The Superhero's Son (Book 1): The Superhero's Test (6 page)

Speaking of Master Chaos, I eagerly watched the news and kept tabs on any updates about him. So far, no one knew where he was. The NHA had members all over the country looking for him, while the government-sponsored superhero team known as the G-Men were working with them to find him. I saw a lot of the talking heads speculating endlessly about what Master Chaos's message meant and where he was going, which I guess meant that the government had not told anyone about Robert. Or maybe even the government didn't know about Chaos's son.

In any event, I kept expecting to see Master Chaos walk into my classroom any day now and attack me. I knew what he looked like, because I had searched for pictures of him on the Internet. Unfortunately, it turned out that there had been no new pictures of Master Chaos since he was thrown into Ultimate Max, so I had to rely on 16-year-old pictures that showed a man in his late thirties with wild, crazy gray hair and a mismatched outfit that made even my lame style look like the height of fashion. I figured Chaos had to look older now, though, but the news hadn't shown any new pictures of him, although I figured he'd still be recognizable if I saw him in real life.

But Master Chaos never showed up, which made it easier for me to focus on my school. Over the week, I spent every lunch period with Malcolm and Tara, who basically became my only friends at school. Neither of them mentioned me punching Robert through the cafeteria wall, which meant that they had been as effected by Dad's memory altering tech as well.

Malcolm, however, couldn't stop talking about the news of Master Chaos's escape. He kept talking about how various neoheroes compared against Chaos and which one was likely to recapture him. It was from Malcolm that I learned that there was an entire subculture of teenage guys like him who spent endless time, both online and off, debating the strengths and weaknesses of different heroes and villains.

It was actually really cool. They had this tiered system called the Neo Ranks, with 10 being the strongest and 1 the weakest. The strongest heroes—such as Omega Man—were given Neo Ranks of 10, while the weakest were given Neo Ranks of 1, though there was a lot of debate and disagreement about which hero had which Rank. The villains were rated with the same system and there was an entire website, called neoranks.com, that showed where each hero and villain ranked in comparison to others.

But as fun as it was to talk about with Malcolm, I found it kind of hard to talk about because Master Chaos was apparently ranked an 8, which put him in the top 10% of all supervillains. It might have just been an arbitrary number, but the fact is that most people on Noe Ranks often had to have good reasons for assigning a neohero or villain a ranking and there were entire essays under Master Chaos's page that explained, in detail, about why he deserved to be an 8. It was actually kind of disturbing how many people gave this so much thought, like they had some sort of weird obsession with Chaos and other villains.

As for Tara, we didn't hang out or talk all that much. Sure, she still sat with Malcolm and me during lunch, but only because she was never welcomed anywhere else. She didn't seem to mind all our talk about superheroes, but I learned very quickly that you shouldn't ask her about them, because she was always very dismissive and generally had a sarcastic comment about them. I once asked Malcolm why Tara seemed so hostile toward superheroes, but he just shrugged and said she had been that way for as long as he had known her.

In any case, this was no good. Despite Tara's cold attitude, I still liked her and still wanted to ask her out, but I had to stop and think about what she would do if she found out that I had powers. That seemed incredibly unlikely to happen, because I was keeping my powers a secret from everyone, but it always felt weird whenever Tara made some snide comment about how superheroes always cause more trouble than they're worth. I just avoided the topic with her whenever we hung out together.

Dad was mysterious during the week. Every day before breakfast and every day after I got home from school, I'd ask him if the thing he ordered for me had arrived yet. He always told me no, and then I'd ask him what it was, but he'd always just say, “You'll see.” Typical Dad talk, in other words.

Dad didn't seem very distressed about Master Chaos, despite how worried he had been when the news first broke. I think this was probably because Dad didn't worry very easily, but he said that he was keeping in constant contact with the NHA, who fed him all the latest details about the search for Chaos. I asked Dad if there were any updates about Chaos's location that weren't reported by the news, but Dad never gave me a straight answer about that. He'd just tell me not to worry about it and just to focus on school until Saturday.

As for Mom, she never talked about Chaos or even mentioned him. She just spent most of her time either doing housework or going out into our new community to make friends and meet people. Mom never said that she was worried or afraid, but every time I saw her whenever she thought no one was looking, there was always a mixture of fear and anger on her face. Especially whenever she looked at Dad; I could tell that she still didn't agree with his decision to train me, but she was not going to challenge his decision, at least in front of me.

I still wondered why Mom seemed so worried. Sure, I'm her son, and yes, I know moms always worry about their sons, and of course it was understandable that Mom was worried that her one and only son was the target of one of the most infamous supervillains ever, but didn't she understand that, if I learned how to use my powers, that I would be able to defend myself? It was almost like she thought that me learning how to use my powers was the real problem, not the fact that a psychotic supervillain who has killed hundreds of people is after me.

After what seem liked forever, Saturday finally arrived. I woke up earlier than usual because I was so excited to begin my training. I still had no idea what my training would consist of, exactly, because Dad had been sketchy on the details. Still, I was ready to do whatever Dad had in mind. It was probably going to be more fun than playing video games or sitting alone in my room browsing the Internet, anyway, because I didn't have any other plans for the weekend (although that was intentional on my part, because I didn't want to have a conflicting schedule).

The night before, Dad told me to meet him in the basement in the morning. So when I got up, I showered, went to the kitchen, grabbed a bagel and some coffee, said good morning to Mom, had a quick breakfast, and then went down to the basement, eager to begin my training.

I had never been down in the basement before. Well, okay, I did go down there once when we first got here, but only to move some of our boxes full of things we didn't really need to unpack just yet, like the Christmas decorations. I didn't spend much time down there, though, because I hate being underground, plus it's dark and smelly, like a rat had died down there or something.

But when I went down there today, the basement had been radically transformed. In the center of the room was a fancy-looking chair that was hooked up to a dozen different monitors of varying sizes and shapes, which showed numbers and graphs that I didn't even come close to understanding. The various boxes containing our unpacked things had been pushed up against the walls, although the smell of a dead rat was still present if much weaker than before.

Staring at the monitors was Dad, who was wearing his Genius costume, complete with helmet. Thus, I couldn't see his face, but I could see the monitors reflecting off his helmet's surface. He was typing furiously on a wireless keyboard, but I wasn't sure what he was typing. On a small table next to him was a fancy-looking suitcase that looked like the kind you stored tools in, but it had a lightning bolt-shaped logo on it, which I recognized as the logo of the Neohero Alliance.

Before I could ask why Dad had a suitcase that was from the NHA, Dad looked over the monitors at me. “Ah, Kevin. You're early. Did Mom drag you out of bed?”

“I set the alarm to get up early,” I said. “I wanted to start my training as soon as possible.”

Dad nodded. “Good. Please sit in the chair.”

Dad gestured at the technological chair I noticed before. When I looked at it more closely, however, I noticed that it had straps on the arms and legs, which made me think of an electric chair.

“Uh, Dad?” I said, looking at Dad, who had returned to typing. “Why does that chair have straps?”

“To keep you in, of course,” said Dad, which wasn't a very helpful answer.

“No, I mean, why do I need to be kept in?” I said. “What is the chair even for anyway? Where did it come from?”

“I call it the Detector,” said Dad, without looking at me. “It's an invention of mine I built in the early 90s. It is supposed to be able to detect what kind of powers a neohero has. You sit in the chair, strap yourself in, and the chair scans your brain and tells you what your powers are.”

“Really?” I said. “It's that accurate?”

“Well, it isn't totally accurate, of course, due to how little we know about how neoheroes' biology works,” said Dad. “It has a thirty percent accuracy rate.”

“Thirty percent?” I said in alarm. “That doesn't seem very accurate to me.”

“It used to be ten percent when I made the first version about twenty-five years ago,” said Dad without missing a beat. “The reason it is so low is because scientists still haven't completely figured out what, exactly, causes powers to form in people. I have to keep updating it whenever any new discoveries in the field of neohero biology are made and I am very proud of the progress I've made with it.”

I frowned. Thirty percent might have been higher than ten percent, but it still didn't seem all that impressive to me. I was worried that it might say that I have flight powers and then Dad would push me off the top of a skyscraper as part of my 'training,' only for it to turn out that I didn't actually have the power of flight. That made me a little hesitant to sit in the Detector.

Still, I walked over to the Detector and sat in it. It was pretty comfy, despite its metallic surface, but then Dad started strapping me in before I could know what was happening. Dad tightened the straps so hard that I couldn't even feel the blood flowing through my limbs.

“Why do you need to strap me in?” I said, looking at the straps. “It's not like I'm going to get up and go anywhere.”

“True, but the Detection process can be … uncomfortable at times, to put it mildly,” said Dad as he put his hands on his waist, tilting his head like he was looking me over to make sure that I was strapped in well.

“Uncomfortable?” I said. “Do you mean painful?”

“No,” said Dad, shaking his head. “It's just has to do with how the process works.”

Dad walked over to the side of the Detector and pulled out about a large, metal bowl with blinking lights and wires attached to it.

“This is the Detection helmet,” said Dad. “When you wear it, it will 'sync' with your brainwaves and feed the information it receives into my computer, which will then match up your brain waves with the brain waves of known superheroes and tell you your powers based on that.”

I frowned. “I thought that neoheroes got their powers from the neogene.”

“That's just a theory,” said Dad dismissively. “And an old one at that, nearly discredited, since scientists have been studying neoheroes for thirty years now and still haven't been able to locate the so-called 'neogene.' Recent scientific research shows that there is something different about the brains of neoheroes and villains than normal peoples' brains, so I've based the latest incarnation of the Detector off that theory.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked at the Detection helmet warily. “Will the Detection helmet hurt?”

“No,” said Dad. “But the Detection helmet has been known to cause disorientation after syncing with the brain. It's nothing permanent, of course, and you shouldn't worry about it, but I just thought you should be aware so you can mentally prepare yourself for it.”

I bit my lower lip. “How do you know it won't, like, erase my memories or turn my brain into mush or something like that?”

“Because it hasn't done that to anyone else before,” said Dad, “although I suppose there is always a first time for everything.”

Before I could tell Dad that he really wasn't being a very reassuring father right now, he slammed the Detection helmet on my head and tied the strap around my chin. The Detection helmet was surprisingly light, feeling more like foam than metal, and it fit my head very well, but the wires constricted my movement.

I watched as Dad walked back over to the monitors and start typing again, no doubt getting the Detector ready to scan my brain.

“Uh, Dad?” I said as more strange numbers and graphs appeared on the monitors. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Certainly, Kevin,” said Dad without looking at me. “What is it? Do you need to use the bathroom before we begin?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I was just wondering why we had to use this machine to figure out my powers. Can't we just, like, go out into an abandoned field somewhere and practice my powers there? I mean, we already know that I have super strength. Can't I learn my other powers through practice?”

“We learned you had super strength when you punched the son of my archenemy through the cafeteria wall and inspired said archenemy to escape from the most secure prison in the world as a result,” said Dad, still without looking at me. “I don't want us doing any practical exercises yet, if only because I do not want you accidentally blowing up the house of some old man who happens to be the grandfather of some other supervillain I might have put behind bars a while ago.”

“Hey, it wasn't my fault,” I protested. “I just didn't know my own strength and who Robert's dad was.”

“Regardless, the Detector will give us an idea of what your power range is,” said Dad. “I've already told it that you have super strength, which will increase its accuracy rate by five percent.”

“So it's really thirty-five percent accurate, then,” I said. “That's really accurate.”

I don't know if Dad sensed my sarcasm or not, because he said, “All right. I am about to start the Detection process. Are you ready?”