by H. L. Burke
His brother ignored Jake’s silent pleas. Silverhawk withdrew a metallic rod from his utility belt and slapped it against Caleb’s lower leg. It snapped in place.
Disruptor cuff. Jake’s throat tightened. He’d heard of DOSA’s tech to essentially short-circuit super abilities, but he’d hoped to never see it.
“I’ve got one of them!” Silverhawk shouted.
Feet tramped across the ground, cracking sagebrush. The woman in the pearly suit and two other individuals, one a man in just jeans and a gray jacket, the other a woman wearing military style fatigues, joined Silverhawk.
The armored hero pulled Caleb onto his knees. Caleb blinked at the light.
“Where’s your accomplice?” Silverhawk demanded.
Jake’s heart pounded. In his fragmented state, the throbbing sensation seemed to come from every part of his being at once, as if his whole body was one massive pulse, pumping overtime. How long could he hold his form like this? He’d never tested his abilities for more than ten minutes at a time, and usually towards the end of those periods, he’d start to fade, getting tired and lightheaded. Now, with adrenaline rushing through him, he couldn’t sense any building fatigue—but how long would that last?
I need to do something.
Silverhawk started to drag Caleb back towards the road.
Go get help? Go help him? Run so they don’t catch me too?
“Jepson, Dark Hammer, you two keep searching for the other one,” Silverhawk ordered. “He can’t have got far.”
“Yes, sir,” two of the sables said.
The remaining sable, the woman in the pearl jumpsuit, followed Silverhawk.
Jake slipped along the desert like a slug, caterpillaring his body by gripping the ground and pulling himself forward, slow going, but Caleb dragged his feet and resisted enough that Jake managed to keep them in sight.
By the time they reached the road, the crew who had remained there had already pried open the back of the truck and were going through the somewhat battered contents.
Jake cringed. Uncle Vic would not be happy about the loss of all that equipment.
Since the regulation of sable gene manipulation, it was getting harder and harder to find sables who weren’t directly associated with the government in general and DOSA specifically. While some backroom labs would still offer superpowers to those who could pay enough, the procedures were expensive and not completely guaranteed to grant useful powers. Some sables, like Jake and his brother, had received their powers hereditarily, from superpowered parents, but few villains seemed to breed these days, and waiting for a baby to grow up, manifest powers, and join the gang wasn’t exactly in Uncle Vic’s timeline for expansion. Getting his own lab equipment and finding a geneticist who could be manipulated into working fulltime for the gang was his white whale, the last thing he needed to grow his criminal empire from small scale to an unstoppable force.
This lab equipment was supposed to have been the start of that. Jake didn’t want to face his uncle when he found out he wouldn’t be getting it.
Silverhawk released Caleb once they reached the road. Floodlights lit the area and the normie police had set up another barrier, this time to warn away any civilian traffic that might stumble upon them. Caleb sat down heavily, glowering at no one in particular.
“I’ll call it in. See if we can get more searchers out here to find the other kid,” the woman in the pearl suit said. She moved away from Caleb and Silverhawk, now talking on a cell phone.
Silverhawk zeroed in on Caleb. “So, where were you taking this stuff? A lot of high tech equipment in there.” He nodded towards the truck. “Your gang must have a lair set up to house it. Not in Tucson, I’m guessing, since you dropped that name so easily. Though maybe I’m overestimating your intelligence there.”
“Die in a fire,” Caleb muttered.
Jake felt about the ground and made contact with a rock about the size of his hand. He extended his energy into it, fragmenting it so he could easily carry it with him, and moved closer, reaching the edge of the road, just outside of the circle of light.
“You might as well tell me, kid. DOSA would cut you a deal if you give up the gang.” Silverhawk dropped his tone to a conspiratorial whisper. “Look, we can work together. You tell me where I can find your gang. I’ll use my influence with DOSA to make sure you get a light sentence—maybe no sentence—”
Caleb snorted. “There’s no way you have influence with DOSA. DOSA doesn’t stick ‘influential’ sables in the middle of the desert chasing teens driving box trucks. You’re a nobody, even by DOSA standards—”
Silverhawk snarled and raised his armored hand.
Panic shot through Jake. He surged upward, darting onto the highway. He hurled the rock forward, releasing it from his energy as it left his hand. It collided against Silverhawk’s helmet with an impressive crack. The hero staggered back, swearing.
Jake darted towards Caleb and tried to extend his own powers into him. They spread into his brother’s body, partially fragmenting him, but stopped when they reached his leg with the disruptor cuff. It weighed the older teen down.
“Get out of here!” Caleb pushed his brother.
A blast of air thrust Jake backwards. Unwilling to give up, he reached for Caleb one more time. The female sable rushed towards him. She swung with a disruptor cuff at Jake’s outstretched arm. The rod-like cuff cut through Jake’s fragmented molecules, unable to get a hold of him. However, a zap of energy accompanied the blow. It ripped through Jake’s being, and his powers momentarily fizzled. Before he could fully reclaim them, the woman struck again, aiming for his leg this time.
The cuff slapped around Jake’s ankle, and the particles of his body slammed together like metal shavings drawn to a magnet. The energy of his powers condensed into his core, unreachable, before flickering out altogether. Jake cried out and collapsed, grabbing his leg with both hands and tearing at the anklet.
The clomp of heavy boots on the blacktop caused him to look up.
Silverhawk sneered down at him. “First time in a disruptor cuff, huh? Get used to it, kid. It’s your life from now on.”
A thousand insults and comebacks filled Jake’s head. He opened his mouth.
“Shut up!” His brother’s voice hit his ears, and Jake stared at him. Caleb knelt, his hands cuffed behind him, rage contorting his face. “Not a word. We don’t talk. Not. A. Word.”
Jake’s mouth clamped shut. The disruptor on his brother’s leg seemed to taunt him.
This is my fault. If I’d held it together, we could’ve gotten past the barricade. I failed the gang. I failed Uncle Vic. I failed Caleb.
He curled in on himself, knees to chest, head bowed over his knees, only to have Silverhawk yank him to his feet.
“Don’t listen to your friend, kid.” Silverhawk forced Jake to look at him. “You’ve been caught transporting an illegal sable creation lab—my guess across state borders, considering your California plates.”
Jake angled away.
“If you want to see the outside of a holding cell before you’re a senior citizen, you’ll talk. You’ll tell us everything you know about your gang—”
Jake swung upwards, his knuckles connecting sharply with the one exposed section of Silverhawk’s armored body: his chin. There was a crack and pain radiated from Jake’s hand down into his arm. Silverhawk fell back. Then he steadied himself, eyes aflame. Jake’s breath quickened.
Silverhawk darted forward, fists clenched. “You worthless—”
“Ted!” A blast of air sent Silverhawk stumbling backwards. The woman in the pearly white jumpsuit moved between the hero and his intended target. “He’s a kid.”
“He’s a supervillain, Galeforce,” Silverhawk spat the words. “They’re all trash. This one just got started a little earlier.”
“Whatever. DOSA still has rules.” She faced Jake. “Hands behind your back. If you fight, we can legally use force to restrain you, and with the mood my colleague is in, I can’t
guarantee it won’t be excessive.”
Jake hazarded a glance at Caleb. His brother focused on the road beneath him. Jake’s chest deflated. This was it. He’d been captured, under arrest. Only sixteen and his life was over.
Chapter Two
Laleh Ashe hovered one hand over the keypad lock on the outside of her boarding school’s science wing. In her other hand she gripped the handle of a large cat carrier. She had about three minutes until the security guard’s rounds took him down this hall, closer than she wanted to cut it, but the last few locks and security cameras had taken longer than anticipated.
Her olive skin glowed slightly as her powers buzzed within her chest then filtered down through her arm, into her hand, before radiating into the lock itself. She could feel the components of it. She found the right wire and sent a surge of power into it. The lock whirred, and a green light flashed above the handle. She pulled the door open, shut it quickly behind her, and sank to the floor to rest for a moment.
A mural of teens doing sciency stuff—holding beakers while wearing safety goggles, peering into microscopes, typing on computers—as well as a full on cliche superhero in a cape glared at her from the opposite wall along with the motto for the Shepherd Academy: Building Tomorrow’s Leaders through Science and Education.
Laleh huffed in disgust. Some of the teens attending her school had been literally “built.” While experimenting on one’s children in order to create the next generation of superheroes was legally discouraged, volunteering as an adult to be a superhero, then breeding with other superheroes to create your own little brood of fledgling superheroes was harder to regulate. Her own family, the Ashes, were three generations into the process since her grandparents had used their wealth and political influence to be among DOSA’s founders in the early 80s.
Every step on our path was predetermined before we took our first breaths, good little sheep. No wonder they named this place after committee member Shepherd. Not me, though. Tonight I’m going to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
She stood. Maybe that should be her handle. Something-Wolf, Wolf-Something ... of course, it didn’t really fit with electrical manipulation powers. Shock-Wolf? Wolf-Bolt? She’d work on that later. Right now, she was on a mission.
Placing her free hand against the wall, she could sense the living wires within it. Up ahead was her target: the laboratory. If she wanted to get through this without being expelled, she needed to make sure there would be no trace of her presence. Closing her eyes, she followed an energy signal up the nearest wire until it connected with a security camera around the corner. Her consciousness connected with the camera, allowing her to see through its lenses as if they were her own eyes. It aimed right at the door to the lab where she needed to be. Gently, she nudged it to the side, causing it to turn and create a convenient blindspot. She smiled as it obeyed her.
Too easy.
She slipped around the corner, clinging to the wall and investigating various electrical pathways to see if any of them ended in anything useful. She re-angled two more cameras before reaching the door to the “advanced studies” lab.
Her nose wrinkled at the sight of the room. While all the students at Shepherd Academy were undeniably privileged, to gain access to the advanced studies lab, a student had to be a special kind of “privileged.” Not just from a family influential enough to get them into Shepherd in the first place, but also gifted enough to impress the board of directors and with a simpering enough attitude to convince a teacher that their pet projects had more value than the average student’s.
Unlike with other schools where grades, test scores, and athletic achievements were lauded above all else, the curriculum at Shepherd tended to be project based. Students would vie over leadership spots in group projects or try to sell the academic board on solo projects in their field of specialization. These projects were given excessive attention and unbelievable resources.
This system was how Jenna Otieno had managed to get permission to do the unthinkable: experiment with live animal subjects.
The other day in the cafeteria, Laleh had listened, eyes wide, jaw slowly dropping, as Jenna had boasted about her experiments manipulating the very DNA of a series of ferrets.
“I have a theory that just like humans, some animals carry sable genes,” she’d explained, her words dripping with self-assurance and superiority. “If we can activate them, we could potentially have superpowered animals. Think about the applications! Enhanced rescue and drug sniffing dogs, animals capable—”
It had been at that point that Laleh had lost it. “You can’t do this! Why is the school allowing you to tamper with innocent animals? That has to be against some sort of school rule.”
Jenna had rolled her eyes, of course. Jenna never thought anyone had a point other than Jenna. “The board got special permission once they realized the potential of my project. They even brought in a top genetic scientist to mentor me and observe my experiments. She’ll share credit with me on any papers, of course, but it’s worth it for the opportunity to work with someone of her caliber.” Jenna turned away from Laleh to address the enthralled sycophants at her “cool girls” table. “I’ve seen some progress with—”
Laleh leaped from her chair to loom above Jenna. “I don’t care if the school board gave you permission or who you are working with. Animal testing is immoral.”
“Sweetie, your whole family tree is the product of human testing.” Jenna clicked her tongue. Only Jenna could make being a sable sound like a bad thing. “Are you saying it’s all right to experiment on humans but not animals?”
“Animals can’t consent.” Laleh crossed her arms over her chest. “Did you get your ferrets to sign consent forms?”
“I’ll get right on that.” Jenna gave another eye roll before nodding to her followers. “Come on, ladies. Let’s leave Laleh to run her little rebellion against the big evil school board and their rodent torturing ways.”
The tittering of other teen girls had sent heat rushing through Laleh, but Jenna was gone before she could think of a reply. Laleh had skipped all her afternoon classes that day to try to find someone in the office who would listen to her plea for the ferrets. All this had netted her was a stern warning from her teachers and a disappointed phone call that evening from her mother.
It was at that point that Laleh had decided if she couldn’t save the ferrets through school approved means, she would just have to go full on vigilante. After all, she had superpowers. Why not use them?
So now, here she was, sneaking around her school in the dead of night, dodging security guards and manipulating cameras to save the ferrets from a fate worse than death.
Somewhat ironically, the advanced lab’s door was locked not by one of the code locks but instead with an old fashioned key. This portion of her mission had taken the most planning—and by planning she meant watching YouTube video after YouTube video on lock picking. Thank goodness for incognito mode.
Glancing down the hall she saw no sign of the guard. She pulled a set of wires and pins out of her pocket and inserted them into the lock. The scraping of metal on metal screeched in the quiet of the empty hall. Her hands shook, so she clenched her teeth.
Hold it together, Laleh. You can do this. This is nothing.
Something clicked, and when she tried the handle, the door swung open. It took all her restraint not to cheer out loud. Instead she punched the air. Picking up the carrier again, she entered the lab.
A constant skittering, squeaking, and chattering rose from a large metal cage on the far wall. As the door shut behind her, the noise died, and a half dozen pointed heads with intent eyes turned to look at her. A faint blue glow rose from the collars around their necks.
Laleh sized up the ferrets. They were bigger than she’d expected. Maybe she should’ve brought a larger cat carrier. Well, she only needed to keep them in it until she could drop them off at the no kill shelter a couple miles away.
She approached the cage and tapped the
tablet attached to the front, wired into the locks and feeding system. The ferrets scurried from their various perches to form a line staring at the cage door. She paused.
Do they expect me to feed them? Or do they somehow know I’m planning to let them out?
She fished in her pocket for her smartphone and turned on the flashlight feature for a better look. The ferrets didn’t flinch. They seemed pretty much like normal ferrets, looked well-fed, reasonably alert—actually maybe more than reasonably. As she approached, they followed her movements, never breaking eye contact.
“Okay, that’s kinda freaky,” she breathed. Her flashlight beam illuminated the largest of the ferrets, a long one with a slightly reddish tint to its fur. The collars might be tracking devices or something. She’d probably need to remove those before she took them, otherwise it would be too easy for Jenna to track them down and enslave them again.
First things first, though, she had to figure out the lock.
Because she wasn’t an idiot, Laleh had worn gloves tonight, but with her powers she didn’t need bare fingertips to work a touch screen. She hovered her hand over the screen and let her powers activate it.
A display flashed with an icon for each ferret, a picture of them followed by a “subject number.” Other icons offered food and water levels, lock controls, and ... disruptor collars?
She inhaled sharply. Why were the ferrets wearing disruptor collars? That seemed unnecessarily cruel even for Jenna.
“Well, that’s the first thing to go.”
Laleh selected the disruptor collars option. Six numbered collars displayed including a toggle switch for active and inactive. Laleh ran her finger down the list, toggling each collar to inactive. There was a whirring, and the collars dropped from the ferrets onto the shredded paper at the bottom of their cage.
The ferrets went rigid, then quivered, then chattered among themselves.
“Okay, now for the doors.” She selected the locks which immediately snapped open. She opened the cat carrier. “Sorry to take you out of one cage and put you in another, but trust me, it’ll be worth it to get out of here.”
