Rise and Shine

by R. J. Ross

  “Davis?” he hears Marisol say from his bedroom door. “School’s over, so we’re going to play the Technico game, now! Are you coming?”

  “Yeah,” he says, slipping his old phone into his pocket. “I’m coming.” Soon, though, she’s going to look away. He can’t let people use his tech for their own gain, and get away with it! It’s even worse that they stuck it in bushes! Why on EARTH would anyone stick such a masterpiece of technology into a BUSH?

  “He’s got his ‘mad’ face on,” he hears Marisol whisper to Whitney. “Those Invisiboys are going to be sorry!”

  “Let’s do this,” Davis says, moving to his “chair of leadership” and placing his phone into the docking station of the armrest. A hologram of two keyboards and a mouse come up and he starts to type, rapidly, without bothering to look at the letters. If Zoe sees him playing the game, she’ll think he’s following her instructions.

  “YEAH!” everyone cheers. He might be a pain, sometimes, but he’s THEIR pain. Plus, he has excellent gaming skills. They’re well on their way to the top of the now “official” board, thanks to him!

  ***

  “This is it?” I ask as we pull to a stop over a rather dilapidated looking house next to a grown-over field. “Can we land there?” I ask, pointing to the field. Voltdrain drops down in the field and lets go of me. I go straight to one knee, placing my hand on the ground. There’s something wrong with this field, and not just because it’s been abandoned. It isn’t the plants, though… it’s the ground, itself.

  “Is there something wrong?” Voltdrain asks.

  “There’s a bunker under here?” I ask him.

  “Yes, it is very impressive. It should cover more than half of the field, I believe,” he says.

  “Further,” I say, standing. I can see it in my mind. “I mean, yeah, the large room stops… over here… but then we have a rock lined tunnel here… and…” I start following the tunnel, only to get irritated and tug my shoes off.

  “Excuse me! Excuse me, but I believe that regardless of whether you’re supers or not, it’s illegal to trespass,” a woman in a dress suit says, hurrying over to us. She stops, picking up her foot and looking at the soul of her heel with an expression of disgust. I think she stepped in something. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Ah, Mrs. Monk,” Voltdrain says. “I was not expecting you to be here. May we speak with your brother?”

  “Is there something wrong?” Mrs. Monk asks. “And it’s Ms., not Mrs.,” she corrects him. “I’m not married at the moment. Has something happened with Davis? Is he okay? He didn’t get hurt in your silly games, did he?”

  “Davis is doing fine,” Voltdrain says. “He has earned much respect from the other students in thanks to his excellent leadership abilities.”

  “Davis? A leader?” she says, looking shocked. “I mean, of course. I’m not surprised, he has wonderful leadership skills.” She’s lying. No, I’m not suddenly an empath, or anything, it’s just that obvious by her expression. She hadn’t expected her son to get along with the other kids.

  “He’s the leader of the Southern Storms, right?” I say to Voltdrain. “They’ve got a pretty big reputation in the game. I hear Freddy and Lance complaining about them all the time.”

  “Yes, they are quite proud of how well they do,” Volt says with a hint of pride, himself.

  “A video game,” Ms. Monk repeats. “He’s wasting his precious time playing a silly video game?”

  “It’s based on the kids’ real abilities, though,” I say. “So in a way, he’s controlling a team of supers well enough to become famous, if it was in the real world. I mean, even my sister’s a fan of theirs. She’s been playing outside of her shop ever since he showed up.”

  “Do you?” Voltdrain asks me. “I have not tried it, myself, but Jimena is quite fond of the game. I have watched it.”

  “Nah,” I say. “I just grow my plants and play with specialized stuff. I’ve got a hybrid that can take down an entire country, you should see it sometime.”

  “I will have to,” he says, “but not in real life.”

  “Nah, not in real life, plus, it would take years for it to grow, even with my help.”

  “As fascinating as all of this is,” she says. “Is there a reason you’re trespassing on my brother’s property? We weren’t informed that we were going to have visitors.”

  “Has your brother gone out, recently?” Voltdrain asks. She looks at him blankly for a moment before shaking her head.

  “No, never, he spends all of his time in that nasty basement of his. He won’t even move upstairs. He says he can’t handle the noise of sleeping there, anymore. I really don’t understand it. He was kept a prisoner down there for so long! I would have thought the first thing he would do is to move out!”

  “So… no trips to buy Petleaves?” I say, prodding.

  “What’s a pet… leaves?” she asks. “Is it some sort of drug? He’s not doing drugs—no, how could he be? He never leaves the basement! You know what? Unless you come with a warrant, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is personal property, and you are not the police. Thank you for coming, but we are working through our own problems, quite nicely, I might add.”

  “May I ask,” Voltdrain says, “why did you move in with your brother?”

  She goes still, before glaring at him. “If you supers aren’t going to protect him from your own type, then someone has to do it. Now, please leave. I don’t want to bring in the authorities, but I will.”

  “We apologize for taking your time,” Voltdrain says, looking at me. “Do you need help?” he asks.

  “A hand would be nice,” I admit. He holds out a hand and I jump up, stepping into it so he can toss me straight into the air.

  “He is still learning,” I hear him explain before he takes to the air as well. I’m wobbling, but I can stay up here a bit, I think. I just need to NOT think about the ground. Except right now I really need to think about the ground, though, right? Because there’s something that the Hall doesn’t know about Penski’s underground bunker, and I was only starting to figure out, earlier, before she distracted us.

  “So there is a tunnel?” Voltdrain asks as he joins me, looking down at the ground below. He reaches out and grabs my arm as I start to plummet. “Where does it come out at?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “But he’s got to be getting out somehow. The question is, why didn’t Dad notice it?”

  “I do not feel it, either,” he says. “That is easily explained.”

  “What? How?”

  “There is no electricity. It is a dark tunnel. Perhaps there are levers and gears.”

  “So somewhere down there are the Petleaves, and she has no clue,” I sum up with a frown. “I don’t think she’s as bad a lady as people seem to…” I stop as I see a car driving down the street. This is a dead end street, right? So it should be stopping at one of the houses, or turning around. It stops, but to my surprise, it’s right in front of Richard Penski’s house. “Wow, they’re pretty popular today.”

  “It is a rented car,” Voltdrain says. We watch as Ms. Monk hesitates as she sees it, before walking out to greet whoever is in the car. I see a look of shock on her face as the tinted window rolls down.

  “Hello, Lydia,” a somewhat familiar voice says. “Why don’t you get in the car?”

  “Walt?” I hear Ms. Monk say. It all clicks together, and I start forward, only to be grabbed by Voltdrain. “Walt, I thought I would never see you again!” She says as she gets in the car, sliding into the seat next to Walter Colleck.

  “We can’t let her go with him!” I say, trying to pull free. “He’s not who she thinks he is! He’s a super!”

  “That is not what we are here for,” Voltdrain says. “When she leaves, we can find out where the tunnel ends.”

  “But he’s an old guy! He was just using her to—to have his kid! He was trying to breed a super genius, right? And he DID, because that’s exactly w
hat Davis is!” I say, still struggling.

  “By her expression, it is not the worst thing that he has done, Sunny. She did not seem scared,” Voltdrain says, but I can see him give in. “Once we have found the exit, we will find them.” He taps on his earbud. “Send me a fleet of black suits, por favor,” he goes on, rattling off the address as I turn my attention to the car that’s driving away.

  We shouldn’t have let him know. Skye probably didn’t realize what would happen, right? I’m actually not really sure what will happen, myself, but the last thing I want is for some poor kid to be turned into an experiment by his dad. Then again, I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m an experiment for my dad. He’s constantly checking my stats and has all these charts projecting my growth, you know? It hasn’t killed me yet, right? But my dad doesn’t train monkeys to carry guns! He just… makes random weapons while watching ancient TV shows. I think I’ve seen every single episode of Hogan’s Heroes, and I didn’t even realize it WAS a show before I met Dad.

  “Sunny,” Voltdrain says taking me by the arms and making me look at him. “We need to find the exit, my friend.”

  “Oh… oh, right,” I say, looking at the ground. “And then we’ll see what he has to talk to her about?”

  “It is not any of our business,” he says.

  “But Davis is,” I say as we land on the ground. I see my shoes lying to the side, but I ignore them, focusing on the ground beneath me. “I don’t get the feeling he’s doing this out of fatherly love. I mean, isn’t the Collector his grandson? He didn’t seem to like the guy at all! Then again, he tried to kidnap my girlfriend before she was my girlfriend, so I don’t like the guy at all, either…” I’m following the tunnel towards the trees in the distance. “It’s somewhere over here.” I come to the trees, feeling the end of the tunnel, but not seeing any door. “How did he make this, anyway?”

  Voltdrain doesn’t say anything, but he does look up as the sound of sirens comes to our ears. “They are heading this way,” he says, starting for the road. “They are not the black suits, so I believe she has called the police.”

  I hesitate, still looking for the exit of the tunnel. He can handle the cops, right? I take a step towards a large rock, wondering if I’ll find a lever. Something wraps around my ankle, and I start to fall. This is so much like when I was first coming into my powers that I almost think it’s natural, until the ground comes up, wrapping around me and dragging me down.

  I don’t even get the chance to call out to Voltdrain before a leafy hand covers my mouth. I struggle, a bit surprised at just how strong the plant thing is.

  “Hello, nephew,” a voice says right next to my ear. It shocks me into stillness. Well, that and the gas mask he covers my face with.

  I’m not sure, but I think I was just kidnapped by a bush.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “What in the world were you thinking?” the demand is loud enough that it sinks into my consciousness. I can sleep through a lot of things, so that’s saying something. “You just kidnapped a child super! What are we supposed to do with him?”

  “He’s a plant elementalist,” the same voice that had called me “nephew” says. “He was about to expose our way out of here. We don’t have time for this! Voltdrain will be coming back at any moment.”

  “And we’re supposed to pack up before that? AND carry that kid? If you were going to kidnap someone, you should have at least brought our ‘nephew.’ He would be somewhat useful.”

  I dare to peek through my lashes, only to find a brilliantly bright light aimed straight into my eyes. I groan, turning away and covering my eyes. Oh… whoops. I think they know I’m awake, now…

  The room is silent as I attempt to play dead. “Really,” one says, “it’s a bit late for that.”

  “Why did you kidnap me?” I demand, giving up and sitting. I totally ruin the demand by yawning. I really need to work on that. “Also, what did you drug me with? That gave me a REALLY weird dream.” Even weirder than usual! I think there was a tap-dancing donkey somewhere in there, along with a tree singing a Justin song. Wait, that guy is a gigantic Petleaves. “AHH!” I scream belatedly, jerking as far back as I can. “It’s ALIVE! Well, I mean, they were alive, earlier, right? So what… evolution? Did you battle things? What level did you have to reach to turn into that?”

  “Are you deliberately being an idiot, or is it just natural?” the scientist guy asks.

  “Hey, you’re Richard Penski, aren’t you?” I ask, my eyes narrowing. Look, I might have been panicking right now, if it wasn’t for a few simple facts. One, Voltdrain, the guy that DAD says would give him trouble, is right over our heads right now, and he’s going to notice me being gone any moment. Two, I’m still wearing my commlink. They can find me anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had other tracking chips hidden in my clothes. Dad tends to go overboard with that. Skye still uses her hairpin as a recording device, you know? We get some of the most hysterical videos that way. Speaking of Skye, fact three: my aunt can find me ANYWHERE on the planet.

  “Do we know each other?” Penski asks me.

  “You hurt my aunt,” I say, glaring at him and getting to my feet. “And now you’re making mutant monsters?”

  “I’m not a monster,” the Petleaves guy says. I look at him. “Okay, maybe I’m sort of a monster. You look delicious for some reason, kid. You don’t mind if I chew on you for a bit, do you?” He starts forward, reaching out with leafy fingers.

  “DOWN,” I say, exerting my power. He makes a surprised sound as he automatically sits on the ground.

  “What in the hell?” he says. “How did that work?”

  “We don’t have time to mess around like this, Clay,” Penski says as he packs things away in a bag as quickly as he can. “If you’re going to eat the boy, do it already.”

  “Clay?” I repeat, trying to remember where I’d heard that name. “No way! Aren’t you supposed to be in the Cape Cells?” I barely finish the sentence before the leafy guy jumps me, wrapping around me tightly and dragging me to the ground. I jerk, remembering the last time the Petleaves tried to eat me like this. He’s stronger. There’s something in this batch that makes him a lot more dangerous than the version I fought before. I might have been joking about evolving, but there seems to be some truth to it. I’m not sure WHAT this guy is, but…

  The ground all around us starts to rumble and I feel the tectonic plates start to shift. “Let go of me!” I shout, struggling as hard as I can. My clothing is being torn to shreds.

  “Is this all you have?” he asks me. “Is the son of a Superior really this weak?”

  “I don’t want to cause another earthquake,” I say, desperately. His words are remarkably reminiscent of what Max had said to me. I’m not going to fall for it, again.

  “So you’ll die instead of fighting back? The man that experimented on your aunt is right above us. He tortured her, little Superior. He experimented on her and is even now using the information he stole from her to make a tool. Are you just going to die here, and let him go on with that?”

  I can feel it. The Petleaf part of this monster is tugging at my powers, sapping me of my strength. The longer I hesitate, the stronger it’ll get. Soon I won’t even have the choice to fight. “Why are you doing this?” I ask him. The plant wrapped around me tightens and twists.

  “Because they got me, but he’s still free,” he says. The leaves in front of my face pull back, and take the form of a face. “You brought Voltdrain right to me, nephew. Now finish the job and get that no-good pain in my neck tossed into prison, just like I am.”

  I go still. “You did it on purpose?”

  “I effectively pretended to be one of the biggest brains in America for almost fifteen years,” he says. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to just kidnap a kid right as we were about to leave? But if you die here, well, then I’ll just get another… level up, I believe you called it? Such a useful nephew.”

  “I… am not… your nephew,” I sa
y, seeing black spots in front of my eyes. He’s doing this. He’s feeding off of me, and I can’t let him. I have to fight back. But if I use the earth to fight him, it could cause an earthquake, again. I already caused one. I don’t want to…

  I don’t want to die, I think as I tighten a fist. A rock shoots through the leafy body that’s trapping me, ripping straight through the creepy face. “Get off of me!” I shout, ripping apart the remains and flying straight through the earth, through the tunnel and out into the surface world. I’m dirty, mostly naked again, and I know that what I just did didn’t kill him. I look around, seeing nothing but the hole in the ground I just created and the field, like it had been before I was dragged under.

  “Sunny!” I hear Zoe say over my earbud. “Sunny, help is on its way!”

  “Who’s on their way?” I ask, distracted. Just as I’m looking for someone, I see the Petleaf guy jump out of the hole, launching himself at me.

  “What have you… doing? I couldn’t… to you… a moment!” she says, but her voice is fading in and out, even now.

  “I’m fighting Clay!” I yell, only to fall to the ground as his weight throws off my balance. I struggle, feeling him start to steal my power again.

  “WHAT?” she yells.

  “I’m FIGHTING CLAY!” I bellow, as if that can make the commlink work better. Why is the commlink not working in the first place? Usually Dad’s tech works anywhere! I jerk as my arm is wrapped in leaves, pulling as hard as I can. With a strangely sickening ripping sound, the batch of leaves attached to me comes free of the rest of the body.

  “Do you really think I’m going to let you have a chat?” he demands. Leafy vines wrap around my throat while more wrap around my wrists and ankles. “Do this seriously, nephew!”

  “I SAID I’M NOT YOUR NEPHEW!” I bellow, twisting and punching him as hard as I can. The part I hit shatters into dust, and I stare in surprise for a second—which is a second too long. It’s soon replaced by more leaves and the sound of Clay laughing.