Winning Choice: “Vanish and take them down from the shadows.”
Recap: After a huge battle with the FBI and two giant men who apparently had been somehow modified with super-strength, a very tired Brandon returned to Ryan's apartment. There he told Ryan, Susan, and Tyler that he now realized how they had to work from here on out.
I tell them, “I’m going vanish and take them down from the shadows. The public doesn’t need a hero or a disrupter. In fact, they don’t need to know about this at all right now. It would be too dangerous and just put more innocents in the line of fire. No, I’ll do this entirely underground, striking at the people in power pulling their world apart. I’ll be invisible until I strike, then I’ll go back to being a nightmare. I’ll reduce their plans to rubble around their feet, and only then will I show it to the world.”
They all stare at me a moment, and I wonder if I scared them. I kind of hope I did. If they want out, now the is the time. Probably the last time.
Tyler breaks out into a huge grin. “We… are going to kick some butt!”
Susan smacks him in the shoulder. “This isn’t a game, you know. Not anymore.”
I look her square in the eye. “I’ve been looking for my kidnapped wife and trying to find the people who experimented on me like a lab animal. They took away everything I had. This has never been a game for me.” She looks away.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says. “We know what the stakes are.”
“Do you realize what happens if we’re caught?” I ask them. “They’ll throw us in a prison so deep we’ll never see the sun again. That’s assuming they let us live at all.”
"We've never really talked about how we met," Susan says. "The three of us, I mean." She gestures to Ryan and Tyler. "It's not as pretty as you might think."
Ryan frowns, and Tyler shifts uneasily. “‘Pretty’ sure isn’t the word I’d choose,” Tyler says.
"The point is that we would all be in plenty of trouble even without you," says Susan. “We’re not a bunch of wide-eyed, clueless kids.”
Ryan thumbs back over his shoulder towards the humming and beeping pile of computers on the table. “That stuff was at least a national security threat long before you showed up. I have no idea what it would be considered now."
“You know what it is? It’s power,” says Susan. “It’s a pipeline of information we can use to take their secrets and turn them around. We can take them apart!”
Ryan rubs his forehead, pacing a bit around the small living room. “It’s the ‘them’ part that worries me a bit,” he says. “Who are they, exactly? Some mad scientists? A shadowy company? The FBI? The NSA? The whole danged government?” He stops pacing and points at me. “And maybe a whole bunch of other people with super powers like him?”
“I don’t know,” I tell them. “I wish I did.”
Tyler nods. “That’s why this is so important! They’re the ones playing games, not us. And we can change the rules. We’ll see who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. That’s what I love about comics. Besides all the powers and crazy gadgets, you know who is on which team.”
“The world isn’t that easy,” Ryan tells him.
“But it could be!” Tyler says with an excited look in his eye.
I want to say more but bite my tongue. They need to sort this out for themselves, and with what we’re about to do there’s no turning back. I grab a new jacket and shirt from the table, as mine are a mess.
YOU ARE READING
Power Shift (Book 1)
Science FictionBrandon Stamp is abducted on his way out of a grocery store. He doesn't know who took him or why, and when he finds out what they want him for his confusion turns into terror. Frantically searching for clues to the group behind his abduction, Brand...
