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

As the Third merged back with Triplet, Grandfather said, “Kevin, how did the fight go? Did you beat Twinfist?”

I nodded. “Yes. He’s still alive, but I left him under a tree so I could come back and check on you guys. Did anyone else try to enter the mansion while I was fighting him?”

“No,” said Triplet, shaking his head. “As far as we can tell, Twinfist was all by himself. I imagine that whoever sent him probably didn’t think Twinfist would need backup, probably because he hadn’t expected us to be here.”

“Where did you leave Twinfist?” Emma said.

I thrust a thumb over my shoulder. “Somewhere in the woods. Just look for a bunch of downed trees and craters and you should find him. Why?”

“Because I am going to search for him,” said Emma. “I want to find out how he found Mr. Jason’s mansion and whether or not he has any allies who will come to back him up.”

“Are you sure about that?” I said. “Because Twinfist is very strong. Even pinned under a tree, he could be a threat to a normal human like you.”

“Normal human?” Emma repeated. She rolled her eyes. “Thank you for the concern, but I don’t really need it. Please keep Mr. Jason safe while I am gone.”

Emma brushed past me, almost shoving me aside, and returned to the living room. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see her mount the window and then jump out, apparently heedless of the glass shards in the window frame.

Looking back at Grandfather, I said, “Is Emma always that rude?”

“You will have to excuse her,” said Grandfather with a shrug. “Emma does not take kindly to anyone who she deems a threat to me or Jane. Nor does she take kindly to anyone who beats her in a fight.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Still, maybe I should go and follow her. I don’t think Twinfist will be able to escape, but if he does, he might be able to hurt her. She’s not a superhuman, after all.”

“Actually, she is,” said Grandfather.

“She is?” I said. “What’s her power, then?”

“Camouflage and the ability to silence all sounds her body makes,” said Grandfather. “It makes her useful as a bodyguard, because she can be around me at all times and no one would ever notice.”

That explained why I couldn’t see or hear her when we fought. “Then I guess she’ll be okay.”

“Yes, she will,” said Grandfather, nodding. “But how are you, Kevin? Are you hurt?”

I touched my chin, which was bleeding slightly, and said, “No, I’m fine. I’ve been through much worse. What made Twinfist so dangerous, though, is that he’s skilled as well as strong, so he can figure out the best ways to beat you that don’t necessarily involve pure physical strength.”

“Yes, I am aware of that,” said Grandfather. “But it is good that you managed to defeat him anyway. If you had not been here, I am afraid that he would have killed me, Jane, and Emma as well. Then he probably would have burned down the whole mansion and left our bodies to burn to ash with it.”

“You sound like you’ve met him before,” said Triplet.

Grandfather sighed. “Yes, but it’s his master who I am really worrying about, and she is even crazier than him.”

“Yeah, he mentioned his boss, but didn’t say who she was,” I said. “Who does that guy work for? And why does she want you dead?”

Grandfather looked like he didn’t want to talk about it, but he eventually said, “It is a long story, something I thought I had put away, but my past, it seems, has come to haunt me yet again. Come up to my study. I will tell you about it in there.”

-

Grandfather’s study was in a room on the second floor of his mansion and was kind of small, but there was enough room for me and Triplet to sit down, thanks to the two comfy seats in front of Grandfather’s desk. We sat down opposite Grandfather, who took the seat on the other side of the desk, which was clean and uncluttered, although it didn’t have a computer. Though now that I thought about it, I didn’t see any digital or electronic devices in the mansion yet, which made me wonder if Grandfather wasn’t into electronics. Given how old he was, that wasn’t surprising.

Grandfather pulled open the top drawer of his desk and then pulled out a manilla envelope, but he didn’t put it on the table. He just held it in his lap, where we couldn’t see it, and seemed reluctant to show it to us.

“All right,” said Grandfather. “I hoped, Kevin, that our first meeting together would not be under such tense circumstances, but it is now clear that my enemies know where I am. So I believe you have every right to know about this, though I must ask that you keep it a secret from your friends and allies outside of this room.”

I wondered what was so important that Grandfather wanted me to keep it secret from everyone else, but since I doubted it was going to be anything that bad, I said, “Sure.”

“Mr. Mieko, can I ask you to keep this a secret as well?” said Grandfather. “I know I am not one of your clients at the moment, so you are technically not under any legal obligation to keep my secrets for me, but I must ask that you do anyway, for safety reasons.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Jason,” said Triplet. “I promise not to mention a word of this to anyone outside of this mansion. You may not be one of my clients at the moment, but you were at one point, so I am perfectly willing to keep whatever secrets you need me to keep.”

“Excellent, excellent,” said Grandfather. He looked at us both with a serious face. “Now, have either of you ever heard of something called Project Neo?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s a secret government program meant to help the government create and test the next generation of high tech weaponry.”

“Is that what it is about now?” said Grandfather. He shook his head. “My, how it has strayed from its original intent.”

“How would you know what its original intent is?” said Triplet.

“Because,” said Grandfather as he slapped the folder on the desk between us, “I was one of the Project’s original founders.”

Triplet and I leaned forward to get a good look at the folder. It was labeled ‘PROJECT NEO MATTHEW JASON RECORDS, JUN 1984-OCT 1986.’

Looking up at Grandfather again, I said, “What do you mean that you were one of the Project’s founders?”

“I mean exactly what I said,” said Grandfather. “I was one of the original architects of the Project. I, along with a few other men, put it together at the behest of the government to study certain people who were then referred to as ‘differently evolved human beings,’ or DEHBs for short.”

“I’ve heard the term before,” said Triplet. “That was an early term used to described the first neoheroes, though as I understand it, it was mostly used among researchers and academics and fell out of use after the Neohero Alliance was founded.”

“Correct,” said Grandfather. “The term ‘neohero,’ of course, was coined after the Four Founders of the Neohero Alliance defeated Nuclear Winter in nineteen eighty-seven. I still sometimes call them DEHBs, however, because I grew so used to it.”

“So you’re telling us that you were one of the founders of Project Neo?” I said in surprise. “Dad never told me that. Did he know?”

“He knew,” said Grandfather. “I never told him much about it, due to its top secret nature, but he knew I was involved with it in some way.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. I pointed at the folder on the desk. “Why does this file cover nineteen eighty-four to nineteen eighty-six? The first neoheroes were not discovered until nineteen eighty-six, when Omega Man, Dad, and several others first became known to the world. How were you studying neoheroes before then?”

Grandfather shook his head. “Kevin, just because that is when the first neoheroes became known to the public does not mean that Omega Man, Genius, and the others were literally the first neoheroes to ever exist. No, neoheroes have existed for a long time, well before even I was born.”

“But I’ve always been told that neoheroes were created when Haley’s Comet flew past Earth and activated the neogene,” I said. “Isn’t that how the first neoheroes were created?”

“No, that’s nonsense, plain and simple,” said Grandfather. He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. “That was just a theory that the government put out there in order to control the narrative. No, Haley’s Comet has nothing, as far as we know, to do with the emergence of superhumans on Earth.”

“It still doesn’t make sense, what you’re telling us,” said Triplet. “If superhumans have been around for a long time, why didn’t anyone know about them until recently?”

“Because they were never quite as numerous as they are now,” said Grandfather. “That is what makes nineteen eighty-six a significant year—not the fact that Haley’s Comet flew by—because it was during that year that the superhuman population exploded; prior to that year, Earth’s entire superhuman population was estimated to be less than a hundred, whereas nowadays it is estimated to be between ten and one hundred thousand worldwide.”

“Why the sudden population explosion in nineteen eight-six?” I said.

“No one knows,” said Grandfather with a shrug. “But it doesn’t really matter why, at least to this story. What matters is telling you that the US government has been aware of superhumans for a long time, possibly since the end of the Revolutionary War, and created Project Neo in order to study ten known superhumans in the US population in order to understand how they worked.”

“Ten superhumans?” I said. “Do you mean ten Test Subjects?”

“Yes, I do,” said Grandfather. He looked at me in surprise. “Where did you learn that term?”

“A few months ago, I went to an abandoned government facility called the Cavern that had some old records about Project Neo,” I said. “The records had ten Test Subjects, labeled Zero Zero one to zero ten, but I didn’t know what that meant until just now.”

“Really?” said Grandfather. “Interesting. I know of the facility that you are talking about, but I thought all of the records from that place had been destroyed after it was abandoned. Where are the records now, by the way?”

“Stolen,” I said. “One of the G-Men, codename Shade, took them from me down there before I could get a good look at them. My guess is that the government has them now … or at least one guy does.”

“No surprise there,” said Grandfather. “I would have been surprised if the government had allowed records about the early years of Project Neo to fall into the hands of non-government personnel. That would have been disastrous for all involved.”

“Yeah, but I learned from the files that Cadmus Smith was one of the Test Subjects,” I said. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” said Grandfather. “I know Cadmus Smith rather well. He was one of the main Test Subjects, but is now the Director of the G-Men, if I am not mistaken.”

“He is,” said Triplet. “But you’re saying that he was one of the Test Subjects for Project Neo?”

“Right,” said Grandfather. “He actually volunteered for the Project, you see, because he was serving in the military at the time and wanted to be of use to his country. His own father, John Smith, was in charge of Project Neo, which made it easier for him to join the Project.”

“Is that why he was put in charge of the G-Men?” I said. “Because he was already serving in the government and was trusted to do a good job?”

“I imagine that is the case, though I wasn’t there when Cadmus was appointed Director, so I don’t know for sure,” said Grandfather. “I never did trust him, though. His telepathy made him someone who you needed to keep an eye on, because you could never tell what he really knew and what he didn’t.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, thinking about all the times I had met Cadmus and how mysterious he usually behaved.

“Anyway, Cadmus Smith was the first Test Subject, but of course not the last,” said Grandfather. “The ten Test Subjects were chosen primarily from the military or government, though a handful came from the civilian or private world. Most of them had kept their powers under wraps, because at the time no one really knew or understood anything about superhumans and the biological basis for superpowers, which is another reason why they were not known except in legend and folklore.”

“Why did they agree to be in Project Neo?” I said.

“Because most of them hoped that it would help them understand their powers better,” said Grandfather. “Many of the Test Subjects were afraid of their powers because they didn’t understand them. They thought that by volunteering in Project Neo, that the government might help them understand their powers and ease their worries.”

“But it didn’t work out that way, did it?” said Triplet.

Grandfather looked down at his desk, as if he was remembering something terrible. “No, it did not. Well, not exactly. There were … experiments done on these people. Experiments I cannot even name because they were so … horrible. Some of the Test Subjects even died, though their official deaths were always different from how they actually died, of course, because the government did not want anyone to know about its experiments on innocent people.”

“What happened to the Test Subjects?” I said. “Were they all killed? Are any of them still alive? I know Cadmus is still alive, but what about the others?”

Grandfather looked up at me with pain in his eyes. “Most of them escaped in nineteen eighty-six, after Omega Man and the other original heroes first appeared. They broke out of the Cavern—which, back then, was called the Hole—and went into hiding. They have stayed out of the government’s eye and have never been recaptured, even though the G-Men have orders to capture any they find. That was when the focus of Project Neo changed; from studying superhumans to developing weapons designed to defeat superhumans.”

“Meaning they’re still out there,” said Triplet. “Doing … what?”

“Living normal lives, I suppose,” said Grandfather. “Or at least, I assume that’s what they were doing. Now, though, I think they’ve decided to come out of hiding.”

“What makes you say that?” I said.

“Twinfist’s attack,” said Grandfather. “Twinfist was one of the Test Subjects, Test Subject Zero Zero Seven, if I recall correctly. I did not expect I would ever see him again.”

“Is his boss one of the Test Subjects, too?” said Triplet.

“Yes,” said Grandfather. “Test Subject Zero Zero Two, Yolanda Stephenson, or as she is sometimes known, Echo. Her powers were related to sound; she could unleash powerful sound blasts from her mouth or mimic any noise imaginable. I recall that she was very powerful and never cooperated very well with the scientists in charge of the Project.”