Corpies (Super Powereds Spinoff Book 1) (44 page)

“Hurt yourself already? It’s only the first day.” Owen didn’t bother pointing to the ice bag; they both knew why Zone was here.

“It’s preventative, not that this is any of your business,” Zone snapped. “I have to ice my knees between events so I can make it through everything. Doctor’s orders.”

“Uh huh. I’m pretty sure the docs’ preference was that you not do any of this stuff, not just keep your knees cold.” Owen crossed his arms deliberately and stared down at the much smaller man. “What’s the deal with this, anyway? Will Mordent really not spring for a healer? I mean, you’ve got a lot of sponsors. It seems like a worthwhile investment.”

Zone puffed up for a moment, ready to be combative, but as he shifted the bag from his right knee to his left the wind seemed to drift out of his sails. “They. . . they’ve healed me before. A few times, actually. The problem is that this isn’t just one injury that can be easily fixed. It’s the culmination of a lifetime full of putting constant strain on my body. Unlike some people, there’s nothing really special about my physique, just in how I use it. Little injuries keep piling up, and by the time a healer comes around, the damage is already done.”

“And total-body, retroactive healers are as rare as they are expensive,” Owen said, understanding setting in. Healers, like all Supers, had highly individual powers. They were already a fairly uncommon breed, and the ones who could do more than just accelerate a body’s natural recovery were a step above. Getting rid of injuries after they’d already healed on their own. . . there were probably fewer than ten known Supers in the world with that kind of power, all of them in high demand. Even if it could book one, Owen doubted Mordent was willing to fork over the cash it would take just to turn back the clock on a single asset.

“You’ve got it. So I’m stuck icing my knees and powering through, at least for as long as this body of mine is willing to hold out.” Zone shifted the bag once more; clearly his right knee was the one more in need of treatment.

“I can see that. I suppose asking if you’ve thought about hanging it up before you tear yourself apart would be a waste of my breath,” Owen said.

“Not all of us get to do this for as long as we want,” Zone replied. “Getting a taste of what it’s like to be out there, making a difference, doing things that only we can. . . for a lot of us it’s fleeting. One day, when these things finally give out on me, I’ll have to settle for some corporate gig, probably take a job for Mordent helping oversee new corpies. But until then I can still work. I’d rather spend the rest of my time doing the job I love than watching from the sidelines. But I guess you probably wouldn’t understand that.”

There was no right answer Owen could give, not to Zone, so he didn’t bother. Instead, he merely walked across the medical tent, filled up a fresh bag with ice, and brought it over to his teammate. Wordlessly, he took the melting bag away and handed Zone the fresh one. Only when the new bag was in place did Owen speak, and it was with a more subdued tone than Zone had ever heard from the large man’s mouth.

“You’re not wrong. I’ve got no place to lecture you on how you spend what time you’ve got, not after I wasted so many of my years. But I’ve seen a lot of good people die because they couldn’t let go when their bodies were no longer capable of doing the job. It’s a damned shame to see that happen. What’s worse, though, is that there are people counting on the ones who die. . . innocent civilians who were expecting to be saved but got left in the fire because someone unable to admit their time was up took the call instead of letting it go to a person still capable. Just remember, Zone, your job doesn’t exist in vacuum. Your team and the people we go out there to help all depend on you. When the day comes that your body does finally give out, you might not be the only one who pays for that failure.”

Before Zone could respond, Owen turned and headed out of the tent. There was no trying to drill the point in, not with someone so stubborn. Heaven only knew how many people Owen had seen ignore the warning before.

All he could do was hope that Zone would be smarter.

84.

When the rest of his team headed back to the Mordent penthouse, eager to relax and prepare for the next day’s activities, Owen took a quick jog across town to a different destination. The evening air was cool against his face as he ran. He nodded his head to those who waved at his familiar costume as he passed them by. Near the day’s end, Dispatch had passed on a message from Jeremiah that another meeting was set to take place. Owen was surprised at how eager he was to attend, and not just because of his curiosity about what the hell these robots were up to, either. Owen was getting a bit of a thrill from the chase. Working with his team was great and rewarding, but Titan hadn’t been a legend for no reason. Deep down, Owen Daniels loved Hero work, and hunting the bots was reminding him why.

Instead of a hotel, this time Jeremiah had them meeting in the upstairs of a store that seemed to sell nothing but smoked meats and whiskey. Owen circled around the back, climbing the rickety staircase and easing past the slightly-rotted wooden door. It seemed Jeremiah hadn’t been kidding about his team’s need to meet in different places; this was about as far from a five-star penthouse as he could get.

Stepping into the surprisingly-spacious room, Owen quickly realized that he was the last to arrive. Deadlift, Aether, and Gale were all sitting in fold-out chairs, staring at the projector’s screen that Jeremiah had positioned himself next to. The Subtlety Hero smiled as Owen entered, motioning for him to shut the door.

“And at last, the great Titan has arrived to bless us with his presence. I’d offer you a seat, but the owners only had the three chairs on hand.”

“Did you run all the way here or something?” Gale added. “We got the call over half an hour ago.”

“Actually. . . yeah, I just jogged over.” Owen slunk toward the back, towering over the other seated Heroes and positioning himself carefully so as not to block their view.

“You’re joking,” Aether said. “I know not every team has a teleporter, but surely you’ve at least got a car.”

“Well, the team does, but I let them take it back home,” Owen admitted.

“Wow.” Jeremiah shook his head, half in amazement and half in disbelief. “That’s something one of us should do something about. If there’s a situation where we have to call in Titan, I doubt we’ll have time for him to take the shoe-leather express.”

“It’s worked fine so far,” Owen said.

“Ah, but I fear things are about to get more complicated, if not outright dangerous.” Jeremiah clicked a button on the remote clutched in his fingers; an image appeared on his projector screen. It showed a map of Brewster, complete with a dozen or so small red dots scattered throughout. “As you all know, the robots we’ve been dealing with broke their usual pattern last week, using decoys to attack us while they looted technology from a local company. Since then, there have been sporadic break-ins throughout the city, all at places specializing in either high-tech research or materials. No security camera footage has been recovered, not a single witness has come forward, and most distressing of all, the strikes have always come at times when Heroes are occupied or scattered.”

“Hold on, if no one has seen the perpetrators, how do we know it’s the robots?” Deadlift asked. “All they did before was attack us, and now they turn to petty crime?”

“I assure you, there is nothing petty about the sorts of things they’ve been stealing,” Jeremiah replied. “And as for why we assume the bots are the culprits, I’ll admit that part is speculative. That said, it would explain the shift in their behavior. What we assumed were attacks meant to test out new models may, in fact, have been intended to test us. . . specifically, our individual response times and coordination. These robberies are hitting us in the metaphorical blind spots, which either means that someone is using extensive surveillance and planning to estimate our responding abilities, or the Dispatch system has been compromised. My team ruled out the latter possibility as soon as we suspected it.”

“Wait, did you actually meet Dispatch?” It was Aether who asked the question, but everyone in the room, Owen included, leaned slightly forward as they stared at Jeremiah. Despite a long, prestigious career as a Hero before his scandal, Owen had never met, nor heard of anyone else who had met, Dispatch. Whoever or wherever she was, it was a complete mystery even from the people she talked with daily.

“I. . . no, I did not,” Jeremiah admitted. “But people I trust went through the communication system and assured me everything was still secure. And if the actual Dispatch decided to turn against us, we’d be in for more trouble than just dealing with robots, theft, and assault. Thus, we assume they are avoiding us through the other method, which points squarely at our mechanical opponents.”

“What do you think they’re doing?” Gale asked. “It’s still a month out from the next attack in their pattern.”

“Yes, and that’s part of why I gathered you all here.” Jeremiah clicked the button once more, and a diagram of a small device took the place of the map with the red dots. “Titan has informed us of a piece in the puzzle we were previously unaware of, a stolen machine that allows the machines to act as a single unit split into multiple bodies. That knowledge forced us view their attacks as far more organized than we originally assessed, and from the new perspective, my team has crafted a fresh theory.”

Another click, this time showing a familiar model of the robots that Owen had fought on two occasions now. “At their last iteration, the bots were tough enough to injure multiple Hero teams and cause extensive damage. While we don’t know exactly what benchmark they were working toward, we do believe that in that attack they met it. Thus, having evolved to whatever necessary point they were aiming for, their methods switched in to gathering experimental technology and equipment. Essentially, the robots reached a baseline, and are now incorporating stolen assets into their already powerful forms.”

“Damn.” Gale leaned back in her chair as Jeremiah’s words washed over her. “You’re saying this next fight is going to be a tough one.”

“Worse.” Jeremiah made another click, and this time all that showed on the screen was a giant red question mark. “I’m saying that, now that their first pattern is broken, we have no way to know when or where the next attack will be coming from. Not only will these things be far more powerful than any iteration we’ve faced before, but they have already demonstrated the ability to blindside us. Their next strike, the most powerful one yet, will likely come with exactly zero warning or chance to prepare.”

85.

“I really hope there’s some good news as well, and that you didn’t just call us all in to make sure we knew we were helpless.” Gale seemed unfazed by Jeremiah’s announcement, as did pretty much else in the room save for Deadlift. As the youngest Hero of the group, he’d let out an audible gasp of shock at the announcement, an act he was clearly regretting in the face of the other’s stoic reactions.

“Well, it might be good or bad. Sort of depends on how things go. But we definitely know
something
.” Jeremiah clicked away the question mark, revealing a diagram of a single red dot with dozens of arrows pointing to blue ones spread across a new map of Brewster. “While running all the robots from one device might allow for incredible levels of cooperation, information relay, and strategy, it does still come with one giant weakness: namely that all of your robots are being run from one single point.”

Aether nodded, quickly taking Jeremiah’s meaning. “Unlike before, when we thought each unit was self-contained, now we know there’s a central command system. Which means if we take that out, we end the entire threat with one blow.”

“I can always tell which teams employ their own Subtlety Heroes, even without the research,” Jeremiah said. “Aether has hit the nail dead on. Before, we were trying to track the robots’ points of origin or uncover their creator, assuming that once an attack started, the only way to end it was to break them all to pieces. Now we know there’s another option, as well as some method of remote relay being used to issue orders. One of my fellow Modus Operandi members is currently working on a device that will, in theory, allow us to trace the signal back to its origin point, assuming we can capture a robot that isn’t completely destroyed.”

More than a few sets of eyes glanced at Owen, who merely raised his wide shoulders in a mighty shrug. “Guessing there are other Heroes who might be able to manage that.”

“Speaking of Modus Operandi, when are we going to meet one of these other team members of yours?” Deadlift asked. “You all seem to be spearheading the research, but from what I’ve heard, you’re the only one of the group anyone ever talks to.”

“And that is for good reason,” Jeremiah said. “The less that is known about a Subtlety Hero, the better. We do our best work when no one is ever certain we’ve been there at all. That’s why I, as the most extroverted member, was chosen to be the face and mouthpiece of our group. It lets the others keep on task while protecting their privacy as much as possible.”

“Though if you ever really want to meet them, just hold an event with an open bar,” Gale added. “I’ve yet to meet the Subtlety Hero that won’t drink as much of the good liquor as possible if given half a chance.”