Page 21 of We Could Be Heroes

“A baby whose mum has to take him for a drive to lull him to sleep.”

“I am a grown man.”

“I hope all the supervillains out there don’t find out that the unbeatable Captain Kismet can be thwarted by the slightest rhythmic motion.”

Will’s use of the words “rhythmic motion” was, of course, entirely incidental. But now that he was fully awake, and those green eyes were looking at him so intently, Patrick was painfully aware that he’d become somewhat…excited in his sleep. He shifted in his seat, hoping against hope that Will hadn’t noticed. Jesus, it really had been too long.

“You’re not going to tell all my enemies, are you?” he asked, adopting the same irreverent tone.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Will told him. He winked, and Patrick nearly choked on his water.

The collector in Manchester was, Will had told him, a quintessential crypto bro. “I mean that in the most derogatory way you could possibly interpret,” he’d said, but Patrick hadn’t really known what he meant—still didn’t fully understand what crypto was—until they were being welcomed into the front hall of a new-build mansion just outside a place called Altrincham.

“Patrick Lake, a pleasure.” Their host clasped Patrick’s hand between both of his own, shaking it in some studied display of dominance. His skin bore the kind of tan that did not occur in nature, and the blinding white of his pressed shirt was only outshone by his veneers. “Harley Manning. And you are…?” He turned to Will, scanning his denim jacket and black jeans as if he could visually ascertain his value.

“I’m Mr. Lake’s broker,” said Will, his voice comically deep, thrusting his own hand out. “We spoke on the phone.” Patrick suppressed a giggle.

“Of course, of course,” said Harley Manning. “Come through to my office, both of you, please. I really think you’ll appreciate my collection, Paddy,” he said, appearing not to notice the twitch in Patrick’s temple at this presumptuous nickname.

“That’s an original Ronan McCann,” Harley said, gesturing to an ugly painting en route to the study as if answering a query. Neither Patrick nor Will had asked. “It’s expected to double in value by this time next year.”

Harley’s “office” was a large white room with a marble floor looking out onto an expanse of lawn through plastic double-glazed patio doors. A pool table dominated one end of the space, while a giant sofa took up the other. The walls were dotted with framed movie posters, comic pages, magazine covers, and cabinets displaying various action figures, vintage toys, and other collectibles.

“Mr. Manning,” Will began. “I never told you Mr. Lake was my client. How did you know to expect him?”

Manning shrugged. “Educated guess,” he told them. “I know our leading man here has a thing for obscure memorabilia, and I know he’s filming in Birmingham. Then out of the blue comes a query from a Birmingham dealer asking about something only the real fans have ever heard of. I took a punt!

“Not to brag, and I haven’t had this, like, officially verified or anything,” he continued, “but I’m pretty certain that I have the biggest collection of Captain Kismet merch in the country.”

“Really?” asked Patrick, curiosity piqued.

“Yeah, man!” Harley gurned. “I get that the character didn’t go down as well over here because he’s such an all-American hero and that, but he was always my favorite. The way he just kicks arse and takes no shit, man, you know?”

“I like to think he’s a little bit more nuanced than that,” said Patrick.

“And the women! He was swimming in it, wasn’t he?” Harley laughed. “Sura, Penny, that Russian spy lady who could do the splits…”

“The ’80s were a weird time for comics,” said Will. “April did a whole thread on it,” he added as an aside to Patrick.

“Check this out,” Harley continued, taking a frame down from the wall and handing it to Patrick. The cover illustration showed a man in a blue flight suit, blond hair jutting out from behind a pair of goggles, standing with his hands on his hips, surveying an alien landscape. An aviator turned spaceman turned hero.

The Adventures of Captain Kismet, #3.

“It’s a first printing,” said Harley.

“That’s awesome,” said Patrick, adopting the same tone as he did when meeting fans under ten. “These are pretty rare, right?”

“Exactly!” Harley enthused. “I was so excited! It was like, here are all these opportunities to create whole new original NFTs based on content in the book…Not to mention using AI to autogenerate whole new IP projects! Then my lawyer told me that I only bought this issue and not the ‘copyright’ and that’s not how NFTs work. And I was like, so why did I spend so much of my coin on a few old sheets of paper? But it turns out the issue itself is rare enough to qualify as an investment piece, so it all worked out in the end.”

He pulled a Sharpie out of his jeans pocket.

“Would you sign it?” he asked. “On the glass, obviously, not the issue itself.”

“Sure,” said Patrick, taking the proffered marker and scrawling his autograph across the lower half of the frame.

“Sweet!” Harley pumped his fist. “That just doubled in value,” he added, either to himself or to the frame, but seemingly not to either Patrick or Will.

“Mr. Manning,” Will interjected, still forcing his melodic voice into a pantomime baritone. “The Omega Issue?”

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