Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Read online

I focused hard, and started to rip it all out, and when I saw what looked like a dimensional reactor, I ripped it out with a feral grin. The ship’s power died, and it started to fall like a brick toward the ground with the drives offline.

  That was okay, because I gripped harder, and started to slow down, while holding it up at the same altitude. It took quite a while to slow it down, it was less than ten thousand pounds, but we were doing something like Mach fourteen, so it took time to stop the thing given all that momentum. I had no idea where I was outside of over America somewhere, at ten thousand or so feet, when I lowered the ship and us down toward the ground.

  No power had also killed his suppression field and the anti-technology field.

  Aura said, “There you are, how the hell did you get to Montana so fast?”

  Lia snorted, “Spaceship. I don’t think Amber liked it, because she made a mess.”

  I giggled, and it was a bit crazy sounding, but I was going with it.

  When it hit the ground, we both started walking toward it. I really had made a damned mess in the engineering section, but I ignored it as we marched into the big hole in the ship. The connecting door to the front of the craft was closed, but I ripped it out with a thought.

  That’s when I saw the pain in the ass for the first time. He was short, bald, and not at all appealing. He was also rolled up in a ball on the deck, and violently throwing up, with tears running down his face. The man didn’t even look aware of his surroundings.

  We walked through the door, and that’s when we saw Kara. She looked beat up, bruised, and had obviously been through a bad time. She was still tied up to a chair. At the same time, she was hardly cowed, and she was glaring at her kidnapper with death in her eyes.

  Lia walked over and cuffed him, but really a mad scientist was helpless without any technology, and I’d just killed the power to all his toys.

  Hmm, Chris would probably be mad at me, there was no way they’d be able to figure it out now. Unless there was a data drive that was still intact, maybe. I was pretty sure I’d crushed the main computer though. What can I say? After all we’d been through, I’d totally lost patience with this madman and his damned toys.

  “Kara?”

  Her jaw twitched in angry focus, and the stalker screamed in a tortured voice devoid of all hope.

  Yeah, note to self, never piss off a projective empath.

  Kara spat on him, since apparently wearing his own puke wasn’t enough, as I untied her from the chair. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that bastard had done to her, when she jumped up and kicked him in the head while letting out a wounded scream of her own.

  Kara took a deep shuddering breath, “Thank you.”

  The stalker’s body suddenly relaxed, and he passed out.

  Aura said, “Prepare for teleport.”

  I nodded, “You’re welcome, here, hold this.”

  I handed her my cuffs, which had a teleport beacon in it similar to the ones in our watches. A second later, the four of us were transported directly to the cell block in super headquarters back in Excelsior, New York.

  My mother was there, with a petrified look on her face, but she didn’t do more than look me over before she removed the cuffs, picked up the mad scientist, and threw him into a cell, none too gently.

  She said, “Harmony is sending Chris and Silvia to the site, to see if they can salvage anything. If another mad scientist makes the same breakthrough, it’d be good if we had defenses against it.”

  I blushed, “Sorry, but it was a crazy ride, I should’ve been more selective when I…” I trailed off as she pulled me into a fierce hug.

  She said, “We were all scared when you disappeared from the radar.”

  “I see, so you’re watching me then?”

  She blushed, “Me?”

  I snorted, but I wasn’t really mad or surprised she’d watch out for me. I’d have been more surprised if she wasn’t. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give her crap over it, as a teen daughter trying to blaze my own trail in life it was a moral imperative to do so.

  Still, I let it go for now, there was a time and a place.

  Kara gave a statement before we went back to the hotel, suffice it to say the mad scientist wouldn’t be seeing the sun for quite a long time. Kara’s bruises faded long before we went back, and Sarita was extremely glad to see her.

  We wound up skipping the night out, and after officially relieving the other team we all ordered in pizza and just hung out while keeping an eye out for trouble.

  We didn’t expect any more trouble, and no more trouble came for the rest of Sarita’s time in town.

  Unless of course, Death’s Mistress could be counted as trouble. My grandmother showed up for about an hour, to chat with Sarita and accept her thanks and accolades, but I was fairly sure she was there to check up on me too. Subtly of course.

  I was fine, really. The mission had gone south, and I’d almost died a few times, but in all we’d won the day. In the end, that’s what counted. We’d also gained a couple of fans and friends, and our first job although not without its issues, ended with a positive review from one of the most popular and beloved pop stars of our age.

  Not too shabby for our first case.

  Chapter Nine

  The late afternoon sun filtered through the living room window as we had a celebration of sorts. I was on the couch between Chris and Lia, leaning on the former, while our older team sat on the matching brown leather love seat, and my uncle had his feet up in the recliner. Lia and I had just finished our debrief and critique session.

  “Were you able to find anything useful?” I asked.

  Chris replied, “We’re still going over everything, but we believe the electronic scrambling field takes a whole lot of power and it was part of his ship. He must’ve approached the hotel in the ship while cloaked, it’s why you didn’t pick anything up. The cloaking he had was standard, the same cloaking tech supers have been using for forty years in the smaller drones. Of course, to hide something that size, his reactor must’ve been impressive.”

  Lia snickered, “I remember it being rather large, as Amber pulled it out of the ship with her mind and crushed it into pieces.”

  I blushed, and elbowed her, not that she even noticed, being super tough and me having normal strength. I’d been more than a little pissed at the time, if I hadn’t stumbled across Lia she’d have died when the outer ship blew up.

  I also had a new respect for mad scientists, I was just glad he hadn’t built weapons into his outer hull, or we really would’ve been screwed.

  Aura appeared in a professional looking red women’s suit and blouse, with a skintight black top beneath. She wasn’t really there, but I assumed we were all seeing her, unless someone wasn’t wearing their HUD contacts.

  The television snapped on, and she said, “Big news.”

  The anchor of the twenty-four-hour news station was already mid-spiel, with a picture of a burning building in the background. It was unidentifiable and almost completely consumed.

  “The leader of the super group goes by the name Dragonfire, and he has gained control of the final three Chinese provinces early this morning reuniting the vast country under one ruler for the first time in decades. It appears the long civil war has come to an end, and many world leaders will be sure to be looking that way nervously tonight since his first act has been to recruit all supers of great power into the military.”

  America had its dark times and black marks in the past when it came to the transition of humanity from homo-sapiens to homo-potens. The SAB’s systemic murder of citizens and the worldwide terrorist Dr. Grayson were just two of the most obvious instances, and the worst. But the people of China had seen various bloody revolutions on the province scale, and civil war between the provinces for the last forty or so years.

  I could see where a suddenly unified China with a violent government would make the world nervous, since their population was about a fifth of the world’s populati
on, which would also give them the largest military in the world.

  The world stage and world politics had been a touchy thing for a long while now, no country including the U.S. was recognizable as what it was seventy years ago, but overall it’d been a good thing as repressive dictatorial regimes were overthrown by a populace who no longer feared their murderous governments, given their own power. China was an exception to that rule, and the opposite had occurred.

  From what I knew, Dragonfire had been little better than a gang leader with a silver tongue forty years ago, a supervillain who’d stirred up others to join him. That gang of supervillains had grown vast over the years, and systematically gained control of China one province at a time. He placed his own lieutenants to rule over those provinces, as he himself ruled over an expanding empire.

  The one good thing that could be said was nuclear war was off the table, those weapons had been destroyed before I’d been born. Of course, dimensional bombs were just as effective, and had no fallout, but the world had agreed not to build those either. That was something even Dragonfire had agreed to. The last thing he would want was to die in a dimensional energy bomb when he himself was one of the strongest fire supers on the planet.

  The question was if Dragonfire was going to try to rule the world, or if he’d settle in. The world hadn’t seen a large-scale war, a world war, for almost a hundred and thirty years. That his first act had been a forced draft of every super in China with offensive and defensive powers, didn’t bode well for that question.

  Of course, that wasn’t a sure thing, I hoped. The U.S. had a similar law, if war came we’d all be drafted, anyone capable. In a way, we already were, as reserves. That said, we weren’t active military, and that was a big difference.

  Lia said, “He couldn’t win, no one’s ever been able to rule the world, despite trying. Maybe he’s just paranoid about keeping what he finally gained.”

  Jace replied, “It depends on how quickly the rest of the world governments come together. He could chew a piece at a time. There’s not much anyone could or should do about it yet though, so far he’s stayed in his own sandbox. If the Axis hadn’t overextended themselves in World War two, things might have turned out differently for the allied countries.

  “Several of the countries around him are unsteady, and despite his ambition he doesn’t mistreat his people and he has a silver tongue to stir up the populace. He’s inspirational, a great orator, and he brings order and safety to the average citizen. The problem of course, is that he puts down any political rivals ruthlessly.”

  Ella said, “There’s not much we can do about it though, unless it comes to war. If it doesn’t, it could even be a good thing to calm that part of the world. We have to wait and see.”

  I nodded, “True. Any predictions?” I asked both Jace and Aura.

  Aura said, “There’s a lot of variables. I don’t feel confident predicting his actions, much less the world’s in response if he chooses to lead a conquering army. That said, it’s a serious situation, and tensions are rising.”

  Jace shook his head, “Our power doesn’t work that way. I might see something if one of us gets involved somehow, or if the city is threatened, but we don’t see much on the world stage.”

  Gabriel said, “It seems to me India is the biggest threat to them, and fairly close to them as well. If they make a move, I’d imagine that they’d try to invade there first?”

  That was true enough. The U.S. no longer really counted as one of the few premiere world powers, since that was measured by superpower now, or population. Our country had a population a seventh the size China, in that way we hardly even rated. India on the other hand, had the second largest population in the world, and were right behind China on the world stage as far as military might.

  Of course, training mattered, and we still had one of the best trained militaries in the world, but at six to one odds I had to wonder if believing that was simply hubris. Training did matter of course, superheroes showed that every day in taking down supervillains who were equal in power but had no training.

  We also weren’t weak by any stretch, the U.S. still had the third largest population in the world at over three hundred million, but we were a very distant third in comparison to China and India. Our competitors there were much closer to us, than we were to the top two.

  Jace nodded, “Which gets back to my point, if the world’s countries just watch something like that happen, instead of joining together right away which is doubtful, and Dragonfire wins, then he’ll control over thirty five percent of the world’s combined military might, minus his losses. It’d be all but over at that point.”

  Ella interjected, “We could go in circles all day long, and it’s out of our hands.”

  I grinned, “I’m with Ella, let’s stick our heads in the sand. There’s nothing we can do about it, let our president stress it.”

  Ella glared, which made me giggle.

  Jace tilted his head, “I have to get this,” he stood up and left the room to take his phone call.

  We were all a little lost in our thoughts, and doubts about the future. Super or not, we were all still human, and the world would always be a little bit of a mess. Maybe Dragonfire even had good intentions at some point. He obviously believed what he said as he rallied the people around him, but somewhere along the line he’d lost himself to his ambition.

  Jace came back in, “We have a job, who’s coming?”

  Lia replied, “We will, Ella and Gabriel had the last shift for our first job.”

  I nodded, “What are we doing?”

  Jace said, “Kidnapping. I’m going to find the girl, hopefully. You two are going to go get her.”

  We got up, and then followed him out the door. We didn’t always have our suits on, but we tended to be wearing them during work hours.

  Chapter Ten

  Jace was driving, and we were going with him in the car which felt a bit weird while wearing our super-suits. There was no point in flying ahead, we couldn’t do anything until Jace found a lead anyway. He also took the time to brief us on what he knew so far.

  Jace said, “Cerise Daniels is fourteen years old and was kidnapped two days ago. She has extremely affluent parents, Brian and Sheila Daniels, who were asked for a ransom. They’d thought because of that fact, that the kidnapper wasn’t an abuser that had an interest in underage girls. Simply, that it was merely a business transaction for a professional kidnapping, and that they’d get her back safely.”

  He shook his head, “Of course, all of the initially assumed motives are in question now, since they’d obeyed the demands, hadn’t contacted the authorities, and had paid the ransom. The problem is after they’d paid the ransom, they didn’t get Cerise back. They also haven’t heard from the kidnappers in eight hours, which has both parents extremely nervous and second guessing themselves. At that point, they’d started to panic and after they considered all the options, they decided to give us a call just in case the kidnappers have spies in the government.

  “That’s about all we know right now. I’m hoping I’ll be able to pick something up like I did for Kara, and I’ll point you both in the right direction.”

  “How was she taken?” I asked.

  “Not sure, we’ll find out more when we get there. You two can talk to them while I check out the girl’s room, find some hair or something to get a vision, hopefully of the present or future.”

  I nodded, “We can do that.”

  The mansion we arrived at made ours look like a small cottage. It was a three-story colonial with at least sixteen bedrooms on the second and third floors, then there were the wings. The white mansion with dark green trim stood on hundreds of acres with artful landscaping that looked perfect. Affluent just didn’t begin to cover it. It was the kind of place billionaires lived, because millionaires just didn’t have enough money for the upkeep expenses.

  The property was surrounded by a ten-foot wall, and there were gates at the end of the drivewa
y, but we got through quickly as soon as we’d identified ourselves to security.

  I took in the parents as we walked into the place. Brian wore an Armani suit, but the jacket was open and wrinkled, and it didn’t look like he’d slept in days. Sheila had on more casual clothes, but they were still designer made. She looked a lot more put together but that was just the shell of her appearance. They were both tense, worried, and obviously loved their child.

  Jace said, “I’m Jace, this is Amber and Lia. I need to see her room right away, but my associates have some questions.”

  Brian waved at another man in the room, perhaps part of their private security, “Show him.”

  Sheila crossed her arms and hunched in on herself, as if to hold herself together.

  “What do you want to know?”

  I asked, “How was she taken?”

  Sheila replied, “On her way to the mall, to meet friends and go shopping. She never got there, and our A.I. reported her watchphone going offline shortly before we we’re contacted by the kidnappers. Her guard and driver showed up shortly after, his watch broken, and he was dismembered. He’s… still recovering.”

  “Did he see anything?” I asked, with perhaps some skepticism in my voice.

  Maybe I was overly suspicious, but it might be worth a million bucks to live through a few days of regenerating a limb.

  Brian shook his head, “If you’re thinking he’s involved, forget that. My wife is an empath, all our employees are well paid, and highly loyal.”

  Sheila patted his arm to calm him down, “It’s fine dear, they’re here to help,” she turned to us, “My husband can be rather protective of our family, and that includes our employees. The kidnappers were in masks, all Derek knows is one of them is an energy wielder, the one that took him down.”

  “Your daughter hasn’t quickened yet?”

  Chances were that she hadn’t, the typical ages are fifteen to seventeen, but fourteen was possible for some of the outliers. Even under the stress of being kidnapped, it was likely she hadn’t yet.