Steel City Heroes (Book 1): The Catalyst Read online

  The unnatural upward motion of elevators always struck her as curious—a symbol of humankind’s capacity to fight their physical nature. While efforts to overcome their bodies never ceased, people refused to elevate their minds.

  Willa found the top floor vacant. She curled her slender fingers into a loose fist and rapped lightly. She hoped for no response. Perhaps she could slip away unnoticed.

  “It’s open,” a voice croaked from behind the door.

  She grabbed the familiar knob and felt energy pulse through her hand. Pushing into the office, she found the old man seated on a wooden chair, surrounded by piles of texts. Towering bookcases made the tiny room feel even smaller. Photographs, mostly black and white, were haphazardly hung on the remaining wall space. The office’s occupant—at various ages—was in each photo alongside famous literary figures. Ginsberg. Borges. O’Connor. Angelou. It was a “Who’s Who” of twentieth century authors—from pulp writers to beat poets to the pop-literary.

  The most recent—and current prize possession—was a photo of George R. R. Martin taken just weeks before in Roanoke. Edwin had driven six hours simply to snap a photo with the contemporary bard. George and Edwin could have been brothers. Matching gray beards and physiques that accompanied long days in the chair paired with little exercise. The primary difference was in their expressions. Martin’s smile was wide and his eyes sparkled. Edwin—even in the company of this pop genius—looked dour.

  “Sit,” Edwin said through his beard. He held an index finger in the air as his eyes remained on the page. Willa unearthed a rickety old chair from under a stack of books. Looking for an appropriate place to set them, she squatted and placed the volumes gently on the floor.

  Her eyes scanned the shelves. Though there were thousands of volumes, they were ordered differently each time she arrived. Once they seemed to be arranged topically, another time chronologically, and once by color of binding. Most of the collection were literature and poetry, but histories, biographies, and astrophysics found their places within the metric ton of paper.

  Geographical by author, she thought—guessing at the latest schema.

  The old man set the book open on his lap, smoothed the pages with both hands, and carefully pressed a bookmark into its crease. He glanced at the pile of books Willa had just set on the floor. She noticed him grimace, though it wasn’t much different than his general countenance.

  “You rang?” Willa tried to keep her smartassery to a minimum when visiting the fortieth floor.

  “I think you know why,” the old man said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. “Your class. You need to learn to control yourself.”

  He was right that Willa knew why she was there, but the how remained a mystery. She was uncertain how he knew anything that went on during her day—though he inevitably did. It was uncanny, much like the rearrangement of his shelves. Though curious, she dared not ask. The man coveted his secrecy.

  “Funny, I thought I had controlled myself perfectly well.”

  Edwin looked into Willa’s lap and watched her hands tremble. He sighed. “How’s your father?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How’s your son?”

  Edwin cracked a smile. “Touché. You know he and I haven’t spoken since you came here. He chose a different path and hoped the same for you.”

  “I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.”

  “‘Invictus’?” the old man asked. “I’m glad your education plumbed the depths of the English canon.”

  Though accustomed to his scrutiny, Willa still blushed.

  I’m sure George R. R. Martin would approve.

  “We talked last week. He’s the same, always the same.” She looked at her watch. “Look, can we finish?”

  “Why? Do you have a course to teach?”

  The old man was particularly pissy. She was used to his attacks—Willa considered it part of her training. But an emeritus professor jabbing an adjunct struggling to make a living should be out of bounds.

  “Master Weil, I would like to be done for the day.”

  “Grandpa works, you know.”

  “Yes, I do, Master Weil.”

  The old man shifted his girth and swiped a hand across his forehead. He always looked old—but now antiquity had found its home on his brow. “Willa, you knew full well that when you decided to take this path it would not be easy. Every guild has its boundaries. They are not meant to stifle, but to grant freedom. Only within the boundaries is true freedom possible. But you and I are different than most of our profession. We are bound to two: the professorial guild, and the magicians. Today you bent the boundaries of both. And for what?”

  “For good,” she whispered.

  “Excuse me?”

  Sitting up straight, Willa pushed the small of her back against the chair and lifted her chin. It was hard to feel big around him. “I did it for good, Grandpa. Those students, they’re lost. They need inspiration—they need the full power the words hold. I can give it to them.”

  “Pedagogy is power,” the old man fired back. “The words are meaningful without your spell-work. You operate in two spheres toward two ends with two sets of power. Today you cheated as a professor and used your magic in a place it didn’t belong.” He sat back heavily in his chair. “Fine, you did some good. Maybe you lifted their spirits for a moment. But then class ended, as did your influence. You’ve not taught them to appreciate poetry, to understand the way in which words mold our lives. You simply manipulated their emotions. You’ve taught them to rely on your power, which is temporary and limited, rather than giving them the tools they need to own it for themselves. You didn’t do it for their good. You did it for your own.”

  Willa held back tears that threatened to undermine her composure. None of this was new; she’d heard it a thousand times.

  “Maybe you’re right, Master Weil. But locking away the gift that you have—barricading yourself in this tower—is an act of equal hypocrisy.”

  She stood and left the room, her words hanging in the air behind her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Media attention on DARPA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, revolved around exoskeletons and other technical enhancements—devices that increased soldier speed and lifting capabilities. Front-line machines that could replace their biological counterparts were also popular. And why not? That stuff was a Tony Stark kind of sexy. Robots made good headlines and fit the techno-utopian vision that most Americans swore by.

  It wasn’t that biological enhancements didn’t exist in the military world, they just failed to garner the same press. Altered caffeine pills kept soldiers awake, and Ritalin provided extreme focus. Strictly speaking, chemical enhancements in the US military went back to the colonies. Washington administered vaccines to his troops to counteract British biological warfare in the form of smallpox—a type of combat that had been terribly successful against the native people years before.

  Fool me once.

  “I’ll be damned,” Chem mumbled to himself as he scanned the outputs on the screen. The program had been running its analysis for well over an hour. His deep-set eyes grew heavy. The military had their Ritalin and caffeine pills, Chem had his Red Bull—and he needed another.

  Through his typically excessive scrutiny, the researcher discovered precisely what he was looking for—and determined what he would need moving forward. “Gamma aminobutyric acid,” he said into the empty lab. “The fountain of youth.”

  He rubbed his hands together as he stared up at the yellowing dropped ceiling. Soccer moms around the country swallowed the neurotransmitter inhibitor by the fistful to counteract the anxiety created by grandé lattes and cheating husbands. Chem and his ilk considered these supplements snake oil. It might sound good in an advertisement, but oral dosages would have the same chance of crossing the blood-brain barrier as a fourteen-old-old boy had of getting into Cheerleaders Gentleman’s Club on Liberty Avenue.

  But consumers typically opted f
or what sounded good and gamma aminobutyric acid—GABA for short—could be purchased at any of the health food stores popping up on the East End. His formula might just work with the proper levels of Baclofen—a GABA agonist that relieved spasms in MS patients. It was also the hallucinogenic de jour of junkies around the city. But the medicinal and recreational effects held no interest for him. Baclofen was also found to induce the development of human growth hormones when injected into the brains of male rats.

  This might just be it.

  Chem tossed his keys and cell into his pocket. Taking off his lab coat, he swung his messenger bag over his head and turned for the exit.

  ****

  No matter how nerdy he might look, a towering black man walking the halls of a chemistry lab in the middle of the night tended to draw attention.

  The bleary-eyed guard clutched Chem’s credentials as he barked into his university-issued cell phone.

  “Sorry for the mix-up, Dr. Scott.” The man looked down at the floor as he handed back the identification card.

  Chem sneered at his proper name. “Technically it’s just Mr. Scott. But everyone calls me Chem.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  He snatched the credentials and turned for the door. The medical lab would be a ghost town this time of year. Students weren’t yet cramming for exams, and the faculty would be enjoying as much time as possible at home before the end-of-semester scramble. Percy Carver Scott, AKA Chem, enjoyed this solitude.

  His feet echoed down the empty corridor. The guard was right to be suspicious. The other access card, the one hidden in his bag, had been turned off months before, his final mark of humiliation. Once he’d been a prized asset of the academic community, but the university had disavowed all connection with him. His failure to produce results, the debacle with the research ethics board, and even his failures in the classroom provided a compelling case against him. Without tenure and few political allies, it was a fight he couldn’t win.

  Thanks to the technological prowess congregating around Oakland, it wasn’t difficult for the defunct professor to find a hacker who could be bought for a couple bucks. With his private research ramping up, he needed access to the lab and chemical supply closets for late-night shopping trips such as these.

  Left, right, straight, left.

  Chem’s body knew the way to the chemical and prescription storeroom better than anywhere. He had navigated the labyrinth for years and could have made it with his eyes closed. The key he pulled from the stash pocket of his bag was more difficult to obtain than the hacked ID. It took several rounds of laced drinks with an old colleague. Rohypnol wasn’t just a date-rape drug. Poor Michael likely got chastised for his “absentmindedness,” and maybe even had to pay a fine, but science was a costly endeavor. Progress required sacrifice.

  Chem pushed through the door, his eyes adjusting to the dimness. Auxiliary lights would have to do; cameras kept a watchful eye on every square inch of the place. He knew just what he needed and where it would be anyway. The same key unlocked the cabinet. He snatched a bottle of pills and dropped them into his messenger bag. The rattle always drew a smile.

  He waved his phone in front of the shelves to illuminate the labels. Getting back to the lab only to realize he’d left something off the shopping list would be a disaster. Satisfied with a chosen few bottles, he closed the doors.

  His grin faded as footsteps and a faint whistling approached the storeroom. Scoring drugs was on his to-do list—a larceny charge wasn’t. Chem’s strength was his mind—and his will—not his body. Fumbling with another cabinet, he found something nestled in a plastic bag that would do the trick in a pinch. He crouched and prayed the footsteps would pass by.

  They didn’t.

  The door opened with the creak of a B-grade horror film. Lights flashed on just as the chemist ducked behind a cart of empty beakers and five-gallon buckets. His eyes cut over to the cabinet.

  Shit.

  The door was ajar. Scientists pride themselves on their cautious precision. How could he have been so careless?

  His uninvited guest had seen it too. “Hello? Somebody in here?”

  Chem held his breath like a Japanese pearl diver.

  “Hey, Ken, it’s me.”

  A radio crackled to life: “Yeah, Bill. What’s up?”

  Chem cursed under his breath. Bill was a fifty-year-old guard working these halls at night so his little girl could attend in the day. The man was friendlier than a golden retriever and just as loyal. The chemist would often take a break from the lab and join the night guard as he sucked down a cancer stick on the front steps. He liked Bill—but not enough to serve time.

  This was going to have to be perfect.

  “You need me to come down?”

  “Sure. You need the exercise, and we might need to sweep the place.”

  “Roger that.”

  A lab towel with the iconic mascot was just within reach. It would serve as a makeshift mask. Chem’s steady hands worked fast. He opened the tiny plastic bag he’d palmed from the shelf and shook it. A piece of metal the size of a six-sided die tumbled out. He pulled a water bottle from his bag, broke the seal, and took a long drink.

  Looking under the table, he could see Bill’s legs across the room. The guard stood directly in front of the storage cabinet. Chem did a quick calculation and blew on his hand, hoping to rid it of any condensation. In one fluid movement, he grabbed the Cesium—a soft pyrophoric element—flipped it into the water bottle, and twisted the cap in place. Without hesitation, he slid the bottle under the long lab table toward his old acquaintance.

  Chem blocked his ears and put his head between his legs.

  The blast split through the room. The deafening chemical explosion was accompanied by the tumult of shattering glass on steel. The reaction was perfectly timed and placed. Chem leapt to his feet and shot for the door. Jumping an overturned cart, he glimpsed a crumpled mass under an upended table. He prayed to whatever gods might exist that Bill was OK.

  The hallway was still empty, but it wouldn’t be for long. Exiting through the front would be a mistake. He angled toward the rear emergency exit. His heart was a jackhammer in his ears; his lungs screamed.

  I’m not in any shape for this shit.

  Coming to a T in the corridor, he groped the wall and catapulted himself around the corner—directly into the chest of Bill’s shift partner.

  “What the hell?” the man shouted.

  The security uniform barely fit the guy. He looked like he got the job right after he failed off the offensive line.

  Though tall, the chemist was rail thin. But he could use his body strategically, and the element of surprise was on his side.

  Chem grabbed the man’s uniform; his knee shot upward, targeting the guard’s soft crotch.

  Bullseye.

  A gravelly groan escaped the lineman’s mouth, and he dropped to a knee.

  The researcher wasted no time escaping through the rear of the building into the brisk December air. He compartmentalized his thoughts, shifting from his narrow escape to the promises held in his personal lab.

  There would be a breakthrough before the sun rose.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Many of you are here, I imagine, because you had a cool history teacher in high school. Or maybe your dad always had the History Channel on. Then again, that’s mostly science fiction and reality TV nowadays.”

  Elijah had given the same opener a thousand times to a hundred students at twenty schools. His adjunct career was diverse. He hopped from community college to private college to every campus of the UMass system east of Springfield. Most adjuncts were road warriors, and Elijah was no exception. One semester he put nearly 30,000 miles on his Subaru moving from campus to campus. While some might think that students at small private colleges in New England would be quite interested in a class called Historical Research Methods, or at least more interested than the multi-gen learners at Bunker Hill Community College, it just wasn’t tru
e. The students were, for the most part, the same—distracted and disengaged.

  Pittsburgh was no different.

  “Most of you are freshmen, I presume, which means, if statistics hold, that nearly forty percent of you won’t be here next year.”

  And, nearly thirty percent of you are asleep right now.

  “Accounting, business, human services, elementary education…I don’t know which it will be, but this course will drive many of you out of my discipline and into another. Some would say that’s my job—to sift out the chaff.”

  Students lining the back of the nondescript classroom tapped away at their phones. A few in the middle napped unashamedly. But, there were three students sitting in the first row. Elijah knew the type, likely homeschoolers—God bless them—who were fastidiously taking notes. A young woman off to his left, barely old enough to vote or buy cigarettes, was giving him that look. There’s always one. He flushed and rearranged his notes on the lectern.

  “It’s okay, really. I started college nearly twenty years ago as a journalism major. I had imagined backpacking through Europe, snapping photos, and writing about adventures. Time Magazine would be my main employer, of course.” He grinned.

  The only one smiling was the girl to his left. His front-row crew, eyes on their notes, were jotting down “Time Magazine,” as if it would be on the test.

  “In my second semester, I realized that was a fool’s dream, and shifted my education toward more serious pursuits.”

  He left the lectern and paced across the room—to the right so as to avoid the blonde. “Most of you will wash out because you can’t take the workload. But some of you will leave because you love history too much.” Elijah paused for effect. “I’m standing here today to tell you that the worst historian is the one who loves history.” One of the guys in the front row, a high achiever, jerked his head out of his notepad. A furrowed brow exhibited his disbelief.

  “You can revere history. You can admire history. You can understand the deeply important place that history holds in all of human experience. But you must not love her.”