Vigilance (eBook)

A Heroics Novel

Alex Kost (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
330 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-68222-996-5 (ISBN)

Infos

"e;This is not good, guys."e;"e;New slogan for our team right there."e;"e;There is fire, AJ."e;"e;Even better."e;Time may have passed for Caotico City, but that doesn't mean everything has remained peaceful: seemingly random murders are jeopardizing the city's trust in its superheroes, old enemies appear to be joining forces with new ones, and life has become even more complicated for the Heroics team. With their wounds still healing and the realization that sometimes the hardest challenges to overcome are human ones, even for superheroes, the now-adult members of Heroics face some of the toughest battles of their lives. Can they work together to restore order in Caotico City? Or will their unity finally crumble?

Textauszug

3

Kate and Justin walked into the conference room inside the mansion that had once been their home. The circle of team members hadn’t changed much over the years. Cass was sitting next to AJ, her husband, and whispering something to him with a smirk on her face. To Cass’s right was Casey Cabot, who had gained glasses only a few months earlier and was squinting as she tried to read something on her tablet without them. Jay West and Ray Sampson were next, arguing quietly. The rest of the circle— Niall Sullivan and Kara Hall —were sitting in silence, patiently waiting for the meeting to start. As Kate and Justin took their seats, Kate asked, “Where’s Alix?”

“She should be here,” Cass said.

“Unless she’s hiding in her room again,” Justin muttered.

Cass shot him a glare. The last member of their team, Alix Tolvaj, had been acting strangely recently— frequently locking herself in her room in the mansion and not coming out, at least to anyone’s knowledge, for days.

Before any other suggestions as to Alix’s location were put forward, the woman herself ducked into the room. “Does anyone know who this belongs to?” she asked jokingly, gesturing at the redheaded two-year-old who was sitting on her shoulders.

Cass grinned and patted AJ on the shoulder. “That would be this one.”

AJ looked at her. “My turn?”

“Your turn.”

“Fair enough.” AJ stood and removed his son from Alix’s shoulders. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

As he disappeared out the door, Alix took a seat across from Kate. Physically twenty-six and alive for eighteen years, Alix Tolvaj was the poster-child for why cloning was generally considered to be a bad idea. “I saw the news reports,” she said. “There was another murder?”

“Jumping right into work as always, Al.” Cass smiled, but Alix barely reacted. Cass’s smile twitched slightly, and she hesitated before moving on with, “Yes. Actually, there was a double murder last night.” She leaned back in her chair, hitting a button on the keyboard in front of her that brought up police files on the monitor in the wall at the head of the table. “Henry and Lauren Freund, from Anchorage, Alaska. Apparently, they were writing a book about superheroes and came here since, well, Caotico is a bit of a hotspot.”

“It says that they were walking alone in the northern district late at night,” Kate said as she read the screen. “Did no one tell them that that’s not a safe place to be right now?”

Kara shrugged. “Depending on what they were looking for, they might have done it on purpose. If they were here for info on superheroes, they probably assumed that some would be on the streets where there have been a bunch of murders.”

“Was anyone on duty in that part of town last night?” Niall asked curiously.

Kate shook her head. “No one from our team. For the Legion, well, you’d have to ask our resident expert.”

Everyone at the table turned to look at Casey, who was in the process of drinking from her coffee cup. She lowered it slowly. “…What? Why do I always have to be the one to know?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Cass said sarcastically, smirking. “Maybe because—”

The door to the conference room opened and interrupted Cass’s words. AJ walked back into the room, holding two children by the backs of their shirts. The black-haired girl and the brown-haired boy smiled sheepishly at the group. “These two were listening at the door,” AJ said sternly. “If it was only Brooke, I would’ve taken her back upstairs myself, but seeing as she now has a partner in crime, I thought it best to bring everyone’s attention to the problem.”

Nine-year-old Brooke Hamil and seven-year-old Ciaran Sullivan looked embarrassed but excited. “Are you guys going to go after that killer?” Brooke asked eagerly.

“Remind me to hire a babysitter for the daily fifteen minute meetings,” Cass muttered.

Niall frowned. “Kids, you know that you aren’t supposed to be eavesdropping.”

“Yeah, Daddy, but we want to know what’s going on,” Ciaran replied, pouting.

Cass, AJ, Niall, and Kate exchanged glances. “We’ll make you a deal,” Kate said. “The next time a meeting does not involve people getting hurt or people getting killed, you can sit in, but only if we don’t catch you listening at doors anymore. Fair?”

“Yes!” Brooke and Ciaran said simultaneously.

“Then go back upstairs with the other kids. We’ll be done shortly.”

As both children bolted away towards the stairs, AJ shut the door behind him. “A Heroics meeting without violence or murder being a discussion topic? When is that going to happen?”

Kate shrugged. “Never, but by the time they realize it, they’ll probably be in high school.”

AJ took his seat. “Where were you?”

“We were asking Casey whether anyone from the Security Legion was in the northern district last night,” Kara replied.

“And was anyone?”

Casey looked irritated. “I’ll call Zach after this meeting is over.”

“Good. Until we hear back from him, we’ll move on.” Cass turned to Kate. “I’m assuming your criminal from this morning is in custody?”

Kate nodded. “The police were already showing up when Justin and I headed back here.”

“Well, that’s good, but something’s funny here,” Casey said. “Plasman— Colin Kilian —is a pretty useless bad guy who was once captured by police because his grand plan for escape was hiding underneath a police car. I find it hard to believe that, by himself, he’d be able to evade capture for twelve years.”

“I did think that catching him seemed a bit too easy.” Justin rubbed at his five o’clock shadow absentmindedly. “Have any of us checked with the prison?”

“I called them,” Jay said. “I have an in with one of the guards; he was a friend of mine in college.”

Justin scoffed. “Parvalo? Isn’t that guy like the bottom of the food chain over there? Who’s your next source, the canine cop that works the front gate?”

“Parvalo knows how to look up records. I told him I was doing a favor for a friend who’s looking into the prisoners who have gone missing.” Jay paused for a moment, taking a sip from his soda. “He told me that the records over there are apparently more of a joke than the fact that Justin ended up married.”

“That’s uncalled for,” Justin mumbled.

Kate ignored him, saying, “What is that supposed to mean, Jay?”

Jay scoffed. “Colin Kilian disappeared from the prison at some point between yesterday and fifteen years ago.”

A heavy silence fell over the table. Casey was the first to break it. “Hold on, what?”

“Yeah. If I’m understanding what Parvalo told me in confused whispers, at some point in 2061, a lawyer named Raylans managed to get a bunch of records of empowered people from Caotico Prison. The moment he did, all those records stopped being updated. Of those sixty-five people, twenty of them have release dates that passed without the record showing that they were released, thirty should be in prison but nobody seems to know where they are, five are dead, and ten are locked up in a secure section of the prison that no one has access to, other than the warden and his two highest-ranking guards. Colin Kilian is among the first twenty. Other than him, all the prisoners supposedly released by Alice Cage are dead or in the missing thirty.”

AJ gave a sarcastic laugh. “Sixty prisoners disappear from the prison system and nobody thinks that that might be important information? Gotta love our justice system.” He frowned at Cass. “What’s the matter? You look pale.”

“I’m a white person who is German, Irish, and English. Pale is my natural state,” Cass retorted sarcastically.

“Honey,” AJ said in a half-warning, halftired voice.

“Raylans was a friend of my father’s.”

Casey snorted. “Why am I not surprised? There was never any reason to believe that Alice’s fingerprints were the only ones on this.”

Alix nodded. “From what I can remember, I think he had a few meetings with both Wechsler and Cage. I’m not sure if they ever met together.”

Kate leaned back in her chair, spinning a pen through her fingers. “Cass, do you know what Raylans is doing now?”

“Uh, making a run for Attorney General, I think.”

“Think he’d discuss possibly getting some campaign assistance from the company of an old friend?”

Cass smirked. “You mean see if he...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.2.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 1-68222-996-3 / 1682229963
• ISBN-13: 978-1-68222-996-5 / 9781682229965