“So… you guys gonna go easy on me?” Jake asked in a whiny voice.
Eun looked back at him and grinned. “Yeah. A whole lot easier than I’d like to.” He drove his forehead hard against Jack’s skull, the crack sounding so loud that Samantha winced.
Jake’s eyes rolled up into his head and he sagged in Eun’s grip.
“You’re awful,” Samantha said, though there was no venom to her words. She sounded amused, in fact.
“It’s better than he deserves.”
“No argument there.” Samantha reached down and picked up the dynamite. “I’ll handle the cleanup if you call the authorities.”
“Fair trade.” Eun let Jake slip to the ground and then began dragging him by the collar. “Don’t blow yourself up.”
“I’ll try.”
The Omega Solutions building had burned to the ground by the time Lazarus Gray and his allies arrived. The firemen and police on the scene regarded the heroes with a mixture of awe and disdain, depending on how honest they were.
Lazarus spotted a small knot of detectives huddled around an ambulance and he moved towards them. “What happened here?” he demanded.
A wippet-thin man with one perpetually narrowed eye turned to face Lazarus. Inspector Cord was not a fan of Assistance Unlimited and he’d made that quite clear in the past. “Well, look at what the cat dragged in. You can turn around and get back into your car, Gray. We’ve got this under control.”
Lazarus looked past him, seeing a handsome man in a singed black uniform. He recognized The Black Terror immediately, even though the hero’s activities had been mostly under the public radar thus far. “I’ll take it from here, Inspector.”
Cord’s face turned bright red. “The hell you will.”
Lazarus focused his gaze on The Black Terror. “Where did Maxwell Schmidt go?”
“South America. He’s got The Titan with him, too, if you know who that is.”
“I do.”
Bob Benton stood up, brushing away the paramedics who had been treating him. His burns had healed miraculously fast and now he just looked a bit ruffled but unharmed. He offered a gloved hand to Lazarus. “The Black Terror. It’s an honor, Mr. Gray.”
“Same here. Let’s go. We can talk on the way back to headquarters. If need be, I have a private plane we can use to go after Schmidt.”
“Prometheus.”
“What?”
“That’s what Schmidt is calling himself.”
Lazarus nodded and put a hand on Cord’s shoulder. “I’m deputized and you know it. We have full authority to intervene in any case that we deem beyond your ability to handle.”
“There’s nothing I can’t handle,” Cord retorted.
“Take it up with the Mayor.” Lazarus drew The Black Terror aside and pointed him towards their car. “Morgan, please start the engine.”
“Sure thing, Chief.”
Lazarus looked at Cord one last time. “I apologize for embarrassing you in front of your men,” he said quietly. “But this really is bigger than you know.”
Cord kept his voice just as low. “Do what you want, Gray. But you better know this: your day is coming. And when it gets here, I’m gonna be first in line to laugh at you when you fall.”
Chapter IV
Into the Wild
The Indui tribe was hidden deep in the jungles of South America, far from the strongholds of civilization. Since their concept of time was quite different from that of the men who uncovered their existence, no one knew exactly how old their tribe was, nor how long it had been since the mysterious visitors from the stars had come to see them.
But their ability to ‘grow’ human beings was an obvious testament to the truth of their legends. The Indui had cultivated several large plant-like structures of alien origin, each large enough to contain a full-grown human. Using a mixture of local ingredients and the bodily fluids of various Indui elders, they were able to urge the plants to produce a unique kind of fruit: humanoid entities whose minds were pliable, waiting to be filled with instruction. The Indui had noticed that each creation of the plants was different than those who had gone before — some had dark hair and eyes, others light. Some had skin colors that did not match anything the Indui had ever seen. With practice, some of the elders were able to imprint certain features upon the creations, praying upon the plants before they gave up their fruit.
All were strong and fierce, ready to obey the commands the elders gave them: to defend the tribe at all cost.
In the end, however, they were not strong enough to save the tribe.
The Americans had taken as many of the huge plants as they could, along with the ingredients they thought they would need. But something had been lacking and the men they created eventually went insane… and in the end, the plants had died, despite all attempts to save them. The project to create a superhuman soldier had produced only one true success: The Black Terror.
Maxwell Schmidt had known nothing of the Indui or their strange means of creating life… not before McIness had stumbled into his office one day, hoping to find someone who would pay him handsomely to do the one thing he was good at: killing people.
Schmidt had hired The Titan after seeing a sample of his strength but he’d insisted on learning everything there was to know about his new employee. When the truth had come tumbling out, Schmidt had realized the full potential of all this. He had the potential now to raise his own army of enforcers, men and women who could possibly breed with one another and no longer require the use of the plants to produce more.
Like the mythical Prometheus, he would steal fire from the gods and present it to humanity. But it would his fire, his to control and to share.
“Never expected to run into another person like me.”
Schmidt looked up, his reverie broken by the words of McIness, who sat across from him on the private plane they shared. The Titan was still in his “working clothes,” which Schmidt found amusing. It didn’t matter ultimately, since no one at the airfield gave them a second glance, but Schmidt preferred to wear his own adventuring gear when it was necessary to do so. He wasn’t Prometheus full-time, after all. Within the armor, he was Maxwell Schmidt, a mutant born with a form of pyrokinesis.
“You seem troubled by this,” Schmidt pointed out. He sat back in his seat, crossing his legs. “Why?”
McIness shrugged. “I just figured I was the only one to get away.”
“You were the only failure to get away,” Schmidt pointed out. “From the looks of things, this Black Terror was considered to be a success. He hasn’t had the mental breakdowns that the rest of them — including you — did.”
“I’m not a failure,” The Titan answered testily. “Just because I wasn’t some zombie they could order around doesn’t make me a mistake of some kind. It’s the opposite; I was too smart for them.” Schmidt said nothing, but the look on his face was enough to send McIness into a fury. “I’m not just some muscleman, damn it! I don’t need you!”
Schmidt coolly replied, “Then by all means, grab yourself a parachute and take a flying leap. But I seem to recall that you were a man with massive gambling debts, an expensive opium habit, and absolutely no prospects. You were wanted by every law enforcement agency known to man. I gave you a job, cleaned you up and made some of those problems go away. And all I’ve asked in return is that you do the things you like to do anyway — murder, mayhem, violence — on my behalf.”
“And you want to know how to grow more of me.”
“More like you, yes.”