CITY OF HEROES - LIBERTY SERVER'S
The SOLUS Foundation
Excerpts from
"Heroes - The Rebuilding
of Statesman's Camelot"
Chapter 76 - In
the Beginning - Martin Jeffries AKA PUSH
“Something very, very bad is going to happen
very, very soon.”
Martin shook his head and pushed the thought
out of his brain as he looked up. Why did the lights just shut off?
That hardly seemed normal. Usually the backup generators kept all
the R&D labs at Portal Corp. well lit, even during the frequent blackouts
Peregrine Island experienced. There must have been another villain
attack, he thought, as he sighed and put down his ion stabilizer.
He would be sure to check that out after work, when he was out of his lab
coat and into his “other” uniform.
“Any clue what’s going on, Matt?”
“Naw, nothin’, Martin. Computers
are dead, lights won’t work, and even the batteries in our flashlight are
toast.” Martin’s lab assistant, Matt Johnson, had been working at
the Corp. for some time now, and he was a brilliant engineer, despite his
apparent lack of common sense. Matt tiredly flicked the light switch
back and forth, back and forth, as he stared up at the obviously dead florescent
bulbs that lit the lab. “Only thing that seems to be workin’ is the
prototype.”
Oddly enough, it was true. The only
light in the room was the dull blue glow of the prototype portal this branch
of Research and Development had been working on. It was Martin’s
brainchild, a work that combined his expertise in kinetic motion and gravitational
fields with transdementional physics and quantum phenomenon. An awe-inspiring
machine, Portal XV17, as it was being called, was a moveable portal with
an identical partner system that allowed for mass organic and inorganic
transport across large distances.
The funding for such a project was easy
enough to obtain – it was common knowledge that Martin moonlighted as the
high-tech hero “Push,” and the city owed him more than a few favors.
Besides, the military advantages of moveable teleportation stations were
obvious, and such technology could even help revolutionize the already
existing “mediport” system on which every hero in the city relied.
On top of that, only Martin’s, or, rather,
Push’s gloves could help assemble the station. A careful balance
of negative and positive quantum particles needed to be held in place while
their chaotic motion was stabilized for the teleportation to be safe, and
the anti-grav gloves were the perfect tools for such a job. The team
of researchers currently working on the project had all gone home, and
it seemed like Matt and Martin would be putting the finishing touches on
the machine tonight, at least until this little setback.
“I guess I better go check it out,” Martin
said, with a twang of annoyance in his voice. “Just don’t blow anything
up while I’m gone, all right?” He flashed Matt his trademark grin,
and glanced over. Matt was still baffled by the flashlight’s inability
to work, his graying eyebrows furrowed in a scowl of frustration.
The dark circles under his eyes looked down right creepy in the blue light,
and his glasses reflected a perfect picture of the lab back at Martin.
“What a way to spend my birthday, huh,
kid?” Matt frowned, and continued to shake the flashlight.
“Yeah, well, we’re blow out those fifty-seven
candles AFTER we finish the revolutionary machine, alright old man?”
Martin patted his mentor on the back. “I’ll be right back. Just give
me two seconds.” And with that, he was gone, through the motion-sensing
door, and down the hall.
Halfway to the generator room, Martin stopped
short. If all the lights were out, and even the flashlights weren’t
working, why in the world would an electronic door work? More than
a little concerned, he turned and began to head back to his lab, just as
the telltale pulse of blue light signaled XV17’s activation, and a pillar
of fire erupted out of the door frame. The explosion, although a
good twenty feet away, knocked Martin on his back, dazing him. Coughing
and struggling to regain his composure, he managed to lift his head.
XV17’s dull blue light was now complimented by flashes of bright green
and purple, and the high pitched whine made it blatantly clear that the
light was some kind of energy weapon being fired. Sprinting down the hall,
Martin came to a halt just before the door, and peered around the corner.
His jaw dropped. Inside, huddled
around the machine, were four, no, only three, but god they were big enough
to be four, humanoid figures. Clearly inhuman, and clearly hostile,
they chattered in low voices in a language that sounded almost like English,
their pulsating energy guns lowered to their side. Damned things
must’ve come through the portal!
Martin almost didn’t notice it at first,
but the charred remains of Matt’s body laid about three yards behind them,
his face contorted in a grimace of pain, his arm outstretched to the door.
He had been trying to run. The three monsters, or whatever they were,
examined XV17 with surprising tenderness, adjusting it with learned motions.
Whoever they were, they knew how to handle technology. And whoever they
were, they made the fatal mistake of turning their backs to Martin.
Eyeing his gloves, which were laying on a table about a foot away from
the door, Martin glided soundlessly into the room. Putting on the
gloves and switching on the neural link, he tried with all his might not
to look down at Matt. Without a noise, he took a deep breath, and
made his presence known.
“I’m giving you to the count of three to
step away from that machine.” There was no confidence in his voice.
Normally, he would have opened with a wise crack, or a taunt, or at least
let the enemy know that he had the advantage. But today felt different.
Today didn’t feel like fighting, it felt like survival. “One.”
The humanoids looked at each other. One of them, who was on what
seemed to be a communications device, muttered a few words and then put
it down. “Two.” They assumed fighting positions, drawing their
weapons. “Thr-”
Before he could finish the word, they had
opened fire. Familiar bolts of green and purple energy screamed towards
Martin. Almost on autopilot, he lifted his gloves and stopped the
energy cold. A simple kinetic stabilizing field left the energy floating
helplessly in the air. Confused, the creatures paused – and then
scrambled, as gravity suddenly told the energy to fly backwards to its
place of origin. The blasts hit the attackers, but rather than completely
incinerating them, it merely stunned them.
“Great,” Martin thought. It was going to
take more than a clever counterattack to finish this. Focusing, his
gloves hummed as gravity in the room suddenly pointed “up.” The creatures
flew to the ceiling, and Martin rocketed towards them, activating a kinetic
repulsion field around them. He ricocheted off the walls, pummeling
his assailants, until sticking a landing back by the doorframe. Glancing
at his desk, and Martin’s lab rack, he summoned them into the air…and sent
them flying straight towards the figures. They crumpled, motionless.
Almost instantaneously, the lights flickered back on. The florescent
bulbs hurt his eyes at first, but soon, everything came back into focus
for Martin. The lab was a mess. XV17 seemed fine, but the TV
cabinet was cracked, and…
For the fourth time today, a feeling of
dread hit Martin’s stomach. The sound was off, but the images on
the television were clear. News coverage showed nearly every sector
of Paragon under siege by invaders exactly like the ones in the lab.
Scrolling bulletins at the bottom of the screen said something about “invasion”
and “Rikti.” “Panic.” “War.” Reports swept across the screen
until one particular headline shook him from his shock… Talos Island…
Alarms went off in Martin’s head. Talos
Island? The coverage hovered for a moment on the burning skyline
of New Troy. Ohmigod, mom and dad? Without hesitation, Martin
rocketed out of the room, down the hall, up the stairs, and out of Portal
Corp. He had to get home. Racing as fast as he could, his gloves
whirred to life again, increasing his velocity to the point where the rest
of the world seemed to be at a standstill.
Peregrine Island was no better off that
the rest of the world: fires were everywhere, and chaos was in the streets.
But still, Martin raced forward. Faster, the friction tearing away at his
lab coat. Faster, the heat from the speed melting away the rubber on his
shoes. Faster, nearly breaking the sound barrier, now. Faster,
through Poseidon Square, through the docks, bypassing the ferry to Talos
Island altogether. Across the harbor, faster, until his tendons felt
like they’d snap in two. Through New Sparta, his feet raw and bleeding,
now. Faster, faster, FASTER, until…
Home...
He skidded to a halt, tumbling end over
end, and collapsing in front of the familiar red brick building just across
the street from the Exarch Industries building he’d nearly grown up in.
He arrived just in time to see a patrol of those monsters, those awful
things, vanishing into the distance. And there, on the street, were
Pam and Stephen Jeffries. Charred and burned, just like Matt, just
like the rest of the city, there they were, sprawled out on the sidewalk.
Martin slumped to the ground, his gloves clunking helplessly against the
cracked pavement. Mom was holding a suitcase. Dad was holding
mom’s hand.
Dead.
It must have been twenty minutes before
Martin realized that he was still sitting there, staring. It must
have been another ten before he realized that most of the bones in his
feet were completely broken. It didn’t matter, though. Nothing seemed
to matter. Calmly getting up and stepping over his parents, Martin
gestured with his gloved hand and opened the door to his burning apartment
complex. Without even glancing at the fires, he extinguished them
through sheer force of gravity.
It was like an old habit, an old routine,
a dance that he had performed so many times that it was natural to him,
now; climb the stairs, key under the door matt, gloves on the hall stand,
first door to the left. Martin collapsed onto his childhood bed,
and closed his eyes.
It would be so easy to just give up.
He’d worked so hard for everything, why couldn’t he just give up now?
Straining to open his eyes, he looked around at his room at the familiar
wallpaper, the Statesman action figure in the corner, the poster of Albert
Einstein on the wall, in front of the door. The world outside may
have been at war, but for Martin? This wasn’t war. This was
home.
He looked back over at the Statesman figure.
Where was Paragon City’s protector? Why hadn’t he been there to save
the Jeffries like he’d saved so many others? Then Martin looked down
at the gloves…
Why hadn’t he?
It was a question he’d never stop asking
himself. |
