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Duality

High Wind

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“Welcome to Super Burger, home of the Super Burger, can I take your order?”

Four thousand three hundred thirty-eight dollars was a lot. A few months worth of pay. It helped ease the pressure of a week without pay, revitalized our emergency money, and got Thoth a few goodies. After I got off work today, I was going to take a trip down to the mall to find some goodies for the rest of the family.

However, it was not enough money to quit my job over, unfortunately. Even if it had an extra zero on the end, I probably wouldn’t have quit my job. Two zeros? Maybe. But even that wasn’t enough to last forever. The more money we had available to us, the more we would inevitably spend as well. Already, Thoth was on the internet nearly every day, searching for new electronics to add to her wish list.

She wasn’t getting it all, of course. I told her five hundred. It was more than I had budgeted for any one of the rest of us, but she had been the one to put forth the idea of finding the money in the first place. She had done all the work. I had just bumbled about. And I almost missed my chance to get the money at all because I had decided to be honest with a super villain.

Still, as excited as I was to have the sudden influx of cash, I was glad things were going back to normal. That had been enough excitement for me. Now I could just sit at home without worrying too much, keeping the girls from getting into too much trouble, while I took mundane orders from hungry customers.

Though I wasn’t sure that the next group of customers looked all that hungry.

Super Burger was a popular fast food eatery. The most popular one in the United States. I doubted that everyone in the world had eaten Super Burger food—Thoth and Ares hadn’t ever eaten any, for example, though I sometimes brought some home for Dice and Toxx—but I imagined that a significant portion of the world’s population had been inside a Super Burger location.

Because of its popularity, people from all walks of life had passed through my counter. Rich and poor, large groups and solitary individuals. As such, today was not the first day I had seen uniformed men and women step up to the counter. Police, soldiers, and even hero company personnel all got hungry the same as anyone else. We even had heroes pop in on occasion, like Snow Queen.

Today was, however, the first day I had seen a group of four police walk in, look directly at each employee, look down at a little tablet, then move on to the next visible employee. They even had a hero with them. I recognized most heroes in the city on sight—a side effect of working at a hero-themed restaurant—and High Wind was no exception. Her green and white wingsuit-like outfit with a helmet and goggles stood out for how… unflashy it was.

One of the officers, O’Hara by the name on her uniform, nudged her parter in the side and nodded toward me.

If I hadn’t already had a bad feeling, that would have tipped me off that something was going on.

The two officers stepped forward. Their two partners spread out, moving to the sides. High Wind just stayed in the back. It was hard to see her expression with her helmet and large green goggles, but her posture as she leaned against the dividing wall screamed boredom.

“Sir,” O’Hara said, clearly speaking to me. “Would you mind stepping around to this side of the counter?”

“Is this about the attempted robbery two weeks ago? Because I already gave the police my statement.”

“Sir, please.”

It sounded like a request. Nothing more. But it clearly wasn’t. They were tense. Even High Wind, despite her air of calm boredom. I could see it in her gloves. They way her fingers were clenched. The way she was trying to act nonchalant and avoid looking in my direction, but wasn’t quite succeeding. It all just added to the atmosphere of something being amiss.

That something was probably me, given their focus on me. They knew something, or thought they knew something, and it was making them nervous. Nervous enough to have hired a hero.

“I’m sorry, I can’t leave the counter unattended.” Delay. Delay, delay, delay. “My shift ends in an hour. Can I take your order while you wait?”

While trying to avoid acting too nervous in front of the police officers, I shouted out to Thoth at home, asking her to get online and find out why they might be interested in me. It couldn’t be something to do with the money. King of Spades had only seen me as some random guy. It hadn’t been any face that I normally wore. Thoth had the tracker situation well in hand. That would have led them to our home anyway, not my work. My name on Super Burger’s file wasn’t even my real name.

O’Hara and her partner, McGregor, shared a look. It was not the look of two people deciding on what they should order.

My thumb brushed against the knife in my pocket. The optimal outcome would be that nothing happened at all. The police might ask a few questions then be on their way. But if they did just have a few questions, they wouldn’t be acting like they were. High Wind wouldn’t be here. Their tense muscles… The way O’Hara had asked me to move to their side of the counter…

They were here to detain or arrest me.

“Take one of your coworkers hostage!”

At home, I turned and just stared at the television screen.

“What?” Thoth shrugged. “You don’t have to actually hurt them. Just use them long enough to get away from the police, find a hiding spot, and kill yourself. If you hide yourself well enough, your power will remain hidden. Hostage gets to go back to whatever they have for a life and the police get stumped if they ever run across your dirt remains.”

I didn’t bother dignifying her comment with a response. Instead, I focused on the police.

“If you don’t have anything to order, please wait to the side. There are other customers in line.” One other customer. This was supposed to be the lunch rush, but the police were apparently scaring away customers. Since they had arrived, only one other person had entered and actually stuck around. A mother who looked utterly bewildered at the officers being around, here with her young son. The latter was trying to squirm out of her grip to rush up to High Wind. I really didn’t care if they were going to order. I really just wanted a mild distraction. Something to relieve the pressure on me long enough to give me a chance to think.

I let out a small sigh of relief as O’Hara turned to the two officers standing behind her. With a slight motion from her hand, she split off, heading to stand near one door while her two partners moved to the other door. Both entrances to the customer side of the store were not blocked, but guarded. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had people watching the back door too.

“They sure capitulated quick, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. She seemed pretty insistent when she first came in, but… I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“Maybe they think you took that mother and son hostage.”

“I haven’t moved from behind the counter.”

“They were tense right? They probably think your power is a lot flashier than it actually is. Like laser eyes or something.”

At home, I leaned back on the couch and sighed. It… might have been like that. But I figured that they would have tried to tackle me over the counter if they actually thought I had taken hostages. It was more likely that they were just trying to keep from escalating. Still, I was thankful. Their decision to not escalate bought me… at most an hour.

Thoth fell silent, turning away from the rest of the room to look at some gauges and dials. Every once in a while, she would twist valves or pull levers. Her idle animation indicating that she was doing something. Probably using that internet line we had piped down to the basement through the elevator shaft. Prior to a few days ago, the upper floors had an internet connection, but the basement did not. It had been completely isolated from the rest of the world. Now, Thoth could directly access the internet without having to ask one of the rest of us to navigate the mouse and keyboard.

Dice and Toxx were both in the room as well. They had been before this whole debacle started. The picture book they had been reading together was forgotten on the floor, discarded without a second thought. Dice was kneeling on the carpet, face far more serious than I could ever remember having seen before. At least she looked calm.

Toxx seethed. She stood just a step behind Dice, staring at me. Her fists clenched and unclenched over and over again. Her stance, wide at the feet with her elbows bent, looked like she was about ready to pick up the coffee table and throw it out the window. Underneath her stringy black hair, I could see her eyes. They had been clear earlier today, but now the whites were stained red. Her subconjunctival hemorrhaging was acting up.

“Breathe, Toxx. Calm down.”

“They hurt you.”

“Nobody has hurt me, Toxx. I’m fine. I’m right here.”

“They’re attacking you.”

“Nobody has attacked me either, Toxx.” Not yet, anyway. “My manager is talking to them, trying to get them to leave, I think.”

They were scaring off customers. That wasn’t good for business. But I doubted she would be all that convincing. And, as she talked to O’Hara, the officer pointed back toward me. My manager turned back, surprise laden on her face.

“I have a feeling I’m not going to be keeping my job after this.”

“There are a few people standing outside with their phones. One is streaming,” Thoth said, sliding to the side as an exterior shot of the Super Burger building popped up. “So I have eyes on you. Don’t know why they’re after you or what tipped them off yet. Maybe they ran your name and address after you were involved in two separate thieving incidents and were surprised to find that you and your stated address don’t exist.”

“If it’s just that, then fine. At least I’m not leading them back here.” Leaning forward, I stared at the screen. Thoth, without even being asked, moved completely out of the way so that I could see the image in its entirety. “I don’t suppose you could get a better shot of over here,” I said, pointing my finger toward the thinning drive-thru line.

“It’s some guy streaming,” Thoth said, popping back up on screen. “Not a robot that I can control.”

Looking out the side window of the Super Burger, I did see a handful of people with phones up. I couldn’t tell which one was up on the monitor, but I supposed it didn’t matter. “Right.” Turning back to Super Burger’s lobby, I just about jumped out of my skin.

High Wind stood right at the counter. The police were silent, watching like they expected something to go wrong. Behind her, the mother and the little boy were still in the shop. It looked like he was clutching a notebook to his chest. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the hero after the police backed off, but she had probably given him an autograph.

Which gave me an idea. “Thoth! Pull up full images of children. Ten to twelve years old.”

The view of the Super Burger shrunk to one corner of the screen as a dozen pictures popped up. People clearly sourced from a quick image search.

“I hope you’re not going to do something foolish,” she said as the last image filled the screen.

“Probably, just give me a minute…”

At the same time, High Wind leaned on the counter. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be, you know. You can’t run from me.”

I plastered on my best ‘customer’ smile. “Can I get you anything?”

Groaning, High Wind slumped forward. After a quick glance back at O’Hara, she leaned in a little closer. “Do you think I could get a High Wind kid’s meal?”

“We’re really not supposed to give out kid’s meals to teenagers, but… since it is your name on the meal, I suppose I can make an exception.”

As I punched in the order to the Super Burger register, I pulled out my knife at home. “Sorry about the mess,” I told my siblings.

“What do you think you’re—” was as far as Thoth got before I couldn’t concentrate on those surroundings anymore. A minute later and the body died.

A little girl from far beyond where the cameras were recording, maybe ten to twelve years old, ran up to the door. She heaved it open just as I handed High Wind her High Wind kid’s meal. An ear-splitting squeal of delight pierced through the tense air. Everyone in the lobby, officer, manager, hero, and customer, turned toward the noise. Everyone except for me.

I backed away from the counter as quickly as I dared. Everyone’s eyes were on the little girl, watching as she just avoided O’Hara’s hand grabbing at her shoulder. In the video stream that Thoth had pulled up, I hadn’t seen any officers standing around near the drive-thru. The angle wasn’t perfect, so I could be walking into a trap, but I was hoping that I wasn’t.

Luckily, my little girl impression was doing a perfect job of distracting everyone in the lobby. I was playing up the over-excited girl starstruck at meeting an idol. Except I didn’t have a mother to stop me from rushing up and hugging High Wind around the waist.

There weren’t any officers outside the building. At least not out the back door I used. I ran as fast as I could between the cars, rushing behind the condominium complex that was directly adjacent to Super Burger. I made it fully into the alley by the time McGregor noticed that I wasn’t behind the counter anymore. He shouted out a warning, alerting the rest.

I tried to keep my arms around High Wind just a little longer, but, in a surprising disregard for an innocent child’s well-being, she peeled herself out of my grip, knocking me to the floor in the process. A gust of wind just about tore the door off its hinges as she blew out of there. The four officers were hot on her heels.

Before anyone could question a parent-less child in the middle of the Super Burger lobby, I walked out, leaving through the opposite door and heading in almost the exact opposite direction from the condominium complex.

Both of me moved in opposite directions. The little girl was heading back home, or roughly in that direction. I wouldn’t head straight there until I was sure that I wasn’t being followed. Meanwhile, I would lead High Wind and the police on a goose chase if I could. Loosing them long enough to find a good hiding spot would be the best outcome.

So I kept running. The condominium’s dumpsters were locked behind a chain link fence. Climbing it was possible. Easy, even. But I didn’t think I could get inside and hidden before High Wind noticed where I was.

She flew high above the Super Burger. I could see her from my position as the little girl. She looked back and forth, trying to decide where I might have gone from the back exit. As the little girl, I almost got knocked off my feet when High Wind finally took off. The blast of wind left behind in her wake set off a car alarm in the Super Burger parking lot.

Thanks to my forewarning of her departure and her direction, I knew I had precious few seconds before she flew overhead and spotted me. Those few seconds bought me a moment to dive to the ground and roll underneath a minivan. I skinned my elbows on my way down, but bit past the stinging. This body wasn’t long for the world anyway.

Even underneath the van, I could feel the gust of wind tugging at my work uniform as High Wind flew past.

That was another problem with running. Not the wind, but my uniform. Super Burger employees wore a fairly distinctive outfit. The shirt was black, but covered in logos and emblems in a variety of colors. It was all a tourism thing. Even now, as the little girl, I could see a crowd gathering to watch High Wind zoom about.

As soon as the heavy wind settled, I squirmed out from under the van. High Wind was out of sight—all my sights. Hopefully she wouldn’t be back quite so soon. Maybe she would do a quick loop around the entire Super Burger lot. I considered running back to the dumpster, but that would have taken me closer to the Super Burger. Even if High Wind was on the opposite side of the city, the police officers were undoubtedly searching as well. At least one was probably headed this way. A single word from them over their radios and High Wind would rocket back.

I started running again in the same direction I had been before hiding. While moving, I considered tearing off my shirt, but a shirtless man running around was just as noticeable as one wearing every heroes’ logos from the past fifty years for all different reasons.

On second thought, polka dots stuck out a lot more.

With Ares’ body, I wasn’t strong enough to just grip both sides of my shirt and tear it off. I had to fumble with the buttons while I ran.

A rush of wind was my only warning that heroic company was returning. I ducked into the garage of the automated car wash and waited, holding my breath as if that would help.

Puddles of water rippled as she flew overhead. But I couldn’t see her. That meant that she couldn’t see me either.

The brief rest as I waited for High Wind to leave wasn’t doing me an favors. I wasn’t even a full city block away from the Super Burger, but my heart hammered in my chest the way it always did when I tried rushing. This body just wasn’t built for a marathon. I wouldn’t be able to run much further. And High Wind would catch up sooner rather than later.

But I didn’t need to run far. Just far enough to find a large dumpster. Or even an alley with sufficient cover. Something that would keep me and the nature of my power hidden for an hour until my body decomposed to dirt.

Biting my lip, I finished tearing off my shirt. It went right into the small garbage bin outside the car wash as I ran past. I could do this. Not much farther. Despite working around here, I didn’t know the area near the harbor all that well. But the city was the city. The entire thing was laid out in a grid. Even if the signs on stores changed, the buildings hardly did. There would be a spot to hide soon enough.

At least my form as a little girl was being left alone. I had been a little worried that one of the officers might try to stop me from leaving. But nobody, onlooker or officer, cared. It seemed like they were far too worried about the other me to care much.

I made it to the end of the block and across the street before I heard the shout.

“Stop!” An officer, not O’Hara, ordered me with a pistol drawn and aimed in my direction.

She was still in the alley I had just left.

Naturally, I didn’t stop. If anything, she spurned me on to run faster. The officer would call in my location. High Wind would be on me in only minutes. Instead of rushing through the nearest alley as I had intended, I rushed to the door of a high-rise apartment complex. The officer saw me, of course, but the apartment building was a better location even if they knew where I was. Especially if they knew where I was.

High Wind couldn’t use her power to their full effect inside.

That was the theory anyway.

I had never been inside an apartment building before. I knew what they were, of course. The machine had given me general information and apartments were universal enough that I knew what they were. In a general sense. There were lots of miniature houses without yards or front porches where people lived.

My hope, my new hope, was that there would be enough rooms and enough hallways that my pursuers wouldn’t be able to easily find me.

For that, I had to get off the ground floor.

The elevator was probably too slow, but Ares’ body couldn’t possibly climb more than one flight of stairs. Especially not after my dash from the Super Burger. By some small grace of luck, the elevator was at the ground floor. There was only the one. No second elevator for pursuers to take.

I rushed inside and hit a random button in the upper-middle section of the building. Floor nineteen. I couldn’t go all the way to the top. High Wind would probably be coming from that direction while the police guarded the elevator and stairs. There was a fire escape on one end of the building. Presumably, it opened to the hallways. But that would probably be watched as well.

By entering the building, I had effectively ensured that it would be my tomb. At least, this body’s tomb. My other body was already halfway home.

Around floor fifteen, the elevator lurched to a stop. It was not the smooth graceful stops of an elevator pausing to pick up passengers on a floor. It felt more like the time a bus had to slam on its breaks to stop itself from crushing a cyclist.

Trapped.

Would my body decompose before they could find it if I stabbed myself now? Could I pry open the doors and maybe delay them finding me by long enough? Or the hatch above the elevator? It was a bit high, but Ares wasn’t a small person. I well knew that he would have to duck to enter any room at our house.

Jumping, I slammed my hand against the hatch. It rattled, loose. Planting my foot against the hand railing, I got my fingers between the hatch as I hoisted myself up. If I would have had to jump and do a pull up, it would have been impossible. With the foothold, getting up there was just extremely difficult. It took a few hits with my fist, but the hatch came off completely. Climbing out on top, I quickly found out why.

The entire top of the elevator was covered in rust. A padlock had secured the hatch shut, but the padlock hadn’t given way. The hinges had. Every rainstorm probably resulted in leakage and corrosion.

Maybe me climbing out on top would get some inspectors out to make it safer. But that was someone else’s job.

The elevator was stopped dead between two floors. A series of pulleys and wires were connected to the doors, but I doubted I could open them even if I could reach them. Bars and crossbeams lined the walls, but there was actually quite a bit of space around the elevator. Rungs for a ladder ran up next to the doors, though I wasn’t sure if there would be a way out if I kept climbing. Leaning over the edge, I stared.

It was a long way down.

As I stood, half my weight over the edge, the elevator lurched again, moving back down toward the bottom.

I tumbled right over the side.

One of the cross beams flew up toward me, but I didn’t hit.

A gust of wind blew me back up, sending me even higher up the shaft.

“What are you doing?” High Wind shouted from the very top of the shaft. The highest doors were open with her leaning out, glaring. “Don’t you know that hundreds of people get decapitated—or worse—trying to self-rescue from stalled elevators? What if I hadn’t been here, huh? You would have fallen!”

Her words were a bit difficult to make out. She kept shouting while lifting me up, but the roar of the wind blasting around me made it like trying to understand Thoth when she was pulling some odd antic in her workshop.

Although the wind was keeping me from falling, it didn’t keep me from moving. I pulled out my knife. There were no more options. The police were down. High Wind was getting closer even with her still just leaning over the edge of the open doors. I wouldn’t be able to escape from either. Gripping the knife, I pointed the tip at her.

“Really?” High Wind put her hands on her hips. I couldn’t see much of her face with her large goggles and helmet in the way, but it was clear she was disappointed. “You’re going to fight me? You realize that if I lose my concentration, you’ll plummet.”

“That’s my hope.”

“You’re insane.”

Although the wind kept blowing around me, I came to a stop. I was well out of reach of the top floor. She wasn’t going to bring me closer. Maybe she would wait for someone else to give her backup, or maybe she was just trying to get me to cool off.

Regardless, this was the end of the line.

Spinning the knife in my hand, I plunged it deep into my neck.

High Wind screamed a cry of true horror and the gust of wind holding me aloft vanished.

The last thing that body felt was tumbling against one of the crossbeams in the elevator shaft.

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