CHAPTER FIFTY

Washington, D.C.

Two Suns still sparked the sky, making every day a hot summer day. Security was higher than ever along the National Mall, and yet the same age-old iron gates protected the White House. A young tourist let go of the red balloon his mother just bought him. It's pulled into the skies as a storm rolled in. The cloud cast it shadow from the White House to Capitol Hill, and the boy fell to the sidewalk short of breath. His mother ran to his side, "Harold!"

The President saw a light reflect off of the clock on his desk in the Oval Office as if the storm had passed already. He got up and took a moment to look outside. "But that's impossible."

The storm clouds still hovered above the Capitol, but the sun shined below them within the boy named Harold by the gate. The power of the sun harnessed in Harold's Heart. The poor boy screamed as the energy overcame him and was released into the atmosphere in a blast wave. The wave tore Harold and his mother to atoms. It reduced the White House and the iron gates to nothingness. Everything in the radius of the blastwave floated in the air above them as radiated particles. The red balloon passed through the storm clouds as it began to rain.

A shadow left the District of Columbia in cinder.

The Pentagon immediately went to DEF CON ONE, declaring martial law on the nation after loosing the President, Vice President, and most of the cabinet. The major cities began evacuation. Once the news and the internet got the information to the public it was not long before there was looting and rioting in the streets. It didn't matter if you were in a city or suburb, people were scared; democracy and liberty were at its weakest. Like an army without a commander retreating at the first sign of trouble, society was crumbling.

Due to his expansive research in the area, Doctor Mordechai Fitzsimons was given orders to take his team along with the super human soldier squadron to secure and protect the largest city in the country.

New York City, NY

DarkFlood sat on the roof of a skyscraper timing Moses and Vlad running through the city. Moses had learned how to create stone slabs while Vlad held them suspended in the air as they ran high above Chinatown's streets. They were both well on their way to becoming super heroes. Soon they would no longer need Philip to be DarkFlood. Vlad was calling himself Geronimo. Moses wore sleeveless shirts, showing the flesh on his arms that was now smooth grey stone from his shoulder down to his fingers, a trademarked look for his neighborhood persona, Stone Thrower.

It had been a couple of weeks now without his skin eroding any further. Moses prayed it was over. They did not mourn Lazarus and his boy, for DarkFlood told them that they would all see them again. And Jason used his power to keep them off the grid, hijacking into the system from the desktop and television at Moses Apartment along with Dr. Randolph, who was finding himself more and more useless every day.

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As Jason and Randolph found out about Washington, DarkFlood waited for his team to finish their city scramble. It never took them this long. Something must’ve been wrong. He jumped off the skyscraper and the cloak Sensei gave him fixed to his hands and caught the wind like a hang-glider. He tracked down the stone tablets suspended in the air, but no Moses or Geronimo were near. Police sirens echoed around the corner. He turned in and teleported onto the hood of the police car. DarkFlood waved his hand behind him and the police sirens turned off. The two officers in the patrol car were dead. He looked down the street and this is what he saw.

A woman out in the street holding her head as her elbows and knees turned to knots, her feet turned to stumbling stumps, and her skin turned to bark. Before she could finish transforming, people in the shops around her threw Molotov Cocktails at her and tried to shoot her dead. They pulled a guy hiding in his apartment out to the street for another public execution. Even the children were watching and cheering the lynch-mob on.

He must do something. DarkFlood scatter-jumped over to them before they killed a man for being blue. He was able to breathe underwater, but they would never get that far. DarkFlood rubbed his hands together and pulled the blue from the man's face, creating water to put out the fire on the woman's back. The crowd panicked upon seeing DarkFlood and scattered, revealing his men down the block combating another rampaging mob.

Moses was keeping a burning building from crumbling over families still rushing out of their apartments. He threw pillars of stone up from the ground to replace the caving foundation. Geronimo stood back to back with him, holding the bullets away from people who took advantage of them being distracted after catching them in full use of their powers, even though they were clearly helping people. His patience was spent. For Vladislav Geronimov, proud Russian and father, they did not deserve a second chance. His hate erupted a power more than he ever imagined. He stopped and pulled all the bullets and all of their hearts into the pavement. Moses felt the tremor of death create a schism, but did not dare to look back.

Around Manhattan tanks and Humvee convoys covered all the bridges and tunnels. Joining the police in a city wide lock-down. They quickly combed every neighborhood from Washington Heights to Staten Island, putting down any citizen uprising or rioting mob. Fitzsimons, along with the Hatter and Faulkner leading the super human soldiers, rode to Chinatown. The soldiers sought out every superhuman from the neighborhood all the way to Times Square, along with every other neighboring district where Oliver, Yvonne, and the Alchemist were waiting to round them up into two groups. The first group was to be only a few recruited into the new human army. The second group would be sacrificed to appease the remaining humans, making them think that Fitzsimons was still "following orders.”

Jason finally gave up on waiting for Philip, Moses, and Vlad to return home and went out looking for them. He passed through the alleyway and night drew over him like a curtain. Even the floor ran black. The Shadow Man surrounded Jason. He pulled out his cellphone from his pocket and supercharges it to emit a light. Jason stood strong.

One lone beacon in the darkness.

Jason held his beacon for someone to find him. The whole city was crying out. Who would be there to save him now?

The docks and the ships were abandoned. For the first time in years, the Intrepid was active, patrolling the Hudson River. The water shifted with an unusual tide and flooded down city blocks. It moved with a mind of its own and tracked a source it's been looking for since China.

Jason couldn’t keep the spark alive in the phone forever and the shadow began to take over the dwindling light. The water carried over its own residual trail of inter-dimensional goo. The Shadow Man revealed himself to Jason, whose phone broke in his hands. The pressure of the darkness brought the kid to his knees and right before the Shadow Man killed him, Lazarus and his son returned with a champion from the Realm of the Dead.

From the afterlife as an embodied spirit, Sensei swiped the last bit of light up over Jason with his katana, clashing against the Shadow Man's scythe.