“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Dorian asks.
“No, you don’t,” Droakam replies.
* * *
After a week in the lab, the scientist who created this technique finally discovers a way to reverse it. When your powers are siphoned away, it’s like losing a sense. You could feel the world around you with your telekinesis and flying was simply amazing, but that’s all behind you now.
Now you watch from the sidelines, from the 24-hour news programs, as superheroes form the ranks of the US Army. In fact, Superhero Team 6 takes out all the United States’ enemies in the first month after its formation.
Now you’re just some schmuck with a Phantom of the Opera mask grafted onto their face.
THE END
Reign of Terror
The next morning, you head out in search of disguises. A mannequin dressed as the Phantom of the Opera greets you outside the downtown costume shop and a chime goes off as you enter. “Can I help you?” the store clerk asks.
“Yeah, I’m looking for something I can wear on a crime spree,” you say.
“Ah, I have just the thing. Follow me, please.” The clerk—who wears all-black and has orange/bleached hair—leads you toward the back of the store. Once there, he points to a rack, then scratches his nose near a piercing and waits as you inspect the wares.
It’s a collection of long-sleeve, pinstripe, black-and-white shirts, black pants, black knit caps, and canvas bags with money-signs on them; organized as male, female, and children’s bank robber costumes. Oh, and on the end there’s “slutty bank robber”—which is mainly pleather and not much of it. You can’t help but grin. The clerk must think you’re going to a costume party.
“I’ll need a mask too,” you say as you select your size. “I don’t want anyone to see my face.”
“Well, it comes with a domino-style eyepiece, but if you’d prefer full-face, I’d recommend a MorphMask. Those are over here.” He shows you to a different aisle, where you find a collection of thin, skin-tight masks that hide your features but allow you to see through from the inside. Essentially, a monochromatic version of what the Power Rangers or Spiderman wears. The most common of these is plain white, so you take one.
At the edge of this section are several bowler hats on a Clockwork Orange display—that ought to complete the look nicely. Taking the whole getup into a changing room, you catch your reflection in the mirror. You’ve lost weight. Or possibly gained weight—in muscle. Your skin is toned and firm and that softness around the belly is all but gone. The skin-tight outfit complements your new musculature perfectly.
“Whoa,” Nick says when you step out. “I’ve never seen a badass mime before.”
“It does kind of look like a mime, with the hat and mask,” the clerk agrees.
“In a good way,” Nick is quick to add. “Hey, that gives me an idea!”
Nick heads off into the store in search of a suitable alter-ego while you pass time browsing an area filled with make-up, fake blood, and general Hollywood-grade special-effect supplies. Blood squibs that make you look like you’ve been shot, that kind of thing.
After a few minutes, Nick approaches in the full get-up from the movie Scream: A long, hooded black robe with excess fabric around the sleeves, a white mask with blank, devoid eye-holes, and an exaggerated mouthpiece that hangs open six inches.
“Mime, meet Screamer,” he says, his voice only slightly muffled by the mask.
“Not very original….” the clerk comments.
Nick takes off the mask. “Yeah, but it matches the ‘black-and-white’ look. Besides, the mask wasn’t original to begin with. It’s modeled after Van Gogh’s ‘The Scream.’” With a grin, he adds, “Art history class.”
“If you say so,” the clerk says.
“Okay then, Screamer, where to begin? The downtown branch of Mercury Bank is only a few blocks from here,” you say.
Nick shakes his head. “What do we need money for? What we need—is fear. Respect and deference. We need a televised public display demonstrating our powers and announcing ourselves to the world. When they see that, money will be meaningless. We’ll just take what we want!”
“I guess I never thought of it that way….”
“Well, if you’re going to be ‘Mime,’ then you should let me do the talking.”
• “Okay, what do you suggest we do?”
• “No. If we rob a bank, it’ll accomplish everything you just mentioned.”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Re-Shard-ed
The man gets slashed and burned many times over from the glass and the molten office furniture, but he’ll live. You hover above the destruction and float over toward him, just to make sure, but you’re stopped short when a shadowy figure emerges from the recesses of the building.
Shockingly, it’s Catherine, the woman from the lab experiment. The one who picked “Rock” when you picked “Scissors.” What’s she doing here? This can’t be a coincidence.
• She must be here to help too! With your combined powers, this fire doesn’t stand a chance.
• She must be the one who started the fire! Drop the hose and prepare yourself for battle against your first supervillain!
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Resistant to Change
You close your eyes to concentrate, feeling the energy around Catherine. In your mind’s eye, you reach out and mentally touch her brain with your telekinesis, squeezing it as hard as you can. Something’s wrong. You can feel that nothing’s happening; it’s like squeezing a diamond. Somehow she’s too strong, too durable.
When you open your eyes, she’s standing right in front of you, a grin on her face.
“Nice try,” she says.
Then she punches you with such force as to snap your neck. Which is actually a saving grace, considering what her granite-like fist does to your face.
THE END
Right Answer
“Okay, hold on one minute,” the man says. Then he disappears back into the building.
Enough time goes by that you wonder if they’re fleeing out the back. When the door opens once more, it’s the man from the FBI website, his face as sinister as his portrait.
Roger Aleister Kingsley, FBI’s #10 Most Wanted.
“I do say, what is all this fuss about?” he asks in a thick, noble-blooded English accent.
All you have to do is get him to come outside and he’s yours.
“The, uhhh, arcane reactor—in the back.” Arcane reactor? Where the hell did that come from? “It looks modified, I just need you to verify. It’ll only take five minutes.”
He glares at you, head cocked with curiosity.
“Could be dangerous, or it could be nothing. Like…carbon monoxide.”
He shakes his head. “Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”
“Right this way, sir.”
You lead him around the side of the building while waving Droakam in with your hand behind your back. As you get around the corner, Kingsley looks at you with impatience.
“Well?”
That’s when Agent Droakam arrives. He immediately cites the Miranda Rights and cuffs the man right then and there, with Kingsley pressed against the grimy brick wall.
“I don’t know how you pulled it off, but I’m impressed. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little disappointed, though. I had hoped to see you in action,” Droakam says, shaking his head good-naturedly. “Here I thought Dorian was the genius of the group. I’m gonna take this guy in, but I’ll meet you back at HQ.”
• Fly back to the warehouse with a smile on your face.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Risk-Averse
Back at your fourth-floor apartment, life is reassuringly normal. Your mailbox latch sticks like usual, and there are only the usual bills and junk mail. The elevator, which has been out of order for months, remains so.
Settling into the routine comfort of your couch, you flip on the TV. Blonde eye-candy reporter Alison Argyle giv
es a special report: Explosion Decimates Mercury University Campus. Onscreen images of what was once the chemistry lab flash before you. Whoa, that was close! See, sometimes it pays to stay perfectly within your comfort zone.
For the next week or so, this’ll be a great story. Hey, did you hear I was almost in that explosion? makes for great dinner conversation. That is, until the airwaves are crowded with incredible stories of three superhumans—a college student, a single mom, and a homeless man—who got unbelievable powers from that same lab explosion.
Hey, did you hear I almost had superpowers? makes for a far less brag-worthy tale.
THE END
Rite of Passage
Just like Nick did a moment ago, you grab hold of the golden lion and twist. The world spins, and you’re suddenly inside a separate part of The Savior Complex; Dorian White sprints away.
“Nick, wait!” you call out, zooming down the corridor toward him.
He stops in his tracks and spins around. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You’ve got to come back! We need to stick together to….”
“I’m not running away, you dolt. I’m going to get my mechanized weapon suit.”
“Oh.” You look at the floor.
“Go back and help Catherine!” he screams. You turn to run, but he calls after you. “Wait, you can’t go back that way—it’s a one-way passage. You’ve got to go forward, take your third left. Then two rights. Go until you see a firepole, slide down that and then go past the kitchen area and back around the entrance on your left. That’ll lead you to the main door, got it?”
“Uhhh…”
“Goddamnit. Just stick with me. C’mon!”
He sprints down the hallway as fast as his white sneakers will carry him. You float just behind the college student, trying to think of some way to improve your situation, but falling short on ideas.
Finally, Nick makes it to the room he’s looking for, presses his palm against the entrance scanner, and steps inside.
“Computer, boot up White Ranger sequence. Prepare for Stark battle-mode.”
“Dorian White voice recognition accepted. Beginning Iron-zord protocol,” a disembodied voice with a filtered, British accent replies.
A door slides open to reveal an enormous, ten-foot-tall mechanized suit. It’s glittering white, with the sheen of a brand-new sports car. Nick climbs inside, and the armored computer closes around him, booting up. The limbs move as part of a systems check, and two more arms swing out over the shoulders—they prove to be more cannons and less appendages, however.
“Whoa….”
“All systems online,” a filtered, robo-Nick says. “Let’s go kick some ass.”
* * *
When you burst back into the entry, you see the five Ex-men hovering over Diamond’s lifeless body; one of the men shoots arcs of electricity from his fingertips into her flesh. They all look up when you enter.
“No!” comes a computerized cry from Nick’s body armor.
The weapon suit’s dual cannons unleash a barrage of attacks and deafening missile strikes pound into the semi-circle of superpowered agents. But when the firing stops and the smoke clears, you see the man in the middle with his arms outstretched, and a force field that’s stopped the attack completely.
The field drops, and the man with the energy whip steps forward. In an instant, his weapon slices through Dorian White’s cannons like they were made of ice cream. You blast the man across the room, distancing his terrible energy weapon from Nick’s machine.
But you’re horribly outnumbered and in the same moment, one of the other Ex-men blasts into you with a temperature assault of absolute zero. Everything stops. Your muscles, your breath, even your mind. The last thing you see are crystals as your eyes frost over.
THE END
Rock
You make a fist in the sign for rock.
“I’ll be paper, I guess,” Catherine says. She shoots her hand flat while the student extends only his forefingers.
Nick says, “Scissors.” With a collective shrug (this really isn’t how the game works), the three of you move onto your respective platforms.
The glass seals once more without any trace of the door’s edges, leaving you inside what looks like an un-tapered hourglass or a gigantic canister of mutagen-ooze from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That static, pervasive energy is stronger inside here and growing by the instant. The hum is now akin to the bass reverberations given at a heavy metal concert.
As you look to your companions, you see Nick’s pod take on a blue hue for an instant while the glass around Catherine turns green. Your own pod ripples red before going back to clear. The doctor notices and jots something onto his clipboard, then walks over to the far wall and adjusts another dial. He dons a set of very steam-punk goggles and some elbow-length black rubber gloves.
“Let’s make history, shall we?” the Experi-mentor says, shouting to be heard above the electronics. He flips an enormous wishbone-style lever and the experiment begins.
The artificial atmosphere thickens and coal-black storm clouds coalesce at the ceiling, swirling clockwise and growing by the instant. The Experi-mentor’s lab coat whips in response to the indoor wind, and his papers and charts form a cyclone up to the roof.
The equipment racks pull away from the wall, rumbling, cracking, and dancing their way towards the center platform. In an instant, seemingly from nowhere, a fireball engulfs your pod and superheats to a brilliant flash of fiery white light, sort of like falling into the sun.
And just as fast, everything goes black.
* * *
When you finally open your eyes again, you’re lying on the ground. Groggy as if from a night of heavy drinking, you put your palms to your eyes and massage away the mental fog. After composing yourself, you look around.
The lab is gone.
The explosion left nothing more than smoldering stones and flaming debris. Beyond that, the Mercury University campus reels from collateral damage. It looks like a war zone, as if the building fell victim to a missile strike. Yet, despite rising from ground zero, you don’t have a scratch on you.
You sit on the base of your pod, surrounded by a mysterious three-foot ring, free from damage. Your companions, who lie unmoving at the base of their own pods, have the same invisible but apparent forcefield of protection. There’s no sign of the glass from the pods, not even in the debris. No sign of the scientist, either. Just what kind of experiment was this?
The distant wail of police sirens draws your mind back to the present.
• Check on the other two and make sure they’re okay.
• Will anyone believe you survived without a scratch? Flee quickly before the cops show up.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
The Rogues’ Gallery
“Nice tagline,” Catherine says, cracking her knuckles. “You’ve gotta come through me too, Diamonds are forever.”
“Yeah, uhhh—Best Friends Forever!” Nick chimes in, wincing at his own choice of battle cry.
“Oh, goody. I was hoping you’d say that. Let me introduce you to…the Ex-Men!” the Experi-mentor cries out.
He sweeps his arm towards the entrance and steps aside just as five men in government suits identical to Agent Droakam’s rush in. One of the men raises his hands into a fighting stance, and his fists instantly come ablaze. Another makes a pantomime whip-motion, and suddenly he’s wielding a whip made of pure energy. A third crackles lightning around his person. All five stand at the entrance to the room in a v-formation, ready to do battle.
“Seriously? X-men?” Nick says.
“E-X. Eee-X. For Experi-mentor,” the mad scientist defends, obviously flustered. “Like you’re one to talk! Named after a novel? Dorian Grey, Dorian White, whatever. And ‘Diamond’ is from a videogame, didn’t you say? Not to mention The Phantom here, who stole the lead character from a stage play!”
“Let’s just get on with it,” you growl, mentally feeling the air around the men.
“Yes, let’s. These volunteers have powers gleaned from a modification of your DNA, Phantom. I took your power of telekinesis and gave Agent Flame pyrokinesis, Agent Freeze cryokinesis, Agent—”
“Whoa! Let’s not spoil the surprise, eh, Doc?” Droakam interrupts.
“Very well,” the Experi-mentor says. “Ex-men, attack!”
Catherine—Diamond—rushes into the fray head-on. Nick—Dorian White—twists a small golden lion on the fireplace mantel, then disappears into a secret passageway!
• Attack Droakam and the Experi-mentor. Why fight the soldiers when you can easily take out the Generals?
• Chase Dorian White. He can’t run away; you need him!
• Join Diamond in the fight against the other five supers.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Role of a Lifetime
Commanding their full attention, you cry out, “You want a challenge, is that it? You want a villain? Be careful what you wish for!”
Dramatically, you float up, arms spread wide in a threatening gesture. Catherine’s surprise gives you enough time to distance yourself. You grab Alison Argyle by the throat using the power of your mind, then lift her off the floor.
You fall back down in response—like a seesaw with Alison rising at the same rate—but manage to land on your feet. Ms. Argyle claws at the invisible noose around her neck, kicking her feet wildly through the air and gasping for breath. Catherine looks at you with rage.
“Come any closer and the reporter gets it!” you shout. She looks around, trying to plan her next move.
That’s when you back toward the window, keeping Alison between the two of you, and step out into the sky. You fly straight up the side of your building, the choking reporter serving to block your exit.
SUPERPOWERED: Are YOU a Superhero or Supervillain? (Click Your Poison Book 3) Page 33
