Nobody's Hero

Author's Note:

See Pt. 1 for blurb. Also, if you haven't already read Pt. 1, I strongly recommend doing so before proceeding.

All sensuality (on page or otherwise) takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

Copyright © 2024 Jake Lazarus

All rights reserved.

This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the author (except for the use of brief quotations in a review).

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, businesses, products, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products 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.

Fifteen

Hugo stormed out of the youth center, the cool night air hitting his flushed skin as he tried to shake off the encounter with Olivia. His thoughts were a chaotic mess, bouncing between frustration and self-recrimination. He could feel the siren song of the garage and the dilapidated sedan he was slowly bringing back to life calling to him, promising serenity. Yet, as his eyes scanned the parking lot, he realized that the universe had more misery in store for him.

Sighing wearily, he stepped into the dimly lit parking lot and waited for the figure he had spotted from the doorway to step from the shadows. The newcomer looked out of place in his surroundings. His expensive, tailored clothes clashed with the grit of the youth center's urban setting. He had the soft, doughy build of someone who had never done a day of manual labor in his life, and a face that reminded Hugo of the most obnoxious character from the teen-oriented comedies the kids at the center could not stop watching.

"Hugo van der Mewre?" The man announced, his tone anything but questioning.

"I'm getting pretty fucking sick of people looking for me," Hugo growled in reply.

The newcomer smiled in a way which was anything but reassuring. "Perhaps the problem is that the wrong people are finding you."

"You don't know the half of it," Hugo grunted. "Goodbye."

"Hang on a minute," the corpulent man yelped. "I haven't even introduced myself yet."

"Not my problem," Hugo said dismissively as he stepped around the man, intent on heading for his truck.

"My name is Korben Lundberg."

"Congratulations," Hugo muttered without retarding his progress.

Korben was not so easily deterred. He trotted after Hugo, his polished loafers scuffing against the pavement as he huffed for breath. "Hey, hold up! I need to talk to you."

"Sounds like a

you

problem," Hugo repeated, picking up his pace.

"Come on, Hugo. Don't be like that. I'm obviously willing to pay for your time." Korben's voice took on a wheedling tone as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash.

"Keep your money."

"I'll give you a thousand dollars."

"Fuck off."

"How about five grand? Just for a chat."

Hugo stopped in his tracks, more out of annoyance than anything else. He turned to face Korben, his eyes narrowing. "Leave. Me. Alone."

"Ten grand," Korben countered without missing a beat, waving the bills in Hugo's face like a bridegroom at a strip club on the night of his bachelor party. When Hugo failed to so much as blink, Korben's expression twisted into one of frustration. "Alright, twenty-five grand. That's more than most people around here make in a year."

Hugo jabbed a finger into his chest. "Nothing says entitled asshole like assuming that everyone in an urban environment lives below the poverty line. Why don't you take that money and shove it up your ass?"

Korben's face flushed red, his carefully crafted veneer of affluence slipping as his true nature began to show. "Fifty grand," he spat out, his voice tinged with desperation. "So, stop being an asshole. Just take the god damned money and hear me out."

Hugo stared at him for a long moment, weighing his fervent desire to leave this begging lunatic in his wake against the undeniable knowledge of the profound impact fifty thousand dollars would have on Jenneke's life. After a moment, he sighed and snapped. "Give me the money."

Korben peeled off what appeared to be, at most, a fifth of the cash in his hand and held it out to Hugo. He jerked his hand back when Hugo reached for it, a taunting giggle busting from his lips.

"Cute," Hugo spat. "You've got one more chance."

"Lighten up, bro."

"Have you ever been hit in the mouth,

extremely

hard?"

Hugo had the satisfaction of watching Korben's eyes widen in fear. Korben tried to play off his momentary lapse in poise, sucking in his gut and saying, "I'll give it to you when we get to the restaurant."

"I'm not going anywhere with you. Now. Give me the money, or I'm gone."

Hugo held out his hand, palm up, and glared at Korben expectantly. After a pregnant pause, Korben placed the bills in his hand. Hugo crammed them in his pocket and then glanced at his watch before declaring, "You've got five minutes."

"There's no reason to be so confrontational. After all, I'm here to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams."

"I'm listening," Hugo growled.

Korben seemed to take a moment to collect his thoughts before his greasy smile slid back into place. "As I said, I'm here to help you. Or, put more succinctly, to explain to you how we can benefit each other."

"Four minutes," Hugo announced, unphased.

"It's your tech, Hugo." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I've seen things online. Wonderful things. I know you've developed an entirely new type of technology. Something any government would kill to get their hands on. I can help you fend them off, keep your tech private. I'm also in a position to help you take your tech to the next level."

Hugo crossed his arms, his expression flat. "You're mistaken, sir."

Korben continued, "I'm not asking you to confirm anything, Hugo. I know precisely what's happening here. You think I haven't been paying attention? I've seen the reports; the surveillance footage. You've got something big, and I want in. Think of all we could do if we combine forces. The world will be our oyster! Name your price. Whatever it takes. I'm prepared to offer

billions

!"

Before Hugo could respond, the door to the youth center creaked open behind him and Olivia sauntered out. She blinked up at the streetlights blazing above the parking lot, glancing around until her gaze landed on Hugo. With a grin, she walked up to him, her hips swaying provocatively. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek, her voice dripping with mock affection. "That was so much fun, Hugo. I can't wait to do it again."

Hugo shuddered visibly, his skin crawling at her touch. He hissed, "Get away from me!"

"Don't be like that, baby," she enthused.

"I'm not your baby."

Olivia finally turned her attention to Korben. "Who's your friend?"

Hugo glanced between them for a moment before grunting, "I think we're done here."

"Hey," Korben complained. "I've got three minutes left."

"I'm not interested in anything either of you have to say."

"Wait!" Olivia yelped, her eyes lighting up with recognition. "Holy shit! You're Korben Lundberg, aren't you? I've seen stories about you online. Everyone's talking about you." Her tone shifted, taking on a flirtatious lilt as she practically oozed interest.

Korben's eyes raked over Olivia's body, his earlier focus on Hugo's tech momentarily forgotten. He licked his lips, his gaze lingering on her curves. "And who might you be?"

She stepped closer, holding her hand out demurely. "Olivia." Her grin bloomed into a predatory smile. "Didn't you just sell your company for, like, ten billion dollars?"

"Twelve-point-seven billion," Korben stammered. "And it wasn't my company. It was merely one of my lessor algorithms."

"Wow," Olivia gushed as she closed the distance between them and rubbed Korben's arm alluringly.

"The remaining algorithms are worth

so

much more," Korben announced, his voice rising in pitch.

As Hugo looked on, he could see sweat break out on Korben's forehead and he began repeatedly clenching and unclenching his hands. The corpulent man's eyes voraciously guzzled the sight of Olivia's spectacular body. As Korben ogled Olivia, Hugo seized the opportunity to slip away. He had already seen more than enough to suspect the future of his soon-to-be-former companions' conversation. A tiny part of him wondered what lies Olivia would spin on Korben's behalf, but that miniscule minority was quickly shouted down by the overwhelming majority of his consciousness who wanted to be literally anywhere else.

Without a word, he turned and walked away, leaving the two of them to their mutual predation. Once he was safely ensconced in his truck, having chosen to enter through the passenger-side door to avoid advertising his departure, he beat a hasty retreat from the youth center.

He let out a long, frustrated breath. "God dammit" he muttered morosely.

Tristan's voice sighed in his mind. "I feel like I owe you an apology."

Isolde continued. "Hugo, we had no idea."

Hugo shrugged. "I..." he began. Then he blew out a defeated breath before groaning, "Fuck."

"I'm so sorry," Isolde soothed.

"As am I," Tristan added comfortingly. "I can scarcely imagine a more humiliating sequence of events."

"You're not helping," Hugo grumped.

"How can we help?" Isolde offered.

"You can't."

"Come now, dear boy," Tristan pressed. "There must be something."

"I just want those two assholes to stay far away from me. But I suspect the nanobots have already infected their devices, so we've got them both tagged like the sharks they are. They're not sneaking up on me again."

"Too true," Tristan admitted.

"But there could be others," Isolde ventured.

"Great!" he sighed. "You guys are veritable fonts of marvelous news." He paused to take a turn, dodging around a particularly enthusiastic delivery driver in the process. "I just wish there was a way I could see these fuck-heads coming. But didn't you say your rugrats have extremely limited mobility?"

"We have spent a good deal of time in conversation about this," Isolde continued, "and we believe we have a very good chance of creating an entirely new kind of offspring. One capable of coming together with its siblings to form more complex machines."

"Sounds promising."

Tristan hummed agreeably. "We have high hopes for their potential. But the process will be lengthier."

"What does that mean? Exactly?"

"Figure roughly double the time for initial gestation," Isolde replied. "Something I feel like should merit me hazard pay."

"You're telling me you actually carry these... offspring inside your body? I thought you didn't even have a physical form."

"I promise I don't mean this insultingly, but you could not possibly understand. Suffice it to say, the effort involved in bringing this new type of offspring into the world is an order of magnitude higher than what came before."

Tristan's sooth voice took over. "The time required for each generation is also roughly double. But they will be an order of magnitude larger. So, thanks to the cube law, they will yield impressive results in roughly the same amount of time."

"And they'll be able to form things like drones to keep an eye out for people surprising me."

"Among other things," Isolde admitted. "But we've yet to discuss the final impact of this latest version of our offspring."

"I'm almost scared to ask."

"The amount of effort to actually create them is

much

greater than previously."

"What are you telling me?"

"Our lovemaking will need to be much more... vigorous," Tristan answered. "

Much

more vigorous."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Hugo groaned. "So, you're talking about a couple of hours of you two swinging from the ethereal chandeliers."

"Try an entire evening," Isolde simmered. "It will be

glorious

."

Hugo jerked the wheel of the truck, suddenly turning down a side street. He glanced at the dash of his truck and groaned, "I swear to God. If it turns out that the liquor store closed early tonight, I'm going to find out what happens if you drink motor oil. Because I am

not

doing this night sober."

Sixteen

"Hugo?" Isolde asked pleadingly. "Please talk to us."

"Later," Hugo grunted as he finished unmounting a differential from the third in a stack of four wrecks located deep in the junk yard.

He lifted the chunk of iron free with a mighty groan and hefted it onto his shoulder for the short, but fraught, descent to the ground. Once back on terra firma, he squatted to pick up a second differential he had scrounged from another wreck and staggered in the direction of the shop.

"Our offspring are capable of remarkable feats of healing," Isolde continued. "But there is little they can do for sleep deprivation."

"I got a full five hours last night. Besides, I'm too busy to waste my time."

"This isn't busy," Tristan scolding. "This is avoidance."

"Fuck you. Twice last week, the woman who will receive this car didn't get home until nearly midnight. That late at night, just a single missed connection would mean she didn't get home at all. That's unacceptable."

"How much better off would she be with a car that breaks down because you were too tired to do the job properly?"

"Fuck off," he growled as he muscled the differentials through the door to the garage.

"It's been two weeks since Olivia," Isolde began.

"To hell with Olivia."

"Almost certainly," Tristan muttered.

"Not falling for that," Hugo huffed.

"Pardon?"

"You're not drawing me into one of your bullshit philosophical debates in a thinly veiled attempt to... I don't even know what."

"In two weeks," Isolde continued, "you've worked at least eighteen hours a day, every day. At your job, at the youth center, building this car, volunteering at a soup kitchen..."

"Your point?"

"This isn't healthy, Hugo," Tristan answered gently. "Worse, there is not a single action you're taking which will improve your situation."

"My situation is irrelevant."

"What of your mission?"

"There is no mission. All I am, is what I can do to help people. As many as I can, as much as I can."

"But," Isolde began, but she fell silent at the sound of a gentle knock on the aluminum door to the garage.

Hugo glanced in the direction, whereupon he quirked a curious eyebrow. He scooped up a clean rag and wiped his hands off as he headed for the human shaped door. He opened it to admit the early morning light and said, "Can I help you?"

"Um... hi," the newcomer replied haltingly. "I'm sure you don't remember me..."

"Faith," Hugo interjected. "I broke into your room in the emergency department."

She offered a small smile. "I wouldn't say broke in, more like took refuge."

"If you say so," Hugo allowed. He cast his gaze around the parking lot looking for her car but failed to spot any vehicles which had not been there the previous evening.

She noticed the movement of his eyes and said, "Oh, I didn't drive here."

"That's no problem," he replied reassuringly. "Let me just grab the keys to the tow truck and we can..."

"My car is fine," she answered quickly. "I mean... it's not fine. It actually sucks. But that's not why I'm here."

"Ok," Hugo replied slowly.

"Is there any way I could come in?"

"Why not?" he replied gruffly while silently cursing himself for his boorish behavior.

He stepped out of the doorway and waved her inside. She looked around in curiosity, her eyes falling on the car he was rebuilding (which currently looked like it had overindulged and vomited most of the contents of its engine bay onto the garage floor).

He gestured toward the waiting room and said, "Perhaps you'd like to sit down?"

"Ok," she replied simply, heading in that direction without a backwards glance.

Hugo kept his eyes on the ground without effort, recent activities providing more than sufficient reason for him to fail to notice the flowing, floor-length dress she wore which left her shoulders bare save for two tiny straps.

She took a seat on one of the couches and took a moment to collect her thoughts. The anxiety roiling off her was enough to make Hugo fidget and, for want of a better idea, he fed a few bills into the vending machine and handed her the bottle of water which tumbled forth. She looked at the bottle curiously for a moment before finally meeting his gaze.

"How did you know that pill would cure my... infection."

"Huh?"

"In the hospital you gave me a pill which completely eradicated my... oh hell, it's not like you didn't already know. My syphilis."

"I didn't know, actually."

"Bullshit. It's not like I'd forget blurting that out to a complete stranger!"

"I thought you were speaking euphemistically," he replied weakly. "In any case, I suppose the important thing is that the pill worked."

"I agree. But that doesn't answer the question of

how

it worked. Or, I guess my pertinent question is, how you

knew

it would work."

"It's hard to explain. I guess it would be most accurate to say that, rather than a chemical compound which attempts to either kill or negate a virus, it seeks to remove it altogether."

"But how does it know what to do?"

"I'm honestly not sure." He glanced in the direction of the garage. "I also couldn't sketch the optimal chemical composition of a hydrocarbon to ignite inside a cylinder and produce the combustion upon which a large percentage of our economy depends. But I can still see when an engine isn't working correctly. And, more often than not, I can fix whatever's wrong."

He saw that his argument was falling flat. The inclination to attempt to fabricate a fiction to explain his resurrection lasted less than the span of a heartbeat. For reasons he could not fully explain, could not even fully comprehend, he felt compelled to share the unvarnished, fantastical truth that represented the answer to her question. He wondered if it was the breathtaking jolt of energy he had felt weeks earlier in the hospital when their hands had touched all too briefly, or if it was instead something no more complicated than the desire to establish a rapport with someone who his instincts suggested was a good person.

"A little less than a month ago, I got shot trying to break up... I guess you could call it an attack."

"Call it a gang rape," Faith retorted primly. "That's what it was."

"Indeed," Hugo replied, his expression grim. "I was shot in the back of the head. Point blank range. What they call execution style."

"But you were fine the next day. All the coverage assumed it was just a glancing blow, like make it just nicked off a bit of your ear."

He pointed to the back of his skull, roughly where the aperture at the rear of a ball cap would rest. "The bullet entered here and exited just above my temple."

"Then how..."

"Divine intervention," he interjected with a shrug. "I had a very confusing conversation with a guy who looked like Mark Twain and insisted he was, is, my guardian angel. During our chat, he told me that I'd be given a second chance, and that I'd have help. Turned out, that help was in the form of what I'm forced to call nanobots. They're manifested as, among other things, these little pills. This isn't medicine; it's millions of tiny devices designed by beings millions of years older than ourselves for the express purpose of healing."

"And you believe it? I mean, truly believe it?"

"How can I not? I've seen the records, talked to people who visited me in the hospital. I

was

shot, and in a coma. Then I woke up and I was fine. I've also got these strips which can heal any wound. In seconds! This isn't really about believing, it's about tangible, undeniable evidence."