Masked (Superheros Undercover Book 1)

by J. D. Wright

  She held the flashlight in one hand and pulled her binoculars out with the other. “How am I supposed to use them in the dark?”

  “Just trust me.”

  The moment the lenses met Majestic’s eyes, she could see what he meant. They were night vision binoculars.

  “Oh. Never mind.” She looked up and watched what looked to be a bat fly overhead. “These will definitely be handy.”

  “Try putting both of those away without looking down at your belt,” Whiskey instructed. “You’ll need to practice that because you never know when you’ll need your hands to be free.”

  Majestic stopped and reached both arms behind her at the same time. The waist-belt somehow sensed that she was putting the items back. Almost as if they were magnetized, the flashlight and binoculars gravitated toward their spots on her belt and stayed after she released them.

  “Whoa.”

  Whiskey chuckled into her ear. “Thought you might like that. The electrolaser is next. Try charging and uncharging it, then get a feel for using it when you kick or do all of that other crazy stuff that you do.”

  It was Majestic’s turn to snicker. She knew he was talking about the martial arts and tumbling that she had been doing since she was old enough to walk. She spent the next half hour practicing with the electrolaser in each hand and then pulling it from her waist-belt in a hurry and reattaching it.

  As she continued to work, she began to talk to Whiskey about Henley, “I haven’t heard from her since school yesterday. She didn’t come to my house to pick me up this morning, either.”

  “I noticed that,” Whiskey’s voice replied. “I was going to ask why you had taken a cab to school, but the bell rang and I forgot all about it.”

  “Yeah, it was too bad we didn’t have a meeting in our spot today. I wanted to talk to you about it. Still nothing suspicious showing with the S.U.C.?”

  “No.”

  Majestic sighed and replaced all of her gadgets in their designated spaces. Having a supertech for an agent was a blessing that she would never take for granted. Sure, there were companies, like the one who made her suit, where she could get gadgets and things, but a supertech could not only customize items for her but also make things like her compact, something that a typical engineer would never be able to create.

  There was a certain supernatural element that went into the making of gadgets or tools by supertechs. It was the same for superchemists or any other super who had a power for production of some kind. They could make and configure items that normals couldn’t and infuse them with a portion of their power.

  “We’ve got a little bit of time left,” Whiskey said. “Let’s test out the tracking device. I should be able to tell where you are, either way, but I also tried to install an element to let me see how far from the ground you are. Bear with me, though. It might not work right.”

  Majestic looked at the building behind her and mapped out a way to the top. She grabbed a gutter spout. Using her hands and the gripping soles of her boots, she climbed up about four feet before swinging onto a nearby dumpster lid. She bent her knees, then sprung up, using the ledge to propel her higher and onto another ledge. She continued up two more stories until she reached the roof.

  “Hmm…” Whiskey said thoughtfully. “If I had to guess, I’d say that you’re on the second story?”

  “Nope. Third.”

  “Damn. I’ll have to work on it.”

  She walked around for a few minutes, taking in the view of Cyper City. Downtown was in the short distance. The skyline was lit with an array of buildings in every height, some so tall that they touched the moon behind them. It made her smile to see her city in all of its glory.

  “All right, Majestic. That’s all I need for tonight. Get a good night’s rest. We have a test tomorrow.”

  “Will do,” she said to the empty rooftop. “But I know you’re just going to go play that video game you always play and yell at that guy who beats you every time.”

  Whiskey growled. “Diamondintheruff14 is going down this time.”

  Majestic laughed. “Good luck with that.”

  “I’ll keep the comms open until you get home and change out of the suit. If you need me, just say my name and it will trigger my alert.”

  “Sounds good. Night.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Majestic walked over to the edge and prepared to start down, but her eye caught movement on the left corner. A man was walking down the alley in a hurry. He was tall, thin, and wearing a long, dark overcoat, hiding anything else that he might be wearing underneath. The only thing that was remarkable about him was the fact that nothing was remarkable.

  She had no reason to suspect this man was up to no good, other than a gut feeling. His brisk pace continued until he disappeared into the darkness that the furthest streetlamp couldn’t reach. She considered following him but decided against it and climbed down, instead. Whiskey was right. She had a test tomorrow and it wouldn’t help to slack off on her schoolwork now.

  Soon, she thought. Soon she would graduate and be free to investigate strange characters whenever and wherever they manifested.

  Chapter Eight

  The door to Victor’s bedroom flew open, hitting the closet behind it with a loud bang. Victor had been napping in his reading chair and the noise caused him to jump and tumble to the floor. Before he could even think to demand an answer for the rude interruption, someone grabbed a fistful of his shoulder-length hair and hoisted him up to stand. Within a fraction of a second, he was face to face with his incredibly angry father.

  “Where are they?” Marticus bellowed. “What did you do with them?”

  Victor sputtered, barely able to understand, let alone respond. “What? Who?”

  “The SM47 vials, imbecile. What did you do with them?”

  “I don’t know which vials you’re talking about.”

  Marticus shoved his son backward into the wall, then released him. He began to pace quickly and speak even faster, running his hands through his frazzled black hair. “There are vials missing from my laboratory. You are the only one, other than me, who has access to the lab, Victor. Now, tell me what you’ve done. Did you need money? Did someone offer you money to slip them some of my work?”

  “I still have no idea what you’re talking about!” Victor sat back down in his chair. “I go into your lab every week. I take the drugs you make and I sell them like you want me to. I have plenty of money, so I don’t know what that shit is about.”

  “Tell me the truth!”

  “I am telling you the truth!” Victor rolled his eyes. “I might have gotten the drugs mixed up. I don’t know. They’re all the same color. What’s the big deal? Drugs are drugs.”

  Marticus marched over, grabbed his son by the back of the neck, and jerked him forward until their noses almost touched. “What’s the big deal?” he growled. “That drug you stole was my new project, you fucking idiot! What have you done? Where are they?”

  “I…I sold it. I thought it was the usual stuff.”

  Marticus snorted and shook his head in disbelief.

  “I didn’t know!”

  “Who?” he barked. “Who did you sell it to?”

  “Just a few…”

  “A few what, Victor?”

  “A few kids from school, that’s all. Mostly my usual customers. Why? What—what exactly was your new project?”

  Marticus released Victor and stepped back, rubbing his thick hand over his face. He sighed and looked to the ceiling. “It was a mutation gene alteration.”

  Victor shook his head. “Use words I understand, Dad. Not everyone is a superchemist, like you.”

  “It means that the drug you gave those unsuspecting people will cause changes in them that they certainly didn’t pay you enough for. I can’t believe you did this.”

  “What kind of changes?” Victor swallowed hard when a flash of Henley’s gorgeous face popped into his mind. “What does it do to them?”

  “That
depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On the person. Those with a supergene will just receive a heightened sense of power, most likely temporary. But those without one…well, they won’t be without one any longer.”

  “Wait.” He leaned forward and worked out his father’s words in his head. “Supers have the supergene. And if you give a normal person a supergene…”

  Victor and Marticus just looked at each other in silence for a moment. If normals somehow got a supergene, then they were no longer normals. They would become a super.

  “Does this mean what I think it does?”

  “That you just unknowingly created over half a dozen new supers? Yes, dumbass. That’s exactly what this means.” Marticus took a deep breath. “I know I promised you when we went into hiding that I would stay on the straight and narrow, but…”

  Victor almost laughed. His father’s past as a supervillain had caused the death of Victor’s mother when a scheme had gone wrong. That single tragedy prompted Marticus to take Victor and go into hiding. But the man couldn’t just turn off the obsessive need to use his power. So his father had gotten into the drug business, one that Victor knew was just as dangerous. And he hardly considered creating drugs to be “the straight and narrow.” But this had been their entire lives for the past ten years.

  “Just how did you manage to create a gene mutation alternator, anyway? Why?”

  “Alteration, Victor. Alteration. It was easy, really. Once I isolated the gene and—”

  “You know what? Never mind. I won’t understand a single word you’re about to say.”

  Marticus smirked and shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “But why? Did someone hire you to do this? You’ve never said anything to me about gene mutation or—”

  “It doesn’t matter why I did it. The point is that I did, and you have just handed half of my work to fucking strangers!”

  Victor didn’t bother arguing this time. He just sat in silence for a moment before asking, “Well, what do we do now?”

  “We?” Marticus scoffed. “We aren’t doing anything. You are going to find these people and bring them to me. All of them.”

  “How in the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  “You said they were your usual customers, genius. So find them. I want them. Every single one of them.”

  “But…” Victor sat up straighter. “I sold dozens of vials. How am I supposed to know who took your drug and who didn’t?”

  “That’s your problem, Victor. Not mine.” Marticus started toward the door. “Bring them to me and I’ll handle the rest.”

  “What does that mean?” He stood and felt a sense of dread rush over him. His father’s tone was enough to scare him, alone. “What are you going to do with them?”

  Marticus stopped by the door but he didn’t turn around. “I’ll just…monitor them. See how my project is faring. That’s all.”

  Victor could tell it was a lie, but he knew better than to say it. He watched his father storm out and made sure he was gone before walking over and closing the door.

  He hadn’t been entirely honest with his father. He did know the difference between the usual vials and the ones he took from the second rack. Sure, they were all yellow, but the ones that his father had called SM47 had a shimmer to them that the others didn’t, which he had only noticed after taking them from the lab. He’d just assumed his father had decided to improve the formula.

  And while he didn’t remember which drug he gave to most of his customers, he did remember one in particular. The only one he didn’t actually sell.

  Victor pulled out his phone but remembered that he didn’t have Henley’s number. Fuck! He’d just have to find her the old-fashioned way.

  Nick heard the front door open and close while he was in the middle of his chemistry homework. It had to be his father returning home from work after spending several days at his downtown office. Nick wasn’t even sure where Phillip Grayson slept when he stayed at the office. And until now, he hadn’t cared to ask.

  He put his paper inside his textbook and closed it, setting it down on the bed before walking toward his bedroom door. He stopped just inside the doorway and checked his reflection in the mirror, smoothing his thick hair down the best he could with his hand. It didn’t help much.

  He looked about as terrible as he felt. His sleep had been sporadic and his waking days just as hectic. If he was awake, he heard voices, and if he was asleep, he had nightmares about his new power and the incident with Scarlet and Travis. The bags under his eyes were proof.

  When Nick walked down the stairs, his father wasn’t anywhere in the kitchen, living room, or parlor, so he went to check the study. Just as expected, his father was already hard at work on his computer, not even bothering to seek out his son after being absent for almost an entire week.

  Phillip looked up when the door opened. “You’re home.”

  Nick nodded, even though he didn’t think it was a question. “And so are you.”

  “I had a break between court dates and wanted to grab some files I’ve been storing here at home. I won’t be staying long. Just until tomorrow morning.”

  “I expected as much.” Nick’s jaw tightened when his father confirmed that seeing his son hadn’t been the real reason he’d come home. It was typical and Nick had grown used to being ignored. “I’ll be upstairs doing homework.”

  Phillip grunted and didn’t look up from his desk as he shuffled papers around. Nick started out of the room, but stopped. He turned back and considered telling his father about what had happened. About his new ability and the stress it was causing him. Shouldn’t he know? Wouldn’t he want to know if such a big change had happened to his son? His only child?

  Nick opened his mouth but no words came out. He wanted to share this with someone, but realized his father probably wasn’t the one to trust with his secret. Phillip Grayson didn’t like change or anything out of his perfect routine. He only wore one specific brand of suits and had eaten the exact same thing for breakfast every day since law school. Telling him that his son had somehow turned into a super who could read minds would probably make Phillip’s head explode.

  Just then, the man in question lifted his head and caught his son gaping at him.

  “Yes?” Phillip asked, annoyed. “Do you need something?”

  Several thoughts ran through Nick’s head. Did he need something? He needed a father who actually gave a damn about him, to begin with. Or how about a text every once in a while, to check to see if he was still alive? Maybe even a simple, “How are you doing in school, son?”, would suffice.

  But Nick said none of those things. Instead, he closed his mouth, shook his head, and turned toward the door. On his way out, he could hear what most certainly had to be his father’s thoughts. They were things he hoped the man would never actually say out loud.

  …That kid is so strange sometimes. Just like his mother was. Not sure why he’s doing homework…dumb as a box of rocks. Luckily, he’s good at sports. Probably not good enough to make a career out of it…but at least I might be able to buy his way onto a professional team…

  Outside the study, Nick felt his blood boil after hearing his father’s uncensored opinion of him. He wasn’t sure how his father would even know how smart or dumb he was. Nick had been signing his father’s name to his report cards since sophomore year when Phillip had stopped bothering to ask about his grades.

  Sure, he was mostly a B student, with the occasional C or D, depending on the subject. And maybe he had focused on sports more than he should have over the years. He still had a few college prospects that didn’t revolve around sports. He hadn’t even decided what he wanted to do after high school. But hearing his father think that his future was limited to bribing his way into a career, Nick was furious and insulted.

  He took the stairs two at a time until he reached his bedroom, slamming the door closed behind him so hard that the windows shook. Bullshit! What sort of supe
rpower was this? Hearing people’s thoughts only caused him discomfort and pain. Had he really been so oblivious before this? Had he been so self-involved that he didn’t know Scarlet had cheated? Was it better to live in denial of his father’s opinion? He could see no benefit of having this ability. None, whatsoever.

  His angry pacing halted when he heard his computer ding. He walked over and tapped the keyboard, bringing his screen out of hibernation. There was a new message in his inbox. The sender’s address was a string of letters and numbers that didn’t spell any words he recognized. It had obviously been sent by a computer or something.

  He was about to delete the suspicious email but paused when he read the subject: Your Application Has Been Accepted by the S.U.C.

  “What the—”

  Clicking on the message, he held his breath and hoped this wasn’t some hoax that would give his computer a virus. But the message opened like any other. He read it to himself once, then out loud because he couldn’t believe what he was reading.

  Dear Super,

  We have received your application via web form. After careful consideration and investigation, we have determined your request is valid.

  As a member of the supernatural community and possible S.U.C. affiliation, you are required to attend the S.I.C. (Super Indoctrination Class) being held next Friday, 3 p.m., at 5191 South Birdneck Street. Please come alone and in your super identity only. We ask that you refrain from using or speaking of your normal identity during the class, for safety reasons. Your super name/alias will be used on all forms and a test of power will be required to gain entry.

  If you are in need of a supersuit, there is still time to order one. See below for sites that offer discreet services.

  S.U.C.

  Superheroes UnderCover

  Saving the world, one day at a time.

  Nick stared at the computer screen for what felt like hours. He re-read the letter over and over until it was almost committed to memory. Was this real? Had someone seen him looking at the web page in the library and decided to prank him? If not, how did they find him since he hadn’t left any contact information?