“We never run; we never retreat; we fear nothing.”

–Super Corps Propaganda.

“I’ve buried a lot of heroes.”

–Past Prime, advice to new recruits.

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The whispers start at midnight. They are a siren’s song: persuasive and impossible to ignore. The temptation to follow them is overwhelming. In my dream, I swing my legs out of bed and stumble to my door. I’ve been upgraded to a new, larger cabin that I’m still unfamiliar with, but I pass through the darkness without touching anything. The empty corridors stretch into the distance, growing longer as I walk. In my dream someone is talking to me, but the whispers grow until they are a chorus of shouts that drown out everything else. I clutch my head in my hands and follow, follow, follow until the demanding voices die down to an approving murmur.

The voices lead me down to the weapons laboratory. I am walking in dream time, so a path that should take only minutes goes on forever. I am bombarded by flickering lights that go dark as I pass below them, and unseen creatures growl in the shadows. The part of my brain that knows this is a dream would like to wake up now, please. Wake up!

I feel sweat trickling down my face as I approach the gun labs. The doors are locked, but the metal hinges pop at my touch, and I push the barrier aside. The whispers are getting eager now, hungry. Whatever I am looking for is close; whatever I am looking for is here.

Someone grabs my arm and I flinch, panicking. My world spins and I hit the hard ground.

I wake up to see the angry face of Talented Brat looking down at me.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demands.

He lets me go and runs over to a bench. I can see that he’s trying to hide a clear container behind a larger box of junk. The clear container seems familiar, although I can’t remember where I could have seen it before. I blink a few times as I stand there feeling out of place and very confused. The dreams fade, and I don’t know where I am or how I got there.

“Leave,” suggests Talented Brat, pointing at the door.

I’m so confused that I leave without asking any questions. I backtrack out of the gun labs and back to my room. All the corridor lights are out, and I walk over a trail of powdered glass made by exploding bulbs. I am barefoot, and my feet are cold. The thought of my room is claustrophobic, so I wander to a lounge where a TV is playing an old Kung–fu movie. I lay on the lounge and sigh.

“Can’t sleep?” Little Voices asks.

I hadn’t seen him sitting in the shadows. He looks alert, his eyes bright in the darkness. He passes me a plate of biscuits and I grab a handful.

“I couldn’t sleep either. The little whispers in my head are screaming tonight,” he says.

I know exactly what he means.

“Pizza?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“Steward!” I yell out loudly until one appears.

“Pizza, asap. Hawaiian,” Little Voices says.

“I’ll have a chocolate calzone,” I say.

The steward nods and runs off, and we go back to watching our movies. Part of me feels guilty for being so rude, but most of me is just too tired, too sore and too angry to feel much of anything of value. In the movie the young hero, a monk of some kind, is battling dozens of evil ninjas. He jumps off walls and knocks his opponents over easily, but there are too many of them and they swarm over him. It’s unpleasantly familiar.

“Can we watch something else?” I ask.

Little Voices is my best friend, so I don’t need to explain myself to him. He flips through the channels – and thanks to Talented Brat we get all of the channels – until he finds a kids’ movie about talking tractors that spend their time playing dumb pranks on each other. The movie is stupid, so we like it.

Our pizza arrives, fresh from Chef’s wood–fired oven. It’s excellent, like all the food on the Cerberus.

The tractor movie is part of a series, and we spend the rest of the night watching them. Eventually I fall asleep on the couch, waking early when the alarm in my artificial hand starts ringing. It’s time for work.

With all the battles the Earth has seen, only the toughest and luckiest superheroes are still capable of flying. Our team has taken so many casualties and injuries that we are now working in pairs rather than larger groups, and now we cover a far larger portion of the globe. The only good news is that the saucers have been quiet since Simon Smith died.

Little Voices and I work together. We make a great team, just like we always knew we would. It should feel amazing, but instead it feels like the world itself is resting on our shoulders. We walk to the armory in silence.

“Should be an easy shift,” Bad Memories says as he straps me into my suit.

I shake my head and smile; I bet he just completely jinxed us.

Dark Fire walks into the armory and sits down. He is already wearing his armor – I’ve never seen him outside it – and he is ready to go.

“The Earth currently has two active superhero teams protecting it. You two are one team, and I am the other. I’m also your backup, but only call me if things are getting really bad. Even then I might not be able to help out if I’m busy elsewhere. Are you two okay with that?” he asks.

“Do we have a choice?” I ask.

“No.”

“Then I guess we are okay with that.”

“Good. Now shut up so that I can get some sleep.”

Dark Fire shuts his helmet and his radio falls silent. After a few minutes, we can hear the soft sound of his snoring through his helmet. He has been working harder than anyone in these past few weeks, and it seems that waiting for the Earth to be attacked is the most relaxing part of his day.

Three hours later an alarm starts ringing and the armory springs into life. A small saucer has been spotted near South America, and we are the only ones able to respond to it. We are far away from the saucer, so it’s going to be a rough trip.

“Good luck, guys. Try to make it back in once piece,” says Bad Memories.

The cannons fire, I pass out, and when I wake up I’m so high in the sky that I can’t even see the saucer we are meant to be targeting. Little Voices and I fall side–by–side as I look for the saucer. I have to do that by myself because I know Little Voices has his eyes tightly closed.

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“Oh, man,” he moans over the radio.

“Danger… too high… see the… bomb?” my radio crackles.

“This is Danger Magnet, please repeat,” I say.

We must be close enough to the saucer if my radio is starting to cut out, but I still can’t see it.

“Danger… unknown superheroes…” the radio adds, and then it dies completely.

I power up my suit and slow down a little, grabbing Little Voices by the back of his suit so that he doesn’t fall past me.

“Sounds like we might have company,” I say.

“Fine. Are we on the ground yet?”

“Not even close.”

“Okay. Tell me when we are and I’ll open my eyes.”

I finally see the saucer – it’s blue, small, and slow. It’s making its way towards a small town, and I’ve seen enough to know what will happen if it gets there. I’m carrying the bomb and I’m feeling pretty confident in my shields, but even a small saucer normally needs a whole team of superheroes to take it down. On the other hand, all the town has to protect it are two trainee superheroes, one of which is refusing to open his eyes until his feet touch the ground.

“It’s only a small saucer, I think I can take it,” I say.

“Dude, no. Give me a few minutes to settle down and then we can tackle it together.”

But there won’t be time. I don’t blame Little Voices for being so scared of heights, but today seems like the wrong day to let it stop him. I pull his parachute cord and drop him, then ramp up my shields and fly straight down for the saucer.

“Dude! Uncool!” Little Voices protests, but he is in no shape to fight.

The saucer’s turrets find me while I am still a long way away, but I only feel the faintest of hits on my shields, so I don’t even take evasive action. My alarm pings as the saucer gets a lock on me, and I roll to one side as a crimson bolt of energy passes nearby. I’m flying down too quickly towards the saucer, and I realize I can’t slow down in time.

“Chute!” I shout, pulling my parachute cord.

It burns up in my shield without slowing me. I’m going to hit the saucer hard enough to dent its armor and squash me flat. I focus all my shields forwards until I am inside a cone of shimmering white light that pierces the saucer and brings me to a shuddering stop deep inside it. The saucer’s guts are a confusing mix of blinding lights, deep shadows, and narrow corridors full of movement. I’m caught up in thick cables and a thick green gunk that I manage to smear all over my visor. There is no point sticking around, so I drop my bomb and try to climb back out of the saucer’s mechanical insides through the way I arrived. I just get my head out of the saucer when something catches my legs and tries to pull me apart.

“Help!” I shout, kicking out.

I’m not particularly scared of whatever is attacking me, although having unseen tentacles wrapping around my waist is not enjoyable, but I am worried about the bomb. Little Voices slams into the deck beside my head, stabs his sword into the darkness until my legs are free, and then grabs my arm and pulls me out.

“And that’s why you don’t try to take on a saucer by yourself, jackass,” he says with some satisfaction.

I’m just trying to remember if I set the bomb timer for three minutes, five minutes, or ten minutes. I have a bad feeling that I set it for three, in which case we are in trouble. The saucer rumbles below us, and I grab Little Voices and leap off the side of the saucer as it explodes into tiny fragments around us. My shields protect us; we hit the ground ready for action.

Except we can’t see any of the saucer’s creatures, which is odd.

We take to the air. The village is nearly deserted, but a few brave or stupid souls wave to us as we pass over. We don’t wave back.

“Anything?”

“No… wait… wait…no, sorry. It was just a pigeon.”

We take three tours of the town without seeing anything. I’m about to call it quits when I see the corpse of a monster lying on the main street. It wasn’t there a few minutes before. The corpse is that of a tall, emaciated beast with six arms ending in nasty hooks. It has a thick skin that has turned white in death but gave the creature perfect camouflage while it was still alive. Whoever killed it shot it in the back of its head just once, killing it in a neat and efficient manner that is quite alien to my way of fighting.

“Ghostwalkers. I freaking hate ghostwalkers,” Little Voices complains.

So do I, because they are stealthy beasts and notoriously hard to track down. The clean–up operation would take us all day. I sigh; sometimes being a superhero is simultaneously boring and very dangerous.

Glass explodes behind us and we turn to see two ghostwalkers that run quickly through the town throwing cars into the air and blasting civilians with white rays of energy. I blast one and Little Voices brings another down with a spinning blade, but we both know there will be more than three such beasts in the town. We spread out.

I take up a position on the town clock and settle in to watch for our enemy. I’m more of a brawler than a hunter, and patience is not something that comes easily to me. I shift position and sigh, my suit heavy on my shoulders. I rub the back of my head and wonder who shot that first ghostwalker, and if they are still around. After ten minutes or more a pair of ghostwalkers finally pass below me.

“I’ve got two,” I say over the radio.

“Shush,” whispers a voice in my ear.

“Who said that?”

The ghostwalkers look up and see me, then start to run. I leap down at one, smashing it into the ground, and blast another. A third one I hadn’t seen charges at me from the side, but it explodes before it gets to me. Whoever is shooting the ghostwalkers is either on my side or has terrible aim. Whichever it is, they don’t seem keen to introduce themselves and I don’t have time to look for them.

“I’ve killed two ghostwalkers,” I say to Little Voices with some satisfaction.

“I got six so far, but we aren’t moving fast enough. I’m getting reports of civilians being attacked all over town.”

“We need a dog whistle, like the one Small Talk used to pull his enemies towards him,” I say.

I think about how useful that would be and my head begins to ache. I drop to one knee as the lights in my helmet flicker and spark. I hear a loud, painful humming in my ears and I bang on the side of my helmet until it fades.

“Dude? Dude!” Little Voices is shouting.

“What?”

“Uh… we may have a problem; it looks like every ghostwalker in this town is heading your way. Do you want to run?”

I think about it, but I have a better idea.

“Nah, this is a good thing. I’m going to divert all my energy into my shields… but you better get here to help me out.”

“On my way!”

The ghostwalkers aren’t meant for real combat, so I smash the first two as they run at me. A dozen more of the creatures gather around me like hungry ghouls, slashing out with razor–sharp talons. I focus on protecting myself and a sphere of red–hot discs forms around me, blocking out the ghostwalkers and burning them if they get too close. Little Voices is cutting the walkers down like a scythe through wheat, but I notice that some of our enemies are falling to gunfire from some unseen sniper.

“We have company,” I warn Little Voices.

“I noticed! They seem to be friendly, at least.”

I don’t seem to be in any immediate danger, so I let my unknown ally use me as bait to gather the ghostwalkers to me.

“Why haven’t we ever tried this before?” I ask Little Voices.

“Because no–one else is dumb enough to volunteer as bait!”

Twenty minutes later the last of the ghostwalkers is lying dead at our feet. I start to wonder what caused them to charge at me in such an unusual way, and then I just shrug. What matters is that it works.

Little Voices steps over the severed legs of one of the walkers, pretends to stumble and then lunges out with a kick that hits the an invisible body with a thump. A superhero materializes out of the air and Little Voices throws him to the ground. Little Voices puts a knife at his throat, but a second superhero appears and places a plasma shotgun on the back of my friend’s head. Nobody moves, which is a good sign. The superhero under Little Voices’ knife has a cybernetic eye.

“Hey, I know you! It’s Free Man, right?” I say in surprise.

Free Man can’t nod without dying, so he gives a little shrug. I don’t recognize his partner. I nod to Little Voices and he carefully withdraws his knife and jumps back beside me.

“I thought you were dead,” I tell Free Man.

“And I assumed you would be by now, too. I guess we both got lucky. This is my boss, Quiet Killer,” Free Man says.

The superhero called Quiet Killer says nothing but his intense stare makes him look like he is thinking of the best way to take me out without any fuss. I increase the power to my shields, just a little bit.

“We have a message for Dark Fire,” Free Man says. “The Super Corps knows what he has, and they want it. They asked us to find it for them, but we just can’t seem to track down the Cerberus. The General is not pleased by this, but I keep telling him that it’s a big ocean out there, and one ship is hard to find.”

“Particularly in the southern oceans where we have fewer satellites to search with,” suggests Quiet Killer softly.

“Yes. Particularly in the southern oceans where we have fewer satellites to search with. Do you understand? Sometimes hiding can be the smart choice.”

“Why are you helping us?” Little Voices says.

“We aren’t helping you, we are saving the world by preventing a civil war,” Quiet Killer explains.

And then they are gone, faded away into the background and leaving us no way to track them. I’m impressed – I never thought stealth was a useful power until I met them.

“What is it that Dark Fire wants?” Little Voices asks, but I know.

I know.

That night the whispers are louder than ever.