Ex-Superheroes Read online

  Multiple prisoners ran up to him, all of them yelling.

  “Dude, help me!”

  “I’ll pay you to bust me out of here!”

  “Come on, man!”

  The guy just brushed past them, ignoring them and concentrating on the cells.

  Somebody put a hand on his shoulder. “HEY, I’m TALKING to you!”

  That’s when the white guy used his powers to fling Mr. Handsy off the third-floor to the common area below.

  CRUNCH.

  Didn’t even look at him when he did it.

  Shit.

  After that, the inmates gave him a pretty wide berth.

  As he got closer to me, though, I realized why he looked familiar.

  I knew him.

  Doug Parth. Telekinetic enforcer for a superpowered gang based out of Sydney. I’d shipped a good bit of Ephemera to Australia, and had to pay off the Aussie cartel to do it. That’s how I knew Doug.

  What a fuckin’ stroke of luck.

  Of course, I’d rubbed shoulders with half the superpowered criminal underworld across the globe, so it wasn’t that big a stroke of luck. Although I guess the fact that Doug was one of the jailbreakers was.

  He was a douchebag-and-a-half – a murderous son of a bitch who deserved to be in Karkarin just as much as any of my fellow inmates. But he was a free man, I wasn’t, and beggars can’t be choosers.

  “Doug,” I called out to him.

  He looked up in surprise. His eyes focused on my face, and he immediately lit up. “Hunter?”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “What’s it look like?” Because of his Aussie accent, sounded more like Whassit look loik?

  “A prison break.”

  He grinned nastily. “A very selective prison break.”

  I pointed to my collar. “Can you get this off me? Whatever the fuck you’re doing, I’m in.”

  He hesitated.

  “Come on, man,” I urged him. “You know I’m good for it.”

  “Alright,” he grumbled, and flicked his fingers.

  My collar split in two and went flying off my neck.

  Such is the power of a telekinetic.

  Without the inhibiting frequencies of the collar, the part of my brain that governed my powers suddenly kicked back into gear.

  Imagine you’ve been imprisoned in a silent, dimly lit room for a year. You can barely make out the shape of your bed and the bathroom next to it. You haven’t heard more than the whisper of your feet on the carpet in 12 months. Your eyes have grown accustomed to virtual blindness, your ears to near-silence.

  Then suddenly somebody turns a spotlight on you and cranks heavy metal at 100 decibels.

  Yeah. That’s what it was like.

  I gasped and staggered against the third-floor railing. My ‘sixth sense’ was suddenly back on line after 12 months of radio silence, and it was like a freight train roaring through my skull.

  “You alright, mate?” Doug asked in his Aussie accent.

  “I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth, and forced myself to straighten up and ignore the pain. “What’re we doing?”

  Doug brushed past me and began scanning the cells again. “We’re lookin’ for a couple of people. Rodovan Golubovic’s at the top of the list.”

  Genocide Gol?

  Fuck.

  This was worse than I thought.

  Golubovic was a grade-A psychopath who’d made a name for himself taking out gypsies in Serbia. You know, just cuz he hated gypsies. He was an electrokinetic, capable of manipulating electrical blasts. Last I’d heard, he was responsible for 850 deaths. Right before he was caught, he’d supposedly killed 150 gypsy women and children in a shelter for abused women. Easy pickins.

  What the hell kind of deal had I gotten mixed up in?

  “Why are we springing him?”

  “‘Cause he’s on the list,” Doug said. “Do you know where he is?”

  I knew exactly where he was. Cell Block D, second level.

  “No idea,” I answered.

  “Fuck,” Doug hissed. He kept trudging past inmates cowering in their cells, and killed a few who made the mistake of touching him. Lots of screams and broken bones as they went over the third-floor railing.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you working for the Serbians?”

  “Later. What about Vasily Romanov? Know him?”

  Shapeshifter. Liked to turn into people that women knew – their husbands, boyfriends – gain entrance to their homes, then rape and strangle them.

  I knew him, all right.

  “Can’t say I do,” I said.

  “Shit. Enrico Paredo?”

  Aerokinetic. Flying son of a bitch. Terrorist who’d taken down seven airliners over three years, killing over 2000 people total.

  “Not ringing a bell.”

  Doug glared at me. “How long have you been in here, anyway?”

  “There’s a lot of guys in here.”

  “You’re makin’ me rethink my decision to free you.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll pay off.”

  He shook his head and kept going.

  Suddenly the black guy appeared with five prisoners in tow behind him. I recognized them as some of the worst of the worst: serial killers, terrorists, assassins. All of them were incredibly powerful – and none of them had their collars on anymore.

  The black guy glared at me. “Who the fuck is he? He’s not on the list.”

  “I know him,” Doug said. “Trust me, he’s solid.”

  “If he’s not on the list, he’s not coming with us,” the black guy snarled.

  “Just tell me who you want me to kill,” I said.

  I always did know the right thing to say.

  The black guy squinted at me, then turned his attention to Doug. “Where’s Golubovic, Romanov, and Paredo?”

  “We were just – ”

  “FREEZE!”

  I looked down at the second level and saw 15 guards with automatic weapons pointed right at us.

  Two problems, though.

  One: we had the high ground.

  Two: it was two murderous assholes with superhuman powers versus some guys with popguns. Not exactly a fair contest.

  They should have shot first and yelled ‘Freeze!’ later.

  Instead, Doug knocked them on their asses with his telekinesis, and the black guy started liquefying their heads with sonic blast after sonic blast.

  I watched in horror as heads exploded and men screamed.

  I mean, don’t get me wrong. We’re talking about prison guards here. They were brutal, foul-tempered, and had a sadistic streak a mile wide. (Of course, those were all pluses when you worked in a place like Karkarin.) As an inmate, I liked the guards about as much as I liked the clap.

  But I was a smuggler by trade.

  Not a murderer.

  I’d wanted to break out of this joint, not kill a bunch of working stiffs who had wives and kids back home.

  When the fourth guy got his head reduced to jelly, I’d had enough – so I used my powers.

  Force fields.

  That was my thing: invisible barriers. Army scientists said it had something to do with alignment of trillions of subatomic energy particles on a quantum level. Whatever. All I knew was, I could create walls you couldn’t see – and they could fuck you up.

  Just one year ago, I could do all sorts of shit:

  Create barriers that no bullet could punch through.

  Forge marble-sized spheres that could blast through skulls and steel doors alike.

  Sculpt fields around my body that could withstand the depths of the ocean or the vacuum of outer space.

  Throw up shields around my sparkjet that could explode any missile currently manufactured.

  Now, after a year out of commission?

  I could basically throw a weak right cross.

  And even that made me break out in sweats.

  I imagined a sphere in my mind’s eye, then slammed into
the black guy’s face –

  But instead of breaking his jaw, the forcefield delivered something more akin to a love tap.

  The black guy still went down – but he most definitely wasn’t down for the count.

  Everybody around him looked stunned.

  Except for me. I looked like I was having a migraine – which I was.

  Doug saw my expression and asked, “Did you – ”

  Rather than use my powers again, I just used a regular right cross and decked him.

  Good ol’ violence. Contrary to popular opinion, it solves a lot of problems.

  Now Doug and the black guy were on the ground – but they were still awake, and pissed.

  Time to make my exit.

  I vaulted over the third story railing, but created an invisible platform for me to land on.

  Except even that small task made my brain feel like somebody was feeding it through a meat grinder.

  SHIT!

  Through my haze of pain, I still managed to lower myself about 15 feet before the forcefield gave out and I collapsed to the ground.

  “KILL HIM!” I heard the black guy roar.

  I rolled underneath the overhanging platforms just as a sonic wave blasted the floor behind me, turning the scuffed steel into a modern art sculpture.

  THAT was close…

  I had a tendency to piss off powerful people at the worst possible times, usually because of some quaint moral code I was attempting to uphold in a completely immoral situation.

  This was apparently one of those situations.

  Well, fuck that noise. Time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

  I ran for the far end of the prison compound, trying to put as much distance between me and the psychos I’d just double-crossed.

  That was when I heard the black guy yell, “We’ve got enough of them – let’s go!”

  Two seconds later came the shriek of collapsing steel, and then water began blasting into the prison like a fire hydrant times a thousand.

  They were going to flood the entire place.

  I struggled to calm my nerves.

  Okay – okay, I can do this – just create a forcefield around my body, get outside, and get to the surface. If I can do that, I’m home free. They’ll be sorting out the corpses for weeks – nobody will know I’m gone until I’m halfway across the –

  “Hunter?” a shaky voice squeaked behind me.

  I looked over. There was Stu and five guys on the kitchen staff, all of them terrified beyond belief.

  fuck, Fuck, FUCK.

  All I could think of were the pictures of Stu’s three kids. Little Susie just learning to read.

  There went all my glorious plans of a solo escape.

  Water was rapidly rising around our waists. In ten seconds it would be up around our necks.

  “Stick close to me!” I barked.

  Back in the day I would’ve just punched a hole through the wall and escorted us all to safety via a force field. At the moment, though, that was not an option.

  The only choice I had was to go out through wherever the water was coming in – and pray that I could hold a forcefield long enough to keep us all alive.

  I led the charge up a stairwell to the third level, hoping that we wouldn’t run into Doug, the black guy, and their merry band of psychopaths.

  God looks out for children, drunks, and unjustly imprisoned smugglers, because we didn’t see a single bad guy. Scratch that: we didn’t see a single bad guy without a collar. There were plenty of them with collars running around like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming like little girls.

  Sucked to be them.

  We made it to the third floor, where the water was blasting through the wall like a torpedo had hit it. The water level was already up to the second floor and rising fast.

  “Listen up,” I snapped at Stu and the others. “I’m going to surround us with a forcefield and get us out of here. Do NOT say shit. You interrupt my concentration, we’re FUCKED. Got it?”

  Stu and the others all nodded in terror.

  I turned back and looked at the geyser spouting out of the third-floor wall, just ten feet away.

  Over to my left, prisoners were trying to swim on the rising tide, screaming and pleading with God to save them.

  Too bad God wasn’t taking requests today.

  Ice-cold seawater rose above our knees.

  “Get ready!” I barked, then focused.

  It felt like a combination of a hangover and an icepick through my forehead.

  After a year of inactivity, my powers had gotten a hell of a lot weaker. That was the only explanation.

  Unfortunately, I was locked in a life-or-death situation, and had probably never needed my powers more than this instant.

  Life’s a bitch, and then you die.

  But not today.

  I gritted my teeth against the pain in my head and imagined a three-dimensional oval, seven feet tall and 15 feet wide, large enough to encapsulate me, Stu, and every one of the kitchen guys.

  Fireworks went off behind my eyes, but I ignored them.

  There was water around our feet, but the water rose even faster past our waists – and yet we were safe inside a bubble.

  My forcefield was holding.

  For the moment.

  “Come on… come on…” I grunted, watching as the water level rose over our heads.

  I didn’t think I was going to be able to push out against 2000 PSI of water pressure – not with my powers in their current state – so the only play we had was to wait until the entire prison flooded, the pressure equalized, and then maybe we could make our way out.

  The water rose over our heads.

  Around us, bodies floated past my forcefield. Inmates screamed out their last gasps of air, twitched, and then sloshed around with the currents.

  Well, if nothing else, the guys who had done the prison break had succeeded in ridding society of 500 bad motherfuckers.

  Except for the ones who had gills, that is.

  Although at the moment, I didn’t see a single fish man, so maybe the bad guys had made a clean sweep.

  Within 20 seconds the water completely filled the prison.

  Time to leave.

  I mentally guided the bubble through the water, then out the hole in the wall into the open ocean.

  After all the rumors about Karkarin being a mile underwater, I was half expecting the pressure to crush my pathetic little forcefield like a grape. But we stayed intact – barely.

  Not to mention there was daylight filtering down through the water.

  You can’t see sunlight a mile down, can you?

  Behind me I could hear Stu and the others sobbing and praying under their breaths.

  I ignored them. This was hard enough as it was.

  It felt like somebody had my frontal lobes in a vise while they were stabbing the rest of my brain with a Bowie knife.

  As dead bodies floated past me – and some not quite dead – I directed the forcefield up as fast as I could.

  The bodies thinned out, the light grew brighter, the water clearer.

  Hold on, goddamn it! I cursed silently. HOLD THE FUCK ON

  We were rushing up through the water as fast as I could manage when I had a thought.

  I hope we WEREN’T a mile down, or the bends will kill us even if we make it to the surface.

  I didn’t have long to contemplate that, because my forcefield broke through the surface of the ocean.

  All around us was water for miles in every direction. But at least there was air.

  I released the forcefield – the sweetest damn relief I’d ever felt in my life – and we tumbled back into the icy salt water, plunging briefly below the surface.

  I didn’t care about that.

  We were alive.

  And the samurai sword jutting through my brain? Somebody had pulled it out.

  “YOU DID IT, HUNTER!” Stu screamed joyfully. “YOU DID IT!”

  The rest of the guys were ho
oting and hollering, too.

  I wanted to join in – but I couldn’t.

  Everything was going grey. My eyesight was getting dark on the edges, and my arms and legs felt weak.

  “Hunter?” I heard Stu yell, panicked. “HUNTER!”

  I couldn’t hold on.

  Darkness overcame me, and I slipped beneath the icy waves.

  4

  I came to in a room with steel walls, sitting in front of a steel table, with my hands cuffed to the armrests of a steel chair that was bolted to the steel floor.

  At least the décor was consistent.

  I had a dull, throbbing headache – a hangover from the last use of my powers. But I was alive, so that was a start.

  Which I probably owed to Stu keeping my head above water while I was passed out.

  Thanks, buddy.

  I’d saved his life, he’d saved mine. Tit for tat.

  I hoped wherever he was right now, he was okay.

  I had no idea where I was, although everything looked too new and shiny to be Karkarin.

  Then I remembered the prison was filled with about ten million gallons of salt water right about now – so I definitely wasn’t in Karkarin.

  The cuffs, though, were suggestive. And the chair was obviously designed to detain the person in it.

  I was guessing another prison facility had ahold of me.

  Or maybe the military.

  Either option sucked.

  If Doug and the other superpowered assholes had saved me, I would be shocked. After the stunt I pulled, they probably would have just liquefied my head with a sonic blast.

  I was leaning towards the military, though. The prison system didn’t really invest much in keeping their facilities nice and shiny.

  I looked down at my body, which was clothed in dry, olive-grey fatigues – very different from the soaked, orange jumpsuit I’d last been wearing.

  Military it was, then.

  At least I was alone. That part was good, at least. It meant I might have a shot at getting off my cuffs – if they hadn’t slapped another collar on me. Whoever ‘they’ were.

  I tried to summon a small forcefield –

  And couldn’t feel anything.

  It was like I was shut back in the dark room with no sound again.

  Shit.

  They put a collar on me.