Transfusion 5.3
Of course I knew about Godolkin's stadium — the venue where young supers held their competitions and training bouts. Relatively modest in size by stadium standards, but still a serious asset for the university. I was fairly certain it paid for itself almost every year, given the number of people who wanted to attend something that unique.
Despite the considerable number of supers in our society, those with genuine strength or truly distinctive abilities were still relatively rare. Anyone comparable to the Soldier Boy or the Patriot essentially didn't exist. Which made organizing a reasonably fair competition its own particular challenge.
Vought officially held an annual series of races between their speedsters, searching for the fastest person on earth. It was the moment Speedy overtook Marathon — the reigning champion at the time — that the younger hero earned his real fame and recognition.
And honestly, even I had followed that event, at least with half an eye. The scene where a graying Marathon shook the hand of the exhausted but victorious young hero had already become part of the cultural fabric — a symbol of the beginning of a new era.
But those races weren't held for their cinematic quality or visual appeal. Tracking even a single speedster was difficult enough, since they moved at velocities nearly imperceptible to the human eye. The competitions were held for exactly one reason — they were the only format that could be properly evaluated while still maintaining any suspense.
All you needed was a few sensitive sensors along the track and a way to measure who crossed first. But how do you evaluate who can regrow a limb fastest without accumulating a stack of lawsuits for psychological trauma in the process? How do you measure which super is the most durable and invulnerable without causing actual harm to future models and actors? How do you find the one with the finest perception?
Vought had attempted competitions of those kinds too, but almost no one watched them. They couldn't find supers who genuinely stood out in those categories and were also willing to spend time on what felt like pointless trials. The only formats that ever achieved real success were straightforward athletic contests — basketball, football, super-powered players competing in familiar sports — and the occasional battle between heroes. Those, people watched everywhere.
But who had first thought to introduce them?
Richard Brinkerh off, naturally.
It had been one of his earliest reforms after being appointed director of Godolkin. It began modestly — a small field where students practiced their abilities and sparred with one another while an enthusiastic crowd watched from the sidelines.
The results were encouraging, but Brink wasn't one for stopping at modest. He persuaded investors to fund the construction of a proper stadium — not enormous, but real. And within a few years, it was pulling more viewers than the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Because these were the first fights between actual supers, where the participants barely held back and could use their abilities at full capacity.
I'll admit — I was a genuine fan of this format and had watched every competition with real interest. It was a more compelling spectacle than any championship among ordinary people, and for an obvious reason: it was, simply put, extraordinary.
"…Few people remember this now," Brink was saying, "but Kevin — the Deep — when he studied here, he didn't exactly shine on the field. He was the most physically resilient student I ever had, his skin was nearly impenetrable, but throwing a punch? That was never something he could do. Over the years I managed to work the fear of hitting someone — or being hit himself — out of him. But rather than steering him toward a fighting career, I recommended the path of the model. The living symbol." The old man smiled to himself. "And I can't say I came out badly on that decision, can I?"
Brink and I had come through the main entrance and taken positions at the front row, where the view of the arena was unobstructed. The director had been telling me stories along the way — anecdotes from his life, some of them connected to the training of the current members of the Seven. Nothing particularly significant or classified, but genuinely interesting. The main show, however, was still playing out directly in front of us.
And what a show it was — two students in a training bout, neither one holding back.
The first was a tall man in an orange tank top and matching shorts, red sneakers, and a pair of goggles that gave him the look of a racing driver. He stood with his arms spread wide and a grin on his face that said he had already decided how this ended.
The second was either Arab or Black — it was hard to be certain — with a large afro, a dark beard, and bright white eyes in which the pupils were barely visible. He stood close to two meters tall and appeared to be constructed entirely of muscle, watching his opponent with unbroken severity.
Brink noticed my interest quickly and didn't waste a moment.
"Oh, this particular matchup is going to be genuinely interesting! Our 'Incredible Steve' has very strong potential — I'm confident a bright future awaits him. One of the most powerful regenerators in the university, and a remarkably tough young man with no shortage of dedication in training…"
While he spoke, the two supers moved to opposite ends of the arena, maintaining constant eye contact, tracking every shift in the other's stance. The only thing disrupting the building tension was the referee beginning his countdown, and the orange fighter waving at the crowd, trying to fire them up.
"…But our 'Shockwave' is simply in a different category of superhuman. I'll confess — his abilities are among my personal favorites…"
The moment the whistle blew, Steve launched himself at his entirely-too-cheerful opponent. The man moved well — trained, clearly, with a solid foundation and a practiced striking technique. But none of it made any difference here.
His grinning opponent simply smirked. In the fraction of a second before the fist made contact with his face, his body blurred across space and was simply no longer there. He reappeared behind his opponent and drove a single, lightning-fast strike into his back.
Steve might have been incredible, but he was not invulnerable. A fist moving at that velocity hit like a needle — it punched through his back and came out through his chest wall. Blood sprayed outward in a wide arc as the man began coughing it up in dark red streams. My ability was running, as always, and I could tell immediately that the heart and lungs had been shredded. But this was clearly not the end of the bout.
As if he had barely registered the hit, Steve spun sharply and lunged for his opponent. Just as before, the speedster simply slipped away — accelerating at the last possible instant — then circled back and came in at a run, driving his fist into the giant and sending him tumbling sideways as if he were a ball being kicked across a field.
Despite the severity of what was happening, no one in the crowd seemed particularly disturbed by any of it. Every wound Steve sustained had closed within a minute, leaving no trace behind — as if none of it had ever happened. Only the blood soaking into the ground of the arena remained as evidence of what had taken place. Everything I knew about medicine said that a human being simply could not survive that kind of blood loss. He had lost more blood than the human body actually contains.
But that, it turned out, was merely the smallest part of what the most powerful regenerator I had ever encountered was capable of. My ability was screaming at me again — a living organism simply could not function this way. It was generating new cells in defiance of every limit the human body was supposed to have, and at a pace that looked less like biology and more like something else entirely. Blood was forming in real time, visible to my perception.
And the restoration of flesh and organs as solid matter — that broke the laws of physics outright. I tracked the blood flow through his system carefully, monitoring the concentration of essential elements with each passing moment.
But despite all the miracles, Steve was losing the fight completely. He hadn't landed a single blow on Shockwave, who with every exchange seemed less interested in winning and more interested in performing for the crowd.
Thoughts also started arriving on their own about what I would do if I faced a speedster like this in an actual confrontation. His body was remarkable, but it was more or less comprehensible to me. From the inside, he was not fundamentally different from an ordinary human being — only the accelerated metabolism and the Compound V in his bloodstream marked him as super.
But accelerated metabolism alone couldn't allow a person to move faster than sound. Air resistance and the microscopic particles suspended in it at those velocities should have been stripping his skin off with every burst of speed — to say nothing of the risk of simply losing traction. What was likely at work here were the same processes that allowed certain supers to fly, or shrink to the size of an insect, or discharge lightning from their hands — something disconnected from conventional biology, rooted instead in the "energetic" nature of these beings. But the details connected to that line of research could be turned over later.
The fight continued, but with each passing second it grew less interesting and more closely resembled a simple one-sided beating. Yes, Steve was showing real skill — against ordinary people he could have dropped dozens without breaking a sweat — but here? He was a punching bag. The referee had clearly come to the same conclusion, and after a few more minutes he blew the whistle and ended it.
Despite the defeat — and what appeared to be several dozen broken bones and at least a few ruptured internal organs — Steve didn't look particularly devastated. He simply exhaled and extended his hand to the speedster with genuine respect. The other, somewhat surprisingly, dropped the performance and shook it without ceremony.
"That was a rather one-sided battle," I said, turning to Brink. The director simply gave a quiet huff and allowed himself a small smile.
"Steve is a very conscientious student — but I was not his teacher. Jim, on the other hand, came under my guidance two years ago, when a new hero joined the Seven — another of my former students. I simply wanted to show you how wide the gap can be between my personal pupils and those who give everything they have but simply don't possess the particular gift required to shine in front of the entire world." He turned to me and met my eyes. "But in you, Mark — there is exactly that fire. The kind that will carry you to the top."
Now it was my turn to huff quietly.
"That's a great many compliments for one evening, Director. I think you may be overlooking the fact that a person needs more than a single talent — they also need the will and the ambition to reach the top. Some of us are more grounded and concerned with different things. And the right motivation can overcome even the absence of the 'correct' heroic ability." I smiled. "Would you like me to prove it?"
The director looked at me with a questioning expression as I shifted my gaze toward the speedster, who was still showing off for the crowd. The plan had already taken shape in my head, and it was time to teach this place's students a small lesson. If I was going to be working with the director, I needed his impression of me to be as favorable as possible — it would mean better terms.
***
Annie had to work hard to convince her mother to stay put and watch what happened next. The older woman, who had briefly been interested in the arena's proceedings, had immediately wanted to leave the moment she saw the volume of blood covering the ground.
But Annie herself was curious to see this other side of the hero world. In the church, no one had ever so much as considered learning to fight, and the idea of violence was something you simply didn't entertain. Though Reverend Ezekiel's sermons had contained no shortage of subtle calls to stand against anyone who violated even the smallest Biblical commandment — and those calls had become considerably more frequent lately, as the congregation shrank with each passing week.
Training with abilities had been part of her teenage hero team's program, but Annie had been the only one who genuinely tried to learn. Because her powers could cause harm to those around her if applied without precision, she could not afford even the smallest miscalculation.
That was precisely why she had never been particularly eager to use her gift. She had studied taekwondo, boxing, and kickboxing instead — which put her above ninety percent of heroes in direct physical confrontation. She could defeat any member of her former team with her fists alone.
The problem was that the absence of appropriate opponents was severely limiting her progress. She couldn't properly spar with ordinary people, and her teammates had simply had no interest in the kind of training she wanted. That was a significant part of why Godolkin appealed to her so much — a place where she would likely rank nowhere near the top, where she would actually have to push herself to the limit just to stand alongside the best.
"…Look, it seems something new is starting. I've had quite enough of that preening unbeliever. Did you see the way he was waving at the girls?!" Annie's mother continued her running commentary, while the blonde's attention shifted entirely to the arena ahead.
"I think we're about to find out if he can hold his own," Annie said.
The speedster, who had been staging an extended performance for the crowd, stopped and turned his head, looking behind him with an expression of genuine surprise. A new young man had stepped onto the field — and he appeared to have come with every intention of participating.
He looked not much older than Annie, but he had a good ten centimeters on her. She privately admitted to herself that he was quite good-looking. Short black hair, gray eyes, solid build, and a fairly striking face — one that felt vaguely familiar, though she couldn't pin down exactly why.
The moment the young man reached the center of the arena, he called out to the speedster and a brief exchange began between them. Since Annie and her mother were seated in the far rows, she could only follow the conversation by leaning on her heightened hearing. The newcomer was proposing a training bout — a chance to test their abilities against each other.
The speedster frowned as he listened, visibly uncertain what to make of the situation. He seemed to settle only when he caught a nod from the older man sitting on the nearest bench. A few seconds more and they were moving to opposite sides of the arena.
Shockwave, once he had collected himself, recovered his confidence and composure quickly and resumed his performance for the crowd. His new opponent, however, simply began to warm up — and from the way he moved, Annie could see that he was completely, entirely serious.
The referee stepped forward to explain the rules: the bout would continue until one participant either conceded or was declared unable to continue. Both nodded their acceptance. They settled into their stances and faced each other.
And Annie found, to her own mild surprise, that she was genuinely curious who would win. She knew that a speedster's abilities made them almost untouchable in direct confrontation — but something told her that the newcomer knew that too. Either his power was capable of closing that gap, or he had something else entirely up his sleeve. Wanting to understand more about other supers and what they could do, Annie turned her full attention to the fight about to begin.
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