The Superhero's Son Omnibus Volume 3

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Uggh … what happened? My head hurt. It felt like someone had slammed a ten ton sledgehammer in my face. I felt so weak and tired, too, like I’d been working intense manual labor nonstop for a whole week without any breaks or getting a chance to rest.

I tried to sit up, but immediately felt thick braces around my limbs. I opened my eyes and looked down to see that my arms and legs were indeed being held down by thick steel braces. I tried to break free of them, but my super strength wouldn’t come to me, no matter how much I focused on it. It felt like someone was smothering my brain with a pillow, though at least the pain in the back of my head I felt whenever I tried to remember stuff was gone.

“Come on, damn it,” I muttered, tugging at my braces. “Let me go.”

“Sorry, but we cannot allow you to be free just yet,” said a soft, gravelly voice I did not recognize but which sounded very familiar. “Not until we fix whatever they did to you.”

I raised my head, looking for the source of the voice, but the room I was in was dark. Aside from the single light shining from the ceiling above me, the rest of the room was in complete darkness. But I could sense someone looking at me just outside of my field of vision, though I didn’t know who it was.

“Who’s there?” I said. “Where am I? Where is the Visionary? Is he safe?”

“Sagan is currently imprisoned in a secret government facility far from here,” said the voice, “in a location only I know, because I do not trust anyone else with that knowledge.”

“So you’re with the government,” I said. “Let me guess, G-Men, right? Where are Incantation and Hopper?”

“They escaped,” said the voice. “Iron Horn attempted to catch them, but they were not hit with the powerless gas like you, so they escaped via a portal. Their current location is unknown, though I will get it from you soon enough.”

“Powerless gas …” That phrase felt familiar on my lips and sent a sense of dread down my spine that I could not explain. “What’s that?”

“A gas created by the Pokacu alien species that temporarily negates the power of a superhuman,” said the voice. “The G-Men got their hands on a few cases of the stuff after the second Pokacu invasion. I thought I would put it to use in order to catch you. It is still in effect, by the way, and will remain in effect for a few more hours.”

“Catch me?” I said. “Why do you want me?”

“Because you are far too powerful to be allowed to roam freely with those criminals,” said the voice. “We’re lucky that Vision did not send you to destroy any cities and that you have not caused much damage with your powers.”

I gritted my teeth. “Show yourself. Or are you afraid of a powerless kid like me?”

A figure suddenly stepped out of the shadows and into the light. He was a man who appeared to be in his early forties, wearing an old-fashioned suit, his jet-black hair combed back neatly. His eyes, however, looked like the eyes of a much older man, which made him look like he had stolen his eyes from someone older than himself.

He looked eerily familiar, but I just couldn’t identify him no matter how hard I tried. Maybe I’d once seen someone like him in the past, although it really felt like I had seen this guy in particular before, even though I couldn’t remember his name or anything else about him.

“Hello, Bolt,” said the man. He stopped beside me at the table, looking down at me, his hands in his pockets. “Do you remember me?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

“It appears that your brainwashing was very thorough indeed,” said the man. “I wonder if the damage was permanent.”

“Damage? What damage?” I said. “Are you talking about my amnesia? I slipped on some water about a week ago and knocked my head against the floor.”

“Is that what they told you?” said the man. “Well, you sound like you believe it, even though it is a transparent lie. Then again, if you don’t remember the truth, then how can you know when you are being lied to?”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “And who are you, anyway? You still haven’t given me your name.”

“You already know it … or did, anyway,” said the man. “My name is Cadmus Smith. I am the Director of the Department of Superpowered and Extraterrestrial Beings and the leader of the G-Men.”

I would have started on my slab, but I just couldn’t move thanks to the braces around my limbs. “Cadmus Smith? You’re the leader of the G-Men. You’re the enemy.”

“I have many enemies, but most of them are in Ultimate Max or dead,” said Cadmus. “Now, does my name ring a bell? Do you remember anything—anything at all—about me prior to your ‘accident’ a week ago?”

I thought about it. Cadmus Smith’s name and appearance were very familiar, but maybe I’d seen a picture of him on the Internet at some point. It wasn’t like he was totally unknown, after all, because he worked for the government and everything, but that didn’t seem right, either. I knew him, knew him from more than just seeing a few pictures on the Internet, but I couldn’t place where I had seen him before exactly.

I shook my head. “I don’t remember anything about you from before my accident. And why the skeptical tone? You’re acting like I’m lying about my accident.”

“Technically, I suppose you aren’t, because you seem to believe that you did indeed have an ‘accident’ that gave you amnesia,” said Cadmus. “But the truth of the matter is that your amnesia is not the result of an ‘accident.’ It was deliberately inflicted on you in order to get you to ally with a dangerous cult hellbent on destroying not only just the superhero community, but America as a whole.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I’ve always been a Visionist. Incantation said so. I even remember when Thaumaturge first offered me membership in the organization along with all of my friends back in high school.”

“Those are false memories,” said Cadmus, “likely placed there by someone within Vision, although unfortunately I don’t know who. Still, I know for a fact that you are an enemy of Vision and not a friend.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “My memories are real. Every last one of them. I may not remember them all because of my amnesia, but so what? That doesn’t make them any less real. You’re just trying to deceive me, like Shade and Iron Horn.”

“No, I am not,” said Cadmus. “I am telling you the truth. You are not, and never have been, a Visionist. In fact, you have been Vision’s greatest enemy, ever since you helped defeat Sagan last year.”

“I … helped defeat Sagan?” I said. I shook my head. “No way. Sagan was captured by the government. That’s what Incantation told me.”

“Incantation lied, as Visionists always do,” said Cadmus. “She lied to you in order to manipulate you into aiding Vision in their quest to rescue their leader.”

“No, she didn’t,” I said, though the words felt false in my mouth. “She’s my girlfriend. We’ve been dating for years. Why would my girlfriend lie to me?”

Cadmus simply looked at me in amazement. “You mean you don’t remember your real girlfriend? Amazing. Whoever they have altering your memories must be incredibly powerful and thorough if you don’t even remember your real girlfriend.”

“But Incantation is my real girlfriend,” I said. “What are you even talking about?”

“No, she isn’t,” said Cadmus. “I happen to know that you are dating another girl entirely, one who goes by the name Blizzard. Do you remember her?”

Blizzard … that name sounded incredibly familiar to me. I felt feelings of warmth and desire when I heard it, but no specific memories came back to my mind. Just like with Cadmus, the name seemed familiar to me, but I had no specific memories to back up that feeling.

“I … don’t,” I said. “I don’t remember any girl named Blizzard.”

“You don’t sound too sure about that,” said Cadmus. “That’s good. It means that your memory was not totally wiped. There may yet be a way to retrieve it.”

“My memory is fine, aside from the amnesia,” I said. “You’re the liar here, trying to confuse me and make me distrust my fellow Visionists.”

“The truth does seem rather confusing after you have lived in a lie for so long,” said Cadmus, “but I can assure you that I am not trying to manipulate you. If I was, you wouldn’t even suspect it.”

I looked at Cadmus skeptically. “If I’m not really a Visionist, then what am I? Not that I’ll believe you or anything, but I want to know what kind of lies you’ll try to fool me with, just so I can laugh at them.”

“You are Kevin Jason, also known as the superhero Bolt,” said Cadmus. “And you are the leader of the Young Neos, the most famous young neohero team in the country, which is under the supervision of the Neohero Alliance.”

Young Neos … it sounded familiar, but I wasn’t going to say that aloud, because I still didn’t trust Cadmus. “Is that all?”

“No,” said Cadmus. “You are the son of Theodore Ronald Jason, also known as the superhero Genius, who died earlier this year at the hands of your arch enemy, Robert Candle. Your mother is Ashley Jason, a normal human, and she lives in Silvers, Texas, though you and your family are originally from New York City.”

“My dad was a superhero?” I said. “And he was killed by my enemy? I didn’t even know I had an arch enemy.”

“You did, until you killed him,” said Cadmus. “You were also enemies with his parents, Bernard Candle, also known as the supervillain Master Chaos, and Maria Candle, a normal woman who was good with technology. Both are dead after trying to kill you.”

Master Chaos … Robert Candle … Genius … all of those names swam through my mind. They were tugging at my memory, making me see glimpses of things that I didn’t understand; fighting a crazed-looking blond Hispanic guy underwater, flying through the sky with a woman in a mecha holding onto me with a chain, fighting a giant made of boiling water alongside a girl in a white hood who was incredibly beautiful but whose name I could not recall … but they were just flashes. Bits and pieces that were taken out of context, like taking a stack of photographs and throwing them into the air and letting them fall into a random order that made no sense.

The back of my head burned with pain, causing me to cry out. “No! You’re lying. None of this is true. I’m a Visionist, a follower of the Visionary.”

“No, you are not,” said Cadmus. He put his hands on the table, a serious and intense look on his face. “You were almost tricked into joining them last year, but when you helped to defeat their leader, they marked you as their number one enemy. They are using you for their own purposes, but you are too stubborn and foolish to realize it.”

I bit my lower lip. As much as I hated to admit it, Cadmus’s words rang with truth. I remembered how hostile and callous Incantation would treat me, how I was treated more like a tool than a person. I told myself that Cadmus was lying, but no matter how much I repeated that lie to myself, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

“Do you understand now?” said Cadmus. “I see you’ve gone silent.”

I didn’t want to talk to Cadmus, because I was so confused and overwhelmed with fear and worry that I didn’t know what to believe. But I had a deep, burning question, one I couldn’t ignore for much longer.

“Cadmus,” I said. “If all of this is true—and I am not saying that it is—how did I end up this way? Did I ever really have an … accident?”

Cadmus pulled back from the table and folded his arms behind his back. “No, at least nothing like what the Visionists told you. A week ago, you and your teammates responded to an attack call for helpin Brooklyn, where some Visionists had been spotted attacking innocent people. But when you arrived, it turned out to be a trap. You and your teammates were separated by Vision and you vanished into thin air. And, until last night, no one knew if you were even still alive.”

I frowned. Another flash. I saw myself and five other teenagers walking down a street in Brooklyn. All of a sudden, a smoke bomb came out of nowhere and exploded between us. Coughing and hacking, I looked around for the others, only to see a woman in a dark cloak standing in the mist. She raised her hands and that was where the memory ended. “Is anyone still searching for me?”

“Everyone has,” said Cadmus. “Your teammates, the NHA, the INJ, and even the G-Men have been searching for you. It appears that I got lucky and ended up being the one to find you, which will no doubt irritate Mecha Knight.”

Cadmus smirked, which looked weird and strange on his otherwise calm face.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m still not sure I believe anything you just said, but I do have a few memories that seem to match your story.”

“Of course,” said Cadmus. “But if you need proof of your antipathy toward Vision, here is an article from Neo Ranks from last year that details your conflict with them.”

Cadmus drew a smartphone out of his pocket, swiped across the screen a couple of times, and then showed me the article, which was dated late October of last year and was headlined ‘PLOT BY SUPERHUMAN CULT ‘VISION’ EXPOSED BY BOLT,’ complete with a picture of me flying away from what looked like a crime scene. It was a very short article, detailing how I had saved President Plutarch from being assassinated by a woman named June, who was apparently the assistant to the Visionary.

I looked up at Cadmus, still unsure whether to believe what I’d just read. “This can’t be true, can it?”

“It can and it is,” said Cadmus as he put the smartphone back into his pocket. “It was a big news story at the time, easily the biggest one of the year. And it was all thanks to you.”

I looked down at my body. I wanted to say that I had no memory of the events that the article described, but that wasn’t exactly true. I found myself viewing another flash, in which I stood above a man with a twisted arm who looked very much like Sagan. Then I heard a gun c**k behind me and moved out of the way just in time to avoid getting shot. Sagan, however, was not so lucky; the bullet entered his head and he fell onto the ground, blood spilling from the bullet hole in his head.

I shook my head and returned to the present. Cadmus had not moved from his spot near me, his hands still in his pockets, an expectant look on his face.

“Well?” said Cadmus. “Do you remember it?”

“I …” I didn’t want to finish the sentence. “I do. Not all of it, but enough. More than enough, actually.”

“I can tell it is causing you immense pain,” said Cadmus. “I don’t know what Vision did to you to repress your memories like that, but it is clear that they had zero intention of letting you remember anything that would make you turn against them.”

This time, I didn’t even try to deny it. Cadmus was right. Vision had lied to me, had repressed nearly all my memories and given me a lot of false ones. That meant that Incantation, Thaumaturge, Hopper, Wrath … all of them had lied to me. They had manipulated me, tried to make me do their dirty work, to rescue their leader, a vile and evil man who I wish I didn’t know. That also meant that Incantation was not even really my girlfriend; she was just a liar and deceiver. She never really loved me at all, unlike my real girlfriend, who was probably somewhere out there extremely worried about me.

I looked up at Cadmus. “Does anyone else know I’m here? Have you told my friends and my girlfriend and my family?”

Cadmus shook his head. “No. I wanted to ensure that we could remove the brainwashing that Vision had put you under first, before I told anyone else. It appears that I was successful in that regard.”

“Then let me talk to my friends,” I said. “Let me talk to my family. I want to see them again.”

Cadmus, however, just shook his head again. “No.”

“No?” I repeated. “What do you mean, ‘no’? You put me through all of this emotional torment, only to deny me the chance to see my friends and family and maybe get more of my memories back?”

“There’s no need to get emotional about it,” said Cadmus. “I haven’t even told you my reasons. Then again, you’ve always been impulsive and irrational, so I shouldn’t be too surprised that you’d jump straight to the most emotional response when I say something you don’t understand.”

I didn’t remember if Cadmus was always this arrogant or if he was just feeling particularly uptight today, but I also realized that he had the power in this situation and I didn’t. “All right, then. Tell me your reasons for keeping me away from my friends and family.”

“Very well,” said Cadmus. “You see, at the moment, Vision does not know that your memories are returning. They are aware that you have been captured by us, but they don’t know that you know the truth about them just yet.”

“So?” I said. “Who cares? I just want to go back to where they’re hiding and beat the snot out of them.”

“Not so fast,” said Cadmus, wagging a finger at me. “Vision is slippery, like a snake. If they suspect that their location has been compromised, they will pack up and leave. And they would know that for certain if I let you go and see your friends and family, news that has a very high likelihood of being leaked in this day and age where news travels at the speed of thought.”

“What are you saying, then?” I said. “Am I never going to see my friends and family again?”

“No,” said Cadmus. “Instead, you will act as a mole for the G-Men. We will send you back to Vision, but you must pretend that you are still one of them. We will make up a story about how you broke out of the facility in which you were kept and made your way back to their base to rejoin Vision.”

“So I can beat them up?” I said.

“Hardly, though you may have to use force at some point,” said Cadmus. “No, instead it will be us G-Men who will take them down. I will send a team of elite G-Men operatives to follow you and infiltrate the base. Once the location is confirmed and the team set, I will send the team inside and they will capture every member of Vision there, including, hopefully, Thaumaturge.”

“So you want to use me as a weapon with which to take down Vision once and for all,” I said. “Is that right?”

“More or less,” said Cadmus.

“I’m not so sure I like being used like that,” I said.

“You should, at least in this scenario,” said Cadmus. “Vision has been an enemy of the American people and government for too long, but more importantly, it has been an enemy of you. Vision aided Robert Candle in killing your father.”

“They did?” I said.

“Indeed,” said Cadmus. “And they would have most likely killed you, too, after you helped them save Sagan. By taking out Vision once and for all, you will be protecting not just the United States, but also yourself, your family, and your closest friends.”

I bit my lower lip again. I wanted to protect my friends and family. I also wanted to get revenge on Vision. As foolish as I felt about being manipulated, I also felt angry, angry at what Vision did to me and how they lied to me. I wasn’t going to let them get away with it, especially if they helped Robert Candle kill my father, like Cadmus said.

On the other hand, however, even with my memory returning, I wasn’t so sure I trusted Cadmus. Maybe it was just his mysterious way of behaving, but I sure thought he had something up his sleeve. But even if he did, so what? Vision was the bigger threat at the moment. Once they were gone, then I would worry about whatever Cadmus’s agenda or plan might be.

So I nodded and said, “All right, Director. I agree to your plan. When do we get started?”