Free Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) by Blake M. Petit Page B

lounge and cafeteria were located. We breezed through there and I saw Miss Sinistah, who gave me a smile and a wink before Dr. Noble showed up with a scowl and a snarl, dragging her away.
    “Level four,” Hotshot said as we stepped off the elevator, “the dormitory.”
    He led me down to an unoccupied apartment -- it consisted of a living room/kitchenette combo, a bathroom, and two single bedrooms. The furniture was plain and the decor Spartan.
    “Morrie lets you decorate as you please,” he said. “Everybody is entitled to quarters, but some people prefer to live outside of the tower.”
    “I’ve got my own apartment,” I said. “I think I’ll stay there for a while. Besides, my cat hates to move.”
    The bottom floor was pretty frigid. “What’s down here?” I asked.
    “Storage,” Hotshot said. “Of all kinds.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “This is where we keep all of our supplies and merchandise. Y’know, the stuff we haven’t gotten out to the stores yet. You should see how packed it gets in October, just before the Christmas rush. This is also where we keep prisoners waiting for arbitration upstairs. And, when the situation demands it, the morgue is right down the hall.”
    “I don’t suppose you mean ‘morgue’ in any sort of newspaper sense, do you?”
    “The most writing you’ll find in there are on tags.”
    “Beautiful. I really hope you don’t have to use that often.”
    “It’s been years.”
    “Good to know.”
    “And that’s pretty much it,” Hotshot said. “Any questions?”
    Yeah. How long did you wait after Lionheart was dead before you drove the knife in his back?
    “No, I think I got everything.”
    “Great.” We wandered back to the lounge area and he clapped me on the back. “It was nice getting to know you, Josh.”
    “Mmm-hmm.”
    “If you need anything else, let me know.”
    He was friendly, courteous and a real nice guy to be around. But one little thing overshadowed everything else. As he left, my eyes followed. If anybody nearby had heat vision, I would have wound up frying the guy.
    It was the kind of stupid, irrational anger that has no explanation and, once it has passed, you simply cannot understand. But while you feel it, none of that matters.
    For what he’d done to Lionheart’s legacy, I hated Hotshot. I couldn’t help it. Although, to my credit, I was sorry for it later.
     
    THE ARENA
    Part of me, the stupid part, wanted to be matched against Hotshot for my first professional rumble. I r eally wanted to hand him his head. Then I thought for a while about Hotshot’s main power -- the ability to take any solid object and break down the atomic bonds within, turning it into a particle stream whose strength was proportionate to the mass of the original object. In short, he could turn any thing into a zap-ray. So a much larger portion of me was relieved to draw a match against half of the Spectacle Six. First Light, Fourtifier and Five-Share were supposed to meet me outside the room called The Arena.
    I spent a week practicing the powers I would use in that first rumble. I copied both Flux’s gravity powers and the inertia-controlling abilities of LifeSpeed. Between the two I could pretty much contradict everything Isaac Newton ever said. Fortunately, rather than dressing me up like a giant apple or something, Morrie gave me the semi-respectable stock name “Shift.”
    First Light, a thin, albino woman in gossamer robes, was the first to meet me outside the training room. She was practically glowing, and there was a Tolkienesque look about her somehow, with her pointed ears, high nose and narrow eyes. “You, then, are the new Shift?” she said in a high, hollow voice that made me think of elves.
    “For the moment, anyway,” I said. “Josh Corwood, nice to meet you.” I stuck out my hand to shake, but she blanched away, eyes bulging in terror.
    “No! I must not sully myself with human contact. It would shatter the purity of the Light.”
    I