Enhancer

by Wyatt Kane

  Irritated, soaked through, and seeing no obvious excuse for the running man’s behavior, Ty pulled himself back to his feet and continued to trudge.

  He was still wondering what had gotten into the man when a new noise caught his attention. Grunting and cursing mixed with malicious laughter.

  It was the type of noise that was common in this part of town, and on another day, if it hadn’t been raining, Ty might have chosen a different direction. But he was cold, wet, and tired. And he had a stubborn streak a mile wide. He didn’t want to backtrack the block it would take for him to go another way. So instead, he stepped forward, kept his eyes open, and continued onward.

  The noises were coming from a side alley. He should have walked straight past it without paying any attention. Maybe the sounds were those of a mugging taking place. Maybe something worse. Either way, it wasn’t his business.

  Instead, curiosity got the better of him. When he reached the alley, Ty turned to look.

  What he saw was beyond anything he could have imagined.

  As far as anyone knew, people with superpowers were a recent phenomenon. When Ty was a child, there had been only one, and even he was little more than a rumor. The Architect, they called him. What his powers were, if he had any, Ty didn’t really know, but the stories were that he solved problems for those in need. He was a vigilante, someone who inspired trust and who seemed to be more capable than most at putting things right.

  Where the Architect was now, Ty didn’t know. Maybe nobody knew. But now, apparently, there were a handful of others, both in New Lincoln and elsewhere. Ty didn’t know how many exactly, but they were men and women with amazing powers who worked with police to keep a lid on some of the most violent crimes.

  In a city like New Lincoln, where the crime families were strong, their efforts barely made a difference. Yet it gave people hope, something to believe in when there was so little hope to be had.

  Ty had only ever seen these superheroes in blurry pictures and videos on the news nets. To him, they were no more than whispers, hints and suggestions without being entirely real. And if they were, then New Lincoln was so big and Ty so insignificant that he’d never expected to meet one in person.

  So he was completely surprised to find himself staring at two of them battling each other in the alley.

  Ty immediately understood why the homeless man had been running. These people were like Titans or Gods, and Ty could scarcely believe what he was seeing.

  He stood in the rain at the entrance to the alley, the cold all but forgotten, gaping at this spectacle in front of him.

  One of the people doing battle was enormous. Dressed in a black jumpsuit that did nothing to hide his frame, he must have been eight foot tall and was made out of muscle. He was horrendously strong. As Ty watched, this monstrous man let out a roar and picked up a full dumpster as if it was nothing. He whirled the dumpster about like an Olympic hammer thrower and let it fly.

  Ty watched with a mixture of shock and awe as the dumpster sailed through the air like a missile toward the monstrous man’s opponent. This second super was smaller, more humanlike in size and appearance, yet Ty thought he recognized him by his extravagant costume. He’d seen it on the news nets, full of purple and sequins and complete with an elaborate cape.

  This second super was flying. Hovering about in the air as casually as if he was walking along the path. It was like a scene taken from the pages of a comic book. The flamboyantly dressed super dodged around the thrown dumpster with ease and gestured towards the monstrous man on the ground. Unbelievably, apparently through no will of his own, that huge figure also started to float off the ground.

  The monstrous man gave a roar of anger and twisted in mid-air. He reached out and punched a hole in the brick wall of the alley and barked a laugh.

  “You’ll have to do better than that!” he shouted as he tore bricks from the wall and hurled them at the flying man.

  The flying man wasn’t quick enough this time. He ducked the first brick, but the second caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder. It was enough to break his concentration. The enormous man crashed to the ground, then picked himself up, completely unhurt, and launched himself with a mighty leap toward the flying man.

  The flying man only just got out of the way.

  “Good thing I’ve got better to give,” the flying man replied. With that, he made another gesture, conjuring what for all the world looked to be a bolt of lightning that he held in his hands. He flung the bolt at his opponent and was rewarded with a roar of pain.

  But it did little actual damage. The monstrous man’s jumpsuit briefly burst into flames where the bolt hit him, but he batted them out with a hand. Then he barked a laugh.

  “Not bad,” he said, his voice a snarl of approval and rage. “But not good enough!”

  The monstrous man was full of brutality and strength. Ty had no clue what the fight was about. He didn’t know where these men came from or who they were. All he knew was what he could see before him, which was two impossible people doing their best to hurt each other in the worst possible way.

  He also knew that he shouldn’t be standing there watching. It was like he was a noob who had just stumbled into a player versus player zone where two high-level characters where battling it out. It was terrifying to see, and yet in a way, it was awesome as well, and there was a sense of unreality to it all that made Ty wonder if he’d suddenly gone mad and was hallucinating somehow.

  If Ty had been sensible, he would have taken to his heels like the homeless man had done, and left the battling Titans to their dual. He should have run and not looked back. The huge man could have ripped him apart without even trying, and the flying man had powers far beyond normal.

  In comparison to either of them, Ty was no more than an ant. Whatever they were fighting about, he wanted no part of it.

  Yet perhaps it was the sense of unreality that rooted him to the spot.

  Or maybe it was just that Ty was stubborn.

  That stubbornness had been with him since as far back as he could remember. It hadn’t helped much in his life, only getting him into trouble. It was because of his stubbornness that he was so much in debt. That he hadn’t told Angie where she could stick her job. That he kept trying long past the point where others might have given up.

  It was who he was. So where other, more sensible people would have left the alley with all due haste, Ty stood in the rain and stayed where he was.

  The monstrous man still had a brick in his hand. Ty had failed to see it because his hand was so huge. Worse, the flying man had failed to see it as well. The monstrous man took aim and threw the brick like a bullet.

  This time, it was not a glancing blow. This time, the brick hit the flying man squarely in the chest. Ty heard the sound clearly. It was the sound a boxer’s gloved fist made when punching a heavy bag accompanied by a whoosh as the flying man’s air escaped from his lungs.

  He had no defense against it, and the flying man was flying no more. He hit the ground, staggered, and tried to keep his feet while at the same time clutching his chest.

  4: Cybertech Device

  Ty knew that the flying man was badly hurt, but the fight was yet to be over.

  “Got you, you flying pest!” the monstrous man said, every syllable he spoke sounding like he was gloating.

  With that, the monstrous man strode forward, quickly closing the distance between them. The injured man raised his arm as if to protect himself, but it was too little, too late. The monstrous man wound up with a mighty backswing and unleashed, smashing the flying man with all of his strength.

  The blow was prodigious. More than prodigious, it was phenomenal. Ty couldn’t see how anyone could stand against it, and the flying man could not. The blow picked him up and sent him flying through the air to crash on the ground at Ty’s feet.

  Ty took one look at the crumpled form of the superpowered man and his mind started screaming in panic and fear. It was telling him to run as fast as
he had ever done in his life. He needed to get out of there, and he knew it. He needed to run, and he needed to do it immediately!

  But something still held him in place. The flying man would fly no more. He was a crumpled mess on the ground. He had bounced as he landed, skidding to a halt, and had come to a rest on his back with his head at an unnatural angle and his limbs twisted and broken.

  His health bar was obviously way down in the red, yet there was still life in him. How much, Ty couldn’t guess, but enough that he tried to speak.

  “Run,” he murmured. In a strange way, Ty thought the man’s plea was heroic. He was dying. That much was clear. No one could live through such an impact as he had suffered. Yet his last thoughts were not of himself, but of Ty, a stranger whom he had never met.

  Nor had he finished speaking. “Take the device. Don’t let him get it.”

  Ty had no clue what the flying man was talking about, nor did he have any hope of clarification. As Ty watched, the man stiffened in sudden pain. A bubble of blood appeared on his lips. Then, all at once, the flying man relaxed, the bubble of blood not bursting so much as fading back into nothing.

  The flying man was dead. Ty was standing over a dead man, and his monstrous opponent, the man who’d killed him, was looking his way.

  And laughing.

  Ty was about to go. About to follow the stranger’s advice and that of his more sensible self. But before he did, he heard a sound which caught his attention. A metallic click followed by a whine.

  At first, Ty couldn’t see where the click and whine came from. Then he saw it. An electronic device, a bracelet of sorts. It was a mixture of silver and blue segments, and at the man’s death, it had clicked open and fallen away from his wrist. Ty glanced up at the murderous monster. He was still laughing, apparently enjoying the sensation of victory, but had started to step in Ty’s direction.

  Ty should have left everything as it was and simply run away. But he did not. He had always been interested in cybertech. To him, the dead man’s device was fascinating. He’d never seen anything quite like it.

  He couldn’t help himself. Instead of leaving the corpse of the flying man to his enemy, Ty reached down and plucked the device from where it had fallen. A quick inspection showed no indication of what it might be. Wristwatch, Omnimatrix, Pip-Boy, or something in between, he couldn’t tell.

  Out of no more than curiosity and instinct, thinking that maybe he should change his name to Ben and become a plumber, Ty placed the device over his own wrist. But he didn’t yet click it shut.

  “Leave that alone!” the monstrous man bellowed. He was approaching more quickly now and had covered half the distance between them. “Or do I have to kill you as well?”

  The unexpected threat surprised Ty. He flinched, and before he could stop it, the device snapped shut.

  “Ow!” Ty said, more out of surprise than anything else, yet the device did have teeth. They pierced Ty’s skin, and moments later, did far more than that.

  Ty was hit with a kick of energy that ripped through him like an electric shock. It was painful and stunning, and all Ty could do was cry out in pain. It was as if he’d been struck by lightning, by one of the bolts that the flying man and had used in vain against his opponent.

  It was enough to drive Ty to his knees as he gasped in pain.

  Despite the rain, despite the distant sounds of cars and occasional sirens, the click of the device closing around Ty’s wrist rang out like a bell, echoing from the walls of the alley.

  The huge super who was bearing down on Ty heard it clearly. Before Ty could even begin to recover from his unexpected shock, the monstrous man uttered a snarl like that of an enraged beast and charged in his direction. It was all Ty could do to fumble about and turn away. He expected the monster to crash into him within moments, to crush him to the ground and then do whatever he wished. But before he did so, out of nowhere, a third superpowered person appeared.

  All Ty saw was a blur of motion combined with a shriek of agony and rage, and then whoever it was hit the monster with a force of a cannonball.

  This time, Ty heeded his instinct to run. He regained his feet and staggered clumsily away from the new battle. As he tried to move, Ty realized that as well as the initial shock, he felt dizzy and nauseous, and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. The world smelled like copper, and when he looked around, it seemed as if everything he saw was unstable.

  He wondered if the device had injected some new designer drug into his system.

  “You killed him!” the new super said. It was a woman. Ty could hear the pain and grief in her voice, and it was followed by a mighty thump as she hit the monster again. Ty tried to look, but all he could see was a blur of movement. He had no idea what the woman’s powers might be, or if she had a hope of standing up to the monster.

  “Yes, and I will kill you as well! That bracelet is mine!” he roared.

  There were more shouts, more crashes, more grunts of pain, but that was all Ty knew. The weird effects of the device were too much. Ty couldn’t stand it any longer. He collapsed back to his knees and threw up on the pavement.

  The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was a battle shriek like no other, followed by what sounded like an explosion.

  Then he knew nothing at all.

  5: Waffles

  Normally, Ty was slow to wake up. Perhaps the odd hours he worked messed with his biorhythms. Whatever the reason, he and mornings had a relationship built on disappointment and irritation more than friendship.

  Ty would normally lie in a half-doze for several hours with the thin curtains of his rat-hole apartment letting in the light of the day. Then, when his phone alarm finally went off, he would groan out loud and hit snooze without even thinking, then roll back over, bury his head in a pillow, and try to squeeze in another few minutes of rest.

  Even though it was rare that he shared those sheets with anyone else, he still didn’t enjoy getting out from between them. The alarm would have to do its job at least three more times before it, combined with a full bladder, was able to coerce him into starting the day.

  Even then, Ty would be groggy for ages, stumbling around in a semi-functional state until he could get his first coffee inside him.

  Ty often felt that instead of an alarm, he would do better if he could hook up an IV and inject caffeine straight into his veins.

  But this morning was different.

  One moment Ty was lost in a world of dreams, images and echoes of his entire life arranged in a largely incoherent fashion. He saw himself growing up on the edges of New Lincoln with his mother and two older sisters. Working hard all through school to get the grades he needed. His first girlfriend. The news that his older sister had died, a victim of a disease that cost too much to cure. Then the downward spiral as he lost hope and eventually dropped out of school.

  Then, without transition, he was fully awake. For once, he didn’t feel like a zombie or a geriatric trapped in a 26-year-old body, but instead, he felt surprisingly good. Alive and well, as if he’d rested better than he had in years.

  For a moment, he just lay there feeling comfortable and relaxed, luxuriating in the warmth and the freshness of the sheets.

  Then he lurched up into a sitting position as he realized he wasn’t in his own bed, wasn’t in his apartment at all. The last thing he remembered was collapsing onto the alleyway floor with a battle of Titans raging behind him.

  Ty looked around, but there was little to see. It was just a room. It could have been a cheap hotel. There were no windows, the walls were featureless, but there was a half-open sliding door that suggested a bathroom as well. For furniture, there was little aside from the bed, a low table next to it, and a couple of chairs. Ty’s shirt, trousers, and jacket had been neatly stacked upon one of the latter, leaving him in his boxers and undershirt.

  There was no clue at all where he might be.

  On another day, he might have started to panic. But he was feeling so goo
d, so relaxed from the wonderful sleep, that he didn’t. He just sat there and wondered how he had got there. Had the two supers completed their business and gone away, leaving him on the ground for strangers to find?

  Had the woman defeated the monster somehow and carried him off as her prize?

  Ty figured that the monster would not have done anything for him. He had seemed to be interested only in the device –

  The device!

  It was still attached to his wrist as it had been the night before. Ty remembered the feeling that he’d had when it closed. A shock that went through his whole system, followed by nausea and dizziness and a feeling that he had been drugged.

  The device was wider than a digital watch and several times as bulky. On the surface, there was a small sensor.

  Ty was about to trigger it when the door swung open to admit one of the most stunning women had ever seen in his life.

  She was absolutely gorgeous. Easily over a hundred on a ten point scale, she was the type of woman who redefined the standards of beauty. Blonde and dressed in black leather that hugged her figure, she was a vision of perfect skin and immaculate proportions.

  Ty’s heart lurched in his chest and his mouth became suddenly dry. He could do nothing but stare. The stunning woman hadn’t gone in for a lot of bodily modifications. She didn’t need any. She was perfect as it was.

  As she approached with a faint smile curving her perfectly luscious lips, all the activity stopped in Ty’s brain. His eyes bulged and his mouth dropped open like he was a cartoon character. He was so stunned that it took him a while to realize that she had already spoken and he didn’t have the slightest clue what she said.

  “Huh?” he said.

  She flashed the most beautiful smile Ty had ever seen. She was a fairytale creature, a tribute to the concept of flawlessness, and something about the way in which she stood reminded Ty of the battle last night.