Omega Superhero Box Set

by Darius Brasher

  Safety was now right at hand, though. The emerald field inside of the Portal rippled, almost seeming to be gesturing at me invitingly. I could fly through the Portal and back to the Guild complex on Earth Sigma. The worm swarm was so close, it was likely I’d only manage to kill both of us if I went back for Hacker. Surely no one would blame me if I saved myself and left Hacker behind.

  The smart thing to do would be to save myself.

  Sometimes I’m not very smart.

  I rocketed toward the building Hacker was in like a stone shot from a slingshot. Worms rained down around me. I felt a sharp pain in my right arm, and yet another in my backside as approached the building. I cried out in pain. I opened the building’s door with my powers. I shot toward the small opening in the building like a billiard ball racing toward the side pocket.

  As soon as I zoomed through the door, I slammed the door shut behind me with my powers. The sound of the worms pelting the outside of the building was thunderous.

  I was barreling toward the wall facing the building’s door. I was going too fast. I couldn’t stop in time.

  I slammed into the wall like a cannonball.

  I bounced off of it, leaving a Theo-sized dent behind. I sailed backward, hitting the floor hard. I skidded along the floor like a slapped hockey puck before finally coming to a stop. Fortunately my shield was still up, otherwise I probably would have broken bones. As it was, my insides were shaken around like I had just been in a car accident.

  I looked up to see Hacker standing over me.

  “You came back for me.” She sounded surprised. She had to yell to be heard over the ear-splitting sound of the worms pounding the building.

  “Of course,” I said. If I weren’t in pain and scared silly, maybe I could have come up with a clever quip. As it was, “of course” was the best I could do.

  I tried to get to my feet. It was harder than it should have been. Hacker bent over to help me up.

  “You’d have done the same for me.”

  “No I wouldn’t have,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s not logical. The only thing you’ve accomplished by coming back is to put yourself in a position to be killed too.”

  “You ever think about changing your name to Negative Nelly?”

  As if on cue, two cans of food jumped off the shelves with loud pops, like they had been shot. We ducked at the noise. The cans hit the floor. They moved around there as if they were full of Mexican jumping beans. Worms were clearly getting in through the holes they had made in the building in their last swarm.

  The worms that had made it into the building amply demonstrated Hacker had a point about how we were now both in danger. My plan had been to fly in here. I didn’t have a plan as to how to get me and Hacker out of here.

  “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” Dad had often said. What a terrible time for him to be proven right.

  The building’s skylight and window were completely covered with colliding worms now. Thanks to the sun being obscured, the interior was now almost totally dark. The worms pounded the building’s outsides. If I tried to fly Hacker out of here now, the worms would turn us into Swiss cheese before we flew twenty feet.

  A few more worms punched through the building’s walls and whizzed by. They ricocheted off the opposing walls. At any moment they might punch holes through me or Hacker.

  I needed a plan. Immediately.

  Vegetable juice oozed from one of the cans on the floor. The fact the cans still moved around on the floor like something possessed indicated the worms remained in them. Why hadn’t the worms already flown out of the cans?

  The question reminded me of how the worm that had gotten into my water bottle earlier had seemed to be confused by the water.

  I got an idea. I felt a sudden surge of hope.

  “Come on!” I cried. I grabbed Hacker by the hand and pulling her to the door. Once there, despite my butt’s and arm’s painful protests, I bent over and easily picked her up and held her. Before my Heroic training, it would have been easier for a woman to pick me up rather than vice versa. The countless squats and deadlifts I had done during training were serving me well.

  “What are you doing? Put me down!” Hacker made it sound like I was groping her.

  “Shut up,” I snapped, distracted. “I need to concentrate.”

  Think of a ten-pound dumbbell. Picking one up by hand and moving it around was simple. The same was not true of ten pounds of water. If you dipped your hand in a bucket full of ten pounds of water, picking all the water up by hand would be impossible. The water would flow through your hands like, well, water. That’s because the molecules of a liquid like water flow and slide past one another. By contrast, the molecules making up a solid object like a dumbbell are compressed together tightly, making the entire object easy to pick up.

  Just as picking up a ten-pound dumbbell by hand was easy and picking up ten pounds of water by hand was impossible, me moving a solid with my powers was easy, yet moving a liquid was almost impossible because it was tough to grab onto a liquid. The molecules in liquids just moved around too much.

  Almost impossible, but not impossible. At least theoretically. Late one night when I had been in the Academy, I could literally feel with my powers the molecules and atoms of everything in the building I had been in. That had been the first, but not the only, time that had happened. One day, I had thought during those times when my powers had seemed to kick into overdrive and let me feel things on a molecular level, maybe I’ll not only be able to feel things on a molecular level, but manipulate them too.

  That day needed to be today. It had to be. If it wasn’t, it would be buh-bye Hacker and Kinetic. We’d get our Heroes’ capes alright, but they’d be draped over our caskets instead of draped around our necks.

  Feeling encouraged that my powers seemed to be stronger than usual since I had managed to move that massive rock, I stretched out my mind to the water bottles on the shelves. I dove deep into the water with my mind, down to the molecular level. I grabbed ahold of the chains of hydrogen and oxygen. It was like grabbing onto strands of spaghetti swirling in a boiling pot. I tugged hard on the water molecules.

  The water bottles exploded. Both the big drums containing gallons and the small ones containing mere ounces exploded open like a bomb had been planted into each of them. I levitated off the ground a bit with Hacker in my arms. I had picked her up earlier rather than levitating her separately because this way there was one less thing my powers would be distracted by. I made the water rush toward us. It formed a thick liquid sphere around us. The view of everything got distorted. It was like looking through glasses of the wrong prescription.

  I felt myself sweating with the mental exertion of maintaining the sphere of water around us. Would the worms penetrate the water around us, or would they be confused by it as we had observed previously?

  Holding my breath in apprehension, I diverted enough of my attention away from holding the water in place to use my powers to open the door.

  What seemed like a Biblical plague swarmed inside. The inside of the building immediately filled with worms flying through the air like a swarm of black and orange locusts.

  And yet, Hacker and I remained untouched. I felt some of the worms enter the water around us. They swam around in it, but did not penetrate to where we were.

  Whew! I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Despite the fact we hadn’t been immediately shot to pieces by the worms, this was no place to linger. The worms might eventually get through the water to us. Plus, my hold on the water was tenuous. I literally shook with the effort it took to maintain my hold on the water. I felt like a quaking bodybuilder holding too much weight over his head.

  Still carrying Hacker and still surrounded by the water, I flew us out of the building. Thanks to both the water and all the worms, I couldn’t see where the Portal was. I knew in what general direction it was, though. I diverted a tiny bit of my attention away from the water to extend mental fe
elers out for the Portal’s metal. I groped around for it like a man groping for his car keys in a dark room.

  I found it. I flew toward the Portal as quickly as I could without letting the water around us fall. Even with the sound-muffling liquid around us, being in the thick of the worm storm was deafening.

  Moments later, Hacker and I shot through the Portal like a smashed tennis ball.

  Then, we slammed into something hard face-first. I hit it with such force, it felt like my brain sloshed around in my skull. My hold on both Hacker and the water was jarred loose. Surprised, I inhaled water. I felt myself falling.

  A moment later, I hit the ground. Hard. The air whooshed out of my lungs.

  Wheezing and coughing up water, I wiped wetness from my eyes. I looked around, expecting to be slapped with a faceful of worms.

  There were none to be seen. We were back in the room containing Portal Five in the Guild complex on Earth Sigma. Other than Hacker and I—who were both a coughing, wet mess—the room was as empty as it had been when I had first entered it. Based on the huge wet splotch on the wall above us, Hacker and I had slammed into it before falling to the floor.

  Unsteadily rising to her hands and knees, Hacker make a bunch of choking sounds. She then threw up all over the floor. Some of it got on me. I was too busy coughing up water to mind much.

  It would be mighty ironic, not to mention embarrassing, if I had survived all that on Hephaestus only to choke to death on Earth Sigma.

  “Congratulations, Hacker. Congratulations, Kinetic. You both passed test two,” intoned Overlord’s voice from the wall panel. “If you suffered any injuries, please report to the infirmary for treatment. You would be well advised to hurry. Test three could begin at any time.”

  I still coughed. When I could finally speak again, I asked Overlord, “Where did all the worms with us go?”

  “No extraterrestrial life-forms may pass through the Portals,” Overlord said. Apparently it was more inclined to answer questions here than it had been on Hephaestus.

  Hacker was done throwing up. She was now standing, bent over, panting, with her hands on her knees. I tried to get up as I was lying in puke and water, but my body didn’t seem to be working correctly. So I stayed where I was, exhausted, gasping for breath. Standing was overrated anyway. If standing was so awesome, why didn’t infants do it?

  “You saved my life,” Hacker said, looking down at me.

  “We saved each other,” I rasped. “I never would’ve been able to jump the chasm without you.”

  “That is true. My performance was exemplary.” Her lack of social graces seemed more charming here than it had on Hephaestus. Not fighting for one’s life apparently made one more forgiving of others’ quirks.

  Hacker reached up. She started tapping her cheek again. She said, “Even so, you came back to rescue me when the most sensible course of action would have been to leave me behind to die. I am in your debt. If there’s anything I can ever do to help you, just let me know.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” I tried unsuccessfully to stand up again. My head pounded and my body ached. My arm and butt throbbed painfully from where the worms had shot me. I didn’t seem to be coordinated enough anymore to get to my feet. Using my powers in new ways apparently had taken the starch out of me. “Well, for starters you can help walk me to the infirmary. I seem to have hurt my—” I broke off, not sure how to finish the sentence. My head? My butt? My arm? My bones? I hurt all over.

  “My everything,” I concluded.

  Hacker put her arm around me. She helped me stand, and then started walking me to the Guild infirmary. I knew I wasn’t feeling so great because I didn’t notice how her breast pressed into my side as she aided me.

  Well, okay, I did notice it a little. I was hurt, not dead.

  On the way to the infirmary, we saw another cape-draped casket had been added to Hammer’s and Prism’s.

  16

  “All right everybody, huddle around and listen up,” Hitler’s Youth said at the beginning of my third test of the Trials’ scenarios phase.

  We seven Hero candidates all hurried to cluster around him. If Hitler’s Youth wasn’t the king of the douchebags, he certainly was douchebag aristocracy. Despite that, Neha and I hastened to gather around him like the five other candidates did. We didn’t want to be left out.

  Even though I didn’t like him, I understood why people tended to listen to Hitler’s Youth. With his tall, strong body, rugged jaw, and flashing blue eyes, he looked like a Hollywood casting director’s idea of what a Hero was supposed to look like. That, plus the fact he was assertive and he had natural charisma—as much as I hated to admit that last part—made it hard to not do as he asked.

  Hitler’s Youth said, “Like it said, Overlord has given us forty minutes to find and deactivate the bomb hidden in this mall. If we don’t, we fail the test. Plus, hundreds will be killed or injured.”

  Even I couldn’t fault Hitler’s Youth for adding the people being injured or killed part as an afterthought. This wasn’t a real mall we were in, of course. The Guild would never endanger a bunch of civilians by planting a real bomb in an actual mall. We were in one of the Guild’s holosuites in the Trials’ complex. Other than us candidates, everything around us was merely a cunningly wrought, high-tech combination of photons, tractor beams, and force fields. Beyond knowing that, I was too technologically challenged to understand exactly how the holosuite worked. It seemed like magic, though I knew it wasn’t.

  You never would have known we were merely in a holosuite based on the sights and sounds around us. We had just walked from outside the mall where it was sunny, hot, and muggy, to inside the mall where it was cool and temperature-controlled. According to the mall directory we had just consulted by the entrance, the mall had three stories and lots of high-end stores. Thanks to a star labeled “You are here” on the directory, we knew we were on the first floor. It looked, felt, and sounded like we were really in a big city’s shopping mall. The mall was busy, with plenty of people laden with shopping bags bustling by. There was a steady hum of conversations and music playing softly over the mall’s loudspeakers. There was even a faint whiff of odors from the mall’s food court.

  Floating overhead near the mall’s high domed ceiling was an Overlord node. A green-glowing countdown indicating thirty-nine minutes and counting was below it. It gave me flashbacks of my time on Hephaestus days before. I still had bandages on both my left buttock and my right arm where worms had shot through them. Otherwise, I felt much better than I had when I first returned to Earth Sigma. Though the Guild doctor who had treated me didn’t have Metahuman healing powers the way Doctor Hippocrates did, he knew his stuff and had done a good job stitching me up.

  “This place is massive, so we’ll need to split up,” Hitler’s Youth said. All of us were dressed in normal clothes that had been issued to us by the Guild for purposes of this test. As per Overlord’s instructions, we were supposed to find the bomb without letting the mall-goers know they were in danger. That’s why we were wearing mufti and why we weren’t supposed to use our powers too obviously in locating the bomb. Fortunately, though, once we found the bomb, we could use our powers to our heart’s content in deactivating it.

  Hitler’s Youth said, “Dervish and Glamour Gal will search the third floor; Flare and Chance, you’ve got the second; Samson and I will take the ground floor. Once you locate the bomb, alert the rest of the group. We’ll converged on it and figure out how to defuse it.” Overlord had provided us with communicators mounted in our ears for purposes of this test. I felt like a Secret Service agent with it in.

  The group began to scatter to carry out their assignments.

  “Hey, what about me and Smoke?” I protested to Hitler’s Youth.

  He stopped in mid-stride. He smirked down at me.

  “Just stay out of the way. The rest of us will handle this,” he said. With a jerk of his head, he motioned for Samson to follow him toward the escalators. Sam
son—who was as big as you’d expect from his name—hesitated, looking at me and Neha with a confused frown. Then he turned to trail after Hitler’s Youth.

  Neha and I looked at each other. If we stood here twiddling our thumbs while everyone else did the work, we’d flunk the test for sure. Hitler’s Youth had to know that. With us being friends of Isaac’s, apparently Hitler’s Youth had decided the friends of his enemy were his enemies.

  Neha said, “If that lunkhead really thinks we’re going to stand here with our heads up our asses, he’s very much mistaken.” With one exception, Neha had taken the words right out of my mouth.

  “Lunkhead? Interesting word choice.” I grinned. “What are you, a character out of Archie Comics?”

  “I’m trying to cut back on my motherfucking cursing.”

  When irritated, Neha tended to curse like a raunchy stand-up comedian. She also talked dirty when we were in bed together. There had been many times when her command of profane language had simultaneously turned me on, made me blush, and expanded my vocabulary. Her pillow talk was the fucking trifecta. Pun intended.

  Despite the fact we were in the middle of a test, just looking at Neha right now got me a little turned on. She was dressed in black boots, tight skinny jeans, a purple fitted turtleneck, and an unzipped leather jacket. If it hadn’t been for metallic Big Brother hovering overhead in the form of Overlord, I would have kissed her.

  The only thing that marred Neha’s appearance was a black and blue shiner on her right eye. It stood out in vivid contrast to her light olive skin. It was a memento from her previous test. When I had asked her about it earlier, she had smiled happily and said, “If you think that looks bad, you should see the other guy.” I had the feeling Neha was enjoying the Trials more than I was.

  With an effort, I pulled my thoughts away from how good Neha looked in her jeans.

  “Any thoughts on how best to go about finding the bomb?” I asked. “It could be anywhere and look like anything. The other guys searching by hand is better than nothing, but trying to find something in a place this huge is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s like looking for a needle in a needlestack.”