Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (9 page)

“Actually,” said the next one over, pulling off his mask, “we
are
six people.” His face was the same as the other, at first, until I realized his chin was full. A definite resemblance, but
not
the same guy.

“The amazing Cochinsky Brothers,” said the third, pulling off his mask to reveal a blonde.

“Our
real
power is to teleport,” said Four, whose hair was black. “The problem is, we can only teleport to a location where one of us already
is
.”

“If we do it right, it looks like we’re one guy with multiple bodies,” Five said. He had the pocked remains of an old scar on his cheek.

“One of us sits out each fight here at Simon so the others can teleport home in an emergency,” said the last one. “It was Morrie’s idea.”

Six sported the same brown hair and eyes as One, Two and Five, but I couldn’t help noticing a fundamental difference.

“You’re a
girl
!”

“Boy, nothing gets past you,” she said. “It’s a padded suit, genius.”

“Man, this place is just one fake after another, isn’t it?”

“Ah, what
is
‘real’?” asked Three.

“Just a state of mind,” Four said.

Two piped up. “Sophocles said--”

“Do you guys
always
talk like this?” I moaned.

“Yeah.--I suppose.--Pretty much.--It’s a gift.--It would seem.--You got it.”

It was beyond a blessing, a few seconds later, when Flux and LifeSpeed finally arrived. With them was another Cape, one I hadn’t been told to expect -- the veteran called Particle. He’d been on the front lines as long as anybody -- even as long as the LightCorps, and although he’d never officially joined any teams he was well-known and respected in the Cape community as a technological and biochemical genius. Particle had the ability to shrink himself down to near subatomic levels. At least, that’s what I’d always been
told
his power was -- the way
my
day was going I was probably going to learn that he just made everything else
big
.

“He said we’d rehearse the combat in a replica of Siegel City, and that the two guys I’m drawing power from would wait it out on the side. What I don’t get is where this replica comes from... do we have a hologram room or virtual reality setup or something?”

“What is this, a Keanu Reeves movie?” Flux said. Particle let out an amused chuckle.

“Nothing quite so elaborate, son,” Particle said. “Here, it’s best to show you.”

Next to the door was a computer keypad, into which Particle fed a series of numbers. Then he was given a palmprint, retina scan and voice analyses. “Only Particle can access the rehearsal area,” LifeSpeed said to me as we waited. “He runs all the training sessions, so Morrie’s got the whole system keyed into him. Only two or three people can get in.”

“Is he afraid of someone stealing all the high-powered equipment or something?”

“Nah, he’s just such a tightass he’s afraid we’ll break the thing if we go in without a chaperone.”

Finally, Particle was finished with the ridiculously over-elaborate entry sequence and the steel doors glided open along their tracks revealing an empty doorframe and a tunnel. We headed down a hall and Particle waved Flux, LifeSpeed and one of Five-Share (they’d put their masks back on, I couldn’t tell which) into an observation area off to the side. Finally, Particle led us to another steel door.

“Your first day in the Arena, Josh,” Particle said. “Hope you like it.”

He slid the portal open and I saw it for the first time -- Siegel City. A perfect duplication. Oh, it was empty of people and movement and, well... life, really. But there were cars and street signs and billboards just like the real Siegel. The gleaming presence of Simon Tower, the subtle elegance of Barks Plaza, the peaceful centerpiece of Lee Park. It was incredible.

“You forget who you’re talking to, Josh. I’m Particle. I’ve been doing this for
years
.”

He wasn’t even scolding me, not really, but for some reason being spoken to in that tone by him made me feel small. Very small.

“You’re shrinking me, aren’t you?” I said.

I was looking, at eye-level, directly at Particle’s belt buckle. Then his knees. Then his boots. Behind me I could hear a similarly shrinking Five-Share chuckling at me.

“You didn’t think I could only shrink
myself
, did you?” Particle said, his voice booming. He wasn’t coming down on me, he just enjoyed his job and didn’t mind having a little fun with the new guy. It sort of made me more comfortable to know that not everybody I encountered would be a Dr. Noble. “How do you feel, Josh?”

“Like G.I. Joe,” I shouted.

Particle sat down at a control panel at the edge of the mock city. He hit a couple of buttons and a small, open-topped transport with long rows of cushioned seats along the sides rolled up beside us. It may have been a foot long. To our perceptions, it was like a bus.

“Hop in,” Particle said. “The transport will take you to the rumble site.”

TRAINING EXERCISE

My first rumble was scheduled for the tall, glass-and-steel structure of the First National Bank -- the same one I decided not to stake out that first night when I’d met Sindy. The plan was for me to go in, steal some quick cash, allow an unsuspecting teller to trip the alarm and rush outside just in time to meet my opponents from the Spectacle Six, who would subsequently “capture” me.

I was worried, at first, about doing this dry run with no actual civilians involved -- “How can I prepare for the bystanders?” I’d asked Morrie.

The manager simply blew a smoke-ring and scowled. “No point in worrin’ about our audience, kiddo. There are only two things civilians
ever
do during a rumble.
Nothing,
or something so ridiculously unexpected that there’s no way to prepare for it. Either way, you’re gonna just have to play it by ear.”

I smiled and nodded, trying to remember his precise phraseology so I could write it down later. I had a notebook of all the illicit activities I’d run across in the week since I’d been there. I didn’t have a plan or any idea how long I’d be there. Until I got everything I could use, I supposed.

Or until Mental Maid decided to point the finger at me.

“Nervous, kid?” asked Fourtifier in his rock tumbler voice.

“A little,” I said. “Be kind of stupid
not
to be, don’t you think?”

“At first, maybe,” he said. “But you get used to it.”

“Goody.”

The transport dropped me off outside the miniature replica of First National and pulled away, taking my “opponents” to their own starting location.

“How are you over there?” asked Particle. I was hearing his voice, now, through a micro radio woven into my mask. With more experienced, more reliable Capes, full scripts were sometimes written, because guys like Hotshot could be counted on to stick to them. I was the rookie, though. In order for the battle to be both spontaneous
and
realistic, we were going to improvise large chunks of it, with Particle giving us commands at various points that would take us to the preordained conclusion -- my defeat.

“I’m doing fine,” I said. On the horizon I could see what looked like a mile-high wall of glass, through which was the observation area. LifeSpeed and Flux were flanking the last member of Five-Share. Apparently my diminutive size had no effect on my powers -- even though those guys seemed miles away I could still feel the Rush they provided as if I were standing at their gargantuan feet.

It was a typical robbery, worthy of any poorly-scripted movie. I was supposed to barge in, scream out some supposedly intimidating phrase and begin juggling around security guards to prove my point. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure what my point
was
, but I was going to prove it regardless.

I kicked the miniature door open and shouted, “Everybody on the floor, this is a stick-up!” The scene was not exactly what I was expected. The scene was, in fact, a shoebox-sized room full of paper dolls. Some with smiley faces. There was laughter outside and I wondered if this was part of some hazing ritual or something.

“Oh,
veeeeeery
droll,” I said. Still, sticking with the plan, I used Flux’s gravity power to hurl one security guard doll against the ceiling and simultaneously used LifeSpeed’s inertia powers to slam the other into a wall more than hard enough to incapacitate even a non-cardboard opponent.

Behind the counter one of the teller-dolls was already holding out a tiny bag with the words “This is money” written on it.

“Uh-oh,” Particle said in my ear. “Some well-meaning teller has just triggered the silent alarm. What are you going to do about it?”

I played along, pretending to roll my options over in my head. “Well... let’s see... Herr Nemesis would probably blast her head off and call her an ‘insolent dog’... the Squid would trip over his own tentacles in the escape attempt... but something tells me
Shift
would simply...
take the money and run
!”

I think I did a pretty good job, too. I grabbed the cash (that doll didn’t even put up a fight), clocked the guards together and got the hell out of there. I still think it was
totally
uncalled for when a Five-Share clotheslined me on my way out the door.

“Clumsy, pal. You’ve got to watch that.”

“Yeah. Same to you.” In an eyeblink I hit him with the gravity and inertia powers. During my training with those particular skills I’d developed just enough control to spin his arm through the air, causing him to punch himself in the face. As soon as he was down, I found myself hoping it wasn’t the girl. For some reason, I felt like Lionheart wouldn’t approve at all.

There was only the one Five-Share there -- the others were waiting nearby to teleport in and give the illusion of bifurcation. I turned around to bolt and wound up facing the observation room, way on the horizon. I saw we had a few more spectators now. Sindy and the Conductor were there, applauding me, and the Goop was bouncing around the room with a big doofy grin on his fluid mug.

Off to the side was Mental Maid, her eyes glowing, glaring at me.

Seeing her froze me in place. I couldn’t even move, and the ground began to quake beneath me. It wasn’t just
her
making me stiff -- I just hadn’t noticed that one of the other Rushes I was feeling was now coming from beneath.

“Not so fast,” a flinty voice growled. A shield of solid rock grew up around my feet and I realized I’d been
standing
on Fourtifier’s spread-out silicon form. My body was beginning to copy his rock-powers, and my joints began to growl when I moved. “Ain’t so easy to get away, is it?” his voice rumbled.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to shake Mental Maid. “Let’s see.”

One thing that always bugged me about certain Capes or Masks was the limited ways in which they used their powers. I mean... here we had LifeSpeed, a guy who could control something as fundamental as inertia itself, and he almost always used it for something as petty as simply running fast. When Fourtifier’s rock-form crackled up around me, I poured the inertia
down
, into his very molecules.

A quick mental review of 10th-grade science reminded me that solid objects are only those forms where the molecules are moving too slowly to pass through them. You speed up the molecules of a solid, it becomes a liquid. Speed them up even more, you’ve got a gas. So when I poured inertia into Fourtifier...

“Hey! I’m
melting
!”

“Quick study,” I said.

I hopped out of the puddle that Fourtifier was quickly becoming, only to slam face-first into Five-Share.

“You get one freebie, Shift,” he said. With a pop of his fingers, I was surrounded by the entire quintet. I was impressed -- if I didn’t know better I would have sworn he
did
split apart. My eyes began darting around for an out.

“Time to make your escape attempt,” Particle said. “Your route is straight up.”

I looked up the side of the bank building, totally clear, and smiled at a couple of the Five-Shares. “Catch you later,” I said as I cut off gravity’s effect on me. I pushed off the ground and rocketed up, up and away.

I glided along the side of the silicon and steel construct (more likely plexiglass and aluminum in this miniature form), viewing myself in the window as I went. At about the fourth floor I caught a glint of light. Two floors higher and I saw First Light arching down towards me, robes swirling around her. In the eighth floor window I saw her hand explode in a veil of light and, by the time I reached the roof of the bank complex, she had completely blanked out my vision.

I was racing upwards, flying blind. I couldn’t turn my gravity back on because, without seeing my way down, I’d most likely splatter along the side of the bank -- and that was assuming I didn’t get impaled on its spire.

“Yaaagh!” I howled as she flipped me through the air. I don’t know if it was because I was blind and new at this or if she was just a lot tougher than she looked, but somehow, with no leverage whatsoever, she made me lose my orientation. I had no idea what direction I was drifting in, but I knew I was moving fast.

“Shift! Josh, dammit,
look out
!”

My eyes picked that moment to begin to clear. I saw several humanoid shapes in front of me and thought, for a second, that Particle had sent a squadron of fliers to pull me down. When I saw the way the shapes -- Five-Shares, I now realized -- were thoughtfully scrambling out of my way, I decided it was far more likely that I was about to crack my skull open against the ground.

“Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!”

I reached out at a lamppost, hoping to regain my control, but it slipped right away from my hands.

“Crapcrapcrapcrap...”

I was ten feet from the ground now. Eight. Five.