October 6, 2083
Las Vegas
Luxor flew down the Vegas Strip, zapping cars and stealing light from the marquees as he went. One by one, casinos and restaurants lost power as Luxor went on his rampage. “Fear not, my children! I punish you because I love you! The age of darkness is nearly done, and the Age of Light will begin!”
Terror ran amok in the streets as Luxor made his way to the massive pyramid along the Strip. Yes, that pyramid. Atop the Luxor Casino, Luxor hovered and surveyed his latest conquest. Smoke billowed in the sky and car horns filled the air with the sounds of panic, fear, and anger. Yes, Luxor thought, this is a glorious day.
And then he showed up.
With a great gust of wind and a crack of thunder, Graviton landed beneath the glass pyramid. “You called?”
“Graviton! You’re right on time.” Luxor hovered slowly down the pyramid, that cocky smirk still on his face. “Tell me, what do you think of my kingdom?”
Graviton looked around at the chaos. “Looks like you broke it.”
“Ha! That’s what your narrow mind would think, isn’t it? No, I’m taking the old, dark world and molding it into my image. I must destroy the darkness to bring forth the light.”
“Fantastic. So, you summoned me out of my cozy cell. What do you want?”
Luxor landed in front of Graviton and the golden cape dimmed just enough for his face to be revealed. Luxor was a full foot shorter than his elder, and Graviton could see just how young and raw his opponent was.
Luxor offered his hand. “I’d like you to be my right-hand man. We’re the only Supers left, you and I. Think of what we could do together. I’ve already taken Sin City. All the money, booze, and women you could want are under my control. We can leave right now and march on Washington. You can have your vengeance against those who imprisoned you. Together, we can bring in a new era.”
Graviton looked the boy in the eye, then down at his hand. Fifteen years of pain could be repaid. He could take the money and buy a nice mansion, with beautiful women to warm his bed at night. He could drink away the demons and live the rest of his life in comfort. He had paid his debt to society.
The little girl from Mendocino raced across his mind.
“No. I reject your offer.”
Luxor looked shocked. “But. But you tried to do the same thing. This is your destiny, man. I mean, I’m offering you everything you tried to take and failed at.”
“Look at me, son. Do I look like a man that was fulfilled by this life?” Graviton gestured to the salt-and-pepper hair and beard he sported, matted and greasy; the lines in his face, caused by a life of pain and regret. “Look at me, kid. Remember this face. Turn around and fly away, someplace they can’t find you. Take off the suit and mask. Use your abilities for something that matters, or better yet, don’t use them at all. It’s better that way. Believe me.”
Luxor studied his elder for a moment. Confusion flashed across his face, then pain. Anger quickly followed. “No. I gave you your chance. Join me, or die.”
“Just wait a minute, son, think this through. You don’t have to do thi-”
In an instant, Luxor’s light cape whipped out and blasted Graviton 50 feet down the street. He landed roughly and rolled a few more yards before staggering to his feet. Luxor rose into the air above him. “If you won’t see the light, I’ll force you to! Get up and fight!”
Graviton looked around at the gathering crowd. Curiosity had outweighed panic, and the Strip had become an arena full of spectators. Graviton clenched his fists and focused on the crowd. A hum filled the air as the crowd felt a gentle force pushing them further from the fight. The humming grew louder and the pressure grew. The crowd had no choice but to let the force guide them down the road.
Luxor watched as the gathered throng was ushered away. “You sent them to safety? Why do you care whether they live or die?”
“They’re your ‘disciples,’ aren’t they? Why don’t you care?”
Luxor’s eyes filled with rage. His cape whipped out to engulf Graviton in a heat wave, while Graviton stretched out a hand. The cape narrowed as it approached its mark, then veered to the left. The light beam struck a gas station, which exploded with a crash of thunder. In the distance, the crowd cheered.
We’re too close. I’ll have to draw him out.
Graviton jumped and took to the sky; Luxor circled him in the air, steadily blasting his enemy with light. Graviton deflected each blast with ease, sending them into the sky and ground.
“Is this all you’ve got? I expected more from you. Or have you simply gone weak with age, old man?” Luxor smirked as he readied another blast. He pulled his hand back to prepare for another blast, then felt his blood run cold when his arm froze in place. His eyes could no longer move. His eyelids wouldn’t budge. His entire body went still as stone, and his lungs felt close to bursting. Graviton had his hand outstretched, holding the young man in complete paralysis. With a downward motion, Graviton sent Luxor crashing to the earth. Dust flew as Luxor smashed into the concrete, and the humming in the air subsided as Graviton landed beside his fallen foe. Luxor lay in the ground, bleeding and bruised.
“I told you not to do this. I gave you a chance.” Graviton looked at the boy beneath him. So much potential lay in that body. So much waste…
Graviton turned to fly away, in some direction—he knew not where. The dust scattered beneath his boots and he hovered a moment in place. Freedom at last.
The blast struck him in the shoulder and sent him sprawling to the ground, face first. He rolled to his side, the pain in his shoulder blinding him. Above him, Luxor hovered toward him.
“You can’t kill a god. But you were never a god, were you?” The gleaming cape twisted until it took the shape of a harpoon, poised to strike. “Goodbye, Graviton. Enjoy your Hell.”
• • •
The harpoon darted across the distance between both men. A split second before hitting Graviton, a burst of energy rippled into the air and caused the harpoon to divert to the right by mere inches. Luxor gathered the light to ready another attack, and another energy burst surged through the air. With the force of a thousand hammers, Luxor was sent flying backward into the desert. Graviton struggled to regain his footing, the pain throbbing in his shoulder. He looked at the damage, then realized there would be no more using that arm. A hole the size of his fist left a void in his back and shoulder, the skin seared and muscle charred. The arm hung limply at his side, useless. I have to end this, now. He took to the sky once more and followed his enemy. Five miles away, Luxor was hovering above a sand dune, clearly worse for wear from Graviton’s recent attack.
“You just won’t die, will you?” Storm clouds gathered overhead, and lightning filled the sky. The golden cape glowed brighter as the storm’s energy grew.
The wind blew through Graviton’s matted hair. The noise of the storm raged, but it was nothing compared to noise of the demons in his mind. Forgive me, all of you. Please…
Luxor stretched out his arms and pulled the light from the clouds in a dazzling display. The cape shifted from gold to purple, audibly crackling with power. Luxor let out a mad, wild laugh, molding his cape into a massive sword. Graviton raised a shield against the incoming attack. The sword struck once, twice, three times, each strike bouncing off Graviton’s energy shield. He’s gotten stronger. This won’t hold…
Luxor raised his sword high above his head, then sent it crashing down with a boom. Graviton raised his good arm and willed the sword to bounce off his shield. With a flash of light, he fell to the sand below.
“Look at your god! Plead for his mercy before he strikes you down!” Luxor screamed, his eyes now replaced with orbs of violet light.
The wind began to calm. The clouds stopped moving. All sound ceased. Graviton stood, eyes closed. No more pain. No more regret. No more demons.
Luxor fell to the ground as all air was pulled in front of Graviton. The air formed into a ball, spinning and pulling ash and dust
into it. The clouds fell from the sky and were sucked into the violent, rolling sphere. The air in the ball turned red, flames erupted, then died. The sand dunes began to pull toward the vacuum force in front of the older man.
Luxor struggled to his feet, his cape extending toward the vacuum. He tried to yell, to scream, to cry. Graviton looked at the boy, saw the confusion and fear etched in his face. No more demons. The vacuum ball grew as it inhaled sand, clouds, and air. Lightning flashed and disappeared as the sphere turned black. Sunlight poured down from the sky and joined the vacuum. The darkness of the sphere grew.
Luxor felt the skin of his fingers stretch, then his arms. His ears pulled toward the black vacuum, then his nose and hair. His eyes lost their shape and bulged from their sockets. His body lost all structure as the vacuum pulled him into the wormhole. For what seemed an eternity, Luxor stretched into the darkness. Within a microsecond, he was gone from the Earth.
The black hole now pulled at Graviton’s beard. This is how it must end. I am ready. His hair pulled, his knees grew weak. Warmth left him. He closed his eyes and, for the first time in nearly twenty years, he smiled.
The darkness rolled over him. The demons were silenced.
A Word From Ian Garner
I’ve been a fan of comic books for as long as I can remember. As a child, I fell in love with the Spider-Man saga, as well as stories about The Incredible Hulk. When I was a teenager, I found Batman to be my all-time favorite hero. As I grew older, I found myself trying to understand why I loved these characters so much. The one burning question in my mind was, “What makes a hero great?” Is it the costume? The moral code? Is a hero defined by his actions, or do his opponents define his strength?
I realized then that a hero is only as great as the challenges he faces. Spider-Man is destined to fight The Green Goblin. The Hulk is made stronger by surviving a battle with The Abomination. Batman’s crusade of justice relies on the terrors that The Joker and other villains unleash upon Gotham. In short, the villain makes the hero what he is.
I’ve always been a sucker for a redemption story. To me, there is nothing better than a story where a villain sets aside his vendettas and realizes that he is on the wrong path. “Redemption” is my homage to those stories that I have learned to cherish. Just as Darth Vader sacrifices himself to save Luke, Graviton sacrifices himself to stop Luxor.
Has Graviton really changed? Did he act out of love for humanity, or was his sacrifice made for selfish reasons? You are now the judge. If you’d like to discuss this topic, feel free to email me at [email protected]. If you enjoyed “Redemption,” I invite you to check out some other stories I’ve written at Amazon.com.
May the Force be with you, happy reading, and God bless.
TROUBLESHOOTING
BY HAYLEY STONE
TROUBLESHOOTING
BY HAYLEY STONE
While The Burnt Aspect lay at the bottom of a smoking crater at the intersection of 9th and J Street, his killer stood at its crumbling edge, reciting aloud the recipe for her mother’s chile rellenos. It wasn’t working, though. She wasn’t emerging from the simulation.
“Anytime now,” Green Viper grumbled to herself, and then started over again. “Take five fresh chile peppers and rinse them under cool water…”
Several fighter jets made passes overhead. The sonic boom funneled through the buildings like the tide crashing into shore, rattling her teeth. She thought she heard—but couldn’t be sure because she’d never made it this far before—the sound of tank treads grinding her way. What an unpleasant surprise. In prior attempts, the governor had never managed to mobilize the National Guard this quickly.
Viper swilled acid around in her mouth. “Figures,” she said. “The one time I succeed.”
She wondered what she’d done differently to alert the-powers-that-be ahead of time, and made a mental note to review once she pulled out.
If.
If she pulled out.
“Hello?” Viper shouted to the sky. “I’m not doing this for my health!”
That was certainly true. By any reasonable estimate, she had mere minutes until the jets rained holy hell down upon her head. Or the tanks came into range. Or, even more probable, some gallina in the army reserves sighted Viper through a scope—molted skin dragging behind her like a cloak, honeycombed by the viridian scales that pushed up through her flesh during moments of high stress; yellow eyes slashed with a dark black pupil—lost his nerve and opened fire.
No lie, this was some real bull.
She was going to die, horribly, because she couldn’t remember if the recipe she’d supplied for the command prompt included queso asadero or queso Chihuahua. It could have been either. Her mother always liked changing things up. Or she had—until a bullet punched through her C1 and C2 vertebrate on her second tour in Afghanistan, practically decapitating her in an instant. It was all very sad, but Viper had moved on. Her family used to call her cold-blooded, first as a joke because her hands and feet were always ice, and then because she didn’t waste time moaning over her dead mamá. After she joined up, suffered the excruciating experiments, hatched, and devoured her competition, her family stopped calling altogether.
She had come across her sister on a news program once a few year ago, debating with some liberal talking-heads over the use of genetically-modified soldiers inside U.S. borders. The news anchors kept trying to get her to condemn N.E.S.T. and Viper, Manic, Gharial and all the rest of Viper’s brood-squad, acting as though they hadn’t praised the project a year prior when the squad liberated a gay concentration camp in Chechnya. Never mind what Viper’s team had been asked to do afterward. Apparently it was okay when the violence was happening far away, to strangers whose expressions the cameras never seemed to capture in anything but hatred. But here at home? At home they were monsters. They were a threat.
But none of that mattered at the moment.
Right now the important thing was figuring out how to pull the ripcord and get out of this nightmare before Viper’s death-to-kill ratio grew any more embarrassing.
Honestly, she should have chosen a simpler command to trigger the callback. This whole thing could have been avoided with two freaking words: ginger snaps. That’d been Manic’s suggestion. But, no. She’d had to get fancy trying to impress Manic’s new IT girl.
Sasha was the only member of N.E.S.T. who hadn’t arrived warped by the military industrial complex. Her normalcy, which Viper initially assumed she would find boring, and her genuine delight in all things pertaining to Disney movies was actually kind of charming. The rellenos recipe had been an invitation, but maybe she’d been too subtle.
“Slit the peppers along the side and fill with queso asadero. In a separate bowl, begin whisking—” was all Viper managed to get out before a sniper’s bullet sent her back to morning.
• • •
Sixty-one of the same damned days later, Viper cornered The Burnt Aspect in the nonfiction aisle of his favorite used bookstore.
He would have been easy to pick out even if Viper hadn’t done this a hundred times before. The Aspect dressed in a shock of white pants and a button-down shirt, the latter’s bright paisley pattern proclaiming an ignorance or otherwise indifference to current fashion trends.
Sunglasses flattened his already short dark hair, and Viper saw herself in their reflection while the Aspect studied the cover of a book on composting. Huh. He has hobbies. The glare from the overhead lights cut her reflection in half, and Viper bared her poison-slick fangs like a child making a face in a mirror seconds before he looked up.
Her expression sprang back to neutral in an instant. She averted her eyes to the shelves.
Por Dios. Had it really come to this?
When his back was to her, out of pettiness she moved to slam him up against the metal gondola. His powers of opposition redirected the kinetic energy right back at her like a bat rebounding off dirt. It was nothing less than she expected and as humiliating as it was to be sent careening into
an island of bestsellers, it was still a little satisfying to have at least tried inflicting injury on him. His abilities were truly extraordinary. Too bad the government wanted him dead, and put Viper in the best position to see it happen.
The Aspect politely offered to help her up, but she swatted his hand without thinking. Her own palm immediately hummed with pain. Viper hissed. She knew better than that.
“I’m sorry, have we met?” the Aspect said, furrowing his brows.
In real life, she doubted his manners would hold up, especially once his powers were nullified and his face began to run like butter from her acidic kiss, but the computer operating the simulation didn’t know any better. Usually she answered his question with a lie. No, I don’t think so. Or The President sent me. He needs your help. Please come with me. Or There’s a man outside who says he’s going to blow up the capitol building. Hurry!
But today she was too tired for games, worn out on all the sameness.
Instead she said, “Too many times to count. Want to grab coffee down the street?”
He looked confused. “You just tried to attack me.”
“And I failed. Obviously. So, coffee?”
They walked down to a small café with a generic storefront and unmemorable name, Viper leading the way. An A-frame outside showcased the talented chalk art of one of the employees in the form of an anthropomorphic coffee mug enthusiastically recommending the Drink of the Day.
Viper tried to ignore the niggling sense of unease she got when faced with something new after months of tedium. Not for the first time she considered the extent the computer had gone to in order to create such a convincing world for her to experiment in, and wondered how hard the system would work to maintain the illusion. If she hopped on a plane, could she reach an entirely new continent populated by strangers? Or would the computer render the same environments wherever she went, recycling the same faces until they all blurred together? If she went too far, would she simply hit an invisible wall as in a video game?
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