The Invincibles (7 page)

“
The countdown is on, asshole!” the Bride yelled, holding up the detonator as her men sprayed the room with bullets. “You better believe I’ll give everyone in this hellhole of a city malaria and AIDS and Ebola!”

She wore a tight, revealing, fluorescent blue slip of a wedding dress. Wild neon blue hair spilled down onto her light fairy-blue painted skin. Silver-blue lipstick and eye shadow also unhinged her young, pretty face.

Her men had on loud red tuxes and were having trouble hitting Nightshadow with bullets as he kept moving from table to table and dodging their fire. However, they did a fair job tearing up the place. Nightshadow snagged a flash grenade out of his utility belt and flung it up into the air near the dizzying, dazzling disco ball hanging from the center of the ceiling.

“
NO! YOU IDIOTS! STOP!” the Bride screamed, realizing what was happening before her men did. She ducked and covered her eyes as her men ripped through the ceiling with gunfire, obliterating the disco ball and hitting the flash grenade. Light exploded and rippled through the air, flickering whiter and brighter with each subsequent burst, and getting right into their eyes.

With them all temporarily blinded and reeling, Nightshadow pounced, cutting through the whole gang like a scythe with his escrima sticks. Once he’d pummeled them, he bounded up onto the platform and menacingly stalked toward the Bride. She cowered back against the wedding cake. Her nervous, jittery hand tightened around the detonator.

“
Back off!” she snapped. “I’ll do it! I’ll kill everybody!”

Two hours into Nightshadow’s patrol tonight, her threats had come through on the news. She demanded twenty billion in diamonds and for every married couple in the city to be legally divorced. If she were denied, she’d trigger a series of plague bombs hidden throughout the city. Nightshadow knew those bombs well. They used to be one of the Death Reaper’s favorite toys.

“
Give me the detonator,” he growled, with his mask distorting his voice.

The Bride wiped her hair out of her face and gritted her teeth. “You think you can boss me around like my dad and every other man?” she asked. “I can do whatever I want! That’s why I was glad that rich loser ditched me at the altar! Glad! My dad loved him, not me! Fuck him! Fuck everyone! I took the immunization shot! I’ll be fine, but you, him, Dad, and everyone else will suffer!”

She made to press down on the button, but Nightshadow lunged forward and snatched it right out of her little hand. “BASTARD!” she hissed, but a swift slap sent her tumbling back into the cake and almost half of it collapsed down on top of her. “Go to hell!” she shouted, lying in a pile of messy cake and frosting. Tears smeared down across her face and smudged her makeup. Cake covered her, and she had to bat chunks of it away to sit up. “Who are you to stop me? You’re not my husband!”

Nightshadow tossed the detonator away. “I already disarmed all your bombs,” he said.

“
You did?” she asked. “And so you’re here for what? My spanking? Go ahead, pervert!”

She spat at his mask, but he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her roughly up to her feet. Holding her by the shoulders, he forcefully shook her.

“
WHERE DID YOU GET THE BOMBS?” he roared.

Shock and fear flashed across her face. Her mouth gaped open.

“
WHERE?” he barked and cuffed her across the face.

She cried out in pain. Her nose and lip bled.

“
THE BOMBS!” he shouted. “DID YOU GET THEM FROM HIM?”

“
W-who?” she asked.

He backhanded her.

“
WERE YOU ONE OF HIS CHILDREN?” he shouted.

“
What? What are you talking about?”

“
TELL ME!”

He struck her again. Bruises began blackening up the side of her blue-painted face.

“
I bought them!” she whimpered. “They were on sale! On the black market!”

His hand clenched her throat.

“
DID HE TELL YOU TO LIE?” he yelled.

She gagged and choked. Nightshadow realized she couldn’t talk with him trying to strangle her. He let go, and she stumbled back, falling raggedly down to her knees.

“
Are you lying to me?” he demanded.

“
No!” she cried. “I’m not!”

Whimpering, she curled up into a quivering, fetal little ball. Her makeup had started flaking off her face, making her more closely resemble a girl again. Nightshadow wondered what had come over him. He hadn’t needed to use such excessive force. The Bride cowered away from him and wouldn’t stop sobbing. She was shaken up in a way he had never seen before, but it wasn’t like he could console her. She didn’t deserve that anyway. So there was nothing left for him to do here. Upon hearing the sirens, he left the Bride crying and handcuffed for the police to find.

***

Hard, fire-resistant, and bulletproof Plexiglas lined his Triangle Park lair. It was one of his largest hideaways. Massive supercomputers crowded about, humming softly while processing data. The armory lurked one level below. A medical station, lab, kitchen, bed bunk, and mini-gym also packed together into the layout of the tight underground space.

Having tugged his mask off and dropped it to the floor, Nightshadow gazed at the helmet from the Death Reaper’s hideout. It resembled an insect’s misshapen head. Though bulbous and round, its insides contorted to fit and clamp down over any forehead. Its black plastic shone. For weeks, he’d been taking it apart, studying its circuitry, and trying to hack into its programming to figure out what exactly it did. So far, the helmet’s system firewalls had prevented him from accessing its data. Yet, he continued tinkering with it. He needed the challenge right now. It kept his mind off what had just happened with the Bride.

It shouldn’t have bothered him so much. He got rough all the time. In fact, he’d smacked the Bride around before more than once. His job required it. He couldn’t go easy on freaks and maniacs when lives were at stake. Still, for a moment, she’d reminded him of those poor reaper children (if she wasn’t actually one herself).

She was also youth and innocence twisted into something dark and deadly, and those kids were the same thing. It ate at him that he hadn’t been able to save any of them and that he hadn’t even known about them to begin with. They could all end up like the Bride or worse. They could end up like the Death Reaper. Each and every one of them was a ticking time bomb primed to go off. Still, to find and deal with them, he needed a better idea of what had been done to them.

Yet again, he cracked the helmet open and poured over its circuitry. He dragged over some wires and connected the helmet to one of his supercomputers. He used a specialized screwdriver and drill to open up its mechanical guts while his supercomputer probed the helmet’s programming and ran into firewall after firewall. The numbers flashed and burned across the supercomputer’s screen. A few times before, a firewall had even crashed his systems. However, he’d now connected his systems to S.I.L.E.N.T.’s network for additional computing power.

He disconnected a few circuits and powered up a couple others, which must have finally hit the right combination, as nothing was short-circuited. His supercomputer, meanwhile, was trying countless combinations of numbers, symbols, and letters to access the system’s passwords and began striking gold. The helmet’s security system shut off. Its design specs and programming filled the supercomputer screen along with notes from the creator, all signed with the initials “DL.”

“
Doc Lethe,” Nightshadow muttered, pounding a fist into his other hand.

Chapter 3: YE GODS

Hyperman circled the world a few times, scanning and listening. Finally, he sighted the Whorl super-speeding across North America, leaving a blurry trail of dust in his wake.

Decades ago, an insane astronaut had crashed an experimental, super-fast space cruiser down in Timberton, Indiana, and the resulting explosion destroyed the entire town. Only Donald Donovan, who’d been trudging door-to-door selling encyclopedias, survived. He awoke in an alien hospital on the moon where a race of super-speedsters helped heal and train him to master his new abilities. In time, his hyper-speed surpassed them all, and he returned to Earth while they tarried on to perform good works for an even slower galaxy in a distant corner of the universe.

Other superheroes loved speculating over whether the Whorl or Hyperman were faster. Over the years, they’d raced for charity and fun multiple times. While Hyperman nosed closer and closer each time, the Whorl still always won, but Hyperman always remained a good sport about it. He didn’t have to be the best at every single thing. Besides, one day, he knew he’d outrace the Whorl. His powers had eventually surpassed everyone else’s, so it was only a matter of time.

He caught up with the Whorl in Northern Canada’s rocky evergreen forests. Snow melted on the ground and whitened the treetops. A crisp, pine-scented chill bit into the air. In the distance, the city of Nouveau Paris sat up against the side of a mountain. At the city’s center, their version of the Eiffel Tower stabbed up through the wintry white clouds. Called Le Blanc Tower, it lit up spectacularly white even during the day.

A strange reddish-black amber muck flowed across the city roadways, bleeding up onto and into the buildings and sidewalks, around street signs and poles, and coating entire cars. Any person caught out in the open got covered. The amber hardened, twisting the buildings into odd, new shapes and warping the roads. People turned into statues, but their features shifted and transformed so that they all resembled the same pock-eyed, straggly thin man.

Immediately, the Whorl set to work, zipping through all the city streets and sidewalks, up and down the buildings, and in and out of every shop and home. He shattered, ripped, and picked apart all the amber, freeing people and shuttling them off to safety miles away before returning in the blink of an eye to help more innocent victims.

Hyperman joined in, whipping around the city, tearing apart the amber, and burning it away with eye-beams. He whisked freed civilians away to the small towns dotting the distance before flashing back to find more people in need. His path intersected with the Whorl’s here and there as giant, six-headed Cerberus dogs and monstrous trolls grew out of the amber. They cracked free, roared, and attacked.

“
Hey Cal,” the Whorl said, talking and moving too fast for anyone but Hyperman to understand him. He dodged a troll’s powerful hammer swing and battered its mongoloid head with a thousand rabbit punches. “How’s it going?” he asked.

The Whorl’s skin glistened with a faint, spectral violet, and shiny silver streaked through his short-cropped hair. On his chest, a sharp, starry-blue spiral glowed and whirled its tendrils all across his dark ethereal-purple bodysuit.

“
Busy,” Hyperman said, football-punting a Cerberus dog up into orbit.

“
Aren’t we all?” The Whorl twirled his hands so fast he created whirlwinds that swept through the barking, mouth-foaming dogs and flung them away. “You still seeing that blonde? The artist who only used black and gray paint?”

Hyperman started casually eye-blasting trolls. “Nah. She was still hung up on her ex, but that’s all right. I’m dating someone else now.”

“
Really?”

“
Her name’s Lindsey and I like her a lot, but…it’s kind of complicated. You see, she doesn’t really like me. Well, she does, but only as Cal. She has a problem with Hyperman.”

“
No kidding?”

“
She doesn’t really like any superheroes.” Hyperman let a troll hammer shatter against his back. “She said we can’t be held accountable for our actions and that we’re too powerful and dangerous for this world.”

“
We’re accountable to each other,” the Whorl replied, zipping and vibrating through a pack of Cerberus dogs, causing them all to shatter and explode.

Hyperman proceeded to punch the heads off a gang of trolls. “True,” he said, “though enough of us go bad or exercise poor judgment that she might have a point.”

“
Maybe,” the Whorl replied, stealing a pair of troll hammers and sneaking one over to Hyperman. He and Hyperman proceeded to smash the trolls to bits together with their own hammers. “We live in a world of super-powers and wonders though,” the Whorl said. “There’s bound to be some downside, but there is with anything. Besides, you, me, and the gang are always trying to keep every super-being in line in addition to saving the world.”