Supervillain High

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “Put yourself at ease,” the headmaster said, as if reading his mind. “I meet with all the students early in the school year, especially the new ones. I know you have Mr. Childes as your counselor. A good man. You can speak to him about your every concern. I wanted to see how your first week has been. Thursday already! Tell me, is this your first time away from home?”

  “Pretty much. I’ve never lived anywhere else but with my mom in New York.”

  The headmaster nodded. “It’s a bit quiet out here in Dutchman Springs. Quite the contrast. I know the first weeks can be tough. That’s why we encourage all of our students to take advantage of everything we have to offer here, be it resources to make you comfortable, tutors for your academics, or even just a shoulder to cry on. Are all your tears already shed?”

  “Um, no. Haven’t had any tears. I miss my mom, but I called her twice, and I’ll talk to her later today.”

  “And what does she do for work?”

  “She works in a hospital in administration.”

  “I understand she’s a sole provider. Raised you herself. Sounds like a remarkable woman. A single parent is a true hero, with no space for frivolities.”

  Brendan nodded.

  “I also read over your curriculum. Looks like good choices. I hope Mr. Childes will give you adequate direction. We allow students to survey courses they wish to explore, with the option to change out to give something else a try if a class doesn’t seem to fit. Nothing remedial on your plate. Geometry, so you’ll be on track for calculus in your senior year. That’s where we like our students to be in their fourth year. Physics, world history, civics. And to round it out, you chose music as your elective.”

  The headmaster hadn’t looked at his tablet once.

  “I played clarinet in middle school,” Brendan said.

  “Excellent. Your dorm monitor will no doubt remind you of the noise policy and times on when to practice. The band instructor will make sure you have access to your instrument and the practice rooms should you wish to work on your skills during quiet hours. An elective like this allows for social growth. I know it’s just the first week, but have you found others with similar interests? Any new friends?”

  Brendan thought about his across-the-hall neighbor Brian. He hadn’t had a chance to say more than hello since the first day, and they didn’t share any classes. He also thought about Lucille, with whom he shared not only English lit but also his history class. She was very needy and bossy with him anytime they interacted, something he wasn’t used to from girls he wasn’t related to.

  “Sure, there’s a couple,” Brendan said.

  “They’ll come in time. I can have Mr. Childes recommend you to a sports group or social club based on your interests as well. You don’t have any club activities for after class. This helps in the rounding out of your academic résumé when you start planning your college track, which Mr. Childes will help you with, of course.”

  “I haven’t chosen any after-class group yet. Still deciding.”

  The headmaster considered Brendan. Then the creases in his face deepened, and his eyes narrowed. He turned and picked up his tablet. “Hmm,” he murmured. “There is one matter I wanted to bring to your attention.” He set the tablet down and crossed his arms.

  “You were observed after hours in the electronics lab. Now Brendan, you understand that this lab is off-limits for anyone not taking Ms. Hayes’s electronics or engineering courses.”

  Brendan’s mind raced to find an explanation. He needed privacy, and he’d discovered on his first night that in the dorms his phone stopped working at ten o’clock. He had thought it was just a network outage, but when it happened the next night at precisely the same time, he knew it had to be something else blocking his wireless signal. The dorm Wi-Fi still worked, but he didn’t like the idea that a teacher, dorm monitor, or school IT worker would be privy to his searches. He had let himself into the lab the last two nights while in search of someplace quiet. His interest in the clarinet was minimal; he had signed up for music thinking the band room would serve that purpose, but when he’d gone there students were hanging out and playing in all the practice booths.

  “Someone saw me?” Brendan asked lamely.

  “Not the issue. It’s your safety that concerns me. There’s equipment in there that, without the proper supervision and training, could be hazardous. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, there’s nothing more to say about this since you didn’t break anything or steal anything. But just as you don’t want to have someone fiddling with your clarinet when you aren’t present, the same principle stands for those with projects in the electronics lab. Is this by chance an area of interest? We could give the electronics class a try for a week.”

  Brendan hadn’t considered it before. He had always been good with taking appliances and gadgets apart and putting them back together and found it relaxing. Sometimes the appliances still worked. For some reason, he never felt comfortable letting anyone know about his interest in tinkering. Next stop would be building drones…

  He watched as the headmaster twisted a large ring on his right ring finger.

  “Well, give it some thought,” the headmaster said.

  “I’ll do it,” Brendan said, surprising himself.

  “Excellent. I’ll send Mr. Childes a note, and he’ll see to the transfer. I hope you find the class a challenge to your talents. I’m glad we had this chance to meet. I look forward to monitoring your progress.”

  Brendan ignored the proffered hand and asked, “What’s blocking the cell signal after hours?”

  The headmaster nodded. “The staff psychologist and the nurse implemented this as a way to help get the students off-line, and hopefully to bed, at a reasonable hour. This also throttles back their use of social media during late hours when, let’s be honest, less than savory content usually shows up. It’s all an attempt to curb cyberbullying and other antisocial behavior and encourage a respect for privacy, as I understand it. I’m sure it’s in the orientation packet somewhere.”

  “I’m sure it is. But the school network stays up.”

  “Indeed. Students still must access their classroom data, course material, and the like. And the rest of the internet is still there through it.”

  The headmaster’s tablet pinged.

  “Well, my next student interview is here. It’s been a pleasure. Consider the door to my office open whenever you have a concern.”

  As Brendan left the office he wondered if he was the only student who didn’t like being watched.

  4. Idiot Box

  That night, Brendan sat at the small desk in his room, having just read through the second act of Shakespeare’s The Tempest for English lit. He was mostly able to follow it, at least enough to regurgitate a few pertinent facts.

  At seven it was time to call his mom. But first he wanted to check the various video hosting sites and supers fan sites he frequented and the news search alerts he had in place. Had his father surfaced in the past eight hours?

  No Signal, his phone told him.

  Weird. Three hours early.

  He went to his settings to make sure he hadn’t accidentally gone into airplane mode or scheduled a time out. Everything appeared to be in order. His dorm Wi-Fi beckoned, but he put his phone in his pocket and left his room. He almost knocked at Brian’s door, but he didn’t hear anything coming from the room. Might be napping or studying without music. Or maybe Brian had discovered the social lubricant called headphones that would keep him in his neighbors’ good graces.

  No one was in the bathroom either. Their floor had one large bathroom for every six rooms, all three stalls featuring the fanciest showerheads Brendan had ever experienced, along with three urinals, three toilets, a bidet that he stayed away from, and a closet full of the softest towels known to man. Brendan had actually stuck his head into the door of the inset wall hamper to discover that it opened into a laundry chute. Folded, clean towels appeared by
the end of each day. He had done his own laundry for the past couple of years to give his mom a break, and he wasn’t used to someone else providing the service. He decided he could live with it.

  “If you see Poser, tell him he left his towel on the floor in the bathroom,” a boy called from an open doorway.

  This wasn’t the first time Brendan had heard one of the other boys call Brian Poser.

  “How do you know it’s his?”

  “It reeks of his hair product.”

  Before Brendan could say anything else, the boy shut the door. Brendan promptly forgot about it and went downstairs to continue his search for a signal.

  The bottom floor of the dorm had several lounges with tables and chairs, one with a piano, others with televisions. Quite a few students were down here, including girls. One of the dorm monitors was always present. Brendan saw Lucille standing in front of five boys, speaking animatedly, her audience enthralled.

  From one of the lounges, he heard a cheer. Usually a big group in a tightly packed space would have accelerated his departure, but when he heard what sounded like a news broadcast he went in to investigate. Ten students crowded the lounge, overflowing two couches set in front of a large wall-mounted monitor where a newsreader narrated what looked like a street brawl. Two of the combatants wore bright-colored costumes and had onscreen labels.

  “Please, no,” Brendan muttered.

  “Kick his ass, Drone King,” a big kid in the front yelled, fist pumping. He looked South Asian, maybe Indian.

  The time stamp on the footage read 1:13 p.m., and a caption read “New York City.” A logo in the bottom corner identified the station as “Supers News Network,” one of several reporting venues that catered to the viral popularity of “folks in tights getting into fights,” as his mom would put it.

  The onscreen action paused as a blue marker circled the main actors and indicated via arrows something that was about to happen between the two. The scene cut to an extreme long shot that was surprisingly steady, showing a bank with kneeling, lined-up employees at the windows facing a semicircle of police personnel and vehicles. The screen cut again, this time to a shot labeled “Exclusive Bank Footage!”

  Now the vault was in view. A tide of smoke flowed out past the giant metal door. Bags presumably full of cash and treasure floated out to the bank lobby as if borne up by invisible phantoms. Then the loot was dropped into a forming pile, revealing tiny drones that returned to the vault. Standing next to the loot was a man with purple mask, leather jumpsuit, and kneepads.

  “Change the channel,” Brendan said. It was too much. Keeping up with his dad in secret was his own private obsession. Having him up here for all to cheer and ridicule made his stomach sink.

  The other students in the lounge ignored him, all eyes fixed on the screen.

  “Drone King,” one of them said. “We haven’t seen him in a while, and now we get him twice in two weeks. He’s legit.”

  The caption at the bottom of the screen identified the robber as “Myron Reece aka Drone King.” A sidebar appeared displaying his statistics: height, area of operation, known powers, possible associates, and a list of past crimes. Just robbery and assaults, for which Brendan was grateful. So far, no reporter had done the small amount of digging it would take to discover his mother’s name change from Reece back to Garza. Perhaps his father had taken measures to protect her privacy. If so, it didn’t absolve him of any of his sins.

  The screen cut to the super fighting Brendan’s father. He wore a silver-and-tan tunic with dark brown leggings, a fluffy hat, a simple brown mask over the eyes, and shoes with curling toes that reminded Brendan of what a medieval court jester might wear. He brandished a silver scepter, holding it with both hands.

  “Sir Duke,” said the announcer. “This is his third public appearance. We haven’t seen him since his last hospitalization five months ago during the last Mannequin Gang robbery. It appears he redesigned his scepter to do more than fire beanbag rounds, judging by his entrance.”

  The footage rewound. One of the bank’s side glass doors blew in with a pop of light and a crash.

  “That was minutes before the police arrived.”

  The studio shot widened, showing an attentive-looking co-anchor with a cup of coffee in front of her. “No surprise entrance here, Dale,” she said. “Our munitions consultant explained this was some kind of flashbang Sir Duke detonated right outside the door.”

  Dale pointed to the wall screen behind them where the explosion replayed. “Maybe he was trying to shoot Drone King through the door. Not enough penetration power, eh, Linda?”

  Dale and Linda shared a perky laugh.

  “Let’s see what happened next. Play video.”

  Sir Duke stepped through the broken doorway. He wobbled and put a hand to the doorframe to steady himself.

  “The dork flash-banged himself,” Poser said, and several students laughed. He sat on one of the couch arms, intent on the program. His towering hair blocked some of Brendan’s view.

  The action cut between the different bank cameras, all in color but grainy. What happened next was quick: Drone King flicked something off his belt towards Sir Duke. It looked like a dart with a fat backside. The dart accelerated, corrected its course, and struck the entering super in the head.

  Sir Duke dropped to the floor.

  The footage looped at various speeds. Finally, it paused, and the blue onscreen doodles isolated the thrown weapon, showing it to be some sort of propelled drone.

  “At this point Sir Duke stops moving until the paramedics get to him after it’s all over,” Dale said.

  “What are we going to call that?” Linda asked.

  “That’s a KO in the first round. No contest. What was Sir Duke thinking? And that drone is yet another new gadget in our villain’s arsenal. Can we get some specs up on that? Note Drone King’s fantastic reflexes, not even taking the time to see who was coming in.”

  “He had to know it wasn’t a friendly.”

  “You’re right, Linda. Drone King is a solo act.”

  A graphic appeared with a feature diagram laying out Drone King’s thrown weapon, noting its aerodynamic design, weighted front end, and dual DC-powered propulsion units. The speculated weight was four pounds.

  “Like a brick,” Brendan said.

  “What?” Poser asked.

  “That’s the weight of a brick, more or less.”

  “Heavy enough to knock teeth out,” said a girl behind Brendan. She was leaning on the wall in the back of the lounge. The blue flickering light played off her pale face, which was framed with dark, straight-cut bobbed hair. He hadn’t noticed her there, but he had seen her in two of his classes. Tina from geometry and history. She absentmindedly chewed the cuticle of her thumb as she watched.

  The camera vantage point changed, and the quality of the image improved from the bank feed. The news agency now had footage from outside the bank and relatively close, either taken from a news drone or in a zoomed shot from across the street.

  More of Drone King’s flying machines appeared above the heads of the kneeling hostages. Each was the size of a small bird and was equipped with four rotors that allowed finesse in maneuvering. They crowded together at the front door until something happened that shattered the glass into a cascade of white pebbles.

  “Gunshot?” the big kid in front asked.

  “No, a drone touched the glass,” Poser said. “They must be equipped with—”

  Tina shushed him.

  “This is a rerun from earlier.”

  Several people joined in the shushing, one adding “Shut up.”

  The police shouted for Drone King to surrender. The drones flew single file through the shattered door and spread into a line just outside. Then they belched out some kind of gas. Soon the front of the bank was shrouded with white smoke.

  “Think it’s weaponized?” Tina asked.

  “Doubt it,” Brendan said, although he couldn’t say for certain. “He’s never us
ed poison gas before.”

  “For someone who wants the channel changed, you know your supers.”

  Someone else shushed her and said, “Look!”

  “We’re in for a treat, Linda,” Dale said excitedly. “This is an afternoon that will make this year’s top ten showdowns.”

  The spreading mist swirled towards the police line. The cops pulled their people away to the opposite side of the street. Then something or someone descended from the sky into the cloud of smoke. The student lounge erupted in shouts: “Ooh!” “All right!” “Fight!” The camera shot went in tight on the newcomer while the news anchors babbled in incomplete sentences, reminding Brendan of his aunts saying their rosaries. Having finished their task, the smoke-spitting drones shot forward and vanished into the mist.

  Brendan groaned.

  An object flew out of the cloud, followed by another. The camera missed it at first, but then a digitally stabilized shot provided clarity. Two drones—or rather, their crumpled remains—went flying towards the bank. A tight zoom-in followed a third object, metallic, crumpled, and sailing up like a fly ball. It soon fell and bounced off a cop car. As the cloud dispersed, the rest of the wrecked drones were revealed. A tall figure stood there for a moment before approaching the bank. The air was clear enough to see the white, tight suit spun onto the muscular form of Silver Eagle. The hostages’ fear became elation as they pointed at their savior.

  “Boo,” Tina shouted at the screen, and a couple of kids laughed and joined in the jeer.

  Brendan wanted to hide, cry, or telepathically ask his father to allow him a shred of dignity by surrendering. But he had no idea how this confrontation had turned out, if his father had escaped, or was arrested or dead. He stood transfixed.

  Silver Eagle now stood a few paces away from Drone King, who waited just inside the bank’s front door. The villain in purple flung a weapon at Silver Eagle, which the hero caught and smashed on the floor. Then the hero gestured expansively.