Rogues: The Omega Superhero Book Four (Omega Superhero Series 4) Read online

  ROGUES

  the omega superhero

  book FOUR

  By Darius Brasher

  Check out the first three books in the Omega Superhero Series here:

  CAPED: THE OMEGA SUPERHERO, BOOK ONE

  TRIALS: THE OMEGA SUPERHERO, BOOK TWO

  SENTINELS: THE OMEGA SUPERHERO, BOOK THREE

  Click below to sign up for Mr. Brasher’s e-mail newsletter for exclusive information on his new releases. His novels are often sold at a discount for only a few days when they are first released. Newsletter subscribers are the first to be able to snap up these deals and discounts:

  DARIUS BRASHER’S NEWSLETTER

  Rogues Copyright © 2018 by Darius Brasher.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by RMG Book Cover Designs.

  First Edition, Published February 2018.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  The poem Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson which is quoted in its entirety in Rogues was published in 1897 and is therefore in the public domain.

  Special thanks to Michael Hofer, the first supporter of Darius Brasher’s Patreon campaign. Michael, your support is much appreciated!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  EXCERPT FROM SUPERHERO DETECTIVE FOR HIRE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Rogue

  noun /rōg/

  A person with superpowers who uses those powers without a license granted by the Heroes’ Guild and the United States Department of Metahuman Affairs in violation of the federal Hero Act of 1945—i.e., a supervillain.

  UWant Online Dictionary, 2017

  I strode through a sea of unconscious henchmen toward Amok. As I advanced on the superpowered terrorist, the arms and legs of his henchmen moved out of my way due to slight gestures of my hands. Since the prostrate men wore crimson armor, it was like parting the Red Sea. Maybe Moses had been a telekinetic like I was.

  I glanced at the giant digital clock that hung from the old warehouse’s rafters like a scoreboard. Obviously installed by Amok and his men, it was as out of place in the abandoned toy warehouse as a cockroach in a bowl of soup. It was tilted so the hostages kneeling at Amok’s feet could see it and their fear could mount as the seconds ticked away. A little over fifteen minutes remained until the dirty bomb Amok had hidden here in Astor City exploded, killing everyone in the warehouse and untold citizens in the rest of the city.

  Other licensed Heroes, including my friend Isaac Geere—the Hero Myth—were trying to evacuate the city. As Astor City, Maryland was one of the country’s largest urban areas with a population in the millions, there was no way the other Heroes would be able to get everyone out in time. Not when Amok had only given the city an hour’s notice of the impending explosion.

  I had already scanned this sprawling warehouse with my telekinetic touch. There were lots of mice, enough bugs to give an insectophobe nightmares, and bits of broken and unfinished toys. No bomb. Amok must have hidden it somewhere else in the city. I’d have to get the bomb’s location straight from the horse’s mouth.

  Since Amok’s Metahuman powers let him literally feed on fear, I tried to tamp down the fear mounting in my chest as the seconds slipped away. My hands burned with my powers as they always did, feeling like they were over a warm fire. Waves of energy pulsating out of them that were invisible to everyone but me. It was hard to not rush through the warehouse to where Amok stood on the raised platform with the hostages. I forced myself to approach Amok slowly. Calmly, deliberately, without fear. Fake it until you make it. The fear was more for the others in the city than for myself. Most days, me getting killed felt like it would be a blessed relief.

  Amok was a Rogue. Rogues were people with superpowers who used them despite not being licensed to do so. Non-Metas often called them supervillains. I called them pains in the ass. There were five general categories of Rogues: the money-hungry; the power-hungry; the fame-hungry; the ones whose bats in their belfry were hungry—that is, the ones who were batshit crazy; and the ones who were a messy medley of the other four. Doctor Alchemy was a prime example of the fifth category—a greedy, power-mad, spotlight-loving Rogue who was also loony tunes. He was the father of Smoke, the Heroic name of my friend and lover Neha Thakore whom I had let the Sentinels kill a couple of years ago.

  Though Amok was not as powerful as Doctor Alchemy, Amok was still an infamous terrorist whose fiendish attacks had gotten more elaborate and deadly over the years. This latest plot of his was to plant a nuclear bomb in Astor City, tell everyone about it through social media and the local news, and for him and his death cult followers to feed on the resulting panic and fear like hogs at a trough thanks to Amok’s powers until they and everyone else in the city were vaporized in a nuclear fireball.

  So yeah, Amok was definitely in the batshit crazy category of Rogues. What he lacked in raw Metahuman power he made up for with sheer nuttiness and reckless disregard for human life.

  “Where did you find these knuckleheads? Hapless-R-Us?” I said to Amok about his unconscious henchmen. I spoke with a forced glibness. Who’s scared he’s going to fail like he did with Neha and get everyone in the city blown to radioactive bits? Not me. No fear. No doubt. I’ve got this. Not even I believed my internal pep talk. Hopefully lack of fear was like The Secret—if you believed it hard enough, it would manifest. “Is that the same place they get Star Wars Stormtroopers from? They look intimidating and make a lot of noise, but pose no real threat to the hero. That would be me, by the way. The fancy duds and the cape are what give it away. These jerks barely slowed me down. Must be hard to find good help these days. Now be a good little Rogue and tell me where the bomb is before I’m forced to beat it out of you.”

  My cape rustled softly behind me as I got closer to Amok and the kneeling hostages. Amok glared at me. The hostages quivered in fear. I wore my full Omega suit: a full-body, dark blue costume that moved with my body like the second skin it was despite the fact it was tough enough to deflect knife thrusts and low caliber gunshots. A cowl hid my features except my eyes, nose, and mouth. A silver white omega symbol was on my chest; a cape of the same color billowed out from my neck. As I advanced toward Amok, my shoulder still hurt from that brutal fight with the Rogue Grendel a few days ago. I barely felt it. The pain was like bad background music—faintly annoying, but I was only vaguely aware of it in the face of the threat Amok p
osed. Nothing focuses the mind like imminent death does.

  Amok was mostly bald, with a fringe of iron gray hair ringing the back of his head. He wore a charcoal robe and leather sandals. He was of medium height, thin-limbed, with a slight belly. His feet were dirty, his skin pale white, his face chubby and unlined. He would look like a monk who spent too much time cloistered in his monastery if it weren’t for the assault rifle strapped to his body. Also, his eyes. His irises were as gray as his robe, but the whites of his eyes were anything but white. They were as green as a leprechaun’s suit. The bizarre color was not a side effect of his Metahuman power. Rather, his eyes were tattooed. At some point he had undergone a procedure known as sclera staining, in which needles injected ink into the whites of the eyes.

  Yeah, like I said—Amok was batshit crazy.

  He stared at my approach with the glassy eyes of an addict. His drug was no narcotic, though; his drug was the fear his terrorism caused. “I can taste your fear, Omega,” he said. He spoke with a pronounced lisp, making his voice the hiss of a snake. “Fear you will fail. Fear everyone will die because of you. Your fears are justified. And delicious.” He licked his lips, like he was savoring a meal.

  So much for willing my lack of fear into existence. I always suspected The Secret was a load of crap.

  Less than thirty feet away now. As calmly as I could, I said, “Where’s the bomb, Amok? I’m not going to ask nicely again.”

  Amok reached out to snatch the badly dyed red hair of the nearest hostage, a white woman in a large, shapeless shift dress. He yanked her toward him. She yelped in fear and pain. Amok jabbed the barrel of his gun into the side of her head. Her eyes rolled back, like those of a frightened horse. “Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” she prayed. Some of the other hostages gasped; others gibbered in fear, their eyes darting from Amok to the countdown. They cowered where they knelt despite the fact the guns of Amok’s henchmen were no longer pointed at them. I did a quick count. Maybe twenty of them. They were scared. So was I.

  “Stop where you are or the fat bitch gets it in the head,” Amok hissed. There was no anger in his voice. Only intense pleasure. His face looked almost orgasmic. Though Amok could sense the fear of everyone in the city, the closer the source of the fear, the more acutely he felt it. It was probably why he had taken hostages and forced them to watch the countdown to their personal Armageddon.

  I reached out with my powers, running my mind over the gun pointed at the woman. Screws unscrewed, metal and plastic peeled apart. In the blink of an eye, the gun disintegrated in Amok’s hand. Its parts clattered on the concrete floor. Amok was left holding only the gun’s stock and trigger. Both his and the woman’s eyes widened in astonishment.

  “You were saying?” I asked. I hadn’t even broken stride. Don’t be afraid, I told myself. Keep calm. Don’t feed his hunger. You’ll find the bomb in time. You have to. You won’t fail this time. Not again.

  Now that a gun no longer threatened to blow her brains out, the look on the face of the woman in Amok’s grip changed. Fear disappeared, displaced by rage. Her face red, she rammed her head backward, directly into Amok’s crotch. I winced merely seeing the force of the blow. Amok gasped in pain, doubled over, and fell to his knees, clutching his privates. The woman twisted around, pulling off one of her high heeled wedges. She started pounding on Amok with the thick shoe. Her fleshy arm rose and fell like a hammer that had found a nail. I guess she didn’t need Jesus’ help after all. God helped those who helped themselves.

  “Who’s the fat bitch now, huh bitch?” she screamed as she pummeled Amok. “Who’s the fat bitch now?” Hell hath no fury like a woman called a fat bitch.

  I sprang into the air, flying the remaining distance to Amok and the woman. He covered his head with his arms, trying to protect himself from the woman’s blows. I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from Amok. She went sprawling, her dress sliding up and bunching around her waist. I had yanked more roughly than I meant to in my haste to stop her before she clocked Amok on the head and knocked him out. I needed him conscious.

  “Jeez lady, calm down,” I said. I averted my eyes from her exposed thong and ivory flesh. The last thing I needed was for her to attack me too for ogling her. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Omega. I’ve got this under control.”

  “Really? Cause it kinda doesn’t look like it.” She jabbed a finger at the countdown overhead. Less than fourteen minutes left.

  The lady had a legit point.

  I scanned the room with my powers again, this time locking onto all the weapons of the unconscious henchmen. Most of them I disassembled just as I had Amok’s. The sound of countless gun parts hitting the cement floor filled the air. The few guns I left intact I levitated over to the platform the hostages and I were on.

  “Take these and cover Amok’s men in case they wake up,” I ordered the hostages. “I’ll take care of Amok and the bomb.” The hostages slowly got to their feet. Everyone but the chubby lady looked dazed by all they had been through. They grabbed the floating guns as I commanded. In my Omega suit and cape, I was an authority figure, just as my Hero Academy training had promised I would be. If I had just been in regular clothes as 23-year-old Theodore Conley, the hostages, most of whom were older than I, likely would have thought, “Who the hell is this kid to give us orders?” I was careful to disable the firing pin of the gun I gave to the heavyset lady. She clearly had anger issues. I didn’t want her losing her cool and shooting Amok in the head before I extracted the bomb’s location from him.

  Amok still lay on the floor, making no effort to get up. Though his face was now bloody thanks to the chubby lady’s wedge of vengeance, there was a blissful smile on his face. His teeth were rotting, spotted brown and black. I could smell his breath as I stood over him. It reeked like a rotting corpse. Terrorism clearly was higher on his list of priorities than oral hygiene.

  “Fear swaddles the city like a baby’s blanket,” he said, his green-haloed gray eyes looking heavenward in a hazy, unfocused way. “So warm and delectable. I’ve never felt the like before.”

  I looked down at him with disgust. Endangering all these lives just to feel a high. I wondered where this nutjob had gotten the fissionable material for the bomb. I pushed the thought aside. An issue for a later time. Assuming there was a later.

  I examined Amok’s body clinically. I kicked him on his right side, under his ribcage. He moaned gutturally and curled up like a poked caterpillar. I said, “That was a liver shot. Right now it feels like you’ve been kicked in the balls, had the breath knocked out of you, and like you want to throw up. As bad as it feels, the next blow will be worse. Where is the bomb?”

  Despite his ragged breathing, Amok still smiled, as if he was listening to beautiful music only he could hear. He shook his head no.

  Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. When was this job ever easy?

  I shoved my foot out and rolled Amok over a bit. I punched him hard twice, this time near his back. His body straightening out like he was being electrocuted. He howled, the pain I had inflicted now enough to pierce the fear-fueled euphoria he was experiencing. I said, “Those were kidney punches. Now it feels like you have lava diarrhea shooting through your guts. You’ll likely be pissing blood for a while. You’re obviously willing to die, but I doubt anyone is willing to live through the hell I’m going to put you through the next few minutes if you don’t tell me what I want to know.” I put my boot on his already tender genitals. I pressed down and twisted my heel. Amok howled again. “Now where is the bomb?”

  “Stop it!” one of the hostages cried out. “You’re hurting him.”

  “Shut up,” I snapped irritably, not taking my eyes off Amok. Amok had taken these people hostage and was about to blow them and everyone else up, yet this birdbrain was still sticking up for him. Some people were too kindhearted for their own good. Not me. I’d learned my lesson the hard way. I would pull Amok’s toenails out through his penis and worse if I had to. Dad, Hannah Kim, Neha . . . I’d be
damned if more people died because of me.

  Amok softly said something, still smiling happily despite the pain he was in. He was crying. Tears of pain, or of joy? I couldn’t tell. I leaned closer, thinking maybe he was saying where the bomb was.

  He wasn’t. He was singing. I recognized the words. It was the Nine Inch Nails song The Day the World Went Away.

  Crap. That settled it. I could subject him to more pain, but I knew Amok wasn’t going to tell me anything. Not now, not like this, while he luxuriated in the citywide fear and panic his ticking time bomb caused. Getting him to tell me what I needed to know while he was in this condition was like trying to get someone tripping on heroin to focus on a quadratic equation. I needed to detox him and quick.

  I glanced up at the countdown. T minus thirteen minutes and counting until the city blasted off into nothingness. Thirteen? I wasn’t superstitious, but that did not seem like a good omen.

  Inspiration struck. Amok felt people’s fear more intensely the closer he was to it. If I got Amok away from all the people he had terrified in Astor City and I roused him from the fear-fueled euphoria he was basking in, maybe my fists could then talk some sense into him.

  I started the stopwatch on my wrist communicator, the one Amazing Man had given me years ago. This would be the worst possible time to lose track of time. I raised a force field around me and Amok. Carrying Amok with me, I shot up, toward the ceiling of the warehouse.

  “Omega, wait! Where are you going?”

  “Don’t leave!”

  “Come back!”

  “Save us!”

  The cries of the hostages trailed me, making me feel like a rat leaving a sinking ship. I felt guilty even though I knew I wasn’t abandoning them. If there was one thing I was really good at, it was feeling guilty. Being raised Catholic had made sure of that.