Alternia Comics

Venym managed to identify the figure as the pilot … naked, glowing, and floating just above the floor of the plane. Something must have happened with the lightning and the gel … and it may have had something to do with the poison, too.

Whatever it was, Venym did not feel like giving the pilot a chance to understand whatever new abilities he had. He took out his biggest knife and hurled it right at the left side of the pilot’s head.

*****

Derrick felt something bounce against his head … well, more like it had hit something unyielding his head was on the other side of. He looked to his left to see the young man with the knives – Venym, he remembered hearing the killer call himself while he had been blacked out – looking very worried. A moment later, a knife clattered to the ground.

Derrick smiled. Whatever had happened to him, he was knife-proof.

The next thing, he decided, was how to …

His eyes fell on the bloody form of Dr. Law. He stopped smiling.

Lightning struck nearby, and thunder filled Derrick’s ears.

Without thinking about how, Derrick zoomed through the air and slammed his fist into the assassin’s chest with incredible force. He thought he heard bones cracking, but couldn’t be sure because of the sonic boom that resounded right behind him. Venym was knocked all the way across the landing strip, bounced once in the grass, then rolled to a stop next to the plane from New York.

Derrick blinked in surprise and worry. Just what was he capable of? Looking down at himself, he saw that he was sheathed in a glowing white substance about an inch thick. Though it had slowed his actions before, it was becoming easier and easier to move around, as if he was getting used to it, or maybe even the sheath itself was becoming more responsive.

He could fly, obviously, and extremely fast, too. He could also now detect a low humming, and figured it was coming from the sheath. Even so, his hearing and vision seemed much more acute, and he could smell the grass from here as easily as he could smell the blood from …

“Dr. Law!” he shouted. Derrick flew over to the maimed scientist and reached down to check him, but stopped himself when he realized his new … “skin” might not be safe to touch. He landed and watched smoke rise up from the ground beneath his feet.

Derrick cursed inwardly. He had to find a way to carry Dr. Law without actually touching him …

Derrick flew into the plane and grabbed the plastic door of the lavatory, intending to try and break it off by bracing his feet against the wall and pulling. He watched it melting in his fingers … this time, he cursed aloud. He slammed his fist against the open door in frustration and watched it fly down the isle, torn from its hinges.

Apparently, the sheath was making him stronger, somehow.

He moved over to a chair and put his hands under it. The material smoldered, but didn’t quite get destroyed before he heaved upwards and ripped the seat from the floor. He grabbed it and the door and flew quickly outside before they were immolated by his touch, and managed to scoop Dr. Law carefully into the seat using the door. Picking up the seat with unbelievable ease, he flew towards the DIA terminal. As he soared, he looked down at the barely breathing form of his burden. He had seen bad wounds before; he had flown plenty of flights with casualties on board. Soldiers, civilians, friends, enemies … but they had all been hurt … somewhere else … and none of them had ever been hurt saving his life …

… Derrick only knew the man’s last name …

Up ahead, he saw an ambulance just leaving the terminal with a police car. Both of them stopped as he flew closer. As he descended towards them, Derrick thought very seriously about what had just happened to him. He decided he wanted more time to think about the consequences of letting anyone know what had happened to him before he … well … let anyone know what had happened to him. In moments, he had left Dr. Law right behind the ambulance and was flying back to his plane to look for Venym.

*****

Venym spat a curse when he heard that low hum behind him.

“Was it worth it?” asked the pilot. “You killed a man with that disgusting poison, and probably another one by … mutilating him, and you would have killed me, except it looks like God has other plans.”

Venym turned, tense and ready to spring away, though he was not convinced it would do any good. He had moved so fast, and though the broken bones the pilot’s punch had left behind were healed by now they were still sore, and the burn mark was still there.

The man he had tried to kill was floating two feet off the ground. The nimbus of white light around him buzzed and snapped angrily, and his eyes crackled with electric energy. The wounds Venym had left in his stomach looked like they had been flash-fried closed, and his fists were clenched and ready. Venym didn’t like his chances in a fight with this glowing do-gooder. “You won’t get what you came for, either,” he said with a finality that made Venym shudder. “So tell me, before I put you down hard enough to keep you down, was whatever you tried to shove down my throat worth all that death and suffering?”

Venym’s mind raced to try and find a way out of this. At least this guy wanted to talk, first. “If you knew what I get paid doing this,” he said, running over the list of his weapons in his mind, “you wouldn’t be asking that.” Knives, knives, and more knives … and his gas bombs! No matter how strong that shield was, the guy had to be breathing, somehow.

*****

Derrick’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit,” he said. “You enjoy this. I saw it in your eyes when you first tried to stab me, and I heard it in your voice when you had me helpless. You get off on it, you twisted son of a …”

Venym cut him off by throwing something at Derrick’s chest. It exploded on contact with his shield, and green gas filled the air around him. Derrick instinctively gasped and managed to suck in a lungful. He began to cough and convulse uncontrollably. He felt his control over his new abilities falter and fell out of the air, down to his knees before the laughing assassin.

“If you weren’t going to die right here,” he taunted, “I’d tell you that lesson number one is not to waste time talking.”

As he coughed, Derrick saw that his shield was … spiking, somehow. It was twitching and convulsing the same way his muscles were. If the shield was like his muscles, then maybe …

“Good … *COUGH* … advice.”

On his next convulsion, Derrick focused on lancing the shield out at Venym. A glowing spike of solid electricity sprang out from him and struck the young killer right through his stomach. Fighting with every fiber of his will to maintain the spike, Derrick watched Venym’s body shudder and shake about as electricity arced through his entire body. Derrick felt himself ache in the way that he might if he tried to hold up a dumbbell too long, and finally had to let go of the spike. It disappeared back into the rest of the shield. Without the spike to hold him up, Venym dropped forward onto his face.

Derrick’s coughing fit took hold once more. He fell onto his side and heard the sirens coming up behind him. He knew he had to get rid of this sheath of white light if the paramedics were going to save him from this gas. He … relaxed, somehow … a lot like the way he did when he let the spike fade back into him. He felt a sudden rush prickle across his skin and heard a thunderclap right in his ears, as if it had happened right next to him. Then he felt the cold tarmac beneath his naked body and heard the emergency vehicles stopping behind him.

Hands wearing latex gloves carefully picked him up and put him on a stretcher. “Gas,” he managed to say between coughs. “Some … kind of …”

“He’s going into shock,” he heard a woman’s voice say. It had an accent … Irish? His vision was blurred and he couldn’t see who was speaking. “Did he just say, ‘gas?’ Get the anesthetic.”

A needle pricked his arm. The convulsions and coughing stopped a few moments later. Derrick sighed and smiled as his breathing returned to normal. He thought back to when he had been rushed into surgery, a piece of his control panel sticking in his ribcage, after a rough landing in a damaged plane. He recalled the profound relief he felt as they strapped the mask over his face to put him under; he would go to sleep, and when he woke up, everything would be alright …

*****

“Mr. Lucious?”

Wherever he was, he was comfortable … well, except for the tubes in his nose, but it wasn’t so bad. He thought about pretending to still be asleep, but he would have to get this over with at some point.

“Yeah,” he said with a dry throat. “I’m awake.”

The nurse checked his vitals and went to get the doctor and a police detective. The doctor explained how lucky he was that the paramedic on hand recognized it as a nerve gas designed to tighten the muscles in the body until they tore themselves apart or the victim choked to death. The detective asked him a lot of questions about Venym, why Derrick had been naked, and the “glowing man” who had delivered Dr. Law to the ambulance.

Glowing-Man? Glowman? Nah.

Derrick told the truth about Venym and what he was after. He said he figured the assassin had taken his clothes off to humiliate him. As for his luminous savior …

“He came out of the sky and knocked the crap out of that bastard. He flew off with Dr. Law, then came back … I guess to finish him off. They fought … that’s when Venym threw the gas bomb and I lost it. What happened to Venym, though?” he asked, genuinely concerned. “Like I said, I shot him twice and the glowing man hit him really hard.”

“Oh, he’s still kicking,” said the detective. “The paramedics found him with a hole the size of a basketball in his chest, but he seems to be able to heal from just about anything.”

“Sweet Jesus,” said Derrick. “It’s like comic books are coming to life.”

“Yeah,” the detective chuckled ruefully. “I’ve got a feeling things are just going to get worse.”

Derrick nodded slowly. Venym said he was getting paid by someone. That meant there were going to be more like him … psychos with powers and abilities that put them a cut above those who protected and served … maybe even some with powers greater than his. After all, he knew from that fight with Venym that, as powerful as he was, he was hardly invincible. The detective was right – things were going to get worse. What he did next would count for a lot … maybe everything.

“By the way, this glowing guy,” said the detective, breaking Derrick from his thoughts, “did he say anything about where he came from or who he was?”

Derrick sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “He said his name is Lightning Shard, and he’s here to help.”

The detective wrote one last thing in his notebook and closed it. He got up to leave and said, “I hope he means it Mr. Lucious. Thanks for your time.”

“Sure thing.” And yes, I do mean it. He watched the detective leave and asked the doctor for a phone.

Rebecca hung up and immediately dialed another number. After two rings, someone picked up. “Thompson, here.”

“It’s Gannistov. Something has happened to your son.”