than the rumours of over-excited farmers. Maybe.
Bloody hell, who am I kidding?
They weren’t that lucky.

Doll Face was here. The Breaker of Souls, the Great Puppetmaster, he was in New Zealand. And he wasn’t alone.

“Thank God you two are still around,” Marvin said. He looked at the two of them, the tension draining from his face. “At least we still have heroes to protect us.”

She tried to speak, but she’d forgotten how.

12: And Now, A Message From Our Host

As in many Asian-Australasian Union member countries, the Metahuman Division (colloquially known as Met Div) of the NZ Police was formed in 1959 in response to increasing public concern around metahumans. Met Div is tasked with controlling metahuman activities and responding to superpowered threats, although their methods for doing so are controversial. The division operates outside traditional police structure and combines both investigative and response elements to form an almost entirely self-contained organisation. In recent years, many branches of Met Div have been downsized due to decreased resistance from the metahuman community. Today, one of Met Div’s major roles is ensuring that all metahumans are registered and fitted with kill-switches if above a certain power level.

—Metahumans in New Zealand: Past to Present, Herbert Gutman

Morgan was finishing the briefing on the evening’s upcoming raid when the right side of his vision went dark.

He paused in mid-sentence, facing the men and women who would be fighting alongside him tonight, and tried to get his heart rate under control. The air was stuffy in the requisitioned warehouse. He blinked, hoping the black splotch would go away. It didn’t.

“My lord?” Obsidian said in a low voice. She stood beside him; as his second-in-command, she would be in charge of securing the building’s perimeter and dealing with any external threats. Her sharp, stony face betrayed nothing, but her eyes dimmed.

It had come on so suddenly. He didn’t even have a headache at the moment, and the pills were controlling his seizures. How was he supposed to fight with this blind spot in his vision?
Damn it all!
His gloved hands curled into fists. He could feel sweat dripping from his forehead and rolling around the corners of his domino mask.

Perception is all that matters
.

“This is not going to be like Siberia,” he said to the group, channelling his anger into his voice. “Our target is easier, yes, but do not let your guard down. We are in a city that is hostile to us. Any counterattacks will be rapid. Those of you holding the perimeter will need to be prepared. You cannot fail.”

He stared at them, trying to ignore the black spot, but his mind was already calculating scenarios in which it would be a fatal weakness. Why now, of all times?

“Make your preparations,” he said. “We leave in an hour.”

The metas bowed as one and wandered away, chatting and joking with one another. Only Obsidian remained at his side. He turned his back on her and faced the maps and building blueprints he’d marked with routes and extraction points. The spot was like a black ghost, haunting him. Every time he tried to look at it directly, it shifted away. It was infuriating.

Obsidian shifted her weight and the floor rumbled. “My lord—”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Very well.” She paused. “Avin approaches, my lord.”

Avin?
Oh, the harpy. He turned to find the naked bird-woman making her way towards him. Her wings were folded around her shoulders, but they were still tall enough to brush the top of the doorway. The feathers weren’t enough to cover her flat breasts. She walked unnaturally, like she was unused to it, and her twisted arms gave her a somewhat demonic appearance.

She stopped before him, and gave a small bow of her bald head. That was enough for him; his people didn’t need to treat him like a god. The “lord” business was all Obsidian’s doing. It was only important that they believed what he believed. Or that they knew little enough of the darker parts of his plan that they didn’t actively oppose him.

Wordlessly, the woman passed him a pair of enlarged colour photographs, each about the size of a leaf of legal paper. He forced himself to ignore the black spot and focussed on the pictures instead. “This is the woman?”

“Yes.”

The pictures seemed to have been taken a few seconds apart. They both showed a short Asian woman—he couldn’t narrow down her race any further by sight—dressed in an unfashionable jacket and blouse and wearing a pair of large sunglasses. She wasn’t pretty, really, but she was a long way from hideous. In the first picture she was stepping off a boat onto the marina walkway, and in the second she was lighting a cigarette and staring directly at the camera.

“Do you recognise her?” he asked.

“I didn’t at first,” Avin said. Her voice was sharp, almost painful to listen to. “But the way she fought reminded me of someone I worked with once. A Warden called Gloomgirl.”

“A Warden?” He stroked his chin.
Interesting
. He didn’t realise there were any Wardens still around. He vaguely remembered the hero’s alias, but he couldn’t recall anything else about her. He studied the photos closer. “Do you know her real name?”

Avin shook her head. “She was always careful, more careful than the others.”

“What was your impression of her?”

“She was a frigid bitch. Always had to do things her own way. I’m not surprised she was there alone.”

“And how did she act this morning, before she saw you?”

Avin shrugged. “Calm. Careful. She took her time, scoped out the place. I didn’t see where she came from, but she must’ve had a car somewhere. She was on the boat for one hour and twenty-two minutes. What she did there, I have no idea.”

Interesting. Morgan had posted Avin and two other metas there on rotating shifts on the off chance the boy’s uncle showed up. Instead, he had this mystery woman.

“Did she use any powers?” he asked.

“No. If it’s who I think it is, she’s a shadow-shifter. But either way, she’s well-equipped. The gun she pulled on me wasn’t stock, and she had a mask on by the time she came after me. I would probably have had to kill her if I stayed to fight.”

A friend of Frank Julius’s? Unlikely. Maybe she was just working with him. But in what capacity? Mercenary? Or hero? The question intrigued him. He’d expected that if anyone came after him this quickly, it would be Frank Julius himself.

He touched a gloved finger to his cheek. “You did well. I know you didn’t want to kill anyone. I don’t either. Moral quandaries aside, her body would have been a complication we could do without.” He passed the pictures back to her. “I want you to work with the research team. See what you can find out about her. A name would be a good start.”

“Why?”

“You seem to know more about her than anyone here. And she intrigues me. I like to know all the variables.”

The muscles of her wings rippled, and she jerked a nod. Without another word or gesture, she turned and left.

So someone was following the breadcrumbs. It wouldn’t be a problem. Things were in motion now that couldn’t be stopped. But perhaps the metas here weren’t as downtrodden as they first appeared. The ones his people had picked out to aid them had been like tightly wound springs, just waiting for someone to lift the weight from their shoulders so they could jump into the fray.

That reminded him of something. “This Avin,” he said to Obsidian. “She doesn’t know everything, does she?”

“No, my lord.”

He nodded. “Have her watched while she tracks down the Asian woman. Just as a precaution.”

Obsidian bowed and left Morgan to his thoughts. He turned back to the maps, imprinting them on his memory. Always, the black spot stayed in his vision. It wasn’t that terrible a disability, he supposed. And he probably wouldn’t have to deal with it for long. If his plan didn’t kill him, the tumour would.

So be it.

At 9:37 p.m., a white van screeched to a halt in the centre of Neo-Auckland. Morgan jumped from the passenger side. All around him, metas unloaded from the four vans that arrived seconds later. They were all dressed in their respective costumes; a dizzying array of clashing styles and colours. None bore firearms. He’d chosen them for their skill with their powers alone.

Other cars came skidding along the road, blaring their horns. A few passers-by gasped, eyes wide. The area was heavily trafficked even at this hour. An unfortunate fact. With luck, none of his people would need to kill anyone. But luck was a fickle whore, and he never relied on it.