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

  I gripped the bottle of aspirin tighter in my hand and pulled the headpiece of my Tempest outfit over my face. I began walking to the front door of the building. When I reached the front door, I realized that I didn’t have a key to get it. I didn’t want to have to break in, but just as I was figuring out what the best and least damaging way to do so would be, the lock in the door clicked. I pulled on the door, and it opened.

  “Sorry. Forgot to mention the door would be locked. Come on up,” Samantha said in my head.

  I tried to shake the uneasy feeling that crept into the back of my head. I had no idea what I was walking into. I knew that I shouldn’t be rushing into things, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I had no idea what was going on in the world, and Samantha had answers. At least she said she did. She’d said that even before I took out Richter, so I could only imagine what she’d learned in my absence.

  Truth was, I didn’t have much of a choice. Samantha had helped me take out Richter. I wouldn’t have figured out how to do that on my own, and even if I had, it probably would’ve been too late. I owed her one, so I forced myself to enter the storage building and walk up the stairs to the third floor.

  “What room is it again?” I whispered once I reached the correct floor. I looked down the row of storage unit in front of me, searching for any sign of Samantha.

  A large garage door rattled down the hallway ahead of me, and the smiling face of a young lady with blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail poked out from the storage unit. “This one!” she said.

  I instantly recognized the voice as Samantha’s. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her. She didn’t look crazy or anything. Although she did seem to be living in a storage unit. She smiled at me as I walked down the hallway toward the unit. Her bright blue eyes sparkled behind her thick black-framed glasses.

  “You must be Samantha,” I said when I reached her, sticking my hand out.

  She ignored my hand. Instead, she jumped toward me and gave me a hug. I was taken aback, unsure how to respond.

  “Thank you,” she said. Then she pulled back and looked me up and down. “Wow. I can’t believe it’s really you! Thank you so much for what you did. Taking out Richter…I know it wasn’t easy, but if you hadn’t done something, who knows where we’d all be today.”

  I smiled, and a warm feeling rose within me. I couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t had any time to process anything yet, and it was just now beginning to hit me what I’d done.

  I really had defeated Richter. I really had saved billions of people. I was having a hard time processing it, and I had the feeling that it wouldn’t get easier to do so for a while.

  The weight of everything started to hit me. Dizziness washed over me, and I almost fell over. I took a step to try to stabilize myself.

  “Are you okay?” Samantha asked, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m good. It’s just… a lot has happened lately.”

  “That’s definitely an understatement.” She turned back into her storage unit. “Come on,” she said, gesturing for me to follow. “There’s a seat waiting for you in here.”

  4

  Q&A

  I SHUT the door behind me with a loud bang. When I turned around, the smell of air freshener hit me in all of its fake-flowery glory.

  “Sup? I’m Doug,” I heard someone say.

  I looked behind a desk and saw a kid who looked to be no older than fourteen sitting there. He had extremely curly hair, and was wearing an oversized sweatshirt that had a couple of stains on it. I was taken aback; I hadn’t been expecting company. “Oh, hi. I didn’t know you were in here,” I said, looking to Samantha for an explanation.

  “This is my little brother, Doug,” Samantha said as she cleared some dirty clothes off a large recliner. Once it was clean, she stood gesturing toward it like she was a car salesperson showing off her latest import. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I sat down. As soon as I hit the chair, I was overcome with drowsiness. The chair conformed to every part of my body, wrapping me in comfort. I sank into it, welcoming the warmth it provided. “Oh, wow,” I said as I closed my eyes and took it in. “I didn’t realize how tired I was.”

  “Should we leave the two of you alone?” Samantha asked from behind her own desk next to Doug’s.

  I smiled. “No, I’m good.” I sat up in the chair and wiped the drowsiness from my eyes.

  “Did you bring that aspirin?” Samantha asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I’d forgotten it was in my hand. The side of the chair was pushed up against the front of her desk, so I leaned over and placed the bottle down next to her keyboard.

  “Thanks,” she said as she popped the bottle open and poured a couple of aspirin into her hand.

  I looked around the storage unit. It was actually pretty cozy in here. There were some battery-powered lamps lighting up the room, and some small fans keeping the air circulating. Doug’s and Samantha’s desks were in the left and right corners respectively, facing the door of the unit. There was a small gap between them so you could squeeze by and get behind their desks.

  In front of the desks, besides the chair I was sitting in, were two cots with pillows and sleeping bags on top, some boxes filled with belongings, and a small battery-powered generator.

  “This is some setup you got here,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Doug said as he typed away on his laptop.

  “This is just our ‘office,’ I guess you could call it,” Samantha said after she took a swig of her water. “We’re 99% sure we can’t be tracked, but just in case, we have this setup. We have our own apartment, too, of course.”

  “Oh, good. It looked like you guys might be living here,” I said as I looked back at the cots and belongings.

  “No, no,” Samantha said with an almost embarrassed laugh. “Sometimes we have to pull all-nighters, though, so we just leave those set up.”

  I leaned forward in my seat. “Speaking of which, what exactly do you do? I’m guessing you have powers?”

  Samantha and Doug looked at each other for an uncomfortable moment. Then Samantha turned to me. “Well, yeah, but we were actually wondering if you could maybe take your mask off? I know you want to keep your identity a secret and everything, but if we’re going to just start telling you all about our powers and such, we’d kinda like to know who we’re talking to.”

  I thought about it for a moment. That request was fair enough. If they were about to launch into a big spiel about what all they could do, they deserved to know who they were telling their biggest secrets to. I felt as if I could trust them enough to reveal my identity to them.

  I slipped off my headpiece, and it hung behind me like a hood. “My name is Kane Andrews,” I said, reaching my hand over Samantha’s desk.

  She smiled as she shook my hand. “Samantha Trask.”

  Doug got up from his desk and leaned over just enough to reach my hand. I reached out for him, and we shook. “Douglas Aiden Trask,” he said with a goofy smile.

  “Nice to meet you, Douglas.”

  “It’s Doug.”

  “Of course,” I said, raising my hands to concede. I sat back in my chair. “Now, what exactly do you do?”

  Samantha took a quick sip of water and cleared her throat. “Well, as you’ve experienced, I can project myself into other people’s bodies.” She stopped, and made an adorable scrunched-up face. “Well, kinda. It’s a lot less creepy than it sounds. Basically I can see, hear, smell, and feel anything someone else is feeling. And I can project my thoughts into their brain. Well, I can do all those things to most people. I’m still trying to get the hang of it. It’s a lot easier for me to do to people I know well or see a lot. Still, it can be difficult. It took me a long time to get hold of you. I had been trying ever since I first got my powers.”

  “When was that?” I asked. “How long have I been gone?”

  “Six months,” Doug said.

  “B
oth how long you’ve been gone, and how long I’ve had my powers. I got them the day after you caught that girl,” Samantha said.

  I barely paid attention to what she was saying. Doug’s words haunted me.

  Six months.

  Six whole months. The fact that six months of my life were just gone made me feel incomplete. How much could I have gotten done in those six months? How much could I have changed in those six months? I felt as if I was far behind, and struggling desperately to catch up. There was so much I’d missed out on, for sure. Of all the times to spend in a comatose state on the Moon, it just had to be the six months that mankind was going through the biggest changes it ever had.

  “I’m really good with computers,” Doug blurted out. He seemed to be trying hard not to jump up and down in his seat.

  I snapped back to reality. “Really? That’s interesting. That’s your power?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Samantha said. “Well…” She looked up to the ceiling, thinking. “Okay, so it’s not really a superpower—”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Hey! Watch it,” Samantha scowled.

  “It’s definitely a superpower,” Doug said, shooting her a sideways glance. He turned to me, and his face returned to its normal, sweet demeanor. “Just not in the traditional sense.”

  “Well, I’m not very good at computers, so regardless, you’re better at it then I am,” I said. An idea popped into my head. “Hey, can you try to find something on the internet for me?”

  Doug sighed. “I mean, you don’t have to be a superhero to use Google—”

  “You’re not a superhero,” Samantha groaned.

  “—but,” Doug said, shooting her another death glare. “I’d be happy to be your personal Siri, just this once.”

  “Thank you, Doug,” I said with a smile. He smiled back, knowing that the two of us were getting on Samantha’s nerves, and thoroughly enjoying it. “Can you see if you can find some records or something that’ll tell you where my parents are? Their names are Andy and Zoe Andrews.”

  Doug held back a laugh. “Your dad’s name is Andy Andrews?”

  I rolled my eyes. That was an observation I’d been hearing people make for years. “Yes.”

  Doug waited for me to say more, but when I didn’t, he began typing away.

  “So, what’s happened since I’ve been gone?” I asked Samantha.

  “Well, you picked the wrong six months to spend sleeping away,” she said, echoing my earlier thoughts. “A few more Supers—which is what we’re being colloquially known as—have shown up. Their powers range from flight to communicating with animals.”

  “Really?” I said, taken aback. “That’s an interesting one. How many, exactly?”

  “Seven. That we know of, at least. So all in all, there’s nine of us Supers.”

  “Ten,” Doug said under his breath.

  “Nine. However, the number of free Supers? There’s only five, including you and me. Don’t even,” she said to Doug before he could get his protest out.

  “What do you mean free?” I asked. I had a bad feeling about what her answer was going to be.

  “Every time a new Super shows up, it’s not long before they disappear. One time it was a very public disappearance. A bunch of people in all black body armor pulled up in a large vehicle when this Super, who could stretch his body like elastic, was showing off his powers to a bunch of his friends. They started shooting these guns that shot out purple lighting, and knocked out the Super. They put him in the back of a van, and drove off.”

  “We think the government is behind the disappearance of the other Supers. So by that logic, they have four Supers in custody,” Doug said.

  Their words began to sink in. The government wasn’t interested in killing the other Supers like they were Richter and me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure they were interested in killing me anymore. If they were, they would’ve just left me on the Moon.

  Shit, just thinking about being on the Moon made my stomach turn. I couldn’t believe I’d spent six months up there. I’d never be able to look at the night sky the same way again.

  “They would have had five, if I hadn’t escaped from them,” I said.

  “Yeah, we figured going to get you was why the NASA shuttle program was very quickly refunded with little to no explanation. They didn’t want to partner with any of the other space programs of the world, because that meant they’d have to share whatever they learned from you, or any of the Supers, presumably."

  “So they didn’t tell people why they were going up there?”

  “Just your regular ISS spiel. Nobody believed it. though, although nobody knew you were up there, so they really weren’t sure what they were going for. Just that it probably had something to do with the Supers.”

  “It seems like everything does these days,” Doug said with a yawn.

  “You tired?” Samantha asked.

  “A little. It’s only almost four in the morning,” he said sarcastically.

  Samantha sighed. “We’d better get some rest. Busy day tomorrow.” She stood and began putting her laptop into her backpack. “You can stay here on one of the cots,” she said.

  I nodded. “Thanks, I’ll do that.” I settled back into the chair, enjoying the relaxation and comfort it radiated.

  “Or just sleep in the chair,” Doug said.

  “I’ll do that too,” I mumbled. I was already slipping away into sleep’s embrace.

  “See you in a few hours,” Samantha said, but before I could respond, I was already fast asleep.

  5

  FLOOR 24

  THE SOUND of the storage unit door rolling up woke me from my sleep. I jumped up, unaware of where I was for a few moments before the memories came back to me in a hurry.

  “Good morning,” I said with a dry throat.

  “Afternoon,” Samantha corrected me as she walked behind her desk. She turned some lights on and began taking her things out of her backpack.

  Doug slammed the storage unit door shut, and gave me a nod as he walked by.

  “How has nobody found out about you guys living in here yet?” I asked as I stood and stretched. “Somebody’s gotta start getting suspicious of you guys coming and never leaving for a long time.”

  “It’s something to do with one of my powers, I think. I’m not sure. I haven’t exactly gotten the hang of it, but I can—in a way—turn myself invisible. If I can concentrate, I can get into people’s minds and make them ignore me. They don’t know why, but they can’t look directly at me, and they don’t even notice me. It comes in handy when we’re sneaking in here. So to them, no one’s come to this storage unit for a long time.”

  “Well, you failed to mention this mind control power yesterday. That and your memory erasing thing,” I said as I sat back down.

  “I was just trying to give you the CliffsNotes. Besides, that was the first time I’d ever successfully erased memories in a human. It’s very difficult, and the fact that they were in their seventies or eighties was the only reason I was able to do it.” Samantha opened her laptop and sat down. “But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. We have a big opportunity on our hands that we need to take advantage of.”

  This piqued my interest. I got up from the chair and stood between Samantha’s and Doug’s desks. “Okay, what is it?”

  “First, Doug?” Samantha gestured toward Doug’s backpack. “Give Kane those clothes.” She turned to me. “Your outfit is a little worn. We got you some fresh clothes to change into.”

  “Yeah, I heard wearing the same thing for six months straight isn’t good for your skin,” Doug said as he handed me a folded-up red t-shirt and basketball shorts.

  “Thanks,” I said as I grabbed them from his hands. I began to change into the clothes at super speed. I pulled off the Tempest outfit and the clothes I was wearing beneath it in one smooth motion, and put on the clothes that Doug had given me. The change happened so fast, all Doug and Samantha saw was me in my Tempest ou
tfit one second, and the very next, I was in my fresh clean clothes.

  I tossed the tattered Tempest outfit on the chair I’d slept in. Wearing the fresh, comfortable clothes felt amazing. It was like I’d shed an old, tight skin, and a fresh, loose one had grown in its place.

  “I wish I could get ready in the morning that fast,” Samantha said. “Okay, so, next thing. Over the past few months, Doug and I have been keeping a close eye on all the Supers. We’ve been tracking them, keeping logs of what they’re getting into, and if they’ve been taken by the government, everything behind their disappearance.”

  I held up my hands, stopping Samantha. “I’m happy to help you guys. It’s obvious that we need to figure out everything we can about all the Supers, as well as what the government’s role is in all of this. But I really need to find my parents. They need to know that I’m alive and okay. I can’t have them finding out I’m back through the news or something. I need to find them.”

  “Of course, Kane. I’m sorry. I get ahead of myself sometimes,” Samantha said.

  “Don’t worry about it. You find anything, Doug?”

  Doug nodded as he took a bite from a granola bar. “Yeah, I found something.” He sat up in his chair and began messing with something on his laptop. “It looks like Mr. Andy Anderson is a practicing lawyer again.” Doug turned the laptop around to face me.

  I looked at the screen, and saw my dad standing in front of a podium at a press conference. I recognized the fire in his eyes. Even though it was just a picture, I could hear his voice in my head, filled with passion. He spoke with determination and ferocity.

  “In the past three months, his clients have received over five million dollars in settlements. They’ve all been people who’ve lost family members or property due to Richter. Right now, lawyers are seeing a huge gold rush. Everybody’s suing everybody, and your dad’s doing a pretty good job making sure people are getting paid,” Samantha explained.