It didn’t surprise me. The Old Man had a holographic training facility in the mansion. I had fought many a holographic opponent there while training. I still had the scars to show for it. The fact we might go to other planets was no surprise either considering the conversation I had with that cute nurse who had vaccinated me.
Pitbull continued, saying, “You might be wondering why we don’t conduct the Trials back on Earth Prime. The short answer is we can’t risk innocent civilians getting hurt.” He smiled grimly. “The only ones who will be risking getting hurt is you all. But, risk and danger is what a Hero signs up for. You’ll learn that here at the Trials if you don’t know it already.
“Those of you who are able to pass all five of your tests will then face one final challenge. In it, you will be pitted in a one-on-one fight against another Hero candidate. A duel, if you will. Whoever wins that duel will get his or her license. Whoever loses will fail out of the Trials.
“You already know this from prior warnings, but it bears repeating: Each test in this phase of the Trials has the potential to be deadly. Even if you find yourself in a holographic simulation, the simulation’s safety protocols will have been suspended. In the Trials, a holographic bullet will make you just as dead as a real one would. We didn’t have you sign those waivers of liability in your applications for the fun of it. We did it because there is the real chance of you being killed or seriously injured in this phase of the Trials. And, frankly, that is as it should be. It is better for you to get killed here because you’re not ready to be a Hero than for you not being ready getting innocent civilians killed out in the real world. This is the Heroes’ Guild’s last opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff before setting you loose on the world. And, this is your last opportunity to get up and walk away if you’re not ready to face this challenge.”
Pitbull let that sink in for a moment. If he actually expected anyone to get up and leave, he was mistaken. No one moved. We had all worked too hard to get here to turn tail now. I knew I had.
Pitbull resumed speaking when no one got up. “The specific test you will undergo and who your partner or partners will be, if any, will be determined randomly by Overlord. Furthermore, as I said earlier, Overlord will be the sole judge in most of the tests. This is so who passes and who fails isn’t subject to human error and prejudice.”
I glanced up at the Overlord node hovering over the dais. Though it looked like a metallic tear like all the other nodes, after my run-in with the nanites, it was hard to not see the nodes as being a little sinister.
Fantastic, I thought. The same thing that was used as a conduit to try to kill me is also going to decide whether I get to be a Hero. Maybe I should just jump into a volcano now to save Overlord the trouble.
Pitbull continued to speak, apparently not caring about my mental reservations. Few did. “Overlord will inform you when a test is scheduled to begin and what your objective will be. Overlord may give you hours of notice; it may merely give you a moment’s notice. As a result, you must be ready to perform at all times. Just as a licensed Hero must be ready at all times.”
Pitbull paused dramatically.
“Your first test begins now,” he said.
The room went pitch dark. People’s voices raised in surprise and alarm.
My chair disappeared from under me.
I fell into a dark, empty void.
10
A voice boomed from all around. The sudden voice in the darkness nearly scared me out of my pants.
“This is Overlord,” the voice said. It didn’t sound like a computer-generated voice at all. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was a British aristocrat speaking. “Your objective in this test is to survive.”
Those ominous words still rang in my ears when suddenly the lights came back on. No, that’s not right. The lights didn’t come back on. A light came on. The sun. Or, what looked to be the Earth’s sun. I had gone from falling in an inky black void to falling in the bright sunlight. The wind whipped around me. I, along with the rest of the Hero candidates, were high in the air, falling toward a grassy clearing in the middle of a wooded area.
Now that I could see what was going on, I activated my powers to slow my descent. Several of the other Hero candidates could fly, and I saw them swooping around to grab ahold of others near them who couldn’t. I did the same, grabbing a bunch of people with my powers who obviously couldn’t fly. I spotted Hammer nearby. I was about to grab him, but then he activated a jetpack that had materialized out of thin air onto his back. With a sudden whoosh, twin flames licked out of the back of the jetpack. Hammer’s descent slowed. So, I ignored him and grabbed some other non-flyers instead.
I didn’t see Neha or Isaac anywhere in the jumble of flying and floating bodies, but I knew their powers would get them down to the ground safely.
Before too long, everyone was down in the large circular clearing. Aside from a few tall trees sprinkled here and there, the grassy area we were in was completely clear. We fliers had gotten all the non-fliers down without so much as a twisted ankle.
The clearing was surrounded by a thick circle of tall trees that were off in the distance. Mostly pines, from the look and smell of them. It made me think we were on Earth, or at least a holographic simulation of Earth. An Overlord node floated serenely high overhead.
Everybody seemed to be speaking at once.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Is everybody sure they’re all right?”
“What’s going on?”
“Where did the proctors go?”
“Is this a hologram, or were we transported somewhere?”
“The Guild’s got transporter tech that can move you halfway across the galaxy, lickety-split. I’ve seen it.”
“If that’s all there is to this test, it was a snap.”
As if on cue, something exploded out of the tree line. No, not something. A bunch of somethings. More somethings than I could count. As they got closer for me to see more clearly, they reminded me a little of Star Wars Stormtroopers in appearance, though these guys wore gold and black rather than white and black of Stormtroopers. Their armor glinted in the sun. They carried staffs that were almost as tall as they were. There were nasty-looking blades on the end of them. They looked a bit like oversized surgeon’s scalpels.
The armored men advanced on us from all sides, as if they were a tightening noose. They weren’t running, but they weren’t exactly strolling toward us either.
“Uh, are we supposed to fight these guys?” someone asked, sounding confused.
As if in answer to the question, the advancing men silently lowered their staves until they pointed at us. The blades of the staves suddenly glowed pinkish-black. It reminded me of when the guys in the Chinatown bank had fired their guns at me all at once.
These guys were looking less and less like a “Welcome to our forest” committee.
Pink energy beams lanced out from the tips of the men’s staffs. A few of the beams hit the force field I had hastily raised around myself and those around me. The beams packed so much concussive force they almost knocked me off my feet before I braced myself better.
Explosions sounded all around me as some of the pink beams hit the ground. It was like being in a war zone. There were cries of alarm and pain. Several people took flight, trying to avoid the energy blasts that pelted us like bullets.
Everything was a mad confusion. I had a sudden thought that this was what the Allies invading the beaches of Normandy during the last world war had been like.
“Form a perimeter and fight back,” Isaac cried over the pandemonium. He was far off to my left. I only heard him because he had used his powers to swell to the size of a giant. His amplified voice boomed over the mayhem caused by the men’s attack on us.
I dropped my force field around the people around me so they could retaliate against the advancing men. Some of my comrades charged the men shooting at us; others returned fire with Metahuman projecti
les and energy of their own. Hammer was by my side, firing at the men with some kind of gun I didn’t recognize.
I knocked a large swath of the advancing men down with my powers like they were pins in a bowling alley. The hordes of men behind the fallen men simply trampled over their fallen comrades like they weren’t even there.
That was my first clue something was amiss. Men weren’t ants; they didn’t simply step through and on their fallen comrades.
Inspired by how I had gotten the nanites out of my body before, I stretched my hand out toward the men to help focus my powers. I reached out with my mind. I went past the surface of the men’s armor into the men themselves.
I did not find flesh and blood and bone in my metal probe. I only found metal and wire and plastic.
These guys weren’t guys at all.
I snatched a glowing staff out of the hands of one of the marching figures with my powers. I turned it and slashed downward.
I had hoped to incapacitate the thing. I did more than that. Perhaps because of the energy that surrounded the staff’s blade like a halo, I easily cut the thing’s torso in half diagonally, from the side of the thing’s neck down to its waist on the other side of its body. It was like cutting butter with a hot knife.
The thing’s body fell apart like a sliced cucumber. Lubricant gushed out. Sparks flew.
“These are robots,” I cried out. “You don’t have to worry about not killing them! They’re just robots!”
I thought at first no one had heard me over the mass pandemonium. I was wrong.
A bullhorn suddenly appeared in Hammer’s hand.
“Our opponents are robots,” he thundered through the bullhorn, almost deafening me. “I repeat: Our opponents are robots. Use all necessary force.”
I didn’t think everyone heard, but enough people did that they started fighting back more ferociously. Soon, enough robot parts littered the ground that what was going on became obvious to everyone. Then everyone started fighting against the robot soldiers in a way they never would have with real people.
Soon there were so many robot bodies and body parts piling up that I couldn’t see to continue to fight effectively. I rose into the air to get a better vantage point and to see if any of my comrades needed help.
Hovering in the air, I could see the robots were still pouring out of the trees like water out of a breached dam. I took multiple pink energy blasts, but my personal shield protected me. By now, I had several of the robots’ staves under my mental command. I used the staves to mow the robots down like stalks of wheat with a scythe. Others I ripped apart with brute force, though it was much more mentally fatiguing to destroy the robots that way.
Isaac, still in a giant’s form, was stomping robots left and right. I saw Hitler’s Youth somehow conjure up a massive tornado that swept up the robots into the sky dozens at a time. A bright green mist, which I assumed to be Neha in one of her gas forms, spread throughout the advancing robots, causing their bodies to melt and malfunction in its wake.
I spotted a woman in a green and tan costume running toward one of the robots. She nimbly dodged energy blasts from the thing’s staff. She got close enough to smack the robot on the chest with the palm of her hand. I expected to see the robot explode or fall apart or at least stop working. It did none of those things. It immediately turned in its tracks and started firing on its mechanical brethren. Every robot the woman touched did the same thing. Soon we had a small robot army fighting with us instead of against us.
Though it seemed like forever, eventually the rush of robot soldiers slowed, then halted.
With all of us working together, we incapacitated or destroyed every single remaining robot. It took a while, but by the time we finished, the pristine clearing we had fallen into looked like a war-torn junkyard from a science fiction movie.
After having spent God knew how long in the air, I landed again. I was exhausted, and a little lightheaded. Never before had I used my powers for so long and in so many different ways at once. Even so, I was pretty stoked. Giddy, even. I had never fought alongside so many Metas before. The experience had been exhilarating. We had all kicked some serious robot butt.
I looked around. I wanted to share this exciting moment with someone I knew. Soon I spotted Hammer, sitting calmly with his back against one of the few trees in the clearing. His eyes were wide open, appearing to look at a huge pile of robot parts in front of him. He had a faint smile on his face.
I went up to him.
“Tired so soon?” I said to him, grinning as I looked down at him. “And I thought the guys I went to the Academy with could go all day without resting. At least that’s what the Academy girls wrote on their latrine’s stalls.”
Hammer didn’t respond. He had the same slight smile on his face.
“Hammer?”
No response.
Now a little concerned, I reached down to gently shake Hammer by his shoulder.
His head slid off his neck. It hit the ground with a small thump.
His open eyes stared up at me. His frozen mouth smiled at me.
There was hardly any blood at all.
11
Pitbull explained to us the next day at a memorial service what had happened.
None of us Hero candidates had ever left the Guild auditorium during our fight with the robots. In fact, the auditorium wasn’t actually an auditorium. It was a holosuite capable of projecting holograms so realistic that everything had seemed real. The chairs in the auditorium, the auditorium itself, the Hero proctors on the dais, the clearing, the trees, the sun, the smell of pine—all had been constructs that had seemed so real that they may as well have been.
The robots we had fought had been real enough, though.
Hammer’s death and that of another Hero candidate were all too real as well.
Overlord had recorded everything that had happened during the melee. Pitbull told us how Hammer and the other fallen candidate, a woman I had never met named Prism, had died during the memorial service held in their honor.
Prism had been struck down in the first volley of blasts from the robots’ energy weapons. She had shoved another candidate out of the path of the blast that had killed her.
As for Hammer, he had just straightened up from destroying a robot that was choking another candidate when a different robot swung its weapon from behind Hammer, cutting through Hammer’s neck like a sword through a sheet of paper. Hammer’s body had crumpled against the tree I had found him leaning on. He was almost certainly dead before he hit the ground.
Overlord had determined that everyone had fought admirably during the robots’ attack. So, Pitbull told us everyone had been cleared to pass to the second test of this phase of the Trials.
In light of Hammer’s and Prism’s deaths, our victory felt more like a defeat to me. The looks on the faces of many of the other candidates told me they felt the same way.
One of the proctors had used his powers to put Prism’s and Hammer’s bodies into stasis. Their bodies were then placed in mahogany caskets, which were in turn placed on waist-high platforms in the middle of the area we had all first entered the Guild complex at. We all had to pass through that area several times a day. Hammer and Prism would lie in state there for the duration of the Trials. Thereafter their bodies would be returned to their families.
After Prism’s and Hammer’s memorial service, the proctors had us form a line to walk in between their caskets to pay our final respects to them. Then we had been instructed to return to our quarters. All tests had been suspended until the next day in honor of Prism and Hammer.
White capes signifying Heroes were draped over each casket. Pitbull had told us during the memorial service that any candidate who died while saving another during the Trials was posthumously awarded a license and a Hero’s cape.
So, Hammer had achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a Hero. Though I wasn’t happy about what it had taken for him to earn his white cape, I was proud of him. When the Trials we
re over, I hoped to find out Hammer’s real identity so I could look his family up. I wanted to pay my respects and see if there was anything I could do for them.
Hitler’s Youth was a few people in line ahead of me as we trooped past Prism’s and Hammer’s caskets.
“They’re going to need extra pallbearers to tote this big boy around,” Hitler’s Youth said to one of his cronies in line behind him, gesturing with his chin at Hammer’s casket. They snickered at that until a scowl from one of the proctors silenced them.
It took every ounce of self-restraint I had to not launch myself at these two jackasses. A stab of pain made me realize my fists were clenched so tightly that my fingernails dug into my skin.
I wished Hammer were still alive. I needed him to pull a baseball bat out of hammerspace.
I’d then use it to put a new part in Hitler’s Youth’s perfectly coiffed blonde hair.
A little while later I lay in bed in my room. I had changed out of my costume and cape, which I had worn to the memorial service. I now had on shorts and a tee shirt. I still had on my mask. As had been the case at Hero Academy, we had been told to keep our masks on at all times during the Trials to keep from revealing our true identities to our fellow Hero candidates.
I stared at the ceiling and thought about Hammer and Prism. I wished I had known Prism.
There was a chime from my Overlord access panel which indicated someone wanted to come in.
“Come in,” I yelled out of habit. I was used to yelling to be heard on the other side of the thick door in my room in the Old Man’s mansion. Here in the Guild building, I could have whispered it and the effect would have been the same. Through the access panel, Overlord would relay my voice to the person outside my door.
My door dilated open like a camera’s shutter. I expected to see Neha. Instead Isaac came in. I had seen him earlier at the memorial, seated far across the room from me and Neha. As I had, he had changed into regular clothes.
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