The Superhero's Powers (The Superhero's Son Book 4) (15 page)

Another
crunch
—this one louder and closer than the last—made me snap, “But we can't die. There has to be something we can do.”

Graleex shrugged. “What is there to do? I cannot breathe in your water, nor do the weapons work. And you have already mentioned several times that you do not have your powers anymore, so we could not send you out there to beat him even if I gave you my suit.”

“Suit?” I repeated as more water leaked through the ceiling. “What suit?”

“I have an underwater suit,” said Graleex. “You might have seen it in the lab. It should give you enough air to breathe by and let you survive in the sea's pressure and cold temperature.”

“You mean it will fit me?” I said in surprise.

“It may, since human and Pokacu body structures are oddly similar, although I doubt it would be very comfortable for you,” said Graleex. He sighed and looked at the touch screen longingly. “It appears that I will never get to see the Mother World again. Perhaps I should just kill myself now, which would be more honorable than drowning to death or being killed by a dirty human.”

I had to admit that I shared some of Graleex's negativity. Our situation seemed hopeless. It wouldn't be long, I bet, before Robert smashed through the ceiling and drowned all of us. And once we were dead, I didn't know if there was anyone on the planet strong enough to stop Robert.

But then an idea occurred to me. I found it hard to accept, because if I did it, I would almost certainly die, though Mom and Graleex might survive. On the other hand, if I didn't go through with it, I would almost certainly die here and so would Mom and Graleex.

So I said to Graleex, “Graleex, give me your underwater suit.”

“Why?” said Graleex, looking at me like I was crazy.

“Because Robert is after me,” I said. “If I leave the ship and lure Robert away from it, he'll stop trying to destroy you as well. Trust me, Robert is very single-minded, so as soon as he sees me leaving your ship, he'll forget all about you and come after me.”

“But Kevin, if you do that, Robert will kill you,” said Mom. “Even if you have that suit, you'll still be mostly powerless and defenseless. I doubt you'll last more than two seconds out in that environment against him.”

“I know, Mom, but the only other alternative is to let him break open the ship and kill us all,” I said. “At least if I draw him away from the ship, then you will survive so that Dad can find you again.”

“I know, honey, but—”

“Mom, don't worry about me,” I said. “I think you should worry more about yourself, anyway. This is my decision and my decision alone and if it will keep Robert away from you, then it will be worth it even if he kills me.”

I thought Mom was just going to keep arguing with me, but then to my surprise she nodded shakily and said, “Okay, Kevin. I understand. But please be careful. You know how powerful and ruthless Robert is.”

“I know,” I said. I looked at Graleex. “Take me to the lab. We don't have any time to waste.”

Chapter Thirteen

G
raleex was right; the underwater suit
was
uncomfortable, even though I managed to fit in it all right.

It was large and clunky, making it hard for me to move around in, though in the water it was actually easy to swim around in it. But I could barely turn my head thanks to the way the helmet was designed, which heavily restricted my neck movement. The helmet itself was large enough to give my head some space, but it smelled awful, like sewage water combined with skunk stink. And, despite its size, it felt too tight; not enough to restrict my breathing, but enough to make movement uncomfortable. About the only good thing about it was that it was rather warm, which was good because the ocean water was incredibly cold, and the fact that it had a few gallons of air constantly pumping into my helmet so I wouldn't suffocate.

Of course, at least part of the problem with the suit was that I was having to swim in the very dark ocean water while wearing it. While I was a good swimmer in my own right, I had never been this far underwater before, nor had I ever swam in such dark conditions. The helmet had a small light affixed to the forehead, which helped me see where I was going somewhat, but the rest of the water was still very dark and the light itself only illuminated a few feet in front of me at most, which made it hard to see anything.

I also found the small rockets on the boots to be hard to use. They were meant to give me enough propulsion to help me move through the water faster, because you just couldn't swim very fast in this suit, but every time I activated them, they threw me off target and I had to swim back in the direction I had wanted to go. Graleex had warned me that the rockets were hard to use without practice, so I decided not to use them too much unless I absolutely had to.

As for weapons, the suit had a laser, a mini missile launcher, and not much else. According to Graleex, the suit hadn't been designed to be used in a fight, so it had only the most basic of self-defense weapons built into it. It didn't even have any of that blue glue that Graleex had, but even if it had, I doubted it would have helped, because I doubted Robert was going to stand still long enough for me to hit him with the glue.

Swimming upwards, I heard the pounding of Robert's fists against the exterior of the ship growing louder and louder. I knew that even if Robert managed to break open the roof to the control room before I distracted him, Graleex and Mom would be okay, because they had both moved to the laboratory and sealed the door to the control room to keep the water out. Even so, that probably would buy them maybe half an hour or so of extra time, depending on how much air they had and how much water poured in, so I had to stop Robert before he could get that far.

Soon I rose past the top of the ship and spotted Robert instantly. His back was to me and he didn't seem to notice me floating behind him, probably because he was too busy punching the ship's roof like it had insulted his mother. I hesitated to draw his attention, but that was only for a split second.

In the next second, I aimed my shoulder-mounted missile at him and fired. The small missile hurtled through the water toward him, the rebound from the missile sending me floating backwards a couple of feet. Robert didn't even seem to notice the missile until about a second before it hit him, at which point he looked over his shoulder just in time for the missile to strike him on the back.

A huge explosion erupted from the collision, much bigger than I thought a missile of that size should have been able to create. It sent shock waves through the water that sent me stumbling head over heels uncontrollably, which almost made me panic until I managed to regain control of my suit and stop and look back at the site of the explosion.

Robert was no longer there. The spot on the ship's roof that he had been pounding in like bread was blackened and smoking, but I saw no sign of Robert at all.

“Wow,” I said. “Graleex, are you there?”

“Yes,” came Graleex's voice from the helmet's built-in communicator, which was connected to the computers in his ship's lab. “What happened? We heard an explosion. Did you use one of the suit's missiles?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I shot it at Robert and it blew him up.”

“Blew him up?” Graleex repeated. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There's a big blackened spot on the top of the ship where Robert was, but I don't see Robert himself anywhere. You Pokacu sure know how to build powerful—”

I heard rushing water nearby and looked over in time to see Robert's fist coming at me. His fist slammed into my abdomen, which felt like getting hit by a ton of bricks, and I was sent flying through the water, screaming my head off as I spun uncontrollably in a random direction.

Then I crashed into the sandy ocean floor with a
crunch
, slamming my head against the back of my helmet, which dazed me for a moment. Then I shook my head and heard Graleex say, “Human, what happened? You were suddenly interrupted.”

“Robert punched me,” I said. I touched my abdomen, but the suit was not broken, though it felt cracked. “Guess he didn't get blown up after all.”

“Where is he now?” said Graleex. “Is he nearby?”

“Not sure,” I said, looking around. “I don't see him. He could be—”

Then I saw him. Robert was rocketing through the water toward me, one of his fists drawn backwards, coming so fast that I was sure that I would get turned into paste if he hit.

So I activated the suit's rockets and went flying up and backwards away from the ocean floor as fast as I could. Just in the nick of time, because in the next second Robert slammed into the ocean floor and sent up a huge cloud of dirt and sea grime that obscured my view of him.

“What was that?” said Graleex. “Was that an explosion? Does this Robert human have missiles, too?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head as I came to a stop. “He just—”

Again, I stopped speaking because Robert suddenly burst out of the dirt and grime and shot toward me. I instinctively shot upwards, using the rockets on my feet to send me hurtling up as fast as I could. Robert passed underneath me before he could hit me and vanished into the dark water.

Turning around, I aimed my shoulder-mounted laser at him and fired it into the shadows. The laser hit something, but it was too dark for me to see it, though based on the fact that I didn't hear any screams of pain, I assumed that I must have missed him.

All of a sudden, Robert shot out of the darkness. This time, he came too fast for me to dodge. He grabbed me by the throat and pulled me through the water with him until he came to an abrupt stop and hurled me through the water. Once more, I found myself flying uncontrollably through the water, but this time I managed to stop myself before I hit anything and got into an upright position.

But then Robert was in front of me again and he slammed his fists against my chest. The blow knocked me down into the ocean floor again, but before I could get up, Robert landed on top of me, his legs spread so that they didn't crush me and instead landed in the sand on either side.

Robert was still smiling like a madman and he raised his fists to bring them down on my face, but I wasn't going to let him kill me. I fired a laser at him, which struck Robert in the face and actually knocked him off me.

As soon as Robert was off, I activated the rockets in my boots and flew backwards away from him. The laser must not have affected him greatly, however, because soon Robert was in front of me again.

I aimed my laser at him, but Robert reached over and ripped the laser off my shoulder. He also ripped off the missile launcher for good measure, which left me entirely defenseless.

I tried to escape by rocketing away, but then Robert grabbed my legs and crushed the rockets in my boost. Alarmed, I tried to kick my legs out of his grasp, but Robert's grip on my boots was as tight as steel.

Robert then started spinning around and around, with me in his grasp. The ocean spun around my head like the Earth around the sun, which made me feel both sick and confused. I couldn't move or do anything to stop Robert and so just tried not to scream as we spun in an ever faster circle.

Suddenly, Robert let go and I went zooming through the water uncontrollably. I slammed into a rock wall so hard that my head smacked against the back of my helmet again and briefly knocked me out before I regained consciousness again.

In a second, Robert was in front of me and grabbed my throat. He pushed me harder against the wall while crushing my throat under his grip. My helmet protected my throat, but I could feel it starting to give way under Robert's strength. Yet there was no way that I could fight back. I could only just stare into Robert's maniacal smile as he strangled me tighter and tighter. I just hoped that after he killed me, that he would at least spare Mom, even though I knew he wouldn’t.

But then a huge, bright light illuminated all around us. It appeared so quickly that Robert actually looked around in surprise, though that didn't lessen his grip on my throat.

Then a huge laser shot out from the light above and struck Robert. The laser blast was so strong that it sent Robert flying away from me, leaving me in my spot in the wall. Robert crashed against the side of an underwater cliff, sending more dust into the air, and before he could recover again, dozens more lasers shot out of the light at him. The lasers just kept coming and coming, striking the cliff and sending tons and tons of dirt and grime all over Robert. It was like the light was hitting him with everything in its arsenal and it just kept coming for several minutes until it abruptly cut off, leaving the sea eerily quiet after that intense bombardment.

Breathing hard, I looked over at the spot where Robert had been blasted. There was nothing more than a huge pile of dirt and sand, but Robert did not suddenly burst out of it. In fact, the dirt didn't even stir, which I hoped meant that Robert was dead.

More importantly, however, I wondered who had managed to save me. Had Graleex somehow gotten his ship back into order and backed me up? Or did someone else save me?

I looked up at the bright light, but it was almost too bright to see through at first until it dimmed a little, enough for me to see the
Spinner
—still as large and alien-looking as ever—floating above me, with its cannons aiming at the cliff that Robert had been buried underneath.

Chapter Fourteen

T
hat was when I heard my earcom crackle and then Dad's frantic, worried voice saying, “Kevin? Are you there? Are you still alive? Can you hear me?”

“Dad?” I said. I couldn't help but smile when I heard his voice. “Is that really you? What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you and your mother, of course,” said Dad. “Speaking of your mother, where is she? Is she safe?”

“She is,” I said. “She's in that other Pokacu ship, the one crashed into the ocean floor.”

“The
other
Pokacu ship?” Dad repeated. “What are you talking about?”

“It's a long story,” I said. “Can you bring me aboard the
Spinner
so I can tell you about what happened? I can't really move on my own here.”