Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

nearly two decades since the bomb hit turned the route into a maze if you didn’t know where you were going. But it was navigable, if bumpy, and kept them free of checkpoints.
    Officially, metas weren’t forced to stay in the Old City. They were still human after all, and could go where they pleased. But probable cause wasn’t hard for the coppers to manufacture, and if Niobe and Solomon got caught driving around after nightfall where they weren’t welcome, a quick search would turn up a dozen things that weren’t strictly legal. Her gun, for one, not to mention the road tack deployment system in the boot of the car. But the checkpoints and police dirigibles were well to the west, so the law didn’t bother them.
    The Neo-Auckland skyline cut a jagged line through the night. The guys who’d designed it had been fond of tapering towers and spires that glimmered even in the darkness. Above the streets, the upper highways and monorail tracks swooped between apartment buildings and offices, suspended on the impossibly thin support struts originally conceived by the metahuman Green Tornado. Billboards dotted the skies as well, advertising Coke or the new electric Toyotas or rocket-plane trips to the sunny Gold Coast. And in the middle of it all, the Peace Tower stood tall, its spire piercing the sky; a monument to the destruction of the Old City, and a promise of something greater.
    Thinking of the Old City brought her mind back to Gabby, and the argument. Gabby always worried when she went out on a job, and lately it had been getting worse. Niobe tried not to bring her work home with her, but it was never enough to keep the pain out of Gabby’s eyes.
    “Are you all right, Spook?” Solomon’s voice snapped her back to reality. “You’re quiet, even for you.”
    Niobe blinked and cleared her throat. “Yeah. Fine.” She nodded outside, to where the lawns and trimmed hedges of the Neo-Auckland suburbs gave way to a pair of three-storey department stores and a long shopping mall. Past the dress and shoe shops, a sleek white tower stood between elevated monorail tracks. “That’s our man’s hotel.”
    “Hotel? He doesn’t live here?”
    She shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t want us to know where he lives.”
    A row of manicured trees divided the road in two. They drove beneath coloured banners that stretched across the street, proclaiming a Christmas sale at a toy store. It wasn’t even December yet.
    The shops were all shut, of course, and the moving footpaths had been switched off for the night. Niobe pulled the car off the main street and parked it down an alley a block from the hotel. Even the alley was spotlessly clean. It looked like some poor bugger had scrubbed each green rubbish bin until it shone.
    Niobe activated the car’s security measures—you could never be too careful—and they strode down the footpath together, Solomon’s shoulder cape billowing in the breeze.
    A tall silver birch stood guard beside the Starlight Hotel, the base of its trunk ringed by a low brick fence. The hotel’s revolving door faced the street. It’d be locked at this hour. Through the glass came dull orange light, probably from a lamp. She touched the lever at the side of her goggles, switching the magnification. She could just make out the silhouette of the night-shift clerk at the front desk, her head nodding.
    “Our man’s in four-oh-eight,” she said in a low voice. She stepped back and counted off the fourth floor balconies. “That one there.”
    “I take it asking politely isn’t an option?”
    She buttoned up her trench coat and smiled beneath her mask. “Race you there.”
    She sucked in a lungful of warm night air, held it, and relaxed her body.
    Then she spread out in all directions like an ice cream melting in double time. Everything became thin, two-dimensional. Sight disappeared, replaced by a sense of position and an awareness of the minutest traces of light reflecting off surfaces.
    She never really