Gigaheroes

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine: Adam Mason

I holed up in an abandoned warehouse for the rest of the day, waiting for things to cool over. I spent the next half a day having fun punching holes in walls and generally testing out my new powers. I still hadn’t discovered a limit to how long I could hold my breath. For all I knew, it could very well be indefinitely. By the time night fell, I was still giggling like a maniac. It was then I realized I hadn’t gotten hungry all day. 

It was like every normal human limitation had been dialed back or turned off. The weirdest thing was that I had to force myself to notice that they were gone. It all just felt so normal. Of course I didn’t need to eat or drink or sleep as much I needed to before. This was who I was now, but it was still crazy to me that some people had felt like this all their lives. 

They were lucky ones. They got to be gods among men while the rest of us barely scrapped together a living. I don’t think the divide ever really cemented itself in my mind before now. I knew people were rich and famous and powerful, but it never really sank in just how much they lived better. I’m not just talking about all the creature comforts, though those came with their benefits. I’m talking about freedom. I’m talking about the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want to whoever you want. 

Don’t ever kid yourself in things like public servants or philanthropists or whatever bullshit they feed you on the news. Take it from a guy who’s seen the other side. They don’t give a damn because they don’t need to. You work for them so they can lead the lives you always wanted, the life I always wanted. I giggled again. Now I was one of the lucky ones, and now I could do whatever I wanted. 

Now, I’m not an idiot. I can put two and two together when the occasion arises. I figured out what the enzyme was. They siphon the blood of supers from blacksites to inject into normals for their temporary super soldiers. What the world was frustratingly unclear on was how long those lucky normals lasted. The officials said years. I remember the Ghost told me that I was on the clock, but I honestly didn’t believe him. I felt fine. I felt better than fine. It was obvious that I was an exception to the rule, and I had more time than I knew what to do with. 

I had been putting a list of all the things I wanted to do, but never got the chance. And as the night dragged on into the very early hours of the morning, I knew exactly what I was going to do first. 

…

You would be surprised how easily I walked in the open streets. Well, I wasn’t exactly walking openly. I stuck mostly to the sides and went down alleyways whenever I got the chance. Normally, I wouldn’t be doing something so risky. But who was going to stop me now? What? Was a mugger going to stab me? I’d like to see him try. 

It took me an hour, but I was standing in front of that same grimy fast-food restaurant where this whole adventure began. I was cackling as I entered the door. There was a short line at this late an hour, but I went straight to the front. The robot had just placed an order on the counter. I swiped it before the man could pick up his meal. 

“Hey!” 

The guy was young, maybe in his early twenties. He wore the same rags as everyone else who would go to this joint, but his face ticked me off. It was all beady and squintish like. It reminded me of that weasel of an interrogator. Could’ve been his son for all I knew. 

I picked him up by his neck. His anger quickly turned to horror as he realized just who I was. 

“Ask yourself this. Do you really want to mess with me?” 

He choked out a noise and shook his head rapidly. 

I threw him to the floor. Not hard enough to hurt him badly, I wasn’t a monster. The patrons all gasped, horrified, and started running for the exit. The man yelled and scrambled away with them. Holding my meal in my hands, I turned to the tin can with the crooked mustache. 

“Alert. Alert. You have been recorded causing a public disturbance. Please wait until the police arrive.”

“You always were a stupid robot. You know that?” I asked it. 

“Alert. Alert. You have—”

I reached over the counter and snapped off the mustache. The piece of iron was like putty in my hands. I tossed the scrap of metal behind me. “Tell me, did they program you to run? Or are you just as disposable as the rest of this garbage dump?”

“Alert. Alert—”

I pulled out its microphone mouth and crushed it in my hands. “I’m a nice man. You have three seconds to prove me wrong. One… Two…” I held out my finger to flick it in the forehead. The tin can rumbled, trying desperately to say the same thing as it always did. “Three.”

The robot went crashing through the wall and into the kitchen behind it. The automated kitchen exploded with grease and debris and machine parts. An alarm sounded in the restaurant, and I heard the doors click locked behind me. I ripped them off their hinges and chucked them in the back as well. A fire caught up and soon the whole place was burning. 

I took off into the night, flying around to shop for places to eat. I found this really nice penthouse on the top floor of a skyscraper. All the windows were broken, and the place had been throughly looted, but it had a nice view of the city. I grabbed a chair and dragged it over to the edge. Sitting down, I opened up my meal. 

Surprise! Surprise! Inside was a cheeseburger and a bag of fries. I regretted not taking a drink when I had the chance, but it didn’t matter now. I bit into my cheeseburger and tore a piece off. As I overlooked the city, I wondered just which cheeseburger had tasted more delicious. Was it the one that cost me everything, or was it the one that cost me nothing? 

Sitting on top of the world, I’m not going to lie; it felt pretty great. But as I continued chewing, the burger didn’t fill me up like it had before. I suppose it couldn’t anymore. I mean, the flavor was all there, don’t get me wrong. All that wonderful, greasy slob that made the tastebuds go crazy was still there. But there was also something visceral that was missing. When I swallowed, I didn’t get any pleasure from it. My stomach wasn’t satiated. It didn’t feel much of anything. Halfway through, I got bored with the burger and tossed it away. I kicked the rest of the bag off the skyscraper. 

I leaned back in my chair and took in the view. It was nice up here. Quiet, but nice. You never got a lot of that in City 57. There was always someone chattering louder than they should or some distant gunfight or some drug addict muttering in the corner. And if it was quiet, it meant you were in a really bad part of town. And that meant you should get out of there fast. 

This quiet felt more… peaceful, if you know what I mean. For the first time in my life, I think I realized what that word meant. I was always going from work to dumpster diving to trying to scrap together enough credits for what food I didn’t eat from the dump. And when I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was sleeping with one eye open. I never had the time to stop and think about things. 

But looking on the mostly dark but still twinkling lights of City 57, I just felt sad and alone. I don’t know. I look back on my life, and I don’t even understand what I could’ve done differently, but I still feel like I somehow wasted it. I didn’t know how or why, but deep down, there was something I missed all those times when I was begging for my next meal. There was something more to things than surviving, even when you were starving. And just as the sun was beginning to rise over City 57, that feeling awoke me. 

And it wasn’t that bullshit you still see on advertisements about “living your life to the fullest”. I don’t know who still believed in that these days. A pretty woman got to lounge on a beach, trying to sell you shampoo, meanwhile you’re considering whether you should drink the toilet water. A man’s got to have a reason to stick around—a good reason. I just didn’t know I needed it until now. 

I relaxed back in my chair and closed my eyes. Look at Adam Mason! Having a religious epiphany! What will he do next!? I chuckled to myself. Nah, but I wanted something now, and I didn’t know how to get it. When I got my super powers, all I thought about was what I was going to take first. But now, I just wished I had someone to talk to. Yeah, maybe a friend would be a good start. 

My ears picked up a humming noise that rose above the general hubbub of the city. I had noticed that my senses had also been dialed up, but in a very convenient way. It wasn’t that my hearing had increased, loud noises remained the same as they always did, but that I could just pick apart sounds a lot more. The humming grew louder and louder. 

I opened my eyes just in time to see a missile aimed square at my face. 

“Oh shi—”

I didn’t feel the impact or the explosion. In fact, all I felt was utter chaos in my senses for the next minute as I was flung backward and the world turned to fire and dust around me. I vaguely recall landed on my side and rolling until I slammed against some rubble. All in all, it lightly stung. 

I had to take a moment to process what had just happened. My heart was still pounding in my chest. That was the part of me that still hadn’t adjusted to the new me. I still I thought I could die. I picked myself up and dusted myself off, only to find I was now completely naked. My clothes had been all but vaporized in the blast. 

There were not a lot of ways to piss me off anymore. That was one of them. 

I clenched my fists. “Oh, you son of a bitch.”

I exploded out from the building, flying towards the drone that had fired the missile. The operator didn’t have a chance to react as I flew through the drone, splitting it in two. The machine exploded and fell to the ground. And now I was naked and flying over the city skyline. I was glad it would be difficult to see up so far. 

Glancing around, I saw dozens of other drones converging on my position. And I’m not saying they were all around me. I could see them coming from miles off. I gritted my teeth. Fighting City 57’s entire defense network naked hadn’t been on my to-do list, but they were the ones who picked this fight. 

Well, to call it a fight wouldn’t do it justice. All their fancy equipment couldn’t keep up with me. I took a drone and held it as a baseball bat. Another one launched another missile at me. All right. I took a deep breath. Batter! Batter! Swing!

Unfortunately, I was terrible at baseball and the drone was a worse bat. It snapped in half, and the missile hit me square in the face again. I was covered in black soot, but the hit didn’t even faze me. I got bored quickly and flew through all of them. Fiery debris rained on City 57. The morning sky was full of crimson rain, and I wasn’t even getting tired. 

I noticed two drones flying higher than the rest. They had this invisible cloak surrounding them, but my eyes could pick them up easily. They seemed awfully expensive, and more than that, fun dummies for target practice. I didn’t have a great swing, but my throwing arm had just gotten several thousand times stronger. I picked up two molten chunks of metal, and soon, two more very expensive piles of debris were added to the rest. 

I touched down on the roof of a nearby skyscraper and enjoyed the show. Hopefully that would get them off my back for the time being. And if it didn’t, then maybe I would send them a louder message. I remembered the Ghost’s words right after he jabbed me, but I honestly didn’t feel like attacking the ASA, or anyone else for that matter. I just wanted to be left alone. 

It occurred to me that might be a wistful fantasy. I was now one of the biggest threats in the Democratic Union. Hell, I just destroyed billions of credits in equipment without so much as breaking a sweat. They would be forced to come after me until they took me down—which wasn’t ever going to happen. 

I realized that this exact scenario is what they were so terrified of. There was now someone they couldn’t control. Someone was outside the system, and they were probably all shitting their pants because of it. Everything they had done could fall apart in an instant if someone with the strength and will came around to blow their house of cards away. 

And perhaps the thought that terrified them most was that maybe someone should. If I wanted to set myself up as king of this festering country, who was going to stop me?

Almost in answer to that question, I heard someone approaching. I waited a few minutes, and a pair of boots landed behind me. There was a strange popping noise, and I sensed three others appeared as well. The only thought that ran through my head was this:

Ah damn, I wish I had a pair of clothes.

Link to Chapter Ten