Hero Status Read online

  He smiled primly, like he’d just complimented my shirt. A minute in, and I’d already hit a brick wall. This is why I hate interrogations. Punching people is so much more straightforward than playing word games. Call me a caveman, but it’s true.

  “Supersonic was killed by a telepath,” I said. “There aren’t very many of you.”

  “The Black Valentine’s a telepath.”

  I was lucky I’d been prepared to face a mind-reader, or else I’d never have controlled my thoughts and emotions on hearing that statement.

  “How do you know about that?”

  He smirked. “You DSA agents are all the same. Go through a two-week crash course on resisting mind-readers, and you all think you can block me out.”

  I stared him down. Deliberately not thinking about something was a very hard thing to do. If I said, “Don’t think about your email password,” you could bet your password would be the next thing to run through your mind. It made national security difficult when mind-readers were involved.

  It was possible, though. The DSA trained their agents to choose something else to focus their entire attention on. They recommended holding the image of a brick wall in your head, picturing every detail. I guess the idea was that it metaphorically represented the barrier between you and the mind-reader. It wasn’t my strategy of choice. I sung “The Song that Gets on Everybody’s Nerves” in my head, and I kept playing it until the mind-reader stopped.

  It usually didn’t take very long.

  “I know the Black Valentine is the main suspect,” Mental said. “The other agents let it slip. What are you going to let slip, I wonder?”

  I could feel the pressure of Mental’s psychic probe like the start of a headache. I focused on the song.

  Mental frowned.

  I concentrated on each note, playing it over and over and over again.

  “Cute,” said his voice in my head.

  The pressure increased to a throbbing pain. I couldn’t let myself be afraid he would take over; that would be just the foothold he needed. He could direct my thoughts if I gave him the slightest opportunity. I couldn’t be anything less than a hundred percent focused on the song. It was like driving down an icy mountain road in the dead of night; I couldn’t let my concentration slip for an instant, or it would all be over. Only it was more like driving drunk, because I didn’t have complete control over my own thoughts.

  Sweat dripped down my back and chest. It felt like he had driven an ice-pick through my skull. He was pushing harder, trying to force my thoughts toward the details of the investigation. I didn’t think about the consequences; I just thought about the song.

  Mental gripped the stiff arm of the couch in concentration. I saw him, and I knew he could see himself through my eyes. I could feel his frustration.

  He’d gotten sloppy.

  I followed the sense of frustration like it was my own—and found myself sucked into the middle of a whirlwind of strange thoughts.

  Entering Mental’s mind was the opposite of entering his apartment: it was a filthy mess. I struggled to keep my own consciousness separate, but it was hard not to get overwhelmed by the chaos. Anger infested everything. Mental was angry at the whole damn world. At White Knight, a swaggering bully without enough brains to fill a teaspoon, who had barged into his home and thought he could just order him around. At every superhero who thought they were so much better than the rest of us, every rat who had testified against him in court.

  He shouldn’t be here, stuck in this tiny apartment, nearly broke, when other supervillains were richer than God. He was one of the best, a genius; it was just dumb luck that had gotten him caught. Dumb luck and that bastard Supersonic. Mental had gone to jail because of him, lost a decade of his life, and now the Black Valentine had killed the idiot hero, and Mental would never get the chance to make him pay.

  Mental hadn’t killed Harris.

  That thought snapped me back to myself, and I struggled to get out of his head, my heart racing. I’d almost lost my mind—literally. And for what? It was a dead end. Mental didn’t know anything about Harris’s murder.

  I couldn’t help but be disappointed. That was how he got me.

  “You think you can do that to me?”

  His voice boomed in my head. I dropped my cane and clamped my hands over my ears, but I couldn’t block it out. I lost the song.

  His consciousness pressed in on me from all sides, and I could feel his smug smirk without seeing it. I tried to find the song, but it was like being drugged; I couldn’t focus. He wouldn’t let me.

  “You underestimated me. You people always do.”

  He seemed bigger now, more terrible, looking down on me like a cruel god. How could I have ever thought he was just a pathetic little man? I could see his true self now, and it was so much greater than anything I could ever hope to be. I was an idiot to have thought I could take him on. I had to get down on my knees and beg his forgiveness. I—

  No, that wasn’t right.

  Wait. These weren’t my thoughts. He was getting to me. I had to fight it.

  “You can’t fight me, White Knight. I’m in your head.”

  “Then I hope you enjoy it,” I thought back.

  I abandoned my attempts to get the song back and focused on another thought: a memory. A small room underground. The acrid smell of chemicals burning my throat. The sound of a man’s laughter overpowering the muffled sobs of a little girl. Then the light. And the pain.

  My hands are slick with blood. I can’t hold on; I can barely breathe. I push with everything I have, but it’s not enough. Even with my strength, I can’t stand against this thing, this monster. My muscles tremble uncontrollably, and I can barely see. I can’t feel my eyes, nose, or cheeks—just a swelling of agony where my face should be. My stomach and back burn, and the thing in my grip tries to buck and twist free of me.

  I’m not strong enough. It breaks free. Its blow falls on my knee, and I hear a pop.

  I scream.

  Mental screamed with me.

  He toppled out of the armchair, clutching at his knee and the pain of an injury that didn’t exist. His presence vanished from my head, and I immediately put my defenses back up. I swayed but remained standing as he howled and sniveled on the carpet. Then I took a moment to catch my breath. My cane was still on the floor, so I picked it up. Bending down hurt like hell, but I gritted my teeth and put up with it. The pain was a pale shadow compared to what I’d been through before.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Ellsworth.” I turned around and headed for the door.

  “You can’t do this,” he spat, still crumpled on the floor.

  “Do what?”

  “You read my mind. You’re not allowed to do that without a warrant.”

  “I’m not a telepath. I wouldn’t have been able to get anything from you unless you made the connection to my mind first. Any lawyer worth his salt knows that.”

  “You still need a warrant. You’re DSA.”

  “Actually, I’m retired.”

  I walked out of the apartment and into the clean, fresh air. I didn’t need to be a telepath to sense Mental’s rage following me.

  I took the apartment stairs slowly and gingerly. Mental had nothing to do with Supersonic’s murder, so I should put the incident behind me and move on, but I couldn’t. I didn’t care that he had attacked me; that was par the course when you were dealing with supervillains. But he’d been my only lead, my only suspect. Now that he was ruled out, I had no idea where to look.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs, crossed the parking lot, and got into my car. Then I sat there. With Mental ruled out, who else could have killed Harris? Telepathy wasn’t a very common power, and most people who had it were either institutionalized or working for the DSA. And out of that small pool of people, who’d want to kill Harris and frame Val for it?

  And that was assuming it wasn’t a contract hit. I’d heard of telepathic assassins, and the idea of a hired killer who could give
you a brain hemorrhage just by concentrating on you was a scary thing to contemplate. But copying Val’s old calling card with the lipstick… It just didn’t strike me as very professional. Any decent assassin would either want to make it look like a natural death, or make it obvious they were responsible for such a high-profile kill. Unless they’d been instructed to frame Val, in which case I should be looking at her enemies instead of Harris’s. But then, why kill Harris? There were plenty of other people Val had a stronger motive for murdering.

  I could think myself in circles all day, and it wouldn’t get me any closer to the answer. I needed to talk to people who knew Harris, find out if he’d gotten on the wrong side of anyone recently who might want to kill him for it. If needed, I’d track down every criminal Harris had fought over his career. He was a superhero, and we had no shortage of enemies. When I thought about it like that, my problem wasn’t having too few suspects, but too many.

  It looked like I wouldn’t be able to cancel dinner with Starla tonight. She was the only person I knew who’d been close to Harris recently. But there had to be others, and I wracked my brain for every bit of information I had about his personal life. The useless, painful details came to mind first. He had Marlins season tickets and was always trying to get me to go to a game with him. He considered it his solemn duty to get twice as drunk on my behalf, since super-strength made anything more than a beer or two a bad idea. He was always teasing me about Val, wondering vocally (and often drunkenly) how a straight-laced, boring guy like me had landed a woman like her.

  I thought back to our conversations, trying to remember any significant relationships he’d mentioned. His brother lived in the city, didn’t he? And his ex-wife did, too. They would be good people to talk to. I pulled out my phone to look up their contact information.

  I had twelve missed calls from Elisa.

  I called her back immediately, all thoughts of Harris gone from my mind. How had I missed twelve calls?

  It must have happened when I was fighting Mental. I wouldn’t have been able to hear the phone ring with the battle raging within my own mind. What was so wrong that she had called me twelve times? I didn’t have much of a chance to wonder, because she picked up after the second ring.

  “Dad?”

  Her voice was small, like she was scared to be overheard.

  “It’s me, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

  “Can you come pick me up?”

  “Of course. Are you in class?”

  “The clinic.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to pick me up.”

  A dozen worst-case scenarios ran through my head in the space of two seconds. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  “No, I…” A muffled sound came over the speaker as she squirmed. I wondered if the school nurse was there, if anyone was taking care of her.

  “It’s that time.”

  “Oh.” My stomach sank. “Oh. Okay. I uh… might have to break out your mom for this one.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I’ll manage on my own somehow.” I hesitated. “You need me to stop at the supermarket for some girl stuff on my way?”

  Some punk had hit me with a semi-truck once. If I could survive that, I could survive buying feminine products.

  She paused. “What? Dad! Jesus Christ, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Elisa, I have told you not to use that kind of language.”

  She groaned in familiar exasperation with me. At least her voice wasn’t soft and afraid anymore.

  “Then what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I had my breakthrough. Please come pick me up.”

  I opened my mouth, but it took a few tries to get words to come out.

  “Stay calm,” I choked out. “I’m on my way.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  She must have been really upset, because there was no usual teenage embarrassment when she said, “I love you, too.”

  I pulled out of the parking lot so fast, the entire neighborhood must have heard the screech of my wheels.

  Chapter 3

  I didn’t usually break the speed limit. I could survive pretty much any crash, but the person in the other car wouldn’t, and I always felt irresponsible putting them at risk. But right now, I didn’t even spare the speed limit signs a glance; I just went as fast as I could.

  My imagination ran wild. There were plenty of urban legends about breakthroughs, and pretty much all of them ended with people dying—maybe ending up horribly mutilated if they were lucky. But Elisa’s breakthrough hadn’t been extreme enough to hurt anyone, had it? No, she would have told me if it had… I hoped.

  My own breakthrough had been incredibly mundane: I stopped being able to shave. Another drawback of invulnerability is that your skin isn’t the only thing affected. I’d looked like a homeless person by the time my parents could afford the special razor needed for super-strong hair. But all in all, it was a gentle way to come into my powers. Super-strength could be a dangerous breakthrough, especially if you were a kid who played any sort of sports. When you didn’t know your own strength, you could literally kill someone.

  And telepathy could be even worse. Some people never learn how to block out all the voices; it’s what drives so many telepaths insane. Or else, they venture into someone’s head and never find their way out. You saw people on TV all the time complaining that genetics gave them a useless set of abilities. I knew a woman whose skin turned bright blue when she was startled, and a man who could digest plastic. At least they didn’t have to spend every day being careful not to kill the people around them.

  Then again, I wasn’t stuck with prehensile nose-hair as my superpower, so maybe it was a case of the grass always being greener.

  The real question was what ability Elisa had developed. She hadn’t said, and I’d been too panicked to remember to ask. Honestly, she was older than most girls were when they broke through, and Val and I had been starting to think she was normal. There was no way to tell beforehand. The field of genetics in regard to special abilities was one that billions of dollars went into, but no one really understood yet. Elisa could inherit Val’s, mine, or wind up with something completely different.

  I’d given Elisa the talk about super-strength years ago, so if she got my powers, hopefully she’d remember to move slowly and carefully until she learned how to touch things without breaking them. I didn’t know how likely that scenario was, since I’d gotten different abilities than my mother had, and she was the only one on my side of the family who had powers—at least that I knew of. Mom had left most of her family in Cuba and didn’t talk about them much, so I guess it was possible they could all bench press trains. If I had to guess, though, Elisa would probably end up with Val’s powers. Telepathy ran in the Belmonte family; all three of Val’s sisters had it, too. The possibility made me push the gas pedal even harder. I didn’t want Elisa stuck listening to the thoughts of a school full of teenage boys any longer than she had to.

  There were so many other abilities she could have gotten, and of course, I couldn’t help thinking of the most dangerous. If she’d gotten pyrokinesis, she could burn down the whole school unintentionally. She could be emitting radiation, or generating poison in her skin. What if her breakthrough wasn’t complete yet, and she ended up with the need to breathe water instead of air?

  And then there was Dr. Sweet. We’d never discovered the full extent of what he’d done to her. What if…?

  Calm down, I told myself. The problem was real enough without inventing imaginary scenarios to worry about, too. It couldn’t be that bad, or else she wouldn’t have been able to call.

  I wanted to be at her side this instant, but the entire bay was between me and her school, plus all the traffic. It was the festival’s fault. I was quickly going from mildly annoyed with the event to downright angry. A cold lump of dread formed in my stomach as the cars in front of me began to slow. Then my worst fea
rs were realized, and red brake lights flashed as they stopped completely.

  Perfect.

  I craned my neck to try and see how far the standstill extended, but there was no end in sight, just an endless line of cars ahead of and behind me and the waters of Biscayne Bay to either side. I snarled several words I would have scolded Elisa for using if they’d come out of her mouth. Hypocritical? Who, me?

  I wished Val were here. She would have taken over the minds of every driver in front of her and made them pull out of her way: illegal and highly immoral, but it would have gotten her to Elisa. My wife was guilty of many things, but being a bad mother wasn’t one of them. I’d give anything to trade places with her. She’d be concerned but calm, purposeful but not rushed—in other words, the exact opposite of the panicked wreck that I was.

  And Elisa was closer to her mother than to me. Val had raised her, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I told myself I’d forgiven Val for it, and mostly I had, though I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t brought it up in a few of our more heated arguments. There were just so many things I had missed: birthdays, bike rides, all the countless little daily lessons that had shaped Elisa as a person. I could never get those back.

  But I could be there for my daughter now. Assuming traffic ever let me.

  My turn came into sight, and twenty minutes later, I reached it. Once I was moving again, I could let go of my frustration and calm down. If Elisa had gotten telepathy, it would be a bad idea to approach her while panicking. She wouldn’t be able to shield herself, and my tension on top of her own would completely smash whatever control she was managing. Luckily, I was an expert at blocking my thoughts and emotions. If Mental had known it, he’d have never tried a psychic assault. My talent was one of the reasons the DSA had sent me after the Black Valentine so often; I was one of the few people who could (mostly) resist her telepathic coercions. And before you say how unfair it is that I’m super strong and immune to mind-control, you should know it’s not a superpower. Apparently, it’s just the way my brain’s wired. People complain that I’m a stubborn son of a gun, and I think that’s the key. I’m too pig-headed to change my ways, even if a voice in my head tells me to.