Energox

CHAPTER ONE: LOGAN SHINALL I keep having the same dream. * * * We just ate supper and we are heading to watch my older brother’s play. Jack Shinall is my oldest brother, and he can command elements like fire, water, air, and earth. My next oldest sibling is Arianna, she can teleport and blow stuff up with her mind. Then there’s Jonny, my younger brother, who can control machines. Sue, my youngest sister, is two and she giggles and fries all radios and TV’s in the building. And my name is Logan Reid Shinall and I can move fast, lift seven tons, fly, shoot lightning, shoot fire, and I am perfecting my telekinesis. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention we are not your typical American family. Anyway, we are in the car. Laughing, singing and the baby’s crying fill the car. Jack is already at the play. Just then Jonny froze. “The car has an extra part on it that I’ve never sensed before!” he was panicking. “Calm down. What is it?” my mom asked. “Wait… um…. Skull Industries….” His eyes widened, “OH CRAP! IT’S A BOMB!” Those were the last words he would ever say. The bomb went off. Fire started in the front of the car and covered my parents. The baby was next, her eyes met mine. Arianna vanished in a flurry of light. Jonny vanished in the flames. I learned that day that I was invincible, for when the fire covered me nothing happened. In a second I was twenty feet away looking at the burning wreck. I saw Arianna over in a tree. I flew up and I cried on her shoulder. We made our way home to see if Jack was still okay. Someone had placed that bomb in our car. Jack, Arianna, and I are the only ones left in our family. I walked to the garage and Arianna looked inside the front door. She yelled for joy. “Jack’s inside!” she rushed in before I could stop her. The windows burst with flames, and just like that I became the only living person left in my family. * * * I woke up. I tried to shake it off, but I can still remember the day that it happened for real. I walked out of my bedroom and saw a robot, my butler, and friend, the Drone. He has white orbs for his head, shoulders, elbows, hands, hips, knees, and feet with dull, gray metal beams holding the orbs in place. “Good morning, Logan.” He said. “Morning, Drone.” I was obviously tired. “You had the dream again, didn’t you?” he handed me breakfast. “Yeah, I feel as though I could have saved them somehow.” I sat down and started eating the bacon. “We both know there was nothing you could do. You need to stop looking back and just concentrate on the now.” “The thing is, I looked inside the house on my way to the garage and that was not Jack, it was the practice dummy. I think Jack isn’t dead, but I don’t have proof. And no one but me has seen Jack since the day after he ‘died’ with Arianna. I have to investigate that company that Jonny mentioned: Skull Industries.” I started on the eggs. “Don’t think for an instant I’m just going to let you go all vigilante on some company that we know nothing about. We need info.” “No we need to find out who bought that bomb and why.” I picked up the newspaper and read the bold headline: EMPOROR OF JAPAN ASSASSINATED, EIGHTH WORLD LEADER THIS WEEK. “I think you should investigate the assassinations of these world leaders, because that would be a better way to come into the public eye than ransacking a weapons company.” “Maybe, but I think I will look into the company anyway.” I super-sped through my room and got dressed in my usual attire; blue jeans, white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. I straightened my brown hair in the mirror and slipped my sunglasses over my blue eyes. “Besides, I’m going for a ride anyway.” I said. I rushed to my motorcycle and took off. The ride was calm and the breeze was nice. I rode down the street to my friend Jade’s house. I rode up his driveway and jumped off the bike. I walked inside to see my friend watching the news. “Hey, what’s up?” I said. “You know,” he said without turning his head, “I’ve always wondered why you don’t fly or speed to my house, since you only live a mile away in that mansion of yours.” “Well, wouldn’t it look weird to your fifteen neighbors if a man flew through the sky or arrived on your doorstep out of nowhere? Anyway, that would protect my secret.” I said. “That makes sense. So, what’s up?” he shut the news off. “I need you to look up everything you can about Skull Industries.” “The weapons designers? The nearest facility isn’t in Illinois. It’s in Wisconsin, ‘bout a five hour drive. Though something tells me you aren’t going to drive,” he drank some coffee, “You finally going to go vigilante?” “Yes. My hero name is Energox, and I’ve finished the suit yesterday.” “’Energox’? How is that spelled, with a ‘j’ or a ‘g’?” he finished his coffee with a sad look. “It’s spelled with a ‘g’ even though it’s pronounced like a ‘j’.” I handed him another cup of coffee and he smiled. “Fun, but before you go trick-or-treating I need to know why do you want to do this?” “The last words Jonny ever said was the company that manufactured the bomb: Skull Industries. So I think I can solve the mystery as to who killed my family.” “Well, we should go to that secret lair of yours with the advanced machinery.” We left and went to my underground ‘lair’. He tried hacking the mainframe of the industry, but the numerous firewalls prevented us from finding the sales records. We did find the name of the CEO: John Skull. We searched his name in every database known to man, but the only thing that came up was that he is and has been the CEO of the company since the 1920s. “Wait, how long ago were the 1920s?” Jade asked. “About a hundred years ago... that’s impossible! He should be dead!” I yelled. “Calm down. Wait… that’s not the strangest thing yet, look! His name is in the enrollment as a general in the Civil War. And look that’s the same guy in the painting of Napoleon on his horse. Hold on let me scan his face and search it.” Jade was getting excited. The screen filled with windows to countless results. “Okay, weird part alert: his face is seen in pictures and paintings so far back that there are some windows that can’t have pictures because of the dates. This guy is too old for pictures!” The mystery became even deeper. A centuries old CEO of the company that sold the bomb to the person that killed my family. “I’m going to be back up for tonight. It will give me a perfect reason to try on the Titian suit.” Jade left and went home. Jade Elijah Simms has been my friend since we were young. And when he found out about my secret powers he wanted to be super powered as well, and so ever since he has been designing weapons and suits to accomplish that task. I was staring at the screen and I could have sworn I had seen that face before, in person. I thought of every business deal my company had authorized. That face was not a new one. I leaned back in my chair and went to sleep.