Authors: Kevin Hardman
“As I was saying,” he began after he stopped laughing, “I had wanted to give you the sports car after you got your driver’s permit. However, John and Geneva put the kibosh on that plan. I think they were afraid of it being viewed as me trying to buy your affection.”
“For a car like that, my affection is for sale and will even come gift-wrapped.”
“Ha ha,” my father said mockingly. “But I happen to agree with your mother and grandfather.”
At that juncture, my father began pontificating on the importance of family and how he wanted our relationship to be based on the right kind of connections (which apparently didn’t include half-million-dollar sports cars as gifts). Mentally, I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what he was saying; it was the fact that this was a sermon that I received — in one form or another — almost every time Alpha Prime and I got together.
That said, I understood that this was important to him — that maybe he was saying to me all the things he wished he’d said to Paramount. Still, I was grateful when an odd beeping noise started sounding from somewhere in the SUV’s interior, effectively cutting off my father’s speech.
“What the heck is that?” I asked. I scanned the instrument panel, expecting to see a “Door Open” light or something similar flashing, but there was no indication that anything was wrong with the vehicle.
“It’s a call-in beacon,” Alpha Prime said.
“What’s it mean?”
“It’s a request for me to call in,” he said, shaking his head at my ignorance.
Alpha Prime popped open the glove compartment and reached inside. I assume he pressed a button of some sort because the irritating beeping immediately stopped. When he withdrew his hand and closed the glove compartment, I saw that he was holding a wireless headset device, which he slipped over his ear.
“Alpha Prime,” he said. “Where?…Are you sure?...How’s that?...What do you mean you don’t know?...Alright, give me five minutes.”
He took off the headset and tossed it back into the glove compartment almost disgustedly. After a few moments of silence, I glanced in his direction and saw him giving me an odd, appraising stare. I’d kept my eyes on the road while he had the headset on, but I’d been listening intently. Finally, he spoke.
“Hey,” he said. “How’d you like to see your old man in action?”
Chapter 5
Alpha Prime slipped out of the car while I was still driving — just opened up the passenger-side door and zipped up into the air, slamming the door behind him. However, he’d given me some basic instructions before he left.
“Just take a right at the next intersection, then drive straight,” he’d said. “I’ll find you. This will only take a minute.”
Of course, I knew where he was going: back home to get “dressed” for work. True to his word, he was back just a minute or so later — this time fully decked out in his black-and-gold uniform.
He had come in low and was flying right next to the driver-side window. Seeing him now in his full Alpha League regalia, I had to admit that he’d been right earlier: in costume, he seemed like an entirely different person, radiating confidence and competence, as well as inspiring trust.
He looked in my direction and gave me a snappy salute, exaggerating the motion so wildly that I couldn’t help but smile.
“You got your seatbelt on?” he shouted.
I nodded, then watched as he rose up and drifted over towards the roof of the SUV. I couldn’t see him, but — since I had a feeling regarding what he was about to do — I knew that he was taking up a position above the vehicle. A second later, I was proven right when the SUV’s tires left the road as it became airborne. Alpha Prime had picked the SUV up and was flying with it.
***********************************
Alpha Prime brought the SUV down in a deserted, unkempt parking lot that had riotous weeds sprouting up through numerous cracks in its surface. Looking around, it became obvious almost at once that we were in a deserted area of town: boarded-up buildings, streets in a state of utter disrepair, huge swaths of vacant land littered with rubble where structures had been torn down.
All in all, it looked like a bombed-out war zone. Urban blight at its finest.
Alpha Prime actually held the vehicle aloft just a few inches from the parking lot surface, making me think that perhaps he felt actual contact with the ground here would soil his tires or something.
“Hey, Einstein,” he shouted from above me. “You want to turn the engine off?”
For a second I didn’t know what he was talking about, and then it struck me that, even though I hadn’t been driving, the SUV was still cranked up. I switched it into park and then turned the engine off. A moment later, my father set the vehicle gently on the ground before floating down beside my door.
I stepped out of the car, not even trying to hide my excitement. I didn’t even know what was going on here, but just getting to tag along on a real mission had my blood pumping.
“So,” I said, practically rubbing my hands in anticipation, “what are we doing here?”
“You see that highway over there?” Alpha Prime asked, pointing.
I looked in the direction indicated. About half a mile away, I could see what appeared to be a deserted stretch of highway, including an overpass, although the area — like much of the neighborhood we were in — was dimly lit. In fact, the primary source of light in closest proximity to us was the SUV’s automatic headlights, and even those winked off after a few seconds, as if afraid to draw attention in our current surroundings.
“I see it,” I said, telescoping my vision and switching over to the infrared at the same time. “I also see some construction equipment — a bulldozer, a backhoe and some others.”
“They’re working on the highway, extending a portion of it to this part of the city. The hope is that ease of transit — among other things — will make the area attractive again to businesses and residents.”
“Good luck with that,” I scoffed. “You’ll have better luck teaching a fish to ride a bike.”
Alpha Prime ignored my comment. “There was supposed to be a construction crew out here tonight working on the highway, but the police received an anonymous call saying there was a bomb on that overpass. They checked it out, confirmed there was a device, set up a perimeter, and then sent for me.”
“Perimeter?” I asked. I looked around and noticed about a half-dozen sets of flashing red-and-blue lights, all spaced equidistant from the overpass. (Thankfully, their sirens weren’t on.)
“Yes, a three-mile radius,” my father said, pointing out the squad cars. “That puts them a little farther out than us. I’m surprised you didn’t notice them before.”
I didn’t say anything. In truth, however, I had actually seen the flashing lights when my father was transporting the SUV here, but didn’t assign any special significance to them at the time. Since the mayor had recently threatened to fix the city’s budget problems by furloughing government employees (including cops and firemen), I had just assumed that they were all doing their part to raise revenue by issuing traffic tickets.
“If it’s just a bomb,” I finally said, “why do they need you? Why can’t the bomb squad take care of it?”
“Well, it was identified as a bomb by whoever initially called the police, and they think that’s what it is. But it doesn’t look like a conventional device, so no one knew what to do with it.”
“And that’s why they called you.”
“Correct.”
“Okay, so what do we do now?”
“Actually, ‘we’ don’t do anything. You’re going to wait in the car — where it’s safe — while I check things out.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts,’” he said adamantly. “Look, I know that you’ve got an awesome power set and that you’ve been holding your own against formidable supers for years now, but I’m only just getting a chance to be a parent to you. A father. That means I’m probably more protective than I need to be, but I can’t help it. Even with you being part of the Alpha League’s teen affiliate, it’s going to take time for me to adjust to the thought of you willingly putting yourself in harm’s way.”
My natural inclination was to continue protesting, but I could sense the sincerity of his emotions, which included a healthy dollop of anxiety with respect to me.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll just hang out here and watch the show from the cheap seats.”
“Thank you,” he said in obvious relief. Then he flew towards the overpass while I climbed back into the SUV.
Of course, I wasn’t happy with this turn of events. Being in danger was almost the last thing anyone had to worry about with me — especially with my abilities. But it wasn’t worth getting into an argument about, particularly when we’d been getting along so well thus far. Besides, with my vision telescoped, it would be like I was in the middle of everything anyway.
I watched as Alpha Prime approached the highway. When he got close, he went from flying horizontally to a vertical position. Even then, however, his feet didn’t touch the ground, but that was normal for him. Rather than stride anywhere, my father had a tendency to float from place to place when he wasn’t in a rush — just another sign of his preeminence. More than one late-night talk show host had joked about his legs being stuck together, or atrophying from lack of use.
Cape rippling slightly in the nighttime breeze, Alpha Prime drifted beneath the overpass. Head up, he scanned the underside of the roadway, apparently looking for the bomb. Presumably he found it, because after a few seconds he stopped gliding parallel to the ground and floated up, hand reaching for something. Unfortunately, whatever it was he was trying to grab, he never got a chance to touch it, because all of a sudden — with a thunderous roar — the overpass collapsed on top of him.
My first thought was that he had inadvertently set off the bomb. However, although it was indeed loud (a normal person in close proximity would have certainly had their eardrums shattered), it hadn’t sounded quite like an explosion. Rather than the short, dull flat sound I would have expected based on my own experience, this was more like a giant hammer striking an equally gigantic nail, leaving a sharp pinging sound reverberating through the atmosphere.
Beyond that, though, it bore just about all the earmarks of a traditional bomb. A monstrous cloud of dust billowed out from where the overpass had been, enveloping everything within five hundred feet. The ground shook maddeningly for a moment, like Mother Earth was a wild bronco trying to throw off a determined rider, and the SUV was actually tossed two feet into the air before slamming back down with a massive jolt as debris rained down around it.
Two nearby buildings collapsed under the force of the tremors, and I could only imagine their owners thinking that Christmas had come early this year with what they’d save in demolition costs. A third building, a deserted tenement with excessive fire damage, began leaning dangerously to the side with an ominous creak of metal and stone, but somehow remained standing, looking like the Tower of Pisa’s crackhead brother.
Still in the SUV, I scanned the area where the device had gone off, desperate for any sign of my father, my infrared vision allowing me to see through the dust. The overpass was gone, smashed down like a gargantuan foot stomping a bug. Shattered chunks of concrete in all shapes and sizes lay around, many with jagged pieces of rebar sticking out of them
Although Alpha Prime was considered to be invulnerable and had been to known to survive much worse than this, I still couldn’t help feeling apprehensive for his well-being. I was just about to go into action when I saw some of the rubble on the ground shift, and a moment later my father stood up, concrete and debris rolling off him. Smiling in relief, I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
Alpha Prime floated about a foot up into the air, then spun madly for a few seconds, like a ballerina doing a pirouette. I initially thought this was just to shake the debris from his costume, but his motion also had the effect of dissipating the dust cloud that had formed. In a few moments, it was gone, blown away by my father’s actions.
Alpha Prime looked around, seeming to assess the damage and taking stock of the situation. However, with the bomb having detonated, there really wasn’t much more for him to do. Needless to say, it was a rather anticlimactic end to this adventure, and I was saying as much to myself when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
Behind my father’s back, the darkness seemed to shimmer and come alive with a soft, barely noticeable incandescence. It was an obscure, shapeless blob at first, big enough to wrap around a hippo and with edges that undulated almost rhythmically. I was so fascinated that it didn’t immediately register that what I was seeing might constitute a danger. That all changed when the blob suddenly coalesced into forms I recognized.
My father’s head jerked in my direction — evidence that he had heard me. Heeding my warning, he was in the process of turning around when something like a laser bolt struck him, sending him flying face-first into a circular pillar of concrete that supported the highway.
There were three of them, three figures that had appeared out of the shimmering darkness I had previously noted. They were all male, and dressed in dark bodysuits. With one look at their heavily-muscled frames, I knew that each of them had to have super strength. (Not to mention the fact that they were purposely engaging Alpha Prime in a fight — a bad move for anyone unable to lift a supertanker.)