“I feel like a circus freak,” I said to Isaac.
“You look like one too.”
“Talking to you never fails to boost my self-esteem.”
Isaac shrugged modestly. “It’s a God-given gift.”
EZ Keep was a fenced-in, three-story building next to a gas station. Though I had never been here, I had walked or driven past self-storage places like this one hundreds of times. Real estate prices in Astor City were sky high and, unless you were wealthy or had roommates like I did, you could not afford very much living space. A lot of people who moved here from less expensive areas stored their extra stuff in places like EZ Keep. Self-storage businesses were as much a part of big city life as panhandlers and muggings were.
During non-business hours, we would have needed to use the access code Truman had given us to get inside. Since it was business hours, we simply walked through the door of EZ Keep’s front office. A young, pretty brunette behind the counter looked up. She smiled brightly at Isaac. Her smile faltered when her eyes fell on me. Pity mixed with disgust on her face. Now I knew how Frankenstein’s monster felt.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” she said, though she only looked at Isaac when she said it. Look away, I’m hideous.
“We’re just going to our unit,” Isaac said. We breezed past the counter toward a glass door secured with a numeric code access panel on the far side of the office. I punched Truman’s access code into the panel. The door buzzed unlocked. Isaac said to the employee, “When we come back, let’s talk about what you can do to help me. I can think of a few things.” Isaac winked at her. She blushed and giggled.
We passed through the door into a large loading area with two closed commercial bay doors. I hit the button for the elevator. The girl behind the counter looked at Isaac with obvious interest through the glass door we had just passed through.
“I like you better as a wingman when you look like this,” Isaac said. “You make me look even more handsome than usual by comparison.”
“As a matter of fact, when Mechano tried to cook me alive, all I could think was, ‘Gosh, I hope this helps Isaac with the ladies.’”
“I’ve always said selflessness is your greatest virtue. You’re a prince among men.”
I changed the subject. “I’m starting to get worried you haven’t heard back from Neha.” I was understating the case. I had a sickening feeling in my stomach that seemed to get worse with each passing moment. “You’ve left her several messages and we haven’t heard a peep from her.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. Besides, she’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.” Despite his words, Isaac looked as worried as I felt.
We rode the elevator to the third floor. We walked through the wide corridors of the storage space, passing dozens of spaces of various sizes secured behind corrugated metal doors painted blue. Our footsteps on the bare cement floor echoed off the closed doors. The lights, controlled by motion detectors, clicked on and off as we made our way deeper into the facility. We saw only one other person, a middle-aged lady. The door to her storage unit was open. Her unit, the size of a medium-sized walk-in closet, was filled from floor to ceiling with furniture and bric-a-brac. She struggled to squeeze a wooden chair inside. I feared the unit’s contents, already packed tight, would explode under the pressure of the addition, like one of those toy snakes that shot out when the lid of its can was opened. I happily would have traded my problems for hers.
Each unit was numbered. We found the one we were looking for, Unit 357. Leave it to Truman to store the portal to The Mountain in a storage unit with the same number as a bullet round. I glanced around. A circle of light shone down on us from the overhead automatic lights. Beyond that was darkness. No one was around. I faintly heard the middle-aged woman grunt with exertion as she continued to try to shove her chair into her overstuffed unit. Hope sprang eternal. I admired her optimism, if not her sense of spatial relationships.
I unlocked the padlock securing Unit 357 using the key Truman had given us. I unlatched the door, leaving the open padlock hanging from it. I swung the unit’s door open. Inside the large unit was a single item in the center of the space. It was a brushed metal cylinder, dull silver in color. It was much wider and taller than I. The top of it almost touched the ceiling of the unit. A man-sized, rounded rectangular opening on the object faced us, letting us see the object was hollow. More brushed metal was inside of it.
This was the portal to The Mountain, just as Truman had described it to us. He had told us he had his super strong Metahuman friend Shadow break into the apartment Avatar leased under the name of his civilian secret identity once Truman grew to distrust the Sentinels. Since Truman did not want them to access The Mountain using the portal, he had Shadow carry it out of Avatar’s apartment and hide it here. When I asked how Shadow had gotten the big portal out of Avatar’s apartment and into this unit without being observed, Truman had said he didn’t know the precise details, but that he did know it could not have been too hard because, as he put it, “Shadow could steal the pulp out of an orange without breaking the skin.” Apparently, Shadow was a professional thief. Between Cassandra and Shadow, clearly Truman kept interesting company.
We stepped inside the storage unit. Despite the portal’s size, there was so much room left inside the storage unit that several more people could have joined us without us jostling each other. I closed the door behind us. We were swallowing by darkness. Isaac flicked on the small penlight he’d brought. Between the dim light and moving shadows, I felt like I’d stepped into a haunted house. After first using my telekinetic touch to ensure no one was around, I used my powers to lift the padlock on the other side of the door, snapping it shut. The point was not to lock us in, but to keep a passerby out. I could unlock the padlock readily enough again with my powers.
Isaac shined the light directly on the portal. We were silent as we stared up at it.
“What if something goes wrong and one of us gets stuck in that thing and suffocates? The longer I look at it, the more it looks like an oversized coffin,” Isaac finally whispered.
“It does at that,” I whispered back. “Don’t let that stop you from hopping right on in.”
“Me? You’re the Omega. If you really are the latest in a long line of dashing heroes, leaping before you look and derring-do should be right up your alley. You should go first. I’m just along for the ride to keep you from doing something more stupid than usual, provide comic relief, and hit on the pretty girls. There aren’t any girls, pretty or otherwise, in that thing.”
“Coward.”
“I’d rather be a live jackal than a dead lion.”
“Truman says it’s perfectly safe.”
“If it’s so safe, why isn’t he here with us letting his actions speak louder than his words by being the first to climb in?”
“You make a solid point.” I sighed, and then stepped forward into the portal. The moment I was inside, a panel slid down from the top of the portal’s opening. I turned in time to see the portal snick closed. Isaac and his light were gone from view.
I felt a surge of claustrophobia in the enclosed, totally dark space. Before my eyes could adjust to the darkness, the curved walls of the portal glowed slightly. I could see again. Not that there was much to see; the interior walls of the portal were perfectly smooth and featureless, as if the metal structure had been carved rather than constructed.
The glow from the walls dimmed for a moment. My hair stood on end, as if static electricity had built up in my body after walking through thick carpeting. The portal was scanning me. The sensation would have freaked me out more than it did had Truman not told me to expect it.
“Unidentified entity,” a computerized voice said, making me jump even though I had been expecting it too, “please state the Hero’s password to gain admittance.” As there was no visible speaker, I had no idea where the voice came from. It seemed to come from all around me. Due to both nerves and my lingering injuries, my mind went complet
ely blank. It was like that time a couple of months ago when a woman on the subway asked me where I worked. Made witless by the fact a cute girl was talking to me, for the life of me I couldn’t remember the name of the newspaper. The girl had looked at me like I was soft in the head, and slowly backed away when I eventually stammered that I couldn’t remember. I knew thanks to Truman that the portal would do more than give me a weird look and treat me like I had cooties if I didn’t enter the password in time. It would hit me with knockout gas.
Fortunately, my brain fog lifted right as the portal demanded the password for the second time. I quickly recited the Hero’s Oath, stumbling over the words a little in my haste: “No cave so dark, no pit so deep, will hide evil from my arm’s sweep. Those who sow darkness soon shall reap, for in the pursuit of justice, I will never sleep.”
“Password accepted. Please stand by for transport,” spoke the computer voice. It suddenly felt like there were bugs crawling on me, as if I had stuck both feet into an anthill and the ants were swarming all over. Despite the fact I knew to expect this too, reflex made me glance at my hands, looking to see what was itching me. There was nothing to see of course. Well, on my body, at least. The walls of the portal soundlessly melted, like I had been dosed with LSD and reality was dissolving around me. I felt nauseous.
Soon after the portal’s walls had started melting, they suddenly snapped back into place, as if the melting had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination. The nausea ended and the crawling bug sensation stopped.
The opening I had entered the portal through slid open again. Instead of the dark interior of the storage unit and Isaac being revealed, Isaac was gone and the area outside the portal was well-lit.
“Welcome to The Mountain, Hero,” the portal’s voice said. “When you wish to return to Astor City, simply step inside again. Enjoy your visit.”
Feeling like Captain Kirk who had just used the Enterprise’s transporters to beam down to an alien planet, I stepped out of the portal. Unlike Kirk, I was not confronted by an alien landscape and scantily clad Orion slave girls I would inevitably have sex with. Unfortunately. Rather, I was confronted with a massive cavern composed of grey rock marbled with veins of white and gold. The veins of white luminesced, making the cavern as bright as Las Vegas at noon. The cavern was so big, I felt like an ant by comparison.
The portal I had just stepped out of was sunk into the rock face of the cavern. The rock face was curved, extending high above and to either side of me. The only gap in the rock face was far off to the right. Over there was a big hole, like the entrance to a massive cave. The hole was about the size of an opening to an airplane hangar. Through that huge gap was a breathtaking view down on clouds and snowcapped mountains of varying heights. The mountain range extended out for as far as I could see.
The Mountain was in the middle of the Himalayas according to Truman, who had determined that using GPS the second and last time he had visited here. Thanks to the portal’s matter transport technology, I had traveled over seven thousand miles in the blink of an eye. Transporters were another technology Mechano had invented. Unlike most of Mechano’s other tech which he had commercialized, the existence of transporters was a tightly guarded secret only members of the Guild knew about, much like the Guild’s space station. Politicians would lose their minds if they knew Heroes withheld from the public technology that would revolutionize travel in a way the world had not seen since the introduction of the airplane. This was the first time I had ever used a transporter, though I knew Isaac had used one at least once before, when he and Neha accompanied the Old Man on a mission into space when we had been Apprentices.
As I watched, the air at the gap showing the mountain range shimmered momentarily, tinged with blue, before becoming perfectly clear and transparent again. It was indicative of the force field which kept out the harsh cold and elements of the outside. The cavern was as warm and comfortable as my house’s living room. More comfortable, actually, since the cavern was so much bigger; the cavern had more square footage than our entire house did. Force field projectors like the ones here that kept the elements out were also Mechano’s inventions according to Truman. As much as I hated to admit it, I had to give the devil his due: Mechano really was a latter-day Edison. It was a shame he was a Machiavellian murderous maniac in addition to one of the greatest technological geniuses of all time.
Isaac came out of the portal. He stood next to me. The cavern was completely silent, so much so that the only thing I could hear was Isaac and me breathing. With our mouths agape in wonder, we stood transfixed and looked around.
Directly ahead of us on the other side of the cavern was a curved computer monitor that was somehow suspended from the rock wall. It was massive. It clearly would tower over us if we stood directly in front of it. It was even wider than it was tall. It was angled slightly downward, toward the smooth stone that served as The Mountain’s floor. Directly below the monitor was a long, curved, waist-high computer panel that looked like something on the bridge of a navy vessel a hundred years in the future. A single large black chair rested at the focus of the parabola formed by the curved computer monitor.
To the right of the computer panel were several headless mannequins. On each was mounted copies of the iconic costume Avatar had always worn that was famous and instantly recognized the world over: blood red gloves, matching red shin-high boots, and a grey bodysuit with a utility belt around its waist. The utility belt’s color matched that of the gloves and the boots. A bright red “A” was on the center of the chest of the bodysuit. A cape matching the red of the “A” on the chest was around the neck of each mannequin. Mechano had said Avatar wore the Omega weapon in the form of a cape. Could one of these capes be it?
Suspended from the cavern’s ceiling and on display throughout the cavern were various artifacts. As a big admirer of Avatar’s who had followed his adventures ever since I had been old enough to know the difference between a licensed Hero and a hero sandwich, I knew they were mementos from Avatar’s exploits over the years: the gigantic robot exoskeleton Doctor Diabolical had used to level the White House and the United States Capitol in 1971 before Avatar had subdued him; the torch from the Statue of Liberty, destroyed in 1985 by the Rogue Black Plague when he threw the statue at Avatar; the originally normal-sized but now man-sized glass tumbler that Magnifier had tried to brain the British Prime Minister with in 1982; and remnants of the V’Loth alien mothership Omega Man had destroyed in 1966 when he, Avatar, and a bunch of other Heroes attacked the alien fleet hovering in the skies of Baltimore. There were many other artifacts from Avatar’s adventures here, some of which I did not even recognize.
After gawking in silence for a bit, Isaac and I looked at each other. His eyes were wide.
“You have a lair!” he said with wonder. “I’m jealous. I always wanted a lair.”
“I don’t have a lair,” I protested. “Avatar had a lair.”
“Avatar had a lair. Avatar was the Omega. Avatar is dead. Now you are the Omega. Therefore, you have a lair.”
“I’m not sure I agree with your logic, but we’ll argue about syllogisms later. Right now, the sooner we find the Omega weapon—assuming it’s even here—the better.”
“While we look, give some thought as to changing your lair’s name from The Mountain. It’s too Game of Thronesy.”
With Isaac following in my wake, I strode across the cavern to the mannequins adorned with Avatar costumes. Despite the fact the rock floor was so shiny and smooth it looked like it had been polished, it was not at all slippery. My shoes had no problem with traction.
We stood in front of the broad-chested costumed mannequins. Each of the five mannequins had on seemingly identical costumes. Just looking at them, nothing seemed remarkable about the capes on each headless figure. Well, other than the fact they had belonged to one of the world’s greatest Heroes. These costumes and everything else in the cavern really belonged in a museum where admirers of Avatar could see them i
nstead of them gathering dust here. If I got out of this fix with the Sentinels with my neck intact, I would make sure everything here got a good home.
But, first things first. Holding my breath nervously, I reached toward the cape on the first mannequin. My hands were clammy. I was anxious. I had no idea what would happen when the Omega weapon came into contact with the host of the Omega spirit. Whatever did happen, I expected it to be something dramatic.
My fingers met the cape’s fabric.
Nothing happened.
I waited expectantly.
More nothing happened.
“Maybe you need to say ‘Shazam!’ or ‘It’s clobberin’ time,’” Isaac suggested.
“You’re not helping,” I said. “Maybe this cape isn’t the right one. Or, maybe it needs to be worn to be activated.” I pulled the cape off the mannequin, undoing the heavy grey metal clasp which held it together around the neck. I draped it around myself, redoing the clasp to secure the cape. The cape’s fabric was so heavy I could feel the weight of it on my shoulders. As Avatar had been much taller and broader than I, the cape dragged on the ground and enveloped me like a robe.
Now that the cape was on me, I again waited expectantly. And again, nothing happened. Other than me feeling like a grave robber for wearing a dead Hero’s cape, that is.
Isaac eyed me critically. “You look like a trick-or-treater who can’t afford a costume other than a bedsheet.”
“You’re still not helping.”
I took the cape off, put it back on the mannequin, and went through the same process with the next cape. And then the next one, the next one, and the next one. With each attempt resulting in nothing happening, I felt increasingly frustrated and foolish, like a ghost hunter looking for a ghost in a haunted house that probably wasn’t even haunted.
“So much for hiding the Omega weapon in plain sight,” I said as I pulled the last cape off.
Sentinels: The Omega Superhero Book Three (Omega Superhero Series 3) Page 25
