Super Powereds: Year 3 (136 page)

           
      
Despite knowing this, or perhaps because of it, he pushed onward. This was all he could give them. This was the most he could do.

*         
      
*         
      
*

           
      
A stray gust of wind carried the sound of a choked out sob to Vince’s ear. He turned in place, scouring the area for someone hurt or trapped. Nothing immediately met his eye, but now that his ears were straining, he caught the sound of more muffled crying. Picking a direction, Vince sprinted forward, dashing across the campus. He tried to stretch his energy outward, searching for the warm heat of a human body, and after several moments of effort, he succeeded. Strangely, he felt one as he’d come to recognize it, but another had a fainter signature, and it was only growing weaker the longer he sensed it. As soon as Vince realized the explanation, he ramped up his speed. There was only reason the heat would be fading away . . . that person’s body was slowly growing colder.

           
      
He bounded across the grass, finally coming over a small hill to the side of the sprawling sidewalk. As soon as he crested it, Vince saw what had happened. His heart, previously pumping hard from the strain of running, stopped. When it resumed operation, Vince could feel his blood screaming through him, lighting up every nerve and muscle as they all tensed, trying in vain to physically rebuke the truth of what lay before him.

           
      
Alex looked like hell. His face was busted up, there was a bone sticking out of his left arm, and bruises covered his whole body. Vince had seen people walk away from being hit by cars with less damage, and yet, Alex was not the sight that was forcing Vince to grapple with a hellish sense of déjà vu.

           
      
Sasha was cradled in Alex’s arms. Unlike him, she looked relatively normal, save only for the fist-sized hole in her torso. It was a strange contrast to see the brutal, bloody wound next to the almost peaceful expression on her face. A face with closed eyes that was covered in Alex’s tears.

           
      
“No . . .” Vince stared at his friend, former lover, and classmate. He could almost feel the heat from the explosion as he stared down at the boxcar where his father was supposed to be. Even though he’d later learned his father had survived, the scar of that moment, of being helpless and watching as someone he loved died, had never truly healed. The pain seared Vince to his soul, and he could feel every ache of it as he slowly forced himself to step forward, nearly tumbling down the minor incline toward his friends.

           
      
Alex whipped his head up, ready for battle, but then fell back into grief as he saw Vince approaching. “It’s my fault.” The words were mere whispers from Alex’s bruised lips. “It’s my fault, Vince. I couldn’t hold him. I couldn’t stop him. He was beating me, trying to kill me even though I was half-passed out, but she got between us . . .”. His voice fell away.

           
      
Vince leaned down and carefully touched Sasha’s cheek. It was lukewarm, held that way only by the spring heat. As night fell further, it would cool down, and Sasha would be cold. She was supposed to be zipping around, making snarky comments, spending her time with her friends. But she wouldn’t. Not anymore. She’d be here, cold, and forever beyond the reach of what even the most powerful Supers could do. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t how things were supposed to be.

           
      
“This isn’t your fault, Alex. The people who came to our school did this. The one who killed her, that’s the person who’s at fault. Tell me what happened.” Vince’s voice didn’t seem particularly hard or resolved, not like the other times when Alex had witnessed Vince backed into a corner. If anything, it sounded hollow, as dead as the woman he was staring down at.

           
      
“One of them has super speed. Beyond what we’ve ever seen before. He’s wearing street clothes, but the w-w-way his eyes blur, you c-c-c-can’t miss him.” Alex realized his teeth were chattering involuntarily, and it struck him for the first time how cold it had gotten. He glanced down and saw frost forming on the grass around them.

           
      
Vince leaned in and hugged Sasha close for a brief moment, the blood of her wound smearing onto his already soot-stained uniform. “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear, then pulled away, leaving Sasha fully in Alex’s arms once more.

           
      
“Mary will find my thoughts and send over a healer soon. If I see anyone else along the way, I’ll pass a message that you need help. You’re fairly out of the way here, so you should be safe.” Vince turned, his foot crunching through the newly frosted grass as he moved. He stared down at it in surprise and let out a long sigh.

           
      
“Vince, you can’t go after that guy. He’s too strong. I’m not sure even the professors could stop him. Please, don’t make me lose another friend tonight.”

           
      
“You won’t, Alex. I promise, you won’t. That’s exactly why
I’m
going to find the man who killed Sasha. No more die tonight.” Vince looked out at the campus, searching as best he could for a bursting bundle of kinetic energy. He’d never tried this trick before, but he was on a roll. And he was
very
motivated to succeed.

           
      
“No more of us, anyway.”

247.

               The world burned around her. All of it was so fragile, so unable to bear the weight of her power. A single motion and a beam of energy tore through the upper levels of a building. Debris rained down, the few bits that came near her scorched away by her shield upon impact. She was invincible and unstoppable. Once, she’d barely been powerful enough to blast through a single brick, and her shields had been laughable. That version of her was weak, and worthless. She would complete her mission and return to Crispin’s side. She could never go back to who she’d been before. One taste of true power, and she knew there was no returning to the fragile woman she’d once been.

           
      
“I am going to give you one, and only one, chance to surrender.”

           
      
She turned to find a man in a suit of custom combat armor staring back at her. He must have moved quite silently, in spite of the cumbersome outfit he wore. It was meant to protect him, no doubt. Meant to keep him safe from the dangers of the world. She would rip through it as easily as she would rend his flesh.

           
      
“You people have killed innocent students, barely more than children, in your quest to come after us. Trust me when I say, you do not want to see me angrier than I already am. Surrender.
Now
.”

           
      
“What gives you the right to make demands of me?” She laughed, her voice bouncing off the rubble still raining down behind her. “Perhaps you still don’t understand your situation. Most of the time, you might be the strongest, most powerful Super on the battlefield, but not today. Today, I am the strongest. I am a god.” She raised her hands, preparing to let loose a torrent of energy. “And you are just one more corpse at my feet.”

           
      
There was no warning before it happened. One moment, she could feel the power coursing through her, begging to be let out. The next instant, it was gone, along with her shield. All of it, all of the beautiful, bountiful power Crispin had bestowed on her vanished. A cry of shock slipped loose from her mouth, but it was nothing compared to the shriek of pain she let out moments later as a fist crashed into her stomach.

           
      
“Point of fact: I’m never the strongest Super on the field,” he told her. His hand grabbed her arm and pulled it back, then he drove his elbow down and shattered it clean through. She screamed, but he paid her no mind as he slammed a foot into her knee. The cracking sound rang in her ears as she fell to the ground.

           
      
“Most of my opponents are like you: so drunk on what they can do that they’ve lost all touch with what it’s like to be human. I’m not like your kind; I’m far closer to a human than a god. If Supers didn’t exist, I wouldn’t even technically have a power. In a way, you can think of me as the ultimate human, the one who drags you down off your thrones and reminds you just how mortal you really are.”

           
      
He gripped a gloved hand around her throat, and she felt a slight tingle run through her body. She could scarcely perceive it over all of the pain, yet she noticed it all the same.

           
      
“Impact, get Wisp over here. I’ve powered down one of the five. Something tells me she might just know where all the key people are hiding, and she’s going to tell us. Eventually.”

*         
      
*         
      
*

           
      
The explosion of dirt nearly sent Roy tumbling over in surprise. For a moment, he thought someone had detonated a land mine nearby, improbable as it was for mines to be buried topside at Lander. But then he saw the figure standing there, pulling itself from the crater it had created, and Roy understood. Leaping around was the strongman’s only option for expedient travel. It took a lot of practice to do with precision and care, but it was much easier if one didn’t give a shit about anything they landed on.

           
      
“Hey, are you a Hero?” Roy called, waving his hand through the dirt lingering in the air. The guy didn’t seem to be in costume, but Roy couldn’t imagine they had been given a lot of time once the emergency call went out.

           
      
The man swiveled around to face Roy, and for the first time, the young student got a look at his features. His face was the color of dark metal, and spurs stuck out from all over his skin. Given how much power he’d landed with, the guy was obviously denser than his frame would suggest. Roy’s first instinct was shifter, but the man seemed almost too human for that. Maybe a power that was fully activated, like the way Chad looked when using his bone armor. The expression on his face as he took in Roy’s presence answered the question before a word passed the twisted grin that appeared on his lips.

           
      
“A Hero? How fucking dare you. I’m no one’s puppet, you little shit.” The man surged forward, but Roy was already moving. He charged down into the crater, faked right, and then took a wide swing with his bat at this strange man’s shoulder. It was meant to make him step back, where Roy would be prepared to pull the swing around and hit him in the leg, but to his shock, the man didn’t so much as twitch. He took the blow full-on and stood there with an even deeper smile.

           
      
Pain tore through Roy’s hands as his bat came to a dead stop against his opponent’s shoulder. This wasn’t like getting a blow absorbed by Vince; Roy had the sore hands to prove that contact was made. No, the hit had simply been too weak to even move him. It didn’t make sense; Roy knew he had used enough strength to elicit
some
reaction, but the evidence was right in front of him.

           
      
“For a kid, that wasn’t too terrible.”

           
      
The man rushed forward, slamming a fist into Roy’s right shoulder. It was the exact spot where Roy had hit him, only Roy wasn’t able to shrug it off. He was sent sprawling back through the grass, tumbling on the ground until he finally came to rest on his back twenty feet away. If the blow had been angled upward, Roy would have been an uncontrolled rocket screaming into the night sky. He also would have been safe, which was probably why the punch had kept him earthbound.

           
      
Roy tried to pull himself up, noticing that his right shoulder was little more than powdered bone at this point. If Roy were a regular human, he estimated the attack would have torn his arm from his body. And it hadn’t even looked like the guy was trying that hard. Roy raised his bat with his left hand just in time to see his opponent land on top of him.

           
      
The wind escaped Roy as incredibly dense knees sank into his torso, driving him hard back to the ground. He struggled to right himself, bracing his bat on the ground to push with, but the man snatched it out of his hands effortlessly.

           
      
“Ah, the ultra-heavy material some Supers use for weight training. You must be damn strong to be able to swing this much around. Ordinarily, I doubt I’d even be able to lift a bat like this. Too bad for you, though.” The man tightened his grip, and before Roy’s eyes, the bat bent like putty, forming around his hand with the slightest effort. “Tonight, I’m not the ordinary me. I’m indestructible. I’m unstoppable. Tonight, I’m the strongest fucking Super on the entire planet.”