Gigaheroes

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Two: Daniel Peterson

I cradled the boy in my arms as I sat in an office room. We were at one of the top of the ASA regional headquarters. It wasn’t the safest place to be, but everywhere looked worse. 

I had been camping in one of the nearby buildings when I heard an explosion, and the entire world turned into flying rubble. I let my instincts take over, and I was teleporting so fast that even I couldn’t keep up with it. Then a blink later, I was near the roof of the ASA watching the rest of the city collapse around me. 

There was a huge dust cloud, and the noise of everything falling apart hurt my ears. I could only look in horror at the devastation. I could never really picture a nuclear bomb going off, but this might as well have been a miniature one. But after a while, things settled, and I was alone with the kid in the dark office. 

The kid wasn’t in good shape. I knew that much, at least. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, not unlike what prisoners would wear. Except instead of a muscular tattooed criminal, this kid seemed to be one hamburger short of dropping dead. But even that didn’t concern me as the metal plugs that were fastened along his body. 

I didn’t know how advanced cybernetic technology had advanced in the Democratic Union, and I didn’t really want to know. But this kid was something else. There were what I presumed to be feeding tubes all over his stomach. And there were metal plugs in his arms and the back of his shaved head. 

He was alive and breathing, but how much more than that was anyone’s guess. And I had no clue what made this pasty kid so special that he was locked up in some sort of ultra secret laboratory. And then, maybe I didn’t want to know. 

The class system went one through five. Though it would be so incredibly rare that it shouldn’t happen, I suppose there could also be class sixes and above. There wasn’t anything that theoretically stopped it, at least not that I knew of. It was possible—though extremely unlikely—there could be a person born out there who could destroy the whole planet if he wanted to. 

Maybe the kid I held in my arms was a monster who could somehow destroy the whole world. Maybe the best bet was to find a gun and put a bullet in his brain for everyone else’s safety. I won’t lie. I thought about it. It was one of those gruesome thoughts from time to time that you entertain for the mere possibility of it. 

But as I looked down at this kid, I couldn’t see anything other than a ten-year-old. Maybe I was holding the destroyer of the world in my arms. Maybe I wasn’t. And if this kid was that dangerous, did the world really deserve to be saved? The second option was that I let whatever power this kid had go loose, and if it burned the Democratic Union to the ground, wasn’t that a good thing? 

This country was sick and rotten, and the world was probably even more so. I didn’t know why I was so scared for it. Maybe because by burning it all down, there would doubtlessly be something left in the ashes. And if I survived, it would be in a new world, one where all the rules were thrown out the window. And I was scared so much that that world would be worse. 

And then there was the third possibility. If the kid was really that dangerous, how did he get caught in the first place? Did he get caught? How did I know this wasn’t some clone or test-tube baby? Maybe he was some other third thing. Something that wouldn’t change the world at all. 

There was so much I didn’t know, and so much was riding on a decision I was the least qualified to make. 

A minute passed, and no answers appeared out of thin like I hoped them to. 

I sighed, letting the tension out of me. Fuck it. I wasn’t a child killer. And if someone ever said that letting a child live was a bad thing, then fuck whoever made that a rule. I didn’t have the right to make that call for the world, and even if the world suffered for it, then so much the worse for them. If it was so, then I would let the whole world burn for the sake of this ten-year-old boy. And I realized I didn’t think that was a bad thing. 

So I stayed in that darkness, out of sight, unsure what to do. I didn’t see Adam Mason anymore, and I wondered if he was dead. Maybe I was waiting for nothing, but I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t know what to do. And so I just waited for something else to happen. 

My heart rose in my chest when I finally saw a flying speck in the damaged city scape. I squinted my eyes, and I knew it was Mason. But damned if he didn’t look bad. He was covered in blood and debris and ash. He was in one piece, but he was battered, and he looked like he had gone through hell and back. Adam touched down on the concrete and began digging. 

I didn’t know why I hesitated to teleport down. The sight of him scared me a little. He looked deranged. I suppose I couldn’t really blame him for that after everything he had gone through. He dug out a soldier, and he let the soldier run away. I suppose that proved he was still sane despite his appearance, but I still hesitated. 

Too much was quiet now. Too much was still. I was waiting for the next bad thing to happen, and then I heard the voice of Seattle Vance, though from up here it was barely a whisper. 

“That’s a lot of damage! Do you think you got it all out of your system!?”

I could barely hear it. I knew if I wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation, I would have to go many floors down. It was a risk, but I needed to know what was going on. I held the kid tight as I teleported to a better spot in the shadows that overlooked the whole scene. 

Closer up, Adam Mason looked no better standing in the rubble. But he was alive, I guess. So there was that. 

“I really like your fashion choice! It’s very minimalist!” Seattle shouted. 

“Just stop with the bullshit. Where’s my serum you promised!?” Adam yelled back. “I did exactly what you wanted me to!”

“I would love to give it to you, but I ran into some trouble! Where’s your friend, Daniel Peterson!?”

“I have no fucking idea!” 

“Well, can you place a call!?”

Adam looked down where his clothes should’ve been, and the question answered itself. Then I heard a voice I didn’t recognize. 

“Enough! Either Daniel appears, or I blow your friend’s head off!”

Adam shrugged his shoulders, confused. “Okay!? I don’t really know him!?”

There was an awkward moment of silence. I saw Seattle panic and cry out before he got shot. “Wait! Wait! I die, and you don’t get your serum. All of this will have been for nothing! Use your super senses to find your friend!”

Adam spat on the rubble. “Serum now, or I don’t do shit! And none of us will get what we want!”

To tell the truth, I was perfectly fine letting this play out. I didn’t give a damn about Vance, and it looked like Adam had the situation under control. That was, until the man in the black uniform jumped off the side of the building and fell at least fifty feet to the ground. He landed unfazed and walked right up to Mason. He grabbed him and put his nullifier to his head. 

“I’m tired of this. Daniel Peterson! I assume you’re watching right now! Come out with the kid, or your friend dies!”

I chuckled quietly at the absurdity, but it became far less funny when Adam couldn’t break the guy’s grip. My eyes widened as I realized Adam had finally been pushed to his limit, and now it was do or die. 

“You have until the count of three!” The guy in the black uniform yelled. “One!”

I was down there faster than you could blink, but I left the kid behind. I wasn’t just about to hand him over. 

I raised my hands in surrender. “All right, let’s talk.”

Standing face to face in the strewn rubble, I wish I could’ve seen what the other guy was thinking. He wore a black mask with a visor. I didn’t know anything about what I was dealing with except that this guy was bad news. 

Lightning crackled. The rain was pouring around us. And I was tired, I was so very tired. 

“Hand the kid over!” The guy in the black uniform ordered. “Hand him over, and I let you two live!”

I thought about teleporting to Mason and grabbing him away, but black uniform’s finger was pressed against the trigger. It would only take a hair’s movement, and with Adam looking as he did, I just didn’t know if he could take it. He might’ve been in one piece, but he was absolutely drenched in blood. His eyes looked like someone had tried to pop them open. There were gashes along his body like his flesh itself had been burst open. 

He looked like he was on death’s door already, and I didn’t want to risk it. 

“One!” The guy in the black uniform shouted again. 

“Don’t give him what he wants!” Adam struggled against black uniform. “I can take it!” He said, trying to egg me into teleporting him out. 

“If your friend thought that, he would’ve already tried it. I can’t say whether this won’t pop his head open like a smashed pumpkin, but I’m excited to try. You wanna roll those dice?” black uniform asked me. 

“And what would you do with the kid, huh!? What was that laboratory down there! Why do you want him so bad!?” I tried stalling for time. 

“That’s none of your concern! Two!”

I gritted my teeth. Why did it all have to come to this? Where was that higher power when you needed him most? Adam Mason was the only friend I had in City 57, maybe the whole world. I didn’t want to lose him, not after all this. He was dying, and I still would’ve traded my life for his in a heartbeat. 

I just couldn’t lose another friend. I had nothing left except him. 

Adam looked at me and slowly shook his head. “Don’t do it.”

I hated it. I hated it so much, but I wasn’t about to betray Adam and give over the kid. If this was his play, then so be it. We would go out like he wanted to. 

“Three!” 

I braced to teleport. And if I left holding his corpse, then that was it. Adam saw the look in my eye and smiled. I saw a look of happiness on his face, and I realized he had found a good way to die. 

Okay then. 

I blinked, but I didn’t teleport. Suddenly, there was another black uniform standing next to Mason and the guy holding him hostage. 

“We got him,” he said, placing a hand on the guy’s shoulder. 

I stepped forward, confused. “What?”

And they were gone. Adam fell to the ground, but I didn’t catch him. I teleported back up to where I had left the child, only to discover he was missing. I screamed in rage as I realized they had another teleporter on their team. Maybe he was there from the beginning. Maybe he got called in as soon as I took the kid. It didn’t matter. 

I had been played. I should’ve ran out of there with the kid as fast as I could. But no, I had to be stupid and forget other people had superpowers too! 

I teleported around as fast as I could, hoping to get a snapshot of them so I could follow their trail. But my moment’s hesitation and going back to check for the kid cost me. I searched desperately for several minutes, popping in and out of reality everywhere I could look before I accepted that they were gone. 

Going back to Mason, I saw him lying on the rubble. He wasn’t passed out, but he looked to be weak. I got him upright, and he looked at me deliriously. 

“Not feeling too good,” he weakly gasped. “Think this might be the end of the road.”

“Yeah, well, we’re going to get you better,” I reassured him as I looked up to the ASA headquarters. 

Seattle Vance and the kid with him were gone, but it didn’t matter. 

They couldn’t outrun me. 

Link to Chapter Twenty Three