Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (30 page)

The fifth card was a modern knight in shining armor -- high-tech armor complete with Tasers, rocket-boots and bulletproof glass for the faceplate. The armor was gun-metal gray, but a slick paint job of red, black and blue racing stripes gave him a sleek, powerful look. It was the Tin Man.

The last card was an attractive, long-haired blonde woman in a black leotard with yellow leggings and a red-and-yellow electric motif. Her most obvious power was super-speed, the card said, but in fact that was only a manifestation of her ability to speed up or slow down time itself. She had been known as Lightning.

Those five cards, along with the Lionheart and a more recent Hotshot, would comprise the old LightCorps. None of the others, alone, carried quite the level of reverence that Lionheart did. But together... making a stand...

“Can you get them?” I asked Hotshot.

“Christ, Josh, those guys retired...”

“Because they didn’t want to fight without Lionheart, I know. But this is different. We’re asking them to fight
for
Lionheart. For his legacy. You can’t tell me that none of them would be willing to fight for
that
.”

“Not
all
of them,” Hotshot said, staring at the pages. I saw his finger trace gently across the Lightning card. “Some people have suffered enough. I won’t call them
all
back. Not even for this.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Get whoever you can.”

“You’re right,” he said. “But I don’t have to like it. Be good, Tom,” he said. Then he climbed out on the window and then he was gone.

TOM’S SECRET

After I finally had a marginal understanding of the game rules, Tom proceeded to soundly defeat me three times (twice, I grudgingly noted, with alternate versions of Animan.)

“Another round?” he asked with a mildly annoying grin.

“I dunno,” I said. “There’s only so many times a man can get whipped before he decides to move on to a new game. You don’t have a cribbage set around, do you?”

“A who?”

“Never mind.” I picked up the deck I’d been playing with and began shuffling through the cards, examining the pictures, reading the body text and getting a pretty good laugh over some of the things I saw -- Spectrum’s flight speed, for instance.

I stopped shuffling when I came across a Miss Sinistah card. I gazed at it for a long moment before it spilled out of my fingers and on the floor. I sighed deeply.

“You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” Tom asked.

“A little, yeah,” I lied. I was actually worried a
lot
. “I just have this nasty feeling that Todd’s going to be after her.”

“You can relax,” Tom said. “She’s all right.”

“How do you know that?”

He smiled. “Can
you
keep a secret?”

“After today, you have to ask? Spill.”

“Well... every so often I get this...
feeling
. This sensation -- I can’t really explain it, but I always get this flash -- like I’m seeing through Annie’s eyes, and I know she’s in trouble. That’s how I
really
knew she was a Cape... or... Mask, I guess. I never really saw enough to tell which side she was on. But she’s always gotten out of it. She can take care of herself.”

Was
that
it? I’d sensed the first time I ever met Tom that he had a power -- was it this “danger sense” that linked him to his sister? “How often does this happen, Tom?”

“Not often -- maybe every couple of months.” That made sense. With Morrie’s positively anal concerns about safety, the chance of Annie ever having been in
real
danger often were pretty slim.

It wasn’t entirely clear -- it was like looking through a blue filter, but I could see a small apartment, meticulously decorated in a country motif. The color scheme, I’d be willing to bet, was either sunflower yellow or cream -- I couldn’t tell.

Over the kitchen counter was one of those charming painted menus that read “Tillie’s Diner. 1 -- Take it. 2 -- Leave it.” In the corner was a water cooler with a knitted cover and fruit magnets peppered the refrigerator.

The images all clicked into place just in time for me to see Dr. Noble shatter the water cooler with a teke burst. Water gushed out of the fabric, which collapsed in on itself, shards of plastic ripping through. Then Noble spun around and glared directly at me and, for a moment, I felt a jolt of fear, certain he could see me. This was ridiculous, of course, I was just seeing what Annie saw.

Which meant, I realized with a churn of my stomach, that look of homicidal rage on his face was meant for
her
. Despite myself, I began to mutter, “I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him if he hurts her, I swear to
God
...”

“Where is he, you little bitch?” he snarled. His voice resonated through my ears, but it sounded empty, hollow, like someone talking through a balloon.

“I don’t know, Todd!” she shouted, and my heart leapt. Not because she was angry or in danger, you understand, but because her voice did not crack or waver. She didn’t sound afraid, she just sounded
mad
, and I was proud.

“Get out of my aunt’s house!” she said. “How
dare
you barge in here and start
breaking
things?”

“Because I
know
you’re hiding that little prick and
I want him.
”

“She can
hear
me?” I squeaked.

“I didn’t hear nothin’” Noble grumbled.

“Sometimes she can,” Tom asked, “if I get really excited. I try not to do it, though. I don’t want her knowing I can do this yet.”

As we watched Noble continue to tear up Aunt Tillie’s apartment looking for me, I reached out and grabbed Tom’s shoulder. “There anything else about this you think you should be telling me, Tommy?”

“Well... sometimes, if I get
really
mad... I start to feel like I’m falling.”

“
Falling?
” I asked. “What happens
then
?”

“I don’t know... I’ve always pulled myself back.”

“I swear, Todd,” she was saying, “if you don’t get out of here
right now
, I’ll--”

“You’ll
what
?” he asked, charging right up to her face. His breath was a mixture of tobacco and cheap beer and I suddenly found myself wondering how many stereotypes it was possible to cram into a single being.

“What are you gonna do, Miss Sinistah?” he spat. “Gonna call your new boyfriend? Sic that little psycho on me? He already killed the Gunk, who knows what he’ll do to
you?
” Then the right side of his lip curled up into a nasty little sneer. “Then again, maybe you
like
whatever he’s doing to you.”

I saw a hand flash in front of me making solid contact with Todd’s cheek.

“I can’t believe I ever had feelings for someone who can’t even use my real name,” she spat.

“You
bitch
!” He raised his arm, clenched in a fist--

--and I was falling. Unlike Tom, though, I didn’t even
try
to stop myself. I fell and fell and then--

--I was there, my left arm holding back Noble’s right first, my right hand clamped around his incredibly thick neck.

“
You’re never hurting her again, do you hear me?”
I raged. He choked and sputtered in my grip and I noticed all at once that the hollow quality of his voice was gone and the world was no longer blue.

“
Josh
?” Annie shrieked. “Where did
you
come from?”

“Your place,” I said, driving a fist to Noble’s gut and hitting his neck with a combination of Annie’s strength and his own telekinesis. I smacked him across the face with my elbow and nailed him with a strategically-placed knee in the jaw as he fell to the floor.

“How did you
get
here?” Annie gasped. “It was like you just...
appeared
.”

My immediate reaction was to tell her, “There’s something you should know about Tom,” but my jaw clamped shut before the words could even form. I’d promised him I’d keep his secret, after all.

“Long story,” I said, but the point became moot a second later when I heard, echoing around in my skull, Tom’s voice.

“Josh, look out!” he shouted. My head felt a little it was exploding for just an instant and he snapped into existence. There was no pop, no flash of light -- it was like someone spliced two frames of a movie together, one without Tom and the next with him.

He lashed out as soon as he was there, kicking at Noble’s hand, which had been reaching for my leg while I was talking to Annie. I use Noble’s telekinesis to mash him against the wall, and Tom and I both gave Annie a sheepish grin.

“Tom? Josh,
what
is going on here?”

I raised an eyebrow at Tom in a “we’d better tell her,” look and he nodded. “The kid’s been watching you for a while now, whenever you were in trouble,” I said.

“Not just
her
,” Tom said. “When Noble was about to attack, just before I jumped over here, I could see through
your
eyes, too, Josh.”

I high-fived Tom as Noble growled. “I never
did
like that little freak,” he said. “Come on,
Annie
. What do you do now? Harbor this wanted criminal?”

“He didn’t do it,” Tom shouted. “Copycat is
innocent
!
You’re
the bad guy, he told me all about it!”

“What?” Annie cried.

“Thanks, pal.” I looked to Annie. “You know it, Tom. I know it. Noble
absolutely
knows it. Question is... does your
sister
believe it?”

“You believe he’s innocent, don’t you Annie?” Tom asked.

She furrowed her brow and her eyes darted between the three of us. “Tom... I...”

“Annie?” I whispered. “Annie you
know
me. You remember what I said to you in the arboretum that night? Do you really
think that guy could do the things they’re accusing me of?”

Her lips turned in and quivered.

But only for a moment.

“Of course I believe you, Tom,” she said. Then, turning to Noble, added, “Josh may not be perfect, but he’d
never
hurt an innocent man. If
you
weren’t so thick-skulled, you’d know that too.”

“He
does
know that,” I said. “He’s in on it.”

There was a sudden smash against the back of my head and the “Tilly’s Kitchen” sign showered my shoulders with splinters. It didn’t hurt, really, but it was enough to break my concentration and free Noble.

“Word of advice, punk,” Noble said, smacking my face. “Pinning a guy down isn’t good enough when he’s telekinetic.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said, giving him a roundhouse blow to the gut, which I quickly followed with a good old-fashioned ear boxing. Noble shrieked and fell back, then telekinetically hurled me at the ceiling, which split apart on impact. I found myself outside, crashing to the roof of an apartment building not that far from the one where Hotshot and I had pulled our fire rescues.

Noble, as expected, popped up through the hole a few seconds later. What he
didn’t
expect was for me to be waiting. I grabbed his cape and he executed an incredibly awkward arc, crashing face-first to the roof.

“Havin’ fun yet, Joshie?” he said, picking himself up.

“Oh,
loads
.”

“I’m glad. You’ll be short on it once you get a taste of the Soul Ray.”

“I’ll never feel it,” I said, driving a kick to his jaw. I came in for a follow-up, but he caught my foot and spun me through the air, away from the building. I slammed into a smokestack one building over just in time to see Annie scrambling to the other roof, shouting at Tom (with absolutely no success) not to follow her.

Noble leapt across the chasm between buildings, aiming his fist at my head. I darted out of the way just in time to see him smash into the steel smokestack, which buckled with the impact. I hurled myself into the air, trying to get the battle as far away from Annie and Josh as possible. I lost track of how far I’d gone or even where the hell I was until Noble caught my cape and yanked down. I sputtered in the air and smashed face-first into a roof that was more ash and soot than any building material. It was the apartment Hotshot and I had helped evacuate. It seemed very long ago. At least no one would be hurt here.

“
Bas
tard,” he growled. He piledrove his knee into my back and I’m pretty sure I heard something crack. I
know
I
felt
something crack.

He yanked my head back and began smashing my face into the roof, mixing my blood with ash, shouting all the while. “Think you can get away?”
Smash!
“You’re
nothing
!”
Smash!
“Just a measly little worm.”
Smash!

He was then politely suggesting an anatomical atrocity he would like me to perform when two now-familiar Rushes came over me. Heroes were approaching -- thank God.

“That is quite enough, Doctor,” said a high, proper voice. “
We
will see to it Copycat is taken into custody.”