Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7

by Pitt, Darrell

  ‘I can get his attention,’ Brodie said.

  ‘Will I make a hole?’ Ebony asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘We just need to get Twelve into it.’

  Brodie snatched up a piece of debris, a thin shaft of metal, and hefted it experimentally in her right arm.

  ‘I’m ready when you are,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, Twelve!’ I yelled.

  Twelve swung around as Brodie flung the makeshift javelin with all her might. It struck the alien across the eyes. He flinched but didn’t fall. At the same moment, Ebony dropped to her knees, forming a hole, thirty feet across and twenty feet deep, under the alien. He toppled into the pit. I used my power to lift the tank into the air. It hovered over the hole.

  ‘Chad!’ I screamed.

  He understood. As I dropped the tank, Chad directed a fiery blast at the metal. It transformed into a molten liquid and slopped into the bottom of the pit. There was a single, brief scream from below us that ended in a horrible silence.

  We hesitantly made our way to the edge. The metal was still cooling, but at the center of the molten liquid stood the figure of a man. He looked like an ancient heroic figure with his arms flung out wide.

  ‘He said there would be a statue,’ I mused. ‘I don’t think that’s what he meant.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  ‘But you can’t just leave,’ Mister Jones said.

  We’d found a campervan parked in one of the underground car parks. It was modern and obviously worth a lot of money. Unlike the one we arrived in, this one had windows and beds for everyone. This would be our home.

  For now, anyway.

  ‘Try to stop us,’ Chad suggested.

  We were standing in front of the van outside the entrance to The Agency. The engine was running. Inside the complex, the cleanup was still happening, but we weren’t interested. We’d already been through enough.

  Mister Jones considered Chad’s suggestion and thought better of it. After seeing us defeat Twelve, the idea of confrontation obviously didn’t appeal to him. Dan and the others were packing our few belongings into the back of the van. There was very little to take. The Agency had already stolen our names, our homes, our families. They’d taken the most precious thing of all: our memories.

  All we had left now was each other.

  ‘I’m not sanctioning what Twelve did,’ Mister Jones continued. ‘I can’t sanction what he did. The other Agency branches are up in arms over it. They’re completely disavowing Twelve’s actions. It’s a betrayal of everything for which The Agency stands.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ I replied.

  Although I didn’t really care much. It was hard to tell the difference between truth from lies with Mister Jones. He and some of the others at The Agency knew about The Alpha Project. Trying to find out who, would be a waste of time. The Agency was modifying other teenagers all the time. How The Alpha Project was different was anyone’s guess. Doctor Richards destroyed all the records, and the death of Twelve signaled the end of the whole experiment.

  Mister Jones had already told us a replacement was being brought in for Twelve. There would be more accountability for projects within The Agency. Personally, I was just glad we were leaving.

  Mister Jones made one last attempt to stop us.

  ‘I understand why you’re upset.’ He tried to sound conciliatory. ‘And the last thing I would ever want to do is threaten you—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You may have forgotten those poisonous capsules we implanted in your bodies?’

  I reached into my pocket. ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘You mean these?’ His jaw dropped as I handed the capsules to him. ‘They were difficult to find, but fortunately, they’re made from metal, and Dan has a special knack with metals.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘It was painful,’ I told Jones. And it was. ‘But he got them out.’

  ‘But we’ve invested an enormous amount in you—’

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and wound down the window. ‘And we’re going to pay you back,’ I said with a thin smile. ‘By not exposing you to the world and not suing your organization through the International Court of Justice.’

  ‘You can’t mean that.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ I began. ‘Kidnapping, child endangerment, abuse, deprivation of liberty…’

  ‘And that’s just for starters,’ Chad said, settling into the seat beside me. ‘I’ve got all these injuries that need fixing. I need compensation for my sore knee. My elbow…’

  ‘I’m not saying you’ll never see us again,’ I told Mister Jones. I was thinking of Pegasus and what would have happened if we hadn’t stopped it. The world needed superheroes. Even teenage superheroes like us. ‘If you ever need us, really need us, we’re prepared to help.’

  Chad vigorously shook his head. ‘Mister Goody is only speaking for himself,’ he said. ‘I’m never coming back!’

  I raised an eyebrow at Mister Jones and shrugged.

  ‘Where will I find you?’ he asked.

  ‘Where does this road lead?’

  His eyes followed it into the distance.

  I nodded. ‘That’s where we’ll be.’

  Epilogue

  We drove all through the day and all through the night. Putting as much distance between The Agency and us seemed to be the only thing that made sense. The others were asleep. Only I was awake as I maneuvered the motor home across the desert. We were passing through Monument Valley, one of the beautiful parts of the United States, on our way to the Grand Canyon.

  I’d never been there, or if I had, I didn’t remember it. Last night I’d grabbed a few hours of shut-eye and had the dream again. It was the one where I was in a field of wheat. I was running my hands through the tall grass and walking towards a farmhouse. A boy was sitting on the step.

  I think he’s my brother.

  Maybe he was alive. Maybe he was waiting for me. Maybe my parents were too. For all I knew, a family was sitting around a dinner table awaiting my return. Or maybe there was no one. Maybe I truly was an orphan, and I was already home.

  It was a strange world. Solomon Wolff told us The Bakari weren’t the only aliens on Earth. There were others. Who knew what they were planning? I had a feeling a big change was coming. Maybe events that would change the whole world. Whether we liked it or not, I had a feeling we were going to be part of this superhero business for a while.

  My eyes scanned the ageless rock formations to the stars fading from the night sky. The horizon was growing lighter by the moment. The sun was about to crest the horizon; dawn was only minutes away.

  There was movement at my side as someone clambered into the seat beside me.

  Brodie.

  ‘Pull over for a moment,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

  Who am I to deny a beautiful girl?

  Bringing the vehicle over to the curb, we both got out and gazed across the desert. It would be hot later, but for now, it was cold and motionless—a quiet, peaceful place. Peaceful was good.

  She pulled out a book. It was the one Doctor Richards handed to me back in the hotel room. The book with all the blank pages. It seemed like a million years since I’d last looked at it.

  ‘Open it,’ she said.

  I flipped to a page in the middle. It was as blank as any other. Now Brodie produced the strange device we’d found buried in the book’s spine.

  ‘That Ferdy’s amazing,’ she said. ‘He spent five minutes playing with this thing and had it all worked out.’

  Gripping the glass tightly, she suddenly seemed to twist it in both directions at once. It clicked, and a pale beam of light shone from it.

  ‘How—’

  ‘Don’t worry about how,’ she advised. ‘Just look.’

  I held the glass over the page. The crystal shone a kind of infrared light that made the writing visible. Various formulas were written on the pages, as well as addresses.

  Our homes?

  ‘What�
�’ I begin. ‘How…’

  I couldn’t find the words, and it became even more difficult as Brodie grabbed the book from me and pressed her lips against mine.

  ‘Like I said,’ she said, drawing back. ‘That Ferdy’s a bright kid.’

  We kissed again as a gentle breeze swept over us. After a while, we returned to the van, and I started the engine. We’d all been through so much and come such a long way.

  I should write all this down, I thought. I should keep a diary.

  It’s not every teenager that becomes a superhero.

  But first things first. My stomach rumbled. We’d need to eat soon, and that was another crisis that needed fixing. I was able to talk Mister Jones into giving us some money, but that wouldn’t last forever.

  ‘We need cash,’ I told Brodie as we drove across the desert. ‘We need to buy some food.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  She held up a rose. It was perfect in every way. I remembered seeing Ebony with it the previous day. She’d bought it at one of the rest stops. Ebony was saying how lovely it would be to preserve it forever.

  Now it was made from gold.

  Solid gold.

  ‘Money won’t be a problem,’ Brodie said.

  Laughing, we drove into the dawn.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN…

  Teen Superheroes

  Book Two

  The Doomsday Device

  The Story So Far…

  My name is Axel.

  No last name. No middle name. Just Axel.

  If people ask me my surname, I tell them it’s Smith. I know that’s not original, but it sounds so phony people never guess it really is fictitious. There’s a good reason I don’t have a last name, and here it is.

  Okay. Deep breath.

  I was part of a secret experiment carried out by an organization known as The Agency. This organization works with an alien race known as The Bakari. They’ve been here on Earth for thousands of years. The experiment was known as The Alpha Project, and their goal was to create superheroes.

  Why? The Bakari don’t want to interfere in human affairs, but neither do they want to see us destroy ourselves. One day humanity will join the intergalactic club. They’re still waiting for us to develop enough as a species for that day to arrive.

  During the process, they wiped my memory, and they gave me incredible powers. I can manipulate air. I can compress it and turn it into a shield or a weapon. I can shape it into an invisible glider on which I can fly, or I can create a vacuum, leaving someone else struggling for breath.

  So, don’t make me mad.

  And here’s the rest of it. I’m seventeen (I think—it’s hard to know when you have no memory) with brown hair, brown eyes, and a small scar on the left side of my chin. I’m a native of the old US of A, but don’t ask me which part because I don’t know.

  My looks won’t put me on the front cover of any magazines, but I’m also not ugly either.

  Oh, and I’m not alone.

  There’s Chad. He’s about the same age, but he’s from Norway. He can create fire and ice. Also, he’s a pain, but more on that later. His sister, Ebony, looks about the same age. Like her brother, she has blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s attractive and can transmute objects to any substance she wants. That’s handy if you want to turn coal into diamonds, and you don’t have twenty million years to spare.

  Next on the list is Brodie. She’s an Australian with red hair and a pretty face. She’s my girlfriend. Kind of. In a way.

  Confused?

  Me too.

  Then there’s Dan. He’s a few years younger. Probably about fourteen. He’s Chinese, but he speaks perfect English. He can manipulate metals with his mind. He also has some psychic abilities. So, if one of us is in pain—he’s the first to know. He can manipulate people’s minds too. If you were playing poker against him, you would probably want to double-check your cards. Maybe those aren’t three six’s you’re carrying.

  They could be aces.

  And then there’s Ferdy. How would I describe Ferdy? Let’s see. Like Dan, he’s younger, but the really incredible thing about Ferdy is that he’s an autistic savant. He has a brain like a computer, but he finds it hard to communicate with other people. He can remember amazing facts and do incredible calculations in his head, but he’s often lost in his own world. We do our best to draw him out as part of the gang.

  Oh, I forgot something.

  Ferdy has super strength and can lift a bus.

  So, don’t make him mad either.

  And that’s us. We’re teenage superheroes, but we’re trying to lie low and get our lives back together. The Agency gave us a campervan—actually, we stole it from them—and we’re renting a house outside Las Vegas. We left The Agency, but agreed they could call on us for help if required.

  The people at The Agency aren’t our friends, but we hope they’re not our enemies either. If they leave us alone, we’ll do the same.

  So, that’s us.

  Chapter One

  Everything was fine until someone decided to blow up the plane.

  I was sitting near the back. One of those Air Crash Investigation shows said that passengers sitting toward the rear have a better chance of surviving an air crash. Call me afraid. Call me a coward. Call me whatever you want. So what if I have superpowers? It doesn’t mean I’m invincible.

  We were returning from Dallas on yet another one of our trips to discover our origins. When we left The Agency, we took with us an encrypted book containing formulas and addresses from across the planet. So far, we’d visited about twenty places, expecting to discover that we’d lived at one of them.

  So far, we’d turned up exactly—nothing. Some addresses were residential homes. Others were businesses. A couple were factories. We could find no link between us and the addresses.

  We hadn’t given up hope, but we felt discouraged. One scientist at The Agency—Doctor Sokolov—told me some crucial information with her dying breath. She told me I had a brother.

  Somewhere out there I had a family member. All I had to do was find him.

  I glanced around the plane. Dan sat beside the window. We’d taken a lot of flights over the last few months—ever since we’d gained our superpowers—and he always grabbed the window seat. Watching the world fly by held no great allure for me.

  I’d done plenty of flying, but most of it was without an airplane.

  The jet was traveling from Dallas to Las Vegas. I was sitting next to Dan while Brodie, Ebony, and Chad were near the wings. It was a typical flight. Flying in a plane is dull when you’ve flown without one. I’d watched most of an in-flight movie. Then I’d moved onto a book. Finally, I’d tried closing my eyes to grab forty winks.

  I opened my eyes and glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes till we were due to land. Not my idea of fun. Then Dan sat forward and rubbed his forehead.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘Yeah.’

  He didn’t sound all right.

  ‘I’ve got one of those headaches,’ he said.

  I knew what he meant by those headaches.

  The Alpha Project had left Dan with an odd set of abilities. Not only could he control metal objects, but he could also manipulate people’s minds like in Star Wars. You know, like those old Jedi mind tricks. He could pick up the feelings and thoughts of other people. It had begun with us, but over recent months he’d heard the thoughts of other people too.

  ‘What can you hear?’ I asked him quietly.

  He said nothing for the longest time. ‘A guy,’ he said. ‘He’s got…bad thoughts.’

  Bad thoughts. That could mean anything from being a serial killer to painting graffiti on city buildings.

  ‘He’s got…’ Dan stopped. ‘He’s carrying a weapon.’

  I looked across the rows of seats before us. This was a 747 carrying a full load of passengers. From memory, that numbered around four hundred and fifty
passengers. Air marshals weren’t unusual on flights. Not only were they authorized to carry a gun, but allowed to use them in case of emergencies.

  ‘He’s carrying a bomb,’ Dan whispered.

  ‘Wassat?’

  Dan looked up at me with fear in his eyes. ‘He’s carrying a bomb around his waist. I think he…killed his wife this morning. I can see blood—lots of it. He’s been planning this for ages. This morning…this morning was the trigger.’

  I swallowed. ‘Who is it?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You’ve got to focus,’ I said. ‘You’ve done it before.’

  He had done it before. He’d picked out the thoughts of a woman who had robbed a bank. Unfortunately, it had taken almost half an hour and left him with a blinding headache.

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Just try. I’ll tell the others.’

  Heading down the aisle, I maneuvered around children and their parents heading to the restrooms, and flight attendants trying to force-feed the passengers. I could just make out Brodie’s red hair. She and Chad were sitting on the window side with Ebony on the other side of the aisle, chatting to Ferdy. She’d taken a liking to him and seemed to have made it her personal mission to draw him out of his shell.

  I wasn’t too sure how much success she was having. Ferdy was autistic, but without professional advice, it was hard to work out what was best. So far, everything we knew about autism was from the internet.

  Chad and Brodie’s heads were close to each other, so close in fact that I thought, for one horrible split second, that they were kissing.

  Don’t be stupid, I thought.

  I needed to speak to them in private, but jumbo jets aren’t famous for their privacy. Kneeling next to Brodie, I gripped her armrest and bent low.