I hit the button on my watch, both relief and disgust that it was over running through me. We were legally fine, they were killing people, so it was clear self-defense. If it’d been a supervillain holding hostages, in a relatively stable situation, then we would’ve been wrong to act, but that wasn’t the case.
Of course, it wasn’t over yet, because we both heard screams from much farther down the mall. The screams made my heart jump in my throat as horror filled me, and my stomach twisted as I realized there was more of them.
Prisma said, “Stand by. The city is a mess.”
Janna threw the weapons at a middle-aged couple and pointed at the bad guys, “Watch them!”
I ignored Prisma’s comment as I rose up into the air. The mall ceiling was at least a hundred feet up, and there was plenty of room to fly. I followed the gold blur below me, my speed in the air was hardly up for the task to match her in such a short quarter mile sprint, but I managed to keep her shielded and I shielded anyone else that came into view as we went.
Fortunately, that seemed to be a mere matter of focus and will on protecting everyone, I didn’t have to focus on each one individually to make it happen. It was also apparent I didn’t have to keep up with Janna at all. I had to see someone to shield them initially, or feel them in the same room anyway, but once shielded I didn’t have to maintain that line of sight contact.
Which meant only a solid wall or a closed door where my thin thread couldn’t fit through the crack of would be enough for Janna to lose that shield I’d put on her, as long as she stayed within three thousand feet. Which was a relief.
The next two guys in tac gear went down just as fast as the first two. She knocked them out, stole their guns, and gave them to the shocked mall security guard.
She said, “Be right back,” and disappeared in a blur I didn’t attempt to follow. Strangely enough, I could kind of track her progress as she cleared the rest of the mall. It was good thinking, we should’ve done that the first time, we might’ve prevented a couple of those murders.
“What do you mean the city is a mess?”
Prisma appeared in my HUD view but like she was standing next to me, enhanced reality. I could only see her if I looked in that direction. It was… disorienting with my heart hammering in my chest but I supposed I’d get used to it. She was wearing a bright red skirt and jacket, with a dark blue blouse.
Janna reappeared before Prisma spoke.
“Like here, there are nine more pairs throughout the city and counting. Super teams are dispatched.”
Janna asked, “What do they want?”
Prisma replied, “Unknown as of this time.”
“We could help, with my shields, and Janna’s faster than most speedsters.”
Prisma replied, “Not legally you can’t, since you and the people around you aren’t in danger any longer, it would be considered active hunting, not reactive self-defense. You both did good but leave the rest of the city to the superheroes.”
Shit, she was right of course, but it physically hurt to stand there while my mother’s team and even the city supers were out there. I could count on my hand the number of city heroes that could take a hit from one of those guns, including Debra. The rest would have to dodge.
In the meantime, mall security had all four guns and the men in custody, waiting for the regular cops to show up.
Two hundred and forty-two people died that day, before all eleven of the two-man teams were taken down. Including three superheroes. It was horrifying, and I didn’t understand it at all. There was no reason for it, at least not then. Even when I found out the reason, just three hours later, it still didn’t make sense to me. It was… evil. It took almost two hours to give the police our statements, neither of us were in the mood to shop after that, and we headed to my house.
Chapter Five
The living room was full when we got home. My whole mother’s team was over, and I could hear Jace and Sharon playing with my younger cousins Ray and Shawna who were around the same age, ten and eight respectively. They all looked shell shocked and upset as they looked at the two of us.
“Did you find out something?”
My mother gave me a measuring glance, then said, “Prisma, play it again, from the top,” then to us, “The stations were all hacked at the same time, and this went over all the news channels.”
I looked at the television as an older man came on. He looked to be in his late fifties, and he had a black three piece suit on with a red tie. The look on his face was stern and faintly regretful at the same time, as if he regretted the need to do what he did. Bastard.
He pontificated, “We’ve been lying to ourselves. In one sweeping change, be it the meteor, the hadron collider explosion, or some unknown reason, homo-sapiens stopped being born almost forty-five years ago. There was nothing we could do about it, no way to preserve our race, so we told ourselves that was fine. Homo-potens could take over where we left off, our own children at least, if not our own race. What choice did we have?
“Or at least, most of you did. I chose a different path that day. I did not lie to myself. This is an unnatural evolution, an abomination in the eyes of god, leading to an uncertain and violent future. The second generation is even more powerful than the first, where will it end? Natural evolution happens over hundreds of years, and the two races usually compete, but the unnaturalness of this has denied us that opportunity.
“Until now.”
He gestured off screen, and a young woman walked forward and handed him a baby.
The man continued in a proud voice that turned my stomach, “This is John. He’s my son, and he’s the first human born in forty-five years. My young wife Carla is a first generation super. For the last forty-five years I’ve been working on undoing what was done to us, so that the human race, homo-sapiens, don’t fall by the wayside. I have succeeded. I have also built up a following. We’re not able to reverse the supers that already exist, but we do have a serum that will allow them to have human children, the way god meant them to be. This new evolution is false, and it is nothing but a disease.
“I implore all of you to agree to my demands, which are as follows. All homo-potens that have not yet quickened must submit to being cured, and all children of the second generation and those of the first who have not quickened. The genetic serum will prevent further quickening, and the next generation will be true humans, free of this horrific disease that has caused nothing but havoc and death. Unfortunately, the quickened would be immune to the serum, with their jumped-up immune response. If they don’t interfere, they may live out their lives, and like homo-sapiens once faced, their new race will die a natural and peaceful death in its second generation.”
He paused for a moment, and my mind was having a hard time accepting that anyone could be that… crazy. The evolution was artificially quickened, almost everyone agreed with that, but it was clearly the way we’d been headed as a species. If this genetic fix actually worked, it was possible it would forever stall our rightful evolutionary path. I was assuming there of course. I did have an active imagination, but who knew? I just knew what he was suggesting was far less natural than what already happened.
Plus, I already got the idea that he was responsible for today, and anyone that opens up an argument with the murder of two hundred and forty-two innocent people doesn’t get a seat at the table. He’d lost the right to be heard in my mind, and all he deserved was death.
He continued in that earlier contrite tone, “I regret what happened today, but it was necessary to show you the truth. Most of you would fear we have no chance against supers, yet twenty-two volunteers proved today that with technology supers can be defeated if they fight and are returned to our true nature, our true and god given path as wise men and women. Regret or not, be warned, if you fight me, or if you choose to stand on the side of an unnaturally unstable and abominable race, then today will have only been the first battle in this war. Those twenty-two brave men and women were only a s
mall part of those willing to fight for this. Humanity won’t go quietly, and now we have a way to restore what was meant to be. A cure to the disease of supers, and we must do whatever it takes to bring it to fruition.
“Now, my demands are simple enough. The congress has one week to repeal those ridiculous new laws and changes. One week to outlaw hero work and put properly armed humans in their place. One week to admit the truth, that a super race is nothing but a sickness, a bad mutation, and one that needs to be weeded out. Once that happens, I’ll release enough doses to cure everyone. The human race will live on. If these demands are not met, you will regret it.”
The screen flickered, and the video stopped.
Janna said, “Breathe.”
I gasped in a breath, and then blushed.
“He’s insane.”
Glenn said, “You’re not wrong. The human survival instinct is strong. I suspect the rise of homo-sapiens was a lot more violent, to overcome those that came before.”
“What are you saying?”
He shrugged, “That he’s crazy but I’m not all that surprised. The only reason things have been as peaceful as they have over the last few decades, was because the old humanity had zero paths to survival. Now that they do, things could get… ugly.”
“But… that’s stupid. We’re their children, and we’re not unnatural.”
He nodded, “That’s where the crazy part comes in. Our evolution was fast-tracked, which is unnatural, but the rest of it isn’t and where we were always headed. His certainties clash with most of the scientific experts around the globe. Though I wonder how many of the older ones, the human ones, will change their tune now.”
My mother snickered, but sobered quickly, “Your father’s not wrong. SAB was a horror, but if old humans could still breed old humans the last forty-five years would’ve been a lot uglier. It’s also ironic, because he called us a cause for violence. His little breakthrough is going to cause a nightmare of violence,” she waved at the television, and there were reports of several riots going on in that moment, “See, it’s already starting.”
Janna shook her head, “Can’t we stop it? The guns, can’t they be scanned by their signatures?”
Prisma said, “That would not be simple. We would have no way of knowing if it was a case of cell phones or a crate of beam weapons. The dimensional reactor technology is too widely used in almost everything now for us to locate them by energy signature scan. I’m working on backtracking the men, but they all seem to be in disguise until they changed in public areas, and so far, I haven’t been able to identify them. I’ll let you know when I have more.”
“Thanks, Prisma,” Debra said.
It was a crazy day, and one of the worst in my life.
The next six days passed in a whirl of stress, worry, and trying to relax because there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about.
Most of the pundits seemed to agree the vote was the trigger that set the man off, and suggested this man led a few hundred men and women at most. It also suggested the transition to a super military over the next couple of years had put him on a deadline and forced him to make his move early, and that could only be good for us. Reason being, a regiment or two of supers would be able to hunt him down quickly and effectively, but at the moment there just weren’t enough supers to deal with hundreds of attacks at once, perhaps over several different cities.
The initial rioting seemed to pass quickly. The first three days on the political side of things, there were several protests around the country and one in D.C. There were at most about five thousand protestors in total, which both disgusted and cheered me at the same time. After all, five thousand was a very small percentage of three hundred million Americans. Something close to a thousandth of one percent. Still, their slogans of calling us abominations and diseased wasn’t exactly heartening.
Congress seemed to have two stances, as usual. One side which seemed to be in the minority called the man a murderous terrorist and insisted we didn’t deal with terrorists and that we’d move forward as planned and deal with him as appropriate.
The rest of congress also called his methods reprehensible and said he was a terrorist, however they seemed to think the subject matter and possibilities that had been brought up deserved an honest debate. The fact it was possible to make the world go back to normal seemed to appeal to a lot of the older senators and representatives.
Fortunately, on day four there was a leak that changed everything. The man had sent his data and some samples to the CDC, over forty years of testing. If the psychopath had thought that would sway minds and hearts, he’d been dead wrong.
Some of that data had been leaked, specifically that the so-called cure had a forty percent death rate. Two out of every five on the planet who took it would die, and the death toll from that would be over three billion people. Apparently, the crazy terrorist had thought those numbers worth the battle and reversing progress.
He might’ve called it a cure for a disease, but clearly that kind of loss could only be justified as an acceptable loss during a war. Even in war, it would be a monstrous act. He saw us as the enemy, that whole disease part was just crap.
Suddenly that half of congress didn’t seem to think it a viable plan to consider it anymore. Well, most of them came out against it anyway, and it was painfully obvious there’d be no reversal of the vote at that point. All sorts of other people started to point out even if we agreed, we couldn’t force it on the rest of the world. It was also clear from the medical data, that unless both parents had been gene modified, the super gene would come out dominant.
That caused more riots, for those among humanity who’d felt the carrot dangled in front of them had been a lie and false hope. I was happy enough that the government wouldn’t be jumping on board, but I was horrified by all the riots. The protests became very thin as well, hundreds, instead of thousands, and they were mostly ignored by the press.
It really confused me though. What parent wouldn’t want their child to live a life free of disease for their full lifespan, which was likely far longer than homo-sapiens. Over the last fifteen years there’d been enough psychological studies to know homo-potens had all the same emotions, and morals along the spectrum.
It was insane. But then, there was always a one percent or more outlier of humanity that was insane in their radical viewpoints.
There was no good news on the law enforcement front either. Prisma had made an erroneous assumption, and assumed they’d come in disguised and changed in places. But after exhaustive research on cams, she came to believe our enemy had a teleporter. They’d teleported in the teams, one at a time, at predetermined sites. That meant the guys lair could be anywhere on the planet. The captured ones spilled their guts. They didn’t have a choice with government empaths and telepaths asking the questions, but they didn’t know where they’d been, where they were trained, or anything else really. It’d all been underground, and they’d never been told their location once recruited and teleported there.
In short, we had no idea where he was, and the superheroes were preparing for the moment his ultimatum date came in and what may come. We had no idea how many would be attacking, or even if they’d be sticking around. If they could teleport in, then they could probably teleport out. The twenty-two in the city, two of the teams in the mall, had all been on a suicide mission. They’d volunteered to kill as many as they could and not retreat.
Next time it could be hundreds, and they could retreat and attack somewhere else over and over if Prisma was right. Not exactly heartening. It was very convenient when my mother could teleport to a supervillain site, but it was far less so when the enemy had the technology as well. It was also highly guarded technology. The teleport booths scattered around were two-station teleports, booth to booth, the ones that could go from or to anywhere from the base station were kept from the general public.
The one piece of good news was they could scan for the weapons, the bad news was the scan was on
ly effective to about a hundred feet. They couldn’t scan for the energy signature since it was so widely used, but in examining the weapons they’d turned up some rare alloys and elements to make the rest of it work. They could scan for that grouped with energy signatures but scanning for elements was far more limited in range than scanning for energy signatures. I knew Prisma had several stealth drones searching the city, and the city A.I. and super team had similar efforts going as well.
Of course, it was probable they weren’t in the city at all, but out in the suburbs around it or perhaps even in rural upstate New York. We all believed him to be near our city, otherwise he’d have attacked a different one. Chances were even if he were near the city, his lair could be deeper underground than a hundred feet making the scans worthless.
On a personal note I was accepted to training which started exactly seven days from the day of the mall incident. So, I’d be in my first class, when this guy struck back, unless he was going to hit the day after. No one was really sure, since that day was the end of the ultimatum he might wait until it had passed.
I’d also been training with Uncle Germaine all week, AKA Mindgrip. He taught me a lot actually, although he’d long ago taught me those mental exercises to keep my head in a fight.
Lastly, I spent a lot of time with Janna, probably half of every day, and we tried not to talk about the drama and stress of the man who wanted to become the greatest mass murderer of all time to guarantee his version of humanity lived on, but it came up. A lot. We also discussed what a good team we’d make, and how our powers complemented in a lot of ways.
No one ever did figure out the psychopath’s name, not that I knew of anyway. Some suspected for that reason he didn’t look like himself in the video, and some kind of holographic technology was used, or perhaps just direct video modification. It wasn’t even hard to do in this day and age, I could make a video of an alien confessing to the fall of mankind if I wanted to, in about five minutes, not the months it would take with professional artists in the past.
Lady Aegis: Origins of Supers: Book Two Page 5