by Lucas Flint
That reminded me of how Blizzard used to have problems with controlling her ice powers, but Blizzard’s reason was because she had been a new superhero and had just recently developed her powers. I didn’t know what Rime’s excuse was, but before I could ask, I heard Enor growl and I looked down to see that he was getting back on his feet already, even though his right foot was still bleeding from where Rime’s ice spear had stabbed it.
“Damn you, Rime,” said Enor, his voice stricken with pain. “Why are you sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong? You have nothing to do with this.”
“I c-consider Ivan a f-friend,” said Rime, his teeth chattering. “So f-forgive me for coming to my friend’s defense.”
Enor growled, but then Ivan stepped forward, one hand raised. “Ernest, do you really want to take on me and my friend while you are in such terrible health? You should really get that foot looked at by one of the prison’s doctors. Otherwise, you risk getting an infection, which would likely require the removal of your foot to cure, and you don’t want to lose your foot, do you?”
Enor just glared at Ivan, which I thought meant that he was going to attack anyway. But then Enor shook his head, turned, and hobbled away, most likely to look for one of the guards so he could tell them about his injury.
Mimic and the others glared at me as well, but I guess they must not have wanted to fight Ivan and Rime, because they just turned and left, too. The crowd of watching prisoners split to allow Mimic and the others to leave, wary looks being cast in their directions as the villains went to different corners of the prison yard, though I doubted this would be the last I’d see of them while I was in prison.
But then Mimic stopped and, looking over his shoulder at Ivan, said, “I’m surprised, Ivan, that you are protecting the boy, given your history with his father. Saving him to kill him for yourself someday, maybe?”
Ivan just shrugged. “Whatever enmity I felt toward his father has long since vanished, but thank you for projecting, Mimic. It is an interesting look into your psyche.”
Mimic’s face contorted into the most angry scowl I’d ever seen, but he didn’t respond. He just turned and resumed walking, muttering threats under his breath all the while.
As a result of the lack of a fight, the ring of prisoners that had gathered began to break up, though I heard more than a few prisoners complaining about not getting to see a superhero get beat up, while others exchanged money for their bets on whether a fight would break out or not. The guards on the walls lowered their guns and returned to their usual duties.
But I didn’t care about any of that. I just looked up at Ivan, who was now wiping away the sweat from his forehead. He wasn’t looking at me, but whether that was out of fear or because he knew what I was about to ask, I didn’t know.
“Ivan, what did Mimic mean about your history with my dad?” I said. “Did my dad put you in jail before he died? Who are you, really?”
Ivan sighed and looked down at me. “Yes, Bolt, your father, Genius, did beat me, but he was not alone. He had help from Omega Man, Beyond Man, and Lady Amazon, however, though it was his intelligence that really helped them beat me.”
I stared at him in shock. “Then that means that you are—”
“Yes,” said Ivan. “I am indeed Nuclear Winter, the first supervillain and the first inmate of Ultimate Max.”
Chapter Three
Ivan returned to weight-lifting, but I just stared at him, unable to believe what he’d just told me.
I knew who Nuclear Winter was. Or, at least, knew of him, because he was featured predominantly in the history books about the history of superhumans in the United States. He was the first known supervillain and was the whole reason that Ultimate Max had been built in the first place.
It was thirty years ago, back in 1987, about a year after Dad, Omega Man, and all of the other first neoheroes first appeared. By then, superhumans were becoming more and more known. Most of the public superhumans at the time had been heroes or at least tried to be, with most using their powers for good, stopping criminals, helping people in natural disasters, and so on. Those few that weren’t interested in superheroics instead kept their powers to themselves or applied them in other areas, such as in business, sports, and so on. There had been a handful of ‘super criminals,’ as they were called at the time, but most super criminals had weak powers and weren’t very smart, which made it easy for even the normal police to deal with them.
Then Ivan Yadernoy—also known as Nuclear Winter—appeared. According to the history books, Ivan was a Russian immigrant and defector from the Soviet Union. He had allegedly been an important Soviet spy, but defected due to his hatred of communism and his desire to see the Soviet Union fall. At least, that was the excuse he gave; most people never trusted him and thought he was just pretending to be a defector.
Ivan developed superpowers shortly after his defection to the United States. What were those powers? Pretty simple: He could control nuclear energy, which he then used to attack various US cities and towns, killing thousands of people and causing untold costs in property damage. His main target was Washington, where he intended to overthrow the US government and turn the US into his own personal kingdom.
That’s where Dad and the others stepped in. They came up with a plan to defeat Nuclear Winter, since Nuclear Winter had pretty much steamrolled every attempt by the US military to stop him, and succeeded in taking him down. They then put him into Ultimate Max prison, where he was sentenced for life.
Actually, it was the defeat of Nuclear Winter that convinced Dad, Omega Man, Lady Amazon, and Beyond Man to create the Neohero Alliance. And it was the failure of the US military to deal with Nuclear Winter that led to the creation of the Department of Superpowered and Extraterrestrial Beings, or the G-Men, as they’re called, so that the US government would have a way of dealing with supervillains like Nuclear Winter in the future, instead of relying on private superheroes and organizations.
In fact, the term ‘supervillain’ was coined in order to describe superhumans like Nuclear Winter. He had been the first serious superhuman threat to any country in the world at the time, though he certainly wasn’t the last; Master Chaos was another, though the two never worked together as far as I knew.
I had grown up hearing all sorts of stories about Nuclear Winter, some true, some not. I had even seen footage of one of his rampages in history class; it had looked like a nuclear war zone. But Nuclear Winter had always seemed more like a myth than a real person due to the fact that he had been kept inside Ultimate Max for the last thirty years; in fact, he had been kept under such tight lock down that the press wasn’t even allowed to interview or film him. All of the pictures available to the public were pictures of him when he was in his thirties.
So I had a hard time believing that Ivan was, in fact, Nuclear Winter. The Nuclear Winter I had heard of was violent and a megalomaniac, willing to obliterate whole towns that refused to bow down to him. Ivan, on the other hand, was a crazy bodybuilder that liked cat magazines and considered me a friend.
But then, it explained why everyone seemed to avoid Ivan and why Mimic and the others had decided not to fight us. If Ivan really was Nuclear Winter, then that meant that he was probably the most powerful prisoner in the whole prison, even more powerful than me. After all, he didn’t even need to fight; he could infect me with nuclear radiation and I’d die in forty-five minutes or maybe a few days if I got lucky.
I looked at Rime, who had decided to stay with us instead of going back to hang out with the other prisoners. Based on his expression, I could tell that he already knew that Ivan was Nuclear Winter, which made sense, because Rime seemed to have been in prison for a while.
I looked at Ivan again. He was grunting with every lift of his weights and didn’t seem to be paying attention to me or anyone else. I wondered if he was trying to avoid talking to me about this subject.
“So you really are Nuclear Winter?” I said. “The same one that the Four F
ounders defeated thirty years ago?”
Ivan rested his weights on the bars and sighed. He looked at me again. “Yes, indeed. But I no longer go by that name; I am Ivan Yadernoy now. Nuclear Winter is dead.”
I bit my lower lip. I wasn’t sure what else to ask, but I knew I had to say something.
“Confused?” said Ivan. “Not surprising. Though I haven’t been outside of Ultimate Max in over three decades, I am aware of how the rest of the world sees me. I’ve been told that most people think I’m just a legend, a myth, even with all of the footage and pictures of me destroying towns. Most new prisoners here tend to react like you when they meet me; disbelief, slowly—and sometimes quickly—followed by fear.”
“It’s not just that,” I said. “It’s also … well, Dad beat you. Your defeat helped Dad to become a famous superhero.”
“Yes, he did,” Ivan agreed. “He was only a boy at the time, but he was much smarter than adults three times his age. It was thanks to his brilliant mind that he and the other three Founders took me down. Otherwise, I likely would have succeeded in my plans to nuke Washington and make myself the king of this country.”
Ivan sounded relieved about that, as if he was happy that his plot had been foiled and that he was in prison and would probably never be freed. I didn’t understand that at all, but then, there was a lot about my current situation I didn’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are you happy that you were defeated and put inside jail? Everyone else here just wants out.”
“Because I’ve had time to think about my life,” said Ivan. “And I realized that I was really just driven by anger more than anything. So I have now devoted my life to peacefully carrying out the life sentence that the judge handed down to me thirty years ago; it’s much more fulfilling than constantly bitching about how this or that superhero foiled my plans.”
I scratched the back of my head. “So you’ve never tried to escape at all? Never tried to get your freedom?”
“Never,” said Ivan, shaking his head. He resumed lifting his weights. “Unlike Bernard, I had no reason to break free. I have no spouse, no children, nothing awaiting me on the outside. Besides, I suspect that my old communist pals in Russia would like to take me out for defecting to the USA, so I am much safer in here than I am out there.”
“Bernard,” I repeated. “You mean Master Chaos. Did you know him when he was in here?”
“Who didn’t?” said Ivan with a snort. “He was mad. He spent all day every day ranting about how he was going to get revenge and kill Genius. No one really liked him, so we were all quite relieved to hear about his death last year.”
“But he did manage to escape from this prison, though,” said Rime, glancing wistfully at the guards on the walls. “The only prisoner to do that.”
“How did he do it, exactly?” I said. “None of the news articles went into detail about it.”
“He used his chaos powers to cause a riot in the prison,” said Rime. “Then he stole a guard’s uniform and used it to sneak out while the other guards were preoccupied with ending the riot. He also used his powers to mess with Ultimate Max’s security systems, which helped him escape easily.”
“Huh,” I said. “That’s sounds simple. Wonder why he didn’t do it before.”
“Who knows?” said Ivan. “He was always crazy. I suspect it just never occurred to him that he could do it until he heard about how you punched out his son.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But anyway, who cares? I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“I was about to ask that, actually,” said Rime. “I’ve heard of you. You’re the superhero Bolt, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Who are you? I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“I-I’m Rime,” said Rime, his teeth chattering slightly. “I was put behind bars eleven years ago. I can control ice.”
“I saw that,” I said. “I have a friend who can do that, too.”
“It’s not exactly a common superpower,” said Rime. He looked down at his hands. “But it is my power, though I used to be able to control water until my powers changed.”
“Your powers changed?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“It’s something that happens as you grow older for some superhumans,” said Rime with a shrug. “Your powers can change as you age. It’s something to do with neogenetics. I don’t know. I’ve never understood it.”
“Me neither,” I said. “By the way, what are you in prison for? You didn’t say.”
Rime shrugged. “I killed a man, got caught, sentenced to life prison in Ultimate Max, and will probably be here until the are you growday I die.”
Rime didn’t look at me when he said that, like he was trying to avoid making eye contact with me. That meant that there was likely more to his story than what he was telling me, but at the same time, I didn’t see any reason to dig deeper, since I doubted his story had anything to do with me.
So I just said, “Do you want to escape? Or are you like Ivan and want to stay?”
“I’d like to escape, but it probably will never happen,” said Rime with a sigh. “Ultimate Max is practically inescapable. I’d also love to get the guy who actually caught me; that bastard deserves it.”
“Who caught you?” I said. “A superhero?”
“Someone you probably don’t know,” said Rime. “Some detective who calls himself Triplet. He’s pretty obscure.”
Triplet? I knew him. He was a superhero detective and former member of the NHA. I had worked with him in the past—once to expose Vision, the other time to find out the truth of my grandparents—but I hadn’t realized that he had defeated some supervillains on his own before. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so shocking, since Triplet had been active as a superhero and as a detective for a while. I wondered how many other inmates in here had been caught by Triplet … and how they would react if they knew that I was friends with him.
I decided not to mention my friendship with Triplet to Rime right now, because Rime sounded really angry about him. “I’ve heard of him, yeah. He’s supposed to be a good detective.”
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t,” said Rime with a shrug. “All I know is that he’s the reason I’ve spent the last eleven years behind bars. If I ever get a chance to see him, I’ll turn him into the most realistic ice sculpture that the world has ever seen.”
I bit my lower lip, mostly because I didn’t think I could agree with that, and then glanced at Ivan. Ivan just shrugged, as if to say that it was normal for Rime to talk like that and I shouldn’t worry too much. But I did make a mental note to ask Triplet about the details of Rime’s case later, if I ever managed to escape this place.
“Uh, okay,” I said. “So you and Ivan are friends?”
“Pretty much,” said Rime. “Only because Ivan is the only other prisoner I’ve ever gotten along with.”
“Ah,” I said. “I see.”
“And now it looks like you and I are going to be friends,” said Rime. “At least, if you’re a friend of Ivan’s, you’re a friend of mine. So I’m probably not going to try to kill you, unless you try to pick a fight with me, anyway.”
Rime spoke entirely seriously about that. I wasn’t sure how to take that, but since Rime so far was being mostly polite with me, I just nodded and said nothing. Besides, I thought it would be useful to have two fairly powerful allies in this place, especially since I had so many enemies that would be more than happy to kill me the second my back was turned. As long as I stuck with Ivan and Rime, I thought I was going to be all right.
But that didn’t change the fact that I still didn’t belong here. I would want to be out of here even if everyone wanted to be my friend, because I knew that I shouldn’t be here. I was innocent. I hadn’t committed any crimes, at least knowingly. Something was definitely wrong here, but what, I wasn’t sure, though I intended to find out.
I folded my arms over my chest and leaned against another bench that was next to Ivan’s.
“I still don’t know why I’m here. But I do know I need to get out.”
Rime snorted. “Good luck with that. Ultimate Max is inescapable unless your name happens to be Master Chaos.”
“I know,” I said, “but you don’t understand. Unlike you guys, I’m innocent. I was put in here falsely.”
“What are we supposed to do about it?” said Rime with a shrug. “We can’t really help you escape or figure out why you’re in here.”
“I know,” I said. “But it’s just so frustrating. I wonder if I could talk to the Warden.”
“Of course not,” said Rime. “The Warden doesn’t talk with prisoners.”
“Well, just who is the Warden, anyway?” I said. “No one’s told me his name yet.”
“Mark Ferguson,” said Ivan, causing me to look down at him as he lifted weights. “Also known as the superhero Glass.”
I frowned. “Glass? Never heard of him. What’s he do, turn into glass?”
“Nope,” said Rime. “He turns other people and things into glass, and then breaks them. Saw him do it to a prisoner that attempted to escape once; it took the guards weeks to sweep up all of the shards.”
“And there is also the Chief of Security, Burn Shot,” Ivan added. “He has perfect accuracy and can shoot fire, meaning that if he takes aim at you, you’re probably dead. Between them and the guards, plus the prison’s security systems, it can get … interesting in here sometimes.”
“And neither will talk to me, right?” I said.
“Right,” said Rime. “All of the people who work here look down on us prisoners. And we look down on them in turn, so it all works out.”
“It doesn’t work out for me, though, or help me understand why I’m even here,” I said. “I need to talk to someone. Do prisoners get phone calls?”
Rime laughed. “Nope! Warden Glass doesn’t want anyone using our phone calls to coordinate break outs. You only get a phone call if the Warden allows it, and even then, it will be tapped and traced so they can make sure you aren’t calling your friends or minions on the outside for help.”
