Not Another Hero Story (Seriously)

Chapter Five

I was starting to get antsy.

I hadn't heard from Lovell since that night - which either meant he hadn't spoken to Tamara yet or he had decided this was all a giant mistake and was never going to reach out to me again. Either way, I felt a ball of bile permanently stuck in my throat. A fear gripping me at the knowledge that things had been set in place to change everything, except... nothing was actually happening. Everything was still exactly the same.

Lovell had dropped me off at my apartment that night after we'd swung by Public Trust for my first withdrawal. I'd been able to take $3,000 out, to my surprise. When I joked that this was like pocket change, Lovell had threatened to hit me with his car. I'd laughed and said that it wasn't very becoming for a grown man to threaten people like that and he told me that after hitting me with his car he would bring me home and give me a bath in lemon juice and salt too.

It was funny, and I'd gone back to Public Trust ATMs every day since then to withdraw more money. It wasn't all of it, but it was a decent enough sum to keep me comfortable while we were working on this. I'd decided to keep all of the money I'd withdrawn in a safe at a storage unit near the river. I was sticking to the plan! Making progress! Why had no one else done so?! Despite feeling a bit like a caged animal, I didn't leave my apartment if I didn't have to. Some weird sense of paranoia had been slowly growing inside of me since the night I was fired.

No matter where I went or who I spoke to, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched. As if monitoring me would make a difference, the damage had been done already and the Council would be shit out of luck when we... if we ever actually figured this out and started exposing them.

The morning of the fifth day, I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding and senses on high alert. There had been something that woke me, some strange noise like someone was walking around and moving my furniture. Because of the terrible pounding in my head, I couldn't even be sure whether the sounds I heard were real or just my mind playing tricks on me.

I sat in bed for a moment as I got my bearings and ended up getting up and doing a full lap around the apartment, checking every nook and cranny. The first gigs heroes got during The Switch tended to be similar to security detail, nothing like what is now considered hero work. I'd had plenty of practice doing perimeter sweeps. The door was locked, the windows were locked and the alarm was still armed.

I got back into bed and starting looking at news on my phone.

Which is how I saw the announcement - a data breach was discovered by a security firm that the Council outsourced work from. They had caught on to it two nights ago, though they didn't have many other details they could release to the public yet, according to sources. What they could say was that: "those responsible collected information for a handful of organizations who utilize the software. They assured all those concerned that they were taking every precaution to ensure it didn't happen again and that the organization that had gotten in was being traced and would be dealt with expeditiously. The also suggested everyone worried change should their passwords and other security information.

It was kind of a terrible PR release, but it made a small part of my brain switch to life again. Had that been Tamara's doing? Was it completely unrelated? The firm made it sound like it wasn't a big deal and like they'd already taken action to finding whoever had done it. Moreover, they didn't outright say that it'd had anything to do with the Council, but...

I lingered there for only a moment before switching to the official Twitter account for The Council. They hadn't shared anything about a data breach... they had however shared a post about the unexpected departure of the city's favorite hero, with a picture of me attached. My smile looked too big on my face, it didn't even reach my eyes. I hated this photo, and I hated that it was the one that was used as the official announcement. No doubt intentionally - make sure the city thinks their favorite hero was secretly miserable for the twenty years he'd been at the top.