Free sample chapter.
The midday sun beat down mercilessly on the asphalt of Metroville. The heat was so thick the air seemed to vibrate. For Captain Frank Miller, the sweat stinging his eyes was the least of his problems. He had been staring at the glass facade of the Metroville Central Bank for two hours, two hours in which the world had shrunk to this single city block, sealed off by patrol cars and yellow police tape that fluttered in the hot breeze.
"Any updates, officer?" a young reporter's voice sounded beside him.
Miller didn't even turn. He knew the tone: a mix of ambition and nervousness. Fresh meat.
"The update is there are no updates, Miss Vance," he muttered, his eyes fixed on the bank's entrance. "Three armed men, about twenty hostages, and a radio silence that gives me a bad feeling."
Sarah Vance of Channel 8 News adjusted her earpiece. Her cameraman, a burly guy named Dave, kept the heavy equipment on his shoulder, unfazed.
"The SWAT team has been in position for an hour. Why haven't they gone in?"
"Because the leader of these clowns has his thumb on a detonator and has promised to blow the lobby sky high if he sees a single helmeted head peek through. We're at a stalemate. One wrong move and the hostages will pay the price."
It was the grim truth. Three small time crooks had decided to hit the big time and gotten in over their heads. Now they were trapped, scared, and dangerously unpredictable. Frank had seen it dozens of times: fear was more lethal than malice.
The murmur from the crowd behind the barriers was a constant hum, a mix of fear and morbid curiosity. Cell phones held high, recording the drama, oblivious to the smell of gunpowder and the palpable tension that only those at the front could perceive.
That's when Frank saw him.
In the middle of the frightened crowd, there was a man who didn't fit. He wasn't looking at the bank in a panic or with his mouth agape. He was observing it. Leaning casually against a parking meter, he wore a simple white shirt and jeans. His hair was dark, his jaw sharp, and in his eyes was a calm that chilled Frank's blood more than the bomb threat. He didn't look scared. He looked bored.
"Who's that guy?" Frank asked a nearby sergeant, pointing with his chin.
The sergeant squinted.
"Don't know, Captain. A civilian. He's been there for a bit."
The man at the parking meter suddenly stood up straight. His body language shifted. The boredom vanished, replaced by a resolve so sudden and absolute it was almost tangible. He pushed himself off the meter and started walking. Straight for the police tape.
"Hey, you! Stop right there!" shouted a rookie officer.
The man didn't slow down. He ducked under the yellow tape as if it didn't exist.
"Stop him!" Miller roared, his heart leaping into his throat.
Two officers rushed the stranger. The man didn't even look at them. He shrugged, a fluid, economic movement, and the two cops, both large, trained men, stumbled backward, thrown off balance by a force they hadn't expected. It wasn't violent. It was dismissive.
"Sir, you can't go through! That's an order!" another officer yelled, blocking his path.
The man finally stopped, inches from the cop. He gave him a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Move," he said, his voice a calm baritone but with a threatening edge. "Or I'll move you."
The cop hesitated, baffled by the suicidal audacity. That second was all the man needed. He stepped around him and continued toward the bank's glass doors. He walked with a casual calm, completely out of place in the chaotic scene.
"Snipers, hold your fire! I repeat, hold your fire!" Miller yelled into his radio as he ran after him. "Dammit, what the hell are you doing! They're going to kill you!"
The man reached the doors. He turned briefly, not toward Miller, but toward the crowd and the cameras. For an instant, he seemed to enjoy the chaos he had created. Then, just like that, he opened the door and walked inside.
The silence that followed was louder than any explosion.
Inside the bank, the air smelled of sweat and panic. The hostages were lying on the marble floor, sobbing quietly. Three men in ski masks and holding assault rifles watched over them. The leader, a nervous guy named Rico, was talking on a burner phone.
"I'm not kidding! One million dollars in a bag and an untraceable car, or I start sending people out in body bags!"
Suddenly, the sound of the main door opening made all three of them spin around.
A man was standing in the entrance, letting the door swing gently shut behind him. The sunlight created a silhouette.
"Sorry, am I interrupting anything important?" the newcomer said with a tone of polite curiosity.
Rico aimed his rifle with trembling hands.
"Who the hell are you? Some kind of damn hero?"
The man tilted his head.
"Hero? No, not at all. That word is too cheap. Let's just say I'm... a pest control enthusiast. And you, my friends, are a pest."
The second robber, a big, muscular guy, let out a nervous laugh.
"You're dead, clown."
He raised his weapon.
He never got to fire.
The man at the door raised a hand, palm open, in an almost lazy gesture. There was no flash, no sound, only a sudden, intense orange glow that enveloped the barrel of the rifle. The metal instantly liquefied, dripping onto the thug's hands, who screamed in pain and surprise. Before his scream ended, the glow intensified. The big man went rigid, his eyes wide with silent terror, and then... he came apart. He turned into a fine shower of gray ash that settled gently on the pristine marble floor.
Silence. The hostages held their breath. The youngest robber, a kid who couldn't have been twenty, dropped his weapon with a metallic clatter.
Rico, the leader, looked from the pile of ash to the man at the door, his face a mask of panic.
"What... what are you?"
The man smiled.
"I'm the solution."
He fired his rifle. The burst of bullets should have torn the stranger to pieces, but none of them reached their target. About a foot from his body, the bullets melted in midair, falling to the floor as drops of molten lead.
"What a waste of ammunition," the man said, clicking his tongue. "Now, my turn."
He didn't raise his hand this time. He just stared at Rico. A thin red line of light appeared on the robber's chest. Rico looked down, confused. The line widened, becoming an incandescent hole. There was no blood, only the cauterized edges of the wound. Rico opened his mouth, but only a choked whisper came out before he collapsed, a perfectly circular, smoking hole where his heart used to be.
The youngest robber was on his knees, trembling, hands on his head.
"Please... please, don't kill me. I was just doing what they told me."
The man walked toward him, his leather shoes echoing in the deathly silence. He crouched down until his eyes were level with the terrified kid's.
"Fear is a disease," he said softly, almost compassionately. "I'm the cure."
He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. There was a flash of white light, as quick as a camera flash. And then, the boy was gone. Only the echo of his terror remained in the air.
The man stood up, brushed a nonexistent speck of dust from his sleeve, and turned to the hostages, who were staring at him, petrified with terror.
"Well," he said with a charming smile. "You can all leave now. And don't worry, the police will take care of cleaning up this mess."
When the bank door opened again, Captain Miller nearly choked on his own breath. The same man who had walked in minutes before, walked out. He was spotless. Not a drop of sweat, not a scratch.
Behind him, the hostages began to file out, stumbling, crying, some vomiting in the planters. They were terrified, but they were alive.
The man stopped at the top of the steps, blinking at the sudden explosion of camera flashes and the clamor of questions. He ignored Miller and the police and walked straight for the press line with the confidence of a movie star.
Sarah Vance was faster than the others. She pushed her way through and stuck the microphone in his face.
"Sir, who are you? What happened in there?"
The man smiled at her, and for the first time, the smile reached his eyes. It was magnetic, predatory.
"What happened is that justice was served. A little cleanup. And please, call me Jack."
He was flirting with her. In the middle of a bloodbath, with the remains of three men still warm behind him, he was flirting with the reporter.
"But... how? Those men... the witnesses say you..."
"That I what?" Jack interrupted, his voice taking on a seductive tone. "Solved a situation these brave officers couldn't? Sometimes, serious problems can't be fixed with half measures. They require a radical solution."
The word hung in the air. Radical.
"What are you?" Sarah insisted, mesmerized.
Jack laughed. The question seemed to transport him to another place, another time. His smile turned nostalgic for a moment.
"Good question. I asked myself that a long time ago..."
Flashback
Five years earlier, Jack wasn't Jack. He was John, a name as common as dirt. He worked in a foundry, a hell of heat, sweat, and deafening noise. He hated every second of it. He hated the smell of burnt metal, the taste of failure in his throat, and above all, he hated his supervisor, a greasy hulk of a man named Murdoch, who enjoyed humiliating his employees.
That day, the heat was unbearable. A faulty boiler had raised the workshop's temperature to inhuman levels. Murdoch was screaming at John for a minor mistake, his stale coffee breath hitting him in the face.
"You're useless, John! My eight year old son could do this job better than you!"
John clenched his fists. He felt a strange, cold rage building in his chest. It wasn't the usual anger, the kind that made you want to punch a wall. It was something deeper, hotter. A pressure building behind his eyes.
"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" Murdoch taunted, shoving him.
John stumbled back, his hands brushing against a red hot steel beam that had just come out of the furnace. He instinctively pulled his hands away, but he felt no pain. He looked at his palms. There were no burns. They were untouched. But the beam... the beam was changing. The spot where he had touched it was glowing with an unnatural intensity, melting, dripping molten metal onto the floor.
Murdoch saw it. His taunt turned to confusion, and then to fear.
"What did you do?"
"I didn't..." John started, but he didn't know how to finish.
The pressure in his chest was now a volcano about to erupt. Murdoch took a step back, his face pale beneath the layer of soot.
"Get away from me, you freak."
That was the wrong word. Freak. The same word the kids at school used. The same word he felt was tattooed on his forehead every time he looked in the mirror.
The volcano erupted.
It wasn't a scream. It was a silent heatwave that radiated from him. Murdoch, who was about ten feet away, froze. His clothes began to smoke. Then his skin reddened, blistering instantly. He screamed, an inhuman shriek of pure agony, as he fell to his knees, his flesh cooking from the inside out.
John watched, paralyzed, not by horror, but by fascination. He saw how the wave of energy concentrated, how he could feel it and, with a simple thought, direct it. He focused all his rage, all his hatred, on the man writhing on the floor.
Murdoch's scream was cut short. His body arched and then, like a piece of paper in a bonfire, it was consumed in an instant, leaving only a black ash silhouette on the concrete.
John stood there, breathing heavily, the air around him vibrating with power. The fear came then, an icy chill in the middle of the foundry's hell. But it wasn't fear of what he had done. It was fear of the sheer scale of what he was.
That night, in his miserable apartment, the fear transformed. He sat in the dark, looking at his hands. They weren't the hands of a laborer. They were the hands of a god. All his life he had felt powerless, a victim of circumstance. But the truth was he had never been a sheep. He had been a wolf, hiding, waiting.
The rage that had killed Murdoch hadn't gone away. It had simply settled, transforming into a cold, absolute clarity. He wasn't like them. He was better. Superior. The world wasn't a fair place. It was a place that needed a new kind of order. His order.
For the next five years, he practiced in secret. He learned to control the heat, to go from inflicting burns to firing concentrated blasts. He discovered he could disintegrate matter, erase it from existence. He had absolute control over his environment. He waited for the right moment, the perfect opportunity to reveal himself to the world, not as a monster, but as the answer to its prayers.
End of Flashback
Jack blinked, returning to the present. The smile returned to his face, sharper than before. He leaned into Sarah Vance's microphone, his voice loud enough for all the cameras to catch it.
"Let's just say I've always had... a certain inner energy. As for what I am..." he paused dramatically, savoring the moment. "You can call me Jack. Gamma Jack."
He winked at the reporter, turned around, and walked away. He moved effortlessly through the stunned crowd, which parted before him.
Captain Frank Miller watched him go. The hostages were safe, the criminals neutralized. He should have felt relieved. But he didn't. He felt a deep, visceral dread in the pit of his stomach. Metroville hadn't gained a savior today. It had just met its new owner. And the price of that salvation, Miller was sure, was going to be terribly high.