Prologue
Los Angeles, California, July 1st, 2001
The bank’s alarm bells were annoying the large man who was trying to pull the vault door open this late Sunday morning. He is tall, exceedingly muscular, and wearing a ski mask with his black overalls.
The thick steel released with a deafeningly high-pitched screech and equally loud moan as bare hands pried the door from its frame.
Bent and broken steel rods were a testament to the strength needed to open the vault. Meathead, the unimaginative nickname given to him by his friends, swung the door all the way open and looked over at his companion.
The companion is a mid-20s woman, average build and height, walking around the bank and turning off the alarm klaxons. She took a deep swig from her large water bottle and inhaled through her nose. She then exhaled, with great force, as a needle-sharp icicle shot from her mouth and impaled the boxes making that godawful racket. The bank was thankfully silent when the final alarm was destroyed.
“You got the bags?” Meathead asked her.
She reached down to a pile of empty duffel bags and tossed them over.
“Get to work. Somebody should be here any minute and I want to be gone if she shows up.”
He grabbed the bags and started to fill them with large stacks of cash. He didn’t understand why this bank didn’t have at least one of the heroes on guard duty, especially considering the huge cash shipment from Larry Flynt’s Hustler Casino yesterday.
Many millions of dollars in cash were just asking to be taken and they were willing to oblige. The woman quickly jogged into the open vault and started filling some more bags.
“What the hell do you guys think you are doing?!?”
They both looked up to see a guy a fitted cotton costume, including a face-covering mask, standing 20 feet from the ripped-open vault door. The woman looked him over and chuckled.
“A costume? Really? You are taking this hero thing a bit too seriously, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. I do what I like and I like what I do. Now, with whom do I have the pleasure of catching?” The woman couldn’t help but be more amused at his overblown self-confidence.
“You can call me Icebreaker and the meathead over there is, well, Meathead. Would you be so kind as to introduce yourself?” she asked as she started taking a drink of water.
“You can call me ‘Quarterback.’”
Icebreaker inhaled deeply, aimed carefully at this self-righteous prick, and sent an ice spike straight at his chest.
“What kind of name is ‘Quarterback?’” she asked herself as she listened for the expected thump and scream.
“It’s my hero name.” She whirled to the right to see him, unscathed, standing by the lobby watercooler. Surprisingly, her water bottle was now in his hands.
“You can spit out ice when you drink water? Interesting, but I’ve seen better,” he said. He put one hand on the water cooler as he held her bottle with the other. Familiar cracking noises came from both as he instantly froze both sources of liquid water.
“Meathead? Smash him!” she shouted as she ran behind the big brute.
Meathead, now angry, pulled the vault door off its hinges. He turned to the intruding hero and was startled by a soft red glow around him that slowly faded.
“Impressive super-strength. I was wondering when I would come across somebody like you,” Quarterback said as he effortlessly lifted the five-gallon ice block from the water cooler. “What do you think happens when you mix incredible strength with extreme speed?” he asked.
Icebreaker saw the answer as the vault door held by Meathead suddenly buckled and twisted slightly as thousands of tiny ice chips exploded against it. Meathead was thrown back against the reinforced brick wall and Quarterback was no longer in front of her. Meathead wasn’t moving.
“Don’t worry, I made sure he’ll live. He’ll have a monster headache, though,” she heard behind her. She didn’t have time to react before she found herself sitting on the open floor, securely tied with rope, as sirens swiftly approached. Meathead was quietly moaning behind her.
It has only been a few months since The Event, the day the world changed and superhumans became more than just comic book fiction. The world is still full of people who want to follow the law, break the law, or enforce the law, but the new power dynamics between and within these groups will pose challenges the current legal system is woefully unprepared to handle.
All of this brought about by an interstellar alien spacecraft with a singular and deadly goal.
