Meta Zero One by Martin J Moss Read Free Book Online Page B

inside of the jar responding to the sound of their voices.
     
      “It has your eyes, don't you think?” Elroy asked.
     
      “No, it hasn't,” Stevens eyes were clear, the drugs had been flushed out of his system completely; he stared at Elroy with a look of thinly disguised contempt.
     
      “Oh I think it has, yes, you have to look past the 8 legs, the vicious little teeth and the rather nasty temperament. But it definitely has your eyes. All four of them.”
     
       “What do you want?” Steven asked, “cut to the chase zero.” Zero, that was a name Elroy had heard before, a derogatory term used by some of the   Meta Powered to refer to normal unpowered humans.
     
       “The truth,” that'll be a start Elroy thought; “I'm the man who holds the key to your future. Do you end up in a cell 39 floors down from here, with a bodybuilder called Bubba buggering you every night?  Or do we help each other? Really it all depends on you. But let's start with the unalterable fact that your wife, and adopted daughter are dead, because of you. You must have known what was happening, you must at least have suspected, are you just stupid? Or were the lives of two zeros so unimportant to you?”
     
      “I didn't know what would happen,” Steven asserted again.
     
       “Ok,” Elroy held up the green and yellow shirt, with the distinctive pattern emblazoned across the capital “A” on its chest, “from the top then, when did you get your powers?”
     
       “6 years ago, when I was 18,” there was resignation in Stevens voice.
     
       “Good, that’s a start, how did it happen?”
     
       “It was a drug test, a trial sample for a serum developed from some rare African mantis-venom. I stole it, to be honest, thought it would be worth something, but it broke while I was getting away. Glass shards coated in the stuff became embedded in my hand and the drug entered my bloodstream. Somehow it reacted with my system, my body, I don't know why but I woke up the next day with powers.”
     
       “What?” Elroy thought he knew Steven’s powers, he was after all a major league Meta in the Pantheon of Heroes. An occasional member of both the League of Heroes and the Family he was a well-known champion of the underdog. He was a street level hero unlike The Guardian or the Warrior Queen. He had to Elroys knowledge saved hundreds of people, not that made murder  acceptable, but it might give him some leeway, in the eyes of the FBI if not in Elroy’s.
     
      “I can make webs obviously, I'm strong, fast and can jump really high, and I can change my skin color and texture to blend in with the background as well.”
     
       “Is that it?”
     
       “Yes.”
     
       “Remember no lies, No tricks I need to know the truth, I need to know if you can be useful to us in the future, if you are better-off alive than dead.” Elroy knew that many Metas kept some of their abilities secret, they thought it gave them something of an edge.
     
       “Well I can sweat a pheromone which makes me more attractive to women. The affects are not permanent, and it doesn't always work, but it can be very effective in the long-term, if I use it consistently, on the same person.”
     
      “Did you use it on Jean-Marie?”
     
      “Yes,” Steven looked embarrassed, “I'd always loved her, but she never even saw me, how else was I to make any impression at all. I had no other chance. Without it I didn't have a shot.”
     
       “Smooth,” Elroy said, “nice moves you've got there, so you effectively drugged her and raped her. You used your powers to seduce and trick an innocent woman. That explains a lot.”
     
       “Don't judge me Zero, I've saved the world more times than you can ever know, I've saved hundreds of people from rape, murder, car accidents, alien invasion, you name it, and all I ever got was “thanks”. I deserved a reward. I deserved what I got.”
     
       “And did Jean-Marie, did