Superhero (20 page)

Nearly twenty minutes later, a cherry-red Mustang pulled to a stop in front of him.

CHAPTER 44

Lieutenant Pedro Hernandez made the sign of the cross in the back of the SWAT van before pulling on his mask. They had been told the target may have toxic gases at his disposal and they weren’t willing to take any risks. He had once been sprayed in the face with battery acid and had only just avoided going blind, but it left a slight scar on his left cheek just below the eye.

“Lieutenant, we got everyone in place. Looks like it’s abandoned.”

“What do you mean abandoned?”

“No one’s home. No cars in the parking lot, and the sound guys are telling us they’re not picking up any conversations from inside.”

Though he didn’t say it, secretly, he wished that everyone had left the compound and they found nothing here.

“Let’s go in strong then and get the hell outta here. I’m missing the Dodgers.”

Pedro hopped out and his team did the same. Coming equipped with blow torches and battering rams became useless as he saw one of his men open the front door to the compound, peek inside, and close it again. He would have to remember who that idiot was that could’ve gotten his head blown off and cost them their surprise.

Pedro and his men lined up outside the door. He gave the signal and someone opened it as they rushed inside. The team split instantly into two: Pedro and half the squad went left and the other half right. Long hallways led into darkness, and the occasional light lit up their surroundings a few feet before it went back to darkness. They hadn’t worn night-vision goggles and Pedro was regretting it now, but the rules were clear: You break ‘em, you buy ‘em. And they were too expensive on a cop’s salary.

Doors led below and above and rooms began appearing. The men went in, swung left and right, sweeping the room, and came back out again. The more ground they covered, the more they felt the compound had been abandoned. Pedro was just beginning to feel relieved when he saw the other team up ahead. They must’ve looped around to meet them here, indicating that the compound was circular. That wasn’t what the blueprints on file at the County Recorder’s Office had shown them.

The men from the other team were in front of a large door. The commander saw Pedro approaching and pointed inside the room. Pedro came up and glanced quickly into the room. He had to look twice to believe what he saw.

A man, or what he guessed was a man, stood in front of a large monitor. A keyboard the size of a desk sat in front of him and he pushed a few keys, making the image on the monitor change. It went from a bank downtown to an image of the desert.

“Good evening,” the man said.

Pedro guessed he was somewhere around eight or nine feet in height and as wide as a piano. Muscles rippled underneath his exposed flesh but what looked like black spandex covered most of his body. He turned to the officers and the lower portion of his helmet blinked red as he spoke.

“I’m afraid you’re too late, gentlemen. I believe we knew you were on your way down here before you did.”

“Drop your weapon!” the commander shouted.

Pedro didn’t see any weapons. The man was holding something, but it didn’t appear like a weapon.

“This?” the man said, holding up what was in his hand. “It is a remote control to the monitor. But you may have it if you wish.”

The man threw the remote with such force Pedro actually felt the wind created as it tore through the air and smashed into the commander’s throat, knocking him back against the wall behind them.

The men opened fire as the man in the room picked up the monitor and held it in front of him, letting it absorb the rounds as he ran toward the doorway. Pedro fired several times but the man wasn’t slowing.

“Get outta the way!” Pedro shouted.

The giant barreled through the entryway, causing chunks of concrete to fly over the men and the entire compound to shake as the roof cracked. The man didn’t stop and pummeled through the wall into the next room and into the one after that.

Pedro was frozen, watching the giant pound his way through wall after wall. He stood up, debating whether to chase him, when he heard something behind him. It was an electronic tick. He looked back to see a device in the corner with a red timer counting down.

“Get out! Get out now! Bomb! Everybody out now.”

Running down the corridor, his men behind him, Pedro checked to make sure the commander was with them before stopping and letting the men pass. He would be the last one out. It was his duty.

All the men passed him and he followed as they made their way to the front entrance. Pedro was running so fast he was out of breath. He ripped his mask off and dropped his weapon, pumping his arms to gain speed. He could see the entrance now. Double doors framed by concrete. But he didn’t feel the warm air of the environment outside. He felt only the heat on his back and a bright flash. There was no sound. Only a ringing in his ears as the flash of light grew brighter and brighter, and then there was nothing.

CHAPTER 45

Jack Kane felt motion. He saw images but couldn’t be sure if his eyes were open or closed. A metal roof was above him and whiteness clouded his vision. Something hung from the ceiling and it clanked against a metal wall. Muffled voices came through to him every so often but they would fade and the motion would stop.

Pinpricks would sting his arms but immediately afterward he’d feel warm and euphoric. He would think about his childhood, his first kiss, the first time he went on a roller coaster. The memories flooded his mind and sometimes he felt himself crying, and sometimes he felt enraged. Enraged at the parents that found him too inconvenient. Parents that didn’t even have the courtesy to mention him in their will.

Jack couldn’t be sure when the motion stopped but by the time he was aware of it, nausea churned his stomach. He turned to his side and vomited. With nothing in his stomach, a thick liquid was the only thing that came up. His vision swirling, he saw an old man sitting in a cot across the room he was in. The man was reading a book. He put it down long enough to glance at Jack before Jack vomited again, and passed out.

Hours, maybe even days, passed with nothing more than nausea, vertigo, and vomiting. Every once in a while Jack would feel the coolness of water on his lips and the old man’s smiling countenance next to him. But the images of his childhood and the feelings that came with it had stopped and been replaced with pain.

One day, that stopped too.

Jack felt his body settle enough that he was able to open his eyes and take in his surroundings. He was in a cell, or what looked like a cell, with a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The old man was still there, reading a different book now. He saw that Jack was up and placed the book down and walked over with a tin tray.

“Eat,” the old man said, making the motion of eating with his hand. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” Jack said, fatigue pulling at him with the effort of even one word.

“You need to eat. You haven’t eaten for three days.”

Jack didn’t respond. Instead, he closed his eyes. He felt hands on him and they sat him up and he tasted something warm on his tongue. He chewed, though it didn’t have flavor.

“What…is it?”

“Protein paste. Just something to keep you alive. You will find you do not require taste as much as you think you do.”

Jack ate two bites and the man laid him back down.

“What is your name?” the old man said.

“Jack.”

“My name is Habib Ahmad. You will feel better soon. The narcotics will pass with time.”

Jack wanted to ask him so many questions that he didn’t know where to start. As he opened his mouth to ask the first one, he found he didn’t have the strength to complete it. So instead he just lay back, and went to sleep.

When Jack awoke he saw the bare outline of sunshine behind him, but everywhere else was enveloped in darkness. He glanced next to him and saw Habib asleep on the cot. Laid in front of Jack was the tin of food and a cup of water. Using his elbow, Jack pushed himself off the cot and reached for the water.

“Do not drink too quickly,” Habib warned from the darkness. “You will get sick.”

Jack gulped half the glass and it took everything he had not to finish the rest. He took a bite of the paste. Crackers were next to it and he spread it on a few and sat back on his cot, leaning against the wall behind him.

“Where are we?”

“We are in a maximum security federal prison. But it is not any prison you will find on a map. We are a hundred feet underground with only one entrance to the world above.”

“The last thing I remember,” Jack mumbled, more to himself than anyone else, “was Colonel Finley. Someone hit me from behind. I was…I was protecting someone.”

“A woman? Short black hair?”

“Yes. Have you seen her?”

“They brought her in with you but the women are in a different section.”

Jack drank some more water. “How long will they keep us here?”

“I have been here for years, my friend.”

“For what?”

“For nothing.”

“You didn’t do anything?”

“No. Did you?”

“Not really.”

“Then,” Habib said, “we are the same, you and I.”

“There has to be a reason you’re here.”

“There is. I was stupid enough to volunteer for the injections. As you were.”

“What injections? Berridium?”

“What else?”

“You…you’ve had injections of berridium?”

Habib sat up and stepped out of the darkness. Jack could see his face in its entirety now. It appeared melted, as if by a blow torch, and was almost skinless. His skin replaced with a thick plastic sheet. Jack wondered how he had missed it before.

Out of nowhere, Habib’s face began to contort. The flesh moved in circles and twisted the jaw bones and cheeks and slimmed the head until what was left was the face of another man. It was Jack’s face.

“That’s…impossible.”

Habib lay back down. “The chemical is unstable. It affects everyone differently. Most die. I, as I am, am quite fortunate. Those voices you hear in the dark are others like us. The fortunate, though they would not call themselves that.”

“This can’t…I…”

“There is no need to speak. I know your pain as well as anyone here. It is simply a matter of moving on now.”

“I was told I was only the second subject injected.”

“No. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands. As I said, most die. We are no more than thirty here and perhaps twenty women. All unique, all the children of God. But cast off from His sight.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He stared at the ceiling, listening to the hollering and fighting of the voices around him. Some were weeping. He closed his eyes. He was exactly where he swore to himself he would never go. Exactly where he had put so many others before him: caged in a cell like an animal, existing at the whim of those that had power over him.

CHAPTER 46

Veronica Gables thumbed through pages and pages of Google Scholar results. She was comparing violent crime rates in the 1970s with current rates for an article about the effects of the passage of Roe v. Wade—making abortion a legal right—on crime. Her conclusions so far were not heartening: the legality of abortion seemed to drop crime rates. But that didn’t mean the moral question should be cast aside.

She leaned back in her chair and stared out the large windows. She was in a coffee shop on her Mac, sipping a cappuccino while nibbling a biscotti. In college, she had spent her days at a coffee shop near the campus, studying and flirting with the boys. She hadn’t been promiscuous but the attention always flattered her.

“Excuse me.” A man suddenly stood next to her. “Is this seat taken?”

He sat down without being invited to do so. Veronica moved some of her folders so that he wouldn’t spill his coffee on them. She noticed the tan line where his wedding ring should be.

“It is,” she said.

“What is?”

“You asked if the seat is taken. It is.”

The man seemed shocked that she would rebuff him and he stood up and mumbled, “Dike,” as he walked back to his table. She ignored it and went back to her results.

But her mind wasn’t on this article. It was on the man that had been called the Dragon. She could still see him leaping off her balcony and disappearing off the streets below. Mystery was something she didn’t have a lot of in her life and what was more mysterious than a man in a mask that could lift cars and jump down forty stories without a scratch?

She was suddenly aware of a man’s presence next to her and she sighed.

“Look, I already told you—” She glanced up and saw the smiling face of Jerald Lynch. He sat down across from her, his blue eyes on hers.

“You haven’t answered my calls,” he said.

“How’d you find me here, Jerry?”

“Easy enough. Why haven’t you answered your phone?”

“I’ve been busy.”

He leaned back, glancing to the man that was sitting by himself at a table close by, staring at them. “Man proposes marriage and doesn’t get a call back, he begins to wonder.”

“I told you I need time to consider it.”

“Why? You know how wealthy I am. Isn’t that all a woman needs?”

“You’re such a pig.”

He laughed. “I’m joking. Come away with me this weekend. Let’s go to St. Bart’s.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have a trust fund and I actually have to work.”

“Oh, is that what this is about? Class warfare? We’re not politicians, V. I can take care of you for the rest of your life. You’ll never have to work again.”

“I like working.”

“Why? I don’t get it.”

She closed her Mac. “I gotta go but—”

Someone behind her screamed. Veronica looked over and saw a young woman behind the cash register staring with horror outside. Veronica looked out through the glass doors but didn’t see anything except…

A shadow barreled through the doors, breaking off bits of the ceiling. The doors flew off their hinges and struck one of the patrons. At the entrance stood a giant.