Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  “Stop,” she puts a gentle hand on the top of my head, “Self-pity tastes awful on you. And no, I doubt Luke will be as upset as me,” she says cocking her head to one side to peer at me. “You really didn’t think to include me did you?”

  Having an empath for a friend, a best friend, has its ups and downs. Sometimes I feel like my conversations with her are me feeling things and her replying to them as if I had spoken. Regardless, her touch tells me she’s passed it.

  “I’m sorry Kate, I… I was so wrapped up in finding them, in knowing where they were, I fell into old habits. Of course I can trust you… do trust you. I just—I’ve been alone for a long time and when it all came down, I went back to instinct. I’m sorry.” I’m terrible at this, I know. Since I was six years old the whole world has thought I was delusional. I had to stop talking about my parents or they would put me in counseling to ‘actualize my grief’. I learned that lesson the hard way. I guess I need to ‘unlearn’ it.

  She squats down to look me in the eye, raising my head with her fingers on my chin.

  “You’re not alone, Amelia, not anymore. Okay? We all believe you.”

  I can feel the tears welling and my heart is pounding as her face fills with warmth and a smile that makes it all better.

  “It’s okay,” she says.

  I smile back wiping my eyes for a second before I speak. “Why don’t they know who I am?”

  She gives me one more reassuring look before standing up and turning to evaluate my parents. Her eyes take on the distant look, a kind of unfocused gaze, as she uses her powers.

  “Mind if I touch them?”

  Her abilities work on many different levels, touch is one of them.

  “Please do,” I tell her. I look up at the big screen. Epic has the news from Boston on it. He’s monitoring the situation, making sure I’m not mentioned. I don’t think any cameras caught sight of me, especially since we hacked all the CCTV within a block of the building. I came down just before dawn so even a night vision camera wouldn’t have worked well. So far, they are going with ‘building fire’. Why hide what really happened? Unless it was an illegal building and they don’t want to draw attention to it.

  “There’s something not right here,” Kate says over her shoulder. I wheel over to see.

  She has a hand on each of them and her face crinkles up like she smelled something bad.

  “It isn’t like anything I’ve seen before. There are different levels of manipulation. The basic stuff, like what I do passively is pretty harmless.” She doesn’t open her eyes as she speaks, just cocks her head to the side as if she were working through a puzzle. “If I try real hard I can make a man more attracted to me then he normally would be, but I couldn’t persuade him to do anything he didn’t already want to do. The next level is active persuasion. That is where I shift people’s emotions and feelings in the direction I want them to go. Third level is where the low-level mind control starts to come to play. While I can do one and two better than just about anyone, mind control is strictly the domain of the telepath. And there just aren’t a lot of them capable of this fine control. As far as I can tell, your parents are perfectly normal. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve been reading people’s emotions since I was fourteen I wouldn’t even think there was anything wrong...”

  “But you do think there is?” I say hopefully.

  “Yes, there’s something wrong, but it’s slippery. I can’t quite get a grasp on it.”

  I shake my head, if she can’t fix it, what do I do? I’m no neurologist. In all my plans and backup plans, undoing brainwashing wasn’t one of them. Stupid, really. Why didn’t I think of this? Between my parents they have three advanced degrees. If they could have found a way to contact me they would have. I’d always assumed I’d been under some kind of threat and that was why but… now it all makes sense.

  “Which begs the question, who could do this?” I ask Kate.

  “I don’t follow?”

  “Every person with superpowers is on a list of some kind. Either through government registration or as a criminal, right? You said yourself, there aren’t a lot of empaths and even fewer true telepaths, right?”

  She nods, “Yeah. We went to a special school in New York state, up north away from people. Some of us were too dangerous to allow out and others, like myself, needed time to learn how to control our powers before we were safe around people. I think there was,” she looks away for a second, “Fifteen or so students when I was there ten years ago. As far as I know, the rate of emergence of mind powers stays a fairly small percentage. The vast majority of supers get the F1 package, you know, better than normal vision, levitate a foot off the ground, that sort of the thing. The number one power set for F3’s is speed, strength, and reflexes. The higher the rating the less often the powers emerge. I’m an F4 empath which is rare in itself, but only a small percentage of F5’s are telepaths.”

  I nod, my mind whirling. If there is a school, then there is a list.

  “Epic—”

  Way ahead of you. Checking.

  “If someone did mess with your parents’ minds, and I am pretty sure they did, do you think they would have gone to the School? Mind control, true mind control, is dealt with pretty harshly. Our headmaster was the strongest telepath around and if he found out you were consciously using your abilities to force people to do things they didn’t want to do…” she shivered. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her afraid or upset before. This guy must be a piece of work.

  Was his name Mr. Kana?

  “That’s the guy. When people think of mind control they think of big-brained individuals. Mr. Kana is from Samoa, the biggest man, and I am including Luke when he’s hulked out, I have ever seen. Six-seven if he was an inch and—”

  Deceased.

  Kate stumbles, her face flashing pale, “Dead? No, he was only ten years older than me… what happened?” She releases my parents and walks over to the screen where Epic displays the information. The screen fills with news stories of a mugging gone wrong and Mr. Kana tried and failed to intervene. He caught a bullet in the back of his head.

  She shook her head, “No. Amelia, just… no.”

  I look at her then my parents and back at her. I need her help to fix them but she is as distraught as I’ve ever seen her.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “You have to understand,” she says, “He is… was an F5 Telepath, do you know what that means?”

  F5’s are the most dangerous of all powered people. They’re rated based on how much property damage, or lives they can take in a given minute. They stop counting at F5. Once they got to the part where they could wipe out a city in a minute, giving them ratings above that just didn’t make sense.

  I shake my head, “I mean I know what an F5 is and I can only assume an F5 telepath is probably a big deal—”

  She interrupts with a wave of her hand. “Not a big deal, the big deal. He worked with us because he loved kids and he wanted to see the people afflicted with the curse of empathy and telepathy make it. Do you know what the suicide rate for empaths and telepaths are?”

  I shrug.

  “If we’re not found within a day of our abilities manifesting it is near eighty percent. No one makes it past a week without help. There’s no blocking it out, no stopping it. You drown in other people’s thoughts and emotions. They become yours. The only difference is, you have a hundred people inflicting their emotions on you all at once and you feel them all as if they were your own…”

  She turns away, her shoulders hunching. She’d hinted at the difficulty she’d faced when her powers emerged, but I hadn’t known, not really. Having no powers it feels uncomfortable trying to comfort her. How am I supposed to understand?

  “You’re not,” she says with a sigh, letting out a long breath she shakes herself and stands tall. “You can’t, not really. He could, though, Mr. Kana. This is why he wasn’t killed by a mugger or in some stupid crime. With a thought, he could o
rder any person alive to kill themselves. No, he was murdered. The question is, why?”

  “I don’t know why, but the who… I would guess it’s the same people behind Cat-7. Epic, is the school still in operation?”

  Yes.

  “That’s something. In the meantime, what do I do about my parents? I can’t leave them in a coma and if they wake up they’re just going to run back to Cat-7. This isn’t how I imagined this going,” I tell her. Frustration churns inside of me and I want to hit something, scream, or cry… possibly all three.

  “I’m sorry Amelia, really,” she says with a hand on my shoulder.

  “Me too,” I sigh.

  “There’s a private hospital in Seattle, for victims of telepaths and empaths. I could make a call, maybe get them admitted. I don’t know if they can do anything for them, but it might help.”

  My heart leaps to seize just a little bit of hope.

  “Let’s do it.”

  44

  Mind control. The database is pretty limited. In the last hundred years only a few dozen true telepaths emerged. Almost all of them F5’s. Most rely on sound. Their voices trigger something in a person’s mind forcing them, or persuading them, to do what the controller wants. A few can lock onto a person’s brain waves and alter them or read them.

  Ultimately, everything in our bodies is nothing more than a series of electrical impulses. If a power allows the manipulation of those impulses then it stands to reason said power must be able to read those impulses. This is all theoretical, but it is all I have. My lab is protected by a Faraday cage, this prevents any electronic spying or unwanted signals from escaping or entering my lab. Theoretically, it would also prevent any electromagnetic signal, including telepathy, to enter or exit.

  Which is why I’m spraying a clear coat of metallic ink on my suit. The effect will make it slightly glittery in the sun, which isn’t a bad thing, and it will add a Faraday cage to my external armor when powered. By itself it wouldn’t be one-hundred percent effective. However, with the ZPFM powering it and the rest of my ECM suite I should be damn near invulnerable to mind control. The good thing is, my faceplate isn’t really transparent I use micro-optic cables to simulate transparency. Which means my suit is fully coated in my new ink—

  “Hey, you didn’t show up for dinner.” Luke’s voice startles the crap out of me and I end up spraying the wall next to the helmet.

  Dinner? At two in the afternoon?

  I glance up at the TV and the timer in the bottom corner shows I’m off by about four hours.

  “Luke, I’m so sorry I—”

  He holds up his hand, “No, don’t. Amelia. Would you get mad at me if I lost track of time at the gym?”

  I shake my head, of course I wouldn’t. Especially with the way his muscles ripple. Even now, when he’s just wearing jeans, a white v-neck t-shirt and his cowboy hat… Luke has always done funny things to my insides. The way his smile touches his eyes when he sees me for the first time each day… that’s the best part of all.

  “So I won’t get upset with you for mad-sciencing your armor and forgetting our date. Instead,” he brings his hand out from behind him, “I shall bring dinner to you! Wallah!”

  Pizza from Bianco’s, oh how I love this man. I didn’t mean that. Or did I? One more thing to think about.

  Thirty minutes and three slices later we’re on the couch watching Star Trek and cuddling. Possibly my favorite thing to do in the entire world. Cuddling, not Trek. Well, okay both.

  Sadly, I can’t quite focus on it. Kate suggested holding off telling anyone about my parents, for now. With a telepath on the loose as strong as it would take to kill her mentor, she’s worried just having the knowledge would endanger them. I can’t say she’s wrong. Still, after the fact, it feels like lying. Something I have always hated to do, even when necessary.

  “Amelia, what’s wrong?”

  “Are you sure you’re not the empath?”

  He chuckles. “It doesn’t take an empath to tell your upset. Is it me? Am I presuming too much by staying here to the wee hours every night?”

  Him? Oh no, he thinks I’m upset with him? Fix it, Amelia!

  “No, not at all, I love having you here. Who else would fetch sodas for me at two in the morning? It’s not that at all Luke,” I say, resting my head against his chest.

  “Is it Studio 50? I can always tell them you can’t come.”

  Crap, I completely forgot about that. I need to work out some kind of calendar for Epic. Then again, he probably didn’t remind me because he knows how much I don’t want to go.

  “No, I was thinking about my parents. How they… if they… if they were out there but for some reason couldn’t remember me or didn’t know me? Why else would they not find a way to let me know they’re okay. I mean, I built Arsenal to find them and they’re at least as smart as me, right? Between the two of them, they could have found a way.”

  He nods, “I’m sure they would, Amelia.” He runs his hand through my hair and for a second I let it all go. Were they mind-controlled from the moment the accident happened? That would explain a lot.

  I hate thinking about that day. On the flip side, I’ve thought of little else since the accident. The phone call. Mom called the accident in on the phone. I close my eyes and try to think back.

  She handed the phone to dad. They both spoke on it. Then… I don’t remember. Well, either they use voice control or brainwave control and I’m pretty sure I can defend against both. All the other feelings associated with that day leave me shivering. I’ve thought about it so many times it seems like it should get easier. It doesn’t. Luke pulls me tight, bringing the blanket covering my legs up to my chin.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, yes I am, thanks.”

  “How much better?” he asks with a hungry look in his eyes.

  “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”

  45

  The last time I was at the airport, the Psychotic Six tried to blow it up. This time is a little different. Apparently, as a registered superhero and with her powers properly identified, my Kate, with the BA in Marketing from Ohio State, can stand before a judge in her mask and testify to the condition of my parents. When asked how they came to be found, Kate towed the line between truth and lie.

  “A concerned citizen turned them over to us.”

  Us, being the Arizona State Militia. Aka The Diamondbacks. She also told the judge, based on the level of manipulation, it would be best to keep their identities sealed, lest the controller find them. The problem with evil mind control powers is the complete lack of an ability to stop them. Except for me of course.

  “I’m still not sure what we’re doing here, we should be at work. Why are we in Arizona and not Boston?” I hear my dad say. My heart cracks open and I want to scream. Instead, all I can do is stand here and play guard dog. It was the only way I was going to see them again.

  Kate has her hand on each of their shoulders in a move I know well. She’s using maximum effort to influence them. Unlike a telepath, who can outright force people to do things, Kate uses her God-given charm, knowledge of psychology, pheromones, and empathic touch in a combination few can resist.

  “Mr. Lockheart, I explained this. A telepath has altered your memories, altered your perceptions. I’m one of the good guys here. We’re taking you and your wife to a safe place where you can heal. It’s important you try to remember who you are. Focus on your love for each other and I promise you will find your way through this.”

  He nods, his hand is in Mom’s and they glance at each other with a soft smile I remember them sharing often. More than anything I want to climb out of this armor and hug both of them. My fist clenches and I try real hard to stay calm. It isn’t working.

  I’ve never wanted to murder anyone in my life, but if I find the person responsible for this…

  “Arsenal, they’re leaving,” Kate interrupts my felonious thoughts.

  I want to say something. Try to explain who
I am again. Kate says there is no getting through to them; the memories are locked up tight behind a wall of their own creation.

  “Have a good flight,” I say instead.

  I watch as they walk through the terminal, hand-in-hand. I watch as they take one last look behind before exiting the building to board the private gulf stream I arranged. The plane takes off without incident and I track it as far as the airport's radar goes. Then I stand there some more. I don’t want to go. I found them. I found them. And they are gone again. It isn’t fair.

  Someone is going to pay.

  “Epic, status on Shai-Hulud?”

  He has successfully infiltrated their network. However, he is limited in communications. Their security is incredibly sophisticated. He can send one-kilobyte of data every twenty-four hours.

  “What happens if we go for broke and have him send what he can before they shut down the system?”

  There is no way of calculating the odds of retrieving useful information.

  “Penny for your thoughts, the non-murderous ones?” Kate asks. Crap, I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes staring north and she has stood silently next to me the whole time.

  “I want whoever did this, Domino. I want them dead,” I hold up my hand to forestall her, “and if I can’t have them dead, then I will see them rot in prison for the rest of their stinking life.”

  She nods, “I believe you… the question is, what’s next?”

  Mom and Dad are safe, at least. Maybe even on their way to a cure. That leaves two avenues. Kate’s old mentor, Mr. Kana, and Shai-Hulud.

  “I’m gonna fly, clear my head. I’ll meet you back at HQ and we’ll go from there.”

  She cocks her head sideways at me and I know what she’s thinking.