CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY

Prison Break, Part 1

Sam was falling, falling, falling—plunging through a cloudy morning sky while the wind buffeted his face and Thunder’s arms tightened around his waist.

Why am I always falling off great heights these days…?

With Thunder’s cheeks brushing against his, he was forced to drive back the scream that threatened to escape his lips. He hoped she didn’t notice how his arms shook while they wrapped around her shoulders either.

Three times in just this past month… and I still can’t shake off this godsdamn fear.

Sam wished he had the power to keep them both in the air. But even with Herculean’s help, he didn’t have the strength to defy gravity.

Gods I wish I could fly… that would be epic.

Despite Sam’s fear of possibly plunging to his death hovering in the forefront of his mind, a larger part of him wasn’t overly worried because he believed in Thunder. Sam had faith that she didn’t just throw them off a plane without a plan. He might have done that, but Thunder was smarter and cooler than he was—and that faith would be rewarded.

“Hold on tight!” Thunder yelled over the wind. “We’re going for a ride!”

She began a chant that seemed like a lullaby to Sam’s ears—a song meant to serenade the sky. In a matter of seconds, the heavens answered her dulcet tones with a lightning bolt. One so large it looked to Sam like an ancient drakon had descended from the clouds and lit up the sky in a brilliant flash. As he was forced to shut his eyes from the blinding light, he felt a tug in his gut similar to that feeling of a roller coaster ride just before the steep plunge down the tracks.

“What’s going—”

It was like he was being pulled forward in every direction so that his sense of being—that feeling of having a body—disappeared completely. Somehow, he had become the wind that was being carried off into a lightning storm raging across the clouds. Then, just before his consciousness could give way to oblivion, Sam felt his feet touch solid ground and weight returned to him.

“I know riding the lightning can be jarring, but try not to puke,” Thunder suggested as she let him go.

Hers was a failed hope though. For no sooner had her hands left his waist when Sam was forced to his knees by the most intense feeling of vertigo he’d ever experienced.

“There goes breakfast,” Thunder commented.

Sam puked out a portion of the burger and fries Warden Salvatore had kindly offered him and Thunder back on the air transport. These discarded bits of an early breakfast fell onto the polished obsidian floor that he belatedly noticed was hot to the touch.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Remind me never to let you drive…”

“Not to rush you, Herculean”—Thunder’s tone seemed urgent—“but you need to get your game face on. We’ve got company…”

“What…?” Sam’s gaze drifted forward. “Oh, Styx…”

About two to three feet away from where Sam knelt was a hole in the floor. One wide enough to reveal the crowd of people gathered on the level below. They were mostly veiled in shadow so it was hard to make out any of their features. Except for their eyes. These were easily noticeable as they were all glaring daggers up at Sam.

“Can we just go back to falling from the sky?” he asked.

Sam felt the sudden rise in temperature in front of him, and he instinctively raised his left arm and summoned the round ethereal shield that had become Bulwark’s default mode. He was just in the nick of time too because a roiling purple flame shot out of the hole a second after Bulwark appeared to explode onto its surface.

“Holy—”

As the force of the explosion pushed Sam backward, his mind instantly recalled a villain he’d recently read about in the newspapers who’d been apprehended by the LAPD with the help of Weather Witch. This same villain was known to wield the purple flames of ‘Hel’ and had been responsible for the fire that burned half of downtown L.A. less than two years ago.

Watch out, kid! It’s—Chiron began, to which Sam finished with, “Helfire!”

A second burst of purple flames rose to meet Sam. However, this one was much too large to defend with just Bulwark.

“Thunderstrike!” Thunder yelled. While at the same time, Sam roared, “Herculean!” into the sky.

[ALERT! Title [Champion of the Sun] is now active.]

[ALERT! Due to the effect of the title [Champion of the Sun], all your stats have increased by 5%. They will continue to increase in increments as [Dawn] gives way to [Noon] for a maximum increase of 10% and then begin to decline as [Dusk] approaches.]

[ALERT! Title [Champion of the Sun] has a 10% chance of activating at [Dawn]. It is recommended that the hero not rely too much on this random power-up.]

A bolt of jagged lightning descended from the cloudy sky and cut the column of purple flames in two. A half-second later, Sam’s punch—fueled by Herculean’s triple boost in strength—dispersed the two halves of the purple flames with just the wind pressure. The heroes’ combined display of power did nothing to deter the prisoners who’d climbed up to the platform they were on though, which meant Sam and Thunder were about to be surrounded.

“I don’t know who this costumed clown is,” said the lanky man in a white jumpsuit who’d grabbed at Sam’s outstretched fist with arms that stretched and wrapped around Sam’s arm like twin snakes.

“You should read the papers more, Constrictor,” suggested the bronze-skinned, muscular woman who’d grabbed onto Sam’s neck from behind. She wore the same white jumpsuit as the Constrictor. “This is a new guy. Calls himself Herculean. I hear he’s super strong!”

As if to show off that she wouldn’t lose in a contest of strength, the bronze-skinned villain who Sam knew was called ‘Barbelle’ tightened her hold on his neck, forcing Sam’s breath from his lungs.

“Does it matter?” Constrictor’s arms squeezed on Sam’s shoulder, causing the hero to wince in pain. “He’s just going to be one dead hero in a minute.”

“I like the way you think, Constrictor!” yelled the third villain to cross Sam’s path. This one had a cat-like face and a lean body that possessed beast-like qualities that reminded Sam of a cheetah. “Hold him still while I rip his heart out with my bare hands!”

“Get away from him, Cheetor!” Thunder spat.

She’d extracted herself from the villains who’d attempted to pin her down with a cloak of elemental energy wrapped around her body. This ‘Lightning Raiment,’ which Sam had once borrowed to pierce a giant’s shadow, kept incoming villains at bay long enough for Thunder to whip her ‘Lash’ at Cheetor’s exposed back. The resulting elemental explosion that shocked the polymorph villain spread outward, zapping both Constrictor and Barbelle while avoiding Sam entirely. ‘Shock’ spread across the villains’ bodies, slackening their grips on Sam and allowing him to extricate himself from their holds by roughly slamming them both into the obsidian floor.

“I didn’t know…you could…chain your lightning…like that,” Sam huffed.

Thunder, who’d move to stand back-to-back with him, replied, “I’ve got a title that allows me to chain my abilities sometimes… Are you alright?”

“I’m healing,” Sam answered.

More prisoners were beginning to climb up from the hole, which meant Sam and Thunder would soon be surrounded once again. All of these new arrivals wore matching white outfits and had power-dampening collars around their necks. For obvious reasons, Sam didn’t think their dampeners were functioning properly.

A glance at his surroundings told Sam that escaping their current predicament was next to impossible. The polished obsidian platform they were on was surrounded by a thick, thirty-foot circular wall whose only exit was the titanium double doors inconveniently located directly behind him and Thunder. If these defenses weren’t daunting enough, Sam had also noticed the fiery orange glow coming from beyond the walls. Coupled with the intense heat in the air that reminded him of a hot spring and the craggy slopes about two hundred yards past the prison’s walls and he realized that the ‘Crucible’ really was an apt name for this prison hidden inside the crater of an active volcano.

“It’s official… we are the unluckiest people in the cosmos…” Sam pulled out his hammer from its holster which was clipped to the side of his poor man’s utility belt. “Only we would arrive at a prison inside a volcano during the middle of a prison break while all the guards have either run away or…”

He didn’t like to think about it but the platform was littered with uniformed bodies that he hoped belonged to unconscious guards and not... corpses.

“They’re going to have to get through us to get to the exit,” Thunder added. “And we can't let them through... even if we have to take them all on with just the two of us.”