Omega

by Riley Tune

  How many times had he said his brother was behaving differently. Was treating him in a way that wasn’t normal. He had assumed that the ambush, and losing their team had changed him. In reality, it never was him. His brother was gone. Dead, and discarded. There wasn’t even a body to pay respects to.

  He wiped a tear from his check that he didn’t realize was there. “So, the pieces fall into place at last,” Icaro said. His face was hard to see through the wax-like sludge from when he was Cord. Flex felt this was done intentionally to conceal his true face.

  “No, they haven’t,” Impervious said as he used his speed to move from beside Omega to in front of her in an instant. The Warden’s Circle around her didn’t even have time to react. Before they could move, Impervious’ hand was impaled in her chest. Her gasp cut through the air as blood flowed from her mouth and she dropped to her knee.

  She tried to speak, but her words came out gurgled as Impervious removed his hand and left a hole in the place where only moments ago it was solid. The Wardens dashed towards him, but their movements were pointless. As Omega’s life faded, so did their power. Each member around them slowly began to change.

  With each step, they took, the glass- like formation that took them over spread through their bodies. In mere moments they were surrounded by glass statues of what was once several Warden’s Circles.

  Hunter’s eyes darted from side to side as the events unfolded. “I can’t keep up with all of this,” Power Prince said. His glowing fists were up and alive with energy, but he had no target. Icaro looked down to the lifeless body of Omega and at the glass statues around him. He didn't know what was going on, and for the most part, he didn’t care.

  He had only one goal in mind, and that was his survival. “Doesn't this change our agreement?” the wax-faced man asked. Impervious wiped the blood from his hand on his white pants as he shook his head. “No. When the cure is perfected, I will summon you.”

  “Well as much as this reunion was fun, I think I’ll be leaving now.” He moved to take a step and found a bolt of energy hit the ground where his foot would have been. “Stick around,” Perkins said slowly as she kept her gun raised. “This, reunion as you call it, is far from over.”

  CHAPTER 36:

  FROM IDOLS TO RIVALS

  I caro turned slowly and faced Perkins who stood beside Cayden. The two people who knew his recent persona the most. Likely the two who were hurt the most. Icaro had dealt with this sort of thing before. In the past, he would have just killed them, but this damn Curse of Varo had made him weak. Literally.

  He could feel it as the bleeding increased. He wasn’t as formidable as he once was. His only hope rested with Impervious, and this plan he had. This plan that he had assured him would work. Although a crashing city wasn’t part of said plan. He had begun to think that they had underestimated these brats from the start.

  Icaro had warned them what the team was going to do, and they still just barely made it out in time. Seeing as how Impervious just killed Omega, his efforts to pass on the information was pointless.

  “Impervious. Davis,” Flex said slowly as he stepped towards the man that he once looked up to. “What in Atlas is going on here?” Impervious put his hands on his hips and then rubbed them through his beard. He looked at Flex and it genuinely hurt him how the young Icon looked. He was confused, scared, and angry all in one yet he still played the role of leader for the team. A role that he had left for him to fill.

  His eyes looked at them all one by one. His old team and interns, along with two of the young rebels he had met when he arrived here. “I suppose I do owe you answers,” “I’d say so, yes,” Hunter added in.

  Impervious took a deep breath. “When I arrived here, I found a planet, not like the one I left. The elite families were all but forgotten, and this damn curse was spreading. So, I wanted to help. I had turned my back on the Spellborn before, and as a result, the Battle of Ages took place.”

  Hunter felt a slight prickle of goosebumps as the event that killed his parents was referenced. “I couldn’t let that happen again. I wouldn’t betray my people twice. So, I joined Bravado. I figured with my help they could regain control from Omega and slowly, with me at the head, I could restore order. Save the people. Cord and Cayden were elite but they didn’t want to lead. Who else but me could? Perkins was holding the rebels together, but she was burnt out, and still hurting from her brother’s actions. So, I sent her to your world. Figured maybe she could get a breather, and learn somethings in the process.”

  He paused for a moment and a glance went toward Perkins. “I didn’t expect her to end up with Flex, though.” For a moment Flex wondered how Impervious even knew about him and Perkins. Then he realized that Icaro must have been very detailed in his reports back. Impervious continued talking, despite the looks on some of his former team’s faces. “Then the ambush came, and Icaro entered the picture.”

  Impervious glanced to the wax-faced man, who in turn did a slight bow. His movement, slight as it was, was met by a single shot from Perkins. “Stay still,” she said. “I was about to kill him when he told me that Omega had a treatment for the Curse of Varo. That he was just doing his job to secure treatment, and that the rumors were true, and that if I spared him, he would share all that he knew. So, I agreed, and decided to look into it. Then I found out the truth and with it, an alliance was created.”

  “And what exactly was this truth?” Power Prince asked. Impervious fought a smile. Power Prince had come so far from the boy that joined the Imperial Lords just after an internship. Impervious always knew that Kevin had potential, and the name Power Prince would eventually go down in history books beside the big guns of their time. As Impervious saw the young man now, bursting with power at his fingertips, clearly upset, but unwavering in battle, he knew he had made the right decision to ask him to join the Imperial Lords. He truly hoped that Kevin’s future wouldn’t end here. On some other dimensional planet in the sand with forgotten beast.

  “The truth was that Omega was dying. She too had caught The Curse of Varo. She had it for ages, but her powers kept her healthy. It was becoming harder and harder for her to heal, so she got desperate. When people get desperate, they do unthinkable things. I confronted her, and she confessed to having a cure, but at my expense.”

  Hunter could hear the shift in his voice as Impervious paused and looked down slightly. “She had Will didn’t she.” Hunter finally asked. Impervious nodded as several people looked at Hunter at once. All but Cayden and Danielle seemed confused. They had seen the body in the lab. Had seen the tubes, and test. “What does Infinity have to do with anything?” Danielle asked.

  “His name was Will,” Impervious said slowly but in a strong tone. He shut his eyes for a second and turned away from them slightly. “He was my son, and I abandoned him all those years ago.” He took another deep breath. “When I returned here with his body, I buried him in the Sand Wasteland. In the same spot where my family’s garden once was. Somehow, she found out, and in her desperation, she ran a test on him. She knew what he was. While Will didn’t live in the East Section, many knew of the power he had wielded. Omega thought that one as powerful as Will could have hidden abilities, or stolen powers, to defeat the Curse of Varo.”

  “Atlas,” Jen said slowly. Impervious shook his head and raised a hand. “In the end, she was right. Through Will, a treatment was created. Turns out the blood from a Spellborn and human hybrid does the trick. If done correctly it produces a potent treatment to keep the disease away. That’s why the people of Acropolis never seemed to have it. The cure was available to them without hesitation.”

  “None of this explains why you vanished. Why you created the story that you had been captured. Why you sent Icaro back to them as Cord.” Hunter said, as he looked his uncle in the eyes. Flex was the first to answer this time. “It was for you.” Hunter and Danielle looked at Flex in confusion. “Me?” Hunter asked. “I’m not sure why,” Flex said. “But you and Will have one t
hing in common. You’re both Spellborn, human hybrids.”

  The weight of his words slammed into Hunter like a slap to the face from an angry lover. He could remember what Cord or Icaro said to him when he arrived. How he could save them all. He thought he meant because he was elite, but now he wasn’t so sure. “Flex is right,” Impervious said as he looked at Hunter slowly. “Will is dead. Has been for a long time. All of our studies show that, if the blood comes from a hybrid that is alive, it will be strong enough to cure the virus.”

  “And that’s why she wanted you,” Cayden said as he made effort not to look at Icaro. “She needed you by her side and strong to provide her with the cure. You’re blood. You’re the only other hybrid of your kind.” Hunter glared at his uncle now. “So that’s it? You want me to be a lab rat? Your only living relative?” Impervious shook his head.

  “I don’t want that, no. But my people need it. I told you, I turned my back on them once, and nobody will make me do it again. Nobody is going to die this time because of my actions. Not anymore.”

  “Well, sorry to break it to you, but Hunter isn’t going to be plugged up and drained just for your magic cure. You can suck a bag of zebra dicks before I let that happen,” Danielle said. “Let?” Impervious asked.

  “Looks like some decisions still need to be made huh?” Impervious said as he looked at Flex. “Omega wasn’t joking. Plans are in motion to destroy to the city on Great Beast Arzi. The guards are manageable. They likely could be stopped by a normal citizen if they banded together. But that Manis,” Impervious said as he shook his head and whistled. “Omega gave him a similar boost to Hunter’s. It wasn’t permanent, but it wasn’t set to die if she did. Manis was more of a trial case. He got the new powers created for a few hours to try them out, and was given immunity on any carnage he could create in that time.”

  As Impervious spoke, he glanced at Flex whose eyes were wide now. He remembered Manis from the fight they had. While Manis wasn’t as strong as Flex, he damn sure wasn’t as far off as his team was led to believe. The purple, stony skinned man was plenty strong then, and with am augmentation from Omega he would be leagues stronger now.

  Flex turned to Hunter. “I need you to fight.” “What?” Hunter began to ask, but Flex cut him off. “I know your powers are new now, but with Manis in the city, we need to have somebody there to match him, and that’s going to be me.” Hunter didn’t speak but he shook his head.

  “I didn’t train you to run away, Flex,” Impervious said. Flex fought all the urges in his body to lash out at his former mentor. “Power Prince, Danielle, and Jen. You’re with me to protect the city. Paragon, Cayden, and Perkins can keep things under control here.” “Seriously,” Danielle began to protest, but Flex shook his head. “Not now.”

  Danielle gave a pleading glance to Hunter, who in return gave a slight nod to her. She took a deep breath and her flight band on her wrist began to glow as she rose in the air. Power Prince and Jen followed her. Flex looked across the sand at Impervious once more.

  “I expected better from you,” Flex said to him. “And you’re right. You didn’t train me to run away. You trained me to value life, and to know how to use my resources. You trained me to be a hero.” Impervious looked away slightly as Flex rose into the air, and took off towards Arzi.

  After he was gone, Impervious seemed to regain his composure and inhaled once more as he looked at the team before him. He knew them all. Loved them all, and to a certain extent would fight to the death for them all. But he had a loyalty to his people. “I’m sure none of you missed the fact that Flex left all the Spellborn together to work out their differences. Either way, if Hunter comes with me, none of you will have to die. None will suffer. Under my rule, the cure will be given out for free. The murders, and plotting on the other sections stop. I will reclaim this world in a way that only an elite Spellborn can. Can’t you see that?” His words came out as a plea as he stepped towards them.

  Sadly, they didn’t move, and Hunter didn’t step forward to sacrifice himself. They all stood their ground. Weapons were drawn, eyes wide, and powers at the ready. Perkins kept her blaster pointed at Icaro, and Cayden popped several tiny cubes in his mouth and began to chew. “As you wish,” Impervious said in little more than a whisper. Then it happened. He was gone in a blur of speed as he began his assault on the very people he once trained and called his friends.

  CHAPTER 37:

  DUST AMONG THE SAND

  P erkins, during the entire conversation, never truly let her gaze or her guns fall from Icaro. She couldn’t. A person with his abilities could be there one second and gone the next once he consumed another person. It had long been suspected that the spy would keep portions of prior victims preserved and on his person, if he needed a quick escape. Her never- failing watch over the spy came to an abrupt stop when the blood-stained white shirt suddenly appeared in front of her.

  Impervious was a mountain of a man. Something made evident as he stood and towered over Perkins. From pure reaction, Perkins looked up at Impervious and unloaded both blasters in his chest as she leaped back. She may as well had been shooting a wall of steel with rubber bands. The bolts of energy destroyed his shirt, but left skin that was pure and damage free. There weren’t even faint red spots from the heat.

  In an instant, Impervious snatched both blasters from Perkin’s hand and crushed them with as much effort that was required to crumble paper. For a split second, she looked at her now empty hands and felt rage that her favorite blasters were gone. Had this been normal circumstance, she would have been making a plan in her head on how to replace them. Sadly, she didn’t have the time to do much of anything, because everything that was happening to her, did so all in the span of a few seconds.

  One minute she was pointing her guns at Icaro, the next she was defenseless, and being lifted into the air by an inhumanly strong hand. Perkins swung at Impervious, but the powerhouse caught her arm and broke it quickly. Pain that could have only been matched by the Pain Conduits rushed through her body.

  Her head was suddenly throbbing, and she was finding it hard to focus. Behind her, she could hear air rushing around her, and she realized she had been thrown with such force that the sand below her dispersed. How could he be that fast? To do so much to her in less than a minute’s time. She expected to crash into the sand, and with the speed at which she was moving, it was going to hurt.

  Instead, she found herself being snatched out of the air by a force field. She was still in pain, tons of it, but she was thankful that the force field was there for her. As she tried to regain focus, Perkins realized that the force field she was in, wasn’t the pale blue energy from Hunter that she had come to love. Instead, it was a vibrant, pulsing white orb of energy with blue swirls here and there.

  It wasn’t painful for her, despite the random streaks of white electricity that pulsed from the field. “You’re fine,” A voice said as the force field faded away after she was placed on the ground. Cayden was speaking while Hunter was standing over her.

  “No, I’m not,” Perkins said through gritted teeth. Hunter was surprised to find that his force fields now appeared to be white, and not the pale blue color he had known most of his life. These new powers created by Omega must have been so much more potent than his own that they looked different. Now that he thought about it, he could remember the energy feeling different when he created it.

  Across the sands, Icaro realized that he had gone from being in the crosshairs to being free. Impervious for some reason or another chose to attack Perkins first, even though she posed almost no real threat. Icaro played back what he knew about Impervious compared to what he knew about his fellow Spellborn that were fighting him.

  None of them truly posed a threat to Impervious. His name said it all. He watched as a beam of white light ripped apart the night around him. Hunter was unleashing blast after blast of the white energy from his eyes, as Impervious approached and swatted them away with little effort.

  C
ayden, the man who he had acted like was his brother, was crouched over the injured Perkins. Icaro felt bad for them slightly. They really weren’t of any use to Hunter. Perkins was injured, and Cayden didn’t have power suited for the type of enemy that Impervious proved to be. Icaro took several small steps backward from the fight.

  He kept quiet, as he reached into his pocket, looking for the slither of jerky he had stashed there. It was the skin of a man he had killed before he became Cord. A normal man. A nobody. Somebody that could move through the world and people wouldn’t notice him. The perfect form to use as he got some things in place to leave the East Section, and wait for word from Impervious once he finished with these children. Icaro only hoped that he could last long enough.

  As he continued to move back and chew the jerky something began to happen. The darkness from which he moved began to change. It was almost as if a pink light was being aimed directly towards him. The ground around him suddenly went from dark to being a beacon of vibrant pink. Icaro looked up above him, his waxy face slowly beginning to take shape of the new form.

  From where he was, it looked like a meteor was falling through the sky with pink trails behind it. He narrowed his eyes and realized that it wasn’t a meteor at all. It was a person. A person with glowing fist of energy and a smirk on his face. Before he could react, the falling force was upon him and the ground exploded as impact was made. Sand peppered the area as Impervious and Hunter continued to fight.

  Power Prince stood in the round crater he had created with Icaro’s lifeless form below him. His face was half wax, and half middle-aged man with long white hair. “Well, that’s one problem solved.” Power Prince said as he turned and witnessed Paragon going toe to toe with his own uncle. A few feet from them, Cayden was leaning over Perkins as if he were some sort of human shield.