by Barry Lyga
But first … I have something else to do.
Something to say.
Hello, there, Walter. Walter Lundergaard. I know you’re reading this at some point in the future. You disappeared from the time capsule burial before the police could get the area locked down, but Mairi had you on video. That video clip of you absorbing energy from your plasma “zombies” has been on every news channel in the country. It’s gone viral on YouTube. Now the whole world is looking for you.
Just like they used to look for the Blue Freak.
But the Blue Freak is gone now.
There’s just me.
And I want you to know something: You may have a lot of money and a lot of secrets hidden around the world, a lot of places to hide … but it doesn’t matter.
I’m going to stop you.
I don’t know how, but I will stop you.
Kyle stood at the closed door to his parents’ bedroom. This would be the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
After long moments of waiting, he finally rapped on the door.
“Come in!” his dad called out.
Kyle went into the bedroom. Mom sat at her makeup table, brushing her hair as she did every night. Dad lay in bed, half watching the news and half reading one of the paperback mystery novels he never seemed to be without. It was so strange — just a day ago, to Kyle, his father had been a scrawny little squirt. And now he was a man. It was as though he’d grown up overnight.
And Kyle thought that maybe his dad wasn’t the only one who’d grown up.
“What’s up, sport?” Dad asked a little warily, a little less brightly than usual.
I lost my powers because of my trip through time. I lost Erasmus. But I may have gained something more important.
Kyle fidgeted. And then finally just spilled it:
“I just wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“For what you taught me.”
Dad stared at him, then grinned and gave a little shoulder shrug. “You’re welcome!”
Kyle hugged his father and left. As he closed the door behind him, he heard his mother say, “What did you teach him?”
“I teach him a lot of stuff,” Dad said confidently.
Kyle chuckled under his breath.
After his parents had gone to sleep and after Lefty was satiated with an abundance of yogurt drops and chunks of dried pineapple, Kyle lay awake in bed, unable to drift off. Too much had happened to him. Too much to think about. And with no more superbrain to process all of that information, he was having to do it like normal people did — one bit at a time.
There was still, of course, the lingering question of who Walter Lundergaard really was. And what he was up to. Lundergaard had recognized him back in 1987. So, someday in his own future, Kyle would meet Walter Lundergaard. For Kyle, it would be the second time. For Lundergaard, the first.
Well, that’ll be weird.
He rolled out of bed, ignoring Lefty, who suddenly stirred and became very active now that Kyle was up and about. Kyle turned on his computer. He had already transferred the contents of his videotape to his hard drive, but he hadn’t watched it yet. Why not do it now?
First, there was static. Then, framed by dry, dying cornstalks, Kyle could make out a chunk of the Bouring Middle School football field.
As Kyle watched, he saw himself walk into frame.
A few moments later, there was a flash of light from off-screen, and Kyle watched himself hold up an arm against it … and then pass out.
I didn’t get Mighty Mike in frame after all. Oh, well. It doesn’t matter anymore.
Kyle reached out to turn off the video, but just then Mighty Mike walked into the scene, still glowing from the plasma storm.
Oh, cool!
A slow, wicked grin spread over Mike’s face as he leaned in close….
Kyle watched. Watched Mike slowly approach his own unconscious body. Had Mike done something while Kyle was out cold? Something Kyle didn’t remember?
The camera had good placement; he could see everything as Mighty Mike crouched down near Kyle’s prone form. Kyle held his breath. What had happened? What was he about to see?
Mike leaned in close. Closer. His lips at Kyle’s ear.
His lips moved.
He said something to me that night! He said something! What, though?
The microphone on the camera wasn’t good enough to pick up what was said. It was brief, whatever it was. It took only a few seconds and then — as Mike walked away — the video ended.
Kyle rewound and watched again: Mike approached. Leaned in. Spoke. Walked away.
Again: Approach. Lean. Speak. Leave.
He zoomed in as much as he could.
He watched those seconds over and over again, staring at Mike’s lips for what seemed to be hours.
Eventually, he picked out four syllables.
Three words.
Just three words before Mike walked away.
Three words that made the hair on Kyle’s neck stand on end. Three words that made his skin crawl with absolute terror.
The first two words: “It worked.”
It worked.
And then the last word:
“Master.”
Now Kyle really couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, which meant that Lefty couldn’t sleep, either. The rabbit stomped his feet and tugged at the bars of his cage. Which had the effect of making it even harder for Kyle to sleep, so he finally got out of bed, hoisted Lefty out of his cage, and plopped his fat bunny butt on the bed.
“‘It worked, master.’ What’s that about, Lefty? I was the only one there. He had to be talking to me. He was calling me master. Why would Mighty Mike call me master? And then go ahead and be all secretive and alien? Why, Lefty?”
Lefty cocked his head to one side and regarded Kyle with one pink eye. Somehow, that calmed Kyle down. He stroked Lefty’s soft fur and the rabbit settled in for a nice, long petting. Before he knew it, Kyle’s eyes were drooping and his chin dipped to the bed.
He awoke hours later to Lefty head-butting his forehead with an insistence that meant either “Put me back in my cage so I can use the litter box” or “Feed me, you dolt!” Kyle did both, just to be safe.
It was early in the morning, around the time when Kyle would normally have to wake up for school. But school — which had just started up after Ultitron’s rampage — was temporarily on hiatus again as Bouring recovered from being turned into time-stealing zombies. Kyle chuckled: The motto “Bouring: It’s not Boring!” was becoming truer and truer with each passing day.
With his parents at work and the house to himself, Kyle had nothing to do, so he ambled down to the basement. A part of him wanted to go visit his grandparents, but he knew it would be a shock to see them so old, after having just seen them so young. Plus, he wasn’t sure he was ready to see Gramps. Not yet.
Down in the basement, he began to clean up the remains of his workshop. He’d left the place a mess before leaving for the past. Once, he could have used these leftovers to build … something. Anything. Together, he and Erasmus would have figured out …
He sighed and sat on the bottom step leading upstairs. Erasmus. Oh, Erasmus …
After a while, he was tired of feeling sorry for himself. He needed to move. Needed to do something. He gathered up all the stuff that was now just junk again and hauled it outside, leaving it by the curb. People were still — weeks later — cleaning up from Ultitron’s rampage, so it wasn’t strange to see piles of random junk left outside for pickup.
As the morning became the afternoon and then early evening, the basement slowly began to resemble its old self, the version of it from before Kyle’s exposure to the plasma shower and the arrival of Mighty Mike on Earth. All that remained were his two trophies: the leaded jar of irradiated dirt from Mike’s landing site and the wooden mask that young Jack Stanley had worn as the Mad Mask. Next to them, Kyle placed his third — and final — trophy: the iPod shell that had once h
oused Erasmus.
And so ends the career of the Azure Avenger, he thought. Some dirt, a piece of wood, and a piece of useless electronic junk. Way to go, Kyle.
He stared at the mask. Its empty eyeholes seemed to stare back at him.
Project Steely. Project Brassy. Something like that …
He shook his head. No. He was done. He had no powers. He had no superbrain. He had no snarky artificially intelligent sidekick. He was just Kyle Camden again. For a moment, he considered trying to track down the grown-up Jack Stanley, but he realized that would be fruitless. Jack had had plenty of time to go wherever he wanted since 1987. He could be anywhere in the world, under any identity.
But his younger self is still out there. Still nuts. Kyle remembered Jack’s warning — “Be on the lookout for me…. I’m pretty sure I did some nasty stuff to you to get back at you for destroying Ultitron.” So, I have that to look forward to. Which is nice.
Still … whatever Jack had done to Kyle in the past and whatever he would do to Kyle in the future, Kyle knew that a day would come when the Mad Mask would reform, would become an ally.
A friend.
Yeah, and speaking of friends … maybe it’s time you start acting like one to the only one you have left.
That sounded about right.
Later that night, after dinner, Kyle bundled up (bundling up was something he would have to get used to again, now that he could feel cold) and walked over to Mairi’s house. The devilish little prankster in him had considered wearing the Mad Mask’s mask. Because boy oh boy would that have given Mairi a shock when she opened the door!
But, no. Sure, it would be funny to see the look on Mairi’s face, but it would also be cruel to do that to her. She’d been kidnapped by the Mad Mask. Saying “It was just a prank” couldn’t make up for scaring someone. Especially a friend.
So all Mairi saw when she opened the front door was Kyle’s freezing cold face, ringed by a fake-fur-lined hood to ward off the wind that blew down the street.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back. And then they were silent for a moment until Kyle said, “So. I’ve been a butthead lately.”
Mairi glared at him. Then she said: “A total butthead, you mean.”
“Yeah. A total butthead.” He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other and then said, “I’m sorry.” And not just for being a butthead. But also for lying to you and erasing part of your memory and all of that stuff. But mostly for being a butthead because friends shouldn’t be buttheads. “I’m really sorry,” he added.
Mairi seemed to think about this for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. That’s cool. Want to come in?”
Mairi couldn’t believe Kyle was back. He was the old Kyle again — funny, interesting, fun to be with — but also somehow a new Kyle, too. A better Kyle. As if he’d grown up a whole bunch just in the past few hours.
But that was impossible, of course.
Whatever he’d had had going on in his head, she figured, he must have worked it out.
They spent time playing video games and watching Sashimi desperately chase a laser pointer — “You’ll never catch it!” Kyle chortled — and watched some TV and then, before it was time for Kyle to go home, they went out on the back deck with blankets and two ginormous mugs of hot cocoa and stared up at the stars.
“Remember when you showed me Pegasus? The night the dirt monster tried to kill me?”
“How could I forget?”
Mairi sipped some cocoa. “You know, I didn’t used to get it. Why you didn’t like Mighty Mike. And I guess that’s because he rescued me that night from the dirt monster. But I’ve been thinking lately….”
“About what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You know, someone came and rescued me from the Mad Mask, when he had me down in the sewers. It wasn’t Mighty Mike. I think it was the Blue Freak, but my memory’s all …” She shook her head, frustrated. “The doctors say that trauma and shock can mess with your memory. They say I might never remember everything about what happened down there. But I know Mike didn’t save me. And today … today, he didn’t know what to do to stop the zombies or Lundergaard. I had to figure it all out and he still got the credit! It’s not fair!”
Kyle put his cocoa down and gazed at her. “What are you saying?”
“I guess I’m saying that maybe I understand why you don’t like him. There’s something just … off about him.”
Kyle surprised her by shrugging. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.”
“Oh, so now I guess you guys are best buddies and all?”
“Not really. I guess I’ve just come around on him, is all.”
“And I suppose you’re going to try to convince me I’m wrong.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you of anything,” Kyle told her. “You’ll figure it out on your own someday.”
“Well, isn’t this ironic,” Mairi said. “Suddenly, you’re the Mighty Mike fan and I’m —”
Her cocoa was halfway to her lips and it almost spilled and scalded her when Kyle grabbed her by the shoulders like a lunatic. “What did you just say?” he asked.
“I said — get off my shoulders — I said that you’re the Mighty Mike fan —”
“No, before that. You said it was ironic, didn’t you?”
“Well, duh.” Kyle’s eyes had that crazy light in them, a light Mairi knew all too well. It meant he’d figured something out. That he was planning something. “It’s ironic, Kyle. Ironic is when something happens that’s the opposite of what —”
“I know what it means,” Kyle said, evidently too busy thinking of something else to say it sarcastically. “But it … Oh, man!”
And then he did the most shocking thing ever: He leaned over and planted a kiss — a quick smacker — right on Mairi’s forehead. It was so fast she barely had time to register it before he pulled away.
“You know how people say, ‘I could just kiss you’?” he babbled. “Well, that’s how I just felt. So I did. Oh, man. I think I have it figured out.”
Mairi touched her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She didn’t have anything figured out right now.
“I need your help, Mairi,” Kyle said. “I need to … I need to pull a prank.”
Mairi rolled her eyes. This she understood. “More pranks, Kyle? Really? After everything that’s happened to this town?”
“Just one more. My last prank, probably. Will you help me?”
Mairi sighed. “Of course I will. You butthead.”
Kyle grinned.
The next day, at noon, Kyle Camden threw himself off the top of the Bouring Lighthouse, much to the horror and shock of the people below.
A day earlier, throwing himself off the lighthouse wouldn’t have been a big deal because Kyle could fly. But now he couldn’t fly anymore. These days, when he flung himself at the ground, he only had one option: Obey the law of gravity and go splat.
Still, it was a tall lighthouse and Kyle had some time to think on the way down. Mairi had been instrumental to this prank, of course. She’d gotten him into the lighthouse, which was necessary. He needed some height. He needed to be seen. No other building in town would do.
Mairi had insisted on going all the way to the top with him. The trapdoor into the Lantern Room was still fused shut, so Kyle had climbed out a window in the Watch Room and — with Mairi fretting the whole time — scaled the lighthouse up to the Lantern Room, then the rooftop.
“Be careful!” Mairi had cried more than once.
“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart!” Kyle had told her.
And then jumped.
Right on time, Mighty Mike swooped in from above the clouds and snatched Kyle out of the air long before he could go splat.
“Kyle!” Mike exclaimed. “What are you doing?! Why did you jump? And why is there a bungee cord attached to you?”
Kyle could have explained, but instead he gave Mike a moment to think it through.
It took more than a moment, but eventually Mike got it. “Ohhh …” He hesitated, hovering in midair, as if unsure what to do. For a second there, Kyle thought Mike might just let him go and then Kyle would go all bouncy-bouncy alongside the Bouring Lighthouse.
“I needed to see you,” Kyle explained, “and you’ve been all over the world, looking for Lundergaard. But I knew that if half of Bouring suddenly shouted for help, you would come running.”
“You were wrong,” Mike said sternly. “I did not come running. I came flying.”
Once upon a time, Mike’s banged-up brain annoyed the heck out of Kyle. Now it didn’t seem like such a big deal. “Consider me corrected,” Kyle said. “Take us up to the roof, all right?”
Mike complied. They passed Mairi on the way. Kyle saluted her. She grinned and saluted back.
On the roof of the lighthouse, Kyle unattached his bungee cord and gazed at Mighty Mike.
“Is there something else I can help you with?” Mike asked politely. “I have other things to do….”
“Why did you call me ‘master’?” Kyle asked.
Mike cocked his head to one side, and for a moment, he looked exactly like Lefty. “What do you mean?” Totally guileless. Completely sincere.
“You really don’t remember anything from that night, do you?” Kyle had suspected this was the case. He wondered if it was a safety feature or just a glitch. It could go either way. “Or even before that?”
Mike shook his head. “I have been very front-up about that. I have no memory before being here in Bouring.”
“It’s ‘up-front,’ not ‘front-up,’” Kyle corrected. Gently.
“Thank you.”
“Look, Mike, I don’t expect you to get this…. I don’t expect you understand it all at once, but … I think we should work together.”
Mike blinked rapidly. “Together? But you are just a person. No offense.”
“None taken. I’m just a human being, yeah, but I’m smart. And you’re not.” He paused. “No offense.”
