Superhero Read Online Free Page B

father.
    He went to his old room and stood at the doorway. The bed was exactly the same. They hadn’t even changed his sheets. He walked in and sat down on the bed. Posters of Michael Jordan and Miami Vice were up on the wall. On the small desk in the corner was a photo of him and Master Uyeshiba, his sensei when he had spent the few years after high school in Kyoto, training at the master’s academy.
    He thought of the little old man throwing two-hundred-pound students across the room as easily as one would pillows. He thought he was superhuman at the time. Age and physics didn’t seem to affect him.
    Jack rose and took in a deep breath, unable to suppress his smile.
     

 
    CHAPTER 5
     
     
    Despite the insistence of his sister and her husband, Jack bought a condo in Burbank twenty minutes from their home rather than stay with them. The place was empty and he didn’t have the desire to decorate it so he hired an interior decorator and told him to furnish it as well.
    Jack had no need of money, as his biological parents had left no heir upon their deaths. The executor of their estate knew about Jack, and tracked him down rather than letting the government get their hands on the family money. But he still wondered what he was going to do for work.
    He once learned about a thought experiment that said you should imagine yourself walking into a bookstore. The first section that you go to is the field you’re supposed to have your career in. Jack always went to the martial arts and then the science sections; his undergraduate degree was in mathematics.
    Though he didn’t need it, he understood that work occupied the mind and gave a person purpose. Without it, you would drift aimlessly and then adopt a nihilist stance that could lead to depression. He’d always wanted his own martial arts studio to pass down everything he had learned to others and decided he would go scout out locations today. But first, there was someone he had to visit.
    He took Santa Monica Boulevard for the view, and eventually, after an hour and a half of driving and watching the crystal-blue of the ocean spread out before him, he made it to the LAPD’s Hollywood Division. He parked in visitor parking and it hit him that he forgot to get an alarm installed on his Viper. Something else for the to-do list.
    He walked into the precinct and to the reception desk. A woman in a police uniform was helping a man make a report, and Jack waited patiently behind him. Hollywood Division wasn’t exactly South Central, but still, a good number of drunks and prostitutes and wife-beaters yelled from the holding cells and had fingerprints and photographs taken.
    When the man in front of him had finished, he stepped forward and said, “Officer William Yates please.”
    “ Detective Yates is currently in a meeting. You can have a seat if you want and I’ll buzz him when he’s done.”
    “That would be great, thank you.”
    Jack sat down on some chairs set out as a waiting area and looked to the small, circular coffee table with old magazines piled on it. He sifted through them but found nothing interesting except a three-month-old copy of Sports Illustrated . He started flipping through it when someone screamed near the entrance.
    He glanced over and saw an officer holding his neck, blood running over his fingers, and two other officers jump on a man with dreadlocks. The man with the dreadlocks was laughing hysterically, blood dribbling down his chin, his teeth stained red. The two officers tackled him and one of them strapped a gag over his mouth to prevent any more biting. Lifting him by his arms, they carried him to a cell.
    “Jack?”
    He looked up to see Detective Yates standing in front of him. Yates’ hair was gray at the temples and the potbelly was new. He looks tired , Jack thought. Tired and burnt out.
    Jack rose and the two men slapped hands and embraced quickly.
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “I’m now a former DEA agent. I quit a