Strike 3: The Returning Sunrise

by Charlie Wood

  The piranhas had to have come from somewhere.

  Reaching the dirt floor, Tobin looked around, straining his eyes to see through the muddy water. There was nothing there, however—just unending brown dirt and a few rocks sticking out of the walls. Worst of all, the boy could feel his lungs tightening; he was running out of air. Soon he would have to swim back to the top, but he doubted he even had the strength to do that, and even if he made it, there was likely no longer any air pockets between the water and ceiling. As he looked up to where he came from, trying to figure out his options, he suddenly saw the pack of white shapes coming toward him. The piranha-skeletons, every single one of them, were swimming down to the floor, with Tobin’s blood still streaming off their lips.

  Tobin looked back to the ground. It was now or never. He swam downward as fast as he could, and began to fire his lightning blasts in every direction. With the bolts fizzling under the water, he darted his eyes around the walls, but he could see nothing, even with the light from his energy blasts, and the only sound he could hear was his lightning searing against the cavern floor, sporadically bouncing off something metal.

  Wait a second.

  Metal?

  Tobin fired more lightning; yes, even through the water, it was the unmistakable sound of one of his lightning blasts hitting metal. Tobin looked in the sound’s direction, and he saw a rock sticking out of the wall, right where the wall connected to the ground. There were a few other rocks embedded in the cave wall in that area, but none as big as this one.

  This was no ordinary rock.

  Knowing he only had seconds to work with—and fighting the terrible urge to gasp for air—Tobin swam down to the large rock. The piranha-men were nearly on him now, but he had to put them out of his mind. Reaching the rock, he hammered at it with his arms and legs, blasting it with lightning bursts. But, it would not budge, so finally he reached back and grabbed his bo-staff from his back. Using it like a crowbar, he jammed the weapon into the area where the rock was attached to the wall and sent a stream of lightning scorching down the staff. Summoning all of his strength, the boy then gripped the bo-staff with both hands and pulled back on it as hard as he could.

  The power Tobin exerted in attempting his lightning-fueled crowbar was so fierce that he uncontrollably let out a scream, and in the process let out whatever remaining air he had left in his lungs. But, it did not matter; feeling a rushing sensation underneath him, Tobin looked down. The rock was wiggling against the wall, and as Tobin gave it one more swift kick, it loosened itself and dropped to the ground. However, before Tobin could even celebrate with an underwater fist-pump, everything in the cavern—the water, the piranhas, Tobin—was sucked down into the hole behind the rock, and suddenly Tobin found himself falling down yet another underground-metal-death slide. This was where the piranhas had come from, all right—now Tobin just hoped this slide led somewhere better than the underground cavern.

  Luckily for Tobin, it did; the slide traveled right out through the underside of the Time Queen’s island, and the boy soon found himself in the open air, falling at an incredible speed. Hitting the lake with a SPLASH, he swam up to the top and broke free of the water, gasping for air and thankful to see the night sky above him. However, even though he had escaped, Tobin was well aware that everything else inside the cavern had also been sucked out into the tube. As he looked back to the underside of the island, every last one of the piranha-skeletons also came rushing out of the slide, before falling into the lake with Tobin, splashing one after the other. It only took a moment for the skeletons to smell Tobin’s blood in the water and reengage the chase for their prey, swimming madly in his direction.

  Tobin bobbed at the top of the water, trying to think of an escape. His brain was light-headed, and he knew his lungs could not take another swim underneath the surface. He half-heartedly attempted to swim towards the far-off shore, but his arms and legs were exhausted to the point of uselessness, and he could not manage to make it even ten feet from where he was. With blood pouring from the wounds on his arms and legs—leading the piranhas straight to him—he debated trying to reach the Time Queen’s island, where he could perhaps climb the underside up to safety, but deep down he knew he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the strength. And he could never out-swim the piranhas, anyway.

  Resigning himself to waiting until the piranhas reached him, he treaded water and reached for the bo-staff on his back. When the piranhas came near, he would light the weapon, and then give it his all, trying to fight them off. As useless as he knew it was, it was either that or give up. At least this way, he wouldn’t give up.

  But then, with his eyesight going blurry and his lungs tearing at his chest, Tobin heard a roaring, burning sound above him. He was so disoriented and light-headed that he didn’t recognize the noise at first—it wasn’t until a beam of light shot down from the sky and illuminated the water around him that he realized the sound wasn’t coming from inside his own aching head. Arching his neck back and squinting, he shielded his eyes from the light and looked up.

  A figure was descending from the sky, dangling on a long rope. As Tobin’s eyes adjusted to the blinding brightness, and as the figure grew closer, he could see who the person was: it was his friend, Keplar Costello, the six-and-a-half-foot-tall, beer-drinking, cowboy-hat-wearing Siberian husky. Looking past the dog, Tobin realized that the rope he was dangling from was attached to the open cargo bay of the silver sky-ship known as the Sky-Blade, which was hovering above them.

  “You’re lucky,” the husky said, as he reached Tobin, “that our little robot friend can’t keep a secret for krandor.”

  As Tobin grabbed onto Keplar’s arm, the dog pulled the boy against him, and they both rose up to the waiting cargo bay of the Sky-Blade. Nearly unconscious, Tobin looked down; far below him, in the water, he could see the swarm of piranha-men, splashing their arms and snapping their jaws in a fury, still trying to jump up at their escaping prey. To the right of the furious fish, on the shore of the island, Tobin spotted the Time Queen; she was standing outside her curio shop and staring up at the Sky-Blade.

  “No!” she shouted, slamming her fists at her sides. “No! This wasn’t how it was supposed to end! This isn’t what I saw! I need the Chrono-Key, Tobin, please! Please! Bring it back to me! I need it! I need it!”

  Smiling and closing his eyes, Tobin rose up through the open cargo bay door of the Sky-Blade, and it closed after him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The morning after the escape from the Time Queen’s island, Tobin, Keplar, Scatterbolt, Wakefield, and Orion were in the briefing room on the main floor of the Museum of the Heroes. Orion and Wakefield were standing at the front of the room in front of a large screen, while Keplar and Scatterbolt were sitting in a couple of chairs facing them. Tobin, meanwhile—wearing all of his Strike gear except for his mask—was standing in the rear of the room by himself, near a large open window that looked out over the treetops outside of the Museum.

  “Okay,” Orion said, holding a remote control in his hand. “Here’s what we know.”

  The old man pressed a button, and a long horizontal line appeared on the screen behind him.

  “Thanks to Tobin’s completely unauthorized trip to see the Time Queen, we now know that Rigel used the Chrono-Key to travel back into the past. By doing this, he created another timeline. This timeline branches off from ours at the moment I first met Tobin at the supermarket.”

  Orion clicked the remote control again, and another horizontal line branched off from the line on the screen.

  “By traveling into the past, Rigel changed one incredibly important moment. Instead of meeting me and receiving the picture of his father, the Tobin in this timeline was captured by Rigel and placed in the Daybreaker armor. Rigel and this second Tobin then returned to our timeline. Which is why it is possible we now have two Tobins in our timeline—and it’s also why this other Tobin—the Daybreaker—is so different than ours.”

  “That’s it, t
hough?” Keplar asked. “That’s the only difference? I mean, I know our Tobin can have a bad temper sometimes, like when he dies in Mario Brothers or we run out of Nutella, but I can’t believe he would take over the entire city of Boston.”

  “No, you’re right,” Orion replied. “That can’t be the only difference. And that’s what we need to find out. We need to find out what else has happened to make this Tobin so different from ours.”

  Wakefield—the short, grumpy, balding, robotics-genius senior citizen— stepped in front of the screen.

  “Because of our work in helping to cure him of his were-bat disease, Jonathan Ashmore has finally begun to give us useful information about the Daybreaker. And he has told us that he was there when Rigel first reappeared with the Daybreaker in our timeline. And the first thing Rigel and Nova did when the Daybreaker arrived in our timeline was hook him up to some kind of mechanical throne.”

  “We don’t know what that machine did to the other Tobin,” Orion said, “because even Jonathan doesn’t know that. But we can assume, almost assuredly, that the machine somehow affected his brain, his memories—it made him think things that weren’t true. It essentially brainwashed him.”

  “Which is why he was so quick to attack us at the pyramid,” Wakefield said.

  “Yeah,” Scatterbolt said, “and that explains why Rigel was telling him all that stuff about how we were the bad guys.”

  Orion nodded. “Yes, exactly. Whatever that machine did to him, it made him think that we are his enemies, that we did something to his family. Which led to him attacking us, and—a few weeks later—to him working with Rigel and Nova to invade Boston.”

  Keplar turned to Tobin. “See kid, I told ya you couldn’t be that psychotic on your own. Not unless a lack of Nutella was involved.”

  Tobin rolled his eyes.

  “Which leads us to our next course of action,” Orion continued. “Up until now, we have not been able to get into the Dark Nebula surrounding Boston, but I have been able to make contact with someone who has. This contact on the inside has been supplying me with intel, and now we finally have enough to make a move.”

  Orion walked to a nearby table and picked up four silver, ballpoint pen-shaped devices with buttons on their tops.

  “These are called fakers, and they will conceal our identities, allowing us to walk freely inside the Dark Nebula. Thanks to the holographic technology that Junior and Wakefield have created, while using these devices, anyone interacting with us or seeing us will not actually see us—we will be coated with a hologram, and they will instead see four normal, Rytonian citizens. Tomorrow night, using these to conceal our identities, myself, Tobin, Keplar and Scatterbolt will infiltrate the Dark Nebula, and use the information my inside contact has been able to obtain.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” Keplar asked.

  Orion clicked his remote again, and the screen behind him changed. It now showed a blueprint of the Trident skyscraper.

  “Based upon what my contact has told me, it seems that the next phase of Rigel and the Daybreaker’s plan involves two key components. We don’t know what the two components are, or what these next phases involve, but we know where the information on these two components lay.”

  Orion clicked his button, and two blinking lights appeared on the blueprint of the skyscraper. One was in the basement, and one was near the top of the building.

  “The first component is being worked on in the basement of the skyscraper, in its computer mainframe, and the second component is being worked on here, in a science lab on the 105th floor. I do have concerns about the 105th floor, however, as it is only five floors below the Daybreaker’s place of residence.”

  Keplar raised his hand. “I hereby volunteer to be part of the team that goes into the computer basement, rather than the one that goes near the ultra-powerful teenager.”

  Orion ignored him. “We’ll decide on the teams later.”

  “Okay,” Keplar replied. “But, like I said, I volunteer for the non-super-villain teenager one.”

  Orion turned off the screen behind him. “Okay. That’s it for now. Let’s get some rest people. We’re going to need to be as prepared as possible for what’s next. We’ve worked hard to get this information, and it’s the only chance we have to discover what Rigel is planning to do next.”

  The meeting broke apart, and as the heroes headed to the various parts of the Museum, Tobin walked through the building’s main entrance and out its giant glass doors.

  “Hi, Tobin,” Orion said, following Tobin onto the museum’s sky-ship landing platform. “Everything okay? Do you agree with what we’ve decided to do next?”

  “Yeah, definitely,” Tobin said. He stood on the edge of the landing platform, looking out over the trees. “It makes sense to me.”

  “Okay. It’s just that you seemed awfully quiet in there. I’m not used to you not piping in and telling everyone why my plan is all wrong when we have a mission briefing.”

  Orion smiled, but Tobin didn’t smile back. He looked down to the ground.

  “It’s just…this mission isn’t like any of the others, Orion. This is me we’re going against here. It’s me.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is. The Time Queen even said so. Everything you and Wakefield have investigated has said the same thing. That’s me, whether we want to admit it or not. It’s me up in that skyscraper. Just a different me.”

  “Tobin, sit down. Take a deep breath. Let me tell you what I know.”

  Tobin sat down on the landing area, with his legs dangling over the edge, and Orion sat down next to him.

  “I know, for a fact, that the Daybreaker is not you. You are right here next to me. Right now. This is you.” The old man poked a finger in Tobin’s chest. “Everything in your life up until this point has made you who you are. Just like everything in the Daybreaker’s life has made him who he is. Your life went one way, and his life went another. We can’t know what terrible things happened to him, or what terrible things he was told. But that’s why he’s done what he has done. You did not, and would not, do those things.”

  “But that’s the thing, Orion. I know what you are trying to say, but that’s exactly my point. If those things had happened to me—those exact things that happened to him—I would have made the same decisions as him. Because I am him.”

  Orion thought it over. “If my life had gone another way, who knows what I could have turned into. If only a few things had gone differently for Vincent, he could have become the greatest hero in the history of Capricious. I have always known that. It’s all a matter of whatever is thrown at us. And sometimes what is thrown at us is too much to take, without anyone there to help us.”

  “I would just think that...even if I was in the worst situation possible like him, no matter what had happened, that I would still do the right thing. But I guess I wouldn’t. Because the Daybreaker—the other me—didn’t.”

  “I can understand why you are confused, Tobin. And angry. I completely can. But the first thing we need to do is figure out what has happened to the Daybreaker. What has happened to him to make him make these choices. Only then will we be able to figure this all out.”

  Tobin nodded.

  “Just know,” Orion continued, “that no matter what you might think, that is not you in that skyscraper. Okay? Because I know that is not you. I know it, because I am sitting here with you now. You would not make the same choices that he has. There is only one you, Tobin. And you are who you choose to be.”

  As Orion headed back into the museum, Tobin sat on the landing platform by himself, listening to the wind blow through the leaves of the trees.

  ***

  That night, back home in Bridgton, Massachusetts, Tobin sat on his bed in his room and surfed the Internet on his iPad. He knew he needed to take his mind off the situation and think of other things, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Tobin clicked onto the website for the Bridgton Herald. The top headlin
e read:

  BOSTON DOME DEATH TOLL RISES TO TWENTY.

  Underneath the headline, there was a smaller headline:

  MOST DEATHS OCCURRED DURING INITIAL APPEARANCE OF THE DOME.

  Tobin heard his mother calling for him from downstairs. “Tobin? Are you up there? Did you have any dinner?”

  “No, Mom,” Tobin said, quickly closing the webpage. “I’m not really hungry.”

  Tobin’s mother walked up the stairs and into his room.

  “Are you sure? I made one of your favorites. Well, I re-heated some of Grandma’s shepherd’s pie, which is one of your favorites.”

  Tobin smirked, but he didn’t look away from his iPad. His mother could tell something was wrong. It was impossible to hide things like that from her.

  “Is everything okay, honey? Is something bothering you?”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m just...feeling kinda crappy today.”

  Tobin’s mother sat down on the bed. “Do you wanna talk about it? Is it the dome in Boston? It’s okay to be afraid of it, you know. We’re all a little afraid. I was watching this special with Oprah today, and she was discussing the dome in Boston, and she said we should all be talking about it with our families, and that it’s okay to be afraid.”

  Tobin felt nauseous. He couldn’t have this conversation. Not now. Not ever. “No, it’s not the dome, Mom. Really, I’m fine.”

  “Okay. But if you ever wanna talk about it, honey, I want you to talk to me, okay? We’re all in this together, and we’re all gonna get through it. And even though none of us know what the dome is, they are gonna find out where it came from, take care of it, and then we won’t have to worry about it anymore. Okay?”

  Tobin’s mother walked out of the room.

  “Everything will be fine, honey. Just remember that it’s nothing for you to worry about. It has nothing to do with you. Someone will take care of it, someone will take care of whoever did it, and then everything will be fine. It’s not something you should be worried about. It has nothing to do with you.”