Infiltration (15 page)

Chapter 15

The triathlon was apparently amongst the day’s most popular events. Upon arrival, my friends and I found ourselves swimming in a sea of bodies, most of them wearing costumes. It was like some kind of clambake for superhero fans.

The venue for the triathlon — at least the beginning of it — was a multi-purpose sports complex used by the city’s professional baseball and football franchises. The portion that we were currently in was a seventy thousand seat arena with a retractable dome ceiling. The place wasn’t filled to capacity, but there were certainly a lot of people present.

The triathlon itself consisted of three activities: weightlifting, running, and swimming. The competitors, of which there were fifty, were first required to lift a total of thirty tons. The items to be lifted included a car (weighing two tons), a truck (five tons), an armored personnel carrier (ten tons), and a tank (thirty tons). They could be lifted in any combination in order to achieve the obligatory thirty tons. For instance, a competitor could lift the car fifteen times, the personnel carrier three times, the tank one time, and so on; in each case they would have lifted a total of thirty tons, which was what was mandated for the first part of the competition.

The running portion of the triathlon consisted of two full marathons. The first would begin right after the weightlifting and was designed to start in the stadium and end at a nearby beach. At that juncture, competitors were required to swim twenty-five miles out from shore and back. After the swim, the second marathon would commence, ending back at the sports complex. With all that the competitors were required to do, it was easy to see why there was so much excitement about this event.

“Looking at the number of people here, they should’ve made this the main event instead of me and Dynamo,” I remarked to Smokey as we found some seats that gave us a clear view of the action. Unfortunately, everyone around us was standing, so we had to stand as well in order to see anything.

“I heard it was a real toss-up,” he said. “Ultimately, the producers felt that the public’s fascination with Kid Sensation would be a larger draw.”

“I’m flattered,” I said, without any hint of emotion. “By the way, where’s Dynamo? It seems like this type of thing would be right up his alley.”

“Don’t you know?” he asked. “He’s saving up all his energy for his face-off with you.”

I frowned, not liking that. It sounded like Dynamo was taking this whole competition thing far more seriously than I was — which was exactly what I didn’t want.

A tap on my shoulder caused me to look around, and I saw Pronto standing next to me again.

“Hey,” I said. “This is the second time you could have thumbed a ride, if I’d known we were headed in the same direction.”

“I figured we’d bump into each other here,” he said. “Truthfully though, I like running. It’s what I’m built for.”

I nodded, understanding what he meant completely. Before I forgot, however, I launched into an explanation of what had happened before, with me seeming to be annoyed with his telling of the speed competition. Thankfully, Pronto seemed to be a good sport about it.

“No need to apologize,” he said. “There was something I needed to do anyway.”

With that, the conversation ended and I probably would have put Pronto out of my mind completely, except for the fact that I felt a slight tingling in my shoulder where he had initially tapped me. It didn’t really hurt; it just felt like maybe he’d put a little extra zing into it when he was getting my attention.

Maybe a little payback, after all, for my mistimed grunt?

I didn’t have much time to dwell on the issue, though, because the competitors started getting into position for the triathlon. As with the earlier race between speedsters, I telescoped my vision in order to get a better look at them, most of whom were unfamiliar to me.

And that’s when I saw her.

Chapter 16

She wore a costume consisting of a black bodice and a dark red cape. She was tall, probably on par with my own six-foot frame, with a caramel complexion, fetching brown eyes, and clear, flawless skin. Her dark hair was intricately braided and hung down just past her shoulders, and her features were so captivating that I could have stared at her all day.

All in all, she was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, with an allure that went beyond my ability to describe. (No offense to Electra.)

I was so fascinated by this girl that I didn’t even take note when the triathlon began. One second I was watching her standing there, looking beautiful, and the next she was off to the races.

She went straight to the thirty-ton tank, as I somehow knew she would. She lifted it without any effort whatsoever, set it back down, and was gone again — dashing out of the arena to start the first marathon. She was incredible.

I felt something tugging on my arm, pulling it towards the ground. I looked down and was surprised to see Electra below me, yanking on my wrist.

“Where exactly are you going?” she asked, surprised and confused.

I suddenly realized I was actually floating in the air several feet off the ground. It dawned on me then that, although I had not consciously intended to do it, I had been about to follow the girl in the black-and-red costume out of the stadium.

What was wrong with me?!

I floated back down to the ground. Fortunately there was so much frenzied yelling and screaming around us that nobody had really taken note of my antics. Nobody other than Electra that is, and she did not seem particularly happy.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked in a perplexed voice.

I gave a noncommittal answer about being lost in thought and forgetting where I was, but I don’t think she bought it. She eyed me suspiciously, but I did my best to pretend that I didn’t notice, turning my attention instead to the giant screens around the stadium that stayed focused on the competitors.

Frankly speaking, it really wasn’t a competition. The girl who had captured my attention essentially ran away with the whole thing. She was one of only seven females competing in the triathlon, but there was no other competitor — male or female — who could catch her. She ran like the wind, she cut through the water like a torpedo, and, of course, she lifted the tank like it was a feather. The only person who came close was a bare-chested fellow known as the Pelagic Prince, who claimed to be the heir to an underwater kingdom, and even he was a distant second.

As the triathlon ended, Electra thrust a paper napkin at me that she’d gotten from somewhere.

“Here,” she said.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“To wipe the drool from your chin.”

I didn’t take the napkin but I conceded her point. I was acting like some stupid, love-struck idiot, but it hadn’t been intentional. I simply had no explanation for why I found that girl to be so fascinating. Speaking of her, my conversation with Electra had distracted me enough that I hadn’t caught her name when they announced her as the winner.

Oh well... It was probably for the best that I didn’t know anything more about her. My reactions thus far with respect to her had been far from typical or exemplary. Reflecting back on my conversation with Sylvia, I sincerely felt that a ten-second attention span would suit me just fine if it would help break whatever hold this girl had somehow gotten on me.

I wasn’t quite that lucky.

Chapter 17

I practically sleepwalked through the other early events, barely registering who the participants were or what the competitions were about. For a while, it was an effort to even maintain awareness of the friends who were with me; my thoughts were fully occupied with images of the girl from the triathlon. Still, I do know that Pronto took off again after the triathlon ended, while Electra, Smokey, Sarah, and I stayed together.

Gradually, however, my obsession (you couldn’t call it anything else) lessened, and by the time of the live broadcast I was somewhat back to normal. At that point, however, I had been so distant — mentally and emotionally — that Electra was barely speaking to me.

Long story short, I spent a good part of the live broadcast essentially groveling before my girlfriend, trying to believably express remorse for behavior that I honestly had no true rationale for. Thankfully, my transgressions had been few and of limited duration. Thus, although she was still not completely over her anger, I was able to get back into Electra’s good graces before I had to get in front of the cameras.

Because I’d spent much of the live show breaking in a new pair of kneepads, I really only had time to pay attention to one of the prime time events: the competition featuring Vestibule squaring off against Actinic, the young super who was supposed to render the explosive inert in the bomb scenario I had bungled. Oddly enough, it turned out to be one of the more interesting match-ups.

Having the power of teleportation made Vestibule a formidable adversary for almost anyone. Thus, it had come as a bit of a surprise when it was revealed the previous week that her opponent for the exhibition would be Actinic. Even more surprising, Actinic had actually volunteered.

The competition between them was set up to take place in the same gym where Electra had showcased her talents and was rather simple to boot: Vestibule and Actinic would be placed in a large room created in the center of the gym through the raising of four glass walls. Sitting on opposite sides of the room were two metal containers, one for each of them, with circular holes in the top. When the competition started, a jillion plastic, colored balls were going to drop down into the middle of the room from the ceiling. The two competitors were to find as many gold balls as possible in a two-minute period and drop them into their respective containers.

Each ball was sprayed with a chemical compound that was to identify its color. Whenever a ball was deposited into one of the containers, a sensor would read its chemical signature and either grant a point (for gold balls) or subtract one (for any balls that weren’t gold). The winner would be the person with the most points at the end, as noted on a large monitor just outside the room housing the competitors.

Vestibule was representing a West Coast team called the A-List Supers; she was nominally a teen member, although she spent most of her time on the red carpet rather than going toe-to-toe with bad guys. Actinic was, of course, a teen from the Alpha League, so he had our support (along with that of many other locals sitting in the bleachers). Still, it looked like a less-than-favorable match-up, to say the least.

“This is going to be a slaughter,” Smokey said. “All Vestibule has to do is teleport to wherever she sees a gold ball then teleport to her container.”

“Sounds like she should have been pitted against another teleporter,” Sarah said.

“Or at least a speedster,” Electra added, finally allowing me to hold her hand again after an hour or two of rebuffs.

A buzzer sounded before I could make a comment, and plastic balls rained down around the competitors in the room.

Vestibule went into action immediately, winking in and out of existence as she teleported around the room looking for gold balls. As soon as she had one, she popped up next to her container and dropped it in. After about fifteen seconds, she had a comfortable lead.

On his part, Actinic hunted around patiently until he found a gold ball. Then he smiled, in a way that not only said that “I have a secret,” but I-have-a-super-duper-extra-special-classified-off-the-record-you’ll-never-guess-it secret. Then he raced over to his container.

Once there, still holding the gold ball, he reached down with his free hand and grabbed a blue one. He closed his eyes, clearly concentrating deeply for a second as his lips pressed together firmly. Then he opened his eyes, and one corner of his mouth tilted up into a cocksure grin as he dropped the blue ball into the container.

All four of us — along with a great number of other people — groaned collectively as we assumed that Actinic had put the wrong ball into the container. What followed next was stunned silence as we saw Actinic’s gold ball count go to “1” on the monitor.

He picked up another ball — a red one this time — frowned in concentration, and then dropped it into the container. His count went to “2.” A thunderous roar of support sounded from the crowd.

“How’s he doing that?” Sarah asked, caught up in the excitement as Actinic reached for a third ball.

“He has the power to change the chemical composition of things!” I shouted, trying to make myself heard over the crowd. “He’s altering the chemical spray on each ball so that the sensor in the container reads them all as gold!”

“It’s genius!” Smokey yelled.

Actinic’s count began to zoom as he basically reached down to grab any ball, held it for a second, and then dropped it into his container. An infectious frenzy swept through the crowd as they saw what many had assumed would be a rout being dominated by the underdog.