Take Aim

by Charles Case

  SUPERS: TAKE AIM

  Charley Case

  Justin Sloan

  Elder Tree Press

  Copyrighted Material.

  SUPERS: TAKE AIM Copyright (c) 2019 by Charles Case and Justin Sloan. Book design and layout copyright (c) 2019 by Charles Case and Justin Sloan (of Elder Tree Press). This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission.

  Contents

  Welcome

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Authors

  More Superhero Books?

  Welcome

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  Justin Sloan

  1

  Seena lowered the passenger side window of the OVAL and stuck her hand into the warm wind. She let the slipstream take it like a wing, changing the angle so it would rise and fall in a wave. She focused on that simple motion for so long that she was surprised to suddenly find they had made it all the way to the foothills, nearly a hundred miles from Settlement One.

  “You okay?” Corbin’s voice was just loud enough to hear over the rushing noise.

  She started to give the automatic ‘yes’ that her social station demanded of her but blinked a few times as she realized that her social standing meant shit out here in the wilds. Seena wasn't even sure what the answer to that question was anymore. She had just been instrumental in defeating her father as he tried to kill the man sitting beside her. And while shooting the overbearing, manipulative, and very psychotic man in the back was therapeutic in its own right, he was still her father.

  “I don't know. I think so, but to be honest I’m probably in shock.” Her hand waved a few more times as the quiet stretched on.

  Corbin cleared his throat. “Leela says there’s a cave up ahead where we will be able to find one of her kin. About a half an hour from here.”

  Seena swallowed. “Sounds good.” She didn't know if it was good but Corbin did, and she trusted him. Looking back, she realized he was the only person besides her mother that she’d ever trusted. If what her father had said was true then it sounded like the trust she had placed in her mother was misguided as well.

  She rubbed her eyes, letting them water with frustration rather than betrayal.

  “Did it hurt?”

  Corbin raised an eyebrow. “Did what hurt? The fight? Hell yeah, it hurt.”

  “No. The… Leela. Did it hurt when you two bonded?”

  “Oh.” He stuck out his bottom lip in consideration. “No, not that I remember. It was more of a mental thing than a physical one. At least at first. Later, there was plenty of pain during training, but I was ready for that.”

  She nodded, brushed a few stray hairs from her face, and stared out at the tan landscape dotted with chaparral. Right now, she thought a little pain might be just what she needed. She should feel something after turning her entire world upside down, but she really didn't. She simply felt justified. But justice was a lonely place to hang your hat, it seemed.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Corbin reach into his ever-present shoulder bag and pull out a memory stick. He inserted it into the dash of the OVAL and fiddled with the sound system. She didn't pay much attention, her thoughts off in a dark corner of her mind, brooding. Then the music started.

  A fiddle ripped a beat faster than seemed necessary, followed by a southern-accented man belting out the first line, “I’d have been married a long time ago, if it hadn’t been for Cotton-Eyed Joe…” then it got weird.

  The song was like some sort of sonic drug. Awful, yet catchy. She found herself staring in horror at Corbin, while at the same time tapping her foot along with the fast beat.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Corbin turned to her, a huge smile on his face. “It’s what I listen to when I’m stuck in a rut. It’s called ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ by the Rednex.”

  “How can it be so bad, yet I don't want it to stop?” Her head was bobbing along all on its own.

  Corbin laughed and shrugged. “It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe.”

  The song played on, somehow lifting her spirits more than she had realized they’d fallen. By the time the ridiculous tune ended, she had a smile plastered on her face and felt a hundred pounds lighter.

  “They just don't make songs like that anymore.” Corbin selected a much more mellow song to follow it, and turned the volume down to something a little more manageable for conversation.

  “I don't know if that’s a good thing or not. That’s a very confusing song.” Seena laughed and reached over to put a hand on Corbin's forearm. “Thank you. I needed that.”

  He gave her a thousand-watt smile in return. “Any time.”

  They let a few verses of ‘Casey Jones’ by the Grateful Dead play before either one of them said anything. It was Seena who finally broke the silence.

  “So, Leela can speak to you whenever she wants?” Seena figured she should probably prepare for her suit. Partner? Alien lifeform? She wasn't entirely sure what Leela was.

  “Not at first.” He cleared his throat and straightened, sensing her serious mood. “It took her a while to change me and that took most of her energy, so she didn't have a lot left over to chat. We mostly spoke in visions.” He smiled and winked. “You’ll want to be ready for that. It can be a little disorienting. But yeah, it’ll take a bit to get to the full-on conversations. Even now, she keeps communication to a minimum. I have the feeling it takes a lot of concentration for her to speak when not in a vision.”

  “What do you mean by change you?”

  Corbin cleared his throat. “I’m not entirely sure. That’s what she said she was doing. I think she altered my genetic code to make me stronger and able to heal faster. That sort of thing.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “A week? Maybe a little more. Honestly, I was in a cell for most of it so I wasn't keeping track very well.”

  The mention of him being imprisoned and tested by her father made her taste bile for a second. “You were in there for about five days.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Corbin said, trying to keep her from slipping into her previous mood. “I wasn
't alone. I had Leela, and I knew you and Lore were out there looking for me. That guy would never let me disappear without turning over every stone from here to Vale.”

  Corbin’s smile was infectious, and Seena’s mood soon lifted. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Always know what to say.” She pulled her feet up under her and turned in the seat to face him.

  “Leela says it’s part of my inherent power that never fully manifested.” He glanced over at her. “She says everyone has the potential to have a superpower, but most never have the chance to let it manifest. Something to do with the mind needing to be open to the possibility along with there being the proper catalyst present.”

  Seena had never heard anything like that before. She leaned in. “A catalyst? Like what?”

  Corbin was quiet for a few beats and Seena assumed he was having something like a conversation with Leela. His eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. “Huh. Well, according to Leela it can be all sorts of things, but the one that is causing the changes in the VRC is the trace amount of the metals in everything we consume. She can't remember what her people’s catalyst was, but she does remember that once it started there were more and more people with abilities as the generations went on, until nearly everyone had at least some sort of power.”

  “Wow.” Seena’s eyes widened. “Can you imagine what a society of nothing but supers would look like? There wouldn't be any inequality. People would be free to be themselves.” She unconsciously fingered the slight bulge in her hip where the implanted device her father had forced on her resided.

  Corbin frowned. “I don't know about that. People have always found reasons to bring each other down. The dynamic might change, but if we keep the same power structures then we’ll fall back into something like we have now but with higher stakes. We need to change the way we think about others if we want to truly be free.”

  “Way to crap on my dreams, man.” She gave him the stink eye.

  “Sorry,” he chuckled, “I kinda go too far when thinking about how bad it can get. Probably a byproduct of growing up in the lower class.”

  Seena bit her lip, considering that. He assumed the worst and she assumed the best. She was smart enough to see the flaw in her thinking. “It’ll probably be something in the middle. Not as good as I think and not as bad as you do. I think you might be right about our upbringing tainting our views.”

  He nodded and flashed her a smile. “I’ll defer to you on this one. Besides, I would like nothing more than for it to all turn out rainbows and candy corn.”

  “Rainbows and candy corn?” she laughed. “What the hell is candy corn?”

  He turned and gave her an unbelieving look. “You’ve never had candy corn? What kind of hell did you live in?”

  “One without candy corn, evidently. I assume it’s some sort of delicious delicacy I’ve been deprived of?”

  “Oh, no.” He shook his head emphatically. “It’s awful. But, in a festive kind of way.”

  “What?” Seena’s face screwed up in confusion. “If it’s awful, why would you want everything to turn up rainbows and candy corn?”

  Corbin shrugged. “It’s awful, but it’s still candy. Better than most days, as far as food analogies go. Like a regular day would be brussels sprouts, and a particularly bad day would be rotten brussels sprouts.”

  “What would a good day be?” Seena asked, completely taken by the analogy. She had to see where this was going.

  “A particularly good day would be brussels sprouts with bacon and shallots. Quite tasty, if I do say so myself.”

  “Why brussels sprouts?”

  “Brussels sprouts are the perfect analogy for a day.” Corbin gazed off toward the horizon as he formulated his thoughts. “They can be absolutely plain and tasteless if you simply boil them. That’s a normal day. Boiled brussels sprouts. But, they can also be one of the rankest things you’ve ever eaten if they go bad. I swear it’s like magic how bad they can get.”

  “Why have you eaten rotten brussels sprouts?”

  “It happens sometimes.” He smiled. “That’s the point. A rotten brussels sprout looks normal until you bite into it. Just like a bad day. They all start out the same. And only after it’s gone rotten and you’re stuck in the middle of it can you tell.”

  “Okay, so what’s a good day?”

  “That would be brussels sprouts that have been sauteed in bacon grease with a diced-up shallot and salt and pepper.” Corbin rubbed his stomach and groaned. “Oh, man. Now that is one delicious meal. Again, they look like a regular old brussels sprout until you take a bite. Just like a good day, you don't know until it’s happening.”

  Seena held up a hand and shook her head in disbelief. “I can't believe I’m saying this, but that actually makes sense. My only question is, where does the candy corn come in?”

  “Ah, the candy corn.” He nodded knowingly. “Well, the way I see it, candy corn is the best it will ever get. They’re not all that good, and kinda ugly, but they’re still candy. Even on the best day you still have to take a shit.”

  “I’m sorry, you don't like taking a shit?”

  “It’s time-consuming and usually inconvenient. They’re not bad but they’re not good, either. Kinda like candy corn.”

  Seena blinked a few times while taking it all in. “I don't know if that whole theory makes you brilliant, or an idiot. But I do know that I will never be able to rate a day on anything but the brussels sprout scale ever again.”

  “I see my work is done here.” He smiled and leaned forward to squint out the windshield. “I think we’ve arrived.”

  2

  Stepping into the shallow cave pressed into the rock outcropping next to where they had parked the OVAL, Corbin blinked a few times to adjust to the relative darkness after the bright light of Trac and Nhi.

  “I thought there was supposed to be a passage deeper into the rock?” Seena kicked a pebble off the solid back wall of the cave.

  Corbin glanced over at the small silver two-tailed fox sitting on his shoulder. Leela winked and closed her eyes. “I think Leela has to reveal it. When I found the passage to her, she had to open it first.”

  “Well, unless she can…” Seena’s voice trailed off, her mouth hanging open.

  Corbin turned in time to see the rock at the back of the cave open. It looked as though it was melting into the stone around it, but that wasn't quite right. The wall seemed to be making room for the opening like a mouth opening—the rock was adjusting without losing any mass, or disappearing at all. After only a few seconds there was a passageway wide enough for the two of them to walk through side by side.

  “Was that you?” Seena glanced over at Leela.

  She shrugged her tiny shoulders.

  “She says it was her compatriot inside. She just let them know that we were here.”

  Seena put a hand on the edge of the opening and slowly leaned in to get a good look down the passage and presumably to make sure it wasn't some sort of optical illusion. “They can talk over distances? Do they have radios or something?”

  Corbin glanced at Leela. Her ability to communicate with him had increased exponentially to the point that she could now speak in full sentences, although she kept the conversation in their heads. Outright speech still seemed to be a struggle for her.

  “She says that her people all developed low-level telepathy at some point. Although she’s not sure if that was a natural thing or a byproduct of them all bonding with the metals.” Corbin's eyebrow raised as he relayed her words.

  “Their entire race was telepathic? That’s incredible. Must have saved a fortune on communications equipment.” Seena smiled over her shoulder at the two of them. “Come on. Let’s find our new friend.” She walked into the passage, pulling a flashlight from one of the pockets of the surveyor’s jumpsuit she had put on during the ride from the city.

  “Well, I guess we’re doing this now,” Corbin quipped to Leela as he pulled his flashligh
t out.

  “I wouldn't have expected her to wait. Always charging ahead, never back. She’s a brave woman.” Leela’s voice was melodic in his head.

  “That she is.”

  Seena glanced over her shoulder. “That I am, what?”

  Corbin smiled. “Brave.”

  Seena reddened but smiled. “Thanks, Leela. I hope you’re right.”

  They walked for a good five minutes before anything about the passage changed. It was the same dull rock that they had seen in the cave until it suddenly opened up to a room with smooth, whitewashed walls that looked far too modern to be stone.

  “Light,” the squeaking voice of Leela’s fox form said into the darkness.

  The entire room suddenly lit up, as if a switch had been thrown. Corbin blinked at the brightness. There didn't appear to be any light fixtures, just a glow that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once.

  “That’s handy.” Seena clicked her flashlight off and dropped it into a pocket of her jumpsuit. “Which way?”

  Corbin glanced around the room and noted that there were two passages leading out, besides the way they came in. Both were of the same white material and just as brightly lit. He reached out to touch the wall and was surprised to feel that it was some sort of plastic composite. There didn't seem to be any seams in the material, almost like the room came out of a mold fully realized.