Trainee Superhero (Book One) (3 page)

Whew.

Something heavy hits the dome; cracks appear.
I can't see through the dark ice, but I can hear what sounds like
explosions. A single spark sneaks through the cracks and hits me in
the chest, dancing painfully across my whole body and throwing me
hard against the alley wall. The pain is incredible. My vision
starts to fade, my heart stops.

And, for the second time in my life, I
die.

“Superheroes are our brightest and our
bravest. We teach them how to use their powers to serve humanity,
to be the heroes we all need, the saviors of humanity, the very
best of us.”

-Official Superhero Corps website.

“Superheroes are ordinary people with
extraordinary abilities of destruction. Think about that, and if
you aren’t scared then you haven’t been paying sufficient attention
to the world.”

-Email from
Dark Fire
to an
unidentified recipient, read at
Dark Fire
’s
court-martial.

I wake up on a mattress that smells of old
socks and failure.

I open one eye and find myself in a long hall
with a high ceiling. Ropes hang from the ceiling, and I can see
treadmills and racks of weights in near, grim rows. A climbing wall
dominates the wall near me, promising hours of tricky handholds and
painful falls.

I’ve died and hell is a high school gym
class. It’s just like I always feared.

“Up,” says a stern voice, but I ignore
it.

I know I’m no saint, but no one deserves
this. What did I do that was so bad? I can remember trying to save
Stace, and being chased by
The General
, but I can’t quite
remember what happened next. Did he really say that Stace was his
daughter? Did she survive? Did Tenchi? Cold fear descends on my
heart and I desperately try to piece together what happened.

“Up!” insists the voice again.

My body doesn’t hurt. It should; I heard
bones crack as I passed out. Maybe they gave me a new body when I
arrived in hell, but I don’t see why they would bother. Maybe I’m
not in-

“UP!” yells the voice, and my neck erupts in
pain.

I put my hands to my throat and find a thin
collar wound tight around the skin. It burns my neck and burns my
fingers when I try to tear it off. I scream, and the pain stops
suddenly.

“Get up.”

I get up clumsily. I’m wearing grey tracksuit
pants and a pale orange shirt that has
Red Five
written on
the chest. I haven’t seen the pants or shirt before, which means
that somebody dressed me while I was still asleep. Creepy. There
are six other people in orange standing in a ragged line beside me.
Three are men, two are women and one is androgynous. They all look
older than me, decades older in some cases, and they look as
confused as I feel. We are all wearing tight metal collars around
our necks.

Facing us are a bald older man and a young
woman with short blond hair. They are both in black shirts trimmed
with gold, and the way they stand suggests they are in command and
take a no-nonsense approach to punishing their new batch of
sinners. The man stands upright and in a military manner with his
arms behind his back but the woman seems far more interested in the
data feed projecting from a pin on her shirt. Both the man and the
woman are wearing similar collars as us the seven of us who have
just stood up.

“My name is
Past Prime
,” says the man,
“and this is
Never Lies
. We are now in charge of your
training. Do as we say, or we will initiate your collars.”

Past Prime
looks familiar. Really,
really familiar.

“I’m not meant to be here!” protests the man
beside me, and a couple of the others nod in agreement.

I don’t even know where here is, although my
mind is so slow that I’m not too sure who I am just yet either. I’m
still trying to work out of this is hell, purgatory or a nightmare.
At least I’m wearing pants, so I guess it’s not a nightmare.

Never Lies
sighs theatrically and
shakes her head.

“You are not here by mistake,”
Past
Prime
says, “all of you are here because you have potential,
but you failed in some way. Some of you have been kicked off
superhero teams, some of you are criminals. What you did, who you
were or who you know is no longer important. You will serve in the
Cerberus Brawlers
, or you will spend the rest of your lives
in jail for treason.”

The
Cerberus Brawlers
? I’ve never
heard of that team, and I thought I knew them all. I’m not the only
confused one, and many of my team are unhappy at finding themselves
treated so badly.

“I don’t belong here,” a man shouts, “and
when-”

My collar explodes in red-hot pain and all
seven of us hit the mattresses.

“Up,” says
Past Prime
patiently.

I get up, and I’m the first to my feet. I’m
still not sure where I am or what is happening, but I’m learning to
respect that voice. The others are slower, but
Past Prime
waits without hurting us further.

“Service or prison, you decide. The
technicians are going to set you up now.”

Men and women in blue shirts flock to us. One
straps a set of sensors onto my arms and the side of my head while
another checks the movement of my arms and legs. They take blood
samples, test my blood pressure and shine lights into my eyes. They
treat me like I’m nothing more than a science experiment, poking
and prodding with an enthusiasm that worries me. My mind feels
sluggish, so I just sit back and let them do their work.
Never
Lies
wanders over to where I am and gives me a look like she
does not like what she sees. She shakes her head and turns
away.

“I’m not a criminal or a failure,” I say
loudly to her, “so I think-”

“No one cares what you think, trainee,” she
interrupts curtly and walks away without even looking at me.

“I-”

“-set,” interrupts a technician, “now for the
suit.”

The men and women in blue are replaced by a
team in green with big boxes. The boxes hold parts of a bulky suit
of padded armor, and the technicians start dressing me. Everything
fits snugly together, but the suit is bulky and surprisingly hard
to move in.

“Just like the real thing,” says a technician
in green, “so get used to it.”

It feels like I’m wearing three wetsuits all
at once. It’s uncomfortable to say the least, but I don’t have time
to protest before the technicians walk me to a treadmill and start
me running. I fall over a few times until I find my rhythm; it’s
like running underwater, only not as fun.

The running helps clear my head; I’m pretty
sure that this isn’t hell. I’ve read Dante’s Inferno, and it made
no mention of technicians or blood tests. Plus, the suit I’m
wearing looks a lot like the power suits that superheroes wear on
their missions. I remember being accepted into the Superhero Corps,
so am I in some strange training program? I let the treadmill dump
me on the ground and walk over to
Never Lies
. She doesn’t
look surprised to see me.

“The last thing I remember was my town being
attacked,” I say, “I need to know if my father and friends
survived.”

I expect her to shock me or order me back to
work, but
Never Lies
checks the data feed hanging in the air
in front of her face. She scans the list quickly.

“You father is fine. There were thirty-nine
deaths from the attack. Check the list.”

She spins her feed around so that I can read
the list. My Dad isn’t on the list, and neither is Tenchi or his
family. That’s a relief, but I recognize most of the names of those
who died. I don’t know how to feel: I’m sad for the people who were
killed, yet happy that my friends and family are okay. Mostly I
feel angry; none of those people should have died.

“Those numbers are two weeks old, and are
final,” she says.

Two weeks? What have I been doing all that
time? I have a hundred questions running through my head, but
Never Lies
looks impatient and there is really only more one
answer I need.

“Will I get to fight saucers?”

She shrugs.

“The
Cerberus Brawlers
kill more
saucers than any other unit. Pass your training and we’ll make you
part of the team.”

“Okay,” I say and turn back to the
treadmill.

“Is that all?” she calls after me. “Don’t you
want to know where you are, or why you are here? You must have more
questions.”

“My family is safe, and I’ll get to kill
saucers. What more is there?”

I hear her laugh as I get back on the
treadmill and start running. I run until my legs hurt, and then I
stop and crash onto the ground, bouncing on the soft mats. A women
in white brings me a bottle of water and an apple. It’s crisp and
juicy, much better than the ones Dad buys from the grocery store.
Other men and women in white shirts are handing out water and fruit
to the other trainees, almost like the airplane stewards in old
movies.

“Next station!” orders
Past Prime
.

The armor is heavy, and it takes two
technicians to help me to my feet. The next station tests how fast
I can respond to flashing colored lights. I jump for blue, duck for
red, turn left or right for green and pink, and freeze for yellow.
I’m not great at it, but I do my best. The technicians record my
every movement with cameras mounted in floating drones.

After a while the lights stop, and the
green-shirts lead me to a rope hanging from a platform about
sixteen feet off the ground. If this was a movie, it would be time
for a training montage but I really, really hate gym. I don’t even
make it halfway up the rope before I slip back down and land
heavily on a mattress.

“Saucer!” I shout in frustration.

Superheroes don’t need to climb ropes, they
can fly. Why am I doing this?
Past Prime
walks over to me
and looks down. He shakes his head.

“Up,” he says.

I don’t get up; I’m exhausted. My collar
fires up and pain arcs over my body. I roll around until the pain
stops.

“Up,”
Prime
says quietly.

I sit up.

“This is killing me,” I mutter to myself.

Past Prime
grabs my arm and pulls me
to my feet. He points at his arm and it changes color to a metallic
red. He’s a cyborg from the shoulder down. He lifts a trouser leg
and his foot is metal, too. I wonder how much of him is still
original.

“This training
might
kill you,” he
says seriously, “but the saucers will
definitely
kill you if
you aren’t ready for them. Our job is to make you ready. We use a
carrot and stick approach, and the collar is the stick.”

“What's the carrot?”

“Not getting the stick. Now, up that
rope.”

He starts climbing the rope beside mine. He’s
really fast, even with his fake arm and leg. I feel pretty bad
being beaten by a man who is fifty years older than me and who only
has one real arm, so I start climbing. I get all the way to the top
and climb onto the platform where
Past Prime
is waiting for
me.

“Good,” he says, “now if you need to rope
climb to escape a saucer you can. I had to, once.”

I recognize him now.

“
Master Bansuri
,” I say, “that’s who
you are. I have your poster in my room.”

He looks right at me, his face carefully
blank. My dad taught me how to tell when people are bluffing, so I
know that he’s concealing something from me.

“My name is
Past Prime
, and that is
what you will call me,” he says.

I notice that the ground around me is covered
in thick and well-used mattresses.

“Ready?”
Past Prime
asks me.

“For what?”

A large ball flies out of nowhere and hits me
in the gut.

“Ouch!”

I stagger right off the platform and hit the
mattresses hard.

“Up!”

I climb back up the rope and back onto the
platform. A ball shoots from my right and hits me in the leg, but I
don’t fall. The next ball hits me in the back of the head, and I
fall to my knees as dozens more balls bounce off me. None of them
hit
Past Prime
. I fall off the platform, and climb again. My
arms are burning; I don’t think I can make that climb again, and I
don’t see why I should have to.

“And what’s the point of this training?” I
mutter, “Since superheroes can both fly and have shields.”

“They can and do,” he answers in measured
tones, “but being physically strong means faster reflexes and
greater resilience. On your feet.”

The balls start flying again, and one knocks
me off the platform. I hit the ground hard enough to make the world
go black for a second.
Past Prime
leaps off the platform and
lands in an elegant roll right beside me.

“You will have shields, but they will only
absorb ninety-nine percent of whatever hits you. That last percent
hurts. A lot. You need to be in peak condition to survive.”

I didn’t know that the shields let part of an
attack through. No wonder all the superheroes I’ve seen are in
great shape.

“I’m no athlete,” I say.

“I know, I read your file. We have a few
tricks to help people like you, but you still need to work as hard
as you can. We won’t push you any more here. Next station.”

The technicians lead me onwards.
Never
Lies
is waiting for me, tapping her foot as if she has better
places to be. Beside her stands a huge tattooed man in a red shirt
who looks like he enjoys hurting people. The name on his shirt says
Violent Behavior
. He doesn’t look like a superhero; he looks
like the hired muscle working for the bad guy in a spy film.