Free Footsoldiers: A Super Human Clash Special From Philomel Books by Michael Carroll Page A

kidnapping case that this story starts.
    I didn’t like the way Apex was running things. But then I didn’t like much about him. I mean, the rest of us knew each other’s real identities, but Apex never even removed his helmet. And you couldn’t see any part of him under his armor.
    Like Paragon, I guess. But at least with Paragon you got the sense that there was a real guy under it all. With Apex, there were times when I wondered if maybe he was a robot.
    Even without visible features it was pretty obvious to anyone who cared to take notice that Apex was a strange-looking guy. He was short, not much taller than Hesperus. And he was stocky. Not exactly overweight—hard to tell through all the body armor—but he was kinda chunky.
    And that voice of his. Perfectly clipped British accent. But a very fake one, you know? Like a guy doing an impression of a newsreader on the BBC World Service.
    Apex and Thalamus got on like a house on fire. A really strange boring house, that is. It was probably because neither of them had any social skills. They’d known each other for years and as far as we could tell they didn’t have any other friends.
    Thalamus, now . . . I’ve got to say, I kind of liked him. Sure, he was puny and ugly and sometimes if you asked him a question he’d answer with more detail than you really wanted. Like, one time I asked him what he’d done the previous weekend and he started telling me. “I woke up at a little after seven-seventeen on Saturday morning and got out of bed and walked the eight steps to the bathroom. The door was closed, so I opened it before I went in. I closed the door after me but I didn’t lock it because I live alone, so the likelihood of someone unexpectedly walking in is less than one in fifty-one thousand.” And so on. I stopped him when he started telling me exactly how many corn flakes he’d had for breakfast.
    I used to drive him crazy by asking him stuff like, “Hey, Thalamus. What time was it yesterday?”
    Hesperus was a little odd too, but in a good way. I’d known her since we were teenagers. We grew up in the same town and pretty much discovered our powers together. Most of us in the superhero community had secret identities, but Hesperus kept hers
very
private. Around people she didn’t know—or just people she didn’t like—she often came across as quite cold and abrupt, all business and no fun. Among her friends she was smart and funny and bubbly, with a grin that was amazingly infectious and made you feel good to be alive. She laughed at silly jokes and would become embarrassed when you told her that her hair looked nice.
    She wore handmade armor and carried a sword and an ax, and it didn’t bother her in the least when Thalamus pointed out that the Greek god Hesperus was traditionally considered to be a man. She counterargued that Hesperus was an early name for the planet Venus, which is associated with women. That shut him up.
    I could tell you of at least a dozen instances when some bad guy just assumed she’d be a pushover. That was not a mistake anyone made twice.
    I remember the time Slaughter tried to kidnap her. Forget Ragnarök: Slaughter was easily the most vicious excuse for a human being I’ve ever met. She was like Genghis Khan crossed with Vlad the Impaler, only worse. Seriously. One time she killed a guy for looking at her. According to the news reports, she was walking through the city wearing a purple and red costume. Who’s
not
going to look? But she spotted this guy staring at her, and she stopped and punched her fist right through his neck.
    So she kidnapped Hesperus. Swooped down out of the sky and grabbed her, dragged her into the air. And Hesperus didn’t even struggle. Didn’t even say a word until Slaughter had taken her to her hideout, an abandoned house on the outskirts of Seattle.
    Slaughter cuffed Hesperus’ hands and feet,