Superluminary (Powered Destinies Book 1)

by Olivia Rising

  “Chris, you got her! You got Mirage!” Overdrive’s voice chimed through her earbud, whooping with juvenile cheer. “The Covenant is—”

  He was cut off, his words overridden by the flat monotone of Athena’s voice. “My drones located One Fell Swoop when he lost the protection of Mirage’s illusion. He is now attempting to flee from the area, using the crowd as cover.”

  Samael was quick to reply. “I’m on it.”

  “I need to take the Warden back to HQ,” Paladin added.

  He soared through the sky, the stands dwindling away beneath them. Soon they were moving through the air and away, leaving the screaming, swarming crowd behind.

  Chris knocked her fists against Paladin’s industrial-strength armor in protest. “No! I need to help … all those people … those kids….”

  A flashback of the panicked, jostling crowd sent another wave of dizziness through her body, forcing her to keep quiet and hold still until the vertigo stopped. Paladin ignored her request, and she didn’t have the strength to keep arguing. He stopped and turned back around, hovering about fifty feet from the stadium’s upper deck to allow her a view of what was happening.

  She stared at the green turf in the center of the stadium to bring her vision into focus. All the bystanders who had jumped down onto the field were climbing the walls to get away from the telekinetic maelstrom of flying objects that raged on around them. A man in khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt—the one she saw just before blacking out—stood at the center, creating a dense funnel cloud spanning a diameter of close to a hundred feet. His long black dreads whipped around him as more and more items were sucked into the funnel’s center from the outlying stands.

  “Who’s the guy with the dreads?” Chris asked.

  Paladin addressed her directly without using the microphone. “Must be newly transitioned. We have no records of him.”

  “So Mirage really was working with others. Did Athena find One Fell Swoop yet?”

  “Not yet,” Athena replied.

  Chris’s eyes flicked across the field until she discovered Mirage. The blonde woman was at the same spot where Chris had collided with her, crumpled in a broken mass. Samael was nowhere in sight.

  “I don’t think the vortex guy wants to hurt the spectators,” she said, weak. “I don’t think Mirage or One Fell Swoop were, either. No one’s attacking the spectators.”

  “Not directly, maybe. It doesn’t matter. Samael is about to end this. We’ve got no other choice.” Paladin’s tone told her that they had both come to the same conclusion. The whole plot had been a ruse to bait the heroes to the stadium, provoking them into suicide using One Fell Swoop’s power feedback ability. Word must have gotten out that the Covenant was no longer impossible to harm. After two years under the UNEOA’s strict jurisdiction, not even previously harmless rogues were able to resist the opportunity. Chris couldn’t imagine why they would have practiced terrorism without someone putting them up to it. Money must be involved.

  Athena spoke up again. “The drones have One Fell Swoop surrounded. While he is disabled, you are to take out this new transition, Samael. Do you copy?”

  “As you wish, my queen,” Samael replied without even a hint of sarcasm. The words were delivered with a softness Chris never heard from him before.

  His tone puzzled her. Is he hitting on Athena?

  It didn’t matter. Samael might be a jerk on the surface, but underneath it all he was a regular person. A person whose life depended on her at the moment.

  She turned her attention to the sky in time to see a gray flash plunge through the air. It stopped above the open center of the stadium, spreading a multitude of silver ribbons.

  Chris harnessed every last ounce of energy she had to cast a new force field onto him, and not a moment too soon. The vortex of hurled objects erupted with the kinetic energy of a small bomb, hurling a mass of debris at Samael’s hovering figure. The dreadlocked man stood at the base of the funnel with his arms outstretched and his head tilted back, gazing up at the flying hero.

  Samael reacted immediately. He flew up with incredible speed, avoiding the worst of the debris cloud. He wasn’t able to accelerate to his full speed, though, and a small part of the barrage still crashed into his hovering body, knocking him back.

  Chris winced at the impact. She felt Samael’s force field flicker and crumble under the strain. It warded off several smaller, lighter objects, but didn’t survive contact with a fist-sized piece of concrete. Mrs. Clarence’s words from her therapy session a week before came to mind. ‘It’s not unheard of for powers to be affected by emotions.’

  She didn’t want Samael to die, but she didn’t particularly like him. He was kind of a dick. Considering the relative weakness of the force field she put on him, her power wasn’t too fond of him, either.

  Good thing he dodged.

  The impact sent Samael into a tailspin. He reeled, tumbling back for a split second before catching himself and stabilizing his position. He didn’t look hurt, at least.

  The debris explosion had incited more panic from the crowd and as the screams increased in volume and intensity, the entire stadium was filled with utter chaos. The jostling mass of heads and limbs made it impossible to focus on any one person. The sight of them made Chris wonder why she couldn’t feel their pain anymore when she watched them getting hurt.

  Her thoughts were cut short by a strong gust of wind blowing across the position. Samael had ascended back to his previous position, wing ribbons fluttering around him. He raised his hands to the vortex of flying debris, thumbs adjacent and palms turned out. The whole vortex of telekinetically hurled makeshift projectiles froze in midair before slowly reversing its movement away from Samael, back down to the ballpark.

  He’s pushing the vortex back down, Chris realized.

  The entire stadium erupted with the thunderous sound of concentrated air currents rushing to the center of the ballpark. The force was extreme enough that some of the largest objects that had been caught within the whirling sphere had been vaporized into dust.

  As the debris was forced back down by Samael’s powers, it pressed down onto the lone figure standing in center field. A split second later the dread-locked man was gone, flattened by extreme air pressure until all that was left was a haze of blood splattered across an area the size of a single-family house.

  Holy shit! Chris thought. He got the wind to do that?

  Now that she had witnessed Samael’s power in action, she couldn’t deny her newfound respect for him. She still classified him as a jerk, though.

  “Samael, are you all right?” Athena’s concerned voice asked over the comm system, revealing a sliver of emotion for once.

  “Yes, I’m fine. No thanks to the force field.”

  Chris could have explained to him why the energy barrier was not any stronger, but decided to keep her mouth shut.

  “It did the job,” Paladin said. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  Samael grunted and asked about the whereabouts of Mirage, who had suffered most of the vortex’s blowback from where she had been in the field. Chris stopped listening when Athena and Samael speculated on the severity of the woman’s injuries.

  Meanwhile, Paladin resumed his slow descent away from the stadium. “Are you okay?” he asked over the surrounding noise.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Chris mumbled against his armor. Helen surfaced in her mind, bloodied and broken to the point where she barely looked human.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Paladin replied. He paused before delivering his next words with meaning. “The outcome here would have been a lot worse today if it hadn’t been for you. We were helpless until you removed Mirage’s illusion. You did well here.”

  Maybe, but I could have done better.

  Chris tried to shut the sounds of the on-going stampede out of her mind. Even without feeling them, she knew countless people were still trapped down there, still getting hurt. She caught sight of a dark-haired toddler on his father�
��s shoulders, the two of them amid the crush of the crowd. Something about the boy reminded her of Dylan. He would be that age if he’d lived.

  Needing to do something, she projected the smallest force field possible around the pair. Almost instantly a running woman near the father and son was pushed down by the invisible force and trampled by the rush of people behind her.

  Chris allowed the force field to evaporate before turning away. Unable to watch any longer, she let herself get lost in the hum of Paladin’s power armor as he carried them to the stadium’s forecourt, where the Whitefield business center was located.

  As they approached ground level, Chris noticed an official-looking black vehicle with tinted windows next to an ambulance with flashing red lights. Security personnel with UNEOA uniforms surrounded both vehicles, their heads tilted at the sky as they watched the hero’s approach.

  The sight of the ambulance reminded her of the injuries she suffered when she collided with Mirage on the field. Of the agony that followed, and of dragging herself through the grass with a broken bone or two.

  She glanced down at her fur-covered arms. Now that she was able to give them her full attention, she discovered that one of them was slightly crooked and a small bulge poked out against her costume above her wrist. It all looked unreal without the pain.

  “Hey, Paladin,” she said as he lowered them onto the pavement. “Why can’t I feel anything anymore?”

  “After your evacuation, I gave you one of our emergency shots for the pain.”

  “And my danger sense?” she ventured.

  He straightened her body right-side up, preparing to make contact with the ground. “I disabled it when I reached you.”

  Oh, yeah. He’s a Revoker.

  Power nullification was one of the most useful Evolved powers in Chris’s book, and not just because it would be nice to have someone to disable her danger sense if it ever threatened to make her black out again. Revokers counteracted some of the most dangerous abilities. Without them, the world would have ended years before.

  A gurney with an attached IV bag was waiting, surrounded by a small army of paramedics that stood ready to receive her.

  Paladin gently touched down on the paved plaza near the vehicle before lifting Chris off his plated shoulder and easing her onto the gurney. A half dozen hands stirred into action, readying equipment and cutting into the furry sleeve of her bear costume.

  “The hospital staff have been cleared to use the Covenant’s medical equipment,” Paladin said. “Uberdoc designed it, so you won’t be out of commission for too long.”

  Chris liked the sound of that. While Shanti was the only known Evolved to ever possess healing powers without adverse side effects, Uberdoc’s drugs and surgery tools were efficient in speeding up recovery time. She couldn’t afford to waste weeks by sitting useless in a hospital. Not when Nora relied on her to stay by her side.

  “Athena told me that Overdrive made it out of there okay,” she said to distract herself from the IV needle getting shoved into her arm. “Where is he now?”

  The glowing eye slit of Paladin’s helmet watched over her. “He’s probably on his way to HQ by now. You’ll be able to see him soon enough.”

  She was about to ask about Ryan, but swallowed the words before they slipped out. Paladin wasn’t a Visionary, so he wouldn’t know how her former BFF was doing. “Well, thanks,” she said instead. “For everything.”

  It was obvious that Paladin was getting ready to leave her and return to the stadium where he was actually needed, and that One Fell Swoop hadn’t been taken into custody yet. Before she said her goodbyes, a distant explosion lit up the overcast daytime sky, followed by a deep rumble which rolled across the city like thunder.

  “What the—” the sound of two more explosions cut her off. One of them was more distant than the first, little more than a baritone rumble. The other went off with a loud thunderclap, no more than a few streets away.

  Oh, shit.

  Chris’s mouth fell open and she turned her head, straining to look beyond the ambulance wagon and the bustle of paramedics swarming her. Paladin launched himself into the air in the direction of the explosions. To the UNEOA headquarters building, she realized with a shudder.

  And then it dawned on her. The stadium had been nothing more than a diversion.

  6.6 Emergence

  San Francisco, USA

  Tuesday, the 12th of June, 2012

  7:12 p.m.

  The hospital staff were not miracle workers, but Uberdoc’s medical equipment allowed them to set Chris’s broken left forearm within a couple hours. She had been lucky enough to get away with a sprained right ankle and a dislocated shoulder. She would need a crutch to walk, but she preferred her status as an injured person to being stuck in bed for weeks on end.

  The Covenant arranged for a private flight to take her and Peter back to San Francisco shortly after the hospital released her. Both of them were in a solitary mood, and Chris was grateful when he chose to sit across the aisle from her. She needed some quiet time to assimilate the day’s events. Judging by the fragments of conversation drifting through the plane, he used the opportunity to pour out his heart to his family in Arizona.

  Chris was a little jealous. She had texted her parents to let them know she was okay, and her mother had returned a heartfelt message full of motherly wisdom and comfort, but she hadn’t called. Chris lacked the courage to make the first step.

  She distracted herself by fiddling with her phone and going through everything she experienced that day. She was settled in a posh leather airline seat, leaning back against her window, glad to be back in her sweats. Her bandaged ankle rested on a pillow in front of her, and she had one hand available to operate her phone because her right arm was trapped in a sling-supported cast which hurt with the slightest movement.

  The first thing drawing her attention after she boarded the plane was yet another text message from Emily.

  OMG, Chris, why won’t you write me back? Are you guys okay???

  Fractured arm or not, Chris regretted that she hadn’t written back to her sooner. The little girl must have been worried sick, and, with Nora in transient captivity and the rest of her team off in New York, Emily had the big apartment on the fifth floor all to herself. Naturally, she had watched the news.

  And no wonder. While events at the stadium had diverted the Covenant’s attention, the UNEOA headquarters in New York had been attacked—completely blown up—along with a NYPD administration building and a hotel. Chris still struggled with the fact that the UNEOA’s thirty-story office tower was gone, decimated by an unknown combination of tech and super powers still under investigation. Samael had flown over right after hearing the initial blast, but was unable to locate the perpetrators.

  The total death toll from the explosion was over a thousand and climbing. At least a hundred spectators had been trampled to death in the stadium, and many others injured. Chris dreaded the moment when she would find out that Ryan was among them.

  It had been total and complete chaos. The Secretary General survived because he had made his speech from a proxy location, unbeknownst to the rest of the world. Which had been smart, obviously.

  Looking back, she figured they moved his location at the last minute. The first piece of news she picked up after her hospital discharge was about the ten high-ranking UNEOA operatives who had been kidnapped from various locales. Where they might have been taken to was anyone’s guess at this point. No villain or criminal group had stepped forward to claim responsibility and make demands.

  Chris awkwardly pecked out a response to Emily’s text with the thumb of her good hand.

  Hey munchkin. Sorry. We’re OK. On our way home. C U soon.

  She let the phone fall into her lap, and stared at nothing in particular while the plane taxied down the runway.

  We’re OK, she had typed. As if.

  Only a small fraction of the news had been good. Athena had captured One Fell Swoop during his
attempted escape from the stadium, but never revealed if the interrogation had turned up anything useful. Mirage had died from the injuries she suffered during the telekinetic maelstrom’s blowback. The dreadlocked rogue— named Vortex—hadn’t survived the super high air pressure of Samael’s counterattack.

  I didn’t kill Mirage, did I? Chris asked herself over and over again. Her intervention had canceled the illusion and exposed the other two rogues responsible for the mass panic, but she didn’t feel good about it. She couldn’t erase the image of Mirage’s broken, mangled body from her mind.

  She could direct her thoughts elsewhere, though. As she scrolled through the headlines on her phone’s news app, she discovered a story about a politician with close ties to the UNEOA’s Evolved Committee who had been kidnapped from a live NBE Britain broadcast in Liverpool. While no deaths had been confirmed at that location, the intervening EU hero team had not yet succeeded in arresting or eliminating any of the responsible villains. One of the European heroes was hospitalized after nearly drowning in sewage water that still leaked from a rift above the NBE building.

  Perhaps most disturbing of all, there was also coverage about persistent Internet rumors suggesting the manifestation of the Antithesis in Liverpool. As far as Chris could tell, the Covenant hadn’t confirmed or denied these rumors. But even if the supposed Antithesis turned out to be just another Evolved, the power to create a permanent, sewage-spewing rift was serious business.

  She wondered how the hell the Antithesis rumor had taken over the Internet. The UNEOA must have a strong interest in keeping that kind of information under cover. Maybe the news was too big to be controlled by the UNEOA or other governing bodies anymore.

  Once she switched to a social media feed, she discovered that the dreaded A-word had already spawned millions of posts and tweets, and most referred to the Oracle’s mentions of an Antithesis in her end-of-the-world prophecies. She checked the date on her phone: June 12, 2012.

  This one’s headed straight for the history books.