Prologue

On June 23^rd, 2021 hundreds of thousands of humans across the globe woke feeling different than when they went to bed. No one knew why or how. Nor would they ever discover the cause.

When they woke, the new Class of humans called Supers, instinctively knew what the changes that had overcome them meant. Some could generate fire or control electricity, some were stronger, or faster, or flew, or could jump incredible distances. Rarely, a newly Awakened Super, as they were now called, manifested more than one ability outside of enhanced physical attributes. There were no Supermen who could fly, were super strong, invulnerable and could shoot lasers from their eyes, like the characters from the comics of their youth, but a plethora of lowered powered, single aspect Supers, emerged. Not that there weren’t exceptions.

Each and every new Super instinctively understood that they acquired new Powers and Abilities, yet had to learn how to use these abilities on their own.

The learning curve would be too steep for some to survive.

Supers being human, acted in accordance with their desires and wants. Some of the newly Awakened were helpful, such as saving a child from a burning building, rescuing cats from trees, and fighting crime.

Of course, where there was good, there was bad. Some Supers robbed, killed, destroyed, and became Powermad.

A tiny minority were extremely unstable. Those that lost their grip on sanity, Rampaged.

The first major confrontation between Supers in the US was between a gang member and a young high school graduate.

Jesus Cilla was a twenty-eight-year old life-long Redfist, one of the myriad SoCal gangs, far from the worst that occasionally found itself on the wrong side of the law. He could generate high energy greenish beams from his hands, strong enough to kill a man at three-hundred feet if he focused his attack for a full second on a target. He was also one of the rare few that had a second ability of enhanced regeneration. He soon became one of the Powermad not long after his awakening, and he Rampaged.

A good Samaritan, Maria Campone, was a Super given the Power of manipulating electrical energy. The eighteen-year old recent high school graduate, along with two of her friends were browsing in the Sunny Vale mall to escape the 90-degree relentless summer heat. She stepped up and tried to stop Jesus Cilla’s Rampage during the man’s assault on the mall’s shoppers.

Upon seeing a man in gang colors with a red bandanna shoot grayish green beams from his hands, she acted to end his senseless slaughter. Drawing electricity from all around her, the young woman lashed out with her own power, electrocuting the monster in the guise of a human.

Seven hundred people died in the half-hour confrontation between the evenly matched Supers. Along with both the good Samaritan and the former Redfist gang member, numerous men, women, and children visiting the mall died during that Saturday afternoon dust up.

Over the next two months, tens of thousands of people reported to their local hospitals with loss of hair, swelling, rashes, boils, and bloated flesh. Mr. Cilla projected Gamma energy, it was later discovered. Radiation sickness was not just limited to those that visited the mall that day, he had been consciously and unconsciously emitting deadly radiation to all those near him for the two months between his Awakening and his death.

That encounter was the worst and not the last in those first few months.

Every month since the initial Awakening, more of the world’s children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen Awakened. Knowing the what of their powers but not the how, aside from the pure non-physical types, new Supers had to practice of their use. This ‘practice’ resulted in untold damage.

People in the United States panicked. The radiation sickness, the firestorms, the marked increase in violence nationwide, were just too much too fast.

Acting swiftly and harshly, the voters made their voices heard...

Chapter 1 »