Superluminary (Powered Destinies Book 1)

by Olivia Rising

  “You know I don’t play your games, Raven,” he said, losing patience. “Get to the point.”

  “‘I don’t play games,’ says the hero who left a house of cards behind.”

  Before Radiant had a chance to respond, Athena’s voice rang in his ear. “I will get some surveillance drones into the area, but perhaps you should just leave. Raven is not likely to approach you on his own.”

  He scanned the area without moving his head. He knew Raven’s powerset allowed him to share his flying ability with his entire mercenary crew. Fortunately for him, the Murder of Crows was only a concern if they had somehow recruited a Revoker—which was implausible, considering the rarity of that power classification.

  Raven wheeled around to hang upside down, surrounded by the shroud of his cloak’s wind-ruffled feathers. “The exiled angel has been cast out of heaven,” the young mercenary said. “The church has a very specific expression for the outcast’s curse. Anathema.”

  Radiant flexed his fingers. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep his composure for much longer. “Shouldn’t you be plotting in Paris?” he spat. His question was a shot in the dark, but it hit home. Raven’s mouth tightened.

  “I am prepared to send backup if necessary. Please advise,” Athena said into his ear. He detected the worry in her voice by the way she spoke so fast.

  “No need, Athena. It’s fine,” he addressed her through his helmet.

  “Still a pair of lovebirds, I see,” Raven commented.

  Will you ever grow up?

  “I wonder if the Covenant knows she’s helping a deserter,” Raven continued, enjoying himself.

  “Are you speaking for anyone except your Crows? Because, if not, I’m done wasting my time here.”

  “What if I told you I was paid to risk my life to say hello?”

  “Yeah, right,” Radiant said, failing to keep the frustration from his voice. “By whom?”

  From behind the beaked mask, the young mercenary’s eyes locked onto his. “The Conglomerate.”

  His answer came as a surprise. Raven had to be lying.

  “I can’t imagine Data would make use of you,” he stated. “He has his own diplomats.”

  “Data isn’t in charge anymore.” Raven twirled again, setting himself upright. “Be sure to let your girlfriend know that, too.”

  Athena chimed in, this time with an undertone of urgency. “I suggest you vacate the area. Raven may be stalling to keep you there until help arrives. There are a number of people who would pay to see you dead.”

  No need to remind me.

  “How about you give me the number of whoever’s in charge at the moment, and I promise to call him or her later,” Radiant suggested.

  He didn’t have a chance to hear Raven’s smarmy reply. The AI in his helmet recited a stream of intelligence, overriding its previous deactivation setting. Another surge? he deduced. Emergency overrides only occurred in the most extreme situations.

  “Transformace. Transition. Update 8:02 by Czech Republic. Threat level seven. Governmental call for assistance. Location: City of Prague. Effective immediately.”

  An emergency override for a mere transition? That’s impossible.

  He remembered the last time when he had received an emergency override, when Monsoon’s power surge had flooded an area the size of a large city, which resulted in the drowning deaths of several hundred people.

  “Athena, can you perform a systems check on Iris? She’s reporting a level-seven distress call for a transition. There must be some bug.”

  Raven was saying something which was lost in the wind. “…help? I hope you know … none of us…”

  Radiant ignored him. He had more important matters to focus on.

  “Iris is fully functional,” Athena replied through the earbud. “The Chief Executive of the Czech Republic requests immediate intervention for a level-seven transition. The EU team is working on evacuation efforts in response to the Sleepwalker; they will not arrive in Prague for at least three hours.”

  Radiant sighed. It looked like his plans for focusing on alternative global solutions would have to wait—at least until this most recent threat was brought under control.

  “Coordinates,” he said.

  “I thought your plan was to be passive,” Athena reminded him, her tone tense. “I doubt the UNEOA will appreciate your intervention on this matter, under the circumstances.”

  I have to live with my decisions. They don’t.

  “If this really is a level seven, even Samael won’t make it there in time,” he rationalized. “So, once again, coordinates, please. I’d rather not fly blind.”

  After a long moment, coordinate overlays flickered across the interior of his visor. They showed his current position followed by a map of Europe, including a close-up on central Europe. The last projection showed an inset of the Czech Republic.

  “You’re leaving me behind?” Raven’s whine cut through the wind. “What of our epic airborne duel of Good and Evil?” The feather-cloaked rogue executed a theatrical twirl.

  Radiant didn’t grace him with a response. He was occupied with the most recent projection on his visor, which showed the Czech Republic’s capital city marked with a blinking red dot. When he had a clear idea of the distance and direction, he transformed into a beam of light and projected himself east.

  Less than a millisecond later, he materialized three hundred miles away, surrounded by a corona of luminescence reflected on the clouds beneath him. It took him a moment to collect his senses and re-orient himself.

  The clouds blocked his view of the landscape below as he waited for the beep in his earbud to confirm that Athena’s satellite signal had tracked him. His visor soon informed him that he was hanging above the German–Czech border. He hadn’t gone quite far enough.

  After two more short jumps, he saw the city of Prague below. The sky was almost cloudless here, allowing him to make out a sea of red brick roofs nestled on either side of the meandering Vltava River. Under different circumstances, he would have liked to spend some time admiring the Baroque architecture with its high-peaked roof elements and tall stone archways. He had once been a student who explored the similarities between the Baroque movement and Moscow’s Stalinist Empire style as a means to expand his own professional background, but today his attention was on any destruction caused by a level-seven threat.

  Because he wasn’t able to spot any of it from his current altitude, he needed to get closer.

  Honing in on a location without crashing into any solid structures was a bit of a challenge. He crossed the globe faster than the Traveler could teleport himself, but precise short-range jumps within an urban environment still proved precarious.

  “No signs of destruction from three hundred feet up,” he reported into his helmet. “I need more information.”

  “The target is a local university student, Krystof Drobny,” Athena informed. “Twenty-two years old. Suspended for drug abuse, LSD. He was last seen in the lower quarter near St. Nicholas Church, a very populated area northwest of Charles Bridge.”

  Radiant adjusted his position to three hundred feet above the brick roofs, just low enough to compare the map overlay on his visor to his actual view of the city below. Another flare jump brought him above the town square which bordered the church.

  “The target is surrounded by a large area of effect that is actually … visible. Maybe instantly lethal. This is unconfirmed, but please be careful,” Athena said with an urgent voice.

  Now he heard the screams so he looked down. Numerous people were running through the city’s alleys. The historic two- and three-story buildings were lined up seamlessly, not offering many escape routes for those who searched for other ways to leave the area.

  “Has my intervention been announced to city officials?” he asked into his helmet. The Czech government had requested help from the Covenant, not a rogue, but he would worry about his legal status later.

  “I am informing them right now,�
�� Athena confirmed. “It should be on every news channel within minutes.”

  He hoped that he wouldn’t have to worry about friendly fire this time. It wasn’t uncommon for panicked people to confuse super-powered allies with threats, and Radiant was aware that his luminescent wings—his most recognizable feature—weren’t visible in broad daylight.

  After another short flare jump, he spotted the target. Now that he had a clearer picture, the reported threat level made sense.

  A figure in jeans and a sweater shuffled along a deserted street, resembling something out of a nightmare, surrounded by an aura of around 150 feet in diameter which was made up of greenish light and swirling shadows that passed through any walls they touched. The shadows were each about the size and shape of a person, although the many-voiced screams that echoed from them as they swept through the air were nowhere near human. Even though the young man tried to stop himself from moving, his limbs made unsteady jerking movements as he dragged himself along the street.

  Good Lord. This is more than just a transition. A faint sickness settled into Radiant’s gut. He had studied the reports on most of the known transitions that had happened to date, and he couldn’t recall anything that compared to this. As he watched, an elderly couple got caught up in the green-tinged aura and vanished, dissolving into shadows that joined the others on their horrific carousel. The absorption of the pair expanded the aura of greenish light by about six or seven feet.

  He spawns shadows from living beings?

  “Update,” he reported into his helmet. “This is definitely a level eight, and maybe even a level nine. I need everyone to move away from this area. Now.”

  “Can people take cover inside buildings?” Athena asked, concerned.

  “Negative. The effect passes through walls, and it’s growing.”

  He shot a thin laser beam down into the aura. The shadow it penetrated squirmed and twisted, but continued to move. He tried the most aggressive beams he could produce—a pair of white-hot rays each about six inches wide—to the same effect, except that they cracked and melted the cobbled road below.

  What on earth?

  Radiant was dumbfounded. The presence of shadows suggested a Darkshaper classification, but the aura appeared unaffected by light, its opposing element. Whatever is wrong with powers lately, it’s getting worse. He was uncomfortably reminded of the Sleepwalker.

  A tentative link formed in his mind. It was possible that hallucinogenic drugs had played a part in this transition, instead of the Sleepwalker’s overdose of sleeping pills, but there was no way of telling because the Sleepwalker’s aura had never grown.

  The Shadowspawner stopped and looked up into the sky. He was too far away for Radiant to make out the details, but his face resembled a twisted mask rather than the dazed expression of someone on a drug trip. Unlike the screaming shadows surrounding him, he still looked human.

  He guessed that his lasers would kill the target with a direct hit, but he couldn’t take the risk. It was too dangerous to kill the target because powers that absorbed energy unleashed all of its capacity to disastrous effect if the host was destroyed. He had observed this phenomenon in the aftermath of Maelstrom and Osmotic’s deaths. He had seen what had become of the city of Berlin: half of it would be uninhabitable for decades.

  “Samael is on his way,” Athena announced into his ear. “ETA just over thirty minutes.”

  “You need Paladin,” he replied. “A Revoker’s power nullification is the only safe way to end this.”

  “Andrey … I was asked to tell you to get out.”

  Radiant ignored her request. It was too late for second thoughts, and he had already considered and discarded several action plans. As much as he hated standing by, he knew he needed a solution that wouldn’t cause countless casualties. And he couldn’t risk being touched by that aura.

  Three hundred feet below, the Shadowspawner continued walking down the length of the residential street with unsteady jerking movements.

  “The rest of the team will arrive on scene in about four hours,” the voice in his earbud informed. In softer tones, she added, “And Andrey? Be careful.” The connection cut off with a crackling sound.

  He was on his own, not that he was surprised. The Covenant’s predilection for territorial claims was one of the things that had driven him away in the first place. All that was left for him to do was to stall until backup arrived. Unfortunately the backup might be Samael, whose flying speed surpassed Athena’s aircrafts, but that was a problem for later.

  He shot a wide, super-heated laser beam from each of his palms, using them to cut into the road ahead of the shuffling level eight threat. A section of cobblestones melted away while its remaining edges glowed with heat.

  The Shadowspawner stopped, opened his mouth, and released an inhuman scream echoed by each of his shadow projections. Radiant had seen some messed up things during his time with the Covenant, but he still resisted the urge to shut out the noise with his helmet. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the carousel of humanoid shadows lurched ahead to surge across the half-melted pavement in a single fluid motion. By the time the Shadowspawner had reached the destroyed stretch of road, he was able to pass over it unimpeded as though the lasers had never touched it.

  So the shadow aura absorbs heat and molds materials? Radiant couldn’t connect what he saw to anything that he had experienced before, and, unfortunately, he was much more efficient when he calculated known factors.

  As the aura passed through a pair of historic buildings on either side of the road, another six feet or so were added to its range. More absorptions.

  He forced his mind to think about solutions rather than the unknown number of added victims. He flare jumped ahead to get a better view of the alley where the Shadowspawner was traveling. The absorbing aura grew with each building it touched, expanding up and out in all directions.

  People think they’re safe inside their homes, but they’re not. He wished he spoke Czech so he could warn people to abandon the false security of their homes.

  He aimed another pair of laser beams at a stone carving, protruding from the building beside the Shadowspawner. These lasers were surgically thin, intended to cut rather than melt. The targeted stone adornment broke free, plummeting three stories, hitting the alley below with a calamitous crash, missing the threat by more than three feet, but the shadows didn’t even flinch. Streams of people flooded into the streets up ahead, some of them panicked enough to run in the wrong direction.

  Radiant produced a thin laser beam to burn a glowing arrow into the section of road ahead of them, directing them away from the approaching threat. Many people took the cue and redirected their evacuation while others followed them.

  He closed his eyes, his racing thoughts delivering ideas. He couldn’t enter the greenish glow, surrounding his opponent, because it might kill him instantly. He could disable the Shadowspawner’s legs with thin precision lasers. But if he accidentally killed his target all the stored energy would become unleashed on the city. He knew from experience that a precise non-lethal hit on a moving target over a hundred feet away was next to impossible.

  He opened his eyes to turn his attention back to the swirling aura of shadows, which had to be fifty to sixty feet across by now, when he noticed that none of the threat’s shadowy minions had passed through the glass when the Shadowspawner moved past a number of large shop windows. In fact, they avoided it as if the material caused them discomfort or pain. How had he failed to notice this pattern before?

  Reducing his altitude, he balled his hands into fists and smashed every window he could reach. He watched as the shards of glass scattered across the ground below in front of the Shadowspawner’s path, and then flare jumped ahead to continue smashing windows on the other side of the road.

  After scattering glass splinters across a good portion of the Shadowspawner’s path, Radiant noticed the aura hesitated to advance across the shards. The level-eight threat changed direction
with an earsplitting scream before heading down a side street.

  He directed his lasers at a sandstone building which fronted the alley. The beams sliced through the crumbly stone in seconds, detaching a pair of small stone balconies, sending them crashing down into the alley about forty feet ahead of the threat. As the Shadowspawner approached the broken sections of balcony, Radiant released another pair of super-heated beams. A few thousand degrees of heat turned the sandstone rubble into a large puddle of molten glass within seconds.

  The Shadowspawner stopped just ahead of the glowing orange puddle of liquid glass and screamed again. The sound was repeated six or seven dozen times by his shadow minions, who once again refused to absorb the heat of the puddle for their master. After a minute of screaming at the obstacle, the Shadowspawner turned around and shuffled in the opposite direction, back the way he had come. He didn’t get very far before Radiant created another puddle of liquid glass from a sandstone pillar, enclosing him.

  So long as the threat wasn’t able to move through walls like his shadows, Radiant had him trapped. He knew from experience, however, that he couldn’t allow himself to relax just yet. Things often went wrong in the worst ways when they appeared under control. For one thing, he wasn’t sure whether the Shadowspawner would remain contained once the melted glass puddles cooled.

  He jumped to a nearby rooftop, and watched for a few more minutes. Thankfully, it looked as if the threat was still unable to progress in any direction even as the glass puddles solidified. It wasn’t much of a relief, but it was an improvement. The Covenant should have time to fly Paladin in and end this before any more people were sucked into the aura.

  As he watched the streets below, he saw more and more people fleeing from their homes. He observed the evacuation with a clenched jaw and hunched shoulders, knowing that this outcome was more akin to a disaster than a victory. The people he had failed to save hadn’t merely died. Something awful had happened to them. Thinking about it brought back the sickening twist in the pit of his stomach.