In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition (36 page)

“And if catching twenty-eight makes twenty-nine think better of it?”

“There’s always
another
twenty-nine. Always.” I stared at him. “But that’s not your problem with me, is it? No, your problem is that
in absentia
you built me into something I never was.”

“You saved my mother.”

“I know, and without that you might not have been born. I get that, but look at who I was. I had an independent career for three years. I had three more years with C4, mostly holding capes, directing traffic and keeping the odd civilian out of the line of fire. And then I went away.”

“But if you hadn’t…”

“Hypothetical. I could have had my career ended the next week. Ever look at the statistics on heroes? Worse than the old NFL. Average career for a pro football player was three years. Average age of death, fifty-six years. That’s the toll the stress takes on the body. I guarantee you, any hero over fifty-six is a mutant, an alien, or got out early.

“But, look, because of what happened with your mother, because of your father, because I wasn’t around, you took scraps of legend and built me into something I never was. And you built yourself to be worthy of that legend. When I showed up again, it was a chance for me to validate everything you’d done, and the biggest validation would be the two of us going off to fight crime together. Don’t deny it. Been there. Know the feeling.”

“Well, maybe…”

“No maybe about it.” I clapped him on the shoulders. “The thing is, kid, I never asked to be a hero.”

“No, you never asked to be
my
hero.” He batted my hands off his shoulders. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’ll keep working on the Crusher. For Diana. The Chaser’s done. I’ll be moving my stuff out of your lair. I’ll find somewhere else to go, someone else to be.”

“Kid…”

“No, you’re right. I’m really not a kid anymore. There are adult responsibilities that need shouldering.” He turned from me. “About time I start taking care of those.”

I watched him walk away and felt my guts shrinking.

Selene came walking over, a uTiliPod in her hand. “Bad news. It’s your father.”

I groaned. “Sometimes I wish he would just die. What happened?”

She stroked my arm. “Your wish just came true.”

Chapter Thirty-three

I never got to see my father’s body. Consular officials from Santiago showed me video of a coffin being sealed and loaded onto a plane. A flag from the Republic of Santiago was draped over the coffin and the body was conducted into the belly of the plane by a military honor guard.

The official stopped the Murdoch replay. “Doctor Sinisterion will be buried with the honor befitting a diplomat of my nation. You, like the others, will be permitted at the memorial ceremony, if you so wish.”

“Others?”

The man, swarthy, small, with grey hair raked into a massive comb-over, shrugged. “Doctor Sinisterion had a number of enemies who wish to make sure he is dead. Many of the press wish to be there as well.”

“You don’t have to save space for me.”

Vicki and Selene looked at me as I said it. On the way from the church we had discussed whether or not I would let the Consulate know Sinisterion was my father. I’d opted against it. I couldn’t see any advantage to be gained from it–save perhaps some message being passed along, which was the last thing I wanted. In fact, all I saw was downside, with word getting out and a number of his enemies deciding to even the score by going after me.

The man gave us an envelope thick with documents addressed to Castigan. I refused it, but Vicki took it. I thanked the man and he bowed perfunctorily. He promised that Sinisterion would be on a postage stamp by the end of the year.

We returned to the limo and headed back to Selene’s place. Vicki began leafing through the documents. She read various bits and pieces aloud. It was a perfect public relations job–a post-mortem revision of his life. Somehow I imagined that the only regret he’d have had was not living long enough to pee on Nighthaunt’s grave.

I should have felt guilty about wishing my father dead, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel joy over it, either. Fact was, I felt absolutely nothing. It would have been easy to credit it to my father shaping me into a weapon to kill Puma, but it was more complex than that.

And more simple.

Vicki held up the coroner’s report. “Says here it was his heart.”

“He had no heart.”

She glared at me. “You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”

“I’m not.” I rubbed my forehead. “He literally had no heart. He had it replaced years ago. If they said it was his heart, it was poison. Probably a neurotoxin. He smothered to death.”

Vicki frowned. “But why would they falsify…?”

“Because they were paid to do it.” I pointed at the packet. “My father could have had a bus dropped on him and that same packet would have gone out. He couldn’t stand the idea that an enemy could have gotten the better of him. He probably has four or five plans in place, ready to nab whoever it was. As far as Santiago is concerned, having his death appear peaceful means more people like him will take up residence and pay lots to be protected.”

“How can you be so cold? He was your father.”

I bit back my first response, and then snarled so no tears would come. “You remember what you first called me?”

She blushed. “A sperm donor.”

“If Sinisterion ever showed a hint of positive human emotion, I don’t remember it. He’d go through the motions. Every year, on the anniversary of her death, we’d visit my mother’s grave. We’d place flowers. He’d encourage me to say a prayer. I never heard him say one. It was duty for him, not to honor someone he loved, but to pay homage to someone who had given him an heir.”

Selene squeezed my forearm. “There must have been one time…”

“No.” I shook my head, adamantly. Too adamantly. A dim recollection came to me. “Okay, maybe, once. I was very young. Three, maybe four. My mother was with us. We stood back away as my father knelt at a grave. It was my grandparents. They’d been murdered when my father was very young. And maybe he was weeping.”

It came back to me more through emotion than visuals. The fear. My father, crying. Fathers weren’t supposed to cry. You cried when you were scared. My father could never be scared. He was the bravest man in the world. But there he was, sobbing, hands covering his face.

“His parents were murdered?” Vicki shook her head. “But that’s just like…”

“Nick Haste, right. Could have been twin sons. Him born to privilege; my father to a working-class family with pretensions of middle class. He had a kindly butler to raise him; my father had an uncle with a criminal record that included breaking every law on the books. Nighthaunt ended
his
career, how’s that for irony?”

Vicki searched my face for something, then her eyes sparked. “Can’t you feel anything?”

“For my father? What should I feel? Gratitude for making me what I am today? Even before my mother died I was shipped off to boarding schools. Breaks while she was alive would involve my seeing them in a setting that was just too perfect. It was sterile and artificial–perfect for a child, but I might as well have been living in a doll-house. Then, after she died, all I got were ‘opportunities.’ I got to study with the world’s greatest experts in every deadly art known to man. Other people travel Europe to expand their lives. I traveled there to learn how to
contract
lives. Then he sent me out to kill someone. When I failed at that, he let people use me for twenty years as a weapon and bargaining chip against him. So, you tell me, what should I feel?”

Vicki’s expression had slackened with shock. Her lower lip quivered for a second.

I reached out and caught her wrist. “Vicki, I’m sorry. That’s not what you asked, is it? You asked if I could feel
anything
.”

She pulled her arm from my grasp. “And you answered.”

“I don’t think you heard my true answer.”

“You’ve made your feelings abundantly clear. You’re cold and unfeeling, just like him. And you justify being that way because he was. He was that way so he couldn’t ever get hurt. Fine. You don’t want to be hurt. Fine. I get it. Just don’t care about anyone, don’t feel anything and you’ll be fine.”

I buzzed the driver. “Pull over.”

Selene squeezed my arm again. “You don’t have to go.”

“Yeah, I should. I need to walk, to think.” I looked at our daughter. “Victoria has a point, a very good one. I never wanted to be my father, but it looks like the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree. The two of you deserve something better than rotten fruit.”

I slipped my arm from her hand, gave her a kiss on the cheek and got out of the limo. I set off along the street, not watching the limo go. Part of me wanted to flee back to the sanctuary it offered, but that would have destroyed me. Selene would have told me that my past didn’t matter but if I ignored it, it would keep punching its way back into my life.

And addressing it would likely get me killed.

My uTiliPod beeped. I pulled it out. E-mail from a law-firm with an attachment. Dr. Sinisterion had requested the attached file be sent to me upon the event of his death.

I’m not sure what I was hoping for when I opened it. It was a PDF. Five columns, nine rows of letters randomly arranged in blocks of five. A coded message, unintelligible and uncrackable unless you had the device to decipher it and the key.

I had the key. Trevor, the name he’d given me when he signed the book. His little joke. I had one of the devices too, locked away. Just like Nighthaunt’s bottle, the message would give up secrets I didn’t want, and entice me to do things that would destroy me.

I looked at my wrists, willing myself to see the invisible strings attached there. Somebody was jerking them. Several somebodies. My father I expected. Nighthaunt, in his way, was doing it, too. He and Sinisterion were like those cartoon angels and devils sitting my shoulder, each whispering advice.

And then there was Puma. He wasn’t going to pull strings. He was just there to remind me that I could be better than whatever was going on. I could rise above it, if I just had confidence. If I focused.

But I couldn’t focus. Others were pulling strings, but why? All the people who had come into the shop to sell me information, they were just dangling bait. And Becker, he was there taunting me, daring me to explode. Becker was too much of a coward to do that on his own.

And the protection racket, that was more provocation. They probably did the rest of my building, and even most of the block, but there were places they’d not have gone. I was meant to find those places, and to wonder why they’d been exempted. There would be clues there, clues I was meant to follow. But to what end, and for whose benefit?

I started making assumptions I didn’t want to be making. Someone saw me as a threat. Why? What had I done? Absent bashing some Zomboyz with a yo-yo and getting the crap beaten out of me in return, at best all I’d done was sell some memorabilia. I wasn’t any more of a threat than Nighthaunt had been. Less, in fact, because I wasn’t out looking for information.

But, what if…?
What if it wasn’t
me
they were afraid of
per se.
What if my danger was not being me, but being a Felix? What if they were afraid that Nighthaunt would pass information along to me that would let me interfere with their operation? Dealing with me, feeling me out preemptively, made a lot of sense.

That also meant my father’s murder wasn’t connected to me. Sinisterion had likely been out there doing exactly what Nighthaunt had been doing. Nighthaunt would have wanted to take the organization down. Sinisterion would have wanted to take it over. They were both threats, but of a different nature entirely. Both had to be killed, however.

This made a certain amount of sense, but also meant they had to know that Nighthaunt and I had spoken. They had to have bugged my apartment.
And if you find a bug in your apartment, you’ll know that Nighthaunt
was
on to something
–
something that killed him and your father, both. Something that was also responsible for Puma’s death.

But I didn’t care.

I kept telling myself that as I entered the CRAWL and traveled cross-town to my building. I cut through alleys and used the fire escape to ascend to my apartment. I unlocked a window and slipped in, laughing at my caution and yet pleased with it.

It was probably best that I didn’t have a sweeping device for finding the bug. It was a really good one with secondary circuitry that sensed sweepers and shut everything down. And they’d placed it near enough to a crosspiece between studs that I could have put any magnetic response down to nails.

But I found it. And its satellites. They’d collect sound and beam it all to the main unit. It would compact the data and then pulse it out over my upstairs neighbor’s wireless network. While he was downloading porn, the bugs would upload compressed sound files including my conversation with Nighthaunt.

I checked the cupboard. His bottle of Scotch was still there. I added water to the other bottle until it looked a couple tumblers shy of full and put it in the cupboard. I wrapped the other bottle in plastic and sank it in my toilet tank. I flushed to make sure it wasn’t going to hang anything up.