The Superhero's Son Omnibus Volume 2

Chapter Seven-1

Chapter Seven

I sat in the Meeting Room of the House at the end of the table nearest the door, while Mecha Knight sat at the other end opposite me, his helmeted face as inscrutable as always. I was tired and exhausted from my fight with Sight, but when the team and I had returned to Hero Island, Mecha Knight had insisted on having a private meeting in the Meeting Room with me about it, since he wanted to know why Sight had attacked me and what he’d spoken with me about.

So I had explained to Mecha Knight about Sight, which had also included telling him about my visit to Grandfather’s mansion. I didn’t want to, because I wanted to keep my promise to Grandfather, but Mecha Knight had been insistent on learning who Sight was and why he had attacked us for seemingly no reason. I figured Grandfather would never know anyway, seeing as Grandfather was nowhere near Hero Island and didn’t even know Mecha Knight, as far as I knew.

I had just finished telling Mecha Knight everything I knew about the Test Subjects. Now he was quiet, which wasn’t unusual, because Mecha Knight typically kept his thoughts to himself. I still wished that he would at least take off his helmet, though, so I could see his face; in fact, now that I thought about it, in all of the time I had known Mecha Knight, I had never seen his face before. He was always in his suit of powered armor and never took it off; then again, he was a member of the Leadership Council, after all, so he probably wore it all the time for his protection.

While I waited for Mecha Knight’s response, I thought about the rest of the team. Their injuries hadn’t been very severe, but right now all of them were in the House’s medical station, where Carl was treating them with the House’s artificial limbs. According to Carl’s report, none of them were going to suffer from any long-lasting or permanent injuries from Sight, but they would probably need to rest for a while. That was good to hear, because I would have felt incredibly guilty if any of them had been badly wounded by Sight. Especially Blizzard, who had regained consciousness after Sight left but was still with the others anyway due to the injuries she had sustained from that guy.

And, of course, Intellect and Jawtooth had been taken away by the police when they arrived. I had been worried that those might have somehow escaped during our fight with Sight, but they had not, and now both were on their way to Ultimate Max, the only prison in the country designed specifically for supervillains. We may not have been able to defeat Sight, but at least the mission wasn’t a total failure.

Even so, I shuddered to think about how easily Sight had taken out my team. Granted, we were still teenagers and he was an adult who probably had decades of experience using his powers, but just seeing everyone get taken out like that—and then nearly getting defeated myself—made me realize that we needed to train if we were going to avoid a curb stomp battle like that again. I’d talk about that with the others once they had healed from our battle with Sight.

Now I noticed that Mecha Knight seemed to be taking longer than usual to respond, so I said, “Mecha Knight? Do you have any questions about what I told you?”

Mecha Knight suddenly looked at me as if he had been lost in thought. “What? Oh, yes. I am not very surprised about what you told me. I have been aware of the Test Subjects for some time now, but I am somewhat surprised that one chose to attack you today.”

“What?” I said. “How did you know about the Test Subjects? Grandfather told me that they had all gone into hiding and that only the people involved in Project Neo had known about them.”

“How I know about them is not particularly important or relevant,” said Mecha Knight. “What matters is that they have clearly decided to get their revenge, and on your grandfather, no less. This is a surprising development, because I had always assumed that the Test Subjects would never come out of hiding even to get revenge.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” I said.

“Because then the government would be able to find them and capture them,” said Mecha Knight. “Given that the Test Subjects loathe the government more than anything, it was in their best interest to stay out of the public, where the government couldn’t see them.”

“Do you think they have other goals, then, instead of just killing Grandfather?” I said.

“Possibly,” said Mecha Knight. “What those goals are, I cannot say, because we don’t have much proof or evidence to help us figure that out. But I am certain that, whatever their goals are, we must find a way to stop them.”

“How?” I said. “We don’t even know where the Test Subjects are.”

“We will locate them,” said Mecha Knight. “I will have some of our members start looking, first by going to the street where you fought Sight. We have some trackers in the NHA who are very good at finding supervillains, so I imagine it won’t be long before they are found and stopped before they can succeed in whatever their plans are.”

“Can I help?” I said. “These guys are threatening my grandparents’ lives, after all. I think that more than qualifies me to join in the fight against them.”

“You cannot help with the tracking, but if we find them, you may help us detain them,” said Mecha Knight. “As it is, for now you and the rest of the team need to rest from your fight. I do not know how long it will take for us to find the Test Subjects, but I doubt it will take long, given the quality of our trackers.”

“All right,” I said. “So can I go back to my room now and rest?”

“Of course,” said Mecha Knight. He rose from his chair. “Meanwhile, I will tell the rest of the Leadership Council about this and get the tracking underway as soon as possible. I expect to have a tracking team out in the field by tomorrow morning, if not tonight.”

“Great,” I said. “By the way, what’s with the clunking sound in your armor? I’ve noticed you’ve been making some weird sounds recently.”

Mecha Knight stopped and stuck his hand into one of his armor’s compartments before he pulled out a tiny, metal disk. “This. It’s one of your father’s teleportation disks. He gave me one at the Summit earlier this year and I’ve been carrying it around ever since.”

“Oh,” I said in surprise as Mecha Knight put the disk back into his armor. “Why did he give it to you?”

“Because he thought I might need it and he trusted me with his technology more than anyone else,” said Mecha Knight. “Now if you will excuse me, I must leave to get the trackers out.”

With that, Mecha Knight walked around the table and left through the exit. I also left and returned to my room, where I really did intend to go back to sleep. In fact, I planned to sleep in for the entire rest of the day and not wake up until tomorrow morning.

But, of course, as soon as I entered, Carl’s peppy voice suddenly shouted, “Hi, Bolt! Valerie and I have successfully managed to decrypt your father’s personal files! Time to party!”

All of a sudden, a panel in the ceiling opened and confetti poured out of it, while some kind of weird party music started playing, with the lights suddenly flashing a bunch of different colors in rapid succession. It was all so abrupt and strange that I didn’t even know how to react until the music abruptly cut off and Valerie said, “Carl, I don’t think Kevin is in any mood to party at the moment. He looks like he needs some rest.”

“Okay,” said Carl, who somehow managed to sound peppy and disappointed at the same time. “But can we party later?”

“No,” said Valerie. “No party now or ever.”

“Fine,” said Carl. “But if Bolt ever changes his mind, I can still activate party mode in a cinch!”

I stood there in confusion and glanced at the confetti on my shoulders and on the floor. “Why does my room have a party mode installed in it?”

“Don’t know!” Carl said. “I found it when I was first installed into the House’s systems. I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it, but I guess I’ll still have to wait until a more appropriate time for it.”

“Uh …” I had no idea what to say to that, so I looked at the screen of my computer and saw that a message saying ‘DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL’ was blinking on it in bright green words. “So the decryption was successful?”

“Yes,” said Valerie. “We managed to decrypt every file on that flash drive that Triplet gave to you. You now have access to all of Genius’s personal files.”

I yawned, but despite my tiredness, I didn’t go to lie down. I just walked over to the computer and said, “How many files are on this device?”

“Approximately one thousand,” said Valerie. “Most of them are text, but there are a few pictures, videos, and audio files. We have not analyzed the content of most of them, so we don’t know for sure what is on them, but most of them seem to be journal entries from Genius’s younger years, plus plans for inventions that he never made.”

“Really?” I said. “What kind of inventions?”

One of the files suddenly opened up on the screen, showing blueprints depicting some kind of motorcycle that could apparently also double as a hover cycle, if I was reading the blueprints correctly.

“This was Genius’s plan for a hover cycle,” said Valerie. “It would have been able to drive along the ground like a normal motorcycle or turn into a vehicle that could hover approximately ten inches off the ground depending on the situation.”

“Cool,” I said. “What else is there?”

“As I said, we have not done a full analysis on the files’ contents, so we don’t know for sure what they may have,” said Valerie. “Because you requested this task of us, we wanted to give you the opportunity to study them yourself, unless you are too tired to do it at the moment.”

I shook my head and put my hand on the mouse. “No, I’m fine. I think I’ll stay up just a little while longer to see what Dad left for me. I’ll let you guys know if I need anything.”

“Okay, Bolt!” said Carl. “And if you ever need a party, just say the words and we can turn your room into a rave!”

I made a mental note never to mention the word ‘party’ around Carl again. I also made a mental note to ask Mecha Knight if he knew who had installed the party mode into my room, because now that I was aware of it, I was worried that it might just randomly activate on its own again because Carl would misinterpret something I said.

Then I looked at the list of files displayed on the screen, trying to find anything that looked interesting. Most of it, as far as I could tell, was labeled with the date that the contents were written, which probably meant they were journal entries written by Dad, but there were so many that I just sort of ignored them. I wasn’t really looking to actually read anything yet; I was really just going to quickly glance through the list to get an idea of the files’ contents and then actually read through them later after I took a nap. I also was planning to send these to Mom; I was sure that she would be interested in reading Dad’s old journal, if only as a keepsake to remember him by.

But then I noticed one file with an interesting label: ‘FOR KEVIN.’

Did that mean that this file was for me? That was odd. Then again, Triplet had told me that Dad had given him the flash drive to give to me after his death. Maybe this file was the reason for it.

Forgetting all about my tiredness, I hovered the mouse over the file and opened it.

Immediately, a video appeared on the screen. It took a second to buffer, but when it started, it showed Dad—in his full Genius costume, though without the helmet, which was resting on his lap—sitting in a chair in a place that I recognized as the Lab under our house in Texas. I didn’t know when this video had been created, but Dad didn’t look that young, so I assumed it must have been recorded over the last year or so.