Team Omega by Christopher G. Nuttall Page B

outside world could do—or, rather, there was nothing the outside world would do.  Hope had no illusions about the power gathered by the SDI, or the European or Russian superhuman teams.  They could have pacified the entire country in a week, but actually fixing the problems tormenting the Congo would take a long-term commitment—and no outside country would make such a commitment.  The African countries surrounding the Congo were all involved in the endless war.  He looked northwards until he saw the unit of Libyan troops that had been dispatched by their leader to ensure that the outcome of the civil war favoured his proxies.  The task had been impossible; the troops had rapidly become as savage as the rest of the armies fighting for dominance.  Hope couldn't look away from the mass graves where they’d buried their victims after they’d had their fun.
     
    The outside aid workers were just as bad.  Some fed all sides indiscriminately and kept the war going long past when it should've ended.  Others abused the population themselves, even helping one side round up the others for extermination.   It hadn’t been that long since one side had launched an attack on a refugee camp, one the victims had thought was safe.  They’d looted, raped and burned at will, even murdering the Western do-gooders who had thought that organising a refugee camp was the right thing to do. 
     
    And no one had done anything about it.
     
    Hope clenched his fists, trying to shut out the noise, but it was impossible.  Men were screaming in pain as they died; women were being raped and murdered; children were howling for their missing parents...it never got any better.  Nor could he block his senses for long.  His ears repaired themselves automatically; he'd once torn them off, only to have them regenerate within a day.  Rage boiled through him as he found himself looking down at Kinshasa, the capital city of the Congo.  Right now, it was a city in the grip of a tyranny worse than anything Berlin or Moscow had ever known, a tyranny enforced by a superhuman who had declared himself Emperor of the Congo.  His writ didn't run for more than a few miles outside the city, but that didn't stop him from keeping the entire population under strict control.  They couldn't hope to rebel.
     
    They called Hope a hero.  The American population loved his blond good looks, his muscles on his muscles and willingness to risk his life to save people and make the world a better place.  If only they’d realised that, for all of his crime-fighting, he’d done nothing to save the population of the Congo and a dozen other failed states.  He hadn't even managed to clean up Hell’s Kitchen or any of the other inner cities across the United States.  Hope had removed a hundred drug lords, henchmen spraying him with bullets that just bounced off his impregnable skin, but what had really changed?  He could remove a drug lord each day, but a new one would be in power within hours.
     
    The irony chilled him.  If the CIA was to be believed, the first known superhuman had appeared in Africa—and yet Africa was still a mess.  Superpowers had only made a bad situation worse. 
     
    No more, he swore to himself.  No more .
     
    He smiled as he felt another presence near him, turning to see the Redeemer as she floated above the tormented land.  No one really knew what the Redeemer looked like; she appeared differently to each person who saw her, a minor use of her extremely powerful mental talents.  Hope saw her as a woman on the verge of middle age, combining youth and wisdom in her smile.  He had no idea what others saw when they looked at her.
     
    “Such a tormented land.” The Redeemer sighed as she looked at him.  Her talents were, if anything, more prone to being distracted by the suffering below than his own.  Hope had long since come to terms with the fact that she was so telepathically powerful that she could read his mind without ever