Superpowers Read Online Free PDF

bullet. I can walk on water, or at least run very fast on water. Maybe.
    He slogged up the stairs to the apartment. He didn't want the girls downstairs to hear a staccato of footfalls and come up to find out what was happening.
    The steps creaked. Dust motes revolved through the air. It took longer to walk up the stairs than to run three miles! This was going to be tough to adjust to.
    He finally made it to the apartment. No one seemed to be home. He walked—slowly, ever so slowly—back to Charlie's bedroom, and knocked. Silence. He tried the door, but it was locked. He knocked again. "Charlie?"
    "What."
    "Are you sick or something? I didn't see you at all yesterday."
    "Yeah. I'm sick."
    "Too much beer, or too much Caroline?"
    "What do you want?"
    "Just checking on you. I'm going home for the afternoon. You need anything?"
    "No."
    "All right. Later."
    Jack shoved a few books into his backpack, locked the door, moved slowly down the stairs and outside, and looked up and down the street to make sure no one was around. He looked at his watch. 10:10:33.
    He hitched up his backpack and took off running.
    He went northeast on Mifflin, turned right onto Bassett and took it to Wilson, then Wilson to Broom to John Nolen. He passed among speeding cars and leapt over the spray kicked up by them. It was like running through a freeze-frame.
    He took John Nolen to the Beltline, the Beltline east to Highway 18. The speed limit here was sixty; the cars around him might as well be in a showroom. His heart was pounding; he was getting an erection.
    Maybe he didn't need the job at the lab. He could do the work of an eight-hour shift in a few minutes—but he couldn't do it in a workplace, not without drawing a lot of attention. Discovery meant doctors and needles and those suction-cup wired sensor thingies you always saw in the movies. He'd be sedated and locked up and probed and pinched and shaved, and he wasn't going to let that happen. He had to be careful.
    He turned off Highway 18 and onto Highway 26. Maybe he could work from home. Stuff envelopes or something. Of course, stuffing envelopes was still stuffing envelopes, no matter how fast he could do it. There had to be something more exciting.
    Home was a farm off the highway, all but the top of the silo screened by trees. He slowed as he moved up the driveway, not wanting to kick up a cloud of dust. Grace was at school, but Mom's cherry red Blazer stood in the parking space out front, next to a silver Taurus Jack had never seen before. Dad's Chevy was tucked up next to the house, the same spot it had been in for months.
    Jack ducked inside the machine shed and straightened his hair as best he could in the mirror inside the combine. He looked a bit ragged, but he didn't look as though he'd just run forty miles in—he checked his watch—under four minutes. He wasn't even winded.
    He crossed the courtyard formed by the lee of the barn, silo, machine shed, and the garage that had been slumping toward collapse for almost a year now. It was a long walk, but now that Jack was here he was in no hurry to be inside. He paused before the screen door, knowing that its creaking would make retreat impossible. Then he took a deep breath and went inside.
    "Morty!" His mother came into the living room while he was wiping his shoes on the mat. "I wondered if you'd be coming today." She squinted out the windows. "I didn't see you pull up. Where's your truck?"
    "Parked behind the shed." He hugged her, looking past her to the bare spot on the wall where the TV used to be. "Whose car is that outside?"
    "The new nurse. Sylvia moved to Milwaukee, you know." She followed his gaze to the bare spot on the wall. "We moved it into his room." She looked as though she would say more but smiled and squeezed his arm instead. "Are you hungry? I could make you some lunch."
    He was starving. "That'd be great, Mom."
    "I'll make some soup and sandwiches," she said. "Why don't you go say hi?"
    She left him in the living