Don't be a Hero (City Without Heroes, #1) Read online

  “Are you going to let me finish a sentence?”

  “Now I am,” Indira said. “Just don’t leave this roof.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I just want to talk.”

  “Talk? Just talk?”“

  Yes,” Indira said. “Just talk. I’m guessing you didn’t do that very often in your old city.”

  Indira watched Firecracker as she paced, not blinking. Firecracker didn’t take her eyes off of her either, trying to figure out what her game was. The roof was large enough to fight if she wanted, but why would she appear in her pajamas if she wanted a fight? Or was it just because she knew she could win?

  “No,” Firecracker said. “Usually when someone tries to put me in a trap I did something like this.”

  Electricity poured out of her hands towards Indira again. A metal rod appeared from the concrete of the roof, catching it and dispersing it down into the building. Firecracker felt that familiar sensation of being doused in water again.

  “Jane, I really just want to talk,” she said. “You’re new to Whitten. You don’t know how it’s done around here. If you’re out dressed like that, you clearly have no idea what you’ve gotten into.”

  “Why, am I ruining your plans? I don’t know what you’ve got against me, or how you managed to figure out who I am and where I live, but-”

  “Would you stop being a dumbass? Look.” Indira cupped her hands and an image of the small black beads that Jane had spent the afternoon pulling out of her house appeared in them . “You must have seen one of these by now. This is called a listener. They are everywhere.”

  “And you put them there.”

  Indira let out an irritated sigh. “No,” she said. “What makes you think a teenager has the resources to make these and put them all over the city? Why would I do that?”

  “They’re all over the city?”

  “What, did you think they were just for you?”

  Firecracker could feel her face get warm and focused on the image in Indira’s hands. “What do they do?”

  “They listen. There’s a bunch of key phrases that they listen for. Hero, villain, super, crime, power, ability, special, costume, terrorize, the list keeps going. It catches any of those words and it starts listening in on the conversation.”

  The listener in Indira’s hand blinked red, once every few seconds.

  “And if the conversation sounds like it might be between anyone with powers, it opens and gets video.”

  The listener bloomed open into a black flower, then flattened into a disc. In the center, a small piece of glass looked back at her.

  “Once they get you on camera, you don’t have a chance.”

  “A chance?” she asked. “A chance of what?”

  “God, how did you not get killed already?” Indira asked, the image disappearing when she threw her hands up in frustration. “Why do you think there are no heroes or villains in Whitten? If they find out you have powers here, you are killed. That’s it. End of story. The listeners have a laser that fires on command and a team gets called in to make sure the job is done. If you escape, they track you down. You will disappear and they’ll make it look like you just ran away. If you’re caught, you will die.”

  “Wait, so that’s the secret of Whitten? They have a super low crime rate and no heroes because they just kill anyone with superpowers?”

  Indira nodded.

  “That’s... that’s not right!”

  “No,” Indira agreed. “It’s not. But that’s the way it is here. Don’t worry, though. Just forget you have powers. Forget about being Firecracker for a few years. Finish high school and go to school anywhere but the city. Don’t use your powers at all if you can help it and you’ll survive fine.”

  “Aren’t you using your powers right now?”

  Indira crossed her arms and leaned back against the ledge. “I’m a lot more careful than you are.”

  “Careful? You call throwing fire being careful?”

  Indira rolled her eyes. “You haven’t figured this out yet, have you? Didn’t you notice that the fire wasn’t hot? Or that there’s no city beyond this rooftop? Jane, I’m in your head. You said one of the words and set off a couple of the listeners so I needed to get you away from them before you said anything to turn the cameras on. And now we’re talking in your head where the listeners can’t find us. Trust me, I know a lot more about this city than you do.”

  “And you know who I should be staying away from,” Firecracker said.

  “Kyle?” she asked, though she didn’t sound surprised. “Yes. He already got you talking about heroes. You two were setting off listeners all day. You aren’t safe around him.”

  Indira looked her over a moment before nodding to herself. “I think that’s everything. I’m going to put you back on the roof and you should go right home. Forget Firecracker and just be Jane while you’re stuck here and-”

  “Wait,” Firecracker said, an idea already brewing. “If you know so much, you must know who is doing all this. Killing everyone with powers. We should team up. I mean, you can do all this, make my powers stop and make me think all this is real. We could try and take these people down together.”

  Indira looked at her almost sadly. “Let me guess. Back home, you were a hero. You saved lives. Firecracker was known, but not that well and you dreamed that one day you’d be one of the big heroes. Maybe be in charge of protecting a whole city. But then something big happened. You got in over your head. And you won, but when you came home you were hurt. You told your parents you were just a bystander, but you’d been a bystander one too many times now and kept coming home hurt. Maybe you told them you were a hero. Maybe you didn’t. It didn’t matter because they decided that it was too dangerous for you there. It was time to move somewhere safe and without any of this heroes and villains nonsense. And then, before you knew it, you were in Whitten.”

  “You’re reading my mind.”

  Indira shook her head. “You and five others at our school alone. Same story. You’ll do better if you learn to lay low and get out of here as soon as you can.”

  “If you aren’t going to help me, why are you telling me any of this?”

  “Because the five people? There should have been twelve. Don’t bother trying to find them. Even if you do figure out who they are, none of them will help you either.”

  Indira vanished into a puff of black smoke that spread over the rooftop. Firecracker tried to run away from it, but it was too fast and it engulfed her.

  When it parted, she was lying on the rooftop without any tar holding her down, her thoughts a jumbled mess.

  JANE DIDN’T SLEEP THAT night, her mind racing and trying to piece together what had happened. By morning, she still didn’t know what she was going to do. She couldn’t just stop being Firecracker. Firecracker was too big a part of her. She couldn’t forget about being a hero, even for a little while. This whole situation was crazy.

  Should she even believe it? Indira hadn’t been particularly inviting before and there could be a thousand different explanations for the strange recording devices in her house. She didn’t know that they were actually all over the city. Indira might have just been trying to put her off her guard and distract her from what she was really up to. She had been getting friendly with Indira’s boyfriend, after all.

  But there was a chance that she was right. Whitten was a strange city. In a country filled with superheroes, it was the only major metropolitan area that had absolutely zero supervillain crime. All of her logic said that someone should have tried to move into this place by now, but what if they were really killing off anyone who could possibly be a villain, even if they were a hero?

  She was still thinking it over when she walked to school. Today was the first day in a long while that she didn’t wear her costume under her clothes and it felt strange. Until she was certain one way or the other, she would try to remain a civilian, though she kept her mask in her bag just in case.

&nb
sp; She didn’t even know if she could trust Indira, much less believe that there was some huge conspiracy to kill everyone with powers in Whitten. It was too crazy, even for a super villain scheme. And if it was something by some villain, someone would have to stop it. Firecracker would have to step in, not linger in the background waiting until she could run away.

  A scream rang through her thoughts and she rushed toward it. Down the alley a woman was surrounded by three men with knives, one of them with a hand over her mouth to keep her from yelling again.

  In the end, Jane was a hero. She was going to help people.

  She quickly pulled on her mask and rushed down the alley. “Stop!”

  The men turned, looking her up and down and laughing.

  “What’s this?” they asked. “A superhero come to stop us?”

  “Don’t tell me you boys have never seen a superhero before,” she said, smiling. “You folks in Whitten really don’t know what you’re missing.”

  The woman managed to use the moment of distraction to break free and ran past her. Jane smiled a little wider, stepping in one man’s way when he tried to follow after her.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked, pointing at him with her fingers in the shape of a gun. Electricity came out her fingertip and straight into the man. He let out a cry of pain as the electricity passed through him and slumped to the ground.

  The other two weren’t paying attention, instead looking around to the walls. “What in the...?”

  “What?” Jane asked with a cocky grin. “Scared already?”

  And then she saw what they were looking at. On the walls, she could see the black spheres had opened up, a camera in the middle just like Indira had showed her. Didn’t she say they could shoot too?

  The muggers backed into the alley away from the cameras. Their injured accomplice managed to stumble back with them.

  Jane acted quickly, sending an electric wave out from her body and into the cameras staring at her. They crackled, but did not seem to break at the pulse. Panicked, she tried again, stronger this time, trying to knock them out.

  This time, the cameras retaliated. Each one shot her, a laser coming out of the lens. She felt the beams pierce right through her with sharp, blinding pain. Her throat, her heart, her lungs, all of them felt the sting for a long moment before it was gone.

  She managed to stagger a few steps before collapsing to the ground, desperately holding her neck and side. Blood came pouring through her fingers and every breath was agony.

  The muggers ran past her, leaving her alone as she felt the blood slowly draining from her. It was getting even harder to breathe and the air didn’t seem to stay where it should. The world was starting to spin and she wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be able to hold on.

  It was getting colder.

  She saw someone at the mouth of the alley and tried to call for help. All she managed was a croak followed by a coughing out the blood that started to fill her lungs, but it was enough to make them turn their head.

  Of all the luck. Indira looked at her, shocked. The shock only lasted a moment before she looked behind her.

  When she looked back at Jane, Indira held herself tall and her expression was blank. She closed her eyes and nodded once before walking away.

  Jane watched the mouth of the alley where Indira had been, desperately wanting to call after her and plead to her for help. The world was getting darker. She didn’t have much time.

  A moment later, two men in black uniforms appeared in the mouth of the alley. They came towards her with no urgency, their heavy boots hitting the pavement in unison with one another.

  They needed to help her. She was tired and the world was going dark despite her attempts to hang on. Every breath she took felt like daggers were stabbing through her, but her mouth was so filled with blood that she could barely breathe at all.

  As the world started to fade away for good, she watched them, desperate for them to save her. She’d done good before. She’d fought the worst villains and saved so many people. She was going to help save them when they needed it. Even now, she’d just saved a woman from being mugged.

  It was her turn to have someone save her.

  She watched as they made it to her. One of them was looking at the cameras on the walls and doing something to set them back into small orbs again.

  The other one looked down at her and drew his gun. She didn’t even hear the shot.

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  Also by Tanya Lisle

  City Without Heroes

  City Without Heroes

  Don't be a Hero

  Hero Complex

  Cloned Evil

  Origins

  Looking Glass Saga

  Return to Wonderland

  Jabberwocky's Book

  Borrowed, Not Lost

  Wandering Hearts

  Paint the Roses Red

  Tales from the Twisted Eden Sector

  Syndicate

  Backstreets

  Office

  Visitors

  Evidence

  Legacy

  Simya Academy

  Tales from the Twisted Eden Sector - Box Set

  White Noise

  White Noise

  Static (Coming Soon)

  Standalone

  After Destiny

  Watch for more at Tanya Lisle’s site.

  About the Author

  Tanya Lisle is a novelist from the Metro Vancouver, British Columbia who has series littered across genres from supernatural horror to young adult fantasy. She began writing in elementary school, when she started turning homework assignments into short stories and continued this trend well into university. While attending Simon Fraser University, she developed an appreciation for public domain crossovers and cross-platform narratives. She has a shelf full of notebooks with more story ideas than pens lost to the depths of her bag. Now she writes incessantly in hopes of finishing all of them.Thankfully, her cat, Remy, has figured out how to shut off Tanya’s computer when she needs to take a break.

  Read more at Tanya Lisle’s site.