A Hero's Song (Darkest Secrets Volume 1)

Chapter 1 - Test Run

Gabriel stepped into the training room for the last run of this testing stage. Each progressive battle against the training robots had become harder than the last. They'd run through many scenarios, as was customary, from multiple attackers to a combination of power levels. The final tests were always the toughest.

His latest gadget was a device that was capable of creating antimatter using controlled electrical fields. It was powerful enough to disintegrate an old-world Abrams tank in a full-powered blast. Pound for pound, this was the most potent weapon on the face of the Earth. It would help humanity fight off the Mechablitz threat. Not that he would be involved with that.

The weapon strapped to his arm was a simple wrist-mounted cannon - controlled via Neural Link and the special glasses he wore - that attached to his anti-gravity generator through his power armor. If his ensemble could even classify as power armor at that point. His suit was still nothing more than a frame with his weaponry and power source mounted on it.

It afforded no more protection to him than his enhanced physiology. Known more specifically as a Class 3 Strength and Speed mutation with Class 3 Regeneration. Not that those numbers were anything to scoff at, but running into something, or someone that could paste him was always a possibility.

For now, his antimatter - or AM - Cannon capped out at three blasts per hour of whatever antimatter construct he could create using the prototype settings on the devices. The heat generated was still too much for the advanced heat sinks he had originally developed for his flight generator. Right now it strained just keeping him airborne while firing. He was afraid to fry the system trying to push his luck.

He knew he would have to redesign the coolant system, but now was not the time to start another project, it would have to wait. Just like the armor and diamond fiber "muscles" he had already 3D-printed for his exo-suit.

He was not defenseless without his AM Cannon, luck would have it. He had at his waist, electromagnetically fused to his armor, a black metallic object that, when powered up, would channel AM waves along its length to create what he lovingly called a lightsaber. It was more aptly named the Scissor.

Anything that came into contact with this form of energy was atomized; the covalent and ionic bonds holding its structure severed. It could cut through almost anything. His blasts worked similarly, but the extra energy utilized in maintaining the constructs slightly weakened the atomizing effect.

He couldn't exactly just evaporate an entire building or a Blitz Attack Craft, for instance.

Gabriel stood in a stark white, cubic room around the size of a full city block. There was no furniture in this room. It was remodeled specifically for training purposes. Everything was monitored by cameras for the safety of the lab techs. It would take a Class 6 like Quantum to destroy this room quickly, but that didn't mean Gabriel's antimatter couldn't punch a gaping hole in any of the thick surfaces.

Across from him stood a featureless grey robot, identical to all the others they had tested him against. This one was supposed to be the strongest he had ever faced.

The training mechs had settings to allow them to emulate up to the basic Class 3 abilities. They also carried advanced armaments. Iodine created them from notes Gabriel completed in the days before he began his silent resistance.

Unbeknownst to the Human Republic - the coalition formed by the democratic nations of Europe, the Americas, parts of Australasia, and Africa after the Gene Corruption - Iodine Inc. had been supplying their enemies, the Ruchin Coalition, with weapons and robots like these to fight the alien invasion for them.