The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  “It has to be a real song?” asks Shmuel.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Mary’s boots rap like hammers up the stairs. She explodes the door off the hinges with her superpowers. Red letters scroll across the HUD.

  WARNING—

  I skid to a halt behind Mary in a room nearly identical to the one we just destroyed.

  —HOSTAGES.

  At the center of the room is a large hangman’s stage straight out of the Wild West. Seated in three chairs across the top, gagged, bound, and with nooses around their necks, are Mary’s parents—and Mom!

  My breath catches in my chest. My biceps are trembling. I force my fists to relax. The ropes around their necks are taut. Standing to the side is Blythe, her hand on the lever. An inexplicable wave of calm washes through me as a burst of air blows into the room from behind, lifting papers and toppling a vase. Fabio skids to a halt.

  “I got here as fast as I—” His head juts forward toward the hangman’s stage. “Holy crap!”

  Guys, I say. Don’t panic.

  Edge, buddy, don’t you worry about a thing. All right? I’m not leaving your side. I want you to know, I—

  Okay, Fabio, I reply. Thank you. Dad? Are you there?

  I’m here, Dad replies.

  I need to know if that’s really Mom, the prime minister, and the first lady. They’re not clones?

  ’Fraid that’s really them, he replies. But you’ve got us. Keep the faith, stay the course.

  Thank you, Charles, Mary replies.

  Thank you, Mr. B.! calls Fabio.

  “Mom, Dad, Sarah,” says Mary, and I pry my attention from our parents in time to catch the black goo from her suit receding into her ring. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Blythe’s bottom lip comes out. “Mm… I don’t know about that.”

  Mom’s eyebrows lower, and her gaze bores into mine from over her gag. An idea hits me. I face Blythe.

  “How do we know these aren’t clones? I mean, you know. It’s just kind of expected at this point.”

  Are we stalling? asks Fabio. Feels like we’re stalling.

  “Check for yourself,” Blythe replies. “He’s released them.”

  I puzzle on this for a second before taking her meaning. Mary’s tense gaze finds mine.

  She means Nostradamus released them from his mind control, she says.

  I don’t trust her, says Fabio.

  He’s right, says Dad. It’s a trap. Don’t probe their minds. She’ll try to hack into your closed group while your minds are connected to theirs.

  Fake it, then, I reply, and give Mary what I hope looks like an encouraging nod. She faces them again. A tendril of telepathic energy extends from her mind and stops well short of our parents. I turn my attention back to Blythe. Her icy gaze dissects me from top to bottom.

  “Nice codpiece,” Her lips curl on one side, and a mystic heat rises on my neck.

  “Really?” says Mary. “You’re going to do this in front of my parents?”

  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” replies Blythe.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, raising a finger. “What’re we talking about, now?”

  “Your penis. We’re girl-talking about your penis.” She faces Mary. “Is he always like this?”

  Mary frowns, and the back of my neck turns into a pancake griddle.

  “Er.” Fabio waves his hands to get our parents’ attention. “Forget about that,” he says, obviously trying to make his voice boom through the voice changer. “Never fear. We’re… Here.”

  “Boys.” Blythe snickers. “So easily manipulated. Penis.”

  My shoulders slump, then straighten.

  Fabio sticks his chest out and folds his arms. “Real mature.”

  “Penis.”

  “Stop saying that,” says Fabio.

  Mary’s psychic energy swells.

  “Penis, penis, penis.”

  Mary unleashes a torrent of invisible power, which rebounds. I blink. Whoops. Mary’s on her butt.

  “Ooh. Are you okay?” I ask.

  “What was that?” She rubs the back of her neck.

  Blythe points at the ceiling. “A little help from upstairs.”

  “Mikey?” I ask.

  “His name is Nostradamus,” replies Blythe.

  “Wait. Mikey?” exclaims Fabio. “As in: Mike Dame?! He’s Nostradamus?”

  “Sorry, buddy. A lot’s happened. I didn’t get a chance to—”

  “Don’t worry,” says Blythe. “Your friend will know everything soon enough. Oh. This is where I do this.”

  She pulls the lever—

  The trapdoor opens beneath our parents—

  Mary dives forward—

  My skin tingles. I unleash a wave of energy at Blythe, and it rebounds back at me like a two-ton balloon, skidding me across the floor. I smash into the wall, teeter, and press my palm into my forehead against a rising lump.

  Mary’s under the platform, awkwardly supporting her dad’s feet on her left shoulder and her mom’s on her right hip. My mom’s on Fabio’s back.

  My hand flies with a mind of its own to the utility belt. Hanzo guides my aim. I unleash four shuriken, one at Blythe to distract, the other three to cut the ropes. Blythe dives to the side. Streaking shuriken find their targets—but the ropes are too thick. The shuriken simply lodge in the fibers.

  Mary’s mom groans. The ropes shudder and twist. Fabio goes down on all fours, stands, and wraps his arms around Mom and lifts—

  “Uhn, Edge!”

  Blythe lands in a roll, comes up on one knee with her gun trained on me.

  She doesn’t know I’m bulletproof! My skin erupts with telekinetic energy—

  No, cries Dad. Edge—

  Blythe fires, and blue arcs of electrical current cut crazily across the room—

  Einstein seizes control, superspeeds me out of the way—

  Mary falls. Her parents are dangling, kicking, choking to death! Fabio reaches to help, loses his grip on Mom—

  Hanzo guides my hand as I release another batch of shuriken, aimed at the first: one, two, three, four, five, six—they all strike home.

  Blythe fires another round at me.

  Einstein superspeeds me to the side.

  “Stand still!” yells Blythe.

  “Guys, use the Force!” I yell as Hanzo releases another wave of shuriken. The ropes snap. Everyone crashes to the floor.

  Einstein’s superspeeding me away again—Oh, ow!

  The blue arc hits my suit. Pain lances through my body. My teeth are chattering. Back arching, arms and legs convulsing. The HUD’s nothing but red static. Pins and needles scrape my skin. Neurons misfiring, a strange blubbering sound is thick in my ears. Bones rattling on the floor. The discs in my back creak, and my spine arches further.

  Can’t…stop!

  Hang on, buddy! yells Fabio.

  Her gun! yells Mary. That’s not a normal Taser.

  Cool air meets beading sweat on my forehead. The sizzling red in the HUD sparks out. The display vanishes. Sparking black goo squeezes over me as the suit tries to come off. Other globs of it flop around like electrified fish.

  “Can’t…quite…” says Fabio. “Mary, help!”

  The pain seems to emanate from my bones. A swath of nanotech sloughs off my arm. Another peels off my leg. A sparking thatch burns my chest, arcs of electricity lash out, cutting my cheek—

  “Almost got it!” yells Mary.

  “Uhn…”

  My supersuit ring flies across the room, but the goo doesn’t go with it. The stuff on my body won’t—can’t function properly.

  “Stop it!” yells Mary. “You’re killing him!”

  “That’s the idea,” says Blythe.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  “‘Jack and Diane’?”

  “That’s three words.”

  “I don’t know… Maybe it’s more than one word.”

  “‘Cecilia’?”

  “Wrong decade.”
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  “Does it have to be the ’80s?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  “You’re the one who got the code.”

  “‘Josie’?”

  “‘Darling Nikki’?”

  “‘Rio’!”

  “Nope.”

  “‘She Shelia’?”

  “‘Candy-O’?”

  “‘Christine 16’?”

  “I hate that song.”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Pamela’?”

  “‘Jamie’s Cryin’’?’”

  “I’m gonna be cryin’ if we don’t figure this out soon.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  The toppled chair is shimmering with my radiating pain. As are the floorboards, the frayed length of rope and nooses, and Mary’s and Blythe’s ankles going back and forth as they battle for the gun.

  Mom. Knuckles flexed, hands trembling, she claws toward me on her stomach. The prime minister grabs hold of a glob of my suit. His arm sparks, hand recoils into his stomach. He rolls onto his back.

  Bang!

  A pipe bursts. Spewing water. A glob from my suit, still coursing with blue electricity, flops and bubbles toward the puddling water. I roll onto my back.

  Fabio flies overhead, his body doubled over.

  Pop! Zap!

  “Uhn!”

  Scorching heat! Everywhere, in my spine, my pelvic bone—my knee! I dig my fingers into a glob of partially deconstructed supersuit on my thigh. A stretch peels off like a sheet of dead skin. Electricity sparks across my arms, lifts my hair.

  “Ah!”

  “Edger!”

  “I got him!”

  Fabio blasts by again, this time going the other way.

  Heat pulsing in my gums, my teeth…

  Bang-bang-bang!

  Hands under my arms. Flaming chairs. Shoji screens dragging past. A stray arc zaps across my chest. The stench of burnt hair wafts up.

  A man cries out in pain.

  Clack-clack-clack!

  A gun slides past my face. I clench my teeth. My knee, it’s agony. I curl up, dig my fingernails under the glob over my bloody knee. My arms and shoulders convulse as electrified skin and goo peel back—my hands are slapped away. Charlotte, Mary’s mom, settles onto the floor next to me, her hands wrapped in rubber.

  “Let me.”

  My head strikes the floor.

  Edger, a voice whispers into my mind.

  Spots fill my vision. A freight train is roaring in my ears.

  Edger?

  Anna?

  Yes. Relax. I think I can heal you. Let me try.

  Warm, soothing energy flows into me…

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  “It’s so obvious, he said,” says Ralph. “Nobody could ever forget it, he said.”

  “All the minds on the planet under his control, he said,” says Christine. “And he’s so lazy, he picks song lyrics to remember the code.”

  “Whatever!” yells Wang. “I don’t hear you coming up with any ideas!”

  “We literally came up with every girl-named eighties song ever written,” says Ralph. “While you sat there and did this.” Ralph shields his eyes.

  “I’ve had a lot on my mind, okay?” cries Wang. “It’s not easy being a leader!”

  Yourmajesty folds his arms and stares through his face guard at him. “Probably why the boss picked a tune he would remember.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the eighties?” offers Shmuel. “Maybe it was the seventies?”

  “Oh, great,” says Ralph. “We gotta go through all that again for each decade until this asshole remembers the stupid code? Whaddaya think we are? Musical almanacs?”

  “Elvis,” says Yourmajesty in an odd tone. “It’s a song by Elvis!”

  Wang frowns. “No, it’s not a song by Elvis. Don’t you think I would remember if it were a song by Elvis?”

  “Are you sure it isn’t a song by Elvis?” asks Yourmajesty, his tone still strangely off.

  “Yes, Mister Buster of Balls, I am sure.” Wang rests his head against the cold steel door.

  Elvis. As if.

  He sits up and faces the troops, who’re gaping in the same direction, up the stairwell.

  Wang’s head turns. His heart sticks in his chest. He scrambles to his feet.

  It’s the King of Rock and Roll!

  In the flesh!

  Well, if flesh were translucent. The striations in the cement wall behind him are clearly visible through his Jailhouse Rock duds.

  Elvis Presley strikes a double-barreled-finger-gun pose at the top of the stairs, wiggles his hips, thrusts his pelvis, and Wang’s skin tingles.

  Whoa.

  This isn’t Fat Elvis. This is full-on, golden-vocal-cords, fainting-ladies Elvis. This is sent-from-God, gleaming-teeth, second-coming-of-Elvis Elvis.

  “Well, uh-huh,” says the King.

  “You’re a—you’re a—you’re a…” stammers Wang.

  “A ghost,” says Yourmajesty. “It’s the ghost of Elvis.”

  Christine faints. Consuelo gets his arm under her head and waves air into her nose.

  Elvis lowers his arms and saunters down the stairs. “Ahthankyouvurymuch.”

  “The King,” says Wang. “The King. You’re the—”

  “Dude,” says Ralph. “We literally just saw a death ghoul upstairs, and now she’s fainting and you’re freaking out about the ghost of Elvis Presley?”

  “He’s… The King!”

  “Well, uh-huh,” says Elvis again, wiggling his hips and pointing his finger guns at nothing in particular.

  “Michael Jackson married your daughter!” says Consuelo, still waving air into Christine’s face. “But…they got divorced after, like, two years.”

  “Well, uh-huh?” says Elvis.

  “I think it was after he settled that one child molestation case,” says Consuelo.

  “Well, uh-huh.” Elvis’s finger guns lower.

  “So that happened,” says Consuelo.

  Christine’s lashes flutter open. She spots the King, and her eyes roll up into her head again.

  “How can we help you, Mr. The Ghost of Elvis Presley?” asks Shmuel.

  Elvis brightens. “Well, uh-huh!” Wiggles hips, thrusts pelvis, finger guns: Bang, bang! He holds a hand up to his mouth, and a ghost microphone appears from thin air. Music streams into the basement landing from another dimension…

  And Elvis begins to sing.

  “Hey.” Ralph wags his finger. “That’s… That’s not your song. That’s… That’s Tommy Tutone’s song! That’s ‘Jenny.’”

  Ralph’s foot starts tapping. His hip juts rhythmically to the side with the beat. “Ah…Jenny! Of course!”

  Shmuel and Yourmajesty pair off and do the Wham dance, snapping their fingers, swinging their hips, and occasionally adding kicks to the side. Consuelo, still fanning Christine’s face, neck-dances, thrusting his chin in time with the music while he watches everyone else, a slow smile creeping over his face. Wang scrambles to his feet. He punches in the number.

  8-6-7-5-3-oh-9…

  “And now…” Wang claps his hands together and rubs them briskly. “Assuming there’s no missing area code or anything like that…”

  He pulls down on the handle. The lock clicks. The door opens. And there, spread out before them like Area 51 in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, except filled with boxes of contraceptives and not alien artifacts or the Ark of the Covenant, is a seemingly endless warehouse, riches beyond his wildest dreams…and…small furry shapes lurking in the shadows…?

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  It’s like Dad’s trick with washing away pain, except now it’s neural connections healing. Cells repairing, muscles rebuilding. My skin itches, then cools as burn trauma heals over. The pain in my knee dials down. Even my hurt foot from when I was running through the forest with Mom is better.

  This is incredible! I feel stronger than ever!

  Yes, Anna replies. I think you might be. I ma
y’ve done more than just heal you, I don’t know.

  I sit up, drag my fingers through my hair, cast a look around. Shattered furniture. Pipes spewing water. Pockets of fire and pieces of sparking supersuit throughout.

  Grunting, fighting—

  My fight-or-flight triggers. Near the door, Blythe swings a tasseled sword. Mary ducks. Fabio thrusts his palms out in a Jedi Force push. Blythe crashes through a flaming shoji screen. She lands in a roll, comes up on one knee, twists and Force-pushes Fabio into the broken chairs under the hangman’s stage.

  Now, Edger! says Dad. While Blythe’s distracted.

  An image forms in my mind’s eye. A doorway behind the hangman’s stage and, behind it, the final flight of stairs.

  Mikey’s up there?

  Yes. Now, go!

  I cast a hasty glance at the fight and spot Mom and Mary’s parents pinned to the wall, their feet off the floor and arms pressed against their sides. Effervescent energy shoots through me, and a sensation like a snapping towel releases from the center of my head. Mom and Mary’s parents drop to the floor, their arms rising for balance. Mom turns, snatches two swords off a rack, and tosses them to the prime minister and first lady before grabbing a third for herself. Her eyes find mine. Her jaw clenches. She gives me a curt go-get-him nod.

  I race to the stairs. Blythe lurches toward me. Mary snatches her ponytail. Blythe’s head snaps back.

  I round the stage, bound into the stairwell, panting, my drumming feet broadcasting loud and clear I’m coming, but I don’t care. Double doors at the top. Heart pounding, I blast the doors off their hinges, just like Mary.

  I cross the threshold, pissed, fists clenched, arms flexing—

  My feet leave the floor. The room streaks past. A wall slams into place between me and the Collective Unconscious, and then I slam into something solid—

  Crash, crash!

  A puff of air blasts me in the face as a block of wood slams shut over my chest. My wind’s knocked out. I can’t move! My chin pushes into a wooden collar. A smooth piece of wood painted in dragons is closed around my body, neck to feet. My heart’s knocking against the inside as my medallion is yanked off its chain. Oh my God. I can’t get enough air. My chest presses against the wood, but…I can’t breathe!