DCU - Dial "H" for Hero #3: Loose Ends

Vicki experiences, just for a few seconds, a sensation like dozens of comb tines biting at her face and through her clothes. Then she’s rolling down the slanted wall of a musty tunnel. The landing isn’t light, but the slope saves her from meeting the rocky bottom full-force. She coughs out some dust, scanning her surroundings until her eyes rest on the boy… propped against the tunnel on one shoulder blade like a tossed doll. His left boot is still lodged inside the earth.

 

“Hey. Hey, wake up!” She lugs herself on her elbows over to his location, and nudges his arm.

 

“GAAH! I’m awake!” he cries out through gritted teeth. “I’m… egh… not moving on account of there being a very real probability that I carried some of the ceiling out inside my arm.” They both study the appendage, already looking rather purple and swollen.

 

“You… You’re saying…”

 

“Yes, we’re in the mine. I threw us through the ground.”

 

“You’re saying I could’ve ended up with rocks inside me too!” Vicki finishes.

 

He grimaces. “I told you, those weren’t the cops coming, and they certainly weren’t there to save anyone. Leaving you up there wasn’t an option.”

 

Vicki lets out a confounded laugh. “Who says these people, whoever they are, aren’t going to check the obvious mine entrance next to the war zone you and those creeps left up there?”

 

“We’re in the collapsed section. You just need to wait it out…” The boy lays his head back, looking exceptionally drained.

 

“Nick?”

 

The voice came from the portion of the tunnel behind the pair. Vicki makes out ten or so men and women hesitantly approaching with flashlights. The man at the head of the troop stares intently at the boy… “Nick.”

 

Vicki is unnerved by his fixation. She snatches up a stone and readies it as a projectile.

 

“Back off!”

 

“No,” Nick hacks, trying to reach out to her ankle. “They’re friends. They’re friends.”

 

The first man and one of the women kneel by Nick and inspect the damage done.

 

“Ah hell, Nick, you really did it this time,” the woman says, nodding at his inflamed arm.

 

“That good?” Nick remarks.

 

“What were you thinking?” the man demands, while determining how to free Nick’s sole from the wall, “Roping a kid into this… This is becoming-“

 

“She wasn’t supposed to be here,” Nick responds, glaring Vicki’s way. But then his eyes soften. “I slipped up.”

 

Vicki cuts in. “I trailed him! And what’s this ‘roping a kid in’ business? HE’s a kid! What are you all doing, letting him get chased around by meta-humans that are out for blood?!”

 

“Miss? I’m sorry you’ve been involved in any way with this,” the man turns back to her sternly. “We need to get you back to your house. We’ll send-”

 

Nick panics at his words. “Don’t let her go back up there! You have to wait.“ His unrest causes his ankle to twist in its vice, and he clams up again.

 

“We cannot keep an innocent here Nick!” the man thunders. “Regardless of whether or not she was seen with you… regardless of what she can tell the authorities about us… we are not going to become abductors!”

 

“Hey!” Vicki quiets the argument and the rest of the company’s murmuring with her shout. “I’m not taking off until someone explains to me why there’s a bunch of people living underground on the outskirts of town, allowing a kid who can defy physics to play ‘chicken’ with supervillains!”

 

“No. This is as far in as you will get with this insanity. Now… we have our own camouflaged exit at the end of the mine. It’s the only way in and out of this section. Whoever was following you won’t know to search there,” the man makes a point of looking at Nick with his last words, trying to calm him, then motions for another woman in the group to escort Vicki out.

 

Vicki still has the stone tucked between her palm and waist. She raises it once again. The woman stops.

 

“So help me…” Vicki warns. “I’ll make sure cops DO show up if you don’t give me a good reason why you have to keep all this a secret.”

 

“Young lady, that is far easier to live with than becoming kidnappers,” the woman scolds. “It makes no difference if you want answers. Your family will be worried.”

 

Vicki gulps, betraying her faux stoicism for a moment, but her gaze doesn’t falter. She shifts on her heels. “I’m a latchkey kid.”

 

The woman continues attempting to reassure her, but Vicki tunes it out and looks back to Nick. The man is holding something out to him, partially wrapped in fabric. Red and mostly boxy, possibly with a cord of some sort. The man speaks in harsh whispers, but Vicki is able to pick out a couple of pieces.

 

“… -r powers aren’t worth these injuries. I don’t want to forc… change back!”

 

***

 

The soggy sketchpad thwacks onto the table.

 

Cathan blinks. “This doesn’t look like a corpse.”

 

The hulking man standing before him jabs a finger at it. “It’s how the kid has powers.”

 

Cathan tilts his head warily, and the man corrects himself. “HAD powers. He used it whenever he attacked, or ran…”

 

“Slippery, wasn’t he?” Cableman mumbles. “Sort of makes you appreciate how long I was out there, shadowing that son of a-“

 

Cathan holds up a hand to cut short the grievance when, from across the room, the glass woman, who had also been there to dispatch “Nick,” articulates. “He’s right. We have the pages. He can’t be a threat any longer.”

 

With intricate hand gestures, she continues delicately mending the fractured bit of her back, inflicted by Vicki. Cathan reins in his frustration at the sight. He picks up the drawings.

 

“A pen made these, Brent. Where’s the pen? Do we know it’s not the pen, Brent?”

 

Brent rolls his shoulders. “I don’t. I don’t know.”

 

“That’s right, we… we don’t know.” Cathan breathes. A few feet behind him, another lieutenant dressed in the same red as their ringleader fidgets, anticipating an order with all but express fervor. Brent looks down.

 

“No no… don’t take this so personally.” Cathan rises. “I’m sympathetic. You and Kalei… I understand that… when you came to me, you needed me. Dearly.”

 

Brent tenses at Cathan’s hand landing on the armor shaped around his neck.

 

“I only expect each of you to do your best, as your… entry fee. And no one’s best is perfect. It’s only that I find it…”

 

His other hand releases the clasp on Brent’s mask, and lifts it off its wearer.

 

“… difficult, to put into words, how disappointing it is to hear that the wrench in our operation is just… unseen. Not removed.”

 

Cathan’s hand doesn’t move. But it’s close enough. Most assuredly, close enough.

 

The volume of Brent’s acknowledgement is subterranean. “I understand that.”

 

“Well then. Please also understand my clemency isn’t so limited. I do want to help you both. We’re mates.”

 

Cathan pats the shoulder pad heartily and actually grins. “You mean what you say, Brent. I can tell. You’re that type of man.”

 

Brent gives a meek nod and steps back. Cathan’s bodyguard pipes up.

 

“Even if we risk it with one depowered hero who knows we’re here, how do we know he hasn’t got a bunch of friends too?” the crimson-clad man theorizes.

 

“Heroes don’t have to hide like us, Ed. They would’ve shown up all together, long ago, in a big, obnoxious performance. It’s just their way. … No. He’s alone. Fairfax, as it were, is alone.”

 

“There was a third kid.”

 

Everyone turns to the woman. “There was the boy. The girl with him, she was obviously in the dark, obviously not a meta. But the other girl we saw them both with, in the park. She’s an unknown.”

 

“A third…” Cathan utters with boiling irritation. “Kaleidoscope… would you be so kind as to tell Ed where he can find said lass? I’ll have some questions for her in the morning. Ed… you can take Mr. Schneider along on this one.”

 

At his mention, the youngest man present sits up from a pile of planks, eagerly adjusting his gloves. “Consider her caught.”

 

“With discretion, lads,” Cathan stipulates.

 

Before Kaleidoscope crosses the room to relay her information, Brent bumps her arm, facing the other way.

 

“You didn’t need to tell him about the thi-“

 

“How many lies and letdowns, Brent? Before we see the real Cathan?” Her eyes are intense. “I’m looking out for you for a change.”

 

She proceeds to the other thugs.

 

“Welcome aboard, ‘Chain Master’,” Cableman hisses after Brent, wordlessly retreating to another room. He shakes his head at his own teasing, and tinkers with the ham radio in his hand. “That was a close one. Captain was a hair away from finding out your dirty little sec-“

 

Kaleidoscope moves in front of Cableman. She places a fingertip on the radio, and its soft chatter turns into shrieks of agony. She keeps them low enough so as to not alert Cathan and the others, who were now hatching a plan to corner the final child.

 

The appearance of the appliance itself, to Cableman, is now that of a human heart, leaking gobs of its contents. He sneers at her. “Subtle.”

 

“Loose lips sink ships,” Kaleidoscope advises him. The light her body gives off flares of an odious yellow-green.

 

“I’m not going to squeal to Cathan, toots. But you can count on me being there, when it all hits the fan. Hell, I’ll bring popcorn.”

 

She withdraws, and the radio is a radio once again.

 

“Nah, for what it’s worth, Cathan was pretty hard on you two. I mean, just as the price of admission, he expected you to axe a kid? ’s’not like he’s had to do that himself.”

 

Cableman then mockingly gasps at his words, holding his chin. “… has he?”

 

He waggles his eyebrows at Kaleidoscope, who simply recedes to find Brent.

 

***

 

Either his head was throbbing, or the whole room was. Bryan Smith makes an effort to bend his neck, but it may as well have been fused metal. It’s only after a minute of fruitlessly rearing against his inexplicable paralysis that he is certain he’s on his back, within some sort of shallow crib. The light fixture overhead constantly buzzes, lulling him back into to a state of placidity, as much as his conscience was opposed to the idea. There was also the matter of the woman.

 

Bryan had never seen pupils so big; dilated, to the point that the iris’ pigment was lost to the black void. She would systematically take the reading of some instrument at the head of his cot and record it in some notes that were set between them on his sheets. Then she would return focus to him. There was nothing to extract from her expression, but she did speak from time to time; Bryan was sure of that, just not precisely what about. It was probably all perfectly procedural.

 

“-ster Smith, you’ve been here for a week. Your condition appears stable but may be subject to further drastic developments.”

 

“‘Here’ is… where?”

 

Bryan realizes this must not have been his first time asking the question, when she fleetingly hangs her head, accompanied by a wearied sigh.

 

“You’re inside Trojan Labs. You’re being treated here due to the irregular nature-“

 

“My arms feel heavy. ‘nd I have a headache.”

 

“… You’re being administered several relaxants, it should subside.”

 

“Is it… like a really bad headache?”

 

“Mister Smith, this is very important, I need to ask that you really concentrate and let us know…”

 

She inches closer. “You don’t remember how you got here, do you?”

 

Bryan had never seen eyes like that. “No… do I work here?”

 

She smirks. “We’ll know more in the morning.”

 

That was a relief to Bryan.

 

***

 

“Stop… guys I need to stop.”

 

Roger skids to a halt and reaches back for Glinda, bracing herself on bent legs. They both shiver in the early morning air of Fairfax, having just now reached the edge of town after a dead sprint away from their harrowing brush with mortality. Roger noticed he was holding his breath and choked for air. The ground didn’t feel like ground beneath him; more like a paddle board out on choppy surf.

 

Glinda watches Chris, caked with soil and leaves, still jolting towards the neon-lit street just a block away. “Roger I… I don’t think he heard.”

 

Roger catches up to Chris, grasping his old friend’s shoulders. “We made it out, man. There’s nothing behind us. Ease up.”

 

The boy remains in a daze. “… ‘kay.”

 

Glinda watches them trudge back to her spot on the sparkling pavement. She rests her chin on her knees.

 

“I’m sorry,” Roger warbles. “Dumb idea.”

 

“You saved us. Until that second… thing showed up,” Glinda reminds him.

 

“IT saved us,” Chris muses. “We seriously could’ve been…”

 

Roger disregards them. “I almost got us all axed because I wanted to have fun. It’s not okay. I’m still pretending like Fairfax hasn’t changed, like it’s still my playground… God, I’m never going to grow up.”

 

“It’s alright Roger, everything turned out fine. If you need to let it out-“ Glinda begins.

 

“I’m not going to cry in front of a girl. I don’t cry.”

 

Glinda now presses her mouth to her knees, stunned.

 

Chris eventually breaks the silence. “My parents are gonna know. That we weren’t just at your house.”

 

“No, it’ll still work. We can clean ourselves up at my place if we’re quiet,” Roger asserts.

 

“I mean, they’ll know because of me. They’ll just see I’m lying.”

 

“If they get it out of you, tell them it was me. All me. It’s not a lie.”

 

“I agreed to go. I’m not going to rat you out.”

 

“It’s not ratting me out if I’m telling you, don’t dig the hole deeper. I shouldn’t have done this.”

 

“What if Vicki was still on her way?” Glinda abruptly comprehends. “Oh, what if she goes back there and those monsters are still waiting…”

 

Roger waves a hand out from his side. “She would’ve come the same way we ran back, and we didn’t meet up. She just didn’t show. I mean geez, it’s November now. You really think she’d still be-“

 

“Okay!” Glinda yells, more hurt than the boys were aware of. The outburst rings down the length of the street, and then is devoured by the night. The lampposts and shops stand by respectfully in the quiet as the band of children further digests all they had witnessed.

 

“Like I said,” Roger reiterates, “this is on me. Don’t… make me out to be some hero. Now c’mon.”

 

***

 

Vicki steps forward, still tuning out the adults hoping to convince her to leave the mine. Nick looks barely conscious, enduring the painful position that his allies have failed to free him from. The leading man hides the red device away from her, but she’s already pointed it out.

 

“So you get power from that thing?” she tries to bring Nick out of his listlessness.

 

“You’ve seen quite enough, kid. Please, just…” the man grumbles, more tired than angry now.

 

“No! He saved me from the other metas out there,” Vicki protests, “and I want to know how he’s doing this. WHY he’s doing this. Why you LET him!”

 

“Because he’s as stubborn as you,” was the man’s response. He stands from crouching over Nick, moving to converse with the other cave-dwellers. “He still thinks he’s in this alone.”

 

As the man turns his back the kids fully, Vicki is startled by Nick’s hand clamping around her wrist. He has the same petrified look he did back in town, when he had run into her and…

 

“The others,” Nick says haggardly, “don’t need to know… your friend in the park…”

 

“Frannie,” Vicki whispers.

 

“The metas saw us. All three of us. If they aren’t one hundred percent-certain that I’m dead… she’s going to be their only lead on who I am.”

 

“But she doesn’t kno-!”

 

“THEY don’t know that,” Nick growls, matching Vicki’s lower tone with great difficulty. He thrusts the wrapped object through the dirt, nearer to Vicki and out of the adults’ line of sight. “You have to take this. It can help you rescue her… if it comes to that.”

 

“What do you… I’m not cut out for this! Can’t you just-“

 

Nicks body heaves, still beating back the torture of his trapped limbs. “To use it now, would mean that I… I … can’t be the hero this time. Believe me, if I could help her…”

 

“Please… get one of them to do it,” Vicki shudders. “I don’t know what’s happening anymore, I can’t do this.”

 

“I’M the only reason THEY haven’t destroyed it,” Nick insists, still trying to get her to accept the mysterious item. “You’re the only one who knows… who can… TAKE. It.”

 

Vicki conceals the device behind her unbuttoned jacket, as smoothly as she can, in spite of the involuntary tremors running through her muscles. She realizes now, holding it, that it’s a rotary phone; lighter than expected, even more red than it had seemed at a distance. “What… what do I even do??”

 

“Run with it. If you find your friend in time, just hide her, somewhere they won’t know to look for her. Don’t use it. Don’t return it here. Lock it away, I don’t care. But if they’re already there…”

 

Nick pokes the object weakly.

 

“Dial ‘H’.”

 

They exchange a strangely knowing look. Then, while Vicki eases away, Nick begins deliberately convulsing, drawing the entire assemblage out of their troubled bickering. The leader calls for more hands to dig the boy out, and Vicki, forgotten in the rabble, slips past them. She pushes through a fern at the tunnel’s end, once again tasting fresh air. There’s just a hint of a new dawn bleeding through the trees around her.

 

Nick’s friends would notice she was missing in no time at all. She allows herself only a few seconds to compose her nerves and consult her internal compass, before racing uphill; back to where, she hopes, Frannie will be blissfully unaware of the imminent danger, and with any luck, that Vicki could keep her from all of this. More than that, Vicki hopes she’ll wake up. That it would be November 1st; properly, this time. A school day. And that there really were no monsters in Fairfax.

Done