by Lucas Flint
I almost didn't believe my eyes, but the man standing in the doorway was indeed Cadmus Smith, the Director of the Department of Superpowered and Extraterrestrial Beings, and the leader of the G-Men. It had been a while since I last saw him, but he looked almost exactly the same as he did when I met him last year. The only difference was the fact that he was wearing a blue tie rather than a red one, but other than that it was like he had simply traveled through time to get here.
Standing behind Cadmus's right shoulder was a young woman in her twenties who I recognized as Shade. She was another member of the G-Men and seemed to be Cadmus's right-hand woman. She was so-named because she could travel through darkness and even control it, two powers that had always given me a lot of trouble whenever I tangled with her. She smiled and waved at me when she saw me, though it looked like a mocking smile to me.
“Cadmus?” said Mecha Knight, turning to face Cadmus and Shade. Though Mecha Knight's tone didn't change, I noticed him reach for the sword at his side, like he expected a fight. “What are you doing here? I do not remember you being invited to Hero Island.”
Cadmus didn't even smile. He just said, “Shade and I arrived a few minutes ago in response to Robert Candle's attack on John Smith High School yesterday. We heard that Bolt was seriously wounded in the attack and was taken here to recuperate.” He glanced at me. “I can see that that report was accurate.”
“Why are you here?” said Mecha Knight. “You know that the G-Men are not allowed on Hero Island without permission.”
“Oh, but we already received permission from Omega Man and the rest of the Leadership Council,” said Cadmus. “You can ask them, if you'd like. They were very cooperative.”
“Why would they give you permission without consulting me first?” said Mecha Knight. “I am also a member of the Leadership Council, after all. My opinion matters as much as theirs.”
“Because I made it clear that it was rather urgent that Shade and I come here to speak with Bolt,” said Cadmus. “We have already investigated John Smith High School, as well as interviewing witnesses such as Malcolm Rayner about the attack. We now wish to speak with Bolt, who we understand fought Robert Candle.”
“Why do you want to speak with my son?” said Dad. The heat in Dad's voice took me by surprise. He almost looked like he was going to jump up from his chair and fight Cadmus if he got any closer.
Cadmus looked at Dad in surprise. “Ted? I didn't know you were here. But it makes sense, because Bolt is your son, after all.” Then he nodded at Mom. “And, of course, Ashley is here as well.”
“Don't act like we're friends,” said Dad. “Answer the question. Why do you want to speak with Kevin?”
“Because the G-Men are also after Robert Candle,” said Cadmus, “though perhaps not for the same reasons as you. Because Bolt fought Robert, we wish to speak with Bolt and find out what he knows about him.”
“Everyone wants Robert now,” said Dad, folding his arms across his chest. “After that attack on the high school, the NHA and the INJ are also looking for him. You guys aren't that special.”
“But we've been looking for Candle for much longer than you,” said Cadmus. “Not that we actually knew it was him, of course, until just yesterday, but he matches the description of a particular super criminal we've been tracking for a few weeks now.”
“Who would that be?” said Dad.
“He doesn't have a name, but we've nicknamed him the Thief,” said Cadmus. “We call him that because he steals other neoheroes' powers and adds them to his own.”
Cadmus suddenly looked at me directly in the eyes. “Just like what happened to you, correct?”
I gaped. “How did you know? No one outside of this room even knows that I lost my powers.”
“It's a logical conclusion, given what we’ve learned from our investigation,” said Cadmus. “Every superhuman who has ever come into contact with the Thief has lost his or her powers. But you got lucky; most of his victims tend to end up as beaten chunks of meat.”
I gulped, while Mecha Knight said, “Where did this 'Thief' that you speak of come from and how long have you been tracking him? If you let us know, I can tell the rest of the Council and perhaps have the NHA help you track him down before he can harm anyone else.”
Cadmus looked hesitant about revealing important information to us, but then he nodded and said, “Very well. Shade, close the door. I don't want anyone overhearing this who shouldn’t hear it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Shade, stepping inside and allowing the automatic door to close behind her.
“Good,” said Cadmus. He then looked at the rest of us with a stern expression. “What I am about to tell you is classified information. You cannot share it with anyone outside of this room, save for the Leadership Council. We do not want the Thief knowing that we are after him or that we know as much about him as we do, otherwise he may use that information to his advantage.”
“None of us will share this information with anyone else,” said Mecha Knight. “You can trust each and every one of us to keep this to ourselves.”
“Good,” said Cadmus. He pulled out his smartphone and handed it to Shade, who immediately started swiping through it. “Shade will look for the pictures on my phone for me, while I will tell you what we know. I cannot, of course, tell you everything, but I can tell you enough so that we all know what we're dealing with.”
“Then start,” said Dad with obvious impatience. “We're listening.”
“Very well,” said Cadmus. “The Thief's first victim was one of our own, Barry Young, or as you may know him, Black Gold.”
“Hey, I remember him,” I said. “Wasn't Black Gold one of the G-Men assigned to defend my school from Master Chaos last year?”
“Indeed,” said Cadmus. He looked down at his feet, as if he was remembering something bad. “He was a great agent and a good man, one of the best agents in the Department. About three weeks ago, Black Gold was enjoying his day off by taking his children to the park when he noticed a gun store being robbed.”
“Robbed? By who?” I said.
“The Thief, most likely,” said Cadmus. “I say 'most likely' because when Black Gold attempted to intervene, his powers were drained and he was killed. It was a horrible sight.”
“How do you know his powers were drained?” said Dad. “If he was killed, how could he have told you?”
“The gun store owner told us,” said Cadmus. “He said that Black Gold attempted to capture the Thief by covering him with oil, but the Thief grabbed Black Gold and Black Gold suddenly turned solid again, which allowed the Thief to kill him. At the time, we just thought that meant that the Thief could simply negate powers temporarily … until three days later, when he struck again and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could take powers away.”
Shade suddenly stopped swiping and then gave the phone back to Cadmus. Cadmus tapped the screen a couple of times, causing a holographic projection of a teenage Indian girl, who was lying with her eyes closed on a table, to pop out of his smartphone. Oddly, it seemed to startle Cadmus slightly, because he leaned away from it, but maybe he just didn't use that particular feature of his phone very often. I also wondered if there was an app for that or if it was a special app designed by the government for Cadmus’s phone.
“This is Kyra Sodhi,” said Cadmus, gesturing at the hologram. “She is—or I should say, was—the daughter of immigrants from India who moved to the United States ten years ago. Her parents are powerless, but she had the ability to create tremors in the earth. Had she lived, she probably would have been able to create earthquakes.”
“Had she lived?” said Mom. She clutched her chest. “You mean that young girl is dead?”
“Yes,” said Cadmus, nodding. “She was found with her neck broken in a dumpster in Ohio. We considered her a possible candidate for a position in the G-Men due to her powers and eagerness to use them for her country, but sadly she was murdered before she could graduate high school and join
the team.”
“Did Robert do this?” I said.
“Yes,” said Cadmus. “When we found her, I used my telepathy to read her mind and find out that the Thief had stolen her powers. The mental image her memories provided us matched the gun store owner's description of the Thief, so we assumed they were one and the same.”
“You mean she was still alive when you found her?” said Mom. “Why didn't you heal her?”
“She was practically dead, for all intents and purposes,” said Cadmus without a hint of emotion in his voice. “I used my powers to dig out whatever useful information she had left before she passed on. She didn't have much due to her brain deteriorating, but she gave us enough information to be confident that there was indeed a power thief running around stealing the powers of other superhumans.”
“But why her?” said Mecha Knight. “Why would Robert Candle steal the powers of a young girl and then kill her?”
“We are not sure why, but he appears to be collecting powers,” said Cadmus. “As for why he killed her, he probably didn’t want us knowing that he was the culprit. That obviously failed.”
Then the image changed again, showing a middle-aged white guy wearing a Hawaiian tourist shirt and a dark mustache.
“This is Walter Stanley,” said Cadmus. “His dead body was found in a ditch by the road in Oregon a few days after Kyra’s death. Like Kyra, we were keeping an eye on him because of his powers.”
“What were his powers?” said Dad.
“Walter could control animals,” said Cadmus. “He could speak to birds, dogs, cats, even whales, and make them do what he wanted. He was working as a park ranger in Oregon, trying to keep a low profile because he did not want to be drawn into the neohero life and fight crime. He much preferred working among animals and keeping the park he worked at beautiful and in shape.”
“Really?” I said. “But why wouldn't someone want to use their powers to fight supervillains and crime? I can think of a lot of situations in which the power to control animals could be useful in fighting bad guys.”
“Not everyone is fit for a life of crime-fighting or superheroics,” said Cadmus. “There are many superhumans who keep to themselves, not out of shame for their powers, but because they do not want to fight the various supervillains, criminals, and other threats that neoheroes like yourself fight on a regular basis. It is understandable, though I agree that it sometimes is a waste, given the abilities of some people like this.”
“So why were you keeping an eye on Walter, then?” said Dad suspiciously. “Were you planning to offer him a spot on the G-Men?”
“Yes,” said Cadmus, “but when we heard that he was dead, we sent one of our agents to investigate. The agent spoke with Walter's wife, who told him that she had last seen Walter leaving with a young man of Hispanic descent into the darkness outside their house. She said that Walter did not return, which was when she called the police, who then found his body in a ditch by the side of the road not far from their house.”
“Robert,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Cadmus. “We don't know why Walter went with Robert or what they may have talked about. What is clear, however, is that Robert stole Walter's powers and killed him; again so that we would not know he was behind it.”
“Why would Robert steal Walter's powers?” I said.
“We don't know,” said Cadmus. “At this point, I got involved in the investigation, because our initial assumption was that Robert was targeting superhumans who were either G-Men or potential G-Men. We assumed that the Thief was some petty criminal or supervillain who held a grudge against us for some reason and so was killing both members and potential members in order to get back at us.”
“But that obviously isn't what Robert Candle is doing, is it?” said Mecha Knight.
Cadmus shook his head, a grim frown on his face. “No. It appears that Robert Candle is simply trying to get as many of the strongest powers as he can get in order to increase his own personal strength.”
“To kill Kevin,” said Dad. He held Mom tighter against himself. “And me and Ashley.”
“Considering his personal history with your family, yes, I'd say that is a likely explanation for his motives,” said Cadmus. “And now that he has Kevin's powers, he is even more powerful than ever.”
“Has he killed anyone else?” I said.
“We're not sure,” said Cadmus. “After Walter's murder, the Thief vanished off our radar for a while. But it is possible he's killed more people that we do not know of, meaning that he probably has many powers we don’t even know about.”
I gulped. “That's bad.”
“Of course it is,” said Cadmus. “If our theory is correct, then Robert Candle is easily one of the most powerful superhumans on the planet, on par with Omega Man or Tsunami in terms of sheer power. He is a threat not just to America, but to the whole world, assuming that his motives ever expand beyond killing the Jasons, that is.”
“And they just might have,” said Dad. “According to one of Kevin's teammates, Robert escaped from the school through a dimensional portal, similar to what Hopper, a former member of the Young Neos and a Visionist, could create.”
“The Leadership Council is tossing around two theories to explain that,” said Mecha Knight. He held up two fingers. “One is that Robert converted to Visionism and is working under Thaumaturge to destroy Bolt and perhaps the NHA in general or Robert stole Hopper's powers and is using them for his own purposes and has nothing to do with Vision or any of its members.”
“I don't like either theory, to be honest,” I said. “But I think the second is more likely. I just can't see Robert supporting any cause greater than himself.”
“That is troubling information to know,” said Cadmus, shaking his head. He tapped the screen of his phone and the hologram of Walter went back into it. “We still haven't found all of Vision's members yet. If Robert is working with Vision, then all of these murders may be part of a much greater scheme.”
“How are we supposed to beat Robert?” I said, looking around at everyone. “Any plans?”
“That is something the Leadership Council will need to think about,” said Mecha Knight. “We have never fought a supervillain like this. A supervillain who can steal powers with a touch is a danger to everyone. We will likely need the help of the INJ to deal with this.”
“But what about us?” said Mom. She was clutching Dad so tightly that I thought she was going to squeeze him to death. “If Robert is after us, how can we keep ourselves safe? Kevin doesn't even have his powers anymore, while Ted could lose his if he fights Robert.”
“Do not worry, Mrs. Jason,” said Cadmus. “That is actually another thing I wish to speak with you about. We have a way to keep you and your family safe from Robert Candle no matter how strong he gets.”
Dad immediately positioned himself so that he was between Mom and Cadmus. “Keep us safe? How do you intend to do that?”
Dad's tone, as always, was suspicious, but I had to admit that he had a point. I didn't distrust Cadmus quite as much as Dad, but that didn't mean I thought of him as a trustworthy person. That included his agents, like Shade, who I still couldn't quite figure out. But I was willing to listen to Cadmus's idea.
“We have a program designed specifically for situations like this,” said Cadmus. “It's called the Superhuman Relocation Program. In short, if a particularly dangerous supervillain is after an individual or a family, we can take that individual or family and relocate them to a safe, top secret facility where they will not be found by the supervillain in question.”
“Superhuman Relocation Program?” I repeated. “Why not just use the normal Witness Protection Program?”
“Because superhumans are a bit different from normal humans, as you are aware,” said Cadmus. “The Witness Protection Program is applied primarily to normal humans trying to avoid other normal humans and is thus staffed by normal humans. The Superhuman Relocation Program, on the other hand, is under my co
ntrol and is designed specifically for superhumans and their families who need protection from supervillains.”
“How safe is it?” I said.
“Let me put it this way,” said Cadmus. “In its thirty years of existence, no one in the Superhuman Relocation Program has ever had their new location compromised. You and your family would be quite secure if you choose to participate in it.”
“Why should we go with your program?” said Dad. He gestured at the medical station. “Ashley, Kevin, and I would be just as safe on Hero Island as we would be in whatever facility or Compound you throw us into.”
“Not necessarily,” said Cadmus, shaking his head. “For one, Hero Island's location can be found with a quick Internet search. And, while its security is tight, the fact is that one member of the Candle family has already breached it twice and she didn't even have superpowers. It would not take much for Robert Candle to find Hero Island, come here, and kill you.”
“I do not like to admit it, but Cadmus has a point,” said Mecha Knight, speaking up suddenly. “Hero Island is one of the safest and securest locations on the planet, but if Robert can absorb powers just by a touch and has a variety of powerful abilities at his disposal already, then he might be able to overpower our defenses through sheer brute strength alone.”
“Precisely,” said Cadmus, nodding. “If you choose to go into our program, however, you will be whisked away to a secret government Compound whose location is known to only a select few people in the government. Even President Plutarch doesn't know its location.”
“So you think Robert wouldn't be able to find us, if we went there?” I said.
“I can guarantee you that he will not be able to find you there,” said Cadmus. “Like I said, not one of the people in the program have ever been compromised by the supervillain after them. In every case, the supervillain was arrested or killed before he could find them, and the individual or families were allowed to return to their normal lives. You would be one hundred percent safe.”
