Genesis

by Kipjo Ewers

  “Brian, what’s going on?”

  “Kyle …he took something …something that …was supposed to give him superpowers!”

  “Where is he?”

  “They have him in ICU,” He motioned, “This way!”

  They followed him to the intensive care unit where they were greeted by a near-hysterical Mrs. McArthur and Kyle’s older brother.

  “Oh Sophia,” She bitterly wept.

  Sophia without a word gave her a big hug of comfort.

  “Everything is going to be okay Grace,” Sophia whispered. “I promise. Now, what happened?”

  “I got a call that he collapsed right after recess in his homeroom and started screaming,” She fought to get out. “His veins are glowing bright orange, and his temperature won’t go down. A couple of his school friends admitted they injected themselves with this …stuff …that is supposed to give them …powers.”

  “Boosters,” Sophia muttered in disgust. “Who is the on-staff doctor treating him?”

  “I am,” said a man in his thirties in green medical scrubs walking over, “Dr. Mukesh Gupta.”

  “Dr. Dennison,” Sophia quickly introduce herself while shaking his hand. “Did anyone collect a sample of the drug they were using?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Dr. Gupta answered. “We just finished taking a blood sample. His cells appear to be literally evaporating. His temperature is now in a state of flux where it’s dropping and spiking every three minutes, the count before that was five minutes.”

  “Whatever he took has corrupted the Judgement Day virus,” Sophia exhaled. “It’s now misfiring.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. Gupta motioned wanting to know more.

  “A regular human body cannot withstand the superhuman abilities the virus possesses,” she quickly explained. “If the virus does not alter the entire body to adapt, certain activated abilities will kill the host. Whatever he took activated the dormant abilities of the virus, which is now killing him. May I see him?”

  “This way,” Dr. Gupta motioned.

  Sophia followed the doctor with a fretful Kimberly firmly behind her, and Kyle’s parents bringing up the rear. They entered the ICU making a beeline to Kyle’s bed where they found his frightened older brother and two nurses standing beside him monitoring his temperature. The nurses were armed with several packs of cold compresses to administer to him should his temperature spike.

  Sure enough, Kyle was in bad shape. His body was drenched in sweat, while his veins and eyes glowed a bright orange color. He shifted about the bed groaning and crying in excruciating pain.

  Sophia walked up taking his left hand while displaying a bright, encouraging smile on her face.

  “Hey Kyle, how are you doing?”

  “It hurts …it hurts so bad,” he squeaked.

  “It’s okay, I’m here for you,” she smiled. “Someone is also here to see you.”

  Kimberly’s tears fell as she walked up to the side of his bed, which triggered Kyle’s own.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hey,” he weakly answered back.

  “You big dummy,” she got out. “What’d you do to yourself?”

  “I just wanted …us to be friends again,” a deteriorated Kyle got out through his tears. “Mom and dad said …we couldn’t be cuz I’d get hurt if I hung around you.”

  “So, you thought if you had powers, we could hang out again,” Kimberly concluded. “Why didn’t you just call or text me silly?”

  “It’s not the same,” he shook his head. “I miss Sanctuary …I wish we didn’t leave. I miss Akram and you …I didn’t want to leave. And now because I’m a regular human …we can’t be friends …I hate it.”

  “We’ll always be friends,” she forced a smile while taking his other hand. “Nothing is going to change that.”

  “I really messed up,” he sobbed. “Am I going to die?”

  Grace McArthur erupted into a sob falling into her heartbroken husband’s arms as they stood there watching their son dying before them. Kimberly turned to her mother with widened eyes of fright.

  “No baby, you’re not going to die,” Sophia made a stern promise. “I’m going to do something that’s going to feel a bit weird, but is going to take away some of the pain, okay?”

  Kyle tearfully nodded as Sophia gripping his hand a bit tighter concentrated. Her eyes glowed brighter as an orange spark erupted around their handshake. Kyle groaned as the glow in his eyes and veins began to dim to the point that they almost disappeared.

  His family gasped with relief as Kyle became more comfortable where he laid. Sophia patting Kyle’s hand released it. She turned to give Dr. Gupta professional instruction.

  “I just drained the energy building up within him, this will prevent the energies within him from flaring up and possible detonating.”

  “Detonating?” Kyle’s mother gasped.

  “I need to contact a fellow colleague who can help deal with this,” Sophia continued remaining focused. “My daughter has the same ability as me and can keep him stabilized until I get back. I would advise working to break his fever.”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” he nodded.

  She quickly turned to her daughter.

  “You saw what I just did. Just watch him, and drain him if he flares up again, I will be right back.”

  Kimberly obediently nodded as Sophia walked back out of the ICU.

  The second she was back in the hallway, Sophia gave Vincent a command.

  “Connect me to Erica right now.”

  “Connecting,” Vincent obeyed. “Unable to connect with Dr. Champion.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Triangulating her position via orbital satellites. Dr. Champion is currently in Cali Columbia in a combat situation.”

  “Combat?” Freedom asked with a look of disbelief.

  “Dr. Champion and the rest of the Regulators are currently in intense combat with a large hostile superhuman force.”

  Without a word, Freedom exited the hospital and leaped into the air obliterating to sound barrier to get to Columbia as quickly as possible.

  CHAPTER 18

  Back at the battlefield, the Regulators were still engaged in intense battle with an army of boosted EVOs.

  In the middle of Lady Tech hovering to target multiple boosted criminals, a scream came out of her throat as a column of burning magma slammed Buster from underneath taking them further into the air.

  “Son of a bitch! Buster up! Up!”

  Buster’s VTOL system ignited providing greater thrust taking it higher getting it off the column. As the magma scorched underbelly of the mech, Buster let out a savage growl while flapping its wings targeting the boosted Apollo with the ability to manipulate volcanic magma.

  “Oh shit,” gulped the Red Rum Apollo.

  “Buster lo arruinó,” Lady Tech snarled.

  The magma wielder pulled a wall of lava from the ground to protect himself. It was not a strong enough defense against the highly concentrated blast of ion energy from Buster’s gullet that ripped through his wall atomizing him.

  “Miss, I am detecting Dr. Dennison incoming in less than a minute,” Maxine informed Lady Tech through the audio in her headset.

  “Say what?” Lady asked with widened eyes under her helmet.

  The simulated sound of thunder via a sonic boom shook the heavens as Freedom tore through sky forcing the eyes of everyone present to pause and look up.

  Lady Tech quickly banked her dragon out of the way as she barreled through the squadron of air bound boosted EVOs sending them either scattering or violently falling from the sky from the brute force her flight speed generated. She skillfully rolled into a mid-air front flip landing with a craterous stomp sending shattered debris flying blinding those EVOs in her vicinity.

  With no words, she walked to a male boosted Titan from the Russian Cartel and hammered him with a crushing right hook to the side of his skull upending him. His head made a small crater in th
e ground while the rest of his body went limp signaling that she had sent him into a state of comatose.

  She did not give him a second look as she began to blitz across the battlefield laying out anyone that was not a friend with a combination of Krav Maga, boxing, and brutal Muy Thai strikes.

  Her arrival rallied the Regulators causing them to fight harder. Sister Sledge flew over her with a mighty leap crashing shoulder first into a Titan taking him down, while Rogers clocked one with a battle wrecked automobile before dropping another with a high-speed thermal detonator to the face.

  An airborne Blitz strafed across the sky blasting two airborne Apollos out of the air before upending the third with a flying clothesline. A fourth attempted to attack him on his blindside until he was engulfed in a stream of flames. As the gangster’s chard body fell out of the sky, a stunned Blitz turned to a physically changed and hovering Merge using fire as a form of propulsion. Familiar abilities he knew she did not acquire during the battle because there was not a flame wielder on the opposing side.

  Down below a wounded Cyclone extended her hand unleashing powerful tornado blast as Nitro added his thermo-kinetic energy creating another flaming tornado blast enveloping several Titan and Elemental class boosted EVOs, while the speedsters scattered for cover.

  Not to be outdone, Heavy Element with the help of Sam stood in the middle of his right mitt as he hurled him through the air with the technique of a quarterback. On the way down, Heavy Element cocked back and rocked the jaw of a boosted Titan toppling him. He landed executing a tumble roll and came up to his feet drawing his sidearm blasting a hole into another enhanced Titan and an Elemental.

  He shuddered as Freedom shook the Earth coming out of left field with a right arm clotheslining on an incoming boosted Mercurian upending him. He watched in amazement as she targeted the remaining Speedsters by outmatching their speed and delivering crushing ambidextrous haymakers to lay them out.

  One boosted Mercurian attempted to flee the scene only to get smacked with a vicious shoulder charge sending him violently tumbling to the ground. Before he could stand up, Freedom grabbed him by his leg and gave him a ragdoll toss sending him sailing into Sister Sledge’s waiting fist caved his chest in during his mid-air descent.

  Angie and Maxine switched up their armament firing body dampener and nerve hammer rounds from their rifles as the battle came to an end.

  As Freedom made her way towards the battle-worn regrouping Regulators. Sam carried a wounded Cyclone in the palm of his right hand, while Nitro walked next to them. Rogers turned with a venomous glare directed at Lady Tech who felt it from the saddle of her mechanized reptile.

  “I did not call her!” She threw her hands up.

  “She didn’t call me,” Freedom said walking up to Rogers. “I was attempting to contact her on another matter when Vincent informed me about this ruckus. Now, what the hell is going on?”

  “How politely can I say none of you gotdamn business?” Rogers flatly asked her.

  “I think me swooping in and saving your miserable ass makes it my ‘gotdamn business’ Rogers.”

  “We had this situation contained!” Rogers barked back.

  “No, we didn’t,” the rest of the Regulators said in unison.

  “Shut up!”

  The senior members of his team glared back at him not appreciating the Sarge’s remark after what they went through, while the junior members were confused by his volatile outburst.

  “Last year September we came across a booster serum in the hands of ISIS insurgents that is capable of turning a regular human into an EVO in approximately three months.” A fed-up Erica blurted out. “We have been feverishly hunting down the manufacturers for the past eight months who has done an excellent job so far of covering their tracks to the point that they lead us into this ambush.”

  Freedom looked up at Lady Tech with stern disapproving eyes.

  “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

  “She was ordered not to tell you,” Rogers said stepping in. “And the answer to your next question is the information is and still is classified; accessible to government employees, which you are not.”

  Freedom calmly placed her hands on her hips, as her demeanor read she wanted to wrap them around Rogers’s neck.

  “So, we’re on a call me when you need my extra muscle and firepower basis, Sergeant Rogers?”

  “No one called you! You called on another matter and came here on your own volition remember? And in case you damn well forgot, that symbol on your shoulder is not a Regulator symbol, yet I allow you run in and out of our base like it’s your own personal HMO slash clubhouse,” Rogers barked at her taking a step forward. “I’ve been more than accommodating … “

  “Accommodating?” She snarled.

  “People …people,” Sister Shareef stepped in with her hands up. “This is not the time for this. We still need to find the people responsible for sending these goons into overdrive.”

  “Started searching for them the second the battle ended,” Lady Tech answered. “Whoever they are, they vanished once again without a trace.”

  Her answer planted a dejected look on each of her teammate’s face.

  “Well considering the remaining bad guys littered about the place are either dead, unconscious, or neutralized,” Freedom snapped. “Maybe you can finally tell me, Sergeant, what the hell is your problem with me?”

  “You want to do this right here and now?” Rogers snarled taking another step toward her. “Fine, let’s do this now. Why don’t we start with why the hell you met with Vitruvian Absolute on two separate occasions last year?”

  Freedom’s mouth fell a bit as if Rogers slapped her in the face in front of everyone. It slowly closed into clenched teeth.

  “You’re spying on me now?”

  “We were spying on Vitruvian Absolute, which despite their rhetoric is a registered hate group under the United States government,” Rogers corrected her. “No different from the KKK, and the fact that they are a superhuman hate group operating on US soil, they’ve become our business. You got caught while we were doing our jobs, which is making sure they’re not planning the next 9/11!”

  “Then you must have heard my conversations with them, right?” Freedom fired back. “Sitting down and reasoning with them to rethink their rhetoric, and how harmful their speech that they don’t believe is hateful actually is. That I am not their mother, nor some second coming of a Messiah here to lead them!”

  “A talk in which you chose to use the back entrance of their office on both occasions.” Rogers pressed.

  “To avoid a media circus!” Freedom returned in her defense. “Who would no doubt spin an innocent conversation and sit down, the way you’re doing right now!”

  “I’m not spinning anything, I heard the conversations remember?” Rogers shot back. “But if it looks bad to someone who heard your conversations, how bad do you think it looks to someone lucky enough to see you, who didn’t know your intentions?”

  “So now you’re my PR rep, Rogers?”

  “I’m trying to understand how someone who’s had more college than me with Master degrees out the wahzoo can be so reckless!” Rogers erupted, “Like outright threating the United Nations with that insane speech!”

  “I didn’t threaten anyone!” Freedom roared back.

  “Then what happens in seven years, Dennison? What matters do you intend to take into your own hands once the most powerful nations in the world don’t fall in line and do as they are told?”

  Rogers’s direct question had awkward eyes from the rest of his team turned toward her.

  “When I heard your address to the UN, I didn’t think of it as anything,” Rogers shrugged calming down a bit. “Didn’t ask, didn’t care because I thought I knew you and what you stood for, a lot can happen in seven years, and if our former President wasn’t concerned, why should I be.

  That was before you started doing things to make a whole lot of people nervous including me.


  Like throwing the Guards of the Republic a severe beating and then threatening their Supreme Leader.”

  “Are you serious?” Freedom asked him with a raised eyebrow of disbelief.

  “No, I will give you that,” Rogers held a hand up. “If I could do what you do, I’d probably done the same thing. But then there’s the strong-arming of the Chinese Prime Minister to allow you to walk North Korean refugees out of his country.”

  “I didn’t strong-arm anyone,” she answered back with a defensive tone.

  “You don’t have to after your kid posted that crazy video of you brutally beating a bunch of poachers within an inch of their life.”

  “I didn’t know she was going to post that, and they invaded my island with the intent to kill my animals!”

  “And then to top it off, you take an anti-aircraft vehicle and hurl it into al-Assad’s palace.”

  “Are you seriously defending that son of a bitch after he gassed his own people?” Freedom roared. “That anti-aircraft vehicle was intended to shoot down a plane of sick people and their families being transported to my island for treatment!”

  “I’m not defending anyone,” the Sarge fired back. “I’m defending the fact that your actions are making a lot of people nervous. It was different when the world did not know about you, and you were doing your thing in the shadows. Now everyone knows you are the most powerful being on the planet, and you’re going around doing whatever you damn well, please. People aren’t thinking ‘Yeah, she’s taking it to the bad guys.’ they’re thinking, ‘Holy shit, are we next?’ And unfortunately, my team’s affiliation with you has also put a target on our backs, especially from the new administration!”

  The rest of the Regulator team save for Lady Tech looked as if they had been tasered after the Sarge’s revelation. Freedom narrowed her eyes holding her peace until Rogers finished what he had to say to her.

  “The only reason we’re all not gone is because we’re still living off the goodwill of us saving the world alongside you and the Eye of Ra,” the Sarge pointed out. “And the fact that we’re the one unit from the old administration, that they can’t find someone else to replace, even if they are unsuitable for the job. We are the one thing the GOP will fight to the death defending tooth and nail against the new administration, but even that is waning, especially every time we’re seen around you.