Hesperus was the first to notice that there was something wrong. She walked up to me, frowning. “Thunder? What is it?”
“I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. Don’t you see where it’s all going to end? We’ll be killed. Or worse. We’ll be forced to kill others.”
Dropping his Roman emperor act for a moment, Octavian said, “What’s got into him? Torture didn’t get close enough to even touch him.”
Hesperus whirled around to him. “Octavian, get him out of here—now! It’s Paranoia! It’s a trap!”
He barely had time to say, “What?” before Spite appeared out of the darkness, wrapped his arms around Octavian’s neck, and dragged him to the ground.
Still in the grip of panic, I could only watch as Muscle and Vortex charged at Apex from opposite directions. He saw them coming, leaped into the air at the last second—and was struck down by a fireball from Incendiary.
From the light of the fireball I could see Paranoia nearby, standing perfectly still as she concentrated on me. But even though I now knew what was happening, I couldn’t do anything about it.
I’m not sure, but I think I might have been crying at that stage.
Spite hit Thalamus next, materializing inside his own shadow and tripping him up. He twisted around onto Thalamus’ back, slammed his head face-first into the ground.
Octavian ran to help, but was hit by another of Incendiary’s fireballs: it immediately set his toga ablaze and he was forced to rip its burning shreds from his body.
Then it was down to Hesperus, the smallest of us all.
Maybe they’d left her for last because they thought—like so many others had in the past—that she was weak.
Muscle had Apex pinned to the ground, Torture was still tied up and Paranoia was busy with me. But that still left three of them—Vortex, Incendiary, and Spite—against Hesperus. Outnumbered three to one.
They didn’t stand a chance.
Vortex struck first. She darted in at Hesperus so fast that I almost couldn’t see her. Hesperus stood with her sword in one hand, ax in the other.
Vortex leaped into the air, spinning and twisting as she did so, aiming a flying kick straight for my teammate’s head.
Hesperus pivoted, her arms a blur, and Vortex was suddenly on the ground, screaming, clutching at the stump where her right foot used to be.
Vortex didn’t scream for long: Incendiary came next, twin columns of white-hot plasma erupting from his hands directly toward Hesperus. But the plasma streams didn’t find their target. In one fluid movement Hesperus threw her ax at Spite, clipping his shoulder. She grabbed Vortex by the throat and used her as a shield against the fire.
Vortex’s costume was lined with a fireproof insulation, but I don’t know whether Hesperus knew that. I never asked. I didn’t want to know. Vortex’s exterior costume immediately became an inferno.
Hesperus threw Vortex’s burning body at Spite. Trapped under the blaze, Spite was unable to escape into the shadows.
Two down. Only Incendiary to go. And Hesperus still had her sword.
Incendiary erupted in a pillar of flame so hot that the asphalt at his feet instantly became a boiling mass. Hesperus’ sword would melt before it even got close.
For the first time, one of the Chaingang spoke. It was Muscle, his arms still pinning Apex to the ground. “Drop your weapon!” he yelled at her. “Right now. Or I will break his neck!”
Even through my artificially induced fear I could see what Muscle was thinking. It was a standoff. He knew that he couldn’t beat Hesperus, and he was sure that she wouldn’t let anything happen to Apex.
He was wrong about that.
“Go ahead,” she called back. “It’ll save me the trouble later.”
“Incendiary—burn her!”
But Incendiary didn’t do anything. He had seen his own flames possibly kill both Vortex and Spite.
Muscle tried another approach. “Paranoia—increase your hold on Thunder. Tear his mind apart!”
“No!” Hesperus shouted. Hesitating, she held her sword out at her side, at arm’s length. “I’m putting down my sword.”
“Don’t trust her,” Incendiary said. “Throw it out of reach!”
“All right,” Hesperus said. She slowly looked around, and then turned back to Muscle. “I’m throwing it aside.”
Almost casually, Hesperus flicked her wrist and the sword arced behind her into the night sky.
There was a scream, and suddenly I no longer felt afraid.
I whirled around to see Paranoia sitting on the ground, Hesperus’ sword protruding from her thigh.
Then I moved into action.
The Chaingang had been wise to take me out first.
The first thing I did was deaden all the sound in the area, then I hit Incendiary with a shock wave that lifted him off his feet and smashed him—still burning—into the side of a building.
I directed a narrow blast at Muscle’s head. The blow knocked him aside and Apex immediately jumped to his feet, balled his fists, and began pummeling.
I turned to Paranoia, still silently screaming from the pain in her leg. I shattered her eardrums, ripped into her vocal cords.
A wide-band shock wave separated Spite and Vortex, dousing the flames at the same time.
Incredibly, they were both still alive. Spite instantly melted into the shadows, but in his wounded state he wasn’t able to go far. He rematerialized partly underneath a parked car. He began to crawl away, but four quick pinpoint bursts of sound and the car had four flat tires, pinning Spite to the ground. Unable to move completely into shadow, he was trapped, his power useless.
The car’s alarm went off, but silencing that was child’s play for me.
I turned back to the others and saw that Apex had—once again—taken charge. “Thunder, Incendiary’s fire is getting out of control. We need rain. Octavian, Hesperus . . . Get Vortex and Spite to the nearest hospital. I will not have their deaths on my conscience.”
“Right. But they were trying to kill us,” Hesperus said.
Apex ignored her and turned to me. “Thunder, where’s that rain?”
“It’s coming.” The first drops were already beginning to fall.
I picked up Vortex’s severed foot and tossed it to Octavian, who caught it automatically, then yelped and dropped it when he realized what it was.
Within seconds the street was drenched, Incendiary’s fire doused. I concentrated again on the clouds, dispersed them with a subsonic blast.
The rain had already stopped when I reached Paranoia. She was lying flat on the ground, unconscious, Hesperus’ sword still protruding from her leg, the pool of blood now diluted by the rainwater.
Apex said, “Throwing your sword was a reckless move, Hesperus. You could have pierced her heart.”
“You think I need to see what I’m doing in order to hit my target?” She turned away in disgust. “You never had any faith in my abilities.”
“Apex, they knew we were coming,” I said. “They were waiting for us.”
“That is not possible.”
I wanted to ask Thalamus—he was good at this sort of analysis—but he was still unconscious.
I quickly searched through Paranoia’s damp costume and found the sound-muffling device. I didn’t immediately know what it was, or the part it had played in the ambush, but I took it anyway in case it might be a weapon. “Hesperus? Want your sword back?”
“Leave it,” Apex said. “The paramedics will remove it. Hesperus, Octavian . . . Vortex and Spite require immediate medical attention. Go. Now.”
“No need. There are four teams of paramedics on the way,” I said. I could hear their sirens, the tires hissing over the wet ground. “A couple of miles away, but coming fast.”
Hesperus said, “Th
en we’re done. Apex, I told you that when this mission was over I was quitting. You are not our leader. We just followed you. There’s a difference.”
He folded his arms, and in the darkness his opaque visor was as impenetrable as ever. “Then go. There are others who would be willing to take your place.”
“And my place?” I asked. “I know what you are, Apex. And I . . .” I looked over toward Octavian, who was watching with interest. “I’m sorry, Octavian. But this is not for your ears.” I sealed him off from the sound of our voices.
For almost a minute I stared at Apex’s unmoving, impassive, slightly misshapen body.
Hesperus broke the silence, and it was then I realized that she and I were not on the same wavelength after all.
When we were in the air, Hesperus had told me that she had suspected Apex for some time. “There’s something not right about him. He’s not one of us. I don’t trust him, and if you think about it you won’t either.”
Well, I thought about it. I considered Apex from every angle. Of all of us, he and Thalamus were easily the most famous. Even today, some people talk about him the same way they talk about Titan.
But then the people today don’t know what Hesperus and I had figured out. Even though we’d both figured out completely different things.
No one knows what made us superhuman. Or if they do know, then they’re not telling.
It could be something genetic. Certainly the fact that Titan’s son is also a superhuman lends strength to that idea. Or maybe it’s more complex than that. It could be that we are chosen by some higher beings—gods, aliens, time-travelers, whatever—to be the Earth’s champions. That’s a nice theory, but it has one great big hole in it: the higher beings are also doling out powers to the bad guys.
The events of that night led Hesperus and me to look at Apex in different ways. Not just different to each other, but in ways that we had never looked at him before.
For the first time, I used my control over sound waves to map out Apex’s features on the inside of his helmet. I saw his face.
Hesperus used her instincts to analyze his motives. She saw his soul.
Apex was ambitious, and—like all of us—he had a touch of a savior complex. Anyone who becomes a superhero has one. We wanted to be the good guys. Righting wrongs, helping the innocent, foiling evil plans. We did it because we could, because we liked it, and because someone had to. We wanted the admiration, even if we were always going to remain anonymous.
Most of us, I’m sure, led pretty ordinary lives most of the time. But by donning a costume and fighting crime we were able to have people look up to us, think of us as heroes.
Certainly, that was one of the reasons I did it. I loved the idea of being a hero, and these past ten years it’s been pretty tough not being able to talk about it with anyone.
In that regard, Apex was no different to the rest of us.
But there was a difference. And that was in how far we were willing to go for the admiration we craved.
“You did this,” Hesperus said. “You and Thalamus. You set us up.”
“I did not,” Apex said.
The lie in his words was as clear to me as his rapidly beating heart.
But like I said, Hesperus and I had been looking at him in different ways. I’d never even considered that Apex had planned the attack.
It was all I could do not to blast him apart right there and then.
“You wanted the fame that the High Command has,” Hesperus said. “What was it you said back in the HQ? ‘If the public are to become aware of us, it is better that they do so through our deeds, not our words.’ You’ve got what you wanted. After this battle everyone is going to know about us.”
“Preposterous,” Apex said. He turned toward the approaching ambulances, then turned back. “Even if that were true, you would not be able to prove it. Leave if you want, Hesperus. You too, Thunder. Octavian, Thalamus and I will carry on without you.”
“You would have died here if it hadn’t been for Hesperus,” I said. “Do you really want to rely on Thalamus or Octavian to save you next time?”
Again, he turned his back on us.
“I know your secret,” I said.
I could hear his heartbeat increasing.
Hesperus looked at me. “What is this? Something else?”
“Yeah. Something else. You want me to tell her, Apex? Or are you . . . man enough to do it?”
He slowly turned back to face me. “Who else would you tell?”
“Apex, I won’t deny that you’re good at what you do. And I believe that you act in the best interests of the human race. But what you’ve done today is . . . inhuman. Despicable. Innocent people could have been killed. We could have been killed. And for what? For glory.”
“To raise our profile. To let the people know that there are others protecting them. Your idea of a press release would not have worked, not to the degree that my plan will.”
“So you admit it?” Hesperus said. “I’ve had it with you, Apex! Give me one reason we shouldn’t arrest you for this.”
“I cannot be arrested,” Apex said. “Nothing I do is illegal. And Thunder knows why.” He stepped back. “Tell her if you feel that you must, Thunder. If you think that it is going to make any difference. But you know what will happen if it becomes public, do you not? I will no longer be able to operate. I am one of the most effective and best-known superheroes. Reveal my secret and you will destroy the public’s confidence in all of us.”
He walked away then, scooped up Thalamus’ unconscious body in his long arms and carried him to an ambulance.
I only met Apex a few more times after that. We spoke, but only on neutral topics. Then the events of Mystery Day happened, and suddenly there were no more superhumans, heroes or otherwise.
I told Hesperus everything that night, as I understood it. Afterward, we spoke about it often, but only between ourselves. We never told anyone else how Apex had betrayed us. How it had been for nothing—with myself and Hesperus out of the team, the Footsoldiers disbanded. Octavian was still tied to his wife’s business schedule, and the injuries Thalamus received from Spite’s attack kept him out of commission for a couple of months.
We visited Thalamus in the hospital, and he knew that we knew about Apex. He filled in the missing details about Apex’s background, swore us to silence.
Hesperus and I worked together for a while, but it wasn’t long before we drifted apart. Sure, we still liked each other and got along, but our personal lives were quite different, and the bonds of Apex’s secrets were either too small or too great to keep us together.
And now the greatest secret of the superhumans—that we didn’t all die or vanish on Mystery Day—has become public knowledge.
There are still many more secrets. Some of them you will never know, but this one . . . Apex’s greatest secret, and his greatest fear . . . This one I shall tell you now.
There is something that makes us superhuman. We don’t know what it is. But there are a few of us who know that this process is not as selective as one might think. It chooses people seemingly at random.
Apex wasn’t one of them.
He wasn’t a superhuman.
He was the result of an experiment conducted in Max Dalton’s labs by Thalamus. The purpose of the experiment was to test certain subjects to see whether a tissue graft from a known superhuman would allow the recipient to gain superhuman abilities.
There had been twenty-three failures—each one named for successive letters of the alphabet—before they found success.
Thalamus had donated some of his own stem cells. They were cloned, grown into brain tissue, inserted into the unwilling—and unknowing—subjects. The twenty-fourth one worked, but they were never able to successfully repeat the experiment.
For reas
ons they could never fathom, Apex was the only one that worked. Some of the other subjects had died; most had simply shown no effects. But Apex . . . He was a triumph of genetic engineering and just plain luck. His mental and physical development was staggering. Within a year of the experiment he was smarter than the average man and much, much stronger. A further year and he was almost as powerful as Titan.
But Thalamus and the other scientists knew that they couldn’t keep Apex a secret. He was just too good, too powerful. At the same time, they couldn’t reveal what they had done.
So they fashioned a costume for him to disguise his real shape. They gave him an opaque helmet so that no one would ever see his face.
And they let experiment number twenty-four out into the world. They didn’t even have to change his name, because the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet is X.
All in all, it’s a pretty good name for a superhero. Ape-X.
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READ THE JAW-DROPPING CLIMAX TO THE SUPER HUMAN SERIES IN
STRONGER.
COMING IN JUNE 2012.
AN AMPLIFIED VOICE bellowed out, “This will be your only warning! Get down on your knees and place your hands behind your head! You have ten seconds to comply!”
“Look, I know you can’t understand me, but—”
I noticed the flash from the tank’s barrel at the exact moment something slammed into my chest and knocked me back across the church’s parking lot.
I crashed straight through the pastor’s beloved ’65 Mustang and hit the church wall hard enough to crack the bricks.
And then I got up. There was barely a mark on me. The car was ruined, though, and that annoyed me more than the fact that the army had hit me with a shell from a tank. I’d loved that car too. Always wanted one of my own. Now it was just a scattered collection of blackened metal fragments.
Footsoldiers: A Super Human Clash Special From Philomel Books Page 3