Trainee Superhero (Book One) Read Online Free Page B

and back onto the
platform. A ball shoots from my right and hits me in the leg, but I
don’t fall. The next ball hits me in the back of the head, and I
fall to my knees as dozens more balls bounce off me. None of them
hit Past Prime . I fall off the platform, and climb again. My
arms are burning; I don’t think I can make that climb again, and I
don’t see why I should have to.
    “And what’s the point of this training?” I
mutter, “Since superheroes can both fly and have shields.”
    “They can and do,” he answers in measured
tones, “but being physically strong means faster reflexes and
greater resilience. On your feet.”
    The balls start flying again, and one knocks
me off the platform. I hit the ground hard enough to make the world
go black for a second. Past Prime leaps off the platform and
lands in an elegant roll right beside me.
    “You will have shields, but they will only
absorb ninety-nine percent of whatever hits you. That last percent
hurts. A lot. You need to be in peak condition to survive.”
    I didn’t know that the shields let part of an
attack through. No wonder all the superheroes I’ve seen are in
great shape.
    “I’m no athlete,” I say.
    “I know, I read your file. We have a few
tricks to help people like you, but you still need to work as hard
as you can. We won’t push you any more here. Next station.”
    The technicians lead me onwards. Never
Lies is waiting for me, tapping her foot as if she has better
places to be. Beside her stands a huge tattooed man in a red shirt
who looks like he enjoys hurting people. The name on his shirt says Violent Behavior . He doesn’t look like a superhero; he looks
like the hired muscle working for the bad guy in a spy film.
    “Helmets,” Never Lies says, and Violent Behavior passes me a helmet. He smiles; his front
teeth are missing.
    I put the helmet on. It’s heavy,
uncomfortable and dark.
    “I can’t see anything,” I say.
    “Program initiating,” a robotic voice
whispers in my ear.
    A picture appears in my visor: it’s a
floating ball topped with a laser cannon. The picture is computer
drawn but accurate as far as I can tell from what I’ve seen on the
internet.
    “Floating scout” says the voice in my helmet,
“known weaknesses are shown.”
    Most of the scout glows red. The picture
fades and is replaced by another scout, this one red.
    “Scout bomb,” murmurs the voice in my ear,
“may self-destruct explosively. Attack from range.”
    I nod; that’s good advice. The scout bomb
fades away and is replaced with a tricops like the ones that
attacked my town.
    “Simple triclops, capable of range attack,”
my helmet says, “known weaknesses are shown.”
    The triclops only has a few weaknesses, but I
do my best to remember them. The program progresses to flappers,
which are weak fliers armed with rockets, then on to an eight-armed
beast called an octo-ape that can fly. Each of the octo-ape’s arms
ends in some terrible bladed weapon. It only has one weakness, in
its head. The back of its head.
    “The octo-ape is a close combat expert. Do
not engage,” advises the program.
    “Okay,” I say, although I probably would if I
saw one.
    We move onto all the familiar soldiers found
in saucers, from the large cube-tanks to the tiny spider-pods that
clump together to form larger shapes. There were neutron-squids,
eccentrically shaped oddpods, and floating mushrooms armed with
plasma missiles. There were also seven additional variants of
triclops, each scarier than the last. My helmet suggests that I
avoid almost all of them, even the little ones. It’s pretty
disheartening that even the training programs think I’m
incapable.
    I realize that every type of saucer creature
could fly, if only for short distances. I don’t know why I never
thought about that before.
    “Phase two of the training program begins.
Highlight the known weaknesses with your eyes.”
    A circle appears on the visor screen. I move
my eyes and the circle moves