by Zack Archer
I reached out and felt a constant, powerful air-current as Aurora tapped the controls and the wave sled shot down into a tunnel in the rock.
We passed directly under an impressive maze of translucent piping that appeared to be carrying water to various parts of the underground city.
“The water in those tubes is a billion years old. It rises up from a frozen, underground reservoir to form a kind of cap on the top of the planet. The water’s melted and then pumped down here,” Aurora said, gesturing at the piping. “Among other things, it helps manage the heat loads in the domes, supplies water to us, and feeds the hydroponic farms that grow our food.”
“Why didn’t you just create water wherever you wanted it?” I asked. “For that matter, why don’t you just get rid of the bad guys? The villains? I mean, you guys are superheroes after all. You can do anything, right?”
She frowned. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means our wings were clipped a long time ago.”
I barely knew Aurora, but I already could tell that she didn’t like giving direct answers to questions. I had a cousin who was a jackass lawyer back in the day and he used to engage in the same kind of bullshit, verbal ju-jitsu.
We soared down through a tight corridor, little more than a tube through the bedrock and here there was a darker, more dangerous vibe. The walls were smeared with graffiti, there were heaps of trash, and in several niches to my right, I saw men and women fucking, fighting, and injecting each other with crimson liquid from large syringes. None of this seemed to bother Aurora.
The wave sled rocked to a sudden and complete stop and dropped to the ground, onto what looked like a landing pad made from steel.
My eyes ratcheted forward, and I caught sight of a blur.
A figure flew forward and dropped down onto the nose of the wave sled where he sat on his haunches, perched like a crow.
The man was black, muscular, tattooed, and mohawked, garbed in what looked like a wetsuit with the arms cut off, that was streaked with red slashes.
There was, what appeared to be a pair of drumsticks poking out of a pocket on the man’s suit, and in his hands was an ergonomically-shaped rocket launcher.
The man pointed the rocket launcher at me.
I threw up my hands as the man peered down over the weapon at me. A few seconds of terrible silence stretched between us and then he looked at Aurora.
“Is this the dude?” the black man asked.
She nodded. “This is Quincy.”
“Well hot damn and alright,” the black man said, looking me up and down. “No offense, but he don’t look like much, Aurora.”
“You do know that I can hear you, right?” I said.
The black man nodded. “Absolutely, positively. I just didn’t want you to be swole up before you stand tall before the man.”
“What man?”
The black man grinned. “The only one that matters. The man himself. The head of The Shadow Catchers. Mister Atlas Jackson. Now please step out of the sled onto the landing.”
I did.
The black man held up a balled fist and shouted, “GET READY FOR THE VOMIT COMET!”
He brought his fist down and—
WONK!
The section of landing under my feet opened up like a gallows trapdoor, and I disappeared screaming down into a semi-darkened hole.
10
I fell straight down and hit something hard, slamming onto my back, and then began sliding, feet-first, straight down through what looked like a chute, or tube.
The tube was ringed with tiny blue lights that provided some illumination.
I rushed down through the tube as if riding a water-slide, screaming my fucking head off as it zipped left, then right, then straight down at impossible angles.
And then the blue lights vanished and darkness greeted me, a profound blackness, like the bottom of the ocean.
I was jettisoned from the end of the tube, catapulted into the air.
For a few horrible seconds, it felt as if I’d been shot off the roof of a building, as I was pinwheeling down through the air toward the streets below and then—
WHAM!
I hit a spongy surface and spun sideways, eventually coming to a stop.
There was a ringing in my ears, and I noticed I’d lost a layer of skin on my elbows and arms, but I was okay otherwise.
I didn’t move a muscle as my eyes narrowed to slits.
I waited for them to acclimate to the darkness. The gloom seemed to conspire against me for a good five seconds, and then something flared in the distance.
It looked like a match, or a lighter.
The prick of light allowed me to see something roiling in the shadows.
A figure rose up.
Then three more.
The outlines of men and women.
Large men and women.
Moving toward me with menacing purpose.
I elbowed myself up and crouched.
Like any cornered animal, I instinctively searched for a way out, but couldn’t see shit in the murk.
It didn’t really matter anyway.
I mean, even if I could’ve run somewhere, where the hell would I have gone?
“Stop right there!” I shouted because frankly, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
One of the figures, a man, started chuckling.
The match, or lighter suddenly went out and a battery of lights flashed on.
The glare of the bonfire-bright light blinded me.
Squinting, I shielded my eyes with my right arm, slowly lowering it to see four figures, the outlines of what I assumed were superheroes like Aurora.
Standing front and center was a large black man in the autumn of his years. He had a black glove on his right hand and was bald as a stone. The dude had to be pushing almost sixty in human years, but he was still supremely jacked, his upper body inflated like the old Michelin Man.
He held a duffel bag in his left hand and wore a blue, two-piece outfit that accentuated his muscle-quilted frame. The material glowed with an eerie light as he strode forward and the way he carried himself, exuding power and confidence, immediately made me realize he was not someone to be trifled with.
Flanking him like a praetorian guard were two gorgeous ladies in dark compression suits that revealed their erect nipples. One of them was of indeterminate ethnic origin, nearly six feet tall, with long black hair (the same color as her lipstick), and skin the color of hammered copper. She had a dark mask covering her two eyes that glittered like bits of blown glass, and sticking up over her shoulders were a pair of swords secured in a backpack.
The woman next to her was shorter and more muscular with a tsunami of dirty-blonde hair bound in a ponytail that spilled down her backside. She looked like she’d been hand-packed into her compression suit which rode up to reveal her toned legs, and she had what looked like sock-puppets on each hand. She held the sock-puppets up and manipulated their tiny little mouths, staring down at them and soundlessly speaking as if they were all having a conversation.
Shadowing her was the fourth figure, a tattooed, tanned, bare-chested white man of medium height, sporting a New England Patriots football hat of all things (cocked backward on his head), and clad in sparkling red wrestling pants.
He was a handsome fella with a stubbled face, and sported a body that had been winnowed down to maybe two percent body fat. The dude was so friggin’ sliced and diced you could almost see his pancreas pumping insulin, but there was something off about his skin. It was coarse, roughly textured, resembling…the bark on a tree.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” the black man asked.
I looked around for Aurora or the other black man with the mohawk who’d pointed the rocket launcher at me, but they were nowhere in sight. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I set my jaw and swapped glances with the four figures.
“For starters, I’m pretty sure this is fals
e imprisonment, so I’d like to talk to my lawyer.”
The handsome man with the bark-like skin grinned. “There ain’t no lawyers around here.”
“How about the Constitution then?”
“Why would that matter?” the dark-skinned woman asked.
“Because you’re violating my rights.”
“Which ones?”
“All of ‘em!” I snapped.
The black man pinned me with a stern look. “Do you need a moment to get ready, Quincy Fletcher?”
“For what?”
“The test.”
“I don’t have any pencils or papers.”
“It isn’t that kind of test,” the woman with dirty-blonde hair offered.
“What kind is it then?”
The two women traded glances and then broke into laughter, clapping their hands together. I felt a chill of dread work its way up over the knobs of my spine, but before I could process everything I heard a sound.
It was coming from the black guy’s duffel bag.
It was similar to the sounds that had troubled me for years. A ringing, a thrumming, a sound that seemed to be made up of a thousand tiny sounds.
The black man crouched and removed a glowing crystal from the bag and tossed it up into the air.
There was a sharp tang of ozone as the crystal hovered in the air, changing colors and then—
It exploded without warning, and suddenly, everything was washed in a golden light.
The light splintered and then coalesced into a great wave that rolled forward, stretching from floor to ceiling, threatening to swamp me.
I held my ground, everything around me becoming brighter as the air shimmered and roiled.
I raised my hands and the wave of energy shattered at my fingertips.
The air filled with what looked like friction sparks as the shards of energy harpooned into my body and were somehow absorbed into my flesh.
My body quaked as if I was being electrocuted and then, after uttering an uncontrolled, high-pitched wail, a powerful force suddenly welled up inside of me. My hands pulled back involuntarily, and I screamed at myself to control the fucking energy.
Don’t do it! I shrieked internally.
Do not fucking kill the superheroes, Quincy!
But I had no dominion over my own body, and so my arms flapped forward and—
BAROOM!
The absorbed energy was directed back at the four figures who were tossed through the air as though the leading edge of a hurricane hit them.
They sailed twenty feet through the air, bounced off the walls, and slid to the ground.
Not. Cool.
A few terrible seconds of silence ensued, and I was sure I’d killed them all. What the hell was wrong with me?! I’d just iced a supervillain back on Earth and now here I was, trapped on an alien planet, taking names and kicking additional ass!
One of the four figures moved.
It was the guy with tree bark skin.
He’d rolled over and torqued himself up to his knees.
The two women pushed themselves up and did the same.
The black guy was the last one up. All four stood and then the black guy wheeled in a flourish and ran up the side of one of the walls like one of those Parkour-stars from the old YouTube site back in the day.
He flew through the air and landed with a thud directly in front of me.
I felt tiny and insignificant in his mighty shadow, terrified that he was about to vaporize me for what I’d done.
His gaze narrowed and a vein throbbed in his neck.
I nearly pissed my pants because the big man looked capable of almost anything.
And then his lips tugged up in a smile, and he threw back his head and laughed, turning to the others. “HE DID IT!”
The others cheered and then the black man spun back to me. “Congratulations, Quincy. You passed the test.”
11
Bark man and the two women were all smiles as they rushed toward me.
“A little green, but you’re as good as advertised,” bark man said, shaking my hand vigorously, his palm having the texture of sandpaper. He held my hand up like a prizefighter. “The badass who took down Damnation Man!”
“That was totally an accident.”
“Sure it was, killer,” the shorter of the two women said, rubbing up against me, her pneumatic breasts nearly knocking me off my feet.
“I’m serious. I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” I replied.
The tall, caramel-colored woman with the swords wagged a finger. “Don’t be coy.”
“I’m not. I’m Quincy,” I replied, pointing to the nameplate on my shirt, which caused the two women to giggle again.
“Atlas Jackson,” the black man said. I shook his mallet-sized left hand, and he pointed to bark man. “His name is Splinter,” then to the taller woman, “that’s Liberty,” and finally the shorter one with the sock puppets, “and that’s Lyric.”
Lyric held up her puppets and did child-like puppet-voices. “And this is Beatrix and Barney.”
I did a double-take at the puppets, then turned back to Atlas. “Who are you guys?”
Atlas folded his thick arms over his chest. “The Shadow Catchers.”
I studied their costumes. “If you’re superheroes, how come you don’t wear capes?”
Atlas looked at the others, a bemused smile playing at his lips. “We don’t like to label ourselves or play to stereotypes, Quincy, largely because things are rarely black and white in Fiasco Heights.”
“Which is cool with me, because I think this whole thing is one big misunderstanding.”
“How so?”
“I’m not even supposed to be here.”
“Not true,” said Lyric, holding up her puppets and manipulating their mouths while miming puppet voices, “since the beginning of time, you were destined to be here at this very moment.”
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Splinter said, angling a thumb at Lyric. “She was dropped on her head when she was little.”
Lyric stuck out her tongue as I turned back to Atlas. “There was a lady who brought me here.”
“Aurora.”
I nodded. “She killed something called a Phantasm upstairs and…where the hell is she?”
“I’ve been here the entire time,” a feminine voice said. I looked over to see Aurora appearing out of a nearly-invisible door at the side of the room, the trap bottle in her hands. I saw she was wearing a necklace of some kind. A silver chain with a tiny glass bottle that contained a red liquid. The black dude with the mohawk followed her in.
Aurora tossed Damnation Man’s ring to Atlas, who admired it. Then she gestured to the mohawked man. “That’s Kaptain Khaos.”
“Spelled with two k’s,” Kaptain Khaos said, making the letter “k” with his fingers a la throwing up gang signs. “Because shit just sounds cooler with two k’s in it. Am I right or am I right?”
I didn’t respond, turning back to Atlas instead. “I imagine you have additional questions, Quincy.”
“Understatement of the friggin’ century.”
Atlas nodded. “Then follow me. There’s very little time to brief you on everything.”
“Are you guys in trouble or something?” I asked.
“That all depends…”
Depends on what?! I wanted to ask, but before I could, Atlas set off across the room as the others followed. They moved so briskly it felt like I was walking in slow motion and soon I had to jog just to keep up with them.
A red laser beam splashed Atlas’s face, moving back and forth over his eyes. The red light turned green, and a door opened on the far wall to reveal an inner chamber hidden behind an airlock.
Atlas waved his right palm over a scanner, and the airlock opened.
“You got an awful lot of security for people who aren’t in trouble,” I said.
“After what’s been happening, we can’t be too careful,” Liberty whispered to me.
“What
’s happening?”
“Our world’s literally been turned upside down,” she replied as Aurora silenced her with a look.
We stepped through the airlock which closed behind us with a thump.
The space on the other side was sterile, circular, and lit by an overhead light shaped like a halo. There were several tiny, drone-like machines hovering in the air and a small collection of weapons and gear lining the walls and laid out on a metal table.
Atlas whistled to Liberty who lowered her backpack, yanked it open, and pulled out a small black object that was the size of a baseball.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The divine skein,” she replied, handing it to Aurora.
“What does it do?”
“Provides answers,” Atlas said.
Aurora tossed the baseball-shaped object to Atlas who dropped it on the ground as two things happened at once: the lights went out and, a pillar of yellowish light issued up from the ball and Kaptain Khaos whipped out his drumsticks and began pounding out a drumroll on the metal table.
“The time is nigh, so draw near,” Atlas said to me as the drumroll stopped. “Listen closely, for I will reveal the hidden secrets of the universe to you.”
12
The yellowish light became pure white and then changed again to a swirling gray vortex that hovered in the air before me.
Curious, I reached out and waved my hand through the vortex which remained unaffected. Inside it shone a pinpoint of light, a prick of energy, a spark of life in the nothingness.
The light expanded to a golden cone to reveal nebulous forms that ghosted past like sharks through the water. The forms took on the features of men and women, and they were writhing in the cone of light like fetuses in yolk-colored, embryonic sacs.
“In the beginning, there were the Elementals,” Atlas said. “The mighty men and women of renown. The Apkallu, the craftspeople, the architects of everything.”
“Where did they come from?” I asked.
