The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5) (6 page)

“I’ve never heard of her,” I said. “But I guess, if the Test Subjects have been in hiding, that is to be expected. But I still don’t understand why they are targeting you specifically.”

“Because I was one of the founders of Project Neo,” said Grandfather. “Most of the Test Subjects—save for Cadmus—underwent many horrific experiments, as I said. Echo is most likely looking for revenge; she and the other Test Subjects probably want to kill me for my role in the Project.”

“How long has she been after you?” Triplet asked. “Your earlier statements made it sound like you moved into this forest to avoid being found by her.”

“Years,” said Grandfather, “at least since the Test Subjects escaped the Hole. I moved out of Queens, New York to this part of the state because I thought it would keep me and Jane safe, but apparently Echo must have somehow learned the location of this mansion, if Twinfist’s attack is any clue.”

“What are you going to do, then?” I said. “Are you and Grandmother going to leave?”

“We may very well have to,” said Grandfather. “As helpful and experienced as Emma is, she is no match for the Test Subjects. You saw how powerful Twinfist was. The others are all much stronger than that.”

“Are they all working for Echo?” I said. “Or just a few?”

“I have no idea,” said Grandfather. “It may be that it is just the few Echo could find or it may be that all of them are working for her in order to get their revenge. In any case, Jane and I will have to move again.”

Grandfather sighed and sipped from his coffee again. He glanced over the window of his study, as if he was already dreading the moving process.

“Well, why don’t you call the G-Men and enroll in the Superhuman Relocation Program?” I said. “When Robert took my powers, it was that program that kept me and my parents safe. I imagine—”

Grandfather’s mug suddenly slammed on the table, spilling a little bit of coffee on its hardwood surface. Grandfather was glaring at me, like I had just said something absolutely unforgivable.

“No,” said Grandfather. “I do not trust Cadmus Smith. Or the G-Men. I have spent the last eighteen years in hiding and I do not want Cadmus’s help.”

“Why not?” I said. “Is it because he was one of the Test Subjects?”

“It doesn’t matter why,” said Grandfather. “But you need not worry about us. Jane and I have had to move before. And we can still do it again, if necessary.”

“Well, what if I helped?” I said. “What if I hunted down Echo and her allies and defeated them? Then you and Grandmother wouldn’t need to live in hiding.”

“Impossible to do,” said Grandfather. “No one knows where Echo or the Test Subjects are. Even if you did try to go after them, they would not hesitate to kill you. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say that the experiments performed on some of them left their minds destroyed, leaving them with no inhibitions whatsoever.”

“I’m strong, though,” I said. “I’ve taken on powerful and uninhibited villains before. I would be all right.”

“It is still too risky,” said Grandfather. “The best thing for us to do is for you two to leave and never try to contact me and Jane again. And for me, Jane, and Emma to find some place new to hide.”

“Are you sure there is nothing else we can do?” I said. “Because doing what you said just sounds cowardly to me.”

“It is less about cowardice and more about prudence,” said Grandfather. “You are still young, Kevin, but you must understand that you can’t always beat every enemy. Sometimes, you have to run and hope they don’t kill you.”

“But …” I tried to think of something to say to convince Grandfather to let me help. “I want to help. I mean, can Grandmother even leave? You yourself said that she’s really ill. Can’t I at least help you move her?”

“It will be difficult, no doubt,” said Grandfather. “But Jane will understand. And Emma will be able to help. You and Triplet should just leave.”

My shoulders slumped. “But I still have some questions I want to ask.”

“Sorry, but there is no time for that right now,” said Grandfather. “Perhaps at some point in the future we will meet again, but for now, the two of you need to go.”

Before Triplet or I could say anything else, the door to the study opened and Emma stepped through it. She looked tired, like she had been running, but straightened up when we looked over at her.

“Sir,” said Emma, nodding at Grandfather. “Twinfist is gone.”

“Gone?” said Grandfather in alarm. “To where?”

“I don’t know,” said Emma. “I found the tree that your grandson crushed him under, but it was snapped in half and there wasn’t any clue as to where Twinfist had gone.”

“Do you think he’ll attack again?” I said.

“Not right away, no,” said Emma, shaking her head. “I searched for him, but he seems to have vanished. I imagine that getting his legs crushed under a gigantic tree like that probably made him decide to retreat for now.”

“But we will still need to leave,” said Grandfather. “Now that they know where we are, Echo will likely send someone else after us. Emma, you know what to do.”

Emma frowned, as if she wasn’t looking forward to whatever she had to ‘do,’ but then she bowed and said, “Yes, sir. I will get the travel preparations ready right away.”

“And please show Kevin and Triplet out,” said Grandfather, gesturing at us. “They have already agreed to leave, so they need to go before we do anything else.”

“Yes, sir,” said Emma. She looked at me and Triplet. “Please follow me. I will lead you off the property; after that, you must never return here or try to contact us ever again.”

Chapter Five

T
en minutes later, Triplet and I were walking alone through the forest, going down the main path that Triplet said he had used to get here. Emma had shown us off the property, but had not followed us off it. I guess she must have trusted us to leave without worrying that we would simply come back.

I wanted to come back, don’t get me wrong, but at the same time I also didn’t want to put my grandparents’ lives in danger just to satisfy my own desires to see them. I wondered where they were going to hide next and how they could possibly avoid the wrath of Echo and her allies. Granted, my grandparents had apparently done this several times over years, so I probably didn’t have anything to worry about, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them anyway.

Triplet was pretty quiet while we walked. But I could tell he was thinking, because his eyes seemed to be focused on something in the distance, even though there was nothing ahead of us but trees and bushes for as far as the eye could see.

“Well,” I said, breaking the silence after a few minutes of walking, “I guess I’ll be heading back to Hero Island. How are you going to get back to NYC?”

“My car,” said Triplet without looking at me. “I took it here and parked it down the path. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” I said. “You seem distracted.”

Triplet suddenly looked at me as if I had just shouted. “What?”

“I said, you seem distracted,” I said. “But I understand. You’re probably thinking about how you are going to have to start from scratch to find that girl’s soul.”

“Yes, I was thinking about how I was going to need to find a new lead, but that wasn’t all,” said Triplet. “I was thinking about what your grandfather said. I didn’t know much about Project Neo before he told us about it, but it fits with some of what I know about it.”

“All I know about Project Neo is that Master Chaos used some of the weapons that were developed in it to try to kill me,” I said with a shrug. “Not that it worked, of course, which makes me wonder just how effective that program is.”

“Right,” said Triplet. “But what really caught my attention was that your grandfather was blatantly lying to us about quite a few things.”

“Lying?” I said. “What do you mean? What was he lying about?”

“For one, the fact that his wife is ill,” said Triplet. “Granted, we never saw her, but I find it very strange how your grandfather was very vague about your grandmother’s illness. I think he had another reason for not allowing us to see her, though what, I don’t know.”

“That seems like a stretch to me,” I said. “Maybe it was a really contagious disease that he didn’t want us catching.”

“I doubt it,” said Triplet. “I didn’t see any special equipment or anything that Matthew and Emma would need to handle a contagious disease. Besides, if the disease was really contagious, Jane would be in a hospital in a major city with access to the best care and medical equipment, not some mansion in a forest somewhere in upstate New York.”

“You’ve got a point there,” I said. “And I gotta admit, it did feel like Grandfather was hiding something from us.”

“No doubt,” said Triplet. “Matthew was clearly omitting some very important details. Such as the locations of the Savannah Jones’s soul.”

“But he said—”

“That he didn’t know where it was, right,” said Triplet. “He could have been lying. Did you notice the way he didn’t look at us when I mentioned Savannah? I think he is hiding something.”

“Do you think he has Savannah’s soul?” I said.

“Maybe, but it could be that he just knows where it is,” said Triplet. “In any case, I left one of my Thirds back there to keep an eye on them. He’ll follow me again after an hour or so, though, because of the time limit my Thirds have.”

I looked over my shoulder, although the mansion was obscured by the trees now. “You left one of your Thirds there without telling anyone?”

“Of course,” said Triplet. “If I had told them, they would have forced the Third to come back with us. Besides, I’ve done this before, leaving behind a Third to keep an eye on a person or a place that I am technically not allowed to be at. Hardly unusual for me.”

“I know, but what if they discover your Third?” I said. “What do you think they will do to it?”

“They won’t,” said Triplet, shaking my head. “My Thirds have all my abilities and skills, and because I am very good at sneaking around, my Thirds are, too, especially now that I know what Emma’s powers are.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed with Triplet’s actions or not, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I said, “Well, okay, but I’m not sure you’ll actually find out anything. If Grandfather is a secretive as you say, then you might not learn anything of importance.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t need to learn everything,” said Triplet. “Even just a few clues can sometimes turn a case completely around, as you might remember from the Sagan case.”

I nodded. “Right. Well, I guess I’ll just fly home from here. I should be able to make it back to Hero Island in an hour, maybe hour and a half if I don’t slow down. If you need any help or anything, just let me know.”

“Sure,” said Triplet. “But before you go, I have something to give you.”

I had taken a flight stance, but as soon as Triplet said that, I paused and looked at him. “Something to give me? What is it?”

Triplet started digging through the pockets of his coat as he said, “It’s something that your dad gave me before he passed. He wanted me to keep it for safety reasons, but I think it will be far more useful for you.”

Then Triplet fished something out of his pocket and held it out for me. I took the object and looked at it.

It was a small flash drive that looked pretty plain and ordinary. I turned it over to see if there was anything interesting or different on the other side, only to discover that it was labeled ‘PERSONAL FILES.’

I looked up at Triplet. “What is this?”

“A flash drive containing a lot of your father’s personal files,” said Triplet. “He gave it to me when I visited your house last year, when I was on the Sagan case. He said it contained a lot of blueprints for his inventions, research notes, diary entries, and so on. There’s a few gigabytes worth of memory on that thing.”

“Why didn’t Dad tell me about this before he died?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Triplet. “I only know that he gave me the flash drive because he didn’t want all of his files in one basket and he trusted me to keep it safe. I kept it in a safe under my bed back in my apartment in New York.”

“Why didn’t you give this to me at the funeral?” I said.

“I was in too much of a hurry to get to Texas,” said Triplet. “The flash drive completely slipped my mind at the time, but I remembered it this morning and brought it with me because I intended to call you up and tell you about it after I spoke with your grandfather.”

“Have you looked at what is on here?” I said, wrapping my fingers around the small flash drive.

“No,” said Triplet. “It’s encrypted. I have some hacking skills, but whatever encryption Ted used is far beyond my expertise. I don’t know if you will be able to access it, but since you’re his son, I thought you should have it anyway.”

I looked down at the flash drive, wondering what was on it, but I decided I would take a look at its contents when I got back to Hero Island. Or maybe I would just give it to Mom, since I didn’t think there was anything on the drive that important, unless it contained some information on Grandfather, that is.

“All right,” I said as I slipped the flash drive into my suit’s pocket. “I’ll check it out when I go back to Hero Island. Are you sure you will be okay by yourself?”

“I’m sure,” said Triplet. “I may not have super strength, but I’m hardly defenseless.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, good bye, then.”

With that, I flew up into the sky and took off toward Hero Island, leaving Triplet behind me as I soared through the air.

-

The flight back to Hero Island felt much quicker than the flight to Grandfather’s mansion. It seemed like it was only minutes—even though it was actually about an hour—before Hero Island appeared on the horizon and it was an even shorter amount of time before I passed through the Island’s airspace and was heading toward the House.

Hero Island seemed pretty quiet today; I didn’t even see any tourists at the Museum or any of the other tourist accessible parts of the Island. But that wasn’t surprising, given that things had been pretty quiet all around after Robert Candle’s death. I’m not sure why, but it seemed like there just hadn’t been any serious supervillain threats recently, at least none that required the attention of the Young Neos. I heard about some guy in China who was apparently blowing things up with his mind, but the Young Neos never went abroad, and anyway international threats were usually dealt with by the NHA branch of whatever country is suffering from that threat. Then again, did China even have its own NHA branch? I didn’t know.