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Heroes Beneath Us

"So far we've been lucky. Most Supers come forward without resistance, but a few do resist. We've been lucky that those who do resist do so because of ideals, not because they feel all powerful because I'm not sure what's going to happen when someone comes along who is all powerful and thinks that he's above the law. What happens when we have another Super Villain such as Fatal Eye or Singularity? What then? Do we send our finest out to die to bring them in? We don't have our own Supers to deal with them. We're weak, vulnerable and the government realizes this. It's why they're lashing out because we're scared and nothing is more dangerous than a cornered animal that is determined to live. Now the question is, who's cornering who?"

-CMDR. Fenson (RET.) speaking at a convention against registration in New York City, October 19, 2020

Chapter 4

Downtown Detroit, Michigan

October 20, 2020

*This is Officer Connell, dispatch four-oh-bravo, in pursuit of black sedan heading down North Crosby and approaching West Thranton at high speed. Subject is an African American Human, mid twenties. Requesting back up.

Copy that. All officers in the area of North Crosby intersecting West Thranton please respond.

This is dispatch two-three-alpha responding and enroute.*

Tyrone Rivers turned his police scanner down and turned up the radio as he evaded the oncoming traffic who honked and flared their lights at him. He dodged them easily enough, they were so predictable in their movements. He knew exactly when and where the drivers would turn to evade him and he went the opposite way. From above it would have looked impossible as he thread his car through the eye of a needle that was rush hour traffic of the industrial city of Detroit.

"All this because of registration." Rivers said to himself as he casually drove. Anyone else would have been clinging to their steering wheel as they saw lives flash before their eyes each time a new set of headlights threatened to kill them. Rivers was different, very different. He had the music up on some random station, playing pop music as he leaned back in his seat and drove with one hand while eating some french fries that were cold and soggy. He sipped from his cup and turned the wheel to the right, moments after the other driver, an aged Bull in an oversized truck, decided to turn left and into a light pole.

"Amateur." He looked back over his shoulder and yelled at the truck that now had a plume of smoke coming out of it. He noticed the massive amount of police cars that were beginning to collect behind him. They were faring better than the truck driver since he was essentially blazing a clear path through traffic. He flipped off the police even though they couldn't see. He did this while still evading and maneuvering through the traffic. "When will they ever learn."

He put more pressure on the gas pedal, pushing the 2004 Corolla, hardly a car for this kind of action, to its limits. He was passing ninety miles and hour, a speed the police officers in pursuit were hesitant to match in the middle of a crowded city with pedestrians filling both sides of the street. They watched and filmed the chase as the car and cruisers blared past them.

Rivers dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He needed somewhere to go. He held down the home button until he heard a familiar beep.

"What fast food places are nearby?" He asked his phone. The line on the bottom curved at the sound of his voice and then the phone began to search just for what he wanted.

Another beep. "There are these fast food restaurants nearby." It replied. "Is there one you would like to go to?"

He scrolled down the long list. What was he hungry for? There were plenty of burger joints, but after finishing his last french fry, he wanted something else. He went down the list. There it was, Jorge's Tacos.

"Give me directions to the nearest Jorge's Tacos." Rivers said and his phone obediently obeyed, connecting to the internet and bringing up a map of the city along with clear directions to where his chosen destination.

"Turn left in twenty five..." The phone paused as Rivers blazed past the intersection he was supposed to turn at. "Recalculating."

"Fuck it." Rivers threw the phone on the passenger seat. He didn't even blink as he drove past a frightened couple who, just a moment, before had been in his path as they tried to get out of the way. He, without even thinking about it, had turned at the last second to avoid them. What was mere milliseconds was more like an eternity to react for Rivers.

That was Rivers' unique ability. He had reflexes so fast and so smooth that he could dodge anything that he could see or even comprehend. His brain was in a state of overdrive, every action he took seemed to be in slow motion. He knew exactly where cars were going to be as he swerved and turned through the heavy traffic. He saw every opening and every opportunity to move out of danger in an instant. That was why, when there was a single, small flash on the third floor of an apartment to his right, he turned the wheel hard.

Rivers had perfect reflexes, the car did not.

There was a loud and abrupt screech as a single, well placed 30-06 round, meant for killing deer, plowed through the engine compartment, instantly killing it.

Rivers didn't see it, but his brain did. Overcome with a sudden urgency, Rivers ducked as a second round broke through the driver side window of the now dead and coasting car and into the passenger side door. It missed his head by less than a millimeter, but as far as Rivers was concerned a miss was a miss, it might as well have been a mile off.

"Fucking, stop moving." Robert cursed as he pulled his rifle, a Remington that he had purchased online the previous week, deep into his shoulder. That second round should have hit. The inside of the car should have been left a gory mess of brain matter and skull fragments, but that was if he was hunting an ordinary human. Robert knew better.

The buck wanted to take another shot, but there was no way he was going to hit Rivers, aka Bullet Time as the children liked to call him. He knew where he was and that meant that nothing he could shoot at him would hit. It had been a major chink in the buck's pride. He considered himself the greatest hunter who ever live. He had spent two decades traveling the world. At first he hunted animals, lions, elephants, anything exotic as he filled his home in Upstate New York with all kinds of taxidermy of his wild adventures. Then that grew boring as he hunted all of the most dangerous and exotic animals on the planet, all except one, man.

It started slow and hesitant. The buck had never killed a living, breathing human being. Sure he played video games which he somehow found out he suffered in as he quickly came to the realization that every twelve year old in existence has at one point been to his mother's house. How rude of them.

The first was picked randomly, a normal, middle aged man coming home from work one evening. Robert had been in a tree stand overlooking the road from a mile away, never letting his open eye leave his scope. He had let many people pass through his gaze, but he didn't fire at them before. He had been scared to kill them. No one ever came looking for him for killing some rhino in Africa because he had done it legally though the government. This was unsanctioned and murder.

The day was growing dark, his time was running out and Robert told himself that he was going shoot the next car that was going to come around the curve.

The stretch of road he was looking at was small, a small gap in the tree line gave him only a precious few seconds to get one single shot that would have to be taken as soon as the target came into view. He could have gotten closer, much closer, but he liked the challenge, or the illusion of challenge.

Like Bullet Time, who was still taking shelter in his now stopped car that had bumped into another crashed vehicle, Robert was gifted in his own way. Bullet Time could dodge anything he saw, Robert could hit anything he could see, except Bullet Time. The mile long shot, impossible by most accounts might as well have been point blank. His mind worked fast, calculating exactly when and where he should aim at a moment's notice, he was only limited by his reflexes.

His cross hairs sat at the tree line far above the road.. The bullet once fired, would travel at a speed of twenty-five-hundred feet per second or about seven-hundred-and-sixty meters per seconds. It would spend just over two seconds in the air, being pounded by air and gravity that would drop it and move it to the left. Even though it looked as if he was aiming at the sky, the bullet would go right where he wanted it to, about five feet off the road on the right side, where a driver would be.

He didn't waste time as a blue sedan came around the corner. Robert fired instantly, his muscle memory acting before the brain signals were even properly registered.

The deer didn't have to watch. Years of an absolutely perfect record was all he needed to rely on to know that in two seconds, a person would die instantly and without pain. It would be a clean kill.

Two seconds later, his prediction came true as the only thing he saw was the glass shatter before the car disappeared into the trees.

Normally, Robert would immediately get down to the kill to inspect it, but this time he slowly lowered the run and rested it on his lap. He looked out over the landscape. It was beautiful with the trees rustling in the wind, stretching out for miles and covering the mountains like a green blanket. There were some birds of prey soaring overhead, looking for their next meals, flying in the sky that was turning a fiery red. It was calming and that was as strange thought.

Robert was expecting to feel something from his first murder. Remorse? Excitement? He felt nothing even though he fully knew what he had done. No, he felt at peace, as if what he had done was what he was meant to be, that it was natural and therefore there was no reason for some dramatic reaction. He was meant to hunt man, it was his calling and at that moment, Headshot was born.

The name came later, much later after the FBI and CIA put together a profile on his. Twenty confirmed kills later, done by perfect head-shots. The first five were random, just people unlucky enough to be there at the wrong place during the wrong time. The rest were people on interest. People that were more likely to be more difficult targets. Headshot wanted to test his abilities and who better than criminals and politicians. He left a trail of fear and single bullet casings in his wake.

They came after him in force and they could never get him. Not because he was hard to find. No, Robert was not some espionage expert who could disappear, he was just some man. He was very easy to find. The reason why he was never caught was because those that came after him soon found themselves with a hole in their head. They soon learned to talk to him and he talked back. Robert believed himself to be reasonable so he let the negotiator into his house that was surrounded by police and military alike and he negotiated. An hour later, they were gone. He agreed to stop the killing. He lied, partially. He had his fun with the normal people, he had his sights on someone new.

It had come on the evening news. It was a story about an armed robbery at a bank in some backwater town in Missouri. The gunmen outgunned to local police and county sheriffs and were going to get away when some one stepped forward.

Robert was intrigued at the individual who was shown from an aerial view from a helicopter. He wore a gray jacket and jeans. Nothing spectacular there, but when he got shot at, that was what caught the deer's attention as he put away his perfectly prepared salad to lean closer in. They shot at him... a lot and the man seemed to dance, dodging right and left and not getting hit. They emptied everything they had at him as the scenery behind him was decimated by thousands of rounds of ammunition that had all failed to find their target.

They called him Bullet Time and instantly Headshot was intrigued and now had his last and most challenging hunt.

What happens when something that can't be hit meets something that can't miss? Well it turns out that there isn't something that can't miss. The shot had been perfectly line up. Headshot had waited three hours for the man, an African American who lived in a decent middle class home in the suburbs of Jefferson City. He had watched him for a week, learning his routine.

Headshot knew that this man, who he only knew as Bullet Time worked for a business that sold timeshares. He left home every week day to go to work at seven in the morning and didn't return home until six in the evening, sometimes later which was fine, he only needed to be there once. It only ever took one time.

Just like with the car, the first kill, the woman on her bike ride, the second and all of the others, Headshot set up far away, very far away. While Bullet Time was in the suburbs, Headshot was on a power pole, one and a half miles away. He had his normal hunting rifle, a Remington along with the biggest scope he could fine, even then, the target was about the size of a grain of rice, easy.

Headshot knew exactly how Bullet Time walked, what path he took to his car, how long it took him to back up. A week's worth of information was processed to line up a shot. The bullet would enter his head right as he leaned down to unlock his car. It would be fast and painless, like always.

Headshot watched as he saw the target, this time in a fairly respectably charcoal gray suit come out of his home and lock the door. He walked down the sidewalk to a small gate that led to the driveway. He opened it, walked through and closed it. So far, he did everything the same way that he always did it. Routine made life easier, the body got used to doing things the same way every time and that made for an easy shot.

The gate was closed and the trigger was pulled. The gun jerked into the deer's shoulder the exact same way it always did and he didn't blink as he watched the target lean down to open his car. He stopped an instant too soon.

The car window shattered and Bullet Time was still alive, having dodged the bullet by less than a hair's width. He saw it coming as soon as the muzzle flash reached him, well before the bullet.

It was the first miss. The first of many.

Now it was years, many years later and the human was still alive. He was right there in his car, hiding and Headshot couldn't hit him, not now. There was no point in even trying anymore.

Not caring that the cops were now surrounding the dead vehicle, Headshot picked up his rifle and left. They wouldn't catch him, they couldn't touch him. He would slip away as the government cracked down on people like him, people like both of them. Eventually, they would come for Headshot. The deer knew this. The old deals were off, they would come, but not in the way he expected.

The deer was surprised when he opened the door to the empty apartment he had broken into to find, not an empty hall way, but a Canine in a uniform, with a smile.

"My name is Special Agent Roman. You mind if we sit down and talk. I have a job offer for you."