Infiltration by Kevin Hardman Read Free Book Online Page B

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    Although Alpha Prime was considered to be invulnerable and had been to known to survive much worse than this, I still couldn’t help feeling apprehensive for his well-being. I was just about to go into action when I saw some of the rubble on the ground shift, and a moment later my father stood up, concrete and debris rolling off him. Smiling in relief, I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
    Alpha Prime floated about a foot up into the air, then spun madly for a few seconds, like a ballerina doing a pirouette. I initially thought this was just to shake the debris from his costume, but his motion also had the effect of dissipating the dust cloud that had formed. In a few moments, it was gone, blown away by my father’s actions.
    Alpha Prime looked around, seeming to assess the damage and taking stock of the situation. However, with the bomb having detonated, there really wasn’t much more for him to do. Needless to say, it was a rather anticlimactic end to this adventure, and I was saying as much to myself when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
    Behind my father’s back, the darkness seemed to shimmer and come alive with a soft, barely noticeable incandescence. It was an obscure, shapeless blob at first, big enough to wrap around a hippo and with edges that undulated almost rhythmically. I was so fascinated that it didn’t immediately register that what I was seeing might constitute a danger. That all changed when the blob suddenly coalesced into forms I recognized.
     I telepathically shouted to my father.
    My father’s head jerked in my direction — evidence that he had heard me. Heeding my warning, he was in the process of turning around when something like a laser bolt struck him, sending him flying face-first into a circular pillar of concrete that supported the highway.
    There were three of them, three figures that had appeared out of the shimmering darkness I had previously noted. They were all male, and dressed in dark bodysuits. With one look at their heavily-muscled frames, I knew that each of them had to have super strength. (Not to mention the fact that they were purposely engaging Alpha Prime in a fight — a bad move for anyone unable to lift a supertanker.)
    I recognized one of them — a seven-foot brute with blond hair that had been buzz-cut military-style. Built like a block of granite and with a head that seemed too small for his body (and brains to match), he went by the name Imo. It was supposed to be short for “Immovable Object,” so one would think that he’d have chosen the name “Io,” but the last person who brought that to his attention won a free trip to the emergency room, along with shattered ribs and a broken jaw.
    The second guy had an odd appearance. Although nearly as tall as my father, he was extremely rotund, almost round, in fact. His face and the other exposed areas of his skin had grooves, ribs, and dimples like a tire — as if he’d been run over by a tractor-trailer, with the wheels leaving impressions on his skin. He wasn’t anyone I’d ever run across before (no pun intended), but I knew him by reputation. He went by the name Retread Fred, and as a result of a hi-tech lab accident, his body was formed of some kind of futuristic, vulcanized rubber and steel. His skin was purportedly impenetrable.
    The last member of the landing party was someone I hadn’t seen before and couldn’t pin a name to. He was about my height, but so heavily muscled you would have thought he started lifting weights in the womb. He also had long, dark hair that came to the middle of his back, so luxurious that most women would have envied it.
    Each of the three carried the same type of weapon: a two-foot length of metal with a heavy, rounded ended — like a mace or a morningstar, except that the end of their weapons glowed with a red light. They also radiated a certain menace that I couldn’t help picking up on, but you didn’t need