The Super Power Saga (Book 1): Super Powers of Mass Destruction

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  When she turned into the alley to chase after him, he was in a full sprint, but he was out of shape and she closed the gap easily. As she reached out her hand to grab onto the back of his jacket, he stopped and crouched down. Her metallic body rolled over the top of him and crashed into a trashcan. He stood back up and ran the other direction. She flipped over backward and landed on her feet, taking off in a sprint to chase him down.

  “This guy is anticipating everything I do,” she thought as he dodged another attack.

  “Could be his power. Some kind of precognition.”

  “And how am I supposed to catch a guy who can see the future?”

  Replica sighed into her mind again. “Do I have to do everything?”

  The driver ran back out into the street, only to be met with three Replicas. He dug his feet into the ground to stop, and one of them swung at him. He dodged the attack, but when the second one swung, her knuckles scraped against his cheek. The attacks kept coming, and as they did, her bodies split apart, causing more punches and kicks to come flying at him.

  “He's seeing too many futures,” Replica said. “And they all look exactly alike.”

  When her fist connected with his nose, his head reeled back. He stumbled a few times before one of her feet slammed into his stomach, doubling him over in pain. He fell to his knees and the Replicas surrounded him.

  “It's over,” she said, reaching down to pin him to the ground.

  Stiletto barely noticed him reach into his belt, but he when his hand pulled a revolver out from under his shirt, he raised it toward Replica.

  Right before he pointed it at her, he stopped and said, “Oh, bloody-”

  Stiletto drove her sword-hand through his spinal column. His body went stiff for a second, then slid down the blade and dropped to the sidewalk, lifeless. Stiletto watched the blood flow from the wound, reddening the snow around him.

  “Oh, that's so gross,” Replica thought. “Did you have to kill him?”

  Stiletto leaned down and picked up the revolver. “He had a gun.”

  “That thing holds six bullets. I have fifty bodies right now. And you're made out of impenetrable steel.”

  “Whatever,” Stiletto thought, tossing the gun on the ground next to the body. “You can complain to Mermaid if you want, but I did my job, and protected you.”

  “Um, thanks?” Replica thought as Stiletto walked away. “But it sure seemed like I did your job for you.”

  Stiletto groaned in her mind and asked, “Behemoth? What about you?”

  “Still punching,” he thought. “And he's still getting up.”

  “I'll be right there,” Stiletto thought, breaking into a sprint.

  “Don't bother,” he thought back. “He's slowing down. I'll have this wrapped up shortly.”

  “Stiletto,” Link said into her mind, “You need to head back to that MajesTech building and make sure this was all of them.”

  “If there's more to their little gang, try not to kill them,” Replica thought.

  Stiletto ran down the street, toward the scene of the crime. “Just finish up here. And make sure that woman is okay. See if you can figure out how she's connected to all this.”

  When Stiletto reached the end of the street, she turned and ran toward the pile of rubble that was now surrounded by military vehicles. Spotlights were scanning both the ground and skies. She ran up to the captain of the squad and he clicked his heels together, standing at attention and saluting her.

  “Have you seen anyone else around the premises?”

  “No, ma'am. But our orders are to let you enter the building first.”

  Stiletto glanced at the pile of rubble. “Yeah, I get it. Bullet proof and all that. I'll take care of it.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” he said as she walked toward the basement entrance.

  When she reached the staircase, she formed both arms into blades and descended into the darkness. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she would have been standing in pitch black, if it weren't for a discarded flashlight sitting on the floor. Past a melted vault door, she could see movement coming from inside.

  “You still on-mind, Link?”

  She heard a random thought, and then nothing. Something or someone was blocking the telepathy.

  “Whoever you are, if you don't want one of these blades shoved down your throat, you'll lay down on the floor and-”

  “That's not going to happen,” a voice called out. “You want me? Come and get me.”

  She held both blades out to her side and stepped toward the shape of a man, readying herself for any attack. She held her blades in a combat position, one defensive and one offensive, as she stepped through the vault door. The figure inside didn't move. She took another step toward him.

  “Now!”

  She flinched, expecting an attack, but instead she heard something slam into the floor behind her. As she spun around toward the noise, flood lights turned on in the vault. It blinded her for a few seconds, but when her eyes adjusted, she saw a second vault door had closed over the melted one. She turned back around toward the figure and saw a man wearing a suit standing in front of her. She tried to focus in on his face, but it appeared blurry, like she was looking at it through water.

  “I'm not sure what you were hoping to accomplish by locking yourself in here with me, but when I'm done cutting through you, I'll be cutting through that vault door.”

  There was a screech of motors from outside the vault and she felt the entire room begin to descend deeper into the earth.

  “Actually, no, you won't be cutting through anything, Stiletto. I have much bigger plans for you and your blades. After the explosions go off above us, making your disappearance seem to be the result of an SPMD attack, and the earth falls into place, covering our descent and removing any trace of the real vault, we are going to-”

  “I'm bored,” she said as she lunged for him, stabbing one of her blades toward his heart.

  The man twisted to the side with the ease of a trained fighter. Her blade still slid into his suit, then the flesh of his shoulder. Blood sprayed from the wound as she yanked her sword-hand from his body. She raised both blades over her head to deliver the killing blow, but before she could swing them down, a green cloud of gas shot from the ventilation system, filling the room. The gas blinded her first, and she swore she could hear a little girl's voice screaming. Then the gas filled her throat. She tried to cough, but it was as if the gas had paralyzed her lungs. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't even think straight. And three seconds later, her unconsciousness embraced her.

  36

  HECTOR

  “Clear the room,” he growled as he tried to administer the cauterizing solution to his own shoulder.

  As the ventilation system reversed, sucking the green cloud of gas from the room, Esmeralda screamed into the microphone, “Hector! I'm coming in.”

  “Wait,” his father said. “Make sure there are no traces of the gas left in the room.”

  There was a hesitation before the secret door in the back of the vault slid open, and both Miguel and Esmeralda rushed to his side. Esmeralda helped cauterize the bloody wound and when she applied the agent, he only grimaced, remaining silent under the pain.

  “I'll grab the first aid kit,” Miguel said, turning back toward the secret lab behind the vault.

  Hector turned off the stealth mode on his suit and pulled the gas mask from his face. “There's no time. I'll live.”

  “But that wound could-”

  “We don't know how long Stiletto will remain unconscious. Her internal organs may have been susceptible to the gas, but her metal body is still much more resilient than a mortal body. We need to get her locked up.”

  Miguel nodded his head. He knew better than to question anything Hector or Esmeralda said. The boy hooked his hands under Stiletto's arms and tried to drag her. The exoskeleton Esmeralda had built into his suit strained as he moved the metal body one inch.

  “She wei
ghs a ton!”

  Esmeralda helped Hector stand up. “You'll have to work together. Use both suits.”

  Miguel groaned and lurched again, moving Stiletto another inch. “He only has one good arm.”

  “That's all I need.”

  When Hector clamped his hand down onto her ankle, the exoskeleton whined as gears and pistons strained, but the body scraped across the floor, into the secret chamber. There, Miguel helped Esmeralda lock Stiletto's limbs down onto a table.

  Hector coughed and said, “Those blades can cut through anything, but it's only her hands that form into blades, so make sure she can't move her arms.”

  Miguel locked braces down across her shoulders, elbows, and forearms. Esmeralda locked down the rest of her body.

  It had been a long time since he had seen Stiletto that close, but it was just like he had always taught Miguel. The diseased don't look so impressive in real life. Her metallic skin was shiny and smooth, but up close, she was shorter than she looked on TV and much less attractive. She was just a woman, with metal skin that could form into blades.

  “We're about to make history, son.”

  Miguel glanced down at the body on the table and said, “You're sure this will work?”

  Esmeralda chuckled as she moved over to the control panel. “There are no assurances of anything in life.”

  Hector slapped Miguel's back and said, “That's why we always have a back-up plan. Right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Miguel looked down at his feet in shame. “I'm sorry that I didn't wait for your signal to release the gas. When she attacked, I just acted. Next time I'll follow your orders. I promise.”

  Esmeralda smiled. “You think you made a mistake tonight?”

  “I'm sure father had a plan for everything. He always does. If I had just followed his orders-”

  Esmeralda laughed out loud. “Oh, heaven's no. You didn't do anything wrong, Miguel. It was your father's own hubris that caused the mistake. If he hadn't felt the need to deliver some drawn out, cocksure monologue about how he was going to win, perhaps he would still be in one piece.”

  Hector looked down at his wounded shoulder and nodded. “Your mother's right. I'm not infallible. You made a call. A good call. You may have saved my life. You did your job, Miguel. And you did it well. I'm proud of what we accomplished here tonight.” Then he looked directly at Miguel and said, “I'm proud of you.”

  Esmeralda smiled at Miguel. “We both are.”

  Miguel's eyes swelled, but he clenched his fists to summon his resolve.

  Esmeralda returned to the control panel, adjusting knobs and inputting data with the keyboard.

  Miguel glanced over at Stiletto as her eyes started to twitch. “I think she's waking up already.”

  “No matter,” Esmeralda said.

  Hector growled, “Her fate is sealed.”

  As Stiletto's eyes fluttered open and she regained her senses, she looked around the room and screamed, “Where am I?” She struggled against the locks that kept her in place and yelled again, this time more enraged, “Who are you?”

  Esmeralda input the last of the data and glanced over her shoulder.

  Stiletto's metal eyelids blinked a few times, sounding like coins rattling against each other. “Esmeralda Majesty? Why are you here? What are you doing?”

  “You never were the detective-type, were you?” Hector said, stepping in front of her. “I don't know how many times I slipped up, giving away hints to my secret identity. Especially in the early days of my crime-fighting career. But you never even noticed. Never cared. Always more interested in the next battle, the next chance to draw blood.”

  “You're her husband, aren't you? The no-name guy she married.” Stiletto looked confused, her eyes flashed between Hector and Esmeralda, trying to make sense of it all.

  Hector laughed, touching his face. “I suppose I shouldn't expect you to recognize me without my wolf mask.”

  Stiletto's eyes grew larger. “Knight Wolf?” Then she looked to Esmeralda and asked in a stunned, slow sentence, “You married him? The psycho that hung up his costume when things got too hard? Oh, this is just too much. This is pathetic, actually.”

  “No!” Hector said, leaning in close to Stiletto's face. “You know what's pathetic? The fact that you still claim to be a hero when you're nothing more than a Zharkovian lapdog.”

  “Dear,” Esmeralda said, placing her hand on his shoulder to calm him. “We're past the point of making her understand. We're only here for one reason.”

  Hector took a deep breath to calm his nerves, but he was determined to keep talking.

  “I tried to warn you. Do you remember? I tried to tell all of you. But you kept telling me I was paranoid. You called me a conspiracy theorist. A wack-job. The Zharkovs were superheroes, you said. Why would superheroes be a threat to us? But they weren't superheroes, were they? They were just fascists. Like all men with power.”

  “And what did you do, Knight Wolf? You cried 'told-you-so' and ran away.”

  “I didn't have much of a choice, did I? The Zharkovs ordered me to stop my vigilantism. Called me a supervillain and told me they were going to lock me up. Isn't it funny how many demands, how many laws they made for us when they took over their empire? And here I thought Patriot City was supposed to be free. Isn't that part of the deal you made?”

  “Yeah, we cut a deal,” Stiletto said. “Sorry we didn't think you and your twisted sense of justice were worth negotiating for. I can't say I was exactly heartbroken when you quit.”

  “But I didn't quit,” Hector said, smiling at Esmeralda. “In fact, I'd say we stepped up our game to a whole new level.”

  “Yeah? Well, game's over,” Stiletto said, struggling against her bonds again with futility. “When they discover what you've done here-”

  “Oh, I can assure you, that won't be happening.” Hector circled around the metal table they had locked Stiletto onto and continued to talk. “We've been working on this plan for far too long to let anything slip through the cracks. Once we got a hold of the patrol schedules for the Alliance and hired those two-bit crooks to cause a scene we knew you'd show up to. It was just a matter of building this.”

  He waved his hands around the room as if to present it as some kind of trophy.

  “You built a vault. Congratulations.”

  He waved his finger in her face. “No, no, no. Not just any vault.”

  “Hector, please,” Esmeralda said, looking annoyed with his need to flaunt their plan.

  Hector ignored her. He knew what they had been doing all these years was right. And throughout all those years, he always had to keep his mouth shut. He could never let the Alliance know the good he was doing. He had to let them go on thinking they were the heroes. He had to let their smug smiles and proud faces spread across everyone's television screens without reply. He'd been waiting too long for his comeuppance to remain silent.

  “You may have noticed the telepathic dampeners in the walls. No contacting your friends. And we've already begun to descend deeper into the earth. The explosives we set around the basement will leave no trace of you or us. You will be mourned, I'm sure, by those fools on TV that need distractions from their pathetic lives, but don't worry, Stiletto. I will be putting you to an even greater use. You will still be a hero. You will still have a chance to save the world.”

  “You sick son-of-a-bitch. You've really lost it haven't you? You've turned into a full-on supervillain.”

  Hector laughed. “You know, there was a time when I would have agreed with you. There was a time when things seemed so simple. But Esmeralda showed me the truth. There are no clear lines anymore. There's no good and evil. There's just the weak and the strong. And the strong think their strength makes them right.”

  Hector looked at his family with pride. “But we're here to prove them wrong.”

  “Then you two belong together. The insane leading the insane.”

  Hector let out a hearty laugh. “Perhaps you're right, Stiletto.
Up until now, we've been pecking away at a problem that was multiplying right in front of us. In fact, I was ready to give up. I thought our quest might be hopeless. How could men defeat gods like Malignus?”

  Hector made his way around the table and wrapped his arm around Miguel. “But thanks to our son, I didn't give up. He reminded me of what we were fighting for. He reminded me that men don't need gods.”

  Hector leaned in close, whispering into Stiletto's ear. “You see, we figured out how to win this war. We're going to show the world that they don't need to cower in fear anymore. We're going to show the world that they can stand up against the Zharkovs. We're going to show the world that a man can kill a god.”

  It was Stiletto's turn to laugh. “Oh? Please, do tell. How are Knight Wolf and Esmeralda Majesty going to kill the Zharkovs?”

  Hector crossed his arms over his chest and proudly declared, “With you.”

  Esmeralda switched the lever next to the table and the wall behind Stiletto split open to reveal a furnace on the other side. Short flames flickered inside. Hector made his way to the end of the table and shoved it along the tracks in the floor, inserting Stiletto into the furnace. She struggled even harder as the flames licked her back.

  “I'm sorry it had to be this way. I really am. But you had your chance. You could have stood up to them yourself. But you didn't. You bowed down to them. So now it's my turn to wield your sword.”

  Stiletto struggled wildly, giving every last ounce of effort to break free from her shackles, but it was useless. Esmeralda lifted the lever back up and the door of the furnace slid shut. He could hear the flames roaring with increased intensity on the other side of the wall as they began to melt her metal body. The only thing louder were Stiletto's screams.

  37

  MAKSIM

  The bumper crumpled between his fingers as he wrapped his hands around the back of the city bus. It was teetering in the air, four stories above the street, impaled in the side of an office building belonging to an insurance company. The people inside were silent, all of them crowded toward the front of the bus, all of them thirsty, hungry, and tired. They stared at the Guardian of the West with wide eyes, both awed and fearful of their potential savior.