Chronicles of the Supers (Book 1): Born From Darkness (The Story of Max) (8 page)

After
passing the girl back to her house the girl ran to a room and slammed
the door. Max could hear her crying from the window and she reached
over and shut the window to the other house quietly. After she did a
pair of men came running up the stairs to the girls room to check on
her. Max crept back out of the room and across the hall to confront
the man she'd found raping the poor girl.

The
light was off again and she flipped it back on. The man stalked out
from behind the door with a gun in hand and a silencer screwed onto
the end. Without a work Max stared at him as he held it to her face
and smiled cruelly.

He
pulled the trigger but Max dodged the bullet to her left with her
superhuman reflexes. The bullet embedded itself in the wall. Max
grabbed the gun and bent the entire thing, folding it in half with
considerable difficulty.

The
man stared at her in absolute terror as she bent the gun and then
tried to run after she finished. He didn't even make it to the door
though, as Max grabbed his neck from behind. She snapped it with
relative ease and the man dropped limp to the floor. She looked down
and saw that his eyes were still moving, meaning he might still be
alive. She spit on his face before stomping his head into the floor.
His skull was instantly crushed and his brain splattered everywhere,
killing him for good.

Max
scowled as she walked out of the houses front door and sprinted off
into the woods. She heard the police sirens coming just after she
vanished and knew that the girls family had called the police.

##########

Max stared at the television in the dorm lobby in silence as she
watched the news early the next morning. During the night the police
had been called after a young girl claimed to have been hurt by her
neighbor. The girls parents had called the police instantly and the
police had investigated, finding the dead body of the man Max had
brutally murdered the previous night. They were still baffled and the
men she had seen were both on television crying over what had
happened to their daughter.

Inside she didn't know what she felt, if anything at all. She'd been
early enough to stop the man before he'd killed the little girl, but
late enough that the girl had already been hurt. She hated herself
for being so late, but decided there was nothing she could do now and
promised to be earlier next time.

After that she left to go back to her dorm room. The first class of
her day had been cancelled because the teacher was sick and so Max
would have some free time to herself.

Max began going through the list and finding more registered sex
offenders near her area. She found that the next nearest one was in a
county prison waiting to be transferred over to a federal prison for
raping his wife and killing her. He had a 19 year old daughter but
her name hadn't been listed as one of the people who'd been harmed by
the man. Max didn't believe for a second that he hadn't hurt his
daughter and decided to put him on her list, right at the very top.

Max prepared by trying to find any public records of the jail, but
after a vigorous search she hadn't found a damn thing. She needed to
know where his cell was because she couldn't spend too much time
inside the facility. The guards would realize she was there very fast
and would move to protect her target from her.

After hours of searching she finally found a black market site
selling the information she needed. She would need a way of getting
it that didn't require payment because the risk of getting caught up
in the black market, and maybe being arrested, was too high.

Though she had no idea how to do just that. And she had to leave for
her weekend job anyway, so she would have to formulate a plan.

##########

During Max's shift at work she came across a small proposal to have a
professional hacker come in and teach the students about keeping
their online lives safe and anonymous. The hacker was actually a
network security teacher at a major technology university, having
been hired after he'd successfully broken their network while high on
drugs on a dare from an equally drugged up friend. The university had
decided that his sentence, which was community service, could be best
served by teaching his methods at the university level. He'd agreed
and had decided to pursue a full time career as a teacher after his
sentence was over.

The proposal was absolutely stupid and a complete waste of money as
far as Max was concerned. Even the other members of the student
government had agreed so. The proposal had been denied but still had
to be filed as per the rules of the charter for the organization. So
Max filed it but then decided to research the professor more. It
turned out all of his lectures were recorded and published online for
others to use after a small fee was paid. The fee was quite high
compared to Max's budget, but she decided to set aside enough money
to buy the lectures, even though it meant she would need to work some
overtime for her freelance web design job.

She didn't have much longer though. The man she was after would be
moved in 2 more weeks, after a 6 week delay due to over-population at
the prison he would be assigned to. Max had to learn network security
and all related info in less than that time, completely from scratch.
If she could do it she could certainly just steal the information she
needed, lessening her risk of being involved in something illegal
that could get her caught.

She got started with the lectures she'd paid for, watching them at 4
times the normal speed of playback. Though it would still take days
to watch them all, Max patiently went through them. She absorbed the
information quite well and after she was done she found she had a
much better grasp of even her own schools computer network. Within a
day of finishing the lecture videos she'd managed to sneak her way
into the schools network and change the website access and logging
for her computer. She erased all the traces of her activity since the
night she'd killed her father after being thoroughly surprised and
sickened at how much information they kept about their students
browsing habits. The school could have put google to shame if they
ever made their records public.

Even so, Max finally had the freedom she would need to
begin finding a covert way to get the information about the prison
layout. She began the next morning, but it took a number of days and
many failed attempts that definitely didn't go unnoticed before she
finally got the info she needed. She was down to the last day before
the transfer would take place but had lucked out. The info featured
the names and cell locations of all prisoners the day it was posted.
That day happened to be exactly 3 days after the prisoner she was
after had been shut in his cell. Max now definitely had the location
of the man she was after, and she was going to finish him off, one
way or another.

Chapter 9:

Trouble

Max waited outside the prison in silence as she watched the
perimeter. There was a rather tall perimeter fence topped with razor
wire. She figured she could get over the razor wire but she couldn't
see any cameras. She knew they were around but without being able to
see them she couldn't get any idea of their field of view. That was
troubling because Max needed to be able to make her way to the prison
wall without being noticed.

She
sat for a good half an hour thinking and finally came up with a plan.
The lights were the obvious weak point and if she could take a few
out her full black outfit would help her move stealthily across the
compound. She dug around a bit, looking for a suitable rock to try
and use to destroy the bulb. After a moment she found one and looked
up to line up her shot. She threw the rock but it missed to the left
just enough to not hit anything.

Max
scowled and reached for another rock, this time finding one
considerably faster than last time. She threw it but this time missed
too far to the right. She kept trying until she had thrown over a
dozen rocks. She was getting tired of that method and needed
something more reliable. After a moment she suddenly had a very
bright idea. She needed to chip away at the rocks to form a small
arrow head shape from them. That would let them fly straighter and
increase her chances of hitting the damned lights.

She
found 2 rocks and set about using one to shape the other. It took a
further half an hour but she finally had the shape she needed. She
lined up the shot and threw it with as much force as she could
muster. The arrow head rock struck its target, taking out the light
instantly. It made a decent amount of noise but after 5 minutes no
one had come to investigate, so she reasoned that no one had heard
it.

In
that way Max took out 3 more lights before the area she needed to
access was sufficiently darkened. Then she quickly and quietly scaled
the fence and ran across the open ground to the side of the prison.
Once she arrived she found a small depression right beside the wall.
Ducking down inside of it, Max pressed her body to the ground while
watching and listening to see if anyone had spotted her. When it
became clear that no one had, she let out a small, silent sigh of
relief.

Then
she stalked around a bit to find the place she needed to be. The cell
she was looking for had an outside view with a really small window
that would be about big enough for Max to squeeze through. It took 10
minutes of searching and fair amount of retracing her earlier steps,
but she finally found the window she was looking for. Looking around,
she noted the area was sufficiently dark enough for her to hide
herself while she broke in.

After
confirming that she would be unseen she jumped up and grabbed the
ledge of the window. Slowly she pulled herself over the ledge and
looked around carefully. There was a male in the corner, sitting on
the ground with his head buried in his knees. There was no one else
around but Max was sure there was a camera hidden somewhere watching
the cell. Even so, she couldn't spot it.

She
decided she would just have to make it quick and ripped a few of the
cell windows bars out of the concrete with a considerable amount of
effort. By the time she had finished the guy in the cell had noticed
and was watching in anticipation. She slid through, leaving one bar
in place since she was on a timetable.

The
man stayed sitting on the ground but looked up at her with a
combination of fear and acceptance in his eyes.

"So,
what do you want?" he asked, clearly stifling back some tears as
he spoke.

"Your
death." Max growled out, distorting her voice so much that it
scared the man. He stared at her a moment longer and then stood up
slowly. Max stared at him as he moved but made no actions. Finally,
after he was on his feet, he sighed.

"Please
go ahead then. I've caused my family enough trouble. It's time my
miserable life ended."

Max
frowned and stared at him. When she didn't move he stepped closer.

"Please.
I promise if you do this they'll be better off."

Max
stood without moving. After a few minutes she figured she needed to
get out of there. The longer she stuck around the greater the risk of
being caught by a guard. But she couldn't move. Something was rooting
her in place and she didn't understand it.

"Why?"
the words came from Max's mouth but she couldn't remember speaking
them as soon as they were spoken.

"Because
I've caused too much grief. I've already cost my wife her life and my
daughter her education. Go ahead and kill me please."

Max
started scathing but a part of her started fighting against her will.
But that part of her was the part she hated. That part didn't want to
deliver a proper justice to those who deserved it. She fought herself
internally. After what seemed like a very lengthy battle Max finally
subdued the part of her that she hated. In reality it had taken less
than a second.

After
she did she grabbed the mans neck in her hands. Without hesitation
she squeezed, completely decapitating her victim. At the exact moment
his body hit the ground a guard walked by. As soon as she saw the
sight he instantly grabbed a radio and his gun. He began issuing
warnings as Max jumped through the window. A few bullets chased her
but she wasn't hit by any of them.

By the
time they'd managed to mobilize Max had already darted off the
compound and was half way back to the school campus. She didn't care
about whether she was seen, she just wanted to get away as soon as
possible.

##########

Max laid on her bed staring at the ceiling as the sun rose. She
couldn't get the words the man had said out of her mind. And every
time she closed her eyes she could see the look he had when she'd
killed him. He was sad and scared. It wasn't at all like she was
expecting. She had wanted him to be angry. To fight back. To try and
hurt her.

But he hadn't. Not only did he accept his fate, he'd even done so
because he cared about his family. He had wanted to save them from
having to deal with his troubles. Maybe he'd even been sorry...

'NO GOD DAMNIT' Max thought angrily as she jumped up. She couldn't
start questioning her conviction now. She had to be steadfast in her
resolve to finish off the people who deserved punishment.

She went over to her computer and began researching
again. She needed to find more people who deserved to die. She had
to. After a while the feeling that she was wrong about her ideals
would disappear. She hoped...

Chapter 10:

Killing
Spree

Max looked at the file in front of her with absolute disgust. The man
she had found was easily the worst person she could ever imagine.
He'd raped and beaten his wife and 2 daughters, eventually killing
the youngest one, a girl slightly younger than Max. It reminded her
of her childhood so much that she had to go after him. She needed to
end him and let the 2 remaining members live in peace.