I got up, angry over the interruption. “You have some nerve kid. Wasn’t one failure enough?”
“This is my city now. The two of you were causing massive amounts of damage.” He had a pair of infrared goggles strapped to his face, these eyes glowed orange. “I might not be strong enough to defeat you yet, but I won’t allow wanton destruction to occur.”
I was impressed with his courage. “You’re lucky I have a soft spot for your dad, kid. Tonight, I’m not going to kill you for interfering.”
He dropped into a fighting stance. “You’re under the wrong impression that I’m going to let you escape.”
“Please.” I hit him in the chest with a low level shot of negative energy. He landed back first on the street. “Do yourself a favor and go home, for good. Your Uncle Wayne wants you to stop this nonsense.”
He tried to get up quickly at the mention of Wayne’s name, but I put him down again. He growled, “How do you know Wayne? What did you do to him?!”
“I didn’t do anything to him or anyone of consequence.” This was true, only The Crimson Mask died at my hand on my trip to North Terrace. “If you keep trying to avenge your father, this won’t end well. Like I said before, go home.”
Before he could respond with the sort of argument where he tried to justify his actions, I left the scene as well. Maybe seeing the difference in power between himself and me would give him the boost he needed to give this up. In my stomach though, I knew the kid wouldn’t. Next time we met, I’d probably have to do what I just wasn’t ready to bring myself to do tonight. If there was ever a chance he’d perfect The Stormfall, I’d probably have to kill him.
Speaking of getting killed, as soon as I made it home Heather was waiting for me. A storm was brewing under that pretty surface and it was directed at me. “You stupid, foolish, moronic, …”
“Babe, I did it. With Russell’s help, I found a weakness with Titan.”
That stopped her rampage. “How?”
I pulled my mask off, smiling. “Titan is a super, like us. Its suit, it’s made from an organic substance, Titan itself.” I could see my explanation was glazing her eyes over. “Basically, Titan’s suit is made up of the person inside’s body. With a big enough charge, the suit begins to return to its natural state.”
“So if you perfect the polarity accelerator?”
“I can make him or her reveal themself and they’ll be powerless against us.”
Chapter 26 –
Friday Morning; The Sea Hag
Shawn called me at one thirty in the morning. Luckily I was still working on the polarity accelerator and was wide awake. “Hey, can you meet me at a place called The Sea Hag? I got some information to share.”
I confirmed I’d be there as soon as I could. I cleaned up the mess in my shop and went upstairs. Heather was asleep and I didn’t really want to wake her; however after the stunt with the Titan I wasn’t taking chances. I gave her a few rubs and her eyes slowly opened. “Coming to bed?”
“Actually Hammerspace just called and wants to meet at a place called The Sea Hag. I wanted to see if you were up for a little late night meeting.”
She rubbed her eyes open. “The Sea Hag? God, that place is such a dive. Though they have this really killer drink called the Kraken.” She stretched out her arms. “Yeah, let me get dressed.”
It was a little after two when we pulled into the pretty empty parking lot. It was right against the ocean, with an outdoor bar overlooking one of the piers. The smell of saltwater rushed over me as I got close, with just a pinch of fish. It wasn’t the most pleasant odor in the world.
Only two customers were inside, Shawn and some seedy looking old man who didn’t even hide his lust for Heather. The two of us joined our crazy friend in his booth. “Couldn’t pick a more upscale place?”
He just flashed his grin and winked. “No other places are open this late and offer this amount of privacy.” Well, I couldn’t argue that. “Besides, I wanted to buy you a Kraken after that ballsy move taking on Titan.” He signaled three fingers to the bartender and returned to us. “I tell you what; you’re one crazy son of a bitch.”
“Please don’t encourage him.” Heather was tapping her nails on the old wooden table. This place had definitely seen better days. “What the lovely Mr. Staley did tonight was foolish and stupid. One of us should have been there for back up.”
I didn’t want to go down this road again. “What’s done is done and Shawn brought us here for new information.” I looked pleadingly at him. “Please tell me you have some good news to share.”
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 fai
r 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.”
Pacific Station Vigilante (Book 2): The Negative Man [Stormfall] Page 14