The Enhancer series Box Set

by Wyatt Kane

  3: A Chance Encounter

  New Lincoln was a bustling city of more than 38 million people. At this time of year, it was cold during the night but there was no snow on the ground. There was, however, a light drizzle that made Ty shrug into his jacket as he trudged between tall buildings and through darkened streets. Sometimes his way was lit by flickering streetlamps. More often, it was lit by the glare of pink and blue neon signs.

  Even at that time of the morning, with a couple of hours to go before dawn, the streets weren’t entirely empty. Homeless people shivered in dark alleys while others burned rubbish in bins in a time-honored tradition of trying to stay warm.

  Nor were they the only people Ty had to worry about. In hidden corners, thieves, drug dealers, and illicit service operators were all plying their trades to the tune of ongoing traffic and distant police and ambulance sirens.

  On some levels, New Lincoln was a wondrous place. The clientele at the Concubine Club was mostly wealthy enough that Ty suspected none of them would ever know the worst of it. But he wasn’t in that category. With his rent, his loan repayments, and general living expenses, Ty was barely a single paycheck away from being one of the street people he avoided as he made his way home.

  Yet to them now, he was one of the privileged.

  It started raining more heavily before Ty was halfway home. His jacket was waterproof but didn’t come with a hood, so he shrugged into it is as far as he could. Then he hurried along, splashing through puddles that reflected the neon and trying to ignore the cold water that plastered his hair to his head and ran down the back of his neck.

  With every step, he cursed Angie the Hutt and promised himself that one day he would not be subject to her vindictive ways. Yet, if it wasn’t for Angie’s cruelty, if she hadn’t decided on a malicious whim to keep him at work so that he missed his bus, his life may never have changed. He would have made it home to his bed safe and sound, but would never have witnessed the things he was destined to see.

  Ty would never have met the superheroes that lived in the city. He would never have had the chance to become one himself, and the world would have been a much different place.

  As he trudged through the streets feeling cold, miserable, and sorry for himself, he kept his wits about him. The slums of New Lincoln were not the right place to look at your feet and ignore everything else. And with the lights and the neon, the alleys were no darker than gloomy.

  He clearly saw the homeless man charging toward him, his ratty trenchcoat billowing out behind him like a cape and his feet pounding through the puddles.

  Ty reacted with fear. The homeless man was wailing out loud as he ran, an eerie sound that Ty couldn’t interpret. Ty hesitated, unsure what to do, his instincts shouting that either the homeless man was crazy or that he was about to attack.

  As the man pounded closer, Ty tried to duck out of the way, but the running man had also corrected his course and spat curses at him. Ty had chosen the wrong option and was now stuck, still in the running man’s path, uncertain what he should do next.

  “Get out of the way!” the man shouted, and shoved him roughly as he went past. The impact was enough to spin Ty about and make him lose his balance. He sat on the ground, soaking his trousers. He swore, at once relieved that the man was more mad than dangerous, and wondered why he was running.

  Irritated, soaked through, and seeing no obvious excuse for the running man’s behavior, Ty pulled himself back to his feet and continued to trudge.

  He was still wondering what had gotten into the man when a new noise caught his attention. Grunting and cursing mixed with malicious laughter.

  It was the type of noise that was common in this part of town, and on another day, if it hadn’t been raining, Ty might have chosen a different direction. But he was cold, wet, and tired. And he had a stubborn streak a mile wide. He didn’t want to backtrack the block it would take for him to go another way. So instead, he stepped forward, kept his eyes open, and continued onward.

  The noises were coming from a side alley. He should have walked straight past it without paying any attention. Maybe the sounds were those of a mugging taking place. Maybe something worse. Either way, it wasn’t his business.

  Instead, curiosity got the better of him. When he reached the alley, Ty turned to look.

  What he saw was beyond anything he could have imagined.

  As far as anyone knew, people with superpowers were a recent phenomenon. When Ty was a child, there had been only one, and even he was little more than a rumor. The Architect, they called him. What his powers were, if he had any, Ty didn’t really know, but the stories were that he solved problems for those in need. He was a vigilante, someone who inspired trust and who seemed to be more capable than most at putting things right.

  Where the Architect was now, Ty didn’t know. Maybe nobody knew. But now, apparently, there were a handful of others, both in New Lincoln and elsewhere. Ty didn’t know how many exactly, but they were men and women with amazing powers who worked with police to keep a lid on some of the most violent crimes.

  In a city like New Lincoln, where the crime families were strong, their efforts barely made a difference. Yet it gave people hope, something to believe in when there was so little hope to be had.

  Ty had only ever seen these superheroes in blurry pictures and videos on the news nets. To him, they were no more than whispers, hints and suggestions without being entirely real. And if they were, then New Lincoln was so big and Ty so insignificant that he’d never expected to meet one in person.

  So he was completely surprised to find himself staring at two of them battling each other in the alley.

  Ty immediately understood why the homeless man had been running. These people were like Titans or Gods, and Ty could scarcely believe what he was seeing.

  He stood in the rain at the entrance to the alley, the cold all but forgotten, gaping at this spectacle in front of him.

  One of the people doing battle was enormous. Dressed in a black jumpsuit that did nothing to hide his frame, he must have been eight feet tall and was made out of muscle. He was horrendously strong. As Ty watched, this monstrous man let out a roar and picked up a full dumpster as if it was nothing. He whirled the dumpster about like an Olympic hammer thrower and let it fly.

  Ty watched with a mixture of shock and awe as the dumpster sailed through the air like a missile toward the monstrous man’s opponent. This second super was smaller, more humanlike in size and appearance, yet Ty thought he recognized him by his extravagant costume. He’d seen it on the news nets, full of purple and sequins and complete with an elaborate cape.

  This second super was flying. Hovering about in the air as casually as if he was walking along the path. It was like a scene taken from the pages of a comic book. The flamboyantly dressed super dodged around the thrown dumpster with ease and gestured towards the monstrous man on the ground. Unbelievably, apparently through no will of his own, that huge figure also started to float off the ground.

  The monstrous man gave a roar of anger and twisted in mid-air. He reached out and punched a hole in the brick wall of the alley and barked a laugh.

  “You’ll have to do better than that!” he shouted as he tore bricks from the wall and hurled them at the flying man.

  The flying man wasn’t quick enough this time. He ducked the first brick, but the second caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder. It was enough to break his concentration. The enormous man crashed to the ground, then picked himself up, completely unhurt, and launched himself with a mighty leap toward the flying man.

  The flying man only just got out of the way.

  “Good thing I’ve got better to give,” the flying man replied. With that, he made another gesture, conjuring what for all the world looked to be a bolt of lightning that he held in his hands. He flung the bolt at his opponent and was rewarded with a roar of pain.

  But it did little actual damage. The monstrous man’s jumpsuit briefly burst into flames where the bolt hit
him, but he batted them out with a hand. Then he barked a laugh.

  “Not bad,” he said, his voice a snarl of approval and rage. “But not good enough!”

  The monstrous man was full of brutality and strength. Ty had no clue what the fight was about. He didn’t know where these men came from or who they were. All he knew was what he could see before him, which was two impossible people doing their best to hurt each other in the worst possible way.

  He also knew that he shouldn’t be standing there watching. It was like he was a noob who had just stumbled into a player versus player zone where two high-level characters where battling it out. It was terrifying to see, and yet in a way, it was awesome as well, and there was a sense of unreality to it all that made Ty wonder if he’d suddenly gone mad and was hallucinating somehow.

  If Ty had been sensible, he would have taken to his heels like the homeless man had done, and left the battling Titans to their dual. He should have run and not looked back. The huge man could have ripped him apart without even trying, and the flying man had powers far beyond normal.

  In comparison to either of them, Ty was no more than an ant. Whatever they were fighting about, he wanted no part of it.

  Yet perhaps it was the sense of unreality that rooted him to the spot.

  Or maybe it was just that Ty was stubborn.

  That stubbornness had been with him since as far back as he could remember. It hadn’t helped much in his life, only getting him into trouble. It was because of his stubbornness that he was so much in debt. That he hadn’t told Angie where she could stick her job. That he kept trying long past the point where others might have given up.

  It was who he was. So where other, more sensible people would have left the alley with all due haste, Ty stood in the rain and stayed where he was.

  The monstrous man still had a brick in his hand. Ty had failed to see it because his hand was so huge. Worse, the flying man had failed to see it as well. The monstrous man took aim and threw the brick like a bullet.

  This time, it was not a glancing blow. This time, the brick hit the flying man squarely in the chest. Ty heard the sound clearly. It was the sound a boxer’s gloved fist made when punching a heavy bag accompanied by a whoosh as the flying man’s air escaped from his lungs.

  He had no defense against it, and the flying man was flying no more. He hit the ground, staggered, and tried to keep his feet while at the same time clutching his chest.

  4: Cybertech Device

  Ty knew that the flying man was badly hurt, but the fight was yet to be over.

  “Got you, you flying pest!” the monstrous man said, every syllable he spoke sounding like he was gloating.

  With that, the monstrous man strode forward, quickly closing the distance between them. The injured man raised his arm as if to protect himself, but it was too little, too late. The monstrous man wound up with a mighty backswing and unleashed, smashing the flying man with all of his strength.

  The blow was prodigious. More than prodigious, it was phenomenal. Ty couldn’t see how anyone could stand against it, and the flying man could not. The blow picked him up and sent him flying through the air to crash on the ground at Ty’s feet.

  Ty took one look at the crumpled form of the superpowered man and his mind started screaming in panic and fear. It was telling him to run as fast as he had ever done in his life. He needed to get out of there, and he knew it. He needed to run, and he needed to do it immediately!

  But something still held him in place. The flying man would fly no more. He was a crumpled mess on the ground. He had bounced as he landed, skidding to a halt, and had come to rest on his back with his head at an unnatural angle and his limbs twisted and broken.

  His health bar was obviously way down in the red, yet there was still life in him. How much, Ty couldn’t guess, but enough that he tried to speak.

  “Run,” he murmured. In a strange way, Ty thought the man’s plea was heroic. He was dying. That much was clear. No one could live through such an impact as he had suffered. Yet his last thoughts were not of himself, but of Ty, a stranger whom he had never met.

  Nor had he finished speaking. “Take the device. Don’t let him get it.”

  Ty had no clue what the flying man was talking about, nor did he have any hope of clarification. As Ty watched, the man stiffened in sudden pain. A bubble of blood appeared on his lips. Then, all at once, the flying man relaxed, the bubble of blood not bursting so much as fading back into nothing.

  The flying man was dead. Ty was standing over a dead man, and his monstrous opponent, the man who’d killed him, was looking his way.

  And laughing.

  Ty was about to go. About to follow the stranger’s advice and that of his more sensible self. But before he did, he heard a sound which caught his attention. A metallic click followed by a whine.

  At first, Ty couldn’t see where the click and whine came from. Then he saw it. An electronic device, a bracelet of sorts. It was a mixture of silver and blue segments, and at the man’s death, it had clicked open and fallen away from his wrist. Ty glanced up at the murderous monster. He was still laughing, apparently enjoying the sensation of victory, but had started to step in Ty’s direction.

  Ty should have left everything as it was and simply run away. But he did not. He had always been interested in cybertech. To him, the dead man’s device was fascinating. He’d never seen anything quite like it.

  He couldn’t help himself. Instead of leaving the corpse of the flying man to his enemy, Ty reached down and plucked the device from where it had fallen. A quick inspection showed no indication of what it might be. Wristwatch, Omnimatrix, Pip-Boy, or something in between, he couldn’t tell.

  Out of no more than curiosity and instinct, thinking that maybe he should change his name to Ben and become a plumber, Ty placed the device over his own wrist. But he didn’t yet click it shut.

  “Leave that alone!” the monstrous man bellowed. He was approaching more quickly now and had covered half the distance between them. “Or do I have to kill you as well?”

  The unexpected threat surprised Ty. He flinched, and before he could stop it, the device snapped shut.

  “Ow!” Ty said, more out of surprise than anything else, yet the device did have teeth. They pierced Ty’s skin, and moments later, did far more than that.

  Ty was hit with a kick of energy that ripped through him like an electric shock. It was painful and stunning, and all Ty could do was cry out in pain. It was as if he’d been struck by lightning, by one of the bolts that the flying man had used in vain against his opponent.

  It was enough to drive Ty to his knees as he gasped in pain.

  Despite the rain, despite the distant sounds of cars and occasional sirens, the click of the device closing around Ty’s wrist rang out like a bell, echoing from the walls of the alley.

  The huge super who was bearing down on Ty heard it clearly. Before Ty could even begin to recover from his unexpected shock, the monstrous man uttered a snarl like that of an enraged beast and charged in his direction. It was all Ty could do to fumble about and turn away. He expected the monster to crash into him within moments, to crush him to the ground and then do whatever he wished. But before he did so, out of nowhere, a third superpowered person appeared.

  All Ty saw was a blur of motion combined with a shriek of agony and rage, and then whoever it was hit the monster with a force of a cannonball.

  This time, Ty heeded his instinct to run. He regained his feet and staggered clumsily away from the new battle. As he tried to move, Ty realized that as well as the initial shock, he felt dizzy and nauseous, and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. The world smelled like copper, and when he looked around, it seemed as if everything he saw was unstable.

  He wondered if the device had injected some new designer drug into his system.

  “You killed him!” the new super said. It was a woman. Ty could hear the pain and grief in her voice, and it was followed by a mighty thump as she hit th
e monster again. Ty tried to look, but all he could see was a blur of movement. He had no idea what the woman’s powers might be, or if she had a hope of standing up to the monster.

  “Yes, and I will kill you as well! That bracelet is mine!” he roared.

  There were more shouts, more crashes, more grunts of pain, but that was all Ty knew. The weird effects of the device were too much. Ty couldn’t stand it any longer. He collapsed back to his knees and threw up on the pavement.

  The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was a battle shriek like no other, followed by what sounded like an explosion.

  Then he knew nothing at all.

  5: Waffles

  Normally, Ty was slow to wake up. Perhaps the odd hours he worked messed with his biorhythms. Whatever the reason, he and mornings had a relationship built on disappointment and irritation more than friendship.

  Ty would normally lie in a half-doze for several hours with the thin curtains of his rat-hole apartment letting in the light of the day. Then, when his phone alarm finally went off, he would groan out loud and hit snooze without even thinking, then roll back over, bury his head in a pillow, and try to squeeze in another few minutes of rest.

  Even though it was rare that he shared those sheets with anyone else, he still didn’t enjoy getting out from between them. The alarm would have to do its job at least three more times before it, combined with a full bladder, was able to coerce him into starting the day.

  Even then, Ty would be groggy for ages, stumbling around in a semi-functional state until he could get his first coffee inside him.

  Ty often felt that instead of an alarm, he would do better if he could hook up an IV and inject caffeine straight into his veins.

  But this morning was different.

  One moment Ty was lost in a world of dreams, images and echoes of his entire life arranged in a largely incoherent fashion. He saw himself growing up on the edges of New Lincoln with his mother and two older sisters. Working hard all through school to get the grades he needed. His first girlfriend. The news that his older sister had died, a victim of a disease that cost too much to cure. Then the downward spiral as he lost hope and eventually dropped out of school.