Omega Superhero Box Set

by Darius Brasher

  “I don’t care what you say, I think you’re Cassandra,” I said to the woman. In her heels, she was a little taller than I. Now that I could see her more clearly in the dim lighting, she was not white as I had first supposed. Her tan skin and the shape of her nose bespoke of a non-Caucasian ancestry. Middle Eastern, maybe. “I need to talk to you. I’ll pay you.”

  “Plenty other girls here. This one’s mine,” the man said, his anger evident despite his slurred voice. He still struggled to stand. To an outside observer, it probably looked like he couldn’t get up because he was too drunk or high. In reality, he could not get up because I held him down with my powers. Avatar with his Omega-level super strength surely could have stood up despite my telekinetic hold, but not this guy. He looked like a fat cockroach on its back with its limbs flailing. I did not want to let him up. I was in no mood to get into a fistfight with him over a woman I didn’t even know. Actually, that’s not right—I was in such a sour mood from still being in this godforsaken place that I was in the mood to get into a fistfight, which is exactly the wrong time to get into a fistfight. Anger clouds your judgment. I especially had no business getting into a fight with a non-Meta who was no match for me.

  Looking down at me, the woman stared straight into my eyes, her face flushed with anger. Her pupils dilated, like a camera’s shutter. The world seemed to come to a stop and distort, centering on the woman’s eyes. As if hypnotized, I could not look away. I could not move at all. I heard a dull roar, like the sound you hear when you put your ear to a seashell. Only this sound I didn’t hear with my ears. I heard it in my mind. I felt a prickling at the nape of my neck, the same sort of feeling I got when someone was looking at me when my back was turned. Unbidden, I found myself thinking about why and how I had come to Areola 51. A kaleidoscope of images from the last couple of days formed in my mind, like a picture book whose pages were being rapidly flipped. The woman’s eyes widened in surprise. Though I didn’t know how I knew, I knew she had seen the pictures that had flashed through my mind.

  As quickly as it had started, it was over. The woman’s dilated pupils returned to normal. The world restarted, like a needle on a record player had momentarily skipped and now played normally again. I blinked several times, able to move once more. Though I was fully dressed and this woman was not, I felt more exposed to her than she was to me.

  Cassandra—for it was obvious now who this woman was—leaned down over the stout man who still struggled to stand. “I need to talk to this guy for a few minutes,” she said into his ear, though I could barely hear her over the music. “I’ll be right back. Then we’ll pick up where we left off.”

  Without waiting for a response from the man, Cassandra grabbed my hand and started to lead me toward the door to the private dance area. Since I knew she could peer into my mind, I did not take the opportunity to admire her ample backside.

  Well, okay, maybe I did peek a little. I was a Hero looking for answers. Not a monk.

  14

  The door to the private area opened to a flight of stairs leading down. The stairs were ill-lit by several red lights. It had been hot enough in the club proper due to the heat of all the bodies there. It got hotter still as I followed Cassandra down the stairs. Between the red lights and the heat, this must have been what descending into Hell was like. The moans and groans that got louder the lower we went helped with that impression. Feminine wails mingled with masculine grunts. Sounds of pleasure, not pain. Further proof that more than just dancing went on in this private area. If Hell was like this, maybe it was not such a bad place after all. Besides, being from the South, I was used to hot places. Perhaps I would reconsider my plans for the afterlife.

  By the time we got to the bottom of the stairs, the sounds of the club above us were completely gone, swallowed up by the moaning and music that filled the long hall we were now in. Thankfully, the smell of weed and cigarettes was mostly gone down here, though the stench lingered on my clothes. Well over a dozen doors lined the hallway, each numbered. Most were closed. As I followed Cassandra down the hall, I heard different songs coming from behind each closed door. Between the music and the moaning, it sounded like a porno soundtrack.

  When we got to the middle of the hall, a door to my right opened. A dark-skinned stripper with watermelon breasts came out, hand-in-hand with a grey-haired old man. The man averted his gaze in embarrassment when he saw me. He wore a wedding ring. His hair was askew, his shirt was partially untucked, and his fly was half zipped. Somehow I doubted the stripper was his lawfully wedded wife. Not only was he old enough to be her father, he was old enough to be her grandfather. I didn’t know whether I should chastise him, or high five him. I did neither, instead brushing silently past the two in the narrow hall. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

  Cassandra led me toward the end of the hall to one of the open doors. Door number fourteen. If it had been door thirteen, I might have refused to go in. I was not superstitious, but my encounter with Antonio in apartment 1313 had not gone well. Once blasted through a window by an unexpected Meta, twice shy.

  Cassandra closed the door behind me once I followed her inside. The small, windowless room was quiet. The moans and music from the surrounding rooms trickled in faintly. The room was empty except for a couch, a small wooden table next to it, and a black speaker mounted on a wall near the ceiling. The lumpy couch had seen better days. A small remote control I supposed controlled the music was chained to the table. In addition to the remote, the table contained several bottles of lotion and lubrication, a box of Kleenex, and a large glass bowl half full of condoms. Though the room was not particularly dirty, once I got a look at the contents of the table, it seemed filthy. The thought of all the people who had done God knew what in this room made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to touch anything. You could not get a sexually transmitted disease that easily, but better safe than sorry.

  “Truman Lord sent you,” Cassandra said. Her tone was businesslike, not at all the seductive cooing she had favored the big man upstairs with. I nodded yes, though I knew I did not need to. Her words had been a statement, not a question. How much had she seen when she had glimpsed my thoughts before?

  As if in response to my question, Cassandra asked “Aren’t you a little young to be a Hero?” First Truman, now a stripper I did not know from Adam. Uh, Eve, I mean, since this voluptuous woman couldn’t be mistaken for a man even if you suffered from glaucoma and spotted her in the dead of night. At the rate my secret identity was being exposed, maybe I should just fly to the top of the UWant Building again and shout my identity to all the city’s residents. Save some time.

  “Aren’t you a little big to be a stripper?” I retorted, irritated. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Maybe it wasn’t the best move to insult a woman I needed information from. That’s me, Theo Conley, diplomat extraordinaire. I should get a job with the United Nations.

  Cassandra shrugged slightly, making her chest move interestingly. “Different men like different things.” If she was insulted, she did not show it. “You brought the money I require.” Again a statement, not a question.

  I fished the wad of cash out of my pocket and handed it over. Cassandra shoved it down her cleavage. The money disappeared from view. She had not even bothered to count it. Maybe her breasts would count it. That would be a neat trick I would not mind seeing.

  Cassandra directed me to have a seat on the couch. Reluctantly, I did so. The back of my neck immediately started to itch. Though I knew it was psychosomatic, I could not fight the feeling that countless cooties from countless dirtbags were leaping from the couch onto me. Most of me did not want to think about all the action this couch must have seen. A small part of me wished there was a video of it.

  Cassandra straddled my legs, and started to sit down. Startled, I tried to stand. “I want information, not a dance,” I yelped.

  Cassandra shoved me back down by my shoulders.

  “Stop being such a shrinking violet.” She se
ttled down on my lap with her legs straddling mine. “This is my process. Do you want my help, or don’t you?”

  I tried to relax. When a stranger’s big boobs were in your face, that was easier said than done. I took a long calming breath.

  Cassandra was heavy on my lap, but not unpleasantly so. She put her hand over my ears, with her fingertips splayed over the sides of my skull. Her long nails, painted to matched her red lipstick, dug into my skin. Her skin was hot against my ears. Her smell filled my nostrils. Her perfume was musky and, unlike Lilith’s, seemed expensive. I liked it. Inhaling it made my heart thump faster. I felt the hardness of Cassandra’s thigh muscles underneath her plumpness. Her big chest and prominent nipples were right in front of my face. If I leaned forward a little, I could—

  Cassandra removed one of her hands from my skull. She clouted me upside the head, hard enough to make my ear ring.

  “Ow!” I said.

  “Stop perving on me, then,” she said matter-of-factly. Her hand returning to cover my ear again. “Lust is one of the most powerful emotions. It distracts me from what I’m trying to do. Look up, away from my chest. Try to empty your mind. Pretend like I’m not even here.”

  That’s easy for you to say, I thought. You’re not the one with big headlights shining in your eyes, blinding you. I looked up, into Cassandra’s eyes. I tried to shove the thought of headlights away before she smacked me again. My ear still stung. She had a lot of muscle under that flab.

  Cassandra’s brown eyes bore into mine. I focused on them and not on all the flesh in my lap. As I stared at her eyes, their pupils expanded, much as they had when Cassandra had looked at me upstairs. This time, though, they continued to spread out, like ink spilled on a piece of paper. Their blackness expanded to encompass her brown irises, and then the whites of her eyes, until her eyes were like pools of the darkest oil. My scalp tingling where Cassandra’s fingernails dug into it, as if a low-level electric current arced through Cassandra and into me.

  Bit by bit, the world fell away like pieces of broken glass. No longer could I smell the smoke in my clothes, or the musk of Cassandra’s perfume. The music and moaning stopped, or at least I stopped being aware of them. The only thing left was Cassandra.

  She felt lighter in my lap. No longer was she a zaftig woman with dyed blonde hair. Now she was a small-boned old lady with a narrow, pinched face and long stringy grey hair. Her loose, crinkled skin was freckled with liver spots. She still wore a tight pink halter top and matching hot pants. They looked like bandages instead of clothes on this old lady. She was flat-chested. The wad of cash under her top bulged out like a deformed third breast.

  Soon, even most of Cassandra faded away. I stopped being aware of her weight, her appearance, and the burning of my scalp where her long nails dug unto me. The only things left were Cassandra’s eyes. They seemed to have swallowed the rest of the world whole.

  The external world, that is. Internally, in my mind, it was as if countless doors were opening, revealing a new world that had been hidden before. Through them I could see . . . well, everything. I could only see the images hazily, though, as if I viewed them through a thick glass bottle. Though it was hard to be sure, I thought I caught glimpses of my parents when they were young and full of life. Here was Neha, looking so beautiful even with the distortion. There was Isaac, Truman, Mad Dog, Hannah, the Old Man, Hammer, Iceburn, the Three Horseman, the blonde who had planted the bomb on me, the old lady whose tire I changed in Washington, D.C. right before Iceburn attacked me, Athena, Elemental Man, Pitbull, Mechano and the other Sentinels, Avatar, Omega Man, and countless others. Hero and Rogue, Meta and non-Meta, friend and foe flashed before me. Some I recognized. Most I did not. But I knew I was connected to all these people, even the ones I didn’t know, in ways I could almost but not quite understand. It was as if we were all suspended in one massive spiderweb, with each movement we made affecting everyone else, some strongly, others faintly.

  I knew without knowing how I knew that everything I sought, everything I wanted to know—everything I could ever know, no matter how big or small—was all right here. But despite how much I concentrated to bring the distorted images into clear view, I couldn’t. Everything was just beyond my grasp, like a chased rainbow.

  “You have but a single question, and a single answer,” came a voice that echoed in my mind. It did not sound like Cassandra. The voice held an ancient, timeless quality the stripper’s voice had not. Even so, I knew it was her. “What is your question?”

  I had prepared for this, of course. Ever since Truman had told me I could only ask Cassandra one question, I had turned over in my mind how I should ask about Mechano. Now that I knew with visceral certainty that anything I wanted to know was at Cassandra’s fingertips, I hesitated. Should I ask something else? There were so many things I wanted to know: Where was Antonio? If I found him, what should I do with him? How could I make Neha love me the way I loved her? When would I die? When would my friends die? Would I ever be happy? Was time travel possible? Could I go back in time and keep Hammer from being killed in the Trials? Could I prevent Hannah’s murder? Save my father from Iceburn? Prevent my mother from ever getting cancer and dying?

  Compared to some of those questions, why Mechano had tried to kill me seemed trivial.

  My thoughts kept leading me back to my parents, Hannah, and Hammer. Over the past few years I had seen and done things I never would have dreamt were possible before I entered the world of Heroes and Rogues. I had flown faster than the fastest bird, gone to other dimensions, and seen creatures that were supposed to be myths. I had seen the impossible made not only possible, but into a hard reality. What else was possible that I did not yet know about? I realized as I equivocated over what to ask Cassandra that, in the back of my mind, I had been subconsciously harboring the hope that someday I would find a way to go back into the past and fix things, to make sure that the people who had died did not die. Dad’s and Hannah’s deaths had been caused by me. They would be alive today if I had made better decisions. If I could go back in time, I could do things differently, make different choices. I could make sure they lived. And, though I did not cause Hammer’s and Mom’s deaths, they still had been so unnecessary. So unfair. Neither of them had deserved to have their lives cut short.

  Maybe I would one day meet a Meta who could time travel and who would be willing to take me into the past with him to make sure no one I cared about died.

  Or, maybe I would one day meet a scientist who was working on time travel technology. Yes, time travel tech sounded like something out of science fiction, but not too long ago so did computers you could fit into your pocket. And yet almost everyone had a smartphone with more computing power than the computers that put a man on the Moon. Yesterday’s science fiction was often today’s science fact. Perhaps time travel was the same.

  Maybe, as an Omega-level Metahuman, I myself would one day become powerful enough that I would figure out a way to use my powers to time travel. Maybe there was some twist on how to use my powers I had not yet thought of.

  Or, maybe there was some other way to travel back in time that did not involve technology or Metahuman powers.

  Maybe time travel was possible. Maybe saving the lives of all the people I cared about was possible. Maybe, as Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I did not know.

  But Cassandra did. And even if time travel was not possible, Cassandra would know if resurrection was. If a carpenter from Nazareth could pull off resurrection millennia ago, surely a husband and wife from South Carolina could today.

  But, what if I asked Cassandra if I could travel back in time to save Hammer, Hannah, Dad, and Mom or resurrect them somehow and the answer was No? I would waste my one shot at asking Cassandra a question. More importantly, I would kill off the hope that they all could be saved. It was a hope I had not even been aware I harbored, a hope that kept me going when times were tough. If I didn’t have hope that tomorrow could be better than
yesterday, what was the point of living?

  I remembered something Dad once said, one of his Jamesisms: “The past can be the wind in your sails. It can also be an anchor.” I knew if Cassandra told me there was no way the people I cared about could be saved, it would be an anchor that would mire me in a sea of despair, perhaps forever.

  I wrestled with the subject of the question I should ask. Mechano, or my friends and family?

  Seconds passed. Or maybe it was hours. I could not tell. Time seemed to have little meaning in the internal world Cassandra had sucked me into.

  I made up my mind. I needed to know if there was some way to save Hammer, Hannah, and my parents. It didn’t matter if Cassandra’s answer was no. I had to know for sure. Mechano could wait. I had put off dealing with him this long. Besides, as Isaac had suggested days before, I could simply turn what I knew about him over to the Heroes’ Guild and let it handle him. My family and friends should take precedence.

  Unbidden, the words of the Hero’s Oath I had sworn during my cape investiture ceremony bubbled up to the forefront of my mind. Saying those words along with the other five people who had passed the Trials—Isaac, Neha, Hacker, Hardcase, and Zephyr—had been one of the biggest moments of my life:

  No cave so dark,

  No pit so deep,

  Will hide evil from my arm’s sweep.

  Those who sow darkness soon shall reap.

  For in the pursuit of justice,

  I will never sleep.

  The words echoed in my mind, their meaning sinking in in a way they had not before. I could not simply report Mechano to the Guild and let it deal with him. I was the Guild. Even though I was inexperienced compared to Heroes like Truman, Athena, the Old Man, and Ghost, I was as much of a Hero and a member of the Guild as they were. According to the oath I had sworn, it was my job to deal with people like Mechano, not to foist him off on someone else. I knew he had tried to kill me during the Trials, both with nanites and with a bomb. With the latter, he had nearly killed and injured others as well. What else had he done wrong that I did not even know about? How else had he violated his own Oath? It was my responsibility to bring him to justice.