Chronicles of the Supers (Book 1): Born From Darkness (The Story of Max) (19 page)

"What are you doing?!" Dawn yelled over the radio. "You
son of a bitch I'll kill you!"

"What's going on Dawn?" James asked.

"That fucking bastard is about to let off a nuke inside the
launch silo! He's gonna kill us all with it!" Dawn yelled over
the radio.

"Well you've outlived your usefulness after all." the voice
said. "Don't feel bad though. This was always the plan. I can't
have anyone leading back to me alive. That includes you. I'm just
sorry your deaths are in vain now."

Before any more words could be exchanged, the missile detonated. The
blast tore through the base with abandon and ripped apart the
insides. While the base was fortified from an exterior attack, an
interior one, especially of the nuclear variety, had never been
considered. All of which meant the base was decimated nearly
instantly and very efficiently.

The blast tore through the barricades and exited over the top of the
base, leaving a giant mushroom cloud in its wake. Everyone who had
been working on entering to stop the terrorist plot was instantly
killed and the radiation from the thousand plus un-detonated bombs
bathed the area in an intense, scalding bath of energy, killing any
and every living thing in the entire state and most of the
surrounding states as well.

Nothing had time to adapt to the sudden and drastic change in the
environment. Everything that didn't die instantly would die within
the day as the radiation spread at nearly the speed of light across
over a thousand miles of land.

##########

President Winters sat in his office and was about to pick up the
phone to call President Vetrov when a massive rumble tore through the
bunker. The entire bunker shook and felt like it had uprooted. When
the quake stopped the President noticed the entire bunker was now
leaning a little to one side.

He left the private office and, with a little balancing trouble,
moved back to the conference room.

"Report! Now!" Winters yelled. Several people had to stop
and cover their ears for a moment due to the loud volume in the
enclosed space. After that they got to work trying to find the source
of the rumbling. It took almost 5 minutes and came from a gate guard
standing duty just inside the front gates.

"Sir, an object of unknown origins has impacted the white house
lawn."

"Get men out there and find out what it was now!" The
President ordered.

##########

"Sir, we've managed to identify the... body?" the medical
doctor told the President, questioning the last part. The truth was,
none of them knew if the person was even alive.

"And who is it?" the President asked. The person looked to
be human from the outside, but he had to be sure.

"Her name is Emily Dawson, but for a little over 2 years she
lived under the alias of Maximiliana Einhardt. She attended school in
Brittlewall North Carolina until she was arrested for mass murder.
She killed at least 6 people that the investigators knew of and is
suspected of a 7
^th
murder."

The President nearly froze. He'd heard about that case. Everyone had.
Emily/Max had been found guilty of brutally murdering a number of
rapists and other criminals. She'd even crushed the heads of a few of
them, completely obliterating their brains. It had gained national
attention very quickly and the girl had to be moved to a maximum
security prison solely for her own safety.

"So what's been going on with her? I heard some strange reports
while I was at the UN assembly." Winters said.

"Well, we're not sure. Nothing electronic works on her. EEG,
MRI, fMRI, Xray, absolutely nothing works. We suspect she's alive
because we can hear a heartbeat from our stethoscopes, but it keeps
changing in frequency every second so we're not even sure what's
going on. We've read it so high that the individual beats became
indistinguishable and other times it was only beating once every 10
seconds.

Her body is outputting massive amounts of energy in the
electromagnetic spectrum. The highest and most powerful frequencies
are in the IR and UV range but she's outputting in every range
imaginable at amounts we never even suspected were possible. We had
to create a faraday cage room just for her because she was fucking
with our equipment even at a mile away.

The 5 air conditioners inside the modified room are running overdrive
but the average temperature is over 110 degrees fahrenheit and
several of our nurses ended up with minor burns from being in the
room for only 5 minutes with her. Since then we've had to use special
suits just to check on her.

We're also seeing random electrical discharges from her body.
Occasionally a small static spark will jump a 2 foot gap to the
lightning rod we ended up having to put next to her."

As if on cue a discharge jumped from Max's body to the rod, lighting
up the room in a bright flash. The people on the other side of the
exceptionally thick observation window had to shield their eyes from
the flash and took a moment to blink the spots out before continuing
their conversation.

"We can't penetrate her skin to get an IV inside of her body
either. It's extremely tough and even a scalpel dulled and bent
without leaving a scratch. We're pretty sure she's invulnerable.

Our best option has been using a tube to feed her a blend of liquids
through her throat. Her stomach seems to be working fine in that
regards. But we're not entirely sure what's happening to her.

When the men brought her in, she had no skin or muscles. She was just
a rather disgusting lump of bones and some soft tissue. Less than 24
hours later her entire body had fully regrown and that's when our
problems began. We thought she was dead until the first electrical
discharge cost a nurse her arm and career.

To put it mildly we're only sure she's human because of the identity.
Whatever happened to her, I'd say that she's something more. Sort of
a modern, real life super human." the doctor finished up. He
looked entirely flustered as he stared at the girl through the
window. No one who'd looked at her in person had any clue what to
make of her.

The doctor had, under the orders of the head of the government, flown
in every specialist in every field he could think of. None of them
could make heads or tails of the girls case.

"Keep me posted of any new developments. I have to
go prepare for my speech." Winters said. Without waiting for a
reply he exited the observation room.

Chapter 25:

Explanations

Max felt herself floating in... nothingness? She wasn't sure. She
couldn't see anything or hear anything. Or feel anything. She floated
along for a long time before she dared to try and move.

As she
tried to move her arm she found it wouldn't respond. She tried again
but still nothing. Panicking, she tried the rest of her body. But
again nothing. She was alone and couldn't even move her body.

After
a time longer than she could count, Max began to feel something. She
couldn't tell what it was or where it was coming from, but feeling
anything was better than feeling nothing. She basked in the feeling
for a long time, but soon began to crave more. She wanted to feel
more. To know more. To see and hear and move again.

As
soon as she began to crave feeling, the entire world and all of its
feeling flooded back into her mind with so much force she felt like
she was going to pass out and lose herself back into nothingness. So
she fought as hard as she could to stay conscious.

As
soon as she opened her eyes she saw a hand pass over her face. A
moment later the sting from her cheek registered and she
instinctively punched straight up. The yelp that followed stirred Max
a bit more and she found the strength to sit up.

When
she looked across from her she saw herself.

'No
that's Milia.' Max thought as the memories of the girl flooded into
her mind.

"Glad
you remembered me after punching my arm off." Milia said. Max
looked down slightly and saw that she was missing an arm, but it was
quickly regenerating.

"Sorry."
Max said. "So what happened? Where are we?"

Before
Milia could respond the memories flooded to her mind once again. She
could remember everything up to the nuclear explosion, including the
white hot sting of the radiation.

"Yep."
Milia said, already anticipating Max's response.

"So
what? We lived through a nuclear explosion?" Max asked.

"Seems
so I think." Milia said. "And there are some people who'd
like to have a word with us about it."

Max
stared at her and soon found that new memories, ones that weren't
hers, were entering her head. She began to stumble around a bit as a
wave of nausea overwhelmed her, but she managed to stay on her feet.
Once the feeling stopped Max tried to process the memories.

Apparently
they were the memories from when she'd been unconscious. She
'remembered' suddenly being in an odd room in the hospital. There was
a lightning rod next to her and the walls were covered in some kind
of mesh. There wasn't much more than that though until another memory
made itself known.

She
saw herself being watched over by a group of people she didn't know.
More memories processed and she saw more people and heard them
talking over her body and reading off of various charts. After a long
while the memories stopped processing and Max finally returned to the
'real' world inside her mind.

"Well
that's just fucking great." Max said. The last memory that
processed was the one that explained everything. She was being held
by the secret service at the behest of the President of the United
States. As best as she could tell she was inside a special
containment room inside a hospital somewhere.

"So
what do we do?" Milia asked. They both thought for a long time
but Max came to the only conclusion she could think of.

"I
guess we answer their questions." Max replied.

"Why?"

"Because
if we do we might be able to twist it to our advantage. After all we
have super powers, so we could get them on our side. Live a good life
free from prison or worry. Right?"

Milia
thought for a moment, but the smile on her face betrayed her thoughts
instantly.

"Yeah,
I think you're right."

##########

Max awoke and tried to open her eyes, but found she couldn't. She
tried again and felt them slip open a bit but there was some kind of
resistance. Whatever it was it felt dry and crusty, but she
eventually managed to fully open her eyes despite whatever it was.

She then tried to move her arm up to wipe out her eyes but found it
was restrained. Without thinking she flexed and found the restraint
disappeared and she was able to freely move her arm. Then she heard
the clicking of at least 3 guns as they whipped into position.

"Stand down." came a voice to her left. Or was it her
right? Her senses were a little scrambled at the moment. She tried to
sit up and look around but found more restraints around her
midsection. She flexed her body again and found the restraints once
again disappeared.

She sat up and looked to her left, finding nothing. So instead she
turned to her right and saw a man sitting on the chair next to her
bed. She had to look down to see the chair though.

"Hello." Max said to the man.

"Hello. Max I take it?" the man asked.

"Yeah." Max replied. "Where am I?"

"You're in a hospital. You had us worried there after taking a
nuke to the face."

"Yeah I think I worried myself more honestly. I mean, those
things burn a lot." Max joked around. If she seemed friendly
they would be more open to her demands. Or at least she hoped they
would.

"So I hear." the man replied. "Before we go on, could
I ask you for a favour?"

"Uh... sure?" Max half questioned. She was unsure as to
what favours the man could possibly want given that they'd just met.

"Could you stop that?"

"Stop what?" Max was now thoroughly bewildered. She had no
clue what the guy was talking about. The person just gestured down
below her and Max looked down. She saw her bed below her and squinted
at it. It appeared to be tiny.

At the exact moment Milia began to speak in her head she realized
what was happening. She was quite literally floating over her bed by
a good 3 feet. Milia stopped before uttering more than a small noise
as she heard Max's thoughts echo around inside her head. For a moment
Max pictured a thoroughly bewildered Milia with a hand on chin like
she was thinking.

"Um... I'm not sure how to do that exactly." Max replied.
"I've never done this before."

"Well what were you doing when you started floating?"

"I don't know when I started floating either..."

"You started right after you destroyed the restraints holding
you to the bed."

Max thought for a moment but the only thing she could remember doing
was flexing to remove the restraints. With a thought she tried to
relax her midsection muscles.

She let out a yelp as she fell back down onto the bed.

"Well I think you figured that out." the man said.

"Good. Now for a question of my own." Max replied. "Who
are you?"

"My name is Matthew Winters. I'm the brother of President Zane
Winters." Matthew said as she extended his hand. Max looked at
it and gently grasped it, letting the man take over the action of
shaking it.

"Nice to meet you. My name is Max."

"I know." Matthew said with a smirk. "And you can just
call me Matt."

"So what's going on here?" Max asked of Matt.

"I'll answer that question later on. We're waiting on my brother
to arrive first." Matt said. "In the mean time, would you
mind telling me more about yourself?"