“This shouldn’t have happened,” the doctor whispered into his beard, his eyes fixed on the remains of Eve’s defective brothers and sisters.
“They shouldn’t have been born at all.”
He seemed to be trying to justify himself.
The scientist understood perfectly well that he was largely responsible for all of this.
If he hadn’t started this mess, Eve wouldn’t exist.
If he hadn’t fled the project, taking Eve with him, the others wouldn’t exist either.
But he was wrong about one thing.
This wasn’t the end.
Not even close.
Something changed.
I felt it before I saw it or consciously understood it.
My Viltrumite essence, my soul, or whatever controls my supernatural abilities, sensed a powerful *thing* that had appeared before me and was beginning to affect the world around it.
Not just affect it, but literally subjugate everything.
My first instinctive impulse was to destroy the threat.
My second, when I restrained the first, was to get as far away from it as possible.
Neither impulse came from my personality or even my conscious mind.
It was pure instinct, the essence of my race’s existence, hidden in my genes.
We’re like territorial predators, instinctively attacking any competitor who comes to challenge our strength and power.
But fortunately, I have a mind to dictate to my instincts and make my own decisions.
Eve had done it after all.
She’d overcome her creators’ mental block and unleashed her full power.
That’s what I’d felt.
Under the awestruck gazes of the doctor and myself, the girl rose above the ground.
This time she didn’t need reactive jets.
She was directly controlling her body, making it levitate.
She flew over to the remains of Number Two.
Reaching her hand out over the dead, she began muttering about how she could feel everything and control all matter.
She was thinking out loud.
She could reverse everything.
Besides levitation, there were several other external effects of her awakening.
I don’t know if there was any necessity, but small, hard-to-define objects appeared around her and began moving in elliptical orbits.
Electrons?
Like in the planetary model of the atom that Eve had taken as her symbol.
But electrons aren’t corpuscles.
And they’re not pink.
Ah, hell.
Better not to think about it.
Not only these new “satellite electrons,” but even the air around her turned pink after she unleashed her full power.
The girl sure loved pink.
Finally, she moved from words to action.
We watched, mesmerized, as the seemingly departed children returned.
They rose in a pink glow from the green slime their bodies had turned into seconds earlier.
Not very pretty.
But they brought it on themselves for turning into foul-smelling goo instead of noble ash after death.
Within seconds, Eve brought her dead relatives back to life.
Not only that, she reversed everything and fixed their defects.
No more red skin, no more terrible humps, no more crooked faces, not even bald patches.
Just ordinary children, like the thousands who attended my school.
Except for Number Two, who remained unchanged.
He hadn’t had any external signs of deformity in the first place, except for his never-closing mouth.
She also created new, perfectly normal, everyday clothes for the children, replacing the identical shorts that had been melted by their toxic remains.
“What?” Number Two soon to need a new name, stared in shock at his hands.
He looked around, saw the others resurrected, and turned to Eve, who was still floating in the air.
“You brought us back and…
fixed us?”
But she didn’t answer.
The electrons suddenly smeared along their orbits in pink waves of uncertainty.
The air cleared of its pink filter.
And Eve, closing her eyes, collapsed into my arms.
Well, she was falling to the ground, but I didn’t miss the chance to use my super speed to catch her.
“Happy new birthday,” I smirked at the kids.
Then, unable to resist, I added, “Risen from the slime.”
But the surprises didn’t end with the resurrection of the dead.
There was so much power in this fragile girl sleeping in my arms.
Who would have thought?
Because, while I was playing the gentleman and jokester, thinking the worst was over, someone had already started hunting me.
I didn’t even realize what had happened at first.
Just a flash of heat on my skin, a click somewhere in my neck.
The sound came from inside my skull, not through my ears.
Then, stunned, I was thrown sideways.
I’d been careless.
I’d gotten too caught up in Eve’s show and missed the arrival of new opponents.
I’m not a Kryptonian with super hearing who could pick out the suspiciously quiet whir of helicopter blades high above in the general cacophony of noise.
And a bullet travels faster than sound.
The treacherous projectile, at least twenty millimeters, with an enhanced armor-piercing core, dived straight into my neck at a dangerous angle.
I don’t know if the sadistic sniper chose that spot on purpose, but my cervical vertebrae appreciated his choice.
In any other scenario, even with a direct hit to the head, except for my eyes, I wouldn’t have been injured at all.
But the neck is a very fragile anatomical spot.
The effect was comparable to a baseball player hitting the base of a person’s neck with a fastball.
Extremely unpleasant and, with a bit of bad luck, traumatic.
But still not fatal.
I was more stunned than injured.
I regained control of the situation before I even hit the wall.
I simply stopped my involuntary flight by creating an opposing force.
I looked up to where the gift had come from.
High in the sky, a fat helicopter hovered.
From its open side door, the barrel of a monstrously huge, multi-barreled gun pointed in my direction.
The kind of gun you’d use against tanks, not elephants.
I caught the next bullet with my palm, not my neck.
I demonstratively crushed the heavy slug, staring at the shooter.
I know you can see me, you bastard.
For a second, I could have sworn I heard a terrified “oh shit.” But of course, that couldn’t be.
I don’t have enhanced hearing.
***
Speaking of baseball, I suddenly remembered my father’s lessons.
How we’d thrown a ball in the stratosphere.
I didn’t deny myself the pleasure of using the skills I’d learned then.
Besides, I was into baseball back in the day.
Handing Eve to the doctor, I wound up like my old school coach had taught me and made the strongest pitch of my career.
“Strike,” I muttered grimly, watching the helicopter’s smoking rotor.
Wobbling its tail but not going into an uncontrolled fall, the machine began to descend from the sky.
But before it even reached the ground, something jumped out of it.
Space Marines.
Not real ones, of course.
But these guys in full futuristic armor with jetpacks on their backs certainly evoked thoughts of space and drops.
And leading the Space Marines was an extremely pleased-looking bald black man in a brown business suit.
He was equipped with that same mega-cannon that had just been shooting at me.
A real Kill Cannon.
But the worst part of this situation was that the symbols on the marines’ armor clearly indicated their affiliation with the US government.
Looks like the situation had gotten a little out of control.
*
*
*
This black guy was obviously Eve’s “owner.” He’d orchestrated everything.
He’d released the children, telling them they were no longer wanted.
He’d told them Eve was alive, provoking the terrorist attack.
Now, after waiting for the right moment, he’d shown up himself to profit from the results of his cunning.
The fact that he’d brought all this weaponry, which he’d immediately used against me, said he’d been watching everything that happened in the mall and had assessed my strength and speed.
He’d decided to take me out of the game immediately.
And sure, I could kill everyone here in an instant.
But a bloodbath on my first real day as a hero wouldn’t look good for my future career.
The fact that they’d fired first probably wouldn’t work as an excuse.
Besides, the situation had just escalated from “robbery or terrorist attack in a small supermarket” to “a big mess involving big shots from the government.” And judging by how brazenly these guys were acting, they weren’t afraid of publicity.
The military landed in the mall’s empty courtyard and immediately pointed their guns at me and the doctor hiding behind me with the unconscious Eve in his arms.
“Elias Brandywort,” the black man drawled with satisfaction.
“You old fuck.
I knew it.
I knew you were hiding something!
The girl was alive all this time.”
“Erickson…”
“Get in the helicopter,” the man interrupted the doctor.
“I don’t need any unnecessary attention here.”
“Unnecessary attention?” Eve suddenly spoke up, having regained consciousness.
“You flew here in a fucking helicopter and dropped space marines in the middle of the city!”
“That was a figure of speech,” Erickson waved her off.
“I don’t give a shit about attention.
Get in the helicopter.
Now!”
“Hmm…” I drew his attention by demonstratively rolling up my sleeves.
“Forgetting something, asshole?”
“Kid,” he finally deigned to look directly at me.
“You’re tough, I’ll admit.
This little thing can put out a hundred times more power.
She was created to kill things like you.”
He lovingly stroked the barrel of his gun, which had been aimed at me the whole time.
“You’re not taking Eve, or the doc, or anyone.
Leave now, and you’ll live.”
I knew there was no peaceful solution here.
“Ha ha ha!” The black guy confirmed my thoughts.
“You’re cocky, kid.
I like you.
You’ve got talent and personality.
You don’t have to fight the US government, kid.
You could achieve so much more if you worked for us.
Money, influence, any toys you want, anything you desire will be yours.”
Well, then.
No choice.
I’d have to kill government agents.
What a great superhero debut.
Kill a couple of high-ranking officials from the Global Defense Agency.
Perfect.
All according to plan: “Stay quiet and don’t stick out until you’re eighteen.”
But what else could I do?
There was no deus ex machina coming to save me from this hopeless situation.
Except…
“Please, Erickson,” Elias stepped forward.
“Let the girl go.
She’s a human being.
She has rights.
She has her own life!”
Wow.
That was even dumber than what I’d said.
Even I, seeing this man for the first time, could tell that appealing to his humanity and morality was useless.
And Brandywort had worked with him.
He’d seen him in action.
You could tell just by looking at what he’d done to Eve’s brothers and sisters.
But he was buying me a little time and distracting them.
He even stood between me and Erickson so I could more easily reach my phone unnoticed.
“She’s a weapon!” The man immediately confirmed my thoughts.
“My weapon!
It took me years to get her back after your betrayal.”
“Fine!” Eve suddenly shouted.
“I give up!
I’m the one you want.
Do whatever you want with me.
Just let Dr.
Brandywort and the others go.”
“Let him go?” The man sneered.
“That’s funny.
Child, the good doctor’s betrayal is what started this deadly show.
All of this happened because of his stupid coming-out as a hero!”
“You hate me for what I did?” Brandywort immediately latched onto the overly emotional ending of the man’s phrase.
“If you want, kill me.
I don’t have long anyway.
But don’t take this child’s life, like you did with her mother.”
“Ha ha, you think we killed her mother?
Too bad I can’t show you.” He even wiped an imaginary tear of regret from his eye.
“Where do you think we got the rest of the children?
Did we order them by mail?”
“No…” Elias gasped.
“It can’t be…
Sarah, all this time she…”
“Gave birth to our freaks, yes!” Erickson sneered cruelly, enjoying his moral revenge on Brandywort.
“Unfortunately, from a half-dead corpse, we got half-dead children.
Besides, you left us nothing.”
“You’re a monster!” The doctor was shocked, his spine seeming to crumble.
“But it doesn’t matter now.
Because we have her.
We don’t need you or your beggar girlfriend anymore!” The idiot continued to revel in other people’s suffering.
“And what are you grinning at?”
He suddenly turned to me.
“Rejoicing that you’re such an idiot you’ve already talked yourself into a life sentence.”
“You bet,” a new voice suddenly said from above.
“A pretty classic self-absorbed villain monologue.
Couldn’t have been better.”