“Did you just have an encounter with Benny Lonero?” the soldier asked him.
Les nodded with a blank expression. “Yeah, yeah, and there was something messed up about him. He never came in here before, and he was never strong like that…”
Donovan shook the boy a bit, causing him to wince in pain. “Why didn’t he beat you down completely? What did he want from you?”
“He - he told me to give him my friend Marissa Robbins’s address. And – and he told me – told me not to say anything to anyone. But – but you seem to already know this, so I’m not – not – giving this up to you. Jesus, I didn’t want to give it to him, but he was hurting me, I thought he was gonna kill me. God, this is so messed up…”
Jesus H. Christ, Donovan thought to himself just before he turned to his comrade. “Agent Boone, what are you getting from this?”
Her visage went almost chalk white. “I’m getting… a combination of horror and complete sincerity from him. Oh, dear God, he’s going after that girl, Colonel.”
“We have no time to lose,” Donovan said as he turned to Les and again grabbed him rather firmly by his non-injured arm. “You need to give us that address now, young man. This is not a request. And then you need to get some medical attention and not say a word about what really happened here. You tell the doctors that you got jumped by a group of kids in the bathroom, and you had no idea who they were. Give false descriptions if you have to. But don’t mention Lonero’s name.
“And prepare to see us again. These are direct orders and you had best follow them to the letter, do you understand me, young man? Otherwise I won’t be such a good a mood when you see us again.”
Les slumped back against the wall while he nodded desperately, wanting this ordeal to be over.
Donovan then shifted his gaze to his psychic comrade. “Claire, come on, we need to get the team to that girl’s place of residence immediately! I pray to God we’re not too late.”
***
About thirty minutes after Benny departed the Crimson Room, all appeared momentarily calm outside of the Upper East Side apartment complex where Marissa Robbins and her family lived. This family consisted of herself, her mother, and her younger brother, Danny, who was eight years of age.
Her mother was away at her place of employment, while Marissa worked with her brother to fix dinner for the two of them. Also present was her older male cousin Ted, eighteen years of age, who often lent Marissa a hand in looking after the household and her younger brother when her mom was working.
“Are you really sure you know how to make tacos, ‘Rissa?” the tall and burly young Ted Robbins asked his cousin.
“Man, she barely knows how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Danny snidely remarked.
“Shut up, you little poozer,” Marissa snapped at her younger sibling. “Like you can cook at all, right? That’s why Ted and I have to do this for you.”
“Hey, I know how to cook!” Danny insisted. “You just never let me, so we’re always stuck with your cooking.”
Marissa held up a plastic spatula in a mock threatening gesture. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t crack you over the skull with this, you little pimple with legs?”
“All right, you two, can’t we all just get along?” Ted queried with an exaggerated sigh and rolling of the eyes. “We’ll all make dinner together tonight, so if it turns out bad then all three of us share the blame equally, okay?”
Marissa sniggered. “Sure, sure, fine.”
But the girl’s jovial interaction with her two cherished family members was very rudely interrupted when the locked door leading into the front room of the small apartment was suddenly kicked open. The padlock securing the entrance was broken with ease.
All three members of the Robbins family turned their heads, startled at the unexpected and violent intrusion. Marissa was by far the most startled of the three when she saw it was none other than Benny Lonero standing in her home. A look of pure hatred and fury was manifestly evident on his face.
“Marissa…” he hissed upon seeing her. “It’s so nice to welcome myself into your humble home.”
He then shut the door behind him and began approaching the astonished girl.
“Lonero!” she shouted. “What the hell are you doing at my house? How did you get my address? How did…?”
“You know this guy, ‘Rissa?” Ted asked her. “Who the hell is he and how the hell did he kick the door open like that? I know I locked it!”
Recovering from his momentary shock, Ted stepped in front of his cousins, determined to protect them from whatever type of threat Benny may have posed. Unfortunately, he had barely begun to suspect just how great a threat that actually was.
“Dude, I have no quarrel with you,” Benny told the muscular young man barring his way. “I don’t know what you are to Marissa, but know she set me up to get attacked by two of her friends at school. She planned the whole thing out with them and pretended to like me so she could lure me into the place where her friends would jump me. She’s always hurt me in other ways too! She and her friends went too far, and they’re not going to get away with it this time! Not when I can finally do something about it!”
Ted turned to Marissa. “Whoa whoa, what the hell is this guy talking about? What did you do to him, Marissa?”
The girl’s lower lip began quivering as she forced herself to push past the shock for a reply. “I just…”
A moment later the shock was replaced by a wave of anger. “Just get the hell out of my house, you little faggot scum!” she shouted at the intruder.
“Not even an apology, huh, Marissa?” Benny yelled back. “Not that it would be for any reason other than to save your stupid, lying little hide anyway!” He then took a few steps closer to the startled Robbins trio. “Why did you always hate me, Marissa? What harm did I ever do to you? Did you think I’m just going to let all that go now that I can do something about it? You made me think you really had feelings for me, and you lied! Wasn’t everything else you were doing enough to satisfy your sadistic need to hurt someone you dislike for whatever petty reasons that you dislike me?
“Did you think I had no feelings? Or did you just fail to consider them worth your concern?
“And you set me up for Jeff and Mick to hurt me really bad! Well, guess what? I hurt them bad instead! And now I’m going to hurt you!”
“Oh my God…” she stammered. “What did you do to Jeff and Mick?”
“Exactly what they intended to do to me, you stupid bitch!” was Benny’s reverberating reply.
“Oh no, not Jeff and Mick,” Marissa whimpered as tears began streaming from her reddened eyes. “Please, don’t hurt my family.”
Benny stepped forward with his right fist raised, while his eyes began emanating a shiny azure radiance. Similarly-colored waves of energy soon started arcing around his clenched hand. He pointed towards Ted and Danny with his other hand.
“Tell these two to step aside or get the hell out of here and I won’t hurt them,” Benny said.
“Okay, enough of this!” Ted hollered as he moved closer to the advancing Benny. “Look, man, I’m not saying what my cousin did was right, but I’m not going to let you hurt her, okay? You need to get out of this house right now! Now, or I’ll throw you the hell out!”
“Really?” Benny sneered. “Just a few days ago, you probably could have done that easily. But now the Fates have reversed the advantage. Get out of the way, man, or I’ll knock you out of the way. And it won’t be pleasant.”
“I’ll kick his ass!” Danny yelled just before he attempted to rush towards Benny to defend his family until Marissa grabbed him and sabotaged the move.
Deciding to act rather than talk any further, Ted hurled his strong athletic form towards Benny and swung at him with all his not inconsiderable might. Benny’s enhanced reflexes responded incredibly, and he easily side-stepped the incoming blow even though it likely wouldn’t have done much damage had it succeeded in stri
king him. He then grabbed the young athlete by his shirt and effortlessly flung him several feet across the apartment.
The airborne youth smashed into the living room wall, leaving a huge indentation in the stucco. Ted Robbins bounced off the wall and landed on the floor. He wasn’t seriously injured but quickly realized that he had incurred a cracked collar bone that debilitated him with searing pain.
“I warned you!” Benny shouted at the young man as he laid on the floor grasping his pain-wracked shoulder.
Throwing her brother safely aside Marissa grabbed a cast iron cooking pan by its handle and attacked her long-time object of ire. Once again displaying enhanced reaction time, Benny dodged the blow and snatched the pan from the girl’s hand in a blur of motion.
Then in a display of his newfound power designed to terrify the former object of his heart, he grasped the strong metal cooking implement between his two hands and concentrated on summoning forth the Odic energies seething through his cellular matrix. The bluish energy crackled about the metallic substance of the pan, causing it to rapidly tarnish and smoke before quickly melting from his hands into a boiling mass of ferrous liquid that dribbled down onto the kitchenette’s floor.
“Oh… hell…” Marissa gasped.
“Speaking of Hell, that’s what you’ve made my life for the past year,” Benny said through gritted teeth. “Now I’m going to send you there.”
He again raised a still energy-encompassed hand at Marissa, while his glowing blue eyes appeared to reflect the intensity of his anger and inner turmoil.
“Benny, no…”
The girl who formerly served as the focus of many of the tortured young boy’s dreams covered her face while she prepared for the coming blow, hoping that Benny would show her just enough mercy to end things as quickly as possible.
Just then, however, Danny ran over to the dangerous home invader and began pummeling on his back, albeit to no effect.
“Leave my sister alone!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “I’m not going to let you hurt her, no matter what she did to you! She’s my sister!”
Benny halted his action and shifted his gaze to the boy. “Your sister is a no-good piece of…”
“She’s my sister!” Danny yelled through tear-soaked eyes as he continued punching and kicking Benny to no avail. “Don’t kill her, don’t kill her, don’t…”
Benny found himself hesitating as something deep within him was moved by the boy’s heartfelt pleas. He had no reason to fear anyone in that house, and he didn’t; yet a feeling much like fear began rushing through his psyche nevertheless. Consequently, he stayed his hand long enough for another set of trespassers to enter the scene and intercede.
“Benny, stop what you’re doing!” declared an adult male voice reeking with authority.
The young metahuman turned his now luminescent blue eyes around to see Donovan Jakes standing in the front room and pointing an object that resembled an odd-looking firearm at him. Just behind the bearded soldier were five other individuals, three men and two women. Four of them held similarly designed firearms and were clearly fellow soldiers.
The fifth individual, a woman, stood behind all the others, holding no weapon and looking at Benny with an expression quite unlike that of the four stalwart soldiers. Benny seemed to feel a strange sort of rapport, something he couldn’t think of sufficient words to describe, with this woman. Claire Boone radiated a sensation of extreme fear that she was struggling to hold at bay, and the boy could somehow pick up on this.
“Who are you?” Benny asked as he turned his raised fist in the direction of Donovan and his team. “Are you the police or something?”
“No, we’re not the police,” Donovan said with calm conviction. “We’re people who are actually capable of stopping you if it comes to that. But please listen to me, Benny, because I don’t want it to come to that. And I don’t think you really want to hurt anyone. So please listen to what I have to say before you do anything…”
But Benny was too aggrieved by his pain to fully listen. It was immediately obvious to everyone concerned that diplomacy would not prevail.
Chapter 8: It All Hits the Fan
“If you’re not the police, then who the hell are you?” Benny demanded of the Institute agents now confronting him. “And why are you pointing those funky-looking guns at me?”
Donovan couldn’t help noticing that the crackles of coruscating energy which surrounded the boy’s hands were building in their intensity. They soon began appearing to encompass his entire body, as his eyes flared an even brighter level of incandescence.
“Oh my God, Donovan,” Claire whispered as loudly as she could. “He’s about to…”
The veteran soldier wasted no time in diving to the side to evade the oncoming energy bolt that Benny projected from his extended right hand. Agents Gail Parker and Brett Silver did the same, but Agent Eddie Marks wasn’t as quick on his feet. When he was in mid-dodge the searing beam of bluish energy struck him in the side, sending his body clear out the door and into the hallway. He impacted with the far wall outside the apartment and laid still on the floor, while a thick thread of smoke was seen billowing out from where the beam had impacted his hip region.
“Eddie!” Claire screamed as Agent Sasheen Kahn ran to his injured comrade’s side.
After quickly checking his vitals, Sasheen looked up and said, “He’s alive! But he’s really hurt.”
“Damn you, kid,” Donovan uttered as he quickly jumped back to his feet. “You just had to do this the hard way.”
The soldier then promptly pointed his plasma-projecting taze rifle at Benny and depressed the trigger. He found it remarkable that the untrained boy managed an incredible leap across the kitchen to avoid being struck by the spherical discharges of incapacitating energy. Landing on the other side of the apartment, however, Benny lost his footing due to the poor condition of the rug. It was then that Donovan’s firearm found its target, knocking Benny off his feet with three direct hits by the fast-traveling mini-spheres of plasma.
Taking advantage of the time he just bought himself, Donovan turned to his team.
“Sasheen, get Eddie back to the van! Gail and Brett, get the civilians out of here and clear out the building! Claire, stay with Eddie and give him emergency medical aid! One of you stay for crowd control, but the rest of you get back here ASAP!”
The three remaining agents moved to follow their leader’s orders as fast as any human possibly could. Sasheen carried out his fallen comrade, while Eddie rushed to the injured Ted Robbins and helped him out of the apartment.
Gail rushed over to the terror-stricken Marissa and Danny Robbins, motioning for them to follow her out the door. “Let’s get out of here now, people! Move!”
Before Marissa could exit, though, Donovan grabbed her by the arm and spoke to her with a strong tone. “You and I are going to have words over your part in this whole affair later, young lady. In case you were wondering, you aren’t getting off scot free.”
After the girl fearfully nodded her head to show she understood, Donovan released his grip on her arm and she promptly followed Gail and her little brother out the door. The soldier approached Benny and once more pointed his exotic piece at the young metahuman, who was still lying insensate with scorch marks marring the three spots on his clothing where the taze rifle’s plasma projectiles had struck.
“Benny, if you can hear me, please stay down…”
As if on dramatic cue, Benny suddenly opened his still glowing eyes. With a flash of movement that was scarcely a blur, the superpowered adolescent grasped Donovan by his wrist and easily bent it away from him. The teen’s grip was irresistibly strong, and the soldier found himself taken down to his knees. The teen metahuman was clearly fully recovered from the three direct hits by the taze rifle.
Damn it, I should have accounted for such a level of resilience, Donovan silently admonished himself.
“I heard what you said to Marissa before she got away,” a fuming
Benny told the now pain-wracked Donovan. “You know what she did and you’re still sticking up for her!”
“Benny, listen…” Donovan said while his strategic mind was analyzing a way out of this unfortunate predicament.
“How do you know who I am?”
“As you get to know me better, you’ll find out how far my resources go.” Donovan gritted his teeth and focused on speaking coherently despite the pain now assailing his entire arm. “Now, listen to me. I know what that girl and her friends did to you. You have every right to be angry. I understand why you want to get back at them. But this is still wrong. This is not the way to go about it.”
Benny gritted his teeth in anger, and his eyes seemed to glow with a greater luminosity. “You’re just like the rest of them! You care more about what I’m doing to them now than what they’ve been doing to me for the longest!”
Donovan could feel Benny’s crushing grip tightening around the fragile human bones of his wrist. The grizzled warrior could also see the energy arcs surrounding the youth’s body begin to spark with more intensity in concert with the radiance of his eyes. He realized that he but had a few seconds at most to act before crippling injury (or worse) ensued.
Reacting with decades of experience and intensive training, Donovan quickly slammed his booted foot directly below Benny’s knee, where he knew a sensitive nerve was located. As the boy lost his balance, the soldier jumped upwards and slammed his forearm into the teen’s sternum as hard as he could. This effectively took the powerful young metahuman to the floor. The surprise of this maneuver caused Benny to loosen his grip, and Donovan was able to completely wrench free of it.
The veteran of combat then rolled over on the floor, recovered his taze rifle, and again aimed the exotic piece at his target.
However, the soldier once more underestimated Benny’s recovery time. The youthful superhuman had sufficiently shrugged off the effects of Donovan’s move to project a powerful beam of energy in the latter’s direction while still on the floor. Luckily his aim was poor from that position, so Donovan was able to leap out of the way, albeit barely. The beam continued past him and struck the wall next to the door, blasting a huge hole clear through it.
Centurion- Dark Genesis Page 9