New Markets - 02 (63 page)

As Firebane, Lance and I left, she asked, “So … how is this going to work with three of us, and Spartan being so big?”

I smiled, hooked her around the waist and pulled her tight to me.  I stepped us into the air and moved up a few feet before holding my hand down and clasping Lance’s wrist while he wrapped his hand around mine.

Her reaction to moving up even a few feet reminded me to stop, focus on spreading calm and let my pheromones keep her in control.  I wondered if I shouldn’t just kiss people, it seemed to affect them faster….  Not to mention, the reaction would be much more humorous.

We flew to the building with Firebane’s clothing and I set down near her purse.  She grabbed her clothing, stopped and looked at Lance, who had already seen what she was reaching for and turned the other direction.  He studiously analyzed the cloud formations at the moment.

I chuckled and told her, “Go ahead and change, he’s a gentleman.”  She stared at his back for a moment and did so.

I walked over, wrapped my arms around Lance’s arm and leaned against him for a moment, glad to have my big knight around again.  For a moment I thought that he should have named himself something like a knight, it might have been more appropriate.

She walked back over, dressed for work again, I calmed her one more time, and flew us back to her office building.  I left Lance on that building’s rooftop as I dropped her off at the front door and said my goodbye for now.  We hugged and I flew back up to retrieve Lance.

I held him around the waist this time, and mentioned to him that I’d spoken with Anne about last night already.  He was quite relieved that she knew.

Chapter 36 – Home

Rael’s Perspective

I stopped at the hospital and hunted down the room with Daphne in it, woke her, and drove her home on my cycle.  She very quickly recouped her excitement at being able to fly.

When I dropped her off I promised that I’d bring her and Psystar together to talk about flight to see if it would help her learn.  In the meantime I wished her luck – she gave me a crushing hug.  Even with the painful hug I hoped I’d get to see the bikini-clad lady again soon.  Once I recovered I hopped on the cycle, waved and drove home.

I called Agent Willman on the drive.

He answered, “Hello, Black Tiger.”

“Hi.  So you’re going to tell the hospital to let people go home now?”

“We still don’t have whoever is behind this, you know.”

“But we got the merc team.”

“You’ve taken down two mercenary teams, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a third.”

“Damnit.  So what now?”

“I’ll call my team and find out where they are at.  I’ll notify you when we have a next step.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to you later then.”

“Good bye.”  He hung up.

Steph’s got some hacker buddies, she’s the one that brought the website to the Feds.  We’ll have to contact them.

I arrived back at home to find Lance working at cleaning up the darts left by the attack on our house.  Stephanie was asleep on the couch.  Lance was in workout clothes, although they were somewhat tight on him.

“Dude, you need to hit the store for some clothes.”

“Hmm, good idea, I could do that this afternoon.  I only had time to pick up some shoes the other day at Big & Strong.”

“I’ll get those darts if you want to go do that.”

“No, I don’t want you to get scraped by a dart and fall over.”

“That stuff doesn’t affect me anymore.  I think they’ve shot me with them a few too many times.”

He looked back at me with an eyebrow raised.

“Like she said, busy few days.”

“Hmph, sounds like I missed a lot.”

“Hey, here’s an idea, how about you call Anne up and have her come over tonight?”

“I don’t have her number, Stephanie was supposed to pick her up at six p.m.”

“Ah, damn.”

“Okay, fine, go get some new clothes then, I’ll take care of this, and see if I can think of someone that might know how to contact her.  I’ve been dealing with the feds a lot, lately.”

“Will do.  Thanks, Rael.”

I nodded.  He ran off and I worked fast to get the house cleaned up.

Stephanie woke up after an hour or so and asked where Lance was, I told her Big & Strong.

I asked her, “Hey, you were supposed to pick up Anne, right?  Can you swing by her place tonight and see if she’s home?  Maybe we can do the date night tonight.”

“Why don’t I just call her?”

"How are you going to get her number?"

"She called me last night and left a voicemail."

"How'd she get your number?"

"She called it through H.E.R.O. HQ - she
is
a police officer."

"Oh.  Okay.  Fine, you call her then."

She laughed at me, "I'll call her."  She stuck her tongue out at me then.

In a few minutes she'd spoken with Anne and agreed to pick her up at six p.m.  We decided to order pizza and rent a movie online.  I threw my costume in the wash along with other clothes and continued removing the last traces of the attack on our house.  I had to make a run to a hardware store to replace the damaged windows.

All in all the house was in good order by the time Stephanie left at four to go home, change and shower.

Chapter 37 - Broken Leads

Stephanie's Viewpoint

I left for home to do laundry, clean up the place a bit, and take a long needed shower.  Between the dirty warehouse floor and blood stains I felt happy to clean my body off.

I called Jim to find out what he had found out on the website - he said that it was strange, but the site was shut down, and apart from - per Jim - the DNS entries stated, they pointed to some address on the internet that no longer existed or responded to messages.  He said they were continuing to look into it, but at this point it would be challenging to trace back to the persons updating the site.

I asked, "So it's apparent that someone is still out there or they wouldn't know to shut it down, right?"

"Right."

"Thanks, Jim.  I'll see you at lunch tomorrow then.  By the way, we succeeded in getting everyone back."

"That's awesome.  Promise to tell me about it, okay?"

"I'll give you the highlights at least."

"Cool."

"Talk to you tomorrow then."  I hung up.

I called Agent Willman next.

He answered quickly, "Hello, Psystar."

"Hello, Agent Willman.  I just spoke with my computer friends, they said that the website has been shut down, and that they doubt they can get any more information on it.  How about your people?"

"We've seen the same things.  My people also found a few small wireless cameras at the warehouse.  We're trying to use that to track a signal, perhaps we'll be able to hunt something down, but these people seem intelligent, I doubt we'll get any useful leads."

“Okay, give me a call if you need someone's mind read about it.  Well, and if you have them in custody....”

Agent Willman dryly laughed, "I'll try to remember that.  Have a good night, Psystar."

Knowing that I couldn't do any more on the case, I threw my costume in the wash and took the shower.  I dressed in some sweat shorts and a t-shirt and left to pick up Anne.

I took my time flying her back to the boys' house to let her enjoy the flight, and we spent a relaxing evening on their couches.

Chapter 38 - Final Moments

Stephanie's Viewpoint

Before school I called H.E.R.O. HQ to find out where they had brought Chrome and Sunspot.  I felt refreshed enough to try to free one of them, and was able to free Chrome by working on her memory door much as I had Lance's.  Apparently they decided to keep them at H.E.R.O. headquarters until I got to them.

By destroying the new memories, I apparently left her with her last memory being of arriving home after her initial release from the hospital before the hit squad captured her with canisters of knockout gas.  I noticed the memory of her change near that.  That event was interesting - she apparently went through even more pain than Lance had due to the change in skin type.

School went speedily in the morning, with Megan and I working our scheme of sharing her visuals for each class.  Other students wanted to question me as well, but word had spread through the grapevine about my responses to Lee yesterday, so the most inquisitive of them had obtained some information from him.

Jim and Mike had no new word by lunchtime from any of their 'friends' around the world.  For now I assumed that would remain a mystery for some time.  At least now whoever was behind it knew that H.E.RO. would triumph over time, and hopefully at great cost.  They also lost their telepath, and her power of making supers usable was an important loss to any future attempt at slavery.  I did receive a call from Rael’s new friend Daphne asking me to teach her to fly, but that’s a story for another time….

Rael was fired from his job for not coming in for too many days.  He had shrugged and wasn't overly upset, especially with additional income coming in from H.E.R.O. during the week.

Mia began the expansion of the gym for a supers-capable weight room.  Lance helped her during the day with the demolition of the blacktop in the area the building would expand into.

Not even a week had passed since becoming supers, and the trio of Lance, Rael and I found that being H.E.R.O. agents in Metrocity was more complex than it had appeared as a fan.

For one day, life was relatively calm in the region of Metrocity.

****

THE END

Following are the first 5 Chapters from

H.E.R.O. – Rise and Fall

****

If you enjoyed this novel, please look into the other novels in the H.E.R.O. series at the author's website:  http://www.kevinrau.com

The H.E.R.O. series includes:

H.E.R.O. – Metamorphosis (1)
http://www.amzn.com/B005GM3PV8

H.E.R.O. - New Markets (2)
http://www.amzn.com/B005NBLWW6

H.E.R.O. - Rise and Fall (3)
http://www.amzn.com/B005QNS4ZY