An Unlikely Hero - Issue 0 to 2

This is the start of a story set in a superhero universe. Most of the action takes place in Key West.

Please accept my apologies for any errors in depicting Key West, I've never been there, in fact I've never been to America. Most of my knowledge of the area comes from wikipedia and google earth.

This first part is in 1st person, using the main character's own voice. It's a style I'm experimenting with for this story. Most of the story will be told in 3rd person with the occasional chapter being in 1st. Mainly chapters bridging the different parts of the story.

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Issue 0

My name’s Todd Marshall, I’m thirteen years old and I’m the last thing you’d think of when it comes to superheroes. I’m not a mutant or an alien refugee; I don’t have a superhero like Paragon as a parent and my dad is way too careful to let me fall into a vat of toxic waste. Not that he keeps that stuff around the house, he’s smart enough not to bring the really dangerous stuff home with him and I’m not smart enough to crack the keypad on the door to his basement lab. I’m a regular, normal kid, living in an abnormal world. I go to school with my friends, play video games, suck at math tests; you know, all the normal stuff.

Actually I really suck at math. Big time suck. You see, when I was a baby I was in a car crash. Some drunk driver hit us. My dad walked away without a scratch but my mom and me weren’t so lucky. She was killed instantly. I don’t really remember her much, I guess I was too young. Sometimes I catch dad looking at me with a sad expression when he thinks I’m not paying attention. He says I’ve got her eyes, I guess I remind him of her. Anyway, I was trapped in the wreckage for a while. I got pretty badly injured, mainly to the head. That was the first time I nearly died, but I’ll get back to that in a minute. The short of it is, my brain got busted up pretty bad. Now I’m not a head case or a vegetable or nothing, but I got “issues”. I get in trouble a lot at school and I find it hard to concentrate on school work for long periods. Plus I got trouble with numbers and words. Not all the time, but enough to mean I’m lucky if I get a C. Dad says when my head got whacked in the crash, something in my brain broke. He doesn’t quite say it like that, he uses much bigger words and stuff.

I guess it kinda sucks for dad, having an idiot like me for a kid. He’s like the smartest person on the planet. I’m not kidding, his IQ is off the chart. My dad’s a scientist and he’s worked on some really cool stuff. Paragon’s rocket pack? My dad designed and built it, and he helped design Sentinel too; he’s worked with a lot of superheroes over the years and the government too. I just wish I wasn’t such a disappointment.

Like I said, apart from the fact that my dad’s a supergenius, I’ve got Paragon as an uncle (did I mention that?), and our house is run by computer called Baxter that my dad built, I’m just a normal kid. Things didn’t start to get weird until the night before the big test at school. Which was also the night I died.

Although this is the "second" chapter, it was the one that was written first. Consequently, there is a little repetition in the first section of information that appeared in the introduction. At some point, I plan to go back and rewrite the first section in order to avoid it. I just haven't found a way to do it yet.

---

Sam Marshall knocked on his son’s bedroom door. When there was no answer, he opened the door and stepped inside. His son was sitting at his desk with his back to the door, the room illuminated only by the single desk lamp. It was no wonder that his son hadn’t heard him; he was concentrating hard on the textbook in front of him, loud music leaking out from the oversized headphones he was wearing that were connected to a small laptop. The professor smiled, he was studying no doubt for his big test tomorrow. He looked around his son’s bedroom, almost every wall surface except that directly above the desk was covered in posters. All of them of various superheroes and super-teams; there were posters of the various members of Alpha Force along one wall, the world’s premier super team; on another wall was a poster for the recently formed EU sponsored team, EuroForce; a poster signed by the leader of the UN Overwatch team took pride of place above his bed; and there were posters for lesser known teams such as Legion and the Army of Light as well as independent heroes such as Defender, Upload and Rescue. His son, Sam had to admit, was a bit of a superhero fanboy. But then so were many thirteen-year-old boys. Looking slightly out of place above his desk was a wall chart calendar. Tomorrow was ringed in red marker with “Big Test, Do Not Fail” written next to it. He reached over to the light switch and flicked the light on and off again to get his son’s attention.

The boy jumped, startled out of his concentration by the flashing of the lights. He turned around looking for the source of the flashing and saw his dad standing in the doorway. “Hey dad,” the boy said taking the headphones off.

“It’s eleven o’clock Todd, time for bed.”

“Aww dad,” the boy pouted, “but I really need to learn this stuff for tomorrow.” Sam walked over to his son and looked down at the textbook he had been studying.

“Algebra,” he whistled, “tough subject.”

“Not for you,” Todd muttered under his breath. His father pretended not to hear him, over recent months his son had become increasingly bitter over his poor academic performance. Sam had decided to give his son some space, the last thing he needed was his father hovering over him pressuring him “to study hard and do well”. Encouragement or platitudes only seemed to anger him further.

“Okay,” Sam said relenting. He ruffled his son’s blond hair before he left, an act that he knew Todd publically hated but secretly liked. “But even your uncle needs a good night’s sleep,” he said nodding over at the poster of Overwatch. Stopping at the door, he turned and looked back. “Don’t overdo it son, see you in the morning.”

“I won’t, night dad,” Todd said turning back to the desk and putting his headphones back on.

Sam smiled sadly as he closed the bedroom door. “He tries so hard,” he thought as he walked downstairs and into the study.

Todd pinched the brow of his nose in annoyance as he stared at the book on the desk in front of him. It wasn’t going in; the harder he tried the less he seemed to understand it. He ripped the page out of his notebook, screwed it up and threw another page of incorrect revision answers across the room. “Stupid stupid stupid,” he muttered repeatedly, thumping the side of his head with the heel of his hand.

He knew his inability to do well in school wasn’t his fault, not really. When he had just been an infant, he’d been in a car crash. His parent’s car had been hit by a drunk driver, one of those random accidents that no amount of superheroes could prevent. His father had escaped without injury but Todd and his mother had not been so lucky. The other car had smashed in the passenger side of his parent’s car and his mother, who had been sitting in the passenger seat and had taken the full force of the impact, had been killed instantly. Todd had been in a baby seat in the back and had been trapped in the twisted metal wreckage until they could cut him out. He had suffered a serious head injury in the crash and for a while, they had thought he might die. But he didn’t, eventually he pulled through. Although he’d been left with a small and nearly invisible scar above his left eye, the real lasting damage had been much more insidious and didn’t show up properly until he started school. After several “incidents”, Todd had been diagnosed with a number of behavioural problems and learning disabilities, all of them stemming from the brain injury he had suffered as an infant.

All his life he had been held back by those problems; dismissed at school as a disruptive and academically poor student. His father was a genius, gifted at science and engineering. To the rest of the world, Sam Marshall was just a simple scientist who worked at a university on cutting edge research; but a handful of people, including his son, knew the truth. He worked with superheroes, designing their equipment, analysing devices captured from supervillains and acting as a consultant with the UN Overwatch in regards to off-world technology. Todd’s father was one of the smartest people on the planet. His son, on the other hand, was a moron. Todd could tell by the way that his father had started to ignore him, throwing himself into his work and ceasing to encourage him, that he was disappointed in his son and that he had given up. That hurt more than anything and that was why Todd was determined to do well on the test tomorrow. He had to prove to his father that he wasn’t just some dumb kid and a lost cause.

He flipped the textbook to the start of the chapter. Picking up his pencil, he yawned and began the revision exercises again. He didn’t get very far however, within ten minutes he was slumped forward on the desk, sound asleep.

----

In the shadows behind the house, the air shimmered and three men materialised out of nothingness. They were all dressed in identical black body armour and were carrying mean looking submachine guns. If it weren’t for their high tech breathing masks and wrist-mounted stun blasters the men would like average members of a SWAT team. The leader of the three men pulled out a small scanner and pointed it at the house. “I’m picking up two life signs,” he said to the other two men, “the larger one downstairs is most likely Professor Marshall, and the smaller one upstairs will be his son.” The men readied their weapons and moved towards the house.

The lock on the back door was easily bypassed and the three men entered the house silently. Reaching the hallway, the leader motioned towards the stairs and the smaller of his two men started up them while the other followed the leader towards the study door. Creeping silently up the stairs, the man moved across the landing towards one of the bedroom doors. Light was leaking out from under it and the man looked at the sign fixed on the door that said “Keep Out: Level 4 Biohazard.” Beneath the mask, he smiled a thin smile as he opened the door slowly, his gun ready. He saw the boy slumped forward on his desk, his head resting in his folded arms and fast asleep. The boy didn’t hear the shouts from downstairs as he slept with his headphones on, no amount of noise would break through the loud music playing. This wasn’t what he had signed up for; no one told him that one of the targets was just a child. The man had his orders however and he was committed to the cause, but nonetheless he hesitated as he raised his gun.

----

“What do you want?” Sam asked the man pointing the gun at him. He had been just about to call it a night and turn in when the two men had burst into his study. Panicked, he had managed to shout out a desperate warning to his son before the leader of the two men had shot a blue bolt of energy from a wrist-mounted weapon at him. As he had fallen to the floor stunned, he prayed that Todd had heard him. Even if he hadn’t, he took comfort in the fact that Baxter, the computer system that he had designed to run the house, was probably already alerting the authorities to the situation.

“My boss wants you to deliver a message,” the leader said as his follower kept an SMG trained on Sam.

“What sort of message?” Before the leader could respond, there was a commotion as Todd was shoved roughly into the room, tripping over the rug.

“Get up!” Yelled the man who pushed Todd into the room, kicking the boy in the side and pulling him to his feet by the hair.

Sam took a step towards his son but was stopped by the barrel of an SMG prodding into his chest. “Leave him alone,” he yelled as Todd was shoved against the wall on the other side of the room and held at gunpoint, “don’t hurt him, please.” Todd looked across the room at him, absolute terror evident in his eyes. Blood was dribbling from cut on the side of his head and his cheek was starting to swell up from where he had been struck by the barrel of a gun. He was too scared to move, too scared to resist, too scared even to call out.

“Well, now that we’re all here I guess we can get this over and done with.” The leader reached into a pouch on his vest, pulled out a DVD, and tossed it to Sam. “Give that to Paragon; I know you know how to get in contact with him.”

“What’s on it?” Sam asked, wondering how much the man knew about him and Paragon, the leader of Overwatch.

From behind the mask, the leader smiled. “The general gist of it is this; next time it will be his kid.” He waited just long enough for the words to sink in before turning to the man pointing the gun at Todd and nodded.

As Sam watched in horror, the man opened fire. Todd didn’t even have time to scream as the bullets tore into his unprotected body. He crashed to the floor, the wall behind him splattered with his blood. Crying out, Sam ran across the room and pushed his way past the armed men. “Oh God no!” He cradled his son, holding him close as the men slipped quietly out of the room. Their job done, they had no wish to stick around.

“Dad,” Todd said, coughing up blood and gasping for air.

“Shhh, everything’s going to be alright.” He was lying; it wasn’t going to be all right. The blood was everywhere; the pool on the floor beneath his son was growing larger by the second. Todd had over a dozen gunshot wounds perforating his body and only had minutes to live before he bled to death. He realised that his son was going to die in his arms and there was nothing he could do about it.

Todd looked up at his father’s distraught face and instantly knew the truth. He was dying. The pain came in waves, great tsunami’s of agony that threatened to overwhelm him. He could feel himself getting weaker, slipping away. Already it was a fight just to breathe and keep his eyes open for just a few seconds more.

As he helplessly watched his son die, it suddenly hit him that there may be something he could do after all. “Please, just hang on a little while longer.”

Managing a half-smile, Todd tried to say “I’ll try” but could only cough up more blood.

“Baxter,” Sam said loudly as he picked Todd up gently “power up the lab.”

Sam carried Todd out of the study and across the hallway to a door that opened with a hiss as he approached. The door opened on to a stairway the led down to the basement lab where most of his “special” work was conducted. Entering the lab, various computer systems and scientific devices booted up and the lights came on automatically, illuminating the crisp and clean surfaces with a soft white glow. “Lab systems are at 100% Doctor,” an electronic voice said from an overhead speaker, “emergency services have been notified. I took the liberty of alerting Overwatch. Estimated time of arrival, 7 minutes.”

“They’ll never get here in time,” Sam muttered as he laid Todd down on one of the workbenches, placing his folded up sweater beneath the boy’s head. “Just hold on.” He ran over to the large fume hood that stood against one wall. Suspended inside the apparatus by a series of energy beams was a silver capsule, the focus of his current research project. The project was for Overwatch and it involved a piece of off-world technology recovered from a derelict alien spaceship that had been found in orbit by NASA. It had taken weeks of research to uncover its function and Sam believed that was an advanced piece of nanotechnology. If he was right, then its purpose was medical in nature, a species-neutral technology designed to help speed up the healing process. “Drop the containment field and unlock the fume hood Baxter.”

There was a noticeable pause before the computer responded. “Sir, Overwatch demanded Level 4 Biohazard protocols when dealing with the nanobots.”

“I don’t care,” Sam snapped, “drop the blasted field!” There was a clunk as the locking mechanism disengaged and a red warning light started to blink. Sam lifted up the hood and reached inside, grabbing the canister.

“I will have to notify Overwatch over the breech of containment protocols.” Sam ignored the computer as he rooted through several drawers looking for a hypospray. He ripped it out of its sterile packaging and began to siphon off some of the alien nanobots, a silvery-grey solution filling the hypospray’s glass vial. “Sir, the nanobots are years away from human trials.”

“Todd doesn’t have years, he has minutes!”

Todd didn’t hear the conversation between his father and the house computer. A great coldness was beginning to spread through him and he felt so tired. His vision was blurring and everything had started to swim around him, as if he was spinning on a roundabout. Todd wondered why it was so dark in the lab, why didn’t his dad put the lights on? He knew that any moment now, his eyes would close, probably for the last time. It was at that point that something moved into his field of vision. It was a woman with a kind face and long blond hair. She was surrounded by a luminous glow. As she looked down at him, gently stoking his hair, he saw that she had blue eyes just like him. “It’s okay Toddy,” she said softly, “it won’t hurt for much longer.” The woman faded from view as his father returned to the workbench, hypospray in hand.

“This’ll feel a little strange at first,” Sam said, his voice breaking, “but it’ll make you feel better.” He pressed the hypospray to Todd’s neck and pressed the trigger, watching as a silvery sheen spread from the contact point for a few seconds before vanishing. Sam prayed that it would work. There was no reaction at first, and then Todd’s body twitched and began to convulse, arching and writhing. Sam held on to him but within a few seconds the convulsions had stopped. There was a sigh as Todd breathed out and his chest stilled, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. “Nononononono,” Sam cried. He began CPR, desperately trying to breathe life back into the body, not wanting to accept that it was already too late. For several minutes he tried in vain before Baxter spoke softly.

“Sir ... Sam ... I’m sorry, I’m detecting no signs of life. He’s gone.” Sam threw his head back and cried out in grief.

----

Paragon had been the first to arrive on the scene, his rocket pack getting him to the house ahead of the police. Baxter had opened the front door for him when he had arrived, but he didn’t need the computer to tell him where to go. A blood trail led from the study towards the basement lab. Following it, he found Sam clutching the body of his son weeping. He took off his helmet as he stood at the lab door. “Jesus,” he muttered in shock.

Sam looked up, his eyes that of a broken man. “I’ve lost him John.” Paragon, or John Harris to his friends and family, had rushed over to his brother-in-law. He wanted to console him, but the words he usually used suddenly seemed hollow to him.

Somehow, he had managed to tear Sam away from Todd’s body and bring him upstairs. The police had arrived soon after, as did several of his Overwatch teammates. Although uninjured, Paragon had Sam taken to the medical facility onboard Sentinel, Overwatch’s aerial command centre that was already on route the region. The local police were only too happy to accept the assistance of the superheroes in the investigation, especially after hearing that the lab in the basement had been contaminated.

Paragon stood in the hallway, watching the forensic investigators move in to the study and begin their sweep. It had been nearly an hour since he had arrived, and he was still stunned by the brutal slaying of his nephew. Although none of the civilians knew that Sam Marshall’s wife had been the sister of the famous superhero, they could tell that the normally stoic man was deeply shocked by the incident. One of Overwatch’s technicians approached him holding a handheld DVD player, the look on the young man’s face told Paragon that he wasn’t going to like what he was about to be told.

Downstairs in the lab, another superhero stood over by the workbench looking down on the body. Her name was Shimmer, and it was because of her powers that she was the only one currently allowed in the sealed lab. She could push her body slightly out of phase with the rest of the universe, rendering her completely incorporeal. This meant that she could enter the lab without risk of contamination. Although theoretically, the nanobots that Doctor Marshall had been working with were inert outside of an organic medium once activated, no one was taking any chances. With the lab off limits, she had volunteered to enter it to obtain the crime-scene photographs the police needed and other forensic samples. She looked down at the body again. “Poor kid,” she said to herself, “what sort of monster guns down an innocent child like this.” She turned her back on the boy, took out a scanner calibrated to detect nanobots and began a scan of the lab. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed movement from the workbench. Just in time, she turned around to catch one of Todd’s hands twitching slightly. Moving back to the body, she bent down to re-examine it. As she watched, she saw the cut on the side of the boy’s head close up. “What the,” she muttered. Taking a risk, she brought herself back into phase and attempted to feel for a pulse. She found one; it was weak and erratic, but definitely there.

Paragon crushed the DVD player in his hand, his enhanced strength making it easy work. “That bastard,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I’m going to make him pay.” The technician swallowed and looked uneasy.

“Sir, there’s one other thing.” He had that look on his face that said “please don’t shoot the messenger.”

“What?”

The technician’s answer was lost as Shimmer phased through the floor, a panicked look on her face. “The boy’s alive!”

“That’s not possible,” Paragon said, “the paramedics checked the body. He’s been dead for nearly an hour.”

“I don’t know how, but he’s alive now and he needs medical attention immediately.” Shimmer phased back through the floor as everyone in the hallway stood stunned by the news. Paragon ran down the stairs back to the lab, breaking through the quarantine seals.

“Baxter, is it true?” He asked the house computer.

“Yes sir, but he is barely registering. Life signs only began again a few seconds ago.”

Paragon looked down at Todd, if there was a chance that he was still alive ...“We need to get him to a hospital quickly,” he said picking Todd up. He ran back up the stairs, bursting into the hallway and running out the front door, Shimmer just behind him.

“Good luck,” she called out as he ignited the rocket pack and took to the skies. The nearest hospital was only a few miles away but they would not be equipped to deal with this. Pushing the rockets past the redline, he streaked across the sky, leaving the city behind him. There was only one place that could help his nephew, Sentinel.

I like the style you've used in the first chapter, the first-person life story grabbed my attention and held it. I read it once, and all I could really say about in a negative way it is that you've used the word "stuff" too often in one paragraph. When read it again, with the knowledge of what happened to your main character, I decided that even that isn't such a problem because it suits the character.

Well written, definitely.

As for the second part; I honestly tried to find something to properly critique, but seeing as you've mentioned the repetition yourself, and the rest is written with great style, I only have a few little comments rather than a proper review.

> In the last paragraphs you make use of the word "look" a few too many times.

>

“The general gist of it is this; next time it will be his kid.”

Maybe do something to emphasize the "his"? Italics, for example.

>

centre that was already on route the region.

Shouldn't it be "en route to the region" ?

Aside from that, I've only got praise for your work. I enjoyed reading it ^^

XxxDo

Thanks

Italics

I don't tend to use them for a number of reasons. Mainly because I post this till to a few places, deviantart, acbtales and so on and very few of them maintain formatting during copy-paste. I would have to go back and manually insert the formatting codes. Since there's no guarantee that I'd remember I just don't bother to use them in the first place. Also, I can't remember seeing italics used for emphasis in any of the books I've read recently.

On route vs en route

You're probably right and I've already changed it in the Word file.

Issue Two

Staring down at the blood staining his hands, his son’s blood, Sam was lost. His mind, usually as sharp as a monofilament blade, was spinning; contemplating every what-if possibility, calculating every permutation and variable. Could he have done things differently, would his son be alive now if had not used the nanobots. All these questions ran through his head, second-guessing every decision he had made.

The movements of the medical staff around him were like a blur and he was barely aware of his own surroundings. He grunted an unintelligible reply to a nurse asking if he wanted something to drink. She took his answer as a yes and left the private room, narrowly avoiding being run over by a group of doctors and nurses who were pushing a wheeled stretcher loaded with medical equipment. From down the hallway, towards the open-landing pad, there was the whine of approaching rockets followed by the crash of a door almost being thrown off its hinges.

“I NEED A DOCTOR!”

The voice cut through the funk, jarring him back to reality. He got up and stood at the door to the room, looking down the corridor. In front of the door to the medical centre’s landing pad, a group of doctors were clustered around someone on a stretcher. Behind them stood Paragon, the front of his sky blue armour smeared with blood. “You need to observe L4 protocols,” the superhero said to one of the doctors over the shouting, “he’s been infected with nanobots.” As soon as Paragon mentioned the word “nanobots”, the medical team swung into action, pushing the stretcher towards an airlock-like door marked “Quarantine Section”. Left behind by the medical team, Paragon watched the heavy metal door close behind them and took his helmet off; it was out of his hands now.

Sam took a step into the hallway. “John?” he asked tentatively, a flicker of hope beginning to form, “what’s going on?”

Paragon walked over to Sam, taking him by the shoulder and smiling. “I don’t know how Sam, but Todd’s alive.”

“Alive?” Sam said incredulously, the gears of his mind grinding for several seconds before slipping into place, “The nanobots! They worked!” His despair turning to sudden joy.

“The doctors here are experienced in dealing with the ‘unusual’. He’s in good hands.” Sam tugged his arm, trying to pull away, but with Paragon’s enhanced strength, he wasn’t going anywhere. “But Todd’s not out of the woods yet.”

“But...”

“Listen,” Paragon said carefully, “you understand the technology behind these nanobots better than anyone. If Todd is to have any chance, we need to know what you know.”

Sam looked towards the airlock; it took several seconds for him to gather his thoughts before he turned back to his brother-in-law. “Find me a lab and a computer terminal with an open comm-line.”

----

Todd was in surgery for several hours as the doctors battled to save his life. If it hadn’t been for the nanobots acting as an auxiliary life support system, regulating his heart rate, breathing, and limiting the amount of blood loss, Todd probably wouldn’t have made it through the surgery. Even with the nanobots inside him keeping him alive, it took the skill of several surgeons to repair the internal injuries caused by the gunshots. Once repaired however, the nanobots no longer had to devote most of their efforts to just keeping Todd alive, and were able to take over the healing process. Within a day, his injuries had completely healed.

Nonetheless, it was twenty-four hours before he woke up and when he did, he awoke to days of blood tests and medical scans. He was kept in an isolation room, hermetically sealed and with only a locked airlock as a way in or out; the only people allowed inside were the medical staff. They had to wear bright yellow hazmat suits with self-contained air supplies in order to enter the room and even then they only stayed as long as was absolutely necessary. They were taking no chances. Despite putting on a brave face, the whole experience was more than just unnerving for him, it was terrifying. His father wasn’t allowed to enter the room and could only talk to his son through the glass from the observation room next door. To Todd, the isolation and lack of physical human contact made him feel more like a prisoner or test subject than a patient. Eventually after three days the boy could no longer take it and he snapped, throwing his dinner tray across the room. The tray smashed into the observation window, smearing the glass with the nutritionally balanced and scientifically designed paste that was supposed to taste like pasta and meatballs but tasted more like stale tofu. He had refused to take part in any further medical tests. His father was brought into the observation room to try to calm him down but it didn’t work. Sam was shocked when Todd lashed out at the nearest suited doctor, punching him hard and knocking him to the floor. Two other doctors tried to restrain him but Todd fought loose and was backed into a corner yelling that he’d rip through the suit and bite the arm of the next person who touched him. After that, they had been forced to sedate him, knocking him out for the rest of the day.

When he awoke, the lights in the room were dimmed and there was no one around. The first thing he noticed was the padded leather cuffs around his wrists and ankles, securing him to the bed like an unruly psych patient. “Great,” the boy muttered lying back in the bed and staring at the ceiling, “from bad to worse.” In hindsight, he probably deserved it, threatening the doctors like that. But what did they expect, keeping him in here like this. Locked in a room with no entertainment or diversions, and with his behavioural problems, it was no wonder that he had gone a little crazy. After a few minutes of tugging aimlessly at the cuffs, he lifted his head and looked over to the observation window. The glass had been opaqued, becoming a mirror through which he was unable to see if there was anyone in the room beyond. “Hello,” He called out, “you can take these off now ... Seriously, you can't just leave me like this ... I won't do anything stupid, I promise ... Hello?” If there was anyone on the other side of the glass, they didn’t answer. He spent the next hour or so trying to stave off the boredom by counting the dimples in each of the ceiling tiles; working out that on average there were 15.19 dimples in each tile, Todd felt a small measure of personal pride that he'd actually managed to do the sums in his head.

Eventually the airlock hissed open and a hazmat suited doctor walked in, flanked by two orderlies who waited by the airlock. He walked over to the bed and looked down at Todd, his arms crossed. “Well Mr Marshall,” the doctor said condescendingly, “have you calmed down now? We can continue these tests with the straps on if we have to.” The doctor waited for an answer, Todd muttered an apology in response. Satisfied, he nodded over to the orderlies who came over and undid the boy's straps. They stepped away from the bed, but not too far away. Todd sat up, rubbing his wrists and gave the three men wary looks. The doctor pulled out a needle and removed it from its sterile packaging. “Arm,” he said holding out a waiting hand. The boy hesitated for a second before reluctantly holding out his arm. Todd winced slightly as the doctor drew the blood sample although he was now starting to get used to it. They had been taking them every few hours, monitoring the concentration of nanobots in his blood. The rest of the examination was done in silence, neither doctor nor patient speaking to one another. Writing down a few notes, the doctor turned to leave.

“Am I ever going to get out of here?” Todd asked in a quiet voice. The doctor turned around to look at Todd who was sitting back against the headrest of the bed, hugging his knees. His face softened, perhaps realising for the first time that his patient wasn't a battle hardened superhero, but a scared young boy. Dismissing the two orderlies, he sat down on the bed next to Todd, gently placing a hand on the boy's arm.

“A lot of people are working very hard to sort this out,” he said softly, “to find a way of getting those things out of you.” The doctor looked around the spartan room. “I'll see if I can't get a TV or video game or something brought down here. It can't be much fun in here all day on your own.”

Todd looked up and smiled slightly. “It has been a little boring.”

The doctor got up off the bed and walked to the airlock. As the airtight door opened, he turned back to the boy. “With your dad on the case, I'm sure you'll be out of here in no time.”

----

“It's impossible,” Sam said sitting down heavily and looking at the computer screen despondently. “Sure, every treatment we come up with eliminates the nanobots, but they all have that annoying side-effect of killing the host.”

“What about that EMP idea you had?” Paragon asked from across the workbench.

“No good, it'd short out all the nanobots in his body.”

Paragon was confused “Isn't that what you want?”

“Try to imagine a million tiny robots electrocuting you from the inside. There's no telling what that sort of damage could do to him, especially the ones in his brain.”

The two men fell silent, Sam staring at the screen of his computer. “So what's the plan?” Paragon said eventually, knowing that Sam wouldn't have called him down to the lab without a reason.

“We do nothing.”

“What, we just give up?”

“Not exactly,” Sam said turning the computer screen to face Paragon and showing him the test results. “Every test has shown that the nanobots are benign, only affecting damaged tissue. What's more, they seem to have bonded to him on a genetic level. I extracted some of the nanobots from the latest blood sample and inserted them into a sample drawn at random from the blood bank. As soon as the nanobot was separated from Todd's blood it deactivated, as expected, but it didn't reactivate when placed in the second blood sample. It only reactivated when returned to Todd's blood. I repeated the test several times with a variety of samples just to be sure that the nanobots aren't a threat to Todd or anyone else.”

“And are you?” Paragon said carefully.

Sam gave him a sidelong glance. “Of course I am; this is my son we're talking about after all.”

Paragon looked dubious. “I don't know; you're talking about letting him walk around with alien nanotechnology flowing through his veins. The Advisory Council won't be happy about that. They're already talking about revoking your security clearance and bringing you up on charges.”

“The Council can go jump for all I care!” Sam said slamming his fist on the workbench. “All I care about right now is my son.”

Paragon sighed and scratched his bald scalp. “I'm supposed to give you this lecture on responsibility, lab protocols and all that. But to be honest, if I did it'd make me a hypocrite.” Sam looked at him quizzically with a raised eyebrow. “If it'd been Cody lying there and I was in your position, I would've done the same thing.”

----

The doctor had kept his word about getting some form of entertainment into the isolation room. About 15 minutes after the exam two technicians arrived and installed a large widescreen TV along with a high-end video game console. The console had a wireless network connection and was linked to a massive library of downloaded music and videos; probably illegally downloaded by the looks of things. Someone had obviously been busy with the Sentinel’s high-speed internet connection. For the next few hours, Todd lost himself in video games and movies, vaporising aliens and slaying zombies by the dozen. His crusade to save the world from the alien cyborg zombie horde was interrupted around lunchtime by a tap on the observation window. Todd paused the game and saw Cody waving to him from the observation room.

His cousin was two years older than he was and in high school. Todd didn’t get to see him much, during term-time Cody went to a private boarding school somewhere in Europe and during the school holidays he spent most of his time onboard Sentinel with his family. The massive flying installation could be stationed anywhere in the world and civilian access was tightly controlled, popping around for a quick visit was out of the question. Still, there were the annual family gatherings at Thanksgiving and the Independence Day weekends. The Harris’s and the Marshal’s, taking on the world together through the power of fireworks and family barbecues.

“Yo Lazarus,” Cody said through the intercom, “I hear you got yourself into trouble again.”

Todd scowled. “That’s not funny Cody, I almost got killed. And what’s with the Lazarus thing?”

The older boy blinked in surprise. “Whoa, you mean no one told you?”

“Told me what?”

“Dude, I hate to be the one to tell you,” said Cody, although his smile said otherwise, “you were dead for like an hour. If weren’t for those nano thingies, you’d still be dead.”

“I ... I died,” Todd whispered.

“The way I hear it, you got the record for being dead the longest before coming back. Hence the bible reference.” Todd wasn’t listening; he was looking at the floor in shock. He had died? Why had no one told him? His dad had told him that the nanobots had kept him alive, not brought him back from the dead. Why had he lied to him like that? “Hey,” Cody was still talking; he hadn’t noticed that Todd’s attention had wandered, “maybe they’ll put you in the Guinness Book of Records or something.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school or something?” Todd asked, eager to change the subject.

“What, I’m not allowed to visit my favourite cousin in hospital?” He said laughing.

“Cody,” Todd said his eyes narrowing, “I’m you’re ONLY cousin.”

“Well I guess that would also make you my LEAST favourite cousin as well.” Cody shrugged. “Truth is, after what happened dad pulled me out of school for some reason.”

Todd knew why his Uncle had pulled Cody out of school. He remembered vividly what the gunmen’s leader had said just before he ordered his man to shoot him. “Next time it will be his kid.” That had been a clear threat aimed at Cody.

“I got here a few hours ago, and they said you could do with a visitor. Plus you seem to have my games console in there with you.”

Todd looked at the wireless controller in his hand and the games console connected to the TV. “This is yours?”

“Yeah, and I see they only gave you one of the controllers.” Cody held up the other controller. “Fancy a deathmatch?”

Wow, this is really awesome! Very imaginative, original, and well-written I think.
The only thing that I saw that should be fixed was a spelling error. "breech' is actually 'breach'. Other than that, well done!

Next chapter is here.