Read Online Hero Engine by Alexander Nader - Free Book Online

keeps itself shut. It’s a smart mouth like that.
    “First call came in was a bank robbery. Robbers locked themselves inside a main branch. They had hostages and fired shots at police outside. The situation seemed like a perfect way to break in a new superhero or die trying. No one except the highest SHI officials knew about me at this point. I think they planned to sweep me under the rug if I failed.
    “They kept the operation so secret, they didn’t even use Miles to traverse us to the bank. They sent us out by plane. The robbers seemed content to sit in their stalemate and SHI doesn’t care much about a few lives. The whole ‘few for the many’ policy is SHI’s unwritten rule.
    “Meltin and I get to the bank, all right? We meet with the head of the police, tell him we are going in.”
    “Excuse me. I’ve got one half-and-half pizza.” The cashier girl sets the pizza on a stand, pepperoni side facing me, spinach facing Ann. She sets out two plates and tells us to enjoy our meal.
    Ann flashes a weak smile and watches the pizza. I take a slice for myself and set it on my plate to cool. “What happened next?”
    Ann’s eyes shine. No tears, no quivering lip. Just a pair of gleaming greenish globes, reflecting the cheap light hanging over our table. “Meltin tells me to stay behind him. He says, ‘Just because you might have super powers, it don’t mean you’re invulnerable to bullets.’ I walked behind him, willing my body to prove any sort of super power. As we got close to the bank, maybe twenty feet out, the robbers took notice.
    “Two men pointed rifles at us out the shattered front doors. They had bandanas tied around their faces and black leather gloves on. Both their arms were covered in tattoos. Swastikas and skulls and naked women. I could draw those tattoos from memory.” Ann swallows. She takes a slice of pizza and sets it on her plate. Steam rises off the melted cheese. The sweet, earthy scent of spinach drifts in the air around us.
    “The men, they yelled at us to sod off or whatever. Meltin told them we were heroes. He told them their guns were useless against him. He kept walking forward. I stayed in his shadow like a frightened little girl. Finally, ten feet out from the front door, one of the men opened fire. Meltin took a stance like he was about to harden to a shield. I ducked behind him thinking he would stop the bullets just like he always did…” Her voice trails off and her eyes drop to the rapidly chilling piece of pizza.
    “Only, he didn’t stop the bullets, did he?”
    “No.” Her voice is a whisper. “I ended up dragging his body behind the police barricades. Paramedics were waiting, but it was too late, there was nothing to do for him.” Ann picks a spinach leaf off her slice of pizza and drops it on the side of her plate. “And that is how I found out my only super power is nullifying other heroes’ powers.”
    I don’t have any words of comfort. What do you say to a story like that?
    Ann grabs a slice from my side of the pizza. “And so, the Initiative deemed me a danger to heroes. I was forbidden from telling anyone I had been through the Engine. They gave me a desk job where heroes rarely visited and left me there until,” she checks her watch, “seven hours ago.”
    “Oh,” is all I can manage.
    We eat the rest of our pizza in silence, splitting my half of the pizza and leaving the spinach side untouched. When she finishes, she wipes her mouth with a napkin and sets it on top of her cold slice of spinach pizza.
    “Well,” I say, “you ready to go shakedown another hero? Maybe we can use the phonebook to get information out of this one.”
     

Chapter 11
    BACK IN THE PLANE , we call Vince before the wheels leave the tarmac. Vince shows up on the screen after a few seconds. He’s wearing his mostly jovial expression, but bags are swelling under his eyes, and he doesn’t seem to be chewing his gum with the same pop as when we met earlier. This long-ass