Hero Stalker

Part Fifty-Three

"Get me something to punch," I grunted through clenched teeth. The sound came out at a higher pitch than I'd aimed for. A tear ran over my mask and onto my chin. I wanted to curl up and cry, but adults weren't supposed to be hurt by a few careless words, and heroes supposed to stand up to bullies. How could she say that? Is it true?

Cypher's voice softened. "Benny, initiate subroutine Blow Off Steam."

I blazed over to the gym mats. Heavy sandbags dropped on chains from the ceiling. Pow! I punched one so hard it burst open. A high kick sent another sailing backwards. Spinning at superspeed, I threw myself into a roundhouse. My foot connected. Sand flew. She's wrong about me. Bag after bag dropped. I danced around them, cutting and ripping and kicking them open, until my foot hit a loose patch of sand and I flew face first into the wall.

"Benny, initiate subroutineBeach Party."

A dozen tiny robotic vacuums slid out of panels in the wall and started vacuuming up the sand. I braced my hands on my knees and gasped down air. A wonderful, exhausted relaxation swept over me. No wonder people liked sports. "Did you write code for all of this?"

He smiled. "That's the genius of it. I'm teaching the AI to recognize colloquialisms and guess from word choice what it's supposed to do. Unlike most artificial intelligences, it can recognize sarcasm."

"You're the smartest man I've ever met."

He bowed. "Thank you."

"Yeah, Benny is more intelligent than you. Why program a voice-activated AI when you can control computers with your mind?"

"That's like asking DaVinci why he'd bother painting when he could sketch."

"You're the DaVinci of computers?"

"You said it, not me."

I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "Got any more sandbags?"

"Slasher ripped the rest of them yesterday." He walked over to the training mats, delicately maneuvering around his tiny vacuum robots. "Ignore Peregrine. She's got a stick shoved up her ass. Tries to loosen up and falls apart instead. She pulled herself out of GreenwoodHeights and now understand no one whose mind isn't completely focused on self-improvement at all times."

"Slasher told me she had some . . . trouble, growing up." Lord knew, it was none of my business. But if I had to work with her, it'd be a big help to understand her triggers.

"Yeah." A robotic arm lifted a computer screen off the wall and spun it around to face us. Satellite images of Bayton popped up on the screen. "No father, no mother, aunt on meth. Problems. You'd think she had a monopoly on them." A shadow passed over his face.

The map on the screen zoomed in on an apartment complex a stone's throw from I.26, on the edge of GreenwoodHeights. The angle shifted to a street-front view. A rusty swing sat on the dead grass. All the windows were broken. Needles and cigarette butts littered the sidewalk.

"The Fantastic Flier's childhood home. She broke the windows when her powers manifested. Came home from school to find her aunt bleeding out in the foyer. Screamed so loudly she gave three neighbors permanent hearing damage and shattered all the glass in the building. No one's lived there since."

I shivered, remembering how jealous I'd been of her when we'd met. She'd never had to worry about being psi-negative. Only about food, shelter, and crime. Harpy's seven homeless victims had lived the same way. "Does anyone care what happens in GreenwoodHeights?"

"Bad things can happen anywhere. To anyone." Cypher studied the map.

"Yeah, but they happen a hell of a lot more often there," I said. For the first time since I'd met him, he didn't have a retort ready. Did he get my point, or was there something else on his mind?