Apex 2: Rise of the Super Soldiers Read Online Free Page A

already.
    He looked around frantically. He was super strong but he still felt heat and cold, and he was starting to shiver already.
    He focused his vision the way he did when he was about to teleport foreign objects. He had to be careful not to accidentally teleport entire sections of mountain away, so just as his focus became crystal clear, he pulled back before he lost control.
    It was hopeless, but he couldn’t go back to Molly and throw his hands in the air, saying, “It was just too hard so I gave up and let them die.”
    He focused his sight down another face of the mountain, gave up and floated onwards, to a different spot. He stopped and floated in the air, unconsciously teleporting his own body millions of times a second to keep himself aloft.
    He focused again but this time, a feeling accompanied the sharpened vision. He felt a weakened, watered down despair coupled with physical pain coming from the south. He allowed the strange feeling to direct him, floating south as his vision swept the landscape below. The despair increased, becoming palpable, like it was his own. Finally, when he didn’t know if he could handle it any more, he felt a weird surge of elation wash over him. And then he heard muffled voices far below.
    He focused and saw three figures waving up at him frantically. Apparently the multicolored costume had helped after all, since it had probably caught their attention.
    He swooped down and watched them staring at him in awe as he put his feet on the frozen ground. One of the guys took a frightened step backwards but the other two rushed forward to greet him, or at least to see if he was real or a figment of their fevered imaginations.
    Jack beckoned the other guy forward, put his arms over all three of their shoulders, and teleported them back to the farmhouse.
    In that moment, he realized that the dread and the elation he’d felt was their dread and elation. He’d empathetically connected to them somehow. He didn’t know what that meant. It was a new ability that seemed a little weak or inconsequential, but he had to admit to himself that it had come in handy at just the right time.
    Molly had hand- knitted sweaters awaiting them when they arrived and Dan had started a humungous bonfire out back.
    The hikers were speechless, shivering uncontrollably, with blank stares and stiff legs. The girl’s left hand was black and one of the guys had a nose that had given in to necrosis. They were in bad shape. But they were safe now.
    Molly and Dan tended to them as Jack and Melanie sat at the kitchen table.
    Melanie said, “I was surprised you agreed to go. I thought you’d come back a month from now with nothing to show for your troubles.”
    “I couldn’t let Molly down.”
    “How’d you get so lucky? Everest is huge.”
    Jack shook his head, not sure how to describe the new ability that had helped him out.
    Molly rushed in and said, “They’re from Nashville. Can you get them to a hospital there?”
    “Of course.”
    “You should do it right away then. They all need medical treatment.”
    “Okay.”

Hero
     
    It took no time at all for the news stations to pick up the story. It didn’t help that Jack had been spotted by dozens of onlookers when he’d dropped off the hikers in the emergency room lobby.
    They immediately concluded that the costumed man was Jack Peterson, the superhero teenager from the news.
    The hikers would all pull through eventually, according to their doctors. They said another few days in the elements would’ve probably killed them.
    Jack was in deep shit when he got home. His mom was going to be mad as hell that he’d risked his life for strangers. But it was worth it. Molly gave him a big bear hug when he arrived back at the farmhouse and told him that he was her hero.

Hank and Sally
     
    Hank Beltran saluted Commander Watson as they passed each other. He spat at his own feet in a half-assed kind of defiance as soon as the Commander was out of sight. One of