Dark Hunter (7 page)

Scuffer snarled. He recognized that the voice belonged to a mortal enemy. But the voice woke a painful memory. Now Scuffer didn't see Jake as somebody he had to locate—he saw him as someone he had to
destroy
.

Flexing his mighty muscles, Scuffer leaped toward Jake—easily making a thirty-foot jump from a standing start. Scuffer slammed into Jake midair and they both fell back to earth, smashing through the wooden spars of an old roller coaster like demolition balls.

Jake rolled across the ground as they landed, splashing through one of the stagnant ponds that decorated the ride's grounds. Scuffer was already on his feet and snarling with rage.

“Scuff, what the hell happened to you?”

Scuffer launched himself at Jake, smashing into him with a rugby tackle. Jake was winded and sure some of his bones had cracked. He was lucky, they would repair themselves in a few seconds' time, but he still felt the pain.

They crashed into a steel support pole and the entire roller coaster rattled. A punch from Scuffer landed in his stomach so hard that he was lifted off his feet and flew two hundred feet through a variety of brick and plasterboard walls before hitting the raised pneumatic arm of a spinning Enterprise wheel—the ride was already at top speed, gravity pinning the riders to the wall of the cage fifteen yards above the ground. Jake ricocheted from the ride and crunched through the railing of the park and across a busy road. Cars honked their horns and skidded to avoid him. His head felt groggy, but he looked up as the sound of tearing metal caught his attention.

The entire Enterprise wheel was revolving with such force it wrenched itself from the damaged arm. Full of screaming people, the circular cage shot through the air like a Frisbee.

Lorna had been hiding around the side of the bumper cars, watching as the motorcycle-helmeted hero fought the brute. She wondered who the hero was and felt a stab of jealousy that he was taking the limelight. Lorna was a superhero too. Together with her brother and two friends, they had stumbled across Hero.com and had been downloading superpowers—until it had suddenly malfunctioned two days ago.

Typical
, she thought. The moment for her to shine and actually act like a hero in the public eye was being snatched away because, with Hero.com off-line, her powers were unreliable. She should be saving the day and claiming the fame—something she had desired for so long.

Lorna flexed her arms. Though the powers were glitchy, she had
some
powers stored in her body after the Web site had exploded right in front of her. She looked up in time to see the creature smash the new hero through the roller-coaster stanchions.

She spotted a cart that offered monster masks as prizes and slipped on a rubber witch disguise. Lorna had trouble seeing through the narrow eye slits, and when she finally turned back to the action the hero was bouncing off the Enterprise wheel. The entire structure started to wobble, fragments of metal spinning off the gimbal arm—then the wheel tore itself free and shot through the sky toward her.

Lorna flung herself skyward—and fell flat on her face. The power of flight she thought she possessed had chosen that moment to vanish.

Jake saw that the wheel was going to land on an ugly witchlike figure picking herself up off the ground. The witch suddenly blew jets of ice from its hands. The ice
rapidly formed between the ground and the wheel, plucking it from the air.

The disk's momentum was too great for the ice to hold it, and several frozen columns shattered like glass before the wheel abruptly halted less than two feet from crushing the hero. People inside the wheel were flung against the cage walls, breaking bones and smashing noses—but at least they were alive.

A loud horn got Jake's attention and he looked sidelong to see a bus feet away from crushing his head. …

WHAM! Scuffer bolted from the theme park and straight into the road, intent on getting Jake. Instead he got ten tons of bus in his back.

Jake flew upward like a jack-in-the-box and watched as the front of the bus buckled around Scuffer's broad shoulders. They skidded together across the road, Scuffer's feet gouging troughs in the tarmac.

Jake readied another fireball and blasted Scuffer. The front of the bus caught fire; the injured driver and his terrified passengers bailed out of emergency exits. Scuffer howled in pain as his hair caught fire, but rather than douse the flames he lashed out.

Lorna watched in astonishment as the mysterious helmeted superhero just about dodged a car the brute hurled at him. She glanced at her impromptu ice
claw; it creaked ominously but seemed to be supporting the wheel.

Jake ducked as the unrelenting Scuffer threw more cars at him. The brute ran forward, effortlessly scooping up the vehicles. Not all of the cars were empty either; Jake had a fleeting glimpse of drivers and passengers screaming as they hurtled past, landing on top of other vehicles to form a massive pileup.

Jake had had enough. He felt his anger rise, and his body glowed green as the radioactive power he had mastered formed in his hands. The blast was powerful. Scuffer was pushed onto his back and surfed several yards down the street, crashing headfirst into the mangled bus.

Lorna ran through the hole in the fence and watched as the brute was thrown back into the bus. This close she could see its deformed face and she was reminded of the ugly kid who used to be Jake's pal at school. She raised her hands and fired what she
hoped
was a fireball.

Jake watched as the witch unleashed a spray of water from her hands. It had the intensity of a fire hose, but did little to faze Scuffer. The witch stared at her hands as though she hadn't expected that to happen. She was
too distracted to see Scuffer lift the end of the bus and swing it around like a baseball bat—right at her.

Lorna looked up in time to see the massive bulk of twisted bus arc toward her. She raised her hands in a futile display of self-defense and looked to the helmeted hero.

“Help!”

Jake heard the plea and sneered, “Tough luck!” The visor hid his expression. The bus slammed into the witch with a hollow clang, sending her flying through the air like a struck baseball.

One lousy hero less
, thought Jake.

WHAM! Jake didn't see Scuffer swing the bus back. But he felt it connect with his body. He saw his shimmering shield take most of the impact before his vision was swamped with stars—and he was pitched back into the theme park.

Pain racked his body as he soared through the air and struck a steel drop tower—the kind of ride that shot people straight into the air before they plummeted back to earth in a free fall. Jake hit the tower and crumpled back to the ground with such force the concrete around him cracked, as did the motorcycle helmet.

Scuffer bellowed and charged at Jake.

“Oh boy!” Jake murmured, and raised his hands to fire at the seemingly indestructible mutant.

Scuffer suddenly stopped in his tracks and gripped
his throat. He bellowed, clutching at the collar around his neck before he toppled over, unconscious. Jake stared at his hands. What had he done?

A long black Chinook helicopter thundered over the park, the tail ramp open and several armed Enforcers hanging from the back. The chopper landed at the side of the road, the rotor wash causing some of the stacked cars behind it to topple off one another.

Some Enforcers surrounded Scuffer. Two more ran to where Jake had been lying moments earlier.

“The kid's gone!” an Enforcer shouted before they ran back to the chopper.

Across the park, Lorna yanked off her mask. She was drenched in sweat and thankful that her shield power had decided to activate at the crucial moment the bus struck. That's what had saved her. She pushed through the crowds that had formed to watch the fight and ran for the entrance gate.

Jake was already there. She ran toward him and hugged him.

“That was horrible!” she said.

“I saw.”

Jake gritted his teeth as she squeezed him tightly; not all his bones had knitted back together yet. He pulled the cap over his eyes and guided Lorna away from the carnage as Scuffer was hoisted under the Chinook and it lifted off. Already the Enforcers were grouping witnesses
together. Lorna was curious as to what excuse they could possibly spin to keep this story out of the press.

Jake's mind was a jumble of thoughts. The witch had proved that there were some part-time heroes still out there. And the revelation that Scuffer was still alive had surprised him. Jake felt no compassion for what his ex-friend had become. In fact, it alleviated some of the guilt he had been feeling since he thought he'd killed Scuffer. At least the traitor got what he deserved, although Jake hoped they wouldn't cross paths again. That was the first time he had suffered such a severe beating, and it wasn't pleasant.

He was just glad Lorna had been smart enough to keep out of the way. At least she was a friend he could rely on to treat him like a normal person.

That's just what he needed right now. Someone
normal
he could trust.

Chameleon stood in a spacious aircraft hangar. On a normal day, it would be filled with Enforcer helicopters, but at the moment it only had one Chinook from which an unconscious Teratoid was being lifted and strapped back into his reinforced clamps. Reports of Enforcer losses were coming in heavy and fast since the fall of Hero.com. The United Nations had made a valiant effort to suppress the truth, but blaming the rising troubles across the globe on terrorists was becoming harder to swallow.

Now Teratoid had destroyed a theme park in what seemed like a false trail to Hunter. After all, why would an international fugitive take time out to sit on a few rides? The government's spin doctors were hard at work trying to explain that a wild elephant had rampaged through the theme park. Normally they would use Psych to help cover up such a story, but the Prime was in hiding. Now they only had low-level mind control available.

Chameleon was having a moment of doubt that felt
dark and ominous. He'd always believed in doing the right thing, following the unwritten code of the hero. But now, just when the world was sinking into oblivion because the balance between good and evil had been upset—upset with the smallest of viruses—ninety-nine percent of the Primes had run to the hills. Maybe he should run too?

The Foundation headquarters had been repositioned somewhere in the Gobi desert, and their leader, Eric Kirby, had been instructing Chameleon, and the few Primes left fighting the futile battle, to stop the Council of Evil's coordinated attacks. With the few Primes busy trying to protect the world's population, the fate of the Hero Foundation rested on four rookie superheroes, the only Downloaders who, by chance, had been taking powers from Hero.com when it crashed. They were the only heroes available to prevent Basilisk and his team of evildoers from toppling the Hero Foundation.

Back at Diablo Island, Chameleon and several Foundation scientists had calculated that Hunter's ability to store powers and then amplify them to a much more potent level could be used to
replace
the entire Hero network, and the V-net system too. Couple that with his latent power to
create
previously unseen powers, and the potential was earth-shattering. Although the Foundation had long ago learned how to recreate the
powers that heroes had willingly donated (and villains forcibly donated), they had never been able to “mix and match” to create new ones. The effects during trials had always been lethal.

Chameleon knew that since he had let Jake slip through his fingers on Diablo Island, Kirby was punishing him by demanding that
he
get Hunter back.

The boy had become the ultimate weapon for both the heroes
and
the villains. Whichever side he was on, it would be the winning one. Hunter's abilities made him a truly frightening opponent.

Chameleon left the hangar and descended to the private underground railway station. There he took a small bullet train for some twenty miles to the Foundation hospital.

The moment he left the train and entered the subterranean command center, he was assaulted by Enforcer staff all demanding his attention. Huge screens on the wall depicted the planet, airspace above, and even sections of the moon. Different colored graphics showed the deployment of Enforcer, Council, or Foundation forces—and Chameleon didn't need to look to see who was winning. The glow from the screen made the entire command center look as if they were on red alert.

“One at a time,” said Chameleon, taking his seat behind the controller's desk. He hated this administrative part of his job; he would much rather be out in the
field, fighting. Actually, he would much rather be sitting in bed with a hot chocolate and watching repeats of
The Simpsons
because his body ached from the constant punishment it had taken recently.

A nerdy-looking Enforcer technician thrust a tablet PC at him. “Sir, while you've been away the kids, uh, I mean, Toby Wilkinson's team, lost Basilisk—”

“What?” Chameleon was on his feet again. “I thought we had Enforcer patrols bringing him in?”

“They were too late. Long story.” He looked at the notes on his computer tablet and ticked them off like a shopping list. “Loss of assets, multiple witnesses, Pete kidnapped, Mexico lead, blah, blah.”

Chameleon looked at him in astonishment. “What? Don't ‘blah-blah' me! Tell me everything.”

“It's all in the report. Without you here, Mr. Grimm acted on it right away.”

Chameleon sat back down. He never felt comfortable when Grimm's name was mentioned, but for some reason Eric Kirby trusted him. And Eric was the boss. Chameleon thought, for the good of his blood pressure, he'd read the report later.

Another techie offered a similar tablet PC, but snatched it back when he saw the look on Chameleon's face.

“Just
read it
to me,” said Chameleon, rubbing his eyes.