Sensation: A Superhero Novel (3 page)

Running at super speed switches my metabolism into high gear.  The result was that I needed to replace the calories I’d burned, and – per our usual routine – BT always had a buffet laid out for me.  Nearby, a cook stood working over a six-burner gas stove, with all of the burners covered.  The cook was another BT clone; this one had four arms.

BT’s clones tended to be specialized.  In other words, they were designed to perform a distinct function, and therefore tended to have the necessary characteristics to do their jobs.  Thus, the cook had twice the usual number of arms.  For the millionth time I wondered how BT formed these clones – whether there was some unique biological process that let him grow them off his own physical body (whatever that was), or if he created them through some artificial means in a lab.

BT took a seat while I ate. “I really thought the inhibitor would work this time.”

“Not a big deal,” I shrugged, talking around a mouth full of food.  “No harm, no foul.”

“Well, I’ll need some time to find the next target, as well as tweak the inhibitor and reset the nullifier.”

I simply nodded, shoving a piece of cheesecake into my mouth.  Because of the nullifier, I usually had about a two-month break in-between going after fugitives.  Standard nullifiers give off a particular energy signature when in use.  Because that signature can be traced, BT designed a nullifier that operates on a slightly different principal.  I didn’t really understand it, but the end result was that - although it doesn’t give off an energy signature - our nullifier had to be “reset” after each use, which usually took about sixty days.

There were actually a lot of non-powered criminals out there I could have gotten the reward for whenever the nullifier was out of commission, but there were normal bounty hunters who could take them down.  There was no need for me to take food out of the mouth of another working stiff.  (Not to mention the fact that I was still in high school and – at least during the school year – had class during the day.)

“So,” BT continued, “other than the occasional capture of wanted felons, how’s the rest of your summer been?”

I held out my hand and wobbled it side-to-side.  “So-so.” 

Speaking frankly, summer vacation wasn’t anything that got me particularly excited the way it did most kids.  I didn’t have a lot of friends.  My summers were normally spent hanging out with my grandfather, which usually meant training. Not that I was complaining.

“Well,” he continued, “don’t forget that there’s a game tomorrow.”

I frowned. I knew where this was headed.  “Yeah, I’m still thinking about it.”

“And don’t forget that there are tryouts in about two weeks.”

This is where I knew he’d been going with the conversation, and I didn’t want to think about it.

Every year, kids from ages fourteen to eighteen could, if they had a super power, try out to join one of the superhero teams.  If you were good enough, or had enough potential, you’d get recruited to go study in-residence at the Academy (where they help develop your powers) with one of the superhero teams as your sponsor.  If you succeeded there, the expectation was that you’d eventually get an offer to join the team that had supported you.  In a sense, it was a lot like being a high school athlete who college scouts were trying to recruit.

My tryout two years earlier had been a disaster of epic proportions.  (It was also what had landed me my own “Wanted” poster.)  It was something that I tried, unsuccessfully, to put out of my mind almost every day of the week.  Being reminded of it now didn’t help.

“It’s time you put the past behind you,” he went on. 

“Yeah, right.  Because my tryout last time was such a rousing success.”

“You know, when you think about it, you didn’t really do anything wrong.  And you can’t tell me that you haven’t been giving it some thought.”

“Well, I haven’t,” I lied.  “I’ve had other things on my mind – like who’s been following me.”

BT was a little startled.  “What?”

“Yeah, someone was following me today.  Some guy I haven’t seen before.”

“When?  Where?”

“In the shopping district today, after I brought in Drillbit.”

I launched into a quick explanation of how I’d sensed Pinchface and then given him the slip.

BT frowned in thought for a moment before asking a question.

“Can you show me what he looked like?”

“Sure.”

I closed my eyes in concentration.  My intent was to plant an image of Pinchface in BT’s mind.  Normally, I don’t go mucking about in other people’s brains.  As I already mentioned, the telepathic stuff really isn’t in my wheelhouse.  In fact, reading minds was, for me, like taking a bath in someone else’s vomit.  (From my standpoint, people had a lot of mental “filth” in their brains.)  It usually made me nauseous - my grandfather once compared it to a doctor who gets squeamish at the sight of blood - so in my opinion, it’s not a talent that I truly possess, despite technically being a telepath.

Reading BT was different, though.  His mind was the exact opposite of other people’s:  clean, sterile – antiseptic, in fact. 

BT opened his mind to me, so I had no trouble getting inside.  As I said, though, he had a titanic intellect, and I knew that he could shut most telepaths out if he wanted to.  Right now, however, his mind was a clear, open space, a dimensional void where nothing existed but bright, pervasive light.

I focused on the picture I had of Pinchface in my head.  The light in BT’s mind shimmered, started taking on color and form.  It was an oval at first, an upside-down egg that began assuming features I recognized:  cheeks, eyes, a nose.... Suddenly, the face solidified in all its detail.  I withdrew from his brain.

“Got it,” BT said.  “I’ll check it out and let you know.”

As I said, BT trucked in the area of information.  He’d have no trouble finding out who Pinchface was.

“You also said that you didn’t notice him initially because you were distracted,” he continued.  “A new power?”

“Yeah - good guess - but I don’t know what it is yet.”

“But you have the sensation that usually accompanies a new ability?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmmm…maybe it’s an augmentation of your existing powers rather than something new.  Care to run through some exercises?”

I shrugged.  “Sure thing.  I’m in no rush.”

We then went through a quick series of exercises that involved me using each of my powers.  We started with invisibility.  As usual, when I turned invisible, my vision automatically switched over to the infrared spectrum.  It was another ancillary power; once my eyes became invisible, I couldn’t see across the visible light spectrum the way normal people do, so I used infrared (although, in truth, I could also see across other wavelengths of light). 

After invisibility, we went through all of my other primary and secondary powers as well: flight, teleportation, phasing, and so on  – the whole shebang.  It took a little bit of time because, to be frank, I’ve got way more powers than the average super. 

“I’m not seeing anything outside the ordinary – for you, that is,” BT stated, shaking his head when we’d finished. “In all honesty, though, I still don’t fully understand your power set.”

“What’s to understand?  I’ve got super powers, just like a lot of other people.”

“It’s not quite as banal as you make it sound.  There are roughly seven billion people on this planet.  Approximately two million of them are supers, or metas, or whatever term you like for someone with super powers.  Ninety-nine percent of those have powers that barely register as anything above normal, like being able to float half an inch off the ground.  That remaining one percent consists of those individuals who have powers that fall into Levels A through D, the ones that generally come to mind when we think of supers.”

“And A-Level - as the highest-ranked - would be along the lines of the Alpha League, I take it?”

BT nodded.  The Alpha League was the premiere superhero team on the planet.  Led by the invincible Alpha Prime, they were the best of the best, the superheroes all others were measured against.

“But,” he continued, “even among groups like the Alpha League, you’ll usually find that most people only have one or two primary powers – nothing like the smorgasbord you’ve got.”

“Well, you just said it yourself:  some people are born with no powers whatsoever.  It only stands to reason that someone would be born at the other end of the spectrum with lots of abilities.  I guess I just got lucky and hit the jackpot.”

“Yes, but a lot of your powers are completely redundant.  For instance, you don’t need super speed
and
teleportation; one is almost just as good as the other.  You don’t need shapeshifting
and
the ability to turn invisible; both are camouflage techniques, but why have two of them?  Likewise, I’m not sure that you need to be both a telepath
and
an empath – knowing what people are thinking as well as what they’re feeling – although those two often go hand-in-hand.”

“So basically, when they were giving out powers, I had a special two-for-one coupon in my pocket.”

“I guess that’s one way to look at it.  Except your powers keep expanding – even though you already have almost all of the highly-regarded abilities.”

“Except super strength,” I reminded him.

“Yes,” he acquiesced with a slight nod, “but you can mimic it well enough that you don’t need it.”

I knew what he meant. Basically, when I’m moving at super speed, much of what I can do is amplified and can give the impression of having super strength.  As an experiment, BT had once had me hit a baseball at normal speed.  I got off a good hit, but nothing to write home about.  He had then had me hit a second ball at super speed; it landed almost a mile away.

Still, being able to mimic super strength and actually having it were two different things.  Personally, I preferred to have the real McCoy, and I stated as much.

“Talk about ingratitude,” BT said, shaking his head in mock disappointment.  “Most people would give their right arm for just one of your powers, and all you can do is cry about what you can’t do.”

“Fine, I’m a big baby.  So if that’s it, I’m going to go home and cry myself to sleep.”

“Yeah, that’s it.  Give your mother and grandfather my regards.”

Chapter 3

After finishing with Braintrust, I teleported home.  My real home.  Although the apartment was effectively my secret lair, I actually lived with my mother in a quaint little two-story in the suburbs.  I appeared upstairs in my bedroom, and almost immediately found myself under psychic attack. 

A good telepath is like a professional safecracker.  They can stealthily sneak into your mind, deftly spinning the tumblers of your psyche until they find a way in.  Then they take whatever valuables they can find and leave without you ever being aware of it. 

Of course, some telepaths don’t care about being nimble.  Rather than adroitly picking the locks of your brain, they come at you like a SWAT team on a raid, using a battering ram on the door of your mind and rushing in to suppress any resistance and take control of the premises.  This attack was of the second kind.

Thinking of the mind as a house is a pretty good way to conceptualize it, although a better analogy is probably a castle with a lot of nooks and crannies.  Just like a real castle, you need to fortify your defenses; it doesn’t hurt to give yourself a mental moat, high walls, etc. 

My attacker came at me like a blunt instrument.  It was an attack on all fronts at once.  However, there was no strategy involved; it was merely an attempt to overwhelm me with sheer force of will.  In short, my mind-castle was under siege on all sides.

I fought back valiantly, mentally firing arrows and dumping hot tar on my attacker.  He didn’t give up, though.  What he lacked in strategy, he made up for in strength, and it wasn’t long before he found a crack in my walls.  He worried at it, expanded it, and soon he had an army pouring through.  Which is exactly what I wanted.

My nemesis soon came to realize that his makeshift entry into my castle was a dead end; it led nowhere.  But before he could get back out, the exit sealed up behind him.  Then the walls started closing in.  He hammered at them without avail, gave a mental screech, then evaporated from my mind. 

>
I thought.  Less than a minute had passed since I had popped into my room, but I was sweating and breathing hard.  Mental battles can take a lot out of you.

came the reply, with a mental chuckle.  your
mind, come onto
your
turf.  Remember:  your mind, your rules.  Come by when you get a moment; I want to talk to you about something.>

With that, contact broke off.  I beamed; it may have sounded like he had some complaints, but that was high praise coming from the old man, my grandfather.  I vaulted down the stairs two at a time and headed to the kitchen for a drink.

“Jim?” It was my mother.  As usual, she was in her office.  Mom was a moderately successful author of superhero romances (albeit under a pseudonym), so she tried to spend at least four hours per day writing.

“It’s me,” I answered.  “Just getting a drink of water.”

“Have you eaten yet?”  I heard the slight squeak of her chair as she rose, and the firm cadence of her footsteps as she headed towards the kitchen.  “Do you want me to make you something?”

“No, I’m fine,” I stated as she came into view.

In typical mom fashion, she came over and began picking at my clothes, removing inconsequential strands of hair, lint and the like.

“So, any big plans for tonight?  It’s Friday, you know.”

“Not really,” I replied.  “Probably just stay here and play video games.”

“You’ve only got a few weeks before school starts again.  Don’t you want to go hang out with your friends?”