The Invincibles (Book 1): The Invincibles Read online

  The Invincibles

  Tristan Lee

  © 2018 Tristan Lee - All Rights Reserved

  First Contact

  July 30th

  Sandor Burns is fifty-six years old and fond of sleep. He is not fond of being awoken from his sleep. He is extremely not fond of being woken up to go to work. With all of that taken into account, Sandor knows it is not going to be a good day when he is awoken at midnight being told that he is needed immediately. A normal office worker might just feign illness and deal with it in the morning, but Sandor Burns does not work in a normal office. He is the director of S.A.B.R.E., an international organization dealing with matters that world governments simply cannot. In essence, whatever requires him to leave his home in Haven City, New York, and be at S.A.B.R.E.’s headquarters in the island city of Genesis, Massachusetts, could probably destroy the planet.

  It is an hour long trip from Sandor’s apartment using S.A.B.R.E.’s rapid-transit system that links the homes of all of their employees to every base in the nation via a super-high-speed subway and private freeway, but the trip takes an hour and fifteen minutes since he has to explain to his wife what he is doing at midnight. Once he is there, he uses his keycard to get into the building where a friendly receptionist who apparently never goes home tells him that he is needed in the war room. The war room is like a NASA control room, computers and machines Sandor does not understand forming a semicircle around a massive screen and three smaller screens running down either side of it. The war room is unusually full, every computer is occupied by a tired and stressed looking S.A.B.R.E. analyst, engineer, or scientist, each of them typing and clicking away furiously at their computers while occasionally receiving a huge stack of papers and glancing up at the main screen.

  Sandor walks up to the bald defense minister, Damian Santiago, “What’s going on?”

  “See for yourself,” Santiago says, pointing at the screen. “We sent a shuttle with our ambassador and sixteen marines to make contact with it, but they shot them down.”

  “My God,” Sandor says in awe of the object on the screen. “What is it?”

  “No clue what it is exactly, but to me it looks like a damn big spaceship.”

  The object in question does indeed look like a spaceship; cylindrical in shape, it orbits the planet in an upright position with two rings around it, one near the top and the other near the bottom. Surrounding the main object is what seems to be a dark cloud, but upon further inspection . . .

  “Are those all ships?” Sandor asks.

  “Unfortunately for us, yes. From our rather rushed analysis, each one of those could easily outfly, outmaneuver, and outgun an F-16.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “We estimate at least seventy thousand. Maybe more.”

  “Have they attacked us yet?”

  “I just told you, they shot down our ambassador.”

  “They might have done that out of self-defense, have they made any move on us?”

  “Actually, they have. Bring up footage of Hong Kong.”

  One of the smaller screens displays an image of flaming debris floating in black and red water under smoke-filled skies. Aid ships are sailing around, pulling bodies out of the water, but no living people.

  “What happened?” Sandor asks.

  “After they shot out ambassador down about a thousand of those little fighters went on a bombing run. It wasn’t random, they knew exactly where they wanted to hit and exactly how hard to hit.”

  Sandor turns away from the screen to look Santiago in the eye again, “Are there any survivors?”

  Santiago shrugs sadly, “I doubt it. Death toll is estimated at over seven million.”

  “Can we fight them?”

  “Once again, I doubt it. They have more aircraft than us and none of the weaponized aircraft we have can safely reach that altitude. Well, there’s one, but one jet isn’t really going to help.”

  “So how do we fight back?”

  “In essence, we don’t,” Santiago says with a shake of his head. "Unless we have some gods on call."

  Sandor smirks, “Good thing I do.”

  “What do you-“

  Sandor turns around and slides into an empty chair next to another tired S.A.B.R.E. worker, “I need you to find some people for me.”

  The analyst rubs his eyes, “Yeah, sure, who?”

  “Dr. Alexander Pryce, Gunnery Sergeant Richard Joseph Barnes, Belle Drake, Christopher Drake, Anna Barnes, and Frank Butler. Last one might be under Franklin Butler.”

  The analyst types for a while before getting his results, “Here they are.”

  “Make me a file on each of them, everything we’ve got on them.”

  “That’s going to be a thick file.”

  “Only the essentials, then. Appearance, address, abilities, you know, that kind of stuff.”

  The analyst rubs his eyes again and takes a swig out of his coffee cup, “You got it, sir.”

  Santiago makes his way over, “As I was trying to ask, what do you mean we have some gods handy?”

  “I’ll explain when the files get here.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, an intern arrives with the six files and hands them to Sandor.

  “Look,” Sandor says. He kneels on the floor and spreads all of the files out, opening each one to the page that gives an overview of them.

  “I’m looking, but I’m not understanding,” Santiago says. “What’s going on?”

  “Five years ago, I had Homeland Security keep a tab on people suspected of having superhuman abilities or other extraordinary traits.”

  “The press is going to have a field day if that breach of privacy ever gets out.”

  “Dr. Alexander Pryce. Lost the use of his legs in a car crash,” Sandor continues, ignoring him.

  “So?”

  “He studies robotics and artificial intelligence, so he built himself a new body.”

  “You’re saying he’s a robot?”

  “No, he controls a robot. He’s Dr. Invictus.

  “That’s crazy, but go on.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Richard Joseph Barnes, his faulty reconnaissance during the World War 3 resulted in the death of his entire squad. Following that, the military offered him the opportunity for a second chance. It made him a super soldier.”

  “Let me guess, you think he’s a superhero too?”

  “Defender, to be exact.”

  “Still crazy.”

  “Belle Drake. Developed her superhuman abilities at the age of six, after she was adopted by two regular humans, George and Sandra Brightly. She never knew her birth parents, but she managed to live a relatively normal life before meeting and partnering up with Christopher Drake. Mr. Drake was adopted from what seems to be birth, but his biological parents don’t seem to exist. Or they aren’t on Earth, at least.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “I think she’s Demoness and he’s Titan.”

  “All due respect sir, but you’re stupid.”

  “Anna Barnes, twin to Dick Barnes. She disappeared for seven months, no one knows where.”

  “But you have a theory.”

  “Naymar Barbos, the island of the Black Dragon. Probably went there to get trained, don’t know why, but she emerged as a Black Dragon herself, only she abandoned the order when they tasked her to kill her brother, Defender.”

  “You think she’s Nightshade, don’t you?”

  “Exactly. Last but not least, Frank Butler. Witnessed the brutal murder of his mother in the same attack that blinded him at the age of fourteen and traveled to the Shaolin monastery to find his father. Trained in fighting by the monks and how to use
his telekinetic powers by his father, he returned to his home in Godfall City.”

  “Actually, that one I believe you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Like, the most prominent blind guy in the city who regularly disappears every time the vigilante Ronin, who also happens to be blind, appears? Doesn’t take an expert.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So let’s assume I believe you and don’t feel like sending you to the psychiatric ward. Let’s even assume that you’re right. What do we do with these people?”

  “Recruit them, get them to fight these aliens for us.”

  “I think Kevin Walker had the same idea with the Olympians and we know how that turned out.”

  The Olympians had been the first group of superhumans to unite in order to protect the world. Led by Michael Stone, or Paragon, the Olympians had six other supporting members: Sam Gideon (Vanguard), Sara Gardner (Athena), Joe Macready (Reaper), Owen McMann (Owlman), Simon Stone (Shockwave), and Garrett Walker (Knight). Although they were very successful at first, Michael Stone had Sam Gideon’s wife killed during a brutal regime brought on by a fit of madness. Following his wife’s death, Sam Gideon went to war with Michael Stone. The war devastated the world’s population and introduced the Superhuman Containment Act, which made being a superhuman punishable by death. The act, or its better known acronym, the S.C.A., was repealed after fifteen years. Unfortunately, by that time eighty-five percent of the superhuman population had been wiped out.

  “The Olympians would have worked out if Paragon didn’t go mad. If he and Vanguard never went to war, hell, we might not even be having this conversation.”

  “I think it’s a shit idea.”

  “I think that it’s our only option.”

  “Where will they operate from?”

  “Definitely not here. If they go rogue like S.P.E.A.R. did we can’t have any ties to them. Get some people to get Gideon Bunker in Skyline running again, we could use that temporarily. I’ll handle the recruiting.”

  “I’ll get on it.”

  Sandor picks up all of his files and heads for the door when Santiago calls out after him, “Burns! You’re not trying to reboot the Olympians, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Sandor says. “These guys . . . they’re going to be better. They have to be. For all of our sakes.”

  The Living Star and the Prince of Xor

  August 1st

  Once the euphoria of being a part of something that might save the world passed, Sandor realized that there was no way that he could make it to Goodwater City, Quebec where Demoness and Titan (the only Canadian superheroes) operate, at this hour. Instead he goes home and sleeps on it until the morning. Once the morning does arrive, Sandor is up, dressed, and out of the house before his wife even rolls over in bed. The drive to Goodwater City takes two, long hours on S.A.B.R.E.’s rapid transit system.

  Goodwater City is, according to hundreds of studies, the safest city on the planet. Crime rate is less than 0.000001 per hundred people, much of that due to the affluent population and Goodwater’s resident superheroes. The city’s placement means it really only has two seasons, winter and summer; in Goodwater, it is either snowing or shining, no in between. Although the main city is as metropolitan as can be, the suburbs of Goodwater are much more tranquil; sixty houses, the local bar, and a medium-sized grocery store. Someone living in the Goodwater suburbs could live their entire lives without ever stepping foot in the main city.

  Sandor drives up a ridiculously steep hill to the houses on top of it and parks in front of a modest two-story house with a front garden overflowing with various plants. The house is the oddball on the street since all the others have desert landscapes and are painted white or beige, whereas this one is baby blue. Other than that, it seems perfectly normal; welcome mat, Canadian flag flying from a flag pole mounted above the garage door, and a black muscle car in the driveway. For all intents and purposes, it is a normal house on a normal street containing some very abnormal people.

  The young lady who would one day be known as Demoness’s life changed before she finished first grade. On her very first day of school, she felt hot even though it was forty degrees that day. The young future heroine went to the nurse’s office because of her discomfort, but the nurse could find nothing wrong with her. She was sent back to class and exactly fifteen minutes later, at recess, fire began to erupt from the six-year-old. Although her powers had not yet developed fully, the fire was measured to be around four hundred degrees Celsius. Scared by what she could do, Belle did not try to use her powers again until a man named Jonathan Hewitt attacked her during a home invasion robbery when she was fifteen. That was when she unlocked her powers of energy projection and telekinesis. Belle started using her powers to help people when she was sixteen, at first against her parent’s wishes, but soon they saw how their daughter could change the world and relented. Two years later, after being fired from her job, she met the employee that she indirectly got fired: Christopher Thomas Drake. To normal people, getting fired would have been a cataclysmic event, but to the two newfound friends and future spouses, it set them on the path that led to the two people most feared by the criminal underworld: Demoness and Titan.

  Christopher Drake was born on a planet twenty-thousand light-years away called Xor. There, he was the heir to the throne of the planet when his jealous uncle attempted to have him seized and killed. His mother, sensing the treachery, sent him to Earth aboard a spaceship that would sustain him for the journey. Relativistic changes from traveling faster than light meant that when he landed on Earth eighteen million years after his craft was launched, he had only aged a few months. Found in a snowy forest near Quebec, Canada, by a construction worker, Thomas Drake, he was adopted like Belle Drake, or Belle Brightly, since this was before their marriage. Christopher grew up not knowing what he was until fifteen when his aunt Zarelda came to Earth, warning him of how the coup had succeeded and his uncle, Xandar, was coming to Earth to look for him. Zarelda guided him to his ship, where he discovered that he had his extraordinary strength, flight, and other abilities. Once he finished his studies on Xorian history and the rest of the known universe, his aunt presented him with the suit of Xorian royal armor that his father had made for him all those years ago and told him his Xorian name, Titan. After a fierce battle in Quebec, Christopher emerged triumphant over his uncle and decided to use his powers as Earth’s guardian angel.

  Both of them moved to Goodwater City shortly after finishing high school, Belle to pursue higher education and Chris to get a job. One fateful day, Belle tripped and fell down the stairs, but was caught by her future husband, who had just happened to be walking by. It was love at first sight and the two were married a scant eighteen months later, before Belle had even graduated.

  Sandor compares the address to the one in his file: 452 S. Starview. This should be the house that Belle and Christopher Drake live together in. He walks up to the front door and rings the dinosaur-shaped doorbell. Two dogs start barking the moment the T-Rex roar from the doorbell is emitted.

  “Who is it?” a woman asks in a sing-song voice.

  “Sandor Burns.”

  “Are you selling Girl Scout cookies?” the woman asks excitedly

  “No, I’m not a Girl Scout.”

  “Sorry, not interested,” she says quickly.

  “I’m not a salesman.”

  “Are you that guy who wanted to buy the Mustang? ‘Cause I really don’t like the rusty thing since it ruins the landscape of my front yard, but Chris would bust a lug nut if he found out I sold it. But then again, he can never stay mad at me. Anyway, are you that guy who wanted the Mustang?”

  “What Mustang?”

  “Never mind. You’re not here to kill us, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then again, that’s what someone who came to kill us would say.”

  “I’m with S.A.B.R.E.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Sandor a
sks. Suddenly, the door opens and he is yanked in rather forcefully by his tie and pushed into an uncomfortable wooden chair. He tries to stand, but he’s pushed back down.

  Looking down on him is the strangest duo he has seen in a while, and that ensures him that he has come to the right place. Both are Caucasian and twenty-five years of age, but that is where the similarities end. The man is a giant, and, if his file can be believed, is six-feet-nine inches tall. He has short black hair and wears a pair of blue jeans and a black t-shirt. His eyes are black, not brown, actually black, and he has a handsome face, along with a muscle tone that would make girls swoon. Sandor can immediately recognize the giant of a man as Titan.

  The girl next to him looks more likely to be a Disney princess than her namesake Demoness. She is over a foot shorter than the man, and is, according to all accounts, a solid five-feet, one-hundred-seven pounds of sweetness with a sprinkle of sass. Her wavy, champagne-blonde hair is loose and neatly tucked behind her ears, reaching just past her shoulders. She has wide, soft green doe-eyes that fit well on her pretty face; in addition her complexion is completely clear and devoid of any makeup or blemishes. The girl wears a more faded pair of jeans than the man and a grey tank top that accentuates her ample figure.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” Sandor says quickly.

  The woman looks at the man, “Believe him?”

  The man gives Sandor a scrutinizing look, his pupils melting away into the whites of his eyes before returning to normal, “Not sure. He didn’t bring any backup and he’s unarmed, so either he’s telling the truth or he’s very stupid.”

  “Stupid until proven intelligent,” the woman declares. “Let’s start with your name.”

  “I told you, Sandor Burns.”

  “Chris, frisk him.”

  “I don’t want to touch his junk,” Chris complains. “Plus, I x-rayed him.”

  “Well I’m certainly not doing it,” says the woman, who must be Belle. “And you might have missed something important.”

  “It’s an x-ray, Belle. He’s probably sterile by now.”