Heredity, Chapter One

Across a flat expanse of rubble that had until recently been a derelict city neighbourhood, Joe, Bret, Dylan, Neetra and her sister Phoenix stared at the quartet of newcomers standing before them. There were two young men and a teenage boy and girl, all of them clad in black uniforms with a flash of a different colour. On the breast of each shone the crimson and gold insignia of The Four Heroes.

The man in the blue-accented uniform had silver skin and purple eyes and hair like a Martian, though the features on his aristocratic face more closely resembled those of a human being. Our heroes recognised him and knew his name was Thassal, for they had met him before, in a manner of speaking. They could not say even that for his three companions, upon whom they were gazing for the very first time. Nevertheless, Thassal’s presence, combined with the emblem all four of them wore, and combined with the way the teenage boy had just introduced his team, meant the Four Heroes knew who they were too. It was this, not the fact that they were strangers, that made it impossible for Nottingham’s champions to tear their awestruck eyes away from the colourful group.

Stepping forward, the teenage boy beamed and opened his arms wide. His uniform was pink, and he was ruddy-cheeked and jolly with brown hair and twinkling brown eyes. The girl, who followed him, was just as merry and rosy as he was and she was also dressed in a pink costume, identical to his. She was sturdy and pretty, with her brown hair tied up in two short pigtails and a light smattering of freckles across her nose.

“Well, it looks like introductions are in order!” the boy in pink declared brightly. “I’m Tidshaw, and this is my sister Autumn.”

That this pair were twins would have been obvious to anyone who saw them. Something else was obvious about them too, something none of The Four Heroes could miss, though Joe and Neetra were the most aware of it. Joe, even as they both continued to gaze at Tidshaw and Autumn, finally found his voice.

“We…have known of you, for quite some years,” he breathed. “But that knowledge was never more than theoretical, a received truth. To see you face-to-face like this…!”

“It’ll take a bit of getting used to,” Autumn said kindly. “The situation’s quite strange for us too!”

“It must be freaking you right out to see me in my miniskirt days,” Neetra agreed with her.

Bret’s stare, meanwhile, was fixed on the young man whose uniform boasted a red flash. This one came forth to introduce himself now. He was lean and muscular and good-looking, with a dark complexion, long black hair and brilliant green eyes.

“Name’s Ned Stevens,” he announced. “Love animals, love a good fight. Got superhuman strength and resilience – naturally – along with heightened feline instincts and reflexes to keep the bad guys on the run!”

Bret walked slowly over to him. Without speaking, he put both hands on Ned’s upper arms.

“We’ve been talking about you,” he said at last, and no-one had ever heard The Four Heroes’ mightiest member sound so close to happy tears. “Just now, in fact. But we didn’t even know if you were possible…I didn’t, right until this moment…!”

“You knew,” Ned corrected him softly. “Somewhere deep down inside, you always knew.”

A smile illumined Bret’s face and his glittering eyes. “I’ll bet we’ve wrestled a couple of falls!” said he.

“One or two,” Ned grinned back. “And seeing you now, when you’re in your prime, maybe even getting the chance to fight alongside you…well, I guess I’ve been looking forward to this mission more than any of the rest!”

Dylan and Phoenix turned to the fourth member of the newly-arrived team. “So, Thassal,” Dylan began. “You’ll have to take our word for it, but we know who you are. We met a dimensional equivalent of yours a while back, but if you’re friends with these guys and wearing that symbol it must mean an alternate future was successfully created then. You’re the Thassal from that new timeline, not the Thassal we fought against on Mars. Incredible, the changes you can make with just a little love!”

“Erm…if you say so,” said Thassal, somewhat confused. “I do wear the symbol though, and with pride. It was even possible to give me a few superpowers of my own so I could keep up with these fellow heroes of mine, thanks to my Skay genes. Some experimentation with a tachyon engine to simulate temporal displacement brought out special abilities similar to those of my mother and aunt. I don’t have their energy-projection, but I can manifest super-speed and invulnerability through building up kinetic force. It’s a pity we had to apply a process invented by Doctor Vytrex, of all people, but…”

“Well, it won’t have been him who used it on you,” Dylan interjected. “My guess is someone not quite so far away from here, right?”

“You guess correctly,” Thassal replied knowingly.

Dylan tried to return his confiding smile, and so did Phoenix beside him. Neither of them quite managed it. Thassal’s own expression quickly sobered too, for he saw as clearly as everyone else that his being there raised a serious concern for the couple in front of him. An uncomfortable silence fell.

“You must have…many questions,” Thassal began tactfully to Phoenix and Dylan, but the latter raised his hand to stop him.

“We’ve all got about a million,” Dylan declared, “but everybody here knows how dangerous time-travel is. It’s best that you tell us as little as possible about where and when you’re from, and just stay on the things we need to know here and now. So I guess you could start by telling us who was that guy in the cloak, who came out of the rift ahead of you?”

“That was Harbin,” Tidshaw said darkly. “You don’t need us to explain that we’ve come here to thwart whatever evil he’s up to, right?”

“Sounds like the pattern,” said Bret. “Bendigo and his family had Lord Qualtrough, The Wandering Dragon had Colonial Administrator Ferron, we’ve got Dimension Borg, Perdita and her gang had Ezekiel Garrisom, and you’ve got Harbin?”

“That’s it,” Ned confirmed. “And aside from that, there’s not much we can tell you about him. All we know is that he’s made it his mission in life to wage a one-man war on our cause. As for his age, where he came from, and how he developed the incredible powers he has…your guess is as good as mine! No-one’s even heard him speak, or seen his face.”

“That weird twilight that obscures his body,” Autumn went on with a shiver. “Harbin’s more like a force of nature than a person, and I’d want to say that’s what he is…except for one thing.”

Joe nodded. “Of course,” he said softly. “You, Tidshaw and Ned must feel it too, that which amazed we Four Heroes when first this Harbin appeared to us. Something about him is familiar – he resonates with us on a level deep within our powers. And yet…he is so dissonant, so clashing, so opposed to all that those powers represent.”

“Harbin just felt…wrong,” Neetra murmured. “It was as if he should never have existed.”

“We’ve never been able to solve that mystery,” said Tidshaw. “So like Dylan says, maybe we’d better focus on the more immediate mystery of what Harbin’s up to this time!”

“I concur, mon neveu,” Phoenix said. “As I remembair you telling me, Neetra, ze Thassal you met before came from an era in which ze one-way time-travel ’ad been invented – zat was ze means by which ’e journeyed back into our present. Is zat ’ow all of you come to be ’ere now?”

“Indeed,” Thassal said. “Researchers have lately managed to achieve a limited time-journey into the past, though it’s very much in the experimental stage and there’s no way yet to return to the point of origin. Harbin broke into a development plant for time-travel battle-spacecraft and stole the time-unit from one – he ignored the warships, which is like him. He only ever takes what he needs.”

“Harbin then started fuelling the unit with his own powers, opening a highly destructive temporal rift which of course you saw at this end,” Tidshaw continued. “We were called in to apprehend him, and arrived just in time to follow him through. Of course, that means none of us has any way of getting back to our own time just at the moment, but we’ll worry about that once Harbin’s dealt with!”

“Then let’s find him!” Bret announced. “He took off towards the populated areas of the city. From the psychic powers I was sensing in him, I’ll bet tracking him down that way is out?”

“Yeah, no-one can mask his telepathic signature from us better than Harbin,” said Autumn. “But that still leaves the old-fashioned method of splitting up and looking for him!”

“Then Neetra and I shall form one pair,” Joe said. “Dylan is correct that it would be unwise for us to learn any more than is necessary from you and your team, Autumn. Though I am loath to admit it, it is safest that our respective groups remain apart for this.”

“That’s true,” Tidshaw conceded. “Sis and I can make up another pair, in that case!”

“Leaving me, as ever, with the human who personal hygiene forgot,” Thassal muttered, casting an arch glance at Ned. “The things I do for the cause…”

“You’re half-human too, Thassal!” Autumn reminded him with a laugh. “And no-one in our team’s human all the way through – even Tidshaw and I are one-quarter Martian!”

“Yes, you are,” Neetra said gently, still unable to take her eyes from the girl.

“I do my hunting on the ground,” Ned went on, “so Dylan, why don’t you and Phoenix take our Hero Cart up? You’ll have no trouble figuring out the controls, trust me – you’re quite familiar with the designer’s work!”

He held out his hand to indicate the shining sliver air vehicle in which he and his friends had arrived. Dylan and Phoenix climbed on board and began to study the dashboard. “You’re right,” Dylan declared after a moment. “But Tidshaw, Autumn, are you sure you don’t mind walking?”

“Oh, we can join the air support too, just as long as Autumn’s not put on any more weight!” Tidshaw replied cheerily. “Come on, sis!”

So saying he slipped his hands under his sister’s armpits and rose noiselessly from the ground, lifting her as he did so.

“You can fly?” Dylan exclaimed. “Who do you get that from? I guess fire can be used to generate a lighter-than-air principle, as in early aviation, or maybe it’s mass-displacement, a sort of continuous ongoing teleport…?”

“Perdita could generate ze forcefields,” Phoenix reminded him. “We are not in ze realm of conventional genetics ’ere, or indeed any branch of science zat is understood.”

Bret jumped into the pilot’s seat of The Four Heroes Ultimate Cycle. “I’ll provide a little extra air support too,” said he. “Stay in touch telepathically, and the first one who finds Harbin, holler!”

“Let’s do it!” Autumn cried as the heroes separated, the Ultimate Cycle, Hero Cart and flying twins streaking to the skies while Joe and Neetra and Thassal and Ned parted into duos and struck out on foot, all bound for the heart of Nottingham.

END OF CHAPTER ONE