by Russ Linton
“Get back, get back!” I hear a thickly accented voice calling amid cries of shock. It’s all accented by a language with a hurried, frantic pace that only adds to the panic level. Vaguely, I’m aware of Emily’s hand searching for mine and she grips it tightly.
“Spencer, you don’t have to watch.” Her eyes never leave the screen.
“Shhh!”
From off camera, a mangled drone cartwheels into the street below. The camera shudders—or is it the building?
A dark mass of twisted steel and crimson plummets by the hole. Rising, the camera jostles to the edge. The tangled ball hurtles to the earth and I see a drone peel away while the other wriggles helplessly between Dad and the approaching pavement.
The camera pans out and I stay with Dad. Pavement shatters as the drone becomes scrap. Dad’s already assessing the scene before the powdered metal has even settled. I see him scan the carnage and check his wrist, again. There, street-level, surrounded by mutilated corpses, burning vehicles, homicidal robots, and the screams of the dying, Dad roars and wades in, flinging off robots with mighty shrugs and vicious maneuvers. He shouts in rage, mincing drones with bare hands at a furious pace. Eliminate the threat. Don’t pull your punches. It’s all the same, but a hidden fire burns behind every inhuman burst of strength as he plows through the drones. So furious are his attacks, the drones begin to hurtle at him, en masse. Dozens of fast pitches thrown from every angle, and Dad contacts each one with closed fists, feet, knees, forehead, elbows in a flurry of destructive force.
The camera swerves and shakes and for a second the view becomes a fuzzy patch of brick and blue sky. A dark shape hurtles by, jerking in and out of frame as the hurried voice of the cameraman sounds in the background.
The Black Beetle’s battle armor lands atop a mangled car with all the grace of a falling meteor. Wheels fly out from beneath the tiny foreign vehicle as the remains crumple into a wafer-thin slice of cheap steel. Those drones that can fall back.
Only, this isn’t the Black Beetle. No way it fits the strategy for him to be there in person. Besides, I’ve seen him up close and personal, picked apart one of his drones. This one’s a cleverly disguised drone made to look like the real deal. A near-perfect imitation. Dad has to be able to tell. He has to see it.
Emily grips my hand tighter, “It’s okay. It’s okay. He’s going to be fine.” She sounds unconvinced.
The drones fade and the Black Beetle steps forward. Dad tenses and his foot digs several inches into the concrete. With bent knees he prepares to launch, but he holds back. Maybe he can sense it’s a setup, too. Images of the Black Beetle and Dad on a Navy carrier come to mind. Maybe it’s not a setup at all.
With a maniacal laugh, the Black Beetle extends a deadly pincer and a beam of light streams into the air, fading into nothing inches above his head. “Have you had enough killing today, Sean?” Light spreads from the focused beam to create a glimmering curtain. The curtain begins to separate into dark and light streams which slowly collect into a monochromatic image of ghostly white and dim blue. “Or shall I order one more execution?”
The camera zooms in. A face wavers on the surface of the hologram like a reflection in a stream.
It’s me.
Emily lets go of my hand and covers her mouth. Her eyes finally leave the television.
Dad’s tense shoulders fall. He stares at the image, unable to move, his response barely audible. I stand inches from the screen, soaking in every detail of his reaction. “How do I know he isn’t already dead?”
“You don’t. But I assure you, he will be unless you surrender. Now.”
The Crimson Mask surveys the destruction. Cars and trucks continue to smoke. A remaining phalanx of drones stands ready to return to their mayhem. Muted cries and screams drift out of the wreckage.
He steps forward, head bowed. “It’s time. Time to end this.”
The Black Beetle nods and scans the predatory circle of metal. The circle tightens. Emily’s tears stream unchecked.
I keep waiting for a blur of movement that never comes. Drones tighten the circle and latch on. Arms. Legs. He hangs defeated among them. They lift him into the sky.
Emily crosses the edge of my vision and the television goes dark.
“What are you doing?!” I shout, “Turn it back on!”
Fear shrouds Emily’s face and she mutely shakes her head.
“Why did he do that?” I say it out loud, not expecting an answer. I need to know why he would surrender and go off with the Black Beetle. Is it an act? Are they popping champagne on a yacht in the Indian Ocean? Or did he really just surrender himself to the same guy that kidnapped my mom?
“I’ll think of something,” Emily says in airy breaths.
I’m numb and I can’t fight as Emily guides me into the next room. She’s nervously speaking, sniffling, saying over and over that I need rest. I’m not tired, but the numbness of the bunker is back.
A blanket, soft pillow beneath my head. On the other side of the closed bedroom door, Emily’s crying seems to escalate. I let the cold consume me. The sobs fade and I’m alone. But not for long.
Chapter 14
That odd ring of light comes again—the same ring that replaced the sun when I last dreamed about Mom. I want to talk to her. She’s the only person that could help me make sense of all this.
My gut lurches and the light explodes. I’m moving, or flying, or my stomach is being ripped away. Then it stops.
“Jesus Christ,” I say.
An almost familiar, lisping, whiny voice replies, “Why are you talking to Jesus?”
I’m standing in a well-lit garage. There are worktables with labeled jars, wall racks containing yard tools in ascending order of height, and two plastic containers, one marked “recycle” and the other marked “trash”. This, even before they had curbside recycling in that neighborhood.
The centerpiece of the garage isn’t a car. It’s an electric race track. And not just any track, but a scale replica of the Formula One speedway at Monte Carlo. Classic French architecture lines the curves. Little trees and bushes fill spaces in the median. A harbor complete with yachts and wooden docks stretches toward an imaginary sea, and sand fills a construction site at the water’s edge. Store-bought model building sand that you apparently can’t just dig up in the back yard. A kid and his father spent hours together building this.
That kid is Kyle. The whiny voice is his, too. He’s standing next to me. A little blond-haired boy with a dusting of freckles across a nose which is currently crinkled into a skeptical scowl. I say he’s little, but when we were ten, he was bigger than me. Like everyone else. I look down at my hands. I guess we’re both ten.
My words come out on autopilot. “Dude, come on! It would be so wicked!”
Kyle crosses his arms and glares at me. “No way! No way!”
“Don’t be such a wuss.”
“I’m not a wuss. I just don’t want to burn down my track,” says Kyle as his scowl deepens.
“You won’t. It’ll be awesome. Here, check this out.” I pull the bottle of rubbing alcohol from my backpack. Strange, ‘cause my backpack when I was ten wasn’t the same black and orange backpack I’m carrying now, but here it is. I don’t blink when I see the iPod or the satellite phone inside, but I keep digging. I get out the bottle, unscrew the cap and dip a finger. As an afterthought, I grab the cup of water on the table and place it closer. “Watch!”
His eyes are straight out of an anime as I light the match and touch it to my finger. Sure enough, my fingertip is bathed in flame and his mouth drops open. I smile and dip my finger into the cup. “See, no damage. All we have to do is put it out before the alcohol burns off and we’re all good.”
“I don’t know,” says Kyle, staring at my finger. “Can I try?”
“Yeah, why not.” I push the bottle in his direction. Eyes still saucers, he dips his finger and reaches for the match. He fumbles with the matchbook, flipping it open and trying awkwardly to hold
the book while tearing a match free with his alcohol-soaked finger. I remember, he will try, drop a match, and very nearly catch his pants on fire. That was comedy gold when I was ten.
I snatch the book of matches. Is this really a dream?
“Here, let me do that,” I offer and he nods rapidly. I strike the match and he eases his finger forward, cross-eyed by the flame. With a quick breath I blow it out. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Hey! I’m not a wuss! C’mon, light my finger!”
“Kyle, I don’t think you’re a wuss.”
“Well, maybe I think you’re one.”
“Am not!” I say. Great, now I’m arguing with a ten-year-old. Wait, aren’t I ten, too? At least here? What the hell is going on?
“Do it. I dare you!” spits Kyle.
“Fine.” With a scrape and a flick, the match springs to life and I light his finger. Kyle stares at his fingertip, wreathed in flame and turns it in slow circles.
“Dip it, Kyle.” He’s mesmerized by the flame even as I repeat more desperately, “Dip it in the water, Kyle.” I’m starting to wonder why I was ever even temporary friends with this kid.
“It kinda tingles.” Kyle turns his finger slowly in front of his face.
I grab his hand and shove it in the glass.
“Hey!”
“I didn’t want you to get burned.” Well, maybe I did, just a little bit.
“I was gonna do that.” He scrunches his face again and blurts out, “Wuss!”
The indignation of a ten-year-old swells in my chest and the urge to play out this memory takes over once again, “Fine, let’s do this.”
I recall the bright idea that started it all. We were going to make burning tire tracks with the cars and try to get a picture with Mom’s digital camera. It was like in a movie I saw, only this was going to be way cooler. On the highly detailed track, nobody would be able to tell it wasn’t real. We’d have stock footage for our own killer action movie, with myself as director and Kyle the producer.
Once we get going, Kyle turns into a mini-pyro. He insists we do it over and over again until we get the perfect shot, using each and every car in the collection. Even now, I can feel my apprehension rise. Finally, one of the cars locks up on the track and Kyle reaches for it.
“This happens all the time. They get dirty and the connection doesn’t close between the rails and the track,” he speaks with the confident voice of his father’s experience echoed in his tiny frame and I try not to roll my eyes. “I’ll swap out the chassis on this and we’ll get the last car.”
As he flips the racer over, his eyes get wide again. He fumbles with the plastic chassis, turning the car over and over again. Tossing it to the track, he grabs another, then another. “Oh shit!”
At ten, a cuss word could mean only exactly what it means—serious shit. I grab the nearest car. The bottom is blackened, the copper contacts that connect to the track are warped and twisted. A black bubbly smudge melds the chassis with the frame of the car. We were so focused on not burning the track we didn’t notice the damage to the cars.
“Oh shit! Oh shit!” Kyle can’t stop saying it.
He’s desperate, the look on his face isn’t comical anymore. Fingers trembling, he’s rooting through the cars again, checking and rechecking.
I know what I did back then, when this really happened, so I do it again. I grab the bottle of alcohol and douse the pile of wrecked cars along with a good section of track.
“What are you doing?” He’s dumbstruck as I strike the match. I’m doing this for his own good, I tell myself.
Thick black smoke fills the garage. Kyle screams. I reach for the glass of water but I can’t see. The smoke is billowing in a thick cloud and it wraps itself around my head. Unable to breathe, I’m falling, again.
Smoke clears. I stop falling, my stomach left about five feet above my head.
“Was anyone hurt?” Mom’s voice. Pieces of conversation come from the living room. I’m seated on a stool in the kitchen. An apartment, like so many others. I ran home from Kyle’s house and tried to pretend I hadn’t just set fire to his little world. A faint ring of smoke which I didn’t see until later surrounds my mouth and nose.
“I’m sure it was an accident,” she says hopefully.
There’s a long pause, and Kyle’s father’s muffled shouts drift out of the receiver of the phone a room away.
Mom replies, steady and quiet, “Oh. I see. I’m so sorry. We’ll pay for any damages.”
The angry voice blurts again.
“Yes, I understand. I don’t know what could have gotten into him.”
A soft click of the phone being returned to the cradle is the only reply. I sit waiting. Waiting. Dad isn’t home, but I never had to worry about that.
Finally, she walks into the room. “That was Kyle’s father.”
I nod.
“What happened?” she asks, arms folded and eyes stern.
“We were making a movie.”
“Why did this involve setting stuff on fire?”
“It was a dumb idea. Special effects.”
She crosses her arms and I examine my feet perched on the rungs of the stool. “Kyle’s father says you started the fire because Kyle didn’t want anything to do with your idea.”
Good. I remember. My half-baked plan sorta worked.
“Spencer? Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you.”
My eyes leave my shoes. This isn’t what she said back then. Off-script, I stammer, “What…what do you mean?”
Mom’s face stays neutral, her arms crossed and a silver light gleams in her eyes. I start looking around for a sign that this truly is a dream, but it all seems so real. I’m hyperaware, and even the neutral colors of the apartment glare. Bits and pieces of the room start to become familiar. The stool and counter where I’d eat snacks at the apartment in Washington. The latticework on the patio door from a house in Florida. The simple design on the linoleum with straight lines and intersecting curves that I’d race Hot Wheels along from that house in… Kansas? Nebraska?
Above the table is a light. A fluorescent bulb, the tube is a bent cylinder forming a glowing ring in the sky.
“I don’t believe you. I think I understand why you did that. Do you?”
“I… I wanted to see what would happen.”
“Let’s start over,” Mom says, moving closer. I find I’ve inched away from her to the edge of the stool as she continues to question, searching with those silvery eyes. “Whose idea was this?”
“Well… mine.” I hear the sink start to drip. I’m sitting straight up on the stool but the room feels like it’s tilting backwards.
“For the movie? The fire?” She leans in and I can’t answer as I stare at the corona of mercury around her pupils. “Don’t be scared. I need to know.”
“Why?” I grip the table to keep from toppling over. I try to rein in the fear I see etched on my face in the reflection of those strange eyes.
Her own expression softens. That should be pleasant and calming, but it isn’t hers. “Because I want to understand. That’s all. Don’t worry. I’m not mad.”
I swallow before speaking, trying to loosen my throat. “We both wanted to do the movie. He was scared about my special effects idea, but once I showed him how it worked, he really got into it.” Mom’s smiling and shaking her head sympathetically and I keep talking now, unable to stop the flow of words I never said. “Kyle was gonna get busted ‘cause of the cars anyway. My idea was, well, I could take the blame. We’re probably moving soon anyway. Who cares if the crazy kid next door did it, right?”
Her face softens but the silver light flares. Her eyes and the ring of light above her are all I can see now. “You destroyed things. Put yourself at risk to help your friend.”
“I guess.”
“And you hated him for what he had.” Excitement flashes across my mother’s face as she says the word, hate.
“No.”
Hate Kyle? The kid was a dork, but I never hated him. But I can’t ignore the stab in my gut when I think of him building that track with his dad. His house right around the corner from the same school he’d been going to since kindergarten. Their manicured lawn with the black iron mailbox etched with their last name. “I don’t think so.”
“Even though you were outside a cage, you still felt trapped. Strapped down.” Her gaze darts wildly around the room and fixes on the light.
“This is getting weird.”
Her eyes peel away from the light and burn into mine. “None of this is your fault, Spencer.”
“Huh?”
She’s smiling in a way that tells me she sees all of my pain. But this isn’t a mother’s empathy. She’s lived that same pain of icy-cold isolation. And then, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the expression from the department store nightmare, memory, whatever it was. A look that so doesn’t fit her face I can’t describe it. Hunger? Anticipation?
“It’s their fault, Spencer. Their fault, and they should pay.”
Chapter 15
Through wet and blurry vision, I see a face inches from mine. A hand across my head. Cool, damp. I swat it away and roll. In one not-so-slick motion, I slip off the edge of the bed.
“Spencer…” Emily grabs my arm. I push off the floor and she pulls as I scramble onto the mattress. “It’s okay,” she says as she fluffs a pillow and places it under my head.
“I thought…”
“Shhh. Relax.” She drapes a cold cloth over my forehead.
“Oh God. Mom?” I tilt the corner of the cloth and search the room. The same assemble-it-yourself furniture and a ceiling fan. Emily’s eyes are next on the checklist. No weird lights.
She gives my hand a comforting squeeze. Light fades in the window of what must be her room. I thought it was already dark outside when we were watching television. She registers the confusion and tries to fill the silence.
“You’ve been asleep for a while. I’m not surprised. I was worried though, you started feeling feverish. I almost called Martin.”
