Sucker Punch, page 1
Sucker Punch
A Super Short Superhero Romance
Book 2 of The Gemini Conflict
By
Jamie K. Schmidt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Sucker Punch (Super Short Super Hero Instalove Romantasy, #2)
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Epilogue
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About the Author
Sucker Punch is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright @2023 by Jamie K. Schmidt.
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Prologue
Ten years ago
Brynn
The ceiling that fell on her head would have killed a normal human. Brynn Davis hadn’t been a norm in a long time. It stunned her, though, so she lay there underneath the rubble and wondered if this was where she would die. At least she would die free. Closing her eyes, she tried to drown out the screams and the explosions, hoping that the end would come quickly.
It didn’t.
The lab where they created and kept the Castor variants like her hadn’t been the first place that was attacked. Castors were the first strain that the Aethor Institute had created by having them drink a milkshake filled with things that had changed their DNA. The Castor strains were deemed a failure because they didn’t want to go to war.
But they were still useful in other ways. There was always another experiment or another data point to cover.
The Castors hadn’t even known something was going on until the Mercury variants seized control of the office building and then announced over the PA system what their plan was.
“The experiments end today. The Mercury variants are coming for every last norm in the institute. You will pay for what you have done to us. If the other supernatural variants want to join us, we will accept your fealty. If you aid or assist the norms in anyway, you will die with them. If you choose not to kill the norms, you will die with them.”
Brynn didn’t want to kill anyone. She wanted to go home, even if she wasn’t sure if home was still there for her. It had been five years since she had been free to come and go out of the Aethor Institute. Within that time, her landlord surely had evicted her. Brynn hoped that her parents hadn’t declared her legally dead. She hoped that they had never stopped looking for her.
After an eternity and even more brick, iron and wood piled on top of her, Brynn realized that she was very much alive. It took a while to unbury herself, even with her super strength, but when she did, the Aethor Institute was no more.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. So she did both.
And when she stopped shaking, she realized that she was all alone amidst the destruction. She tore through the rubble trying to find any survivors. But there weren’t any. She was alone.
Brynn ran then. She didn’t have super speed, but she had endurance and the driving need to get away from this nightmare. The Aethor Institute was situated out in the countryside of upper state New York. It took a few hours, but she eventually came to the interstate. Too afraid to hitch hike, she kept to the woods and followed the highway until she came to a truck stop.
Brynn had never seen a more beautiful sight. But she had no money to buy food and she was starving. She didn’t have access to a phone to call her parents. There were state police everywhere, though. Maybe they could help her.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Are you one of them?” One of the staties pointed a gun at her.
She held up her hands in defense.
“I’m from the Aethor Institute,” she said. “I want to...”
Three taser bolts hit her from all four sides and she tumbled to the ground in agony.
“...call my parents,” she moaned out, pain arcing through her tortured body.
“Are you a supe?”
Brynn nodded. “I es...scap...ped.” Her teeth chattered and it was hard to talk.
They tased her again. As she jerked and wept, they cuffed her and threw her in the back of the police car. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. When the police moved away from the car, Brynn snapped the cuffs. She was dizzy. Her chest was on fire.
She was so tired. So hungry. In too much pain to think.
Then she smelled something delicious. Coffee. Fumbling into the front seat, she grabbed the to-go cup and drained it in several long swallow. Five years. It had been five years since she had tasted coffee.
Then she noticed the cop had left his lunch in the front seat. Reaching over, she snagged the lunch box and wolfed down the contents. Brynn didn’t even know what she was eating. She forced herself to chew more slowly. She devoured the rest of the sandwich and chips. She gnawed on the apple until it was stem and seeds.
She could breathe again. Resting her head against the window, Brynn knew she couldn’t go back to a cell. Even if she could probably break out of this one. The meal had been small, but it would give her enough energy to use her super powers to escape. She wished it didn’t have to be this way.
Kicking the car door off the hinges, Brynn darted out and headed for the tree line. She heard shouts and gunfire behind her, but they couldn’t catch her. She kept on running.
Peter
Peter Strong punched at the door of his cage, hoping he’d weaken it enough to get out. Why he thought that this time would be any different, he didn’t know. But it was either that or wait to die while the building came apart around him.
A laser blast blew the door to his lab off the hinges, and three Mercury variants stormed in.
“Pollux lab,” one sneered.
“You,” the leader said. “Join us or die.”
“Get me out of here and I’ll bash through any wall that isn’t made out of reinforced titanium,” Peter said.
The leader touched a button on his goggles and a laser beam sheared through the door. Peter barely had enough time to jump away. The red beam singed his arm when he wasn’t fast enough. Melted, the door sagged. Peter kicked it off its hinges.
“Make a hole in that wall,” the commander said.
Peter ran at it full tilt and hit it with his shoulder. He barely felt the plaster and wood give away.
“Let us out,” Three men and two women shouted when he burst through to the next room. They were in cages, but unlike his, they weren’t reinforced. As the Mercury variants came through the hole he made, Peter freed the five supes inside.
“More Pollux variants,” the same one said in the same disgusted tone.
“Join us or die.”
“Just get us out of here and we’ll do anything.”
That seemed to be the theme of the day as they went from room to room via the walls when the doors wouldn’t budge. But then a rolling explosion shook the building and it started to collapse around them.
“We still have people to free,” Peter said.
“Move or die,” the Mercury variant said, shoving him.
Peter, even with his super strength, went sprawling several feet. Mercury variants were the elite soldiers, super strong—but mostly super psychotic. The Pollux strain variants were a step down in lethality, but a step up in sanity. Peter didn’t argue with them. You don’t argue with crazy, and he needed to be free of the Aethor Institute.
Getting free of the Mercury variants, however, was going to take some time.
Chapter One
Ten years later
Brynn
Brynn tasted blood as she took a nasty left hook to the jaw. She had mixed feelings. One the one hand, it was nice not to have to worry about injuring a norm in the underground mixed martial arts competition she was participating in. On the other hand, other supernaturals hit like a train. The woman she was facing off against was probably a Pollux variant because Brynn was the only Castor variant that she knew that liked to throw hands to blow off steam. When you had been pumped full of chemicals that changed your DNA and made you superhero strong and superpowered reflexes, you couldn’t just meditate away a bad day.
And Brynn had one hell of a day today.
She bobbed and weaved, lashing out with a turning kick and following up with two quick jabs. Her opponent was fast. She was never where she should have been. Brynn wondered if she had super speed and took another knock to the face that rocked her back when she paused a nano second to consider it.
Damn it. She couldn’t afford to lose this match. Literally. She had bet her last hundred dollars on herself to win. She needed grocery money until her paycheck from the gym, where she did personal training, cleared.
There had been a weird vibe in the city ever since two giant robots had appeared out of nowhere and started wrecking the lower East side last month. Two flying superheroes had saved the day and dismantled the robots. Luckily, no one had been hurt. But everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Who was behind the robots? What did they want?
And more importantly, who were these superheroes and what were their plans?
The gym had been crammed full of norms who wanted to bulk up in case they were called upon to defend the city against giant robots or flying freaks. Little did they know they were being trained by one of the freaks they were bitching about.
“I’m glad the Aethor Institute was destroyed,” one of her clients told her as they worked on her core.
Brynn had agreed. What her client hadn’t known was that Brynn had been inside when the bombs went off. The fact that she had only survived by cowering in a corner as the building came down, and then using her super strength to dig herself out from under the rubble, made her deeply ashamed to this day.
“But they should have euthanized all the freaks.”
That earned her client an extra five reps with an additional five lbs. That’s what her parents had told her, almost verbatim when she had arrived home after being gone for five years. Brynn thought they would have welcomed her with empty arms. When they found out she was a supe, her father had threatened her at gunpoint.
“Get off my property. You’re no daughter of mine.”
Brynn thought maybe her mother would stick up for her, but she had just cried and said, “My daughter is dead. She died five years ago. You’re a monster.”
After that, Brynn decided that she didn’t need anyone or anything from her old life. So she moved around until she settled here in New Athens City. It wasn’t the greatest place to live, but at least she wasn’t behind bars. She kept her head done, shunned everyone outside of work, and was grateful to no longer be behind bars.
“I feel sorry for them,” another gym member chimed in from the treadmill. “They were tortured and experimented on. They were human once.”
“They knew what they were getting into,” her client jeered.
Yes and no. Brynn compared it to selling blood and platelets. Only it had more complicated side effects. After receiving a few the experimental treatments at the Aethor Institute, she had gripped the table in pain from after drinking a milkshake that had usually been tasty and pleasant to drink. Brynn had bent the reinforced metal in two. After that, they tested her until they found a metal she couldn’t twist into balloon animal shapes. And then they had imprisoned her inside a cage made of it.
Another punch from the fast supe made Brynn regret letting her mind wander. She was starting to see little birdies after each shot. She knew it was now or never. Pretending to sag and wobble, wasn’t a hard stretch. When her opponent went in for the kill, Brynn exploded up from a crouch with an uppercut. Had Speedy been a norm, Brynn would have popped her head off her neck with that punch. As it was, Speedy’s head still snapped back, and she was unconscious before she hit the ring floor.
“Winner and still undefeated champion, The Masked Marauder!” The announcer raised her gloved hand up in the air.
Pfew, now she could lay off the ramen noodles and get some real food. Taking a last look at her opponent, Brynn wished she could shake hands with her or at least get a peek at her under her mask. It was lonely being a freak in this city. She could have used a friend. One who knew what it had been like in the laboratories of the Aethor Institute, as well as one who knew the dangers of being a supernatural human surrounded by norms who wanted you dead or imprisoned because they were scared of what you could do.
Meh, it was just as well. Undoubtably, she was probably a Pollux strain variant and would be more trouble than she was worth. Not that Brynn had a leg to stand on, as a Castor variant strain, she shouldn't have even been here exposing herself and her powers to anyone who paid the admission fee. But desperate times had caused desperate measures, and it was either fight for her dinner or starve. Besides, opening herself up to someone—even another supe—was a recipe for disaster. Brynn didn’t want the heartache of caring for someone again only to be rejected or worse, losing them to violence.
As Brynn ducked out of the ring and made her way back to the locker room, she slapped a few hands, dodged a few gropers, and moved just in time to avoid getting a cup of piss thrown at her.
Just another night in the dregs of New Athens City.
PETER
Peter Strong was undercover, trying to get a scoop on supernatural fighting rings that were illegally being held in the New Athens City. What he really wanted to do was find out who or what had set two giant robots loose in the city last month. Unfortunately, he had no leads. He was waiting for the Gemini Initiative to set up a meeting of a lifetime between the Pollux and the Castor strain variants so they could compare notes. There was a small voice in the back of his head that wondered if any of the Mercury strain mercenaries had survived and were now coming out of the shadows.
Paranoid much? It wasn’t paranoia if they were really out to get you.
After he had escaped the Aethor Institute by signing on with the psychotic Mercury strain variants, Peter had worked with them for a while. They made it clear that even though he was a Pollux strain, and therefore a weaker variant because of the dampeners the Aethor Institute initiated with the Pollux infusions, he was useful because of his super strength. They sent him in to batter down walls and gates, or to throw heavy objects at their enemies. The Mercury strain wanted revenge against the sadistic Aethor Institute, hunting down every employee from the CEO down to the janitors. And even then, it hadn’t been enough to satiate their bloodlust.
In one particularly ugly raid, Peter had been knocked out from a barrage of concussive grenades. The Mercury variants had left him for dead. When Peter came to, he decided to keep letting them believe that. He moved around for a few years, and when the last of the Mercury variants had perished in a blaze of glory, he knew he was safe. He ended up in New Athens City as a reporter for the local newspaper and their social media accounts.
There he joined up with the Pollux Legion. The Legion commanders were tough as nails supes who issued orders for all Pollux variants to follow. It was for their own safety, but sometimes the powers that be were a little vague on their motivation for some initiatives.
The Pollux Legions main goal was to keep an eye out on a small, but increasingly vocal group of norms that wanted to round up all the supes and put them in containment facilities—or execute the ones that refused to go. So far it was just noise. But Peter had a feeling that things could get ugly, real fast. He used his career to keep tabs on anything that the Pollux Legion would need to know just in case they had to prepare for war.
Peter was in luck. He had gotten into an event that was taking place in one of the subway tunnels that was currently out of commission for repairs. This was a chance to meet up with other supes, maybe even recruit any random Polluxes he came across. And yes, scope out if there were any Mercury variants lingering around the fringes of society. He heard the cheering of the crowd long before he saw the makeshift boxing ring.
Jackpot.
Peter was coming in on the tail end of a match, but he saw by the way a tall female was zipping around the ring, that she was a supe. The other woman was taking a few hard knocks. It took everything in him not to rush the stage and protect her—which was weird because he had to keep a low profile and she looked like she could handle herself. Before he could decide to blow his cover and put a stop to her getting beat, she landed a sucker punch that took the tall woman off her feet. The tall woman went sailing across the ring and landed with a hard bounce.
A quick ten count later and it was all over.
