The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5) (10 page)

Even so, I shuddered to think about how easily Sight had taken out my team. Granted, we were still teenagers and he was an adult who probably had decades of experience using his powers, but just seeing everyone get taken out like that—and then nearly getting defeated myself—made me realize that we needed to train if we were going to avoid a curb stomp battle like that again. I’d talk about that with the others once they had healed from our battle with Sight.

Now I noticed that Mecha Knight seemed to be taking longer than usual to respond, so I said, “Mecha Knight? Do you have any questions about what I told you?”

Mecha Knight suddenly looked at me as if he had been lost in thought. “What? Oh, yes. I am not very surprised about what you told me. I have been aware of the Test Subjects for some time now, but I am somewhat surprised that one chose to attack you today.”

“What?” I said. “How did you know about the Test Subjects? Grandfather told me that they had all gone into hiding and that only the people involved in Project Neo had known about them.”

“How I know about them is not particularly important or relevant,” said Mecha Knight. “What matters is that they have clearly decided to get their revenge, and on your grandfather, no less. This is a surprising development, because I had always assumed that the Test Subjects would never come out of hiding even to get revenge.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” I said.

“Because then the government would be able to find them and capture them,” said Mecha Knight. “Given that the Test Subjects loathe the government more than anything, it was in their best interest to stay out of the public, where the government couldn’t see them.”

“Do you think they have other goals, then, instead of just killing Grandfather?” I said.

“Possibly,” said Mecha Knight. “What those goals are, I cannot say, because we don’t have much proof or evidence to help us figure that out. But I am certain that, whatever their goals are, we must find a way to stop them.”

“How?” I said. “We don’t even know where the Test Subjects are.”

“We will locate them,” said Mecha Knight. “I will have some of our members start looking, first by going to the street where you fought Sight. We have some trackers in the NHA who are very good at finding supervillains, so I imagine it won’t be long before they are found and stopped before they can succeed in whatever their plans are.”

“Can I help?” I said. “These guys are threatening my grandparents’ lives, after all. I think that more than qualifies me to join in the fight against them.”

“You cannot help with the tracking, but if we find them, you may help us detain them,” said Mecha Knight. “As it is, for now you and the rest of the team need to rest from your fight. I do not know how long it will take for us to find the Test Subjects, but I doubt it will take long, given the quality of our trackers.”

“All right,” I said. “So can I go back to my room now and rest?”

“Of course,” said Mecha Knight. He rose from his chair. “Meanwhile, I will tell the rest of the Leadership Council about this and get the tracking underway as soon as possible. I expect to have a tracking team out in the field by tomorrow morning, if not tonight.”

“Great,” I said. “By the way, what’s with the clunking sound in your armor? I’ve noticed you’ve been making some weird sounds recently.”

Mecha Knight stopped and stuck his hand into one of his armor’s compartments before he pulled out a tiny, metal disk. “This. It’s one of your father’s teleportation disks. He gave me one at the Summit earlier this year and I’ve been carrying it around ever since.”

“Oh,” I said in surprise as Mecha Knight put the disk back into his armor. “Why did he give it to you?”

“Because he thought I might need it and he trusted me with his technology more than anyone else,” said Mecha Knight. “Now if you will excuse me, I must leave to get the trackers out.”

With that, Mecha Knight walked around the table and left through the exit. I also left and returned to my room, where I really did intend to go back to sleep. In fact, I planned to sleep in for the entire rest of the day and not wake up until tomorrow morning.

But, of course, as soon as I entered, Carl’s peppy voice suddenly shouted, “Hi, Bolt! Valerie and I have successfully managed to decrypt your father’s personal files! Time to party!”

All of a sudden, a panel in the ceiling opened and confetti poured out of it, while some kind of weird party music started playing, with the lights suddenly flashing a bunch of different colors in rapid succession. It was all so abrupt and strange that I didn’t even know how to react until the music abruptly cut off and Valerie said, “Carl, I don’t think Kevin is in any mood to party at the moment. He looks like he needs some rest.”

“Okay,” said Carl, who somehow managed to sound peppy and disappointed at the same time. “But can we party later?”

“No,” said Valerie. “No party now or ever.”

“Fine,” said Carl. “But if Bolt ever changes his mind, I can still activate party mode in a cinch!”

I stood there in confusion and glanced at the confetti on my shoulders and on the floor. “Why does my room have a party mode installed in it?”

“Don’t know!” Carl said. “I found it when I was first installed into the House’s systems. I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it, but I guess I’ll still have to wait until a more appropriate time for it.”

“Uh …” I had no idea what to say to that, so I looked at the screen of my computer and saw that a message saying ‘DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL’ was blinking on it in bright green words. “So the decryption was successful?”

“Yes,” said Valerie. “We managed to decrypt every file on that flash drive that Triplet gave to you. You now have access to all of Genius’s personal files.”

I yawned, but despite my tiredness, I didn’t go to lie down. I just walked over to the computer and said, “How many files are on this device?”

“Approximately one thousand,” said Valerie. “Most of them are text, but there are a few pictures, videos, and audio files. We have not analyzed the content of most of them, so we don’t know for sure what is on them, but most of them seem to be journal entries from Genius’s younger years, plus plans for inventions that he never made.”

“Really?” I said. “What kind of inventions?”

One of the files suddenly opened up on the screen, showing blueprints depicting some kind of motorcycle that could apparently also double as a hover cycle, if I was reading the blueprints correctly.

“This was Genius’s plan for a hover cycle,” said Valerie. “It would have been able to drive along the ground like a normal motorcycle or turn into a vehicle that could hover approximately ten inches off the ground depending on the situation.”

“Cool,” I said. “What else is there?”

“As I said, we have not done a full analysis on the files’ contents, so we don’t know for sure what they may have,” said Valerie. “Because you requested this task of us, we wanted to give you the opportunity to study them yourself, unless you are too tired to do it at the moment.”

I shook my head and put my hand on the mouse. “No, I’m fine. I think I’ll stay up just a little while longer to see what Dad left for me. I’ll let you guys know if I need anything.”

“Okay, Bolt!” said Carl. “And if you ever need a party, just say the words and we can turn your room into a rave!”

I made a mental note never to mention the word ‘party’ around Carl again. I also made a mental note to ask Mecha Knight if he knew who had installed the party mode into my room, because now that I was aware of it, I was worried that it might just randomly activate on its own again because Carl would misinterpret something I said.

Then I looked at the list of files displayed on the screen, trying to find anything that looked interesting. Most of it, as far as I could tell, was labeled with the date that the contents were written, which probably meant they were journal entries written by Dad, but there were so many that I just sort of ignored them. I wasn’t really looking to actually read anything yet; I was really just going to quickly glance through the list to get an idea of the files’ contents and then actually read through them later after I took a nap. I also was planning to send these to Mom; I was sure that she would be interested in reading Dad’s old journal, if only as a keepsake to remember him by.

But then I noticed one file with an interesting label: ‘FOR KEVIN.’

Did that mean that this file was for me? That was odd. Then again, Triplet had told me that Dad had given him the flash drive to give to me after his death. Maybe this file was the reason for it.

Forgetting all about my tiredness, I hovered the mouse over the file and opened it.

Immediately, a video appeared on the screen. It took a second to buffer, but when it started, it showed Dad—in his full Genius costume, though without the helmet, which was resting on his lap—sitting in a chair in a place that I recognized as the Lab under our house in Texas. I didn’t know when this video had been created, but Dad didn’t look that young, so I assumed it must have been recorded over the last year or so.

But that was irrelevant. I just stood there and watched the video as intently as possible, wondering what it could be about.

“Valerie?” said Dad. He sounded a little tired, as if he had been up all night, and the bags under his eyes seemed to prove that. “Is the video recording now?”

“Yes, Genius,” came Valerie’s usual calm voice on the video. “You may start speaking any second now. I will be automatically adjusting the audio and video output to ensure that the recording is as high quality as possible so that Kevin will be able to view this video without any problem once he sees it.”

“
If
he sees it, you mean,” Dad corrected grimly. “I hope he never does, but thanks anyway.”

Dad then suddenly looked at the camera. I felt my throat constrict when Dad looked at the camera, because it felt like he was looking directly at me, even though this video was obviously from some point in the past. I guess I still hadn’t gotten over Dad’s death entirely just yet.

“Hi, Kevin,” said Dad. He adjusted his seat, though it seemed to do less with trying to be more comfortable and more to do with being uncomfortable with whatever he was going to talk about. “If you are watching this, then I’m probably dead. I don’t know how or when I died, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are most likely wondering why I left you this message.”

I nodded, but caught myself and stopped, because I had almost forgotten that Dad was dead and this was just a recorded video of him and not the real thing.

“I would have told you about this before I died, but …” Dad trailed off and then shook his head. “But it is a hard subject for me to talk about. Besides, I didn’t think it’d ever be relevant, since I did not know for sure if you would ever become a superhero. But now that you’ve gotten your powers, well, I had to do something with this information I’m about to share.”

Dad seemed to be rambling, which was rather out of character for him, because Dad usually spoke pretty plainly and directly. Whatever he was going to tell me about must have been really personal or something.

“All right,” said Dad. He took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you about my parents, Matthew and Jane Jason. If you don’t recognize their names, that isn’t surprising, because I kept them away from our family and did not want them interacting with you in any way.”

I knew that already, because Mom had told me as much, but I continued to watch the video, because Dad obviously had something more to say than just that.

“You might be wondering why I did that,” said Dad. “The reason is simple: Your grandfather is an awful, awful man.”

I blinked. Grandfather was awful? What did that mean? Grandfather didn’t seem that bad when I first met him earlier today. I listened closer, not wanting to miss a second of this video.

Dad pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I should probably be more specific about what I mean. Your grandfather does not accept people with powers. He did not accept my own powers when I was growing up, nor did he ever accept the powers of other superhumans. Like most people back when I was a kid, he didn’t have much tolerance for superhumans, not even his own son.”

Dad stopped. He looked like he was having a hard time talking about this, which made me wonder what kind of abuse Dad had experienced at the hand of his own father. Well, okay, he didn’t
say
he was abused, but Grandfather had obviously done
something
to him, though what, I didn’t know.

“He believed in using science to take away the powers of superhumans,” said Dad. “He thought that superhumans were inherently miserable people due to the presence of our powers and that we’d be happier if we didn’t have them. He thought he was doing the right thing, but … well, he didn’t really understand what he was doing.”

Dad bit his lower lip, but then continued speaking as if he had not just paused. “He never harmed me, but his ideas about superhumans were toxic. I saw what he did to my mom and it …”

Dad almost broke down there. He just looked away for a moment, like he was taking a moment to recover, and then looked back at the camera.

“My mother—your grandmother—is not a normal human,” said Dad. “Like me and you, she is a superhuman. Or was; I don’t know if she’s still alive or not. In any case, I think that I inherited my own powers from her, though mine are different from hers, obviously.”

I almost gasped out loud when I heard that. Grandmother was a superhuman? How come Grandfather hadn’t mentioned that when we talked earlier?

“She had only one, very simple power,” said Dad. “She could see the future. Not that she had any control over it; remember, she discovered it decades before the NHA, INJ, or G-Men even existed. She was always terrified of it and never liked to talk about it, not even when I discovered my own powers.”

I almost asked what kind of visions of the future she got, but then I remembered that this was just a recording of Dad, not an actual video feed of him. So I held my tongue and continued to listen.

“Because of her reluctance to talk about her powers, I was never sure about the full extent or detail of her visions,” Dad continued. “All I know is that she was never really surprised by anything, though she always lived in a constant state of dread, particularly whenever a catastrophe was going to happen somewhere in the world. In fact, I only learned about her powers by accident.