Omega Superhero Box Set

by Darius Brasher

  Isaac and Neha sat on her bed as they argued about what I should do. I paced at the foot of the bed like a caged tiger. Maybe like a lamb being led to slaughter would be a better analogy.

  What in the world was I going to do?

  “If I fight him and lose, I’ll die. If I fight him and win, I’ll have killed someone. Hitler’s Youth is hardly my favorite person, but I don’t want to murder the guy. If I refuse to fight him, I’ll get thrown out of the Trials and be forever barred from getting my license.” I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t have a choice. You have to kill him,” Isaac said definitively.

  “The only part you’re right about is that Theo doesn’t have a choice.” Neha glared at him. “He has to quit.”

  She turned to me.

  “Theo, we all know how important getting your license is to you. We know you want to use it to find who hired Iceburn. I know how hard you’ve worked to get here. We’ve all worked incredibly hard to get here. But you can’t kill Elemental Man. How many times did Amazing Man and our instructors at the Academy tell us that Heroes don’t kill? I’m not saying quitting is a good option. But, it’s the best of your bad options.”

  Isaac interjected. “Heroes can kill in self-defense. That’s what this is—self-defense. It’s kill or be killed.”

  “Oh come on, you can’t really believe this is self-defense,” Neha said. “This is like breaking into someone’s house, shooting the gun-toting owner, and then justifying the shooting by saying if you hadn’t shot the owner, he would’ve shot you. You should’ve never gone into the house to begin with. What the Guild wants Theo to do is wrong. He has a moral obligation to never step inside the house.”

  No one said anything in response.

  Neha shook her head in frustration. “I can’t believe I’m the one who’s pointing out the morality of the situation. I’m the daughter of a supervillain. Usually I’m the one who wants to do something that morally questionable. The fact that I’m the one who’s saying this is clear case of wrong versus right should tell you guys something.”

  Even Isaac didn’t have a counter to that.

  “And, I should also point out that there’s no guarantee that you will win,” Neha said. “Every Hero candidate here knows how to fight, or else they wouldn’t have gotten this far. I don’t want to have happen to you what happened to Hammer.” She actually teared up a little. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.” Even at a time like this, my heart soared. Maybe there was a chance she cared about me the way I did about her.

  “Stop being such a worrywart. When did you become such a milksop? Theo will go in there and kick his ass.” Isaac said it with a confidence I did not share.

  Neha turned on him like a cat protecting her kittens. “This is Theo’s life we’re talking about. The worst-case scenario is that he dies. The best-case scenario is that he murders somebody. Even the best-case scenario is terrible.” She was almost screaming now. “What the fuck is wrong with you? If it weren’t for the fact you have some sort of bad blood with Elemental Man, you would be agreeing with me right now.”

  “The fact Elemental Man is a piece of shit has nothing to do with this.” Isaac must have seen the look of disbelief on both of our faces, because he continued in a defensive tone. “I’m not gonna lie: the world will be a better place without that jerk-off in it. But that’s beside the point. Theo’s worked too hard for too long to quit now.”

  “All right, I let this go before because it really was none of my business,” I said to him. “Now that my life’s on the line, it’s very much my business. What’s your problem with Elemental Man?”

  “I told you before, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What you want is not relevant anymore,” Neha said. “Like Theo said, his life is on the line. You’re going to tell us what your issue is with Elemental Man, and you’re going to tell us right now. If you don’t, I’ll force you to inhale a gas that’ll make you tell us.” Her left forearm and hand ominously turned a cloudy yellow-white.

  Isaac jumped up off the bed as if he had been scalded by it. He looked down nervously at Neha’s now translucent arm.

  “That’s a violation of my privacy. It’s unethical. You wouldn’t dare,” he said.

  Neha looked scornful. “Have you met me? I’ll do it with a song in my heart and sleep like a baby afterward.”

  Isaac’s eyes darted over to me as if I would intervene to stop her.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I’m with her. If you know anything that will help me decide what to do, I need to hear it.”

  Isaac’s eyes then shifted to the door. He looked like he was considering leaving. I doubted he’d make it two steps before Neha tackled him. Since my neck was on the line, I had just about decided I’d help her when Isaac puffed his cheeks out and let out a long sigh. He sounded like a balloon with a hole in it.

  “You’re right,” he said, looking deflated. “I’m just so used to avoiding talking about this that it’s gotten to be a habit.”

  “Avoiding talking about what?” Neha demanded. She still looked like she was going to fling herself at Isaac if he moved toward the door.

  “About Elemental Man. His real name is Frank Hamilton. He’s the third male in his family to have that name, so people usually call him Trey. I mostly just call him ‘Asshole.’ His father is married to my mother. So technically, he’s my stepbrother. As far as I’m concerned, though, he’s no brother of mine.”

  Isaac’s eyes were full of pain.

  “He raped and killed my sister,” he said.

  19

  There was stunned silence in the room at Isaac’s bombshell.

  “How is that possible?” Neha finally asked. “The Guild runs a background check on Metas before they let them into the Academy. The background check is even more thorough before you’re allowed to stand for the Trials. There’s no way a rapist and murderer could slip through the cracks.”

  “Well, it’s not as though Trey put a gun to Lilly’s head and blew her brains out. He may as well have, though. As for the rape, there’s no official record of it. He was never arrested or charged.”

  My mind was awhirl at Isaac’s revelation. As if I didn’t have enough to think about as it was.

  “Whoa, whoa, back up,” I said. “Start from the beginning and tell us everything.”

  “It all started when my father died. He was a California state trooper. He was a great man. Tough, but kind; strong, but giving. A lot of people want to be cops so they can carry a gun and push people around. Dad had always wanted to be a cop so he could help and protect people. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be just like him. Still do, as a matter of fact. It’s the reason I’m trying to become a Hero.

  “When I was fourteen and my sister Lilly was twelve, Dad pulled over a guy for a busted taillight. Little did Dad know the guy had a couple of outstanding warrants for armed robbery. When Dad asked for his license, the guy pulled out a gun instead. He shot Dad twice in the chest. When Dad fell to the ground, the guy got out of his car, stepped over him, and shot him three times more in the head. The dash camera in Dad’s car recorded it all. I’ve watched it so many times, I could draw you a picture of it.”

  Isaac said all this tonelessly, as if he were talking about an incident that had happened to someone else’s family on the other side of the world. Only the tightening of his jaw muscles betrayed how he really felt.

  “Good God Isaac, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “How does Trey play into all this?” Neha asked impatiently. I wanted to kick her. I loved her, but sometimes she had the sensitivity of a wolverine.

  “Theo asked me to start at the beginning, so I’m starting at the beginning,” Isaac said. “Anyway, Mom was understandably inconsolable. You find out what someone’s really like when they are going through stress and grief. Mom processed hers by climbing into bed with just about any man who
would have her. It was as if she couldn’t stand to be alone, as if she and Lilly and I weren’t enough to make her feel complete. The entrance to her bedroom became a revolving door through which any Tom, Dick, or Harry could stroll. Especially Dick.” The last part was said bitterly, without a trace of humor.

  “Mom desperately wanted to remarry. Now that I’m older, I realize that since she married Dad when she was just nineteen, she never had a chance to form an adult personality that wasn’t dependent on a man. My Dad was older than her. When she married him, she went right from her father’s house to Dad’s house. Until Dad died, she never had the need to stand on her own two feet. Now that I look back at it all with adult eyes, Dad was as much of a father figure to her as he was a husband. After he was killed, instead of learning to be independent, she immediately opened up auditions for the new guy who would take care of her.

  “The problem was, she wasn’t a dewy-eyed, tight-bodied, nineteen-year-old anymore when Dad died. She was older, less attractive, and had two kids to boot. The fact she’s black didn’t help any. Even childless black women often have troubles finding good men. Guys weren’t exactly lining up to shoulder the responsibility of an instant family. They did line up for some free booty, though. They’d sleep with my mother, but they weren’t interested in settling down with her. Why buy the cow when someone’s giving the milk away?

  “Then Frank Hamilton, Junior—Trey’s father—came along when I was sixteen. I was with Mom when she met him. We were grocery shopping. Frank’s a tall, handsome white guy who looks and sounds like he has money. That’s because he does: he’s an Ivy League-educated owner of a brokerage house that he inherited from his father, Frank Senior. I could practically hear Mom’s brain assessing Frank’s net worth as she looked at his expensive shoes, clothes, and watch. I could also practically hear Frank wondering how long it would take him to get into Mom’s panties as he stared at her boobs. As usual, they were on display in a too small, too tight top. After Dad died, she always dressed that way. To my mortification. She always looked like a streetwalker, and the day she met Frank was no exception. I guess she figured she’d always keep bait on the hook because she never knew when a rich fish would bite.

  “In case you’re wondering how long it took Frank to get into Mom’s panties, the answer is less than an hour from the moment they met. Even over the headphones I always blasted when Mom invited a guy over to the house, I could hear them, howling and grunting like animals at the zoo.”

  Isaac shook his head the memory.

  “I expected Frank would just be another notch in Mom’s bedpost who would get his rocks off a few times and disappear. Just like so many others who had come before him. But to my surprise, they started dating. It turns out Frank is into race play as a fetish. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s as disgusting as it sounds. Frank and Mom didn’t even have the decency to keep their master-slave relationship confined to the bedroom. Frank had a real taste for dark meat. ‘Dark meat.’ Those are Frank’s words, not mine, by the way. He’d call Mom that, often in front of both Lilly and me.” Isaac shook in head in a combination of wonder and disgust. “Mom has very dark skin, unlike me. I took after Dad’s side of the family that way. ‘Smile so I can see you,’ Frank would say to her. If someone said that to me, I’d punch him in the mouth. Instead Mom would just giggle and rub herself against him. Even now, it makes me want to throw up just thinking about it. If you think there aren’t worse words to call a black person than the N-word, you’re wrong. I know because I’d hear Frank loudly calling Mom them when he’d play his sick fantasies out with her in the bedroom.

  “Eventually, as things got more serious between Mom and Frank, I met Trey. He must’ve been eighteen at the time. The instant I laid eyes on him, I could see that the rotten fruit hadn’t fallen far from the putrid tree. For both of us, it was hate at first sight. Unlike my mother, I didn’t have big boobs and a big butt to mitigate against the unpardonable sin of having been born black.”

  Isaac paused and swallowed.

  “But Lilly did. Like Mom, she was dark-skinned. Also like Mom, she was well-developed, even at fourteen, which was how old she was when Frank and Trey came along. As Frank put it in his oh-so-charming way, Lilly was ‘built like a black brick shithouse.’ Can you believe a grown man would talk about a fourteen-year-old like that in front of her and her brother?” Isaac’s voice dripped with disgust mingled with disbelief. “Anyway, it was obvious Trey hated me the moment he laid eyes on me. It was equally obvious he lusted after Lilly the moment he laid eyes on her. Like weirdo father, like weirdo son.

  “Before I knew it, Mom had moved us in with Frank and Trey. Frank had a huge house that was like something out of MTV Cribs. Mom was delighted, of course. She thought she had won the lottery with Frank. From a monetary standpoint, maybe she had. I was less happy. When they weren’t ignoring me like I was invisible, both Frank and Trey treated me like I was dog doo they had stepped in. The moment I was an adult, I planned on moving out. I didn’t know how or where, but anywhere was better than living with Frank and Trey.

  “They didn’t ignore Lilly, though. You know how a dog looks at your plate when you’re eating a steak? That’s how those two looked at Lilly. Like the moment your back was turned, they would pounce on her. Lilly thought Frank was creepy. She was certainly right about that. As for Trey, she was flattered by the attention from him. As much as I hate him, even I have to admit he’s a good-looking guy. He’s tall, muscular, blonde, and has good bone structure. He looks like something a white supremacist would cook up in a lab. Lilly loved the fact that an older guy who looked like he belonged in a boy band was paying attention to her.

  “I tried to warn her. I tried to tell her Trey was no good. But she wouldn’t listen. To her, I was just a dorky brother who didn’t know anything.

  “One day I came home to what I at first thought was an empty house. When I passed Lilly’s room, though, I heard crying behind her closed door. I knocked, but she wouldn’t let me in. It was clear from the sound of her voice she was upset. Worried, I broke down the door. I found her on her bed, half-dressed, with the few clothes she still had on ripped. Her thighs were bloody, as was her bed.”

  Isaac’s face was screwed up in anger, like he wanted to punch something.

  “Lilly didn’t want to tell me at first, but I eventually got it out of her. Trey had raped her. They were doing that whole grouse mating dance they always did, but this time Trey had pushed her further than usual. Lilly had told him no. Flirting with him was one thing; having sex with him was an entirely different thing. She was only fourteen. She was still a virgin. She hadn’t even kissed anyone yet.

  “After she told me what happened, Lilly told me that Trey had then gone to play basketball with his friends. Knowing what I know now, I should’ve called the police so they would have seen the way Lilly looked when I had found her. Instead, all I could think about was getting my hands around Trey’s neck and choking the life out of him. So, I left Lilly at the house and went to confront Trey.” Isaac barked out a humorless laugh. “I choked the life out of him all right. I choked him so well, I was in the hospital for almost a week afterward. I didn’t know until I confronted him at the basketball court that Trey had powers. Instead of me beating the stuffing out of him, he beat the stuffing out of me. Gave me this lovely little memento of our encounter.”

  Isaac pulled up his shirt to reveal a dark blotch on his otherwise light brown skin that was the size of a large grapefruit. I had seen it before. I had seen Isaac without his shirt on many times. When I had asked about the blemish before, Isaac had told me with a wink that it was an old sex injury.

  Unfortunately, he had not been entirely lying.

  Isaac shook his head. “Nothing happened to Trey. He denied raping Lilly. He denied sleeping with her at all. He was eighteen and legally an adult; Lilly was under the age of consent. It would have been statutory rape even if Lilly had agreed to it. Trey knew that. There was no way he was going
to admit what happened, even if the sex had been consensual.” Isaac shook his head at the memory. “There was no way it was, though. I saw Lilly. Her clothes. The blood. The stricken look on her face, like she was a little kid who was told that, not only was there not a Santa Claus, but the Tooth Fairy was a serial killer.”

  “But what about the forensic evidence?” Neha asked. “Surely your mother had the cops do a rape kit.”

  Isaac snorted.

  “Mom refused to report the incident to the police. She said that by the time she got home, Lilly was just fine and there was nothing amiss in her room. When Lilly came to visit me in the hospital, Lilly told me she had made up what she had told me about Trey. She couldn’t even look me in the eye when she told me that. I didn’t have to be a master detective to know it was a big fat lie. Though I have no definite proof of this, my strong suspicion is Mom cleaned Lilly and her room up when she got home and that she strong-armed Lilly to say that nothing had happened between her and Trey. I didn’t need telepathy to figure out what Mom was thinking. In her mind, she had found the golden ticket when she had hooked up with Frank. She wasn’t about to do something that would jeopardize her gravy train, even if that something was standing up for her own flesh and blood against a sexual predator.”

  Isaac’s voice was bitter. “Lilly was never the same after that. Can you blame her? She was living with a guy who had defiled her, an older guy who always looked like he wanted to defile her, a mother who wouldn’t protect her, and a brother who couldn’t protect her.”

  Isaac’s eyes glistened.

  “I wasn’t even all that surprised when I found Lilly dead on the floor of her room a couple of weeks later. An empty bottle of Mom’s sleeping pills was on the floor next to her.

  “The fact I wasn’t surprised didn’t mean I wasn’t mad, though. I was mad at Trey, of course. He didn’t pour those pills down Lilly’s throat, but he might as well have. I was also mad at Lilly for giving up on life and leaving me. I was mad at Mom for choosing Frank over her own family. I was mad at Frank for spawning a piece of crap like Trey. And, I was especially mad at myself for not being able to give Trey the thrashing he richly deserved. I wished I was stronger, more powerful, so I could take Trey on again.