1
Radiant Wasp
(Book One)
The overly sized company trucks with the Wayne/Powers logo on the sides rolled covertly into the underbelly of Gotham City, the side of town ripe with every crime imaginable and unimaginable. Trash littered the streets: bottles, plastic bags, needles, wrappers, and condoms. Prostitutes from the underbelly crept through the area on warmer days, and they left needles, condoms, and every ungodly item for the kids to find. The city's trash crew went on a strike nearly six months ago over higher wages, and the trash piled up on the side of the road nearly six feet high in some places. The sanitation worker's strike crippled the city, and brought the wraith of the city government on the heads of the people who supported them. The city unleashed the water hoses on the strikers several times, and killed four people. The local prostitutes kept the strikers happy, and made a lot of money during the crisis. But since the strike ended, the prostitutes returned to hustling and stealing and doing whatever it took to make ends meet.
Jessica Hall, a vibrant young lady with deep brown, swarthy skin, braided hair, and wearing a black, Gothic like dress walked by the clandestine compound as the roaring trucks pulled into Cadmus. She had a stern look about her, and high cheekbones. No more than sixteen-years-old, she stood approximately five-foot-eight, but slender. She watched the swaying drums of contaminate on the back of the trucks closely, because it looked like they could fall off the beds of the trucks with the way they swayed back and forth. The drums of waste rattled because the driver didn't tie them down. When the economy crashed in twenty-twenty-five, the government fired all the inspectors who insured the drivers secured their drums of toxins. When the newly elected city council went into effect, they rescinded all laws regarding waste removal. Seedy corporations stored their biochemical and radioactive waste all over the poor parts of the city, and the cancer rates soared. The bitter wind blew wildly against Jessica's soft, brown face as she walked quietly on the other side of the street. She watched the trucks closely with the large, wobbly containers of radioactive canisters on the back, and feared of a possible spill if they didn't slow down. The flickering streetlights didn't brighten up anything on Fifth Street, as the trucks moved into the military facility that stood quietly most days of the week. Rumor had it that a clandestine government organization kept tabs on meta-humans, but that was only a rumor. She knew the compound contained a multitude of secrets, but she didn't know what those secrets were. Rumors and conjecture about the happenings on the compound raced through the community, but most of them were impossible to believe. Some people claimed the government built several clones of Superman, but they weren't viable; they died before they turned the age of two. She stood in front of the main gate, but had to focus hard to see the compound's lights in the distances.
The skyline of Gotham stood quietly for the last ten years without the ominous roar of the bat jet that flew overhead for many years, keeping a watchful eye over the city, but only the viable parts of the city. Crime was rampant. But since 2020, nobody had heard anything from the Batman. He disappeared after he saved a young girl in a high profile kidnapping, and nobody knew what happened to him after that highly publicized case. The criminals didn't move into the city immediately, but they gradually took hold of it by twenty-twenty-five. The Jokers played major ball with the cops, and had control of the crime in the underbelly. Most of the sophisticated aristocrats believed Batman to be dead, including Billionaire Bruce Wayne. Mister Wayne wrote an oped about Batman in Twenty Twenty-Seven titled "Good Riddance to the Bat." The entire community rallied against the image of the Batman after Mister Wayne assailed him, and tons of people in Gotham burned his images in the streets. The Jokers led mobs of miscreants into downtown Gotham, and hung Batman's image from the tallest building. The people spit venom at the man that kept crime at bay for so many years. The disrespect of the cape crusader disgusted the older generation.
It seemed irresponsible for the drivers not to tie down their drums of contaminate, and Jessica pulled out her cellphone, took a few pictures of the wobbly containers, and then posted them on her social page. Everybody knew if the city didn't demand businesses to be responsible, they wouldn't. She saw one of the drums of contaminate fall off the back of the last flatbed truck, and she started to run down the blackened street in order to escape the flying waste. She stopped running once she made it to the end of the block, but she wanted to see what was inside the canister, take a few pictures, and post them on her social page. She looked up at the skyline, and saw the moon creeping behind the thick, billowy clouds. She had an acute interest in chemistry that often got her into serious trouble with the authorities. She made several batches of meth when she was only ten years old by following a simple recipe she found on the Internet. She gave the batch to her fourth grade school teacher, Miss Harris, and she ended up losing her job because she had a system full of drugs on the quarterly drug test that year. Vengeful, she turned in Jessica to the police, and they raided the young girl's home for traces of the drugs, but didn't find anything. Her momma grounded her for sixth months over the incident.
Curious, Jessica darted back down the street where the dense, green liquid with an effervescent glow covered a small section of the dark roadway. A legion of red wasp flew over her head with their menacing stingers threatening her existence. She didn't know where the wasp came from because it was too cold for normal insects to be outside. The buzzing bugs dove into the greenish goo, and she backed away from the clump of wasp and grassy colored goo with adroit cautiousness. Stumbling, she fell to the ground, and the thump caused several of the mean spirited insects to attack her ferociously. One of the red devils stung her in the face, and she screamed in excruciating pain. The roar of her cry bounced from building to building, but nobody came to her rescue. Trembling, she continued to try to back away from the red savages, but they stung her repeatedly and without hesitation. It felt like the stinger hit her cheekbone, and it ignited a spark of pain that raced throughout her entire, svelte body. Lunging to her feet, she sprinted down the road, but two more feverish, venomous bugs stung her in the back of the neck. She tried to swat the nasty buggers as they flew through the air, but they were nimble—circumventing her every swing until they injected another load of radioactive sludge into her body. She had never felt so much harrowing pain in her entire life. The effects of the radioactive material in her body with the poison from the bugs caused her to feel sick. She retched repeatedly, but nothing happened. When she fell to the ground, she continued to heave, but nothing came up. Every time her body convulsed, it felt like her ribs would burst, and all she could do was scream, as loud as possible. Placing her right hand over her chest, she felt her heart palpitating wildly, and she began to sob loudly. Her vision blurred. The tears raced down her face, but none of the half curious people walking by her stopped to help. They stared. They pointed. They scoffed at her because the bubbles of puss forming on her face and back looked hideously uncouth. She looked monstrously deformed because of the deadly stings from the wasp. Instantly, she went from a young, prepubescent girl to Frankenstein's monster, and didn't have the ability to evade the sneers of the small crowd of people that gathered to scoff at her.
Jessica fell face down on the cold, grungy ground, but none of the people who walked by her offered to help. They laughed. Some of them even said, "It's people like that sponging off the hard working Americans that's killing this economy."
Due to the high crime, people grew cold towards each other, and nobody dared to offer a caring hand to a black girl. The majority of people probably thought she suffered from chronic drug use; and according to the popular rumors, most of Gotham's youth used drugs. She found enough strength in her puny muscles to crawl to the far side of the building. Flurries of bright snow began to drop on Gotham, and she knew that she needed to try to make it home before the flurries turned thick and deadly. Every year the news media reported on a slew of homeless people dying from Gotham's bitter winters. She knew the flurries would turn into a heavy snow, and that the temperatures would drop below zero. She had told herself repeatedly over the last several weeks that this Christmas break would be uneventful, but not now. It was the first day of her Christmas break, and death seemed imminent. Reaching in her coat pocket for her cell phone, she noticed it didn't have power; and if she didn't find help, she'd be just like her communication's device—dead. She knew she didn't have much juice left on her phone, but the pictures she took of the wobbly drums of contaminate used the little power she had left, and now death was close at hand.
It didn't take long for the heavy snow to creep into Gotham. It came down sideways, and stuck to everything it touched. Jessica lay against the stone building wrapped in her heavy coat, but it didn't help much. She held out her tongue for a moment in order to capture some of the snow, because for some reason she felt awfully thirsty. Looking up into the snowy sky, she didn't see an immediate end to the fluffy white stuff. The entire night sky looked white and cloudy—and dangerous. But when she looked at the manhole cover in the middle of the street, she noticed the snow didn't accumulate on it. She watched the steam emerging from the cover, and wondered if she could find temporary refuge underneath the shady city. She knew of the underbelly community that kept a shanty town underneath the city, and they would most likely have a heating source of some kind. But according to the rumors, the people beneath the streets indulged in every sin imaginable, including child sex trafficking.
But this was Fifth Street, a place where the Jokers had complete control. The miscreants called the Jokers marked every building in the area with their gang graffiti. And everybody knew—or should have known—the Jokers controlled the sewers beneath Fifth Street. They took indigent children beneath the streets, and sold them into sex slavery. The majority of the gang members who didn't become slaves joined as kids in order to escape a horrible childhood, but quickly grew into ruthless savages—preying on the weak of the city. But she couldn't think of the what-ifs, because if she didn't find safety soon, she'd die. She crawled over to the manhole, and nudged it enough until she slid the heavy steel lid off its base. The smell that emanated from the sewer made her feel sicker, but she could feel the warmth too. Focusing on the ladder, she slowly climbed down into the dark, dank hole, but used caution with each step.
She saw large rats treading through the dirty water, and they put some fear in her heart. She'd heard stories of the large, predatory rats beneath Gotham, but never took them to heart. The rodents were at least the size of large cats, and they floated through the water gathering food. When one of the nasty animals looked at her, it showed its teeth. She felt a little scared, but tried to ignore them in order to find a place where she could rest. For some reason her legs felt heavier than usual, and she had a hard time walking.
She hugged the sidewalls of the dirty tunnel, as she gingerly walked deeper into the warm delve. Labored breathing and holding her stomach as if it ached, she struggled to make it down the dark tunnel. She saw the source of the warm air when a stream of steamy smoke came out of the wall. The giant knot on her forehead throbbed, and she winced in excruciating pain, but she tried her best to ignore it. It felt as if the knot had its own heartbeat on her tender forehead. Every time she tried to feel the large bump, she pulled her hands away in agonizing pain. It leaked a bit of bloody puss onto her brown coat, and the infection smelled like rotten cabbage. She laid her shoulders against the wall, and sobbed with a loud roar. The infection oozing out of her face smelled worse than the smell emanating from the sewer. Hugging the wall, she tried her best to ignore the bump on her face. All she wanted to do was find a little solace in a small room or crevice in the tunnel, where she could die in peace.
She thought she had stepped into some kind of glue like substance, because her feet ceased to move. Every time she struggled to move her legs, it was nothing more than a good try. She couldn't move from her spot. At first, she thought she was going crazy because she didn't see anything impeding her from walking. Her brain told her to keep moving through the corridor, but her legs wouldn't obey. No matter how hard she tried, she didn't have the power to move her legs, and the sound of the steam exiting the wall caused her to flinch repeatedly. Every time she tried to move, it felt like gravity stopped her, but she didn't know why. She began to lament about all the things she didn't do with her short life, but didn't let her tears keep her from struggling to walk. When she looked down at her legs one more time, a molted film engulfed half her body. It seeped through her pants, and had a crystal like appearance to it. She tried to tear a chunk of the substance off her legs, but she couldn't break it. The sting of the radioactive wasp stole her strength. It looked like some kind of cocoon coming from the pores of her skin, but she wasn't sure. The tingle she felt in her legs raced up to her hands; and when she took a glance at her fingers, the cocoon like substance engulfed her digits until her hands looked like warm, wintery mittens. It scared her. The puss filled knot on her head started pulsating rapidly, and then a stream of white, bloody puss flew all over the wall immediately in front of her. She couldn't believe that much goo came from her head, but it did. She fell against the bloody, white mess, and more of the molted substance came out of her skin until it enclosed her inside of it. Within minutes, she looked like a gigantic crystal cocoon without any form whatsoever. She was nothing more than a pile of biological goo stuck to the wall.