Heroes Wear Capes
Chapter 9: Faces from the past

“You’re probably thinking, “My boyfriend said this was a superhero movie but that guy in the suit just turned that other guy into a fucking kabab!” Well, I may be super, but I’m no hero. And yeah, technically, this is a murder. But some of the best love stories start with a murder. And that’s exactly what this is, a love story. And to tell it right... I gotta take you back to long before I squeezed this ass into red spandex.”

~ Wade Wilson (Deadpool)

Turns out, not as easy as Xander thought to break into the room of a very famous multimillionaire.

The guard outside the room was still – like statue level still. There was no way he’d make it into the room without him noticing, even his speed would require him to open the door that the guard stood at.

So Xander decided that he needed a distraction. He walked down to the other end of the hall and found a trashcan. He always wanted to make a scene like this. The stuff the protagonist did in movies.

The can crashed to the floor with a loud bang, hopefully the people in the waiting room couldn’t hear with the door there closed. All he needed was the guard. Xander then feigned a high-pitched voice and yelled out, “Help! He’s chasing me down the hall!”

In seconds the guard appeared. “Hey, you! What’s going on?”

Xander shrugged. “I don’t know, but some dude with a knife attacked this lady and started chasing her down the hall. If I were you, I’d try and stop him. You seem like a big enough guy. I’m a stick, I’m no help to anyone.”

The guard sighed and muttered something under his breath about useless kids and chased after the imaginary man with the knife.

Xander took the opportunity to walk back around the corner and open the unguarded door to Paul Rossi’s room. A male nurse was just exiting the place, causing the two people to bump into each other.

“Sorry,” Xander apologized, letting the nurse go past him.

Well, there went Xander’s surprise entrance.

“Xander? What on earth are you doing here?” Paul Rossi asked.

He forgot that the man knew him from his time hanging around his son.

“Um . . .”

Paul sighed and took a sip from a small plastic cup on the table full of a clear liquid. The medicine the nurse must’ve brought in. “Why have you visited? If it is on my son’s behalf, let it be known that I don’t need any more pity visits.”

Xander narrowed his eyes. Paul Rossi was literally just shot, he was in no shape to already be insulting people. It made Xander mad that he was enough to get the old man rude again.

“I came to ask for your help.”

The guy actually laughed.

“Son, I don’t just give out favors, even while I’m immobile on this bed I hold more power in my pinky than you have in your entire body. What makes you think I would help you?”

Xander sighed. All of a sudden his hand started vibrating again, just like before outside his apartment building. It seemed like he still didn’t have control of his powers.

Paul Rossi wasn’t a dim man, he noticed. His eyes went wide and he sat up straighter in his bed. “You’re a super.”

“As of last night apparently.”

Realization passed over Paul’s face pretty quickly.

“You! You were at the warehouse, weren’t you? You were the one who destroyed all of the PF-08-2 serum and freaked out my business partner. You must’ve got some of it in your system. You’re a Potent, aren’t you?”

“A Potent?” Xander was confused at the name calling.

Paul Rossi’s eyes held an excited light in them. “What were the chances, eh? Potents aren’t exactly supers, but they hold the potential to be. As soon as an event happens to them that awakens some dormant gene and turns it on, they become supers.”

“Wait, everyone has the potential to be a super.” Xander argued. “It’s just that some happen to get powers and others don’t. Scientists haven’t found any link between the people who get powers. It’s all random.”

Paul shook his head. “Haven’t you noticed how some people can be struck by lightning and get powers while other die a horrible death? How some people die from toxic waste and others can suddenly fly? Haven’t you ever wondered what made those people different? Why two people can go through the same event and only one gets extraordinary powers? It’s more than random, it’s genetic. We don’t exactly know why yet, but certain people have a gene called PF-08, which is what the serum was originally named after. In supers the gene is turned on. You can have the gene without it ever being turned on, without ever being the wiser that you could’ve had powers. The scientists who you see on talk shows spurting out false facts don’t have the information that some secret organizations have.”

Xander was in shock. He’d never known any of this. How could the public not know this? There must’ve been something in place to keep this information from the public. Otherwise conspiracy theorists would’ve unraveled this by now.

“So, this magical serum activated this gene in me? It’s why I can suddenly run insanely fast?”

The man nodded. “This is extraordinary. The serum worked, which means my research can work now. All I need is more of the serum. X can’t stop me now. I need-”

Paul Rossi suddenly coughed. And then he kept coughing. It got so bad that Xander noticed a spot of blood on the man’s starkly white sheets. And after hunching over, he suddenly fell back. The coughing attack had stopped, but the heart monitor on the side of him was screeching with a bright flat line running across it. Xander had seen enough TV to know that it meant his heart had ceased beating. That was never a good sign.

The door behind him burst open and Xander panicked. Paul Rossi was either dead or dying and Xander was the only other person in the room. It would look bad. In a split second decision, Xander ran out of the room at top speed. He no longer cared about blowing a few papers in the air, he had to get out of that room. There was nothing he could’ve done for Paul Rossi, and it was terrifying to know he was there to witness his death.

Trevor Rossi hated Lacey Carlton for what she stood for. She was the epitome of the unfair advantages that were given to the superheroes who thought they were above normal people. Even her husband, the bow and arrow slinging vigilante, who wasn’t even a real super, had the superiority complex the rest had.

And now she came sniffing, right when the CEO of her rival was injured in the hospital. It seemed kind of convenient that she’d show up right when Rossi Corp was in the middle of a crisis.

“Trevor, you seem a lot older since the last time I saw you.” She greeted, smiling with a mouth full of white teeth. As the youngest inexperienced CEO of any multimillion dollar company, Lacey Carlton had a lot to prove, which meant looking perfect at all times. Trevor and his father had always been able to see past her picture perfect façade.

Trevor scowled. “The last time we met you threatened my father.”

She frowned and tilted her head, “Wasn’t your father the one who threatened my husband first? I believe his exact words were ‘no one can respect a women who is only there as a stand in for a scoundrel of a husband.’ I was only defending what was mine, Trevor, as I’m assured you would.”

He narrowed his eyes at the woman. Not only was she married to a vigilante, she was best friends with Sonic, one half of the most famous superhero couple ever. Not to mention that her twin brother was Tornado, another hero. Her connections in the superhero community must’ve given her the same superiority complex as her associates. She was desperately clinging onto their success to make her normal life elevated. Trevor despised her for it.

“What are you doing here?” Trevor demanded, standing a good head above the blond, who was short to him even in heels.

Lacey stared him down defiantly (though it was more like staring up at him with harsh eyes). Dealing with heroes also meant she knew how to deal with someone who was much more powerful than her. “I am here to help. Carlton Laboratories is gifting Kingdom City General Hospital with a new shipment of medicines, some that will be able to speed up your father’s healing process.”

“We don’t need your masked generosity, Carlton,” Trevor spat the name like it was poisonous.

Lacey huffed, “I’m trying to save your father. Despite your bad views of me and my company, I have the power to help and I’m using it.”

“My problem isn’t with you, it’s with the spandexed heroes you associate yourself with. They make the world a lot more complicated. Without them in it, we’d fare a lot better. Business would be easier.”

“You mean it would be a lot easier for Rossi Corp to smuggle guns and drugs and horrible contraptions into the country without superheroes to stop you? I’m not blind to your father’s real business plans, Trevor.”

Trevor was surprised she knew so much about Rossi Corp’s dealings. It made him wonder what she knew that made her so desperate to acquire the company.

Lacey stood straighter, giving Trevor a disapproving stare, “I also know that your father was trying to buy a very specific drug last night from some associates of a certain villain. They have a product I happen to be very interested in. I want to know how much of it was saved after the chaos of your father being shot. I heard most of the boxes were smashed beyond repair.”

Of course she would be interested. If the serum was really a version of the one that turned her best friend into a super, she may be here on her orders to reclaim it. A serum that could turn people into speedsters would be valuable.

He wondered how she’d heard about it. Maybe the disturbance that had shaken the minions of X was an agent of Carlton Laboratories or one of their associates. Maybe they were purposely trying to destroy the batch of instant super so Rossi Corp couldn’t get its hands on it.

“They were. As soon as the serum was exposed to the air, it became useless. Someone was there who sabotaged the order. Whoever it was is responsible for my dad being in here.”

Lacey narrowed her eyes and popped her hip. “If you think I had anything to do with your father’s hospitalization, you are wrong. My intel says that X might’ve wanted your father out of the way anyways. You should be glad that he was only shot and not killed. If X decides you’re a threat, he will do anything he can to stop you, you should know that.”

X hadn’t attacked in Empire City, just in Kingdom City, but word was that The Marvel helped put him away. Lacey may not have dealt with the villain directly, but she did know someone who had. Besides, if X ever got out, his schemes would work to destroy more than just one city.

“X is stuck in Alcatraz,” Trevor argued. “What plans could he be orchestrating from in that place? And why would he want my father gone?”

Lacey shrugged. “I would just be glad that you were able to save him without any other casualties. X is merciless, and so are his henchmen. Your father was a fool to try and buy something from them, especially considering the nefarious ways they were able to make that serum.”

At least they didn’t kill Sonic for her blood. They never specified how they’d gotten it from Sonic, but seeing as they made the serum from it, the blood was definitely hers. Trevor wondered how they were able to claim the blood of a super without alerting the media in some way through a kidnapping or something of the sort.

Suddenly an alarm went off through the hall. Trevor knew there was only one occupied room in this section of the hospital, so he ran faster than all the doctors to reach the room first. Inside his father was laying in his bed at an awkward position, blood on his sheets. Inside was a hooded person. They must’ve heard Trevor at the door because the next thing he knew, the person disappeared in a rush of wind that raced out the door in between Trevor and down the hallway. The doctors pushed Trevor outside as they went inside his father’s room, but Trevor knew better. Those alarms meant his father’s heart had stopped. Whoever this hooded figure was, he was no doubt responsible. And, judging by his speed, he was at the warehouse last night and he was the one who damaged all of the PF-08-2, because what else would result in this superpower? And why else would they appear only now?

Lacey Carlton stood outside the waiting room with a stricken look on her face. Whether or not the hooded figure was an agent of hers, she looked shocked by the alarms. Maybe she hadn’t believed her agent would be able to pull it off.

And then Trevor heard the doctors inside call the time of death.

He fell to the ground at that moment. There was no way he was dead. His father was a stubborn Italian who immigrated with only a penny in his pocket, who turned that penny into a million dollars overnight. He was a force of nature. He was a business tyrant. He was a father.

Trevor swore in that moment he would enact vengeance on this speedster who dared murder his father. This super would soon know exactly who he had messed with.

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