​My Superhero Apocalypse

Chapter 1: Discovery

Kayla stopped at the door. It was the only one that was shut on this level. Her breathing slowed as she strained all her senses for danger. The sound of her heart beating seemed to drown out the rest of the noises. Growing more confident, Kayla rested her palm on the door while closing her eyes. The door felt dead, the circuitry inoperative. She began to rub the fingertips of her other hand together in a slow back and forth motion. The faint smell of ozone began to pervade the hallway and the occasional soft sound of a static discharge could be heard. She opened her eyes as the door shifted under her delicate touch. The grim expression on her face softened into a slight smile as she felt the door begin to show signs of movement. With a subtle push of her hand, the door soundlessly slid to the side, opening to the room in front of her.

She immediately gagged at the smell of stale air that was released out of the doorway. She tried in vain to keep her eyes from watering, and quickly covered her mouth to stem the sounds of coughing. When she felt she couldn’t loiter safely in the hallway any longer, Kayla quietly crept into the room, keeping one hand on the door. The air was still stale, but lacked the odor of decomposition that seemingly clung to the hallways in the rest of the building she had already explored. Accepting that the room was empty of threats, she let the door close quietly behind her, locking it with a touch.

As her eyes scanned the room, she immediately noticed the almost complete lack of debris in the room compared to others she had explored. The only source of light came from the large bay window at the other side of the room, the dirt filtering the weak sunlight that struggled illuminate the area. In the far distance, she could see the caldera of what used to be Los Angeles. Reaching up to her shoulder, Kayla turned on the flashlight that was attached to her harness. The powerful beam of white light revealed a sparse room, filled with a large bed on a pillar, some strange mechanical arms that came from the ceiling, a few small rolling cabinets and a lone desk tucked in the corner. Everything was a drab grey, owing more to the dust than anything else.

Moving with caution, Kayla examined the closest rolling cabinet. There was a monitor on the top, some dangling cables and a shut drawer midway down.

Probably some sort of medical device, she thought to herself.

The other rolling cabinets looked similar, so she turned her attention to the desk. The top looked mostly empty at first. There was a dried organic lump on a plate, probably once the source of the foul odor. She focused on it until her eyes glanced sideways and recognized the rectangular shape that had initially fooled her as being part of the desk.

A tablet! , she thought. Mindful to hold in her gasp of surprise and delight, Kayla quickly crossed the room on her tiptoes to minimize sound. The tablet was very dusty, and her heart fell when the screen looked faded and scratched. Knowing that it felt dead in her hands, she tried the power button anyways. A small sigh escaped her lips as she decided what to do. Holding the tablet at arm’s length in one hand, she repeated her previous gesture as she had done with the door, but moved her fingers far more slowly.

Can’t burn out this one like I did the one back at the enclave, was her only thought. Must not let my attention wander like last time.

Her efforts were rewarded with the power light slowly powering up from a dark, lifeless black to a bright emerald green. Her delight deepened when she noticed that a corner of the screen seemed to be peeling, revealing a fresher surface below. She tugged the corner, revealing more the screen below, clean of scratches. Kayla’s cheeks dimpled into a smile as she looked over the device. It was larger than the one back home, and the screen looked like new. She pushed the power button and stared intensely at the screen.

The device brightened, and an unfamiliar blue logo filled the screen. The logo morphed into a small blue rectangle on the screen, and small words appeared below the box.

Thumb here, she read. She mused the query for a second before putting her thumb to the screen. The device hummed for a second, and then the screen turned a bright red as Unauthorized Access filled the screen.

Nearly dropping the device in alarm, Kayla started and thought for a moment. She smiled again and rubbed her thumb and fingertips together a few times before putting her thumb on the screen again. This time the screen went through a whole host of colors, blinking until the screen turned a solid green. Access Granted.

The screen filled with small boxes, each with its own label. Absent mindedly, Kayla sat down on the chair by the desk, which erupted in a cloud of dust. She quickly held her nose, holding back the sneeze that threatened to burst from her. Regaining control of herself, she shook her head and slipped her scarf over her nose to block out the smells as she examined her findings. Nothing of note caught her attention. She sighed deeply.

Maybe someone at home can figure this all out, she thought.

Closing her eyes, Kayla took a shallow breath and let her sense explore the room more thoroughly this time. She almost missed the slight sensation of power that came from the bed across the room.

No, not the bed, she thought, but under it, like in a drawer.

Crossing the room, her free hand grabbed the first drawer tab and pulled it open. Unknown devices rolled around in the drawing, but nothing emitted what she had felt. She closed the drawer, vowing to pack its contents in her backpack before she left and opened the lower drawer. Bits of cloth and other metal instruments filled the drawer. But there, in the left corner of the drawer closest to her was a small black square half the size of the nail on her pinky finger. She picked it up and immediately felt the faint stirrings of power that she had felt earlier. Instinct made her glance at the tablet, more to the side, where an open port beckoned her to install the small device. Without hesitation, she pushed the block into the tablet.

The screen flashed a few times, and the words Retrieving Journal were the only things on the surface. A small circle below the words appeared. Kayla touched the circle with her fingertip and the screen lit up covered in words. Walking back to the chair, she sat and began to read:

Chapter 2: The Journal

09.21.28

How is your day going? Mine’s been absolute crap. My therapist suggested I put my thoughts and shit down in a private journal as a way of working through some of my problems. Hell, we’ve all got problems. But if mine gets me out of control, really bad shit tends to happen. The format is probably bugging you. This is all recorded to a micro implant that I dictate to, and it converts to a text file to save space. I don’t understand how it works, but it just does. The doc that put it in me said that as long as I’m alive, it’ll have power. When I die, which I hope is never, the data can be retrieved like a storage drive. Really freaky shit. It’s been two weeks since I arrived here. I think I’ve had more blood taken, been poked and prodded in every way imaginable, but I’m still kicking. At least the food is decent, and the clothing is okay. My room is just a basic bed and desk, but I do have my own john and shower. The damn implant itches. I’d rather not have it, but it wasn’t my call to make. Oh, and every time I make a journal entry, it should log the date. Should. Who knows if it works or not? I don’t even know if anyone will ever read this thing.

Anyway, where to start? The beginning seems to be a good way to go. My name is Kyle Anders. I’m the youngest of three kids, and I have an older brother and sister. My brother, Harold, is about 8 years older than me and is an utter douchebag. My sister, June, only 2 years behind him and was, in my opinion, a complete sweetheart. Complete opposites. I was an accident of the family and a surprise to our parents.

Ah, our parents. They were, for lack of a better term, losers. More dad than my mom, but both were dealt shitty hands in that game of life. My dad always tried to find the easiest way to make a living. Simply put, he was lazy and lacked morals of any kind. Dad was unemployed, drifted from scheme to scheme, and spent most his time smoking smelly cigars, drinking beer and getting fatter by the year by sitting on his ass. His only positive contribution to the family was getting clipped by a driver back in the day and spending part of the settlement on a double-wide, something he never would’ve done unless mom forced him. Well, that’s the story they told me when I asked.

Mom had dropped out of high school when she got pregnant with Harold and worked at a nearby diner, a real shit-hole, but made decent tips to offset the pitiful wages. Yeah, we lived in a trailer park. Go tell your fucking jokes and have a laugh or two. Get over it. My brother peaced out with a scholarship to some fancy tech school out West after high school and never returned. I never saw him again, even mom’s funeral many years later. The fucker just sent an anonymous wreath of flowers like a coward. He wrote apps for smart phones, or at least his company did. Fucker was a multi-millionaire and never once thought to help out his family.

My mom must have been a real looker as a teenager, because everyone said my sister was her spitting image growing up. My sister was a goddess, both in looks and personality. She left at 19 to seek out her fame and fortune in Hollywood, rather than hooking up with one of dad’s loser buddies, which is what he had set up for her. I was only 13 at the time she left, but most of my good memories of that time are of her. Plans got derailed in California and she ended up doing porn, but made real bank doing it. Unlike my asshole brother, she did visit from time to time. She would show up around my birthday or at Christmas with some gifts. Her visits were the highlight of every year. When I turned 15, she promised to take me to California when I hit 18. Got me a dirt bike for my birthday, which the asshole promptly sold off about a week later after she left. Too bad she and her director boyfriend died of in a car crash about a year later. There had been money that was coming to me from her estate, but I never saw a penny of it. As a minor, Dad had control over it. By the time I was old enough to inherit it, he had siphoned off every cent of that windfall. God, I hate that bastard.

Mom. I still get a little misty when I think of her. She was the real worker of the family. The slumlord who ran the diner and the trailer park had her working 12 to 14 hours per day, six days a week and still routinely called her in on her day off. She never complained, never refused, just did the work to support her family. It wore on her. We could all see it.

She died less than a year after I graduated high school. Advanced Stage 4 Pancreatic cancer. No one knew, not even her. Or if she did, she never let on. She was tough that way. I can’t remember her taking a sick day. Hell, according to my sister, Mom had me and went right back to work the very next day.

It was on a Monday that Mom started acting sick, just as I was leaving for work at the construction site. She was worse when I got home, bad enough that I took her to the local hospital, which we couldn’t really afford. By the time they had any inkling and called in a specialist, it was far too late. Mom died late Tuesday afternoon. Complete organ failure. I had taken the day off work and held her hand as she passed. The asshole didn’t even get off his recliner at the trailer park. His only words when I arrived back home afterwards was that he needed money for smokes and that my boss called to say I missed work. He didn’t even react when I told him his wife was gone.

09.22.28

Guess someone is reading this. My therapist wants me to talk more, go into more detail and shit. Fuck, that was a lot to talk about. Let’s back track a little. I wasn’t a good student in high school, or any school for that matter. I don’t have the brains my brother has, nor the stunning good looks of my sister. I was more interested in girls, cars and barely scraped by. All my friends left for college or university shortly after graduation. I was directionless at best. A buddy of mine hooked me up with his uncle’s construction company. They hired me as unskilled labor, mainly cleaning up job sites, stacking material and shit. It paid, most of which I gave to Mom. After she died, my boss promoted me to helper, mainly assisting the tradesmen, plumbers and electricians and such, by humping material and holding stuff. I learned a lot, enough that the plumber would have me run the lines and do the soldering. By the end of my third year, I could do any job at the site and meet code. I used my skills to upgrade the trailer, mainly improving the wiring and plumbing, but only when the old man was not there. I was finally making decent money, putting enough away to think about moving out on my own, getting a truck and maybe a steady relationship. Hell, the plumber, the electrician and the head carpenter all offered to make me an apprentice if I wanted it. I was leaning towards plumbing when everything changed.

Oh, just in case this journal ever gets read by a dimensional traveler, there are some things I need to clear up. Hey, don’t laugh, I was told that shit like that has happened to others.

We have super humans in this world. Honest to God heroes that can fly through the air and pick up cars and shit. They started showing up in the mid-40s, the products of “Big Science” and the World War experiments or whatever that means. People could have ‘awakenings’ or ‘breakthroughs’ and be the next super hero or super villain. We have those too. I was never a cape chaser, following the exploits of local or national heroes. I had enough on my plate to deal with. One of my buddies at the trailer park knew names, powers and shit. He would spend hours talking about his favorite heroes and what he would do if he ever got powers. I barely listened, and cared even less. However, if Miss Demeanor ever crashed through my wall some night, wearing her trademark lacy teddy costume that barely held in her assets, I wouldn’t have told her to go away.

This shit is all relevant because I’m now a breakthrough. Yeah, me. I know right? It has been explained to me that despite what the media tells the general public, there aren’t many of us. In world where the population is reaching nine billion, less than one percent have powers. Pretty small numbers for people who hold that much influence? The estimated number is like fifty million people have a power great enough to register on a detector. And of those, about one percent have a power that’s graded D or better. Half a million are would-be heroes or villains. The numbers game gets even smaller the higher up the power scale you go. About twenty-five thousand are rated C class, just over two thousand are B class and the highest up, the Alphas, number in the low hundreds. There are only five Omegas worldwide, with three of them in Europe, one in Asia and the last living in Maine. Scary shit when you think of how many normals there are compared to the superhumans.

It all happened when I was walking the roof line of a mansion that we were building. Tall fucker too. I was at least forty-five feet above the ground. I was tasked with bringing up shingles as the roofers finished up. We were secured with safety lines and I was leaning over the side pulling up batches of shingles. Didn’t bother with the ladders as it took too long and I had the arm strength to just pull them up. I had just finished a load, waiting for the next group to be hooked up when Fat Tony, the stupid ass clown that he was, unhooked my safety line so he could slip in a sheet of plywood easier than maneuvering it around the lines. I pulled, met no resistance and went headfirst off the roof. And stopped before I hit the ground with my face. About an inch from the ground, in fact. I hovered for a few moments before gravity reasserted itself and I collapsed in a heap. The other guys clustered around me until the site foreman chased them off. Less than twenty minutes later, three black SUVs rolled into the jobsite. By then, I had a splitting headache, my hands were shaking and I was drooling uncontrollably. The doors of the vehicles opened to a cadre of black suited gentlemen and an older woman carrying a laptop. She pointed at me and I was swiftly put into the backseat of the second SUV. She slapped a metallic cuff around my wrist and a metal cap on my head. Instantly, no headache and I could think again.

I was informed that I had an Awakening, and that they were taking me to be evaluated. The cuffs damped my powers and the helmet cleared my thoughts. I saw more people in white lab coats in the next 24 hours than I had seen in my entire lifetime. They poked, prodded and took measurements. I was asked so many questions, most of them not relevant, at least to me and after what seemed like forever, finally fed a meal and given a chair to sit in. By the time I was finishing my sandwich, an older gentlemen, dressed in the most expensive suit I have ever laid eyes on to this date, sat down across from me and explained my situation. I had superpowers and I was a danger to the public until I learned to control them. I was being shipped to superhero academy to do just that, and I was leaving as soon as I finished chewing. The only question they asked was if I wanted anyone told of my new situation. I thought for the briefest of moments, just shook my head and went where they directed me. No one I cared about needed to know what had happened to me.