Generation Next: A Superhero Adventure (The Pantheon Saga Book 3) Read online

  Rodrigo chuckled.

  Greyson didn’t smile. “I’ll take smart and alive over stupid and dead.” He floated to the ground, wiping sweat from his face. Greyson made an effort to not kill Noordaal’s troops. They were following orders. House Garcia and their administration were the enemy.

  Greyson scanned the city around him. “Hear that?”

  Rodrigo frowned. “No.”

  Now Greyson smiled. “Exactly. It means the battle’s over.”

  After rounding up the defeated soldiers, Greyson floated high over Noordaal for a quick sweep. Everywhere he looked in the city's rounded spires and farmlands were AmeriForce troopers. The combined forces from Dourado, Bellazul, and Angelique boosted their forces. After breaching Noordaal’s walls, victory was an afterthought. The key now was capturing city leadership. During his flight, Greyson passed by Solomon Shen.

  “Did they find the Garcias?” he asked.

  “Found Renato Garcia and his family myself, trying to escape like rats,” Solomon responded in disgust. “They'll see justice.”

  Soon after, Greyson landed in front of Noordaal’s city hall. The main plaza was packed with filthy and emaciated masses. He guessed all were recently freed superhumans.

  Tigre stood on the pink-marbled city hall steps, arms spread as he addressed the crowds like some tiger messiah. Frostknife stood behind him, beaming from ear to ear. “No longer are you slaves in your homeland,” he bellowed. By the cameras around Tigre, this speech was being broadcast across Noordaal and possibly Amarantha. “This island belongs to you. The superhumans of Amarantha now rule. Are you with us?” Tigre shot one fist into the air. Thousands roared in support, all raising their fists. Frostknife clapped loudly.

  The scene would’ve reach Braveheart-levels of inspiring if the rhetoric hadn’t rattled Greyson so much. “I thought we were toppling the royals,” he said to Rodrigo much later as they sat inside a government building eating dinner. “Sounds like Tigre wants the supers to become the oppressors.”

  The Amaranthine glanced back, shoveling down a Cuban-style sandwich. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Greyson gaped. “Everything?” He caught himself, realizing again how his outsider’s perspective might not register. “No one learns from their mistakes, and then the humans repeat what AmeriForce did to take back the island.”

  Rodrigo scoffed at those concerns. “Not happening. They be baselines, yea.”

  Greyson realized, to his sorrow, he wouldn’t reach him. “Once the Internet gets restored, read more world history, my friend.” He rose from his bench and picked up his trash before marching off.

  The sun was sinking into the rugged horizon, splashing the skies with deep red and purple. Greyson walked along Noordaal’s narrow, winding streets to clear his head. Some streets were awash with celebration. Many supers pranced around drunk, cheering House Garcia’s downfall. AmeriForce troops intermingled with locals, keeping watch yet enjoying the dancing and music. Greyson exchanged hellos with soldiers he recognized, never staying too long.

  After a time, he found himself on dirt roads away from the hubbub. Hugo appreciated the quiet, the breezes blowing in from the sea. He’d never imagined in a million years to be toppling a cruel regime. It felt good. Connie seemed in lockstep with AmeriForce’s dogma. Like butchering Gaspar and Martine Carneiro, Greyson recalled, shivering. He couldn’t back murdering the Carneiro children. Or the Mendes family that once ruled Angelique. He inhaled deeply and kept walking.

  The voices reached him then, yards away. Greyson paused. Curiosity pulled him off the winding dirt road to a huge dip in the land.

  In the bottom of the depression, a slim human hovered off the ground shining bright blue.

  “Radiant.” Greyson spotted the original AmeriForce member with a cadre of soldiers and many supers nearby. In front of Radiant was a huddle of kneeling prisoners. Greyson should’ve walked away. But unshakeable dread pushed him down that hill.

  He froze within a few yards, recognizing the group kneeling before Radiant.

  The pudgy man was Renato Garcia with his wife and several children. Along with his cabinet and most of the city assembly. All were stripped naked and shivering in the evening cold.

  “Please…” Lord Renato begged. “Show mercy to my children…”

  “Like you showed mercy to the superhuman children you sold as weapons?” Radiant sounded robotic. “I'll respond in kind.” His illumination blanketed Noordaal’s former elite, forcing Greyson to look away. The night exploded with bloodcurdling screams and sizzling flesh.

  “NO!” With a flick of his wrist, Greyson doubled Radiant’s gravitational pull, yanking him from the sky.

  The light dimmed. Radiant was pinned to the ground, thrashing helplessly. His crew aimed their guns at Greyson, then relaxed after seeing him.

  “What the hell?” one asked.

  Greyson almost asked if they'd gone crazy. Half of the unclothed humans were covered in soot and gruesome burns. The soot came from the other half, blackened husks in various postures of pain and fear. House Garcia was front and center, scorched to death.

  Greyson tore his eyes away from the sight. “You’ve won,” he pleaded. “Enough killing!”

  “Not yet!” Radiant snarled, straining to stand. His increased gravity wouldn’t allow it. “Let. Me. Up!”

  Greyson glanced from the surviving humans, cowering and afraid. “Only if you stop this.” The air buzzed as soon as Greyson drew this line.

  “Fine,” Radiant decided. “Clarice.”

  Confused, Greyson looked up. A pixie-like Amaranthine woman approached, with coal-black skin and a kinky afro. Her eyes burned crimson. “Sleep.”

  Sudden exhaustion sapped Greyson's strength. “Godammit,” he mumbled. “Didn't restrain every....” His knees buckled as he passed out.

  Greyson woke on his back, staring up at a concrete ceiling. He scrambled to a seated position, inside a four-by-four cell. Frostknife and Tigre watched him through the one transparent barrier.

  Greyson recoiled, pressing his back against a wall. “Where am I?”

  “Containment cell,” Frostknife explained with a heavy sigh. “Don’t bother,” she interjected as Greyson strained to activate his powers. “Your abilities are dampened in here.”

  Greyson’s mind went to his last memory. “Noordaal’s entire leadership is dead?”

  Tigre nodded and folded both arms across his chest. His fierce, cat-like features were sympathetic. “I know this is hard to understand, Statesider. But eliminating the previous regime is the only path to justice!”

  Greyson was over trying to understand Amarantha’s ways or superheroes who lacked a moral compass. “This is NOT the only path!” he refuted angrily. Wrong was wrong no matter who perpetrated it. “There are laws to hold these people accountable. You hold trials—”

  “This is Amarantha!” Frostknife exploded. The angrier she became, the more chilled condensation rolled from her slender frame. “You think these supers who’ve only known slavery or the humans who benefitted from their slavery know how to convict the royals and their lackeys?” Frostknife shook her head like an infuriated parent trying to educate a child. “After over fifteen years of this? Change comes through brute force.”

  Tigre maintained his calm as his partner raged. He spoke again when she paused for breath. “When those in power have to share it, then you see their true faces.” He stared down, as if recalling some horrible memory. “This island’s humans are fucking monsters, abusing, raping, killing, torturing, oppressing supers for so long. All because they were different, had powers.”

  Frostknife began again, passion lacing every syllable. “You have no clue what these humans did to our teammates or our initial allies. Warstar? The Carneiros carved him up and sent pieces of his body to every major Amaranthine city as a warning.” She choked back a sob. “Red Hornet? Given to Paxton-Brandt for experimentation.”

  Tigre held his lover close, murmuring in Spanish to soothe her.
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  As Greyson watched them from inside his cell, comprehension dawned on him. Their liberation of Amarantha was no longer about justice. Who knew how much this group had suffered, how much trauma and paranoia had broken them? “Not all baseline humans are evil,” Greyson began softly. “You have so many believing in your cause, spying for you, helping you…”

  “Because they aren’t in power!” Tigre’s tolerance had waned. “And they never will be!”

  “Then who will rule Amarantha? AmeriForce?” Greyson snarked.

  Tigre and Frostknife eyed each other. “For now,” she replied.

  Greyson swallowed hard. He’d been joking. They weren’t. This was worse than he’d imagined. “What gives you the right to rule over Amarantha? AmeriForce’s original members are foreigners, like me.”

  “Power begets power,” Frostknife stated. Her stare was strange and detached. Almost as if she wasn’t fully home. “We alone can show the Amaranthine supers how to rule. All we need is to defeat House Bowen in Merenwjick. After that, the rest of the island will fall.” She smiled.

  Watching these two made Greyson’s skin crawl. “Replacing one dictatorship with another?”

  Tigre’s ears flattened. He was clearly insulted. “Never. We make sure the baselines know their place in this new order,” Tigre explained. “Then maybe we allow them a seat at our table.”

  Greyson’s bowels all but liquefied. “Good God…” He’d helped them take one city after another. Like a good little soldier, believing in their desire to free Amarantha. Not turn it into a superhuman ethno-state. “You’re supposed to be better than the evil you fight.”

  “We ARE better!” Frostknife slammed a fist onto the partition separating them. “How dare you!”

  Tigre just looked tired. Something inside him had to know this was wrong. But he clearly chose to ignore his conscience. “Sometimes, you have to do some bad to do a lot of good. And after our countries abandoned us, after everything we’ve lost.” His voice rose, a feverish light burning in his amber eyes. “AmeriForce has earned the right to claim something as our own.”

  Greyson knew then he couldn’t reach them. “Someone’s hero is another’s monster.” What terrified him now was what came next. Torture? Death? But unlike when he’d first arrived on this island, both options now terrified him. “What are you planning to do with me?”

  Tigre laughed, waving off his bravado. “We’ll let you out tomorrow when you’ve gotten more sense in that skull.” With that, both he and Frostknife departed.

  Greyson sat alone in the cell, so ashamed. Follow these heroes into battle, save Amarantha. Boom. Clean Slate. The naiveté made him laugh aloud for a long time. Better than crying again.

  “You can’t be surprised.” Her voice drew Greyson’s attention to the cell’s other side. Ghost-Lauren, dressed in Amaranthine fatigues like him, sat with her back against the glass partition. She watched him with pitying eyes. “You really thought this could redeem you?”

  Greyson shrugged. “I guess not.” Part of him always knew there was no way back. Getting that out felt like a relief, as did his next, stomach-turning realization. “There really is no such thing as ‘better angels’ anymore. Is there?”

  He looked again. Ghost-Lauren had vanished. But Greyson already knew the answer.

  Chapter 35

  Hugo stood in the middle of the sewer tunnel, ankle-deep in oily sludge, heightened senses at their peak. Sifting through the putrid stinks blanketing this underground maze, he found the scents that mattered. The liger and Brent. Those scents led Hugo down a narrowing tunnel.

  I’ll find him in time, he told himself a fourth time. And the others.

  Hugo’s superhearing caught sewage gushing through pipes and heavy-duty machinery whirring. Several kilometers ahead, muffled by thick walls, were soft growls and someone answering them like that Lassie show. The liger’s boss.

  The bastard who’s killing my classmates. Hugo looked down the gloomy tunnel ahead. Didn’t matter. Hugo could see well in the dark. Wearing his superhero suit, being Aegis—this felt right.

  “Dude. You there?”

  Simon’s voice in Hugo’s ear startled him. Still adjusting to that. “Yeah,” he answered quietly, using vocal manipulation to distort his voice. “Skywatch,” Hugo declared, using Simon’s codename.

  “Sorry,” Simon apologized. “Had to move to my garage so the parents wouldn’t interrupt me. And this software took time to install.”

  Hugo nodded. Simon was his computer guy tonight. Even better, the suit had software which mapped his location and a three mile-radius around him. “I found the liger’s scent…with Brent’s.”

  “Good.” Simon exhaled. “What’s with the Batman impression?”

  Hugo grimaced. “It’s my Aegis voice,” he threw back in defense. “Find anything on the map?”

  Simon cleared his throat. “A half-mile ahead and a quarter-mile left. One room is using more power than other sewer subsections.”

  Hugo took deep breaths to dispel the nervous knotting his guts. “I’m going in.” He raced ahead, sending sheets of sludge everywhere. Hugo banked left, finding a door outlined by yellow light.

  He braked hard, kicking the door inward with a jarring clank.

  Hugo stepped inside a rusty room the size of a one-bedroom apartment, another door on the far-right. The sparse furnishings included a bed, a fridge, and a flatscreen. Hugo also saw supply boxes, wiring, digital timers, liquid glycerin bottles and navy-blue vests. Ingredients for bombs.

  His eyes bulged at three limp bodies hanging upside-down from a rack like slabs of beef. McKenna Phillips's long copper curls brushed the dusty floor. Brent was hanging beside her, wearing a button-down and slacks for the party he should’ve been attending. Waif-like Kerry Winston swayed from the impact of Hugo’s entrance.

  “Found the lair. And the students,” Hugo whispered, listening for breaths and heartbeats. “They’re alive but unconscious.”

  Static replied. “Skywatch?” Again, no answer. Hugo swore. Maybe Si-mon’s parents walked in. Or this room had a jamming field. He’d figure that out later. Hugo moved to free the students when the door across the room opened. He whirled around. The man who entered broke Hugo’s brain. “You?”

  Mr. Proctor, in a lavender short-sleeve polo, frowned at his guest. “I wondered when one of you costumed types would find me—”

  Hugo’s enraged sonic scream rippled the air, plowing Proctor through the doorway. Hugo found the teacher lying on his back in the next room, stunned.

  “That hurt,” Proctor commented like some goofy TV dad. What the fuck with this psycho?

  Hugo wanted to hurt Proctor, scream at him. Yet, he stopped himself. One wrong word, and he’ll know you’re a Paso student. Hugo seized Proctor by the collar one-handed off the ground. “Using innocent children as bombers?” he snarled in his Aegis voice.

  Mr. Proctor smiled, his well-coifed hair disheveled. “That’s where you’re wrong. This world has no innocents.”

  Hugo frowned at the teacher’s confidence, until hearing a rustle behind him. He turned and ate a massive paw to the face. The cacophony of pain sent Hugo airborne. A wall rushed up to smack his chest, shattering on impact.

  Hugo groaned, rolling across rubble onto his back. Eight feet of mas-sive, furry muscle stood over him, baring sharp teeth. That fucking liger was stealthy.

  Mr. Proctor was on hands and knees, rubbing his throat. His vacant stare was unsettling. “Have you met Khan?” Proctor asked calmly. “My superhuman enforcer. His gifts blessed him human intellect inside the body of a liger. And he’s very strong, as you’re surely learning.”

  Hugo moved to rise and speed at Proctor. Khan moved almost as fast. Palming Hugo’s head with one paw, he ragdolled the teen to the floor.

  “Who knew the unwavering loyalty I’d win,” Mr. Proctor monologued, entering the next room. “after rescuing him from an abusive carnie show?”

  Hugo struggled to free himself, but Khan's grip was v
iselike around his skull. As Khan dragged him into the next room, Proctor pulled three vests out from a box next to the rack of unconscious students.

  “Khan is the son I never had.” The teacher placed one vest around McKenna, snapping it in place. “We both want Justice for Shauna.”

  Confusion gave Hugo pause. “Shauna?”

  Proctor snapped a vest on Kerry with practiced hands. “My baby, Shauna. So pure and sweet. She attended Arroyo Grande High. Always bullied and harassed by overprivileged twats like them.” He gestured in disgust at Brent and McKenna, his voice thick with familiar grief.

  Hugo was no stranger to that grief.

  “Titan was Shauna’s life. Kept her going.” Proctor’s features emptied. “His murder finally broke her. And she killed herself.” The teacher shook his head. “That injustice… tore what remained of my family apart.”

  Hugo caught Khan’s paw, wrenching it off his head. He primed to rocket at Proctor. But Khan tackled him, viciously raining down right and left paw swipes to Hugo’s face, leaving him dazed.

  Proctor continued like he hadn’t been interrupted. “Then my mission started. Eliminate those who terrorize kids they considered beneath them.”

  Khan slapped a meaty chokehold on Hugo from behind, squeezing so tight he feared his head might pop off. “Shauna’s death was a tragedy.” He somehow maintained his Aegis voice while struggling for breath, clutching Khan’s massive forearm. “These kids didn’t bully Shauna. She didn’t even attend Paso Robles High.”

  Khan snarled, squeezing harder. Black spots danced at the edges of Hugo’s vision.

  Proctor snapped the final vest onto an unconscious Brent. The ball-player moaned softly. “Paso Robles’s wealth and privilege breeds bullies.” Proctor’s tone grew unforgiving. “Tonight, I’ll take out a Paso High teach-er/parent townhall. Then a basketball party in Cayucas. After that, Arroyo Grande High.”

  He rose, looking to Khan with callous eyes. “Khan? Kill our guest, please.”