Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  “I guess we’ll never know, puta. Since you murdered ten billion people in their sleep,” Carlos says. The contempt in his voice hurts my heart.

  A low growl fills the room as Kate crosses the distance in a heartbeat. Her clawed hand wraps around his neck and she slams him into the wall. “You will keep a civil tongue in your mouth, or I will rip it out. Understand?” Carlos’ feet dangle six inches off the ground and he has both hands on her wrist trying to hold himself up.

  “My brother is excitable,” Orlondo says, holding his hands up. “But he truly believes in what we are doing. However, even if we wanted to fight, that isn’t how our magic works. We are no threat to either of you. Please do not kill him.” Orlondo, with his smooth face and slick features, certainly seems to be the more sensible of the two.

  “That was never a question,” Kate says as she drops Carlos to the ground. The bearded man sputters and gasps as oxygen flows back into him. “We don’t murder people for disagreeing with us. If we kill, it’s to save lives, others or our own. The problem with your ideology is,” she says kneeling down to the coughing man, “once you accept that it’s okay for others to die unwillingly for your ‘greater good’, then anything and everything becomes acceptable. Internment camps, mass executions, death squads—and suddenly we have Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, but now with superpowers.” Kate is saying everything I want to say but I’m too stunned to do so. “You see that woman over there? She’s the only reason any of us are still alive. She risked her life for you, and you pay her back by murdering innocent people and trying to kill her. You’re not fit to breathe the same air as her.” The sheer intensity rolling off of her is palatable.

  Carlos opens his mouth to speak and Kate growls at him. “Your betters are speaking. Do not speak unless you are told to.” The weight of what she says is more than just a suggestion, it’s a command. Carlos’ mouth snaps shut.

  Kate stands, dusting off her shirt as if something disgusting had touched her. I close my eyes for a second and try to regain my wits. She’s right—I didn’t have a choice. It was us or them and I chose us. I didn’t go looking for the fight, but I ended it. That is the difference.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper. I don’t feel okay, but I can deal with that later.

  “Uh-huh.” Kate helps me back into the chair, not leaving my side, giving me someone to lean against.

  “Regardless. How do we shut off the forcefield?” I ask the brothers.

  “You can’t,” Orlondo says. He quickly raises his arms to ward off Kate’s fury. “The spell expires at dawn. We were to renew it.”

  She cocks her head to the side as she reads him. “Truth. Sort of. He’s hiding something.”

  For the first time since we started this conversation, Orlondo’s calm mask slips. “How do you know?”

  She smiles. “Empath. You can’t hide the truth. Now, tell me the rest.”

  He nods. His brother, who still sits on the ground next to him where Kate left him, without making a sound, slaps Orlondo’s foot, defiance plain on his face. “Perhaps you would like to spend the rest of your life in jail for the cause, little one, but I don’t,” Orlando says with a sigh. “Rafael brought us down here on the promise he could increase our magical potential.”

  I shake my head. “You can’t. I know you all believe it’s magic, but trust me, it’s just physics. You can no more increase your level of power by study than Kate can increase her strength by working out.”

  “Si, that is what I believed as well. But my brother,” he glances down at his bearded twin whose eyes plead with him to stop. “He also liked what Rafael had to say about the supers. About the Th’un, and how everything that is wrong with the world was because of people like you. When you returned, he felt like it was the perfect time to make a statement.”

  “How did he know I would come down here?” I ask. The nagging feeling in my gut tells me I already know.

  “He hired some men, gave them weapons you designed, and sent them after you.” He drops his head in shame as he speaks, looking at the ground. “I… I watched the news when they attacked you. I didn’t know…”

  “They almost killed me,” I growl.

  “Si. I know.”

  He goes quiet and I work through my rage. Enough, Amelia. Focus. “Okay, forget all that. He sold my armor—I can get it back. What is he trying to accomplish?”

  Orlondo looks back at me and shrugs. “He wants to kill you, I know that. He hates you, or what you stand for. He talks about this man, Ericsson, the one who tried to kill the world’s leaders? He talks about him and you as if you were the same.”

  “How did you increase your power?” Kate asks.

  “He has a gem on him. A red one. He says it’s a mystical artifact from a bygone era. When we touched it… everything became more… clear. After that, it was easy to create the dome.”

  I nod. That doesn’t make sense per se, and yet it does. If he has some kind of amplifier…

  “Kate, do you think that is why his team went mad? He amplified their abilities until it drove them crazy?”

  Her eyes go wide as saucers. “I never… I suppose if the energy they were channeling was more than their minds could handle, then yeah…”

  “He’s been planning this a long time,” I say.

  “What do we do?” Tia asks.

  I glance at my computer—four hours until the sun comes up. Four hours until I can contact the outside world and let them know what is going on. Four hours until I can call my armor.

  “Find some food. I’m starving,” I say with a grin.

  142

  The Witch wakes up when I’m halfway through my ham and cheese sandwich. She shoots hatred at us with her eyes and then at the security men who are all sitting in the corner eating as well. It’s not their fault they work for an evil overlord. All Kate could find in the fridge was bottled water, so I’m choking down one of those with my meal. I swear, if this is my last meal I’m going to be pissed. My arms and shoulders still ache, but at least Kate found me some Advil while searching for food, for me to take while we wait until dawn. The brothers declined to eat, and instead sit on opposite ends of the room. I don’t know how their powers work, but I don’t want to risk a force field cutting me in half.

  “Don’t glare at them, woman,” Tia says defiantly, raising her chin just slightly as she speaks. “They are honorable men just doing their job to feed their families. You have power and you abuse it. You don’t see them running around sticking up people with guns just because they have them,” Tia continues. She marches over to the Witch and kneels down to glare at her. “You are the worst kind of scum. People like you are why people like me do what we do. It’s the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak, not to sacrifice them for some misguided attempt at a greater good.”

  I’m just taking a wild guess, but Tia is pissed about being mind-controlled, twice. “Easy there, girl. She’s not going to do that again,” I tell Tia.

  “She better not or the next time I’m going to fall on her like a cruise ship.” As Tia stands and turns, the overwhelming feeling of weight fills the room. The tiles crack under her feet and the walls shake as she walks back toward the security guards.

  “Uh, how dense and massive can you become?” I ask out of scientific curiosity.

  “I stopped a train once; it took a lot out of me.” She shrugs, as if stopping a train is no big deal. For most super strong heroes, the ones with the F5 strength and invulnerability, mass is their weakness. No matter how strong you are, at a certain point mass—or weight—is going to win out over strength. The only person I can think of that got around it was Sydney when he was the Protector. I think that had more to do with his armor than anything else. Discounting him, there are only so many things a super strong individual can do. Stopping trains isn’t one of them. Even if they could deadlift a train, the sheer weight and momentum would either push them out of the way or pull them off their feet.

  “You stopped a train?” Kate
asks. “How?”

  Tia smiles. “I got on the back, dangled my feet off the end, then increased my mass until my feet were dragging through the dirt. I just kept increasing until I out massed the train. It eventually came to a stop.”

  I do some quick math in my head. Very loose numbers because I don’t know how much the train weighed or anything but still…

  “Amelia, are you okay?” Kate asks after a moment. I realize I’m starring off at the wall. I blink several times to clear my noggin.

  “Yeah just… that’s more mass than… I mean you could launch someone to the moon with that much mass.”

  “I slept for a week afterward and ate like a starving horse. All things being equal, I would not like to do it again,” she says with a smile.

  “I hear that. I’ve done plenty of things I don’t want to do again.” And plenty of things I do… Dangit, Amelia, why did you have to go and think about Luke. Ever since I got back, things between us have been strained. I’d love nothing more than to take a couple of weeks off and go spend some time on a beach with him. Have dinner, watch some Trek… talk a little about marriage.

  A shrill chirp emanates from my wrist computer. “Dang. Kate, we’ve got to roll.” I throw up the house security monitors into a hollo to show her. Several vans pull up the driveway, skidding to a halt on the pavement. Armed men in black uniforms and balaclava’s leap out, running for the villa.

  “Tia,” Kate says pointing at the far wall. “Make us an exit.” The Argentinian officer smiles and the air around her wavers. She runs toward the far wall, each step shaking the room. When she hits it, the concrete and plaster shatter, one wall after another as she keeps running.

  Kate picks me up and slings me on her back, with my arms around her shoulders and her hands under my thighs.

  “Wait,” I tell her as she turns to follow Tia.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Kate reminds me.

  “They can’t renew their shield when the sun comes up or we are well and truly dead,” I tell her as I gesture at the brothers.

  I don’t have a solution. Clearly, the obvious isn’t an answer. Yes, they are trying to kill me, but I am not them. I don’t murder people on the hopes that it will save me. “Can you knock one of them out or use your empathy or something?”

  Kate shakes her head. “This isn’t a movie, Amelia. Head injuries are dangerous. My empathy takes time—time we don’t have…”

  I let out a growl. “Orlondo, you’re coming with us.” I hate this. But unless I can come up with something else, it’s the only solution.

  “No!” his brother screams. Carlos leaps off the floor and runs toward Kate. She shifts my weight to the side so fast I almost fall off and she backhands him with her bionic arm. Carlos flies across the room to slam into the far wall. He slides down to the floor, dazed but conscious.

  “Orlondo, follow Tia. Move.” The magician nods, eyes on his brother as he moves through the hole Tia has made. As we leave, I see Domingo look to me. He smiles and gives me a small nod. I hope the Witch didn’t see it. I’d hate for him to get in trouble.

  Tia’s exit extends through several rooms and finally out the back of the house. The last room we go through is a kitchen. Water sprays from several ruptured pipes. I can’t help but smile. What an awesome power.

  She waits for us at the base of a small hill, hands on knees as she breathes deep. “Making mass is a lot easier than shedding it,” she explains as we approach. Orlondo keeps looking over his shoulder as we proceed up the hill to the back fence.

  “We don’t have time to lollygag,” I tell him. He keeps hanging back, looking for help. “Orlondo, we’re not going to hurt you. I just need that shield to go down when the sun comes up.”

  “Si, I believe you, Ms. Lockheart. It’s just… I worry about my brother.”

  “I would too if I had one, I’m sure he will be fine.” I need to focus on what we’re doing. I bring up my computer and kill all the security cams for the entire house, followed by the lights. Just for fun, I jack up the furnace to the max.

  An alert flashes across my screen, letting me know they are trying to take the system back over. My fingers fly across the virtual keyboard. It only takes a few seconds to encrypt the entire system. They will have to spend a week trying to break it. I grin as I hit the execute button. Until they shut the furnace off, that house will be unlivable.

  “I can feel your satisfaction, what did you do?” Kate asks, glancing back at me as much as our position will allow.

  “Nothing bad. Now, mush!”

  “I will throw you over the next fence if you say that again,” she tells me in mock anger. At least, I think it’s mock.

  Turns out, the next fence was just past a small stand of trees. Not a secure fence—more like a privacy fence. Tia climbs over with an easy leap. Kate sits me down against the wall then turns to help Orlondo over. She forms a step with her hands, and he places one foot in them.

  “Coming at you, Tia,” she says. With a heave, she lifts him up and he climbs over the fence.

  “Got him,” Tia says.

  “Okay, you’re next,” she tells me. She lifts me up over her head as high as she can. It’s high enough to grip the far edge and hold myself in place. She leaps up to the top of the fence with the grace of a tiger. Once up there, she lifts me up and then lowers me down to Tia’s waiting hands. Kate stays at the top for a moment, looking back the way we came. “I can see some flashlights, but nothing else. I think we’re clear for the moment.”

  Kate jumps down to land with a thump next to us. She freezes for a moment, her eyes doing that thing she does when she’s reading emotions. Slowly, her head turns to face Orlondo as she stands up. “Orlondo, is there something you would like to share?”

  A look of alarm crosses his face. “How…?”

  “She’s an empath, Orlondo. You can’t hide anything from her no matter how embarrassing. Believe me, I’ve tried,” I say with a grin.

  “It’s not that you can’t hide things, Amelia. You’re just bad at it,” Kate says.

  I stick my tongue out at her. Tia stifles a chuckle.

  “Si, so you said in the villa… but, how you say? Seeing is believing? I love my brother; do you understand what that means?” he asks.

  I nod, not speaking but letting him continue.

  “I’m here to support him. He cannot work magic on his own. It’s as if we are both one half of the power set. I don’t… I don’t think the way he thinks.”

  Kate nods. “I understand.”

  He looks down at his feet, pushing pebbles around. “Rafael, he has many mages down here. More than I knew existed in the world. A hundred at least.”

  I let out a whistle. A hundred supers all with “magical” powers?

  “What else?” Kate asks. I can tell she’s using her full power now, not just relying on his sudden streak of honesty.

  “He’s wealthy, incredibly so. Far more than could be legitimate. And it’s all very recent. He has a massive covered dry dock down on the wharf, outside the dome. Every few weeks he would go down there; when he came back he’d have pallets of cash brought to the main center, along with jewels and precious metals.”

  My naturally suspicious mind kicks in. “How do you know all of this?”

  He sighs. “My brother was very eager to prove our usefulness. When it became apparent what we could do, he had us touch his gem for a few seconds. For my brother, it was like he found God or something. For me, it gave me a glimpse of Rafael’s mind and memories.” A shudder runs through the mage as he speaks. Kate gives me a slight nod, letting me know he’s telling the truth.

  “You saw this in his mind?” Kate asks.

  “Si. He’s an evil man. He truly believes he’s doing this for the greater good, but he has no illusions about the evil he commits.”

  I sigh. “Orlondo, if we let you go, can you keep your head down until morning? I can’t do this with the barrier up… and it will be a lot easier to get away if we’
re not towing you.”

  He looks to Kate, then Tia, and finally me. The sorrow in his eyes is plain. “You believe me then?”

  “Yes,” Kate says. “Because you’re telling the truth.”

  He nods. “Si, I can. There is an empty house not far away. I can hide there. If we don’t renew the spell at dawn, we won’t be able to recast it again until the sun goes down. I won’t have to hide for very long.”

  “Okay, get out of here,” I tell him. He doesn’t need me to say it twice. We watch him run down the street until he disappears into the shadows.

  “What happens if they find him?” Tia asks.

  “I don’t think he’ll willingly renew the spell, now that he knows,” Kate answers. “What now?” she asks me.

  I check my computer. Three hours to go. “We keep running.”

  143

  Tia takes the lead, running between buildings, down hills, and across a stream. We come out the backside of the Villas. The mansions all rest on top of a series of hills, so most of our travel is downhill. The lack of sleep and exertion takes its toll on all of us. Kate is breathing hard by the time we make it to a small strip mall with an empty parking lot and few lights.

  She gently leans me against the wall and helps me slide to a sitting position before she does the same. “I’m beat,” she says.

  “I’m glad we got to eat,” Tia says as she joins us on the ground. She leans against a dumpster and the wall, trying to rest her weary head.

  I nod absently. I’m working the problem. Staying ahead of them for a few hours shouldn’t be a problem. Once the sun comes up and communications are re-established the rest should be easy peasy.

  “What?” Kate asks, reading my emotions.

  “Something Orlondo said is nagging on me. The thing about Rafael’s income.”

  She nods, waiting for me to work through my thoughts. This is how we do it. I throw things at her until something sticks. “When I crashed here you were fighting a giant robot-thing in San Diego, right? Luke mentioned something about attacks, and when I had Epic compile a list of things I’d missed I do recall there being a section labeled ‘giant robot robberies.’ Tell me about that?”