1999: A Superhero Novel

by Hodden, TE

  “And the Martians?” Matthew demanded.

  Not-Warner pointed his staff at Matthew. “They were more trouble than they were worth.”

  The staff flashed, and a sphere of energy surrounded Matthew. He was suddenly weightless, floating in the cage. The energy blazed, scorching his armour as it burned away.

  Not-Warner sneered. “I will pluck your genes apart, and see what makes you tick. Yours is a body that might yet be worthy of me!”

  Matthew thrashed and clawed at the bubble, as it closed about him, and burned as hot as the sun.

  10000

  The Bumblebee was on its final approach to Earth.

  Melisa flicked several switches, preparing for the plunge into the atmosphere. “We can divert and join you,” she said, into her earpiece.

  Angel gave her a look, and nodded.

  “No,” Harris growled. “I would rather you and Angel were at the HQ. I need you to see if you can find any trace of our mystery hacker. Maybe we can identify what other systems have been infiltrated… and get ahead of them.”

  Melisa and Angel shared a look.

  “Understood,” Angel said. “We will do all we can.”

  *

  Melisa brought the shuttle down over the ocean, and folded back the Bumblebee’s wings, as she slowed the descent towards the landing pad on Barnacle Rock, one of the outermost of New York’s islands, craggy and lifeless, dominated largely by the landing pad, and a squat, fortified, lighthouse.

  Seabirds swarmed from the island, driven out by the engine noise.

  The shuttle settled on the landing pad, and she powered down the engines.

  The pad descended down the elevator shaft, as the heavy duty iris closed above it, and they rode the elevator down under the bedrock of the island, deep down under the ocean, deeper than subways, or service tunnels, deeper than nuclear bunkers and basements, as deep down as skyscrapers stood tall, down into the hangar complex, where the Manta jets, helicopters, and other vehicles were docked in their bays. An anti-gravity sled hooked onto the Bumblebee’s undercarriage and towed it from the elevator to its bay.

  Melisa and Angel unbuckled their harnesses, and climbed from their seats. Angel stretched, and rubbed her neck, as she hurried down the ramp.

  Melisa paused at the foot of the ramp, to connect a couple of hoses to the shuttle, and set the automated maintenance routine running.

  “Hey!” Angel said, as they hopped aboard the cylindrical monorail carriage. “What do you want to eat?”

  “Takeout?” Melisa offered, pressing the door closed. “Pizza?”

  The carriage whooshed away into the tunnel that connected them to the HQ.

  “Pizza,” Angel agreed.

  The carriage slowed to a halt at the end of the track, beneath the HQ, and whooshed upwards, through the elevator shaft, emerging into the basement level of the building. The doors hissed open, and they stepped out.

  “Okay.” Melisa rubbed her neck. “I’m going to start work tracking the hacker in the Operations room, while you put the order in, and get a shower, yeah?”

  Angel nodded. “Good plan.”

  Melisa stepped into the Operations Room, and powered up her computer. She cracked her knuckles, and tapped her way into the Project Venator servers, and began plucking them apart for signs of the Hacker.

  “Mel!” Angel shouted from the kitchen. “I think I found the Hacker.”

  Melisa paused, her fingers on the keyboard. “What?”

  “Come and see!” Angel shouted.

  10001

  “Sir?” One of the naval technicians said, gesturing to her console. “You should see this. It’s on every television channel.”

  Harris watched as Blathe stepped over to her, and looked over her shoulder.

  “Put it on the wall,” Blathe said. “Harris, you’ll want to see this. It’s on every channel.”

  Harris nodded, and leaned on the desk.

  The video filled one of the walls. At first it was the white noise and digital snow of an untuned television. A stylised, three dimensional zero formed out of the static.

  “This,” a deep voice full of gravitas, stated, “is Zero Vector speaking.”

  The screen filled with a mosaic of violent images, real and imagined, culled from TV shows, movies, and news reports, from the last three decades, of riots, crime scenes and gunfights. All of them were images of blood and horror.

  The voice continued to speak over the images. “The America We loved, is gone. It died slowly, eaten away by corruption and disease. Vermin has been allowed to flourish, for the sake of a lie.”

  The tapestry of images changed, replaced one by one, with images of kids TV, musicians, adverts and comedies, all with varied casts, drawn from the broad spectrum of American people.

  “We have presented an image to the world that is sanitised, and politically correct, that suggests we are a beacon of hope, the success the world wishes to be.”

  The tapestry changed again. This time filling with CCTV footage of armed robberies, gang fights, and riots.

  “President Rupert Croft’s Millennium Projects are a costly and foolish illusion, painting over the cracks in our society. The problem is not with our great American cities, the problem is with the failed experiment of Political correctness. The America I love has died, because we sacrificed it to the black man, the gay man, the Jew, the Muslim, and the Immigrant. We have squandered it to those who dragged it down into the filth of the gutter, because they would not rise to meet our standards.”

  Once again, the tapestry changed. Now it showed black and white images of wholesome families from nineteen-fifties and sixties TV shows, all of them the idealised small-town America, with white picket fences, and two cars on the drive.

  “This is the America we deserve. The America before it was soiled and degraded. The America that is being lost for the sake of many who do not deserve it, who have not earned it, who wish to reshape it in a lesser, dirtier, tarnished image. This is the America we will return to.”

  The tapestry of images became a collection of film clips and photographs of America’s varied countryside, of lakes, fields, and mountains, across all the states.

  “Today we judged President Rupert Croft, and found him wanting. His execution is a statement of our intent, and a demonstration of our power. As we speak, the Whitehouse is receiving a list of one hundred thousand citizens whose criminal records identify them as detrimental to our nation. We give the United States government fourteen days to gather, and execute, these individuals. Every fourteen days a fresh list will be received, until the weeds have been removed, and the undesirable populations of this county have been pared back to manageable levels, that no longer choke us, and prevent the deserving from flourishing. Failure, at any time, to meet these demands, will be met with severe consequences. The Zero Vector have spoken.”

  “Sir?” One of the officers asked.

  Blathe bowed his head, and shook, his fists curled. “Find him!” He could barely whisper. “That does not happen here! Do you here me? Never here. We find him. We stop him. Now!”

  10010

  Charlie Gull sat at the front of the boat, as it continued through the cavern seas of the Twilight Realms. He was curled up, with his chin on his knees.

  He hadn’t looked around, but he could feel the way that Tilda was still staring at him.

  The waves were growing choppy and agitated beneath the boat. The cow sized eels that slithered between the Sleepers were churning and coiling through the dark waters.

  The boat stopped.

  The boatman pointed over the side. “There.”

  Charlie looked up at him.

  Robin shook her head. “But…”

  “There,” the boatman repeated.

  Charlie rose to his feet, and slipped off his jacket.

  Robin glowered at Tilda. “And you will allow this?”

  Tilda shifted uneasily. “We came for answers. Either he seeks them, or we go home.”

&nb
sp; Charlie climbed onto the gunwale and stared into the confusion of waves, and the Sleepers dreaming far beneath the surface, and the sabre teeth of the eels.

  Tilda stared at him, her eyes full of sadness. “Wait. Boy…Wait!”

  He turned on his toes to face her.

  “You can’t be hurt by a dream,” she said, “but you can die. Don’t.”

  “Right.” Charlie grinned. “Don’t die. Okay.”

  Charlie stepped off the boat, and plunged feet first into the waves. The dark waters closed over him, and his heartbeat thundered in his chest, as bubbles hurried past him. The eels swam past, and bared their teeth, but did not attack.

  Down he went.

  The Sleepers bobbed in the waters, their eyes closed, in serene expressions, their hair and loose clothes billowing about them, like the skirts of a jellyfish, their ankles clasped in the bulky cuff of the anchor chains that tethered them.

  One was not still.

  She was a young woman, maybe in her late teens, thrashing and clawing, constantly struggling at the chain on her ankle.

  Charlie swam over to her, and put a hand to her cheek. She stopped and looked at him, her eyes widening.

  He knew her face. He had seen her face many times on TV, on the news, stood with her family, with her father, the President.

  Elois Croft stared back, her mouth moving, her pleading, and begging escaping her as bubbles.

  Her eyes widened, as a shape moved behind Charlie.

  One of the eels emerged from the darkness, and slammed into Charlie, its jaws closing around his midriff as it dragged him away from her. The sabre teeth slid into his flesh, with a grinding pain, pushing down deep, until they reached something soft and vital at his core. Blood filled the water around him.

  He clawed his way free of the jaws, and kicked upwards.

  Cold and pain filled his body, turning him leaden. His head span.

  A skeletal hand caught his neck, and hauled hum from the water. The boatman, despite his skeletal frame, had a grip like cold iron, and superhuman strength. It dropped him back in the boat.

  Charlie howled in pain, and gargled for breath.

  Tilda caught him, and locked him in place, her arms around his chest. “No. Stop struggling. Stop. Listen to me. It’s a dream Everything here is just a dream. Look.”

  Charlie made himself stop and look.

  His top was bloodied, but the skin beneath was unharmed.

  Robin took his hand. “Charlie. What did you see?”

  He shuddered. “She’s here, but she’s not dead. Is that… possible?”

  Tilda nodded. “Who?”

  “Elois Croft. The First Daughter.”

  Tilda glanced around, as though trying to pluck the answer from the air. “Well, that depends who else is living in her head, doesn’t it? If somebody sort of shoved her out, she could end up here.”

  Robin groaned. “You can’t help her from this side. You have to pull her back to the living side of the veil.”

  Charlie nodded. “Well, okay then. Is that all?”

  “All?” Tilda scoffed. She plucked the bag of mint cake from his pocket, and put a square in his fingers. “Go on. It helps.”

  Robin nabbed a square before Tilda could sweep the bag away.

  Tilda took a square, with a triumphant smile.

  10011

  Mathew howled in pain as the bubble of energy sloes around him.

  Summers cowered, rooted to the spot, frozen in horror as his hair and armour burned away, and his skin turned red and raw.

  The Orphan (or Warner?) hovered at the other end of the room, watching him, with the same expression that a school bully would wear, burning ants with a magnifying glass. The energy about him still forming that alien shape of tentacles and eyes. “Yes…” The Orphan purred. “I think a body such as yours, with a few modifications, will do very nicely. It will be cooking quite nicely, while I turn those World Engines on Earth. While I burn the atmosphere away, and put humanity on its knees. Not to die, of course. Just a little pestilence and famine. Enough to weaken them. Enough for me to take control with an army of Husks.”

  “No!” Melisa rose to her feet. “Jeff! No!”

  Warner stared at her. His eyes were ablaze with alien power. “Jeff is gone!”

  There was a flash of red, a blur of warping air, as something moved past her, and resolved itself, into Catherine, slamming her staff into the aura of soul-fire.

  The bubble about Matthew burst, and he fell belly flopped onto the stone floor.

  “No!” Warner screamed. “Did I not already crush you, insect?”

  He thrust out with the aura of soul-fire, the tentacles of fire crashed down upon Catherine, but she met them with her spear. The spear glowed, and the air around it warped, dissipating the soul-fire. The tentacles lost their definition, and broke apart to liquid flames.

  The Marines crashed into the room, advancing with the carbines held ready, firing in tight bursts, that sparked and sizzled against the soul-fire aura as they spread out, taking cover between the pools.

  Warner howled out, as he backed away from the assault, staggering. “Fools! I will burn you all! I will feed on your marrow! You pathetic worms!”

  “Oh?” Mathew asked, climbing back to his feet, as his armoured uniform repaired itself, oozing over his body like a liquid, and reforming. “And yet… you aren’t.” Matthew pointed a finger. “You are powerful, Orphan, but you are no God. You fed on these souls, but their power is not your own, and… you didn’t complete your feeding, did you?”

  Warner seethed. “Then maybe I should feed some more!”

  The aura of soul-fire swelled and burst, throwing Catherine into one of the pools. At once the aura formed itself into a terrible visage of the alien form, the endlessly coiling nest of tentacles. Warner hovered forwards, looming over the Marines, their bullets bouncing uselessly from his aura. A ray of soul-fire hit the Marine’s Lieutenant and reduced him to a swirl of ash.

  “Ah!” Warner laughed. “I missed fresh food!”

  In the blink of an eye another of the Marines was gone.

  Something fell from Summer’s pocket. A floppy disc for her camera. She picked it up, and leapt to her feet. She held it out before her like a talisman.

  “Enough!” She shouted. “You say that Jeff is gone. Maybe that’s true, but something of him remains. Something of him remembers this!” She waved the disc. “His birthday, down on the White.”

  Warner glared at her. “Is this meant to appeal to the last threads of my good nature?”

  “No!” Summers was terrified. Her feet felt like stones, and fleas were jumping in her belly, but she made herself step forwards. “Then why am I still alive?”

  Warner cocked his head. “Easily rectified with a blink.”

  “And yet,” Summers whispered, “you tell me that, rather than feed on me.”

  Warner raised a warning finger. “Do not test my patience!”

  Behind him, Catherine was climbing out the pool, her fingers about the spear.

  “And why me?” Summers whispered. “There were others on the dig, with more authority than me, at the Museum, or Paradox. If all you wanted was access to the staff, then why drag me here? Because whatever you were, whatever you did to Jeff, there are bits of him left in there, that you needed to pretend to be him.” She held out the disc. “It was your birthday. Everybody insisted on getting drunk, but you didn’t want to. You didn’t deny them the excuse. You sat there, and you nursed one can of ale, all night. You…” She closed her eyes. “You talked about your childhood, and your aunt. You asked about mine. You remember this picture, don’t you?”

  Catherine warped the air around her, and faded into a blur.

  Warner snarled. “I know he remembers. It is the least of my memories.”

  “Not to him!” Summers spat. “Not to my teacher, my friend, my… mentor! The kindest, most caring, man I ever knew. The first person I ever came out to! The man who gave me the confidence to at leas
t admit to my room mate how I felt, even if she didn’t feel the same! The gentle, honest, and oh so easily distracted man!”

  Warner blinked. “Easily what?”

  Catherine’s blur shot across the room, faster than Summers could see, and punched through Warner’s aura. She popped back into reality with a shockwave of displacement that tore his aura apart, and sent him crashing to the ground. The staff tumbled from his hand.

  Summers and Warner lunged for staff at the same time.

  Summers fingers curled around the shaft¬

  ¬And a deafening chorus of voices called out to her. Hundreds of voices whispered in her mind, as a tidal wave of memories carried her away. She was dimly aware that for the rest of the world, it was the blink of an eye, but for her it was a thousand lifetimes spent looking over the shoulder of every waking moment of a thousand Martians, from the finest chambers of the Palace, to the dankest corners of the slums. She followed them to school, knew their heartaches and triumphs, the countless little moments, good and bad, of every day, for all their lives, and of their non-deaths retreating into the silence of the crystals. She knew the horrors of the war against their tyrant god, the battle to be free, and… she understood their science, their magic, and… Somewhere in that babble of memories she learned how their warriors would have fought against the Orphan in such a weakened state,

  She knew what they wanted.

  Summers gripped the staff, pulled it free from Warner’s fingers. She scrambled back, out of his reach.

  “Summers!” He roared, his aura blazing. “Give me that staff. It carries the power of thousands of souls. A human can’t take that power. It will burn you to atoms!”

  Summers nodded. “Exactly!”

  A stream of soul-fire poured from the staff, feeding Warner’s aura. The flames grew stronger, brighter, and wilder. They became an inferno, and a tornado.

  “No!” Warner howled. “You can kill this body! But you won’t kill me!”

  “Of course not!” Summers stepped closer. “If I kill this body, you will go back to Antarctica. You can be a prisoner of your own bones for a few more centuries. It can give you time to think of how, even in death, the people of Mars defy you!”