Urban Wardens: Alpha to Oblivion

By Carrie Baize

When even the worst of the established organized crime syndicates dropped off M.E.R.N.'s radar in favor of the terrorist attacks being conducted on the orders of an unknown leader that called himself Alpha, the city had run out of time.

Brought together by fate, an uneasy alliance was formed between Johnny, Checkmate and Shockwave. None of them had ever expected to be part of some costumed superhero team but, if they were honest to themselves, they knew nothing had gone according to plan for a very long time.

And right now, the only way to save Metro's citizens was to work together.

They simply had no choice.

No one else was capable of sending Alpha to oblivion...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carrie Baize
• Release date: Jan 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301318155

Carrie Baize

Carrie Baize was born in Santa Rosa, and has lived most of her life in California's Central San Joaquin Valley. She graduated from C.L. McLane High School and continued her education at Fresno City College. She is an avid role player and has spent a great deal of time in a number of fantasy worlds... some well-known, and some of her own design.She credits her parents with her love of the arts and her father, particularly, for her love of role playing and fantasy world creation.Carrie is blessed with a family who, although scattered across the United States, are incredibly supportive and truly believe in her ability to make her dreams come true. She lives in the foothills above Fresno with her husband, four daughters, and a mob of fuzzy four-legged feline children.

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Urban Wardens: Alpha to Oblivion

By Carrie Baize

Copyright 2012 Carrie Baize

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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To all the real-life heroes

Whose uniforms include dog-tags and turn-out gear and trauma shears

And to the costumed heroes and their creators

Whose spark added to the fires of a young girl’s imagination

Thank you

Urban Wardens

Alpha to Oblivion

Part One – Origins

Every good story has a beginning.

The beginning is just as important as the middle and the end, and more so where heroes are concerned. No one can really explain why this is, but it is.

Not every beginning, though, is as glamorous or wonderful as the middle and end of the story...

Still just as important, though.

Here’s the beginning...

1 – Government Issue

Nearly twenty years before the earth-shattering successful cloning of a sheep named Dolly in Scotland, teams of scientists were already perfecting the techniques that would later be leaked to the community to make creatures like Dolly a reality. The original theories were based on the human experimentation that took place during World War II, and though the government had always claimed moral superiority where the technology was concerned, the fact remained that the bottom line for both projects was the same.

Designer soldiers.

Having seen the hell unleashed in trying to perfect a single master model, though, the government commissioned the team to create a series of archetypes – military personnel that could blend easily with others, each genetically engineered to possess uniquely superior skills in their selected specialties.

In short, the government provided the necessary funding and resources for five brilliant minds to custom-build superheroes.

At least, that was the viewpoint of some of the scientists. Brilliant humanitarians Dominic Cross, Rachael Matthews, and Cynthia Daniels were determined to use the government’s resources, and their own brilliant minds, to figure out how to tweak a genetic blank slate into the archetypal paragons they’d been commissioned to design. Alexander Raider and Max Callahan, though, viewed the project as a way to force humanity’s evolution into a far more devastatingly dominant force than the world had ever seen.

Regardless of the academic notoriety and potential medical advances the scientists could have made, their primary controlling force was the military – and so their initial work was centered around the genetic manipulation of human embryos to create six military support archetypes: Systematic Combat Assault Ground Support (SCAGS), Tactical Assault and Martial Incursion (TAMI), Application of Justice Administration (AJA), Target Acquisition and Destruction (TAD), Alternative Training Hazardous Emergency Response (ATHER), and Advanced Decisions Assault (ADA).

In spite of their ideological differences the scientists were able to work together to isolate and enhance the traits necessary for each archetype to, theoretically, thrive in their predetermined roles. There was concern, however, about the potential for abuse of the program and the use of the archetypes by various governmental subcommittees responsible for the allocation of funds. A decade into the program, with thirty prototypes nearing their eighth birthdays, the government slashed program funding to nearly nothing.

The scientists argued the decision repeatedly: pleading their cases individually and as a group to the various legislators responsible. While there was no official resolution, money continued to funnel into the program’s no-longer-sanctioned budget from a variety of classified slush funds for another five years and the prototypes continued to thrive.

Regardless of the obvious potential for success, though, the funds dried up and the five scientists were left with no further funding and thirty genetically customized adolescents.

Each of the scientists involved with the now defunct program had been given the freedom to create their own set of archetypes, so when their budget ran dry they made the difficult decision to split up the thirty young teens that had grown up together on the base where the program had been housed. Each took their own six children out into the civilian world and raised them according to their own personal philosophies... no more oversight committees, military edicts, or safeguards.

2 – The Art of War

Jacob Helstrom was born into luxury. The son of the phenomenally successful Wall Street Broker Thomas Helstrom and his philanthropic socialite wife Virginia, Jacob grew up knowing he would accomplish great things. He had a guaranteed place in his father’s firm, if that was the route he chose to take, and a host of options... after all, his family’s worth alone was enough to get him into pretty much any school and open any doors he chose to explore.

When he entered the prestigious Hawthorn Academy, Jacob was already an accomplished athlete but he was acutely aware of the long hours his father had spent accumulating the fortune that guaranteed his entry into the academy in the first place. While he could have made a lucrative career at any sport he chose, he focused on gymnastics, rugby, and hockey while he attended the academy but he always knew he wanted to be like his father and actually earn the fortune he enjoyed. Using his natural athletic ability seemed like a cheat.

Early in his career at Hawthorn, Jacob met a young genius named Eric Cole and began studying with him. Eric tutored Jacob in nearly every subject, sometimes actively helping and others simply enhancing the lessons taught in the classroom with his own anecdotes. He was a brilliant mind trapped in a small, frail body and until he and Jacob became friends, Eric was the butt of jokes and the target of bullies.

Jacob protected Eric from the varied assaults of their classmates, choosing the company of the young genius over the base and directionless young men he played sports with. With Eric’s help, Jacob’s academic abilities began to rival his athletic ones and they began spending the time they used to spend studying playing chess.

Eric had explained the long and mostly conjectural history of the game as he taught Jacob the rules. The bottom line, Eric told Jacob after a long drawn-out history that snaked across every major historical world power, was that chess was a game of war. A strategic simulation whose rules changed according to the location and era until it arrived at its modern most form.

You talk about it like it’s a work of art, Jacob had laughed.

Maybe it is, Eric replied with a smile. The art of war.

The literary reference made them both chuckle, but it became the phrase they used to describe their games that sometimes lasted for weeks.

With Hawthorn behind them, Jacob and Eric chose to attend the same university – Jacob studying business and finance while Eric focused on philosophy and history. Their friendship remained strong and Jacob’s role as Eric’s protector paled only slightly with the new scenery.

One night, after Jacob had dropped off a young coed he’d taken to dinner, he found Eric laying on the sidewalk a few blocks from their apartment. He claimed to have been mugged and was badly beaten. Jacob never left Eric’s side, much to the chagrin of the paramedics who answered the call, and sat next to him in the back of the ambulance urging him to stay awake long enough for them to get to the hospital.

Come on, man, Jacob said anxiously. You can beat this. Pawns can’t take you out, man.

I think he was a knight, Eric muttered as he fought to keep his eyes open.

Don’t do it. Don’t you close your eyes.

Checkmate, Jake, Eric whispered. It’s checkmate.

It was a short drive to the hospital, but it seemed to take forever to Jacob. He was still holding Eric’s hand when the ambulance backed up against the Emergency Room’s doors and the paramedics moved the gurney out of the rig and into the facility itself... still holding his hand when the supervising doctor appeared and stepped around the far side of the gurney to check on the young man... still holding his hand when the doctor shook his head and glanced up at the clock on the wall.

Are you family? the doctor asked quietly.

A friend, Jacob choked.

I’m sorry, the doctor whispered as he set his hand on Jacob’s shoulder.

Jacob nodded, but his mind was already miles away... back to the sidewalk where he’d found Eric and scanning the surrounding area for anyone who might have seen Eric’s attacker.

The more time passed, the more it seemed that finding the person responsible for Eric’s death was an impossible task, but Jacob didn’t care. It was the one last game he’d urged Eric to play in the ambulance... one final match that wouldn’t end until Eric’s death was avenged.

Jacob’s natural abilities combined with intensified martial arts training gave him everything he thought he needed. He would find Eric’s murderer... even if he had to capture every pawn bully and predator knight in the state before he found the bastard...

3 – Tune Up

Randy Campbell was jacked into a stereo from the moment his parents were able to recognize the child's love of music. As he grew older, they tried to get him involved in other interests, but he was that kid up the street that always sang into his mom's hairbrush and cut guitars out of the side of cardboard boxes.

Realizing there was no quenching his thirst for music or his desire to grow up to be a rock star, young Randy began taking guitar lessons... then piano... then voice...

By the time he started high school, the friends with whom he'd started his band were beginning to realize that it was a very real possibility that their front man was destined for greatness.

Randy Campbell, though, sounded too much like a country singer's name... and the last thing Randy wanted to do was get pigeonholed into a genre he didn't enjoy because of marketing.

When the band started sending out demos their junior year of high school, Randy had fully embraced the rock star image he'd created – complete with the leather jacket and flowing blonde hair – and had become Johnny Rokke to almost everyone.

And Johnny Rokke was just the man... with just the sound... that independent label, Splintercell Music, had been looking for.

As a condition of his contract – one Johnny was sure his parents had insisted on – he finished high school then vanished for a couple of months into a state-of-the-art recording studio and re-recorded the original tracks he'd written and recorded for his demos.

Johnny's debut single, a bitter pounding rock ballad about being the rebound guy called Man of the Hour shot to the top of the charts in a matter of weeks, and his debut album Rokke and a Hard Place, quickly followed. Rokke and a Hard Place went gold in three months and platinum within a year, with every single reaching the top of the charts.

Randy Campbell had achieved his dream.

Tours and parties flew by and Johnny Rokke became the household name he’d always dreamed of being. He heard himself on the radio, in the background of television shows, and on movie soundtracks... he paid off his parents’ mortgage and showered them with gifts while he built his ultimate rock-n-roll mansion and started accumulating all the expensive toys he’d always believed came with the job of being a star.

Rolling Stone called him a rising star bent on starting his own solar system and Johnny couldn’t have been happier with the description.

Or the article.

Or the fact that he was on the cover.

The party to celebrate the issue’s release had been huge, but it had been a Splintercell affair and his parents were there along with a sea of cameras, caviar, champagne, and money... the real party was waiting back at his house. He knew it was waiting because it had started the night before... with the guys from his high school band, the musicians he’d only ever dreamed of meeting a few years before, and all the barely bikini-clad girls that had been pawing all over him, the other guys, and each other in the hot tub...

There were perks to being a rock star, after all.

Loud parties at big houses... good booze... fast cars... and women like the one leaning against the glossy black Porsche sitting next to the empty space in his garage. Her hair had the same color and shine as the car beside her and her barely-there skirt and thigh-high stilettos. As he killed the Ferrari’s engine she pulled herself up off the Carrera and walked around the candy-apple red Spider, dragging her fingertips over the front wheel well as she walked up to him.

I missed you, Johnny, she pouted, reaching up behind her neck to the strings that seemed to be all that was holding her shirt on.

He couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but he did remember that she had arrived with a handful of friends. You might wanna get someone to help you chase me down then, he smirked, his hand landing on the back of her tight leather skirt as he walked past her into the house.

The rest of the night was a blur. There were vague memories here and there, but the details were lost in a mixture of way too much high-octane alcohol, a little too much cocaine, and whatever the dark haired girl from the garage and two of her friends had done to him before he woke up with the three of them tangled up with him in his satin sheets.

He had trouble pulling his eyes open at first, but the voice wasn’t going away and it wasn’t calming down or getting any quieter.

...hearing me, Randy?! Dammit! Luke crashed, man!

So let him sleep, Johnny yawned, still amazed at the way the sound of his voice could cause three beautiful naked women to snuggle even closer to him. And quit calling me that, Mikey.

"He’s not asleep, you fuck, his high school bass player yelled. He’s in the hospital!"

"Wha... wait, what?!"

On any other day, Mike Gordon would have been glad to realize that his old friend hadn’t risen too high to be worried... but he was having a hard time recognizing Randy Campbell through the layers of superstar glare that oozed off Johnny Rokke. He took off with a couple of girls, Mike explained as Johnny extracted himself from the women in his bed. That was the last I knew until his mom called my cell a couple minutes ago.

"And his mom said what?!" Johnny demanded as he pulled on a pair of jeans.

He drifted across the divider and went head-on with a pick-up, and...

Johnny stumbled as he headed toward the door, oblivious to the fact that Mike Gordon had reached out to catch him.

Why are we still here, Mikey?! Johnny reached over and tried to swipe his keys off the dresser, but his hand missed the black leather fob.

What? Mike snapped, grabbing the keys himself. You’re sure as hell not driving!

But I’ve got to...

"In a fuckin’ ambulance, Randy?! You in that big a hurry, stupid?!"

~ ~ ~

A week and a half later, after Luke Davies’ funeral, Johnny Rokke sat in his uncharacteristically quiet house and drank until he passed out. At least, that had been his plan... just to keep drinking until the pain went away. What he assumed was a good plan, though, was apparently foiled by one of his maids who thought that the fact that she couldn’t find a heartbeat was something worth calling 9-1-1 about.

Johnny Rokke passed out in his living room, but woke up in the hospital with an IV dripping in his arm and his teary-eyed mother sitting in the chair beside his bed.

They thought he’d tried to kill himself because of Luke, she told him. The maid found him on the living room floor with no heartbeat and called for help. The doctors had pumped all the booze out of his stomach and kept him on an IV hoping that his system would burn the rest of it off.

Why would I do that, Mom? he argued weakly. I’m on top of the fuckin’ world right now.

Watch your mouth, his father’s voice reprimanded from the doorway. "And get cleaned up,