Heroes Not Wanted

Chapter 17: Bad News

Hal was exhausted. He'd hardly slept a wink the previous night, staring at the ceiling as he thought about what he'd done a few hours earlier. Granted, at some point, he'd fallen asleep to wake up now, but it hadn't been nearly enough rest for him.

When Hal rolled out of bed—literally rolled, since he accidentally fell on the floor—it took him a minute to figure out what the heck was going on. He groaned before sitting up, rubbing the back of his sore head. Once it hurt a little less, he looked up and saw Brick sitting on his bed, staring down at his phone.

"Morning," Hal said, crawling back onto his bed.

Brick didn't answer. The disturbing thing was, he wasn't even looking at the phone anymore; his gaze was locked on the wall, the phone screen lit in front of him. "Brick?" Hal said tentatively. "What's up?"

Finally, Brick looked at Hal, blinking as if waking up. His expression still wasn't normal, though. "Look at it." Dully, he pushed the phone towards Hal.

Although he actually didn't really want to know now, Hal reached over and took the phone, still watching his friend. It took him a moment to look down at the screen of the phone, and doing that didn't exactly make him feel better. The screen was on a news page, detailing the prison escape of Eagle, including the deaths of seven guards. Hal felt ill just looking at it. "I know," he said, putting the phone down beside him. "I blew my cool. I ..."

"Not that," Brick said harshly. "You could've burned them all and I wouldn't have cared. Look further down, Hal."

That was a surprisingly brutal statement, and Hal again wasn't sure if he really wanted to look at it. But he wasn't sure if he wanted to look at the weird expression on Brick's face, and picked up the phone to avoid that.

But when he read what was on the bottom of the article, Hal wished he'd looked at Brick instead. "One of the perpetrators of the breakout has been caught and confessed to the crime. The former hero, Silence, has been sentenced to be eliminated from Haven at three o' clock this afternoon, along with sentenced murderer Ivy. Stay tuned for updates on the mad pyro hero who physically killed the unfortunate guards last night."

Hal dropped the phone. "Brick—"

"Delphi can read minds, Hal," Brick said, his voice sounding as if it were on the point of breaking. "How could we have been so stupid? It's obvious that she would've known what Silence was doing and where she went. And now she's going to ... they're going to ..."

Hal fell backwards, onto his pillow. "We're not going to let that happen," he said. "No matter what we have to do."

Brick likewise slumped over. "I wish I could believe that. Silence is the only one I've got left."

Hal rolled off his bed and dug his phone out from underneath it. "Not the only one," he said, finding Art's number he'd saved yesterday. "We're here for you, buddy. Which means we need to call in some back-up."

"W-wait, you think we should break her out?" Brick said, his eyes widening. "But we could get into all sorts of trouble for that."

Hal gave him a look that clearly said, "Duh." He started flipping through his contacts. "We literally just did it," he said. "I mean, we can't get into any more trouble than we already are. And are you really going to let your sister get executed because you're afraid of getting into trouble?"

"Of course not," Brick said defensively. "I just don't want to get us executed too."

Hal shrugged. "Well, we won't. Probably." He dialed Art's number and put the cell on speaker phone.