Daniel Peterson
My senses guided my way to the basement. I appeared in a long concrete hall lined with metal slabs. I had no idea how many kids there were here, but getting them out wasn’t the problem. It was getting them to a safe range.
Never mind that Adam Mason would be having the fight of his life up there—I knew ASA reinforcements would arrive as soon as Mason was put down. Not just them, but CitySec too. Hell, every armed grunt with a gun was probably being sent to the regional headquarters to close in and contain the damage. That meant I would have to travel quite a distance to make sure the kids had a good chance to escape.
Grasping with both hands, I yanked the slab aside to take a look, and my heart sank in my chest. Five faces covered themselves from what must’ve been blinding light from above. Three boys and two girls. They wore rags, and they were so skinny they might’ve been human sticks. The pit was so small that only two at a time had room to sleep. The rest had to remain standing.
They were covered in filth, and concrete was crusted with layers of human detritus. The ASA hadn’t even bothered to hose it down.
I doubted they had the strength to flee, even if I got them to safety. And yet, despite the squalor, the three young boys who could’ve been no older than nine, stood to guard for the girls against the stranger who had opened the gate.
Just seeing that small act made me realize Mason was right. This had been the right call all along. Looking over the rest of the pits, I made a decision. I could try to save a few with longer distance jumps, or I could try to save many. Sure, most of them would probably be snatched up again once things settled.
But if I had been one of those kids, and I had known I had been passed over for a chance of freedom because of bad luck…
There was no time to explain to them. Taking two at a time, I teleported quickly across tunnels and empty rooms and even a sewer until we were in a flooding alleyway. The five children stumbled, disoriented by the quick transition. It had all been over in a few seconds, and from how they moved, I knew their limbs must’ve been impossibly stiff from weeks of being trapped in such a cramped space.
The oldest among the group—a boy—stood to face me, to see what my intentions were. His expression was hard. His matted hair and dirty face stared defiantly at me, waiting to see what new trap had been sprung on them. The young kid had been forced to grow up very fast. He knew there was no such thing as a good turn—except for maybe just this once—there was.
I nodded towards the outside street. The rain was pouring down. “Run as fast as you can.” I told him, disappearing a second later.
Pit by pit, I rescued those children. I tried to ignore the fighting as best as I could, and it was all too tempting to watch and see how Adam was doing. But if I did that, it would be wasting the precious little time he had given me. As I was taking two into a nearby building, a great burst of flame shattered through the wall right in front of us. The roar of fire singed my arms, and I grabbed the poor children again before they got caught in the flame. Teleporting them to the hollowed-out ruins of a cafe that was knee-deep in water, I dropped them off and went back to the ASA building.
Did it feel good? Was this an act of righteous rebellion against the Democratic Union? I won’t deny it. It felt good finally sticking it to the world. But there was also just more tragedy. Some of those kids I saved were too far gone. They could barely move, let alone flee for their lives. Some were broken. They sat huddled as infants, not responding even as I desperately tried to make them run.
And some were just feral.
One child I rescued grew claws and tried to rake my eyes out in screeching hatred. There were others like him too, both boys and girls who would spend the rest of their lives as barely better than animals.
But it was important to me that they got the same chance. A chance at freedom that I never had. Maybe those feral kids could one day climb out of the terrible circumstances they found themselves in. Maybe not. Probably not. But they deserved the chance, anyway.
And for those like the first child I rescued, the one who stood defiantly, they were the ones who kept me coming back. The ones who hadn’t been broken, the ones who remained steadfast, they especially deserved that chance.
And I was damned if I was going to leave any of them behind.
I don’t know how long it took. Maybe it was ten minutes. Maybe it was an hour. Maybe more. As I dropped another child off, I teleported to a building overlooking the ASA regional headquarters. Glancing down from a window, I saw the carnage that had been wrought.
There were heaps of molten metal still steaming in the rain. There were great craters in the street’s asphalt where the water poured into puddles of grimy water. I took that to be Lance Bain and Cosmic Warrior’s work, using fire and contorting gravity to try to kill Mason. But amongst the devastation and ruin, I saw a lone body.
It appeared Iron Shield had been the first to fall. The metal spilled out from him like a pool of widening blood. His head had been chopped off, probably by the strike of an arm. I didn’t know what to think of the corpse. Should I be happy? He had come here to kill or arrest us, or worse. Should I be sad? His was probably a similar tragedy to my own, except he had a lot more perks.
But to tell the truth, I didn’t feel much of anything. I didn’t have it in my heart anymore to mourn everyone who dies along my path. I don’t think I can.
Iron Shield had died and was left in the rain. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know his story. All I knew was that it would be up to his comrades to carry on this forgotten corpse’s memory. And when they died, it would be up to someone else to remember them.
And when it was my turn, I sincerely hoped the Urban Defenders would remember me.
I looked into the blackened and thundering sky. I saw towers of fire and beams of contorted light as three figures fought in brutal combat. I was too far out to guess who was winning and who was losing. For all I knew, Adam Mason was on his last legs, and he would soon be brought down. And then again, for all I knew, he was the one who would come out on top. I wish I knew the answer, but until then, I had no choice but to fulfill his request.
Teleporting away, I entered the last pit. The grate blocked out all light, but I could sense two forms huddled in the darkness. One boy and one girl stiffened at the new arrival. They hugged each other and tried to draw away from me. I took them and I put them in a distant alley.
They slowly uncurled from one another, taking in their surroundings.
“Run as fast as you can,” I told them as I turned to teleport away.
“Wait!” The boy cried out suddenly.
I glanced back at him.
“Who are you?” he asked, quicker on the uptake than most. He figured out I had been there to set them free.
I was about to ignore him, but something made me pause. I chuckled and lifted my head to the pouring sky, feeling the rain fall on my face before looking back to him. Of everything I had done in my entire life, this was the one moment I felt I could be proud of. This was the one moment I got to be a superhero—a real one. Hell, so why not?
“Just call me Nighthawk.” I smiled at him and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Back to the basement, I was running one more check through all the levels to make sure I had gotten everyone on the upper levels. I knew the sensory deprivation tanks were a bitch, but thankfully they weren’t locked from the outside.
And thanks to my rather familiar experience with them, I also knew the control scheme to initiate an emergency release. Hatches near the bottom of the tanks burst open, streaming water out into the holding floor. Wires and tubes retracted, the lids hissed open, and soon, there were dozens of people floating face down in pools of fetid, freezing water.
Many were kids, but there were also a few adults. Grown-ups didn’t typically get the pits. They were transferred out to Gen Pop, or otherwise executed. Too hard to control, too much of a risk. I sighed and got back to work. Teleporting in the water with them, I got each of them out, trying to go farther afield.
It took frustratingly long minutes even as I tried to take two at a time. Ripping the masks off, I found one or two that weren’t breathing. I got them out anyway. Didn’t feel right to leave them there like that.
Once this holding room was done, I moved onto the next, and once I was done with them, I moved onto the next floor.
The people in the deprivation tanks—I didn’t even know if they had a chance. All of them were pretty much unconscious—all of them looked half dead. It was all I could do to put them in discreet locations and hoped they would wake up in time.
If they didn’t, well, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to save everyone from this mess.
And by the time I went back to the lowest level, I was honestly dizzy. I stumbled against a nearby wall, trying to keep myself upright. I remember when I was a kid, and I just gotten my powers. I could teleport up to a dozen times a day before getting exhausted. And as the years passed and my powers grew, it wasn’t really a problem anymore. I knew my limit was up there—somewhere. But hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been forced to jump this many times in a month, let alone a week.
How many times had I jumped? Hundreds at least.
I was so out of it that I barely noticed the noise of footsteps in the hall. I teleported out of the way just as they were rounding a corner.
It was weird, now that I thought about it. It was so much of an adrenaline rush that I realized I honestly hadn’t seen many guards. One or two I guess, but they were easy to get around. I suppose the rest had evacuated? I mean, they were normals after all. No point in standing your ground.
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But what were these guys doing then? There hadn’t been any prisoners on this floor—I was checking twice just to make sure I hadn’t missed something.
Glancing around the corner, I watched stealthily behind them as they went down the hallway. They wore black uniforms similar to riot gear, but there was no identification or markings you would normally see with soldiers of the like. They carried big guns that I recognized as—
What the fuck?
I rubbed my eyes.
Those were sonic cannons. The biggest, the baddest, the most expensive hardware for going up against abnormals. What the hell were they doing down here then!? The fight was on the surface! Were they going after me?
But as I looked further, the more confused I became. The way they walked, they weren’t searching around for somebody. They were going somewhere. The men marched down the hall in a brisk formation, clearly knowing the layout of this place.
I hadn’t been expecting this at all.
Was this some part of Vance’s plan? Were they Vance’s men? I doubted it. Sonic cannons were multi-million dollar equipment, reserved only for the elite of the elite. When we raided his hideout, his guys were using scavenged C4 and old military surplus. The ASA then? They certainly had access to that sort of hardware.
But not for a place like City 57. They wouldn’t waste that kind of firepower on this radiated slumville.
As much I still wanted to go back up to the surface to see how Mason was doing… I was exhausted. And frankly, I was curious to see what they were up to.
They disappeared around another corner down the narrow concrete hallway. I tried to keep up on foot, quietly using my teleportation only when I had to catch up or when I lost them. I followed them for quite a distance, tailing them through several cramped passages until we came upon an innocuous hallway no different than the last.
I mean, the lower levels were all the same grey concrete with the same LED lighting. Interspersed with pipes and supply closets, there wasn’t exactly much to look at down here.
The men stopped at one seam running down a concrete wall. I had no idea why they stopped, but it seemed this was their destination. I crouched down and tried to listen in on their conversation.
It seemed they were talking with themselves and someone else who was phoning them. Couldn’t hear who was on the other end of the line, but I could make out some of the chatter between them.
“…Mason is stronger than expected…more time than we thought…”
“—what about Vance?”
“…trap. He won’t make it…”
“Joker’s orders. Just get the target.”
One of the soldiers went up to the seam and brought out a plastic security card. Running it along the innocuous surface, a green light beeped in the crack. The concrete paneling rumbled as it fell away and folded to one side, revealing a previously hidden passage that was coated with a dark, glossy material.
Refined Zurchon.
I didn’t even know what to think. This was a different world than what I was used to. When you wanted to contain abnormals, you threw them in the pits. When that wasn’t good enough, then it was the tank.
When that wasn’t good enough…
Normally, with my teleportation, I gain a snapshot of all of my surroundings. I am able to immediately understand everything around me in less than a blink of an eye and move for my best advantage. But Refined Zurchon made me as pathetically normal as Mason had been. Damn thing was even invisible to my super sense.
The men filed into the secret corridor, leaving the entrance open. I knew what was happening was way over my head, but still, wasn’t I here to die in glorious battle anyway? Hell, if there was a prison cell that needed Refined Zurchon, maybe I could get some actual backup for Mason. And besides, my interest was thoroughly piqued.
I carefully stepped out of the corner and quietly made my way over to the passage.
The secret entrance led to a circular hallway. A catwalk was suspended from the ceiling, and above, dark red lights dimly lit the space. The walls were entirely dark, almost like they weren’t even there to begin with. It extended a long way, then started to descend down. The six men were already nearly out of sight.
I made to follow, but as soon as I took the first step onto the grating of the catwalk, I felt a shiver down my spine. It was like some part of me was being cut off. My instincts kicked in, and I tried to teleport away, except I found I couldn’t.
My heart started pounding in my chest, and I hesitated to continue. You need to understand. My entire life—except in the tank—I had always had a way out. No one really understands what it’s like, but imagine having a button you could press to get you out of whatever trouble you were in. And no matter how fast the other guy tried, as long as you saw him coming, you were always faster.
Now the button was turned off. It was like suddenly losing an arm or a leg, and wondering what you’ll do now.
It was terrifying.
And yet, I still needed to know. Honestly, I don’t know where this overpowering urge came within me. Maybe it was that I thought I was going to die soon anyway, and if I went with unanswered questions, well, for whatever reason, that was more unbearable than anything.
I pressed on, knowing that in here, this was it. Outside I had a safety net. In here, one mistake would cost me my life. Which was funny because I didn’t give two shits about my life ten seconds ago. But what can I say? There’s nothing like clandestine men and a scary hallway to put the fear of death right back in you.
Quietly, I tried to walk down the passage. The noise of my feet hitting the grate still seemed absurdly loud. But then I realized it was because this corridor was silent, too silent. There wasn’t the hum of machinery or the flow of air. There was… nothing. And the deafening silence began to hurt my ears.
Going along a little faster, I reached the point where the catwalk was segmented into stairs leading down. Given that we were in the lower levels of a basement already deep in the earth, it unnerved me just how far down it went. All in all, I would say we were about half a mile under City 57.
I tiptoed down the stairs as fast as I could, and when I nearly reached the bottom, I came across an opened vault door with way too many security measures to make me comfortable. It was at least two feet of solid steel and with more keypads and finger scanners than I had seen in my entire life. The blocky aperture also provided good cover as I crouched to get a good look at the room beyond.
The only way to describe it was part laboratory and part viewing room. Three large panes of glass overlooked a concrete chamber beyond, coated with the same black substance as what coated the hallway. In the viewing room were countless computers and control monitors and screens. Most of it showed diagnostic information I couldn’t make heads or tails of. In the back corner were several large servers and even what I took to be an independent power generator.
Two of the six men had remained in the viewing room. They were seated, working the controls with an unnerving familiarity.
From this vantage point, I couldn’t see what the viewing room was overlooking, and if I wanted to, I would have to get closer.
Part of me screamed to run away, but again I pressed forward. My feet felt like they were rooted to the ground. My breath loudly grated on my ears, only outpaced by my heart which felt like it was going to explode in my chest. And yet, I pushed forward. I was no more than a few feet away from the two men, but I could see the further room beyond.
The concrete chamber contained three spheroid capsules placed on mechanical pedestals affixed into the ground. I say capsules because I didn’t know how else to describe them. Pods maybe. Either way, they were big enough to fit several grown men at least. They were covered in bizarre devices and blinking lights that again made no sense to me. The other four men worked on the leftmost sphere, inputting commands into an interface and monitoring the pod.
On each of them was a pane of frosted glass that frustratingly revealed nothing of the contents. But in the dim red lighting, it didn’t take an idiot to realize it was nothing good.
“It was just as Joker expected. He was able to trip the kill sequence when Adam Mason attacked. It’ll have looked like a malfunction,” one of the men said. “They’ll never guess what really happened.”
“It’s a shame we can’t get the other two,” the other said.
The man shook his head. “Better off this way. One is going to be difficult enough as it is.”
There were a few more clicks on the keyboard and suddenly one computer flashed green. One of the guys near the sphere gave a thumbs up, and they all stepped away as the sphere began to whir into motion. Even from the viewing room, I heard the distinct clang of heavy locks releasing and various hydraulics pulling back.
The sphere clicked and buzzed and hummed as lights began flashing. Then, without warning, the door with the frosted pane of glass retracted. There was a spray of mist—or perhaps steam—still obscuring what was kept inside.
One of the men stepped into the sphere, and there was a long pause. I held my breath, not sure what monstrosity he would emerge with.
Fucking hell man, I mean I’ve the heard the stories of the blacksites. They take abnormals and stitch ‘em together with implants, lobotomized cyborgs. Or they inject you with genetic retroviruses, trying to turn you into some mutant. Or worse, maybe you were the one in a billion abnormal that was that kind of a sheer monster.
The man emerged from the pod carrying something. I blinked twice, trying to make it out. What was so terrifying that it needed to be hidden away by such lengths as this? What was so horrifying it was buried below the basement of the ASA regional headquarters? I held my breath as I watched the man stride forth carrying a…
I blinked.
It was a young boy. Maybe a little older than the kids the ASA had taken, but not by much. There was a sudden flash from the other two pods and a klaxon blared.
“Warning. Subject termination will commence in one minute!”
“Just in the nick of time,” one of the men muttered.
Another man reached out to help carry the unconscious boy, and they started back for the viewing room.
That snapped me out of it as I realized they were about to walk in here and find me spying on them. I wanted to run back down the hallway as fast as I could, but there was no way I could make the distance without them noticing and shooting me. I glanced around in a panic, looking for somewhere to hide.
In the corner with the servers. I ducked behind them just as a door opened to the viewing room, and the men came in.
“We egress to the rendezvous point,” the apparent leader said. “Move out.”
They filed back into the passage without a further word.
“Warning. Subject termination will commence in thirty seconds!”
When they left the room, I cautiously got back up. I stared at the two remaining pods, humming in the red light. If the first one contained a boy, then what did the other two contain? Children as well? I would’ve risked teleporting into the pods to get them out, but my powers still didn’t work. There was nothing I could do but watch in horror as the humming of machinery grew louder.
“Warning. Subject termination will commence in ten seconds!”
The noise grew almost unbearably loud, and it seemed the alarms blazed louder still. Parts of the spheres were rotating in their emplacements. Tubes injected themselves into steel ports. Something hissed as there was a clunk as some piece of vague machinery finally locked into place.
I blinked, and then it happened. There was a bright flash that burned from within the sphere, lighting up the entire room from the frosted glass. It was as if two suns had ignited within the spheres. I had to shield my eyes as whatever was contained within the spheres was eradicated down to the molecule.
I didn’t know what to feel. I knew I had witnessed some crime here, some horrible atrocity that I couldn’t even comprehend. Something awful had taken place within this room, and now it was being covered up.
Those words were all too prescient as not a minute later, hidden explosives triggered within the concrete laboratory. The glass panes exploded as I was thrown off my feet. I scrambled for footing as the machinery sparked and blew out around me. The hallway detonated as well, causing cave-ins and blocking my way out. I was trapped within falling debris and rubbles and two miniature balls of magma whose heat I could feel from even here.
But as the world came apart, so too did that dark material which inhibited my powers. I felt something rush back into me, and my screaming instincts finally kicked in again.
I blinked my eyes, and I was sitting on my ass in a sterile corridor up above in the ASA basement. I was on a higher floor, and it was dead quiet. It was as if nothing had ever happened at all. And if not for the dust and blood which coated me, I would’ve thought it had all been a dream.
I wanted to run away and pretend that none of this had ever happened. But I got up and breathed in deeply.
Whatever this was, whatever I had just witnessed, it was no different from those kids who had been trapped in pits. And from how callously those men acted, it looked like they didn’t have that boy’s best interest in mind either. Exhaling a long breath, I knew what I had to do.
I teleported three times. I was in a holding cell. I was in a closet. And then a blink later, I was in the middle of those six men. None of them had time to react. They couldn’t get so much as a word out as I appeared and placed my hand on the unconscious boy’s shoulder.
And then we were gone.