“You return, but… you are not yourself, Shadow Runner,” one of them said. “Speak now!”

  “Keep them distracted,” Death Girl told me. She started swimming through the air, moving around me as if checking for something in the purple haze.

  “I have returned with new information,” I said, addressing the figure in the hood and cloak as if I was Leticia. “The supers of the Oram and Solar Systems are powerful beyond belief.”

  The figure’s eyes flared red, the glow emanating outward but still not illuminating him properly.

  “Shadow Runner, you will address your Supreme Leader by his title!” the figure to our right said, thrusting out a metal hand. “Or do I have to remind you—”

  “Peace, Floran,” the figure who I now understood to be the Supreme Leader said, then turned back to me. “This is clearly someone else… Someone with or without her permission, I really must know.”

  “Get used to disappointment,” I replied with a hint of a smirk.

  “One of those Citadel types, no doubt. Rest assured, me and mine will be done with you before you so much as cause me to stub my toenail.” The Supreme Leader stepped forward and started to remove his hood, but the purple haze intensified, darkness shrouding him from us. I imagined it was a defensive mechanism from our host.

  Good timing, too, because Death Girl shouted, “There!” and started swimming through the purple mist toward what looked like a man with pale skin and a cloak that fluttered behind him. “Follow me, quickly!”

  The rest of us began to swim or use our powers to push after her, and to my surprise I caught up to find her pushing against an invisible barrier. She glanced around frantically, empty eyes landing on Charm.

  “You! You have the connection—get us through!”

  Charm’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t hesitate. Surging forward, she bared her claws and lit them up with white light, striking hard and true. Sure enough, the barrier broke and we pushed through! Except as we passed, it was like a drain had opened and the water was pulling us into the open hole. Only the water was the darkness and purple haze.

  Leticia appeared all around us, swirling and taking on different forms, until finally it all burst outward and we collapsed to the ground.

  Actual, solid ground.

  “We’re here,” Death Girl said, and I looked to see Leticia on the ground. Her hand pressed against the woman’s chest and the darkness receded into it. As our surroundings became clearer, Leticia healed and became hole.

  “You… monster,” Gale said, voice shaking.

  “No,” Leticia said, eyes opening to meet her gaze first, then mine. “She did what was necessary—what I didn’t have the strength to do on my own.”

  “I am sorry for any pain that might have caused,” Death Girl said to the woman, then helped her stand.

  Now that the darkness was completely gone, I turned to see that we were standing on a rock cliff that looked like the ruins of an ancient fortress. Down below us, a path of glowing lights led to a very different sort of fortress. This one was still intact and had a purple energy field that shimmered in the night. Within were tall towers with balls of glowing, purple lights, parapets with guards on them, and an eerie, spinning cloud of darkness overhead.

  “He’s either here or has been recently,” Leticia said.

  Death Girl nodded. “Here, I’d say—based on the stench of death.”

  I sniffed but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, only the scent of damp grass. A recent rain had left the field around the ruins glistening, so that checked out.

  “Kai might be in there,” I said, leading the way toward it.

  “Breaker,” Charm said, and I turned as I walked, expecting her to tell me to wait up or to rest before we attacked, but she simply glided over to my side and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. “I thought about doing that the whole time we were in the darkness. You don’t hate me for fucking up, do you?”

  “None of this is your fault,” I replied. Could she have told us sooner about the fox cult she had encountered? Yes, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t have stopped their plans. If anything, I was starting to think that would have led us into an ambush and an even worse predicament.

  Charm took one of my hands and gave it three quick squeezes to symbolize “I love you,” then bolted off ahead, calling back, “Last one to penetrate the fortress eats worms for dinner.”

  The rest of us weren’t exactly in a playful mood, but I had a feeling she was using humor as a defense mechanism. Not wanting to let her down, I turned back to the rest and said, “Come on, Kai is counting on us.”

  Andromida blew me a kiss as she shot past, her blue tunnel forming from the ground below and propelling her forward. Sometimes I forgot Kai was her son as much as mine, and the way I’d been going about this wasn’t fair to her.

  I sprinted and then used my ability to move through material to shoot up from the ground at her side, doing my best to keep up as I said, “What do you say to a little parent time after this? You and I take Kai out for a meal and a movie back on Earth?”

  She grunted, refusing to smile considering the circumstances, but said, “You have yourself a deal.”

  Charm had come to a stop ahead and was fiddling with her comms device. She shouted back, “Watch out for the barrier. I should have us an opening in… Now!”

  Whatever she had been doing must have sent out a jammer signal. The rest of our group surged through, ready to find whatever it was that awaited us within those walls.

  CHAPTER 21: KAI

  Unknown Planet

  “Kai! Kai!”

  “Wha…?” I opened my eyes and realized we were floating. For a second, I thought we were in space. Then my vision cleared, and I realized something else – the helmet was still on me, and everything was dark because the power that allowed me to see through the screens of the eyes was no longer working.

  “I can’t see,” I said, clawing for my helmet. Then I tipped over and heard a splash

  “Relax,” Destiny hissed, then she was pressed close to me, hands moving and fumbling with my helmet. Finally, the light came on and I could see through green eye screens that showed her. A second later, they transitioned to clear, with green lights at the edges that read:

  Name: Destiny Saiko Damatraas

  Age: 22

  Power: None

  Added Power: Portals, currently inactive

  This was awesome! I’d always heard about how my dad had a power like this, where he was able to look at other supers and scan them, and here we were with that same power turned into tech.

  Destiny still wore her gear as well, though she wore hers much better than I did. She looked sexy as hell.

  “Can you see me?” she asked.

  “I… yes.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. We landed in some sort of ocean of dark water with debris everywhere. You were out, so I got you here and have been trying to wake you ever since.”

  I lifted my head to see that she was right, we were indeed on debris in an ocean of black water with a pink and orange sky overhead, land visible in two directions and towers and other buildings glinting in the calming light in either direction. My armor concealed the fact that I had a massive boner, otherwise my nap there might have been a bit more embarrassing.

  “Why here?” I asked.

  “My guess, this debris had to do with wherever that came from,” she indicated my wrist, even though it wasn’t visible at the moment, behind my armor. “Point is, we’re clear from my planet, and… there’re at least signs of civilization.”

  “Let’s get to it,” I said, trying to move but finding it very awkward—try having a boner while wearing armor and realizing you needed to adjust. Luckily, my confusion over my surroundings and the nervousness about what we were going to find here ’took my mind off things.

  She nodded and started paddling, indicating for me to do the same from the other side of our floating debris. My anticipation was rising as we neared the shore, though I couldn’t help but notice how the dark substance we were paddling through grew thicker and started to stick to my metal glove. I tried to ignore that, focusing on the fact that we were quite likely on the planet Lamb had come from, the same planet where the leveling up ability of superhero powers originated.

  If ever I had a chance of becoming a super, this was it. And with each paddle, it hit me that this wasn’t just a matter of becoming a super—but becoming the fucking best! I started to imagine myself rising into the sky with plumes of smoke and pillars of fire, lasers shooting from my eyes! The vision adjusted slightly so that all was the same, me in the sky with my superpowers, except Destiny was there, grinning up at me as she pulled out my cock to stroke it.

  Shit, I couldn’t even focus on becoming the best super ever! Not with the build-up of sexual tension between us.

  “About back there,” I started, paddling, relieved to see that the shore was maybe a few paddles away at most. “I mean…”

  “Yeah, agreed.”

  “What?”

  “You were about to say it wasn’t the right time, right? That it was too much, too soon?”

  “Er…” No, I hadn’t been about to say that! Hell no. “Yeah, right. Exactly.”

  We reached shore and didn’t say anything more on the matter, and in truth I found the nervousness and excitement mixing in my stomach numbed the lingering effects of my eager libido. The black sludge of the water wasn’t coming off our armor. As annoying as that was, what really struck me as strange was that the buildings had signs of decay and dark spots of corrosion mixed in with the high-tech futuristic glamor.

  From what we could tell, nobody was home. Not just in the first building, but as we poked our heads around corner after corner and tried scans with our equipment, again and again the results came back negative. We were alone here.

  “What’s happened…?” I finally asked, stepping out into an empty street and looking at overturned hover vehicles.

  “It’s strange,” Destiny said, and she pressed a button on her helmet so that it folded back to only the metal over her forehead and around her eyes. She nodded for me to do the same. “Go ahead, I tested the air and it’s fine. Whatever happened here ’wasn’t related to atmosphere or air quality.”

  I followed suit, glad to be breathing natural air and glad to be able to see in directions besides straight ahead once more. That’s when I noticed her staring up, hands behind her head as she let out a low whistle.

  “I think we have our answer,” she said, pointing.

  Following her line of sight, I put a hand to my mouth. Off to the side of one of the buildings was a massive spaceship that had crashed into it. Dark tendrils of purple and black spread out from it, and I wasn’t sure if all the darkness around had come from that ship, but it certainly seemed to have a connection.

  “Get it off,” Destiny hissed, and was already removing any of her armor that had touched the dark sludge, careful not to touch it again.

  I did the same, but looked at her skeptically.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this,” she admitted. “Our enemy uses a substance like it to control and manipulate others. It was never released like this, but the little bit I saw… let’s just say it drove those it touched insane. The enemy had a ‘Trainer’ who had the ability to command and control those affected, but if the substance was released on a world with no Trainers around, I can’t imagine the effect.”

  My gut clenched at the thought as my imagination ran wild with thoughts of zombies covered in this dark gunk.

  And then, not to my surprise in the slightest, my nightmare came true. First with growls, then with guttural screams, they emerged. Black ooze like we had found in the water seeped from their orifices.

  Fucking superhero zombies.

  There was no better way to describe them, as they moved in short, nonsensical patterns that were interrupted by bursts of rapid movement as if a TV was slowing down and then quickly fast forwarding due to a bad cross-planet connection.

  “We don’t want to fight those things,” Destiny said, already backing up.

  “Not that I disagree, but… why?”

  Her response was to point to an alley to our right. Where it had been empty before, now more of those super zombies were milling about. Could they sense us? Something was definitely drawing them out.

  We backed up, my heart thudding as one of them turned its head, locking black eyes on me, and then suddenly shot forward.

  “In here,” Destiny had me by the collar, pulling me behind her as she lunged down a stairwell.

  I nearly fell and cracked my skull on the railing, but recovered and came tumbling in after her. She pulled me up to her side, and then we worked to get the door shut. It was metal and should hold, but we didn’t have the slightest idea what those things out there were capable of. Something hit with a thud just as we got the door locked, and then thud after thud sounded.

  We backed away, sharing a look of horror, and my hand shot out for hers—protectively or for comfort, I wasn’t sure.

  From there we turned and retreated into the maze that was an underground series of halls that even opened up into what appeared to be a lower level of the city.

  “This should do,” I said, not wanting to descend into this world’s underbelly quite yet. “We wait them out, hope they can’t find us here, and then figure out our next move.”

  “Still think the smart move was coming here?” she asked.

  I eyed her, wiped the sweat from my brow, and then replied, “That all depends on what comes next.”

  She pulled my hand up to her cheek, held it there, and then wrapped her arms around me. We lowered ourselves until we were sitting on the cold, tiled floor, our legs out straight in front of us, neither of us sure what the hell we had gotten ourselves into our how we were going to survive it.

  CHAPTER 22: SNAPDRAGON

  Alien Planet

  We followed Amira to slide through a narrow opening between the Citadel walls that lead us down to the prisons. I couldn’t help but see the concern on Glaze’s face. Worse, a pang of guilt had started to work its way up to my mind. What we were doing was far from by-the-book.

  Breaking into the Citadel’s prison was certainly wrong, but we were doing it to hunt down the latest supervillain to threaten everything we held dear. Surely that counted for something. And of course there was the prophecy to think of.

  So I pushed those worries and that stupid guilt aside and continued on.

  “This remind you of the time we snuck off to unravel the thread of affairs in the city of Foram?” Amira chuckled. “Sooo much fun.”

  I blushed, remembering the fun we’d had, and the two separate duos fucking we had walked in on. Not something she was glad to see in the latter case.

  “Tell me you didn’t use your powers for something so petty,” Glaze said, a bit louder than he should’ve.

  “We’re trying to sneak around here,” I reminded him.

  “It wasn’t petty,” Amira said to him. “In fact, it led to the discovery of a supervillain living in the city’s midst. She was seducing men and women alike, and when we finished unraveling her scheme, she was taken off to be imprisoned. Might even be in these cells.”

  “Are we looking for her?” I asked.

  “No, but I have a woman in mind who actually was connected to her. You know, if you can sense her powers and find her, I can use that thread to track the other super.”

  “What power am I looking for exactly?”

  “Unfortunately, a higher-powered woman. We need to ensure she doesn’t use her powers on us while we’re using mine on her.”

  “What powers?”

  Amira was staring at Glaze intently, but turned to me when I cleared my throat. She smiled, then said, “Omnipathy.”

  “Omni-what?” Glaze asked.

  “Means she can connect with any mind across space and… time,” I explained, having heard of it. “But it’s only a theory. You’re saying a power like that actually exists?”

  “Yes,” Amira replied, gesturing at the two routes ahead of us.

  “Then how have we not lost?” Glaze asked.

  “Because we have our own time manipulators,” I explained. “Uncle Breaker spoke about meeting them.”

  “Holy shit,” Glaze said, shaking his head.

  “It’s a crazy universe out there,” I said, understanding what he was going through. The first time I’d not only heard of time travel, but started to believe it existed, my mind had been blown.

  “Mind if we get on with it before guards discover us?” Amira said.

  “Consider it done,” I replied, and sent out an echo-pulse of my ability to see what powers were nearby.

  From the info the pulse returned, we weren’t close yet. All I managed to get were low-level powers such as increased speed and strength.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  Except I noticed that one of the power sets was geared toward security. Possibly a guard, and one that would sense us if they were paying attention. I hurried along, the dark passages only lit by glinting metal and a glow from the occasional digital displays that showed prisoner counts and stats related to current oxygen levels and the like.

  Amid the darkness, I couldn’t help but remember when Amira and I had actually caught that supervillain from the affairs. Entering a room with throw pillows around a mat on the floor and red curtains hanging from the walls and ceiling, then seeing a curtain blow aside to reveal the woman in the nude, hand thrust between her legs and working its magic. She had tattoos that swirled around her curves, a pair of horns on her head, and eyes that glowed purple as she looked at me watching her.