The Invincibles

by Michael McNichols

  However, before all that, the synthesized Diatomite-x required more testing. Hyperman and Mors had to be certain it’d strengthen and empower people and not sicken and even kill them. They couldn’t risk turning even one person into another Mutagen.

  “How much more additional testing do you think we’ll need?” Hyperman asked Mors, staring down into all the Diatomite-x’s atoms and watching their electrons swirl.

  “Give me another week,” Mors replied, adjusting a temperature dial for the yellow Diatomite-x fog. “Then I want you to run through all the tests again on your own. Between the two of us, I think we’ll catch everything that could go wrong.”

  “Without doubt.” Hyperman paused and chuckled. “I suppose I’ll have to find something to do with myself for a week then.”

  Mors irked up an eyebrow. “What would you normally do?” he asked. “Fight crime, save lives, and protect the world, right?”

  Hyperman smirked. “Of course.”

  ***

  He looped the globe, moving far too fast for S.I.L.E.N.T. or anyone else to detect him. From city to city, he barreled through gangs of robbers, arsonists, and murderers, leaving them dizzied and tied up for the police. Catching super-villains in the act, he hit them before they even knew what was happening.

  He ripped a hole through Sky Terror’s airship and sent it crashing down into the Atlantic before its mad crew could bomb the New England coast or escape to their lifeboats. A single breath froze Mordred Murdock in place before he finished casting a spell that would have caused the ocean to swallow up all of England. Hyperman even hurled the Horror Doctor’s giant robotic Griffin-Man out into deep space and burned down the Costa Rican weapons factory from where it had been launched.

  After that, he perked his ears up, hoping to hear about some trouble somewhere in the world that he could help with. He picked up chatter from a few S.I.L.E.N.T. communications channels, discussing the reaper children search. His ears perked right up with interest. According to reports, they had actually found one a few weeks back not long after Phoenix Bright had been stopped. And the reaper child had been…Nightshadow’s girlfriend?

  Hyperman bolted to Salome City.

  ***

  Unmasked, Nightshadow sat alone in his Triangle Park lair. His supercomputer hummed and pulsed with a strange blue glow. Encoded calculations and data rolled down the screen before him. He wore a new wing-suit with extra padding and equipment pouches. Tired black pitted the edges of his eyes and more lines than usual creased his face, making him look far older than he was. A gray stubbly beard even coated his chin. As he tapped at the keyboard, a slight, nearly unnoticeable tremor ran through his hands. Hyperman thought probably only he could see it, due to his hyper-senses. Whatever had happened with Night’s girlfriend had shaken him up badly if he was trembling like that.

  Pausing, Nightshadow spun around in his seat.

  “I know you’re there, Cal,” he said in a soft, raspy voice.

  After a glaring silver flash, Hyperman appeared at the back of the lair. “How did you know?” he asked.

  “Gut feeling,” Nightshadow replied and frowned. He steepled his hands together in his lap, and his face set like steel. “What do you want, Cal?” he asked.

  “To see you!” Hyperman answered, alarmed by Night’s tone. “To check on you! I just got back from space and heard about what happened with that reaper child!”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you? I can see your aura, Night. It’s black and red and bleeding. I can see how tense you are too. Did you even have a chance to grieve? To process everything that happened and let it all out?”

  “So you’d like to see me weeping and unable to get out of bed? Drinking? Self-medicating? Taking it all out on some hoods and thrashing them to death? It happened. It was horrible, but it wasn’t the only horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m coping.”

  “You’re shutting out the world and burying yourself in your work.”

  “And I’m still going strong.”

  “I can see,” Hyperman said, scanning the entire lair again. “And what are you working on, Night? What requires such massive amounts of Diatomite-x? Or do I need to ask, given you rigged that Diatomite-x gas up with your security? Did you think I couldn’t get past that?”

  “I set that up as a test,” Nightshadow coolly replied. “I wanted to know if it could stop you, but it didn’t. In fact, you’re utterly unaffected by even by the Diatomite-x here in close proximity to you in such large amounts. Your powers have been evolving over the years then, and it takes even more massive amounts of Diatomite-x to affect you now. I had my suspicions.”

  “Where did you get the Diatomite-x, Night?”

  “You might say I inherited it.”

  “Stealing from MorsWorld was quite the risk, even for you. I’ll admit using what Don was doing for cover was clever.”

  “Thank you, I suppose.”

  Hyperman sighed and shook his head.

  “Did Wrath poison your mind against me?” he asked. “Are you even going to hear me out?”

  “What is there to say?” Nightshadow asked.

  “That’s it then? It’s just cut and dried with you, isn’t it? Even if it was El Dorado, who the world is much better off without?”

  “And the Whorl.”

  “The Whorl?”

  “We know what you did to Don, Cal.”

  Hyperman’s jaw dropped open.

  “We might not be able to track you,” Nightshadow replied, “but Liandra still has visions about you that she showed me and Paul in a crystal ball, hard as that is to believe. It was murky and hard to see where and when, but we saw you fighting Don, Cal. We saw you burn off his legs.”

  “You have to let me explain!” Hyperman said.

  Nightshadow held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. We’re Invincibles, Cal. We’re supposed to be heroes! We’re held to a higher standard and no one more than you, because of what you can do! Thanks to Liandra, we figured out what Don was up to and we had to keep an eye on that, but it’s nothing compared to your recent actions! Did you think you could just do whatever you wanted, Cal? Did you think your powers let you escape any consequences? You broke the law! You played god and destroyed someone’s life, and it didn’t end there either! You went wild on Prism! Liandra’s visions showed that too! Where does it stop, Cal? Just how much can you abuse your powers?”

  “Who are you to judge me?” Hyperman snapped.

  “Who else can?” Nightshadow asked. “Who else knows you well enough? You know I did finally find the time to look into your one friend’s background.”

  “Lindsey?” Hyperman asked.

  Nightshadow nodded. “I found nothing, Cal. Nothing suspicious or traumatic ever happened to her. No superhero accidentally burned down her childhood home or hurt her parents. No super-criminal ever kidnapped her or murdered her ex-husband. She was afraid of superheroes, because she thinks we’re too powerful and can’t be held accountable for our actions. Everything you are right now.”

  Hyperman tried to speak up, but no words came out of his mouth. He had no response or defense. Deep down inside, he knew he was doing right, even if he couldn’t properly explain it. Yet, Night’s tone of voice made him feel guilty and full of doubt. His sheer conviction bit into Hyperman and left him floundering.

  “It’s not too late,” Nightshadow said. “You can turn yourself in. We can arrange a trial conducted by your peers and the Silver Seraphs. No matter the verdict, you can still work with all of us and do good. We just have to be able to watch you and hold you back, if necessary. You have to let us figure out a way to stop you if it comes down to it. You’ve shown us that we need one.”

  “You’re serious about all this?” Hyperman asked.

  “Stand trial, Cal,” Nightshadow said, getting up out of his chair and tentatively approaching. He laid a hand on Hyperman’s shoulder. “I’ll even be your advocate,” he added. “Tell us your side. Explain why you did it a
ll. Tell us about the mitigating circumstances. Prove you haven’t gone off the deep end, and we can work something out. You know you can trust me.”

  Hyperman scoffed and brushed Nightshadow’s hand off. “I can? I can trust you with all your Diatomite-x weapons? You assume I don’t know how you think? How long have you been making up a plan to take me down if you have to? I bet you have one for every Invincible! Why the hell aren’t you on trial?”

  “If I ever need to be tried for anything, I’d give myself right up,” Nightshadow said.

  Hyperman stared at him and chuckled humorlessly. “You would. You really, really would, and you’d accept the verdict, even if it was completely wrong.”

  “I’d work around it.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like you. I’m sorry, Night. You’ll see I’m right in the end though. After what I do, everyone will.”

  In a whoosh, Hyperman super-sped away with enough momentum to knock Nightshadow over. Before leaving though, he combed through this lair and Nightshadow’s many others scattered throughout the world, gathering all the Diatomite-x and collecting it up into several massive, clumpy boulders. Somehow, even at hyper-speed, he managed to juggle them back and forth while in mid-flight.

  Having memorized the blueprints for the lab and storage facility Mors was using for the other Diatomite-x in their possession, Hyperman quickly whipped up his own storage facility deep down beneath the Earth, close to the planet’s core. It was easy for him to swipe what he needed from the stockpiles of different companies across the world. They wouldn’t miss the small bits and pieces he had taken and put together into the facility. A large share of the materials had actually come from MorsWorld anyway, and he could grab whatever he wanted from them. He knew Alex wouldn’t complain. Besides, Alex would thank him for taking the initiative by doubling their lab space and increasing their store of Diatomite-x.

  Once done with the facility, he stood in the main lab and gazed about his work. The walls and floors gleamed. The Diatomite-x sat safely stacked up behind energy force fields, and the computers and equipment were the latest and most advanced design.

  Yet, his hands ached and burned. He looked down at them and found he’d scraped them on the jagged, rough surface of the Diatomite-x. More than a few cuts had opened on each hand, and they bled and dripped down to the floor. His stomach clamped up on him and he actually vomited. His small, chunky puddle of puke on the floor sparkled diamond yellow. Feeling light-headed and suddenly weak, he staggered back and nearly fell. Sweat beaded his forehead and a fever boiled the insides of his skull.

  A fever? How could he have a fever? How could he be sick? Had he finally encountered a large enough amount of Diatomite-x for it to finally weaken him? No! He couldn’t let it! Not when he still had so much to accomplish!

  He snarled and screamed, but his skin soon glowed with a pale light. His head cleared immediately up. The wounds on his hands closed, and he felt his strength returning. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was still mostly invincible.

  Chapter 18: WAR DRUMS

  While splashing through the foul-smelling sewer tunnels on his motorbike, Nightshadow tapped the communicator in his mask. It was all right for him to reach out to S.I.L.E.N.T. His dampeners plus S.I.L.E.N.T.’s telepaths and Liandra’s spells were running interference with all the Invincibles’ communications. If Hyperman tried listening in, he’d hear nothing but scraping static. To be extra cautious though, Nightshadow switched from frequency to frequency, and his communicator let out a droning screech before stopping at S.I.L.E.N.T.’s signal. Paul Wrath picked up on the other end.

  “Paul, we need to mobilize now!” Nightshadow said. “Hyperman was just in my lair! He’s about to make a move, whatever it is!”

  “Shit!” Wrath replied. “Do we even have time with that bastard hyper-speeding around?”

  “I don’t know how long we have, but I’ve sent alerts out to everyone.”

  “We’ll deploy right away. Wait! He was in your lair? Why?”

  “He was checking up on me, but he saw the Diatomite-x, Paul. He took it all.”

  “Damn it! He took all of it? And he wasn’t affected or sick?”

  “His powers have apparently advanced beyond what we even thought, but still, if we have a large enough amount of Diatomite-x, it might affect him and our factories have been synthesizing and mass-producing for weeks. We can replace what he took from me, and he doesn’t know that.”

  “Alright, but how can we find him? Do we have to bait him? Can we trap him?”

  “I slipped a tracer onto him.”

  “You did?”

  “Liandra charmed it, so he won’t notice it for a while. Once I activate it though, his hyper-senses will pick up on it right away. We’ll need to be ready to strike. I’ll be teleporting in soon from the docks, and we’ll finalize whatever details we can.”

  “Night, I’ll be honest. I’m freaking out here, and Xanax is the only thing keeping me functional. I’ve been around the block, and I thought I’d seen everything, but this is Hyperman. I don’t know if he can be stopped.”

  “Neither do I, Paul, but we’re going to find out for sure. I’m as scared as you are, but we’re the only ones that can do anything about this. I’ve been worrying that this might happen for years and now we have to face it. Hyperman’s gone rogue, and we have to restrain him. S.I.L.E.N.T. has to arrest him. It’s how our system works, and we have to at least try and show him he’s not above it. Stay calm, Paul. I’ll be there soon. We’ll get through this. We’ll find a way. We always do.”

  Nightshadow blasted around a wicked turn with his bike’s wheels spraying the sewer’s walls with muck. He ran numbers, war strategies, and weapon designs through his mind, getting everything together. They needed to be absolutely precise with no margin for error. Everybody was relying on his plan and the Whorl’s current predicament had complicated things. They’d really needed Don’s speed powers against Hyperman, but Nightshadow was still determined to make their attack strategy work. They just needed to reorganize a few things and try to catch him off guard.

  Oddly enough, Nightshadow felt thankful for this crisis, as jarring as it was to go after one of his friends; but Hyperman was no longer acting like himself. Still, Nightshadow focusing his full mental faculties on the problem of Hyperman kept his mind occupied and his thoughts from drifting into dark places.

  Whenever he closed his eyes, he still saw Piper singing and laughing. At times, he still felt her shivery touch on his chest. Sometimes, at the office or even out on the street, he thought he smelled death and saw bodies. He always shook it off though. The world couldn’t afford for him to crack and that was enough to keep him from doing so. Hyperman losing it gave Nightshadow no excuse to do the same thing. He had to hold it together, if only so everyone else could.

  Chapter 19: DEAD ANGELS BURNING

  Hyperman zipped through Southeast Asia, vaporizing Diablo Dementia’s chemical weapons labs, which were hidden throughout the jungles. He’d hoped that would put him in a better mood, but Nightshadow’s accusing, judgmental lecture still rang in his eyes and rankled him. Night too often knew how to get under his skin, but Hyperman couldn’t dwell on what his friend thought and whatever his futile little plans to save the world from the supposed great hyper-menace were. He had people to save and worlds to transform. He couldn’t wait on smaller minds to grasp the bigger picture.

  While floating back above the world and scanning for any crimes or disasters, Hyperman felt an irritating little itch on his left calf. Him? Itching? He can’t be itching! He immediately investigated and found a spider-sized tracer stuck to his leg. He crushed it between two fingers and wondered where it had come from. Dementia? Maybe Night?

  An abrupt girlish scream from all the way back in New Daedalus caught his ear. It sounded like Lindsey, so Hyperman streaked meteor-fast and hot across the sky. A subtle white flash enveloped him. He almost didn’t notice it. The air became charged and tingled. Every sound abruptly gave off more o
f a little lingering echo.

  He rolled his eyes. Did whoever was behind this think he wouldn’t notice those small details or that this was obviously a set-up? He’d walked into traps too many times not to know one when he saw it. Still, he thought he’d play this out to its bitter end. Whatever the trap was, it couldn’t hurt him and at least it’d draw whoever was acting against him out.

  Lindsey (or something that sounded like her) shrieked again. He bolted toward the flying saucer humming and hovering over the sparkling, sun-brightened New Daedalus skyline. Sleek and silver-white, the saucer vibrated and spun about in place, causing people at their windows and down on the sidewalks to gawk up. It swept out a beam that caught and dragged a random half-dozen screaming bystanders up into its opened hatch.

  Hyperman rolled his eyes at that wretched old cliché. The UFO was snatching people up like in all those old movies! Now he of course had to go play hero. Sighing, he flew up and got a grip on the saucer before hurling it out over the ocean far away from the city, as he’d have done if this were all for real.

  The saucer spun around and rifled back at him out over the thrashing waves. He flew up and tore one of its hatch off to climb on inside. Mismatched dials, buttons, and levers of all sizes, shapes, and colors filled up the circular walls. Beyond a blinking force field, people lay strapped down as metallic tentacles looped down from the ceiling and snapped open with laser-scalpels. Stripped of her clothing, Lindsey fidgeted and struggled against her straps as the conveyor belt slid her down next in line for surgery.