Hero Engine

HERO ENGINE

A
LEXANDER
N
ADER

Booktrope Editions

Seattle, WA 2015

COPYRIGHT 2015 ALEXANDER NADER

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Cover Design by Greg Simanson

Edited by Christopher Nelson

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

PRINT ISBN: 978-1-62015-899-9

EPUB ISBN:
978-1-62015-930-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015909917

Holy hell, so many people to thank, such a shit memory to remember them all. Thanks, as always, goes to you, the reader. You make everything possible. A huge thanks to everyone who beta read this book and told me it didn’t suck. Jon Edward Paul, you told me if I ditched half the fucks it wouldn’t be half-bad. Sorry I let you down, buddy. Julie Reece told me I say ‘pull’ too much. You guys can thank her for the 376,332 ‘pulls’ I deleted from this novel. Laney McMann read this thing as I went along and encouraged me to keep writing. These guys and a hundred others are more than just authors I work with, they are friends and I appreciate their help.

My family. They kick ass, all of them. Pam has told me to keep writing more times than I can keep track of. She’s put up with a lot of pissy author behavior and a whole lot of coddling. She’s perfect and I wouldn’t be anywhere without her. Draven, Ava, and Xavier reminded me how much I fucking love comic books and wanted to write one. Somewhere in the middle of an intense debate about Spider-man and Batman is when I decided I wanted to write this novel.

To everyone, thank you.

For Pam, Draven, Ava, and Xavier.

You are my own personal heroes.

YOU KNOW HOW
old people say they can feel changes of the weather by their joints? Well, I may not be old, but the throb in my fucked-up hip warns me of a shit-storm on the horizon. I walk through the front doors of the station and immediately head for the locker room to get ready for patrol. Usually, I’m the type to wade around the lobby and chat with whomever I can find lounging about. Today feels different—one of those days where I just want to keep my head low, run my shift without shooting or stun-gunning anyone, and go home. Spend some alone time with my couch; the two of us are very close.

On my way past the conference room, a commotion steals my attention from the locker room door ahead. Half the damn force is gathered around a TV. Mr. Head-of-the-situation, Sergeant Lovell, is yelling at everyone to “Shut the fuck up,” while he maxes out the volume. The speakers pop and crackle.

The smart part of my brain tells me to keep walking. If the news is that important someone will fill me in about it later. The shithead part of my brain puts the brakes on my feet and leans my upper body into the room, close enough to see the TV and make out the reporter. Fucking asshole, that part of my brain is.

Before I can separate the reporter’s words over the din of the room, my eyes seize on the background. The city behind the reporter is leveled. Nothing but fucking rubble and rescue vehicles.

I raise my voice. “What the hell happened?”

“Shut the fuck up, Quig,” Lovell shoots back at me without taking his gaze off the screen.

My jaw clenches. My hands try to close into fists, but I stop them. It’s that damn shithead part of my brain, I swear. The whole thing is reactive.

Baker, the officer closest to me, leans back in his chair and in a hushed voice says, “It’s that hero chick, Gravitess. She lost her shit and just went
bih-zerk
on Seattle. She took out two other heroes who tried to stop her.”

Lovell turns to glare at us over his shoulder, but doesn’t bother saying anything.

I turn my attention back to the screen. Images flash by. Each one shows destruction like a bomb went off during an earthquake while LA was rioting over the Lakers losing in double overtime of game seven. In between pictures, the screen shows some shaky cell footage of the attack.

One particularly clear shot shows the Goddess of Gravity hovering over the city, arms stretched out in her Jesus Christ pose. She yells out, “Get away from me,” before ripping a telephone pole out of the ground and flinging it like a Lincoln Log that just gave her a splinter.

“Fucking cape bitch is nuts,” Lovell says, clearly assessing the situation. “The goddamn capes used to be as human as we are. A trip through the Engine and they think they’re gods among men or some bullshit.”

“Yeah,” Collins chimes in. “I’m telling you, they can tell us the capes are good, but it’s a scheme. There are no
super villains
lurking in hidden lairs. They should just leave policing to the police. We’re best off without them.”

“I’d like to see you call one of them a ‘cape’ to their face,” Ogle says to Collins and gives him a stiff punch to the shoulder.

Collins mumbles under his breath and turns back to the TV.

Another clip shows Gravitess raise an abandoned five-story building off the ground, turn it sideways, and drop it to the earth. The building explodes into a puff of dust and debris. She did all that without so much as much breaking a sweat, like a high school band director waving a baton at his orchestra during a practice session.

I lean back out the doorway and take a step toward the locker room.

Baker’s chair squeals as he rolls into the hall with me. “Hey, where are you going?”

“To get ready for my shift.”

Baker nods toward the TV. “With all that going on, you’re just going to get dressed and go out there like nothing’s happening?” He snorts a little laugh. “What are you, some kind of fucking nihilist?”

“Nihilist? Been using your word-a-day calendar again?”

“Fuck you. It means—”

“I know what it means. I’m no nihilist, but all that,” I nod toward the TV, “is happening in Seattle. We are in Atlanta. I can’t do a whole lot about that there, but I can do something about the crazies here.” I resume my path to the locker.

“What if this is some kind of conspiracy and all the
heroes
start going bonkers?”

“I’ll see how a Glock fares against Mr. Cool Ice.” I push open the door.

“His name is Icestro, you ignorant—”

As the door closes, I hobble my way to a row of lockers. My hip burns worse than usual today. Reconstructive surgeons did everything they could, but the pain is permanent; some days are just worse than others.

I open my locker and try not to think about the images on the screen. Bombs, mass shootings, terrorist attacks; tragedy has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the Super Hero Initiative in 1962.

I tuck in my shirt.

People have been telling me for years that it wouldn’t be much longer until the heroes put me out of business. All the talk of how one hero could take care of an entire police force, save the taxpayers millions.

I slip a stun gun into its proper holster.

Heroes have been the golden children of the world for a long time now, like that perfect house pet that only exists in your mind. Not the puppy that chews up your shoes and pisses on your favorite rug. No, the heroes have been that perfect dog from the commercials that brings you the paper and a beer out of your neighbor’s cooler. It sleeps by your feet at the campfire while you make out with a supermodel and then comes and warns you when the little Turner boy fell down a hill, or some shit like that.

I clip my gun onto my belt.

If that dog has gone rabid, the world could be in for some truly scary shit. Can I stop it? No. I’m just a cop: Cool James Quig. Can one single cop from Georgia stop the heroes of the world from uniting and taking this shit over? Fuck no, get real. He can, however, arrest some drunk asshole for hitting his girlfriend
until
the heroes take the world over.

I grab my keys and head for the door.

I TAKE THE BACK EXIT
from the building to avoid useless chatter about superheroes. Celebrity gossip never much interested me and the fear talk that will inevitably spread, even less so. I’m sure they’ve already digressed to how it’s some massive government cover up. Everyone ignoring the plain-and-simple fact that sometimes people just lose their shit and start killing. It happens to humans, so there is no reason it wouldn’t eventually happen to a hero.