Chapter 272: The Purge

Chapter 272: The Purge

“Here it is,” Guile said, handing Truthslayer the medicine.

“How’d you get these?” the black-haired superheroine murmured, opening the case and peering inside.

Inside were four vials of the stuff Paradox had used to ‘cure’ Solaris, although the jury was still out on that. The important part was that it made a god mortal, however temporarily.

I hid inside Paradox’s incinerator in my subspace and caught a few of them as they were disposed of. Kid might be able to sense me when I’m aiming to harm him, but when I’m not...Almost burned my hands off through the hyperweave, though.

“You already know the answer to that question,” Guile said.

“Don’t ask,” Truthslayer said with a dry chuckle. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“Are we actually doing this?”

“We aren’t doing anything.” Truthslayer said. “I’ll do it. He’s not getting better, and he deserves...” Guile watched as Truthslayer choked up a moment before mastering her expression. “He deserves peace.”

“I’ll tell him he needs multiple doses. He trusts me. Once he’s got the serum in him, I’ll catch him in a lie, and he’ll...go to sleep.” She glanced over at him, her eyes red. “Is everyone else on board?”

“Everyone who needs to know, will know to look the other way.” Guile said with a shrug. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Solaris is dangerously unstable,” She said. “He could get violent any second, and a second is all it would take to destroy Franklin City. And if the mimic gets to him...” She shook her head. “It’s already almost everywhere. We’ve had to move him...too many times.”

Guile nodded. “I’ll get everyone ready,” he said. “Just in case. Some Anchors aren’t going to agree with this, but they won’t know until it’s over.”

Truthslayer nodded, closed the case and heaved a deep breath.

“Alright.”

****

Tom Franklin stared at the glass of water. How long had he been sitting there? Things had gotten a little better over the last few days. The memory loss and periods of confusion were getting smaller, if his tracker had anything to say about it.

Like Paradox had said, it wasn’t an instantaneous cure, but it was allowing his mind to gradually put itself back together, which was good enough. His skin wasn’t leaking light anymore, either.

Just another close call in a hundred-year string of close calls.

He made a note in his journal and grimaced.

‘Staring at water.’

He checked his watch, then remembered that he didn’t have one since the cell phone was invented. He checked his phone and wrote down the time.

’15 minutes.’

He picked the glass up and tossed it back, sighing in relief.

If Diane sees me this spaced out, she’ll give me an earful...

Tom’s heart sank a moment, glancing down at the journal, eyeing the words scratched into the paper, forceful enough to damage the sheet beneath them.

Diane is dead.

Right. Right.ViiSiit novelbi/n(.)c/(o)m for latest novels

A flood of memories washed over him. Two decades of hunting the man who’d killed his wife, only realizing with the wisdom of age that it’d been an accident. By then there was already too much bad blood.

So many valuable protectors of humanity wasted chasing a non-threat.

Backfire, Hound-dog Hell-Ware, Bastion, Boom-R-Ang, Molly, Ten-Don, Holy Holly...I’m sorry.

Like touching a hot stove and liking the pain, Tom remembered the way each and every one of them died, wondering exactly what went through their head. What it had felt like as they realized they weren’t going to make it. How much pain they’d perceived before everything went dark.

Anger at Professor Replica flared up for a moment, then fluttered and died like a sick bird. There simply weren’t enough Omni-class supers left to pick another fight with the Replicators.

Although...Tom thought of Claudette’s son. He might be the next. He’s damn close.

Which son? The twenty-something or the little snot-nose...No, they’re the same.

Tom carefully corrected his frayed memories, hoping it would take this time. They were beginning to take, but sometimes requires a little persistence.

Now I’m sitting here staring at an empty glass, Tom mused to himself, sighing and wiggling his toes in his sandals, turning away from the sink.

I haven’t had a vacation in...what? Fifteen years? Role was currently handling the daily appearances, and Locust was surprisingly competent at administrating the city. That old woman was more than just a supreme multitasker, she understood people at a deeper level than most.

Tom yawned and started the coffee maker, shuffling through his apartment.

Sometimes I think Coffee is the only reason the Earth is still spinning. Tom mused, waiting for that nostalgic smell. There’d been a fair number of times where it was the only thing that got him going. Some of those times had included saving the world.

Sure, once the coffee hit his light-based physiology, it vaporized, but he still got a caffeine rush. The doctors told him it was a placebo, but Tom would take it any way he could get it.

Knock, Knock, Knock. A knock on the door brought Tom out of his thoughts.

“Who ‘dat?” Tom grunted, pouring himself a cup of joe while shuffling toward the door.

Then again...

Solaris threw the scalding hot coffee at the mimic as it launched itself towards him. the creature reeled back, screeching in pain while the aging super grabbed a butcher knife out of the knife block.

“Never said I’d make it easy for you.” Solaris muttered, hefting the blade before wading in and hacking away at the creature, all pretense at defense forgone in favor of extracting maximum damage. “You killed my granddaughter.”

A few minutes later, in another point in Franklin City, Chemestro was working out.

Today was Cardio, and Chemestro was sprinting at full speed down his personal track, wearing a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound vest.

Chemestro enjoyed the burning sensation spreading through his body, the taste of blood in his mouth. The pain scoured away all doubt, stress, and worry, leaving nothing but calm. It was the closest to meditation he would ever come.

Every once in a while, as his body struggled, Chemestro could feel his mind touching...something else. Something beyond himself.

It was probably hypoxia.

Still, he pursued this state of mind, simply to be free from the cage that was his life, his body, his ‘friends’ and ‘family’.

It was a delicate moment. Sometimes at the end of a run, he could point to a moment and say ‘there, I was definitely there’, but when he was inside that moment, trying to pay attention to it would tear the state apart like cobwebs, as if his consciousness itself was some kind of scouring wind.

It resided outside consciousness. Outside of reality.

Against the backdrop of his body panting, muscles burning, Chemestro felt his self diffuse and expand, seemingly projecting on a larger canvas than his narrow view of reality, spreading in directions that had no name.

He didn’t dare acknowledge it. That would shatter the ephemeral, dreamlike moment.

He simply kept running.

It’s coming.

Between one step and the next, Chemestro felt a ripple cut across his billowing, expanded self, heading straight for him. Something filled with pain, rage and malice. Something moving at the speed of causality.

Chemestro’s instincts reflexively rendered him completely permeable, to light, to heat, matter. His expanded senses picked up the ball and included thought, meaning, reality.

Chemestro’s eyes widened as he seemed to step outside the world itself, in a dreamlike state, looking in on his underground running track from outside reality in a moment seemingly frozen in time.

The old analog clock on the wall was still, the second hand refusing to budge.

No, wait.

Click.

As though it were forcing its way through molasses, the second hand clicked forward.

Then, for the briefest instant, so small that he might’ve doubted himself, Chemestro saw Solaris standing in the corner of the room.

Then he was gone.

A flood of nameless dread suffused Chemestro’s entire body.

In another location, inside the very same second, Nocturne was watching TV in his underwear, resting a beer on his gradually expanding stomach.

He was getting old, to be sure. The super suit barely managed to contain his paunch nowadays. I guess I should probably call it soon. I’ve got plenty of money, and I can always do good on the side, The sound-based super thought, watching contestants wipe out on the spinning bars and topple into slime pits and chuckling.

BEEP!

The Alarm went off, but Nocturne didn’t have time to process it.

Between one second and the next, Nocturne’s brain caught up to the fact that he was no longer sitting down watching Lincoln City Gladiator. He was in fact being held aloft by Solaris, whose hands were already in his mouth, preventing him from whistling.

Nocturne tried to click his fingers, but they turned to ash.

“Fucking mimics,” Solaris sneered.

The fingers in his mouth pressed upwards, delivering pain to the roof of his mouth.

After that, Nothing.

At that very same moment, Darryl Collins, also known as the Mechanaut, launched out of bed, The Alarm blaring in his head.

His Watchdog AI that kept an eye out for erratic movements from Solaris had triggered, and in a big way. The man had visited the homes of no less than four Anchors in less than a second.

There was no way that was enough time to talk to them or organize some kind of political agenda.

Plenty of time to kill them, though.

Darryl hit the emergency escape button in his head, ejecting his soul out of his decoy body.

An instant later, his decoy was reduced to so much gas, along with 95% of his secret backups and hidden armories.

The purge of Franklin city’s Anchors took less than a minute.