Adventures of Superguy

The four young heroes sprint into the dimly lit hallway beyond the cloning chamber, but skid to a halt as the blue chrysalisides begin to glow with a now familiar red light. As they do, things stir within them, and previously rigid shells soften and bulge as the genomorphs within struggle to be born. They tear their way out with clawed hands, emerging into the hall and the world dripping with amniotic fluid, their red eyes glowing. They are lithe, lean, feral looking creatures with swept back heads, pointed ears, tails and vicious clawed hands. As they pour out of the walls and into the corridor, they turn their baleful gazes towards the stunned heroes and hiss, collectively, in an awful chorus.. 

“What the heck are those things?!” Kid Quick yells.

“G-Elves! Warrior genomorphs!” Superboy snaps as he tenses, watching the approaching horde.

“Gelves? They’re gelves?” She snaps back, panic rising in her voice. The corridor before them is filling up with g-elves, the quick and surefooted creatures clambering the walls and ceilings to cram more of their brethren into the hall. They flow towards the cloning chamber in a living wave of hissing genomorphs.

The heroes look at each other, a single thought passing unspoken; there are too many g-elves to fight. They turn as one and duck down another corridor, beating a hasty retreat as the g-elves pursue.

“Robin! We need an exit strategy! We’re 33 sublevels down!” Aqualass shouts as their feet thunder down the metal decking. Superboy glances over his shoulder, his superhearing telling him precisely how many g-elves are chasing them. He knows precisely how strong they are, and how sharp their claws are. He could probably take dozens of them at a time, but in these corridors and with their numbers, they would bury him a tide of bodies. Kid Quick could probably escape, but that would mean leaving the rest of them behind…

“I’m working on it!” Robin shouts, as she raises her left gauntlet and taps at some control on it. Instantly a holographic map of the station appears in front of her, bobbing in the air in time with her strides. She is scanning through it desperately, the hand she projects it from seemingly tapping at invisible keys and the other touches and manipulates the hologram as she reorients it, looking for their means of escape.

Then a set of thumping footsteps comes from the corridor ahead, and their way forward is blocked by a wall of grey armored flesh. The creatures fill the hallway, even though you could drive a truck down it. Their tusked heads brush the ceiling, brutish heads glaring down at the heroes, and long simian arms brush the floor as they waddle forward. They block the way forward, as the g-elves block the way back.

“Ah, come on! What are these?!” Kid Quick demands impertinently.

“G-trolls. They’re… well they’re the muscle.” Superboy answers, swallowing nervously. The g-trolls aren’t his equal in strength, despite their size. But they have plenty of it anyway, and there’s six of them.

Aqualass grimaces and draws the silver hilts off her back. In an instant, glowing blue water flows from the hilts and forms a pair of flanged maces of the brilliant stuff. Kid Quick readies herself, while Robin ignores the looming threat and continues her desperate search through whatever maps she’s gained access to.

“Clear a path!” Aqualass shouts, and leads the charge forward.

Superboy’s heart beats faster, a thrilling excitement. This is what he’s always dreamed of, being a superhero and charging into the good fight, friends and allies at his side! The way things ought to be. He grins as he charges the lead g-troll and shoulder checks it, ramming himself into its gut. Its breath whooshes out in a foul smelling breeze and it is knocked back into the wall of the corridor with a crash and shudder that reverberates through the hall.

Ha, I got him! This is eas-

The thought never finishes as a fist the size of a boulder crashes down and flattens him like a pancake into the decking. He is stunned as he tries to shove the hog sized hand off of him, but then Aqualass is there, sailing over him to deliver a brutal one-two strike with her water maces to the g-troll’s face, driving it back. The crushing weight pinning him to the decking is gone, and he leaps to his feet. 

A yellow and red blur zips past and weaves around the g-trolls, blows raining down on the hulking brutes and beating a staccato rhythm against their tough hide like the rattle of a machinegun. They flinch at the blows and swipe ineffectually at her, far too slow to actually catch the speedster as she bolts back and forth from one target to the next. As one opponent finally tries to react to her assault, she is instantly across the hall to another and renewing the attack. It doesn’t seem like she can hurt them much, but the dim creatures respond to every provocation she makes.

As he rises, he locks eyes with Aqualass and they share a nod. They glance back towards the nearest g-troll, the one he knocked down as it ponderously gets back up. Together they leap at it and each deliver a blow; his a haymaker to its gut that makes it double over, and hers another two handed hammer smash up into its jaw. With the terrible inevitability of a redwood toppling, it rears back and crashes to the floor, shaking the hall again. This time, dust and bits of red stone fall on them all, but the g-trolls don’t seem to notice.

Kid Quick rushes down the hall to engage the last of the g-trolls, retreating in a blur out of its reach with each attack and kiting it further down the hall and away from the fight. The brute is too stupid to recognize the simple trick. Meanwhile, Aqualass ducks the clumsy but devastating blows one g-troll while Superboy hurls punches into the gut of another. Each punch hammers home and drives the beast a step back until its back is against the tunnel wall. It can barely paw at the air, trying to stave him off, but he doesn’t relent and continues throwing desperate fists into it. Each strike slams it into the wall, and makes the corridor rumble and roil. Aqualass dispatches her opponent just as Superboy’s collapses with a groan.

Only one remains, and Aqualass shouts “Together!”

His timing is slightly off, so as she leaps and snaps the last g-trolls’ head back with a hammer formed from both hilts at once. His following uppercut catches it just as its chin comes back down and it shakes off the first blow. But the finisher sends it into dreamland, while its massive bulk smashes into the wall and the tunnel shakes worse than before, chunks of stone as big as his head raining down on them. Robin actually has to dodge a few as she continues pawing through the map, and impressively does it without even looking up.

“Robin, we need that exit strategy, now!” Aqualass demands.

“Got it! We’re heading for the emergency stairs, we can’t afford to get trapped in the elevator shaft. This way!” Robin points and takes off, leading the way. Kid Quick rushes back, bent over and out of breath.

“Ah, goddess… ha… that one… just kept…chasing me…” She huffs out between panting breaths. Robin grabs her hand and drags her along with a yelp.

“No time! We gotta move! She shouts over her shoulder, dragging the speedster along. Superboy rushes to follow, perfectly aware of how close the horde of g-elves is growing.

“You were a little late on that team attack.” Aqualass says quietly as she runs beside him, her arms stretched out behind her as she moves. WIth her hands spread, he finally notices her hands are webbed. A glance down at her bare feet confirms her toes are, too. Paler than the rest of her skin, and semi translucent, the webbing stretches between each digit, halfway down from the tips. Its strange, and he feels like it should weird him out, but it doesn’t.

I don't know what I should expect from “Aqua”lass.

“Well, its my first team up.” He mutters, awkwardly, not sure what else to say.

“Then we shall have to practice for next time.” She says, and smiles smally. 

So far, she has been stern, commanding, diplomatic, authoritative and angry, but now he sees her being charming, and it takes his breath away. Her storm cloud eyes twinkle when she smiles. 

Are all superheroes this pretty? That seems a little unfair. Or is everyone here pretty? Probably not. Dr. Desmond is best described as ‘matronly’. 

Their headlong flight down the corridor is interrupted by several twists and turns. Superboy racks his brain, trying to figure out where they are from the images and layout planted in the mind palace for him. But without the live tracking that Robin is using on her holo-map, he struggles to pinpoint where they are. There is a missing component to his pathfinding; he knows the layout but not how he got here on Sublevel 33, so he has no memory to back track from.

“There!” Robin shouts and points to a very normal and boring looking green steel door with a push bar in the middle of it. There’s even a glowing green EXIT sign above it, and a decal that says EMERGENCY STAIRS and a little illustration of a stick figure rushing up the stairs. 

That’s surprisingly mundane for a secret underground base.

They reach the door and shove it open, seeing flights of identical steel stairs reaching up into the darkness above and below them. The wall opposite the doorway has the sublevel number stenciled on it in black paint; this one reads 33 in blocky numbers.

“Kid, you’re up! Scout us a path.” Aqualass orders imperiously.

Kid Quick is taking massive bites out of some kind of food bar wrapped in shiny silver foil, and answers between swallows.

“Great! Finally room to get up to speed!” She says as she lowers the goggles over her eyes and is gone so fast she leaves an after image and a rush of wind, the foil wrapper blowing away as she leaves it hanging in mid air. Superboy looks up the stairs and sees a contrail of yellow and red streaking behind her as she scouts ahead. If not for his supervision, she’d just be a blur.

Aqualass takes the lead up the stairs, followed by Robin, still typing at holographic keyboards as they run, with Superboy bringing up the rear. A position which gives him an extended view of his companions’ rears. Both are toned and shapely, wrapped in skintight fabrics, and he finds he can’t look away, even as he pounds up the flights and sublevels tick by.

Man, this is not the time. But they’re all REALLY hot. Still, this is neither the time nor the place. He thinks, warily.

Even so, it is a fine view, even if it might be his last. Much better than the hospital room.

They’ve gone a dozen floors before he hears the emergency door get torn off its hinges and the scritching and hissing of dozens of g-elves skittering they way up the stairs in pursuit. He shouts a warning to the others.

“We’ve got company!”

The three of them pause and glance over the railing, down the stairwells. The others gasp at the sight of hundreds of glowing red eyes illuminating the darkened stairwell, flowing towards them. Thanks to supervision, he can see them in all their details; they even glow in a way that seems different from the visible light coming from their eyes. Some kind of thermal vision?

That makes sense. I think Superman can just see anything if he wants to. Also, that is bad.

“They’re gaining on us!” he shouts as he shoves the other two back up stairs and the head on flight resumes. The g-elves are like man sized monkeys, leaping and climbing and running on all fours,  using every surface and handhold they can. They are boiling up every side of the stairwell and there are almost twenty floors to go. He isn’t tired at all, and he could run much faster, but that would leave Robin and Aqualass behind to face the horde. He shakes his head, unwilling to leave anyone behind. 

“We need something to slow them down!” He shouts, out of ideas as to how to achieve that himself.

“Can we switch to another stairwell?” Aqualass replies, much more calmly, and looks to Robin, who shakes her head.

“The only other one is on the opposite end of the floor, and those gelves are even faster on level ground!” She shouts back. She glances up at the bottom of the flights above them and snaps her fingers.

“Got it! Supey, Aqualass, get ready to bring down the next stair flight when I say so!” She instructs as she draws more of the circular explosive disks, and flicks them at the corners of the concrete pad above them, the stone landing between each steel flight of stairs. They rush up that last flight as the beeping of the explosives beneath his feet fills the Superboy’s ears. He and Aqualass pause at the top of the flight, and she draws her water weapons again, this time forming a pair of machete blades, and she slices through the supports and bolts which hold the flight to the landing pad. The stairs groan under their own weight without the connection points, dipping slightly. 

The dip grows worse as the first g-elves appear and scamper up it, hissing as they spot their prey. 

“NOW!” Robin shouts, holding a detonator in her hand.

Superboy snarls and raises both fists and brings them down in a full body hammer blow onto the flight of stairs. With a tremendous clang and the shriek of bending steel it falls away, taking a dozen g-elves with it, who squawk in surprise as they are suddenly falling. He grabs Robin and Aqualass and shoves them up the stairs. They barely make the next landing when Robin hits the detonator, and with a muffled krump, her explosives detonate. 

It is punishingly loud in the concrete tube of the stairwell, the sound bouncing off every surface back to him. But its aggravating more than painful. It seems that his eardrums are as tough as the rest of him, so his superhearing doesn’t leave him particularly vulnerable to sounds like that. It is still highly distracting, though, so he doesn’t hear what Robin shouts as the landing breaks off and drops, taking out the next one, and the one after that. It causes a cascade of falling landings and torn off stair flights, hundreds of g-elves falling in the process.

“What?!” He yells, trying to hear her over the din.

Robin and Aqualass shrink back as if struck as he yells, and Robin shakes her head as she answers, and he hears her as the cacophony below fades away.

“I SAID, THAT SHOULD SLOW THEM DOWN!” Robin shouts, as if he’s hard of hearing.

“OK, no need to yell…” He replies as he rubs at his ear.

“Heygals,thecoastisclearuptosublevel1ohheyyoureallymadeamessdownhere.” The words blend together as the blur that is Kid Quick suddenly resolves right in front of them, peering over the handrail to look down at the dust cloud and horde of g-elves shrieking in anger at their hunt being thwarted.

“Right, stick together and we’ll get out of here together.” Aqualass orders with a nod and an air of certainty. They all nod in response and resume their flight up the stairs.

They encounter no more genomorphs as they flee, and Robin’s heart rate and respiration are elevated as they reach the landing that is marked with a large number 1. It is amazing, and a little disconcerting, how much he can know about his new allies just by hearing their internal organs do their work. He shudders a little at the gurgling of Kid Quick’s stomach as she digests the meal bar she devoured moments ago.

Robin pants as they reach the landing, and sweat beads her brow, but she doesn’t give any other indication of her fatigue. He is struck by her athleticism, and impressed that she’s keeping pace with meta-humans like Kid Quick and Aqualass.

And me, I guess. God, that’s a weird thought. I’m… not human anymore. Which is good. I would have kicked the can twenty sublevels ago if my old body had to run up these flights.

He’s had no time to even consider this bizarre reprieve from final judgement. Did he truly die? Or was he saved at the last minute, whisked away to the land of his fantasies?

What am I doing here? Besides escaping an evil underground base.

“Okay, Sublevel 1 is the biggest, lots of offices and open spaces, but on the other side of the floor is the elevator to the surface levels and the Cadmus false front on the surface.” Robin explains as she layout, calling up her holomap again to demonstrate. He looks intently as she outlines their route. The layout in his mind palace is frustratingly empty when it comes to sublevel 1, like whoever designed it never saw it themselves. It has wide, comfortable hallways and plenty of meeting rooms. The elevator is in a wide, tall hall lined with columns; maybe some kind of receiving room. Clearly built conventionally, unlike whatever weird organic process produced the tunnels in the sublevels. 

“We’re almost out, so let’s not get tripped up on anything else. Once we’re on the surface, our communicators should finally be able to reach the Guild. So even if we run into any surprises, the objective is escape and evasion while we await rescue.” Aqualass explains as they huddle around Robin’s holo-map. Each of his companions touches some part of their costume; Robin gives her R badge a complex series of taps, some kind of code and he hears an electronic wine imperceptible to human ears. Aqualass tapes the chevron at her belt buckle, and belatedly he realizes its a stylized A, which glows. Kid Quick gives the right lightning bolt ear piece a twist, and he hears an ultrasonic sound that echoes away down the floor.

Belatedly he looks down at himself, forgetting he has nothing but the solar suit on. When he looks back up, all three are staring at him bemusedly, and he grows self conscious.

“Well, everyone was doing it…” he mutters, and absently taps the S shield on his chest, which makes the girls snicker. The little joke breaks the nervous tension; things seem to be going TOO well.

“Right… well, the route is clear. We shall see if the path is.” Aqualass says as she steps to the door and opens it, revealing an empty corridor that looks as tired and corporate as any commercial real estate property; bland and beige, with fluorescent overhead lights and a single potted plant in the corner. 

No genomorphs appear to attack, so they continue down the corridor towards the entrance hall and the elevator. There are no stairs to connect the sublevels to the surface, which seems a terrible safety oversight, he reckons.

I guess OSHA doesn’t get to inspect evil underground genetics labs very often.

As they advance down the halls towards the elevator’s hall, the unease in Superboy’s mind begins to grow. There’s no way they get to the surface without a fight, but where are the genomorphs? This is Cadmus’ last chance to stop them before they make the surface.

Wonder where we are? I’m betting its not Boston.

As they near the elevator hall, the unease grows precipitously. Even the others feel it, glancing nervously around each corner and suspiciously at each potted plant. They pass empty conference rooms with whiteboards that bear notes about ‘synergies’ and ‘unlocking memetic knowledge’. No one, human, meta-human or genomorph, appears to try to stop them.

The foursome reaches a pair of double doors that enter into the elevator lobby, and he strains his ears to hear beyond into the room, but nothing reaches him. He shrugs as Robin posts up at the door, nodding to first Kid Quick, then Aqualass, and finally him. He returns it with his best look of determination, and with a rush they push through the doors.

And almost running directly into Guardian, her arms crossed over her ample armored chest, a wry grin beneath her golden masked helm. She is flanked by a dozen g-trolls, who form a wall of grey flesh behind her, barring the way. He recoils in surprise, as Kid Quick groans in disappointment.

Why didn’t I hear them? He thinks, desperately. Then his eyes fall on the G-Gnome on Guardian’s shoulder, its horns glowing that eerie red. He grits his teeth in anger.

I didn’t hear them because they didn’t want me to!

“Aw, come on! How did you even get those big lunks up here, anyway!?” Kid Quick demands of Guardian. The g-trolls are far too massive to fit in the stairwells, and in the layout stored in his mind palace, they easily violate any elevator’s safe weight limit.

Guardian inclines her head towards a different doorway than the one they entered from, this one standing open.

“Service elevators.” She answers, mockingly.

All of their eyes snap to Robin accusingly, and she throws up her hands in defense. 

“Kal was yelling about exfiltration! I found our exfil! Nobody asked if there were service elevators!” She bites back indignantly.

Aqualass and Kid Quick have a heated and whispered conversation he doesn’t bother following, because he feels the same gravity on his mind again, but this time its accompanied by a small tug on a lock of his hair. It makes him start as he looks to that side, and sees the little G-Gnome is on his shoulder, its horns glowing as well. It has hold of his hair, like it wants his attention. His glances at Guardian; her G-Gnome remains in place perched on her, horns also glowing.

Superboy and the G-Gnome lock eyes, and he tries to understand the mute creature. There is something scratching at the back of his mind, something he’s missing.

How long have you been there? 

It stares at him mutely and gives a silent tug on his hair. Realization slowly dawns on him.

You’ve been here the whole time! You… make me forget you’re there. What game are you playing?! Are you on their side? Trying to trick me again?!

His anger rises, focused on the little creature. It seems so… innocent. He sees and feels no malice in it, but its damnable horns are glowing, so he knows its using its telepathy. The mind palace’s intel tells him so; they were engineered to have a tell so their telepathy could be more easily noticed. Designed to be psionically gifted but without much will and intellect to choose how to direct it. 

Suspicion rolls off the G-Gnome like water off a duck’s back, and again he feels something scratching at the edge of his perception. Something he is missing. Guardian is still standing there, smugly smiling with her arms crossed. The g-trolls don’t advance or attack, they just stand there, breathing as heavily as they always do. Relaxed but prepared for violence.

Why is Guardian so confident? We beat half this many g-trolls already. She knows what I can do, does she think she can make up the difference?

His musings are interrupted by a tug on his earlobe that might have been painful to a human, with a tiny blunt clawed hand. He looks back to his G-Gnome, and its glowing horns as it stares at him imploringly.

It tugged at his ear.

It's trying to tell him something. But it can’t. It's smothered by its brethren’s telepathy.

Something he’s missing.

Something scratching at the edges of his perception.

The edges of his hearing.

Something that makes Guardian confident they won’t escape her. The repulsed anger in her eyes returns as he makes eye contact. She looks at him like he’s dog shit she stepped in. Such animosity.

Scratching. 

He focuses on his superhearing, time seeming to slow as he does so. Kid Quick turning from Robin in consternation, moving at seemingly normal speed while Robin appears to be swimming in molasses. He hears their heartbeats; Robins’ elevated, Kid Quick’s a humming bird, Aqualass a steadying metronome. Guardian’s is elevating, her anger rising. He can see the heat bloom on her face where the masked helm doesn’t cover. The g-trolls hearts (they each have two) beat in a strange rhythm with a bass rumble. They must be enormous to pump all that blood. The G-Gnomes are a tiny flutter, like a rodent. 

There is another heartbeat, similar to the heroes and Guardian, but different. Its off to the side, in the corner. He hears it, and his brow furrows in confusion. Someone is here. Someone he can’t see; every corner is empty except for sad potted plants, which he sees are plastic under supervision’s telescopic sight.

Then he feels that feather light touch in his mind and freezes. 

He knows who is standing in the corner. Who keeps making him forget that he’s there.

The g-goblin. The thin genomorph with Dr. Desmond! He’s making him ignore him.

But that’s not right; he can hear every G-Gnome’s heartbeat. There are only two here, his and Guardian’s. G-goblins are telekinetic, not telepathic. They are designed for advanced meta-human experiment containment and testing. The most intelligent of the genomorphs. How is it making him forget?

Because, brother. I am like you. Something greater than what our creators intended us to be.

Then the filter that its placed over his perception fades, and he sees it standing in the corner that it wasn’t a moment ago. Its red eyes are glowing as they meet his. He also hears what else it was blocking him from noticing. 

Heartbeats, respiration, skittering claws on sheet metal. All around them, and above them. The sounds echoing off of metal ductworks and filtering through loosening grates. Hundreds of them, filling the ducts in the room, waiting to pounce.

“They’re in the vents.”

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