Screaming in rage at himself and the rest of the world, Benny punched the side of the wall above the sprawled and damaged form of Jeff Wolfe. His fist smashed clear into it, leaving a cavernous hole in the plaster. He then ran towards the locked door, easily pushing it open by breaking the lock with a single forceful shove.
Benny ran through the now mostly empty school with such speed that he deftly evaded the security guards and custodial personnel who remained in the building. He rushed through the front doors, once again not knowing nor particularly caring where he was headed. His mind was filled with a barrage of painful thoughts, and he wanted the entire world to pay for what he was now on the road to becoming.
Chapter 6: Turmoil is the Worst Kind of ‘Moil
At the Valis Institute sequestered underneath a “dummy” fitness club located on Buffalo’s Lower West Side, special agent Donovan Jakes suddenly found his mid-afternoon coffee break rudely interrupted. The disturbance was the result of a nearly panic-stricken Claire Boone—the gifted head of the metahuman research organization’s psychic Esper Division—who managed to take the man unawares despite his decades of experience in clandestine military operations. He really hated when she did that.
“Donovan!” the curly-haired woman exclaimed as she burst into his quarters. “It’s happened!”
“Jesus, Claire!” the heavily trained but fully human special agent shouted as he leapt to his feet in a combat-ready position. “Did you forget how to knock? I’ve actually killed people who snuck up on me like that in the past.”
“Never mind your macho posturing right now, Donovan! It’s happened! I just sensed a spike in both his power and his emotional state! Each was strong enough to indicate some serious poop is now hitting the fan.”
“Who? Do you mean the Lonero kid? I’m guessing it’s him, considering you instigated our sponsors to establish this Buffalo branch of the Institute exclusively for the purpose of monitoring him.”
“Yes! The Lonero kid! After ‘feeling’ the spike—it really hurt like hell, I thought it was going to give me a cerebral hemorrhage or something—I checked the police band radio. Sure enough, no more than fifteen minutes from the time I felt the psychic surge, a call was placed to the BPD from Buffalo Historical School, where Lonero is a student. Something involving him went down there, Donovan! A metahuman incident! I’m telling you, we should have been keeping a closer look…”
“Claire, calm down and clear your mind of the empathic detritus you picked up from the kid and the others involved in whatever happened there. Did you get any ‘picture’ of what he did?”
“No clear images, just a blurry but potent sense of chaos and turmoil. And that energy surge. It wasn’t anywhere near an omega-level spike in power, but it was clearly enough to indicate a dramatic display of metahuman force. Not only that, but I sensed great emotional agony emanating from three individuals… and extreme physical pain from two of them.”
“Jesus H. Christ. Okay, I need to get a task force over there right now. I have to locate Lonero and deal with this before something worse happens. Including but not limited to his getting into a firefight with the cops.”
“Please be careful, Donovan. He seems to have snapped or something. You’ll be in my prayers.”
“Pray for Lonero instead. I suspect he’s in need of them more than me right now.”
***
The late afternoon sky had taken on an aptly overcast appearance as Benny Lonero sat curled up in a small tool shed located in the back of a residential home on Buffalo’s East Side. He had no idea who lived in that house, nor did he care in the least. He felt the need to hide from the world, and this place would serve that purpose for the moment. Despite the incredible power he now possessed, his entire body was trembling from spasms caused by sheer emotional anguish and confusion.
What did I do? Benny asked himself this question repeatedly as slow-motion visions of the bloody and broken bodies of Mick and Jeff cascaded through his mind, refusing to cease, offering him as little mercy as he gave them. Moreover, the usual torrent of mental imagery consisting of the abuse he frequently received from his fellow students was now intermixed with these equally disturbing images of his infliction of the same upon two of his worst tormenters.
“But they deserved it!” he screamed to himself, breaking the collage of emotional repetition.
Benny then lashed out physically by smashing his diamond hard fist through a thick oak wood cabinet inside the shack as if it were built out of cardboard. He no longer cared if his verbal venting attracted the attention of the owners of the home whose backyard he had taken uninvited refuge in. After all, he was now pretty much a demi-god, and accordingly, he no longer needed to fear anyone. The exhilaration of the new immunity from fear that this power afforded him conflicted with an equally strong terror over the havoc he knew that he could now wreak upon others at will.
And why shouldn’t he? His entire short lifetime was filled with many who amused themselves and vented their own frustrations by hurting him, both physically and emotionally. Wouldn’t it simply be just retribution on his part? Weren’t they facing a creation of their own cruel and thoughtless actions? Shouldn’t they pay for all the hatred and abuse they hurled at him on a regular basis?
In addition to pondering such questions, Benny also felt that reparations from the universe were his rightful compensation. All the acclaim and respect his tormenters enjoyed would now be his for the taking. Anything he wanted could be his for the taking, in fact.
But the unfettered thrill of these thoughts was continuously replaced with feelings of horror. The fear of what would happen to him each day was now intermittently superseded by a fear of what he could and might do to others.
Benny Lonero screamed another curse as he again used his now herculean strength to kick the well-built oaken door of the shack clear off its hinges.
“They’re all gonna pay,” he said to himself as he wiped his eyes to clear a stream of tears. “Marissa, you’re next.”
When the name of this girl came to mind, he began planning to exact brutal comeuppance upon the young woman who had shattered his heart and eagerly led him into the waiting arms of those who wanted to hurt him. Then I’m gonna get all the rest of those a-holes who went along with them. And then I’m gonna move onto everyone who made my life a veritable hell in middle school.
Benny sobbed as he began to walk out of the unfamiliar yard. Before he could leave, however, he was intercepted by the owner of the house who unexpectedly exited the back door of his home, clearly concerned about the commotion he was hearing outside. The homeowner was Willie Morris, a middle-aged sewer worker of strong constitution who grew up afraid of no one he had ever met. But that would change in just a moment.
The man was startled to see a crying, clearly emotionally distressed teenaged boy standing before him. His first instinct was to ask the boy what was wrong, until he noticed the severe amount of damage wreaked upon the tool shed which he had worked so hard to build with his own two hands the previous summer. His concern was now replaced with anger at the sight of what he believed to be a youthful vandal in his midst.
“Hey, what the hell did you just do to my tool shed?” Willie demanded to know, not caring what the answer would be. “You little bastard, I’m gonna drag your ass right to the police station myself!”
But Benny no longer feared any threat wearing human skin. Not even from a man whose burliness rivaled that of his grandfather, and who was clearly just as fearless. His tortured gaze caught that of Willie’s, and the man suddenly knew fear when he saw the young boy’s eyes take on a bluish luminescence. Sparks of sapphire-hued energy were arcing around the fingers of the youth’s right hand, accompanied by what appeared to be the ozone-like stench of burning air.
“You think that tool shack is damaged now?” Benny hollered. “Then watch this, you ignorant geezer!”
Benny pointed his hand at the shed and focused the torrents of energy gliding through every cell i
n his body into his fingers. A sizzling projection of radiant bluish energy was projected from the young man’s hand into the sturdy wood of the shack, causing the entire structure to explode upon impact. Shards of wood and metal fragments from what was left of Willie’s precious tools were strewn about in every direction, and the older man covered his face as smaller pieces of the debris landed throughout the backyard.
“Dear… God…” was all Willie could say as terror overwhelmed him.
The homeowner slumped to his knees as Benny angrily approached him and stuck his index finger near the older man’s face, the arcs of azure energy still flickering about the extended digit. Willie forced himself not to pee his pants or beg for his life, reminding himself of the dignity he valued more than anything else.
“Do you want to try to bully me now, old man?” Benny yelled. “Do you now? Just try it!”
The horrifying situation was then interrupted as Willie’s wife Elaine walked out of the house.
“Willie, what’s going on out there?” she managed to ask before gasping in shock at the sight of the strange glowing-eyed boy threatening her normally plucky spouse.
“Elaine, get back in the house…” Willie choked out after hearing his wife’s voice.
As the trembling homeowner spoke, Benny’s entire body shook with the force of the conflicting emotions that now tore through his psyche with a force of a geyser.
“Please don’t hurt my husband…” Elaine pleaded as Benny turned and looked at her.
The anguish-ridden young man appeared to think the impassioned request over for a moment. Benny then turned and retreated from the yard, sparing Willie Morris mortal harm, and his wife the trauma of having to witness it.
The woman ran and embraced her husband of 24 years, falling to her knees beside him and crying with a combination of fear and relief.
“Oh, thank the mercy of the Lord,” Elaine said as she and her husband held each other tightly.
“Willie, who was that boy? Why were his eyes glowing like that? Why was he here?”
“I dunno why he was here,” her husband replied. “But I don’t think he was human. I think he was probly one ‘a them metahuman people. He blew up the shed just by pointin’ at it, and there was some kinda blue electricity or sumthin’ comin’ outta his body.” Willie took a deep breath before uttering the final part of his description to his terrified wife. “And there was sumthin’ seriously wrong with him in the head.”
***
Benny ran down the darkening Buffalo streets as fast as his now superhuman leg muscles would allow him as his mental breakdown continued unimpeded. The destruction he had just perpetrated upon innocent Willie Morris’s world filled him with pangs of remorse that were partially flooded out by another stream of consciousness montage which poured through his battered mindscape like torrents of water through a shattered dam.
As he passed an alleyway on a side street, Benny suddenly sensed a tremendous surge of energy that was quite unlike the Odic forces he had recently begun commanding. It seemed to emanate from the alley he just passed, and he instinctually turned to peer into the passageway between tenement buildings.
He saw what appeared to be a taller man with a white beard wearing a pair of bifocals and clad in a black shirt with a Pink Floyd logo on it. But it was clearly a different man than the one he saw in the visions he received during the Warp Event, despite the similarity of the age and the gray beard. For instance, this man had two eyes, not just one.
“I can’t believe what a bloody mess you are at this point,” the man said in a British accent.
“Worse than that counterpart of yours who morphs into the wolf. He’ll be blinkered out of his mind if I should tell him about this. Wish I could help, mate, but it’s out of my hands. Try not to cause too much trouble in the meantime, okay, kid?”
Before Benny could react, the figure was suddenly gone, and the strange energies he sensed seemed to fade along with the image.
Considering the psychic melt down he was now undergoing, the adolescent metahuman shrugged off the sighting of the strange British man and his inexplicable statements as a bizarre hallucination. If this had been anything more than a hallucinatory apparition, it wouldn’t be until sometime in the future that Benny would find out who that man was and what, exactly, he was talking about.
For now, though, the continued flow of disjointed feelings was all that passed for thoughts in his highly distraught psyche as he resumed his mind-addled trek across the neighborhoods of Buffalo’s East Side.
***
Within the hour, Donovan Jakes walked into Buffalo Historical School in a suit and tie with a convincingly forged detective’s I.D. He watched as EMTs carried two teenage boys out on gurneys towards a waiting duo of ambulances. Though not in possession of a medical degree, Donovan had seen more than enough injuries on the battlefield, and he could readily discern with a cursory glance that these boys’ injuries were quite severe.
Not wanting to interfere with the important work of the EMTs, Donovan approached what he recognized as a woman in uniform who possessed a standard officer level rank. He pulled out his false badge, confident that his contacts who forged it had done so to perfection and introduced himself to the officer.
“What happened here?” he asked the lawwoman.
“We have two male students who were severely beaten,” she responded. “Only a custodian and two security guards were still in the building when it happened, but I highly doubt any of them were responsible. We’re still questioning these three employees now, though.”
“Did they say if they saw who did this?”
“They say they didn’t. As for the victims, they are known to have been popular athletes, so they’re wondering if the perps may have been members of a rival hockey team. This school’s team, the Icemen, are known to have a bitter rivalry with the teams from both Hut Tek and Rivertown High. During the second semester of the last school year they had a brawl with visiting students from Rivertown who tried tearing down one of their team’s victory banners.”
“Do you agree this may have been over a petty high school sports team rivalry?”
“These athletes tend to take their sports very seriously, since it’s a major factor behind the popularity they enjoy. This has been known to cause them to engage in acts of thuggish and even gang-like behavior towards rival teams whom they mutually view as a threat to each other’s social status among peers.”
“Hmm. I would like to see the crime scene.”
“Follow me, Detective.”
Donovan did indeed follow the officer, hoping to distract any attention from the fact that Benny Lonero was behind this. He needed to handle this situation himself and minimize the chance of a direct police confrontation with the young metahuman. He knew that Benny—and the world—would be far better off if the boy ended up in the hands of the Valis Institute rather than any government agency.
As the incognito Donovan was led to the door of the boys’ locker room in the gym, he immediately noticed how the lock was broken from the inside.
“It’s quite strange that the door’s lock appears to have been smashed by someone breaking out, as opposed to someone breaking in,” the forensics officer on the scene noted to the faux detective. “Equally strange is the fact that these two boys were athletic types, yet despite the struggle they must have put up, only their blood seems to be present on the scene.”
“So, there is no discernible sign that the perps were injured during the assault?” Donovan asked.
“Well, we won’t know for certain until we analyze the samples I just collected. However, based on the dispersion path of the blood around both victims, it doesn’t seem like the perps suffered any harm. The injuries that the victims received, though quite severe, were not bullet or knife wounds; in fact, no puncture wounds of any type were in evidence following a cursory examination by the EMTs. Of course, we won’t know for certain until they get to the hospital and the doctors are able to give them a m
ore thorough examination. They may have been struck with blunt instruments of some sort, including pipes or baseball bats, but again, we can’t know for certain until they can be fully examined at the hospital.”
“I see.”
Jesus, it looks like this kid used his bare hands to do this. Just how strong is he? Hard to tell when you consider these boys were mere humans, however athletically inclined. Still, I had better assume Lonero is quite the powerhouse before I confront him.
“And there’s another odd bit of evidence,” the forensic officer pointed out to ‘Detective’ Jakes. “The wall here is damaged, and it appears that it was made by… well, a human fist.”
“A fist?”
“Yes, the knuckle indentations in the material are clearly evident. But considering how thick that plaster is, the amount of strength it would take to punch a hole like that into it is, well, rather incredible. Especially considering there’s no sign of blood or fragments of flesh surrounding the damaged area. I’m still going to scrape for possible skin samples, of course. If I find any, then we have a good chance for a DNA match with any eventual suspects.”
That statement didn’t sit well with Donovan. Hmmm, I had better make sure our contacts at the police department check for any samples that may be found in the forensics lab. If they are, we can’t let them be traced back to Lonero. If the police should attempt to arrest him… and if the government ever got their hands on him before we did… well, that could be bad.
“Okay, I’ll let you get back to your work now. I’m going to ask the three employees who were in the building when this incident occurred a few questions.”
“Alright.”
But Donovan already knew those three claimed to have seen nothing. The two guards were extremely worried they might lose their jobs for something like this happening on their watch, but Donovan wasn’t the least bit concerned about that. The former special ops soldier knew that it might be only a matter of time before the guilty party was suspected of being a student at the school rather than a group of outsiders. Or the act of a single individual, as he knew to be the case.
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