by Andy Briggs
“Here’s Em,” said Toby, giving her a wave.
“She’s got her own superpowers. She can find us anywhere,” said Pete.
“She always seems to be able to find you,” Toby quipped, repressing a smile. Pete frowned at him and was about to reply, but Toby cut him off.
“Hi, Em.” The look on her face told him everything he needed to know. “Let me guess: something weird just happened?”
Emily looked at him in surprise before nodding. “You too?”
“Both of us. Here comes Lorna.”
“Lorn, what kept you?” Emily asked.
Lorna looked flushed, and stammered her words. “Nothing. I was just in the basement, and I … er …”
“Basement?” said Emily, studying her friend.
“You had powers misfiring?” asked Toby.
Lorna composed herself. “I take it that means we all did?”
“The Web site went bananas last night, and now this? Something’s gone seriously wrong,” Toby said. “I wonder if we’ll get them again, or if it was a onetime thing?”
“Gone wrong?” said Emily, who was still looking oddly at Lorna. “I don’t want powers that go off at random. It’s too dangerous. We’re all lucky nobody saw what happened. We might not be so fortunate next time.”
“Could be a virus,” commented Pete. “Computers get them all the time. And if your anti-spyware’s not up-to-date, then something could’ve clashed and—bang!—superpowers downloading all over the place.”
“We have the right software. Up-to-date too.”
“Yeah, but do they have one?” Pete’s expression suddenly turned thoughtful. “If we have powers and the site’s no longer working, then do you think they’re permanent?”
“No chance. We’re not Primes. They’ll wear off … at some point.”
“Maybe we are Primes?” Pete said thoughtfully. “Primes are born with powers, but they don’t know they have them, right? Not until something triggers them.”
Lorna’s eyes went wide. “You may be right.”
Toby shook his head. “No he’s not.”
“Typical you’d say that,” Pete shot back. Toby was surprised at the harsh tone in his voice. “Always trying to stop us from doing what we want. But what’s stopping us from going public with our powers now? Make some money from all this. If we have them and nobody else can access the site, then we’ve got nothing to hide.”
Lorna brightened. “We could get on talk shows!”
Toby held up his hands in an attempt to calm them down. “No way. We talked about this.”
“No, you talked. We listened,” Lorna said with an edge to her voice. “We’re the ones going out and taking the risks all the time. And what do we get for it? The stupid Web site telling us to keep quiet all the time.”
Pete nodded in agreement. “And now it looks like we have powers without having to download them. I think that makes us special.”
Lorna nodded in agreement. “Totally!”
Their voices were rising, and Toby had to quickly look around to make sure they had not been overheard. He noticed Emily was keeping quiet, no doubt reluctant to argue against Pete and Lorna. “But our powers do good. They fight evil. I know it sounds silly, but we make the world a better place. We are trusted to keep this quiet. And if something’s wrong, then we have a responsibility to find out why and try to help!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said a new voice that made them all turn in alarm. A tall man was standing close by with his hands clasped together. He studied them with a slight smile. He wore thin square-rimmed glasses with thick black frames that complemented his impeccably sharp black suit, pristine white shirt, and narrow black tie.
“Who are you?” Toby said in a firm, but low, voice.
“Oh, you can speak up,” said the man, gesturing around the yard. “They can’t hear you.”
Toby looked around. Everything seemed normal, and he could hear the constant background screams of the yard. A football rolled over, and an elementary school kid scrambled to retrieve it. It bounced off of Pete’s leg.
“Watch it!” scolded Pete.
The boy was standing right next to them and scooped up the ball with a puzzled frown. His eyes moved across the group but didn’t focus on anything. With a shrug the boy returned to his friends.
“You made us invisible!” Pete accused.
“Not invisible,” said the man, as though he was discussing the weather. “Just temporarily imperceptible. They can see us perfectly, but their brains choose not to register that fact. Out of the corner of their eyes they can see us just fine, but when they turn to look, their brains just filter us out. It’s all very … quantum.”
“You never answered my question,” said Toby. “Who are you?”
The man smiled, although there was no humor involved in the process. His gray eyes studied Toby shrewdly. “You must be Toby Wilkinson. Yes, yes … the makings of a leader. If only you could keep your team in line.”
“We’re not his team,” muttered Pete, but the man didn’t acknowledge him. Instead he kept his gaze on Toby.
“I am the person to call when you have something that needs concealing or a problem that needs resolving.”
Something clicked at the back of Pete’s mind. Stacks of useless knowledge from films, comic books, and science fiction stories brimmed in his head.
“Men in Black!” he exclaimed. “You’re one of them!”
Emily laughed derisively. “Now you’re getting mixed up with movies!”
“No,” Pete said firmly. “In real life they’re supposed to intimidate people who think they’ve seen flying saucers or things they shouldn’t have.”
“He is right,” the man said solemnly, wiping the grin off Emily’s face. “I am one of many fixers, and that name has been applied to us. It is a sad sign of the times that when you dress smartly, you get singled out from the crowd. Think of me as a lawyer.”
Emily’s parents were lawyers, so she felt on familiar ground. “Then who are you working for?”
“The same side as you. Please come with me and I shall explain.” He gestured to a black SUV that was parked next to the school gates. The parking lot was milling with teachers and police who were inspecting the damage caused by Pete’s assault on Knuckles, but none of them paid the slightest attention to the car that was parked in a no-parking zone.
“If you’re worrying about accepting a ride from a stranger, I assure you, you’re quite safe.”
Lorna offered a terse smile. “I didn’t think that we were the ones at risk. You’re the one climbing into a car with four lethal superheroes.”
The man glanced at the wreckage in the parking lot, then back to Lorna. His face was deadly serious. “So I see. Then I hope I can trust you?”
The back of the SUV was comfortable and easily accommodated the five of them. The seats were oriented to face one another, and only as the man slid the door closed behind them did Toby become aware that there was a driver behind the tinted partition. The vehicle swayed gently, betraying that they were in motion.
“Where are we going?” Toby asked sharply.
“There is not a moment to lose, so I thought it better to talk on the move.”
Toby looked at his friends. Emily was unreadable, but she never took her eyes from the man, and her fingers flexed as though she was ready to incinerate him at a moment’s notice. Lorna shrugged and sat back in the seat. Pete folded his arms. “You’re apparently the team leader, dude.”
The man unhinged a flat monitor from the ceiling and swiveled it around to face them.
“I assume you would want to hear this from somebody you trust.”
An image flickered on the screen, and Chameleon appeared—in his natural guise of a handsome twenty-year-old. He was paler than usual, emphasized by his jet-black hair that came to a widow’s peak. A scar ran across his face that hadn’t been there the last time Pete had seen him.
“Greetings, heroes.” Chameleon’s voice w
as strained and wary. “This is a recorded message. Please forgive this unorthodox approach but we are facing desperate times and the Foundation has tasked me with the capture of a deadly supervillain: the Hunter. You can trust Mr. Grimm here. He will explain the situation and I hope we can count on your support. Good luck.”
The image flicked to black.
“That just about explains everything,” Pete said sarcastically.
Mr. Grimm was undeterred by Pete. “I have been hired by the Higher Energy Research Organization to track you down.”
“Er … who and how?” said Pete.
“The Hero Foundation. You know, the people who gave you all those nice superpowers that you have been playing around with?”
“Hero? I thought that’s what we were, not who we were working for!” exclaimed Pete.
“Being a hero is a state of mind, not simply a power you download from the Internet. Even a criminal has that ability.”
Pete sat back in his chair and couldn’t shake the feeling that Mr. Grimm was a personality combination of every teacher he disliked.
Mr. Grimm gazed at Toby as he spoke. “The Hero.com Web site has been sabotaged. Initially the main global feed was disrupted, hence your powers behaving erratically when you were out on a mission. Then a computer virus was introduced into the system. Inserted directly into the Ground Station pipeline so it bypassed the firewalls and viral scanners. It was a real piece of craftsmanship. Metamorphic coding, the likes of which we have not seen before. It created strange loops and even held genetic modification algorithms that—” He hesitated, suddenly aware of the blank faces looking at him.
“So … it was bad?” Toby said, summarizing the words he did understand.
“Crippling,” Mr. Grimm responded, regaining his composure. “It took almost twenty-four hours to spread, but when it did it created a biofeedback. Er … the pretty fireworks that shot from your computer screen.” It was obvious Mr. Grimm was not used to speaking to children, and this made Lorna increasingly dislike the man’s emotionless countenance.
“So it was some kind of feedback that hit us?” she asked. “And you mentioned genetic modification—do you mean the way Hero.com alters our bodies and gives us superpowers?”
Mr. Grimm’s eyebrow trembled a fraction, the only sign that he was impressed.
“Indeed. It so happened that you four were the only people logged on to the site at the time. Other Downloaders around the globe had already deployed their hyper energy … uh … superpowers, beforehand, which have since expired. Others tried after the site went down and were unsuccessful.”
Pete frowned. The leather seat creaked as he leaned forward. “So, logically … we’re the only heroes with superpowers?”
Mr. Grimm fixed his steely gaze on Pete.
“Indeed. That is why everything is now hanging on your decisions. You are the only heroes left.”
Breakout
Stunned silence greeted Mr. Grimm’s comment. Toby was the first to speak up.
“That’s impossible. What about Chameleon, or even you? You’re both Primes, right? We can’t be the only people with powers!”
Mr. Grimm steepled his fingers under his chin. “Remember what I said. Being a hero is a state of mind. There are fewer Primes than ever before. There was once a theory that Primes were the next step in human evolution. Something new. But alas, history bred more Primes than there are now. Multiple theories have been offered: climate change, artificial preservatives in foods, chemicals used to purify drinking water. You name it and somebody has had a theory about it. But the fact is we do not know why. Those Primes that are born and discover their gifts are increasingly becoming, how can I say this—influenced by acquisitive motivations.”
Emily thought about that for a moment. “You mean they become villains?”
“Yes. I suppose ‘criminals’ is a more precise term. Even those who are not seeking global domination, the good guys, are ushered into the shadows as their numbers dwindle. Destined to keep a low profile for fear of becoming extinct. The days are gone when a Prime will fight for what he believes in—they are not heroes, they are just people gifted with powers. That’s why we have Hero.com, to make real heroes when those who have the power are too afraid to wield it. Without Hero.com, the Hero Foundation is just another organization that will crumble to ashes, and humanity will be faced with an army of supervillains that they have no hope of defeating.”
Everybody swapped glances. This was certainly not how they had imagined superhero life. A dying breed? Extinction? Mr. Grimm had not answered anything, but had simply provoked more questions. Toby voiced this.
“Good,” replied the man in black. “Questions are healthy. The pursuit of knowledge is a heroic cause, is it not?”
Pete clicked his fingers and felt smug that he had assembled the jigsaw pieces before the others. But the picture was not looking very appealing.
“That’s why they created Hero.com—to give out powers to people who didn’t have any, so the heroic Primes wouldn’t be forced into the open. They wouldn’t be targets for the bad guys.”
“An excellent deduction. The scientific accumulation of Prime powers was a project started under the banner of the Higher Energy Research Organization, headed by the world’s top minds. They succeeded in distilling and even replicating their superpowers through genetic research. It was a small step from that to being able to incubate the raw power and then apply it to an ordinary human. The digital interface of the Web site is simply a method of quantum tunneling the genetic information into your body. It’s all very complicated. But the Web site keeps sending instructional pulses out to your body. When the pulses stop, the powers fade. Somehow the pulse packed your bodies with more powers than we would safely administer. That’s why they’re unstable, and wearing off at erratic rates.”
Toby’s brow was creased in concentration. “I kind of get it.”
Mr. Grimm flashed a rare smile. “Like I said, it’s all very quantum.”
Something was bothering Emily. “But why do we have powers now? We didn’t download anything.”
“An unexpected side effect from the virus attack. As you were the only ones online, you took the full hit of the feedback. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of powers struck you simultaneously. We have no idea what they are, how long they will last, or how you can control them. But the hypothesis is that you have absorbed enough energy to last the week. That should be enough time.”
“For what exactly?” Toby asked warily.
“To help defend the Hero Foundation.”
“So just a small job then?” said Pete sarcastically.
“You can start by tracking down the culprits who sabotaged Hero.com and stop them before they launch a full-scale attack on the Foundation. Even now we have technicians working to bring the site back online, but that could take a while; the viral damage was extensive. As long as Hero.com is off-line, the Hero Foundation, and the world, is vulnerable.”
“So do I have this right?” Pete asked. “We go out and risk our necks to save a bunch of superheroes, like you, who are cowering away in case the big bad villains hurt you?”
Mr. Grimm’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “I would have put it more eloquently. But you are correct. We are too valuable to risk.”
“And we’re expendable?” barked Lorna.
“You have proven yourselves as heroes already. You have risked your lives on several tasks—from fighting Doc Tempest to stopping more mundane petty crimes. But each act, from stopping a bully to destroying those pirates, has huge implications on the world.”
Lorna was not convinced. “That was different! Those stupid little jobs Toby chose didn’t change anything. So what if a boat full of pirated DVDs gets through? Some film companies lose money. Hardly a crime.”
Mr. Grimm thought for a moment. “Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It’s a quantum thing.”
Lorna sat back in confusion. “Now you’re changing the subject.”
“In
London a butterfly flaps its wings, which in turn displaces air particles. Those particles hit other particles, bouncing like a pinball. One air particle hits two air particles. Now those two particles hit another two particles. Now we have four, which hit another four to make eight. Then sixteen … then thirty-two. The number of air particles displaced grows exponentially. In other words, by the time air particles have bounced off one another halfway around the globe the number of displaced particles has grown to thousands of billions. Enough, for example, to cause a cyclone that could devastate China.”
“That’s one lethal butterfly!” murmured Pete. “They should just kill it.”
Emily’s brow was creased in concentration. “So one tiny action can have bigger consequences?”
“The pirated films would have been sold, the money passed to the organized gangs who then buy weapons with which they cause acts of terrorism—which results in the loss of lives. By stopping that freighter you have possibly saved the lives of hundreds of people.”
“Okay, I understand now,” said Lorna. “But that still doesn’t make us expendable.”
“You stopped that boat because you thought you were doing some good. Now you are being asked to help stop a catastrophe. There are more criminal Primes than law-abiding ones. Hero.com was created to address that problem. We can’t create more Primes, but we can create new heroes. Without help from other heroes, Primes are forced to hide or risk extinction. There are exceptions, a handful of Primes who are risking themselves. I am one, Chameleon is another.”
“So why don’t you stop the bad guys then?” Pete demanded. He was feeling angry about being thought of as expendable. That comment summed up his life.
“A fair point. We are busy protecting the public, trying to stop the other villains out there who are using the situation to their advantage. That would cause total anarchy and alert the public to our existence.”
“Is that so bad?” asked Lorna. “The second part, I mean.”
“Supers have remained out of the public eye for centuries. No good could come of the world knowing our secret now. People like routine and the belief that their leaders are in control. They would find the truth too … disturbing.”
