All That Remains

1 comment on "Excerpt “All That Remains” – from Chapter Five"

Title: All That Remains – excerpt Chapter Five
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: superhero. science fiction. action. mm.

EXCERPT-

They didn’t get to enjoy the afterglow for even five minutes before someone rang the front doorbell. Then rang it again, and again, and again, before leaving their finger on the button for a long time.

One look at Vereint’s darkening expression had Warrick climbing out of bed. “I’ve got it.”

He pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and a loose gray tee shirt.

“No underwear?” Vereint asked.

“I don’t care if whoever that is sees me free-balling,” Warrick said.

“But it might be one of Nicky’s friends. Put on your robe,” Vereint ordered. Then rolled on his stomach and burrowed his face into his pillow. “I’mma sleep now.”

Warrick rolled his eyes fondly. “If you weren’t so cute…” He picked his robe up off a chair and slipped his arms in the sleeves, tying the belt as he left the bedroom and padded barefoot down the stairs.

Whoever was on the porch rang the doorbell again.

“Okay, okay. I’m coming!” Warrick called. He could feel himself getting irritated. His evening with Vereint was being spoiled by this interruption.

He forced himself not to jerk the door open. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a broken front door. Instead he —-purposely—- turned the knob and opened the door.

“Can I help you?” he asked the delivery man in a frosty tone.

“It’s a good thing you’re here. I was about to leave.” The guy proferred a clipboard. “I need a signature, please.”

Warrick took the clipboard but didn’t sign until the delivery man showed him the package with Vereint’s assumed name on the label. Then he scrawled a signature on the digital paper and exchanged the clipboard for the loaf of bread-sized box.

“Thanks,” he growled, then slammed the door and locked it. He waited until he heard the truck start up and drive away before carrying the package upstairs to Vereint.

“Who was it?” Vereint asked when Warrick came in the room.

“A delivery for you.” Warrick set the box on the bed and began stripping back down. He wasn’t giving up a rare opportunity to lounge naked.

“Hedonist,” Vereint teased. He didn’t lift his head from his pillow, just reached out a hand to snake the box across the covers toward himself. He fumbled at the tape with one hand, eventually pulling it off the lid in one strip.

Warrick climbed into his side of the bed and sat with his back against the headboard. His pillow was somewhere on the floor. “What’d you get?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“So it could be a bomb, and you’re opening it on our bed?”

“Yes.” Vereint fumbled the box lid open and tilted it toward Warrick. “What’s in there?”

Warrick reached out to move the brown packing paper out of the way. “It looks like a creepy doll. Is someone going to try and serial kill us now?”

Vereint snorted. “I’d like to see someone try.” He lifted the doll out of the box by its head, tilting it so he could get a good look. “Hm. That is creepy. Who’s it from?”

Warrick glanced at the widely smiling bald ceramic head with the hand and foot-less white cloth body and fought a shudder. He looked at the outside of the box, then the inside. He even flipped it over to show there was nothing inside.

“There’s no name,” he said. “Someone went out of their way to send you a creepy doll anonymously. Strange and suspicious.”

Vereint rolled over and sat up, the bedcovers pooling over his bare lap. He picked up the doll with both hands and examined it closely. “Whoever made this knows how to sew, yet purposely made it look amateurish. It’s a taunt.”

“What–“

Vereint whipped the doll around by one leg and smacked the head against his night table. The head cracked apart, a small slip of paper falling out.

Vereint snatched the paper out of the air and spread it open. “‘I know who you are,'” he read aloud. “What the shit is this?”

/end excerpt

*

Wanna know who these guys are before reading “All That Remains”? Check them out first in “Heroes & Villains“, then follow it up with “Allies & Enemies.”

2 comments on "Defunct opening to “All That Remains”"

Title: All That Remains – defunct opening scene
Author: Harper Kingsley
Twitter: @HarperKingsley0
Rating: Mature
WARNING: descriptions of the aftermath of a violent disaster event.

The beginning of this scene is still the current beginning of “All That Remains”, its just I changed the intro for some action stuff.

ALL THAT REMAINS – defunct opening scene

There was the acrid stink of smoke filling the air, along with the screams and desperate cries of the hurt and dying. The street in front of Caspian Dukes was a wreckage of twisted metal where dozens of vehicles had collided.

He felt helpless. Tragedy had already happened and he didn’t know how they could clear away this mess. His mouth tasted sour with failure.

One hour ago he was eating a food truck taco and contemplating a nap. Now he was looking at a triage situation he didn’t feel up to handling.

The lifestyle was wearing him down. Statistically speaking, most superheroes retired out of the field by their tenth year of active duty. He’d been doing this job for close to thirty.

He didn’t think he was quite ready to retire, but he might cut back on some duty shifts. He wouldn’t do anyone any good if he let himself burn out.

Maybe it’s time for a nice vacation, he thought. Surf, sand, and a chance to get my gills wet.

Just the thought of immersing himself in the ocean soothed some of the tension out of his shoulders. Enough that he was able to focus on the task at hand.

As the old timers had said, the ocean always called their people home in the end.

“All right, boys and girls, the situation has changed,” Caspian called out. “It’s time to focus on cleaning up the mess rather than making it. I want each of you to pair up with an Emergency Services team. It’s search and rescue time. Follow the orders of the ES team leader and be careful, safe, and smart. Understood?”

The Junior League members answered in unison, “Yes, sir!” There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation as they rushed forward to rescue the wounded and comfort the dying. They were strong as a unit, even the ones that had never worked together.

Smart, loyal, and quick to follow the orders of their superiors–they were a good bunch of kids and Caspian felt proud watching them swarm the scene. Maybe he was getting old, but the new League members looked younger to him every year. He couldn’t remember a time when he was ever so young and eager to please. There was a part of him that secretly wanted to wrap them up in bubble wrap and deliver them back to their parents safe and sound. Which was ridiculous because they were competent professionals that wouldn’t appreciate his babying.

He shook his head and stalked forward to do his own part. People needed his help.

Trusting that the Juniors would know to give him a yell if they needed him, he helped a couple of Emergency Service officers by ripping the passenger side door off of a car that had been crumpled like a tin can in the fist of a giant. A single peek through the window showed that the driver–a young woman with blood darkened hair shrouding her face–was dead, but the man next to her was weakly struggling with his seatbelt, his dazed eyes unable to focus. He seemed frantic to reach the toddler screaming in the backseat.

“Hold on, buddy,” Caspian said. “Don’t try to move.”

He stepped out of the way of the rescue workers and their backboard, wishing that the car had been a four-door so he could get to the kid. She was unharmed, though the shock of the crash had turned to terror of the unknown. Interspersed with her shrieks were what sounded like the words “Mama!” and “Dada!” and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her as only one of them was ever going to answer.

Once the father was out of the way and being loaded onto a gurney, Caspian was quick to pull the toddler out of her car seat, turning her so she didn’t get a good look at her mother’s body. “Sh, sh, it’s all right,” he murmured, patting her back and giving her a quick once over.

Her small hands fisted against the front of his uniform and her shrieks trailed into hiccuping cries. Her head moved back and forth, trying to see where “Dada!” had gone, but Caspian kept her turned away from where the paramedics worked. There was quite a bit of blood and he didn’t want to traumatize her more than she already was.

Looking around, he knew she was going to have plenty of stuff to talk about with her future therapist. She’d lost her mother, and her father was probably going to be spending some time in the hospital.

“Here, I’ll take her.” Caspian turned to look at the man that had spoken. He was wearing an Emergency Service uniform along with a Megacity Mavens baseball cap. “You’ve got other stuff to handle.”

“Thanks,” Caspian said. He carefully passed the toddler over, reining in his strength. He’d feel terrible if he accidentally hurt her, especially after everything else she’d experienced.

Stepping away from the totaled car, he looked around to see where he was needed. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to what he was seeing, like some horrible optical illusion coming into focus.

The street was a scene of damage and destruction. The epicenter was three low buildings close together. From the way the awning had been blown across the street from the middle building–with its plaster pillars shattered and broken mirrors everywhere–Caspian thought that it had been the main site of the disaster.

There was a ten-year-old boy seated on the curb, a vacant expression on his dirty face. He was cradling something in his hands and his dark brown hair was nearly white on top from plaster dust. When he glanced up at Caspian’s approach, his eyes were a startling shade of blue. It was such a striking sight that Caspian hitched his step.

“Hey, kid.” Caspian didn’t bother faking a smile. The situation was too raw to be made light of yet. “Do you know what happened here?”

The boy looked up at him. His hands shifted and Caspian briefly glimpsed the watch that he held. The glass face had a crack running through it and there was plaster dust caught in the band. “It was Becky. She said that she wasn’t feeling good. Then all this happened.”

“I see. And who is Becky?” Caspian asked. The first responders would have gathered the information on their arrival, but it didn’t hurt to get a first hand account when he could.

“She’s a girl in my class.” The boy rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. “She’s dead now. Can I call my dad? I want to go home.”

“It will be a little while,” Caspian said. “You’re going to have to be patient.”

The boy hunched his shoulders with a sigh.

/end scene

1 comment on "I hate being poor; ATR-not; Excerpt: The Anomaly"

The plans are as follows:
1. Paint the Kid’s room.
2. Grow and eat mung bean sprouts.
3. Get him a BMX bike.
4. Buy him clothes for school.
5. Wrap up all old stories.

* * *

OMAKE

Being a retiree wasn’t so bad. Not when he halfway felt as though everyday they lived like normal people was one more day when he’d kept the world safe.

Warrick would never say anything, but checking up on the things Vereint had gotten up to while he was indisposed and reading a few essays floating around the Internet about the minds of supervillains had really freaked him out. It was obvious that Vereint had gone a bit psycho.

It was somewhat flattering to think that he was the only thing protecting the world from Vereint going full scale SUPERVILLAIN Darkstar. He got to have the love of his life and save the world at the same time. Blue Ice was dead, but Warrick felt like more of a superhero than he had in a long time.

Having Nick manifest his first metabilities was a bit worrying. Warrick didn’t quite know how he was supposed to handle things, but he managed to at least look like he wasn’t throwing hysterical fits so he considered it a win. Vereint wasn’t even trying to cover up the fact that he was freaking out. It made Warrick feel a bit superior to be the controlled one for once.

“Remember, no showing off,” Vereint said with a pointed look at Nick.

“It’s fine, Dad.” Nick rolled his eyes, but didn’t try to move away when Vereint tugged his jacket straight. “I got this.”

A quirky smile curved Vereint’s lips as he looked at Nick. “You’re growing up really fast. Just don’t expect to get your own car until you’re twenty-five.”

Warrick moved in when it looked like Vereint was about to spit on his hand to smooth their son’s hair. “We’re going to be late.”

Vereint let himself be tugged away from Nick. Warrick wrapped his left arm around Vereint’s shoulder, less as a comforting gesture and more to hold him back from his fussing.

“I guess we better get out of here,” Vereint said.

Nick looked proud in his suit and tie, his hair styled to look careless and windswept. He had Vereint’s dark hair and Warrick’s blue eyes and was growing up to be a good looking kid. When he grinned, it was to show off Vereint’s dimples in a charm that no one could deny. “I look good, right?” He stuck his hands in his pockets and spread his jacket wide for a moment.

“Don’t get a big head.” Warrick clapped Nick on the back and nudged him toward the door. Vereint stayed curled against his side, their legs almost tangling when they stepped out on the porch. Warrick refused to let him go.

They walked up the sidewalk as a group, meeting up with others making the journey. Boys and girls dressed in their best clothes, excited younger siblings bounding around, and indulgent parents trailing along. It was like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, this stream of people all headed toward the country school.

Warrick had never imagined that a child’s graduation between grades was such a big deal, yet here they were. Vereint was beaming with pride and fiddling with the camera hanging around his neck. Nick spotted a couple of his friends and ran up ahead. And suddenly they were taking a romantic stroll.

“Are you going to write about this in your diary?” Warrick asked.

Vereint slanted him a confused glance. “Huh?”

“Never mind. It was stupid. Life is good.”

“It is.” Vereint gave Warrick’s shoulder a squeeze.

Warrick smiled contentedly.

He had a husband he loved and a son graduating the fifth grade. He had sixty-one years of life experience and a thirty-one year old body. There wasn’t much more that he could ask for. Life was good.

/EXCERPT

* * *

They gave him the name Gellar Rembrandt when he was decanted. One more Bottle Baby sent off to the creche. And as soon as he had a mouth full of teeth and could walk and talk, he was bundled off to the Learning Center.

It wasn’t a bad life, being the clone of a clone of a clone. For everything he thought and did, there was a precedence. It gave him a sense of peace to know that he was a stereotypical representative of his genotype. One amongst thousands.

Until the Graduation Exams when he was 20. Until his world was ended with the declaration that he was an Aberration, and Unclean.

He was not the perfect copy he’d always known himself to be. He was an anomaly.

Gellar was taken from the Learning Center in the back of a van. His wrists were shackled together and he was treated like a prisoner, an inevitable threat.

He could see the disgust and disquiet in the faces that looked like his own. (His type is used in the police and military.) Every single one of them was forced to wonder what they would have done if they were him. He was the possibility of failure that any one of them could have been.

He was their worst fear brought to life.

Aberration. Discord. Failure.

/EXCERPT

3 comments on "EXCERPT: All That Remains [Heroes & Villains III] – Scene from Chapter Four"

NOTE: There’s a reason I’ve been obsessing over “Tuesday Night.” It’s because of these guys.

*

Being pinned down by a superpowered madman and his cohort of belligerent henchmen had to be on Seth’s Top Ten list of unwanted scenarios to face. The guy was practically a Bond villain with all of the elaborate traps and mechanical gizmos ready to go off at a single moment’s notice. There was even an evil villain lair paid for with drug money and built on the tears of enslaved orphans.

“Does anyone else think this guy might actually have a pool of sharks with lasers on their heads? Or maybe a murder table mounted with like a rotating sawblade or something?” Even knowing it was a better idea to keep quiet, talking relieved some of Seth’s nerves.

“Maybe there’s sawblades with sharks mounted on them,” Teen Steel joked.

“Heh. ‘Do you expect me to talk?’ ‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,'” Jackblade quoted.

“If you boys are done thinking you’re funny,” Sonic Pulse said, “we need to get out of here.”

The moment of levity was gone and they got back to the business of being nervous and trapped. They were holed up in the east wing of the dramatically named Citadel of Terror.

They were one step ahead of El Muerto’s minions and it was only a matter of time before they were forced into a confrontation with the genocidal maniac.

With the ability to kill anything with the sound of his voice, El Muerto was a supervillain that had carved out a position as the executioner-for-hire of the ruthless dictator and drug kingpin Javier LaCroix.

Mostly working out of France and Central Europe, it had alarmed many when the Citadel of Terror, LaCroix’ flying fortress, had made the trip and subsequent landing in South America. There had already been rumors of the violent dictator expanding his operations to the Americas, but it wasn’t until he was on their doorstep that the Central Metahuman Policing Force decided to step in and handle him.

LaCroix and his operation got declared a problem to be handled and here the Demis here. The plan being that they get in fast enough that LaCroix didn’t have a chance to dig in and fortify his location.

They’d received deployment orders before there was even a working plan to handle LaCroix. Which meant they’d already been behind enemy lines before CMPF command realized quite how dangerous the situation was. El Muerto was not out of the country as intelligence had suggested. He was somewhere in the building.

The Demis had received word that backup was on the way and they needed to stay out of view until help arrived. Once there were enough of them, working together the two teams would take out LaCroix, El Muerto, and anyone else that got in their way.

Seth was looking forward to kicking some ass. One look at the basement prison cells had been enough to ignite a fierce hatred in his heart. He’d tallied the number of men, women, and children that were locked up waiting to be used for slave labor and he’d wanted to punch faces. He’d be happy to see LaCroix’ whole operation brought to a messy end.

He anticipated the arrival of backup, because once they showed up it would be time to take down all the bad guys and free the slaves. And hopefully they’d all make it home without someone being sung to death by El Muerto.

Jackblade’s watch made a soft bleep-ing sound. “Come on. Time to change position again.”

They’d been moving their way slowly but surely through the fortress, staying measured amounts of time in each location. If they’d stayed constantly on the move there was a good chance of being spotted, but if they parked themselves for too long in one location there was a better chance that someone would stumble across them. Seth really wasn’t looking to terrify or kill a maid, and if they got rid of too many people it was bound to be noticed. It was better that they not settle anywhere for too long.

Seth nudged Teen Steel’s shoulder. “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”

Teen Steel grinned and opened his mouth to say something–probably involving the word “princess”–but Sonic Pulse grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “Stop fooling around.”

Seth rolled his eyes and let himself fall to the back of the group as they left the bland room they’d been hiding in and crept down the hall.

There was the sense that they would be caught at any moment. Some maid or toddling child would come around a corner at exactly the wrong moment and they’d all be plunged into a fight to the death battle with machine gun toting criminals. It made Seth nervous.

But nothing happened. They followed the winding corridors until they came to another unmarked door and another unremarkable room they could hole up in.

Seth didn’t question the vague sense of disappointment. He just pushed it away and focused on searching the room for anything useful (or incriminating).

The room was a blandly painted beige square with dark wood floors. Instead of a closet, there was a wooden wardrobe standing tall against one wall, and a narrow three-drawer dresser next to it. There was a twin bed with two pillows and a dark blue quilted comforter spread across the top. There was no window, no TV, and no adjoining bathroom. It was a depressingly personality-free cell of a room.

Seth opened the wardrobe and found men’s clothing hanging from the —-pole/rack/bar—- and a suitcase on the bottom.

“It looks like this room is occupied,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to want to stay here too long in case whoever comes back. Things might get a bit awkward.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jackblade said. He opened the top drawer of the dresser curiously before closing it. “Sock and underwear. I’m not worried.”

“So you say,” Seth said, “but things always look a bit different when you’re facing an enraged drug kingpin and his machine gun toting army. I’m not looking to get shot.”

“Considering you’re the only one here that’s impervious to bullets, I think you should suck it up,” Saint Kloud said.

Seth clutched his chest. “Wounded. Emotionally battered by my own teammates, my fears belittled as not being worthwhile. I can feel the waterworks wanting to start, but I will hold them back with all of my strength.”

He caught Sonic Pulse’s mutter, “God, could he be more annoying?” She’d found a thin paperback book and was puzzling through the French writing.

Seth fought back the childish urge to stick his tongue out at her. For some reason, they’d been rubbing each other the wrong way recently. It hadn’t quite reached the point where he would put in for a transfer, but he’d thought about it.

It was hard to trust his life and the success of the team’s missions to someone that was so obviously not dealing with her own problems. Maybe she’d married Teen Steel too young. Maybe it was the lack of kids after years of trying. Whatever it was, Seth didn’t appreciate the thinly veiled resentment with which Sonic Pulse treated him. It wasn’t like he was trying to steal Teen Steel away from her or anything.

He turned away from her and reached for the suitcase. If they were going to be here for the next little while, he figured it was time to do a bit of snooping.

The suitcase was a deep red color with brown accents. There was a combination lock, but the owner had left it open. It was practically an invitation for Seth to unzip the lid and flop it open.

“Oh shit,” he said. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“What? Why?” Jackblade peered over his shoulder.

“Because we’re in the lair of the beast,” Seth said. “This is El Muerto’s room.”

/EXCERPT

Drama!!!