He looked around, not like there was anyone else listening to us in here. When he was sure, “I found Parson and his newly created super militia. They’re calling themselves ‘Supers of the Revolution.’ I tell you what, these guys are nuts.”
“How did you find them and where?”
“Trust me on the how part Jericho, it wasn’t easy. As for the where, they’re right here.” The doors to The Sea Hag burst open and nine supers rushed in with assault rifles. At the lead was Parson, in his Rhino mask. “Sorry man, they caught me and when push came to shove, Parson gave me a lot of money to sell out.”
The guy in the Rhino mask slid it to the side. “Jericho Staley, never would’ve guessed you were The Negative Man.” He snickered at Hammerspace. “Seems like you really are a complete sell out.”
“I told you.”
Shawn never saw it coming. He was holding his cell phone in his right hand when Heather blew it up. There was nothing left of the upper part of his body after that. “You’d think he would’ve known better.”
I didn’t have time to worry about the dead traitor. These people knew my identity and couldn’t be allowed to leave here. “You’re all fools for thinking you’d live to see the sun rise.” The old knob and tube wiring in this place made it easy to grab a large amount of energy to augment my own. “Heather, duck.”
She went under the table just as I unleashed arcs of electricity everywhere. The bartender and the creepy old guy were unnecessary collateral damage due to knowing my secret. I don’t know if the supers thought their superior numbers would overwhelm me or not, not that it mattered anymore. In the closed space, there was no place for them to go, each one took the full blast of my powers and wasn’t going to live to tell about it.
When I let up, there were eleven charred husks lying on the floor of the old bar. Most of the inside was destroyed from my outburst. I helped Heather back to her feet. “You have any spare phones in your car?”
“I have five burners in the trunk.”
We placed those phones around The Sea Hag and she detonated them. The bar went up in flames as it sunk into the briny water below. We scrammed before any first responders showed up, though I doubt they’d find much to work with.
**Kyle Wonderton**
“Stop twitching, it’s only making things worse.”
Becky was trying to pour peroxide on the wounds from where The Negative Man blasted me. His energy cut right through my suit and tore my chest up pretty bad. “I can’t help it, the stuff burns like crazy.”
She put the bottle down. “Let’s try this.” The next thing to be applied to the burn was a cool gel. “According to the internet, aloe works really well. Your dad had a big supply of it in the one bathroom.”
That felt a lot better than the liquid she’d been pouring on me. “We should’ve started with that.”
“The peroxide kills infections.” She finished applying the aloe to the wound before letting me get back to resting. “You’re so lucky he didn’t kill you again. How many of your nine lives are you willing to risk engaging him?”
A lot about my brief encounter with The Negative Man really bugged me. He hadn’t killed me, no instead used Uncle Wayne’s name and told me to go home. “It’s obvious he knows who I am and my true identity.” That sent a shudder down my spine. “I knew he was in North Terrace because of that whole fight he had with the super up there, but man, it really hits home.”
She hopped up on the end of my cot and crossed her legs Indian style. “We’ve always been at a disadvantage with this. But the way you’re going about it, you’re becoming a real hero.”
That’s not what I wanted though. My plan was never to stay here as a hero. It was to come in like an avenger of darkness and sacrifice myself to kill him. I laid my head back against my pillow. It was so frustrating to be so far behind me, enemy.
I don’t know when I dozed off but I was awoken some time later. “Kyle, you need to see this.” Becky was still in the room and she had her tablet on. “The Sea Hag, one of the older bars down by the ocean, it’s been destroyed.”
I sat up and watched the live streaming news she had up. “Most of the bodies inside were too far gone to identify, but a source within the police department confirmed that a rhino mask was found. Though this is unconfirmed, we do believe one of the victims inside is Nick Parson.”
She muted it. “Those fools.” She said it with such bitterness. “They all knew they were outgunned but they still went through with an ambush attempt.”
“Do you think that’s the group from out front of the comic store?”
“Yes.” She tossed the tablet on to the little table, beside the laptop which held Phil Jenkin’s mind. “Parson became a bloodthirsty idiot and all those others followed him right off the cliff.”
My chest was still a bit of a mess. While she looked like a ticking time bomb, I went over to Jenkin’s and plugged him into the wall. It was becoming more and more obvious The Stormfall was the only choice to take care of The Negative Man and I needed to improve fast.
After taking a moment to boot up, Phil’s pixelated face appeared. “Hey Kyle, I was wondering when you’d get back around to talking to me.”
“Were you able to clean up the video and learn anything?”
With the memory stick still plugged in, his face disappeared and a cleaner shot of my first Stormfall attempt came online. “Remarkable isn’t it? What you were able to accomplish with one attack amazed me.”
Phil knew something. “Out with it Phil, what did you learn from watching?”
He replayed the video and stopped it right before impact. “I judged the speed you were going. Did you know you were still accelerating at impact? If you had just ten more feet, I think your body would’ve done something incredible. I think your attack would’ve broken the sound barrier!”
Phil didn’t know what that meant to me. “Are you sure?”
Becky was behind me as he continued his explanation. “Your reflexes are like high powered rubber bands, allowing you to gain speed without actually having that ability. Each step you take, it’s like the rubber band is re-flung forward, allowing you to accelerate. Unfortunately, if you do this too many times in a row, like an actual rubber band, you will snap.”
I didn’t care about that. “What were you saying about still gaining speed?”
“Oh right – I figure if you had just ten more feet, as you were about twenty five feet away at impact, you’d break the sound barrier. How amazing is that?”
For the first time since coming to Pacific Station, I felt like I earned my dad’s last name. “Phil, you have no idea.”
Chapter 27 –
Friday Evening; Crosby Airfield
We were at the abandoned airfield that sat on the edge of the Sierra Desert. It was the perfect place to test the polarity accelerator as there wasn’t a soul for miles. When Pacific International opened its doors, the usefulness of small airfields like Crosby became nonexistent.
I had the accelerator mounted in a chest harness. As soon as I put it on and started pushing my negative energy into it, what exactly would happen I couldn’t be sure. Heather looked on apprehensive, but she knew trying to talk me down from this wasn’t an option. I highly doubted Titan would give me the same kind of opportunity I just had, so more power was going to be the key.
The accelerator was already humming, probably picking up energy waves from my slight nervousness. There was a chance of course the thing would blow up, sending Heather and I sky high in a million pieces. I’m sure Pacific Station would be okay with that.
“What’s the plan? Are you just going to strap that thing to yourself and see what happens?”
That was exactly what I was going to do. In my mind, I was worried that putting it that way would just worry her. “Once it is in position, I’m going to carefully funnel small amounts of negative energy into it and see what the results are.”
I should’ve been a timeshare salesman. “Okay, that doesn�
�t sound quite as dangerous.”
With her approval, I placed the harness on and immediately felt a pull towards the accelerator in the middle. It was like it wanted as much of my power as possible. I let just a small amount go, and even that was hard. A flood of energy wanted to rush in and supercharge this thing. “Heather, stand back.”
She took a few steps back. “Jericho, that doesn’t look like a small amount of energy…”
“You either go big or go home. I’m going to let it all go.” She took two steps back. “You may want to go just a bit further.”
Once I felt she was out of the immediate threat zone, I let go of my hold against the accelerator and let my energy flow. I quickly fell to one knee as it felt like everything inside of me was being pulled away. I barely had enough energy to stay upright. The device of my chest whirled and began to glow a very bright white. Then, in an instant, a new feeling flooded back into me. It was energy, but nothing like I’d ever felt before.
My negative powers generally were blue with a faint black outline crackling. When I brought some of this new power up and visible from my electron gauntlet, it was white – pure white. “Positive energy! It’s converted all the electrons in my body into protons…”
“Did it work?”
I heard her; I just didn’t know the answer yet. With the positive energy glowing in my hand, I shot it forward towards one of the rickety old control towers. A bright white explosion destroyed the bottom of the tower and sent the rest of the building crashing towards the runway. I fired off another shot, and another, targeting various buildings around the airfield. When the energy began to run out, the accelerator took more in and converted it at a far more efficient pace than I could ever dream.
With a good deal of my questions answered, I smiled at Heather. “It’s working better than I could have ever anticipated.” With the experiment over, I took the harness off. “I should’ve looked into this-” As soon as the accelerator was no longer touching me, I blacked out.
****
When I came to I was in the passenger seat of Heather’s car. My head was thumping like I’d gone on an all-night bender. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could explain that to me.” She looked worried, both hands gripping the steering wheel. “One minute you were gloating over your success and the next you were out cold, not responding to anything.”
I rubbed my temples, trying to get this headache to go away. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe there was a reaction to the polarity accelerator we couldn’t have foreseen.”
She pulled up to a stoplight not too far from our house. “The moment you took that thing off is when you went down.” One of her hands left the steering wheel and wrapped around mine. “Your eyes rolled back into your head and I thought you may have died or something.”
Nope – not dead. At least I wasn’t yet. “Maybe the accelerator pulled too much energy. I honestly don’t know. Either way, we know it works but that it has some pretty strong side effects.”
We pulled into the garage and she turned the car off. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
“I know I say it a lot, but don’t worry.” I reached into the backseat and grabbed the accelerator. “I knew this could go bad, yet here we are. I think a few minor adjustments are all that’s needed.”
Whether she believed me or not this time wasn’t the question; whether I believed that myself was a fair statement. I was tired and aching all over. “Enough of that for tonight. Why don’t we go upstairs and let loose a bit?”
That was an idea she could get behind. So for the rest of the night we went about more romantic business, as it’d been too long since that had happened. Granted, we’re talking like two weeks or so, but that was still too long. I fell asleep shortly after and woke in the morning feeling very refreshed.
Heather was still asleep when I woke up. For some reason, as I wasn’t quite awake yet, I was about to call Hammerspace and make a game plan for what was to come next. Realizing he was dead, a pang of guilt hit me. Sure, he’d been a money hungry moron, but I knew that from day one. Still, he’d become like a friend to me. I tossed the Mercury Five on the couch and sat back. With nothing else really to do at the moment, I turned on the television.
I’d been expecting some Saturday morning cartoons. Instead, what I got was news about The Negative Man. Brandon Howard (didn’t they have any other newsmen? This guy was annoying) was in full on Doomsday Mode as he read the latest to everyone. “Chief Grimes, after consulting with the Fire Department and Arson Division, is confident The Negative Man is responsible for the collapse of The Sea Hag and the murders that took place inside. If you missed it earlier, here is Grimes’ press conference from this morning.”
Grabbing a bowl from the cabinet for some cereal, the scene shifted to the press room at the police station. Grimes was there in all his glory, looking particularly mean. I enjoyed seeing him like that. “I’m not taking no damn questions today, so everyone sit back and listen.”
The hush bristled over the crowd. It was plain to see that people weren’t fans of his thorny personality. I had to give him credit though; he kept the crowd in check. “I’ve been preaching this for the better part of a year, until The Negative Man is in police custody, this city isn’t safe. Some of you here aren’t a fan of my way of doing things, made even worse when those idiot supers tried to strong-arm me into rushing after him. Look what happened, they ended up dead.”
Someone broke his first and only rule: no questions. “What about that technological terror you’ve been trotting out into the city? You said Titan was the answer to our questions.”
Man, I really needed to watch the news more often. I’d apparently missed a lot of banter between Grimes and the press. “Until one of you assholes actually comes up with a plan that’s better than Titan, we stick to it.” If looks could kill… “Are the streets safer? Is crime down? The answer is yes to both and that’s because of Titan.”
“Citywide damage is at an all-time high and panic has gripped the city.” Geri Paisley was getting into the mix. She’d never been shy about turning the screws on people. “You might say things are better, but the taxpayers, the very citizens of Pacific Station, disagree strongly.”
His face was red with anger. Mashing his teeth together and basically growling, “We’re losing the point here. Once again, that mutant destroys one of our buildings and kills people without a care in the world. The Sea Hag is the final straw. I’m giving Titan free reign of the city to do what is necessary. Consider Pacific Station under Martial Law.”
Chapter 28 –
Saturday Night; Wonder-Tech Tower
Martial law… Grimes was an idiot. Even on my way over, the only thing he’d accomplished was making the citizens of the city even more panicked. A Saturday night and Pacific Station looked like a ghost town. Many probably disagreed with my methods, but was what I was doing even this bad?
I chose to do my investigation work at my office due to all the firewalls I’d set up. Not that my home laptop was unsecure, far from it, I just preferred the set up in my office. With one last glance out down to the empty streets, I turned to my desk and logged in. I was hopeful with enough digging I could locate this mysterious super who we all knew as Titan.
Titan began popping up about three weeks ago. With a good place to start, I began looking into prominent citizens that moved to the area about a month ago. It had to be someone who was connected to the police station somehow. I hacked into the PSPD and took a look at the officer hires. No one was new to the department since Rebecca Larsen transferred in almost seven months ago. I took a closer look at her file.
She had a reputation for being a hard ass to say the least. In her old department, there were two documented events where she used excessive force on criminals. Nothing happened further, but this cop sounded just like Chief Grimes kind of officer.
The problem was nothing on her record made her look like super. There were emergency contacts listed,
family in Freemont, and even a twenty-four year old daughter to an ex-husband. Most supers tried to keep their families a secret, not flaunt them around like a normal person did. Still, something about the hard look this woman had piqued my interest. I was easily distracted, I know. On a whim, I delved deeper into Ms. Larsen just to see.
There was nothing on interest except a locked file from sixteen years ago. It was a redacted file that was attached to a government server. I found that odd. I wondered what the hell she’d been up to. I broke the file down and rebuilt it solely on my end. What I saw stopped me in my tracks.
Rebecca Larsen had been with a private security company that took a job with a government official to raid a secured testing facility. Details were scarce on it – the raid had failed and there were numerous casualties recorded. Sparks flew off my hand as even though it didn’t say it, I knew exactly what had happened. I’d been there.
I scoured through the now accessible databases for anything that contained the words ‘Project Jericho’ or ‘Stormfall.’ Cooper had done a good job keeping a lot of this stuff off the books, for obvious reasons. It was a black eye to both the government and to his legacy. In the files that were still left over, no names were even used – not mine nor Dr. Staley’s.
Using the name Jericho Staley had always been a calculated risk. It just meant so much to me, having an identity. From time to time I’d check into it, never seeing it or even hearing any ghosts from the past whispering it. In the back of my mind, though, I knew I hadn’t accessed everything. Larsen’s records proved that. There were a lot of missing puzzle pieces and they could stay that way for all I cared.
Because of her employment with the private security team, I saw her blood was clean, she was a normal. That put me back in the position of starting over on the Titan mystery. I expanded my search to include businesses and public services.
The Negative Man: Act 1 Page 36