Hidden Potential: Nibiru Rising: Book 1 Page 4

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Feeling pretty stupid, but fine.”

  “What happened anyway? The footage from the pursuit vehicle shows you landing, the armored car about to squish you, then the target apparently teleporting on top of you. Then he somehow stopped both the armored car and our vehicle instantly before both of you vanished. The passengers in the armored car said they didn’t feel any deceleration at all after the impact. One minute they squealing tires, the next minute they’re completely motionless. How’s that even possible?”

  “I’m wondering that myself. As soon as he touched me, it felt like I was weightless. What’s more disturbing though was how easily he negated my powers. I didn’t even feel myself power down. As soon as he let me go though, I burst into flames again. So it begs the question, is he some type of power nullifier or leach?

  And why did I catch a whiff of cinnamon and sandalwood?

  “Hello! Kat? You still with us?”

  She realized her teammate had been talking to her, but she didn’t recall anything he’d said.

  “Huh? Sorry, lost in thought.”

  “I asked if we should try an' go after him again. We know his general direction of travel…”

  “No, with his speed and maneuverability, he’s long gone. Let’s get back to base and debrief. I want to review all the footage of this. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Okay boss, no problem. ETA ten minutes.”

  Kat nodded before sinking back into her own thoughts.

  Who is this Newton guy and why was that cyborg so intent on trying to draw him out? And who, or what, is Maelstrom…?

  §§§§§§§§§§§§

  After reviewing the footage, Kaitlyn had more questions than answers. Her initial impression seemed to be accurate regarding this Newton person. From what she’d seen, several people were only alive today because of his intercession, including the woman who was thrown off the roof, the hostages, and even the armored car personnel if she wanted to be honest with herself.

  On another note, she still couldn’t believe that he’d been able to shrug off that blow from Thunderclap. She remembered one mission early in her career they’d both been on where, after he’d thrown it, he’d crushed an Abrams tank like a soda can, launching it backward nearly a quarter-mile before it’d slid to a stop. This guy though, it was like it hit the proverbial immovable object before taking off like it was nothing. Whoever he was, he appeared to be well beyond her Epsilon rank. Possibly beyond Thunderclap’s Omicron rank even. That would put him on a very small list for beings with his power level.

  Striding into the conference room, she quickly glanced around before taking her seat. Besides Thunderclap and the Colonel, she didn’t recognize anyone there. She assumed most of them were part of the strike team that’d given chase to Newton after he’d been blown off the building.

  She briefly flipped through the folder in front of her before the Colonel cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention, starting the meeting.

  “So what do we have?”

  A technician at the end of the table stood up, fidgeting with her collar when every turned their attention to her. Shuffling the remote control in her hand, she stepped slightly to the side as the lights dimmed slightly.

  “Unfortunately sir, not very much. Based off our records, there was only a few scattered mentions of a group known as Maelstrom, but it had code-word level security encryption. We’re still trying to determine who has a clearance level high enough to unlock it. As for this Newton person, we have exactly one entry for him… It’s not good.”

  The tech pressed a few buttons on the remote, bringing several grainy images up on the screen. It appeared to be from what was left of a small warehouse or office building, one that looked like it’d been hit by a bomb. Clicking through several images, the tech continued.

  “These images were from a small classified field office of a since disbanded government department that was very similar to ours. The main difference was that they focused on augmenting normals whereas we try to recruit gifted individuals. Based off what little we could find, the department was getting ready to be shuttered for some reason anyway, but this incident just put the final nail in the coffin it seems. The records from that department were damaged for obvious reasons, but what was recovered was very telling. Among the records was a very short, degraded video clip.”

  Clicking another button, the scene changed to a very grainy, pixelated video. The footage was too far gone to make a positive ID, but what remained caused the hairs on the back of Kaitlyn’s neck to stand at attention. The video footage appeared to have been pulled from some type of security system. It actually looked like it was footage from several cameras that had been spliced together.

  She watched as the unidentified person raced toward the building, carrying what appeared to be a Humvee in front of them like a battering ram. The next scene appeared to be from the lobby. Everyone appeared to be scrambling around. Kaitlyn noticed that it appeared the exit door had been knocked off its hinges, but she only had a split second to note it before the wall exploded inward. A moment later, the video suddenly went dark as the vehicle sailed into it. She noticed that Thunderclap had a look of respect on his face as the images disappeared.

  “Is that it?” she said as she gestured toward the screen.

  “Unfortunately, yes. That’s all the footage that survived.”

  Kaitlyn gestured toward the screen.

  “There’s no way to determine if that our guy or not, based of that.”

  “True, but it’s also the only thing we have in our records that references anything referred to as Newton. Based off the damage and how your confrontation with this Newton person today, it wouldn’t be a hard stretch to think the two are related.”

  “You disagree Kat?”

  Kaitlyn shook her head slightly before responding.

  “Power level-wise? No. I think it’s well within the abilities we saw this Newton person do. The problem I’m having Colonel is, this video is implying a cold-hearted killer…”

  “And?” the Colonel said. Kaitlyn noticed an odd expression flashing across his face, almost too fast to catch, before he waved his hand for her to continue. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost thought it was the expression of someone who’d seen a ghost.

  “How many casualties did we have today?”

  The tech tapped a few keys on her display before responding.

  “Uh… none actually. Other than scrapes and bruises, there were no major injuries reported.”

  Glancing back toward the Colonel, she raised an eyebrow.

  “My point exactly. I can’t believe that someone who, based off how everything went down today, went out of their way to keep people from getting hurt, let alone killed, could be the same person who destroyed a government facility, possibly killing hundreds of civilians.”

  “Well, regardless of your feelings major, we need to track this guy down and detain him, if for no other reason than to question him about his knowledge of who that cyborg was and who, or what, Maelstrom is.”

  “To that effect, I want you to assemble a team to track down this Newton person as quickly as possible before this situation spins further out of control.”

  “But—”

  “No buts Kat, you’ve got until tomorrow to assemble your team. Dismissed.”

  Before she’d had a chance to say anything else, the Colonel spun around and strode out of the room, leaving her with her mouth hanging open as the rest of the group stared at her.

  Thunderclap smirked as he piped up.

  “Ok boss, so where do we start?”

  Chapter 7

  The sound of the phone ringing jarred him awake. Instinctively, he started mentally clawing at any kinetic energy he could sense before the pounding in his head forced him to release it. Struggling out of bed, he held while he searched for his phone. Trying to draw in a trickle charge of energy, he felt another sharp spike of pain behind his eyes. Letting the ener
gy go, he headed toward the kitchen, searching for aspirin. On his way by, he grabbed his still ringing phone out of his jacket, noticing the finger-sized hole in the shoulder. He felt itchy from sleeping in his clothes last night, but that could be remedied by a long hot shower.

  “Where were you last night! Not call, no show? It was everything I could do to keep the boss from firing you outright.”

  Wincing, he dug through his cupboard for the bottle before responding.

  “Sorry ‘bout that. Think I got food poisoning or something. I was hoping some sleep would make me feel better, but I guess I passed out and slept through my alarm.”

  Grabbing a bottle of water, he dumped several pills in his hand as he cradled the phone up to his ear.

  “No worries. I convinced boss man that you couldn’t make it because of all the cops downtown gunkin’ everything up trying to find that terrorist. Hopefully it won’t affect your chance to get promoted to foreman.”

  Rick froze, trying to figure out how to respond.

  “Dude, you still there?”

  “Not really interested in becoming a foreman, honestly. Don’t want the responsibility. But did I heard you right? Something about a terrorist?”

  “Man you must really have been out of it. It’s been all over the news non-stop. Some dude tried to throw a lady off the roof of the Rapier building. Thankfully they got to the hostages before someone got hurt, but the dude blew stuff up and got away in the confusion.”

  Rick dropped heavily into a chair, absently fingering the hole in his jacket, courtesy of Reaper. A thought suddenly occurred to him.

  “Do they have a description of the guy responsible?”

  He heard laughter on the other end.

  “Yeah dude, that’s the funny thing. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought they were talking about you. So you might want to leave a bit earlier so if the cops stop you, you won’t be late getting here. I don’t know if I can cover for you again.”

  Running his fingers through his hair, he nodded to himself before replying.

  “Thanks for the head up, Tim, I owe you one.”

  “Dude, it’s twice,” he said as he chuckled again, “you also owe me for saving you the trouble of finding a better job as well, but who’s counting.”

  Rick chucked at the comment.

  “Yeah, I owe you twice. See you later.”

  “Later dude.”

  §§§§§§§§§§§§

  Rick dropped his phone on the table before squeezing his head between his hands, willing his headache to go away. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten a migraine from using his powers, but by the same token, he hadn’t used his powers for nearly eighteen years… Not since taking down Reaper the last time. Thinking about it, he got up and went to the bathroom. Flipping on the light, he took a good look at himself in the mirror.

  “Shit!”

  When he’d left yesterday, his hair and beard had been an even mix of salt-and-pepper coloring, but now his hair had taken on a lot more pepper in color. Now it was mostly black with just a touch of white here and there, mostly around his temple area and the corners of his mouth. Looking closer, he noticed that the crows feet that had been coming in nicely around his eyes had started to fade, leaving smoother skin behind in its place. He swung his fist down in anger, but caught himself before he shattered the sink.

  One of the side effects of using his powers, one he’d actively been trying to avoid, was the passive healing factor that went along with it. Along with rapid healing, it also kept him from aging. If he used enough power, it actually caused his aging to reverse itself until he reverted to what he looked like in his prime. It was why he hadn’t used his powers since he’d gone underground. Thankfully, he’d only needed to use the more active form of his healing ability to repair his shoulder. Otherwise, he would have already reverted back to what he looked like in his twenties. At least now he could play it off for awhile as using some hair coloring or something.

  Turning the light out, he left the bathroom. Glancing at the clock, he realized he needed to make some hard decisions. It was only nine in the morning, giving him some time to think, but as the saying went, the clock was ticking. His first task was to take inventory and gather up all the tools of his former trade. Now that Maelstrom knew he was still alive and located in this city, he had to prep himself in case they tried to attack again. With that in mind, his next task was trying to figure out where he’d dropped the tube of projectiles he’d used to good effect yesterday. He barely remembered making it home last night, let alone how he’d made it to his bed. He debated using his enhanced senses, but the threat of a worsening headache stopped him. Instead, he went from room to room until he finally spotted it lying next to the front door.

  Picking it up, he uncapped the end and let the contents spill out. Instead of hitting the floor, the took up a wobbly orbit around him again. As he watched, their orbits slowly steadied and tightened up as the pain in his head started fading away. Grabbing one out of orbit, he stared thoughtfully at the sphere for a few minutes. They had been one of the first things he’d had made after leaving Maelstrom, and he’d been kicking himself ever since. He’d used some of his underground contacts to have them made for him, along with several other weapons. He’d spent the better part of some countries GDP getting them made, then spent the next decade and a half berating himself for having wasted so much of his cash reserves. Or at least that’s what he’d felt until yesterday. Now he felt the money had been well spent.

  Grabbing the ball-bearing like object with his hand, he withdrew his field from it to get an appreciation for its heft. The core of it was made from osmium with an outer shell of tungsten carbide buffed to a mirror like polish. For only being around two inches in diameter, they weighed close to three pounds each when he’d first gotten them, but for some reason, after having been exposed to his aura for so long, they probably weighed close to ten pounds each. Letting it go, it returned to its orbit around him before he mentally returned them to the tube, replacing the cap, and slinging it across his back. The tube was something else he’d had custom made. If run through a metal detector or x-rayed, it would give the image of what appeared to be rolled up documents. Even glancing inside from the opposite end displayed a hologram that made it look like the tube was just filled with rolled up papers.

  Adjusting the strap, he turned around and started back toward his bedroom. His foot connected with something metallic that skittered across the floor before hitting the bottom of his refrigerator with a loud clang. Walking over, it took him a moment to identify the what it was. Shaking his head with a chuckle, he bent over to retrieve the chunk of armored chest-plate that was all that remained of Reapers cybernetic body.

  Apparently I never got rid of this thing before I got home. Speaking of which, I’ll need to go grab my truck later.

  Drawing in some energy, he started crushing the metal chunk between his hands, slowly working it into a rough sphere shape. As the temperature of the metal shot up, he noticed a couple brilliant white sparks drop off of it. Pulling all the thermal energy out of the ball of metal, he walked outside. Making sure nobody was around to spot him, he burst forward.

  After a few minutes, he arrived at a forested area on the outskirts of the city, about twenty miles away from his house. Coming to a stop, he reached out with his senses, drawing in energy from all the surrounding environmental movement. He watched with curiosity as a nearby stream stopped flowing when it entered the fringe of his aura field. As his field slowly expanded from the gathering energy, he watched the progress of halted movement of the stream. To an outside observer, the water would’ve looked like it was freezing over, the shell of it slowly taking shape around his growing field.

  When he’d gathered enough energy, he released the water, watching as a standing wave formed before it rushed off downstream. As far as he could remember, he’d never tried to absorb the energy of flowing water before. Just another odd side-effect of how his fie
ld interacted with the surrounding environment. Closing his eyes, he reached out in an attempt to verify he was alone before he moved on to the next step. Satisfied, he began focusing his energy down into the hand holding the lump of armor. Feeling it start to heat up as he continued to charge up, he raised it up over his head. Pulsing the energy, he launched the scrap skyward. The metal ignited from the air resistance it encountered while it raced away at escape velocity, the Mach cone chasing after it in vain.

  Dusting off his hands, he pulsed back home to plot out his next course of action, satisfied that they wouldn’t be able to track him down using the remains of Reaper.

  Chapter 8

  Kaitlyn walked into the garage, surveying the team she’d put together. Some of them looked fresh while others looked tired, probably from having to travel overnight to be part of the group she was tasked with assembling. She made eye contact with each of them before she began the briefing.

  “Morning everyone. I hope you all had a chance to review the materials provided. If you have any questions or concerns, now would be the time to ask. Once we’re wheels up, there might not be time to fill in any blanks.”

  Glancing around again, she gestured in front of her.

  “Each one of you have powers that I’m hoping will help us either capture, or as a last resort, terminate this new threat we’ve identified. Now in the interest of saving time, I’m going to call out your name. I want you to step forward so everyone knows who you are.”

  She pulled out her tablet and tapped on the screen.

  “Glaizia, front and center.”

  Kaitlyn noticed a giant of a woman slowly uncoil herself from the floor before stepping forward. Standing just shy of nine foot, the woman standing before her was heavily muscled, looking almost like she was carved from a block of granite.

  “Here,” she said, her low, deep voice matching her appearance.