The distant sound of alarms at Rourke Industries were enough to catch his attention. Any other company with a security force as competent as Rourke’s and he’d have left it alone, but in the months since the Hartfeld branch had opened, too many strange things had escaped the building for him to ignore it.
(The half-man, half-sabertooth tiger that had wreaked havoc on the city for days had been just the first of several experiments gone wrong to escape the facility, although the papers had left out Rourke’s involvement entirely as they reported on the defeat of ‘The Tooth’.)
Sean launched himself from his perch high above the city, gliding as far as he could towards the building and then sprinting the remaining distance to the main entrance, too fast to be seen by the few people still out on the streets.
This close, he could hear not only the alarm but gunfire.
He pulled the locked door open and entered the abandoned reception. There was never anyone at the front desk later than six in the evening, but Sean knew that was only so the building appeared empty.
It took only a few seconds for Sean to race up the stairs in the fire exit until he reached the floor with the guns. Sean was close enough to them now to figure out where the security were based on the sound of their guns and their footsteps, and although the guards were all separated, they were slowly converging on a room in the centre of the building.
He knocked a few of the security guards out as he rushed towards the room – either they were dealing with something so dangerous the guards wouldn’t be able to handle it, as had happened with Killer Crab, or it was an overreaction and some burglar was about to be ‘handled internally’ instead of handed over to police.
Whatever it was, it was safer for everyone if he took care of it alone.
He left a few more men unconscious as he sped towards his destination, drawing to a sudden stop when he reached the door to what was apparently Everett Rourke’s office. It was unlocked, slightly ajar, and Sean carefully stepped inside, fists raised in case some new mutated creature lunged at him.
“Sean?”
The entire room was lit with the bluish glow from Rourke’s transparent computer screen, bright enough to illuminate both him in the doorway and the woman that was leaning on Rourke’s desk. The last thing Sean had expected to find in the office was his co-worker, but there Amelia was. She was dressed entirely in black, her brown hair tied back in a messy knot and her blue eyes wide as she stared at him.
“How did you know-”
“Just because you’re not wearing your glasses doesn’t mean I can’t recognise you.”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He did have a mask, but it was irritating to wear and he forgot it more often than he remembered it. “What are you doing here?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said as she unplugged a flash drive from the side of the screen. She pocketed it and glanced at her watch. “Are you going to keep asking questions or are you going to let me get out of here? Zahra said she could stop the security for an hour, and if you keep standing in the doorway like that, the hour will be up before I’m out of the building.”
He stepped aside, staring at her as she strode past him. He followed as she weaved back through the corridors, only pausing for a moment when they reached the first unconscious guard to shake her head and stare at him in disbelief, and when she reached the elevator, he stepped inside with her.
Unlike the rest of the building, the elevator was well-lit. Sean glanced around quickly to find the security camera, making sure to stand just below it so he was out of its line of sight. Amelia was watching him, her gaze travelling away from his face to linger on the letter emblazoned across his chest and then back up.
“The security camera’s are off. Or at least they should be. For the next…” She checked her watch again “Five minutes. You don’t need to stand there.” She reached around him to press the button for the bottom floor. “And thanks for taking out a few of the guards.”
Sean had the strange feeling he was more thrown by finding her breaking into Rourke’s office than she was by running into him in his full superhero regalia.
The elevator came to a sudden stop and the lights turned red. “Shit,” Amelia muttered, glancing down at her watch again as she hurried towards him and out of the view of the security camera. “I was supposed to have more time. Zahra said she was going to make sure this didn’t happen.” She got her phone out of her pocket and tapped open a series of text messages. Sean kept his eyes averted. “No signal. Great.”
He might not have known why she was breaking into Rourke Industries, but he wasn’t going to let either of them caught. One punch was enough to smash the glass dome guarding the camera, and then he reached up and crushed it. Sean was tall enough to push at the ceiling hatch in the centre of the small room, the force making the lock break and the metal buckle, and then he lifted himself up and out of the elevator.
“Come on,” he said, reaching one hand down for Amelia.
He felt her small hand slip into his, and then he lifted her. Her other hand grasped at his wrist as her feet left the floor and he hoisted her up and out of the elevator, setting her down beside him.
She kept her hand in his. “So now what?”
Sean glanced around, barely able to see anything in the elevator hatch. The only light was the faint red glow from inside the elevator they were standing on, as well as a few narrow beams of light at regular intervals in the wall behind him – the entrances to every floor.
“We get out of here my way,” he told her. “Climb onto my back and hold on.”
There was some clanging and swearing as she manoeuvred her way behind him. Her hand was on his back, and he bent down slightly so she could climb up him, her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist.
Once he felt like she had a secure grip on him, he jumped up to grab one of the metal cables holding the lift and started to climb it.
“Oh my god,” he heard Amelia breath, her words tickling the back of his neck, her grip on him tightening. “This is crazy.”
At the first thin beam of light, he swung over to the next cable – Amelia buried a squeal in his neck – and then, with one hand gripping the wire, he reached out and punched the door so that it buckled. He could now fit his hand through the wider gap between the two doors, and all he needed to do was push one of them aside.
Outside the elevator, Amelia slid off his back and stared at the crumpled metal door that he had moved so easily. “Well, that was… wow. Okay. What now?”
“You don’t mind heights, do you?” She frowned at him, confused, and then slowly shook her head. “Good.”
He lifted her into his arms, chuckling when she yelped in surprise, and then he ran. He sped all the way up the stairs, adjusting his hold on Amelia so his hand was protecting her head as he used his shoulder to force open the door to the roof. He was moving fast, the world a blur around them, and he felt Amelia turn her head into his chest as he charged towards the edge of the roof and leapt into the air.
They landed on a rooftop a few hundred metres away. Sean put Amelia down carefully, watching her as she gazed, astounded, around the roof, at the large letters reading ‘Rourke Industries’ on the building now several streets away from them. “So you’re Hartfeld’s very own Superman.”
“I guess there’s no reason for me to deny that now.”
Amelia laughed. “Well, I guess that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
She bit her lip and stepped back towards him, a familiar coy smile curving her lips as she drew nearer. “I always thought you were… impressively built for the guy who does the spreadsheets.”
His eyebrows rose. He might have been getting used to her increased candidness when they managed to get lunch together, but for some reason, he’d expected her to act differently now that she knew who he was. “So you’ve been looking at me?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But I know you’ve been looking at me too.”
He coughed out a surprised laugh, glancing down at the floor and rubbing the back of his neck. Amelia laughed, her eyes bright, and then she turned away, looking out over the city.
Sean looked at her.
They’d known each other for a few months now, ever since she started as a lifeguard at the gym he did the finances for. They sat together whenever they shared a lunch break, which was less often than he would have liked, and he’d thought she was beautiful and funny and kind from their first conversation. A few more lunch breaks after that, he’d noticed the way she looked at him (and even if he hadn’t, her flirting was sometimes so brazen that he’d have realised she was into him sooner or later).
Every time he considered asking her out, he remembered the mess that was him and Michelle and his secret, and he’d decided that it was easier just to settle for the occasional lunch and her easy smile.
“Go ahead,” she said suddenly. “Ask me.”
He frowned. “Ask you what?”
“What I was doing in Rourke’s office.”
“What were you doing?”
Amelia took the flash drive out of her pocket and waved it at him. “A friend of mine does logistics for Rourke Industries. You know, transporting stuff in trucks and planes, things like that. He told me he saw a file with my name on it while he was… trying to find his schedule on the shared drive.”
Sean was pretty sure that wasn’t what her friend had been doing. “And?”
“I want to know what Rourke has on me.”
“Why would Rourke have anything on you?”
“I want to know that too.” She pocketed the flash drive again. “I guess, by the end of tonight, I will.”
She sighed, leaning her elbows on the parapet of the roof and gazing out across the rooftops to Rourke’s building. Sean joined her at the edge, his arms crossed over his chest as he surveyed the city.
“So what about you? What’s-” she gestured at his costume “-this about?” He shrugged. Amelia shook her head, amused. “Come on, I already know your identity. I’ve flown with you. I promise I’m not going to tell anyone. How about you just tell me what else you can do? Besides bending steel with your bare hands, that is.”
“My hearing’s pretty good.”
“Good enough for you to hear me at the pool gossiping with Diego about how sexy you are while you’re up in the admin office?” He gaped at her for a moment. Amelia just grinned, straightening up so she was no longer leaning on the rooftop wall and turning so she could meet his gaze. She had to tilt her head up, the top of her head almost an inch below his shoulders. “I love the glasses, but this?” She nodded at him before dragging her gaze slowly up and down his body, biting her lip as she did so. “This is good too. More than good.”
“Thanks,” he said, grinning. “I probably could hear the gossip but I try not to eavesdrop.”
She laughed. Her laugh was loud, infectious, and, not for the first time, Sean was struck with the realisation that it sounded like happiness. “Of course you do.”
He felt her watching him, but he kept his eyes on the horizon. He could hear the traffic below them, but there was nothing that caught his attention. That wasn’t unusual, not in a town as quiet as Hartfeld. Or, at least, it hadn’t been until Rourke’s arrival.
“So why did you decide to be a superhero in your spare time? It’s not the most common hobby,” she asked suddenly, when they hadn’t spoken for a few minutes. Sean stared at her, his eyes narrowed as he tried to decide what to tell her, if he should even tell her anything. “Not that you have to say anything. I’d like to know but… I’d get it if you didn’t answer.”
“I didn’t really decide,” he told her. “It was something I had to do.”
“Had to?”
“I didn’t always have these powers. Not like I do now,” he said. “I couldn’t fly until sophomore year of college. Before high school, I thought I was a bit stronger and faster than the others because I did more sports than most of them. I made starting Quarterback in when I was a freshman and I really wanted to believe that I’d earned that position. That it was because I’d worked hard, not because I kept getting stronger and faster or because of who my dad was.” He paused, his hands clenching into fists as he tried to work out what to say next. Amelia stepped closer, reaching out to rest her hand on his arm, her thumb drawing reassuring circles on his bicep. “My dad, he… had a temper. One night, when I was fifteen, he wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times I yelled at him to leave my momma alone. To get away from her. I snapped. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t different or that I wasn’t strong enough to stop him. I pushed him away and-”
He stopped suddenly. She didn’t need to know the details. She didn’t need to know how his dad would come home drunk or high. How, if his dad didn’t immediately pass out on the couch, he’d take out all his frustrations on him, on his little brother, on his mom. How his dad had flown across the room and smashed into the wall. How they’d all spent the night at the hospital. How the brain damage his dad already had hadn’t been enough.
“I stopped denying the truth that night. I quit the football team and I started training by myself, getting as strong and as fast as I could. I had spent too long pretending I was normal, and every moment I did that was a moment my momma spent terrified. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. Not to her. Not to anyone.” He looked down at Amelia, at her wide eyes and her sad smile. “Besides, what’s the point of having powers like this if I don’t use them to help people? If I can use them to save even one person, then putting on this costume and coming out here every night is worth it.”
“You’re a good guy, Sean Gayle,” she said quietly, stroking her hand up his arm to rest her palm against his cheek. “Super, even.”
Amelia hesitated, and then she rose up onto her tiptoes so she could press her lips to his. It only lasted a few seconds, Amelia breaking the kiss when she lost her balance and had to sink back onto her heels. He was too dazed to react, to wrap his arm around her and hold her steady and kiss her deeper. Instead, he just blinked at her as she stepped away.
“You admin guys can take your lunch whenever, right?” she asked. Sean frowned at her, answering her with a slow nod. Of all the things she could have asked him, that was the last thing he would have expected. “My lunch break is at half one tomorrow. If you’re interested.”
(He walked her home, his glasses back on and his supersuit hidden beneath jeans and a polo shirt. When they reached her place, he kissed her goodbye.)
(He was definitely interested.)