I
t took
four straight days of tracking Nycto’s movements before I finally found him.
He was in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. He sat there alone, the birds singing around him. I wasn’t sure what he was doing here, but I knew attacking him while he was in the tower was too dangerous. Orion was right—there were way too many defenses, and I’d only go and get myself killed. With everyone I cared about imprisoned in that tower and on the brink of being turned into mindless automatons, I couldn’t take a risk like that.
So I was going to make someone take a risk for me.
“I’m still not sure I can do what you’re asking, Kyle.”
I looked to my right. Vortex hovered by my side. She looked concerned. I’d reached out to her individually and asked for this favor. I knew Orion wouldn’t sign off a Resistance move like this. Vortex and I saw eye to eye on a lot of things. Besides, I’d saved her life more times than she’d saved mine, so she owed me a favor. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of. I know if you just focus, you’ll be able to control his mind.”
Vortex shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“It doesn’t? Or are you just too afraid of what might happen if you push too far?”
Vortex looked me in my eyes. Her ginger hair looked dull, its glow weakened by the stresses of war. “You’ve no idea what it’s like to be in my mind.”
“You make people have nightmares. I imagine you’re pretty used to seeing horrible things—”
“When I create the nightmares in other people’s minds, I have to… I have to let my own demons in. Now I’ve got to a point where I can just see them in the corner of my mind, locked away. But… but when I try to push further, I have to let them out.” Her hands shook. “And I don’t know if I can let them out.”
Vortex’s eyes were wide. She rubbed her arms. I’d never seen her looking this uncomfortable. “What are your demons?” I asked.
She opened her mouth to respond. Then, she closed her lips and shook her head. “They’re something I’d rather not talk about right now.”
I wanted to push Vortex further, but I respected her decision not to speak. I looked back down at Nycto. He was sat there in his gear, all but his helmet. He looked totally at peace, like he was meditating or something. “We go down there. I pin him down. You get inside his head. And when you’re in there, you go back to Saint’s tower and you get my people to safety.”
“What about everyone else locked up in that place?”
“We deal with them in time. Together.”
“And what if… what if I can’t do it?”
I put my hand on Vortex’s. “You can. I trust you.”
For a moment, as Vortex looked into my eyes, I felt warmth inside. Not saying I had a crush or anything like that, but it definitely felt like we had a special kind of friendship. I’d liked Vortex ever since we’d first met. Okay, maybe not since we’d
first
met, since she’d made me see my dead sister in my very first Vortex-induced nightmare. But since then, we’d always got on. We had each other’s backs.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”
I smiled.
We lowered down toward Nycto. The tropical sounds of the stiflingly hot Amazon echoed all around. Something seemed weird about all this. I’d spent so much time tracking Nycto down, and I finally found him sitting silently in the middle of the rainforest? It didn’t seem right. It didn’t add up.
Then again, when had anything Daniel Septer did ever truly added up?
We descended closer to him. I held on to Vortex’s hand, passing my invisibility on to her. I lifted a hand and got ready to freeze Daniel. I wanted to paralyze him with minimal fuss, then Vortex could get on with invading his mind. But I had to play this right.
I was just meters away from him. I held out my hand. Built up a huge ball of ice.
“You ready?” I whispered.
Vortex nodded. Her eyes started to roll back. “Ready.”
“I know you’re there, idiots.”
I heard a blast behind me.
When I looked to my right, Vortex was gone.
“What did you—”
Nycto flew into my chest. He pinned me down on the ground.
I tried to fight back but he covered my mouth. Then, in his hands, a massive fireball grew.
“Shut up and stop fighting.”
I kicked back. I tried to teleport away, but my powers felt weakened. I realized then that it’s because Nycto had one of those resistance bars around me. An electromagnetic band from the tower. He had me, defenseless.
“That’s it,” he said. “Much better. I prefer it when you aren’t being such a drama queen.”
“Let me go!”
“Now’s not the time to let you go,” Nycto said, walking around the right side of me. “Not when we’ve got so much to discuss.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. I want my family back. I want my friends back. I want Ellicia back.”
“And if you play your cards right, you might get them back.”
Nycto’s words threw me. I wasn’t expecting him to say something like that. “What do… what do you mean?”
He crouched down beside me. I didn’t see Nycto anymore. I just saw the skinny face of Daniel Septer. The kid who’d been bullied at school. “You really don’t know. Do you?”
I frowned. I realized I’d stopped fighting back. I was just too weak. “Know what?”
A smile stretched across Daniel’s face. He held out a hand. “Hello, Kyle. Let me formally introduce myself.”
“I know exactly what you are.”
Daniel chuckled. He shook his head. “No. No, you don’t.”
He put a hand in my left hand.
I felt something strange take over me. Like déjà vu.
I’d felt that hand before.
I’d felt those fingers in my hand when…
Nausea welled up inside as a horrifying understanding struck me.
“Get the party balloons out,” Daniel said. “It’s time we had a family reunion. Brother.”
S
ixteen years ago
…
J
onathan Hartsmith walked
down the corridor and questioned whether he really wanted to do what he was planning to do.
It was the middle of December. The streets outside were covered in ice. The weather warnings were ordering people to stay at home. Christmas was just around the corner, and nobody wanted to see anyone die in the cold at this time of year.
Jonathan didn’t feel cold, though. He’d never felt cold all his life.
Because Jonathan Hartsmith was different.
The dim lights of the clinic flickered as he walked past them. He was used to the lights flickering by now. He’d had to deal with it all his life, after all.
He first knew he was different when he was playing in a paddling pool in his garden. He’d got mad at another kid, Ellen Halshaw. She’d kept on splashing him and it just made him so mad that he lifted the entire pool of water with his hands, into the air, and covered her in it.
His parents tried denying there was something different at first. But as more and more little moments of weirdness cropped up in his life, Jonathan soon adapted to his reality, as did his mom and dad: he was different. Very different. That was his secret.
It was a secret he’d kept from his loving wife, Eleanor. He didn’t want her to see him as a freak. He’d spent his whole childhood convincing himself and the people around him that he was just a normal guy—and failing. As much as he knew Eleanor loved him for who he was, Jonathan still felt like he was holding a major part of himself back from her to protect her.
He walked further down the corridor. Checked the doors. Dr. Woods. Dr. Burza. Dr. Kelvin.
Life between Eleanor and him seemed good. They’d been married eight years back. They had a little girl soon after they first married—Sophie, who was now five. Last year, they’d had a little boy, Michael. And they’d had
another
little boy this year, too. Anthony. Having three kids wasn’t easy, sure. It was even harder than you might imagine. But really, Jonathan loved it. He got a real kick from it.
That was until Sophie was diagnosed with terminal leukemia just months back.
He tasted sick in his mouth as he approached the last door on the right. He didn’t like to think of Sophie’s pain too much. It just made him feel weak and defenseless. He and Eleanor tried everything to help take her pain away, but it wasn’t easy. She was a fighter, but she was only a five-year-old kid. Besides, with Michael and Anthony to look after too, it was hard being equally responsible for all three of them.
Never before had Jonathan felt so defenseless.
Then he got a knock on the door.
He’d been expecting a knock for quite a while. It went back to when he’d saved a load of people from a falling aircraft. He’d used his…
abilities
to stop a plane falling in midair. Saved everyone on board. Of course, there was no official confirmation that it was a man who’d done this, but enough conspiracy theories were going around to catch the government’s attention.
He stopped in front of the final door. Held his breath.
There wasn’t a “Dr” on this door.
Just “Reverend Lewis”.
He lifted his hand and knocked on the wooden door.
The knock on the door that he’d got four weeks back had been from a government official. They’d sat down and told him they knew what he was capable of. Somewhere down the line of his ancestors, he must’ve been born of a man or woman who they’d been testing abilities on ever since the Second World War. But they’d never seen abilities as pure and as refined as Jonathan’s. They wanted to take him in to transfer those abilities to others.
Jonathan agreed. He saw what just a trickle of his blood could do. Not everyone was receptive, but the government had developed a technology to figure out whether a person’s blood type
was
receptive. After they’d taken several vials of it, they told Jonathan that his blood would be used to create something beautiful. To usher in a new utopia within a matter of years.
Then they told Jonathan they knew of another like him. Another with stunning abilities.
One of those abilities?
He could heal other people.
The door in front of Jonathan opened up.
Standing at the other side of the door was a man. He had short black hair. Big bags under his eyes. He was a little tubby around the waist. His white shirt was creased, and his trousers were too slim for his body. He hardly looked remarkable.
He held out a hand. “Jonathan. Come on in. Pleasure to finally meet you.”
Jonathan took his hand. “Reverend Lewis. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Reverend Lewis waved his other hand then led Jonathan into his office. “You don’t have to call me Reverend Lewis. It’s a real mouthful. Just Lewis would suffice. Or if you’re feeling extra generous, ‘Saint.’”
Jonathan sat down opposite Lewis. His office was quaint. There was clutter all over the place. Balls of elastic bands. Drawings of the world. Diagrams filled with equations. A faint sourness of a decaying fruit bowl filled the air.
“Oh, the bananas,” Lewis said, noticing where Jonathan was looking. “I always leave them just past their good phase, don’t you?”
Jonathan watched as the brown, crinkled bananas turned straight again, and went vibrant yellow.
He looked back at Lewis in amazement. “So your daughter. I’m assuming you want to cut to the chase.”
Jonathan nodded. “Sorry. It’s just…”
“Meeting someone else with powers like yours for the first time is weird, hmm?”
“Something like that.”
“Makes you wonder just how long it’ll take before we’re not so special at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those vials of blood. You and I both know what the government plan to do with them.”
“I guess. But they could go to good use.”
“Perhaps so,” Lewis said. There was a sinister look about him, like he wasn’t totally present. It snapped away almost as immediately as Jonathan noticed it, though. He clapped his hands together. “Anyway. Your daughter. Where is she?”
“She’s… she’s at home.”
“Well, I’ll need her here to—”
“My other children.”
Lewis looked down at some paper. “Two boys, I believe.”
“I can’t have them go through what Sophie’s gone through. I can’t have them feeling the pain she’s felt. Ever.”
“You’re asking me to cure them before they’re ill?”
“I’m asking you to do whatever you can for them.”
Lewis shook his head. “It’s tough.”
“What my daughter’s going through is tough.”
“It’ll require… more than just me. It’ll require you, too. A union of our abilities.”
Jonathan looked down at the brown carpet. “Whatever it takes.”
“You seem apprehensive about something.”
He looked back up at Jonathan. “I just want to look out for my children.”
“And you are doing,” Lewis said. “You’re doing exactly that. Now when can we start?”
T
wo days later
, Jonathan looked over his children as they hovered over a large pool of water.
His arms were strapped up with tubes. So too were Lewis’.
“And you’re absolutely positive there’ll be no side effects?”
Lewis shook his head. “I’ve tried this a million times. From animals to humans. From common colds to cancer. I can heal them. But I’ll need your blood too.”
Jonathan’s mouth was dry. He nodded. Walked over to Sophie and kissed her on her warm head. “Daddy’s going to make you better again. I promise.”
“I don’t like this,” Sophie said. She looked around at her brothers beside her, the pool of water below.
“Me neither,” Jonathan said. “Me neither.”
He kissed his daughter on her forehead then he backed away.
When he was ready, he nodded at Lewis.
He heard the metal bed lower into the water, but he couldn’t watch. He understood the risks. He could drown his children right here. He was trusting a man he barely knew to cure everything he cared about.
But if he didn’t, what hope did any of them have?
He felt a prick in his arm. Blood ran through the tubes from his veins and into the water.
“Focus your powers,” Lewis said, as he stood over the water, which splashed with the kicks of Sophie and the boys. “Put all your powers into making them better again.”
Jonathan focused. He thought about the good times he’d had with his children. He thought about the laughs they’d had together. The joy they’d shared. He felt a tear drop down his cheek as he focused his powers further and further, felt the energy slipping out of his body, into his blood, and into that water.
“Good,” Lewis said. “That’s good.”
He kept on pushing even further. The longer it went on, the more splashes he heard, the more Jonathan wanted to stop.
“How long does it—”
“It’s almost done,” Lewis said.
“How long’s almost—”
“Just keep your focus!”
Jonathan resisted every urge in his body telling him to stop this and poured more of his focus into his children. Sophie was going to be okay again. His other children were never going to feel pain again. It was all going to be okay.
He heard the splashing go weak.
Then, it stopped.
He opened his tearful eyes.
“What happened?”
Lewis looked down at the water, wide-eyed.
“I asked you what happened—”
“It’s done,” he said.
Jonathan looked down into the water and he saw his children lying static.
Their eyes were open.
Beams of light shone from them.
“What have you…”
“They won’t remember you now. And they never will. But you can live in reassurance that your children will never get sick. Not anymore. Not now they’re like us.”
Lewis smiled as he lifted the bed from the water. The light in Sophie’s eyes dimmed. When she opened them, she looked around, panicked, spitting up water and phlegm. “Dad?” she said.
Jonathan reached down but she struggled out of his way.
“My dad. Where’s my dad? I want my dad.”
“I’m here, sweetheart—”
“I want my dad!”
Jonathan looked around at his three children. Children that were like him, now. But children that weren’t
his,
not in their minds, not anymore.
“Why have you done this?” he asked.
Lewis smiled. “I wanted to know I could create them. I wanted to know just how far I could take my powers. Now I do… well, they can go off and live their lives. One day, they’ll come back to me. When I’m a reverend no more. When I really am a saint.”
T
hree hours later
, when Jonathan returned home, there was someone sitting at his dining table.
They were holding a warrant for his arrest.
And they were holding a gun like no other he’d ever seen.
It was that moment that he was taken away from his wife, from their children—who were all moved into different homes with fresh memories and completely fresh identities. Even the families they were moved in with had memories implanted in their minds—as if they’d been living a life with those children all along.
It was at that moment that Jonathan became just another experiment. That the government decided he was too strong to have his own will.
It was that day that he became Orion.
The first Hero.