The Superhero's Son Omnibus Volume 3

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Ivan returned to weight-lifting, but I just stared at him, unable to believe what he’d just told me.

I knew who Nuclear Winter was. Or, at least, knew of him, because he was featured predominantly in the history books about the history of superhumans in the United States. He was the first known supervillain and was the whole reason that Ultimate Max had been built in the first place.

It was thirty years ago, back in 1987, about a year after Dad, Omega Man, and all of the other first neoheroes first appeared. By then, superhumans were becoming more and more known. Most of the public superhumans at the time had been heroes or at least tried to be, with most using their powers for good, stopping criminals, helping people in natural disasters, and so on. Those few that weren’t interested in superheroics instead kept their powers to themselves or applied them in other areas, such as in business, sports, and so on. There had been a handful of ‘super criminals,’ as they were called at the time, but most super criminals had weak powers and weren’t very smart, which made it easy for even the normal police to deal with them.

Then Ivan Yadernoy—also known as Nuclear Winter—appeared. According to the history books, Ivan was a Russian immigrant and defector from the Soviet Union. He had allegedly been an important Soviet spy, but defected due to his hatred of communism and his desire to see the Soviet Union fall. At least, that was the excuse he gave; most people never trusted him and thought he was just pretending to be a defector.

Ivan developed superpowers shortly after his defection to the United States. What were those powers? Pretty simple: He could control nuclear energy, which he then used to attack various US cities and towns, killing thousands of people and causing untold costs in property damage. His main target was Washington, where he intended to overthrow the US government and turn the US into his own personal kingdom.

That’s where Dad and the others stepped in. They came up with a plan to defeat Nuclear Winter, since Nuclear Winter had pretty much steamrolled every attempt by the US military to stop him, and succeeded in taking him down. They then put him into Ultimate Max prison, where he was sentenced for life.

Actually, it was the defeat of Nuclear Winter that convinced Dad, Omega Man, Lady sss, and Beyond Man to create the Neohero Alliance. And it was the failure of the US military to deal with Nuclear Winter that led to the creation of the Department of Superpowered and Extraterrestrial Beings, or the G-Men, as they’re called, so that the US government would have a way of dealing with supervillains like Nuclear Winter in the future, instead of relying on private superheroes and organizations.

In fact, the term ‘supervillain’ was coined in order to describe superhumans like Nuclear Winter. He had been the first serious superhuman threat to any country in the world at the time, though he certainly wasn’t the last; Master Chaos was another, though the two never worked together as far as I knew.

I had grown up hearing all sorts of stories about Nuclear Winter, some true, some not. I had even seen footage of one of his rampages in history class; it had looked like a nuclear war zone. But Nuclear Winter had always seemed more like a myth than a real person due to the fact that he had been kept inside Ultimate Max for the last thirty years; in fact, he had been kept under such tight lock down that the press wasn’t even allowed to interview or film him. All of the pictures available to the public were pictures of him when he was in his thirties.

So I had a hard time believing that Ivan was, in fact, Nuclear Winter. The Nuclear Winter I had heard of was violent and a megalomaniac, willing to obliterate whole towns that refused to bow down to him. Ivan, on the other hand, was a crazy bodybuilder that liked cat magazines and considered me a friend.

But then, it explained why everyone seemed to avoid Ivan and why Mimic and the others had decided not to fight us. If Ivan really was Nuclear Winter, then that meant that he was probably the most powerful prisoner in the whole prison, even more powerful than me. After all, he didn’t even need to fight; he could infect me with nuclear radiation and I’d die in forty-five minutes or maybe a few days if I got lucky.

I looked at Rime, who had decided to stay with us instead of going back to hang out with the other prisoners. Based on his expression, I could tell that he already knew that Ivan was Nuclear Winter, which made sense, because Rime seemed to have been in prison for a while.

I looked at Ivan again. He was grunting with every lift of his weights and didn’t seem to be paying attention to me or anyone else. I wondered if he was trying to avoid talking to me about this subject.

“So you really are Nuclear Winter?” I said. “The same one that the Four Founders defeated thirty years ago?”

Ivan rested his weights on the bars and sighed. He looked at me again. “Yes, indeed. But I no longer go by that name; I am Ivan Yadernoy now. Nuclear Winter is dead.”

I bit my lower lip. I wasn’t sure what else to ask, but I knew I had to say something.

“Confused?” said Ivan. “Not surprising. Though I haven’t been outside of Ultimate Max in over three decades, I am aware of how the rest of the world sees me. I’ve been told that most people think I’m just a legend, a myth, even with all of the footage and pictures of me destroying towns. Most new prisoners here tend to react like you when they meet me; disbelief, slowly—and sometimes quickly—followed by fear.”

“It’s not just that,” I said. “It’s also … well, Dad beat you. Your defeat helped Dad to become a famous superhero.”

“Yes, he did,” Ivan agreed. “He was only a boy at the time, but he was much smarter than adults three times his age. It was thanks to his brilliant mind that he and the other three Founders took me down. Otherwise, I likely would have succeeded in my plans to nuke Washington and make myself the king of this country.”

Ivan sounded relieved about that, as if he was happy that his plot had been foiled and that he was in prison and would probably never be freed. I didn’t understand that at all, but then, there was a lot about my current situation I didn’t understand.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are you happy that you were defeated and put inside jail? Everyone else here just wants out.”

“Because I’ve had time to think about my life,” said Ivan. “And I realized that I was really just driven by anger more than anything. So I have now devoted my life to peacefully carrying out the life sentence that the judge handed down to me thirty years ago; it’s much more fulfilling than constantly bitching about how this or that superhero foiled my plans.”

I scratched the back of my head. “So you’ve never tried to escape at all? Never tried to get your freedom?”

“Never,” said Ivan, shaking his head. He resumed lifting his weights. “Unlike Bernard, I had no reason to break free. I have no spouse, no children, nothing awaiting me on the outside. Besides, I suspect that my old communist pals in Russia would like to take me out for defecting to the USA, so I am much safer in here than I am out there.”

“Bernard,” I repeated. “You mean Master Chaos. Did you know him when he was in here?”

“Who didn’t?” said Ivan with a snort. “He was mad. He spent all day every day ranting about how he was going to get revenge and kill Genius. No one really liked him, so we were all quite relieved to hear about his death last year.”

“But he did manage to escape from this prison, though,” said Rime, glancing wistfully at the guards on the walls. “The only prisoner to do that.”

“How did he do it, exactly?” I said. “None of the news articles went into detail about it.”

“He used his chaos powers to cause a riot in the prison,” said Rime. “Then he stole a guard’s uniform and used it to sneak out while the other guards were preoccupied with ending the riot. He also used his powers to mess with Ultimate Max’s security systems, which helped him escape easily.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s sounds simple. Wonder why he didn’t do it before.”

“Who knows?” said Ivan. “He was always crazy. I suspect it just never occurred to him that he could do it until he heard about how you punched out his son.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But anyway, who cares? I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“I was about to ask that, actually,” said Rime. “I’ve heard of you. You’re the superhero Bolt, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Who are you? I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“I-I’m Rime,” said Rime, his teeth chattering slightly. “I was put behind bars eleven years ago. I can control ice.”

“I saw that,” I said. “I have a friend who can do that, too.”

“It’s not exactly a common superpower,” said Rime. He looked down at his hands. “But it is my power, though I used to be able to control water until my powers changed.”

“Your powers changed?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“It’s something that happens as you grow older for some superhumans,” said Rime with a shrug. “Your powers can change as you age. It’s something to do with neogenetics. I don’t know. I’ve never understood it.”

“Me neither,” I said. “By the way, what are you in prison for? You didn’t say.”

Rime shrugged. “I killed a man, got caught, sentenced to life prison in Ultimate Max, and will probably be here until the are you growday I die.”

Rime didn’t look at me when he said that, like he was trying to avoid making eye contact with me. That meant that there was likely more to his story than what he was telling me, but at the same time, I didn’t see any reason to dig deeper, since I doubted his story had anything to do with me.

So I just said, “Do you want to escape? Or are you like Ivan and want to stay?”

“I’d like to escape, but it probably will never happen,” said Rime with a sigh. “Ultimate Max is practically inescapable. I’d also love to get the guy who actually caught me; that bastard deserves it.”

“Who caught you?” I said. “A superhero?”

“Someone you probably don’t know,” said Rime. “Some detective who calls himself Triplet. He’s pretty obscure.”

Triplet? I knew him. He was a superhero detective and former member of the NHA. I had worked with him in the past—once to expose Vision, the other time to find out the truth of my grandparents—but I hadn’t realized that he had defeated some supervillains on his own before. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so shocking, since Triplet had been active as a superhero and as a detective for a while. I wondered how many other inmates in here had been caught by Triplet … and how they would react if they knew that I was friends with him.

I decided not to mention my friendship with Triplet to Rime right now, because Rime sounded really angry about him. “I’ve heard of him, yeah. He’s supposed to be a good detective.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t,” said Rime with a shrug. “All I know is that he’s the reason I’ve spent the last eleven years behind bars. If I ever get a chance to see him, I’ll turn him into the most realistic ice sculpture that the world has ever seen.”

I bit my lower lip, mostly because I didn’t think I could agree with that, and then glanced at Ivan. Ivan just shrugged, as if to say that it was normal for Rime to talk like that and I shouldn’t worry too much. But I did make a mental note to ask Triplet about the details of Rime’s case later, if I ever managed to escape this place.

“Uh, okay,” I said. “So you and Ivan are friends?”

“Pretty much,” said Rime. “Only because Ivan is the only other prisoner I’ve ever gotten along with.”

“Ah,” I said. “I see.”

“And now it looks like you and I are going to be friends,” said Rime. “At least, if you’re a friend of Ivan’s, you’re a friend of mine. So I’m probably not going to try to kill you, unless you try to pick a fight with me, anyway.”

Rime spoke entirely seriously about that. I wasn’t sure how to take that, but since Rime so far was being mostly polite with me, I just nodded and said nothing. Besides, I thought it would be useful to have two fairly powerful allies in this place, especially since I had so many enemies that would be more than happy to kill me the second my back was turned. As long as I stuck with Ivan and Rime, I thought I was going to be all right.

But that didn’t change the fact that I still didn’t belong here. I would want to be out of here even if everyone wanted to be my friend, because I knew that I shouldn’t be here. I was innocent. I hadn’t committed any crimes, at least knowingly. Something was definitely wrong here, but what, I wasn’t sure, though I intended to find out.

I folded my arms over my chest and leaned against another bench that was next to Ivan’s. “I still don’t know why I’m here. But I do know I need to get out.”

Rime snorted. “Good luck with that. Ultimate Max is inescapable unless your name happens to be Master Chaos.”

“I know,” I said, “but you don’t understand. Unlike you guys, I’m innocent. I was put in here falsely.”

“What are we supposed to do about it?” said Rime with a shrug. “We can’t really help you escape or figure out why you’re in here.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s just so frustrating. I wonder if I could talk to the Warden.”

“Of course not,” said Rime. “The Warden doesn’t talk with prisoners.”

“Well, just who is the Warden, anyway?” I said. “No one’s told me his name yet.”

“Mark Ferguson,” said Ivan, causing me to look down at him as he lifted weights. “Also known as the superhero Glass.”

I frowned. “Glass? Never heard of him. What’s he do, turn into glass?”

“Nope,” said Rime. “He turns other people and things into glass, and then breaks them. Saw him do it to a prisoner that attempted to escape once; it took the guards weeks to sweep up all of the shards.”

“And there is also the Chief of Security, Burn Shot,” Ivan added. “He has perfect accuracy and can shoot fire, meaning that if he takes aim at you, you’re probably dead. Between them and the guards, plus the prison’s security systems, it can get … interesting in here sometimes.”

“And neither will talk to me, right?” I said.

“Right,” said Rime. “All of the people who work here look down on us prisoners. And we look down on them in turn, so it all works out.”

“It doesn’t work out for me, though, or help me understand why I’m even here,” I said. “I need to talk to someone. Do prisoners get phone calls?”

Rime laughed. “Nope! Warden Glass doesn’t want anyone using our phone calls to coordinate break outs. You only get a phone call if the Warden allows it, and even then, it will be tapped and traced so they can make sure you aren’t calling your friends or minions on the outside for help.”

I cursed under my breath. I had been hoping to call Mecha Knight and see if he could help, but it was pretty clear that I wouldn’t be talking to anyone outside of the prison for quite sometime, if ever. That meant that I was going to be in here forever without ever knowing why.

I scowled and thought about who might be able to help. Maybe there was someone within the prison who might know what was going on. But all of the people I knew were my enemies who I had put behind bars, enemies who were just as out of the loop as I was.

Thus, it all seemed hopeless until I suddenly remembered that there was, in fact, someone in Ultimate Max who I knew and who might be able to help me understand what was I doing here. Granted, he was not a G-Man, but he had been involved with secret government projects about superheroes in the past. Maybe if I talked with him, he would be able to use his knowledge of the government to help.

But before I could ask Rime if it was possible for prisoners to meet with other prisoners, I heard someone running nearby and looked up to see Mimic running toward us. For a moment, I thought that he was going to try to attack me, but instead, he stopped several feet away from me, coming to a stop and putting his hands on his knees, panting like he was not used to running so much.

“Mimic?” said Rime, looking at Mimic in disgust. “What do you want? Come to try to fight us again?”

Mimic shook his head. “Of course not. I want to know how you did it.”

Mimic pointed at me when he said that, prompting me to reply, “How I did what?”

“You know,” said Mimic. “I just saw it on the TV. How did you do it?”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’ve just been standing here talking with Rime and Ivan. So, unless you’re asking me about that—”

“Oh, yeah?” said Mimic with a sneer. “Then how come I just saw you on the news attacking the White House?”

“What?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“Come and I’ll show you,” said Mimic. “I think the news is still showing the footage.”

Puzzled but intrigued, I followed Mimic, and so did Rime and Ivan, who looked just as confused as me. We walked all the way to the other end of the prison yard, where an old, small TV had been set up, apparently for the prisoners to watch the news. A dozen prisoners were already crowding around it, making it difficult to see it, but Mimic led us through the crowd until we reached the TV itself.

The TV was on one of the big major news channels, showing a news reporter talking about an attack on the White House that had apparently happened earlier today. She said that the G-Men and Secret Service were still investigating the attack, but footage from the White House’s own security cameras had somehow leaked online, which gave us a glimpse of the attacker.

Then the scene on the TV switched, showing footage of one of the White House’s hallways. All of a sudden, one of the blows exploded inward, sending chunks of plaster and wood flying everywhere, the dust briefly obscuring the camera’s view of the place.

But then a figure stepped through the newly-created hole in the wall, a figure who was briefly obscured by the dust. When the dust settled, it showed a guy in a white and blue superhero costume that looked almost exactly like mine standing in the hallway. The blue stripes on the suit were glowing brightly, and when the guy looked up, his eyes were also glowing the same shade of blue as his costume.

But that wasn’t the most significant part. The most important part was that the guy’s face looked exactly like mine.

We saw it for only a second, however, before the guy raised his hand and fired a bolt of blue lightning at the camera, which struck it and instantly caused the footage to go dark.