“
I hear you’re in a rehabilitation program,” he said.
Mutagen nodded. “I’m seeing some doctors, and they’ve got me on a lot of meds. They put me through all these tests, but they’re nothing like the cure. Man, that hurt, let me tell you, especially with how big I was, not that it wasn’t worth it! They cut me open, jammed all these shots into me, and pumped me full of weird chemicals. Only then did I start going back down to my normal size. My head cleared up then too. The docs are still checking me out, but, once I get the okay, I’m going to help out here however I can. Cleaning labs, letting scientists study me, making speeches to scare teenagers straight, whatever they need.”
“
That’s great,” Hyperman said. “I think you can really make a difference.”
“
It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”
Hyperman nodded and took a breath. He hated the idea of having to question Mutagen, especially since he seemed like a newer and better person now, but he needed information.
“
So I hear you were friends with Alexander Mors,” he said.
Sadly, Mutagen nodded. “I knew Alex for years,” he said, dumping himself back down onto his bed. “I used to work for him in accounting, but I wasn’t a big boss or anything. Still, he liked chatting everyone up when he was making his rounds, and we just hit it off. We both liked all these old, cheesy sci-fi movies with killer robots and giant mutated lizards and stuff. We couldn’t shut up about them. A lot of times, we’d stay up all night in his office, getting liquored up and talking about the world. He had a big vision of everyone getting super-powers and never getting old or sick, of basically everyone being like you.”
“
Is that how he talked you into the Mutagen project?”
Mutagen shrugged. “He made it sound like this big adventure and that he needed someone he trusted doing it. Plus, he told me I’d have super-powers! Super-powers, man! Who’d turn that down? My memory starts getting blurry from that point on though. Back then, I was so sure Alex would take care of me no matter what. I thought I knew him! I thought we were friends! But…but I guess I was wrong.”
“
He wiped away all records of your life,” Hyperman said. “It’s like you never existed. We only know who you are because of what you told us, and S.I.L.E.N.T. has mystics and telepaths who verified everything you said. Still, there’s no evidence there ever was a Mutagen project at MorsWorld either, or at least there’s nothing that’d hold up in court anyway. There’s nothing linking you back to Mors.”
Mutagen shook his head. “Well, I always knew Alex did some unsavory things, but I thought they were for the greater good, you know? He knows how to cover his tracks well, and I was all right with that because I thought the world needed him.”
“
Did you?”
“
Hey, don’t get me wrong! I hate what he did to me! But look at what he does for people. All the diseases he helps cure and those phones and trains he makes? He helps keep the world spinning, just like you do. Hell, he looks up to you! Prays to you and everything.”
Hyperman’s eyes widened. “Say that again.”
Mutagen smirked. “He’d hate for me to tell you this, but screw him! Alex thinks you’re a god or the messiah or something. He keeps it on the down low since being religious like that sometimes scares people, but he opened up to me. You’re his personal Jesus, man.”
“
I am?”
“
I know it’s really weird, but it’s true.”
Hyperman stared at him and grasped for words. His mind had trouble putting thoughts together. He wanted Mutagen to be lying, but his heartbeat and pulse said otherwise.
“
You okay?” Mutagen asked.
“
Of course,” Hyperman answered. “It’s just…that’s a lot to swallow.”
“
Oh, I’m sure, especially given we’re taking about Alex Mors, but you’re Hyperman. I’d be more shocked if nobody worshipped you.”
***
In a small prison staff break room, Paul Wrath calmly made coffee as Hyperman glared at him from across the room. The guards in their segmented armor and doctors wearing long lab coats exchanged awkward glances and shifted nervously about in their seats. Hyperman stalked forward, and they all fled, taking their sandwiches, candy bars, and fruit drinks with them. The doors automatically slid shut behind them.
“
You take sugar?” Wrath asked, holding up a cup of steaming, void-black coffee to Hyperman.
“
No,” he grunted.
“
Suit yourself.”
Wrath dumped a spoonful of sugar into his own cup and stirred. After setting both coffees down onto a table, he took a seat. He leaned back, stretching and wincing, hearing his bones crack. “So you and Mutagen talked?” he asked.
Hyperman glowered at Wrath. “You knew about these cults, didn’t you?” he asked. “The ones that worship me! You’ve probably known about them for years!”
“
It’s part of my job to know about things like that,” Wrath replied, taking a big gulp of coffee. “Got to watch the fringe groups and make sure they behave. You should have seen some of the Silver Seraph hate groups we’ve taken down. They thought that poor girl was the anti-Christ, just because she’s a space angel and not the biblical kind. They couldn’t fit what she is into their beliefs, and so they thought they had to kill her.”
“
She never knew about them.”
“
Nope. She’s too busy policing planets to worry about fools like that. I was glad to take care of it for her.”
“
You didn’t tell her about it though! You didn’t tell me about any of this!”
“
There’s a lot I don’t tell you. There’s a lot I’m not authorized to tell you, and there’s a lot you don’t need to know, especially about things that I should be taking care of and not you. I’m the one that gets down and dirty with the freaks while you take on the apocalypse and aliens and vampire gods and whatever else.”
“
At least tell me you’re shutting all of these cults down, even the ones that worship other superheroes.”
“
If and when they give me a reason to, I will.”
“
Some Whorl worshippers tried to gun down a group of my people!”
“
Right, but you took care of them. The local authorities then arrived and handled it from there. The crazies are now all locked up and can’t hurt anyone. They were extremists though. The rest of their group isn’t like them. In fact, most of these superhero worship groups don’t hurt anyone. I have no reason to go after law-abiding citizens, even if they have weird religious beliefs.”
“
What about Mors?” Hyperman asked. “Did you know about him this whole time?”
“
No,” Wrath said and slurped his coffee. “That came as a shock to me too. I can’t make heads or tails of it, but I got people looking into what we think his beliefs are.”
“
And are you going to let me know what you find?”
“
Sure, though I think you can find it all out on your own, especially now that you know what’s going on.”
Hyperman pursed his lips. He felt ready to burst. How was he supposed to take this? Any of this? Well, there was one thing he could still do while he was here at the Quarry.
“
I want to see El Dorado,” he told Wrath. “He’s part of what’s going on.”
***
While El Dorado slept in his cell’s bunk, Hyperman and Wrath peered in at him. His raw red skin had blistered and cracked in places. Grayish-brown stubble poked up in clumps on his head. Even lying down, his body appeared lopsided with old muscle wasting away on his arms and chest.
Before transferring him into S.I.L.E.N.T. custody, the New Daedalus Police’s Special Science Squad had drained him of as much Diatomite-x as possible and scraped the extra layers of radioactive flab off his skin. S.I.L.E.N.T. had then pumped him full of power-inhibiting chemicals. As a hyper-scan showed, some trace elements of Diatomite-x still lurked within El Dorado’s system. Without the power-inhibitors being replenished every day, the trace elements would build back up and his radiation abilities would soon return.
“
El Dorado here has never even met Alexander Mors,” Wrath said. “He was a Malaysian War vet that had a rough go of it once he got back home. He landed a job as a janitor at a bank, but his bosses wouldn’t approve him for a loan when he needed to pay back some debts. He made a scene and lost his job, but he knew some war buddies involved in powers experiments. He was desperate for cash and volunteered, not knowing who was going to do what to him.”
Hyperman nodded. “His genetics are different enough from Mutagen’s that the same cure wouldn’t work on him. Still, the work done on them both is similar enough to bear the same signature.”
“
My scientists also noticed the subtle MorsWorld touches,” Wrath said. “We’ve seen too many of Mors’s monsters over the years not to recognize another. We’re just looking for something that’ll hold up in court to bust him. The sneaky bastard always finds a way to slip free of whatever hold we think we’ve got on him.”
“
Maybe El Dorado could help somehow,” Hyperman replied. “Could we rehabilitate him like Mutagen?”
Wrath shook his head. “Not this one. When he’s awake, he never stops ranting about the governments and the superheroes and the banks and everyone else out to get him. It’s a shame. He could light up homes and businesses across entire continents with his powers and save a lot of folks a lot of cash.”
“
I’m sure you’re working on creating your own El Dorado.”
“
Naturally.”
“
I just hope I don’t end up having to stop him if he goes on a rampage or you try using him to take over a country.”
“
We’re not MorsWorld, Hyperman. We think about more than weapons and warfare here.”
“
Maybe, but those kinds of experiments go wrong far too often, and I’m the one that always cleans up the mess.”
Hyperman stared at El Dorado. He looked pathetic and weak, but was still dangerous if his genetics could be used to create more monsters like him. Hyperman couldn’t let that happen. While he considered Wrath an ally, he couldn’t trust him or S.I.L.E.N.T. with El Dorado here to experiment on. They could create a whole army of El Dorados.
Even if the S.I.L.E.N.T. scientists had the best of intentions, there were too many things that could go wrong. Would S.I.L.E.N.T. be able to control its El Dorados? What if S.I.L.E.N.T.’s board of directors wanted to use them to fight wars to further their financial and political interests and as a check against superheroes? The potential destruction and chaos would be obscene and worse than anything one of MorsWorld’s monsters had ever done.
Right here and now, Hyperman could prevent whatever potential damage Wrath did by sanctioning experiments on El Dorado, and no one could stop him. It didn’t bother him that his actions might not be completely legal. He and the Invincibles acted outside the law all the time, and the law wasn’t always right. For his entire superhero career, Hyperman had prided himself on using his powers responsibly, which was far from the same thing as using them lawfully. Besides, it wasn’t like S.I.L.E.N.T. had a hope in hell of arresting him unless he went along with it, and in this case, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t about to turn himself in for doing the right thing.
Nightshadow had often lectured him and the other Invincibles about always using their powers for good, morally justifiable reasons. Well, keeping Wrath, S.I.L.E.N.T., and anyone else from making more El Dorados was both a good and morally justifiable decision.
Bearing all that in mind, Hyperman focused a low level, invisible eye-blast through the cell’s energy field and into El Dorado. He traced it across his entire body, quickly burning away all the remaining Diatomite-x. While that might make El Dorado seriously sick and give him problems with his blood, digestion, and equilibrium, he’d lose his powers. Permanently. More importantly, S.I.L.E.N.T. now couldn’t replicate El Dorado’s powers without the original to study.
If entire countries and continents needed a super-being to power them, Hyperman intended to do it himself. No one but those looking to exploit El Dorado would miss him.
“
We’re done here,” he told Wrath.