Fallen Heroes

Chapter Five

By now, Hunter had finished his snack and wrapped an arm around my brother's shoulders. "Don't blame Rylan, dude, he's still new at this."

"You're siding with him?" Connor shrugged Hunter off and began slapping even more food on his sandwich. Ketchup and onions and ground meat and... syrup? "I'm surprised you have the time to deal with some rookie. I know how busy you are."

"C'mon, Connor, don't be like that. I'm not taking sides. Hey!" Hunter grinned, gesturing outside. "I'm free now. You want to go somewhere? Catch up?"

"Nope. Sorry." Connor scooped up his plate, leaving a mess of crumbs behind, and nudged open the kitchen door with his foot. "I'm too... busy."

When a door finally slammed upstairs, Hunter puffed out his cheeks and loudly exhaled. A single curl of hair flopped across his forehead.

"Do whatever you can to help him. Let me know if you need anything." His blue eyes, usually so vibrant, looked sad. "And Abby? Hurry."

*******

I reentered the living room an hour later to find Rylan yawning, curling his legs up to his chest, and burying his head in the couch cushions. Before he could fall asleep again, I plopped down beside him, trying not to jostle him too much. "Hey, boy genius." I ruffled his hair. "I need help."

"With what?" Rylan mumbled from beneath a pillow.

"Research."

Rylan groaned, shaking off the last few dregs of slumber, and sat up. "For what?"

"Hunter was here while you were sleeping. He thinks I should go through with helping Connor." I looked to the ceiling where my brother hid in his bedroom. "As quickly as possible. So I need a name, a vague description, a favorite color, anything that will help me track someone down."

"Oh, is that all? Maybe we should let Sarah organize that bake sale. It might yield better results." Rylan gingerly poked a bruise on his shoulder, wincing. He leaned against my side and nodded at the laptop propped up on my knees. "All right. Let's do it."

But I found my confidence waning, crashing into a brick wall and exploding in a puff of smoke as I watched the icon swirl in the center of my screen, loading. Find a person whose name I didn't even know? Sure, let me get right on that. Allow me to also prove the existence of aliens while I was at it. This was a seemingly impossible task, and while Rylan and I had accomplished those before, this one was different. A name, an age, a gender? I had none of those. And supers were different in the real world than they were on camera. I knew that first hand. These people were retired now; they obviously wanted nothing to do with saving others. Would they be willing to help a kid they didn't even know?

The cursor in the empty search bar blinked in time with the grandfather clock down the hall, mocking me. Tick tock. You're blocked. Tick tock. You're blocked. I hesitated, finally realizing that there was only one good place to start. Slowly, I typed the address of city hall's website.

When the page loaded, my stomach dropped. There, front and center, was a picture of my father. It was an older one—his hair only showed a few streaks of gray—but he still wore his usual crisp black suit and favorite red and gold tie. And he still smiled that clean, professionally bleached smile.

When was this picture taken? Before my mother died? It was definitely taken long before he checked into rehab.

Looking at him felt like a punch to the gut, and I was shocked his picture was still on the website at all. Even though the city hadn't appointed a new mayor yet, I assumed they would have extinguished any memory of Benjamin Hamilton from the internet.