You leap back up and take control of Nick’s body with your telekinesis, keeping his arms crossed over his chest so the gauntlet weapons can’t be aimed at you.
A growling roar over your shoulder announces Catherine’s return, and you pivot with Nick in your mental grasp to swing him against Catherine like a hurled discus. The college student’s motorcycle helmet cracks against the invulnerable woman and his battered body bounces off and over the edge of the building.
She lands against the helicopter platform and slams a fist into the concrete to stop her momentum. The whole building shudders in response. You stand before her, awaiting her next move, ready for her to charge again.
Catherine takes the helicopter’s tail in her hands and lifts the aircraft like a child’s plastic toy. She brings it down; an oversized flyswatter, and you barely dodge, assisting your leap with a telekinetic boost.
It’s an ugly maneuver on both ends. The helicopter crumbles, shearing at the tail and bringing down a section of the roof. The main body stays intact, but the bubble canopy and rotor blades are completely destroyed. You bounce off the roof like Nick did earlier, only you’ve got no body armor to temper the impact. Your skin screams out in protest.
No time to take stock of your injuries. Instead, you fly into the air just as Catherine lifts the main carriage of the helicopter and hurls it at you with terrible speed and accuracy. The world slows down, adrenaline dosing your brain with a survival edge, and you see the path laid out with perfect clarity.
You fly through the cockpit, navigating in and back out of the mangled machine and avoiding the obstacle altogether. Time speeds back up and the helicopter explodes against the next building over. Michael Bay would be proud.
Catherine’s eyes dart up to the sky, giving Nick’s position away. Without even turning, you mentally grab his arms and aim the incoming gauntlet blast directly at Catherine.
When the blue-white ring hits her flesh, her muscles seize and she falls prone with an incredible thud; unconscious. You turn back to see horror on Nick’s face, his wide eyes shining out through the crack in his helmet.
“I thought I told you to fuck off,” you say.
Then you grab him by the neck and twist until there’s a sickening crack and his body goes limp. The jet boots, still active, propel his body haphazardly like a bottle-rocket on the Fourth of July.
To accompany his fireworks, a dozen red laser-sights appear on your chest. You let out a sigh of exasperation, then look over to the roof access doorway. The Mercury PD SWAT team stands at the ready.
Well, you defeated your fellow “supers,” but you can’t take on the whole of humanity, not alone. They bring you down, but boy oh boy, was that a blaze of glory. Well-fought!
THE END
Snippets
Just as you reach the other two test subjects, they each gasp in a lungful of air like they’ve suddenly surfaced from the farthest depths of the ocean. They seem confused, but unharmed. You help them to their feet, waiting patiently for them to get a grip on the situation.
“What happened?” Catherine mutters.
“Has anyone seen the scientist?” Nick asks, stepping off his own platform.
You look around, but there is only rubble. “We’re lucky to be alive,” you say.
Catherine stumbles off her platform base, her movements wobbly and unsure, like a newborn foal. Shock, most likely. “My son,” she says. “I need to go pick up my son from school.”
Nick looks at you, but neither of you stop her from leaving. Wordlessly, you turn toward the rubble. So much damage….
And that’s not the only thing; you feel different after the experiment. That energy is still within you, but it’s everywhere else too. You reach out toward a basketball-size piece of what was once a laboratory wall. There’s a connection, surrounding and binding you together; the debris shimmies and reaches back, and before you realize it—the rock tumbles off the pile and rolls toward you!
Wait…did you just do that?
The sound of police sirens grows louder and invades your thoughts. You could leave now, tell the college student to do the same, and none would be the wiser. If there really is something different about you, maybe it’s best to keep your anonymity. But if the police find out that you were involved in this catastrophic accident—where it looks like someone may have been killed—it could put you in a bad light if you flee the scene now.
• No, stay. You’ve done nothing wrong, and it’s the right thing to do.
• Tell Nick you’ve “got a bad feeling about this,” then speed on home.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Some “Thing” Different
In panic, you run—literally—from the scene of the accident. Why “play it cool” when the world around you looks like the result of a terrorist attack? And you aren’t the only one sprinting across campus. Students, teachers, staff, and visitors of all kinds run from the site of the explosion.
There’s no way you could explain what just happened to the cops—you can’t even explain it to yourself! A building just exploded around you, and you’re completely fine? And that scientist is just…gone. Vaporized. What about those other two? Are they dead? If so, that would make you the only suspect. And without a believable story or alibi? No, thanks.
You suddenly stop and look around. Somehow, your apartment building is right in front of you. Did you just run all the way here? That’s gotta be at least twenty miles and you’re not even winded. A cab pulls away from the building—maybe in your shock you took the cab, but don’t remember—that seems more likely, doesn’t it?
Shaking off the confusion, you step in and check your mailbox, just like any other normal day. You jiggle the key—damn thing always sticks—to no avail. So you twist harder. The key snaps off inside your mailbox. Damn it! In frustration, you pound against the box with the meat of your fist.
The entire thing collapses.
Blinking with disbelief, you back away. The whole wall of mailboxes is dented in like a wrecking ball just hit it. Your hand is unblemished, not a scratch, and doesn’t hurt at all. That felt like punching a paper bag.
You turn and frantically press the elevator call button, but on the third press, the button stays jammed in the wall. So you sprint up the stairs, taking entire landings in one bound, past a terrified old Mrs. Jankis and up to your fourth-floor apartment.
When you slam the door shut, you can actually hear the door jamb crack in response. What the hell is happening?! Deep breaths; calm yourself. In and out—slowly. There you go. Everything’s going to be okay. Take it slow….
Your stomach gives a Tyrannosaur growl and you realize you’re hungrier than you’ve ever been. The phrase “hungry enough to eat a horse” doesn’t seem like hyperbole right now. Getting something to eat…yeah…that’ll help you think more clearly.
• Start draining grocery stores in the dead of night like the Chupacabra of Whole Foods.
• Pop the collar on a thick coat, pull down a baseball cap, and inconspicuously go to town on the all-you-can-eat joint down the street.
• Push the couch against the door, keep the TV off, and eat whatever’s in the pantry.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Something Fishy
Anyone who’s grown up in Mercury City knows you don’t go to the warehouse district after dark. Once the dockworkers punch out at 5 o’clock and the last respectable man has gone home, the harbor becomes a port of call to drug runners and smugglers. Pimps gather their whores to offer alleyway R&R for sailors while their narcotic cargo is unloaded.
Essentially, once the sun sets on Mercury Bay, the warehouse district becomes the biggest, most bustling criminal economy on the eastern seaboard. Which makes it the perfect place for you to bust some skulls and intimidate the low-level bosses into getting you a meet-’n’-greet higher up.
But when you arrive, you’re greeted with an unexpected sight—one of the warehouses is on fire. More surprising still, it’s being robbed. An idling truc
k in one of the alleyways catches your attention. Are you being followed?
Squinting for a better look, you see it’s a long black SUV. Fire reflects off its darkly tinted windows. Anger billowing in your gut, you march forward toward the car. The headlights flip on and the driver peels out; they know they’ve been made.
You take off in a sprint after the SUV, and your legs pump with a ferocity you’ve never known. Soon you’re actually sprinting faster than the car, which fishtails and squeals around a corner into an alley between warehouses, hoping to lose you on the turn. In instinct, you leap high, kick off a dumpster, and end up on a rooftop.
Exhilarated, you push forward and drop down into the alley—just in front of the SUV! Bracing yourself, you bring your shoulder down and plow forward.
The front of the vehicle collapses in a terrible shriek of metal, while the rear flies into the air under the force of its own momentum. The SUV tumbles over you, lands on its roof, and skids to a stop further down the alley.
You calmly walk toward the car. The wheels turn in the night air, gradually slowing. When you arrive, you rip the driver’s door off its hinges and toss it away before pulling the driver from the car.
You give a quick glance to see if anyone else is inside—but it’s just him. He wears a black suit, a white button-up shirt that you’re sure was pristine before you crashed his car, and a handgun at the waist.
The man coughs blood, looks up at you with an odd grin, and says, “You’re perfect.”
Then he breathes his last. In the breast of the suit, there’s an FBI badge that identifies the man as Special Agent Brendan Droakam, FBI, Supersoldier Unit. Great, you’re being trailed by the Men in Black and you just killed one. Better dispose of the body….
You buckle the agent back into the driver’s seat, then lift the SUV over your head and walk it down to the docks. When you make it to the water’s edge, you hurl the vehicle an impressive thirty yards, where it sinks into the briny sea. If the dock is deep enough to house ships, it should be deep enough to hide the SUV. Dusting off your hands, you turn back.
“Guess I should’ve known it was one of you two,” Catherine says.
Though she’s in plainclothes, she has an odd circuitry-laden glove that extends up her left forearm and wears a futuristic-looking rifle slung over her right shoulder. Two RC-drones fly near her head and three more robots roll along the dock around her alligator skin boots.
“I didn’t start the fire,” you say.
“No? And I suppose you didn’t just throw a federal agent into the Bay?”
“How’d you know he….?”
“License plates,” Catherine says. “I mean, I’m all for a smaller government, but I can’t say I approve of your methods.”
“What’re you gonna do about it?” you laugh.
“Allow me to share a theory. I think all our powers are based upon density, or perhaps, a rewriting of the physical laws of density. Me? I’ve got a super-dense mind, sort of like a hard drive upgrade. I can fit a lot more up here, and it runs much faster. Nick? I think he can manipulate density. He makes things float when they shouldn’t. And you? You’re much denser than anything else on the planet, just short of falling through the floor when you walk on it.”
“Is there a point to all this?”
“There is. As someone for whom walls crumble away, there’s not much chance of my weapons doing any harm, right?” She taps some commands into her tech-glove and her robot drones move toward you.
“Right….”
“But by that same token, you don’t enjoy the benefits of being as dense as the average human. Not anymore, at least. So, according to my theory, you’re too dense to swim. You’ll just sink to the bottom as fast as if you were falling through the air.”
You look down at the dock, realizing that beneath these planks of wood countless fathoms await. Mercury Bay isn’t sloping like a swimming beach; that’s why it makes an ideal shipyard. It’s essentially an underwater cliffside. Catherine’s minion bots circle your ankles.
“Yet you still need to breathe oxygen to survive, do you not?”
Your eyes dart back up just in time to see Catherine punch a new command into her tech-glove. The minion bots explode in a self-destruct sequence, blowing the dock apart and dropping you into the ocean below.
Exactly as predicted, you fall to the sea floor, accelerating at an astounding 9.8 m/s2. It will take less than three minutes before you drown; you can’t possibly hope to make it to the surface by then.
THE END
Soon I Will Be Invincible!
Nick lowers himself and slowly floats down to the street next to you. “Where to next?” he asks. He’s eerily calm, as if he doesn’t even realize he’s just murdered dozens of people.
Your-Catherine has stolen her doppelganger’s cloak and adds it to her supervillain ensemble. The powerless villains once known as Drillbit and Shadow Priestess crawl along the ground in an agony only known by those who’ve been thoroughly violated. You remember the feeling all too well.
“Go now, and stay hidden,” you say. “Soon, I’ll return to rule this world, and there will be a place for you in my empire. I will not forget your sacrifice.”
“How magnanimous. Another nice quality for a god,” your-Catherine says.
“Let’s go. I need to reset the device so we can get our final powers.”
“So…back to the power station?” Nick says. Then with a grin he adds, “No problem.”
He lifts the three of you with his newly enhanced power of mind and flies back into the sky.
As you soar across Mercury City, Nick yells, “Oh my God, I’m starving! Is there enough food at the power station, or should we fly-thru Tacos Banditos on the way?”
“There should be enough, but trust me, it never gets any easier. I’m always hungry!”
Catherine says, “We need a world where you have telekinesis, but perhaps you can set the parameters to a universe where things aren’t going so great for you. If you’re already vulnerable, we can get the drop on your alternate self.”
“That’s too amorphous. The criterion needs something concrete to search for.”
“A specific location, then,” the telekinetic genius says. “If you were hiding out, where would you go?”
With your own super-genius mind working on overtime, you say, “I know the perfect spot.”
* * *
So where’s the one place no one would ever look for you? Perhaps somewhere from childhood? Having grown up inland, away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Mercury City, you have a spot no one else knows about. If your parents knew how much time you spent in a cavern—your own fortress of solitude—they’d have forbidden it, so you never told another soul.
Now, as you stand in the center of the darkened cave, you feel a dark foreboding where once there was only comfort. There’s something particularly dastardly about hunting yourself at the one place in the world you ever truly felt safe.
“This beats the hell out of my old treehouse,” Nick says.
“Open the portal. We may be traveling to other worlds, but time doesn’t stand still. One more power and I get my son….”
You nod to Catherine and start to manipulate the staff until it finds a seam in existence and a purple gateway opens inside the cavern. Catherine adjusts Widowsilk and steps through. Nick flies through the portal after her. You mentally prepare to defeat another alter-ego, to see your own face scream in agony for the last time. After a moment’s hesitation, you step through the portal and wave hello to yourself. This-you cowers near a dead campfire, thoroughly racked with terror.
“Where’s the rest of your team?” you ask.
“I—we didn’t…” this-you replies, still in shock.
“Why does that keep happening?” says Catherine with a sigh.
“I’d say it’s because given the infinite eventualities, going our separate ways seems the most likely form of entropy,” you say.
“I understand why,
I was simply commiserating,” she retorts.
“Christ, we need to find the genius-me so I can finally understand what the hell you two are saying,” Nick says.
“Where did you come from? How did you find me? What do you want?” this-you babbles.
“Another universe, duh,” Nick says. “Even I get that much.”
You smile. “How did we find you? I tried to think, ‘Where’s the one place I’d go, the one place where no one would ever look for me?’ Well, nobody but you would look for you here.”
“And what do we want? Why, your powers of course. Now, this may sting,” Catherine says.
She fires Widowsilk at this Earth’s version of you. As she releases the trigger, this-you lets out a painful cry and falls prone, helpless. She then adjusts a setting on the weapon, turns and shoots you with the stolen superpower as a new gift.
You’ve gotten your third power—telekinesis. Combined with super-strength, durability, and the pinnacle of genius, you’re the first trifecta of superhumanity: a Roman god. Catherine can match your genius, and Nick your prowess, but with all three gifts you’re the heavyweight champion and they’re mere contenders.
You feel the world in a way you’d never imagined, a physical link between you and all that surrounds you. All that you can perceive sits and waits for your mental commands. You focus on the link between your mind and your alter-ego.
“Fantastic,” you say. Reaching an arm out, you lift your doppelganger using only the power of mind.
As you see your mirror image struggle, you think, this world’s version of me is here hiding out, so circumstances must be dire. And now, without any superpowers to defend with…perhaps you should put yourself out of your misery?
Nick sighs impatiently. “C’mon, let’s go find the other two.”
SUPERPOWERED: Are YOU a Superhero or Supervillain? (Click Your Poison Book 3) Page 36
