Stormy D. Logan

This is the story of a superhero named Stormy.  The idea was first hatched when I was 12 years old.  Obviously, it has evolved significantly in 20 years.  I'm trying to make it as believable as I can with this subject matter.  This one is not yet complete, but it is currently my major project.  Expect frequent updates.

STORMY D. LOGAN

By Michael MacKenzie

Prologue

Denver, Colorado

            “How do you feel this morning, Private Hurst?” Dr. Trevor Sinclair asked.

            “Good,” Hurst answered.  An earnest grin spread across his young face as he flexed his left arm.  “Better than yesterday.”

            Trevor pulled a tape measure out of the pocket of his lab coat.  “Keep it flexed,” he said and wrapped the tape around the soldier’s bicep.  It was a full inch larger around than it had been the previous day.

            “Good,” Trevor said.  Private Hurst had been a very fit young man before he came to Trevor to take part in this project.  The gained musculature was noticeable if you did a side-by-side comparison with photos, but it didn’t make him appear oddly large.  Put him in long sleeves, and his closest friends might not notice the difference in size.

            “You shouldn’t get any larger than this,” Trevor explained as he noted the bicep measurement on his chart.  He knelt down and wrapped the tape measure around Hurst’s thigh.  “The first phase of the drug works like a fast-acting anabolic steroid, but it doesn’t require you to exercise at all.”  Private Hurst, who had been injected 48 hours ago, had spent the time since reading, watching television, and playing video games.  He had been specifically forbidden to exercise during the test except for when instructed to by Trevor.  “That phase is over, so any visible changes to your body are done.  The second phase is all genetic.”

            “Will it hurt?” Hurst asked.

            “No,” Trevor said.  He thought of the three test subjects that had preceded Private Hurst and hoped that he wasn’t lying to the young soldier.  Those had been anomalies, though.  The drug would work properly this time.  If not this batch, then the next would work.  “You might feel a rush, as if your body is suddenly being energized, but that shouldn’t be painful.”  Trevor was pretty sure that Subject #2 hadn’t felt any pain.  His death had been far too sudden for pain.

            “Hey, I felt something like that early this morning,” Hurst said with an endearing excitement.  “It woke me up, and I’ve been awake ever since.

            Trevor raised an eyebrow.  This was a good sign.  Subject #1 hadn’t survived the genetic alteration that would have led to the initial burst of energy.  Subject #2 had died at the instant of the burst, and Subject #3 had survived for only 30 minutes after the burst.

            “What time was that?” Trevor asked.

            “About 0300,” Hurst answered.

            Five hours ago.  Trevor smiled as he pulled a small instrument out of his pocket.  He switched it on and held it up to Private Hurst.  The needle on the meter jumped up to 75%, which was optimal.  Any higher would be unstable.  “Perfect,” Trevor said, trying to keep his excitement under control.  “I’m going to take a blood sample.”

            An assistant stood at a medical cart nearby, and Trevor waved him over to take the sample.  As the lab tech tied the rubber tourniquet around Private Hurst’s arm, Trevor scribbled some notes on his chart.  Five hours since initial energy burst, and he seemed to be doing fine!  This might be success at last!

            “Uh,” the lab tech said.  “Dr. Sinclair?”

            Trevor looked over at the lab tech with Private Hurst.  “Yes?”

            “I’m having trouble getting a blood sample.”

            “Can’t find a good vein?”

            “No, sir, his veins are beautiful.  I wish every patient had ones like them.”

            Trevor came over to get a closer look.  “What seems to be the problem, then?”

            “Watch.”  The lab tech took the needle and poked the soldier’s bulging vein.  Instead of piercing the flesh, however, it dimpled the skin, pushing it down without breaking it.

            “Has it gone dull?” Trevor asked, taking the needle from lab tech.

            “I don’t think so, Doctor,” the tech answered.  Trevor examined the tip of the steel needle.  It appeared sharp.  He touched it to his fingertip, and a bead of blood immediately formed where his skin had been pricked.

            Trevor looked back at the soldier, and his eyes grew wide.  “Does it hurt when he tries to take blood?” he asked.

            “No, sir,” Private Hurst said.  “I can feel him poking me, but there’s no pain.”

            Trevor took the soldier by the wrist and pressed the point of the needle to his arm again.  He got the same dimpling of the skin without piercing it.  He increased the pressure, pushing the needle into his arm with enough force that the skin should be tearing and causing a lot of pain.

            “Still no pain,” Private Hurst said.

            “Oh, wow,” Trevor said.  “The drug is more effective than I had even hoped it would be.”  This would require a lot of testing.  A sharp, steel needle couldn’t pierce his skin.  What more could he endure?

            Private Hurst shuddered and put a hand to his stomach.

            “What is it?” Trevor asked.

            “Nothing,” Hurst said.  “I just got woozy for a moment there.”

            Uh-oh.  Trevor felt Private Hurst’s pulse, which was going much too quick.

            “I’m fine,” Hurst said.  “It passed.  I’ll be o—”

            Hurst groaned and fell to his knees.  He hugged his arms to his abdomen as if in severe pain.

            “No,” Trevor said.  “Not again.”  He backed away as half a dozen soldiers who had been standing at the perimeter of the room rushed forward to usher Dr. Sinclair and his team out of the room.  Before they got far, Private Hurst shrieked.

            “You said it wouldn’t hurt!” Hurst screamed.  He was staring at Trevor with murder in his eyes.  The madness had set in.

            A pair of soldiers recognized the look in their comrade’s eyes and leveled their rifles on him.  “Stand down, Private,” Sergeant Starr commanded in a quiet, forceful voice.  There was a blur of barely-registered motion, and Starr’s head exploded.  Bits of bone and gore sprayed in a wide fan, spraying everyone in the room.

            Trevor’s jaw dropped.  That blur of motion had been Private Hurst’s arm.  He’s so fast!  Even in the panic, Trevor was amazed with his creation.

            The small team of scientists and lab technicians bolted for the exit.  Trevor retreated to the door, but didn’t exit.  He had to see this.

            The soldiers opened fire, the roar of their rifles a shock in the enclosed space.  Rifle reports echoed off of the steel walls.  Bullets ricocheted like angry wasps.  At this range, there was no way they were missing their target, but Private Hurst didn’t fall.  He bellowed and attacked the closest soldier.  He moved so fast that a sonic boom shook the room, and he almost appeared to instantly teleport from one point to the other.

            Temporarily deafened by the sonic boom, Trevor wasn’t able to hear the screams of the soldiers as each one was ripped apart by the insane Private Hurst.  It was over in a matter of seconds.  When he was finished, Private Hurst turned to face Trevor.

            Oh, shit, Trevor thought.  He had been watching with a clinical fascination up until this point.  Now, for the first time, he feared that he might not survive this situation.

            Hurst screamed and went to his knees again.  He hunched over, his arms again to his stomach.

            Trevor pulled out the energy meter again and gingerly approached Hurst, staying out of reach.  He held the meter up and the needle registered 100%.  This was going to get messy.

            Hurst screamed again, the shriek drawing out.  Trevor turned and fled out of the room, slamming the heavy steel door behind him.  He could still hear Private Hurst screaming.  Right up until the explosion, that is.

            Chunks of flesh hit the door so hard that it bowed outwards, knocking Trevor to the floor.  He recovered quickly and pulled the door open.  Blood and gore painted the walls, floor, and ceiling.  Fragments of bone littered the room.

            Just like Subjects #2 and #3.

* * *

            Colonel James York sat at his desk.  The security report was on his desk, along with Dr. Sinclair’s report and working notes, and Private Hurst’s file.  Dr. Sinclair stood across the desk from him chattering excitedly about what a step forward this was and how close they were to success.

            “Doctor,” Colonel York interrupted, holding a hand out to stop him.

            Sinclair stopped talking and looked expectantly at the Colonel.

            “Sit down, Dr. Sinclair,” York said.

            Sinclair sat, but on the edge of his seat, as if he was too wound up to relax.

            “We’re scrapping the program,” York said.

            Sinclair sprang to his feet again.  “What!  You can’t do that!  Colonel, we’re so close!  We’ll have your super soldiers with the next batch!”

            “That’s what you said after Private Williamson exploded,” York said.  “Four men have died for this project so far.  Good men.  Good soldiers.”

            “We knew there would be risks going into this.”

            “Doctor, I just got off the phone with a kind married couple explaining to them that there’s not even a body left to send them after their son died in a training accident.  Do you think the risk was worth it to them?”

            “It’s worth the risk to us, Colonel!  We can’t expect civilians to understand that we’re working for the greater good here!”

            “I won’t sacrifice the lives of any more Americans for your pipe dream, Doctor.”

            “Pipe dream?  York, Private Hurst was bulletproof!”

            “And then he exploded.  What good is being bulletproof if you’re nothing but ground meat a few minutes later?”

            “It was five hours, not a few minutes.”

            “Oh, well, that’s much better, isn’t it?”

            “Colonel, you are making a mistake here.  The next test subject will not only survive, but he’ll be an unstoppable one-man army.”

            “Which brings me to my next point,” Colonel York said and tapped Sinclair’s report.  “By your own admission, Hurst was far stronger and faster than you had predicted.”

            “Yes,” Sinclair said.  “I thought you would have liked that.”

            “I don’t like the idea of giving someone so much power.  I don’t want my soldiers to be uncontrollable.”

            This gave Dr. Sinclair pause.  After a moment, he spoke again.  “I’m sure I can come up with some way to control them.  Some sort of implant, maybe, or—”

            “Doctor, the decision has been made.”

            “But—”

            “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.”

            Sinclair’s jaw tightened stubbornly, but he turned and left the room.  The door slammed behind him.

            Colonel York removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.  This day had gone completely fubar long ago.

* * *

            Trevor paced around his lab.  He knew how the Army worked.  One of two things was going to happen before the day was out: his computer, papers, and the drug itself would be destroyed, or it would all be taken into custody and locked away for future consideration.  Either way, they’d be taking Trevor’s life work away from him.  He couldn’t let that happen.

            He hurried to his laptop and packed it into its carrying case, along with the hard copies of each of the four test subjects’ files.  He glanced over his shoulder at the camera that was watching him.  He’d have to hurry.

            Two corked vials filled with an amber liquid rested in a rack on one of the lab tables.  One was marked 5, the other 6.  He retrieved them and packed them in a foam-lined steel case, which he tucked in the front pocket of the computer’s case.  He slung it over his shoulder and returned to his desk as he fished his keys out of his pocket.  He unlocked the top drawer and pulled out a 9mm pistol.

            “Dr. Sinclair,” someone spoke behind him.  Trevor put the hand with the pistol into the large pocket of his lab coat and then turned to face the pair of MPs.  “We can’t let you take those.

            Trevor didn’t speak.  He stood there watching the MPs enter the room.  His palms began to sweat.  As an officer, he was trained in the use of firearms, but as a scientist instead of fighter, he had never shot a person before.

            “Give us the case, Lieutenant Sinclair,” the MP said.

            My life’s work.  Trevor withdrew the pistol from his pocket and fired twice.

PART I: Stormy and Peter

Chapter 1: Last Day

St. Albert, Alberta

            “Dude,” Stormy said.

            Peter grunted.

            “Dude, man!” Stormy urged.

            “Did you just call me Dudeman?”

            “No, I said ‘Dude comma man’”

            “Dudeman would’ve been cooler.”

            “I’ll call you Dudeman next time.”

            “See that you do.”  Smiling, Peter turned back to his physics notes and waited for Stormy to start over again.

            “Dudeman,” Stormy said.

            “Yes, Slogan?”

            “What are we going to do after high school?”

            “Plenty of time to think about that,” Peter said without looking up.

            “Yeah,” Stormy said.  “I guess you’re right.  We have four whole hours.”

            “This physics final is really taking up my preparation quota for the day, Storm.  Gavin’s done all of his finals.  Maybe you should ask him what you guys should do this summer.”

            “Gavin isn’t here.”

            “Why not?”

            “He’s done all of his finals, I hear.”

            “Angela?”

            “She’s writing a final right now.”

            “Lori?”

            “What?” Lori asked as she sat down between the two of them.  Peter turned to her, looked at his notes, and then closed them.  “I’m not getting anymore studying done, am I?”

            “Cramming isn’t an effective study method, anyway,” Lori said.  “You’re smart; you’ll do fine.  Now what can I do for you?”

            “You’re the one who approached us,” Peter said.  “What can we do for you?”

            “I distinctly heard you say my name as I walked up behind you.”

            “He was asking me why I wasn’t talking to you instead of bothering him,” Stormy explained.

            “An excellent point, Mr. Nesmith,” Lori said and patted Peter on the back.  “Why aren’t you talking to me, Stormy?”

            “I am,” Stormy said.

            “You are now,” Lori corrected.

            “Yes,” Stormy agreed.

            They sat in silence for a moment, Lori looking sternly from Stormy to Peter as they returned equally stern faces to her.  Stormy was the first to break, his laugh forcing itself out between his pursed lips in a spray of spittle onto the cafeteria table.  Lori and Peter joined Stormy in boisterous laughter that echoed around the nearly deserted cafeteria.  It was the last day of classes at Bellerose Composite High School, and most students were either writing exams or not at school.

            “You’re lucky you turned your head before doing that, or you and I wouldn’t be friends anymore,” Lori said.

            “Balderdash!” Stormy scoffed.  Peter barked a single loud laugh at this, then covered his mouth and chuckled quietly into his hand as he muttered, “Balderdash!”

            “You wouldn’t throw away a life-long friendship over a little accidental spit to the face,” Stormy continued as Peter chortled discreetly.

            Lori put an arm around Stormy’s shoulder and leaned close to him.  “Let’s not test that theory, Stormy D.”  She slapped his shoulder and turned to Peter, who was eyeing the arm that Lori was slipping off of Stormy’s shoulders with a touch of disapproval.  Lori shook her head once, almost imperceptibly, and Peter relaxed.

            “When’s Angela done her exam,” Lori asked Stormy.

            Stormy glanced at a clock, which read 10:56 AM, and shrugged.  “She has until noon, but she could really be done any minute now.”

            “Do you guys have any big anniversary plans?” Lori asked.

            Peter scoffed.  “They aren’t married, Lori.”

            “No, but they’ve been dating for a year.  That’s a big deal.  Especially for teenagers.”

            “No big plans yet,” Stormy said.  “We still have a few weeks.  We’ve been worrying about the end of school before thinking about our anniversary, which reminds me how this whole conversation started.”

            “How’s that?” Lori asked.

            “Dudeman,” Peter answered.

            “Of course,” Lori said.

            “I was asking Peter here what we should do once school’s out.  To celebrate, that is.”

            “Graduation wasn’t celebration enough for you?”

            “Not really,” Stormy said.  “That was everybody.  I want something that’s just the five of us.”

            “Can I bring beer?” Peter asked.

            “If you don’t mind drinking alone,” Lori said.

            “Silly Mormons,” Peter chastised.  “There’s a difference between drinking alone and being the only one drinking.  You guys are the best friends a guy could have; you’re permanent designated drivers.”

            “So it’s agreed, then,” Stormy said.  “We’re celebrating graduation by getting Peter drunk and driving him around.”

            “Awesome.”  Peter held a hand up and Stormy smacked him a high five over Lori’s head.

            “Cool,” Lori said.  “My first Eiffel Tower.”

            Peter bent over laughing.  Stormy eyed him curiously and said, “I don’t get it.”  This just made Peter laugh harder.

            “Come on, Lori, what’s so funny about the Eiffel Tower?” Stormy asked.

            Lori patted Stormy’s cheek.  “I won’t be the one who spoils your innocent mind, Stormy D.”

            “No, you have to tell me now.  If it gets this kind of a reaction out of Peter, I need to know what you’re talking about.  You can’t do this to me.”

            Wiping tears from his eyes, Peter said, “A joke isn’t funny if it needs to be explained.

            “But—”

            “There you are,” someone said from across the room.  They all turned and saw Angela Erikson approaching them.  Stormy stood up and gave her a hug as she arrived.

            “How’d it go?” Stormy asked.

            “Meh,” Angela shrugged.  “Social Studies has never been my strong point.  I’m just glad that it’s over.  What should we do now that school’s out?”

            “Hey, school isn’t done for all of us yet,” Peter objected.

            “Don’t worry, Pete, it’s not like we’re going to jam every fun summer activity into the three hours that you’re writing your last exam,” Angela said.  “We can wait.”

            “No, hold on a second, Ange,” Stormy said.  “You might be on to something there.”

            “On to what?” Angela asked.

            “If we jammed every fun summer activity into three hours, it just might be the most intense, amazing three hours of our lives,” Stormy explained.

            “And we wouldn’t have to deal with Peter’s beer breath,” Lori added.

            Peter sighed dramatically.  “I can tell when I’m not wanted.  Go.  Have your Mormony fun.  I’ll find some of my fellow Catholics to hang out with.”

            “Oh, Peter,” Angela said.  “You know you’re the life of the party.  We wouldn’t dare have fun without you.”

            “We haven’t been to West Edmonton Mall in a while,” Lori said.  “Maybe we should go spend a day there.”

            “Yeah, that could be fun,” Stormy said.  “We could go to Galaxy Land, the water park, do some shopping, and maybe watch a movie in the evening.”

            “Just as long as it’s not on a weekend,” Peter said.  “I hate the weekend crowds, especially in summer.”

            “Sure,” Stormy said.  “Ange?  Sound good to you?”

            “Yeah, I’m game,” Angela answered.  “Just set a date.”

            “I’ll talk it over with Gavin later.”

Chapter 2: Stormy and Angela

            Once Peter went to write his exam, Stormy and Angela decided to be on their way.  They bid good-bye to Lori, who needed to drive to W.D Cutts Junior High to pick up her younger brother and sister, and walked home to Stormy’s house.

            “Hard to believe it’s finally over,” Angela said as they walked hand-in-hand along Deer Ridge Drive.

            “It was a long 13 years,” Stormy said.  “I’m not sure what to do with myself now.”

            “Have you made a decision about university yet?” Angela asked.

            Stormy nodded slowly.  “I think so,” he said.

            “And?”

            “I’m going to work until I’m 19.  Then I’ll send off my papers and be a missionary.  When I come back, I’ll go to university.  Hopefully, I’ll have thought of what I want to do for a career by then.”

            “You won’t forget about me while you’re off handing out Books of Mormon to people in Japan, or France, or wherever you end up going, will you?”

            Stormy smirked.  “With my luck, I’ll probably end up going someplace exotic like Calgary, or maybe Regina.”

            “That didn’t answer my question, Stormy.”  Angela poked him in the ribs.

            “Of course I won’t forget you,” Stormy said and wrapped an arm around her waist.  “I’m worried that you’ll forget about me.”

            “Mr. Logan, I am insulted!”  Angela feigned offense and pulled away from Stormy.  “Do you think me so fickle that I’ll forget about you the first time a suitor declares his intent?”

            “I have a hard enough time beating the guys back while I’m here with you,” Stormy said.  “Once I’m gone, every available guy in the Edmonton area is going to be drooling over my blonde goddess.  And it won’t help that you’ll be going to church at a singles ward.”

            “You’ll be there with me for a year,” Angela said.  “At least that’ll give you ample time to mark your territory.”

            “For the last time, Angela, I’m not going to pee on you.”

            Angela laughed, and they held hands again.  They walked in comfortable silence for a moment, and then Angela spoke again.  “I know going on a mission is the right thing for you to do,” she said, “but there’s part of me that wants you to just stay home and marry me.”

            Stormy smiled and squeezed her hand.  “I’ve had the same thought,” he said.  “I love you, Angela, and I do want to marry you someday.  The mission needs to come first though.  Besides, we’re too young to get married.  We just now, this morning, finished high school.”

            Angela turned and walked in front of Stormy, facing him so that she was walking backwards.  She clasped her hands together behind his neck.  “I know we’re young,” she said.  “And I know you need to go on a mission.  The reason I want to get married right away is, well…”  She moved closer to him, her face just a few inches from his.  “I’ve never had trouble abstaining from alcohol and tobacco.  I’m pretty good about not swearing too much.”  She moved even closer, their bodies pressed together.  Stormy stopped walking and started to feel breathless.  “The hardest rule for me to follow is the Law of Chastity.  Stormy Daryl Logan.  I.  Want.  Y—”

            “Ahem.”

            Angela pulled away from Stormy and spun around.  Stormy conspicuously kept Angela standing in front of him to avoid embarrassment.

            “Am I interrupting anything?”  Stormy’s older sister Pam stood at the door of her car with her arms folded and all of her weight shifted to one foot.  Stormy had been so distracted that he hadn’t even noticed that they had arrived at his home.

            “Nope,” Stormy said.  “We were just talking.”

            “Yeah, I’ve seen that kind of talking before,” Pam said.  “I’m heading to work.  You two behave.  Mom’s home, so don’t get any ideas.”

            “Knock it off, Pam,” Stormy said.  He glanced down and decided that it would now be safe to stand beside Angela instead of behind her.  “We were just fooling around.”

            “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Pam said with a hint of a smile.  She opened her car door and climbed inside.  “Don’t let him take advantage of you, Angela.”  With a wink, she pulled the door closed and started her car.

            “Sorry,” Angela said and giggled as Stormy led her to the front door.

            “It’s fine,” Stormy said.  “I’m just glad it wasn’t one of my parents who found us.”

Chapter 3: Nerds

            Stormy dialed Gavin’s cell number and waited.  Someone picked up after the third ring.

            “Hello?” a woman answered.

            “Uh, hi,” Stormy said.  “Sister McLeod?”  Instead of calling each other “mister” and “missus,” Mormons used the terms “brother” and “sister.”

            “Hi, Stormy,” Gavin’s mother said.  “You looking for Gavin?”

            “Yeah, is he around?”

            “Yup.  Let me just see if I can pull him away from that computer game.”

            “Is he playing World of Warcraft again?”

            “What else?” Sister McLeod sighed.  “He stopped for a week before finals, but he’s back at it.  Thank goodness he has you kids to keep him occupied in the real world.  Hold on, here he is.”

            Stormy heard some talk in the background between Gavin and his mother, and then Gavin said in the phone, “Hello?”

            “Hey, Gav,” Stormy said.  “You have your mom answering your phone for you now?”

            “Nah,” Gavin said.  “I just forgot it in my backpack.  I guess she heard it ringing and answered when she saw it was you.”

            “Playing WoW again, I hear.”

            “Yeah,” Gavin said, clearly sounding guilty.  “I’m a sick man, I know.  You should start playing again.  The guild misses you, man.”

            “I deleted all of my characters,” Stormy said.  “I don’t want to start out from scratch again.  Besides, Angela would kill me.”

            “Where is Ange, anyway?  I figured you’d be with her tonight celebrating your freedom from high school.”

            “She just left,” Stormy explained.  “She had dinner with me and my parents, but then she had to go.  Her brother’s visiting from Utah, and she’s going out to a movie with him tonight.  But it’s funny that you should mention celebrating our freedom.”

            “Oh?  How’s that?”

            “We’ve planned to spend a day at West Ed.”

            “Who’s ‘we’?”

            “All of us,” Stormy said.  “Peter, Angela, Lori, you, and me.”

            “Ah,” Gavin said.  “The original cast.  Plus Angela, of course.”

            “Who else?” Stormy asked.  “Do we have any other real friends?”

            “I don’t know about you, but I have over 500 friends on Facebook,” Gavin said.

            “Exactly.”

            “You and Peter have other friends, don’t you?”

            “Kind of,” Stormy waved his hand in a “so-so” gesture even though he knew Gavin couldn’t see it.  “Friendly acquaintances, really.”

            “What about your basketball teammates?”

            “They’re some fine, young gentlemen, but I wouldn’t really call them my friends.  Peter might like them more, but no, they’re not guys that I’d want to spend a day with at West Ed.”

            “That’s my boy,” Gavin said.  “Stay true to your geek roots!  Just because you’re a jock doesn’t mean you have to be a jock.”

            “The fact that I know what you’re talking about just shows that I know you too well.”

            “So when were we planning this outing?”

            “Does tomorrow work for you?”

            “I think I can have my secretary clear my schedule for you guys.”

            “It’s done, then,” Stormy declared.  “We’ll pick you up around 11:00 tomorrow morning.”

            “Sounds good,” Gavin said.

            “And, Gavin?”

            “Yeah?”

            “It’ll be a videogame-free day.”

            “I suppose I can forgo for the day.  I demand a trip to the comic book store, though, to make up for it.”

            “A shopping trip isn’t a shopping trip without visiting a comic book store,” Stormy agreed.

            After bidding so long to Gavin, Stormy reclined on his bed with his hands under his head.  He smiled up at the ceiling while posters of Superman, Spiderman, and Weezer stared down at him.  A photo of Angela smiled at him from his night table.  He was unsure of his future with only vague plans in place, but he couldn’t have been happier with the present.  If he could make a career out of hanging out with his friends, he’d be a made man.

Chapter 4: Jocks

Peter walked along Deer Ridge Drive with a basketball in the crook of his arm.  It was a hot, dry, sunny morning two hours before he and his friends planned to go to the mall.  Plenty of time to kick Stormy’s ass at basketball.

            He looked forward to the time he had to spend alone with Stormy.  Although he thought Angela was okay, Peter had found himself resenting her lately for taking up most of his best friend’s time.  Peter and Stormy had been inseparable since kindergarten, although they had started off on the wrong foot.  They had wanted to play with the same toy car, and it had come to blows.  However, their bitter rivalry didn’t take long to develop into a friendship.

            Maybe I should get a girlfriend, too, Peter figured.  It would give him something to do while Stormy was with Angela.  But who could be his girlfriend?  He knew a lot of girls that he was attracted to, but he didn’t want to steadily date any of them.  The only girls he really liked to hang out with were Lori and Angela.  He couldn’t date Angela for obvious reasons, and dating Lori would be like dating his sister.

            Might as well just forget about it.  While a girlfriend might be good for some kicks, he didn’t really feel the need for one.  Peter wasn’t like Stormy; he didn’t long for romance.  He was content with being single.  Hell, he was only 18 and just barely out of high school.  Besides, boredom wasn’t a good reason for romance.

            As he walked up Stormy’s driveway, he shot the ball at the net above the garage door.  It hit the side of the rim and bounced into a bush.  “Shit,” Peter muttered as he retrieved the ball.  Hopefully, no one saw that.  Missing a free throw always made him feel like a jackass.  It was almost as bad as missing an empty net in hockey.

            Peter pressed the doorbell with his ball and waited.  Pam answered the door, and Peter realized that maybe there was a girl that he was interested in after all.  Growing up, he had always admired Stormy’s older sister from afar.  She was a very beautiful woman, and she had, in the past two years, acquired the allure of an older college girl.  Peter wouldn’t make a move, though.  Too many complications.  For one thing, Peter was just the friend of her little brother.  What interest could she have in him?  Then there was the religion thing.  For Peter, it wasn’t an issue, but Pam was a 20-year-old Mormon girl with marriage on her mind.  Most Mormons liked to marry within their religion.  Besides, things would probably get strange with Stormy if Peter dated his sister.

            “Hey, Pete,” Pam said.  “Come on in.”

            “Thanks,” Peter said and stepped over the threshold.

            “Stormy!” Pam called up the stairs.  “Peter’s here.”

            “Yeah, I’m coming!” Stormy yelled back.  “Just a minute!”

            Satisfied that her message was received and acknowledged, Pam turned back to Peter with a wink and a smile.  “He’s just prettying himself up.”

            Peter basked in her attention.  He wandered if she realized the effect her smile had on him, especially when coupled with that saucy wink.  Outwardly, though, he remained cool.  “He likes to lose in style, I suppose,” Peter said.

            Pam chuckled.  It was a lovely sound.  “Just don’t humiliate him so much that he never invites you back, Petey.”  And, again, she winked at him.  She turned and walked towards the back of the house.

            Now, what exactly did she mean by that?  Was she flirting?  It was probably nothing.  Was it?

            She’s Stormy’s sister.  She’s Stormy’s sister.  Oh, why does she have to be my best friend’s sister?

            Stormy came running down the stairs in a T-shirt, shorts, and his basketball shoes.  “Let’s go,” he said.

*  *  *

            Peter deked around Stormy and did a lay-up.  The ball bounced off the backboard and went through the hoop.  “11 to 9,” he said.  “That’s game.”

            Stormy bent forward with his hands on his knees catching his breath.  Peter wiped sweat from his forehead with his shirt as he waited for Stormy’s inevitable challenge.

            “Best out of three,” Stormy said between pants.

            Peter lobbed the ball at Stormy, who stood up straight to catch it.  “Loser gets possession.”

            “Let’s take a minute to catch our breath,” Stormy said.

            “Oh, are you tired?”

            “Shut up.  You’re looking pretty red in the face yourself.”

            “I’m just getting warmed up.  It’s a healthy glow.”

            “This is healthy breathing.”

            “Whatever you say, Storm Drain.”

            “Oh!  Oh!  You are going to pay for that, Mrs. Nesmith.”

“I love how your running insult for me is an obscure reference to a kids’ movie from 1995.”

Stormy dribbled the ball to the end of the driveway.  Peter followed.  They stood a few feet apart facing each other.  “Ready?” Stormy asked.

            “For you?  Always.”

            Stormy started forward, dribbling the ball with his left hand to keep the ball far from Peter.  Back-pedalling, Peter stayed with him.  Suddenly, though, Stormy took a step backwards and made a jump shot with his right hand.  The ball dropped through the net without hitting the rim.

            “Damn, I love that swish sound!”  Stormy relished his early lead.  Peter was determined that it would be a temporary lead.

            “Gavin’s playing World of Warcraft again,” Stormy said as Peter carried the ball to the end of the driveway.

            “You mean he actually stopped?”

            “Briefly.  For a week or so.”

            Peter brought the ball into play.  He wasted no time evening the score.

            “You two and your video games.”  Peter shook his head as Stormy retrieved the ball.

            “Hey, I quit WoW.”

            “How about Rock Band?  Or Fallout?  Call of Duty?”

            “Those aren’t nearly as addictive as Warcraft.”

            Stormy dashed around Peter and headed unimpeded for the net.

            “Pam’s hot,” Peter said.

            Stormy lost control of the ball just as he went for a lay-up.  It sailed wide of the backboard while Stormy sailed into the garage door.

            Although Peter was laughing, he still snatched the ball before it went out of bounds and put it in the basket before Stormy recovered from his collision.

            “2 to 1,” he said.

            “What did you say about my sister?”

            “It was just a tactic.  Threw you off, didn’t it?  I’m winning.”  He picked up the rolling ball and tossed it to Stormy.

            “Okay,” Stormy said.  “I see your strategy.  It won’t work anymore now that I’m on to you.”

            “No, I don’t suppose it will.”

            Stormy started playing again.  “Strategy or not,” Peter said as he tried to stay between Stormy and the net, “Pam is hot.”

            Stormy faltered enough for Peter to steal the ball and score.

            “3 to 1.”

*  *  *

            Ten minutes later, Peter and Stormy sat on the front step catching their breath.  “I almost had you,” Stormy said.  The final score had been 11-8 for Peter.

            “Nah, I just let you have your five-point scoring streak because I felt bad for playing cheap,” Peter said.

            “I don’t believe that for a second.”

            Peter smiled.  He was going to miss Stormy’s company next year.  Why did Mormons go on missions at such a young age?  19-year-old men should be having fun and going to university, not going door-to-door sharing a special message about Christ.

            “Who’ll play basketball with me when you’re gone, Stormy?”

            “There’s plenty of time to figure that one out.  I’ll be around for another year at least.”

            “The years seem to be going by a lot quicker as we get older.”

            Stormy smiled.  “Do you ever wish that we were still seven years old and listening to ‘Surf City’ over and over again?”

            “Dude, that song kicks ass.”

            They were both silent for a moment.  Peter smiled as he reflected on the good years he had had with Stormy.  Who was he going to hang out with while he was gone?  What would Stormy be like when he got back?  Would they ever be as close as they were now?

            Stormy broke the silence.  “Come on,” he said and stood up.  “Best out of five.”

Chapter 5: Subjects Five and Six

            Sneaking over the Canadian border had been ridiculously easy.  Keeping mainly to back roads to avoid the police, Trevor had driven to Glacier National Park in Montana, where he had abandoned his car and hiked across the border into Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta.  A short hike and a stolen car later, and he had been on the road again.

            The stolen car had been a risk, but he hadn’t seen any way around it.  He wanted to get as far north as possible.  His car was sure to have been found in Glacier National Park.  Whoever they had tracking him down would put the abandoned car together with the stolen car just across the international border and know what Trevor was driving.

            Sure enough, when Trevor found himself in the city of Edmonton, he noticed a car trailing him.  Since he was no longer in the States, the government couldn’t send regular police after him.  This would be a covert agent.  CIA, or maybe NSA.  They would want to be discreet.

            Trevor saw a sign at the side of the road informing him to exit on the Whitemud Freeway to get to West Edmonton Mall.  He had heard of the mall before.  It was the largest mall in the world.  Or was the Mall of America bigger now?  He wasn’t sure.  Either way, there would be a lot of people there.  He took the Whitemud exit and headed west.

* * *

            The cup slurped as Stormy emptied it through his straw.  He set it down on his tray next to the empty food wrappers and looked up at the group.  “What’s next?” he asked.  “Water park?”

            “You have to wait an hour after eating to go swimming,” Angela said.

            “I thought that was an old wives’ tale,” Peter said.

            “Forget about cramps,” Gavin said.  “I can deal with cramps.  I just want to recover from that stupid rollercoaster that you dragged me on five times before I go on any water slides.”  He glared at Stormy as he said this.  Stormy smiled.  He loved rollercoasters, and he loved dragging his friends on them.  He always sat in the front car if it was available.  Part of it was because he loved the rush.  As a child, he had wanted to be a fighter pilot, and a rollercoaster was probably as close as he would get to that.  Part of it, though, was just because he knew how much Gavin hated rollercoasters.

            “We can take it easy, Gav,” Lori said.  “We’ll get some inner tubes and just float on the pool.”

            “Yeah, that’ll be nice, won’t it, Lord McClobber?” Peter suggested, using the name of Gavin’s main Warcraft character.

            “Yeah,” Gavin said.  “It’ll be nice until they turn the waves on and I get sea sick.  My stomach is seriously on edge right now.”

            “You’ll be fine,” Angela said and squeezed Gavin’s should.  “We’ll walk slowly to the water park.  It’s on the other side of the mall, after all.  Your stomach should settle by then.”

            Gavin reluctantly agreed, and they stood up to leave the food court.  “Just think of all the girls who will be there,” Stormy told Gavin as he dumped his trash in a trash can.  “Heck, you’ll be hanging out with the two best-looking girls in the building!”

            It was subtle, but Stormy saw Gavin perk up at the thought.  There was a slight turning up at the corners of his mouth, and a low spark in his eyes.  He wouldn’t be Gavin without pointing out the downside, though: “One of those girls is dating you, and the other has been like a sister to me for as long as I can remember.”

            “There’ll be plenty more hot girls there for you to ogle,” Peter said.  “Don’t worry; I’ll be your wingman.”

            “You don’t need a wingman for ogling girls,” Lori said.

            “Who knows?” Peter said.  “Maybe we’ll muster up the courage to actually talk to one or two.”

* * *

            Trevor parked in a handicapped spot just outside of one of the main entrances of the mall.  There weren’t any other spots that were even remotely close to a door, and he wanted to get inside among the crowds before his pursuer could apprehend him.

            The person tailing him parked farther away.  Trevor waited just outside the door until the driver of the car got out.  It was a man, maybe 30 years old, tall and broad with dark stubble on his head.  He wore a light summer jacket.  On an early afternoon in June that was at least 85 degrees, the jacket screamed “concealed weapon.”  He looked around, doing a decent job to act nonchalant.  His eyes seemed to fall everywhere except for directly on Trevor.

            Turning to the entrance, Trevor pulled the door open and slipped inside.  He had to hurry.

            A welcome sight met Trevor inside: a mass of people swarmed through the wide corridors of the mall.  There were thousands of people in here.  That would make it easier to get lost.  He slipped into the crowd, moving quickly but not running.  Attracting suspicion from mall security would not help his cause.

* * *

            Stormy bobbed up and down on a large inner tube in the wave pool.  His arm was wrapped around Angela’s shoulders as she lay beside him with her arm draped over his chest.  Gavin floated nearby, his eyes closed as the sun beat down on them through the glass dome roof.  Peter and Lori had gone over to the waterslides.

            “If you want to join them on the slides, I won’t mind,” Stormy said.  “I have Gavin to keep me warm.”

            “In your dreams, Storm,” Gavin mumbled.

            “I want to stay here with you,” Angela said as she ran her fingers through his chest hair.  She had tried to convince him to wax or shave his chest the summer before, but Stormy had never consented.  She had eventually gotten used to it.  The back hair, however, was a different story.  Telling her that it was nothing compared to what he would probably have later in life, assuming he continued to take after his father, did nothing to make her feel better about it.

            Stormy kissed her on the forehead.  “Good,” he said.  “Gavin is all bones and sharp edges.  You’re soft and curvy.  Besides, waterslides and I don’t see eye-to-eye.”

            “What is about you and waterslides, anyway?” Angela asked.  “Are you afraid of them?”

            “No,” Stormy said.  “Well, maybe I’m afraid of that one.”  He pointed to the high, steep waterslide as someone shot down it at breakneck speed, sending up large fans of water.  “The rest of them, I stick to.”

            “You stick to them?”

            “Yeah, it’s really quite odd.  I don’t slide on waterslides.  It’s like I’m Spiderman, or something.”

            “Spiderman can’t stick to things with his back,” Gavin said.  “Not since his deal with Mephisto to erase his marriage with Mary Jane from existence.”

            “I’m talking post-Other, pre-One More Day Spiderman here,” Stormy answered.  “Spiderman when he had biological webbing, stingers, and a stronger spider-sense.’

            Angela snapped her fingers in front of Stormy’s face.  “Come back to me, sweetie.”

            “Sorry, Angie, you know how we get some—”

            “Wait,” Angela said.  “How would erasing his marriage take away his ability to stick to things with his back?”

            “It changed several other decisions and incidences in his life,” Gavin explained.

            “But—”

            Stormy snapped his fingers in front of Angela’s face.  “Come back to me, sweetie.”

            “Oh, my gosh, Stormy, what have you done to me?” Angela asked as she gave Stormy a cute glare.

            Stormy grinned.  “You’ll be as big a comic book nerd as I am soon enough.”

* * *

            Lori stood in line behind Peter gazing towards the pool where she could see Angela draping herself over Stormy.  She sighed and turned her attention back ahead of her to find Peter looking down at her sympathetically.

            “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Pete,” she scolded.

            “I told you for years to make a move,” Peter said. 

            “And you’ve been telling me that for a year now.  Do you honestly think he would have responded favourably to a move?  You boys are always telling me how much I’m like a sister to you.”

            “Have you ever heard Stormy say that?”

            Lori didn’t answer.  She just folded her arms and scowled.

            “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Peter said.

            “You’re his best friend,” Lori said.  “How many times has he told you that he’d like to date me?”

            It was Peter’s turn not to answer.

            “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Lori said.

            “True, he never told me that he has a thing for you,” Peter said.  “But he once told me that you’re too hot for him to think of you as his sister.”

            Lori rolled her eyes even as she tried to ignore the flutter in her stomach at Peter’s words.

            “Besides,” Peter continued, “guys will often not talk about the girls that they really like.”

            “That’s hardly proof,” Lori said.  “Not like it matters anymore, anyway.  He’s happy with Angela.”

            “Maybe he’d dump Angela in favour of you if you ever made a move.”

            “I couldn’t do that to Angela.  Not now.  I genuinely like her.  She’s not just Stormy’s girlfriend; she’s my friend.  Another girl is something this circle of friends has been missing since we were five.”

            Peter was silent, but Lori could see him trying to think up his next argument.  She hated it when he got on this subject.  Before Angela had moved to town and caught Stormy’s eye, Peter would occasionally advise Lori to act on her decade-long crush on Stormy.  However, about a month after Stormy started dating Angela, Peter’s urgings for Lori to make a move became more frequent.  He always claimed that it was because he felt sorry for Lori and that he wanted to see them together.  She believed that this was part of the reason for his interest in his two best friends dating each other, but she knew Peter well enough to know the real reason.  Peter never really did like Angela.  Lori had called him on it once, and he had brushed it off by saying that their personalities just weren’t a good match.  Lori thought that the biggest problem he had with her, the problem that he had never admitted to anyone, was that Angela took up most of Stormy’s time.

            “Maybe if you—” Peter began, but Lori cut him off.

            “Enough, Peter,” she said.  “I know you don’t like Angela, but have you seen the way Stormy looks at her?”

            Peter didn’t say anything, but Lori could read on his face that he knew the look she was talking about.

            “I bet you fifty bucks that they get engaged before Stormy goes on a mission,” Lori said, “and that they’ll be married within two months of him getting home.”

            “They’re only 18, Lori.”

            “Pete, you do not know Mormons like I do.”

            “No, but I know Stormy like you do.”

            “It’s your turn.”  Lori motioned at the awaiting waterslide.

            “I’ll take that bet, by the way,” Peter said.

            “Go down the hole, boy!”  Lori gave him a shove, and Peter finally turned and dove head-first down the slide.

* * *

            Trevor needed some test subjects.  With his pursuer closing in on him like this, he could be captured soon.  He needed to administer the drug even if he wasn’t around to directly observe the results.  He would hear about the results on the news, he was sure, whether it was a success or a failure.

            It won’t be a failure.  It’ll work this time.  Both of them will.  He adjusted the pack on his back once more, feeling the weight of its contents.

            The problem now was choosing his subjects.  They had to be men, first of all.  The genetic changes were linked to the Y chromosome, and the initial phase of the drug required large amounts of testosterone.  It couldn’t just be any two men at random.  Colonel York was right about one thing: the enhanced strength and speed in the wrong hands would be catastrophic. 

            In his wanderings through the mall, Trevor found himself standing in front of a huge glass wall looking in on a water park.  A wave pool undulated with small children splashing in the shallow end, and older children and adults floating in the deeper parts.  A tower rose at the deepest end of the pool that was used for bungee jumping, but which was not currently in use.  To Trevor’s left, a twisting mass of waterslides of various heights emptied into various small pools at ground level.  Looking for inspiration, he watched the people.

* * *

            “You know why he sticks to waterslides, don’t you?” Peter asked as the five of them met on the other side of the change rooms.  They were now dry, fully-dressed, and ready for the next activity together.

            “Of course,” Angela said.  “He’s post-Other pre-One More Day Spiderman.”

            “I have no idea what that means,” Peter said.  “But you’re dead wrong.”

            “Enlighten us,” Stormy said.  He couldn’t wait to hear Peter’s reasoning.

            “It’s the hairy back,” Peter explained.  “It acts like Velcro, sticking to all of the minor imperfections in the surface of the slide.”

            “Of course,” Stormy said.  “It makes perfect sense.”

            “We should pitch the idea to Marvel or DC,” Gavin said.  “Velcro-Man.”

            “I like it,” Angela said and rubbed Stormy’s back.

            “You guys are just jealous that you’ll never feel the pleasure of the wind blowing through your back hair,” Stormy said.

            “He’s right,” Lori said.  “Every night I cry myself to sleep just thinking about it.”

            They walked up the stairs that took them out to the main level.  Stormy glanced over at the glass wall overlooking the water park, and something caught his eye.

            “Hey,” he said and tapped Peter on the arm.  “What’s going on over there?”

            Peter looked in the direction that Peter was pointing.  A man was near the glass talking to a pretty girl who was maybe 16 years old.  The man himself, dressed in dirty jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt, and wearing a faded green backpack, was at least 45 years old.  His thin salt-and-pepper hair was short and well-kept, but it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week.  Normally, Stormy would assume they were father and daughter, if not for two things: the man was white while the girl was Asian, and she looked very uncomfortable.

            “You think backpack dude is up to no good?” Peter asked.  “Maybe a pervert?”

            “Maybe,” Stormy said.  “Whatever’s going on, it doesn’t look like the girl’s enjoying herself.”

            “I said you’re coming with me, sweetheart!” the man said in a raised voice.  He grabbed her by the upper arm, and she yelped in surprise.

            “Let go!” the girl shrieked.  “You’re hurting me!”

            As Stormy and Peter started walking towards the man and the girl, Gavin jogged in a different direction.  “I’m getting security,” Gavin said.

            “Good,” Peter said.  “Girls, go with him.”

            Angela trotted after Gavin.  She glanced apprehensively over her shoulder as she went.  “Don’t do anything rash, guys,” she said.

            “We’ll be fine,” Stormy said.  Still moving forward, he spared a glance at Lori, who was coming along with him and Peter.  He knew better than to try to talk her out of coming.

            “Hey!” Peter called as they got close.  The girl was struggling to get away from the man, but he was much larger than she was.  He may have been middle-aged, but he was in good shape.

            The man looked at Peter.  The expression on his face wasn’t what Stormy was expecting.  He figured the guy would be angry to have someone interfering in whatever it was he was trying to do.  Instead, the guy looked calm.  Almost even relieved.

            “What’s going on here?” Stormy asked the frightened girl.

            “I don’t know this guy!” the girl said.  “He’s trying to kidnap me!”

            “I think you better let go of her,” Peter said.

            “Of course,” the man said and released the girl’s arm.  She immediately ran.  Lori went after to her to make sure she was okay and to keep her close by to give a statement when security arrived.

            Well, that was easy, Stormy thought.

            “You two seem like good guys,” the man said as he shrugged his backpack off.

            “Um…thanks?” Peter said.  All of the confidence he had on the way over to help was wavering at the unexpected reaction from the man.  Stormy didn’t blame him; this wasn’t going at all how he had pictured.

            The man opened his backpack and reached inside.  “Now, I need you boys to remain calm,” he said.  “I was hoping to find some decent people, and you seem like just the type.”  He pulled his hand out of the pack, revealing the pistol that it had been concealing.  “I need the both of you to come with me.”

            Stormy heard Lori gasp from somewhere behind him as he found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.  A moment later, the other girl must have spotted the gun, because she screamed and ran off, her scream fading quickly as she bolted.  Under different circumstances, Stormy might have found it funny.

            Stormy felt a brief spark of anger.  It felt like the start of a hot rage that he so rarely experienced.  But then, as quickly as it had come, the spark was extinguished, and Stormy felt nothing.  It was an odd sensation, almost as if some external force had quashed his anger.  Whatever that force was—some sort of internal survival instinct he didn’t know he had, or maybe even God—it was right.  Anger would only make things worse.

            “Whoa,” Peter said as he held up his hands.  “We’re cool.  Just put the gun away.”  Peter started backing away.

            The man leveled the gun on Peter.  “Stop,” he said.  Peter obeyed.  “Back down the stairs, both of you.  Quickly.”

            Stormy and Peter walked back down the stairs with the gunman close behind them.  To avoid panic, the man stood close behind Stormy with the gun pressed into his back.  He led them into the change room and from there to a private stall.

            “Good,” the man said.  “You guys are doing great.”

            “What do you want?” Peter asked.  “Is this because we didn’t let you take that girl?”

            “I never wanted the girl,” the man said.  “I was just using her as bait.”

            “Bait for what?” Stormy asked.

            “Good men,” the man said.  “I know, it wasn’t the best way, but I’m in a hurry.  There’s a CIA agent in the mall looking for me.”

            Oh boy, Stormy thought.  This guy’s nuts.  We’re in trouble.

            Still holding the gun, the man reached into his pack and pulled out a small steel case.  He set it down on a bench and undid the clasps one-handed.  Inside were two vials filled with amber liquid.

            “What is that?” Peter asked.  Stormy recognized an edge of fear in his voice.

            “It’s my life’s work,” the man said as he pulled two syringes out of his pack.

            “No,” Peter said firmly.  “No way.  You aren’t injecting us with anything.”

            “Sit,” the man demanded and gestured to the bench with his gun.  Still in his weird, emotionless autopilot, Stormy sat immediately.  Peter glared at the man for a moment longer before joining Stormy on the bench.

            “This isn’t what you think,” the man said as he filled the syringes.  “I’m a doctor.  This isn’t a narcotic or some exotic disease.  It won’t hurt you.  Quite the opposite in fact.”

            The man held the first syringe up and tapped it gently with the barrel of his weapon to get any air bubbles out.  Oh, how considerate of him, Stormy thought.  We wouldn’t want to take any risks here.

            “Hold out your arm,” the man told Peter.

            “Fuck you, pal,” Peter said.

            The man lashed out and slammed the butt of the gun against the side of Peter’s head, knocking him to the floor.

            Stormy sprang to his feet, but before he could lunge at the man, he once again aimed the gun at Stormy’s chest.

            “Sit,” the man said.  “He’ll be fine; I didn’t hit him that hard.”

            As Stormy sat, he could see that Peter was still conscious.  Rattled and with blood in his blond hair, but still conscious.  Stormy could only watch as the man leaned over Peter—gun never leaving Stormy’s chest—and jabbed him with the needle.  With a depression of the plunger, the mystery liquid disappeared into Peter’s blood.

            “Sonuvabitch,” Peter muttered.

            “Help him up,” the man said and stood clear of Peter.         

            Peter got one hand onto the bench for support.  Stormy stood and grabbed Peter under his other arm.  Together, they got Peter to his feet.  He wobbled a bit, so Stormy held him steady.

            Something jabbed his arm.

            “Ow!” Stormy exclaimed.  He looked down just in time to see the empty syringe pull out of his upper arm.

            “There!” the man said.  “Finished!  You’ll both fall ill tomorrow, but that will be temporary and only last a couple of hours while you’re DNA is altered.”

            “What!” Stormy and Peter said in unison.

            “Don’t worry,” the man said.  “You’ll be fine.  Better than fine.”

            Sounds of commotion came from outside the change room.  It was probably security or the police.  Gavin had sent the cavalry.

            “I don’t have much time,” the man said.  “What’s your name?”

            “Stormy Logan.”

            “Really?  That’s your real name?”

            “Yes.”  Even under these circumstances, Stormy was annoyed by that question.  Everybody asked him that stupid question.

            “And you?” the man asked Peter.

            “Peter Nesmith,” Peter growled.

            “Well, Stormy and Peter, it’s been a pleasure.  Sorry I had to use the gun, and please forgive the lack of explanations, but I need to be leaving.”

            The man stepped out of the stall, still pointing the gun at Stormy and Peter.

            “Police!” someone commanded out of Stormy’s sight.  “Drop your weapon!”

            The man ran towards the entrance to the pool.  Two police officers rushed after him, while a third came to the changing stall.  “Are you guys okay?”

* * *

            Stormy’s parents, Kris and Daryl, rushed into the emergency room, and Stormy smiled.

            “Stormy!” Kris said as she threw her arms around Stormy.  “Are you okay?  Did he hurt you?”

            “I’m fine,” Stormy said.  “He injected me with something, but I feel fine.  They’re running blood and urine tests right now to figure out what it is.”

            “Is Peter alright?” Daryl asked.  “Where is he, anyway?”

            “He’s a few beds down with his parents,” Stormy said.  “I’m told he’ll be fine.  He didn’t need any stitches.”

            “Stitches?” Kris said.  “What happened to him?”

            “I said he didn’t need stitches,” Stormy said and placed a calming hand on his mother’s shoulder.  “The guy hit him, because Peter was uncooperative when the guy wanted to inject us with whatever the stuff was.  He’ll be okay, though.”  Assuming, of course, that they weren’t both injected with AIDS, or something.  Stormy didn’t say that part, but he didn’t think he really had to.  He could see the worry written all over their faces.

            Daryl looked around the small curtained-off area of the emergency room that Stormy’s bed was in.  All of his life, people had been telling Stormy how much he looked like his father.  Now that Stormy was an adult, he could see what they were talking about.  Daryl Logan was an older, chubbier, balder version of Stormy.  “Where’s your doctor?” he asked.

            “I’m not sure,” Stormy said.  “Off testing my fluids, I assume.”

            “Where’s Angela?” Kris asked.

            “After she gave her statement to the police, she went home with her parents.  Her mother was really freaking out.”

            “I don’t blame her,” Kris said.  “You could have been killed!”

            “I don’t think he wanted to kill us,” Stormy said.  “He was just a little crazy.  He thought the CIA was after him.”

            “Lori and Gavin should go home to their mothers,” Kris said.  “I’m sure they’re worried sick.”

            “They’re here?” Stormy asked.

            “We saw them in the waiting room,” Daryl said.  “Your mother was too intent on getting back here to see you, so we didn’t get to speak to them at all.”

            The curtain parted, and Dr. Baker walked in.  “Hi, Stormy,” she said with a smile.  “Still feeling good?”

            “Yup,” Stormy said.

            “Are these your parents?” she asked.

            “Yes,” Stormy said.

            “Is he okay, Doctor?” Kris asked.

            “As far as we can tell,” Dr. Baker said.  “The assailant didn’t hit Stormy at all, and we’ve tested his blood and urine.  It looks like Stormy and Peter were injected with a harmless dose of sugar water.”

            Stormy heaved a sigh of relief.  He hadn’t realized how tense he had been until the tension was gone.

            “The police are done with you,” Dr. Baker continued, “so you’re free to go.  There’s a small group of reporters out there, so heads up.”

Chapter 6: Aftermath

            “Police are still searching for the unidentified man,” the news anchor said as the screen showed a surveillance camera still image of the crazy doctor guy.  “If you have any information, please contact the local police.

            “Edmonton area veterinary clinics are—”

            Daryl turned off the television and smiled at Stormy.  “Nicely done, son,” he said.

            “Oh, don’t encourage him,” Kris said.

            “Yeah,” Angela agreed.  “He’ll run off trying to save every pretty girl he sees in trouble, and he’ll end up being shot or stabbed.”

            “Or injected with a mystery drug,” Pam teased.

            “What was I supposed to do?” Stormy said.  “A middle-aged guy was trying to abduct a 16 year old girl.  Was I supposed to ignore it?”

            “You should’ve come with Gavin and me to get the police,” Angela said.

            Stormy turned to Gavin.  “Thanks again for sending the cops, Gav.”

            “I live to serve,” Gavin said and threw Stormy a lazy salute.

            “I think you did the right thing, Stormy,” Daryl said.  “If you hadn’t delayed him while Gavin went for help, he might have gotten away with Ivy.”  The 16 year old girl’s name had turned out to be Ivy Wang.  “In most situations like that, the guy probably won’t have a gun or a knife.  You just had bad luck finding the one man in Canada walking around with a concealed illegal firearm.”

            “Who’s to say the gun was even loaded,” Gavin added.  “Or even a real gun.  My cousin was once robbed at gunpoint working the late shift at a motel.  They caught the robber, and it turned out a very real-looking fake gun.”

            “You’re not helping my argument here, Gavin,” Angela said.

            “I thought that was the point of arguing,” Gavin said.

            “Not when you’re on my side!” Angela said.

            “I’m on your side?”

            “Yes!”

            “Oh.  I didn’t know that.”

            “Where’s our other hero?” Pam asked.  “Why isn’t he here with us during his 15 minutes of fame?”

            Stormy turned a suspicious eye on Pam.

            “What?” Pam asked.

            “Nothing,” Stormy said.  Peter’s words earlier while they were playing basketball had come back to him at Pam’s mention of Peter.  Hearing her asking after him and calling him a hero were making him paranoid.  “He’s at home with his family.  He wanted to watch the news with them, and, well, you know how his brother feels about us.”  Peter’s older brother Jordan was convinced that Stormy, Gavin, and Lori were intent on converting him to Mormonism, and he had vehemently opposed Peter’s continued friendship with them.

            Pam nodded in understanding.  She had been in the same class as Jordan, and she knew him as well as Stormy did.  He wasn’t really an anti-Mormon—not a zealous one, at least—but rather just an all-around asshole.

            Kris stood up.  “Well,” she said.  “That dishwasher isn’t going to load itself.  Daryl, come help me with it.  Leave Stormy with his friends.”

            Daryl stood up and took his wife by the hand.  “Good night, kids,” he said.  “Don’t be too hard on Stormy, Angela.  He really did something heroic today, and nobody got hurt seriously.”

            “Good night, Brother Logan,” Gavin said.  Stormy’s parents climbed the stairs.

            Stormy turned to Angela with a grin on his face.  “Hey, beautiful,” he said.

            Angela started to smile, but she forced it away.  “Don’t ‘hey beautiful’ me,” she said.  “I’m mad at you.”

            “Angela,” Stormy started.

            “No,” Angela said.  “I’m serious.  You could have been killed today!  You should have let the police handle it.”

            “Stormy’s dad is right,” Lori said.  “If Peter and Stormy hadn’t distracted the man, he might have successfully kidnapped Ivy.”

            “He didn’t even want Ivy!” Angela said.  “He said he was just using her as bait to get somebody to do something stupid.  Lucky for him, Peter and Stormy were the stupid ones.”

            Stormy just looked at Angela waiting for what she had just said to sink in.

            “I’m sorry,” Angela said after an uncomfortable silence.  “I don’t mean that you’re stupid, Stormy.  I’m just scared.  What if he had shot you?  What if those needles had been full of arsenic or something instead of just sugar water?”

            Stormy took Angela’s hand.  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said.  “Really, I am.  If I had known he had a gun, I would have gone to get the police with you and Gavin.  But he looked like someone that Peter and I could have easily handle together.  I couldn’t just let him drag that girl out of there.  Yes, he was just using her as bait and probably didn’t mean her any harm, but we didn’t know that.”

            Angela squeezed Stormy’s hand.  “Just be careful from now on, okay, Stormy D?”

            Lori cleared her throat and stood up.  “Come on, Gav,” she said.  “I’ll drive you home.  Let’s leave these two to make up.”

            Stormy looked up at Lori.  “You don’t have to go,” he said.  “We’ve pretty much made up already.”

            “We should really get going, anyway,” Lori said.  “It has been a big day.  I could use some rest.”

            “Gav?” Stormy said to his lanky friend.  “Do you need to go home for some rest, too?”

            “Probably,” Gavin said and stood up.  “Besides, she’s my ride.”

            Stormy studied Lori’s face.  He could tell that something was bothering her, but she was doing a good job hiding it behind a relaxed smile.  It might fool most other people, but Stormy had known Lori since before he could walk.  Those big blue eyes were like an old familiar book that he had read dozens of times.  Since she was trying to hide what was bothering her, Stormy didn’t press the issue.  He had just settled Angela down, and didn’t want to start something else with the other important girl in his life.

            “Well, you kids drive safe,” Stormy said.  “Don’t go anywhere and park together, or I’ll tell your parents.”

            “You know us,” Gavin said and put an arm around Lori’s shoulders.  “We just can’t keep our hands off of each other.”

            “Gross,” Lori said and shrugged off Gavin’s arm.  “That would be like making out with my brother.”

            Gavin smiled.  “Gorgeous blue-eyed brunettes aren’t my type,” Gavin said.  “I like nerdy redheads.  You’re also too short for me.”  Gavin stood at 6’3”, while Lori was a modest 5’2”.  “I’d be constantly poking you in the eyes with my elbows,” Gavin added.

            “Let’s get going, Stretch,” Lori said and started walking backwards towards the stairs.  She waved at Stormy and Angela.  “Have a good night, you two.  I’m glad you’re okay, Stormy.”

* * *

            Gavin sat quietly in the passenger seat looking curiously at Lori.  He had noticed that something was bothering her back at Stormy’s place, and now that they were in the car, she wasn’t trying to hide it anymore.  Her face was a dark storm cloud.

            After driving for a couple of minutes in silence, Gavin had to break it.  “Stormy has known you as long as I have,” he said.  “He probably noticed something was bugging you, too, when you decided to make your hasty exit.”

            “I’m fine,” Lori said as she gripped the steering wheel and glared at the road.

            “If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t force—”

            “It’s my nickname!” Lori interrupted.

            “Excuse me?” Gavin asked.

            “Stormy D,” Lori clarified.  “That’s what I call him!  I’ve called him that since elementary school.  And now Angela is taking it from me!”

            Gavin nodded.  He had always suspected that Lori had a thing for Stormy.  If that was the case, this sudden burst of jealousy made sense.  “I wasn’t aware that you claimed ownership of that nickname,” he said.

            “We all have our own nicknames for each other,” Lori continued.  “Peter calls him Slogan; you call him Storm; I call him Stormy D.  Just like Stormy calls Peter Mrs. Nesmith, I call him Petemoss, and you call him Popsicle Pete.”

            “To be fair,” Gavin said, “Peter sometimes calls him Storm, and I’ve been known to use Slogan.”

            “That’s different,” Lori said.

            “How?”

            Lori paused.  “It just is,” she said.  “You and Pete are guys.  And you’re part of the original cast.”

            “And Angela is Stormy’s girlfriend,” Gavin pointed out.  “Doesn’t she have a right to have a nickname for him?”

            “Let her think up a new one.”

            “I think we’ve taken the best three,” Gavin said.  He thought for a moment.  “Storm Drain is Peter’s, and it’s meant as an insult.  Thunder Storm?  Snow Storm?  Stormtron 3000?”

            Lori snickered.

            “I didn’t realize you had a problem with Angela,” Gavin said.

            “I don’t,” Lori said.  “Not really.  I honestly like her.  She’s a good friend.  It’s just—”

            Gavin waited for her to finished, but she didn’t seem to know how.  She drove on in silence.

            “High school romances rarely last into adulthood,” Gavin said as they were nearing his house.

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lori asked.

            “Nothing!” Gavin said and held up his hands.  “It doesn’t mean anything.  I’m just making an observation that has no bearing whatsoever on the conversation preceding it.”

            Lori glanced at Gavin, and then chuckled.  “Just keep it quiet, okay?” she said.

            “I know nothing,” Gavin promised.

            Lori stopped the car at the curb in front of the McLeod household.  “So the nickname thing,” Gavin asked before getting out.  “Does that apply to all of us, or just Stormy and Peter?  I call you Lori of the Rings, and I’m pretty sure no one else does.  What do Stormy and Peter call you?”

            “Peter calls me British Truck, and Stormy calls me Loride.”

            “Right,” Gavin nodded as he remembered those names.  “I get British Truck, but I never really understood Loride.”

            “Rhymes with fluoride,” Lori explained.  “You know how Stormy is.  He makes strange connections in his head sometimes.”

            Gavin thought about his own nicknames for a moment, and realized that the rule did, indeed, apply to him.  “You call me Gavsy, Peter calls me Grabbin’, and Stormy calls me Galvatron,” he said.

            “See?” Lori said.  “You get it.”

Chapter 7: Puking

            Peter thought he was just hung-over when he woke up, but as the day progressed, he didn’t feel any better.  The headache faded, but the queasiness got worse.

            After watching the news with his family, he and Jordan had gone out to a bar.  The day had shaken Peter up more than he liked to admit, and that had led him to drink more than he usually did.

            It was 1:00 in the afternoon now, and Peter was on his knees hugging the toilet.  His body was convulsing with dry heaves; his stomach had returned what little food he had given it long ago.  He finally stopped retching and slumped onto the bathroom floor.  He was covered in a slick of sweat, but he was freezing.  He couldn’t stop shivering.  Along with all of this, there was a deep ache in all of his muscles.

            “You’ll both fall ill tomorrow, but that will be temporary and only last a couple of hours while you’re DNA is altered.”

            That didn’t make sense.  The tests said it had just been sugar water.  The guy had been a nutcase.  This was just a coincidence.  Stormy was probably fine and handing out resumes, or fooling around with Angela, or something.  And if Stormy was fine, then Peter’s illness had nothing to do with the would-be kidnapping scientist.

            I should call him, just to ease my mind.  Peter crawled along the bathroom floor, his arms and legs quivering from the effort.  He reached the door and looked at the stairs.  He would have to climb them to reach the phone.

            Too far, Peter lamented.  Nobody else was home to fetch the phone for him, so he crawled back into the bathroom and curled up on the floor at the base of the toilet where he waited for the next bout of vomiting.  He heard the phone start ringing, but whoever it was would have to wait.

* * *

            Daryl hung up the phone.  “No answer,” he said.

            “Do you think maybe they took Peter to the hospital?” Kris asked.

            “It could mean anything,” Daryl said.  “I’m sure his parents are at work, and his brother probably has a job, too.  Peter could be out looking for a job or with a friend.”

            “Or too sick to get up and answer the phone.”

            “Yes,” Daryl conceded.  “That could be the case, too.”

            “We should take Stormy to the hospital,” Kris said.

            “Yeah, we probably should,” Daryl agreed, “But he refuses to go, and he’s too big for me to carry.”

            The sound of Stormy retching in the bathroom came again, and Kris wrung her hands together.  Daryl felt just as worried as she looked.

            “He said he’ll let us take him to the hospital if he’s still puking tomorrow,” Daryl said.  “We’ll just have to be sure to keep giving him water so he won’t dehydrate.

            “I don’t know if I can wait that long,” Kris said.

            Daryl put his hand on her shoulder.  “Technically, ‘tomorrow’ starts at midnight,” he says.  “If Stormy hasn’t improved by then, he’ll probably be so delirious that he won’t put up a fight when I drag him to the hospital.”

* * *

            “Hey!” Jordan said and nudged Peter with his foot.

            Peter started.  He hadn’t realized that he had fallen asleep until his brother had woken him up.

            “You can’t still be hung-over,” Jordan said.  “It’s 5:30!”

            Peter sat up and looked around.  He was disoriented, and it took him a moment to remember why he was on the bathroom floor.

            “It wasn’t a hangover,” Peter rasped.  “I was sick.”  As he said it, he realized that using the past-tense was accurate.  He was still a little shaky, and his throat was raw from all of the retching, but the queasiness and fever were gone.  So was the muscle ache.

            “Sure, right,” Jordan said.  “Of course it wasn’t a hangover.  You were really throwing them back last night.”

            Peter stood up on shaky legs.  “I had a rough day yesterday,” he said.  “I think I earned a few drinks.  I was assaulted by a man with a gun, after all.”

            “At least he just whacked your head instead of pulling the trigger,” Jordan said and mimed a clubbing motion.  “How are you feeling now?”

            “I’m starving,” Peter said and rubbed his stomach.  His stomach growled.  It was almost painful how hungry he was.  Shoving Jordan out of his way, Peter headed for the kitchen.

* * *

            Stormy shoveled spaghetti down his throat.  He was ravenous.  Waking up and finding his mother setting out supper had filled him with pure joy.  He had shrugged off his mother’s questions and prodding hands to make sure he was really okay and gone straight to the table.  He barely had the patience to wait for the blessing to be said on the food.

            Daryl, Kris, and Pam watched Stormy devour his food in awe. “I thought you said he was sick,” Pam said.

            “He was sick,” Daryl said.  “Stormy, you should slow down there, big guy.  You don’t want to push yourself too hard and throw up again.”

            Stormy swallowed and reached for his glass of water.  “I’m fine,” he said.  “Really.”  He downed all of his water.  He couldn’t explain to his family how hungry he was.  Well, he actually probably could have explained it, but he was too busy eating.

            Kris reached over and felt Stormy’s forehead as he started scooping up a second helping of spaghetti.  “Your fever’s completely gone,” she said.

            “I know,” Stormy said.  “It was just a quick, intense bug.  I hope you guys don’t get it, because it sucks.”

            “We should try calling Peter again after supper,” Daryl said.  “Make sure he’s okay.”

            Stormy paused, his fork halfway between his plate and his mouth.  He had been thinking of Peter the entire time he was sick.  Thinking of Peter, and thinking of the injections they had both been given.  “You think it might have something to do with Dr. Sugarwater?”

            “It just seems like an odd coincidence that you get so suddenly and intensely sick the day after a strange man pokes you with a needle,” Kris said.  “And if Peter got sick, too, then it’s an even bigger coincidence.  We already called Gavin, Lori, and Angela, and they’re all fine.”

            “You never got a hold of Peter?” Stormy asked.

            “No,” Kris said.

            Stormy glanced at the clock, his hunger momentarily forgotten.  It was just about 6:00.  Peter’s parents should be home by now.

            “I’ll give him a call,” Stormy said.  His stomach growled.  “After supper,” he added.

* * *

            Peter started to slow down after six hot dogs.  He considered cooking a seventh, but decided that too many hot dogs in one day couldn’t be good for a man.  He ripped open a bag of chips instead.

            “You really couldn’t wait half an hour for dinner?” Peter’s mother, Bethany, asked.

            “Mom, I seriously thought I was going to die,” Peter said.  “After all the puking I did today, I figured that my body needed something once I could handle eating again.”

            “But six hot dogs, Petey?”  Bethany was dumping two cans of stew into a pot to heat it up for the rest of the family.  “I know you’re 18, and you’re a big, strong, athletic boy, but six hot dogs is a lot of food for anyone.  Except for maybe that Japanese man who wins all those contests.”

            “He was beaten by a grizzly bear once,” Peter said and crunched down on a chip.

            Bethany gave Peter a don’t-mess-with-me look that made him laugh.

            “You seem to be fine, now,” she said.  “Was it just a bad hangover?”

            “I don’t think so,” Peter said.  “I’m pretty sure I was legitimately sick.”

            “It doesn’t have anything to do with that awful man yesterday, does it?  How’s your head, by the way?”

            “My head’s fine.”  Peter gently rubbed the scab on the side of his head.  It wasn’t visible through his hair, but it was definitely there.  “And I honestly don’t know if it has anything to do with that guy.  The doctor said it was just sugar water that he injected me with.  I was just about to call Stormy and see how he’s doing.”

            “That’s a good idea,” Bethany said.  “You should do that right away.”

            The phone rang.  Bethany glanced at the call display.  “Speak of the devil,” she said.

            “That’s him?” Peter asked as he stood up from the table.  Bethany nodded, and Peter grabbed the phone.

            “Hello,” he said.

            “Pete,” Stormy said.  “You’re home.”

            “Yeah, I’ve been home all day,” Peter answered.

            “Why weren’t you answering the phone, then?”

            “Were you trying to call?”

            “I wasn’t, but my parents were.”

            Peter paused.  Stormy’s parents had been trying to call him all day?  “You were sick today, weren’t you?”

            Stormy paused this time.  “Yes,” he said.  “You were, too?”

            “Yeah.”

            Bethany had turned from the stove to watch Peter.  “Is he okay?” she whispered.

            “How are you now?” Peter asked.

            “I’m fine.”  Peter gave his mother a thumbs-up.  “I was insanely hungry when it passed, though.  I’ve never eaten so much spaghetti at one sitting in my life.”

            “Yeah, I just finished half-a-dozen hot dogs and some chips,” Peter said.

            “So,” Stormy said.  “The day after we’re both injected with…something, we both get sick at the same time and then eat enough food to feed an entire family.”

            “Back to the hospital?” Peter suggested.

            “What’ll they do?” Stormy asked.  “Two healthy young men show up and tell the doctors that they were wrong about the tests they ran on us yesterday?”

            “I have a strong feeling that it wasn’t sugar water that Dr. Douchebag gave us yesterday.”

            “I’ve been calling him Dr. Sugarwater,” Stormy said.

            “That’s not bad, Slogan, but after today’s events, I think my nickname for him is a little more apt.”

            “I’ll go to the doctor,” Stormy said.  “But I’m not going back to the emergency room when I feel absolutely fine.  I’ll call my family doctor tomorrow and make an appointment.”

            “Yeah, I figure I’ll do the same,” Peter agreed.  “Now that I’ve eaten, I feel great.”  He flexed his arm and felt his sleeve tighten against his bicep.  He frowned and looked down at the bulge stretching his T-shirt.  He was physically fit, more muscular even than the short, broad Stormy, but this wasn’t one of his snug shirts.  There should be more room in the sleeves than that.  Had it shrunk in the wash?

            “Isn’t that what Dr. Douchebag told us?” Stormy asked.  “That we’ll be better than fine after we’re sick for a few hours?”

            “He’s sounding less crazy as the day goes on,” Peter said.  “I hope the police find him and get some answers.”

            “Hold on,” Stormy said.  “My cell phone’s ringing.”  There was a pause, and Peter could here Stormy moving around.  “It’s Angela,” Stormy said.  “I better take this.  She’s probably worried.”

            “Okay,” Peter said.  “Tell her I say hi.”

* * *

            Once she had ascertained that Stormy was feeling better, Angela had insisted on coming over to see him in person.  Not that Stormy had resisted, or anything.  Sometimes, Angela liked to quash resistance before it happened, whether it was going to happen or not.

            “Hey, sweetie,” Angela said and threw her arms around Stormy after he opened the front door for her.  “Rough couple of days, huh?”

            “Yeah, it’s been weird,” Stormy said.

            Angela pulled back and looked at Stormy with a furrowed brow.  She squeezed his shoulders and felt his back.

            “What?” Stormy asked.

            “Were you just lifting weights?” Angela asked.  “You feel so tight!  And bigger!”

            “I’ve been violently ill all day, Ange,” Stormy said.  “I haven’t had the strength to lift weights.”

            Angela gave his shoulders another good squeeze, and then felt his chest through his shirt.  “I’m serious,” she said.  “Your pecs feel bigger, too.”  She slid her hands down to feel his abs, sending a thrilling tingle through his body.  “Oh my goodness, Stormy!  You’re totally ripped!”  She pulled up his shirt to get a better look.

            “Hey!” Stormy said, glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching.

            “You’ve always been sexy, Stormy,” Angela said.  “But now you have the build of an action movie star.”

            “Angela, you’re being silly.”  Stormy looked down at his exposed midsection.  “I—”  He stopped.  Stormy had worked out regularly since joining his junior high school basketball team, so he wasn’t a stranger to a six-pack; however, save for the hair, what he was looking at now wasn’t recognizable as his own body.

            “I’m right, aren’t I?” Angela said as she brushed her fingers down his belly.  She looked up into his eyes.  “You better put those away before I do something drastic,” she breathed.

            Stormy let his shirt fall into place and flattened out the wrinkles with his hand.  “Do you have your digital camera on you?” he asked.

            “Yeah.”  Angela fished her compact camera out of her small, leather purse.

            “Are the pictures from the water park still on it?”

            “Yeah.”          

            Stormy took Angela by the hand and pulled her the rest of the way into the house.  He closed the door behind her and took his shirt off.

            “My word, Stormy!” Angela said and demurely covered her mouth.  “That’s the opposite of what I told you to do.”

            “Take a picture of me,” Stormy said.  “I want to compare it to the pictures from yesterday.”

            Angela held up her camera and snapped a picture.  The camera beeped and flashed.  Stormy put his shirt back on, took Angela by the hand, and led her downstairs to the family computer.

            A few minutes later, Stormy had two pictures of himself displayed side-by-side on the monitor.  The photo on the left was the one Angela had just taken.  The one on the right was from yesterday at the water park.  He was topless in both pictures, and facing the camera straight-on.

            “What the hell,” Angela said in a slow, quiet voice.

            The photo on the left showed a Stormy significantly more muscular than the photo on the left.  The muscles were more toned, almost as if they were the chiseled features of a comic book superhero.  Not like Superman, who was drawn like an exaggerated body builder, but more like a smaller, more agile superhero.  Like, say, Spiderman, or the Flash.

            “Are you sure that was just sugar water?” Angela asked.

            “I’m not so sure anymore,” Stormy said.  “I’m going to make an appointment with my family doctor tomorrow.”

            He stood up and headed for the bathroom.

            “Where are you going?” Angela asked and followed him.

            “I need a scale,” Stormy said as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket.  He had weighed 170 pounds the last time he had weighed himself, which was about a week ago.  He quick-dialed Peter’s cell phone as he pulled the bathroom scale out from under the sink.

            “Hey,” Peter answered.  “What’s up?”

            “This might sound a little weird,” Stormy said.  “But are you—”

            “Buff?” Peter finished

            “Yeah,” Stormy said.  The digital readout on the scale blinked a few times, and then Stormy’s weight appeared.  “More so than usual, that is.  I know you’re a hulking mass of manliness as it is.”

            “None of my shirts fit me quite right,” Peter said, “except for the baggy stuff like sweaters and loose T-shirts.”

            “I’m standing on a scale right now,” Stormy said.  “And I’ve gained about 15 pounds since I weighed myself last week.”  The scale told him that he now weighed 196.  “Also, Angela is looking like me as if she wants to eat me.”

            “So what do you think?” Peter asked.  “Steroids?”

            “Why wouldn’t the blood and urine tests determine that?” Stormy said.  “It’s not as if steroids are some new-fangled super drug that baffles doctors.”

            “There’s that,” Peter agreed, “and the fact that steroids aren’t magic muscle-growing potion.  You still have to work out for them to help you bulk up.”

            “And marathon puking doesn’t count as a work-out,” Stormy added.  “If anything, we should have lost weight.”

            “Hold on, I’m in the bathroom now,” Peter said.  “I’m gonna weigh myself.  I was about 190 the last time I checked.”

            “How long ago was that?”

            “Two days ago.  I wanted to know how much I weighed before I went running around topless in public.”

            There was a pause as Peter weighed himself.

            “Hot damn,” Peter said.  “210.”

            Stormy scratched his head as he pushed the scale to the side with his foot and turned the bathroom light off.  Angela was looking on with an interesting mixture of concern, curiosity, and lust on her face.  Stormy yearned to meet up with Peter to compare notes and to see if the change was more than just aesthetic.  He decided against that in favour of spending the evening with Angela.  He didn’t want her to worry about what was going on.  Besides, she was much prettier than Peter.

            “Meet me here tomorrow morning,” Stormy said.  “I think we should discuss some things.”

           

Chapter 8: Lifting Weights

            Angela had stayed with Stormy for another hour or so after his phone call with Peter.  Stormy had been able to tell that Angela was a little apprehensive about the whole situation, so he had taken her to the sofa and kissed her mind off of the subject.  Angela hadn’t been able to resist sliding her hand under Stormy’s shirt and feeling his new sculpted body.  Early on in their relationship, they had expressly forbidden such behavior because there was the danger of slipping up and going all the way.  Stormy was aware of his libido, and it had always been obvious that Angela had one to match.  If he wanted to remain a member in good standing with the Church, they’d have to keep each other’s hands out of one another’s clothes, or else it would be more than just hands going inside of something that they shouldn’t.

            It was the next morning now, Stormy was over his case of blue balls, and Peter was eying Stormy’s set of weights.  Peter’s shirt was wet, and his face was dripping with sweat.

            “You ran all the way here?” Stormy asked.

            “Yeah,” Peter said and wiped sweat out of his eye.  He was still a little winded, but seemed eager to start in on the weights.  “It took me five minutes.”

            Stormy whistled.  Peter had run all the way from his house to Stormy’s before, but his best time had been around ten minutes.

            “Have you tried lifting yet?” Peter asked.

            Stormy shook his head.  “I was a little distracted last night,” he said.

            Peter gave Stormy a sideways glance and a knowing grin.  “You’re still a good little Mormon boy, I hope.”

            Stormy nodded.  “A good little frustrated Mormon boy.”

            Slapping Stormy on the shoulder, Peter stepped into the weight room.  “Poor some of that pent up energy into your weights,” he said.  “Let’s see what those new pipes of yours can do.”

            Peter went to the bench first and counted how much weight was on the bar.  “180,” he said.  “That’s about your max, right?”

            Stormy nodded as he sat on the bench.  “I always figured my own body weight was a good upper limit,” he said.  “Of course, that’s not my body weight anymore.”

            “Try it out where it is,” Peter suggested.  “We don’t know how much stronger you are, so we’ll start with something we know you can handle.”

            Stormy lay down and grabbed the barbell.  Peter stood by his head to act as a spotter.  “Here we go,” he said and lifted the weights off of the bracket.  It was easier than it should have been.  It still took effort, but it usually took all of his strength to bench press 180 pounds.  After three reps, Stormy set the barbell back on its bracket.

            “Giving up already?” Peter asked.

            “I need more weight,” Stormy said and stood up.

            “How much more?”

            Stormy grabbed two ten-pound weights.  “20 oughta do it for now,” he said.

            Five minutes later, Stormy had gradually added more weight until he was laying on the bench ready to try lifting 250 pounds.

            “Ready?” Peter asked.

            “Ready,” Stormy said.  He pushed up on the barbell.  For a moment, he didn’t think it was going to budge.  His arms quivered, and his face turned purple.

            “Come on, Slogan,” Peter encouraged.  “You got this.”

            Stormy’s arms burned as he pushed harder and harder on the barbell.  Finally, with a triumphant “Errrrrrrrgraaah!” Stormy lifted the 250 pound load.  He held it at the end of his quivering, straight arms for a few seconds, and then slowly lowered it down to his chest.  Peter held both of his own hands an inch below the bar.  He was ready to catch it in case Stormy needed help.  The help turned out to be unnecessary, as Stormy lifted the barbell again and set it down on its bracket.

            Stormy let his arms hang down with his fingertips brushing the floor.  He was breathing heavily, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest.  “Okay,” he wheezed.  “I think…we found…my new max.”

            “Catch your breath,” Peter said.  “Then it’s my turn.”

* * *

            Fifteen minutes later, Stormy and Peter sat drinking root beer at the Logan kitchen table.  Peter had been able to bench press 260 pounds before having to quit.

            “So,” Stormy said.

            “So,” Peter echoed.

            “What do we know here?”  Stormy held up a finger for each point that followed.  “Some guy claiming to be a doctor injects us with something against our will; he says it will make us sick as it changes our genetics, and that we’ll be ‘better than fine’ after the sickness passes; blood and urine tests indicate that he just injected us with sugar water; we get sick, just like Dr. Douchebag predicts, and we wake up with around 15 pounds of extra muscle, which makes us stronger and faster.”

            “And sexier,” Peter added.

            “Yes, how silly of me to forget that part.”  Stormy finished off his root beer and set the empty can aside.  “So I see one of two possibilities: either we were injected with a drug that has a similar effect as steroids but without being detectable by ordinary tests, or we both freakishly grew a large amount of muscle mass while puking our guts out at the exact same time.”

            Peter nodded as he took another drink.  “What are we gonna do about it?” he asked.

            Stormy tapped his finger on the table as he thought about Peter’s question.  He had been thinking about it since last night, but he still wasn’t sure what to do.  Were there any harmful side effects to the drug?  Was it addictive?  Was it permanent?  He had already made an appointment with his family doctor for three days from now, but he wasn’t really confident in getting any results.  So far, doctors hadn’t even been able to detect the drug, let alone treat it.

            “I don’t know what we can do that we aren’t already doing,” Stormy said.  “We had doctors poke and prod us two days ago, and we’re set to go to our family doctors in a few days.  Hopefully, they’ll be able to do more thorough tests; especially since we know that it wasn’t just sugar water we were given.”

            Peter leaned back in his chair and sighed.  “At least the drug has had a positive effect on us, aside from the puking,” he said.  “When he said it would change our genetics, I was picturing growing a tail, or a third eye, or something weird.”

            “See, that part doesn’t really make sense to me,” Stormy said.  “Why would altering our DNA give us more muscle?  I’m no geneticist, but I’m pretty sure you don’t need to alter your genes to build more muscle.”

            Peter shrugged.  “I slept through biology class,” he said.

            “What if there was some change in us that we’re not aware of yet?” Stormy said.  “What if increased strength was just part of what the drug was about?”

            Peter mulled this over in silence.  “Another question for our doctors,” he said after a moment.

Chapter 9: Stormy and Pam

            Stormy lounged on his bed later that evening reading back issues of Superman comic books.  Whenever he was worrying about something, comic books always helped him get his mind off of it.  Superman had always been his favourite superhero.  He had first seen Superman: the Movie when he was four years old, and he had immediately been hooked.  Just the thought of a flying man with super strength had appealed to him.  These days, people were always saying how boring Superman was because of his near invulnerability, but those people seemed to be the ones who didn’t actually follow the comic books.  They were just sick of Lex Luthor always trying to kill Superman with kryptonite in the movies and on TV.

            As Stormy read about Superman and Doomsday beating each other to death, a knock came at the door.  Before he could answer, the bedroom door swung open and Pam walked in and sat on the foot of his bed.

            “Come in,” Stormy called.

            “Don’t be sassy,” Pam said.  She pulled her hair—the same thick, dark brown as Stormy’s, but significantly longer—back into a ponytail.  She picked up a comic book from Stormy’s pile and examined the cover.  “Who’s this guy?” she asked.

            “That’s Superman,” Stormy answered.

            “Doesn’t look like Superman.  His skin his blue, and he doesn’t have a cape.  Different S, too.”

            “And no red or yellow,” Stormy added.  “Back in the late ‘90s, Superman’s powers went wacky, and he was made of energy.  The new costume was a containment suit that prevented that energy from dissipating.”

            “How long did that last?”

            “Just over a year.  DC restored his original powers in time for his 60^th anniversary in 1998.”

            “You know way too much about this stuff,” Pam said and dropped the comic back to the bed.

            “Be careful with that!” Stormy said.  “These are collectors’ items.”

            Pam rolled her eyes and gingerly rifled through some other comics.

            “Is there anything I can do for you, Pam?” Stormy asked.

            “Not really,” Pam shrugged.  “Do I need a reason to visit with my baby brother?”

            Stormy smiled and closed his book.  “I just find it hard to believe that you came up here just to read comic books with me.  Isn’t there a single adults’ dance tonight or something?”

            Pam glanced at the clock.  It was 8:00.  “It doesn’t start until 9:00,” she said.  “And most people don’t show up until around 10:00.  I’m not even sure if I’m going or not.”

            They sat in silence for a moment as Pam continued to look through Stormy’s comic books.  A Spiderman comic mixed in with the Superman ones caught her eye, and she opened it up to flip through it.  “I wasn’t around to see you sick yesterday,” she said as she examined the art in the book, “but you had Mom and Dad really freaked out.”

            “I was a little freaked out myself,” Stormy said.  “I’m fine now, though.  And I’m going to the doctor on Monday just to be sure that I’m okay.”

            “Peter was sick, too, right?” Pam asked.  Stormy nodded.  “Do you think it might have anything to do with the incident at West Ed?” Pam added.

            “I honestly don’t know,” Stormy said.  “That’s the main reason why I’m going to the doctor.”

            “Is Peter okay?” Pam asked.  In Stormy’s opinion, she acted a little too nonchalant about the question.  Probably just paranoia left over from Peter’s taunts the other day.

            “He’s fine,” Stormy said.  “He was over here earlier.  We were spotting each other lifting weights.”

            “Good.”  Pam read for a little while from the Spiderman book.  Stormy opened his book to where he had left off and started reading again.

            After a few moments of silence, Pamela spoke again.  “How do you think Mom and Dad would react to me dating a non-Mormon?” she asked.

            “Okay!” Stormy said and dropped his comic book.  “What’s going on?  Is there something between you and Peter that I don’t know about?”

            “No,” Pam said and blushed ever so slightly.  “Why?  What did he say?”  She tried to hide it, but Stormy caught a hint of hopefulness in her question.

            “Do you have the hots for my best friend?” Stormy demanded.

            “Oh, please,” Pam scoffed.  “He’s only your age.”

            “That’s only two years younger than you,” Stormy pointed out.  “That may have made a difference a few years ago, but the difference between 18 and 20 is a lot less than the difference between 16 and 18.”

            “Hypothetically speaking,” Pam said, “and remember, I’m asking purely out of curiosity—how would you react if Peter and I ever got together romantically?”

            “It would be freaking weird,” Stormy said.  “But in all honesty, you could do a lot worse than Peter Nesmith.  Mormons don’t have a monopoly on decency.”

            Pam thought this over for a moment, and then seemed to remember that this all was supposed to be a hypothetical situation that didn’t require serious contemplation.  “Don’t mention any of this to Pete,” she said.  “I don’t want him getting the wrong idea.”

            “Of course,” Stormy said and gave his sister a crooked smile.  “I won’t mention it at all.”

            Pam nodded and stood up.  As she reached the door to Stormy’s room, Stormy called out to her: “But Pam,” he said.  Pam turned to look at him.  “If you did have feelings for him—you know, hypothetically—I’d tell you to act on them.  And you’d have my blessing, weird as it would be to have my best friend dating my big sister.”

            Pam studied Stormy’s face for a moment.  “I have to get ready for the dance,” she said and left Stormy to his reading.

            Stormy sighed and leaned against the wall.  His mind was now dwelling on something new.

Chapter 10: Burst

            Peter thought it was a wet dream at first, and so he was surprised to wake up and find everything dry.  The swelling feeling felt good, almost like an orgasm, only all over instead of centered at his crotch.  The second difference was the fact that, instead of feeling spent and sleepy like he did after sex, he felt invigorated and wide awake.

            “Oh, wow!” he gasped to his empty bedroom.  “What was that?”  He sat up and grabbed his cell phone off of his night table to check the time.  It was just after 4:00 in the morning.  He knew that he should be tired, and that he should sleep, but there was no way sleep would be returning any time soon.  Instead, he stood up and went to the washroom.

            As he stood in the washroom relieving himself, Peter wondered about the pleasant surge that had woken him up.  He could still feel it.  It wasn’t as intense as that initial burst, but he could still feel the pleasant sensation seeming to pulse through his entire body.  It worried him a little, but, at the same time, he didn’t want it to stop.

            His eyes drifted towards the light fixture on the ceiling, and something about it troubled him.  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it at first.  Why should a light trouble him, especially a light that he’d squinted at in the early morning hours for as long as he remembered?  And just like that, he realized what it was.  He hadn’t squinted when he had turned the light on.

            “Huh,” Peter said.  “Weird.”

* * *

            Stormy was already awake when it happened.  The urge to pee had been too great to ignore any longer, and he had shuffled into the bathroom.  He left the light off so he wouldn’t have to squint, which made it necessary to sit down to do his business.  It was on his way back to bed when a rush of pleasure flashed through his entire body.  Eyes going wide, Stormy gasped and stood up straight.  He shuddered in a queer, sexless ecstasy, and then the feeling subsided.  It didn’t disappear, but the intensity diminished.

            Stormy put a hand to his racing heart and took a few deep breaths.  He could feel the blood warmly pumping through his blood vessels as if his heart was pumping hot cocoa.  Only, you know, without the death that would accompany that if it literally happened.

            “What the heck is this?” Stormy whispered as he stood in the center of his dark bedroom.  The sky outside of his window was a deep blue now instead of black, and he checked his clock.  4:23.  Probably too early to call Peter and compare notes.  He considered going back to bed, but he realized that he wasn’t tired anymore.  He flipped on the light and eyed the stack of comics on top of his dresser.  Maybe he could read until he felt comfortable calling Peter.  He discarded that idea right away.  He was barely keeping himself from bouncing up and down with excess energy.  Instead, he dressed in a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and athletic socks.  Grabbing his mp3 player and his phone, he quietly jogged downstairs to find his running shoes.

* * *

            Peter fished around in the junk drawer in the kitchen until he found the flashlight.  He flicked it on, and nothing happened.  After a little more searching, he found some batteries and replaced the dead ones in the flashlight.  This time when he flicked the switch, the light flared on.  It was a bright light, the same kind that police officers used.  Holding it at his waist and looking down, Peter shone the light in his eyes.  The light was bright; he could see that.  Despite the brightness, however, he didn’t need to squint, and there was no pain.

            Peter looked away, expecting to see a spot floating in front of him from the image of the light burned on his retina.  Nothing.

            “Is that the genetic change?” Peter muttered to himself.  “Eyes resistant to bright lights?”  It seemed kind of pointless.  A quick look around the dark room confirmed that he couldn’t see any better; it just didn’t hurt to look into bright lights.  He held the light right up against his left eye.  It still didn’t hurt, and there was still no phantom light floating in front of him when he took the light away.

            No, it didn’t make any sense.  Why would Dr. Douchebag, if he was a real scientist, develop his drug?  A little extra strength and the ability to look at bright lights?  There must be something more.  The pleasant energetic pulsing was in his entire body, not just his eyes.

            It was still too early to call Stormy, assuming he wasn’t awake already.  Maybe he’d send a text.  Peter glanced at the clock, which ready 4:35.  He’d wait until 5:00.

* * *

            Stormy jogged in the gradually brightening early morning air.  The sun was still a good twenty minutes from rising, but it was light enough that he didn’t need the street lights, which were still on anyway.  He arrived at the end of Deer Ridge Drive and turned left onto Hogan Road.  That was fast, he thought absently as he rounded the corner.  Must be all these new muscles.

            Stormy’s thoughts were racing.  They started with the injection a few days ago, to the bout of puking the next day, and to the weight-lifting session he and Peter had together yesterday.  Now this sudden excess of energy and the feeling that he’d never be tired again.  Was it connected to the sudden increase in strength?  He hoped that the visit to the doctor on Monday would reveal some answers.

            Stormy sped past another early-morning jogger so fast that he wasn’t even able to determine if it had been a man or a woman.  He was pulled from his thoughts and realized for the first time exactly how fast he was going.  He had run this fast before, but that had been a 100 meter sprint.  He had been running this fast for at least a kilometer, and he wasn’t even winded.

            “What the hell?” he muttered.  Peter had cut some time off of his jog yesterday, but not this much.  And Peter had been out of breath and soaked with sweat.  Stormy was dry and breathing at a normal rate.  15 pounds of extra muscle didn’t account for this.

            Stormy sped up, pumping his legs harder than he thought was possible, and still it felt like he was just tapping into a fraction of his potential speed.  Bits of sand and gravel sprayed up in a wake behind him.

            The intersection with Giroux Road appeared much more quickly than Stormy had anticipated.  It had only been 30 seconds since he had turned from Deer Ridge onto Hogan.  Giroux Road was a collector road.  It was four lanes and was the main route of most people who lived in Deer Ridge Park, North Ridge, and Lacombe Park.  A few cars were already driving along it at this early hour.

            “Crap!” Stormy hissed and swerved to the right before arriving at the intersection.  He didn’t trust his ability to stop in time at the speed he was going.  A gazebo with a red tin roof and circled by seven flag pools was suddenly in front of him.  He crashed into a waist-high iron fence around the perimeter of the gazebo and flipped over it.  The world spun, the ground and sky trading places several times until he came to a crashing stop on the grass.

            Stormy lay on his back staring wide-eyed at the brightening sky.  He was sure that he had just crippled himself.  A few bones must be broken at the very least.  He was just in too much shock to feel pain yet.  He wiggled his toes, and they obeyed him.  Good, Stormy thought.  At least he wasn’t paralyzed.

            He planted his hands on the ground on either side of him and pushed himself up into a sitting position.  No joints or bones shrieked in protest.  Another good sign.  He looked at his legs, which were the right shape and with no mark on them.  That actually seemed a little odd.  He should have some scrapes and bruises.

            There was a depression in the ground ten feet in front of him, as if something heavy had been dropped on it from a decent height.  He had a vague recollection of bouncing, and then realized that he was resting in a similar depression.  This second one matched the shape of his head and torso.

            Stormy felt his back; he was sure that he must be injured.  He had come about 30 feet in a combination of bouncing and flying after running at an insane speed into an iron fence.

            The fence.  Stormy stood and looked at the gazebo.  Impossible.  It was the only word that came to mind.

            Completely uninjured, he trotted over to the gazebo with a slack jaw.  The fence where he had struck was bent over almost at a 90 degree angle halfway down.  The concrete floor at the opposite side of where he first struck was spider-webbed with cracks, and the section of the iron fence above it was snapped in half as if a small bomb had exploded there.

            Stormy ran his hands all over his body again, certain that he’d find some sort of serious injury.  He didn’t even find a scratch.

* * *

            Peter’s phone beeped at 4:55.  He picked it up and saw that a text had arrived from Stormy.  “Are you awake?” it read.

            “Yes,” Peter texted back.  A few second later, the phone rang.

            “Hey,” Peter said.  “Did it happen to you, too?”

            “The burst of energy?” Stormy asked.  “Yeah, it happened.”

            “Notice any changes in yourself?”

            Stormy uttered a nervous chuckle.  “Yeah,” he said.  “How about you?”

            “Nothing spectacular,” Peter said.  “I can stare at bright lights without doing any damage to my eyes.”

            “That’s it?”  Stormy sounded surprised.

            “Well, I’ve just been sitting around for the last twenty minutes,” Peter said.  “I suppose there might be something else that I haven’t noticed yet.  Why, what changed in you?”

            “It’s—it’s something you need to see,” Stormy said.  “You know that gazebo with the flags just west of Bellerose?”

            “Yeah,” Peter said.  “That’s where I made out with Chelsea Young.”

            “Meet me there,” Stormy said.

            “Sure,” Peter said.  “When?”

            “I’m already here, so right away.”

* * *

            “Whoa!” Peter said.  “What happened here?  Was it like this when you got here?”

            Stormy ran a hand through his hair.  “I did this,” he said.

            “You?” Peter asked incredulously.  “What did you use, a sledge hammer?”  Peter reached out and felt the iron fence that was bent over.  It looked like it had gotten too hot and melted while someone was leaning on it, but it was solid to his touch.

            “I ran into it,” Stormy said.

            Peter looked from the ruined fence to Stormy.  “What do you mean?” he asked.  “Were you driving?”

            “No, I was running.  Fast.”

            “How fast?”

            “I’d guess around 50 kilometers per hour.”

            “Bullshit,” Peter scoffed.  “Storm, that’s as fast a car.”

            “Look at this,” Stormy said.  He grabbed the iron fence that had snapped on the other side of the gazebo and bent one of the bars—about three inches thick—with his bare hand.

            Peter could only stare.  His mouth moved, but he couldn’t find any words.

            “I know,” Stormy said and grabbed two fistfuls of his own hair.  “What the hell is going on?”

            Peter tentatively reached out and grabbed the top of the fence where it wasn’t damaged.  He squeezed, and the bar was crushed with a surprising lack of effort.  He pulled his hand back as if it had been burned.  “Shit!” he yelled.  “Stormy, what is this?  This isn’t possible!”

            “It’s the genetic change,” Stormy said.  “Whatever that burst we felt this morning was, it must’ve been the genetic change kicking in.”

            “This isn’t one of your comic books, Stormy!  This kind of thing isn’t possible!”

            “Apparently, it is,” Stormy countered.  “Look at this!  Look what I did!  And I saw what you just did to that bar.  Peter, insane as this sounds, we have super strength!”

            Peter sat down on the floor of the gazebo.  “What do we do?” he asked.  “Should we go to the hospital?”

            “They’d think we were crazy waltzing in there and claiming we have super powers,” Stormy said.  “Even if they did believe us, what would they do?  I don’t think they’d be able to draw any blood to test it.”

            “What do you mean?”

            Stormy broke off a smaller iron bar from the fence.  The end was jagged and sharp.  He pressed the sharpest edge against his arm and pressed.  The flesh dimpled around the pressing iron, but the skin didn’t break.

            Peter winced.  “Doesn’t that hurt?” he asked.

            “No,” Stormy said.  He pressed harder, and the bar bent.  He handed it to Peter.

            “Try it.”

            Peter took the bent bar and examined the sharp end.  It should easily break a person’s skin.  He gingerly pressed it against the flesh of his forearm to test how it felt.  It was warm after being against Stormy’s skin, but the broken jags of metal didn’t cut him.  He slowly increased the pressure until the bar bent some more.  There had been no pain, and there was no wound.

            “So what do we do now?” Peter asked.  “Put on some tights and fight crime?”

            “This isn’t one of my comic books,” Stormy said.  “Besides, my legs are too short and thick for tights.”

            Peter looked up at the sunrise.  He stared directly at the sun without squinting.  “I guess this explains why I can stare at bright lights,” he said.  “If I’m impervious to pain, I suppose that includes light on my retina.”

            Stormy turned his own eyes to the rising sun.  “Wow,” he said after a moment.  “That’s cool.”

            “How far do you think it goes?” Peter asked.  “Our strength, I mean.  I bet we can lift more than 250 pounds now.”

            Stormy looked away from the sun and met Peter’s eyes.  “Let’s test it,” he said.

Chapter 11: Let’s Test It

            Stormy set the barbell back on its brackets and sat up.  “It’s like I’m bench pressing a pillow,” he said.

            “That was every single weight you have,” Peter said.  “It was 400 pounds.  You’re lucky the bar didn’t snap in half.”

            “You try it,” Stormy said and stood up.  Peter took his place on the bench.

            “Before you start,” Stormy said as Peter gripped the bar, “let’s add another 215pounds.”

            “Where are you going to find that much weight?” Peter asked.

            Stormy climbed up and sat on the center of the bar.  “Go for it, Mrs. Nesmith,” he said.  “615 pounds.  Rock this bitch!”

            Peter paused, and Stormy could see the doubt in his eyes.  “You’ve got this, man.  This is nothing.”

            Peter pushed up against the weights.  It went up fast, and Stormy almost fell off.  He ended up slipping off backwards, catching himself with his knees.

            “Dude, that ass is dangerously close to my face,” Peter said.  His voice was clear and steady as if he were lounging around at the beach instead of holding 615 pounds over his chest.

            “Bum-looker,” Stormy said and did an awkward back flip onto his feet at the head of the bench.  “Hey, did you see that?  That was pretty cool.”

            “Yeah, you’re a real marvel, Slogan.”  Peter let go of the barbell with one hand and tilted it with the other hand until it was roughly at a 45 degree angle to the floor.  The bar sagged ominously in the middle.

            “Wow,” Stormy said.  “That is impressive, but you should probably put it down before you break it.”  Peter did as Stormy suggested.  The entire weight bench shuddered when he set it down in the brackets.  Stormy took half of the weights off of one side of the bar as Peter stood up and did the same on the other side.

            “What do we do now?” Peter asked as he set the pile of weights down on the floor.  “You’re all out of weights.  Should we find some more friends to hang from the barbell?”

            Stormy mulled this over a bit.  He considered going out and lifting some cars, but that would be too conspicuous.  It might start a panic to have two young men walking around town seeing how many cars they could juggle.  They also might accidentally cause damage or hurt someone.  They needed to go someplace isolated.  Someplace isolated that also had a lot of heavy stuff to mess around with.

            “Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone,” Stormy said.  “We wanted to test how fast we can run, too, right?”

            “Right,” Peter agreed.

            “Where’s someplace that we can run to where we could lift heavy things—boulders or something—without weirding people out?”

            “I can’t really think of anything close by,” Peter said.

            “It doesn’t have to be close by,” Stormy said.  “How far away are the Rocky Mountains?  About three or four hundred kilometers?”

            Peter shrugged.  “Something like that, I guess,” he said.  “I’d have to google it to be sure.  But, Storm, you said you were running about 50 kilometers per hour.  It would take us all day to get to the mountains at that speed.”

            “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t going anywhere near top speed earlier,” Stormy said.  “And hey, if it takes too long, we’ll just stop and turn back.”

            Peter smiled.  “What the hell.  Let’s do it.”

            Stormy held up a hand to halt Peter.  “Before we do that, though, there’s something else we should test.”

            “What?” Peter asked.

            “We know we’re strong,” Stormy said.  “We don’t know just how strong yet, but we know it’s pretty damn strong.  I’d like to have an idea how resistant we are to pain and injury.”

            “Beyond the bright lights and jagged fence pole, you mean,” Peter clarified.

            “Yeah,” Stormy said.

            “What do you propose?”

            Stormy went to the dumbbells he had lined up along the wall opposite the weights for the barbell.  He picked up a 15-pounder and tossed it up, testing its weight.  “Feels like it weighs next to nothing,” he said, “but it’s solid iron.”  He got to his knees and put his left hand down flat on the unfinished concrete floor.

            “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Peter asked.

            “Not really,” Stormy said.  He kept forcing himself to remember the iron fence pole bending as he pressed its sharp end against his arm.  “I’ll start gently.”  Holding the dumbbell in his right hand, he tapped one end of it against his splayed left hand on the floor.  It was gentle enough that it wouldn’t break a normal person’s hand, but hard enough that it should hurt like a bugger.  It didn’t hurt Stormy at all.

            “So far so good,” he said.  He swung the dumbbell again, a little harder this time.  Still no pain.  He lifted his left hand and flexed the fingers.  They still worked properly.

            “This is nuts,” Peter said.

            “Totally,” Stormy agreed.  Confidence in his experiment was returning to him, so he swung the dumbbell hard enough that it should shatter most of the bones in his hand.  There was a loud thud, but Stormy still didn’t feel any pain.  He wasn’t numb; he could still feel the cool floor on his palm and the hard iron pressing against the back of his hand, but there was no pain.  He smiled and whacked his hand again.  This time, there was a definite cracking sound.

            “Oh shit!” Peter said.  “Did you break your hand?”

            Stormy lifted his hand from the floor and flexed it again.  There was no pain, so he doubted he had broken anything.  He looked at the floor where his hand had been and saw a web of thin cracks where his palm had been.  “Uh,” he said, “maybe we should do this somewhere else.”

            “Let’s just get it off the floor,” Peter said and grabbed a 40-pound dumbbell in his right hand and swung it at his left arm.  He seemed to be having the same results as Stormy had.

            Stormy smiled.  “Weight fight!” he called and swung his dumbbell at Peter.  He struck him hard in the chest.  Peter looked shocked at first, but then he smiled himself and swung at Stormy.  It was a devastating blow to his left shoulder that landed with a muted clang as the iron met bone.

            “Wow, that was louder than I was expecting,” Stormy said.  “We better keep it down or we’ll wake everyone up.”

            Peter examined the dumbbell where it had struck Stormy’s shoulder.  “Holy shit!” he said.  “Stormy, you dented it!”

            Stormy took the dumbbell from Peter and examined the round dent where it had struck his shoulder joint.  It was about half an inch deep.  He wasn’t terribly surprised after what had happened at the gazebo, but he was still impressed.

            “Have we had enough fun with blunt force?” Stormy said.  “Should we go for our run now?”

            “Yeah, I’m game,” Peter said.  “Where are we going exactly?”

            “My first thought was to get on the Yellowhead Highway and run until we hit the mountains,” Stormy said, “but we should probably stick to secondary highways instead of sprinting down one of the busiest east-west highways in the province.”

            “What about Villeneuve Road?” Peter asked.  Villeneuve Road was a block north of Deer Ridge Drive.  It was also Highway 633, which headed out of town into the rural areas west of St. Albert.

            “I don’t think that’ll take us all the way to the mountains,” Stormy said.

            “It’s a good start, though,” Peter said.  “Let’s take it as far as it goes and see what happens from there.”

* * *

They stood on Villeneuve Road wearing T-shirts, shorts, and their running shoes.  A line of backyard fences to the south gave them a small degree of privacy.  Farmland spread to the north.  Stormy was stretching.  “I don’t even know if this is necessary for us anymore,” he said.

            “Better safe than sorry,” Peter said.  “We don’t want to cramp up at the top of a mountain and not be able to run back.”

            Peter gazed off towards the western horizon.  Highway 633 shot straight at it like an arrow.  “So, what, then?” he said.  “Are we just gonna run, or should we make a race out of it?”

            Stormy stopped stretching and looked down the two lanes of faded blacktop.  “What does the winner get?” he asked.

            “Loser buys the winner lunch.”

            “Where at?”

            Peter shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Whatever looks good in Jasper, I guess.”

            “Sounds good to me,” Stormy said.  “Let’s do it.”

            Peter and Stormy stood side-by-side facing west.  “Okay,” Peter said.  “One…two…three…Go!”  They dashed down the road.  In a matter of seconds, Peter was already running faster than he had ever run before, and Stormy was keeping pace right beside him.  Still, they were running at a speed that was probably humanly possible, albeit at the Olympic sprinting level.

            “This is nothing,” Stormy said in a voice completely free of exertion and heavy breathing.  “We can do way more than this.”  Peter knew that Stormy was right.  He didn’t feel like he was burning any more energy than when he had been standing still.  Stormy started pulling ahead, and Peter quickly matched his speed and caught back up to him.  Then he passed him as he dug deeper and increased his speed, his legs pumping like the pistons of a powerful engine.  A powerful engine that wasn’t worked up to full speed yet.

            Stormy caught back up to Peter.  He had pulled out his phone and was looking at the GPS app.  “We’re going 56 kilometers per hour,” Stormy yelled over the wind.  “Enough screwing around; let’s go all out!”

            Peter nodded and started pumping his legs at an insane rate.  He shot forward as if he were a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle.  The scenery blurred past him, and he was gripped with a panic that he wouldn’t be able to react to any changes in time and run into something.  He was about to stop, but then something strange happened.  In the movies, when someone was moving at super speed, time slowed down and everything around the speeding person seemed to slow down or even stop moving altogether.  That’s not what happened to Peter.  The world was still flying by at an insane pace, but Peter’s perceptions and reactions seemed to speed up.  He came up fast behind a car and swerved around it without missing a beat.  He glanced over at Stormy, who was still keeping pace with Peter.  His hair was flared backwards as if he had gelled it back, and his clothes were pulled tight against the front of his body.  Looking at him, Peter was surprised the clothes hadn’t ripped right off of him.

            Stormy yelled something that was impossible to hear over the roar of the wind, but Peter was pretty sure that he read Stormy’s lips correctly: “Faster!”

            They went faster.  Peter realized that they were no longer on a road.  Highway 633 had ended, and they were running over land.  A lake was coming up, and Stormy veered around it to the south.  Peter just grinned and jumped.  His leap took him soaring over the lake.  For a moment, it looked like he was going to get wet, but he felt the energy in his body surge, and he landed on dry ground on the other side of the lake just as Stormy came back on course next to him.

            Peter started to feel more of a drag around his body as he sped up even more.  He thought that maybe he was reaching his limit, but then there was a tremendous boom and he kept accelerating.

            Was that the sound barrier?  Peter glanced at Stormy again to make sure they were still together.  Stormy was a few meters behind, but still keeping pace.  Dirt was spraying up in a huge wake behind the two of them.

            When Peter turned forward again—just a second or two later—the mountains loomed ahead of him, and they were growing closer fast.  He slowed slightly as he was filled with awe at the amount of ground they had covered in so short a time, and that allowed Stormy to pass him.

            Shit, Peter thought and sped back up to stay with Stormy.

* * *

            Stormy was exhilarated.  This was so amazing that all of the worry over what was happening had fled from his mind, and he was filled with nothing but naked joy.  As Peter ran just at his heels, Stormy headed up the slope of one of the Rocky Mountains.  He glanced back at Peter to see how close he was, and suddenly his feet weren’t hitting the ground.  He looked forward again and saw that he had shot over the top of the mountain and then over the other side, which had a dizzying steep downward slope, which Stormy had left behind him.  Instead of running, he was now free-falling from the top of a mountain.

            Can I survive a fall from this high up?  Stormy thought that he probably could, but had no idea what it would feel like.  He flexed every muscle in his body as if he could will himself to stop in mid-air.  He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for impact.

            Sooner than he was expecting, there was a sudden jerk, and he stopped.  He thought that he had hit the ground, but he didn’t feel anything.  There was no sound, either.  He opened one eye to peek out at his situation.  When he saw where he was, both eyes shot wide open.

* * *

            Peter saw Stormy go over the edge.  He tried to skid to a stop, but he had too much momentum.  As soon as his feet stopped moving, he toppled and rolled over the edge of the mountaintop.  The world flipped over and over again, his view switching from the blurred sky to the blurred rocky slope.  Each time his body struck the mountain, chunks of rock shattered off and joined him in his graceless descent.  By the time he reached the valley below and came to a stop, an avalanche of rock and trees came to rest on top of him.  He couldn’t see a thing, and the smell of earth filled his nostrils.  In a moment of claustrophobic panic, he stood up and pushed off with his arms.  Rock and dirt flew off of him as if a bomb had gone off at the bottom of the pile.

            Peter found himself in the center of a crater in the rubble.  He climbed out, futilely brushed at the grime covering him, and looked around for any sign of Stormy.

            “Peter!” Stormy yelled from somewhere far off.  Peter looked up the steep slope where it sounded like Stormy’s voice had come from.  He still didn’t see him.

            “Up here!”  Peter craned his neck further up and finally spotted Stormy.  His knees almost gave out beneath him.

             “Are you okay?” Stormy yelled.

            Peter opened his mouth.  He wanted to yell.  He wanted to curse.  He wanted to rail against the impossibility that he saw above him.  Instead, a strangled choking came out of his flapping mouth.

            “Pete!” Stormy yelled again.  “Talk to me!  Are you hurt?  That was a serious fall you just took!”

            Peter found his voice.  “Me?!” he bellowed.  “Me!  I’m fine!  You’re up there doing…that, and you ask about me!  What the hell is wrong with you, Stormy?”

            Stormy looked at himself.  He was hovering a few hundred feet off of the ground in mid-air.  “I know, right?” he said.

            “How are you doing that?”

            “I—I’m not sure.  It was just a reflex.”

            “Do you think I can do that, too?”  As Peter’s shock started to wear off, he was becoming more and more fascinated.  Stormy was flying!

            “How the hell should I know?” Stormy asked.  “Why don’t you try it?”

            “I wouldn’t even know where to start.  Is it a specific body part that you’re using?”

            “No,” Stormy said.  “I don’t think so.  You know how we’ve felt as if we have energy pulsing through us all day?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, I think it’s that energy that’s doing this.  I kind of—” Stormy paused as he struggled for words— “extended the energy outwards in all directions.”

            “That doesn’t make a lick of sense!”  Peter called.  “Would you get down here so we can stop yelling at each other?”

            “Uh…I’m not quite sure how,” Stormy said.  “Maybe if I—”  He dropped from the sky as if invisible wires holding him up had just been cut.  Just before he struck the valley floor, he jerked to a stop, this time just a few feet off the ground.  Peter jogged over to take a closer look.

            “This is seriously messed up,” Peter said.

            Stormy nodded, but he was grinning.  Peter knew that thoughts of being a real-life Superman must be giving Stormy a nerdgasm.

            “Explain to me again how that works,” Peter requested.

            “Who do I look like?” Stormy asked.  “Dr. Douchebag?  Ask him about the science behind it.  As for simply doing it, you just have to dive in.”  Stormy reached down, grabbed Peter under the arms, and tossed him into the air.

            Completely out of control, Peter was propelled straight into the blue sky.  He pin-wheeled his arms and kicked his legs like a cartoon character who just realized that he had run off the edge of a cliff and was trying desperately to get back before gravity took hold and pulled him to the ground far below.  And the ground was far below.  He reached the peak of his flight just above the summit of the mountain he had rolled down moments before.  Once again, gravity found him and pulled him back towards the ground.

            Stormy threw me this high?  Their strength was still surprising.

            The ground was rushing up to meet him.  Peter wasn’t flying.  Stormy had just extended his energy outwards in all directions?  How?  He could feel the energy filling every inch of his body, but he couldn’t think of how to actually manipulate it.  He was going to find himself at the bottom of another crater soon if he didn’t figure this out.  He looked down and saw Stormy watching him.  Can’t be outdone by Slogan, he thought.

            A memory from a few minutes ago occurred to him.  When he had jumped over the lake, he hadn’t thought that he was going to make it, but he had after what felt like a little surge of the energy inside of him.  Had he flown a little bit to make that jump?  It hadn’t been a surge of energy in all directions, but rather one that extended behind him.  He tried that now.  Unfortunately, his back was pointed at the sky. 

* * *

As Stormy watched Peter, something changed.  Instead of falling to the ground, he suddenly surged at it just as fast as they had been running earlier.  A split second after hearing the sonic boom, Peter struck the rocky ground in an explosion of dirt, rock, and splintered trees.  Stormy, who was about fifteen feet away from the impact, was peppered with fractured tree trunks and rocks the size of basketballs.  It didn’t hurt, but the force was enough to push him—he was still hovering a few feet off the ground—away from the new crater.

Stormy put his feet back on the ground and ran to the edge of the crater.  Peter was lying face down in the center of it, dozens of cracks radiating out from his body to the edges of the hole.

“Peter!” Stormy yelled.  Had he just killed his best friend?  He jumped down and landed beside Peter just as he got to his hands and knees.  “Are you okay?  What happened?  That wasn’t just falling!”

“I’m fine,” Peter said.  He sounded surprised that he was fine.  He stood up and looked around at the results of his impact.  “I think I flew,” he said.  “It was just in the wrong direction.”

“I haven’t been able to figure out how to move while hovering,” Stormy said.

“If I understand what you were doing,” Peter said, “you’re pushing out with the energy in all directions.”

“Yeah,” Stormy said.  “That’s what it feels like, anyway.”

“I just pushed out in one direction,” Peter explained.  “Behind me.”

            “Will it always be that fast, or can we control the speed?” Stormy asked.  Peter just shrugged and hopped about a meter into the air.  Instead of coming back down, he stayed hovering there.  Stormy leapt up and hovered beside him.

            “Which way should we go?” Peter asked.

            Stormy looked around the valley.  They were surrounded on all sides by mountains and fir trees.  A fresh scar marking Peter’s tumble pointed back the way they had come.  “Let’s head back to the top of the one we came down,” Stormy said and gestured along the path of Peter’s avalanche.

            Peter nodded.  He closed his eyes for a moment, and then started floating up into the air at a leisurely pace.  Stormy closed his own eyes and concentrated on the energy field surrounding him.  It was completely invisible and completely insubstantial, yet he could sense it extending around him in all directions.  He visualized it as rays of light emanating from him.  Maybe if he could focus the direction of the light downward, like a searchlight instead of a naked bulb, it would propel him.  Even as he thought it, he felt the energy field shift and point down.  He began to rise.  He opened his eyes and looked at the receding ground, and then he looked up at Peter, who was rising at an angle parallel to the slope of the mountain rather than just going straight up.  Stormy adjusted his energy field—he was already thinking of it as his antigravity field—so that he was flying at an angle to match Peter’s.

            His body was still perpendicular to the ground, so he was flying in a standing position.  It felt awkward and unnatural, so he shifted his body—his antigravity field shifting as well to compensate for his new orientation—so that his body was parallel to the angle of his ascent.  He was in a more classic Superman flying pose now, and this made him smile.  He held his arms out in front of him to complete the image.

            Peter was still ahead of him.  Stormy gave his antigravity field a slight increase in power, and he soon caught up to him.  He noticed that Peter had also adjusted to the Superman flying position, although his arms were at his side instead of out in front of him.  He was also grinning.  Peter always gave Stormy a hard time for his fascination with comic books and science fiction, but when it came right down to it, Stormy could tell that Peter was every bit as thrilled with flying as he was.

            “You still want to throw boulders around?” Peter asked.

            Stormy shook his head.  “I think your fall down the mountain and the way you unburied yourself from that avalanche gave us a good idea how strong we are,” he said.  “That, and the fact that I tossed you about 1000 feet into the air.  I’m more interested in this whole flying business now.”

            “We never did finish our race,” Peter pointed out.

            “What are you talking about?” Stormy asked.  “I totally won.”

            “The race was to Jasper,” Peter countered.  “We never arrived at Jasper.”

            “The race was to the mountains, and I got here just ahead of you.  You owe me dinner at my choice of restaurant in Jasper.”

            “I think we should have a rematch due to the poor definition of the finish line.”

            “Trying to weasel your way out of buying me dinner, I see.  Are you suggesting that we continue on to Jasper?”

            Peter looked around as they neared the top of the mountain.  “Where the hell are we, anyway?”

            Stormy looked around.  There were no towns in sight.  “Uh…” he said.  “The mountains?”

            “The mountains?”

            “The Rocky Mountains,” Stormy clarified.

            “Well done,” Peter said.  “Didn’t I see you looking at your GPS on your phone earlier?”

            “Oh, right!”  Stormy fished into his pocket.  He had forgotten about his phone entirely.  He opened the GPS app and got his bearings.

            “Looks like we’re in the Willmore Wilderness Park,” he said.  “The closest town is Grande Cache to the north.  Jasper is southeast of here.”

            “How far?” Peter asked.

            “I’m not sure,” Stormy said.  “I need a road to tell me the distance, and we aren’t near any roads.”  He did some quick calculations with the phone.  “It takes a little over two-and-a-half hours to drive from Grande Cache to Jasper,” he said.  “It is not, in any way, a direct route.”

            “How many clicks?” Peter asked.

            “210,” Stormy said.  “So I’d guess that flying directly there, assuming we didn’t get lost, it would be about 115, maybe 130 kilometers?”

            “How long did it take us to run here from St. Albert?”

            Stormy navigated back in his GPS to the last trip he made.  “It took us 11 minutes to go 413 kilometers,” Stormy said.  “The top speed says 999 kilometers per hour, but I think that’s because it only goes into triple digits.  We broke the sound barrier, and the speed of sound is about 330 meters per second.  What’s that in kilometers per hour?”

            “Well over 1000,” Peter said.  They were hovering above the peak of the mountain now.  Stormy looked north.  He could see for miles at this height, and he was pretty sure he could make out a small town nestled in a valley along a winding highway.  That must be Grande Cache.

            “So what do you think?” Peter asked.  “Continue on to Jasper, or fly back home?”

            “My vote’s for home,” Stormy said.  “If we can fly as fast as we can run, it’ll only take us about ten minutes.”

Chapter 12: Buzz

            “This has to be fake,” Gavin muttered to himself as he finished the third video clip in the series.  The title of this one was “Low Flying Sonic Boom.”  It was a lot like the first one, which had been “Ground Level Sonic Boom.”  It had shown the same group of excited people from the first two videos.  They were looking at one of the footprints that had been pounded into the pavement of highway 633 that had been the subject of the second video.  As the amateur cameraman chattered excitedly the two streaks that had blurred past them while they drove, leaving them in the wake of a sonic boom, streaked  past again, this time in the air no more than 100 feet up.  There was an ear-shattering boom, just as there had been in the first one.  The streaks were moving east this time.  The scene played again, this time in slow motion, and the things moving at supersonic speeds almost looked human.

            The comments under the videos agreed with Gavin for the most part.  Declarations of “Fake!” made up the majority of the posts.  They had to be fake, but they were good fakes.  Gavin couldn’t deny that.  Also, the people in the video seemed genuine in their reactions.  If it was a fake—and it had to be a fake—then it was well-done with good actors.

            His phone rang, and Gavin snatched it off of his desk.  It was Stormy.  “Hey, Storm,” he said.  “Have you seen these weird videos on YouTube that were taken just west of town?  They’re fake, obviously, but they’re still impressive.”

            “They were on the news this evening,” Stormy said.  “Crazy, eh?”

            “Did you see the slowed down version of them?  They look like two dudes flying!”

            “Uh-huh,” Stormy said.  He sounded uncomfortable for some reason.

            “What’s up, Stormy?” Gavin asked.

            “Are you busy right now?” Stormy said.

            “No, I’m just farting around online.  Is something going on tonight?

            “Yeah,” Stormy said.  “Peter and I are at my place.  Lori and Angela are on their way over.”

            “What’s the plan?”

            “Peter and I actually have an announcement to make to you guys and to our families,” Stormy said.

            “Peter’s family is gonna be there?”  Gavin didn’t find that very likely.

            “No,” Stormy said.  “Peter’s going home afterwards to tell his family the news.”

            “You guys aren’t gay, are you?”

            “No, Gavin, we aren’t gay.”

            “Just making sure.  I’ll be right over.”

* * *

            Lori sat in an easy chair in the Logans’ basement trying to figure out what Stormy and Peter could possibly be announcing to everyone.  Why the drama?  Why the suspense?  It wasn’t like either of them.  If they had been opposite genders, she would have suspected a surprise engagement or something, but they were both heterosexual men.  And she knew them too well for them to be hiding something like that from her.  Besides, if Stormy was coming out of the closet, Angela wouldn’t be here.  He would have told her in private instead of embarrassing her in front of their friends and Stormy’s family.  No, they definitely weren’t gay.  What could it be then?

            She was joining in the group conversation, but she was more of a passive participant and only responded when addressed directly.  She was too busy trying to figure out what was going on.  The only thing she could possibly think of was something to do with the incident at West Ed the other day.  Had they gone back to the doctor and discovered that something was wrong with them after all?  The thought filled her with an unshakable dread, so she tried not to think about it.

            Finally, the doorbell rang, and Gavin joined them in the basement a moment later.  “Is that everyone?” Daryl asked as he scanned the crowd that consisted of himself, Kris, Pam, Stormy, Peter, Angela, Gavin, and Lori.

            “That’s it,” Stormy said.

            “So what’s this about?” Kris asked.  “You two aren’t gay, are you?”

            “Why is that the first thing everyone goes to?” Peter asked.  “Have you all been wondering if we’re gay?”

            “I don’t know about Peter,” Angela said, “but Stormy is not gay.  I can vouch for that.”  This earned her a look from Kris, Daryl, and Pam.

            “Is there something you and Stormy should be telling us?” Pam asked.

            “Our purity is intact,” Stormy said.  “And Peter and I aren’t gay.”

            “Sorry,” Gavin said, “but the only other possibility I can think of is that you two joined Amway and want us to sign up now.”

            “Is it still called Amway?” Stormy asked.  “I thought they changed their name.”

            Kris held up a hand.  “Hold on,” she said.  “I’m going to stop you kids right now.  I know how you like to go off on tangents.  We’re here because Stormy and Peter have something they want to tell us.  Boys?”

            Stormy and Peter looked at each other.  “It’s your family,” Peter said and waved for Stormy to take the lead.

            “Right,” Stormy said.  He stood up in front of the television and faced the group.  Lori sat forward on the edge of her seat.  She tried to keep her face calm, but her heart was racing.  She noticed that Angela was in a similar position.  Lori hoped that her poker face was better than Angela’s.

            “Pete,” Stormy said.  “You have the laptop ready?”

            Peter nodded.  Stormy’s laptop computer rested on his knees.  Lori couldn’t see the screen.

            “Is this about all the extra muscle you gained over night?” Angela asked.

            “I’m sorry, the what?” Daryl said.

            “Yes, Ange,” Stormy said.  “At least, that’s part of it.  Pete, show them the photos.”

            Peter turned the laptop around and maximized a window.  It showed four photos: two of Stormy and two of Peter.  They were topless in all four of them.  Two of them, Lori recognized from the other day at the water park.  The other two looked like they had been taken in Stormy’s house.  They were before and after comparisons of each of them.  In the second photo of both Stormy and Peter, their muscles were larger and more defined.

            Gavin was leaning forward and scrutinizing the photos.  “That’s gotta be Photoshopped,” he said.

            Stormy lifted his shirt, revealing chiseled abs and broad pecs.  He matched the after photo, not the before photo, and Lori knew that the before photo wasn’t fake.  She had seen him looking like that just two days ago.

            “What about you, Peter?” Pam asked.  “Aren’t you going to prove that you match your second photo?”

            “Pam!” Kris hissed.

            “No problem,” Peter said and removed his shirt.  His new heavily-muscled body looked like it could run through a brick wall.

            “Okay, time to get dressed again,” Daryl said.  Stormy let his shirt fall back into place, and Peter pulled his back over his head.

            “We’re pretty sure this happened as a result of the injections we received by the crazy scientist guy,” Stormy said.

            “Was it steroids?” Daryl asked.  “Why didn’t the blood and urine tests detect that?”

            “We don’t think it was steroids, Dad,” Stormy said.  “We think it was an experimental drug that the doctors don’t have a test for.”

            “It’s definitely more than just steroids,” Peter said.

            “Is this why you were so sick yesterday?” Kris asked.  Stormy nodded.  “Have you noticed any other symptoms?”

            Stormy sighed and smiled.  “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he said.  Lori glanced at Peter and saw that he was smirking to himself and nodding.

            Kris looked worried.  “I want to get you to a doctor right away,” she said.

            “I have an appointment for tomorrow,” Stormy said, “but I’m not going.”

            “You most certainly are going, young man!” Kris ordered.  “We don’t know what that madman injected you with!”

            “You know those videos on the news earlier that were shot west of town on Highway 633?” Stormy asked.

            “What does that have to do with anything?” Kris asked.

            “That was us,” Stormy said.

            The room was silent.  Lori’s thoughts were shaken off stride.  She hadn’t been expecting this sudden turn in the conversation.  And what exactly did he mean that it was them?

            “What do you mean?” Gavin asked.  “You and Peter faked those videos?”

            “We didn’t fake them,” Stormy said.  “We were really going that fast.”

            “No,” Gavin said.  “That’s impossible.  Whatever those were in those videos—if they were even real—they were going faster than the speed of sound!  And they were flying in the third video!”

            Stormy stretched his right arm out to his side pointing to his right.  He stepped back a few feet so that everyone was out of arm’s reach.  “Watch carefully,” he said.

            “What are we watching?” Pam asked.

            “My arm.”  In a blur of motion that was too fast to even see, Stormy’s arm was suddenly reaching across his chest and pointing to his left.  There was a crack, like the crack of a whip, only louder.  Everyone’s hair fluttered in the wind from his arm’s short journey.

            Gavin jumped to his feet on the sofa and pressed his back against the wall.  His jaw seemed to want to stay down where he had been sitting a second before.  Pam, Kris, and Angela voiced short shrieks and twitched.  Lori just let her jaw sag as her eyes felt like they were going to pop out of her head.

            “And that’s just part of it,” Peter said.  He waited for everyone to unglue their eyes from Stormy’s arm, and then did something even more impossible than what they had just witnessed: he floated up off of the sofa, flipped over so he was facing down, and rested his back against the ceiling.

            Gavin was the first to speak after what seemed like an eternal silence.  “This,” he breathed.  “This.  Is.  Awesome!”  He laughed and bounced up and down on the couch.  “You guys are friggin’ super-heroes!”

            “Stormy,” Kris said.  “You are going to a hospital right away.”

            “Mom,” Stormy said, “I know this is bizarre and more than a little frightening, but what are doctors going to do?  I’m not sick.”

            “They need to run tests,” Kris said.  “Stormy, we don’t know what else this drug is doing to you.”

            “Their tests will be limited,” Peter said.  “I don’t think they’ll be able to even take blood samples.”

            “Even if they could,” Stormy added, “I don’t want to be poked and prodded at like some sort of lab rat.”

            “What are you saying?” Lori asked Peter.  “Why wouldn’t they be able to take blood.”

            Peter slowly floated down and stood beside Stormy.  “We can do more than just fly and run at ridiculous speeds,” he said.  “We’re strong, too.”

            “How strong?” Daryl asked.

            “You saw the videos,” Stormy said.  “Our feet crushed the pavement as we ran.  That should have been enough to crush every bone in our feet, not to mention give our knees a serious pounding.”

            “Also,” Peter put in, “I fell down a mountain at the speed of sound, and an avalanche landed on me.”

            “A mountain?” Gavin said.  He was still bouncing on the couch.  He was a like a little kid who had just discovered Santa filling his stocking on Christmas Eve.  “You guys ran from here to the mountains?  How long did it take you?”

            “About ten minutes,” Stormy said.

            “This is insane,” Angela said.  She had been quiet until now, able only to stare at her boyfriend in this new light.  “You’re mother’s right, Stormy.  As excited as Gavin is, and as cool as I know you must think all of this is, this isn’t a comic book.  This is serious.  You need to go to a doctor.”

            “Hold on,” Stormy said and reached into his pocket.  He pulled out a pocket knife and unfolded the three-inch blade.  “Nobody is getting blood out of me easily,” he said and jabbed the point of the blade into the flesh of his forearm.  Everyone but Peter reached forward as if to stop him, but Stormy kept pushing until the blade bent and then snapped.  There was no blood, or even a scratch.  “What do you think a needle is going to do to me?” Stormy asked.

            Kris began to weep silently.  Daryl put his arm around her, and Stormy went to her and knelt in front of her.  “Mom, I’m fine,” he said and took her hand in both of his.  “I know this is a lot of strange stuff to take in, but I’m really fine.  You don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

            Lori stood up and went to the broken knife that Stormy had dropped when his mother began to cry.  She picked up both halves and examined them.  The steel had broken cleanly at the halfway point of blade.  She tested the point and found that it really was as sharp as it looked.

            “What are you two going to do now?” Lori asked.

            Peter shrugged.  “What should we do?” he asked.

            “I want to keep this a secret,” Stormy said.  “For now, anyway.”

            “Why?” Pam asked.  “Now that you’re super-heroes, you want a secret identity?  Are you gonna start wearing glasses and get a job at a newspaper?”

            “We aren’t super-heroes,” Peter said.  “Yes, we have amazing, comic-bookish abilities, but we aren’t going to start patrolling the city and stopping petty crime.  I’m going to go on with my life as I had been planning before all of this happened.  I don’t really see the need for keeping this a secret, though.  What’s your reasoning, Stormy?”

            “Protection, mostly,” Stormy said.

            “Protection from what?” Peter asked.  “If we don’t become vigilantes—which is illegal, by the way—we won’t be making any enemies to hide from.”

            “I mean protection from people who want to put us away in a lab to study and experiment on us,” Stormy said.

            Peter snorted.  “Let them try,” he said.

            “True,” Stormy agreed, “they won’t have much luck overpowering us.  We have families and friends, though.  Threaten them, and we might just go willingly to become somebody’s lab experiment.”

            “Don’t you think you might be acting a little paranoid?” Pam asked.  “I mean, this is Canada we’re living in, not Cold War-era Russia.”

            “I’m not really worried about the Canadian government pounding my door down and dragging us away in our sleep,” Stormy said.  “But do you trust the US government to show the same restraint?  They invaded Iraq because there might have been weapons of mass destruction there.  What do you think they’d think of us?  The doctor who did this to us said he was being chased by the CIA or the NSA.”

            “Yeah, but he was just some nut,” Angela said.

            “Was he?” Stormy said.  “Everything he told Peter and me has turned out to be true so far.  My guess is that he was a scientist working for the US government to find a way to turn people into…us, and that for some reason he ran off and chose to test the drug on his own terms.”

            The room was quiet as they thought this over.  Lori saw that he had a point.  She didn’t like the thought of a government—any government; not just the States—trying to force her two best friends into a secret lab somewhere to undergo invasive tests.

            “I can see your point,” Peter said.  “But the main reason I think keeping this a secret is a good idea is fame avoidance.  The last thing I want is to be famous.”

            Daryl nodded.  “That’s probably wise,” he said.  “With the way people worship celebrities, privacy would be a rare luxury if you were famous.”

            “So we’re agreed, then?” Stormy asked and met everyone’s eyes.  “We’re going to keep this a secret?  Just those of us in this room plus Peter’s family?”

            Everyone nodded except for Gavin.  “I think it’s smart to keep your identities secret,” he said, “but I think that you should be open with the public about this.  Just wear a mask, or something.”

            “This isn’t a comic book, Gav,” Peter said.  “I refuse to put on tights and fly around protecting the good citizens of Metropolis.”

            “I never said anything about tights,” Gavin said.  “I just said wear a mask.”  He sat down, but leaned forward in his seat.  “Hear me out, here,” he continued.  “You two have what people have been dreaming about forever.  You have powers far greater than mortal men!  With all of the conspiracy theories and all of the people believing in aliens and Bigfoot and stuff like that, I think the world deserves to have this one proof of the supernatural.”

            “I wouldn’t call it supernatural,” Peter said.  “Amazing, yes, but this was the result of a scientific breakthrough.  Magic had nothing to do with it.”

            “You know what I mean,” Gavin said.  “If aliens are real, they aren’t supernatural either.  Supernatural was a poor choice of words.  What I mean is that it would be nice to all of the nerds like me out there if we had something real that has only been available in fantasy until now.”

            “We’ll think about it,” Peter said.  “That’s all we can promise right now.  I think that maintaining a secret identity would be a lot harder than it’s portrayed in comic books, so it’s not something I’ll consider easily.”

            “Fair enough,” Gavin said.

            Peter stood up.  “I should get going,” he said.  “My family should be told about this, and they’ll be pissed if they found out I told you guys first.”

            Lori stood and followed Peter up the stairs as Stormy stayed with his family, Angela, and Gavin.  Peter knew that she was right behind him, but he didn’t say anything until they were at the front door.

            “What’s on your mind, Lori,” he said as he opened the door and stepped outside.  Lori followed and closed the door behind him.

            “Are you okay?” she asked.

            “Of course I’m okay,” he said.  “I’m better than okay.  You saw our little demonstration down there.”

            Lori just looked at him.  He knew what she was talking about; she wasn’t going to spell it out for him.

            “Well, I’ve been having dizzy spells all day, but nothing major,” he said.

            “You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” she said.  Maybe he was going to make her spell it out.  “This is probably a dream come true for Stormy, but you’ve always been more level-headed.  This is life-changing, whether you want to admit it or not.  How are you holding up?”

            Peter sighed.  “I don’t know, Lori,” he said and shook his head.  “On the one hand, this is pretty damn cool.  The things I can do are amazing, and it’s fun.  But on the other hand, I’m scared out of my mind.  Kris and Angela are right about that.  What else was this drug designed to do?  How exactly is it that we can do these things?  It’s more than just extra muscle making us this way.  Are there any side effects we need to worry about?  Is this change permanent?  I find that I’m walking on egg shells wherever I go now because I don’t know my own strength.  I’m afraid to shake someone’s hand for fear of crushing it.”

            Lori took Peter’s hand in hers.  “Are you going to go to the doctor?” she asked.

            “No,” Peter said, “Because Stormy is right about that part.  What’s a doctor going to do?  Even if they do somehow get a blood sample, do they even know what to look for?  Would it even show up in tests?”

            Lori gave Peter’s hand a squeeze, and he folded his fingers around hers.  It was a completely platonic gesture, one of two life long friends comforting each other.  “Well, you’re not crushing my hand,” Lori said.  “That’s a good sign.”

            Peter smiled.  “It’s a start, I suppose.”  He leaned down and kissed her forehead.  “I really should get going, British Truck.”

            Lori hugged Peter.  His body was rock hard under his shirt, and it almost felt like she was hugging a granite statue.  But then he gingerly put his arms around her, and it felt like hugging her best friend again.

            “Give me a call anytime you need to talk,” she said.

            “Will do,” Peter said and walked away.  Lori watched him go for a moment before turning around and going back inside.

Chapter 13: Assurances

“Did you walk or drive?” Stormy asked Angela as they walked to the door with Lori.  Kris and Daryl had gone up to their room to talk in private, Pam was writing in her journal, and Gavin had just left for home.

            “I got a ride with Lori,” Angela said.

            “Do you want me to take you home?” Stormy asked.

            Angela nodded.  “That would be nice,” she said.  “You’ll be okay going home alone, Lori?”

            “I’m a big girl,” Lori said.  “I’m in no way offended that you want to spend some alone time with your boyfriend.”

            Stormy pulled Lori into a friendly hug.  He was very careful not to squeeze too hard.  Having this much strength made him nervous, and he didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone.  “Thanks for being here tonight,” he said.

            “Thanks for including me in the inner circle of trust,” Lori said.  She turned with a wave and walked out the door as Angela slid her feet into her shoes.

            Stormy turned to face Angela as she straightened up, and he waited for it.  The disapproving look had been in her eyes since she had overcome the initial shock of Stormy’s news.  She gave him a stern look now that somehow made her more endearing; he couldn’t help smiling at her.  Angela smiled back in spite of herself.

            “Stop it,” she said and swatted his arm.

            “Stop what?” Stormy said and laughed.  “I’m just standing here looking at the most beautiful girl in the world.”

            “I said stop it!”  Angela gave him a playful shove.

            “Yes, Dear,” Stormy said.

            Angela took his hands and studied his face.  “You’re really not going to the doctor, are you?” she said.

            Stormy shook his head.  “I don’t see the point,” he said.  “That, and I want to keep this a secret.”

            “You know I don’t approve,” Angela said.  “I just want to be clear on this.  I think you should go to a doctor as soon as possible, and I think you’re judgment is clouded by how much this is wish fulfillment for you.”

            Stormy just nodded.  He didn’t want to argue with her right now.  Thankfully, neither did she.  “Having said that,” Angela continued, “I want to have a nice, leisurely walk home with my boyfriend.”

            “I’ll see what I can do.”  Stormy took Angela’s hand and escorted her out the front door.  The walked to the end of the driveway and turned west on the sidewalk.

            “So tell me all about it,” Angela said.  “Just how strong and fast are you?”

            “Well, if I did the math right, we ran to the Rocky Mountains at about 2000 kilometers per hour, and we flew home a little faster,” Stormy said.  “As for strength, we’re pretty darn strong.  Peter literally plowed down the side of a mountain, had an avalanche land on top of him, and threw off a few tons of rock like they were a pile of dead leaves.”

            “I don’t understand how the flying works,” Angela said.  “You obviously don’t have wings, and you don’t have jet packs growing out of your backs or anything.”  She rubbed her hand up and down his back.  “Or do you?” she teased.

            “I don’t fully understand it myself,” Stormy said.  “When we fly, it feels like there’s some sort of force field around us that allows us to levitate.”

            “Maybe letting scientists pock and prod at you would be worth it just to understand how you work.”

            “Maybe,” Stormy conceded.  “I don’t want to chance it, though.  Not right now, anyway.  I’d want it to be on my own terms.”

            They walked in silence for a moment.  They passed an elementary school, and just to the west of it was a park.  Stormy led them across the street and they followed the paved pathway into the shadows.

            “But Stormy,” Angela said, feigning innocence, “my house isn’t that way.  Why are you taking me into a moonlit park?”

            Stormy smirked at her and said, “It’s not what you think.  Well, not exactly.”

            “What are we doing, then?” Angela asked.

            Once they were a comfortable distance away from the sidewalk and street lights, Stormy looked around to make sure no one else was around.  He scooped Angela up into his arms.  It still surprised him how light people felt with his newfound strength.  It seemed that she should float away on the breeze.

            Angela let out a surprised little “Oh!”  She put her arms around his neck and smiled at him.  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

            “You’ve seen Superman: the Movie.”  It was a statement rather than a question.  Stormy knew she had seen the movie because he had forced her to watch all five Superman movies during the year they had been dating.

            “Yes,” Angela said.  “So?  What are you saying?  Is there an equivalent to kryptonite that can hurt you?”

            “No,” Stormy said and chuckled.  “Not that I know of, anyway.  I just figured that we could recreate the ‘Can You Read My Mind’ scene.  Except for the part when he dropped Lois, of course.”

            “You’re going to take me flying?” Angela asked.

            “I’ve already started.”

            Angela looked down and shrieked.  Her arms clamped tight around his neck.  A few days ago, Stormy wouldn’t have been able to breathe.  Today, though, Angela wasn’t strong enough to constrict his throat. 

            The tree tops were a good twenty feet below Stormy’s feet.  Angela’s face was buried in Stormy’s shoulder, and her eyes were squeezed shut.

            “That’s perfect,” Stormy said.  “You look like a blonde Margot Kidder.”

            “Who’s Margot Kidder?” Angela said, her voice muffled against Stormy’s shoulder.

            “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Stormy said.  He continued to drift higher into the warm summer sky.  The lights of St. Albert spread out below him, and the larger ocean of lights that was Edmonton filled the horizon just to the south of town.

            “You should really open your eyes and enjoy this view,” Stormy said.  “Looking out the window of an airplane is nothing compared to this.”

            Angela peeked out to see the view.  Her arms tightened around his neck as she noticed how high they were now, but she relaxed again right away.  “Oh, wow!” she said.  “It’s beautiful!”

            “Told ya,” Stormy said.  He looked up at the stars.  They were dim this close to the city, but the moon was big and bright.  It wasn’t quite full, but its light falling on Angela’s face gave her an ethereal beauty.  She was looking up at the sky as well.

            “You should take us away from the city,” she said.  “I want to see the stars better than this.”

            Stormy turned north and flew away from the Capital Region.  Angela’s arms tightened again around his neck as he flew with speed now instead of just gently levitating.  For the sake of her comfort, he didn’t go too fast.  Maybe 50 or 60 kilometers per hour.

            “It’s okay,” Stormy said.  “I won’t drop you.”

            “It just takes some getting used to,” Angela said as she watched the lights below disappear behind them.  They were into the countryside now.  St. Albert was a good five kilometers behind them.  There were lights from a smaller town farther to the north, but they weren’t bright enough to hinder their view of the stars.

            “That must be Morinville up ahead,” Stormy said.

            “Uh-huh, that’s great,” Angela said.  Instead of looking north, she was staring straight up in wide-eyed wonder.  A blanket of millions of stars spread over their heads.  They were so much brighter here than in the city.  And there were countless more of them.  Before moving to St. Albert just over a year ago, Angela’s family had lived in Toronto.  She was a city girl through-and-through.  Stormy was a city boy himself, but he had spent every summer since he was a little kid camping.  He was in the city enough to appreciate the stars when he saw them, but he wasn’t blown away by them the same way that Angela was.  He was more interested in looking at her.

            “I’m going to shift you around a bit,” Stormy warned so she wouldn’t be surprised.  He had flown here horizontally while cradling Angela in his arms in front of him.  Now he righted himself so that he was vertical.  As Angela clasped her arms around his neck, he shifted her weight in his arms so that she was also vertical facing him.  He held her around the waist pressed up against him as she rested her toes on his feet.

            “Don’t drop me!” she breathed.  In her nervousness, she wrapped her legs around his waist and locked her ankles behind him.

            “Don’t worry, Angie, we’re good.  I won’t drop you.”  He leaned back a little so that he wasn’t quite at a 90 degree angle with the ground, and she was able to rest most of her weight against him.  She relaxed, but still held him firmly with her arms and legs.  He could feel her heart beating against his chest, and he was suddenly aware of every one of her curves that was pressing against him.  The moonlight made her blonde mane of hair glow like a halo.

            “How did I ever get a girl like you?” Stormy asked.

            Angela smiled at him.  “Stormy, you could have any girl you want,” she said.  “What makes you so sweet is that you don’t realize it.”  She leaned in and kissed him.

            All of the flying, running at supersonic speeds, and lifting impossibly heavy objects paled in comparison to the rush Angela’s lips gave him.

* * *

            Peter drained his fifth beer as country music blared from a juke box.  He hated country music, but Jordan always insisted they come to this bar because he had a thing for one of the waitresses.  That, and Jordan was a closet country music fan.

            “Need a new pitcher?” Jordan’s waitress—Peter didn’t remember her name—asked as she strolled by.

            “Please,” Peter said as he eyed the foam clinging to the inside of the empty pitcher.

            “You finished it a’ready?” Jordan asked.  He was already starting to slur, and they’d only been here for an hour.

            “I’m thirsty,” Peter said.

            “You’re gonna be fat if you keep goin’ like that!”  Jordan cackled at his own joke.  Peter smiled, but just to be polite.  When Jordan was drunk, he got surly if nobody laughed at his jokes.

            Turning to the waitress, Peter said, “Can we get a platter of hot wings, too?  If I’m gonna get fat, I might as well enjoy it.”

            The waitress turned and went to the bar to fill their order.  Jordan watched her ass for a good long while.  Peter examined the empty mug in his hands.  Five beers, and not even a buzz yet.  He had been afraid of this.  Being impervious to pain, he had wondered if he was also immune to diseases.  That lead him to wonder if he was also immune to poisons.  And that lead him to wonder if alcohol no longer had any effect on him.  It was looking like his days of getting drunk were over.  Might as well become a Mormon now.  He smirked to himself.  That would really upset Jordan.

            His meeting with his family had gone much the same as the meeting with Stormy’s family had: a lot of shock, disbelief, and worried parents.  Jordan had taken it the best out of all of them.  He had been the excited one.  Not as excited as Gavin, but he seemed to think it was pretty cool and insisted they go out drinking to celebrate.  Peter had only agreed to come along because he had wanted to confirm his suspicions about his new relationship with alcohol.

            “I need to take a piss,” Jordan said and stood up.  He sauntered towards the washrooms at the back.  He wasn’t drunk enough yet to be swaying and staggering, but Peter was sure that he’d get there before long.  Usually, Peter would join him, but Jordan would be going alone into intoxication tonight.

            “Here you go, hon,” the waitress said and set a fresh pitcher of beer down in the center of the table.  “The wings’ll be a few minutes yet.”

            “Thanks,” Peter said.

            “Where’d Jordan run off to?”

            “He’s taking a leak.”

            The waitress looked a little disappointed as she moved on to her other tables.  Peter smiled.  He’d have to report that back to Jordan. 

            Peter grabbed the fresh pitcher and poured himself another mug.  “Well, beer,” he said under his breath, “it’s been fun, but I think it’s time for us to split up.  You just don’t do it for me anymore, and I don’t drink you for the taste.”  He downed the beer and set the empty mug down on the table.

            Sounds of a commotion coming from behind him drew his attention.  He looked over his shoulder and groaned.  Jordan was lipping off to a table of drunk cowboys.  He wasn’t really sure what all of the yelling about, but there was certainly a lot of cursing.  The cowboys didn’t look very pleased.  This wasn’t going to end well.  Peter stood up.

            “Pete!” Jordan yelled across the bar just as Peter started making his way over to his brother.  “Let’s take these assholes outside and teach ‘em a lesson.”

            “What, just the two of you?” one of the cowboys—there were six of them—asked and sneered.  “This won’t even be a workout, boys.”  The rest of the cowboys laughed.

            “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jordan,” Peter said, “but there are six of them and only two of us.”

            Jordan spit in the cowboys’ pitcher of beer.  “Yeah, but they’re six pussies,” he said.  “We can take these hicks.”

            The cowboys had been mildly irritated by Jordan before.  The spit in their beer changed that.  They all stood up in unison as if they had rehearsed it and scowled at Jordan.  Peter was a pretty tall guy, and most of these guys were taller than him.  He could tell that they weren’t wannabe cowboys, too.  Their broad shoulders, tanned faces, and callused hands were evidence of a lifetime of hard physical labour in the open air.  What was Jordan thinking?

            He was thinking that his brother could lift several tons, that’s what he was thinking.  Peter almost left Jordan to his fate for picking this fight, but he couldn’t do that to his own brother.  Instead, he held up a hand to the cowboys and said, “Excuse us a moment.”  He grabbed Jordan by the arm and pulled him just out of earshot.

            “What the hell, Jordan?” Peter hissed.

            “What?” Jordan said.  “I watched you snap a butcher knife in half with your hand.  What are you afraid of?”

            “Did you miss the whole part about how I want to keep it a secret?” Peter asked.  “Fighting half-a-dozen farmhands isn’t very subtle.”

            “No one will remember you,” Jordan said.  “It’s not like we have to tell them our names and addresses to take part in a bar fight.  Just make it look like it’s hard.”

            “And what if the cops show up, Jordan!”

            “Are we gonna do this, or what?” one of the cowboys asked.

            Peter turned and pointed at him, “Hold on to your chaps, Hop-Along, my brother and I are talking!”

            Jordan was smiling when Peter turned back to him.  “That’s not gonna help stop a fight,” he said.  “I think they’re pretty intent on following through with this, anyway.  They won’t let us just walk away.”

            “I’ll fight five of them,” Peter said.  “The sixth is all yours.”

            “Deal.”  Jordan stepped around Peter and said, “Outside, cow-fuckers, we’ll finish you off and have you home to Bessie in no time.”

            Jordan headed out the side door to the parking lot.  Peter followed, and the cowboys came after them along with a crowd of spectators.  Peter shook his head.  This was just perfect.

            They stopped in a relatively empty corner of the parking lot and faced each other, the spectators forming a wide circle around them.  Peter scanned their faces to see if anyone he recognized was in the crowd and was pleased when he saw none.

            Jordan patted Peter’s shoulder.  “I usually let my brother go it alone,” Jordan said.  “He’s a wild man and can take six men in his sleep.  He’s been drinking tonight, though, so I’m gonna help him out this time.  Besides, why should I let him have all the fun?”

            The cowboys smirked at this, taking it as shallow bravado from a loudmouth city boy.  Peter felt bad for them.  They had just been minding their own business relaxing at a bar when some punk came over and picked a fight with them.  How were they supposed to know that the punk’s younger brother was a real life Superman?  Peter almost walked away again, but he couldn’t just leave Jordan to have his face kicked in by these good ol’ boys.

            “You have a real mouth, donctha?” one of the cowboys said.  He lunged at Jordan, and Peter didn’t stop him.  This wasn’t Jordan’s first fight; he’d be able to handle himself against one guy.

            The other five came forward next.  Two went after Jordan, and the other three came at Peter.

            First things first, Peter told himself.  He tripped one of the guys going for Jordan and grabbed the arm of the other one.  Being careful not to rip the arm out of its socket, Peter swung the guy around and slammed him into one of his friends.  They both went down.

            A fist as big as a ham was flying at Peter’s face.  He side-stepped it and drove a gentle fist into a kidney.  The owner of the ham fist crumpled to the pavement.  He was still conscious, but he wasn’t getting up for a few minutes at least.

            Peter glanced over his shoulder to see Jordan and his one foe trading blows.  The guy he had tripped on his way to Jordan had gotten back to his feet and was reaching for Jordan again.  A pair of fists clasped together came down on Peter’s neck from behind.  Unhurt, he staggered forward to present a good show.  He grabbed the second guy going for Jordan and backhanded him across the face.  He went limp in Peter’s grasp, and Peter gently set him down on the pavement.  The guy was unconscious, but he was breathing fine, and nothing was out of place on his face.

            Peter saw the foot coming at his face out of the corner of his eye and rolled out of range.  The owner of the foot was off balance from the missed kick, and Peter simply swiped the one foot he was standing on out from under him.

            All five of Peter’s sparring partners were down.  One of them was unconscious, one was clutching his side in pain, and the other three were giving him wary looks from the ground.  The anger had left them.  They could tell by Peter’s casual air that he was holding back, and the only blow that any of them had managed to land had just been brushed off.

            “Are we done?” Peter asked.  The cowboys didn’t answer, but they didn’t make any move to attack him again.  Peter took this as confirmation that they were done.  He went to Jordan, who had his opponent incapacitated in a hold he had learned in his mixed martial arts class, and pulled him to his feet.  “We’re done,” Peter said.  “Come on.”

            The spectators and the four guys Peter had pacified watched them go in quiet awe.  The guy Jordan had been fighting got to his feet wiping blood from his nose and looked at his fallen friends.  “Thanks for the back-up, guys!” he yelled.  “You couldn’t handle one high school punk!”

            Jordan was grinning despite his swelling eye and a split lip.  “That was fast,” he said.

            Peter didn’t say anything.  He walked into the bar and saw his platter of wings waiting at the table.  Their waitress hurried to Jordan to examine his wounds.  “Are you okay, Jordie?” she asked.

            “Yeah, I’m great,” Jordan said.  He filled his mug with beer and took a long drink.

            “Can I have these to go?” Peter asked.

            “Sure thing, hon?”  The waitress hurried off to grab a take-out tray as Jordan smiled after her.

            “You going home already?” Jordan asked.

            “Yes,” Peter answered.  “And I suggest you come with me, unless you want to face your group of fans alone once I’m gone.”  The cowboys were back at their table where they very purposefully didn’t look at Peter while they nursed their drinks.

            The waitress came back with Peter’s wings packaged up.  They settled their bill and left.

Chapter 14: Excess Energy

            Trevor watched the YouTube videos again.  He had seen them dozens of times already, but he couldn’t resist.  He was like a proud father watching his sons win the Super Bowl.  The flying was what really made him giddy.  It was an unplanned side effect of the cellular energy, but man, what a side effect!  Much better than the exploding soldiers of his past experiments.  He itched to get Stormy and Peter into a lab setting and find out how the flight worked.  All he had know were hypotheses.  His best guess was that the energy being produced in the new organelles in their cells allowed them to form some sort of propulsion force that propelled them through the air.

            After shaking the trail of the agent chasing him, not to mention the local police, Trevor had hidden out in the town of Grimshaw in northern Alberta.  He had watched the news and kept his eye on the Internet for two days waiting for any news that might indicate the results of the drug, whether it was a success or a failure.  The videos online, which had been featured prominently on the news, had been the only concrete evidence.  People were writing it off as a hoax, but Trevor knew that it was genuine.  Stormy Logan and Peter Nesmith were his first major successes in the human enhancement program.

            The boys were being remarkably discrete about their new situation, but there had been hints online about their abilities.  Rumors of voices conversing in the sky at night, human-shaped shadows against the moon and stars, and stuff like that.  The biggest discovery had happened when authorities had followed the foot prints along highway 633 and ended up in a wilderness park in the Rocky Mountains.  Something had caused a rocky avalanche, and there were two fresh craters with no sign of what had actually created them.

            Trevor had driven back to the Edmonton area this morning, and was now staying at a hotel in St. Albert.  He hadn’t been able to find exact addresses for the two young men, which probably meant they still lived with their parents, but he had found a newspaper article from a few months ago while searching for them that mentioned that they had been on Bellerose Composite High School’s senior boys basketball team in St. Albert.

            There were two Nesmiths and six Logans listed in the St. Albert phone book.  It hadn’t been hard to figure out which ones were the families he was looking for.  A simple call to each Logan asking if Stormy was in, and he’d found that D & K Logan were Stormy’s parents on the third call.  Trying the same thing for Peter had been even easier.  Peter’s address was printed in the white pages, and a quick search online for D & K Logan in St. Albert provided Stormy’s address.

            Trevor grabbed his notepad, a pen, a pair of binoculars, and his energy meter.  After stuffing them into his backpack, he grabbed his keys and left the room.

* * *

            Stormy hadn’t slept at all last night after taking Angela home.  He hadn’t been tired, so he had read some comic books.  Usually, after an hour or two of reading at night, he was tired enough to sleep.  Last night, however, he had still been wide awake after three hours.  He probably would have been able to sleep if he had tried, but he had decided instead to experiment with how long he could go without sleeping.  It was 3:30 in the afternoon; he was going on 35 hours now.

            The day had been a little frustrating for Stormy.  These new abilities he had made him feel like he should be doing something worthwhile with them.  But what?  He was adamant about keeping the abilities secret for now.  Visions of being dissected had filled his mind all morning.  So even if he did decide to be a vigilante—which really was out of the question—keeping his true identity a secret would be counter-productive.  If the only witness wouldn’t even provide a name for himself, the case would never go to court, and every criminal he turned over to the police would go free unless there were other witnesses.  He supposed that he could help with emergencies like fires and stuff instead of fighting crime, but that still presented problems with keeping his identity a secret.  Any mask he wore would just burn off in a fire.  Also, Edmonton and all of the surrounding cities and towns were a huge area.  He’d have to fly around all day and just happen to come across accidents and other disasters.  That would be all kinds of tedious.

            Professional sports were out of the question.  They had an unfair advantage, and even if the rules didn’t ban the specific substance that made them as strong and fast as they were, they would be going against the spirit of the rule, and the various leagues would probably ban them from their sports once they realized what was going on, anyway.  Maybe he and Peter could go into show business.  They could come up with some sort of flashy way to demonstrate their powers for the purpose of entertainment.  They could keep their identities secret from the public and only let their agents and lawyers know who they were.  That seemed like such a waste, though.

            Now Stormy stood in the bathroom after having a shower.  He was looking in the steamy mirror at the stubble growing on his face.  He held a razor blade in one hand and was looking nervously between it and his reflection.  He hadn’t tried shaving since the onset of his powers, and he didn’t even know if he’d be able to.  A blade couldn’t cut his skin.  Could it cut his hair?

            “Only one way to find out,” he muttered.  Setting the razor down, he grabbed his shaving cream and lathered up his face.  As he did, he realized that he probably didn’t need shaving cream anymore.  Skin irritation was a thing of the past for Stormy and Peter.  He lathered his whole face and neck, anyway, and then rinsed the excess cream off of his hands.  He grabbed the razor and looked back at his reflection.

            “Here goes nothing,” he said and put the blade to his face.  He pulled it down along his cheek, and it went with ease.

            “Whoa,” he said and looked at the clean-shaven strip of cheek.  He hadn’t been expecting it to actually work.  A quick glance at the blade confirmed that it was full of shorn whiskers.  He rinsed it out and carefully ran his thumb along the razor’s edge.  The thumb remained uncut.  So he still had his powers.  He tried shaving another patch, with the same effect.

            “Huh,” he said.  It seemed that his hair wasn’t included in the whole invulnerability deal that the rest of his body got.  Maybe it was because hair was made up of dead cells.  He glanced at his fingers and hoped that the same was true for his nails.

            “Well, at least I don’t have to be a modern-day Samson,” Stormy told his reflection.  He took up the razor again and resumed shaving.

* * *

            Peter had gone to bed after getting home from the bar, but he had woken up after only an hour of sleep.  He felt completely rejuvenated and couldn’t get back to sleep, so he had gotten out of bed and searched the Internet for anything he could find regarding him and Stormy.  In addition to the original three videos, there was a wealth of blog entries, articles, and message board discussions about it.  A few had been eye witness accounts from people in and around St. Albert.  It was widely believed that the two mystery fliers were a man and a woman because several people claimed to have heard a man and a woman talking in the sky yesterday evening.  Some had even seen them briefly silhouetted against the moon.  That had to have been Stormy taking Angela for a ride.  Peter was surprised that Angela had consented to going for a fly.

            The rest of the articles and discussion was pure conjecture.  Theories abounded, from X-Men style mutants to government experiments to aliens.  Peter found himself stifling laughter on more than one occasion.  One article in particular claimed that they were ancient Native American spirits angry with the white man’s pillaging of the land and were preparing to exact holy vengeance.  Peter commented on this one, pointing out that the only destruction so far had been in nature, not anything man-made.  “Maybe,” he had written, “they are ancient European spirits angry with all of the environmentalists giving them grief.”

            Throughout the morning, Peter was struck by the occasionally dizzy spell.  He didn’t pay them much mind, and figured that they were a lingering result of the genetic change that had made him puke his guts out the other day.  Annoying, but not alarming.

            It was almost 4:00 before Peter realized that he hadn’t eaten anything since supper the previous evening.  He went to the fridge and retrieved the wings he had brought home from the bar.  He hadn’t eaten any of them.  The fight had made him lose his appetite.  He still wasn’t hungry—did he even need food anymore?—but he was bored, so he was going to eat.

            As the wings were heating in the microwave, his phone rang.  It was Stormy.  “Hello,” Peter said.

            “Have you tried shaving yet?” Stormy said.

            “No.”

            “I can shave.  I think it’s because my hair’s dead.  Same with my fingernails.”

            “You shaved your fingernails?”

            “Yeah, man, all the cool kids are doing it.”

            Peter looked at his fingernails.  He hadn’t even thought about that yet.  “Well, that’s great,” Peter said.  “Long fingernails don’t suit me.  I think a long Moses beard would’ve been bad-ass, though.”

            “Just because you can shave doesn’t mean you have to,” Stormy pointed out.

            “True.”  Peter rubbed the stubble on his chin.  “I’ll have to get to work on that.”

            “I’m looking forward to that.”

            “Hey, did you take Angela flying last night?” Peter asked.

            “Yeah,” Stormy said.  “Why?”

            “It’s all over the Internet.  Some people heard you guys talking and there were even claims of seeing a man and a woman silhouetted against the moon.  Now everyone thinks I’m a chick.”

            “Yeah, well, just wait until they see you.  That’ll quash the rumors.”

            “Or they’ll just assume I’m a really butch lesbian.”

            “With a bitchin’ Moses beard,” Stormy added.

            “Right.”  The microwave beeped, and Peter retrieved his chicken wings.  “So what’s up?  Any plans today?”  Peter sat at the table and grabbed a steaming hot wing with his fingers.  He idly wondered how much heat he could withstand.

            “I’m just online right now looking for a job,” Stormy said.  “I figure some sort of physical labour would be fitting.  Something that requires a lot of heavy lifting.”

            “Maybe we should join the air force.”

            Stormy barked a laugh.  “Yeah,” he said.  “We could replace those expensive jets that tend to crash when they get shot.”

            “I’m only half kidding,” Peter said.  “We’d make great soldiers.  It would save a lot of lives to send us into a network of caves in Afghanistan instead of a bunch of young soldiers who are distinctly not bulletproof.”

            Stormy was silent for a moment.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t think I could ever bring myself to kill anyone, especially someone who can’t hurt me, enemy soldier or not.  Besides, wars are so political.  I don’t want to throw my super-powered weight around politically.  If we ever do go public, I think we should stay as politically neutral as possible.”

            Peter nodded to himself as he saw Stormy’s point.  He chewed and swallowed a bit of his chicken, noting that spicy food no longer had a kick.  It tasted good, but the thrill of spicy foods was gone.  Invulnerability was turning out to have some unexpected downsides.

            “What the hell?” Stormy said on the other end of the line.

            “What is it?” Peter asked.

            “Dude, I think Dr. Douchebag is watching my house from the other side of the street.”

            Peter sat up straight.  “Are you sure it’s him?”

            “Not completely sure, no,” Stormy said.  “But it looks like him.  Whoever he is, the way he’s watching my house is creeping me out.  I’m gonna go talk to him.”

            “I’ll be there in a second.”  Peter hung up the phone, stepped outside, and ran to Stormy’s house.  He was there in a literal second.  The windows on Stormy’s house were still rattling from his sonic boom when Peter stopped in the driveway.  He had overcome the problems with sudden stops by using his flight power to push himself backwards to counter his forward momentum.  This kept him from tumbling through Stormy’s house.

            Stormy was just walking out the front door.  He gave Peter a surprised glance, then turned his attention across the street.  Peter followed his gaze and saw Dr. Douchebag smiling at them.  It was definitely him.  He seemed delighted by Peter’s sudden appearance.

            “Hi!” Douchebag called and trotted across the street.  Peter and Stormy met him at the foot of Stormy’s driveway.  Peter grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him forward.

            “What have you done to us?” Peter growled.

            “Do you really want to discuss it here?” Douchebag asked.  “From what I’ve observed, you boys seem to want to keep this quiet.”  He glanced around the busy neighbourhood.

            Peter shoved Douchebag towards the house.  “Inside,” he said.  As Douchebag started towards the house, Stormy pulled his backpack off and carried it himself.

            Once they were inside with the door closed, Stormy opened the backpack and dumped everything out on the coffee table in the living room.  There was a notebook and pen, a pair of binoculars, some sort of electronic device the Peter didn’t recognize, and the pistol he had used that day at West Edmonton Mall.  Stormy grabbed it and ejected the magazine.  He returned the pistol to the table and slipped the magazine in his pocket.

            “Who are you?” Peter asked and shoved Douchebag on the couch.

            “Doctor Trevor Sinclair,” Douchebag said.  “I’m a biochemist for the US Army.  Until recently, I was head of the Human Enhancement project.”

“What have you done to us?”

            “You already know what I’ve done to you,” Sinclair said with a smile.  “I’ve turned you into gods.”

            Stormy scoffed and picked up the electronic device that he had pulled out of the backpack.  “We’re hardly gods,” he said.  “Superheroes, yeah, but we aren’t all-powerful.”

            “Close enough,” Sinclair said.  “You have more power than any man ever has before.  Have you tested your strength?  I doubt you’ve had time to find your limits.  You should be thanking me.”

            “You’ve tampered with our genetics,” Peter said.  “For all you know, your little experiment could have killed us.  We’ll keep our thanks to ourselves, thank you.”

            Sinclair’s smile faltered, but he brought it back after a second.  “I’ve had a lot of time to perfect the human enhancement drug,” he said.  “I was confident with the results.  I didn’t expect the flying, though.”

            Stormy had been trying to keep an air of hostility, but Peter could see that his curiosity was chipping away at his bad-cop façade.  “How do our powers work, anyway?” he asked.  “It isn’t just extra muscle.”

            “I tweaked your DNA,” Sinclair said.  “I programmed your cells to create a new organelle, not unlike mitochondria, but they produce an infinitely more powerful energy.  It is that energy, being produced in every living cell in your bodies, that gives you your abilities.”

            Peter flipped his phone open.  “I’m calling the cops,” he said.  “I’m sure they’ve been looking for you ever since you pulled a gun on us and forced us to take part in a dangerous genetic experiment.”

            “You need me,” Sinclair said.

            “Why?” Stormy asked.

            “I’ve been watching you both for a couple of hours now,” Sinclair said.  “I have military training; you don’t think I’m so inept to allow you to find me so easily, do you?”

            “What’s your point,” Peter said.

            Sinclair reached a hand out to Stormy.  “If I may?” he asked.  Stormy handed Sinclair the electronic device.

            “This meter,” Sinclair explained, “measures the energy level being produced by your bodies.”  He switched it on and pointed it at Stormy.  Once there was a reading, he turned the display to Stormy and Peter.  It read 75%.

            “75% is the optimal energy output,” Sinclair said.  “It’s as powerful as it can get without being unstable.”

            “What happens if it’s unstable?” Peter asked.

            Ignoring the question, Sinclair pointed the meter at Peter.  “Stormy is at a steady 75%,” he said.  “And you, Peter, are usually at 75%.”  He turned the display to Peter to show that it was at 75%.  “However, there’s an occasional spike to 85%.”

            “What does that mean?” Peter asked.

            “Have you been experiencing any dizzy spells since the initial burst of energy?”

            “Yes.  They’re not very bad, though.”

            “It’s a symptom of the energy destabilizing,” Sinclair said.  “I need to run some tests and see if I can stabilize you.”

            “What happens if you can’t?” Peter asked.  His phone was forgotten.  He stepped forward and lifted Sinclair off of the couch.

            “Stormy?” Kris called from upstairs.  “What’s going on down there?”

            “We aren’t your first test subjects, are we?” Peter asked.  “You said you’ve had time to perfect the drug.  What happened to the others?”

            Sinclair didn’t answer, but his smile was gone and he didn’t look Peter in the eye.

            “What happened to them?” Stormy demanded and came to Peter’s side.

            Another dizzy spell hit Peter.  His heads swam, and the room seemed to spin in two different directions at once.  Peter dropped Sinclair and went to his knees.  This dizzy spell was far worse than any other.  He could feel the energy in his body resonated discordantly with something, as if there were some sort of interference making it go haywire.

            “Oh, God,” Sinclair said.  Peter looked up and saw that Sinclair was pointing the energy meter at him again.  “91%.  We need to get him outside.”

            “Why?” Stormy asked.  “What’s happening?  What happened to the other test subjects?”

            “They died,” Sinclair finally admitted.  “And they died violently.  We need to get him outside or we’re all in danger!”

            Kris was standing at the edge of the living room looking worried.  “I’m calling 911,” she said.  As she disappeared to the kitchen, Pam came down the stairs to see what was going on.

            We need to get him outside or we’re all in danger!  Peter dashed out the front door, shattering it to pieces, and flew north.

* * *

            Stormy was just quick enough to get outside and see which way Peter had gone.  He flew after him, barely keeping him in sight off in the distance.  He was going so fast!  Stormy was following at such a breakneck speed, that he overshot Peter once he stopped.

            Stormy circled back around and found Peter hovering above a forest of fir trees.  He was curled into a ball, his knees drawn up and his arms clutching his stomach as he hunched over.

            “Peter?” Stormy called as he approached.

            Peter shuddered and actually started to sink lower in the sky.  “Stay back!” Peter yelled.

            “It’s okay,” Stormy said.  “It’s me: Stormy.  We need to get you help, Pete.”

            “I said STAY BACK!!!” Peter bellowed.  The face he turned up at Stormy was twisted in rage.  He was barely recognizable as the man Stormy had known since he was five years old.

            “Peter,” Stormy said in a calm voice.  “It’s me, man.  I just want to help you.”

            Peter shuddered again and fell a good fifty feet before catching himself again.  He was clearly in a great deal of pain.

            “Why are doing this to me?” Peter yelled.

            “I’m trying to help you,” Stormy said as he floated closer to Peter again.  He reached for Peter’s shoulder.  “We need to get you back to Dr. Sinclair.  He might know how to fix this.”

            Stormy’s hand rested on Peter’s shoulder for no more than half a second before Peter spun around, swatted Stormy’s hand away, and lunged at him.

            “I said leave me!” Peter shrieked and closed his hands around Stormy’s neck.  Stormy was too shocked to even fight back.  Peter’s countenance was unlike anything Stormy had ever seen before.  His eyes, above his twisted mouth, shone with an insane rage.  His hands were like a clamp around his neck.  If he had been a normal person, Stormy’s head would have snapped right off of a crushed neck.

            Stormy reached up and grabbed Peter’s wrists as Peter screamed incoherently about betrayal.

            The nightmare that happened next lasted only a brief moment, but Stormy’s enhanced perceptions let him see every detail.  Peter’s skin glowed a subtle blue, and then he exploded.  As Stormy watched, the flesh on Peter’s face split and peeled back as it burst, exposing a bloody skull peeking out at him with both eyes still intact.  The splitting skin wasn’t contained to Peter’s face.  His chest blew open in a spray of blood and chunks of muscle, giving Stormy a grotesque view of Peter’s ribcage.  That was when the force of the explosion hit Stormy and knocked him unconscious.

* * *

            “Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Pam asked as she drove north along highway 63.

            “They definitely came this way,” Dr. Sinclair said as he kept his eye on the display of his energy meter.  “This is able to track the trails left by their energy.”

            The only reason Pam hadn’t waited around for the police was because he was so insistent about how much danger Stormy and Peter were in, and that he was the only one who could help.  Mom must be freaking out back at home.

            They had been driving for three hours now, and Pam was forcing herself not to think that Stormy and Peter might be dead.

            “Shit,” Sinclair muttered from the passenger seat.

            “What?” Pam demanded.

            “Turn left here!”  Sinclair pointed at a dirt road disappearing into the trees.  She slowed down and made the turn, and then sped up again.  She was going too fast for a gravel road, but the urgency in Sinclair was catching, and she couldn’t make herself slow down.

            “There’s a huge reading of energy up ahead,” Sinclair said.

            “What could that mean?” Pam asked.

            “It could mean that we’re too late,” Sinclair said.

            Pam’s eyes went teary, but she wiped them and forced back any more that wanted to come.  She wasn’t coming all this way just to drive her car into a tree.

            She rounded a bend, and slammed on the brakes.  The car fish-tailed as it slide to a stop, but she kept it on the road.  They came to a stop a meter from the trees lying across the road.  Pam’s jaw dropped as she looked beyond the obstacle immediately in her path.  For miles in front of them, broken trees were lying flat on the ground as if a powerful bomb had exploded in the air above them.

            “Shit!” Sinclair repeated.  He held up his device and pointed it around the flattened trees.  “There!” he declared and pointed at a crater about 100 meters away from them.  “I think that’s Stormy.”

            Pam started towards the crater as fast as she could manage stepping over all of the logs and branches.  She glanced over her shoulder once to see Dr. Sinclair making his way in another direction.  He must have found Peter.

            As she neared the crater, Pam’s breath caught in her throat.  Stormy was lying on his back in the center of the crater.  He was naked and covered in blood.

* * *

            Something was shaking him.  Stormy reached up and pushed it—a person, he realized—away and tried to go back to sleep.

            “Stormy!”

            That sounded like Pam, and she sounded hysterical.  What could be so—

            “Peter!”  Stormy sat up and opened his eyes.  He could still see Peter’s flesh flaying open.

            “Stormy, calm down,” Pam said.  She put her hands on his shoulders and tried to push him back down, but it was useless.  “You’re hurt.  Where are you cut?  We need to stop the bleeding.”

            Stormy looked down at himself and saw the blood soaking his naked body.  Hey choked out a gurgling scream and jumped to his feet.  He desperately wiped at the blood.  Pam was sitting in front of him wiping the blood off of his leg her shirt.  She seemed to be looking for a wound.

            “Not mine!” Stormy yelled.  “Not my blood!  Peter!”  He scanned his ruined surroundings.  There was no way he could have survived that, but Stormy needed to find him.  Maybe with their powers they could recover from…from that.

            “Stormy, what happened?” Pam asked.  “Where’s Peter?”

            Stormy spotted Dr. Sinclair standing in another small crater.  He flew over to him.

            “No,” Sinclair said as soon as Stormy arrived.  He stood in front of Stormy to block him.  “You don’t want to see this, Stormy.”

            “Peter!” Stormy called as he pushed Sinclair aside.  Peter’s mangled body lay in a heap in the freshly disturbed earth.  Stormy turned away and fell to his knees.  His heart felt like it had dropped into his colon.  Pam arrived just in time to catch him as he fell over unconscious.

            Peter!