Subject 12
S. W. Douglas
(2010)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Superheroes
Superheroesttt
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Product Description
A gritty, often violent, look at a world where super powers are real, told from the point of view of a man who simply wanted to be left alone. Soon enough he finds himself surrounded by the very "heroes" he had disdained and cleaning up a mess he was partly responsible for.
Power corrupts, and if you stare into the abyss long enough it starts staring back. Even the most revered of heroes isn't immune.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Title Page
Guild Intelligence File 90-48-22K-4
Chapter 1
Guild Intelligence File 92-88-29F-1
Chapter 2
Guild Intelligence File 92-36-55X-7
Chapter 3
Guild Intelligence File 77-51-83S-2
Chapter 4
Guild Intelligence File 86-09-71C-8
Chapter 5
Guild Intelligence File 62-51-97G-4
Chapter 6
Guild Intelligence File 92-96-42X-3
Chapter 7
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the aid of some friends and family members. I've bounced ideas off a few, entertained and bored a few, and leaned heavily on a few for far too long in the making of this book. So I'd like to thank the ones who have been instrumental in its creation, and to be totally fair to the three of them I'd like to do it in alphabetical order.
Elisha, who was the first one to read all the way through and proved an effective front-line editor as well as a wonderful friend despite the continent separating us; I thank you for putting up with it and being so honest in your appraisals. Melanie, for letting me bounce so many ideas off you, listening to me talk about this book till your ears were about to fall off, and for being there to distract me when I needed the distraction, thank you. My mother, for putting up with me for all these years and supporting me without question, I owe you the greatest thanks of all and a debt I can never repay.
I love you guys. Thanks. Without you this book would never have been born.
To the others who have offered moral support, positive feedback, and encouragement over the life of this project I thank you as well. Oh, what the heck, I love you guys too!
Subject 12
Guild Files Volume 1
By S. W. Douglas
©2010 All Rights Reserved
Guild Intelligence File 90-48-22K-4
Submitted to Guild Intelligence on May 22. Rejected.
Re-submitted to Guild Intelligence on May 30 after review. Rejected.
Re-submitted to Guild Intelligence on June 5 after priority 1 review by local Guildmaster. Rejected.
Re-submitted to Guild Intelligence on December 12 after events documented in attached file. Accepted with Guild Intelligence staffing change. Prioritized intelligence review initiated.
Archived and Classified Eyes-Only December 15 due to inclusion in Guild Intelligence File 92-45-16B-1A.
Partial transmission exchange excerpt follows:
*** -- -- *** Taken From Guild Intercept X55684ZZ351 *** -- -- ***
Priority Five Communication from Survey Team Four-Kappa to AZ HQ, CC to DTK1.
*** -- Begin Transmission -- ***
ATTENTION:
Subject located in Philadelphia. Initial survey team asseveration that subject had left after his escape appears to be incorrect. Suggest said survey team be punished.
Location of subject carries a level three verification. The new sensor pods were very effective, therefore worth the expense of the ongoing installation. Recommend immediate transfer of containment teams five and eight as other teams have not yet received equipment upgrades requested last month.
Due to the unique abilities the subject exhibited in tests, a request for the new generators submitted last week has been upgraded to most urgent. Please forward to quartermaster with attached request form.
[Large block of text obscured by a black marker except for the word "Hammer" which appears to have been missed by a hurried censor's hand.]
All operatives in the city have been given a hands-off order and withdrawals are being made with maximum haste while maintaining maximum security. To date it appears subject is unaware of our current increase in surveillance technology or intensity. Send congratulations to the tech teams on their new detectors.
[paragraph obscured]
Plans for capturing the subject are in early stage development and look promising, but cannot be finalized without knowing what assets will be made available. Please respond soonest with a full listing of said assets.
*** -- End Transmission -- ***
Chapter 1
The last thing this world needs is another hero. There are enough of those; flying around or lifting heavy buildings off helpless kittens and grandmothers --- who always appear at the worst possible time, only to have the nearest possible thing that could possibly be thrown at them dropped on their blue-haired heads. Men of iron, women of steel, small children with the powers of the cosmos at their very beck and call. Dime a frigging dozen around here:
Arcane warriors, spell-throwing wizards, shape-changing tribal priests, elemental masters, visitors from other planets, mesmerizing mentalists, riddling jesters with amazing gadgets, brooding man-beasts with technological toys, good and bad, dark and light, we got 'em all. Super heroes, super villains, cops, robbers, politicians... though if we start repeating ourselves we'll never get out of here.
Maybe it's not fair to call a villain "super". Then again, maybe it's not fair to call a politician "good". It's all a matter of semantics.
Of course, then there are the one-offs. The jokes. Singularly dangerous only to norms, unless they run in packs (and they always run in packs), if they get delusions of grandeur they either put on some purple tights and a pathetic mask (with their underwear outside their pants) and make the proud pronouncement to "Have No Fear, the Purple Haze is Here!" right before realizing that the Solar Scourge really can channel the sun's energy into beams of heat so intense they melt steel --- for the millisecond it takes their bodies to decompose into a steam explosion --- or they throw on a black-and-red cape with a half-mask and a monocle with the intention of terrorizing the populace (for about thirty seconds) before The Justice Fiend proves why a half-mask doesn't protect your nose from becoming a proctologist's nightmare. Either you're a somebody, a nobody, a norm, or a goddamn joke is what it amounts to.
Heroes? They spend all their time flexing their super-enhanced muscles, flashing eye-lasers for the ladies, and striking poses for the next cover of Time or Newsweek. Villains? They spend all their time plotting over-engineered deaths for their nemeses that almost never work and trying to steal money so they can buy the gear to execute their plots. Then there are the ones who just want to take over the world. That lasts about ten minutes before the first hero to come along knocks them around a bit. After that it's the same as the others. A boring lot, really.
If you have powers and don't join a gang of one-offs, are actually strong enough to keep yourself out of the government's control, and don't join the Guild, you'd better hide them. Eventually, the Guild will come knocking, but only if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, well, the government is always looking for more test subjects. Have to make the troops stronger so they can fight off the villains --- and heroes. If you're really unlucky, the Confederation or some lunatic won't even bother knocking on the door. The building will come down just fine even if you don't know it's about to collapse.
The only other option is to ju
st make life miserable for everyone around you. Everyone you're strong enough to make life miserable for without drawing the ire of someone stronger than you, that is. If you screw up and pick on someone your own size or bigger, well, your life is made miserable in short order. Or ended.
So most one-offs join gangs and run wild. They feel it's better than being a guest of the government's testing labs or cowering in fear every time they hear the sonic boom of another super hero or super villain desperate to make a booty call on the other side of the goddamn continent before it was too late.
After all, unless you can take a building landing on your head, you're not going to survive the next who's-more-handsome argument between the Incredible Hunk and the Fabulous Finnegan. Unless you're a grandmother or a kitten, of course.
No, the last thing this world needs is another goddamn hero.
The storm cloud had vanished as soon as the Weather Witch had been knocked unconscious, but that didn't mean the air was any drier. Enough rain had fallen to soak The Rat's fur, which meant that a rather vicious stench was now clinging to him and assaulting my nostrils with reminders of just how much he hated to bathe, that he liked to spend his time rooting in garbage cans, and by preference he slept in the sewers. Brick was lucky that he couldn't smell anything less pungent than a burning sulfur mine. Posey just wafted a few of her more sweet-smelling petals under her nose and could ignore it.
"Well, I think the fight's over for good," The Rat belched through a mouthful of rancid sausages. "Double Dub-ul-yoo there should have known better than to try to lightning bolt ol' Stretch like that."
"Smarter move than trying to hit him with a hurricane," Posey opined. "Wind don't bother him none, he just changes shape."
Brick finally realized he was wet so he grabbed a sopping newspaper and held it over his head. Brain power wasn't his strong point.
"Come on, let's get somewhere relatively safe before someone else tries to do something stupid with a hero in the neighborhood." I pulled my tattered coat a bit more tightly over my shoulders. While none-too-sweet-smelling itself, it still smelled better than The Rat. "I'd rather not catch a brick to the face from an errant tornado or be too close to where someone missed a shot and blew up a building."
"Wut? You talkin' to me?" Brick looked around to see who'd called for him.
"No, Brick baby, nobody's talking to you," Posey said soothingly and took his hand. The red skin was as hard as rock and just as heavy. "But you should come with Mama Posey, okay?"
Brick's smile took a full three seconds to finish moving across his face. "Okie."
"Just lemme finish up with these sausages, boss?" The Rat's breath was, if anything, even worse.
"No. Chew as you walk, if you think you can manage that." I didn't like The Rat much. Hell, I didn't like any of them much, to be honest. Posey was way too much of a white-trash, gangbanger wannabe to appeal to me, though she did take care of Brick without complaint, and Brick, well, was about as intelligent and fun to talk to as a brick.
The Rat had a rat's sense of smell for everything except himself, jaws powerful enough to gnaw through just about anything, and as much self-control as a professional athlete on steroids. Posey was a giant flower, covered with poisonous thorns, but otherwise about as tough as a wilting daisy. She had a mouth that would make a sailor apologize to his mother, however --- not her most endearing quality.
Brick might have been dangerous if he'd had enough brainpower to come in out of the rain. He barely had enough willpower to want something other than to not be wet when he walked through a river and food when he was hungry. His metabolism was so low that was about once a month. If Posey hadn't spent most of her time looking out for him he probably would have wound up in a rock crusher in some government lab, and if he wasn't around to keep Posey safe she would have been picked and dried years ago. The Rat, on the other hand, was a survivor; just like the species he resembled so much. The three of them got along as well as any group of one-offs --- better than most, actually --- and managed to survive in a city where the next smallest group of one-offs numbered closer to twenty.
The Rat didn't like anyone, near as I could tell, but he took care of us as best he could without complaint. He had a knack for finding, pardon the pun, ratholes for us to hide in when the weather turned foul or we were being chased. He managed to find food when none could be found, could get around the city blindfolded, and never ragged on Brick like I'd expected him to. So I respected him. But I did not like him.
"We goin' somewhere, boss?" He sidled up to me, blasting my nose with not only the smell of his wet fur but his reeking breath.
"I have the feeling this alley is about to get rather hot. Besides that, I think the gang from the west side with that damn snake-headed bitch leading it is coming our way."
Posey shuddered. The new growth of leaves around her neck fluttered as small drops of water flew off them. "I hate that shit-sucking bitch. She tried to have my petals trimmed."
Actually, what she said was even more foul, but I didn't want to repeat all of it for fear of poisoning myself.
"They're easier to deal with than the Firestarters, but I think we'll be better off in their territory tonight." The Firestarters were an odd bunch. They were a gang of about fifty, though at the rate they killed each other off the actual number was always in flux. Their leader, a headcase named Sero Kela, could manipulate flame like nobody's business, though he couldn't start it. The rest of the gang were all pyrokinetics, flame-bodies, or just plain pyromaniacs in flame-retardant suits and tanks of pressurized petroleum distillates on their back.
Those were the ones who didn't last very long at all.
Flame-bodies were an interesting phenomenon. Their bodies were made of some form of self-contained plasma with a guiding intelligence that science, so helpful in so many other ways, had failed to identify. Some people screamed "Aliens!" Then again, some people kill themselves because a comet crashed into Jupiter. Aliens weren't usually a problem.
The Firestarters and I hadn't seen eye-to-eye since my first day in the city. They'd thought I was an easy mark. I'd been forced to kill more than a dozen members and had given Sero a run for his money. If I'd known how much of a pain in the ass he was going to be after that I'd have killed him too. I'd let him live because, frankly, I'd thought he might have kept his word when he was pleading for his life.
I also hadn't wanted to risk any more exposure than I'd already been forced into. Luckily nobody had noticed my absence from the lab at that point, so they hadn't started to look for my signature. Oh, they'd come later, to investigate, but the investigators had decided I'd already moved on afterwards. That news was more than a year old, though.
They'd left a detector. Just in case. Everywhere they thought I might go.
"I hate the Firestarters too, you know." The venom normally in her voice was somewhat abated. Rain always made her a little more cheerful. It also made her grow new leaves and petals. Last time she'd been caught in the rain she'd grown a small flower that dripped nectar so sweet The Rat had taken a bath and had actually brushed his teeth before begging her for a chance to lick some up. It had almost been enough to make me look for another group to babysit. "That Kela creep wanted to see if I'd burn like firewood."
"I said their territory, not their goddamn living room," I snapped back, a little more irritated than I should have been. "Come on. The last thing we need is to get caught out in the open if you have another raingasm."
A foul rat-man; a walking-talking flower covered with thorns of various lengths and toxicities that had a tendency to fall off whenever they felt like it, whose flowers and petals that mysteriously grew and faded at random intervals after rainstorms did interesting and amazing things; a once-human rock with the strength of a mountain and the mental abilities of a retarded eight year-old; and me --- the mysterious stranger --- were an odd mix to say the least. Odder than most, certainly. Four against the world. Before I'd taken them under my wing The Rat had been their lea
der, keeping them half a step ahead of the gangs they'd run afoul off and the various agencies looking to capture them, and Posey had barely been able to get Brick to do anything. Anything except sit and stare at anything that reminded him of who he'd been before he'd started to petrify, that is. I'd managed to secure a treatment for him that had stopped, or at least slowed, the loss of his cognitive functions, and he'd become more social and active with pressure.
He'd been a scientist working on a super-soldier serum. Somehow those always blow up in someone's face. In this case, it'd happened literally. At least now he was somewhat happy. I got the feeling he'd been a miserable bastard like me before he lost it. He was lucky part of the serum had been designed to promote rapid healing --- he still found pieces of glass in his eyes some mornings.
The Rat I knew very little about, and what I did know would have made me queasy if I'd been the sort. He was one of the few who found the transition from being a norm to be a welcome relief. Apparently he'd actually cleaned himself up since it started.
Posey had no memories of what she'd been like as a norm. She'd simply awakened one morning to find her hair had turned into flower petals and the guy in bed with her had died rather horribly from several poisoned puncture wounds. She refused to tell me where and I refused to press the issue. Until she met The Rat, she'd survived by stealing from anyone who seemed weak enough to let her get away with it and dealing with the ones who weren't by any means that presented themselves. She also refused to talk about the implications of that. I didn't really want to know, so I didn't press either.
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