We Don't Wear Capes: Year One: We Don't Wear Capes, #1

By Joshua Guess

The Hero Training Program has always had high standards for admittance. Every registered metahuman in the country is measured, and only the most powerful can pass beyond the first step. They are researched, candidates profiled for the right psychological makeup. Of the thousands of people with abilities who reach the minimum age every year, only a hundred are accepted into the program. The strongest of the strong.

 

Until this year.

 

For seven decades, the villains known as The Five have wreaked havoc across the world. Men and women able to crush mountains and endure nuclear blasts have been unable to stop them. When a superhuman agent of the US government uncovers a trove of vital information about The Five and their weaknesses, a decision is made.

 

As the director chooses his hundred students, seven exemptions are given. Seven people whose powers are nowhere near the usual level. They will have to work harder, be smarter, and protect each other to survive what comes. Weaker than their peers, their only option is to work together. To win against impossible odds, they have to become a team.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Guess
• Release date: Jun 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393664987

Book preview

About Josh

Joshua Guess is the author of more than twenty novels, ranging from  post-apocalyptic zombie yarns to space operas, with a thriller and a few  superhero stories in between. When he's not working the day job, he  likes to sit at home and be a hermit. His favorite people to be around are  mostly the ones he makes up, with the exceptions of Sam and Dean, his  black cats. For five and a half years, he was a full-time writer thanks to the popularity of The Fall, and he's incredibly grateful to his readers for giving him the chance to live his dream.

Keep up with Josh!

Catch me on Facebook at my page:

Joshua Guess, Author

You can subscribe to my mailing list, used only for book releases

here or visit JoshuaGuess.com. I also blog there.

––––––––

Also by Joshua Guess

We Don't Wear Capes

Year One

The Fall

Victim Zero

Dead Will Rise

War of the Living

Genesis Game

Exodus in Black

Revelation Day

Beyond The Fall

Relentless Sons

Dead Nation

The Faded Earth

Deathwatch

Song of the Badlands

Men of Stone

The Ghost Fleet

Cascade Point

Borderlander

Breakspace

Rogue Orbit

Carter Ash

The Saint

The Next Chronicle

Next

Damage

Cassidy Freeman

Chosen

Living With the Dead

With Spring Comes The Fall

The Bitter Seasons

Year One (With Spring Comes The Fall, The Bitter Seasons, bonus material)

The Hungry Land

The Wild Country

This New Disease

American Recovery

Ever After

Black Sand

Earthfall

Ran

Apocalyptica

This Broken Veil

Misc

Beautiful (An Urban Fantasy)(Novel)

Soldier Lost (Short Story)

Dog Dreams In Color (Short Story)

With James Cook

The Passenger (Surviving The Dead)

Prologue: Observer Effect

Two agents in black suits appeared out of nowhere, setting foot where no human being had walked for more than fifty years.

The shorter of the two was a woman with close-cropped black hair and olive skin inherited from an Italian mother, her angular features set in a half-worried, half-excited expression. Despite years of training and more than a decade of practical field experience, Emma Rohm was nervous about being here.

Her partner, a stocky black man of average height, hair dusted with silver despite his relative youth, looked no less concerned. Eric Williams was solid, but walking on ground zero was no small thing.

It looks so normal, Rohm noted. Even after reading all the reports I kind of expected it to look like the middle of a nuclear blast.

Williams nodded. It’s weird. Notice that? No animals. I can’t hear birds or insects. Nothing.

Rohm shivered. She held no belief in the supernatural—or at least not beyond what people like her could do—yet the number of people who had died here and in the two-hundred-mile-wide circle centered on this place hung over her like a funeral shroud. Something so profoundly bizarre occurred in Littleton, Kansas almost seventy years earlier that the wildlife learned to avoid the place as a base instinct.

Discovering the origin of that weirdness was, after all, their entire reason for being here. It was what the last two years of training had been about. Why they’d gone through months of additional background checks, paperwork, government appeals, and two Senate subcommittees. Rohm was the most qualified meta in the entire world for the job, in no small part because she was partnered with Williams.

No time like the present, she said, walking toward the faded pennant waving lazily from its aluminum pole. The image struck her as anticlimactic, that this sad little green flag should represent the point of origin for the most significant event in human history.

The Flare. Both the event itself and the day off its occurrence—August 22, 1953—were referred to by that simple term.

I’m ready when you are, Williams assured her. His hands began burning a bright orange, then yellow, finally settling on a harsh white light without heat. Rohm nodded, and he put both hands on her shoulder.

As always she was surprised by the absence of any sensation when Williams used his power on her. He was one of a handful of top-tier enhancers working for the agency. His ability increased her own by an order of magnitude, yet she felt no rush of energy. The only way to know it worked was to utilize her own ability—which she would have to wait for.

Williams pulled his hands away but didn’t let the power burning from them dissipate. Once enhanced, a person could not be pushed further by him until the initial burst of power wore off. When he took her right hand a moment later, it had no immediate effect on Rohm’s ability. She closed her eyes and reached out to the well of power tucked away in the corner of her mind. Reached for but did not touch. Instead she hovered near it, letting its beat and rhythm fill her thoughts.

Through their clasped hands, Rohm could feel Williams do the same, but in a different way. When searching for Resonance, the recipient had to use their ability last.

It took a bit longer than she was used to for Williams to sync with her. She felt the odd sense of change wash over her mind.

Ready, he said.

I know, she told him, embracing her power and opening her eyes.

Rohm immediately felt her senses widen and new ones spring into existence. She had long ago grown accustomed to the feeling that a thousand faded images flickered at the corner of her vision, which was how her limited human brain tried to interpret the vast flood of information now washing into her mind like an ocean tide.

Under normal circumstances, Rohm was one of the most gifted psychometrists in the world. Psychometry was a broad term, and metas with the ability were often limited to one of its branches. Not so with her. Rohm’s gift spanned the gamut. She could not only read the history of an object, gaining both sense memories and instinctive knowledge from it, but in certain circumstances could intuit detailed information far beyond the scope of others who shared her power.

When amplified by Williams and then put in Resonance with him, her power both grew and changed dramatically. Today Rohm would not find the history of an object and catch glimpses of its passage in time. In point of fact, while in Resonance she could no longer do so any more than a car in fifth gear could also be in first. For the duration of their Resonance, Rohm was no longer able to touch and know physical objects.

Instead she reached out with her left hand, fingers spread, and read the history of a place. This place.

What she saw was this...

––––––––

On an empty stretch of dusty dirt road just outside the city limit of Littleton stood six men. Five arranged in a circle around one other. The man in the middle was unfamiliar to her, but Rohm felt shock to the core of her being as she recognized the other five. Not just any five, but The Five. The most powerful, dangerous superhumans in history.

Yet in that moment they were only human. She knew this instinctively as her power granted her vast if imperfect understanding. The six men argued, the conversation too rapid and split among too many voices for her to make out the context.

The man in the middle began to glow faintly in the dusky light. The others didn’t notice at first, only catching on when the radiance grew sharp and fierce. In between seconds, the stranger went from arguing with his friends to gasping in a huge breath before exploding in a flash of brilliance that would have blinded her were she actually seeing it with her eyes instead of her mind.

When the burst cleared, The Five stood encased—or perhaps turned into—crystal. Their features were captured perfectly, as if carved.

Her mind rebelled against what she was seeing. Every report said that ground zero was and always had been empty. The Flare was assumed to be a tear between realities or some other cosmological event, one that gave rise to superhuman abilities in formerly normal people.

Even as she struggled to understand the presence of The Five in this place, at this crucial moment, history unfolded. Her mind, drawn to the historical impact of the Flare, could no more stop watching the events play out than a rock could stop itself from obeying the pull of gravity.

Within seconds of being turned to translucent glass as everyone within the two hundred mile wide quarantine zone was, the five men in front of her hummed a deep note as if struck with a tuning fork by the hand of a god. Their frozen forms vibrated in place before melting back into human bodies. Of the sixth man, who was apparently responsible for the Flare, nothing remained. No sign of his existence could be seen beyond slight indentations where his shoes pressed into the dirt moments before.

The five men who would become near forces of nature stared at each other wild-eyed until the scene abruptly cut off a few seconds later.

––––––––

Did you see that? she gasped, coming out of the vision. "Did you see them?"

Williams stood next to her, stunned. Yeah. The Five. This changes—wait. Is that another one?

Rohm had only a moment to muse on the strangeness of another person sharing her visions before her power latched on to another vital point in history in this place where there should be only event of such magnetic power, and yanked her mind back in time once more.

––––––––

Why this place? asked the man Rohm knew as Windwalker. He alone among The Five was unique in that over the next seventy years, he always appeared as he did in this moment; middle-aged and thick around the middle. Why do you want to meet here? Not that I mind bringing us back, but there are much more comfortable places we could gather.

The other four glanced at each other with bemused expressions. The villain known as Insight, long assumed to be the leader of the group, shook his head ruefully. See, this is why you make a bad crook. You don’t think about the risks. This is the one place they’ll never look for us. Who knows how many other people out there can do the things we can, now? They quarantined this place in two weeks, and that was almost a year ago. It’s as safe as we can get.

Windwalker sighed. You all act like I’m an idiot, but I notice you’re happy to stand out by having Andrew make you look ten years younger. Not to mention you weren’t in that kind of shape during the war when we were on our feet all day and barely had enough to eat.

As the men spoke, raw information struck Rohm. The pieces and parts were scattered, but they all fit into a whole. Andrew had to be the tall, bearded man anyone in the modern age recognized as Outbreak. A healer of legendary ability, he was the reason The Five were able to operate for seven decades without aging noticeably. She saw glimpses of the war Windwalker spoke of—for men of his generation, it was the war. She didn’t need to see ghostly images of Japanese Zeros and the twisted arms of swastikas to grasp the implication, but they served as definitive proof.

I’m getting stronger, said a third man, small and wiry. Cascade was easily the most dangerous of them in terms of immediate, raw damage. He gave off an aura of absolute control, but unlike Reign with his aristocratic and superior expression, Cascade’s mastery was of himself. Rohm saw the incredible grip the man had on his body, mind, and power. The longer she watched, the more information flowed into the construct of facts in her head.

Reign nodded in agreement. Rohm found it odd to see that perpetually youthful face without the ever-present sneer it would adopt over the coming decades. Was this before he learned the extent of his powers? Before the reach of his abilities made him so feared that entire Hero teams refused to go against him? On this subject her power remained stubbornly unhelpful.

We can get to that later, Insight said diplomatically but firmly. You know the order we follow. We work out business first, then...

The scene shifted.

––––––––

Rohm saw three more meetings in rapid succession. Each was at ground zero, and in a display of sentimentality she could not have imagined these men capable of, on the anniversary of the Flare. With each new iteration she intuited more about them. In the grand scheme of a life, what Rohm got from the vision up to the end of that fourth meeting was little, yet still far more than the combined resources of the world had been able to gather on the men.

During the fifth—and as it happened, final—gathering she witnessed, everything changed.

––––––––

Now they looked more like the villains she knew. The years had not yet twisted them into the merciless beings of seemingly infinite power they would become, but they were no longer the somewhat hapless victims of circumstance she had seen in that first meeting.

These men were confident, more comfortable in their power. They spoke about grander plans. Of using their abilities to do more as a group than they ever had apart. Five years of experience changed anyone, even normal humans. For those with the power to change the world, half a decade might as well have been a lifetime.

This had to be 1958, which was two years before The Five first became nationally known for what they were. History was a subject Rohm was naturally drawn to because of both her work and ability, and the blanks in her knowledge were slowly being filled in. She now had confirmation that the scattered reports of men displaying powers similar to The Five before their grand debut at the dawn of the sixties were true.

The dynamic between them was instructional. Every public appearance by these men was a unified front. It was part of what made them so damned dangerous. They worked in unison, never arguing or doubting, never for a second seeming less than a perfectly designed machine. Yet here she saw them at their most vulnerable—five old friends cast together by fate to ride the wave of history.

They all deferred to Insight. She knew this in concrete terms, but it was obvious without her power. He was the leader, the one they had grown to look toward for answers and direction. They all feared Cascade—even Insight—which unlike their respect for their leader was not apparent in their body language. And was there any rational person on Earth who wouldn’t be afraid of the man once they’d seen what he could do?

Outbreak was the black sheep among them, always standing back and observing. Not forgotten, just not out front. Not obvious. Reign was the same if to a lesser degree, stoic and serious as he let Insight run the meeting. For all the damage Cascade or even Outbreak could do if they wanted, Reign was easily the scariest of the group on a personal level.

Only Windwalker seemed unchanged, personality wise. He remained outwardly amused by nearly everything, even if he fell into the same patterns as the others. Rohm’s power snatched a fact from whatever ether her abstract knowledge came from and knew that Windwalker was and always would be the most human of them. Perhaps by choice.

She listened to them plot and plan the takeover of a city. Chicago. Clearly an event that never came to pass since she didn’t remember it. No exploit of The Five could have escaped the incredible scrutiny given to the group.

Her power began to lag as she tired. Rohm almost never used it for this long or with this intensity, struggling with every breath pull information into her like the gravity well of a planet. She redoubled her efforts, gritting her teeth and focusing on the five men as hard as she could.

Insight abruptly stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence. He swept his shaggy brown hair back as his head snapped up as if listening for a distant noise. His eyes had slowly changed over the course of five years to the flat blue—no whites, no pupils—covering the entirety of their surface. Rohm saw a familiar look cross Insight’s face, one captured on countless videos of his exploits. He was using his power—to some degree, he was always using it—to sense everything around him. The man could see molecules scrape together and hear gravity.

Insight cast his gaze in a wide arc, scanning his surroundings.

And then...

He saw her.

Over the years between them, their minds brushed against each other. As they touched, information passed from him to her, a flood that became a torrent. Rohm knew things, so many things. About him, about them. And in a flash of widening eyes, Insight gained the same understanding of her.

Emma Rohm was still screaming when the extraction team came to pick them up fifteen minutes later.

Part One: Resonance

Six months later

Chapter One

The B Team

––––––––

Jeff Shirani knew his information was badly out of date the moment he appeared in front of the address. The agency put together a stack of dossiers for his meetings today, and the first and most important one was next to useless.

Idiots, he muttered. Then he put on his business face, the pleasant one that said he was not at all irritated with the lazy analysts who were clearly told how important these interviews were, and rang the doorbell.

A middle-aged black woman opened it and sized him up. You’re Director Shirani?

Jeff put out a hand. Yes, ma’am. And you must be Mrs. Jackson. She took the hand with a strong grip and shook.

Just call me Ava, she replied. Haven’t been married for ten years. Come on in.

The dossier should have prepared him for the place. The mother—Ava—was listed as being a mid-level manager at the federal Department of Agriculture. It was solid money, the kind a single parent could raise a family on, but it didn’t buy a place like this.

The house was not a mansion; it was something far more subtle and more expensive. It was big, sure, but not the sprawling monuments to compensation tech CEOs built on million-dollar acres in southern California. Here on the outskirts of Louisville, the home was isolated. Which explained how the more technically savvy metas in the area hadn’t lost their minds over it completely.

For someone like Jeff, noticing those kinds of things was second nature. He was, after all, a Hero. If you didn’t learn to spot advanced materials like the synstone covering the exterior of this place by instinct, you weren’t observant enough to survive more than a few missions.

Synstone was ludicrously expensive. He’d never seen a piece larger than a few feet across. The artificial slate gray rock looked like it was glazed with the thinnest possible coating of liquid opal, and a piece of it a quarter inch thick could protect against a lightning strike without singeing.

To have a home clad in the stuff was beyond extravagant. It was kind of insane.

Interesting place, Jeff said truthfully. I did our normal background checks. I didn’t realize you’d come into money.

Ava smiled as she led him to the kitchen. Oh, we’ve had the money. Or I should say my daughter does. I just managed it for her until she turned eighteen. I still work. Been around long enough to know how fast it can all go away.

Jeff nodded in exactly the right way to convey trust and understanding with just a dash of falsehood. The trick to building interpersonal relationships in the short time he had with prospective draftees was to project reality. You had to come off as a real person, not a perfect one.

Ava led them to a spacious kitchen with shining granite counters. The appliances were restaurant quality but clearly used often. The kitchen had a lived-in look no hired help would allow. Wherever the money came from, this woman was the sort to do for herself. Jeff found his respect for her ticking up.

Have a seat, she said, gesturing to a chair that probably cost more than his car payment.

Jeff sat and rested his arms casually on the long bar taking up one side of the island as if he didn’t have to travel halfway across the world and back several times today. Will your daughter be joining us?

No, Ava said. No, she’ll want you to come to her. I just want to say a few things before then. Things a mother needs to say even if you already know them, you understand.

Jeff nodded. Sure.

Ava reached down to her purse, which hung on her chair, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and took a long drag. Sorry. Terrible habit. I quit for five years before we got your call.

I’m sorry if I upset you, Jeff said. It wasn’t my goal.

Ava waved a hand. None of that. I don’t need your apologies, mostly because I can’t trust them. I know who you are, Director Shirani. Or should I call you Glimmer?

Jeff felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. How could you possibly know my Hero identity?

Ava raised an eyebrow. My daughter worked it out ten minutes after you called. I know you can read people. Change the way you talk and hold yourself to make them want react how you want them to. I’ve watched videos of you out there in costume. You fight like someone in an action movie, and you hit like a train. I guess you’re tougher than someone like me, right?

Jeff gave her a wry smile. Somehow I doubt that.

Ava rolled her eyes. Flattery. That’s original. Point is, you’ve got strength. You can shrug off bullets. Right?

He nodded. It’s more complicated than that, but for the purpose of this conversation, let’s say yes. What’s your point?

Ava stabbed the air with her cigarette. My point, Director, is that my daughter is special. Not just because she has a power, but special to me. She’s my youngest, and unlike you she can’t get hit by a car and walk away. Now, I know your program is going to put her in danger. I’ve made my peace with that as much as I can. I’ve seen what you people do out there. You do what you need to make her survive it. I’m not some kid. I know you’ll have to be tough on her to make it happen. You just make sure you don’t take more risks with my baby girl than you have to. Because if she gets hurt or worse because you screwed up, some asshole in a mask is gonna be the least of your worries.

––––––––

Jeff barely raised his hand to knock before a voice from an intercom next to the door spoke in a soft, light tone. Come in. It’s open.

He stepped into outright science fiction.

The room was in the basement—no, the room was the basement. It stretched a hundred feet on a side and was packed with shelves and equipment in every direction. Only a patch about ten feet by ten was bare of tools and half-finished projects. It contained a bed, a dresser, and an entertainment center arranged with a logic that hurt his brain.

Hello? he said. Uh, where are you?

Movement in the right corner of his vision resolved into a young woman standing up from a large wooden desk. She moved toward him and though Jeff had read her file, it didn’t quite prepare him for the reality.

America Jackson? he asked, extending his hand. She was very tall, at least an inch over six feet, and not petite. The file had vague stats on her father, who was a giant of a man. America took after him in that respect. She was broad in the shoulders and full-figured without being curvy. She looked like someone who could kick ass on the mat more than model swimsuits.

I don’t shake hands, she said in that same soft, light voice. Sorry. Consequence of my ability.

Curious, Jeff let the hand fall away. Really? Care to elaborate on that?

She absently patted her hair, which was pulled back tight against her skull and gathered into a curly ball at the back. You know what I can do, Director. It’s why you’re here, or so you say.

Humor me, he said. And I promise you, that’s certainly why I’m here.

She glanced at his hand. If I touch you, it’s a data point. Whether I want to or not, I’ll start recording every fact there is to observe. Facts I can’t forget no matter how much I try. Everything from the texture of your skin to its temperature, resilience, the hardness of your bones. I’ll remember every nuance of your reaction, the way your hair sways as you move from the shake. As it is, you’re already new data in my head. There’s a reason I stay down here most of the time.

Jeff nodded. Because you can’t control it.

Because I can’t control it, she agreed. Presumably, you’ve done background on me. You know what I am. Which means you also know I don’t even come close to qualifying for your program. I took this meeting more out of curiosity than anything. You should be flattered. I don’t have the chance to feel curious very often.

Jeff laughed. Really? You were an A+ student even before your powers matured. When you were eleven, which is much younger than most people.

Puberty is unpredictable, America said. She waved a hand at herself. I’ve looked like an Amazon since I was twelve. Can you imagine what it’s like for a girl to look twenty when she’s still playing with dolls?

No, Jeff admitted. It sounds awful.

It is. Which is why I spent the next few years keeping busy, she said. Seven doctorates. A few dozen patents, most of them sold or licensed.

Jeff grinned. Through shell companies, apparently, since we had no idea about the income. I’m sure the IRS would love to know how you kept it completely off their radar.

At this, America smiled. I didn’t. I kept it off electronic records. You should have had your people check the hard copy. You’d have seen the small novel of tax documents I prepare every year. And yes, I do them myself. It’s not like I have to think about the math.

Jeff leaned against a support post and shook his head. Honestly, understanding the tax code well enough to do my own would be the best perk of genius.

She waved away the comment. So. Please tell me why you want me in your program, Director. My understanding is that you only take a hundred in the annual draft, and they’re universally of medium-high to high power. My ability barely registers. I know. I checked. You’ve never taken anyone like me before.

Jeff was extremely cautious with his answer. "We want you because we’ve never drafted anyone like you before. There’s a pilot program this year. A team of people with unique powers that register lower than our usual minimum. I’m sure you saw what happened with Cascade three months ago. One of The Five dead, but it cost us nearly a thousand civilian lives and thirty Heroes. What if we had someone like you out in the field, America? Someone whose first instinct is to think, to understand? How many could we have saved?"

He saw the hook sink in. It wasn’t a strong one, merely a first play on her basic humanity. And she had that in spades, unlike many metas with super intelligence he’d met.

Jeff pressed. We lost an entire neighborhood in Chicago Heights. It made the higher ups ask a lot of hard questions. We need to broaden our approach.

She crossed her arms. Let’s say I believe you. Why should I come? What do you have to offer me? Helping people is noble. I respect you for making the choice. But going out in the world would be a nightmare for me.

Jeff’s power didn’t allow him to miss to subtle cues. She desperately wanted control but was hiding just how powerful that need was. Because we can teach you how to run your ability instead of letting it run you.

Uh huh, she said. What makes you think you can do that?

He ticked off on his fingers. A few facts. One, I don’t think genius is your actual power. It’s just one expression of it. Two, we might not have any geniuses as heroes yet, but that doesn’t mean we don’t work with them. We’ve got a couple on staff who can help guide you. Three, I know what your weakness is. And if I know that, doesn’t it stand to reason I have some clue on how you can get a handle on your gift?

I told you what it was, she said with a bitter laugh. Not much of a leap.

Jeff shook his head. "No, your lack of control isn’t your weakness. It’s that you’re fallible. You absorb everything, and accept facts as facts even if you only believe they’re correct.