Chapter 9 - Mineral City

By the time we make it to Mineral City, the sun is starting to rise. It's 7;30am, it's been almost 5 hours since our escape from the hotel, and the hunters. We still don't know who they are, but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

From what I've heard of hunters, they are some of the most resilient creatures on the planet, and will not stop until their job is complete. It's likely that from now until we die, we'll have a target on our backs.

A hunter is typically an above average human, in past times their ranks were made up of the experimental super soldiers, that birthed Captain Liberty, but in recent years, there's been an abundance of Supers that have been offered a choice. Join the ranks of the very hunters that captured them, or lose their powers.

To your average human, this is a betrayal on the deepest level. "Supers" were supposed to be gone, in all ways, shapes, and forms. But the world was too unstable to lose some of it's major assets because of the feelings of the people. And so, prior to the rise of The Humanity First Party, a law was passed, allowing select "Supers" to keep their abilities, on the condition they were fitted with an internal control device, that could immobilize and even kill them on activation.

The hunters we evaded at the hotel must have been fitted with a device like this. Maybe even The Man on Fire had this implant. Although he seemed different to the hunters from last night. They had personality. They were still people. I don't know what had happened to The Man on Fire, but those eyes were not those of a human. If anything they were closer to that of a demon.

I pull the car into a parking lot on the outskirts of Mineral City, and wake my daughter at the same time.

"Claire, we're here"

"uhhh, Dad, what? where?" She arises from her slumber, and is still lost to the world until she rubs her eyes a few times. She looks up and sees a sign in front of her; Mineral City - Population 2 million.

"Welcome to Mineral City" I say, to try and lift the mood a little.

"Come on, it's just around the corner" I usher her out of the car, and we start walking towards one of my old hideouts, one of the 27 I have around the nation, so I could react as quickly as possible to a crisis, no matter where I was.

"The Mineral City hideout is one of my favorite, I'm glad you finally get to see it."

"Why this one? Aren't they all the same?" Claire replies confused.

"They all ended up the same, but there must always come a first. And this was it."

We round the corner to where the hideout should be, and before I see it, I turn to Claire, and say "Welcome to the first place your Mother and I shared"

I look over at Claire, and she's laughing. Am I really that excited to see it, that it's making her laugh so much.

"Dad, turn around" She snickers.

I turn around to look at the building, and it's different than what I remember to say the least. Colored in with new, but familiar colors, the colors of Sheerforce. It was a goddamn museum.

We go over to the front door bemused, and are met by an attendant, who just rudely points at a sign to the side of the door. It read; Opening Hours 8:30am to 4:30pm. They began to walk away when Claire knocked on the door to get their attention, and furiously pointed at my face.

This was the part I always hated, the recognition. I see the cogs start turning in their head as they quickly grab one of the brochures with a picture of me on, and line it up next to my face. I just give back a solemn look as if to say, yes, that's me.

"Could you please let us in, my Dad left something important in here last time he was here" Claire tries to play on their humanity, and the shell-shock of meeting a "celebrity". To nobody's surprise it just happens to work.

"I shouldn't be doing this, I could get in big trouble for this" The attendant looks worried. The news! In my disbelief, I had managed to forget that my face had been plastered all over the news for the last 3 days. Am I getting old or is it just the sleep deprivation doing it to me. Either way we need to find the spare locator, and find Sara. The attendant stops for a second. "Is it true? Did you kill all those people?"

A question I normally wouldn't even acknowledge, but age had softened my personality, and I just shoot the attendant a wink as we walk past.

Claire sees what that wink did to the attendant, and quickly clarifies, "That's just him trying to be funny, of course he didn't kill anyone, he's SHEERFORCE, savior of Aincar" I wonder how she had ever heard that phrase, and then I look up, it's everywhere, I'm everywhere.

"Kiddo, come on, we don't have all day" I say as I usher Claire along.

We go upstairs to the apartment I seemingly used to own, and I usher Claire through the door.

She takes one look at the room and goes "Is this it? Where's all the cool stuff?" She looks over at me and see the look of annoyance on my face, and she tries to get back in my good graces by picking up the gloves out of the display case, and looking towards one of my earlier super-suits, that I definitely did not leave here. "This is coool. I guess." I appreciate it. She's trying.

"Yeah yeah, come on Claire, hold this for me" she looks confused as I pass her one of the pods containing yet another part of my crime fighting gear, this time my old utility belt, that I kept handcuffs and communicators in. God I hate my younger self.

I reach down and press a button on the floor which releases a panel on the wall. I press my hand up against it, and a bright white outline of a door starts to appear on the wall. I turn to Claire who at this point is totally lost as to what's going on and say "You wanted to see something cool, right?"

And with that I step through the blinding light, and without hesitation, Claire follows.