When I came back home, Dennie was just a little bit surprised about his newest customers. I had left the night before without a word to the old man, because waking him up just to tell him that hey, by the way, I might be gone for the next few weeks again, but don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, felt a little unfair on his part. Superheroes had a bad habit of vanishing, anyway, but his being one of the only shops still open meant it was packed full for once, too.

  It was mostly people trying to get their daily espresso shots before they got back to work cleaning up the city and the rubble and the general destruction around these parts. Construction workers, even the occasional shiny assistant with their tight buns and pencil skirts ordering coffee for bosses who wouldn’t dare come all the way into Lower Olympus by themselves. It pretty much meant that I had to force Carter up the alleyway ladder and into my bedroom, leaving Ava on my bedside table to watch him as I tried to find Dennie somewhere around the shop.

  Why did I come here? Pretty simple. Even if I wanted to find Lucas and ask him more about Ben and what he had apparently been capable of doing, I couldn’t find him. He was hard enough to locate on a normal day. Now he was avoiding me, a ghost in the wind and a memory that dented the walls of my bedroom. Dennie would know something about Ben. It was a shot in the dark, but he was Ryan Kennedy before Ryan Kennedy probably ever was.

  “Ry!” he said, somehow managing to sneak up on me instead. I turned, and got served a tray of coffee and cakes and bottles of water into my hands. “I’m glad you’re awake, Buck. And I know you’re beat. But we’re in a pinch right now and I’d really appreciate ya help. Table twelve gets the black coffee. Eight and nine get the waters.”

  “Hey,” I said, before he could walk off, pen behind his ear and notebook in his bony fingers. I lowered my voice and leaned in. “I need your help with something. I’ve got…friends upstairs, and we need some information.”

  He paused, then looked at me, bushy eyebrow raised. “You’re sounding serious, Buck.”

  “It’s Bianca,” I said, and I guess my voice gave away a lot more than I would have liked.

  Dennie’s face paled. “Don’t tell me the kid… Oh, Ry…Hell. I’m—”

  “She’s not dead,” I said—hoping very much she wasn’t. “But she’s in danger right now, and I’m kind of lost on what I need to do to help her, but I know you’ve got something in the basement. I know I’ve been blowing off work for months, but I just need this one last favor, and then I’ll bus every table in here for the next decade.”

  Bless him and his old heart, because he agreed, and told another girl—a new worker, I figured, who was probably doing all the work I used to—to man the shop and take charge of the other part-timers. He told me to take my ‘friends’ out back and into the cellar outside, and I did just that, meaning Ava had to briefly go back inside of my backpack in case anyone wondered what I was doing with a severed head in an alleyway. But I guess nobody would care right now. Sticking your nose into someone else’s business wouldn’t find you a new job or figure out where your next meal came from. So there we stood in the alleyway for several minutes in front of the cellar door, Carter with his hands in his pockets, kicking away a persistent little rodent that wanted nothing more than his laces.

  “Little bastard,” he muttered, smacking it against a dumpster. The poor thing didn’t get up.

  Dennie came hobbling around the corner, a set of keys jingling on his finger. He briefly looked Carter up and down, a slight frown on his face, probably thinking what I had—that Lucifer himself was now my new friend.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “He’ll play nice. He’s the discount Rivera, anyway, isn’t that right?”

  Carter grunted and offered Dennie a hand. “Haven’t seen your wrinkly mug in years, Heart.”

  They know each other?

  Dennie shook it, his lips still thin. “Woulda loved to bring you in for some coffee.”

  “Gonna spike it again?”

  “Nothing less, pal.” Dennie shuffled along and tried to bend over to unlock the heavy metal cellar doors. I made it easier and slid the key into the lock, and then pulled the doors open, but not before I briefly stopped him.

  “You know this guy?” I asked, jerking my thumb at Carter. “How?”

  “Believe it or not,” Dennie grunted, lifting up his trouser leg to ease his way down the first stair, “but that guy once wanted to be a superhero. Imagine that! His old man beat the idea out of him at about your age, Buck. That would have made one hell of a story, tell you what. I even thought he’d manage it. But, well, you know dads.”

  No way. I looked at Carter, and he shrugged one shoulder. Inside my bag, I heard Ava snigger.

  “Different me, different dreams,” Carter muttered, as we walked down the short steps into the cellar. And that was about as much I got out of him. Carter Rivera, a superhero. Gods, that almost sounded like some kind of pipe dream. But it kind of made even more sense why his own brother didn’t trust him entirely. Not when you want to wear a cape when the rest of your family beats costume-wearing people into comas, or leaves them in body bags.

  One of these days, Ava and I would sit down and talk. Really talk. Maybe after I saved Bianca.

  Only then would I have the time to start fraternizing with a supervillain over the good old days.

  Now in the cellar, the bite of cold air made it feel like winter down here. The air in the alleyway had felt icy regardless, and that usually meant snow was on the way sooner or later. The stairwell meant the gusts of wind had a

  direct pathway into the stuffy little room that Dennie once used as a printing press for the comics he made way back when. I had found this place when I was a lot younger, purely out of curiosity. I had bothered him enough over the span of several weeks for him to finally buckle and show me what hid underneath his coffee store. Magic was the answer, at least, it had been to that buck toothed kid, and admittedly, it kind of still did to the exhausted superhero.

  Dennie switched on several lamps scattered around the room, most of them on tables, some of them on old cardboard boxes, turning the room a gloomy yellow shade of black. Dust lingered in the air and sat on the machines and the walls, the chalkboards he once used, and the many drawing stations he once sat at for hours on end. The world in the cellar was trapped in the Nineties, old dial up phones and everything. Cassette tapes in a box. Radios that had been chewed on by rats and time. Dennie didn’t miss a beat, though, when he stood in the middle of the room, holding a box that I took from him. Even I could feel how heavy this thing was, packed full of old comics.

  But…not the oldest comics here. Those were in boxes deep, deep inside this place at the back. Boxes that hadn’t been open since the day he closed down the store. These were the newest comics he’d made before that.

  The black handwriting on the side of the box confirmed it—Apollo: The Boy Hero.

  The comics that never saw the light of day.

  Carter, hands still in his pockets, sat on a table close by, reading off the box, too. He whistled under his breath and said, “That kid had one hell of a soft spot dug inside of you, old man. An entire box of the stuff, too? If I was any less of a man, I’d be jealous. I guess the guy’s dead, anyway. No point in being jealous of a gravestone.”

  I glared at the bastard.

  He put his hands up in mock surrender.

  “Two boxes, actually,” Dennie said, a hand on his bad hip and another on the table I set the box onto. “I lost one somewhere along the way. Must’ve gotten stolen, or just lost to time. Someone somewhere got it, I know.”

  I gently picked up each comic. They were bindings of paper, more like, only a few of them colored, but none of them finished to the end. The thing about Dennie was that I kind of didn’t know everything about him. But he knew everything about the big shots from back in the day. According to him, he’d been a reporter by day and a comic book writer by night, but that was a lie, because more than half the issues he wrote about were based on real life events, and that’s what made his comics so much better than anyone else’s. Those had been real stakes. Real problems. And, in some cases, real deaths. Dad’s last issue had been in his hands, given from him to me the day he had his national funeral. A special edition to Zeus’ kid. The only version that, at the very end, said my name.

  Not Rylee, but Olympia. I guess that was meant to be the next issue. The next story he would tell.

  Heck, it’s where I got my name from to begin with, anyway. He just somehow always knew.

  I frowned. “There’s nothing in here,” I muttered.

  “What’re you looking for specifically in a comic that’s gonna help Carly’s daughter?” Dennie asked. “You know,” he quietly continued, “she’s the one who never wanted these out in the public. Said that she didn’t want that kind of reminder in her face that her own son wasn’t telling her the truth for almost six years of his life. So if you’re looking to see if I put Bianca in here, then you ain’t gonna find her. I never put family members in any of these.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I stored that away for later. Bringing Ben up in the Ross house had bad vibes. His room remained shut and clean, and the pictures he was in were the ones Carly never spoke about if she had guests over. She was kind of like a second mom, when mine was too busy cutting people up for Cassie to come home that night. Her daughter hasn’t been home in nearly a whole day, I thought, shutting the final comic in the box. She can’t do this all over again.

  “Not about the sister,” Carter said, filling my silence. “About Ben. About those…darker nights.”

  Dennie’s lips thinned. He glanced at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Cut the crap,” Carter said, but without a single hint of malice in his voice; just remembrance. A plain statement. “You can protect Olympia all you want from the truth, but the kid is so green it’s kinda scary. She doesn’t know a single darn thing about this city, old man. I’ve known her for a few hours, and the girl’s pretty damned lost.”

  I wouldn’t say I was lost, per say, but some help would be nice, and a straightforward answer.

  And, finally, after weeks of getting the ‘truth’ from villains, I’d get it from someone I actually trusted.

  Even though a part of me didn’t want to hear it, because my chest was already tight from the strip club, from the corpses and the destruction and even the thought that Bianca was behind all of this. Worst part, though?

  Ben must have been going through the exact same thing, and Lucas had let it happen. Heck, knowing him, he probably smiled behind that cowl of his, watching as Ben drenched his hands in blood, then scolded him for even daring to think for himself. For ever stepping out of line and taking lead and not following orders, because now look, Ben—are you gonna shake your dad’s hand, hug your sister, looking like that? He would have told him almost everything he told me, then put it in his head that he just wasn’t that good of a superhero to begin with.

  And that drove him to take a mission that ultimately killed him.

  The lights flickered, and I shook my head. I apologized and waved at Dennie to continue.

  “Well,” Dennie muttered, pulling out an old seat and sighing as he sat. He rubbed his bad knee, then looked at me. “Ben was…normal. The kid wasn’t anything Super. Not a single Divergent gene in that family line apart from a great aunt or something from Carly’s side. I heard a few years back that Bianca snagged it.” He smiled to himself, shaking his head. “Thank God her mother made sure she never came to Lower Olympus. Lucas would have gotten his hands on her one way or another. More potential than Ben ever had. Physically, at least. Gifted.”

  I knew this part. Hell, I’d been the one who helped hang up all her medals week-in, week-out.

  But Ben being a Normal wasn’t on my bingo cards either.

  “Then how did he, you know, do all this stuff?” I asked, waving my hand at the comics scattered on the table beside us. “This isn’t the movies. Normals don’t usually go around being the ones doing the Cape activities.”

  “Oh, see, you’re wrong on that again, O,” Carter chimed in. “There’s a lot of ‘em, even right now. Except you’re the one always fighting the bigger, badder supervillains, meaning these guys handle the lesser crimes. They beat up the purse snatchers that you otherwise wouldn’t bother dealing with, you know? Pain’s in the ass some of ‘em. Real big hero complex. Teenagers with a mask and a dream who want to be just like you, or Shrike, or whatever pajama-wearing weirdo inspired them. I swear, the times I’ve been jumped by some rogue gang of teenagers…” He shook his head, then smiled a little. “They’re endearing though. It wouldn’t be crime without justice, you know.”

  “For once, I agree with him,” Ava said from my backpack. “Except they’re mostly just annoying.”

  Dennie looked like he was about to question why my bag just spoke, but decided otherwise. “Ben didn’t start like this, either. He was just a kid, like Carter said, with a dream and a baseball bat. Got into a lot of fights when he wasn’t in school. He was like you in some ways, Buck. Ended up here a lot.” He chuckled. “I swear if I had a nickel every time a future superhero tried to steal my comics. I even convinced Carly to let him work here during the summers, just to make sure he wasn’t running around the city looking for whatever trouble he can deal with.”

  I sat on the table, shedding my bag. That sounds about right for Ben.

  And then, almost as if the lights had turned off, Dennie sighed and rubbed his eyes. He remained silent for almost a minute, staring at the floor, his dull eyes and the bags around them sagging. I glanced at Carter who, for once, was quiet, looking at the old man with a flicker of concern on his brow. “Ry,” he said grimly, looking at me. I steeled myself, simply because of the tone in his voice. Maybe it was a fear response. Some kind of way to get myself mentally ready for someone else in my life to turn around and stick a knife into my back. Just spit it out, D. “I shoulda known better. There had always been something…wrong with that kid. Something off inside of him.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked quietly.

  “I found him wailing on kids before in the alley, just ‘cause they tried to steal a comic. And I’d pull him off and shout at him, and…” Dennie paused, then said, “He’d stand there in front of me, blood on his fists, and he’d be silent. Perfectly silent. He wouldn’t explain or defend himself. And then, the next day, he’d come bawling his eyes out. It’s like the kid was two different people, you know? Fuck me…It was the night Lucas needed me when he found Ben.” I stilled. Suddenly, the room seemed a lot stuffier. “He needed information on something. Some gang or organization…around the time the Chaos Legion was blowing up New Olympus. Ben stuck around later than usual, trying to help stack new comics onto shelves for some release the next day. I guess neither of them was expecting to find each other here so late at night, because I found them standing at the door, just lookin’ at each other. Staring.”

  I gave him his time, a lump in my throat slowly forming.

  “Normal, I guess, for a kid to gape at the superhero on the comic he was holding,” Dennie muttered. “But I should have seen past that. That look in Lucas’ eyes…he wasn’t seeing a kid. He was looking at an investment.”

  At a mirror.

  “And they say we’re the bad guys,” Carter said under his breath. “At least we don’t hire kids.”

  “It took a month before Ben told me he was quitting. Two months afterward, I found a body.” I perked up, then he said, “I didn’t know if he was the one who did it. Lucas got aggressive sometimes. Too aggressive. But I also knew how Ben could get, and I tried to tell him that he should be his own kind of hero if he wanted to be a Cape so bad. But he didn’t listen. Stubborn little boy, always was. Steadfast. Headstrong. I spoke to Lucas, but he was the same boy, just a lot older and a lot more trained. I told him…I told him you’ll kill that boy, putting him into that life so early, but he told me to stay out of his way. Together, they fed into one another. Then I caught wind of a butcher down by the docks. Got called up by my outlet to check it out so we could keep questioning the police and their involvement in the city.” He swallowed, his eyes clouding over. “The bodies weren’t even bodies. There had been a fight, sure. One hell of a battle. Bullet casings. Bent shipping containers. But bodies. So many dead bodies.”

  I shut my eyes, knowing what was coming next. “Let me guess,” I whispered. “You found the maggots.”

  He nodded slowly. “Took pictures before your old man came and said it would be handled by them instead. After that, it wasn’t headline news. It wasn’t news at all. Then Ben came back one day and asked for a hug.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “The kid smelt like blood. Reeked of the stuff. Hadn’t washed in days. Looked like he’d been wandering around on the streets for weeks. I called his mom and she came, said she hadn’t seen him in whoever knows how long.” Dennie chuckled bitterly. “I called that bird-costumed bastard and asked him what the fuck he’d just done.”

  Nobody spoke. Not until Dennie did again.

  “He told me, ‘I’m putting him in line,’ and that was that. Ben never acted out again. Never hurt a fly.”

  “Except for the thugs that he left in my father’s home,” Carter said. “Or the times when—”

  “Don’t,” Dennie said to him, putting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing. “She gets the picture.”

  I placed my hands either side of me on the table, digging my fingernails so hard into the wood that they sank into the old hardwood. I shut my eyes. Breathed in slowly. I wasn’t even the first one. And now Bianca was out there somewhere, neck deep in the same kind of shit that left her brother with Lucas’ noose around his throat. Fuck me, I thought, sighing quietly, shaking my head. My head was pounding, and when I opened my eyes, they were blurry with exhaustion. I blinked and rubbed them, swallowing a yawn and stopped it by biting on my tongue.

  Rhea would have probably told me to put Lucas under my foot and end all of this. But she wasn’t here.

  Didn’t matter, though, because that’s what I felt like doing. That’s what I would have to do.

  But first came finding Bianca, before any of this got any worse. To save her from herself.

  From the same bastard who’ll turn her into her brother.

  I breathed out, then said, “Ok.” I got off the table, then slung my backpack over my shoulder. Both D and Carter stared at me, their heads slightly tilted. “I’m gonna have to get this done somehow. Lucas is my biggest problem and I should have killed him when I had the chance. But I won’t waste time finding him. Too much time wasted doing that. I’m not a detective, and I never was, so I’m gonna look for Bianca instead.” I was thinking out loud in all honesty, but I needed to let the noise in my head escape somewhere. “Police are swamped with the rising crime rate. Wouldn’t know much about sprees of carnage literally any other cracked out Supe could have done.” I pushed a hand through my hair, shut my eyes, then thought for a moment. “Uh…I can…I can…Maybe I can—”

  “Witchling,” Ava said. I paused. She continued. “Find her, and she can find anyone.”

  “I can’t waste time looking for more people,” I muttered bitterly. And not a villain.

  Especially not one who’d quite literally dragged me to hell for funsies.

  “Then just go to someone you know will be there,” Carter said. “Go directly to the House of One.”

  Go to Hekka and ask one of the only remaining Olympias to look for my crush before Lucas gets her.

  The only problem with that was the House of One has kept its doors shut for nearly a decade. The last time anybody saw Hekka alive was dad’s funeral. A solid ten years had passed since then, but a house call wouldn’t hurt.

  For once, I was gonna go ask a superhero for some help.