Book about a guy who discovers he has super-hearing and then other powers

Question

It starts out with us finding out the main character has superpowers because he can hear his neighbours' kettle going off and various other things that he shouldn't be able to hear. He finds out his parents used to be in an Avengers-like team but something happened that caused them to all lose their powers.

I think his friend has superspeed or something and they end up having to run from the government?

There was also a girl that got frozen in crystal when the event happened that caused everyone (the kid's parents) to lose their powers. She's been frozen all this time but then wakes up and finds out that time has passed. I vaguely remember a woman who had mind control powers; she was the antagonist.

The main character as well ended up finding out he had invulnerability to fire?

If I'm remembering correctly there was a few books in the series. I also remember maybe the first book having a green cover with a helicopter on the front.

Answer 1

The New Heroes by Michael Carroll

The story opens with a seemingly random battle among the many superhumans that inhabited the western world, set ten years ago at the foot of a gigantic tank that was on its way to New York City. During the course of this slugfest, the superheroes and supervillains all seem to lose their abilities.

Ten years later, Colin Wagner and Danny Cooper, the children of these superhumans are discovering their abilities and they soon learn that they have also inherited their parents' enemies. The teenagers are kidnapped in order to calibrate the machine that might take away their powers and stop a war that was prophesied by Danny's father, the man once known as Quantum. Danny was believed to be the cause of this war, and so he allowed the supervillain known as Façade to take his place to let Maxwell Dalton record his visions of the future as he broke down. They had hoped to avert it by stripping the world of superpowers ten years ago, but the machine was destroyed and Danny's powers continued to manifest. The new machine would be unstable, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people, but it was a risk they were willing to take. With the help of old heroes, including the frozen in time Renata Soliz (Diamond), they stop this from happening and have those behind the plot taken away. By the end of the book, they realise how much risk is involved in becoming superhuman, with Danny's arm now missing, his real father dead, and many lives irrevocably changed.