Judgment

  Origin of Supers: Book Four

  Author: D. L. Harrison

  Copyright 2023. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other books by D. L. Harrison:

  Book Description

  Prologue

  I am Anna Cortez, and I am Judgement.

  This account is the start of my story, but a little background and boring facts are needed to set the stage so to speak. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet, so we can all get to the good stuff.

  It’s been a hundred years, five generations since the World War Three was fought, and the dragon emperor was taken to task. In that time the scientists had figured out a few things.

  The first gens for instance, all look like they’re knocking on the door of thirty now. For the longest time the scientists hadn’t been sure how long the homo-potens would live, or what that would look like. The data is in, and it looks like the two favored theories were both wrong. There’s enough scientific data now that most of them agree the new lifespan of humanity is somewhere around fifteen hundred years. Compared to the old homo-sapiens it’s a little better than fifteen to one. For every fifteen years, a homo-potens ages what would have taken one for the old species of humanity.

  That would likely lead to a major population problems and starvation, if it wasn’t for the mad scientists. Mars was fully terraformed by the date of my birth, and there’s currently a third interstellar world being opened up for colonization. The current population of Earth is around nine billion, and that number was slowly shrinking as pioneers move out as space becomes available.

  It’s also not like the science fiction books. There are manned space force fleets to protect the four solar systems Humanity currently claims, but otherwise everything and everyone is moved through inter-planetary transporters. From people moving, to trade and tourism. Seeing another world is as simple as taking a step. No interstellar merchants, transports, or civilian ships.

  Building ships is expensive after all, while our inter-dimensional energy source is cheap and seemingly limitless. It just makes sense to do it that way, both monetarily and for convenience. Even an FTL ship would take months to get to the closest star.

  There are other ships in space too, but unmanned explorers already looking for a fourth living world. Or at least, one close enough to that which could be terraformed. They’re run by A.I., so hopefully if they ever find alien neighbors then they’ll be able to learn to communicate quickly.

  The population percentages haven’t significantly changed in the last hundred years either. About thirty percent of humanity are powerless and homo sapiens, thanks to that crazy doctor. They’ll eventually be bred out, homo-potens genetics are stronger, so a mixed marriage always leads to a homo-potens child, but that could take thousands of years, so no one is holding their breath on it.

  Another thirty percent have powers that aren’t suited for conflict of any kind. So that sixty percent makes up the bystanders that superheroes must protect. Of the last forty percent most just want to live their lives. Thankfully it doesn’t take many to fill in as superheroes, police, fire fighters, federal agents, military, and other dangerous occupations, all to fight the one percent that turn supervillain and to keep an eye on the other countries.

  Superhero or not, that doesn’t mean about twenty percent of the population doesn’t fly to work on their own power most days.

  I think that’s enough to get my story started on solid ground, I’ll fill in anything else new on the go.

  Chapter One

  The mountain air was crisp despite the bright sunlight beating down on the snow-covered trail below. The view was beautiful, and the ski chalet at the bottom of the mountain looked rather tiny. My heart beat was a little quicker than normal in excitement as I set my skis and stopped just before the drop off to wait for Dana who was fighting with her left boot.

  I was an okay skier at fifteen, a solid intermediate though I could take some of the advanced slopes, but generally thought the double diamonds were insane. My sixteenth birthday was just a couple of weeks away, the seventh of April. I was part of the ski club at school, and we were supposed to stay with our partner at all times, using the buddy system. For that trip, Dana was it.

  Dana was good people, but we weren’t especially close outside of sharing a passion for flying down a mountainside with two sticks strapped on our feet. She was a good skier and fearless, but to be fair she’d also quickened a few months ago and was invulnerable enough to physical harm that she had no need to fear wiping out, or even running into a tree. I hadn’t quickened yet, so avoiding running into trees was really still one of my highest priorities in life. At least on the slopes, it was.

  The truth was I’d always been a bit of a loner. I had a couple of close friends and a whole lot of people I just hung out with. Part of that was probably where I lived and had grown up, the superhero headquarters’ building.

  “You okay?” I asked as she unlatched the boot.

  Dana sighed, “Just a minute, something’s in my boot. It doesn’t hurt or anything, obvs… but it’s been annoying me for the last hour.”

  I giggled. Obviously, because razor blades in her boot wouldn’t hurt her.

  My eye caught red and white in the sky, and I looked up with a sigh. My mother was one of the chaperones on the trip. She was also a superhero that worked in Excelsior city, and obviously enough gave new meaning to helicopter parenting. Literally.

  I waved her off subtly and whispered that we were fine, in a tone so low Dana wouldn’t hear it just five feet away. Fortunately, my mother could not only fly, had superstrength and invulnerability to physical harm, but super hearing and eyesight as well. She heard me just fine, and she waved down at me before taking off in a red and white blur.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was proud of my mother and hoped to follow in her footsteps when I quickened. I wanted to be a hero too. But having a mother with super hearing made it impossible to get away with anything in life. Most fifteen-year-old girls got to sneak out, it was a rite of passage, but not me. She could hear me sneaking from across the city, not to mention check up on me visually through walls.

  Love you mom!

  The loud snap of Dana’s boot caught my attention and I twisted around to take a look.

  She smiled at me sheepishly as she stood up straight and pushed off and slid over to me.

  “Ready, and much better.”

  I decided not to ask what it was despite my curiosity, because she already looked embarrassed for some reason. I was nice like that.

  I just nodded, and we both pushed off and started down the slope. I loved the feeling of it as my heart started to race. The feeling of wind and freedom as we practically flew down the slope, cutting the snow at angles just to slow down a little and remain in control. It was freeing, and a hell of rush hitting the few moguls and flying through the air.

  That’s when everything changed.

  A loud booming sound echoed through the mountains, so loud I felt it reverberate inside my body. Then an even louder boom sounded behind me, and I pulled a snowplow stop and looked up and to the left, stopped on the side of the mountain. Dana did too.

  There was a huge plume of snow rising into the sky, followed by a deep rumbling sound that seemed to get louder. If that wasn’t enough, there were also three supers high in the sky, maybe at five hundred feet. It looked like two heroes and a supervillain, merely going by super suit colors and design, but that kind of thing could be misleading.

  Some heroes did wear black, after all.

  I froze in shock as I saw a white and red blur exit the snow plume and fly straight up as an arrow. The loud noise had been my mother hitting the mountain, and my stomach twisted in worry, then in fear as the rumbling sound grew louder and I saw a mountain of snow coming our way.

  Before I could untangle my vocal cords, someone else yelled, “Avalanche!” as Dana grabbed my arm and pulled. My heart was pounding and up in my throat, as I straightened out and pushed off with my ski poles to race down the mountain.

  Dana yelled, “The trees!”

  I shook my head, “No! The other side of the chalet.”

  Dana would be fine wherever she went, but racing into the tree line for shelter would be a huge mistake for me at least. An avalanche would knock down trees, too great a chance of being impaled or crushed by one for the dubious cover it would offer me. I’d have a better chance of surviving out in the open, if we couldn’t outrun the thing.

  A split second later my feet left the ground and my heart stuttered in my throat. My mother had both me and Dana. I should’ve known of course, that she would prioritize
getting bystanders to safety, taking down the supervillain was always the last priority. Bystanders, then the team, then collateral damage, then finally taking down the supervillain. Everyone knew that, but I’d been terrified.

  Still was.

  Then we were on the ground again, and my mother disappeared, no doubt to rescue others still trying to outrun the avalanche. The other three supers were still fighting. I could see the heroes were trying to disengage, but the supervillain was dominating them with some kind of energy attacks. The heroes had physical powers, much like my mother.

  That’s when I quickened, the fear and adrenaline along with my survival instinct, even though I still had a year of growth ahead of me. At the time though, I didn’t know that yet. The sensation was unmistakable, and exactly as described to me. I had an energy buzz going on, it was a bit manic in nature, and I wondered how I’d ever sleep again. Supposedly that would be four hours a night from now on, and I’d be filled with this much energy the rest of the time while awake. It’d take getting used to.

  The cacophony of terrified thoughts that inundated my mind in that moment was both shocking, and at that time in my life, a bitter disappointment I wanted to deny. I flinched away from it, and all the voices in my mind cut off instantly.

  I’d never met my father. I didn’t even know who he was. My mother would never tell me, and she’d raised me alone. With the help of the other supers of course, it was a close-knit community, not just a job. I’d been counting and hoping on getting her powers, but I hadn’t. I had my father’s, whoever the heck he was.

  I was a telepath. I couldn’t feel their fear, not directly as emotion anyway, like an empath could. But the panic and fear flavor of their terrified thoughts had been bad enough.

  Telepaths were not superheroes. Outside of mental powers, they had no other abilities save what all homo-potens had, accelerated healing and immunity to disease. Telepaths were part of the new justice system. They were district attorneys, judges, and jurors, depending on education level and experience. Some few chose psychiatry or the public sector, but most worked for government agencies in one way or another.

  It was all about having a perfect justice system. It was impossible to lie to a telepath or empath after all. The guilty would go to jail, and the innocent would be set free.

  Of course, what I didn’t know then was how wrong I was. About my powers, and about the justice system. Humans had the ability to corrupt anything, one of our defining traits, and there was no such thing as perfect because of it. But I’m getting ahead of my story.

  I looked up just in time to see a golden aura steak across the sky and ram into the supervillain in black. The golden aura stopped dead in the sky, and the supervillain took on all that momentum and turned into a comet. He hit a mountain peak on the next mountain over, which didn’t have any ski resorts. Thankfully, because it set off a second avalanche on that mountain.

  Lady Aegis was kind of awesome.

  I’m not proud of it, but a flash of envy went through me. Even amidst the violence of the moment and the people my mom hadn’t beaten the avalanche to, who were now buried under snow, I felt a bitter disappointment. That my chosen path in life, that my dreams for the future would be denied me.

  I was even irrationally mad at my mother for a moment, why couldn’t she have gotten knocked up by another hero at least, so I’d have had powers to meet and conquer that dream no matter what parent informed my superpowers. A wave of shame pushed down the bitterness, there must’ve been fifty people on the various mountain trails, and I doubt my mother had had the time to save more than a handful.

  I also felt guilty because my mom had chosen to save me instead of one of those others. Guilty, because I was so entirely relieved that I was unharmed and alive.

  There was a flash of light at the other mountain peak, and it took me a moment to figure out the supervillain had just been teleported out, probably directly to a holding cell back in Excelsior city. Which meant Lady Aegis had somehow attached a teleport beacon to him, while hitting him at close to Mach six.

  I don’t care how tough he was, that must’ve hurt.

  Dana said in a lost tone, “I need to go help search for survivors.”

  I nodded, “I’m okay, just a little sore where mom grabbed me. Go.”

  Even that was fading, fast. I might be fragile, but I was healing fast. Faster than I expected, even. Maybe some kind of advanced healing rate even for supers, which wasn’t all that rare in truth. Most supers would take hours to get over the wrenching and bruising that had happened to my shoulder. The pain was fading for me in less than a minute.

  Dana took off for the mountain of snow, as did the four flying superheroes. Lady Aegis, along with my mother Antonia, Intrepid. She hated her hero name actually, but they never got a choice in it. The other two heroes I didn’t recognize at all, but that wasn’t too surprising. We were in the Poconos mountains, and they weren’t from my city.

  Dana wasn’t the only one to join the rescue efforts either, others with the power of flight were joining the search for survivors. Even people that didn’t feel the calling to be heroes, would be moved to help during a tragedy and natural disaster. The problem was the buried people wouldn’t last all that long before they ran out of air, and the heroes were searching blindly for the most part.

  Save my mother, who could see through walls, so snow wasn’t even a thing. She’d already pulled a few out and deposited them near me. But it wouldn’t be enough to get them all before some died. The rest of them were just… floundering around ineffectively, and they hadn’t managed to find anyone yet. Probably afraid if they moved faster in a search grid that they’d accidentally hit the very people they were trying to rescue, perhaps even kill them with the impact.

  Which, gave me an idea.

  It was as simple as thought, as I reached out to my mom with my mind, for the moment keeping my mind closed off to everyone else. Her thoughts were worried, about me, and those under the snow, but I ignored that and dug a little deeper into her senses and perceptions.

  There were more than I’d estimated, sixty-three remained buried in the snow. Some with obviously broken limbs, but they were all alive for the moment. Taking it all from my mother’s mind was easy, as she’d seen them all.

  There were eleven fliers and six people plowing their way through the snow on the ground including Dana, super strength or telekinesis, but no flight.

  I had no idea if I was a projective telepath, or just receptive. But it was time to find out. In that moment I felt oddly calm, almost peaceful despite the life and death situation and urgency.

  It wasn’t until I’d reached out to all seventeen rescuers and sent them pictures of separate locations simultaneously, that I realized my mind’s ability to multitask must’ve been enhanced too. My ability to concentrate, because it would just be impossible otherwise to have seventeen thoughts at once. I not only sent the disparate locations, but I generated the picture in their minds merging it with what their eyes were seeing. Literally making them able to see the person under the snow like my mom had. Well, their literal locations anyway, what they were seeing was an illusion I’d inserted into their minds. That would speed up the rescue even more, as they wouldn’t have to be overly cautious while approaching before pulling them out.

  It was a little shocking, because projective telepaths while being nothing new, were rare. Most telepaths were only receptive, able to see a person’s current thoughts from a distance, and only see a person’s memories, their past, with physical touch. Projective telepaths were similar with those limitations, able to interject perceptions from a distance, but only inject or modify memories of the past with touch.

  Of course, that latter power was illegal to use, under any circumstances. There were no laws about peeking in a person’s public mind however, though there were moral standards to adhere to.

  I noticed that a lot of them were struggling under the snow the next time my mother took flight. So when I sent the next seventeen locations to the rescuers, I also connected to the forty six remaining and sent a message to them all.

  “Relax and conserve your oxygen. Rescue is imminent, within a minute.”