The Invincibles (37 page)

“
You have to get looked at, Don!” Hyperman replied. “We need to know what exactly the Diatomite-x did to you. It wasn’t ready yet. It still needed to be tested.”

“
I am the test, and it’s working! I’m a god now, Cal. I’m more than a god. I think that this must be what it feels like to be you.”

“
You don’t know the science or the equipment! Not like I do! You don’t know what’s been done to you!”

“
I’ve looked over all your work and run every possible figuration. I know what I’m doing. I wouldn’t have before, but I do now.”

“
Don, remember El Dorado, Mutagen, and everyone else altered by Diatomite-x? The process always went wrong! Their genetics went bad! They went crazy!”

“
They couldn’t handle it! They didn’t have powers beforehand and couldn’t adjust like I could!”

“
You don’t know what you’re doing, Don! You’re not thinking right!”

“
I’m not thinking right? You’re telling me that? I’m taking your plan and making it right! You would have killed everyone, Cal! You and Mors!”

“
Don, please! I don’t want to fight you again! Don’t make me!”

“
Then don’t fight back!”

At a speed too fast for Hyperman to even respond, the Whorl raced up with a powerful roundhouse punch. His momentum alone could have cracked the world in half, but the Diatomite-x had also enhanced his strength. Hyperman felt his cheekbones and jaw break with the impact. Two of his front teeth flew out of his mouth. The punch sent him flailing backwards. The Whorl caught up to him in mid-air and began drilling into him with rapid-fire jabs all over his body.

In response, Hyperman spat out a freeze breath. It swept the Whorl up and tossed him across the clouds. He landed and skidded across the cloudscape. Ice glittered across half of his body, but he quickly shook it off. That minute amount of time still gave Hyperman the chance to charge at him. However, the Whorl nimbly slipped out of the way at the last fraction of an attosecond.

At blurring, eye-hurting hyper-speeds, Hyperman and the Whorl proceeded to chase each other about the speed realm, throwing, dodging, and parrying strikes. The Whorl danced away from eye-blasts and Hyperman ducked away from his super-speeding hammer blows. He noticed the Whorl continually luring him farther and farther away from the Diatomite-x and machinery, but he couldn’t bait the Whorl back toward that direction. Nor was he able to keep up with the Whorl’s speed or gain the upper hand. The Whorl was always too fast by a fraction, and the Diatomite-x had rejuvenated him. His injuries had healed, and he seemed to not even feel pain or fear anymore. Don super-sped about and fought like he had realized he had no limits.

Hyperman, on the other hand, had yet to completely recover from the battle on Mars. Pain knifed throughout his body. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt on the verge of vomiting up his own entrails. Every now and then, a strange light-headedness dazed him. One time, it cost him by making him a step slow, which allowed Don to land a powerful punch that caved in half his face.

He went skidding across the cloud surface, but managed to twist himself around and take flight. In those attoseconds, the Whorl had already gone back to fiddling with the machinery, probably hoping to set it all off.

Hyperman let loose with all he had left. Nuclear explosions erupted out of his eyes. Ice age breaths gusted out of his mouth. At the same time, he blazed after the Whorl, throwing hurricane punches. The cloudscape realm flickered blue and white, shuddering and shaking from the onslaught. Whatever damage this did to the real world, Hyperman vowed to fix later.

Though the Whorl easily danced and dodged away from his attacks, he zigzagged in just the way Hyperman wanted him to. It distanced him away from the machines enough for Hyperman to turn his aim onto them.

“
NO!” the Whorl screamed and it echoed all across this strange speed realm. He tried to throw himself in the way of the eye-blasts targeting the machines and their force fields. However, he was half an attosecond too late.

The eye-blasts, turned up to full power, battered through the force fields, leaving the machinery exposed to Hyperman’s freeze breath. Much of it froze, splintered, and shattered before toppling over due to the gushing storm-strength of Hyperman’s exhalation. Their circuitry then sparked and flared. The resulting explosions caused the Whorl to stumble and fumble before they threw him back into the clouds, through which he probably fell down into the real world. That gave Hyperman precious nanoseconds to act.

Before the Diatomite-x dust had a chance to mist away and infect the world, he opened his mouth achingly wide and gulped it all down. Immediately, his insides seared and twisted in on themselves. His heart bloated and bulged inside his chest. He felt his blood thickening and his organs twisting and hardening. He coughed, choked, and spewed blood down out of his mouth and eyes. Old and new wounds opened up all over his body and the Diatomite-x burned through him from the inside out, causing him to bleed radioactive flames and light.

His hyper-senses began fading. Already, he had trouble hearing. His vision dimmed and everything around him meshed and bled together into a dripping, vaporous, cloudy mess. His entire body clenched up, forcing him to hunch over. Somehow though, he kept all the Diatomite-x in, though it sapped and tore at his strength to do so. He shook and fidgeted, trying to manage the overwhelming pain.

The Whorl burst out of the clouds, running faster and harder than ever before, and coming right at him. Hyperman tried eye-blasting him, but his eyes sparked and fizzled. He strained his eyes, trying to force the beams out, but it only hurt him more. However, he clearly saw Don pulsing at him, not thinking and barely looking, having become a charging engine of destruction. He’d put all his power behind this run.

Using all his reserves and willpower, Hyperman deftly sidestepped him and flung out his arm. He straightened and tensed it with all his remaining strength. The Whorl raced right into it without realizing what was happening or being able to halt his momentum. Hyperman’s arm took his head right off. Don’s headless body kept running right on through the clouds.

Before Hyperman had a chance to hate himself for that, his insides ruptured. His skin turned an unhealthy translucent blackish-red. This was it. The Diatomite-x was roiling and raging inside of him, ready to explode back out. With a great, grunting effort, he dove and sliced awkwardly down through the clouds back toward the real world.

As he dropped down from the hyper-speed reality, the clouds separated back into sights, sounds, and smells. The information overload blasted into him like a cannonball, hitting with Internet signals, voices, communications, auras, energy waves, and more. It hurt to take it all in. Yet, he managed to whip himself around and launch out into space. He wished he could have looked over the whole Earth (and Lindsey) one last time, but couldn’t spare a second.

Though he was losing speed, he managed to blitz on through a few galaxies, shaking and shuddering the whole way. Eventually, far out in uncharted space, he found a lonely, dying red sun, ringed by dead desert worlds. The Diatomite-x wouldn’t hurt anybody here.

He vomited it all out, letting the sun’s liquid-y red waves of plasma sweep over and burn it away bit by bit. The act racked and depleted him. Several sun-flares hit him, but he endured. He spat the last of the Diatomite-x out, and one final burst of sun-fire blasted into him and nearly knocked him out.

He drifted aimlessly through space, too weak to move. He shivered from the cold. Numbness soon replaced the pain. Eventually, his hyper-senses dimmed and failed. He waited for the universe to go dark. Hopefully, somehow, his mothership would find him.

EPILOGUE: NIGHT OF GHOSTS AND LIGHTS

The Glow flared a riotous, foamy blue in the dark. The mob soldiers surrounding him wore skin-tight body armor and wielded blade rifles. Their laser scopes flickered and slashed across the big house’s shifting shadows. The night-vision goggles on their helmets clicked and blinked.

“
FIND HIM, DAMN IT!” the Glow roared. The bulgy, thick, middle-aged man lit up the gigantic living room with his radioactive skin, showing the antique furniture, ashy fireplace, and lovely old paintings.

The cameras and hearing devices secretly planted inside fed footage of what was going on to Nightshadow outside, where he crouched down low on a tall, lonely tree branch. His wing-suit’s stealth cloaked him amongst the brittle, green darkness of the dense woods. The massive fortress-like house before him sat alone out in the country sixty-five miles away from the Salome City limits. High monolithic walls surrounded the property.

Nightshadow had killed the power, and darkness had flooded throughout the house. Silky moonlight threaded in through every dark window. Floorboards creaked and the wind battered against the walls. The Glow and his men were jumping at every odd noise and would probably soon be shooting at every shadow.

Ever since they’d fled the city, Nightshadow had been hounding them incessantly, not even giving them the chance to sleep. His surveillance of the Glow’s townhouse and club had paid off. He had footage of several weapons and drug deals, not to mention he’d discovered old vaults full of all the jewels, art, and guns the Glow had stolen over the years. S.I.L.E.N.T., the police, and the feds now hunted everywhere for him and his men. The Glow had needed to use a few well-timed shoot-outs and bombings as distractions to get out of town. Fortunately, Nightshadow had tagged tracers onto the Glow’s vehicles, making him easy to track.

Crouching down on his tree branch, Nightshadow adjusted the settings on his visor for clearer, fuller footage. He needed to know the minute details of what went on inside to better judge his agent’s performance. After all, in many ways, this was his graduation day.

The Glow’s soldiers stalked the long, lonely hallways throughout the house, checking the closets and under every bed. In the living room, the Glow crossed his arms on his chest and watched his private guards swarm over the first floor of the house. Nightshadow chuckled at the soldiers being snatched away one after another around dark corners and into the shadows. The Glow nervously paced about, looking pale and sick despite his luminance. His skin had even turned a faint, will-o’-the-wisp orange.

“
Holy shit!” one of his men shouted and threw open a window curtain. Outside, a gleaming, ghostly white web stretched out across the nearby trees. The Glow’s other men dangled down from the web, strung up in little cocoons.

As if on cue, Danny crashed in through the front windows, wearing his own stylized version of Nightshadow’s wing-suit. The design saw red webbing blazing through the gritty black padded body armor. A shadowy spider crawled across the blood-moon emblem on the chest. The mask even featured a sharp-edged tarantula with crooked, flaming legs.

Danny bolted into action. Springing off the furniture, walls, and ceiling, he dodged razor-fire and the blades embedded themselves in the walls and furniture. Using his quickness and agility, he punched, kicked, and shot webs that exploded and covered his attackers’ faces. Within a minute, he’d disarmed and webbed all the gunmen up to the walls but one.

Laughing, the last soldier tossed his rifle aside and looked over at the Glow. His boss had scurried into a corner where he now crouched down behind a bookcase.

“
Might I?” the soldier asked.

“
YES! OF COURSE!” the Glow screeched.

“
Fantastic,” the soldier said and transformed.

His upper body grotesquely bloated and bulged. Disproportional, obscenely veined muscles bulked up across his arms, neck, and chest. With a wrenching scream, his head exploded into brains and blood that dashed against the wall and his webbed up comrades. In its place, eight crusty, craggy serpent heads rippled out. Purplish-red with leathery-armored scales, the snakeheads snickered and hissed. All sixteen of their sallow, sick eyes glared at Danny. Their fangs snapped and dripped smoky, sizzling acid that burned down through the floor.

“
Hydra-Man,” Nightshadow muttered to himself back at his post on the tree branch. It took a supreme effort of will to not barge in there and take care of that mutated beast himself. However, this was Danny’s night, and he could handle this. He’d certainly beaten enough monsters before.

Back-flipping away from the snapping serpent heads up onto the ceiling, Danny began blasting webs into Hydra-Man’s faces. Their acid ate through the webs, but gave Danny time to hurl a flash grenade into the air. Piercing, diamond-fragmented light exploded throughout the house. Hydra-Man’s many eyes dazed and whirled about in their sockets. He teetered and stumbled about before smashing down onto an antique table. In the chaos, the Glow made a run for the back door, but Danny hit him with a web that tripped up his feet. The Glow fumbled and crashed down to the floor.