Sensation: A Superhero Novel (21 page)

Aqua turned to liquid, a puddle on the floor, and then fled underneath some nearby equipment with frightening speed. Incendia became living flame and went streaking out the doorway. One by one, they all scrambled to flee or take cover from their mad leader.

As for Paramount himself, he initially didn’t seem to realize what he’d done.  After a few seconds it must have sunk in, because the glow of his Bolt Blast faded from his eyes, but by that time most of his followers had fled or were hiding as best they could in Mouse’s lab.

His vision swung back to me.  “You!  This is all your fault!”

He made as if to charge me, but he hadn’t taken more than two steps when something flew out of Mouse’s hidden room in a blur of speed. 

A hand of incalculable strength gripped Paramount’s neck in a vise and lifted him off the ground.

Paramount struggled maniacally, beating at the hand that held him in vain.  His legs kicked wildly in the air.  He looked comically like a child struggling to get away while being held aloft by a parent.  In fact, that’s exactly what the situation was. 

Alpha Prime held his wayward offspring up off the ground by one hand.  He turned to look at me.

“Kid, are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

“Good, check on the others,” he said almost casually, essentially ignoring the struggling giant in his hand.  Paramount, on his part, never stopped fighting, and even fired his Bolt Blast at his father.  They had no more effect on Alpha Prime than they’d had on me.  Alpha Prime sighed and placed his free hand over his son’s eyes.  Screaming in frustration, Paramount brought both his hands up and tried futilely to pull away the fingers covering his eyes.  Not a single digit moved. 

Seeing that, I kind of understood now what had caused Paramount such anguish that he became unhinged.  Alpha Prime was raw power – limitless, timeless, and absolute.  Juxtaposing any human, even a superhuman, against the standard he represented was not just unfair but cruel.

Chapter 24

The next few days were extremely hectic.  As it turned out, we didn’t escape Paramount’s last assault completely unscathed.  One poor kid just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and one of Paramount’s Bolt Blasts had taken the top of his head off.  Another had lost a foot.  All in all, however, we were quite lucky.

The security footage had essentially identified everyone who was working with Paramount.  However, after eventually being rounded up, quite a few of them claimed to have been intimidated into doing his bidding.  Others claimed to have been misled, asserting that Paramount – through his position of leadership – had convinced them that what they were doing was right.  Finally, a few hid behind their status as minors under the law, claiming they couldn’t be prosecuted.  No one knew exactly how it would all shake out.

As for Paramount himself, he was currently being housed at a secure facility in an undisclosed location.  I probably could have gotten more details if I wanted to, but I didn’t press.  Instead, I spent my time essentially being an errand boy for Mouse: go here; go there; do this; do that. 

Much to my surprise, it seemed that Mouse was actually the de facto head of Alpha League instead of Alpha Prime, as everyone generally assumed.  When I asked him how that had come about, Mouse had just shrugged, making a vague comment about superheroes needing more than just tangible super powers.  Other than that, he essentially avoided answering my questions about almost everything, preferring to say that we’d have time to talk later.

Alpha Prime generally kept to himself during this time.  Other than helping out with repairs to League HQ, no one really saw him.

“He’s got some issues to work out,” Rune said when I asked him.  “It’s not every day that you find out your child is a maniac who wants you dead.”

With the threat of imminent harm removed, Braintrust had moved Mom and Gramps to the penthouse suite of a five-star hotel.  Needless to say, they were loving it.

I had dinner with them every day.  So it was that a few days later when I stopped by for my daily visit I got the surprise of my life. 

I’d taken to arriving at their suite in a normal fashion:  taking the elevator up, knocking on the door, etc.  On this particular occasion, my grandfather opened the door and let me in.  Usually, he’d give me a mental hello, but I got nothing this time so I knew that something was going on. 

As I followed him into the suite, I heard voices.  I recognized my mother’s, and the other was also familiar, but a little distorted by the acoustics in the penthouse.  I had assumed it was one of BT’s clones, but when I entered the living area I saw that I was wrong. Dead wrong.

There he was, sitting on a sofa across from my mother, who was lounging in a recliner.  He was wearing a business suit rather than a costume, but I didn’t have any trouble recognizing him.  I’d studied him my whole life, from every angle, every side, every direction, every perspective.  I’d have known him anywhere – in or out of a costume, with or without a cape, in a business suit, in swimming trunks, even in a Santa Claus suit.  

It struck me as odd that I knew so much about a man who knew so little about me. 

A man who probably couldn’t pick me out of a lineup.

A man who probably hadn’t thought about me since the day I was born.

Alpha Prime.  My father.

That he was here meant only one thing:  he knew who I was. My mind was reeling. He’d avoided me my entire life.  I really didn’t want to deal with this now. 

Still staring at him, I took a few steps backwards, then did a full one-eighty and prepared to walk back out the door.  My mother’s voice brought me up short.

“John Indigo Morrison Carrow!” she screamed, coming to her feet.  “Get your butt back over here!”

I rarely heard anyone say my whole name.  However, it was a name meant to embody my entire heritage.  John was my grandfather’s given name, while Indigo was my grandmother.  Carrow was our family name, and as for Morrison…well, that was Alpha Prime’s actual surname, although few people knew it.  For as long as I could remember, though, everyone had always called me “Jim,” based on my first three initials.  Calling out my full name meant only one thing:  Mom was irritated with me.  (Not to mention the fact that her eyes, I could sense, were flashing crimson.)

Slowly I turned around and came back into the living room.  I kept my eyes downcast.

“Don’t be rude, Jim,” my mother continued.  “We have a guest.”

Alpha Prime stood up.  “It’s okay, Geneva.  We’ve actually already met.”

The words sounded odd, out of place - more suited to business acquaintances bumping into each other at a country club rather than father and son.  When I still didn’t say anything, my mother turned to me.

My mother rarely ever used her powers.  She was obviously trying to make a point. 

didn’t
want to see me?>

He
called
me
.>

That last one was a bit of a shock.  I had just assumed that it was my mother who had reached out.  Taking my silence for acquiescence, she turned and started leaving the room.

“I’ll leave you boys to catch up,” she said as she went into her bedroom suite.  I looked around for my grandfather, hoping to find support in that corner, but he had conveniently disappeared at some point after letting me in.

With a disgusted sigh, I flopped down and took my mother’s spot sitting across from my father.  I wasn’t ready for this.  I hadn’t wanted to have this conversation yet.  It was one thing to be around him when he didn’t have a clue who I was. There was no pressure then, no expectations, no agenda. It was something else when he knew that I was his son, that there was some kind of connection between us.

There was an uncomfortable silence as we both struggled for something to say.  Or rather he did; there was no way I was speaking up first.  I crossed my arms, sat back and waited.

“Uh, Jim,” he began after a few moments, “I just want to say that I’m proud of how you handled yourself during this crisis that we had.  I mean, with your…with the situation with Paramount.”

“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked.

“He’s got to face justice for what he’s done.  But at the same time, it’s clear that he also needs therapeutic help.  I should have seen what was happening to him.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing, then, that you weren’t around, if that happened right under your nose.  Who knows what kind of trouble I might have gotten into?”

He just stared at me for a second.  I could tell that I had hit him hard – and possibly below the belt.

“Okay, I probably deserved that,” he said after a moment.  “But there’s no way you’d ever have turned out like that.  Not with your mother and grandfather raising you.”

“Is that why you weren’t around, then?  Because you knew that there was somebody else to pick up the slack?”

“I wasn’t around because I was already raising Paramount in the middle of a three-ring circus.  From the moment he was born, everything he did was news.  Cameras were around him night and day.  It was an unhealthy environment, and as you can see, it took its toll.  By the time you came along two years later, I knew I had to put some distance between us if you ever stood a chance of having a normal childhood.”

“Yeah, right.  You’re father of the year.”

“Ask your mother if you don’t believe me.  She grew up in that same spotlight – the child of two superheroes – and it was no fun.  Your grandparents did their best to shield her, but it was still no picnic.”

“You talk about my mother like you actually cared about her.”

“I did. I do. She came along at a time when I was…lost. Paramount’s mother had taken off, I was raising a kid all alone while trying to save the world -
literally
save the world - at the same time. And I was incredibly lonely.”

He chuckled. “I know, I know.  How can you be lonely when everyone in the world is clamoring to be your friend, to hang out with you, to just be seen with you? And yet, I was. I was a hair’s breadth from chucking it all away when your mother came into my life.  She saved me.”

“Is that why you’re here now? Are you lost and needing to be saved again since your number-one son went off the reservation? What was it that made you finally crawl out of the woodwork?”

“The talk we had the other night. Up on the roof.”

Now it was my turn to be shell-shocked.

“You…you already knew who I was?”

“Not initially.  But right before you disappeared, I apologized to you for that fight we had two years ago, and I saw a flash of color in your eyes.  Literal color.  Just like your mother and grandmother.  I knew who you were then.”

“Great, betrayed by my genes.”  I reflected for a second on that particular legacy of my alien grandmother that my mother and I had both inherited, the physical trait of having our eyes flash color with strong emotions.  I can usually keep mine under control, but now I remembered how my eyes had felt irritated when I’d left the roof.  I hadn’t even considered that it might have been that specific characteristic of my physiognomy.

“I came by your room a few minutes later to talk to you,” he continued, “but you never answered the door.”

“I wasn’t there,” I said.  “I was next door, talking to Smokescreen.”

“Good,” he said with a slight smile.  “I was afraid that maybe you were avoiding me.  Then, a few minutes later, Paramount asked me to meet him in Mouse’s lab.”

“Where he trapped you.” I was already familiar with this part of the story.

“Yes. But the worst part of that whole thing wasn’t being trapped. It was thinking that I’d missed a golden opportunity to get to know you - especially when it seemed like I’d just found you again.”

“All thanks to my genetically freakish eyes.” 

“Don’t discount the value of your genes.  They actually saved your life a few days ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when Paramount used his Bolt Blasts on you?  How they didn’t have an effect?”

“Yeah.  I was expecting to die then.”

“Well, it’s kind of the way that a scorpion’s venom won’t work on another scorpion.  In this particular case, the Bolt Blast doesn’t work on family members.”

Something suddenly occurred to me.  “That’s why you shouted for me to cover the door when we were in the vault.  You knew his blasts wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Yes,
I
knew, but
you
didn’t.  You didn’t know, but you did it anyway, even if it meant you’d die.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that. I just knew that people were depending on me.”

“And it’s that type of selflessness that makes someone valuable, regardless of whether they have powers or not.”  He suddenly stood up.  “Look, I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but I’d like it if we could start working on having some kind of relationship.”

He extended his hand. I stared at it for a moment, then took it. He smiled.

**********************************

A few days later, Mouse asked me to come by his lab to talk.  It was probably the first part of HQ that they completed repairs on – no doubt at Mouse’s insistence.  (Rank has its privileges.)  When I showed up, he didn’t waste any time on small talk.

“When we had our talk before - after your confrontation on the football field with Paramount - you tried to warn me about him.  You knew he was a bad seed, didn’t you?”

I just shrugged and stared off into space.

“How did you know?” he asked.

I sighed.  “I’m an empath, and I’ve also been working as a bounty hunter.  I’ve discovered that some of the bad ones give off a certain type of emotional vibe.  There’s a certain callousness in their personality, a disregard or disrespect for some aspects of common decency.”