Rebels undercity heroes.., p.1
Rebels: Undercity Heroes Book 2, page 1
Rebels
Ren Blake
Copyright © 2022 by Ren Blake
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published by Rendere Writing
2022 First Digital Edition.
Editing by Whitney's Book Works https://www.whitneysbookworks.com/
Cover by GetCovers www.getcovers.com
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
About Author
Book 1: Origins
Prequel story: Flashfire Angel
Coming Soon: Battle
Chapter 1
“Anna, are you sure I should be here?”
Tia looked at the front door to my parents’ apartment unsure, which was the most expression I'd seen on her today. I nodded once, hoping to convince her it was fine. For the most part though, I hoped this dinner would snap her out of the funk she'd been in since the hero rescue.
Like myself, she'd been proud of the things we had achieved, and walking home from the meeting site, we'd spent the time talking, and dreaming about the things that could be. She'd said she wouldn't continue to be a hero after the mission, but I think I had her half convinced by the time we reached her house.
Then, in the cold light of morning, her feelings changed. She no longer wanted anything to do with the heroes. She didn't talk much, didn't interact willingly with anyone other than me, and even that was at a minimum.
I'd tried giving her time, but time seemed only to make it worse. Now, with nothing else for it, I'd made a plan to help snap her out of it.
Or, more accurately, Nathan had made a plan. He knew less about the reasons behind Tia's sudden withdrawal than I did, but he was still willing to help. To start, real food, with people she was comfortable with. It might not pull her out of her shell, but she was more animated with my brothers than anyone else I knew.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod, jerking my head in the door's direction. The narrow hallway had three other doors leading to apartments and was otherwise devoid of decoration. “Parents aren’t here, so we’re both welcome for once.” That was the point, Matthew said, of the family dinner. To have only the family we wanted.
My parents had planned to go out, which was the reason it was safe. After a fight about two weeks ago, I was technically no longer welcome in the house. It didn't stop me—I was quietly confident I wasn't welcome before they kicked me out—but it did mean I was more careful when I attempted to visit my brothers.
For now, I was staying with Tia. If we survived living together, I hoped that the two of us could pool our money and move to a better place. I swear I could hear the demons pass the houses at night.
Opening the door to my parent's apartment, I didn't bother with the key I still had but never needed. I wasn’t sure my parents had a key anymore. That the apartment was perpetually unlocked was concerning in a world with both demons and other humans, but somehow over the years, we’d avoided being brutally murdered in our sleep.
The door opened into an area bigger than Tia’s entire house. On one side was a living room set that circled a coffee table, beyond which was the opening that led to the hallway of rooms. Opposite the living area, was a small kitchen facing a wooden table that was slowly being crushed under the weight of the food Nathan prepared. I stared, a little impressed.
“Just the four of us?” I asked. Tia followed me through the door, giving her signature wave at my brothers—arm bent at the elbow, then rotating her hand forty-five degrees. She'd been doing the same wave since I'd met her at thirteen.
Matthew looked us over from his position at the head of the table. My oldest brother had an easygoing face with hair that flopped over it in a way I heard girls found cool. Like Nathan, his skin was a shade darker than my own, and his tall stature should have meant that he'd have no trouble finding a girlfriend. Honestly, if he wasn’t such a shut-in workaholic, he might have been able to keep one of the girls he attracted. Unfortunately, he’d never gotten the hang of social interaction, and metal was the only thing he could attract anymore.
He liked Tia because she was almost as much of a workaholic shut-in as he was. I’d learned when she’d shared my floor that the two of them could talk metal for hours. If he wasn’t almost ten years older than her, both their relationship problems could be solved easily, but Matthew had never thought of Tia as anything other than his kid sister’s friend, and Tia was still pretending she wasn’t obsessed with hoverboard boy.
“Yeah,” Matthew said, as he returned Tia’s wave with a more common style of his own. “Nathan’s gone overboard again. I think since you complained about the food at Tia’s.”
Tia looked up at me, her brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You complained about my food?”
Why was she surprised? I’d complained about her food for years. “Fish and potatoes are not a diet, Tia,” I commented. “It’s a death sentence.”
Tia still looked a little offended, but I’d never once pretended that I liked what she ate. In fact, I didn’t think even she liked her diet. She complained of poverty as though she wasn’t secretly saving to buy a hoverboard if her attempt to build one failed. I ignored her look and walked toward the table, pulling out a chair that would allow me to sit next to Tia.
Nathan came through then, a bottle of water on his lap as he wheeled closer. Looking at him, you wouldn’t have expected that he would have been able to cook the meal in front of us, but that would underestimate him. I’d learned soon after his accident not to underestimate Nathan. His wind magic gave him an edge that could not be beaten.
Nathan would have been tall standing, but with the use of his legs taken from him by an accident he’d had at fourteen, that wasn’t an option anymore. He had dark skin, with wide-set eyes. His face was carefully impassive, as though, like his words, he enjoyed keeping his feelings to himself. It was a habit he’d developed after the accident, and I suspected it had a lot to do with our parents and Nathan not wanting them to have access to more things to hurt him with.
He’d changed a lot since then. But life-changing events had that effect on people. If he hadn’t had his accident, I wondered whether I would have dragged him to the clearing to be a hero, too. But then, if it hadn’t happened, he would probably be in the military now, and I wouldn’t be able to tell him I was a hero for other reasons. I sighed. I needed to get my head out of what-ifs. Nathan could not be a hero now. That life was lost to him.
“You’re looking serious for once,” Matthew said, tilting his head at me.
Shooting my oldest brother a glare as Nathan slid into his place at the table and put his bottle of water in front of his plate, I said, “I’m always serious. I got told it just the other day.” Actually, Dennovan had said that I was seriously bad news, but it’s basically the same thing.
“Thanks for inviting me,” Tia said. Her eyes were on her plate, and I could tell she was waiting for everyone else to take what they wanted, so she wasn’t interfering with us. It was a Tia thing, I think. I pulled one of the chicken pasties—meat wrapped in savory pastry—over and dropped it on her plate, knowing she wouldn't take one herself. She said nothing, but her head fell lower.
“You’re welcome, Tia,” Nathan said, and it was him she looked up to, meeting his dark eyes with a smile. Maybe Nathan would be a better boyfriend for Tia. He might rein in some of her insanity.
Maybe what I needed to do was stop trying to find a boyfriend for my friend and start looking for one for me instead. I considered it as I stuck a carrot in my mouth and chewed. The problem was not that I wasn’t interested in finding one; it was a complete lack of prospects. My last crush, ending in spectacular failure, had increased my standards. A lot.
While I was considering my love life—or lack thereof—my brothers were entertaining my friend. When I looked up, Tia was talking to Matthew. “Thanks again for the metal.”
My oldest brother smiled. “How goes the build?”
I groaned. I knew Matthew was only asking about it to be polite, but I hoped he knew what he was getting himself into. Tia had immersed herself in her board build as a way of escaping the world around her. She'd achieved a lot in a small time and even I was impressed that the board looked like something now, instead of a composition of parts. I was glad she was
So at his words asking about the board, Tia’s eyes lit up, and she started on a complete deconstruction of what she had been doing, including the circuit board and small electronics she was considering adding to the piece. Matthew, now understanding what he had unleashed, watched, his eyes wide with surprise as my tiny friend spoke in a voice that was getting more and more rapid as she spouted off words with more enthusiasm than structure.
Matthew moved his look of confusion to me, and I pointedly turned away, not wanting to disrupt my friend’s overenthusiastic rant. Better him than me. I'd heard it three times already. Instead, I moved my attention to my twenty-year-old brother. “So, what’s new with you?” I asked Nathan.
A smile tugged at the side of his lips as he watched Tia, who was now adding hand gestures to her explanation. When he looked at me, he shrugged. “Nothing. Actually,” he said a little louder, and a touch of his wind magic caught Tia’s attention. She looked at Nathan pulling something from the side of his chair. “I have something for you.” He handed over a circular metal device about a foot in diameter.
I looked at the object as Nathan passed it over. “It’s going to take more than a robotic vacuum to clean up Tia’s place,” I said. Nathan had never been there, so he didn’t know that the place looked like a bomb had gone off, raining metal everywhere. I’d attempted to clean it once, but had been banned, having moved a ‘critical piece’ of Tia’s build.
But the second Tia’s fingers touched the metal, she frowned. “It’s broken,” she said, as she turned it over in her hands.
Surprise lit Nathan’s face, and I saw him regarding my friend. Something she was oblivious to as she assessed the machine. “Yes,” he said. “Pete passed it along.”
Tia was well used to Nathan’s brevity because she smiled at him. “To scavenge parts from?” Then, she frowned again. I wondered whether she was running her magic over the technology, checking what still worked in it.
Matthew spoke then. “According to Nathan, he said something about how the thing has a sensing motion which would be useful…” he broke off as Tia’s eyes lit up.
“To avoid collisions,” she said. “Yeah, I can see how I could remodel it so that—”
Before she could go off on a complete tangent, Matthew ran a hand in front of her face. She broke off, looking at him. “It’s okay,” she said. “That part’s not broken.” Her confidence in her assessment was complete, and she smiled as though she thought he’d been worried.
It surprised me sometimes that Tia had kept her technopath magic a secret for years. At times like this, it seemed so obvious that there was more going on with my friend than met the eye. Like how she held a complete piece of technology and yet commented on the structure of a part she could not see. But though I was concerned about my friend and her secret, not one of my brothers noticed.
“I didn’t know you knew Pete,” Matthew said. He picked any topic that would stop the onslaught of build ideas Tia was going to take from the vacuum.
While Tia was putting the machine on the floor, I answered for her. “She met him a couple of years ago, I think.” I shrugged. “He wants her to work in the Tackle Shop.”
The clatter of metal made me look up. Matthew had lost his fork and was trading looks with Nathan. I looked between them, feeling like there was something I was missing here. “Tia?” Matthew asked. “Pete wants Tia to work in the shop?” The confusion in his voice matched his expression.
Tia was shrinking in her seat. I glared at Matthew. If the plan was to make Tia feel better, then not making her awkward was almost basic. Even I knew that.
I spoke loudly to pull his attention onto me. “Yeah,” I said, and his eyes met mine. I wondered what about the old man liking Tia shocked him so much. “Got a problem with that?”
Shaking his head, Matthew moved his gaze. “No,” he said, backing down. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” He swallowed and picked his fork back up. “I didn’t realize they knew each other.”
That sounded fake. His surprise was something more, and I looked at Nathan. He was being more subtle about it, but he was looking at Tia as though seeing her for the first time. When his eyes met mine, my older brother shrugged. In typical Nathan fashion, he didn’t offer an explanation, and I decided I would go after one another time, when Tia wasn’t here.
“So, we’re going to the Lookout after this,” I said, hoping to talk to my brothers about the heroes. Honestly, I was half hoping they would say something about my hero name—Trueshot.
Every person at the table embraced the attempted distraction. Even Tia. “Got someone you’re interested in?” She shot me a look of amusement.
To my side, Nathan snorted. “Are you still in love with the hoverboard hero?”
I shot Tia a glare. Since I hadn’t shared my short crush with my brothers, I knew she had. She shrugged, her eyes wide. “No,” I said. The idea I had ever liked Dennovan offended me. Honestly, I was embarrassed for my past self thinking he was crush-worthy. “He’s an ass, and I hate him.”
Tia covered her mouth with her hand, but I could hear her stifled laughter. I glared at her, then at my brothers. But Matthew was grinning at me, and even Nathan had a smile on his face. Only for you, Tia, would I endure this.
Chapter 2
The Lookout had more people on it tonight than when Tia usually visited. I’d been here a few times over the three weeks since the Rockslide rescue, and it had been fuller than this the days afterward, as the news spread. It took until today, though, for me to convince Tia to come.
Nathan had suggested the Lookout for stage two of the 'making Tia feel better' plan. At first, I had rejected it—the Lookout had always been more of my thing—but the last time I had been here, the conversation had turned interesting. Now, I felt it was the perfect place for us.
Tia looked past the people, following me to a spot where we could see out over the harbor. But for the first time, I wasn't interested in watching the heroes. I wanted to watch her reaction. This was going to be fantastic.
The Lookout was what we kids of undercity called the five buildings about halfway down the length of the harbor, which made up the western edge of the undercity. Taller than the surrounding buildings, the Lookout offered a good view of the larger, wider streets of the harbor.
Most of the concrete floor of the Lookout ended in a mid-chest high lip. One section—the part Tia and I usually sat in—the edge of the rooftop only made it waist high, making it a better place if sitting to watch the heroes. After the rooftops became a spot for people to gather and watch the heroes, a small chain link fence had been added to stop anyone from tripping and falling from the height.
You could always tell who the new kids were at the rooftop because they peered out five feet from the edge. It had always been a source of amusement to me, watching them edge closer as the nights went by, until they were indistinguishable from the rest of us, half leaning over the lip, fingers threaded through the metal of the fence in the hopes of getting a better look at the heroes.
Tonight, from my position on the concrete floor, I could see Overpower on one road. The tall hero carried a gigantic sword made of enchanted metal. He shot only rarely. As a hero who used his magic to enhance his own speed, stamina, and strength, guns would just slow him down. He was one of the few heroes who could crush a demon, and we had proven it about four years ago that he did not need enchanted metal to destroy one.
I’d won that bet. It was before I’d met Tia, though I recounted the fight to her once. She had watched me, though not with the impressed look I had been expecting. When I was done, she said, “That sounds gruesome.”
It was. But it was also very cool. Now though, I didn’t like the hero who was one of the main reasons they didn’t let girls join. He was no longer cool. So, I shot him a glare before turning to Tia.
I found her running her hands over the metal vacuum. I wanted to bat the thing out of her hands, but knowing she would get annoyed, I held myself back. Instead of resorting to the violence I craved, I said, “Tia.”
She looked up. “I’m paying attention.” She was not paying attention. I swore she should be more excited about this. She had been a hero.
