Lightweight 7: "Survival"

By Nicholas Ahlhelm

With Bethany's life in danger, Lightweight finds himself out of his element against the deadly killer known as Sigma. Plus new threats move into place that will challenge Kevin Mathis like never before! And the identity of the Gray Man revealed!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metahuman
• Release date: Aug 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310192159

Nicholas Ahlhelm

Nicholas Ahlhelm produces new super powered fiction, often in a serialized format like you see here with Lightweight. He lives in Eastern Iowa where he wishes the winters were just a bit less wintery. Learn more about his work at superpoweredfiction.com. To directly back his writing and get new serialized stories months before everyone else, support him at Patreon.com/ahlhelm.

Book preview

Lightweight 7

Survival

By Nicholas Ahlhelm

Lightweight 7: Survival Smashwords Edition, Lightweight and all related characters are copyright © 2014 Nicholas Ahlhelm.

Sigma created by Nicholas Ahlhelm and Wesley Richardson.

Edited by Lisa M. Collins.

Cover illustration by Brent Sprecher.

Lightweight logo designed by Cynthia Celeste Miller. Lightweight costume and insignia design by Brent Sprecher.

Some fonts used in production of this book were created by Blambot and are used under their Free Font License Agreement. © Nate Piekos. Blambot.com.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Survival

Afterword

Letters

Character Profile: Sigma

Backers

About the Author

Survival

I wasn’t in darkness. I couldn’t remember how long or how often I sat upon the clouds staring at the sun, but it felt like forever. Night after night—or was it day after day—of endless blinding light. I felt my vision should be gone. I felt like I should have been lost in the ever-growing, all-encompassing rays beating down on me. I should burn up, wither into ash, anything to escape it all.

I cried out in impotent rage. No answer came. I was alone up here, adrift in nothingness. I couldn’t die, I couldn’t escape and no one would rescue me.

I collapsed down on to the cloud. It was soft like an overly springy bed, but I welcomed the contact with my skin. It was the only touch of something slightly real I had left.

Please, I said to no one. Please just let me be free of all this. Please just let me out.

No one answered. I was alone. Alone forever and begging for death.

***

Kevin awoke to a thud. His alarm clock sat next to his bed, upside down and far from its plug across the room. He tumbled out of his bed, covered in sweat. He hit the floor with a thump. As he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he realized the mattress was sideways, half off the bedsprings. The frame was also off center in the room. He had moved it all in his sleep.

He grabbed his clock and carried it back to its home. Plugging it back in, it blinked twelve o’clock at him. He stumbled back to his bed to find his phone, still on the bedside table.

The display said 4:19. Another night of no sleep. This is getting to be a bad habit.

He opened his window. The March air was still cool, but far warmer than the harsh winter cold of January and February. He quickly slid into last night’s pants and his shoes. He buckled the belt even as he activated the mechanism inside it. The strange liquid cloth of his Lightweight costume flowed over his skin and clothes. In a matter of seconds, he was fully dressed. He reached out and grabbed the dark gray boogie board that sat beside the window. A present from Millie for his birthday several weeks back, it served as a good replacement for the one he lost in battle with Hellfire months earlier.

Lightweight leapt from his bedroom window and with his gravity powers, he latched the board to his feet. Just a thought sent him levitating out over his house.

Couldn’t sleep? The voice was soft, just above a whisper. He turned around and saw