SUPER VILLAIN
Book Three in The Aberrant Trilogy
Franklin Kendrick
© 2017 Franklin Kendrick
All Rights Reserved
No part of this eBook may be copied in any form without permission of the author.
All characters, places, and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to real people or places, living, dead, or super heroic is strictly coincidental, or are used fictitiously.
The author can be found at his website:
franklinkendrick.com
Also by Franklin Kendrick
The Aberrant Series
Super Charged
Super Vision
Super Villain
The Allagash Series
Lockwood Tower (Book 1)
The Can You Survive? Series
The Zombie Apocalypse (Can You Survive?)
The Zombie Cruise (Can You Survive?)
The Entity Series
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Omnibus Edition
The Commercial Street Haunting Series
A Haunting on Commercial Street
The One-Year eBook
Contents
Heroes and Villains
The First Battle
Under Repair
The New Recruit
Impressionable Minds
Capes and Cowls
Ghosts of the Past
The Convention Floor
Virtual Solutions
The Digital World
Sharp Objects
Overheard in the Lab
Tucker Bates
The First Attempt
New Resolve
The Second Attempt
Hypnotized
Faceplant
The Hostage
Jailbreak
Is This A Joke?
The Surprise Visitor
Reassurance
Pinpoint
The Ambush
Two Against...What?
Regroup
The Cause Of It All
One Last Pone Call
The Arrival
Civilized Conversation
Into The Archives
Knocked Around
Inside Out
Overcharge
The Authorities
Regards
The Retrieval
The New Norm
Three Weeks Later
SUPER VILLAIN
Heroes
Fallout - a.k.a. Shaun Boding
Powers: Flight, Pulse Blasts
Mecha - a.k.a. Mae Williams
Powers: Flight, Visions
Villains
The Drone - a.k.a. Bill Flagrant
Powers: Flight, Pulse Blasts, Super Speed
The Cloak - a.k.a. Austin Spencer
Powers: Mind Control
From the personal files of Jeff Boding
[Date Unknown, handwritten]
“The First Battle”
The thing that nobody tells you about becoming a superhero is that there will come a time when you try to save somebody - and they just cannot be saved. They don’t want to be saved. It’s as if they want to commit suicide by bullet, only, they won’t pull the trigger themselves.
They want you, the caped crusader, to do the job.
Sometimes both the villain and the authorities have weapons. Some guy doesn’t get the reaction he expects, so he pulls out a gun and starts to wave it around. He tries to push the cops or whoever else to take offensive action. It could be by waving around a gun, or any sort of weapon.
Even a piece of the Vestige.
After my father and I turned in Bill Flagrant, I suffered for years with guilt and pain over what happened. Dad told me that it wasn’t my fault. Truly, there was nothing else I could have done to stop Bill from taking that girl’s life. But, in my heart I wished that there were a way to turn back time.
That was my first battle, and it was against my best friend.
I wished I could knock some sense into him, even as he sat behind bars in prison. As if a more powerful punch to the face would make Bill change his mindset. His head was too polluted with rage. There was no going back.
In an attempt to process the murder in my own mind I ended up writing my version of the events I witnessed. It wasn’t pretty, or perfect. To be honest, it was probably an awful piece of writing. Still, it helped me to cope.
And it reminded me that not everybody can be saved. Especially from themselves.
-Jeff Boding
1
Under Repair
Behind his closed eyes, Bill Flagrant could still see their faces. They were the faces of the people who had hurt him - the people who had brought him shame. Countless people whose very names caused his blood to boil even after all these years.
There were boys from grade school on the playground making fun of his long black hair. They called him a sissy - as if any of them took the time to understand that the long ebony hair that covered his eyes and ears was not his choice at all, that his mother was too poor to afford to get him a real hair cut.
The alternative was to let his oaf of a stepfather near his hair with a pair of rusty scissors, which were the only pair his mother owned. There was no way in a frozen wasteland that Bill would have let that happen.
He wanted to bash those grinning, sneering faces in. He wanted to make them as physically ugly as they were towards him.
But there was no time to dwell on that because now the faces of teachers in high school took over the ones of the cruel boys in the same way that a bossy family crowds into a restaurant’s waiting area. These teachers had disgusted expressions on them - all of them.
They judged him before they even knew him.
He was a bad kid automatically because he just looked like he was.
How many grades had he received where he just barely passed because the teacher didn’t like him? It was never based solely on the quality of his work. He could never win.
More boiling rage.
Suddenly he was yanked out of his own memories by a pressure on his leg, then a sharp pain in his ankle.
Cold glass walls reflecting gray and muted blue faded into view all around him and mechanical lights of all sorts of colors blinked here and there as the rest of the Spire Tech workshop came back to him from behind his same shaggy black hair.
“Owww!” he growled. “Would you take it easy down there?”
He was harnessed into a seat that was risen on hydraulics as Austin Spencer fiddled with the mechanical armor that encased Bill’s lower body - particularly his legs. Paralyzed from a brutal fall from the sky when his powers were ripped from him for the second time in his life, Bill thought that he would never walk again, until he met Austin Spencer, otherwise known as The Cloak.
I shouldn’t say ‘met’, he thought as he gritted his teeth. Rescued is more like it.
From down at his foot, the attractive young man glanced up from his wrench and brushed his light brown hair out of his face. Beads of sweat speckled his brow.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that one must have hurt, but you should be thanking me, really. You’re lucky that you can feel anything down there.”
“You can take it easy,” Bill demanded as the bolt securing his ankle’s rotator around his foot was tightened with a grating sound of metal against washer.
Austin licked his lips and replied, “If you want to walk at all, you should stop complaining. Don’t forget that I’m the one in charge of this entire organization.”
Bill grunted.
“Some organization…” he muttered.
The space was not like anything Bill would have expected a high-tech laboratory to look like. The space was incredibly cramped. The walls were so old that the white paint was now faded to a horrible cream color, while the windows, which thankfully let in some natural sunlight, hadn’t been washed in who knew how long? Instead of sterilized stainless steel counters, pieces of lab equipment and power tools were scattered on top of chipped wooden tables that were pushed together in two rows, one on each side of the room.
Austin heard Bill’s snide comment and rolled his eyes.
“You can criticize this place all you want, but for the price, it was a bargain. With a little persuasion this lab will be just as good as one that you would see at a prestigious university.”
Another grunt from Bill.
“Sure,” he replied. Everything with Austin was persuasion. The power of suggestion.
He still wasn’t sure how the young man was able to do it, but Austin had influence over people that wasn’t natural. It wasn’t due to his charming looks or sense of humor, or even his approachable and friendly personality. If Bill didn’t know any better he would have guessed that Austin possessed a piece of the Vestige - the medallion that, while held, gave a super-powered person, an Aberrant, their abilities.
But, Austin did not possess the Vestige. Neither he nor Bill currently did. So, the source of Austin’s manipulative powers came from somewhere else. Wherever that somewhere existed, and how, Austin refused to disclose.
Suddenly Austin sat back and removed his tools from Bill’s leg.
“You know, maybe I shouldn’t fix you up completely,” he mused. “Not yet at least.”
“And why not?” asked Bill, rubbing a hand over his closed eyes. “Don’t say because of my attitude because I can still reach you with a fist from where I’m sitting.”
“Not because of that,” Austin continued. “Because you might run if I fix you up. I mean, what’s stopping you from jumping ship and just setting out on your own? That would mess up everything I’ve planned.” His eyes lingered on Bill’s unfinished mechanical armor. “You’re used to running rogue, aren’t you?”
Bill let out a snarl and strained against his restraints. Despite his threats, he couldn’t reach Austin from where the man crouched. He was just out of reach.
“Cut it with the smug little attitude,” said Bill with gritted teeth. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“I know some things,” Austin replied, not phased one bit by the hostility as he continued tightening the bolt at Bill’s ankle. The cranking sound only agitated Bill more. Still, Austin continued. “I will admit that I don’t know enough. Surely there are things about your past that effectively made you into the man that you are today. Exciting or terrible things that set you on your crooked path?”
His eyes flicked up to meet Bill’s. The look was so piercing that Bill looked away, staring off to the side at anything to keep from being pinned beneath such an accusatory look.
“Terrible is one word for it,” he said.
After a few more cranks Austin removed the wrench and stood up straight.
“There we are,” he said, tucking the tool under his arm so that he could brush his hands together. “Should be good as new. Hop on down from there and let’s see if it’s back in order.”
Bill unhooked his legs from their braces, flinging the bands of thick fabric off to the side, and braced his hands on the arms of the modified dentist chair. He pushed himself off, catching his feet on the semi-glossy floor. His metal armor clinked delicately as he steadied himself and took a few steps around.
After all the complaints, the armor did feel better now. There wasn’t that horrible pressure on his right ankle any more.
Even though he was paralyzed, he could tell after the rampage through Chinatown that the angle of his foot casing was off. He had spent weeks learning how to walk in this mechanical marvel, and just like when his legs were independently mobile, Bill had a characteristic gait.
He stopped at the end of the room and turned on one heel to face Austin.
“I think it’s all set,” he grumbled. “You’re good with those tools.”
“It comes from experience,” Austin replied with a smirk. “If you tinker with things long enough, they start to become second nature. Out of everything that I’ve made, those legs are probably one of the most complicated devices. Please don’t go damaging them again anytime soon.”
“You said you wanted them to be thoroughly tested out,” he growled.
“Tested, yes,” Austin replied as he put his tools away. “Not completely destroyed. You’re not doing us any favors if all of our equipment becomes unusable. We’ll be no better than normal humans at that point, and nothing will stop the Aberrant from hunting us down and turning us in.” He paused for a moment with his hand resting on the tool drawer. He gave Bill a side-glance. “Though, I will complement you on using the sides of the buildings to get around. That took some skill.”
Bill grunted and walked over to a chair. He lowered himself mechanically into a sitting position, hearing the spinning rotors and artificial sounds coming from his lower half. Once he was settled, he grunted.
“I couldn’t control myself,” he muttered. “Just seeing Shaun Boding again in the flesh…” He closed his eyes and felt blood hammering in his neck. “It was almost enough to send me into a rage.”
“That’s understandable,” said Austin. “He took away your legs. It’s only human to seek revenge.”
“It’s not just a desire for revenge that does this to me.” Bill gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles turned white. “He looks so much like his father. Every time I see his face it’s as if Jeff is looking back at me, laughing from beyond the grave.”
Austin finished putting his work station back in order and turned to focus his entire attention on Bill. “More memories from your past?” He stared at Bill once more with those piercing eyes. “Skeletons in your closet? I can help you with those, if you’d let me.”
Again with this prying. Suggesting.
It made Bill sick.
“You can help me by taking down Shaun Boding and giving me the piece of the Vestige that I’m entitled to. That’s all I am after.”
Austin pressed his lips together into a knowing smile, glancing down at the floor as if he knew an amusing secret. He shook his head once.
Bill noticed.
“What?” he said. “What’s so funny about demanding what I’m entitled to?”
“Nothing,” Austin answered. “It’s just that you’re still as impatient as when I pried you out of that armored ambulance. Even delirious with narcotics, you were rambling about smashing the Boding boy into the ground.”
This time Bill forced a smile, releasing the armrests to fold his hands delicately in his metallic lap.
“Consider those ramblings the skeletons in my closet,” he said. For a moment he debated elaborating on his struggle, but before he could say anything, Austin spoke.
“Trust me, I understand. Jeff Boding had a way of getting your hopes up and then throwing them off a cliff.”
“You didn’t know him as well as I did,” Bill said.
“I think I knew him well enough.” Austin folded his arms and leaned against the reclining operation chair. “I worked with him for three years developing different technologies based on his Super Guy series. The visor that Shaun wears as part of his Aberrant disguise? That came from my lab. It was a prototype for something that would be much more powerful. But, Jeff pulled the plug on that.”
Bill watched as Austin stared off. The young man’s face became melancholy, and Bill sat up.
“I’ve never heard you talk about this,” he said. “What happened?”
Austin let out a sigh and continued to stare off as he recounted the story.
2
The New Recruit
“Where in the world do I start?
” Austin muttered, raising his eyebrows briefly. “I guess the main source of contention between myself and Jeff was that we wanted two different things. When it came to the visor, our vision for what it would look like was the same, but the way it would be used…”
He licked his lips.
“I’ve always been the one at the bottom of the totem pole. Always been the grunt. For a while I resigned myself to what I thought was my destiny to always be the one doing the heavy lifting with none of the recognition - or financial reward - which I deserved. I was brighter than anyone, and yet I was still stuck doing dead-end jobs.
“So, when I saw Jeff’s ad for a tech designer in one of the local newspapers I jumped at the chance to apply. There were plenty of people competing with me, but somehow, to my delight, I made it to the top. He had ambitions to make Super Guy’s visor a reality, but he didn’t have the time or the skills to actually see it happen. This was back in the days when merchandising his series was just beginning, and that is where I entered the picture.
“We worked as a team to get the product off the ground. Jeff would give me his ideas while I executed the actual construction of the physical device. With other things like Google Glass and various VR technologies in development across the world, it wasn’t exactly a challenge for me to find what I needed. I already had the skills to put the visor together. Now, as far as Aberrant abilities are concerned, I had no idea that Jeff was gifted, so the thought of creating a working visor seemed to be nothing more than a vanity project for use at conventions.”
Bill chuckled. “But, it wasn’t a vanity project.”
Austin shook his head.
“Unbeknownst to me, Jeff wanted to use the visor to fight crime in the city. It was admirable, sure. But, not something that you expect a best-selling author to do in his spare time. It wasn’t until I started to catch onto his Aberrant abilities that things got complicated.”
The Aberrant Series (Book 3): Super Villain Page 1