Steve Cole Middle Fiction 4

by Steve Cole

  I thumped the man away with a WC headbutt, sent him reeling towards Maloney, who zapped him with his Fetlock-shockers. Sir Guy was bellowing as he smashed heads together, and Jem maintained her calm as her suit catapulted test tubes full of explosive powder through the air.

  Then I heard a call, distantly through the rage of battle: “Noahhhhhhhh!”

  “Mum!” I breathed.

  And, while my friends battled on and kept the martial artists busy, I managed to push and shove my way through the ranks blocking the corridor. Fists and sound guns were shoved in my way, but I knocked them aside, faster, harder. I kept on going. I wasn’t about to let anything stop me now. Not now that I was so, so close . . .

  Finally, I fought my way through to the other side and pounded along the corridor, my head ringing, desperate to find—

  “Mum!” There she was, the other side of a thick glass partition and a lab bench covered in electronic wiring, bric-a-brac – and the good old, bad old the BRIAN™ Scan-and-Zapper.

  A fierce, brawny ninja stood at her shoulder – and now grabbed her in a necklock.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Let her go!”

  As if she hadn’t noticed the necklock, Mum stared at me, face fixed in amazement – and hope.

  I gazed out at her, through the eyeholes in my helmet – and remembered that my armour was the only part of me she could see.

  The ninja looked at me, his face twisted in hatred.

  Then his face was twisted by my mum’s elbow, as with a yell of anger she broke his hold, spun on her heel and clobbered him in the face. He slammed against a rack of electronics behind them and, as he bounced off it, Mum chopped him hard with the side of her hand on the back of the neck. The ninja crashed against her desk and slid weakly to the floor.

  I didn’t wait to watch. I was already hammering at the lab door with my WC fists! The entire glassy wall shattered under my attack; suddenly Mum’s lab was open-plan, as one with the corridor. “Mum!” I rushed inside. “MUMMM! You’re all right! And you were brilliant just then!”

  The WC helmet amplified my invisible voice, of course, like talking into a can only way stronger and better. Mum actually heard me! “Noah!” She had tears in her eyes. “Oh, Noah, is it really you?”

  Then a voice came from behind me; a voice like the purr of the oldest, coldest tiger alive – a vampire tiger who lived in a freezer on a steady diet of puppies, kittens and mice “Oh, yes,” the voice said. “Yes. It is him . . .”

  I turned as you do in a nightmare, invisible hairs rising on my invisible neck. There he stood in the middle of the plain grey corridor, deepening the shadows around him. Seerblight.

  I’d heard tell of him from Jem and Sir Guy, I’d glimpsed him and heard him speak back in the chicken hovel . . . He’d been frightening enough then, but now he was here the effect was doubled, tripled. Just his eyes alone – his wide blue eyes in the lined, sallow face – you could tell he had seen things no human ever had, and done things no human had ever done. His hands gleamed, encased in metal gauntlets, while his arms glowed eerily, half invisible. The smile he showed me was like the scurrying of rats across a shadowy floor. He looked, well, totally BRRRRRRRRRRR.

  “Noah,” Mum said quietly, “just remember, love, he still goes to the toilet like the rest of us!”

  This injection of normality brought me back to life. I tore my gaze from Seerblight, saw the BRIAN™ on the table. With impressive action-hero reflexes, I lunged for it, picked it up, aimed and fired the scan ray at Seerblight. It hummed and a thin beam of red shone over him.

  “Ha!” I shouted. “Now I’ve scanned you. Don’t move a muscle or I’ll zap you with pow-powder, Seerblight! You’ll go fully invisible and then . . . and . . . then . . .” I glanced at Mum, but there was no triumph on her face. “Er . . .”

  “Oh! Look. I’m moving a muscle, Noah Deer.” Seerblight took a menacing step towards me, his hands outstretched. “Aren’t you going to open fire?”

  Frankly, yes, I was. I aimed carefully – although with him right in front of me, it would be difficult for me to miss – and squeezed the trigger again.

  But nothing happened.

  Seerblight laughed.

  “Oh, no . . .” I pulled and pulled the trigger. It refused to respond. “No, no, no, NO! Come on!” I shouted at the BRIAN™. “You’ve got to work!”

  “It’s disconnected, Noah,” Mum said quietly. “The scanner still works, but the pow-powder zapper part of the original mechanism has been taken out . . . and put somewhere else.”

  “Indeed it has.” Seerblight brought up a withered hand and knocked the BRIAN™ from my grip with surprising strength; it went skittering across the floor. Then Seerblight gripped my wrist, metal gauntlets crushing my flesh like the devil’s own pliers. As my Mum yelled, “NOOOOOO!”, the old man loomed over me like some horrible vampire, the sharp points of his teeth bared in a gloating smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Vile-and-Terrible-Evil-Plans-R-Us-a-Go-Go

  Mum hurled herself across the lab bench and with an angry shout shoved Seerblight away. He staggered back, regained his balance, fixed Mum with a glare so malevolent it would make ravens explode. She clutched her head, then slumped to the floor.

  “What did you do?” I cried, voice cracking.

  “I will not tolerate interference from my slaves,” said Seerblight. “She will recover, boy. Indeed, she will live forever . . .” He chuckled, a hateful, frozen chugging of old organs.

  But the laughter was drowned out by a pounding, clomping clamour from the main corridor. It distracted the evil old techno-wizard, halted his horrid advance.

  “Ha! Jem and Sir Guy and Maloney!” I shouted. “They’ve beaten your ninjas and now they’ll get you!”

  I wanted to see fear on the ancient, wizened face – but only a sinister smile sat there. “Yes, I have been watching you and your friends. You have acquitted yourselves well,” he declared. “Even defeating my Head of Operations, Mr Butt.”

  I saw that Jem was leading the charge towards Seerblight, with Maloney and Sir Guy close behind. Yes! My fellow Invisible Inc.-ers were back on the scene!

  “Noah,” Jem cried. “Are you all right?”

  “He still stands!” said Sir Guy. “While those ninja fools will be lying down in their dressing gowns, sleeping for a long, long time . . .”

  “Well, well.” Seerblight remained still, cloaked in gloom as if the light still shied away from him. “I am impressed.” Not even the dust and debris dared to go too near his horrid form.

  “At last, foul varlet.” Sir Guy raised his lance at Seerblight. “We have you in—” He gasped, his body stiffening. “Have you . . . in our . . . power?”

  Jem was suddenly rooted to the spot, staring down at her metal boots, pressing at her many hidden buttons, but finding none of them. “What is happening? My gadgets are not responding!”

  “NElGHHH!” said Maloney, who had frozen stiffer than any of us.

  “Of course they are not!” Seerblight crowed. “Because . . . I CONTROL YOUR ARMOUR!”

  I tried to move myself – just a jerk of the arm – and quickly realised that my own ‘frozenness’ was down to my being petrified, not some mechanical fault in my armour. There were no mechanics in it that could go wrong, since Jem had run out of time before she could make them.

  But it struck me suddenly – Seerblight wouldn’t know my armour was unenhanced. He hadn’t noticed my little wobble, and I decided to hold still for the time being. Or maybe being more petrified than ever decided that for me.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, pretending to be stuck fast.

  “You haven’t worked it out?” Seerblight was having a serious gloat. “When Mr Butt visited that handy electrical store on the other side of town, he didn’t just take the circuits that your mother needed for my Great Work . . . we replaced the circuits we knew YOU would need to complete your armour with ones created here. Circuits I designed to shut down your clever contrapt
ions, Lady Smyth . . .”

  “But how did you know what I needed?” Jem asked.

  “Simple.” Seerblight turned his cruel gaze onto me. “We hacked into the boy’s phone. When you sent him the information by email, we simply opened it and read it.”

  “So that’s why Jem’s mail was open on my screen!” I closed my eyes, so angry with myself. “I didn’t suspect a thing!”

  “And I installed your sneaky circuits, not noticing anything wrong with them.” Jem groaned. “Oh, what a fool!”

  “You are too hard on yourself, Lady Smyth.” Seerblight’s eyes were bright as he came closer. “You have proved most inventive under difficult circumstances. I respect that.”

  “Watch out, Jem,” I said, trying to sound brave. “Sounds like he wants to ask you out on a date!”

  “No!” Sir Guy was straining so hard to be free, shaking inside his armour. “Stay away from her, vile fiend!”

  “You seek to order me? I, who hold the fate of the entire world in my hands?” With his gauntlet, Seerblight cuffed the helpless Sir Guy about his ghostly chops; with a surge of anger, I wanted to throw myself at him and hit him back – but knew that probably wouldn’t help the situation. “I’ll tell you what . . . How would you like to know about my secret project on the floor above? How would you like to find out just what it is?” Seerblight had produced some kind of small, sleek remote control from his robes. “My wisdom and genius will change the face of the world forever.”

  “Wisdom and genius?!” Jem shouted. “You have only ever stolen knowledge from others all your long life!”

  “It’s a strategy that has worked well for me. And now, at last, my goal is within my grasp. Ultimate power.” He pressed a red button on his remote control. “Power over all, as none before me have dreamed possible . . .”

  A rumbling noise started up from the floor above us, rising over the iron squeal and grunt of giant cogwheels as they turned. The ceiling began to crack and flake overhead – then seemed to dissolve completely as Seerblight raised both flickering arms above him.

  I stared in terrified awe as, in a blaze of unearthly light that made the best CGI effects seem like something knocked up on an old smartphone, a ma-hoosive telescope thing was revealed on the floor above. Protruding impossibly from the wall above us, it seemed sculpted from night-black stone and looked for all the world like a giant bazooka. A telescopic sight sat on the top of it – a long red tube with sparkling glass at either end, plugged into the stone body with a thick black cable. I realised what that part reminded me of – it was a larger version of the scanner from Mum’s BRIAN™ device. Sinister symbols glowed and flickered in the stonework along one side.

  “What the goodness me flippington is that?” I whispered (though, since my mum was unconscious at the time, I might have said something ruder).

  “This . . . is the most marvellous weapon ever devised!” Seerblight was trembling with glee. “It is my salt-of-igneous CANNON – almost fully charged, it is trained upon the nearest large city. As Jupiter and Venus come into conjunction, as my earthly form reaches its 1000th birthday, so the city shall be bombarded with essence of what you would call ‘pow-powder’ – and vanish from human senses forever!”

  I stared at him. “A whole city turned invisible?”

  “Yes!” Seerblight gave a skeletal grin. “And that will be but the start of my attack.”

  “So you will reverse your own invisibility, heal yourself, be fully solid once more and then hold the world to ransom,” Jem reasoned. “If the powers that be won’t give you what you want, you will make them into phantoms, like us. Am I close?”

  “Oh, come now, Lady Smyth! I thought you were cleverer than the rest?” His eyes burned at her through his scrying specs. “I do not wish to be ‘healed’! Why should I choose to run my body on food and water? To battle the infirmities of old age as I have to now – elixir or not? To risk accidental harm upon my person at any time? Pah! Why would I choose such an inefficient state of being?” He shook his head. “Oh, no. I knew from the moment I took my elixir that one day I would turn ‘invisible’, as you call it. And I knew I must be prepared for that day.”

  Jem frowned. “To endure as an insubstantial phantom forever more, while the world progresses without you?”

  “Only a madman would choose such a thing,” said Sir Guy.

  “Have you not worked it out yet?” Seerblight stared round at us. “I have no interest in blackmailing humans by turning them invisible.”

  “But . . .” Sir Guy stared. “We thought you wanted to rule the world.”

  “Oh, I do. I do want to rule the world.” Seerblight nodded. “But I do NOT want to rule the people who inhabit it.”

  “Uh-oh,” I murmured.

  “I have scanned everything in the area of that city for the pow-powder ray to make invisible – everything EXCEPT human beings.” He smiled. “Imagine it – buildings and forests and animals. Lakes and rivers and mountains. All of them, transformed and taken away. For, with an unlimited amount of pow-powder, I can transform all things!”

  Sir Guy stared. “You mean . . . you want to make everything invisible?”

  “That is correct. EVERYTHING! I shall snatch reality away from the physical plane of perception.” Seerblight sneered, as if he found even looking at such idiots as us distasteful. “But I shall NOT transform the humans who crowd this world, who pollute it and devour it and destroy it daily. Oh, no. They will find themselves left behind, dwelling in a world of nothing.”

  “But you’ve spent so long searching for the cure to pow-powder’s effects, trying to reverse it,” Jem argued. “Why?”

  “Inevitably, when scanning and zapping such large areas, mistakes will creep in. Certain unwanted organisms will be turned invisible, too – a child here, a family there . . .” Seerblight shrugged. “With the cure in my control, I will simply expel them back to their own world where everything they need for survival is out of reach!” He gave a gruesome cackle. “No food! No water! The entire population of the old world will swiftly thirst and starve and die while I, and my world, will endure FOREVER!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  World’s End

  “Ye gods, man,” cried Jem, “but this is more monstrous than any plot ever conceived! You wish to freeze the world in a single, unending moment of time?”

  “And then rebuild it as I see fit.” Seerblight nodded, his head flickering between solid and see-through. “Correct.”

  I could hardly take it all in. We’d assumed Seerblight was like us, wanting to make himself physical again. Instead, the nutter wanted just the reverse, and was all set to inflict invisibility on the entire world.

  “But this planet is massive,” I argued, still not moving, pretending my rubbish armour was jammed. “You can’t transform all of it at once.”

  “Of course not. Only a city or two at a time.” He sighed. “My cannons must be transported to every corner of the globe to do their work.”

  “But they’ll be attacked by human soldiers!” said Sir Guy. “They’ll be destroyed!”

  “Not with armoured warriors such as YOU to protect them. Warriors I shall first observe in battle, just as I have observed you. Warriors I shall hand-pick from the greatest armies and turn into armoured ghosts . . .” Seerblight laughed softly as he turned to Jem. “And YOU will be in charge. You have done a fine job with limited resources. Once I grant you endless resources, you will do so much better . . .”

  “No!” Jem shouted. “I will not serve you!”

  “You shall! You EACH shall serve me – for if you don’t, the others shall be tortured for ever more!” Seerblight wheezed. “I shall need slaves, you see, to care for me in this new world.” He gestured at Mum. “And scientists like her will be most important, too, as I refashion my new domain: the planet once known as Earth . . . soon to be known as SEERBLIGHTS STAR!”

  “He’s a total looper,” I wailed. And yet his horrific plans were on the verge of coming true. How c
ould we hope to stop him? My only chance was to take him by surprise. I could still move. I could still fight. I could do this!

  Could I?

  “You call me mad when the lives of everyone and everything in creation are in my hands, to preserve or destroy?” Gazing up at his giant pow-powder cannon, Seerblight walked a little closer towards me and laughed. “I am no looper, as you so childishly put it. I . . . am . . . a GOD!”

  With a muttered prayer to someone else entirely, I threw myself forward, hoping to catch Seerblight off guard. It worked! For a moment, I actually saw surprise on his face.

  Then I planted a fist full of WC there!

  Seerblight fell over backwards. Desperate to seize the advantage, I grabbed hold of his arm and tried to bend it behind his back. I would force him to destroy this cannon, to let Mum go, to set free my friends. I would . . .

  Arrgh! How the heck would I do any of this?

  “Mum?” I turned to her.

  She wasn’t there.

  HUH?

  I guess I lost concentration for a moment. Seerblight pulled free of my grip, spun round and yanked off my helmet. WHOOSH. His gauntleted hand swung towards my unprotected face. I barely ducked in time. He snarled and grabbed me by the neck, the metal of the gauntlet closing round my throat. I gasped with pain, dangling in the air.

  Then I saw, over his shoulder, where my mum had got to.

  She was up on her feet and working like a demon – a demon with a screwdriver, to be precise – on Sir Guy’s armour! And I guess she’d been fiddling with those faulty circuits and got them working because suddenly—

  “I AM FREE AGAIN!” Sir Guy came bounding forward, his Lance-a-Lot at the ready. It did not work as a fiery tool, but it still made a fairly awesome bat as he brought it down on top of Seerblight’s evil head.