Making Supers 1, page 2
Giselle drew a key out of her pocket with a twinkle in her eye. “It’s no super-penis, but it should get the job done.”
The lock fell away under a moment of attention from the key.
I pushed the gates open with a grunt and a bit of help from my shoulder. They were damned heavy things, and nothing like the automated entries Empyrion was used to, but that just assured me that I was in the right place. My old man loved technology, but he had a strong view on the importance of analog for security reasons.
Giselle got back into the car to bring it through into the parking lot, and I swung the gate shut behind us. The complex was made up of two-story brick buildings, all squat and cheap-looking, utterly unremarkable in every way.
A small thrill rolled through me as Giselle and I stepped up to the first doorway.
What had my dad left behind for me to find?
A scanner stood over where the door handle should have been. It was a boxy piece of tech from a couple of decades ago, and I pressed my thumb against it. A shade of green rippled over my fingerprint, and a grinding click opened the door a second later.
I pushed the door open and gestured gallantly.
“Ladies first,” I said.
“Such a gentleman,” Giselle snarked.
She stepped inside, and I followed her in. I made sure to close the door behind us and tried the lightswitch. Halogen lights flickered to life, revealing an empty flat with no adornments.
Giselle walked to the center of the lounge room with a frown, and I swept my eyes over the safe house for any irregularities. The place didn’t look like anything special, but a door had been installed in a far wall that backed onto the neighboring flat.
“I’m confused,” Giselle said.
I checked the kitchen cupboards, but didn’t find anything except dust. The whole place was a callback to an earlier time, before smart homes and talking appliances.
I found a metallic suitcase under the sink. I grinned as I pulled it out. Giselle’s eyes widened in excitement, and she joined my side as I slapped the thing down on a benchtop.
Another old-school thumbprint scanner sat where the locks should have been, and a touch of my hand clicked the suitcase open with ease.
Giselle gasped as she saw what was inside.
A simple semi-automatic pistol sat nestled inside foam, beside a roll of cash, a concealed-carry appendix holster, and a spare mag of ammo. A white piece of paper sat under the gun as I scooped it up and checked the chamber.
“What the hell?” Giselle said, shocked. “That’s—”
“Unregistered and untraceable,” I agreed. “Seems pretty standard, for dad.”
“Guns are illegal in Empyrion. You have to know that.”
“Shame.”
I set up the holster in my waistband and pulled out my loose white t-shirt to hide the weapon from any casual inspection. The gun went into it, with the safety firmly clicked in, and I pocketed the roll of cash.
Giselle swallowed her shock after a moment, and she opened the small slip of paper still left in the case.
“I can’t read it—it’s just letters and numbers,” she said.
“Code,” I told her, and took it from her fingers with a nod.
The cipher was an old one, and virtually impossible to put together without knowledge of the cipher. In typical dad fashion, it was short and terse. I took a minute to translate it.
“Starter Town,” I read aloud. “Form a party, and check the Basement.”
Giselle stared at me like I’d started speaking French.
“Means that I’m here for a while,” I said. “He wants me to put a crew together. But Basement is capitalized. What the hell is that about?”
Giselle’s face went white. “They’re terrorists.”
That made me look up at her. “Come again?”
“Anti-superhero group online. Hacktivists, known to use mercenaries, and sworn enemies of Pinnacle.” She gulped. “They’re impossible to find or track down. Hell, we’ve had to fight off a few of their attacks at SatSec. They paid off a couple of employees to snoop around inside of our code and try to weaken it.”
I pocketed the note and muttered a curse. “Well, that’s the mission. I’ve got to find them. Any idea where to start looking?”
“Dean, they’re impossible to find. That was the point I was trying to get at.”
“They’ve got to have left some trails behind,” I argued. “Surely—”
The lights in the flat went out and plunged us into darkness.
I wheeled around to check the door, but it was still closed. I’d locked the gate and the door behind us, so anyone reaching the building’s breakers would have had a hard time getting in.
Giselle’s breathing sped up in the dark beside me, and I felt her shrink against my side like a frightened kitten.
“You get a lot of power outages in Empyrion?” I asked.
“No, not since Pinnacle poured money into the grid,” she replied, quickly.
I crossed the flat, found the heavy curtains keeping the light out, and glanced out onto the street. The afternoon had faded into dusk, and the streetlights outside illuminated the neighborhood. The lights outside the apartments were dead, though, and my gut twisted itself into a series of adrenaline-fueled knots.
“Head out the side door,” I instructed.
“Dean, what’s going on?” Giselle asked, panicked.
“Tell you when I’ve got an idea,” I said grimly. “I don’t like this.”
The gorgeous woman’s heels clipped across the kitchen floor, and she tugged at the newly-installed door into the next flat. It stayed locked, however, and I muttered a curse as I moved to join her. The dark made it difficult to see, but another fingerprint scanner had been installed on the door handle. It clicked at my touch, and I pushed it open.
The lights in the flat snapped on and off for a second, like a reverse brown-out.
I cleared my new gun from its holster and covered the front door.
“Go,” I urged Giselle.
She went into the next room without argument, and I backed in after her.
Cold blue lights illuminated the new room from back-up power systems that my old man had probably installed himself.
I closed the door behind us and rapidly took in the room.
Steel benches covered most of the floor space, and old computers with blank monitors took up a good chunk of them. The rest of the place was clear of anything, except a bizarre structure on the opposite side of the room. It looked like a sci-fi birthing pod, eight feet tall, with glass doors, framed by blinking lights. It could have easily fit two people inside, and I stared at the thing for a moment in shock.
“Know what that is?” I asked Giselle.
“No idea!” she squeaked back.
I checked the walls for another door, but the room was self-enclosed. The only way out was the same way we’d come in, which struck me as odd for dad. He’d always made sure that his safe-houses had bolt-holes. What made this one different?
The unmistakable click of the front door opening in the main flat echoed.
The door, which was coded to my fingerprints.
My adrenaline kicked up another notch, and I took up a position against the wall.
I forced my breathing to a calm as I covered the only entryway into the weird lab. Giselle, a girl after my own heart, had taken cover behind a bench behind me to avoid any potential ricochets.
A muffled, heavily-modulated voice echoed out of the room beside us.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are….”
Giselle slammed a palm over her mouth to stop herself from making a sound, and I sank into a tactical crouch. I didn’t know what the fuck any of this was about. But something about that voice was familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it. As my mind raced to find the information, I decided to go on the offensive.
The invader knew we were here.
And, unless I missed my guess, he had something to do with the lights.
And he could effortlessly unlock fingerprint-coded locks.
This wasn’t just another home invader with a weird sense of humor. He was here for a reason, and that reason had to be tied to my dad. I forced myself not to swear under my breath at my old man before I called out to the voice next door.
“We ordered pizza two hours ago! Where have you been?”
A dry, static-filled chuckle echoed through the room, and the door directly ahead of me clicked open effortlessly.
I forced half a breath out of my lungs and steadied my hand as the invader appeared through the entrance.
My brain gave me a half-scrambled image of a shortish figure in a long, black cloak, neon-green highlights in a half-spandex, half-armored outfit, and a hood deep enough to hide the fucker’s face.
Giselle shouted something as I pulled the trigger and said goodbye to my hearing for a while. I dumped three rounds into the Halloween dress-up freak, two to the chest, and one at his hood. White noise filled my ears, and the figure jerked as if he’d just been slapped.
He didn’t fall, he didn’t bleed. He just turned and looked at me.
I kept firing.
Two bullets tore into his inner thighs, another smashed into his gut, and I focused the rest of the shots at the left side of his chest. My palms were dripping with sweat, I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs, and my ears screamed with white-noise. But I’d trained with the best and brightest when it came to guns.
Unharmed, the cloaked supe looked merely annoyed by the rounds. He might have stepped back a couple of times. He flicked a hand out of his cloak. A thick, machete-like knife appeared like magic in his hand, and, with calm steps, he strode toward me.
I kicked off the wall beside me, rolled to my feet, and vaulted over a bench as fast as I could. The cloaked figure stalked after me and overturned the bench with a single hand, sending computer stuff skittering everywhere on polished concrete.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I wasn’t dealing with a poser. This guy was an honest-to-god superhuman, with all of the strength and bullet resistance that came with it.
I spun to face the nightmare, noted that part of my hearing had come back already, and raised my gun again.
The supe approached without any hurry and tilted his head like some horror-movie ripoff.
“—you going to do with that?” the modulated voice asked.
“Make you uncomfortable,” I replied fiercely.
I ejected the magazine, slapped a fresh set of rounds in with the practiced ease that came with hundreds of thousands of repetitions, and dumped bullets into the supe’s crotch. The hooded figure rolled back with a curse, lunged to a wall where the shadows were longest, and vanished from sight like a goddamned magic trick.
I tracked his last known location with the muzzle of my gun, while scrambling for options in my head. I needed to get Giselle clear, that much was obvious. My bullets couldn’t do any meaningful damage to an armored, super-tough superhuman, but a bunch of rounds of 9mm to the family jewels would have made anyone flinch.
I stepped back, found Giselle, and hauled her to her feet.
“Run!” I shouted, as loud as I could.
Her head whipped around, and the supe appeared from the shadows behind us like a ghost.
I ripped Giselle clear, spun around, and did the craziest thing I could think of.
I lunged toward the lunatic with the cleaver, went low, and felt something rip across my shoulder blades. I ignored the sting of pain as I used my momentum to slam the supe against the wall. The supe just melted away, and I cracked my skull off brick like an idiot.
He’d cut me, and gotten clear.
Shit, shit, shit.
Giselle hadn’t escaped. She sat there, paralyzed, and her eyes darted from shadow to shadow, looking for any sign of the supe.
I didn’t know much about supes, aside from the odd scrap with a wannabe supervillain, but this guy had to be close to a B-tier threat. Not top-of-the-line powerful, but strong enough to turn the lab into an abattoir with our pieces all over it. He could zip in and out of shadows like they were doors.
Wait a minute.
I darted forward, caught Giselle’s hand, and pulled her out of her paralytic state. She gasped, but followed my lead, as I sprinted through the rows of tables toward the weird glowing pod at the other end of the room. I swept monitors and PCs down to the ground behind me in an attempt to slow the fucker down, but shouldn’t have bothered.
The supe melted out of the shadows beside the pod, stepped in front of it, and raised his huge knife. I shoved Giselle over a table as I brought up my gun again, and flung it straight at his head. The supe swept his head aside to dodge it, but the pistol tore his hood away from his face. A metal mask shrouded his features, but I spotted pale skin around his throat, and I did the last thing he probably expected.
I lunged at him again, like a howling barbarian from another age.
His knife sliced over my blocking arm and cut effortlessly through my shirt. I smashed my knee up into his balls. The blow stunned him, drove him back a step, and I used the rest of my momentum to tackle him into the pod. I pinned his throat with my good forearm, clubbed him with an elbow, and caught hold of his knife hand. Warmth began trickling down my cut arm.
Something robotic warbled out from behind the mask.
The fucker was laughing.
The skin on my good arm tingled like crazy, and a strange little box appeared across my vision in front of my red-tinged vision. The supe’s knife drove up, and I twisted as best as I could to dodge it. Steel scraped against my ribs, opened up another gushing cut, and I tried to read the strange, game-like notification in my vision.
Transfer Complete
Darkstalker Powers Stolen
The masked supe shoved me off him with a mighty push, and the back of my head noted that the crushing strength from earlier wasn’t there. He reared back, planted a kick into my gut, and propelled me out of the pod.
I covered my head as I hit the concrete, and rolled with the impact. Giselle appeared in my peripheral as she dived toward the machine. Her fist slammed down on a control panel, and a hiss of gas sealed the pod shut around the supe.
I pulled myself into a crouch, and the pain from the knife wounds rushed in. My hearing was still on the fritz, but it slid in and out. The modulated voice boomed through the room around us.
“Are you fucking serious?” he asked, incredulously. “I’m Darkstalker. There’s not a door in existence that can stop me, you little fucking runt.”
He laid a gloved hand against the glass door.
I looked up at him for a long second as my brain swam to make sense of what the fuck was going on.
Darkstalker stared at the glassy prison for a second, and then slammed a fist against it with a howl of rage. He didn’t pass through as he ought to have done. I realized just what the fuck had happened as he pummeled the glass door, over and over. It was like watching a kid throw a temper tantrum. The supe was trapped there, like a bug under a microscope.
And I’d just stolen his powers.
Chapter 2
Confused elation rushed through my body and chased away the pain from the wounds. I knew they’d be back later, with interest, but I pulled myself up to my feet, and watched the hooded former supe slam his fists against the glass and howl in impotent rage.
Giselle straightened up, stared at Darkstalker with astonishment, and glanced back at me. I picked up the pistol from the floor and checked the magazine as casually as I could.
I still had two rounds left.
I stowed the gun back in its holster, and a new window appeared in front of my vision. The shape and style of the notification reminded me of my dad’s custom software from SilverSky, and I paid close attention to the words while pulling back on my utter shock.
Darkstalker Powers Actualized
Shadow Stealth
Lock Breach
Resilience
No Active Powers
The ringing in my ears died down enough to hear Giselle’s voice.
“Dean, you’re bleeding everywhere,” she said, her voice tight with worry.
I glanced down at my bloodstained t-shirt. The cuts weren’t deep, thankfully, but they were ugly as hell and had still opened up plenty of real estate on my skin. I needed to get them closed sooner rather than later, but I needed answers before anything else.
“Hey, edgelord in green,” I called out. “Can you hear me?”
The cloaked figure halted his tirade for a second. He stared at me with silent rage.
I adopted the most annoying grin I could pull off and strolled closer to the pod. I’d stripped paint off his mask with my headshots, and the guy’s stance was slightly off-kilter, like someone had pounded him in the balls repeatedly.
Oh, wait.
“Fuck you,” the modular voice spit out, higher than it had been before.
“I made it a rule to not do the mask thing again,” I told him. “Amsterdam was wild like that. Who sent you after us?”
The masked figure didn’t say a word, just glared daggers at me.
“I’m short on time,” I said, my voice losing its playful edge. “So I’m gonna give you until the count of three. Then she’s gonna open up the pod again.” I made a show of checking the chamber of my pistol. “I don’t know what just happened to you, but I’m gonna guess that the sauce that makes you bulletproof isn’t there anymore.”
The supe shrank away from the door as Giselle laid a hand on the panel. Damn, I liked the girl. She had guts, and she’d had the presence of mind to close the pod on Darkstalker after he’d kicked me out of it like a ragdoll. Her emerald-green gaze rested coolly on the cloaked figure, and she glanced at me with an emotionless expression.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said flatly.
I tapped the gun against my thigh. “Okay. One.”
Darkstalker trembled visibly under his suit as I raised my pistol to cover the entrance of the pod. I didn’t know what the pod was made out of, but it was a safe bet to assume it was tougher than it looked. Darkstalker’s body language wasn’t Terminator-scary anymore, either. He looked like a kid who’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
