Book 1:

Rise of the Meta-Humans

© Clay Clearbrook

 

 

Its official designation was Comet C/1948 V1.

In essence, the designation declared the type and year the comet was discovered and the part of the month and the order in which it was discovered.  In this case the comet was classified as a Comet (C) discovered in the year 1948.  Specifically, it was discovered in the second half of November (V) of 1948 and was the first such discovery made at that time.   It also had two informal names. The first was the Eclipse Comet, since it was discovered during the total eclipse that occurred on the first of November in 1948. Most people, however, simply called it the Heart Stopper since it scared the hell out of everyone on Earth.

Most comets are discovered when they are far out in the solar system as they start to make their way inward towards the sun. It was no different back in those days, though their technology was primitive compared to that used by modern day astronomers, they still would have noticed a comet on its inward journey.  Such was not the case with C/1948 V1. The Heart Stopper surprised everyone when it suddenly appeared as it grazed close to the sun and began it journey outward.

One moment the heavens were clear as the moon moved in front of the sun to create, at least in the southern hemisphere, a total eclipse of the sun. Yet as the moon continued on its orbit around the planet and the sun became visible again, so too did the Heart Stopper become visible for the first time!

Perhaps, had the Heart Stopper appeared in modern times, astronomers could have discovered it earlier.  It is quite certain that they could have evaded the near panic that over took the Earth at that time.

Still in the first years after World War 2, people were just beginning to recover and it was easy to imagine that it would not take much to push the entire world back into the fear and darkness it had just emerged from.

For whatever reasons, the Heart Stopper had not been discovered until it had rounded the sun, at distances that should have completely annihilated any unprotected object, and began to form a massive tail that stream ahead of the comet.

 That is when the panic started! The very first predictions that were unwisely released to the public showed that the Heart Stopper would hit the Earth.

Modern astronomers, with all the modern technology available to them, would not have made that mistake. With what the astronomers of the late 1940s had available, it was easy to see why they thought the comet would strike the Earth.

As it turned out those early predictions were wrong.  The comet itself missed the Earth.  It was, however, the closest call in recorded history. Panic remained, however, when it became clear that the Earth would be bathed in the particles of the streaming tail for several weeks.

The Heart Stopper came and went and the people of Earth sighed in relief.  After months of near panic and weeks of anticipation of the unknown as the particles from the tail fell to Earth, it was almost anti-climatic as the Heart Stopper continued on its journey back out into the farthest reaches of the solar system with no lasting effect on the Earth or the life thereon..or so the people believed.

It would be nearly seventeen years later that mankind discovered how wrong they were...

---- from “The Rise of the Metahumans”  by Dr. Ronald Parker.

 

 Prologue

 

April, 2008

“Well?”

The Director waited impatiently for the man seated on the other side of his desk to gather himself together. It was obvious from his appearance that he was more than a tad bit anxious.   Perhaps frazzled would be a better way to describe his condition.

The Director was a bit irritated himself.  For the first time in over a month he could look at a desk completely cleared of paperwork. 

He had signed the last form…in triplicate…handed it off to his secretary and poured himself a long overdue cup of coffee.  He had just settled in and taken his first sip, the cup cradled in both hands, when a junior assistant, whose name he could not for the life of him recall, had burst into his office. 

“A level three!”  The assistant burst out, clutching the manila folder he held close to his chest as if it would be a shield against…what? “and….Its gone, sir….just gone!”

The Director sighed and deliberately placed his coffee cup on the desk, making sure it was on the coaster….Julie griped at him for over a week last time he had left a coffee stain on his desk. He laced his fingers before him and took a deep breath.

“Okay son.  Calm down a bit and start from the beginning.”  He said, using the calmest tones he could in order to demonstrate calm to the excited young man. “You said something about a Level Three?”

“Yessir!”  The junior assistant nodded and, following the Director’s example, took a deep breath. “The Claries confirmed it.”

“So a Level Three has finally been born.  A bit behind schedule but...” The Director began…trailing off as the assistant shook his head.

“No Sir.  The Level Three was born on schedule. If the Claries are right…this Level Three was born in 1993.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”  The Director shook his head.  “The Level One Claries can’t get a read on Level Twos but they could tell us when they were born if nothing else. You’re telling me that the Claries weren’t able to sense a Level Three for over fifteen years?” He frowned and then recalled the rest of the assistant’s wild announcement when he had entered.  The blood left his face and he slowly stood, glaring at the young man, daring him to confirm his fear.

“You said its gone…just gone.”  He gripped the edge of his desk waiting.

The assistant visibly gulped and then placed the manila folder on the Director’s desk.  He flipped it open to reveal several aerial photos.

The Director paled even more as he fell back into his seat, his hands reaching for the damning photos. 

Obviously the photos were taken by a high flying reconnaissance craft.  There was nothing that could allow him to recognize what he was looking at.  All the pictures showed was the obvious aftermath of some destructive force.  A destructive force that had leveled an entire, sizeable metropolis.

The Director held one photo up and showed it to the assistant.

“Where?”

“That is….was…Kansas City Missouri.”

“Kansas City….”  The Director looked at the photo again.  Nothing.  There was absolutely nothing left that would allow anyone to identify the remaining rubble as Kansas City. He picked up the final photo and then set it aside as he noticed the short report beneath it. “Complete destruction in an almost perfect circle with a radius of fifty miles. Destruction includes suburbs of Raytown, Independence, Lee’s Summit, Grandview, Blue Springs...” he dropped the report and rubbed his eyes.  When he lowered his hands, his gaze fell on the still steaming coffee cup.   With a savage growl he backhanded the cup, sending it flying across his office in a steaming spray.

“How the fuck did this get past us?” He demanded. “When did this happen?  Why haven’t I heard before now?”

“Those photos are less than fifteen minutes old, sir.” Surprisingly, after the outburst by the Director, the assistant was calmer now. “The Claries got warning about an hour and a half ago. We scrambled a recon flight from a nearby airbase then and there before the Claries could pin point the location.”  He took a breath. “The Claries sensed the Level Three when she…activated.”

“She? The first Level Three was a female?”

“Yes sir.  A fifteen year old school girl, according to the Claries. They all felt her when she activated.  They said she was agitated…and then suddenly went into a panic.  Then she….she…”  The assistant shook his head and pointed at the pictures. “The Claries all say this was not deliberate. The girl went into a panic, not understanding what was happening.  Then she just…exploded.”

The Director shook his head and then motioned for the assistant to leave then stopped him.

“Wait.”  He said, thinking. “I am probably going to need more than Julie out there from now on.  From this point on, you are on my staff permanently. Go get your stuff and get back here asap.  Julie will show you to your new office.  On your way out, tell Julie to get me the White House.  I have to make sure the President knows this isn’t an enemy or terrorist attack.”

The assistant nodded and ran back through the door to the outer office.

“One little girl.” The Director fingered the photos for a moment before picking up the report again.

They had feared that the power levels of the Level Threes would be greater than those of the Level Twos by several magnitudes…but this?  One little girl destroys and entire city. Incinerates millions of people. By accident!

He sat still for a moment before he pulled the keyboard to his computer before him and pulled up an earlier report scanning through it until he found what he was looking for.

Level Three, it appeared, would be the top tier.  They wouldn’t have to worry about a Level Four coming along in twenty or so years.

“If a single Level Three can do this, then God help us if the eggheads are wrong and we do get a Level Four.”  

He read further and sighed in relief.  The scientists had predicted that Level Threes with the power levels displayed by this poor girl would be extremely rare.  Most of those would end up like that girl.  Dead before they even knew what the hell was going on with their bodies as their powers activated for the first time. Dead because the human body, no matter how much it was altered, could only handle so much.

The Director shook his head and pushed the keyboard away. The human body could only handle so much.  Right. There was a time, before the Heart-Stopper comet, before the first Level Ones began to appear, that those scientists would have said that the human body couldn’t handle even the power levels of the Level Ones and Twos, much less the Threes.

 “It had to happen someday.” He whispered to himself. He opened his eyes and glanced at the two portraits that adorned the wall across from his desk.  The two men that had sat in this chair before him. One day his portrait would join theirs and someone else would be sitting here, glaring at his portrait, trying to find answers to whatever problems he or she faced, hoping he had some answers.  Like the portraits on the wall already, his would only glare back, offering nothing.

“The World will never be the same.” He snorted in disgust. “The world stopped being ‘the same’ in 1968.”

1968.  The year the first Level One appeared.  Exactly nineteen years after the Heart-Stopper. All children conceived and born after the Heart-Stopper had passed. Twenty-one years later, the first Level Twos began to appear.  All children of those children born after 1949. The second generation. If this girl was the first of the Level Threes, then she had to have been born in 1993.  About the time the generation of the Level Twos began having children. The third generation.

He shook his head and used the mouse to scroll through the report again.  The first part was primarily background he already knew.  Though the scientists still had not discovered exactly how it worked, they could and had put some of the pieces together.

It was common knowledge that the Earth had been bathed in the particles from the tail of the Heart-Stopper comet for several weeks near the end of 1948.  Nearly every human beings on the planet had been exposed to the particles. For most this meant absolutely nothing. In most cases, the particles simply failed to take root and were eventually flushed from the body.  But for others, the particles found fertile ground and took up permanent residence.  The particles fused with their hosts and made alterations to the hosts DNA that did not affect them but did have an effect on children conceived after the Heart-Stopper, but only if both parents had the altered DNA.  Nine times out of ten, nothing would come of it.  One time out of ten, however….

The percentages for chances of producing a Level One were still the same today.  The percentages for producing a Level Two were vastly different.   For one, both parents of a Level Two had to be Level One Carriers.  Whether they were Level Ones themselves or simply the children of parents that could have produced a Level One didn’t matter.

At first, there had been a panic when it was thought that the world would suddenly be inundated with Level Twos. Though there was still no scientific explanation for it, history had shown that the chances of a Level Two being the result of such a union were much less.  Where there was a one in ten chance of a Level One being born to parents originally…infected…by the comet particles, the chances of their children producing a Level Two were one in a three hundred. Of course the percentages the scientists assigned were so much bullshit as far as the Director was concerned.  No one really knew how many Level Ones or Twos were out there or whether or not more were being born.  All anyone knew for sure was that there appeared to be more Level Ones than Twos and from that they assumed that the number of Level Threes that would soon be appearing would be significantly less than the number of Level Twos.

One thing everyone was in agreement with was the impact those Level Threes would have. 

Now Kansas City was proof of it.  So far they had been able to explain away the Level Ones and, to some degree, the Level Twos.  There would be no hiding the Level Threes now.  From this day forward, all bets were off. From this day on, it was a new and more dangerous world than ever before.

“Sir….I tried the White House…they routed me to the Secretary of the Armed Forces.” Julie’s voice sounded over his intercom.

“Thank you, Julie.” He spoke to the air as he lifted the handset of his phone. Great.  Just Great.  Of course she couldn’t get the President.  As far as he knew, the current President probably didn’t even realize their agency even existed.

“Mr. Secretary?  Carl Durick here, sir.  I am afraid we have a bit of a situation, sir.  It’s about Kansas City…..”