12 Years Ago - The Day of the Silent Scream

  Grunting with effort, Pinn pulled up and flapped a piece of concrete like it was a tarp. Flowing, the hard material rose and froze into a slant leading into a building. A stray side effect sent a long crack into the concrete, but nothing that would trouble the integrity of its material. Kicking the surface to make sure it stayed frozen, Pinn nodded his flame at his handiwork and turned to the owner.

  Slowly making his way on crutches, the small bookshop owner smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Lightcrown. Are you certain there’s nothing I can do to pay you for your efforts?”

  “I’m good,” Pinn assured him. “I’m still impressed you spent so long going up and down stairs on crutches before calling for help.”

  The man looked older than Pinn’s father, wrinkles and gray hairs spotting his head. His beard was cut short and his shoulders sat in line with his chin as he leaned on his crutches. Judging by the cast on his leg, he had recently broken a bone and realized the importance of a ramp to get into his shop.

  “I inherited this place from my father, you know,” the man mused. “We didn’t have anything like ADA compliance in his time. And I would have gotten something paved, myself, if I could afford it. This is thousands of dollars of work you did. Are you certain you’re fine taking nothing? Not even a few hundred?”

  “Accessibility is important,” Pinn said firmly. “Really, you don’t owe me anything. I’m from Hammerton, too, you know? Happy to help my town. I’m gonna go check for anyone else asking for assistance.”

  “Take care, Lightcrown.” The man nodded gratefully as Pinn ran away from him before launching into the sky.

  It was best to keep distance in case there were side effects when he used Flight.

  As he soared to the height of the clouds, Pinn felt a sickly sensation coil down his spine. Nothing like he’d ever felt before. Like a premonition of something ominous to come. Steadying himself in the air, Pinn scanned the world below for anything that looked out of place. He couldn’t shake the feeling, so he did the only thing he could think of.

  Shutting off his Lightcrown, he pulled out his phone to call his mom.

  “Pinny! How did the work with Mr. Abernathy go? Do you need me to come help?”

  “No problems, Ma. I made him a ramp and he seemed really happy with it.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Pinny!” his mother chimed.

  She said that every time, regardless of the scale of the job. Pulling cats out of a tree elicited as much pride as saving a family from a gas explosion in Upham. But somehow he knew she meant it every time. Smiling as a cloud passed through him, Pinn allowed the moment to ease him.

  “I’m up in the sky right now, but I had this weird feeling. Like something’s off.”

  “You think Boli’s back?” Serena’s voice turned serious. “Channel 34 had that article claiming to have heard rumors from Boli a while back. Where he intended to kill you.”

  “I dunno Ma. Something about that felt sensationalized, or maybe manufactured. Like Boli had someone on the inside to say the words he wanted the world to hear. Made it feel fake. The feeling passed. Maybe it was a power misfire.”

  It had been three months since Pinn last destroyed a bot, doing as many jobs as needed to be done around the city. With the help of his parents, he set up a way to call for his aid without giving out any personal information. If anyone used the hashtag “AssistMeLightcrown,” Pinn would read the message and usually end up going to an address to check it out. Ma was very keen on using “assist” over “help.” It felt less desperate, and more like it was building a community to assist one another.

  Through the anonymous tips, Lightcrown had been able to assist some people as the emergencies were still ongoing, one time stopping a robbery before they could even fill their bags. As gratifying as it was to constantly be praised for his actions, Serena would always remind him to remain down to earth, even as he literally flew above planes.

  Flicking off moisture from a passing cloud, Pinn pulled his phone off his ear to scan Chirpper. Scrolling, he double checked that Mr. Abernathy’s bookstore was the last request.

  “I would still be wary of the threat. I’ll keep an eye out, Pinny. If you’re feeling a little out of it, don’t be afraid to come home and get some rest. You never want to push yourself too hard.”

  “I’ll be fine, Ma. I don’t think I’m even close to hitting my limit. Thanks for taking the call.”

  “Of course, Pinny.”

  The ominous sensation returned, nauseating him to his core and pumping his heart erratically. Wincing, he made a pained sound.

  “Pinn?” Serena sounded scared.

  Pinn’s phone burst into a dozen notifications for the keyword. Panicking, he tapped his phone to check the first one, but the worst happened.

  A side effect sliced his phone clean in half, killing it instantly. Eyes widening, he held the two halves of his phone, his own reflection a mortifying gaze.

  Thrusting the broken device into his pocket, he burst his head into flame and Enhanced his hearing and sight, scanning the city rapidly. Screams erupted in the distance, and Pinn winced as he tried to zero in on their location. It was taking so long! The city of Hammerton was huge when he didn’t know where to look!

  Bursting around the air, he dashed above districts in search until he narrowed down the restlessness on the Indus District. As Pinn tore into their airspace, a wave of sensory overload washed over him: earsplitting alarm blares, the ferocious roar of car engines recklessly fleeing the scene, and the panicked screams of the people below, a chilling chorus of fear.

  Bots. Hundreds of them rampaged across over thirty blocks of the district. And from his vantage above, he saw they weren’t pulling punches like they normally would. Bones broke under attacks, blood strewn across windows, pavement, and cars. Rocks and crowbars clanged as thrown around the scene, some from and others towards the bots. Pinn had less than a heartbeat to absorb the scene before diving below to the first bot he could stop.

  Crashing into it with full force, Pinn was stunned to see the machine withstand his attack. The bots had been so easy to destroy before, only a single Enhanced hit was all it took. Now, it had a deep dent, but no internal wiring exposed itself after the attack.

  The machine was different now, a fully humanoid build with five fingers and a smooth, round head with electronic red eyes beneath a dark surface frame. Every limb moved smoothly like it had learned by motion tracking fight scenes in movies and the material was denser, a clean obsidian black instead of rusted metal. Bouncing from foot to foot, it tracked Pinn with the nimbleness of a pro boxer in the ring.

  “Donate to The Cause!” it demanded. Even its voice box had been enhanced. Clear. Menacing.

  “Boli, when I find you, you’re dead!” Pinn screamed.

  Increasing the density in his fist, his knuckles forming into lead, Pinn thrust it forward and crushed the bot’s head in a single blow. Even without its head, the bot gripped him tightly with its arms.

  “Compliance is mandatory. Donate to The Cause.”

  Setting his entire body ablaze, Pinn melted through the bot’s exterior and shredded components out from within until it stopped twitching. Breathing, Pinn listened close and quickly located the nearest bot. With a grunt, Pinn leaped hundreds of feet to the next bot towering over a man desperately crying over his son. Under a flipped car, the son lay motionless, the car stomped on by the merciless machine.

  “Boli! Shut it down!” Pinn demanded.

  Stacking more powers over himself, he felt unstoppable, rapidly pulling the bot apart and cleaving it in two with a flaming headbutt. Tossing the bot aside, Pinn barely had time to address the father and son.

  With a passing thought, he wondered where first responders were, then he saw that the car that was on top of the child was a cop car. They already came and were destroyed. Maybe targeted first to get them out of the way?

  Kicking the car away with a flick of his ankle, Pinn kneeled down and felt at the child. Alive, but barely. People were going to die without Lightcrown, that was certain.

  With no time to waste, he slapped life into the boy with a shocking power, who screamed, wide awake.

  “Get as far away from here as you can!”

  “Thank you, Lightcrown!” the father called.

  “Now! Go!”

  Rocketing into the nearest building, Pinn stopped a bot as it attempted to bring its fist down on a child screaming in her bed. With a crunch of his hand, Pinn obliterated the bot and the entirety of the wall behind him in a single movement. So long as the child was safe, he didn’t care about the side effects.

  “Hey kiddo, you need to leave. Where are you parents?”

  Trembling, the kid pointed to two inert bodies fallen at her door. Blood pooled around them. Tears came and evaporated from Pinn’s eyes under the white flame. Their daughter couldn’t have been older than four years old.

  “I’m sorry. You still need to go to safety. I’m gonna carry you outside, but you’ll have to run from there, okay?”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “What about Mommy and Daddy?”

  “I’m sorry.” Pinn repeated, taking her in his arms and blasting them out of the house into a neighborhood a few blocks away, safe from the carnage. The girl’s eyes were wide and she wouldn’t stop trembling or clinging to Pinn.

  “Sorry, I have to go. I’m sorry,” Pinn insisted with a cracking voice, forcefully pulling her off and darting back into the fray.

  Bot after bot, Pinn took down dozens, but there were always people injured or dying in their wake. Pinn’s side effects once melted down an entire building and he had no sense to tell whether people were inside when it collapsed. Every power he could conceive and more were flaring around him as he dashed from event to event, melting pavement, sucking away electricity, or obliterating cars on the way. It allowed him to destroy every bot the moment he arrived. But he felt like he was doing more damage than the bots.

  Spinning in place, Pinn shot out beams of energy, slicing into bots and sparing their nearby victims. Pinn saw a family of five raise their heads from a protective huddle. The youngest boy, maybe five, smiled widely when he saw Lightcrown. Despite the flames and screams around him, the boy saluted with a wide grin.

  “Get to safety!” Pinn called to them, moving to the next bot.

  Five bots pounced on him at once, smashing him into the ground. Spinning, Pinn thrust one off and burned through a second. A bot bashed into his side with its metallic fists while another tried to pin his arms to his sides.

  Furious, Pinn emitted pure energy, exploding the bots in a raucous blast, shaking the ground like a localized earthquake. Before he could regain his bearings, Pinn noticed blood running down his leg. Blinking, he saw that he’d been stabbed several times. Focusing on the wound to close it, he was suddenly pummeled by another set of bots, smashing his whole frame though the floor.

  “You are preventing donations to The Cause.”

  “Shut up!” Pinn snapped, pulling his head up from an indentation in the asphalt.

  Walloping the closest machine with his forehead, it unraveled like a spool of twine in wind and whisked into the sky. A side effect shot down another bot with a bolt of lightning, and he smashed a fist into a third, shutting it off through an Electromagnetic wave. Mind a blur, he felt the mental anguish of another victim.

  A ten-year-old child was being torn apart by two bots.

  Eyes scanning as he flew toward him, the boy’s muscles screamed in protest, stretched to their breaking point, and Pinn heard the agonizing tiny tears of muscles. Crying out in agony, the boy called for his life to end, just for the pain to stop there and not get any worse.

  Then, a bot disappeared.

  Flopping down in the arms of the other bot, the boy blinked from his upside down position. Two metal legs smoked where the bot was standing only an instant ago.

  Pinn was in pure action mode, pulsating with untamed energy, he melted the first bot and its legs with bursts of hot-white.

  Rearing a shining arm back, he thrust it into the second bot and melted it from the inside. The boy fell from the malfunctioning bot releasing its grip and was immediately caught by a quick swipe of Pinn’s arm, placing the panicked child gingerly on the ground in the span of a heartbeat. The small boy wobbled slightly, unfocused.

  “Get out of here, it’s not safe,” Pinn told him and pointed. “You need to run as fast as you can. Go toward Hammerton Central.”

  “Can you come with me?” The boy surged forward and clung to his leg. “I don’t wanna go by myself.”

  Kneeling down, Pinn knew his face was inscrutable behind his white flame, but smiled nonetheless. Forcing some levity to calm the boy, he placed a softness in his tone.

  “Sorry, buddy, but I have to go save more people. I need you to be brave and go. Now.”

  To his relief, the boy nodded. Without even waiting for that cue, Pinn was already on the move, pivoting in place and blasting off with such force that the kid stumbled back. He hoped he would make it out fine.

  Heart pumping and wounds closing, Pinn felt an exhilaration of power. Thin smile on his face, the adrenaline fueled him with delight. He had never used so many powers before, but now he was forced to, throwing every power at his disposal toward everything in the area. Every blow caused another miraculous form of destruction, stopping another bot from its deadly approach. A punch threw a bot into a void. Kicks spawned clouds that decayed the bots in moments. Even his Lightcrown had grown four feet tall, intense enough to melt a bot in a single touch.

  But the bots were endless and insanely modular. Every limb he tore off would come crawling back to hold him down unless totally obliterated. The more the bots watched him, the more they dodged his attacks, learning as the onslaught continued. They dexterously bobbed under his punches only to be shredded by a side effect. They weaved between his kicks, imploding from other unintended powers. And he was certain the new arrivals were learning from a shared network, not having the chance to see him attack, but reading his moves nonetheless. The change in bots baffled him. He had trained his powers in the time since he last fought Boli’s creation, but he didn’t expect the machines to improve so exponentially in the meantime.

  Another bot dove in and slashed a deep gash across his face, spilling blood everywhere. Focusing on it in retaliation was a mistake. By the time he shrunk it down to nothing, three more bots stabbed and cut him. Eerily, he had a faint sense of nostalgia for the mugging that started his journey. But these wounds were much more serious. And if he died, those same bots would continue their rampage on the thousands in Indus and beyond.

  Roaring in rage and pain, Pinn decided he’d finish the battle before it got any worse.

  No more holding back.

  Allowing every power at his disposal to course through him, Pinn placed his palm on the head of a bot, disintegrating it all at once. More sharp blades cut through him, and Pinn obliterated anything that came into contact with him. Taking steps forward, a gold-white orb spun around him, destroying more and more bots that dared to race into his shield of chaotic energy.

  Through his exploding senses, Pinn saw the sprawling mass raid on the city was over. The glowing energy was too much of a threat and drew the attention of the entire army at once. Every single bot in the vicinity swarmed him like piranhas to fresh meat.

  To Pinn’s surprise, even his power at full strength wasn’t enough to hold them away from him. Boosting in at top speed, some broke through his defence and got hits on him, bashing his jaw and stabbing limbs. More blood spilled to the floor, and he found his vision fuzzing, his legs screaming to rest.

  Grabbing a robotic arm just before it bashed into his throat, he tightened his grip to hold it down, looking at a dozen more breaking through the golden white orb with ferocity. The incoming march was endless. Pinn needed rest. Just a moment to take in the situation. A second to think. Energy welled up inside.

  “Stop!” Pinn unleashed every power at once to destroy everything in the near vicinity and get a second to breathe.

  The sound of his voice was so loud, it spread across the skies like a sonic boom, his single word echoing and drowning out the sounds of his stacked powers and mechanized assailants. A burst of golden energy blasted out of him, like a bomb going off and shredding apart all the bots closest to him. Others still survived; hundreds slowly pushing against invisible energy to get to him. Shouting again for a second wave, Pinn found that he lost his voice.

  No. He watched the mechanics whirr in exposed limbs and cars blink. In the background, people’s mouths opened calling to their loved ones, but no sound left their lips. Something much stranger had happened.

  His shout was the last noise to escape the area. Everything had gone silent.

  Energy within him flaring, the golden-white energy bubble continued to expand, engulfing machines and tearing them apart before disintegrating them. Stretching further, the pulsating mass of energy jumped out dozens of feet at a time, grabbing the edge of buildings and deconstructing them. Mortified, Pinn reached an arm out to reel back the energy.

  It didn’t respond.

  Continuing in silence, the ball of energy with him at its epicenter consumed everything in its path. The bots fell to their knees and reached arms to him one last time before atomizing. The entire army dissipated under the oppressive force of the consuming energy. Pinn’s eyes widened as he took in the scene; all of Boli’s bots were defeated, their metallic bodies like dandelions in a windstorm.

  But he couldn’t stop his power. It continued to expand.

  Screaming into the silence, more energy involuntarily spilled out of him. Flames from his Lightcrown bloomed and expanded into the neighboring streets, racing through like massive dragons. Bobbing up and down, they consumed with fiery destruction. Heart heavy, Pinn saw people in the streets beyond, but they couldn’t hear the oncoming attack before perishing to it.

  Tears streaming down his face, Pinn screamed more and more, desperately trying to pull back the ever-expanding energies. An earthquake rocked the world and lightning danced at buildings all across the district, exploding things in the distance.

  All in blood-curdling, deadly silence.

  Scratching at his face, Pinn couldn’t even reduce his Lightcrown. The one power he thought he could trust. The flood gates wouldn’t close. Running to help people escape, the powers followed him and flared even more powerfully, exploding an entire three story building, its shrapnel shredding through its neighbors. More bodies showed themselves in the remains.

  Hot tears blinded him. He was a walking catastrophe that he couldn’t stop. Every bit of good he had done in Hammerton were utterly erased by the single event; the ground stained crimson, the air thick with the stench of death. Hundreds, maybe thousands, already dead at his hand.

  Falling to his knees, Pinn couldn’t think of what to do. The silence was so loud in his mind.

  The power kept growing. Devouring.

  Small meteors pelted everything around him, lava erupted from under one of the buildings, while a second was wholly upended and thrown on its head. Another was spontaneously crushed like an aluminum can.

  All trapped in silence.

  Pulling chunks from his hair, Pinn screamed to the heavens in silence, watching the unending apocalypse unfold around him. Somehow, it was worse that he was totally unaffected by the cataclysm. Except for the wounds left by the bots, Pinn was almost unscathed by his own destruction.

  The energy advanced further.

  Head snapping up, Pinn suddenly thought of his parents. They were in Hammerton Central, and it was only a matter of time before his energy consumed the entire city. With all his effort, he tried to pull the energy back. Reduce it just the slightest amount. Any ounce of control.

  More buildings fell. More people died.

  The energy pressed on.

  As a last ditch effort, Pinn looked up to the sky immediately above him. Breathing erratically, he thought that maybe if he used Flight to race into space, he could take the destruction with him. If he was a living calamity, then he needed to take himself elsewhere.

  Grabbing a fistful of rubble in his hand, he ran his arm over the tears in his eyes. Hammerton was a part of him, but if he wanted to save it and his family, he would be forced to leave it. Closing his eyes in anguish, Pinn screamed one last time into total silence.

  Kneeling down, he exploded into the sky. Clouds blew away for miles and a fiery, lightning tornado followed him into the sky. Even racing through air, Pinn could feel the world shaking and bursting around him, like his very presence was pulling at the seams of existence. Pushing himself, he rocketed further into the sky, flying so fast that he couldn’t keep his eyes open or catch a breath.

  That was fine. He was going into space. Breathing was already off the table. Gripping tightly to the rubble, he held onto the last piece of home as it burned away in his hand.

  Tears streaking and tearing away from his cheeks in rapid succession, Pinn felt the cold embrace him like an iceberg surrounding him. The atmosphere thinned, and he felt the last bit of air resistance. Then, gravity’s hold released him, and he tumbled head over heels, a rush of flame sparking from him as he used Flight to steady his slowing ascent.

  Steeling himself, Pinn risked opening his eyes to assess his current state.

  To his shock and relief, the ball of energy was gone. The sound of his own heart drummed loudly in his ears. Sound returned. As well as a tenuous sense of control over his powers. Trying to take a deep breath, Pinn found that the air was too thin. A tiny sip of air fed his lungs and he descended slowly back into the atmosphere. The devouring orb was gone and he could finally take a moment to think.

  Suddenly, he had a thought that maybe the ever-expanding energy had remained behind when he launched. Continuing to consume as he fled into the sky.

  Snapping his head to check below, Pinn stared in horror.

  He was pretty sure the untenable orb of energy was gone. But it was hard to see past the mushroom cloud he left behind, stretching a mile into the sky and obscuring the world below.