by Lucas Flint
But there was something different about the Neo-Killer. He seemed to want me dead in a way that few other villains did. The closest villain I could think of who matched him in his hatred of me was, again, Master Chaos, only Master Chaos had been driven by my mistreatment of his son. His son also hated me for personal reasons. The Neo-Killer claimed to be trying to kill me for the benefit of ‘humanity,’ but I wasn’t sure if he actually gave a damn about humanity as a whole or if it was just an excuse on his part to justify his murders.
No matter how much I thought about it, I didn’t know why he could possibly hate me on such a personal level. I’d made a lot of enemies as a superhero—kind of hard not to in this line of work—but all of my enemies were either dead, in prison, or simply not anywhere near me at the moment.
What struck me about the Neo-Killer was that he made sure to attack me using Dad’s old gadgets. It seemed almost like a form of psychological warfare to me. By trying to kill me with Dad’s old gadgets, he was essentially trying to kill me with Dad. It would be ironic, in a way, if he did manage to kill me with one of Dad’s inventions, which might have been the point.
Whoever he was and whatever his real reasons for hating me were, I felt very uncomfortable and vulnerable for the first time in a long time. Twice now, the Neo-Killer had gotten the drop on me and smacked me around with his superior fighting skills. I could probably beat him if he didn’t negate my powers every time, but he was too smart to attack me without first weakening me with powerless gas and making sure I was alone.
And both times, he had been entirely in control of the situation. The first time, I only survived because the cops showed up and scared him off. The second time, the Neo-Killer deliberately spared me in order to show how much power he had over me. I was normally not one to fret—Blizzard was the worrier in our relationship—but even I couldn’t help but feel a little worried about how close I had come to death both times.
The second time was especially brutal. I was no wimp, but he beat me up like I was some kind of loser. He made his point quite well … and now I dreaded what he was going to do now to make me ‘suffer.’
And for the first time I could remember, I dreaded fighting him again. I hated what he did to Blizzard, Vanish, Phobia, and the G-Men workers. A part of me wanted to go out and fight him, tear apart the whole city to find him if I had to, but another part of me was happy to stay in my hospital bed where I was safe.
That was what struck me most: I didn’t want to fight the Neo-Killer again. If we ever fought once more, I had a feeling I would die. He might decide to finally kill me, thus achieving his life’s goal. I gripped my blankets more tightly at the thought of fighting him a third time because I now understood that the Neo-Killer only showed himself when he wanted to and he only fought people on his terms.
I wished Dad was still alive. Mom was still alive and I could talk to her, but she wasn’t a superhero. She wouldn’t know what to say about fearing an enemy like the Neo-Killer. Actually, if I told Mom, she would probably just worry herself to death over my safety. Just like Blizzard. Now that I thought about it, Mom and Blizzard are pretty similar. I should introduce them sometime. They’d probably get along really well.
The closest thing to an adult mentor figure I had was Mecha Knight, but ever since graduating the Young Neos, I didn’t see him as much as I used to. There was also still the fact that Mecha Knight was involved in Dad’s old Project Revival without me telling me about it, which made me wonder if I could trust him at all.
That was another thing I thought about as the day went on. I still knew very little about Project Revival. Valerie told me she was still working on it, but that Dad seemed to have deleted everything very thoroughly meant it was slow-going. It didn’t help that Freya, the AI for Vault B, was more interested in getting her freedom than in helping us figure out exactly what Project Revival was all about.
All I knew for sure was that there was a clone of Uncle Jake’s somewhere in the world, who had Dad’s old gear, and was doing something with it. I just wish I knew what.
So I had two problems: The Neo-Killer and Uncle Jake’s clone. If I could just figure those two problems out … well, it wouldn’t solve everything, but it would make my life a bit simpler.
But lying there in my bed, eating my chocolate pudding, I had a sudden, seemingly irrational thought: What if the Neo-Killer and Uncle Jake’s clone were one and the same?
It was a weird thought. And it didn’t make sense. The Neo-Killer was an ordinary human being with no powers of his own outside of what Dad’s tech gave him. Uncle Jake, on the other hand, had been a superhuman prior to his murder. If a clone of his was running around, then it was logical to assume that Uncle Jake’s clone had all the same powers as him. None of what the Neo-Killer said made any sense if he was a clone.
Yet what if the cloning process didn’t go right? What if something went wrong at some point and Uncle Jake’s clone didn’t come out quite right? Could that be why the Neo-Killer was so crazy? Was that why Project Revival had been shut down and forgotten entirely? Because Uncle Jake’s clone went insane and became the Neo-Killer?
There was no way to know for sure. And frankly, I was doubtful of the theory myself, because it raised far more questions than it answered and I wasn’t sure there was enough evidence to justify it. On the other hand, something about it felt right to me, like I had finally found the last piece of a very complicated puzzle. I decided I would share it with Brains next time I saw him and see what he thought. Or perhaps I wouldn’t. Without any real evidence to support the theory, I had a feeling Brains would not be convinced.
One thing was obvious, however: If I was going to stand a chance against the Neo-Killer, I would need to finish my powerless training. Preferably, as soon as possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The next day, I stood in the Practice Arena again, swinging my staff back and forth. I was slamming it against one of the Arena’s sandbags, hitting it as hard as I could without using my powers. No one else was in the Arena side from myself at the moment, so I trained in silence, whacking the sandbag as hard as I could from a variety of different angles.
It probably wasn’t smart to train so soon after I’d been released from the hospital. Although Dr. Jonathan confirmed that I had healed faster than expected, he still gave me orders to rest as much as I could and not worry so much about other things. I did rest a little bit when I got back to the Braindome, but I spent so much time resting at the hospital that I didn’t feel the need to rest again. I was determined to master the use of my pole, which I would also make sure to carry on my body no matter where I went. It wouldn’t be very useful against the Neo-Killer’s guns, but it would be better than nothing if I got sprayed with powerless gas again.
I would have trained with Vanish, but she was still very ill from the poison powerless gas which she and Blizzard inhaled a couple of days ago. Before leaving the hospital, I actually got to see Blizzard and Vanish. I still couldn’t get their appearances out of my mind. The two of them had been lying on a couple of beds in a room in the same hallway as mine, but they looked awful. Their skin had become grayish and their hair was messy. They also seemed to be having trouble breathing and had very dry skin. It made me wonder just what the heck the Neo-Killer put in that gas that would have such horrible effects on human beings.
As it turned out, the G-Men workers who had also inhaled the gas had been sent back to Washington for medical expertise which you couldn’t find in Showdown. Phobia’s corpse was being transported with them as well, which I did not get to see, but I didn’t need to in order to know that Phobia was dead. Just seeing the body bag was enough for me and, though I didn’t know Phobia all that well, a part of me felt angry at his death as well. He was probably the nicest G-Man agent I ever met, yet for some reason, he had to die and Cadmus did not. The world really was an unfair place after all.
Panting and sweating, I stopped hitting the sandbag and took a step back, taking a short b
reak to catch my breath. My eyes fixed on the sandbag for a moment before I leaped forward and resumed hitting it again, this time even harder than before. I just imagined that the sandbag was the Neo-Killer and I was beating him to a pulp with my whole strength.
I wasn’t the only one returned to the Braindome. Blizzard and Vanish had been moved here as well, into the Braindome’s medical facilities, where they would receive the kind of specialized treatment necessary to deal with their poisoning. St. Francisco’s was great and all, but the Braindome had better medical care for superhumans than ordinary hospitals. Besides, Blizzard and Vanish would be safer here, in case the Neo-Killer decided to come after them next.
Brains was currently in the Braindome’s control center, where he was trying to use the Braindome’s large number of screens to locate any news reports or tips that might help us find the Neo-Killer. I understood that catching the Neo-Killer fell onto our shoulders now, but honestly, that seemed like a waste of time. I already knew that the Neo-Killer would show up when and only when he wanted. I told Brains as much, but Brains insisted on continuing to search for him anyway.
I decided to let him do it. While Brains worked on finding the Neo-Killer, I was preparing myself to fight him. I might not have had any control over when or where I would fight the Neo-Killer, but I could at least make myself ready to take him on again. And this collapsible staff would, God willing, be exactly what I needed to take him down or at least put us on more equal footing in another fight.
“Whoa, there, pal,” said a voice with a Southern drawl behind me. “Maybe you should slow down a bit. What did that sandbag do to you? Mock your mother?”
Pausing, I looked over my shoulder to see a man in his early thirties standing several feet behind me. He had a short, crew cut hairstyle and looked like he might have been in the military or police at one point. He also wore a gray t-shirt and jeans, which made him look rather casual and carried a collapsible stick similar to what I wielded at his side, although his was not unfolded like mine was.
I lowered my stick and turned around to face the man. “Doyle? Is that you?”
Doyle smiled. “Nice to see you, too, Bolt. Don’t tell me you forgot about me already.”
To be frank, I had. Although Doyle was one of the first victims of the Neo-Killer, everything that happened after that first attack had pushed him out of my mind. It didn’t help that Doyle and I didn’t know each other all that well even before the Earth King operation. Thus, it felt a bit awkward to see him standing there with a smile on his like all was well with the world.
“I just didn’t know you were out of the hospital already,” I said. “I thought you would be in there for a while.”
“But I was,” said Doyle. “They let me out about a day before they released you. I went home and rested and then came back to the Braindome just a few minutes ago.”
“Why?” I said. “You don’t have to come here, you know. If you’ve got the day off, why not spend it healing up from your injuries?”
Doyle smiled. “Like you?”
“That’s different,” I said. “The Neo-Killer is deliberately targeting me. Therefore, I need to be on guard at all times and train even when I don’t feel like it.”
“All you’re doing is hitting that sandbag over and over again,” said Doyle. “Great stress reliever, but not too good for training. Brains told me you are doing powerless training.”
“Yeah, I am,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at the sandbag. “I would normally train with Vanish, but because she’s sick, I’ve had to do it on my own. And Brains is too busy to teach me, so I can’t go to him for help, either.”
“Why not train with me?” Doyle offered. “I’m not a superhuman like you, but I know a thing or two about how to fight without powers. How does that sound?”
I looked at Doyle uncertainly. “I don’t know, man. Even if you weren’t just fresh out of the hospital, I would be worried about fighting a normal human like you. What if I accidentally use my powers and turn you into a pancake? I could easily hurt you.”
“I know that, but I’m used to training with superhumans,” said Doyle. “I train with Brains and Vanish all the time and neither of them has hurt me that much.”
“Yeah, but neither of them have super strength or speed like I do,” I said. “I’m not sure it would be a good idea if we trained.”
“Who cares?” said Doyle. “Besides, you’d have to touch me in order to kill me, which I know you won’t be able to. I may not look it, but I’m very fast and hard to hit. Think you can’t hit me with that stick of yours?”
I scowled. “I could beat you without my powers. I just don’t want to do it because I think it is a safety hazard.”
“Sounds like loser talk to me,” said Doyle. “Come on. Just one round. If things get too rough or dangerous, we can stop. How does that sound?”
I considered his offer for a moment. It sounded reasonable to me, but at the same time, I didn’t want to hurt him accidentally. I could control my powers just fine, but powerless training was still tricky for me and I was worried about what I might do if I got too frustrated. I didn’t worry about that with Vanish because, although she wasn’t very strong, her teleportation powers meant that she could save herself if I accidentally lost control. I couldn’t count on the same thing with Doyle.
Still, I knew that Doyle was a strong guy with plenty of combat experience. It wasn’t like either of us were in top shape, anyway, so powerless training was about the only form of training we could really do together.
So I nodded and said, “All right. But if you lose, don’t complain to me about it.”
Doyle chuckled. “No worries here. You’re the one who is going to be asking for mercy before all’s said and done. Now, let’s get ready to—”
“Bolt,” said Valerie in my ears all of a sudden, “are you there?”
“Yes, Val?” I said, tapping my earcom and looking away from Doyle. “What’s the problem? Did something bad happen?”
“No,” said Valerie. “But Brains has summoned you back to the control room to discuss a change of plans.”
“A change of plans?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“Your reassignment to Hero Island, naturally,” said Valerie, “by order of the Leadership Council, effective today.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A few minutes later, I found myself standing in the Braindome’s control room alongside Brains and Doyle. I rarely came into this room, mostly because I didn’t need to. Below us were three rows of desks at which Braindome IT workers typed furiously, working hard on whatever project Brains had given them to complete. The control room smelled vaguely of coffee and donuts, a clue to what the workers normally ate while on the job, while the lights on the ceiling above shone down on us like the sun.
On the wall before us was a large screen showing a helmeted face. The man who appeared on the camera wore a full suit of black, high-tech armor sculpted to resemble the armor of old medieval knights, with a sword sheathed at his waist somewhere off-screen. His blue eyes glowed from within his helmet, showing no emotion other than professional calmness.
But I wasn’t calm. I was staring at the man on the screen, trying to stay as calm and reasonable as possible, but it was hard knowing what I was here for today. “Mecha Knight, you can’t be serious. Did the Leadership Council really call me back to Hero Island?”
Mecha Knight, who was the knight on the screen, nodded. “We did. When we heard about the Neo-Killer’s recent attack on the G-Men’s offices in Showdown—which resulted in the death of Phobia and the hospitalization of several more people, including one NHA member and one Young Neos—we decided that it was too dangerous to keep you in Showdown any longer. You must return to Hero Island until the Neo-Killer is apprehended and brought to justice.”
“But …” I struggled to find the words to argue against Mecha Knight’s logic. “If I leave now, the Neo-Killer will leave as well and you guys will probably
never capture him again.”
“Perhaps, but that is unlikely,” said Mecha Knight. “Since the Neo-Killer’s recent attacks on you and the others, the NHA has joined the G-Men’s investigation into the Neo-Killer. Even the INJ have expressed interest in helping, however, they can, which is rather amazing when you consider how independent the Midnight Menace is, even after you consider how relations between our organizations have improved over the last year or so.”
My fists shook. “Why not just send more NHA members? Maybe if we had more help—”
“We do not intend to give the Neo-Killer more targets,” said Mecha Knight bluntly. “We will send more NHA members to support Brains and Vanish, but only after you come home. The Neo-Killer has only escalated his attacks so far in response to us. If we act too hastily, we are afraid he might escalate it beyond merely targeting superhumans and their associates and begin targeting innocent civilians who have nothing to do with his hatred of us.”
“I agree,” said Brains, nodding. “We don’t know much about the Neo-Killer, but he’s clearly a crazy yet clever bad guy who is willing to do whatever it takes to take us out. Even I don’t feel safe, and I can read peoples’ minds.”
“Which is precisely why Bolt needs to come back to Hero Island,” said Mecha Knight. “And Bolt, I know what you are thinking, but this has nothing to do with cowardice and everything to do with safety. By coming back to Hero Island, you are making things safer for everyone, including yourself.”
I scowled, but I had to admit I couldn’t argue with Mecha Knight’s logic, and it wasn’t for the reasons he stated. Deep down, I still had a strong fear of the Neo-Killer, a fear which had only grown since I got out of the hospital. Hero Island was one of the safest places in the world, home to many of the world’s strongest and most powerful superheroes. If I went there, I doubted that the Neo-Killer would be able to get anywhere close to it without being spotted and arrested. The Neo-Killer might have been a clever man who hated superhumans, but I doubted even he would risk a full-scale assault on Hero Island or even attempt a simple infiltration. Then again, the Neo-Killer seemed to hate me more than anyone else, so perhaps that wouldn’t stop him from trying to kill me.