Hero Stalker

Part Three

I shouldn’t have gone with her. I liked believing I was professional, above all else. I supposed I was really more of a push-over than anything.

“Who posted the rumor?” I asked as we took the exit towards the harbor.

“Shygirl288. Said she worked down by the docks.”

I considered. Shygirl288 had belonged to the forum since last April, with about 800 posts to her name. One of her tips had helped me and Annabelle snag blurry photographs of Peregrine blasting up into the sky three weeks ago, and other posters vouched for her. But it was one thing to track down your favorite superhero in hopes of an autograph or an interview, and another to go looking for trouble. I didn’t want Annabelle’s big break into print media to be in the obituaries.

“What if he’s a psychopath?”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s a supervillain. Most of them are crazy. That’s why we keep quiet, take the photos, and go. You saw that manifesto video. He’s looking for publicity. Even if he saw us, why do anything? Do we look like cops?” She paused. “Look, if you’re scared, we don’t have to—”

“I’m not scared.”

Almost every trade good sold on the east coast these days passed through Bayton’s harbor—half the city got rich off it. The warehouses sprawled out for a mile around the docks, sprawling concrete boxes, some still under construction, some yellowed with age. Drivers behind the wheels of trucks glared down at us. Annabelle ignored them, zipping down muddy access roads, until the trucks and people vanished

“Sixty-eight, sixty-seven . . .” she read, counting off the numbers on the warehouses we passed. “The poster spotted Harpy at sixty-two. We should stop here.”

She pulled the car behind a building and parked.

“Got an umbrella?” I whispered. The rain had picked back up again, and I could barely see more than five feet ahead.

“Nope.” Annabelle wrapped a plastic bag around her camera phone. “Good thing it’s raining. They won’t be out looking for people.”

I might have dreaded the rain when Valerie’s orders pushed me out into it, but hunting a glimpse of Bayton’s newest supervillain filled me with a warmth that even the rain couldn’t cut through. My heels squished in the mud as I followed Annabelle down the road. Water dripped down my face.

“If we split up, meet at the car,” she muttered. I nodded, wondering if this was what a deer hunter felt like—or maybe a bear hunter. We’d stalked supervillains before—mostly petty drug dealers who happened to be psi-positive and got a kick out of wearing masks. Harpy was an unknown quantity. We might be among the first few people to learn what he was up to. To Valerie, I might be a walking coatrack—but on the forums of The Worldley Fewe, I had a name to uphold.

“You hear that?” I muttered as we approached Warehouse Sixty-Two. “Humming. Sounds like a generator.”

She pointed upward. “Those windows look open. We should look.”

“Too high to get a good shot. I saw some crates back towards sixty-three. Gimme a second.” I scrambled off towards the other warehouse, my heels sinking into the ground as I tried to spy out the crates through the sheets of rain.

“Hey, you!” The voice was hard, male, and mad. “What are you doing here?”

The world snapped like a rubber band. Cold terror washed over me, and the world narrowed down into a single action. Run.

But I wasn’t fast enough. Cold hands wrapped around my wrist. Something sharp stung my neck. The world went dark.