“Any favored theories?”
She bit her lip, “I think we were meant for this, humanity. The ability in our mitochondria to access cosmic power and control it is the next phase of evolution. But it was triggered early by one of the events. The hadron collider accident makes the most sense to me, the energy that was released was probably very similar to the cosmic energy we access to fuel our abilities. I believe it woke something in us that wasn’t quite ready to be awoken. None of them quickened of course, but it was passed on to the next generation and the start of the new human race.
“I suspect eventually, all of us will quicken at puberty, naturally. We’ll be a race of supers. It’s like, we weren’t quite ready for it to happen yet. Kids quickening from the simple stress of a final exam for instance, backs up that idea. It also seems to correlate to stress levels, the ones most terrified on the verge of death tend to be the strongest, as a rule, as if the others that quicken aren’t quite complete? We should know if I’m right in our lifetimes, the next few generations will tell. Enough of that, more dancing,” she proclaimed, as she swallowed down the last of her drink.
That was both interesting, and she was right about that last. Time to dance.
Chapter Fifteen
“Bell!”
The bed was warm and toasty, and my brain sluggishly came awake.
“Prisma? It’s… two in the morning.”
We hadn’t been back from our night out long. I’d maybe gotten an hour’s sleep. My head cleared quickly though, the super healing doing its job.
Prisma said, “A supervillain is holding a whole arena hostage. There was an all-night battle of the bands concert going on. Several dead already.”
My eyes popped open wide and I grabbed the watch off the night table and strapped it on as I rolled off the side and onto my feet. The world flashed and I was standing in the lair in nothing but a pair of panties. I really hoped the mad scientist wouldn’t be reviewing footage, or even watching right then. I had to assume even if there weren’t recording devices in the bathroom, they were in here in hte main room where I stood topless.
I shook that off, and I ran into said bathroom snagging the suit on the way, and I stripped off that last garment before pulling it on. My hair was a mess, but it brushed out quickly as I let the illusion of Belladonna go.
Prisma said, “He’s making demands for ten million dollars and safe passage. There’s twenty thousand people there right now. The supers are surrounding the place but haven’t breached yet. He’s some kind of energy wielder, and he claims he can kill them all with one exploding burst. He already killed one whole level in one section, almost a hundred people. If those superheroes breach, I’m afraid they’ll all die. This is a recording.”
The holographic HUD played a short video. The supervillain was glowing bright red, to obscure his face probably. He waved a hand at a small section of seating, and the red light shot out of part of his glowing shield and hit the whole area at once. People started screaming, but it didn’t last long, because their faces started to blister and burn, then melt, and finally they were set on fire.
“You have video in there?”
Prisma snorted, “I have video everywhere. But more importantly he himself is streaming it, so the supers would know his threat is real. That was his example and about ten minutes ago. Based on visual evidence, I’d say he had the power of a sun, like a red dwarf star. He literally cooked those people to death in seconds.”
I felt a little sick, but I also felt more than a little rage at the monstrous act. People like that just needed to die. I felt a certainty in that fact, no second chances for monstrously evil acts. No jail, and no containment. He was a monster. There was also no doubt he was responsible for it, and I was already looking forward to ending the bastard. He’d make a good number three for me. I found it disgusting that the heroes would put him in a jail cell, but they were hunting to kill me, and they’d killed thousands of innocents per year across the country.
Of course, the latter could be covered up, the former couldn’t and he deserved his day in court? As for the middle one, my own death, well that was evil men trying to cover up the truth. I was a danger to that secrecy that they couldn’t abide. How the hell they justified those orders to the superheroes doing the hunting I didn’t know, but I suspected the deaths of their fellow agents played a part.
I also saw no hypocrisy in my intention that night. There was no comparison in my mind between bringing harsh justice in the interest of protecting twenty thousand lives, or even one life, and murdering innocents out of fear they would do something. Anyone who didn’t understand that could screw off, because they didn’t understand the difference between good and evil, perhaps they didn’t even believe in such concepts.
“Right, so like Flame, but at the speed of light so I can’t dodge it. This asshole needs to die anyway.”
To my surprise, Prisma didn’t argue that point.
She said, “I’ll put you in the hallways by the gate to the arena behind him. You’ll be invisible, but the teleportation will flash visible light you can’t block.”
I nodded, “Do it,” while I did my mental calming exercise. It wasn’t working all that well in the moment. I hadn’t felt so angry before outside of my day from hell and at the darkest points of my grieving my husband’s death.
Still, what happed if sun-boy was resistant to sound? I needed to plan an alternate possibility to that death, or I could be responsible for triggering one of the worst singular massacres in human history. Sure, other monstrous individuals throughout history had killed much more than twenty thousand, but over time, not in one five second attack. Point was, I needed a clear mind, or at least as clear as I could get it.
There’d also been no fire, was it a red energy, or just light like from a star. If it was just heat generated from intense light, like literally standing next to a sun, I could probably counter him if I needed to with my own power. But it was all guesses.
The world flashed around me, and I found myself in an empty hallway near a soda, beer, and snack stand. The place was totally empty. I don’t know how he stopped the mass exodus, since I couldn’t imagine none of the people inside had panicked and tried to run when he’d given his object lesson.
I decided I needed to do three things at once, if they all failed, then I’d be dying with the twenty thousand others, and I supposed I wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout. It was a risk, but all of life was a risk, and taking three tacks was more likely to guarantee success.
I deadened sound as I walked over to a large steel pylon type thing. It was around chest high on me, but it would be waist high on most people. I grabbed it, and I pulled. The loud ting of four large bolts snapping was deadened before anyone else could hear it. I was holding it in both hands like an awkward ass thick bat and I paused for a moment. In reality, I was palming it on both sides at the end of it, like you might do with a basketball, or better yet, when picking up a rolled-up carpet. I didn’t like that I didn’t have total leverage control on it.
I grunted, as I pushed my fingers into the steel and deformed it on one side, stretching it out as the loud strain of metal sounded in my ears. I did that until I had a grip and could hold it securely in one hand. It turned as invisible as I was, and I flew through the gate and out into the large arena. The only good news was the arena held almost thirty-five thousand people, and it was a little over half its occupancy.
I bet it’d been fuller before, but a little over a third of the people that came here to see a battle of the bands had to go home at a decent hour.
He was still hovering in the center of the arena, and there were several more cooked and still steaming bodies at most of the exits. Well, I supposed that’s how he’d cowed the crowd and stopped a panicked run for the exits. My stomach churned in disgust at the scent of burned bodies, which was a first for me, and raged filled me.
How dare he do this in my city. Arrogant? Maybe, but I wasn’t perfect. You could add that fault to vain
, and a little bit naughty. I’d never known I’d had those things in me either, so add corruptible to the list. I was just human after all.
I flew closer and closer with a rage in my heart. It wouldn’t be a simple passionless act of necessity, though it was that too. At least in my mind it was. The heat he was putting off was suffocating as I got closer, and I did three things at once.
I screamed in anger, although I didn’t need to. There was plenty of ambient sound I could’ve used, enhanced, and shaped to destroy him, but it was cathartic. I sent that at him in the same way I’d attacked Mistral, with the full intention of making his body explode as every bone in his body including his skull was shattered violently. I also tried to control his light as it left his body, gathered it all up and focused it straight up, or I tried to. Third, I lunged forward at my top speed of flight while turning visible and swung for the fences as they say.
The results were as they say, overkill and quite spectacular in a gruesome way. I did fail to control his light, so I wasn’t broken up over it because he’d have killed everyone if that had been my only plan. I could only guess that it wasn’t purely light spectrum, and there was a part of it that was another form of energy.
Regardless, he let out a loud scream of agony as every bone in his body exploded, and he was suddenly covered in blood. I was mid-swing at the time and the improvised large steel bat that must’ve weighed at least a half ton, hit him right in the face as hard as I could. His head didn’t so much fly off, as it was more like an explosion of fine mist, composed of brain, blood, and bone. His headless body which was greatly deformed without a bone inside of him bigger than a pebble fell toward the ground.
I dropped the steel bat, and I took a deep breath. Mostly, to avoid throwing up violently in front of twenty thousand people. I had a reputation to maintain after all. Or I would.
I turned toward the camera, and said coldly, “This is my city. Any supervillains that get up to shit like this will be put down like the dogs they are. Do your thing, beat up some superheroes, rob your shit, and you’ll go to jail if your caught. Murder innocents, cause collateral damage that takes innocent lives, and I will turn you into mincemeat. That is a warning, promise, and threat. Don’t test me again.”
My voice wasn’t dulcetly pleasant either. I used my power to make it sound like cold doom without hope. A part of me worried the declaration would backfire, but it seemed fair to warn them what they should expect, and the smarter supervillains without the failings of pride would heed my warning. Of course, it could be argued it was my failing of pride that prompted such an outrageous threat. In my defense, I was completely livid at the time, and holding onto that rage because if I let it go then I’d have been physically sick in front of all those people.
The entire arena was silent, and I could practically smell the fear.
Yeah, you're welcome everyone.
I said privately, suppressing the sound, “Get me out of here before the superheroes storm the place.”
I disappeared in a flash of light.
I swallowed down the bile as I appeared in the lair, and I took some deep breaths.
“Alright, let me have it.”
Prisma giggled, “That was awesome.”
I raised an eyebrow, “It was?”
She nodded, “Overkill, but you can’t be too careful in a situation like that. He figuratively had a knife at the throats of twenty thousand people.”
“The threat wasn’t over the top?”
She shook her head and bounced on her holographic toes, “Nope, it was perfect. We want to lower collateral damage, and the deaths of others in super fights. It’s one of our main goals. It will also play well on the video. People will remember how passionate you were about stopping that kind of thing and preserving innocent bystanders and hostages.”
I blew out a breath, “I wasn’t sure if he’d be protected from any of my deadlier abilities, so I hit him with it all. You have access to SAB data, don’t you?”
She paused, “Maybe, why?”
I shrugged, “Not trying to figure out who the boss is. I’m wondering about how powers work. They couldn’t figure out mine. The common core. Like red dwarf there. My powers aren’t consistent.”
She bit her lip and looked up in thought, which was probably an affection for looking up and collating several terabytes of data. She was also in her scientist guise again.
My hammering heart started to slow down. I’d really been terrified I’d fail all those people, only my anger and his need to be killed had kept me from freezing.
She said, “Your suit’s defense shield against thermal vision can be turned off now by the way.”
I blew out a breath, “Not sure it’d be much faster if I’d been at home, and you still would’ve needed to teleport me here first. But that’s good to know, it might come in handy one day.”
She nodded, “Your powers are a mystery. Or at least, you seem to have two different sets, but most people have the increased healing. The body autonomously uses the energy your mitochondria can gather to increase healing, even regrow limbs over time. There’s also data suggesting your lifespan will be much longer, though the oldest known super is only thirty and it may be too early to come to that conclusion.”
I said, “I’ve noticed I look more like I appeared in my second year of college, nineteen or twenty, instead of twenty-three, and Glenn didn’t look much older than low to mid-twenties.”
She smiled, “Yes, it could mean that tapping that energy slows the aging rate, or simply means better DNA correction. You may never look older than in your twenties, until the telomeres run down and you age rapidly at the end of a normal lifespan. We’ll have to wait and see.”
She shook her head, “My point was that it’s common in everyone, and often unrelated to the powerset. There’s no reason your body and mind can’t be using the energy for three different things, instead of two. The norm is the norm because of the outliers after all. One remotely controlling sound and light frequencies, and the other some form of kinetic manipulation limited to your body that mimics super strength and resistance to physical damage.
“There may yet be even more things the energy does for everyone that isn’t clear yet, like the aging and perhaps other subtle things. It’s also possible there is a connection between your seemingly disparate powers, and our knowledge of the universe and science just isn’t advanced enough yet to understand it.”
“So, in short, you’ve no idea?”
She giggled, “Yes.”
“What did you think of Maria’s theory?”
She tried to look innocent, which was adorable.
I said casually, “If I was stuck here all the time. I might get nosy.”
She blushed, and I wondered if that was pure affection of human emotion or if it was something triggered by an emotion she could actually feel. Did it matter?
“There is no contrary data to disprove the theory. I’m not sure if we could ever prove it, though if every homo-potens starts to quicken in a couple of generations or so, that would make it likely.”
I nodded, “Any idea why the government started killing us?”
She frowned, “I suppose I can tell you. You would’ve been around nine when the first quickening happened in the new generation, a sixteen-year-old boy. It terrified the world, and it shocked them. That’s when they started to do testing, and new supers started to quicken almost every day. It was when they discovered homo-sapiens were on the endangered species list, and would shorty become a footnote in history.
“The survival instinct is very strong on the racial level. Homo-potens are still human, but there was a lot of doubt around that. Powers, so they wondered what else is different. Did they have the same emotions, the same intrinsic values? Then there were tons of conspiracy theories as to the cause of the mass and unnatural jump in evolution. Literally in one generation, which isn’t natural at all from what we understand.
“So it was fear in the end. Fear of extincti
on, fear of the different, fear of losing control. The government won’t be able to control the citizens when they’re all flying around like demi-gods. Then the first supervillain came along, and he was a terror until he was taken down. That’s when the SAB was created, just six years ago now.”
She shook her head, “Some of the reports painted an overly grim picture. People argued that supers were essentially weapons of mass destruction walking around without control. It generated a lot of fear in certain quarters. They likened it to a military level force without any checks and balances. People that are armed and work in law enforcement have been trained, and they’ve gained the trust to carry deadly weapons. But a sixteen-year-old kid with the power to destroy whole regiments?
“It’s an argument born of fear, but all of those things mixed together was responsible for the mindset that made such a conspiracy possible. They saw letting citizens running around unchecked with that kind of power as bad as a teen taking a missile launcher to school. So they came up with the protocols to reduce that risk. Mental stability, beliefs, pride in country, records, online posts, opinions, respect of authority, all of it is measured when the decision is made. The stronger a super that comes in, the more stringent those checks are.
“You’re one of the strongest to ever walk through those doors.”
I blew out a breath, “Still, seventy percent fail that measure?”
She pressed her lips together, “Actually, sixty nine percent. But yes, the levels are rather paranoid for those with true power. The ones that are relatively harmless can be anarchists for all they care, and they’re always let go. In truth, those weaker supers comprise less than twenty percent, not the greater share the government tells us. It’s just, those are almost always allowed to live, so are the majority of those that aren’t sanctioned.
“Regardless of the cause, it needs to be stopped. Ironically, the worst of them are the ones that don’t show up, the one percent that might go supervillain don’t go there. So the ones sanctioned are almost sure to be among those that would be like yourself, if not as strong. Most would just live their lives. In the end, the ones that don’t register are either bad, or the small percentage of the population that would fall under conspiracy theorists. So about half of the ones that don’t show up go bad.”
Death's Mistress: Origins of Supers: Book One Page 14
