In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition (9 page)

I watched. Hours on end, I watched.

BCN was the Battle Classics Network. Twenty-four hours a day of footage of hero and villain battles. The morning line-up included a series of “Greatest” battles, then shifted to “First Time” fights. A lot of those had an amateur video quality, showing young heroes who desperately tried to keep the fight in frame. Some had friends shooting the video, and a few intercut footage from nearby security cameras. After that came group battles, vendettas and a feature on up-and-coming heroes. They even had a two hour block that featured villains.

Superbio provided the stories of the world’s hottest heroes. Exploitative and dwelling on relationships and scandals, it had a compelling formula. They showed just enough for you to like the hero, then fear for him, feel for her and ultimately made them dreamy enough that fans could swoon.

But before they did that–every twelve minutes–viewers got the chance to buy official logo-wear and other items. The Graviton collector plates did look nice. Might have been the drugs, but I’d have bought.

Then there was the text-slither at the bottom of the screen. A hero’s name would come across followed by a string of numbers and letters. The teaser promised full details at FHC, which turned out to be the Fantasy Hero Channel

On FHC the numbers became clear, and that scared me. I was still a bit dreamy from painkillers so nothing should have made sense. What I’d see on the crawl was something like this:

1020105 Gravé C2 E0 R1 H7
      
KO3 $0 PD .2 Tot Pts: 4.6

That referenced his part in my rescue. Captures, Escapes, Rescues, Hits, Knock outs, Bounty ($) and Power Differential were the various categories. Gravé had been credited with capturing two Zomboyz, one rescue, seven hits, three knock outs, no money recovered and the power differential between him and the Zomboyz left him at .2, so he only got 20% of his amassed points. Rescues and escapes are worth ten points, which is why Vixen scored big in the bank deal. All totaled, Gravé earned 4.6 points for his part.

This brought back something Randy had said about Kid Coyote–about his being a good choice as a Superfriend. Superfriends were what folks called the heroes in their fantasy leagues. If a hero is active and does well, a Superfriends team benefits. Players who draft well earn money and prizes. I’d already seen Randy’s tip sheet, and FHC was full of adverts for others.

I actually had an entry: Old Dude with Yo-yo. The incident at the market rated me at C0 E0 R1 H4* KO4 $0 PD 1.25. I got 22.5 points for that battle. Of course, Old Dude with Yo-yo was unranked, and Superfriends were restricted to one of eight classes. And once someone connected Old Dude with the victim in Gravé’s fight, I’d be in negative points.

Villains, of course, got ranked on similar scales and, if adverts for merchandise were to be believed, had their own fan base.

As weird as the numbers were, the fighting itself is what made me feel as if I’d never return to action. It even had me thinking that wasn’t a bad thing. I watched for four days straight. Once I got past the old Crimson Skylark doing color commentary, I saw why Selene made me watch.

In battle after battle heroes and villains unleashed incredible displays of power. Windows exploded. Furnishings were reduced to splinters. Buildings took incredible amounts of damage–sometimes coming down completely. Vehicles got crushed, citizens had to be rescued, fortunes vanished from banks and crime sprees built until one or more heroes came together to stop the villains.

That’s what happened with Twisterian and the Twisters. The bank had been the fourth in a series of capers, which made Twisterian a hot commodity. His Superfriends ranking was flying high, and since Power Differential was calculated based, in part, on class and rating, knocking him off would really do wonders for a hero. Likewise, even being defeated by a higher ranked hero could work for a villain because the PD would be boosted in his favor.

Twistron the Twisterian had uploaded his plan of attack to an auction site. The Green Avenger–the guy who had put him down in the street–had won the bid, then turned around and sub-jobbed out fighting the henchmen. Vixen had won the bid for interior rights. Kid Coyote and Blue Ninja combined to get the street rights. Everyone knew the place and time of the caper. The camera crews for BCN and the news networks showed up, so that fight got covered from every angle possible.

While heroes and villains pumped out a lot of power, damage got restricted to property and soft tissue. Tasers and sonic shotguns–what they called the blunderbusses–weren’t designed to kill. Vixen’s pistol shot mercy bullets that knocked her enemies out. In fact, the asterisk on Old Dude’s Hits indicated that he’d broken bones which, were I ranked, would have cost me points.

In the new world, everyone played nice. On purpose.

Pretty much the only reason the Zomboyz hadn’t killed me was because they’d always restrained themselves. They didn’t know lethal techniques. They didn’t have any desire to kill. It didn’t make sense in their world. If Old Dude came back, a vendetta would develop, and
that
would be great for points production and publicity.

Regardless of their self-imposed limitations, the heroes were bigger and faster than I’d ever been. And almost everyone had powers, even the guys down in the Ultralight class. Kid Coyote and Blue Ninja came as close as there was to what Nighthaunt, Redhawk and I had been: guys with tricks and a scary schtick. Even they were preternaturally quick. It could have been training or better food or just youth.

It really didn’t matter. Either one of them could have generated the damage it took a dozen Zomboyz to do, and without breaking a sweat.

Grant hadn’t been completely correct. It wasn’t that heroing was a young man’s game, it was that today’s heroes were a different species. I’d felt all big and bad in kicking Zomboy tail, but they weren’t anything more than I was. Heck, they didn’t even have yo-yos.

And that was another weird part of how things had changed. Gangs like the Twisters and Zomboyz were farm teams for the villains. You take a street kid who’s got a knack for petty theft, jump him into a gang, train him up and see if there’s anything there. Villains use the gangs for support, trade members back and forth, and recruit sidekicks. If a villain produced enough other villains, he could retire on his cut of their revenues. One estimate suggested The Napalm Nihilist cleared a billion a year in legacy cash.

Heroes came out other ways–prep schools mostly. A kid shows promise, someone sponsors him for a school and a sidekick is born. Or, in the case of Gravé and Andromeda, their parents introduce them and their careers take off fast. Near as I could tell, Kid Coyote was strictly homegrown–blue-collar kind of hero with a small but dedicated following.

We’d always called heroing “the game.” Commentators still used the term, but now they meant it in an entirely different way.

And I was on the sidelines.

Selene didn’t talk to me much while I was watching. That’s mostly because I pretended to be asleep when she came in. When we did talk, we kept it light. Only once did I make the mistake of expressing pride in Vixen’s ratings. Selene went cold, so I left things there.

Finally, on that fourth evening, she shut the Murdoch off. “Seen enough?”

I nodded. “Lots of changes.”

“Everything has changed.” She sat on the bed once more. “Tell me what you saw.”

“I saw a lot of big angry people bashing the hell out of each other, denting huge chunks of real estate in the process. People bet on the fights. When I went to the bank after the robbery, the manager’s executive assistant had tons of flowers on her desk. They were all from admirers who’d seen her on the Murdoch, right?”

Selene nodded. “Back up a point. All that damage. Think. How much of it have you seen in your wanderings?”

“Not much.”

“Want to guess why not?”

My shoulders slumped. “There’s a fortune being made in reconstruction.”

“Nailed it. Take your bank. The employees got double-time and a half for the robbery. The windows got replaced before the end of business and cost a fortune–and several companies bid on it with windows already painted up because they knew the battle was happening. Insurance companies pay out for all the damage.”

“And consumers get soaked.”

“But they don’t mind because the broadcast revenues get pumped into the Superfriend pools, so everyone wins a little. Everyone is invested, so no one complains.” She ticked a point off on her fingers. “In all the shows, did you see any sociopaths or true psych jobs? Anyone like Belle Jeste?”

“No, but there should have been. Law of averages.”

“Your nuts and serial killers still exist, but the system picks them up fast and sends them far away. There’s a prison in Death Valley. They’re left there to rot or kill each other. No one cares. They just vanish.”

As I did.
“That’s not a pleasant thought.”

“But the people feel safe. They go out, they work, they come home and cheer for their Superfriends. A little extra shows up in their accounts, or they get their faces plastered over the Murdoch like your friend at the bank. It makes them happy.”

“Quite a little system you have going here.”

She nodded. “Self-replenishing, self-policing; it keeps things going. It’s stable. People like it that way.”

“I saw.” I half closed my eyes. “I saw something else, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I saw how to break it.”

Chapter Nine

“No! No, you cannot... I have not…” She stood quickly, her hands balling. Her face, half in shadow, reflected her struggle.

She forced her hands open. “No, okay, I’m not going there. Not right now.”

“Go where?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re two for two for stupid remarks right now. This is not a trend you want to continue. Back to the point.” She snatched the sheets away. “You can ‘break it?’ Look at yourself.”

She was right. Breaking wind would probably kill me. I had more bruises than a leopard has spots, and big ones, too. The light patches weren’t flesh colored, just that jaundice yellow. And for every mark on my skin there was a deeper, throbbing ache.

“Do you know why you’re not dead?”

I looked up despite the fury in her eyes. “They were pulling their punches. They use tasers and air-guns and mercy bullets and sonic disruptors. They don’t know how to kill.”

“You know better.” She shook her head slowly. “That was a mob. Mobs don’t think. They don’t pull punches. The frenzy builds until someone gets broken. You were.”

“But I didn’t die.”

“You are very tough.” She stared down at me for a moment, then turned her face away. “Grant said…”

“Grant said too much.”

“Nice deflection.” Her ice blue eyes narrowed. “Luck. Pure
luck
kept you alive. You didn’t die because that storekeeper summoned Kid Coyote. You didn’t die because Grant had his son keep an eye on you. You were always lucky.”

“Haven’t been for a long time.”

“Twenty years?”

“Yeah.”

“But you did live, didn’t you? Tell me that wasn’t luck.”

I shivered and closed my eyes. “I can’t.”

Selene pulled the sheet up over me. I wondered if she’d cover me completely.
Like a stiff in the morgue.

Her voice became small, gentle. “Where did you go?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“I can’t.”

“Even after this, you don’t trust me?”

I looked at her standing there. “I trust you.”

“Only because you’ve got no alternative.”

“Not ‘only’.” I hauled myself up against the head of the bed. “I never needed anybody. I always operated on my own. If I was hurt I’d just crawl into a hole and heal. Slower now, I guess.”

She smiled a little, for a heartbeat, but her arms remained folded tight over her chest. “Sucks getting old.”

And then she waited for me to tell the truth.

I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Not all of it. Not yet.