Read The Superhero's Powers (The Superhero's Son Book 4) Online

Authors: Lucas Flint

Tags: #young adult, #superheroes

The Superhero's Powers (The Superhero's Son Book 4) (11 page)

BOOK: The Superhero's Powers (The Superhero's Son Book 4)
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“Prisoners?” I repeated. “Hey, we never agreed to this.”

“Of course,” said the Pokacu. “If you had, you would not be prisoners.”

“That's not what I—never mind,” I said. “What are you going to do to us, exactly, now that we are your prisoners? Are you just going to hold us down here in this escape pod forever?”

“No,” said the Pokacu. He stood up and looked around. “This escape pod is in remarked—I mean remarkable—condition, despite it having been many clicks since the invasion. It may be able to help me return to the Mother World, though I will have to remove the unnecessary additions that the humans made to it first.”

“You want to return to your home world?” I said. “Why?”

“Because the Mother World needs to know about the status of the invasion,” the Pokacu said. “She needs to know that we require back up and that the invasion was a failure. I have tried in vain to contact her before, but due to being so deep underneath the water—I mean underwater—I have not been able to contact her.”

I assumed that his use of female pronouns to refer to his home world was just an odd translation quirk, so I said, “What about us? Are you just going to leave us here to drown?”

The Pokacu shook his head. “No. The Mother World will need to see exactly what kind of forces that the planet Earth has defending it. You remind me of the superheroes my people fought, so I imagine that by studying you, the Mother World will be able to design a new army that can combat you superheroes.”

“But I don't have my powers anymore,” I protested. “They were stolen from me by another human.”

“Is that so?” said the Pokacu. He aimed his organic hand cannon at me again. “Then I will just kill you and throw your body out into the ocean. After all, I have sufficient memories of the invasion to provide the Mother World with the information she will need to devise a counter strategy to resume the invasion.”

“Hold it!” I said suddenly, before the Pokacu could shoot at me. “Just because I'm powerless doesn't mean it would be a good idea to kill me.”

“Why wouldn't it?” said the Pokacu. “You have nothing to offer me if you are powerless.”

“But I work with the Neohero Alliance,” I said. “Do you remember them? They were one of the organizations that fought against your people.”

The Pokacu paused, as if he was doing a Google search in his own memories. “That name … it sounds familiar. Yes, I recall many of my brothers and sisters being slaughtered by an organization that went by that name. One in particular stands out to me, who wore a helmet and used advanced Earth technology to kill many of my siblings. If he were here today, I would kill him without thinking about it.”

I bit my lower lip. I didn't know for sure which neohero this guy was thinking of, but the description certainly sounded like Dad. I wondered what the Pokacu would do if he found out that I was Dad's son and Mom was his wife. It probably wouldn't be very pleasant.

So I said, “Glad you remember them. Did you know that I know a lot about them? Like who their leaders are, what kind of powers they have, their base's defenses, and so on. You know, the kind of information that your, uh, 'Mother World' might find useful during the next phase of the invasion.”

“You know all of that?” said the Pokacu curiously.

“Of course,” I said. “And I am perfectly willing to tell it to you, but only if you promise to spare my mom and me. If you kill me, after all, then you will never be able to get this information from, information that could mean the difference between victory and defeat for the next invasion.”

The Pokacu looked like he was thinking about my offer. I hoped it would work, because it was the only chance Mom and I had of surviving this crazy alien who had apparently been living on the bottom of the ocean for fifteen years.

Finally, the Pokacu nodded and said, “Very well. If what you say is true, then I will spare your life. And the life of the female, as well, at least for now, unless she also happens to know some important facts.”

“Yes, yes, she does,” I said, nodding quickly and eagerly. “She knows how to make the best damned mashed potatoes in the world.”

“Mashed … potatoes?” the Pokacu repeated. “What is that?”

“I'm not going to tell you until you let me and my mother free,” I said. “So why don't you let me go, and I can tell you all about the NHA and everything else on Earth your Mother World might need to know in order to succeed next time.”

“Tell me?” said the Pokacu. “Why do I need to convince you tell me anything? I can simply get what I need to know
directly
from your head, which decreases the chances that you will give me misinformation.”

“Get it directly from my head?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“You will see soon enough, once I take you out of here,” said the Pokacu. “All you need to know is that the information gathering process will be quick … though not painless.”

Chapter Ten

 

T
he Pokacu—who called himself Graleex—poured a weird red liquid onto the blue glue to disintegrate it and allow me to stand. Although my legs were free, the blue glue still kept my arms firmly against my sides, meaning that I couldn't punch him or do anything that might help me escape Graleex's grasp. Not that I really wanted to, because even though I didn't want to be here, I was more interested in learning about who Graleex was and how he even got here than escaping. Besides, I figured we were a lot safer down here in his ship than on the surface where Robert and Vision could find us, because Graleex seemed like he was going to stick to his word and keep me and Mom alive for now.

Graleex forced me to march out of the pod by gunpoint. Since I didn't have any powers and was unable to fight back, I had to march forward. When we left the pod, Graleex closed the door behind us and locked it, but I got one last look at Mom—who looked worried and horrified, like she thought Graleex was going to eat me or something—before Graleex forced me to get moving. I hoped Mom had seen my reassuring smile, because I didn't want her to be worried and alone in that pod while I was with Graleex.

The interior of Graleex's ship kind of reminded me of the
Spinner
, except it wasn't as clean or as new. It smelled kind of like seawater, too, which made me feel a little sick, but Graleex didn't let me stop. He just shoved me down a narrow hallway that had strange glass panels that looked like aquariums full of pink water, but the aquariums looked empty, which made me wonder what they were for. It was also really humid in here for some reason, which made me sweat underneath my suit.

We stopped in front of a door that had a glowing, holographic keypad next to it. The keypad showed twenty different characters that looked like no Earth language I had ever seen before, but which I assumed was the written form of the Pokacu language. Graleex had a hard time putting in the password that would open the door, however, because the holographic keypad kept blinking in and out of existence, which made me wonder if it was damaged.

But Graleex succeeded soon enough and then forced me into the next room, almost bumping my head against the frame. I would have told him to be more gentle, but Graleex didn't really seem to believe in treating prisoners nicely, so I said nothing about it.

Instead, I focused on the room we had entered. It looked kind of like a laboratory … sort of. There was a metal table in the middle, complete with shackles meant to hold me down to its surface, but when I looked at the ceiling, I saw what looked like dozens if not hundreds of folded artificial limbs. They were all so packed together that it was practically impossible to make out any individual limbs, but I could tell that some of the limbs had tools like drills or hammers, while others were normal hands (or normal Pokacu hands, anyway). I wondered what they were for, but Graleex forced me over to the table, so I looked down to avoid tripping over my own feet.

As for the rest of the room, the walls were covered in monitors and strange buttons that looked almost organic. A weird-looking metal suit stood in one corner, which looked like it was designed for a Pokacu body and even had a helmet with a clear windshield. The monitors built into the walls displayed a bunch of strange markings that looked like the keys on the holographic keypad from before, but I couldn't read any of the words, although I did see a few displays of the ocean outside, such as a shark that swam by one of the cameras.

Before I could see much else, however, Graleex pushed me onto the metal table abruptly. As soon as I fell on it, Graleex poured some of that same strange red liquid from before, which instantly dissolved the blue glue around my arms. I coughed as the blue glue turned into a gas, but before I could get up, the metal straps immediately clamped down hard on my wrists and ankles. I tried to break them, but they were too thick for me to even budge.

Meanwhile, Graleex walked over to a corner of the room, where a floating table with what looked like a laptop computer, plus several vials of liquids I didn't recognize, stood. He pushed the table until it was right next to me and then started tapping on individual keys on the laptop, which I realized were also holographic just like the keypad outside. And, like the keypad outside, the keys disappeared every now and then, which didn't seem to be helping Graleex's temper all that much.

“Is there something wrong with your computer?” I said. “The keys keep going out.”

Graleex didn't even look at me, but he said, “Much of my technology is old and damaged. I have had to repair much of it myself, but I am a soldier and not a repman. I mean repairman. And without any contact with the Mother World, I cannot call for a real repairman or for the parts I need to make the necessary repairs to my ship myself. Have had to improvise.”

“So you've been underwater for years?” I said. “How long have you been down here and how come no one ever found you? I mean, back on the surface, I was always told that there were no more Pokacu on Earth.”

At first, I didn't think Graleex was going to answer my questions, because the information I was asking for was relevant to his own survival and could probably be used against him. I wasn't planning to harm him or anything, of course, because I really was curious about him, but Graleex had no way of knowing that.

Then Graleex said, without taking his eyes off the screen of his computer, “I have been underwater for fifteen of your human years and approximately five of our Pokacu years. I fled underneath the waves of one of your world's oceans after the last battle between my people and yours, which resulted in the invasion force I was a part of being utterly destroyed and every soldier, scientist, and pilot in my fleet being slaughtered. I fled because I knew I could not beat you superheroes on my own.”

“Why didn't you return to your, er, Mother World, then?” I said. “Couldn't you have done that instead of fleeing under the sea?”

Graleex shook his head. “My ship was too damaged during the invasion to make it into space. Had I tried to flee, my ship likely would have been torn apart by the vacuum of space and I would have died. Besides, my ship didn't have enough fuel to make it out of the atmosphere, especially after the engines were damaged, so I could only make it beneath the waves, which is one of the few places on this world where you humans have yet to reach.”

“So you've been underwater for fifteen years?” I said. “How did you survive without food and water? Can Pokacu eat and drink the same things humans can?”

“No,” said Graleex, shaking his head. “I first ate most of the emergency provisions on this ship, but when I ran out of that, I had to use my ship's hibernation systems to go under for six months at a time. I only awoke once every six months in order to capture fish and bring in water from the outside, which, through my ship's technology, I am able to turn into food suitable for a Pokacu like myself.” Then he shuddered. “Barely suitable, that is.”

“And you haven't been able to contact your Mother World at all during this time?” I said.

“Not at all,” said Graleex. “The ship's communication sisters—I mean systems—were damaged heavily during the final battle of the invasion. And because I have never been anywhere near the surface of the ocean since the day I have went under, I have been too far out of range to send out a distress signal to the Mother World for help or back up.”

Then Graleex suddenly looked at me, but his expression was as alien and inscrutable as ever. “But if this goes well, then I should hopefully be able to return to the Mother World. That escape pod you and the female came in is in rather good condition. I expect to be able to use it to return home after I make a few slight modifications to it.”

“Do you think the Mother World even cares about the invasion, though?” I said. “It failed, after all, and it looks like your leaders haven't sent any other ships to resume the invasion, since we haven't seen any Pokacu on Earth in fifteen years.”

Suddenly, Graleex grabbed my neck with his hand and slammed my head against the metal table. The blow dazed me briefly and hurt a lot because of how hard the metal was, but I didn't feel anything break or bleed, at least.

Blinking hard, I looked at Graleex's face. He looked angrier than I had ever seen him before, like he was about to tear my head off my neck.

“How dare you insinuate that the Mother World does not care about me,” said Graleex. His grip on my neck tightened, which made it hard to breathe. “The Mother World never gave an order to retreat from Earth. That means that the invasion is still on, even if I must do it by myself. It is part of the Grand Code.”

“The Grand what?” I said, but my words were kind of strangled due to Graleex's grip on my neck.

“It doesn't concern you,” said Graleex. His grip on my neck loosened. “All you need to know is that I will soon be off this vile world and will be able to return to the Mother World. I shall be rewarded greatly for my loyalty, no doubt, perhaps even made a general of the new invasion force that the Mother World will inevitably send to finish the job.”

Graleex sounded like he was rambling now and didn't seem to be looking at me anymore. He seemed caught up in his own imagination, like he was thinking about how he would look as the general of the new invasion force. That kind of creeped me out, but given that I was currently unable to save myself, I just had to hope that he wouldn't forget his strength and snap my neck or worse.

BOOK: The Superhero's Powers (The Superhero's Son Book 4)
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