The First Superhero (Book 2): The Siege of the Supers Page 16

  “I am calm! I’m very calm!” I yelled. “I just want to understand why, when I’m trying to stop Atlas and the army he’s building, you’re telling me to calm down! To take some time off! I don’t need. Any. Time. I just want to find Atlas!”

  “Tempest, it’s okay to admit that you’re in pain. It’s okay to admit that you failed. I-uh—” Holocene said, quickly trying to recover.

  It was too late. The words had already come out.

  You failed.

  “Oh, so you think I’m just a screw-up now, don’t you?” I snapped, taking a step forward. “You just want me to stay out of your way so you can take out Atlas by yourself, don’t you? You think you’re just going to swoop in and finish what I started? You think you’re better than me, and you think I’ll just slow you down, don’t you?”

  “Of course not!” Holocene shouted back. “We’re a team, Tempest! We’re going to take down Atlas. You, me, Samantha, Doug, the people I recruited while you were captured. All of us together!”

  Anger and frustration grew within me. I felt waves of anger slamming against the shores of my brain. I couldn’t think clearly. All I wanted to do was take it out on Atlas. “If you won’t tell me where they’re at, I’ll fly up and down the entire country until I find him myself!”

  I launched myself into the air with such force that a small crater formed in the ground beneath me and flew toward the East Coast. I planned on flying up and down, working my way west until I saw Atlas or he saw me.

  Just outside of Dallas, Holocene flew in front of me and stopped. I came to a halt a foot or two away. “Get out of my way!”

  “Tempest, don’t do this. You can’t take him alone.”

  “I don’t want to, but you aren’t helping me!”

  “You need time! Take just a day to process.”

  I flew past her. I didn’t need her to tell me what to do.

  Holocene grabbed my arm as I flew by and threw me to the ground. I slammed down through some trees and landed on the floor of the woods. Holocene stood over me, pinning me down.

  I pushed my feet up against her chest and threw her off me. She slammed into some trees, knocking them to the ground. I dodged out of their way and jumped up into the air.

  The trunk of a tree slammed into me, sending me flying through the woods, slicing through trees as I flew. I slowed and came to a stop, falling to the ground.

  Holocene flew toward me, her hand in a fist. I rolled out of the way and she punched the ground, sending a geyser of dirt into the air. “Tempest, stop it!” she yelled. “I don’t want to fight you!”

  I swung at her, my punch sloppy. She easily dodged it. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to fight her so bad, but I had to take all my emotions out on somebody.

  Holocene slammed her fist into the lower part of my back and I fell to my knees. She got behind me and put me in a headlock. “Stop fighting, Tempest. Just stop this.”

  I struggled against her grasp, but it was half-hearted. Even though she had me in a headlock, feeling someone put their arms around me struck a certain chord within me. I realized that Holocene was fighting me because she cared about me. She didn’t want me to go out there and do something I’d regret. If anybody could kill me, Atlas could. None of us knew for sure, but we didn’t want to find out.

  Holocene just wanted me to get better.

  I relaxed. I stopped fighting and collapsed into Holocene’s grasp. The moonlight filtered through the treetops as she held me on the forest floor. “I failed. Macy died because I failed. I should’ve waited for you. I should’ve waited,” I said, crying.

  “Shh, it’s okay. It’ll be okay. Atlas will pay for what he did. I promise you. He’ll pay.”

  I nodded reluctantly. “We’ll do it together, Holocene.”

  “Selena,” she said.

  I looked up at her, confused.

  She pulled off her mask, revealing her entire face. “My name is Selena.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Selena. My name is Kane,” I said.

  I began to laugh and soon Selena did as well. My tears turned to laughter as my emotions poured out of me.

  47

  THE SIEGE BEGINS

  TWO DAYS LATER, I was sitting in my favorite chair in the storage unit as Selena explained what she knew about Atlas and the Legion. Samantha and Doug were there, as was a super with flight and strength called Nep. He was the dark-skinned guy who had come with Selena to rescue me from the STF. He wasn’t wearing any sort of mask or costume. I wasn’t sure where the girl who had been with them was. Hank and Drew were both there, though. It felt especially nice having Drew there.

  Basically, it was really cramped and really hot in there.

  “I think Atlas himself is in Washington D.C., as that’s where some of the more evil Supers have been congregating. Even reports of that teleporter Kane and I took down have popped up.”

  “Ugh, Sven,” I groaned.

  “That guy’s the worst,” Hank said.

  “Anyway, that’s the most logical place for him to be,” Selena said.

  “I don’t like the idea of Atlas and his Legion hiding out in the nation’s capital,” Drew said.

  I nodded in agreement. “Whatever he’s planning, it can’t be good.”

  “I think he’s planning something in more than just those cities, though,” Selena said. She turned to Nep, who stood up straight.

  “I was patrolling New York City and ran into some guys who were flying around the R those bastards engraved into the Statue of Liberty. They fled when I got close, but I caught one of them. They kept saying the word ‘mark’ over and over again, like some sort of crazy person. I thought it was a name—”

  “—but he meant a mark as in a target?” Samantha said, interrupting him.

  Nep nodded. “Exactly. All the R’s are marking their territory—territory they’re going to want to take soon.”

  “Where are the R’s all at?” Hank asked.

  “New York City, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and D.C.,” Selena replied.

  I sighed and slumped back into my seat. That was a lot of cities, and there weren’t a lot of us. From what I gathered from the word legion in the Legion of Richter, Atlas had a lot of people on his side. People and Supers, from what it seemed. And plenty of Eximus guns from the raid on the STF complex. This was going to be very difficult.

  “Okay, so I’ll keep watch on Dallas, of course,” Selena said. “Nep’s got New York. Drew and Hank, no offense, but you won’t be able to watch a whole city on your own.”

  “None taken,” Drew said.

  “I’m not that stretchy,” Hank agreed.

  “Hank, I think you should go with Nep. Drew, you’re with Kane. You guys will watch L.A.”

  Drew and I made eye contact, giving each other a nod and a smile. I was really excited to work with him. He was my best friend, and we were superheroes together. It didn’t get much better than that.

  “What about us?” Doug asked.

  “We’ll stay here and keep an eye on all news reports, police scanners, everything we can get our hands on,” Samantha said. “I’ll report it to everyone out in the field. We’ll also keep an extra close eye on the cities we don’t have anyone in, like Chicago and D.C., so if anything goes wrong we’ll be able to direct whoever’s not busy there.”

  “Are you sure there’s not something that needs to be hacked? Because if there is, I can hack it,” Doug said.

  I chuckled. “Yes Doug, we know. We aren’t fighting robots, though.”

  “Never say never,” Doug said under his breath.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I have a few more things I want to go over before we get going,” Selena began.

  “Yeah, you might want to save that,” Samantha said. She pointed at something on her screen. “Local news stations here in L.A. are reporting that Supers just tore down the statue of Kane at the USC campus.”

  Thank god.

  “I got reports of some Supers destroying some const
ruction sites in New York,” Doug said, tapping on his keyboard.

  I stood up from my chair and flipped up the hood on my Tempest uniform. “Everybody get to your cities. It’s beginning.”

  * * *

  I DROPPED Hank and Drew off in the middle of the USC campus. The Supers there didn’t have powers that were too crazy, so I figured they’d be able to take them out easily. Then I turned north up to Koreatown, where one of the more powerful Supers was wreaking havoc.

  Before I got there I could see a car fly high into the air and had déjà vu back to the times of Richter. I landed on the street a few hundred feet from the Super.

  My heart was pumping and my adrenaline rushed. I was ready.

  The Super loomed about seven or eight feet tall. He was huge, his muscles bulging all over. He looked more monster than man as he tossed a car at a crowd of pedestrians who were trying to run away.

  I caught the car right before it got to them. I swung it around and launched it right back at the Super. The car slammed into him and he stumbled backwards. He was thrown off by my attack, and let out a roar in anger.

  “Are you seeing this, Samantha?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he’s all over the news. What is it?” she asked.

  I grabbed another car he threw my way, tossing it back at him like a Super version of catch. “I don’t know! He’s strong, though. He looks like some sort of experiment gone wrong.”

  “I’ll see what I can find later. Gotta help Selena. Two of the Supers at Ebon High are playing hide and seek with her in downtown Dallas,” Samantha said before leaving my mind.

  Things really were beginning to kick off.

  A fire truck slammed into me, sending me flying into the building behind me. I hadn’t seen that one coming. I crashed through the glass walls of the building and slid through a row of empty cubicles, sure that the fire truck would destroy everything after me.

  We slid to a halt and I placed my feet on the grill of the truck. I gave it a hard push and sent it shooting back out the building. I flew after it, making sure it had the right trajectory.

  It did, and it slammed into the back of the Super, smashing him to the ground. The Super let out a guttural roar as he pushed the fire engine off him, sending it high into the air before it landed on the top of a nearby building.

  I rushed the Super, pounding my fist into its chest. The Super flew backward a foot or two, but not nearly as far as another Super or human would’ve flown.

  I hadn’t been expecting this, so when the monster Super quickly recovered and hammered his large fist into my side, I went shooting down the street. Pain filled my body as I tried to slow myself down. I was aided by the three-hundred-thousand-dollar sports car I careened into, destroying it.

  I climbed out of the wreckage. The Super charged down the street at me on all fours. “Where the hell did this thing come from?” I asked myself. He looked like a monster you’d see on some late night TV show, but was clearly human, based on his human face and form.

  I jumped over his head as he got close and he skidded across the ground, stumbling over himself to try to bring himself to a stop. He began to turn himself around to come back for a second pass, but I was right in his face before he could do so.

  I delivered a Super-punch to his right cheek, causing his body to fly up and twist in the air. Then I brought my fist down into his chest, sending his hulking body into the ground hard, creating a crater in the road. The Super was dazed, but tried to get up. I slipped my hands beneath his body and lifted him into the air.

  I flew up fast and high. The Super struggled, trying to get free, but I kept a tight grip on him. Once I was high above the city, I turned around and threw him at the ground.

  The creature-like Super rocketed toward the ground, wailing in the air trying to grab hold of something. I flew down toward it, my fist extended, ready to seal the deal and smash him into the ground.

  A blur came out of nowhere to the left. This new Super swooped in and grabbed the creature, flying off into the distance with him.

  I slowed myself and came to a halt a few feet from the ground. I took in the destroyed street. Destroyed cars burned all around, filling the air with the smell of burning gasoline. The fire engine’s sirens wailed a warped tune, while people peeked out the windows of the damaged building, checking to see if the Super was gone.

  That thing had really done a number on this area, and there’d been no reason for him to do so. He’d been destroying stuff just for the sake of destroying it.

  I waited a few more moments, making sure that that creature-Super wasn’t going to come back. He seemed to be gone for good, taken away by whoever that other Super was who had caught him. I didn’t like what the existence of that thing implied. I had a feeling we had no idea what we were actually up against.

  I left the street and flew back to the USC campus. I landed just in time to see Hank trip a guy who was charging at Drew. Drew punched the falling Super with his arms, which were surging with Eximus energy, and the Super crumpled to the ground in a seizing heap.

  “You got this under control?” I shouted.

  Drew and Hank looked up at me, nodding. “Most fun I’ve had in a long time!” Drew shouted up at me with a laugh.

  “Kane, get to Dallas as soon as you can. Selena could use your help with the two Supers she’s dealing with. She’s holding her own, but things could turn ugly quick,” Samantha said in my head.

  “Gotta run, guys. Stay safe!” I told them.

  “Will do!” Hank shouted up at me. Then the two of them ran off, looking for any more members of the Legion of Richter who needed to be dealt with.

  I turned and flew through the air, heading toward Dallas. It was time to see what kind of trouble Selena had gotten herself into.

  48

  TAG TEAM

  AS I GOT close to Klyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas, I saw a female Super grab Selena by the hair and throw her through the air. The other Super—an Asian teen—hit her in the air, slamming her to the ground.

  Things didn’t seem to be going her way at all.

  The female charged at Selena as she climbed off the ground. She was about to hit her, but I got there first. I flew into the girl, tackling her in the air. We tumbled across the ground, sending grass and dirt flying around us.

  We came to a halt and I grabbed the girl’s shirt. I threw her backward over my head, hoping Selena would crash into her just like that guy had, but a quick glance showed me that Selena was busy fighting said guy.

  The girl was able right herself in the air before I had the chance to realize what she was doing, and she struck me in the chest, sending me backward. She didn’t stop there, though. She kept flying with me, keeping her foot square on my chest, pushing me backward.

  I struck a nearby office building, flying through each wall with explosive force, the Super right on top of me. We came out the other end, and I was able to regain my composure. I grabbed the girl’s foot and pushed it down toward the ground. Her momentum kept her going forward, though, and she tumbled to the ground, head over heels.

  I slowed myself and pulled a light pole up from the ground. The female Super stood up, a bit dazed and confused. I put the light pole over my shoulder like a bat and swung at the Super as hard as I could. She went flying through the air, back toward the park.

  I jumped into the air, following the Super. As she reached the park, Selena flew into the air and grabbed her, then threw her to the ground hard.

  I landed next to the two of them as Selena pulled the female Super up and began beating on her.

  I could hear the Asian Super running up behind me to sucker punch me, and I dodged out of the way just in time. I grabbed his fist as it soared above my head and redirected his momentum straight into the ground. Then I got on top of him and began hitting him in the face as hard as I could.

  I got three punches in before I felt an immense pain hit my back, sending me straight to the ground. Not only was the pain immense, it was terri
fying. The humming feeling of the Eximus coursed through my brain, removing my ability to use my powers.

  STF soldiers were surrounding the park, firing their Eximus guns at us. I tried my best to move, but even though the pain was subsiding, I was paralyzed for a few more moments.

  Selena ran to my side and grabbed me. She jumped into the air and I watched as the park got smaller and smaller below us. Wave after wave of Eximus blasts slammed into the two Legion members who still hadn’t fully recovered from my and Selena’s beating.

  I felt my powers returning and was able to stand when Selena dropped me off on the rooftop of a building.

  “Looked like you could use the help,” she said as she put her hands on her knees, taking deep breaths.

  “Same goes for you,” I said with labored breathing, each breath returning more and more of my power.

  “Got some activity in downtown Chicago,” Samantha said. “Three Supers fighting the STF. Some casualties have been reported.”

  I looked at Selena and she at me. “You get that?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Well, then, let’s go,” I said, and we launched into the air, flying toward Chicago.

  The fact that there were so many STF soldiers around troubled me. The organization must’ve been bigger than I’d thought, and with the Legion attacking, it was only going to make Loren look more and more like a hero in the public eye. In a way, I guessed she was. We shared a common enemy. But we were enemies as well, so I wasn’t sure if that mattered much.

  We reached Chicago in minutes and followed the screams.

  We flew to the street the Supers were fighting on just in time to see them drop four STF soldiers from four stories up. “Go right!” I shouted at Selena.

  I flew to the two on the left, catching one in each arm just in time. Then I flew them back to the line of STF soldiers, who had their guns raised, ready to shoot us.

  I paid them no attention as I turned to the three Supers, who were very angry we were there to ruin their fun. I also tried to ignore the fact that I’d been able to catch those STF soldiers, but I couldn’t save Macy. It stuck in my mind, though and I couldn’t dislodge that fact. I thought I’d spent enough time processing and coming to terms with it, but it just came and hit me like a truck.