Nuklear Age (58 page)

“Okay, I
was
kinda wondering about that part, actually.”

“Oh, and it can do so much more than that.” He heaved Atomik Lad by the neck – or the part of the Field that was around his neck – and held him with his feet dangling above the ground. “My inherent Negaflux field counteracts any energy that it comes in contact with, thus mimicking invulnerability. By extending the field I can seem to release unstoppable energy blasts, Superior BeamsTM! And it can redirect any energy and amplify it against itself so with gravity constantly working, I can also mimic super strength and the power of flight.”

“Good for you.” Atomik Lad noticed Superion’s arms shaking with strain. His torso almost quivered with effort, the veins of his face and neck began to bulge. “What’s the matter? Can’t take the heat?”

“Quite the opposite.” Superion’s body began to give off a faint purple glow. He smiled knowingly. “Counteract, redirect, and amplify any force it comes into contact with. And I couldn’t help but notice that your own Field has quite an abundance of force behind it.” The violet glow surrounding Superion became more tangible and Atomik Lad could’ve sworn a railroad spike was driven into his forehead. “Menace gave me all kinds of intel about your powers. She snatched it from Überdyne’s databases. What was that Dr. Genius said about your Field? That it was essentially your own soul?”

Atomik Lad’s body jerked as every muscle involuntarily tensed. “Ghk! Wh-what are you doing to me?!”

__________

Dr. Menace jumped from her seat and lunged at the screen. “What are you doing?!”

__________

“Tearing you apart,” Superion stated plainly.

__________

“No.” Dr. Menace whispered as she watched Superion’s Negaflux integrity fall from 96 to 15 percent in the blink of an eye.

__________

Atomik Lad felt his mind fracture. Searing pain exploded through his body. Superion tore the Atomik Field in two. Atomik Lad screamed, his voice cracked at the moment his vision was assaulted by a blinding all-encompassing white that burned across each of his senses. The field’s two halves retained their existence separate from each other and their host for just over a second and then dispersed. Atomik Lad collapsed on the debris strewn street like his skeleton had suddenly gone missing.

Superion fell back a step. “Not bad kid, but I warned you what would happen if you opposed me. Still, I nearly had to use all my power for that one.” He looked to the sky. “Don’t worry though, I’ve got more than enough to deal with Menace.” He casually took to the air at speeds that should’ve been impossible.

__________

“Dammit! Too fazt for the satellitez to track! At leazt the computer iz still recording hiz Negaflux readingz.” Her eyes lingered on Atomik Lad’s prone body on the monitor. “I muzt prepare.”

The dilapidated front door exploded into the warehouse and nearly sent a broken plank of ex-door through Dr. Menace’s head.

She spun around. “Superion! I demand to know what you think you are doing!”

He waltzed into the warehouse with his cape flowing behind him like a royal entourage. “Well, I think it should be fairly obvious, Doc. Especially to a lady of your education and fine intellect. It’s an age old story. I’m rebelling against you.”

“Iz that so?” she calmly asked.

“I knew you were only using me to dupe the city into giving up on Nuklear Man, to turn them into mindless lemmings. And I knew you were going to double-cross me to fulfill your own agenda of taking over the world once I did away with anything left that could possibly oppose you. So I played up that anti-Nuklear Man shtick so that you, haughty with ingenious evil, would never suspect me of double-crossing you to fulfill my
own
agenda.”

“Well, actually I did suzpect that you might rebel againzt me. I’m evil you see, and the firzt rule of evil iz that you muzt truzt no one. Az such, I made certain to make a failzafe when I gave you your powerz.”

“Oh really? And what would that be?”

“You have to recharge your supply of Negaflux energy daily and only I know how to uze the highly complex and volatile machinery needed to do so! Or had you forgotten?”

Superion’s words stumbled on their way out.

“Exactly. Without me, you are nothing!”

“When I run out of Negaflux energy, I’ll still have my powers from the Superion Process.”

“A lot of good thoze did your father.”

The Crimson Crusader’s jaw clenched.

“Yez. Now you see. Without me, you have no Negaflux power. Without the Negaflux power, your Superior CharmTM will wear off of the public and they will free Nuklear Man againzt whom you shall be defenzeless.”

“Maybe I could work the recharging equipment myself,” he said, while running his hand over the thick glass of the containment cell.

“Hah! I seriouzly doubt that. The slightezt miztake could wipe out everything within a half mile radiuz.”

He gave her a madly indifferent look. “Won’t know until we try.” Superion started flipping switches, pushing buttons, and generally activating things he had no business meddling with.

“You muzn’t!” Dr. Menace pleaded as the capacitors powered up.

The recharging apparatus consisted of the Negaflux Generator with a focusing laser inside that transferred the energy into the Containment Cell where it would be slowly absorbed over a period of hours by whatever was inside if it didn’t first die from the hazardous process of absorbing those very energies. Superion had already started the generator and he now stood between the translucent green canister and the focusing laser. He smiled at his warped reflection in the containment cell’s curved glass. He tore the great canister from the rest of the machinery and tossed it to the side without a care.

“You cannot do thiz!” Dr. Menace protested. “The Negaflux energiez muzt be abzorbed slowlyslowly or they will tear your body apart from itz own metabolic procezzes!”

Superion stepped directly into the laser’s path. “I’m willing to take that chance.” The laser was warm against his stomach. The warmth spread throughout his body and his abdomen suddenly felt like it was on fire. He cringed but could not bear to move away. After a minute long eternity, the laser finally faded. Superion fell to one knee, purple energy pulsed like a heartbeat around him. He took a deep breath.

“It would seem,” he exhaled. “That it was well worth the risk, good Doctor.”

__________

“John.” A voice like a melody lilted through the air.

I turn to face the back door of my old house. I’m eight years old, but I’ll be nine in a few months. The sun is piercing over the roof but far away, even further than grandma’s house. Too bright, don’t look. Don’t look.

“John,” Mother’s voice from the kitchen window. I’m outside. The grass is green and smells wet, alive, and dirty. “It’s time for dinner, hon!”

“Don’t want to go in yet.”

“C’mon, hon. You can go back out and play when you’re done.”

“But it’s not time for dinner yet.”

“I’m not going to tell you again.”

Kicking at the grass, sweet grass, makes you itch from sweat in the summer. Got a pool though, so that’s okay.

“Robert! Come get John from outside!” Melody gone from the kitchen window.

“Come on, Johnny boy,” voice of god, hand like a clamp, covers my whole shoulder, so heavy and tight.

“It’s not time for dinner yet.”

“It’s time to eat when your mother says it’s time.”

“I’m not even hungry.” Door opens. White walls instead of blue sky. Darker here and cooler, but the kitchen is warm with new food. Clamp is tight but lets go of me here near my chair.

Eating. Chicken, the way I like it. Mashed potatoes, that’s okay though. Poke, poke and roll around the peas.

“Don’t play with your food.”

“I hate peas.”

“They’re good for you.”

“They’re terrible. And cold.”

“They wouldn’t be cold if you didn’t put them off to last.”

“But I hate peas.”

“Do what your mother says and eat them. She worked hard all day and then she made this dinner for us. You need your peas, you’re a growing boy.”

“I hate peas. She could’ve just stopped at Burger Hutt.”

“That’s it.”

“Honey, don’t.”

“The boy has to learn the importance of a damn meal, Heather.”

“Just don’t buy peas anymore.”

“Eat those peas!”

“Robert!”

“Eat them!” Voice of god. Angry. Face red from yelling. Don’t yell Dad, don’t yell. Angry eyes like fire. The fireplace, too hot to touch. Don’t touch. “Eat them!” Red and angry. Like fire. Don’t touch, don’t. “Eat the peas!” Giant hand shaking my shoulder. Red and angry—don’t touch, don’t touch the fire—so angry.

and

red.

Warm kitchen smells like chicken, warm walls, wet and warm. And red.

Always red in my dreams.

No…no, I did it. I did it. I killed them. It’s my fault. Killed them.

Don’t touch.

Don’t touch the fire.

It’s red, always red. And angry. Always, always angry.

“John, are you okay?” Rachel. If beauty had a voice, it would be yours. “What’s wrong, Sparky?”

Sparky?

“Sparky!” Nuklear Man. Resonate, booming, thunder, lightning, so bright, like the sun. Don’t look.

Don’t look.

Don’t touch. Rachel, don’t. Too close, don’t touch!

Red. All over. Everything drenched in it, soaked to the core with…

Red flames, blood. Blood red world. Rachel, don’t You can’t.

But I want her to.

Red. Red Rachel. Rachel in red…red, everyone is red. Blood? Tastes like copper.

Copper. Iron (Scotsman). Tungsten (Titan). Gold (en Guardian). Silver. Silver.

Red and, and silver, laughter. Red and Rachel—“NO!”

Atomik Lad awoke. Steel towers reached out to a stormy heaven like the arms of a giant. One lone wisp of a cloud moved just slow enough to defy motion under the looming blanket of darkness. Breathing. The sound of breathing and sky. He closed his eyes and his vision was bathed in the orange of blood and flesh from what little sunlight came through the clouds. He tried to stand but found his joints stiff and unresponsive. His body buzzed with the warmth of dull, unfocused pain.

“Ugh. I feel like every nerve has been torn out and reattached. Backwards.” He groaned and wiped at his face. “Where?” The past few minutes flashed through his mind. “Aww damn. Rachel.” His Field burst forth and Atomik Lad took to the skies. He oriented himself to find Superion Hall. It wasn’t far, especially at his speed. Approaching it, he could see what was left of the window he’d crashed into and punched Superion out of. He flew through it again and stood in the dismal office casting half of Rachel in shadow.

He ran to her, “Rachel!”

“Hm?” she responded as though distracted by the details of an engaging television drama.

He had to look away from her. “I can’t fail.”

He leapt from the building and streaked through the sky in a splotch of crimson. Superion’s trail wasn’t hard to follow since he hadn’t bothered to go around whatever obstacles presented themselves on the way to wherever he was going.

__________

“How did I know this would end at an abandoned warehouse?” Atomik Lad asked himself while hovering over the Abandoned Warehouse District minutes later. A purple laser fired into the sky from a warehouse skylight below and vanished in a distant forest of Metroville’s high-rises.

Atomik lad began to give chase, but stopped.

“…He said something about taking care of Dr. Menace. What if he meant—”

Atomik Lad entered through the same skylight Superion had used to vacate the premises. He landed in the square of light allowed by the missing piece of roof. The rest of the interior was darkness. As his eyes adjusted, Atomik Lad could see the remains of the Negaflux Generator smoldering to one side, and the shattered Containment Cell heaped in another corner. Dr. Menace, illuminated by the oversized Evil: Computer Console in front of her, sat demurely to his right. Long motionless seconds of silence passed between them.

“Well,” she said at last. “Doez the angel make a deal with the devil to catch a common foe?”

__________

Issue 44 – The Enemy of My Enemy

Atomik Lad stood in the shaft of light speckled with dust dancing its way to the floor. “I thought he might’ve killed you.”

Dr. Menace tilted her head, lengthening the green shadows cast across her features by the Evil: Computer Console’s glow, “I waz about to zay the zame to you.”

“How did you…?”

“I waz watching your fight,” she explained with a vague gesture at the enormous screen in front of her. “In light of rezent eventz, it may be beneficial for both of uz to put azide our differencez and cooperate. Temporarily.”

“I agree. Temporarily.”

She smiled. “Exzellent.” She signaled him closer with a wave of her hand. “I promize I won’t bite.”

He stepped out of the light and walked to her, his footsteps echoing in the darkness. “What about traps or back stabbing though?”

She shrugged. “Buzinezz before pleasure. You won’t have to worry about my evil tendenciez. Not while we are working toward the zame goal.”

“How reassuring,” he said, not at all reassured.

She directed his attention to the Evil: Computer Console and, more specifically, to a windowpane on the screen filled with arcane or perhaps mathematical symbols. “Do you know what thiz meanz?”

“Oh, sure. I’m working on that degree in Advanced Quantum Advancedness.”

“And here I thought it waz Political Scienze.”

“How—?”

“Thiz iz the original Negaflux equation for Zuperion’z powerz,” she said while the formulae in the top half was highlighted. “And
thiz
iz the equation for Zuperion after he came here and…what iz the word…zupercharged.”

“Supercharged?”

“I will explain. Az you may have already guezzed, Zuperion waz but a pawn in my latezt brilliant zcheme to deztroy Nuklear Man and take over the world. I needed zomeone driven enough to allow himzelf to endure the Zuperion Procezz, a highly fatal and experimental undertaking which, theoretically zpeaking, could give any human extraordinary powerz. Azzuming the zubject zurvivez, of courze. But more importantly, it made a human body ztrong enough to hozt and manipulate itz own Negaflux Field!”