Adamant Blood

Mark managed the walk up the staircase by himself, though Kevin was there to help. Many other debilitated people were also headed up to see the flyby. Mark turned out to be one of the faster movers, which was a big change from just last week, but he happily walked slow anyway. They weren’t in any rush. The flyby was still several minutes away, and it wasn’t like they’d actually miss it; not with them being within 20 miles of the bay.

Old people stood with walkers and canes on the roof, many of them still wearing their swimming clothes, but a few, like Mark, were in workout clothes. Aides and nurses were everywhere, easily knowable by lanyards and tags on their necks, or by their general physical health.

The space outside of the physical therapy center was a bunch of palm trees growing to the left and the right, and some oak trees in the parking lot up ahead. Beyond all of that stretched the city. The physical therapy center was several stories of glass, steel, and gym equipment, so their roof was pretty high up there. Mark got a good view of the city, and of the land beyond. He could even make out a strip of blue beyond some trees, though that might have just been a canal.

A lot of people were up on their roofs, in the rest of the city. Some neighborhood cookout was happening over on a nearby roof, with a dad at the grill and kids running around, while uncles, aunts, or maybe just neighbors and parents, all ate cake or burgers under umbrellas. Big hats were out in force, keeping the sun off of older women.

Some people stood in the parking lot, looking up. Waiting around.

Kevin checked his watch, and he was not the only one. “About 2 minutes to the start, and they’re usually on time. You good to stand?”

Mark smiled. “I’m good to sta— oh.”

It was starting. A bit early, but it was starting.

The sky darkened, all of the blue above rapidly replaced by misty white, blocking out the sun with clouds. The clouds deepened, but really only toward the south west, directly ahead of Mark, where the bay was located. The bay was hundreds of miles large, though, so pretty much all of the world in that direction turned deeply cloudy.

The clouds were all thanks to Mistress Storm. She was a skykinetic, and she could bring the rain like few others. Soon, Red Thunder would get involved. He was a lightningkinetic. He could do a lot with that, if he had help, and he would be having a lot of help today, which was pretty normal for him, and his situation.

Mistress Storm and Red Thunder had been married for the last 10 years or something like that, but they had been working together for the last 30 years, ever since the two of them met each other in a battle against a kaiju in like, Japan, if Mark remembered correctly. Maybe not. Both of them lived in the Floridas, though, so they had rapidly gotten the bright idea to combine their powers and start an annual monster clearing event.

‘Flyby Day’ wasn’t a real event; it was just a thing that happened because two superheroes were superheroes.

The sky darkened further. A chill wind blew.

Kevin had out his phone, focused on the southwest. Mark looked at Kevin’s phone and saw he was zoomed in and looking for the fliers, but he didn’t see them yet. Mark kept his eyes on the sky. Someone would see them soon. Someone in this group of old people must have had some sort of eye-enhancement—

“There they are!” said an old woman, pointing to the west.

She wore the thickest glasses on her face that Mark had ever seen. Everyone looked where she was pointing—

People gasped as they saw them, saying how they saw them now, too.

Mark smiled as he saw them. They were so far away that he would have missed them, for sure.

A dot of red held in the sky like a spark of sunlight, almost too small to see. Next to it was a thick fogbank. Red Thunder was inside that lightning, and Mistress Storm was inside that cloud. Mark couldn’t see much of anything beyond that. At these distances Mark was surprised he could see anything at all—

Kevin had his phone in his hands, so Mark saw as Kevin’s phone flashed with a yellow alert, the entire thing turning from a camera view of the distance into a brick of bright yellow.

‘Superhero Action in Orange Bay taking place in 1 minute.’

A countdown started, and Kevin started poking at the screen to make the warning go away.

An older woman next to Mark spoke to her husband, “One minute! Ha! Kids these days can organize things so fast, can’t they.”

Someone else piped up, “I’m sure they spent the entire day clearing out the bay of stragglers.”

Mark was pretty sure of that, too. Dad had probably only gotten half a day of fishing with the guys and then someone probably landed on his deck and told him to clear out, like, an hour ago, or something like that. Dad, Devon, and Trace were probably watching from safe harbor right now—

Red lightning shattered across the sky, like the cracking of light into the dark, illuminating everything red with a branching, searching crackle of power that spread and spread among the clouds. The air boomed with thunder and the wind picked up fast, sending a chill all across Orange City.

Mark’s heart beat hard as his arms prickled with bumps, as an echoing thrum of power broke the sky.

A light drizzle began to fall.

Mistress Storm and Red Thunder were both pretty basic superheroes. Sure, they were on the high end of what was possible, but neither of them could have pulled off what Mark was seeing all on their own. They had to work together; them, and a whole lot of other people. Tinkers for coordination. Seers for more coordination. Maybe some… power boosters? Did those sorts of heroes actually exist? It was theorized that they did, but Mark was behind Curtain Protocol. Mark had no idea how magic truly worked…

But he wanted to know.

Soon, Mark told himself. Soon. Just get better, get through the Tutorial, and you can go anywhere you want, and learn everything you want to learn.

The yellow alert on Kevin’s phone flickered on again, to color his phone orange and then bright red. He dismissed the alert with a flick and got back to his camera, zooming in on the heroes in the sky. A warning ping crackled across the top of Kevin’s phone, beeping loud, and also beeping every other phone in the area, like a ripple of warning.

Kevin focused the zoom on the distant forms of the superheroes. Red Thunder, in his lightning cage, and Mistress Storm, in her gale cloak. Each of them wore dark, skintight clothes. Each of them had some sort of tech wrapped around their heads. They nodded at each other, and then they raised their hands toward each other, toward the storm above.

Mark had seen this a few times before, but it was still inspiring.

Each year for the last 10 years —and this would be year 11— Mistress Storm would litter the sky with clouds, focusing 90% of her power on charging the atmosphere. Red Thunder would come through, following Mistress Storm’s wind, collecting the charges. With the help of some technomages back in headquarters, they’d spot monster targets throughout the entire bay area, all 1800 square kilometers of it. And then the lightning would fall in a gridwork pattern, upon every single monster out there.

The whole effort would take four hours, lasting well into the night, and when it was over the superheroes would throw one of the biggest parties in Orange City. In one single afternoon, they would do the work of an entire year’s worth of monster hunts. In four months, they’d repeat the process for Memphi, and then for a few different bay areas and mountain regions in the Eastern United Cities and elsewhere. They’d help people, and then celebrate the small saving of this or that part of the world with a party. Their parties were legendary, and everyone was always invited.

Every Awakened person.

Mark had only ever seen pictures of the party, heavily censored by the Curtain Protocol AI installed on his phone and in his house, but maybe next year, when he was Awakened himself, he could go into hero town and party with the heroes.

Mark felt his heart soar on the wind as he watched the storm build in the sky.

He imagined himself being up there, one day… Or maybe not up there.

Let’s be realistic now.

Mark would be helping at the sidelines, or maybe staying in reserve to kill kaiju, or something. Adamantium was what they used to kill kaiju, according to Addashield, and Mark was going to be an adamantiumkinetic.

Mark smiled at that thought.

Lightning and wind crashed overhead, blooming between Red Thunder and Mistress Storm, becoming a sudden swirl of power that stormed into the sky like a twisting tempest, red lightning spreading, spreading, spreading. Mark watched the sky as the rainy darkness illuminated from within, red and sharp. On Kevin’s phone, there was a closer view. It was amazing to see all that red flickering strong and—

Silver-edged black-light cracked the sky near the two superheroes, and the twister of red storm that they had been raising to the heavens suddenly broke. They released their power? No.

Wait.

Mark wasn’t sure if he gasped, or if everyone else gasped, and maybe both had happened at the same time, because whatever had happened was not supposed to happen. Mark saw it all happen on Kevin’s phone.

Mark’s mind refused to process what he was seeing, but he processed it anyway.

A man in black robes, edged in gold, stood in the sky before Red Thunder and his lightning cage, and Mistress Storm and her gale cloak. The man was an archmage, with salt and pepper hair. He was Addashield. Mark couldn’t see him clearly, but Kevin zoomed in on him, and Mark knew who he was looking at. Kevin whispered the archmage’s name, too, as he stared, wondering what he was looking at.

And then Addashield raised his right arm. It was a gesture that Mark recognized from all the kinetics he had ever seen, on any show, on any news broadcast, in any story. He couldn’t see it from this angle, and the sky was dark, but he knew what was going to happen. Addashield brought his arm down.

Adamantium blades, each ten meters long and edged in silver light, swept through the two superheroes.

Red Thunder managed to shift left. His red lightning shifted right. He lost his entire right side. Red lightning struck adamantium and sucked into the silver light around the metal. Red sparks washed across Addashield, but they touched flickers of silver light as well, and probably some adamantium inside that light. Mark couldn’t tell. The happening was too far away and Kevin’s hands were shaking his phone, though Kevin was desperately trying not to shake.

Another sweep of metal blades tore Red Thunder apart.

Mistress Storm’s gale cloak hadn’t afforded her any protection at all from the archmage’s blades. She didn’t get a followup strike. Addashield didn’t need it.

People screamed. Some asked what was wrong. Some people called out hatred and rage, at this complete affront to humanity itself. The old woman with the thick glasses shouted ‘traitor’, and worse. This only caused more confusion.

Mark found his balance failing. He held onto Kevin and Kevin’s phone slipped out of his hands as he grabbed onto Mark. The phone fell to the ground and Mark followed, crashing to his ass.

Kevin was on his knee, having guided Mark to the ground, eyes wide, whispering, “What the fuck what the fuck what the—”

The woman with the thick glasses cried out in horror, her wail filling the stormy sky.

Rain started to fall hard, as all of the water that Mistress Storm had condensed out of the atmosphere began to either tumble down, or turn back into water vapor. The darkness of the storm began to pass.

The sun came out.

Chaos.

For a long, short while, people fell all over the place in their attempts to scramble to get to cover, or due to the rain under foot and blinding everyone, or due to just falling to their knees. Some people managed to keep their feet under them, but Mark was pretty sure he just heard someone fall down the stairs inside, in a hurry to get down and out of the rain.

Mark stayed there, on the ground. Kevin stayed with him—

And then a warning blared out from Kevin’s phone.

A few other phones all across the rooftop started blaring at the same time.

Orange warning lights in the rain all shifted to brightest red, flashing white.

Words that Mark had never heard before blared into the air.

!!Dragon Alert!!

Shelter in place.