Chronicles of the Supers (Book 1): Born From Darkness (The Story of Max)

Chronicles
of the Supers:

Born
from Darkness

The
Story of Max

Text Copyright ©
2015 Jeremy L Williams

All
Rights Reserved

No
part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means,
mechanical, electronic, or other, without written permission from the
original author. Exceptions are provided only for the use of short
quotations for review or educational purposes only if proper
accreditation to the original author and work are given.

This
is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, events,
locations, or other works (both fictitious and factual) are purely
coincidental.

To my best friend, P., in
particular. Without her constant support and criticisms this story
would have never developed in any form.

And also to my other
friends, who kept their sarcastic wit flowing when I was stressed out
from writing.

Part 1:

Beginnings

Chapter 0:

Prologue

"Are we ready to begin the experiment?" asked
the voice of a figure shrouded almost completely in shadow.

"Yes. You may begin." said another figure,
sounding as if it was a great distance away.

The first figure reached its 7 fingered alien hand into
the light of a large but dim monitor. It pressed a single, not very
obvious, button. On the screen the display shifted from a series of
illegible statistics to a live video feed of a young girl. She had
long blonde hair and pasty white skin. Standing at 5 feet 5 inches
tall she was somewhat small and skinnier than appeared to be healthy
for her. Her deep purple eyes, which shone like moonlight being
reflected off of a pond, greatly contrasted the rest of her
appearance.

She was running and panting with a bag slung over one of
her shoulders, headed towards a decidedly grandiose building that
appeared to be very old based on the worn appearance and slightly
chipped paint. When she crossed into a grassy portion of the area
just in front of the building she tripped and violently hit the
ground.

Unseen to her or anyone on the planet below, a small
bracelet suddenly appeared in a wash of silver light. It was mixed in
with the girls belongings in such as a way as to ensure she picked it
up. After the device had materialized, the alien hand pressed another
button, and the device activated.

Chapter 1:

Discovery

As the girl laid upon the ground she tried to fight back the tears
that were streaming out of her eyes. When she finally stopped crying
she slowly picked herself up to her knees to pick up her bags and the
items that had scattered from within. In her hurry she didn't notice
that she'd picked up a small silver chain bracelet that had been
lying among her scattered items.

As she
stood up and dusted herself off she noted that her body wasn't
severely injured. She had a nice bruise on her arms and stomach, but
it wasn't really painful or very obvious. The girl touched the
bruises just to be sure they were minor and didn't even wince under
the gentle pressure, so she satisfied herself that she was in fact
okay.

She
looked around to see that no one had seen her fall and, after a sigh
of relief, she took off sprinting towards the building in front of
her again. On the way she wiped the last of the tears off her face
and thanked her self that she had chosen not to wear makeup that day.

##########

The girl came upon a non-descript door on the third floor of the
building and stopped for a moment. She visibly steeled herself and
opened the door as carefully but swiftly as she could. Peering inside
through the forming crack, she saw a very old woman writing
information on a board.

She wiped some sweat off her brow and quietly entered the room and
began to sit down while the woman continued her lecture seemingly
unaware of the intruder.

"And that is the formula for finding the relative time
difference of an object moving at nearly light speed. Now,
Maximiliana Einhardt, would you care to give us a real life example
of how time dilation affects humans as a whole?" the lecturer
said as the girl sat down.

"Um... I'm not sure...." she responded, unsure of what the
woman was even talking about.

"Then perhaps you'd like to explain how it is you sleep. Because
your lateness to class is a result of you experiencing time dilation
by sleeping at half the speed of light, is it not?" the woman
said as coldly as she could manage, which was in fact very coldly.

Maximiliana huffed and glared at the woman as she turned back around
to continue her lecture. After the lady was no longer looking Max
glared at many of her classmates to silence their giggling.

"An excellent answer to my question would be GPS satellites..."
the woman continued.

"Nice Max, you pissed her off. Now we all get double homework."
said the student next to Max.

"Sorry, my alarm clock got smashed by a drunken party in the
girls dorm last night." Max uttered sheepishly. After that no
one said anything to Max and she quickly tuned out the lecture.

'God I hate this woman so much. She reminds me of...' Max gulped
visibly, but no one noticed.

As Max finished that thought she shivered and a single tear ran down
her cheek. She quickly wiped it away before anyone noticed and
started to draw in her notebook. She really didn't care about this
class, and her grades couldn't be pulled up enough for her to pass
before the end of the semester anyway.

'Thank god this class is optional and I don't need it to graduate'
She thought as the womans voice finally disappeared from her
awareness completely.

##########

Max sprinted out of the building as the final class bell rang behind
her. She jumped down the two steps and continued her sprint unabated.
Within minutes she had reached the dorm hall and her room. She
quickly changed into an orange collard shirt with a nametag on the
front and a pair of blue slacks, then grabbed her bag and sprinted
back out of the dorm room and off campus to the local grocery store.
After she had clocked in with her id card she ran off to begin her
work.

Thought it was only part time work, she still hated it. The store
paid less than minimum wage for where she lived and her job was only
part time. But the income was necessary for her to continue to live
independently. And it was also the only evening job she could find,
so she didn't really have a choice in the matter.

##########

After five hours of work, Max finally entered the break room. She
only had a 20 minute break to sit down and eat her supper before her
last hour of work would begin. She opened her bag and pulled out her
lunch from inside. When she looked at it she realized it had been
flattened at some point. She let out an exasperated sigh and slammed
the bag on the break room table. Some other workers looked at her
strangely but she glared at them until they felt uncomfortable and
left the room, leaving her almost completely alone.

As she carefully pulled open her lunch bag she noted with a deep
frown that the contents, a single ham sandwich and a small cake, were
flat and mixed together. She gagged as she thought about eating it,
but relented as she remembered it was her only meal for the day, as
was often the case.

As she bit into a portion she noticed a small glint from the edge of
the now destroyed lunch bag. She moved her hand to touch it and found
a small silver chain bracelet hanging from the edge. She picked it up
and admired it for a second.

'Happy Birthday to me' she thought as she put it on. She didn't know
where it had come from but she didn't really care. If the owner had
been careless enough to lose it inside her bag, then she would be
careless enough to keep it for herself and consider it a free
birthday present.

As she put it on she felt a small pinch on her wrist where the clasp
was fastened. She looked at it but didn't see any visible marks, so
she let the feeling and the thought escape her mind within moments.

A few minutes later she finished her sandwich and birthday 'cake' she
left the break room to continue her shift.

Only an hour later she was out of work and quickly sprinting back to
her dorm room. She sprinted inside, not caring about how many people
she had woken up doing so. It was now midnight and all students were
supposed to be asleep. The school administration didn't know of her
job and thus assumed she was in her room where she belonged. They
never bothered to check on the girls dorm room so they would never
find out that Max left almost every day to attend a regular job.

She quickly opened her computer and started it up, wincing at the
sudden and very bright light. She turned the brightness down some and
started repeatedly tapping an icon on the desktop. When the program
finally opened, many copies came along with it.

"God damnit you piece of shit computer." she exclaimed
quietly but tensely. She closed the copies and began working on lines
of code.

"I fucking hate web design." she said whispered. "I'd
better get paid for this one too, or there'll be hell to pay."

She thought back to her last client, who had refused to pay for the
website she had made because the background colour was electric blue
instead of daylight blue. Not that it was a hard problem to fix, but
they refused to allow her to do so and refused to make a payment.
Without any spare cash to throw around, Max couldn't file a police
report or go to court and get her money from the customer. This
happened more often than people would like to admit, and especially
to Max because of her cheaper than normal prices.

Today she was, ironically, working on a website for the grocery store
she worked at. They didn't know it was her obviously, and were thus
offering a small sum of money. That money wasn't a lot, but it was
equal to 2 months worth of her normal paycheck. It would be the last
amount she needed to finish paying off her school book loan and then
she would have a little extra money to throw at her actual school
loans and hopefully get them paid off before she graduated next year.

She finished the project as quickly as possible and then sent the
rought draft to her employer for a review. It would be likely later
the next afternoon that the employer would see the email and thus she
would be able to sleep.

Max looked at the clock and noted with disdain that it read 4 in the
morning. She had to be up at 7 for class, again. And then she would
repeat the day over and over again. She didn't even get weekends off
because she worked for a small gas station on the edge of town on the
weekends. Her work there totaled more than 18 hours each weekend and
what free time she had was spent doing more work on web design to try
and grab as much cash as she could. School was expensive, especially
considering it was a private school and had exorbitant tuition
prices. Hell her uniform alone cost thousands of dollars and the rest
of the expenses caused that to pale in comparison.

And on the off chance that she didn't have any projects lined up she
would instead spend time working on homework. It was already piling
up on her pretty fast and she was having trouble getting in
assignments. She often spent her lunch hour and break hour working on
it so she wouldn't have to worry about it later that evening or on
the weekend, but the teachers seemed to enjoy draining happiness by
assigning too much work to the students.

She hopped into bed, not caring that she was still in her work
uniform and fell asleep before she'd even felt her head hit the
pillow. Sleeping 3 or so hours was very common for Max, so she had
become used to it. Or at least as used to it as she could. Every
morning it was getting harder and harder for Max to obey her alarm
clock and get the hell out of bed.

##########

Max woke up in her bed back at the house she had grown up in. She was
lying in a simple and small bed with a set of white sheets and a
single white pillow. Her room was very spartan, containing only a
single mirror on the far wall and a single white dresser. The walls
were an off white colour and there was a single small window with
bars on it next to the mirror.

She didn't know why, but she felt compelled to get out of her bed and
good look at herself in the mirror. Staring back at her was a much
smaller and clearly younger version of herself. She was completely
naked and had bruises covering her body and a single tear running
down her battered and bruised face.