The Dominion Key

by Lee Bacon

  TPIS. Was it supposed to make me feel any better that my freaky condition came with its own scientific name?

  “You, Joshua Dread, are capable of freezing time and space. Which is precisely what The Device does. Except on a much, much bigger scale. That’s why Vex has been chasing you all this time. Somehow, he must’ve witnessed your power in action.”

  Suddenly, I remembered the first time I fought Phineas Vex. In his underground lair. It was also the first time my Gyft went haywire. The world stopped. My power took control. And Vex was front and center for the display. He’d been trying to capture me ever since.

  Dr. Fleming stepped toward me.

  “It was only a matter of time until Vex tracked me down,” he said. “I would’ve never been safe. Even here. But now I have something Vex needs. Something he’s been looking for all this time. I have you.”

  Dr. Fleming was standing close enough now that I could’ve reached out and strangled him if it weren’t for the antimagnetized wall. I strained every muscle, trying to free myself, but it was useless.

  “You’re insane.” My voice shook with rage. “Phineas Vex will never bargain with you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. With my unique expertise in high-grade weaponry, I’d make a wonderful asset for any evil billionaire with an interest in world domination. In fact, Vex has already promised to make me his chief adviser. He’s on his way now. Should be arriving any minute.”

  My heart skipped a beat. The situation was bad now, but once Vex arrived, things would only get worse. Much worse.

  Dr. Fleming walked to the other end of the room. He fiddled with the touch screen until a surveillance video showing the front of his house appeared. Still no sign of Vex. Or anyone else.

  As Fleming cycled through more surveillance footage, I glanced at my friends. I could see my own fear reflected in their expressions. Then I caught Milton’s eye. He wasn’t speaking, but I could tell right away that he was trying to say something to me. His eyes flicked down to the pocket of his shorts. Just barely poking out was a corner of plastic.

  It took me another moment to recognize what I was seeing. The sealed plastic bag Dr. Fleming had given us yesterday. And inside was—

  The peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  Correction: the exploding peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  The way Milton was stuck against the wall, there was no way he could reach it. But one of my hands was less than an inch from his pocket. If I could move just a little, I might be able to crack the seal open.

  I strained, flexing the entire left side of my body. Shoulder, arm, fingers—anything that would bring me a little closer to the bag. But nothing happened. It was like I was glued to the wall.

  I could see Dr. Fleming out of the corner of my eye, still inspecting the screen. Turning my attention back to the sandwich in Milton’s pocket, I focused my Gyft. I concentrated all my energy on my left hand. Spontaneous combustion surged through my chest and crackled down my arm.

  And it worked! The blast was powerful enough to knock my hand free of the wall. It wasn’t much, but it did the job. A split second later, the antimagnetism yanked my hand back. My palm smacked the wall with a FWUMP!

  Dr. Fleming whirled. “What was that?”

  He scanned the four of us. I did my best to look innocent. Then Dr. Fleming’s eyes narrowed. He was looking right at the spot where my left hand had just been. In my peripheral vision, I could barely make out what he’d spotted.

  My charred handprint on the wall. A leftover of spontaneous combustion.

  Luckily, Dr. Fleming was too distracted by the burned wall to notice where my hand had landed. My fingertips were at the edge of the plastic bag. If I could wiggle them a little bit, then maybe, just maybe …

  Dr. Fleming made a tsk-tsk noise. As if we were back in first period and I’d just flunked a quiz. “I understand you’re upset, Joshua,” he said. “But really—must you leave marks on my wall?”

  He calmly walked toward us. His shoes clicked on the floor.

  “Your spontaneous combustion won’t do any good here,” he said. “The antimagnetic force is far too strong.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Gritting my teeth, I set off another pulse of spontaneous combustion. This time, as my hand blasted away from the wall, I squeezed the plastic between my fingers. Just like the last time, my hand shot outward … and was immediately pulled back again.

  My knuckles collided with the wall. I winced, pain shooting up my hand.

  “What did I tell you?” Dr. Fleming took another step my way. “You’re just hurting yourself now. So why don’t you act like a good little hostage and wait patiently until—”

  He went quiet suddenly. His eyes widened. And I knew exactly what had caught his attention. I’d managed to pull the sandwich free from Milton’s pocket. It was lying on the floor at Dr. Fleming’s feet. The seal was ripped open.

  I looked from the sandwich to Dr. Fleming. “Hope you’re in the mood for peanut butter and jelly.”

  Dr. Fleming tried to turn, but he was too late. In the next instant, the sandwich exploded. Peanut butter and jelly flew everywhere. A bunch of it got on Milton and me. But most of the brown and purple goo blasted across Dr. Fleming.

  His clothes, his face, his hair—he was covered in PB&J.

  With Fleming distracted, Cassie vanished into smoke. The force of the antimagnet didn’t seem to affect her in that form. The wisp of silver streaked across the air and transformed back into Cassie. As soon as she was herself again, the invisible force yanked her toward the wall—but not before she knocked the silver headband off Fleming’s head.

  Without the band, Dr. Fleming was suddenly vulnerable to the antimagnet. He surged forward. His arms flailed. Peanut butter splattered all over the place. And—

  WHAM!

  He head-butted the wall.

  The impact caused his body to go limp. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. His tongue lolled out of his mouth.

  “Nice job, guys,” Sophie said. “Now we just need to find a way off this wall.”

  “I’ll take care of that.” Cassie transformed herself again. The smoke whipped across the room. When it reached the touch screen, a finger emerged from the cloud. It looked half human, half smoke. The vaporous pale finger seemed to struggle against the pull of the antimagnet. But because she wasn’t fully formed, Cassie could resist enough to tap the screen.

  It was kind of like watching a ghost play with an iPad. Soon enough, she managed to disengage the antimagnet. All at once, the force vanished. My friends and I collapsed to the floor. So did Dr. Fleming. Sophie rushed to him. She ran a hand along his wrist. After a second, she glanced up.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “Should we tie him up?”

  “No time.” Cassie was in full human form again, staring worriedly at the screen. Dark shapes moved across the surveillance video. “Looks like Vex has nearly reached the safe house. And he brought an army with him.”

  We raced through the futuristic house. Down the stairs, into the hall, across the dining room. Empty bowls and cereal boxes were still scattered across the table. Less than an hour had passed since the last time we were here. The world had completely changed since breakfast.

  “They’ll be pulling up soon,” Sophie said. “Maybe we can escape out the back door.”

  Sophie skidded around a corner into a sleek white kitchen. She was halfway across the room when the door on the opposite side blew off its hinges.

  Standing in the obliterated doorway was nFinity.

  “Hey, Soph.” His voice came out casual, as if he’d just bumped into a friend after school. But in his eyes, I saw murder. “I was wondering when we’d get the chance to hang out again.”

  Sophie returned his greeting by reaching for the silver refrigerator beside her. With remarkable ease, she wrenched it from the wall. Pipes burst; steel scraped against marble. And in the next moment, Sophie thrust the fridge nFinity’s way.

  Our form
er teammate sidestepped the attack. The refrigerator smashed through the wall.

  “Is that any way to say hello?”

  nFinity ran a hand through his floppy brown hair. He might have acted all calm and confident, but he looked even worse than he had in the food court: Dark rings under his eyes. Splotchy, pale skin.

  The four of us—Sophie, Milton, Cassie, and I—were crowded at the other end of the kitchen.

  Sophie made a move for the stove, but nFinity was ready this time. He thrust out an arm and unleashed a blast of fire that was bigger than Sophie. Flames tore through the air. Sophie stumbled backward.

  nFinity snapped his hand shut. The fire went out at once.

  “There’s no need for this to get violent,” he said. “Give yourselves up and I’ll talk to Vex. Ask him to go easy on you. He listens to me.”

  “He’s using you!” Sophie spat back.

  “News flash: that’s the way the world works. You think it was any different when I was a superhero? As long as you’re making money and bringing in commercial deals, everyone treats you like a rock star. But that all ends the second something new comes along.”

  nFinity flashed a dirty look my way. Obviously, he was still ticked about being upstaged by the Nameless Hero.

  “At least with Phineas Vex, I know exactly what he stands for.” Flames swirled in the palms of nFinity’s hands. “He doesn’t hide who he is. If he wants something, he steals it. No lies, no hidden motives. Not like Gavin Garland. Or your friend Nigel Fleming. Where is Fleming, anyway?” nFinity glanced around. “Ah well, I guess it doesn’t matter. We have what we’re looking for.”

  nFinity’s eyes fixed on me.

  I clenched my jaw. Any minute, Vex would arrive. And I really didn’t want to be here when he did. I lurched to my side and grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on. Which happened to be … a spatula. Not exactly the world’s best weapon. But with a little spontaneous combustion, it would do.

  Energy surged inside me. I reared back and threw the spatula with all my power. By the time it left my hand, it was blazing. But nFinity was ready. He lifted both hands, surrounding himself with a wall of fire. It was like a shield, incinerating anything that came close before it could harm him.

  As he rose, the flames rose with him, transforming before my eyes into an eight-foot-tall dragon made entirely of fire. Flames curved into sharp teeth and a long lizard tongue. A blazing pair of wings flapped up and down, sending sparks scattering. Burning talons slashed at the air. A red and orange tail whipped from side to side. On either side of the dragon’s head, two white-hot eyes flickered.

  I desperately reached for anything I could find on the counter—a spice rack, a salad bowl, a toaster. One after the other, I charged the objects with spontaneous combustion and tossed them nFinity’s way.

  The dragon snapped its fiery teeth and slashed with its flaming claws, turning my “weapons” into ash before they could cause any damage.

  It was clear that I wouldn’t have much success fighting an enormous fire dragon with kitchen utensils. Time to move on to another strategy.

  Run.

  My friends and I staggered into the dining room. The dragon chased us, leaving fire in its wake. Flames danced across the walls. The table was a red blaze. In the living room, Milton pointed at a back window. “Sophie, can you break the glass?”

  “No problem.” Sophie grabbed a large-screen TV off the wall and tossed it through the window like a giant Frisbee. Glass shattered, giving us an opening.

  But before we could set off for the broken window, a spark hit the rug in front of Cassie. Flames rose, taking the form of the dragon’s claws. They slashed at Cassie. For one horrible moment, I thought she was a goner. But by the time the fiery claws swung, Cassie had vanished. A wisp of silver smoke rippled across the living room. When it reached my side, the smoke transformed back into Cassie.

  “Any other ideas?” she asked.

  I cast a glance back the way we’d come. nFinity was standing in the dining room. Or what used to be the dining room. Now it was an inferno. Fire roared all around him. Orange and red blazed in his eyes.

  “It’s hopeless, Dread,” he snarled. “Give yourself up.”

  Sophie grabbed my arm. “Don’t listen to him!”

  She pulled me toward a hall. Milton and Cassie ran after us. The fire spread on all sides, shifting and changing around us, taking on awful forms. The dragon’s head—huge and horrifying—snapped its fiery jaws. The tail swung down from the ceiling. A claw slashed the air.

  Heat seared my skin. Everywhere we turned, another flaming obstacle stood in our way. My friends and I huddled at the edge of the living room as the blazing red dragon circled us, closer and closer and—

  Then it vanished. And so did the rest of the fire. The forest of flames winked out like a light.

  I whirled around to see nFinity lying on the floor, unconscious. Mom was standing over him, gripping a frying pan.

  “Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to play with fire?” she said (even though I doubt nFinity heard her).

  Dad stepped into the charred dining room beside her. The two of them weren’t dressed like Dr. Dread and the Botanist. More like a suburban couple. But the way they glared at nFinity was pure supervillain. A hundred different emotions well up inside my throat: relief, love, excitement.… But most of all, I was confused.

  “Where … What …” I swallowed. “How’d you find us?”

  “We received a call from Edwin Alabaster,” Mom said.

  I’d never been so happy to find out the principal had called my parents. I rushed across the room on shaky legs. As I hugged my mom and dad, they updated me on the rest of the story.

  “Alabaster told us about how the school was attacked,” Dad said.

  “And that you kids managed to get off the island,” Mom added.

  “It must’ve been a bad connection, because it sounded like he said you escaped on a giant duck—”

  “We assumed he was trying to say ‘truck’—”

  I chuckled. “Actually, you had it right the first time.”

  “Anyway,” Mom went on, “Alabaster informed us that he’d just received a call from his daughter, who said you were all on your way to a safe house of some kind. He gave us the address and we came straight here.”

  “Just in time, by the looks of it.” Dad’s eyes were magnified behind the thick glasses he wore whenever he wasn’t dressed up as Dr. Dread. He examined the charbroiled interior of Dr. Fleming’s house. “What exactly happened here?”

  “The explanations are going to have to wait.” Sophie was standing at a window, peering outside. “There’s an evil army in the front yard.”

  Milton rushed to the shattered back window. “There are more bad guys out here too!”

  Sophie clenched her glowing jaw. “They’ve got us surrounded.”

  Looking out the window, I saw Vex’s minions everywhere. Hundreds of Cyclaurs guarded the perimeter of the house. The morning sun gleamed off their bald heads and motorcycle parts.

  And from the sky, their leader emerged.

  The figure was a colossus of impenetrable titanium and horrible gadgetry, with hulking arms and legs and chest. Jet boosters flamed from the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet as he drifted closer and closer to the ground. I could just barely see the clear window in the head of the bionic body. The scarred face of a nightmare peering down at us.

  Phineas Vex had arrived.

  “This is bad,” Sophie muttered.

  Milton turned from the broken window, his features pale with worry. “This is worse than bad. This is the end of the world.”

  Fear buzzed in my chest like a hive of angry hornets. The Cyclaurs revved their engines, as if to cheer on the arrival of Vex. My brain was a screaming match of differing opinions about what to do next. Run for your life! No, stand and fight! No, pee your pants and cry like a baby!

  I was getting dangerously close to going with option #3 when an
astonishing sight appeared over the tree line.

  Daisy.

  Her broken wing had been repaired. The enormous robotic duck swept over the enemy lines. And riding on Daisy’s back were two superheroes making their first public appearance in a very long time.

  Mr. Marvelous and Whiz Kid.

  Somehow they’d managed to squeeze into their old uniforms—although the M logo had completely faded from Mr. Marvelous’s chest and the fabric of Whiz Kid’s one-piece was stretched so tightly across his paunch that it looked ready to burst.

  We watched through the window, amazed. The duck angled low over the yard, grabbing hold of a Cyclaur in each of its webbed feet. The tattooed motorcycle dudes looked a little surprised that they were suddenly in the grasp of the world’s largest waterfowl … and even more surprised when Daisy flung them at a couple of trees. The Cyclaurs smashed into a mass of bionic body parts and twisted metal.

  Other Cyclaurs turned their headlights on the huge duck. But by the time they fired, Marvin and Gus had navigated Daisy high into the air. Flying over the Cyclaurs, the bird released a series of egg bombs, one after the other.

  BOOM!

  POWWW!

  KABLOOOEY!

  The ring of Cyclaurs was consumed by explosions. A wave of fire was followed by a storm of shattered motorcycle parts and shrapnel.

  “Nice try, but nothing will stop me this time.” Vex’s voice boomed across the front yard. The window frame rattled.

  All around him was a scene of pure chaos. The wreckage of demolished Cyclaurs was scattered everywhere. Craters had formed in the earth where Daisy’s eggs had crashed. Fire raged in the trees.

  But Vex was unharmed. He began walking toward the house, each step shaking the floor beneath our feet. Flames were reflected in the window that shielded his scarred face. A red glow danced in his good eye. The other eye was white and unseeing. His lips curled into a horrible leer.

  In the sky, Daisy veered toward him. Marvin and Gus were still perched on the duck’s back, their expressions sharp with determination. Without slowing his pace, Vex raised a hulking arm. A bolt of lightning formed in the clear blue sky and struck Daisy’s wing. The robot rocked sideways and crashed into a stretch of trees.