The Strike Trilogy
Page 68
Twenty minutes away, Orion pulled up to a small, one-story house in the suburb of Viera, right outside of Quantum City. He was just about to open his car door and walk to the front of the house when he realized, as usual, Ida—the former leader of the Rytonian Rebels—was already walking across the front yard and toward his car.
“You ready?” Ida asked, opening the car door and getting in.
“Yeah,” Orion replied. “I was thinking we could stop and get some breakfast before we go. What do you think?”
“Sure,” Ida said with a smile. “That sounds great.”
After their breakfast at Ida’s favorite diner, Orion parked his car and he and Ida walked into the front entrance of a large, warm, welcoming building in the southern section of Quantum City, nestled between a park and a high school. The sign above the building read:
QUANTUM CITY HOME AND LEARNING CENTER FOR GIFTED CHILDREN.
At the front desk of the learning center, Orion and Ida were greeted by Barbara, the dark-haired, heavy-set woman who ran the orphanage.
“Oh, hi Orion! Hi Ida! How are you? Thank you for coming again, the kids will be so excited to see you. How was the drive in?”
“Not too bad,” Orion said. “I think we missed most of the morning traffic. Who do you have for us today?”
Barbara looked down at a folder on her desk. “Well, Ida, I thought you could meet with Sarah again this morning, since you two hit it off so well last week. What do you think?”
“Yeah, sure,” Ida said, taking Sarah’s folder. “That’d be great.”
Barbara grinned as she handed Orion another folder. “And Orion, I have a new boy I’d like you to meet today. His name’s Andrew. He’s six years old and just arrived two days ago. He’s having a bit of trouble settling in and is not too happy to be here.”
“Okay,” Orion said, looking down at the paper in the folder. “I can do that.”
“Are you sure?” Barbara asked. “He’s a real handful, I’m warning you.”
Orion smiled. “I think I can handle him.”
On the third floor of the orphanage, Orion walked down the hallway, looking for the room number on the file Barbara had handed him. However, he didn’t need to look for long: ahead of him, only a few doors away, he heard a loud CRASH!, which was shortly followed by a ball of ice shooting out of an open door and shattering against the wall.
“I don’t want to be here!” a boy’s voice shouted from the open room. “I don’t want to be here!”
After carefully looking out for more ice projectiles, Orion stepped into the room. He immediately noticed the room was forty degrees colder than the rest of the orphanage, and its walls and furniture were also covered with a thin coating of snow. On the bed in the middle of the room, there was a small dark-skinned boy, about six years old. He was jumping up and down on the bed, and pounding his fists against his legs. His fingers and hands were blue, and coated with ice.
“I don’t wanna be here!” the boy yelled again. It was so cold Orion could see the boy’s breath when he spoke. “Someone call my mom! I wanna go home!”
Orion walked toward the boy. When he got closer, he saw that the boy’s dark skin and lips were tinted blue.
“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on in here?” Orion asked. “Why are you so mad?”
“’Cuz I want to go home!” the boy shouted, his face scrunched up in anger. “My mom left me here but forgot to come pick me up! Someone needs to call her and have her come get me!”
Orion looked down. Near his feet, there was a broken toy dump truck, stuck inside a ball of ice.
“We can settle all that in a minute,” Orion said, “but I don’t think you need to be breaking all of your toys, do you?”
“That’s not my toy.”
“It’s not? Barbara told me that she gave it to you. It’s a pretty nice truck.”
“I don’t care!” the boy said, beginning to cry. “I don’t want her stupid toys. I want to go home!”
The boy reared his arm back, and a ball of ice formed in his hand. After he tossed the ice across the room, forcing Orion to duck out of the way, the boy dropped onto the bed and sat with his back against the headboard. He crossed his arms across his chest, angry.
“Okay,” Orion said, looking back at where the ice ball had dented the wall, “but there’s no need to yell at me. I just wanted to come and hang out with you for a while.”
The boy didn’t answer. He just stared ahead, with his eyebrows narrowed and his lips pouting.
“Is that okay?” Orion asked.
The boy didn’t answer again.
Orion pulled up a chair next to the bed. “Are you gonna throw any more ice balls at me? Do I need to wear a helmet?”
“No,” the boy said, his arms still crossed.
“Okay. Good.”
A moment passed.
“Why are you here?” the boy asked, looking at Orion suspiciously. “Who are you? Do you work here?”
“No, I don’t. My name’s Orion. Barbara—do you know Barbara?”
“Yeah.”
“Barbara asked me if I’d like to come meet you, and I said I would. She also told me you don’t like it here very much.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s boring. There’s all these old people here and they make me eat all this yucky food. And my mom’s not here. I think she forgot to pick me up.”
“Well, I think the food here is pretty good. I heard they are having bremshaw pizza tomorrow and I also heard bremshaw pizza is your favorite. Is that true?”
“Yeah.” The boy looked up at Orion, for the first time unclenching his brow. “Are they really having that tomorrow?”
Orion shrugged. “That’s what I heard. And I know it can’t be boring here. I just walked by the movie room, and I saw all these kids watching a really funny movie. That didn’t look boring to me.”
“I don’t wanna watch a stupid movie,” the boy said. “I don’t wanna see these stupid kids. I wanna go home.”
“Why, you don’t like movies?”
“No, I like movies, just not those movies.”
Orion thought it over. “Well, how about a book then? They have a really cool library here. Or maybe I could tell you some good stories. I know some pretty good ones.”
“I don’t like stories,” Andrew said. “Stories are for babies. I’m not a baby.”
“Oh, okay,” Orion said, sitting back in his chair. “I didn’t know that you didn’t like stories. My stories aren’t for babies, you know, but if you don’t wanna hear it, that’s okay. It’s probably too scary for you, anyway.”
“I doubt it,” Andrew said. “I’m not scared.”
“You sound scared to me. You didn’t wanna hear my stories, so you must be scared. They’re true stories from my life, too, about stuff that happened to me. But you don’t wanna hear about them. They’re filled with stuff you probably don’t wanna hear about.”
Andrew looked up at him. “What kind of stuff?”
“Superheroes,” Orion said. “Monsters. Dinosaurs. Super-villains. Giant bugs. Robots. But you don’t wanna hear about any of that, so it’s okay.”
Orion sat in silence. Andrew watched the old man from the corner of his eye, thinking.
“I might wanna hear about it a little bit,” Andrew said.
Orion chuckled. “Are you sure?”
“Maybe. Did you say one of them had dinosaurs?”
“Yes, I did. A lot of them do, actually. Do you wanna hear one of those?”
“Yeah.” Andrew turned toward Orion.
“Okay. I’ll tell you one about a boy who reminds me a lot of you. How’s that?”
“Okay.”
Orion thought a m
oment.
“Once,” the old man said, “there was a boy named Tobin Lloyd.”
In the Museum of the Heroes, Scatterbolt walked out of the building’s elevator and across the floor of the sky-ship garage, which was located on one of the lower levels of the museum. Keplar was there in the middle of the garage, laying underneath the Sky-Blade and working on its underside. His blue fur and leather jacket were smeared with grease.
“Hey, Keplar,” the little robot said.
Keplar looked up at him. “Hey, Scatterbolt. What’s going on, buddy?”
“Nothing really. I was just working on something in the computer lab and thought I’d ask you something.”
Keplar tightened a bolt on the ship’s engine with a wrench. “Okay, shoot.”
“Do you really think we’ll ever see Tobin again?”
Keplar slid out from underneath the ship. He thought it over, wiping the grease from his forehead. “Gee, I don’t know, Bolt. I’m not sure. But I think it’s definitely possible.”
Scatterbolt’s eyes widened. “You really think so?”
“Sure, anything’s possible. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that. Anything’s possible.”
“Okay. Cool.”
Keplar slid back underneath the Sky-Blade. “You wanna help me take the ship out for a spin in a bit? I’m gonna try the new thrusters I picked up yesterday from Wakefield’s shop.”
“No, that’s okay. I think I’m just gonna hang out here in the museum for a bit.”
“Okay, bud. Just let me know if you change your mind.”
After traveling back up the elevator, Scatterbolt stepped out of its doors and into the museum’s main gallery. As he walked across its marble floor, he made his way to a quieter section in the back of the first exhibit area. There was a small duck pond here, along with a few wooden benches and three bronze statues, each of which represented a different member of the legendary superhero team known as the Guardians.
There were also three new statues in the room. As Scatterbolt sat down on one of the small benches, he looked out at the new statues in front of him.
The first statue was of Scatterbolt himself. It showed him standing with one fist on his hip and the other fist raised in the air. The inscription on the statue read:
SCATTERBOLT.
BRAVE AND KIND. INTELLIGENT. POKER CHAMPION.
The next statue was of Scatterbolt’s friend, Keplar Costello. The statue showed the husky with his plasma cannon slung over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised, and a grin in the corner of his mouth. Its inscription read:
KEPLAR COSTELLO.
ANNOYING. RECKLESS. BAD BREATH. BUT THERE’S NO ONE ELSE YOU’D WANT BY YOUR SIDE.
The last statue was Scatterbolt’s favorite. This was the one he liked to come visit the most. It was of his friend, Tobin Lloyd, dressed in his Strike uniform, but without his mask. Tobin had both hands on his hips, his bo-staff on his back, and, as always, he was smiling.
The inscription read:
TOBIN LLOYD. A.K.A. STRIKE.
THE GREATEST HERO OF THEM ALL.
EPILOGUE
Scatterbolt tiptoed into the dark living quarters on the top floor of the Museum of the Heroes, being careful to not make a sound. Peeking into Orion’s room, the little robot saw that the old man was fast asleep. After slowly walking to the next room, the robot cautiously opened the door, cringing as it creaked, knowing that any sound at any moment could blow his whole plan. But, luckily, the robot saw that Keplar was there in his bed, snoring away.
Perfect, Scatterbolt thought. Finally, everyone’s asleep.
After walking across the silent main gallery of the museum, Scatterbolt traveled down the elevator and into the museum’s computer lab. Pulling up a chair at the lab’s most powerful computer, Scatterbolt turned the machine on, causing the giant screen in front of him to illuminate the dark room in a faint glow. After typing a few buttons on the computer’s keyboard, Scatterbolt brought up the file he was looking for, and looked at the screen.
On the monitor, the robot could now see the map of Capricious that Tobin and Orion had stolen from the Trident skyscraper the night of the party in Harrison, many months ago. All over the map, there were thousands of small dots.
Scatterbolt looked back to the keyboard and cracked his knuckles. “All right,” he said, “let’s see what we can do about these satellites…”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I started writing the first STRIKE book in February of 2001, when I was a senior in high school. A lot has changed since then: Vincent was originally called “the Caregiver,” Tobin had a brother named Steve, and Keplar and Scatterbolt weren’t supposed to show up until book two. Oh, and Keplar was a horse.
A lot of other things have changed since then. I graduated high school. I graduated college. I got my first real job. I got laid off from my first real job. I got engaged. I got married. The Red Sox won the World Series. THREE TIMES.
Through it all, these characters have been with me, and I’ve enjoyed every moment I’ve spent with them. Whether I was bored in class in college, or stuck in traffic, or daydreaming at my part-time job, they were always there to entertain me, and always there to surprise me. If you’ve made it this far, I truly cannot thank you enough, and I hope you’ve enjoyed your time with them, too. It’s readers like you who gave me the energy and motivation to finish the trilogy, and your support means more to me than you can possibly imagine.
If you have enjoyed your time reading the Strike Trilogy, don’t worry. There are plenty more stories left to tell about Tobin and his friends. If only Scatterbolt can do something about those darn satellites…
Sincerely,
Charlie Wood
email: charliewoodbooks@gmail.com
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/charliewood24
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blog: http://www.charliewood24.blogspot.com
ALSO BY CHARLIE WOOD
The Journals of Kara and Jason
Peter and Emily, The Girl From New York (coming in 2014)