by Blake, Matt
And then I saw it.
The metal locker door at the other side of the room.
Again, I wanted to walk away. I wanted to leave this place. Whatever was behind that door could not be good news.
But I had to know what it was. I couldn’t just disappear. Not now.
I moved slowly towards it. And as I got closer, I saw I could just pull that handle using my telekinesis from afar. I’d just been delaying the inevitable, that I was going to have to open it at some stage or other.
I stopped a few meters from the door. My heart pounded, and I heard my pulse racing. I cleared my dry throat. Lifted my hand. I needed to know what was in there. I needed to see.
I pulled the door open.
When I saw what was in there, I nearly ran the hell away from this place.
It was a man. A man with long, dark hair, bearded. And he wasn’t in a locker at all. No, the space behind the cupboard was a little white-tiled room. In there, I saw a toilet, which explained the smell. Stacks of dishes as high as the man himself, dirty and uncleaned.
The man was dressed in a suit, but it looked way too baggy on his frame. His lips quivered, as he looked at me with bloodshot eyes.
“What…” I started.
And then it clicked.
As this man stumbled out of this room, his legs weak and shaky, I looked past the beard, past the gauntness of his face.
I saw who it was.
This man was Mr. Parsons. The same man who’d declared an ULTRAbot war against the remaining ULTRAs. Who promised to destroy every last ULTRA in two days time.
But it couldn’t be. He couldn’t look so different in the space of a week. It couldn’t be the same person.
Could it?
“My wife,” Mr. Parsons gasped. He dropped to his knees, tears rolling down his face. “Haven’t—haven’t seen her. Three whole years. Three wholey-moley years. Please take me to her. Don’t let the bad man in the suit get me again. Don’t let him!”
“You’ve been here three years?”
“Three whole years and a moon after moon. In here, he tells me. In here, at the top of his voice, my wife! My wife!”
I listened to the hysterical ramblings of Mr. Parsons—undeniably Mr. Parsons—and a sense of dread built up inside me.
“The… the ULTRAbots,” I said. “All of this. You don’t know anything about it?”
He looked at me with bleary-eyed terror and insanity. I took that as my answer.
I felt the nerves growing. Felt myself feeling dizzy and sick. One question spun around my mind. One question that I feared I wouldn’t really like the answer to. One question that changed everything.
If this was Mr. Parsons, which it clearly was, then who was the man pretending to be him?
Who was the man behind the ULTRAbots?
37
Mr. Parsons stared at the scenes of chaos on the news and he smiled.
He'd expected his plan to go perfectly. After all, he'd been plotting it for years, ever since he disappeared into the shadows. But this good? No. He never thought it would go this good.
He took a sip of strong brandy as he stood in his office, the place he always stood these days. It was light outside, the sun high now, but darkness would again fall soon. He didn’t mind this view, or being in the office. He was always in his office because he didn't have a family to go back to.
Mr. Parsons might have, but he didn't.
He watched the news. Two days until he proclaimed he'd capture and destroy every ULTRA. Of course, he knew that was a weighty goal. He knew he probably wouldn't achieve it. But it wasn't just about capturing and destroying every ULTRA. That was just a part of the plan.
The main thing he was lulling people into?
Being on side with the ULTRAbots.
Accepting them as peacekeepers of the world, without even batting an eyelid.
And if they did finally realize what was going on, it would already be too late.
He took another swig of his brandy. There was a tangible silence to the room other than the slight buzzing from the news. After Idris sadly passed away with a sudden heart attack in the corridor, there'd already been a loneliness about Mr. Parsons’ existence.
It was a shame, what happened to Idris.
But Idris was an intelligent man. He knew something was amiss.
And for that, he’d had to pay the price.
He sat down and closed his eyes as he leaned back in his chair, and allowed himself to reminisce about just how perfectly the plan had unfolded so far.
He'd imprisoned the real Mr. Parsons three years ago. Taken on his identity with the last of his strength, while allowing his own strength to recharge. He'd... dealt with Mr. Parsons' family. But he'd spent most of his time inside this office, planning. Working.
He'd created the formula for the ULTRAbots. He pretended someone else had made the miraculous discovery. Really, they were born of his powers, cloned by his powers. Which meant that he was in total control of them. They didn't serve the interests of humanity. They didn't serve the interests of anyone but him.
The second stage of his plan was trickier. He'd spent years imprisoning ULTRAs in Area 64, testing on them, trying to use them to make the ULTRAbot program even stronger. But really, that was all just a ruse for the real plan, which he'd launched a week ago—an escape. A breakout, engineered to release some of the most warped, twisted ULTRAs in existence. A justification for the launch of the ULTRAbots. ULTRAbots who were more powerful than those ULTRAs imprisoned. ULTRAbots that would defeat the ULTRAs.
He opened his eyes. Grabbed his iPad. Looked at the image he’d seen days ago when he spent his time beside Spark in his final seconds.
On there, he saw the blurred image of Glacies, sent directly from an ULTRAbot left for dead in the snow. Drawing Glacies out of hiding was just another part of the plan. Another way of lulling yet someone else into a false sense of security.
But he had another plan for Glacies. He had another contact who was very, very interested in making sure Glacies didn't walk this world for much longer.
He sipped some more of his brandy. It tasted acidic but beautiful on the back of his throat. If there were one thing he'd miss when his power finally returned to full strength—which was close—it was the bitter tang of a good brandy.
He'd miss parts of being Mr. Parsons. He'd miss elements of it.
But above anything, he was excited.
Excited to begin.
He thought some more about his contact. The one he'd saved from the bottom of those ruins. He'd told him about this plan. Not completely, of course. He'd told his contact that the plan was to break the ULTRAs out of Area 64, as well as training an army of ULTRAs to fight and destroy humanity.
But there was more to it than that, of course.
That was just another diversion. Another misdirection tactic to confuse the world, to confuse the likes of Glacies, as to what was really going on.
As for humanity, well. The plan wasn't to destroy them. Not all of them.
He had much more exciting plans lined up for humanity than that.
He stood up. As he walked across his office, past the abstract paintings, past the sculptures of great leaders, of battle re-enactments from the dawn of man to today, he felt his disguise slipping. He felt himself shedding his Mr. Parsons skin. The more he walked, the more he was certain he didn't need it anymore.
Especially not after the second piece of footage he'd seen on his iPad, direct from the eyes of the ULTRAbots.
Glacies had fallen right into his trap. Glacies and his entire army, in fact. Which included Orion.
He wasn't sure what to think about Orion's presence at first. It intimidated him a little. But then the more he considered it, the more he knew it just raised the stakes. Elevated the excitement.
He walked past more of his sculptures. Walked right toward the end one. The one he prided more than any.
His contact told him something else. Something terrifyingly brillian
t. Information that he knew would be more powerful than anything else. Information that would kill Glacies.
Glacies was a mystery man no more.
Glacies was Kyle Peters, a seventeen-year-old from Staten Island.
And he was right where he wanted him to be.
He stopped. Stopped right opposite his most prized possession. He felt a smile twitching at his scarred lips. Saw a glimmer of a burned face in his reflection in the mirror at the other side of the room, half of it deformed by fire.
He raised his hands. Grabbed the object in front of him.
The helmet.
Saint's helmet.
His helmet.
And then he put it on his head. Pulled it over, felt it squeeze perfectly around his face, just like it had last eight long years ago.
He turned around. Looked right at himself in the mirror. Looked at the silver metal helmet. Looked at his real self.
His conquest wasn't over.
His conquest would never be over until he won.
Because he was Saint.
38
If I’d known what was coming in the next hour—the hour that changed my entire life forever—then maybe I’d have thought twice about celebrating the victory at the ULTRAbot production facility.
I stood back in the room where… well, where the hell was this room anyway? You know the room I mean, though—the one where Orion took me to when I first met the rest of the Resistance. There was a much more positive attitude about the place now. Slice had a smile on his face. Stone seemed slightly drunk. Even Vortex seemed to be letting her hair down, having a laugh. As far as we all saw it, we’d struck a major blow into the heart of the ULTRAbot operation. That was a cause worth celebrating.
“You did good, kid,” Stone said. He stumbled over to me, a narrow-eyed expression on his round, happy face. He patted me on the back with his heavy hand, something that made me wince. “Really came through back there. Wasn’t so bad now, huh?”
I smiled. Nodded. “Thanks.”
“Seriously,” Vortex said, joining Stone by my side. She smiled at me, her teeth just as yellow as ever. “I might be forced to admit I had you slightly wrong. Just slightly.”
I tilted my head to one side. “Does that make me immune to the nightmares?”
She nudged me in the arm, and for a split second, her face turned into a skull-like monster, then flashed back to normal again. “Darling, nobody’s immune to the nightmares.”
I wanted to feel as happy and celebratory as the rest of the group. But there were a few things on my mind, a few things bothering me. First, Mr. Parsons. I’d found him back at the compound. We’d handed him over to the police, who dismissed him as a fraud. But I wasn’t so sure. None of us were.
It didn’t help that Mr. Parsons’ wife hadn’t been seen for months. Months, and nobody batted an eyelid.
What happened with Mr. Parsons? That was the question everyone was asking, silently behind the scenes.
I felt like everyone else in this room feared something awful was going on, related to my discovery. But they were so relieved about today’s victory that they just didn’t want to face up to the truth.
I saw Orion standing at the side of the room, back against the wall. Even though he was in here with us, he was away from everyone else. And I could hear him gasping for air.
“You okay?” I asked, walking up beside him.
He looked at me, his face still coated in that black mask, then looked away. “The fighting. It… It takes a lot out of me.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“What we did back there. It feels… It feels like a victory.”
“I’d agree there.”
“Then why aren’t you happy?”
I thought I was doing a good job of covering up my fears. I’d kept my mask on for that reason. “My family. My friends. They… They’ll know something’s wrong by now. They’ll realize I’m missing. Mom’ll be losing her mind.”
Orion sighed. Shook his head. “So your bind to us isn’t as strong as we thought.”
“This isn’t anything about my bind to you guys,” I said, unable to temper my impatience. “I’ve just walked away from a life I’ve been living for years without even saying goodbye. You’ve gotta understand how tough that is, especially after… After what happened to Cassie.”
Orion seemed to flinch when I said her name. “You’re being sentimental. You cannot allow sentimentality to—”
“Maybe I am being sentimental,” I said. A few of the other ULTRAs had noticed I’d raised my voice now. “And I accept I can’t be who I was anymore. I accept I can’t just go back to the way things were. But I can’t just run away from them, either. Not like this.”
Although I couldn’t see his face, I could feel Orion looking at me with total disappointment. “Everybody here has made difficult decisions. Walked away from someone they love. Something they care about.”
“And I’m not going to be another one of those people,” I said.
I lifted my phone. Went to call Mom.
“You’re putting them all at risk,” Orion said. “You’re putting everyone you’ve ever cared about in total risk. You might think you know how the forces against us work, but you don’t. And you won’t. Not until the day… The day everything’s taken away from you without a choice. Not until you’ve no choice but to give up.”
Orion’s words spun around my mind. Although he hadn’t really gone into depth about anything, that had to be the most open and honest he’d been with me since we’d met. I got the feeling his guard had dropped, and he’d shown me and everyone else a little more of himself than he liked.
“I appreciate it,” I said. “What you’re trying to do. How you’re trying to look out for me. Protect me. But I can’t just walk away from them. Maybe in time I will, but right now I’ve… There’s just too much.”
I pulled off my Glacies mask, for the first time, revealing my face to the ULTRAs around me.
“I’ve stood with you. I’ve done what you wanted me to do. Now I have to go.”
Orion and the rest of the ULTRAs stared at me. The looks of elation had changed to disappointment. Total disappointment.
“Well I never,” Stone said. “The kid really is a fraud.”
Roadrunner tutted. “If he wants to go, let him go. We gave him a choice. He can live with it.”
I saw Vortex snarling at me. The closer I looked into her dark pupils, the more I swore I saw tears building in her eyes.
“Good luck,” I said. “Seriously. I mean it.”
I got a few shrugs from the group. But mostly, that look of disappointment was all that met me.
I turned around. Closed my eyes. Pictured my street, my house.
“Don’t—” Orion started.
It was too late.
I heard the bang, and I was outside my home.
I looked across the street. I had to go back inside. I had to speak to Mom and Dad. Had to say I’d just stayed the night at Avi’s, and then tell Avi a different story, and then tell… Hell, I’d work it out.
My thoughts froze when I saw my house.
There was heat coming from it. I could smell smoke in the air. And I could see it rising above, thick black smoke snaking into the sky.
“No,” I muttered, staggering closer.
My house was in flames. Completely swamped in them. Outside, the fire department had closed the road and sprayed the hose up into the windows, through the doors.
I clenched my fists together. Bit my lip and stepped forward. Mom. Dad. I had to get in there. I had to help them. I had to save them.
I went to fly towards my house, mask still off, when I saw four people running out of the house.
They were holding on to a person each. When they ran out of the door, they planted them down on stretchers, which then sped them towards the ambulance a few meters away.
“No,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks.
I stood there, defenseless, and watched as the stre
tchers wheeled the two people away, away from the raging inferno, towards the back of the ambulance.
I watched as my life changed in front of me.
I watched as Mom and Dad disappeared into the back of that ambulance, disappeared behind the doors, and disappeared out of my life.
One of them, forever.
39
I sat on the chair in the hospital corridor and felt a sickening fear like I’d never felt before.
I saw people rushing past me. Saw nurses, patients, people coming to visit. Some of them looked at me, half-smiled at me, in that knowing way, like they knew I must be waiting for news. And then when they turned around, they whispered to one another. Speculated as to what must’ve happened. “That poor kid,” I heard one of them say.
I didn’t know how to feel about it. I didn’t know whether to acknowledge these people.
I just felt sick.
The beeps around the hospital and the sounds of feet tapping against the solid corridor danced around my mind, taunting me. My mouth was dry, and I tasted a mixture of blood and sick. I could smell the medicinal tang hanging in the air, and that didn’t help with my sickliness. I couldn’t stop shaking. I just wanted this to be a bad dream. An awful dream.
A glimmer of hope lit up inside me. What if it was a dream? What if this was all some kind of creation by Vortex? A way of punishing me for turning my back on the Resistance?
I clutched on to that belief for seconds. Minutes. And then for an hour.
But the clock kept on ticking. The time didn’t slow down. No illusion faded.
I was still waiting to find out whether my parents had survived the house fire.
Despite my banging headache, I couldn’t rest my mind. I wanted to know who’d done this. I wanted to find whoever had done this and I wanted to destroy whoever had done this. I wondered whether it was the ULTRAbots, and they’d thought I was home and were targeting me. Or maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was another scrap between ULTRAbots and ULTRAs, and a flame had smashed right through my window.
No. It was too much of a coincidence. Someone was targeting me. Someone knew who I was and they were punishing me for my role in the fight.
