Hero Worship (13 page)

TWENTY-ONE

I wake up with the warm sunshine beating against the outside of the safe-house blinds. There's an empty pit where my stomach is, and I try to remember when I last ate. I get out of bed, put my clothes on, and walk into the kitchen. There's no sign of Eliza. I open the refrigerator and find
condiments—ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard—a half-
empty
plastic bottle of water, and an assortment of beer. Not
much in the way of food. Opening a large kitchen cabinet, I find boxes of macaroni and cheese, noodles, and saltine crackers. I grab the crackers and rip open the box. I plop down on the sofa, turn on the television, and eat.

Four hours later, the crackers are gone and I've lost interest in the television. I wonder when Eliza is coming back. I pick up the phone and dial her number. The phone rings and rings. I keep expecting it to go to voicemail, but it doesn't. I let it ring thirty times before I finally give up.

I'm furious. Nothing is how I expected it to be. My mind races in a thousand different directions at the same time. I've got to get out of this apartment.

As I walk through Bixby Gardens,
the abandoned buildings project fingerlike shadows onto the empty streets. A rusted and eroded sign hangs whopper-jawed from the front of a ten-story warehouse. It reads
Cache Valley Manufacturing
, and I'm surprised to realize that I've heard of this place. Decades ago, it was a goliath of American industry at its best. The chain-link fence around the perimeter of the building has toppled, in no position to keep anything out. I step over the fence and head toward the front of the building.

Large panes of glass in the revolving door are shattered, so I hunker over and step inside. The marble floors in the expansive lobby are stained and damaged. Three support pillars rise from the foundation to the high ceiling. The middle pillar is cracked. I pick up a chunk of concrete and toss it at the damaged pillar. The impact dislodges a large section, which cascades to the floor with a rumble.

Something stirs within me. I find something satisfying about being responsible for this destruction. I'm powerless over the state of affairs in my life, but here I stand, instilling change upon my surroundings. Bending over, I gather pieces of lumber, clumps of rocks, and sections of pipe. One after the other, I throw them at the damaged pillar. Some miss completely but others slam into the growing cracks, which expand like tributaries in a flood.

I keep heaving heavier and heavier objects at the pillar. Anger boils with each item I toss. I hear a scream. It's my own voice, cheering me on as I destroy the pillar. I'm consumed with animal rage, incapable of harboring a clear thought. The pillar finally collapses onto the marble floor in a heap. I'm out of breath and sweating. The two adjacent pillars shift under the increased weight, bursting like matchsticks and bringing down the lobby ceiling.

I dash toward the revolving door as the ceiling topples down behind me. Dust and debris follow me out. Running a safe distance away, I turn around and marvel at the destruction caused by my own hand.

The plumes of dust and residue settle. A light breeze rustles my hair as I stand there, rooted in place. My anger is subsiding, replaced with a hollow sadness. I make my way back to the safe house, listening to the desolate wind blowing through the arid urban landscape.

The staircase groans under my weight as I make my way up to Eliza's apartment. I open the door and listen, but no sound greets me. At this point, I don't know if this disappoints me or not. My stomach growls. I don't think I possess the motivation to actually boil water to cook, so I grab a package of ramen, rip open the wrapping, and bite into the dry noodles, chewing them loudly.

Carrying a handful of the rock-hard pasta, I stop outside the door to Roisin's shrine and stare at her walls of memorabilia.

My gaze settles on the closet door and the security keypad. The tiny light is red. Just a few days ago, I never would've thought of going against something Eliza said, but too much has happened recently, and I find myself caring less and less. So I press the number
6
three times on the keypad, remembering how Eliza used this code to lock it.

The heavy lock slides open, and the light flashes green. I open the door. Darkness and a mechanical hum lie beyond the threshold. The closet space is deceptively big. It's filled with shelves lined with row after row of DVDs, memory cards, and jump drives. Two external hard drives hum and chirp as data is exchanged with a computer on a desk.

I pick up a glossy printout of what looks like a frame-grab from a video. And while the image is grainy and blurry, I know exactly what it is—it's an image of Eliza and me tangled together as one at the dam. High above the water suspended on top of the mist, Eliza and I suck face.

“Oh my god,” I mutter. There was a camera there. From the angle of the image, it looks like it must've been near her car.

There's a device that plugs into the computer that looks like a thumbprint scanner. But on the pad is a smiley-face sticker. It looks like the data sticker the man tried to give me the other night. I jostle the mouse until the computer screen comes to life. An icon of a smiley-face appears on the computer's desktop, which I click on. It opens a media player.

The video begins to play, and it's clear the footage is from a security camera. The timestamp at the bottom of the screen states it was filmed a little over two years ago. I can see long tables in a room where men and women garbed in gloves, rubber aprons, and surgical masks scoop up large piles of white powder with mini garden shovels and deposit the substance into cellophane bags. There are guards with automatic rifles carefully watching the workers. Then three men enter the room. One is wearing an all-white suit. He inspects the workers like a CEO walking the assembly line in a factory.

A blinding light explodes and distorts the video's image. When it finally reappears, chaos has erupted. The workers have abandoned their posts and are running for cover. The guards fire their rifles at something off-screen. This seems to go on forever. Then, without warning, a bolt of energy strikes a guard and blows his head off. His body collapses to the ground. The beam fires again and hits another guard in the chest, blowing a nearly perfect hole through his body. A guard fires his gun and an instant later looks down, confused, at his empty hands, his rifle suddenly missing. A man appears out of nowhere and shoots a guard at point-blank range with the automatic weapon. Before the guard collapses to the floor, the shooter is gone.

In a matter of seconds, the guards are dead. As the dust settles, Eliza strolls into the room. She holds a leash that's attached to a collar fastened around the neck of a large lizard who is walking upright—McKay. She yanks on the leash, and McKay stumbles behind her. His wrists are bound together with zip ties and his face is covered in what I assume is blue blood.

A blur comes to a stop in front of Eliza. And though I've never seen his face unmasked, I know it's Streak. He's missing his front two teeth, and this strikes me as strange. But other than that, the man who is Streak is rather unremarkable-
looking. He rounds up some of the cowering workers at gunpoint and motions for them to get back to work. They hesitate for only a moment and then turn and continue to bag up the white powder.

The video goes on for a while as the workers continue to fill the cellophane bags. Once they're done, Streak has them pick up the bundles and march off-screen. Eliza fastens the end of the leash to a table. McKay struggles, but it's pointless. Eliza walks off-screen, following Streak.

The video flicks and goes black.

So this is what really happened in Belize.

And the guy mentioned blackmail. This is what he was talking about. They were using this footage to blackmail the Core. It all makes sense now.

I click on other icons in the data sticker folder. Photo after photo show corpses lying in rubble, missing limbs, buildings demolished, and wreckages of airplanes. Whole city blocks are destroyed—concrete is torn back and pushed up into clumps, like a sheet kicked to the foot of a bed. Damaged cars and trucks are scattered about, and innocent bystanders try to dig people out of the wreckage. Corpses are shown twisted in unnatural positions. One collection of photos documents the collapse of a building.

The common theme, throughout these varied images of carnage and destruction, is Lieutenant Mercury.

I come across a series of photos that show him fighting Monger, and the total destruction of the Grinde Investment Building that was the result. So it wasn't two dirties fighting each other that destroyed the building in the business district, as was reported. Mercury was involved, not Gunner.

“Mercury did all this?” I mutter, feeling like I've just woken up to a dark and grisly reality. I suddenly feel horrible for doubting Yvonne's story. Everything she told me about Mercury destroying her house and killing her parents, and the subsequent cover-up, was probably true. And I didn't believe her.

I didn't want to believe her.

I close out of the data sticker folder. Another icon on the desktop catches my attention—one with the file name
Marvin
. I double-click on it.

The media player opens and plays footage from last night—when Eliza forced herself on me. I'm dazed as I watch it, listening to my muffled voice telling her to leave me
alone. But once her eyes radiate energy, I fall silent and lie motionless as a corpse. The camera films the entire event. And at one point, Eliza turns to the camera and smiles directly at it.

I leave the closet, head down the hall, and look around the bedroom. It doesn't take me too long to spot the tiny lens mounted on top of the mirror.

I suddenly feel ill.

Hurrying back to the closet, I'm just in time to see the footage that shows Eliza getting dressed and leaving me lying on the bed.

“Marvin, where are you?” Eliza calls from down the hall.

I close all the open windows on the computer.

Her footsteps echo on the hard floor.

Darting out of the closet, I shut the door.

She makes her way down the hallway toward the room. “Marvin?”

The light on the keypad is green. I type in the code and hit the
lock
button. The alarm chirps and turns red.

She pops her head in the doorway. I'm standing at a glass case staring at the various Roisin action figures. The smile on her face quickly disappears. “What do you think you're doing?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“I was calling you.”

“Oh, you were? I didn't hear you.”

She stares at me for moment, then glances at the closet door. It could be my imagination, but she studies it longer than I would think necessary. “Come on,” she says. “We've got an errand to run.”

With that, she walks back out of the room. I breathe a sigh of relief as I follow her.

TWENTY-TWO

When I catch up to her downstairs, she's getting into her car. I buckle my seat belt as she checks her makeup in the rearview mirror before putting the car in gear and driving away. The silence between us is thick and uncomfortable, like oppressive humidity that you can't escape.

The drive takes forever. I look at her out of the corner of my eye and fantasize about confronting her about everything I know. I envision her getting tongue-tied and stammering over her words as she feebly attempts to counter the charges. But I don't, because whatever I do next, I don't want her to see it coming. I just need to come up with a plan fast. It feels like time is running out.

The car pulls up to a rundown Chinese restaurant and Eliza double-parks out front. “Okay, let's go.”

As we get out of the vehicle, traffic builds up behind us. A couple of angry drivers honk their horns. “Are you going to move your car?” I ask.

“No time.” She breezes past the front door of the restaurant, passing through a parade of men and women on the sidewalk. Stopping at the mouth of the alley adjacent to the restaurant, she motions me to her. Draping an arm around my shoulder, she leans in and says, “This is just in case.”

A sharp pain explodes in my thigh. She's jammed three needles through my jeans and is squeezing the contents of three vials of Dr. Klaus's concoction into my leg.

“What the hell?” I scream.

Pulling out the needles, she winks at me and says, “Don't be such a sissy.”

I rub my thigh. It stings. “Three vials? Am I gonna OD?”

“We've got to go,” she says, heading into the alley. The sun, sinking into the horizon, casts the passage in shadows. The garbage dumpsters give off a musty odor. The soles of my shoes stick to the ground from the ooze produced from discarded Chinese food. Eliza leads me farther down the alley. “Just up here.”

There's a clatter as garbage cans topple over. Eliza goes rigid as the silhouette of a man approaches us. As he gets closer, I can see he's wearing a suit, and a tie that's loosened around his neck. The jacket is draped over his shoulder, the collar hooked over his thumb. He's tall and muscular and strolls toward us like he doesn't have a worry in the world. His face is chiseled and he has piercing blue eyes.

Eliza looks around, searching for something. She puts an arm across my chest, like a driver who slams on the brakes and instinctively tries to hold back the passenger. “Marvin, stand right here,” she says.

“Roisin, what's going on?” the man asks.

Eliza doesn't take her eyes off him. She's marinating in fear.

“Roisin?” I say.

The man in the suit looks at me. “Who's he?”

“He's my partner,” she says.

He tosses his jacket on top of a nearby dumpster. “Well, kid, I'm sorry to hear that.”

The man charges me. And by charge, I mean charges like a rhino. I reach out with my mind to feed off Eliza's fear. I just barely have time, but manage to power up a millisecond before the man bulldozes into me, sending me into a stack of wooden crates.

I jump up but the man's on me, firing a series of punches to my head and body. He grimaces. “You've got powers,” he says. “Guess I don't have to pull my punches.” He cocks his arm and throws another swing, which sinks into my stomach. This one sends me flying back twenty feet, into a brick wall. I fall to the ground and my head slams down on the concrete.

Eliza shoots the man with a blast from her eyes. This only seems to irritate our attacker. He grabs her and hoists her into the air with one arm, as easily as if Eliza weighed no more than a baby. He slaps her across the face. “I've wanted to do that since I first met you!” he says. Then he heaves her through the air. Eliza lands on her stomach and skids to a stop deeper in the alley.

When his back is to me, I barrel into him with all the speed at my command. The impact launches the guy off his feet, sending him straight into the air. Shock and pain register on his face. He shoots up forty feet, but as he reaches the apex of the ascent, instead of crashing back to the ground, he hovers there. Overhead, he collects his bearings, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs.

He's a flier.

Then, screaming with the fury of an erupting volcano, he aims his feet at me, dropping from the sky like a bomb. I jump out of the way and his feet miss my head by an inch. His loafers smash into the concrete, cracking it open and leaving a crater. He turns and flies at me with his clenched fists outstretched like a battering ram. I'm fast, but not nearly fast enough. His fist clips me in the shoulder, spinning me around and around like a top. By the time I steady myself, he's picked me up over his head like a pro wrestler and tossed me against the brick wall. Dozens of bricks dislodge and crumble to the ground.

Lying on the ground in a heap, I cover my head with my arms as he kicks me repeatedly. “Who are you?” he yells. Pulling back his foot like a place kicker, he aims straight for my head. I grab his foot and yank him to the ground. Not letting go of his foot, I get up and lift him into the air. Like I'm cracking a whip, I hit him against the wall, then the ground, and into the other wall. Using both hands, I fling him out of the alley and into the dark storefront across the street. He crashes through the large glass window, toppling mannequins like bowling pins.

Eliza is battered and bruised, and her lip is split and bleeding. “Let's go!” I say, running farther down the alley.

She shuffles behind me, until finally she stops and steadies herself against a stack of wooden crates. “I can't …” she mumbles.

A breeze picks up, rustling debris and garbage. It's followed by what sounds like the air being cut overhead. I shove Eliza into a doorway, taking cover under the awning. The man flies above us, canvassing the area.

“Who is that guy?” I whisper.

She touches her lip with trembling fingers, pulling them away and seeing blood. “Darren Campbell,” she says.

“Who's he?” I ask. “And what did you do to get him so mad?”

Eliza starts to reply, but goes silent when Darren stops in midair directly overhead. He searches for us and then moves on.

“Let's go,” I say. We race down the alley, passing boarded-up windows and doors. As we bolt toward a busy street, a gust of wind rises up and washes over us. Darren is a bird of prey, flying overhead, tracking our every move. “Hurry!” I shout.

The flier circles around and heads right at us, diving out of the sky. “You've got to stop him!” Eliza shouts.

Darren swoops down with his fingers outstretched like talons, aiming right at Eliza. She screams.

It would be easy for me to slip away, leaving Eliza behind to deal with this lunatic. Heaven knows she doesn't deserve any better. But despite what she's done or the threats she's made, I can't. I just can't.

As he flies inches over my head, I reach up and grab him and, using all my strength, redirect his momentum into the ground, which he hits headfirst. The thud caused from the impact is deep, like an underground explosion. His head lies in an unnatural position on his still body.

Eliza takes a hesitant step toward the unconscious man. His chest slowly rises and falls. “He's still alive,” she mutters.

“Come on!” I say, heading out of the alley. “Before he gets up.”

She walks around the body lying amidst the scattered trash, giving Darren a wide berth. His eyes are open, staring blankly toward the sky.

We duck out of the alley and merge with the pedestrian foot traffic. We get a couple of quizzical looks until we stop running and slow to a brisk walk. “What was that all about?” I drill her.

“We should go back and finish him off,” she says. “He should be put down like an animal.”

“I'm no killer, not like you.”

Eliza storms ahead of me. “Wait for me back at the safe house.”

Before I can say anything, she turns down another street and is gone.