Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Read online

  Wraith

  Origins of Supers: Book Three

  Author: D. L. Harrison

  Copyright 2021. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other books by D. L. Harrison:

  Book Description

  Prologue

  My name is Amber Morris, and I am Wraith.

  Let’s see, it’s been about twenty years since mom covered her first month as a quickened super. The world was a lot different, but I’ll try to get to the good stuff quickly and not bury you in the minutiae. Hmm, where to start?

  The world’s population is right around seven billion, a full seventh of it is homo-sapiens thanks to that nut-bag, Dr. Grayson. For the first time this year, over fifty percent of the world is quickened. Given all of the second generation had long ago gained their abilities, save those poisoned by the aforementioned nut-bag.

  Only pre-pubescent third gens, first gens that didn’t trigger, and the poisoned. It’s pretty clear though that by the next generation that number will be up to around eighty five percent.

  Of course, twenty percent of us supers don’t have offensive or defensive capabilities, another ten percent only weakly so. Then there’s the twelve or thirteen percent of old humans, so there will always be bystanders for superheroes to protect when the supervillains get out of hand.

  If you’ve been following along, that leaves about thirty percent of the population with strong active powers that can kick ass. Thing is, most of them just want to live their lives, we’re all still human. All the old humans could’ve picked up a gun and defended people in a law enforcement career, or become volunteer fireman, but it was dangerous, so only a few did it.

  Supers were no different, we were just human too.

  Of the few percent left, that was still a great number of people, split up between supervillains and superheroes. There was also more than just patrolling superheroes looking for crime as well, with the changes rolled in for over a decade and a half supers also ran fire and EMT emergency services, the FBI, secret service, private detectives, security, the military branches, and bodyguards.

  The non-violent superpowers such as telepaths, empaths, and pre-cogs had taken over the spy agencies and the healers the health industry. Healers like my great-aunt Debra weren’t that common, but there were enough healers to go around, given only a very small part of the population would even ever need healing outside of severe combat trauma.

  There’d been a lot of cutbacks in the U.S. government. Aid programs for disability and huge healthcare costs just wasn’t a thing anymore.

  Other countries had gone a similar way, but not all. Some parts of the world were messy. There were several countries that could have coups every other week in some places. Powers or not, we were still human, and corruption at high levels of government were just to be expected, especially in parts of the world ran by dictatorial governments.

  There was no more pollution at all, and we had colonies on the moon and Mars, both of those things were attributed to the inventions of mad scientists in the private sector.

  The world was far from perfect though a lot of things were better in this new world. There was also the matter of all those weapons of mass destruction walking around, and there were a lot of supervillains, fortunately there were a lot of superheroes as well. Despite all the super fights, collateral damage was extremely low and dealt with quickly, and collateral deaths were extremely rare.

  But they still happened, no one was perfect, and we were all still just human at the end of the day. Still, it was better than the early days, when my grandmother Death’s Mistress took to the skies.

  Who… still looked more like my mother’s twin than a grandmother close to seventy. They both looked right around twenty-four, and you’d have to look very close to see a difference in their faces, though mom was three inches taller. About all the scientists could agree on was that we weren’t immortal, and we would eventually age and die, but so far no one quickened had physically aged past their early to mid-twenties in appearance.

  The tests suggested our lifespan was two to three times longer, and we’d only age visibly in the last six months of our lives. Not a bad deal, young, beautiful, and healthy for a whole lifetime, until almost the very end, thanks to the regenerative power of the cosmic energy our mitochondria harnessed and put to use in our bodies.

  But of course, it was just theory until it actually happened, and the proof wouldn’t come for another hundred and forty years or so, if they were right.

  I’d inherited the golden blonde hair, but it was a bit lighter, and the blue eyes. I was also an inch shorter than mom at five foot three, which seemed wrong, but I’d gotten her larger bust and curvier body, so I’d survive. Plus, I was still hoping to get taller, but that seemed unlikely since I was about to quicken and already seventeen years old.

  Another late bloomer, thanks for that, mom.

  On the neat side, I could raid my mom’s wardrobe, we were close enough for that.

  My quickening was quite frankly much less cool than my mother and grandmother’s stories. My grandmother quickened while falling off a damned bridge in a car, desperate to save mom who was a toddler at the time. My mother’s quickening saved teachers, and over five hundred of her fellow students from a nut-case with an energy power, not to mention grams life. My quickening wasn’t nearly so exciting.

  I’d always felt the pressure of growing up in a family and extended family that served and protected the people as superheroes, but as quickening moments go, I totally missed the bar. To be fair, supervillains knew better than to attack schools anymore, and any that did usually ended up dead.

  The truth is… I was late for sixth period class that day. Mostly because I’d been chatting with Lia, my best friend, and we’d lingered far too long after the lunch bell. It’d seemed really important at the time to finish our conversation, although just a few months later and I honestly couldn’t remember what it was about.

  There was a test that day in history, and Mr. Garrett had a disturbing habit of locking the door right at the bell on test days, which would no doubt lead to a detention when I tried to explain why I wasn’t in class to the principal.

  Point being, I was already slightly stressed as I moved with alacrity down the hallways, which were quickly clearing around me, when I ran into Todd Johnson and several of his friends surrounding Daniel Burke.

  Todd Johnson was simply put, a bully. We were still human, and some kids were still less than kind. The existence of bullies were certainties in life, like death and taxes. Daniel Burke was small, kind of geeky, and an empath, a perfect target for a loser with self-esteem issues and enough strength to bench press twenty tons. His posse wasn’t much better.


  They knew better than to use their powers to hurt Daniel, but they were using their advantages to keep him penned in so they could… express their moronic tendencies in a way that would upset their target. Classic bullying, losers with low esteem always wanted to pull the people around them to their level of misery, to feel better about themselves. Which was pathetic, but it was what it was.

  Point being, they were circling Daniel, and completely blocking the hallway so I couldn’t get by to my class which was right around the corner.

  I know what you’re thinking, I quickened and used my new powers to rescue Daniel, but nope. That would’ve just gotten me suspended anyway. We could only use our powers against another in immediate life and death situations, otherwise it was just plain assault, even against bullying morons. Only a government registered and qualified super could bring force to bear outside of life and death situations, legally.

  That doesn’t mean they had to work for said government, just that they’d passed the courses which included stringent psychological screening.

  Regardless, I kind of panicked, the idiotic posse didn’t even notice me, and it was at the moment I heard the big heavy door around the corner close with a loud banging finality that meant I was going to get a big fat zero on my history test, when my quickening was triggered.

  I know, totally lame, right? Which is why my quickening story is part of the introduction.

  My heart pounded, and my body flushed with oversensitive tingling awareness. It felt like drinking just a cup too much coffee, the energy of it was shocking and really hard to describe. It was also permanent. I couldn’t imagine getting used to it, but we’d been taught we would. I was wide awake, my body was suddenly zinging with power, and I was late for class.

  I was pretty focused on my desk in the classroom at that moment, with the stupid gouge on the left side of it, and only god knew how many generations of gum stuck to the bottom.

  The world… stuttered, and I was disoriented for a moment as my mouth popped open in shock. To my credit, I recovered quickly, and tried to slip into my seat unnoticed, but invariably the whole class was staring at me in shock.

  Yeah, no one had ever had a teleport power before. Teleportation was pretty common in our world, almost all travel involved teleporting booths, from crossing town, to visiting a friend on Mars.

  Clearly, it wasn’t a part or an offshoot development of my mother’s powerset, as Lady Aegis. My father’s powerset came closer, it was at least in the mind power category, which told me I probably had telekinesis too but only testing would find out. I knew better than to try and experiment in history class during a quiz.

  That wasn’t all that uncommon. Sometimes powersets varied within a family, but they were always based on similar things, and they never included parts of two different powersets of parents. One per person was the rule, and inheritance still wasn’t fully understood.

  As an amusing side note, I’d recently read my mom’s account of her quickening and first days, and I almost soiled myself laughing when she called dad a pervert. It was hard to imagine, though he can be clueless at times. Sorry dad.

  By the way, if the person reading this is mom, I totally got an eighty-seven on that history quiz…

  Chapter One

  The second sublevel at mom’s work was where power testing was done for the newly quickened. It also encouraged and led people to control of their powers in a relatively short time. I’d already been through all the classes on it in school, I knew it should be natural, and I knew the rules in using it.

  The setup was a simple gauntlet of room after room of test apparatus, with a line of adjoining rooms with all kinds of recording and measuring technologies, where the technician can supervise and guide. Of course, unlike my grandmother’s time, the intercom was always on when a room was in use, and they weren’t measuring people to see if they were safe to live.

  I had a lot to live up to, both my mother and grandmother were living legends, it was intimidating to say the least. I honestly wasn’t even sure I wanted to try, but more on that later.

  “It’s dark in here, just saying.”

  Wynn laughed over the intercom, “It’s to encourage energy users to create a light of some kind. Instinctual response,” as she brought the lights up.

  No night light for me.

  She said, “Walk up to the pedestal, and touch the small silver globes.”

  Right, this should be unpleasant. I walked over to the pedestal, which had various types of minor energy attacks that were less than deadly, but covered sonic weapons, fire, cold, lightning, and who knew what else.

  I took a deep breath, and I touched the contacts.

  Electricity coruscated around my body, and I felt my hair stand on end, but otherwise it was totally fine. It kind of tickled.

  My mother hummed an odd questioning note.

  “It’s not a shield, the readings are strange.”

  I tossed my hair, “Take your time,” I said in the casual indifference of a teenager, even as my heart was pounding in my chest.

  I could feel my power doing something, but I had no idea what. Some powers did work that way, almost subconsciously, but this felt complicated.

  She said, “Harmony believes you’re telekinetic. We’re reading a telekinetic shield around you, but the problem is that should only stop physical attacks, not pure energy like lightning.”

  I frowned, “I’m not stopping it. I feel like I’m guiding it, subconsciously maybe. Keeping it away from my body, and completing a circuit using my shield, somehow.”

  I shrugged at the window, which made mom snicker. So far the technician had remained silent, but then my mother was second in command at the place and was probably abusing her position to oversee my testing.

  She said, “Harmony seems to think it indicates you can control matter on the micro level as well as the macro. You’re making the air less resistant than your skin, at least in a few molecules wide trail around your body from contact to contact. In short, you’re not controlling the lightning at all, just giving it another path other than your body by controlling the molecules in the air. Okay, step back, we’re going to try sound waves next.”

  The sound waves didn’t do much better against me. Apparently sound required air to propagate, and I had some limited control over the air itself. Not like an air wielder power, but through telekinesis. In the case of sound, apparently I just needed to prevent the air molecules from vibrating, right at the speaker.

  It was an instinctual understanding of what I was doing when the machine got loud enough to hurt my ears and vibrate my body, but I wasn’t really consciously controlling it, until I decided to.

  I was also resistant to fire and cold, but not immune. My mind keeping the molecules in my clothes and body from heating up and setting on fire, by slowing down their vibrations and keeping them a normal temperature. It was interesting, and a little worrying because as far as I knew it was all new. No one with telekinesis had ever been able to control things on the molecular level before.

  Of course, that might also explain why I was able to teleport.

  The first generation of supers had some pretty useless powers, the second generations were stronger, and no one had an incomplete power. It was thought that the first generation was a flux generation. That they weren’t entirely ready because of the partially unnatural jump in evolution. At that point, I was wondering if the third generation wouldn’t have similar advances to the second, more subtleties in power expression.

  Or, maybe I just didn’t want to be special, and I was grabbing for an explanation that made my new powers seem more… normal.

  The door opened to the next room, and I walked through. If you’ve read my mother’s and grandmother’s accounts, you already know the layout of the room. Right in front of me was a crossbar hung between two thick metal hydraulic poles sticking out of the ceiling. Past that, was a three-sided booth for kinetic projectile testing of shields, and a third booth with objects of vary
ing degrees of fragility.

  I was able to float up to reach the bar, but I knew immediately it wasn’t true flying or flight ability. I was literally hoisting myself up into the air with my mind, and it didn’t feel natural at all. I also didn’t believe I’d be able to fly very quickly, but I’d improve with practice. I let myself lower to the ground, no point in holding myself up, and I just held the bar with my mind.

  There was no point in doing it with my hands, I knew I didn’t have super strength.

  My mom said, “Here we go.”

  I could feel the bar push down against my power, like my mind was a new muscle and I could feel the increasing strain of holding it still. It was a depressingly short amount of time later, when I had to let it go.

  My mother said, “Just over ten thousand pounds, five tons.”

  I sighed, my grandmother’s shields could lift sixty tons, and my mother’s about seventy-four. My mental strength was about equal with the average bruiser with strength and toughness powers. Clearly, I wouldn’t be able to go head to head with anyone tougher like they could, but there were ways around that.

  Still, lifting five tons with the power of my mind wasn’t shabby at all, it was more than dad or great uncle Germaine could handle with their telekinesis.

  She said, “So, flight, telekinesis, and teleportation, plus active telekinesis shielding of some kind.”

  I shook my head, “No flight, I used telekinesis.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I gave her a bratty look.

  She giggled, “Fine, I trust you. Get in the booth, you should be fine until we hit fifty cal. ammo, so I’m setting a hard stop there. Fifty cal. hits at about sixteen hundred pounds of impact.”

  I said, “Alright,” but I wasn’t convinced she was right. I couldn’t stop the full force of it head on, but I was fairly sure deflection was in the cards. Ten thousand pounds of pressure at an eighty-degree angle should change the bullet’s trajectory significantly, enough to miss me even from close range, but it was probably better not to ever test that theory unless I was desperate.