Secret Origins

by James Riley

  “I’ll be along shortly,” Nobody said with a smile. “Now go. Your mother is waiting for you.”

  “But you said I always had to hold your hand when we went home.”

  “It’s okay, just this once,” Nobody told her. “I give you my permission.”

  One by one the party guests disappeared, followed by Bethany, who gave her father a big wave. He waved back as she disappeared, and then he melted back into Nobody. A page opened in the meadow, and a moment later he stood alongside Mr. Sanderson in the lands outside of story.

  “Bring me back!” Christian shouted as he launched himself at Nobody, attacking the featureless man for all he was worth. Unfortunately, every shot missed as Nobody’s body stretched and dodged to avoid the blows.

  “You lost your element of surprise, Christian,” Nobody said. “Without that, you’re just a poor little story without a home. Fortunately, I know several good ones that will welcome you in.” He held up a hand, and Christian stopped, a strange look on his face.

  As Owen watched in horror, Mr. Sanderson’s entire body began to contort, swelling in places, shrinking in others, as little bits of himself began to fall to the floor. Owen gasped, leaning closer, and realized that Doc Twilight’s entire body was turning into words, each one describing a part of his body, and those were what was falling off of him.

  The process started slowly, but quickly sped up until finally, all at once, Bethany’s father crumbled apart, collapsing into a pile of words on the floor in front of Nobody.

  “Learned this from your daughter, actually,” Nobody said, leaning down to pick through the pile, sorting through things like “elbow skin” and “eyelash number seventeen.” “Have you ever noticed how she turns into words when she travels between the worlds? That is what fictionals are made from, after all.” He picked up a word that said fear. “Now, I’m not a bad person, and I’m not going to kill you. Just . . . keep you from interfering for a while. Maybe I’ll even bring you back, when this is all over.”

  He continued sorting through the words until finally he found two phrases: “memories of Bethany,” and “memories of Catherine.” Those he pushed into a pocket that hadn’t existed a moment before. Then he stood back up.

  Nobody held up a hand, and one by one tiny rifts opened in the white space. With each rift, one word or phrase that made up Bethany’s father leaped through the hole, each one inserting itself into a different story. Faster and faster they went, until an entire library’s worth of books each had a part of Bethany’s father hidden within.

  “Later, that was going to cause you, Bethany, and Kiel some confusion,” Nobody told Owen back outside the panels. “Remember this?”

  He ran the pages forward to show Kiel’s finder spell exploding into a million different directions in Owen’s library, highlighting every available book. “To be fair, the spell worked,” Nobody told him. “Bethany’s father was in each book, after all.”

  Owen shook his head, horrified. How could this be real? “Is . . . is he still in there? Trapped in the books?”

  “Oh, not anymore,” Nobody said. “Christian had a good point. Jupiter City exists to only let heroes win, so I needed his help to change that. All it took was a bit of rewriting what a hero was, and suddenly, everyone’s just a shade of gray.”

  “What are you talking about?” Owen asked.

  The pages leaped forward to Charm, Gwen, and some teenage boy lying on a floor unconscious. A man with red eyes and shadows whipping all around him held Bethany up by her neck as she struggled.

  “They say that if you live long enough, every hero becomes a villain,” Nobody said. “That’s certainly true of Christian. And all it took was just a bit of rewriting.”

  The Dark’s shadows fell away from his face, and Owen gasped.

  The Dark was Bethany’s father.

  CHAPTER 40

  You’re dooming them all,” Kid Twilight told Bethany as they both waited at the bottom of Jupiter Hill, site of the observatory that her father had apparently used as his headquarters.

  “You’re starting to repeat yourself,” she said. “So Doc Twilight was an astronomer? That would make sense if he used this place as his hideout.”

  He glared at her. “Shouldn’t his daughter know that?”

  She rolled her eyes, but refused to give up her only source of information on her dad. “He . . . kept a lot of secrets from me.”

  Kid Twilight snorted. “If you’re telling the truth, he hid a lot more from me. And yes, he was an astronomer, but this observatory is actually mine. Passed down through my mother’s family, but she and my father died in an alien invasion when I was young. Doc Twilight saved me, though, and began training me in martial arts while Dr. Christian Sanderson, the observatory’s head astronomer, started teaching me the family trade.” He smiled, and Bethany suddenly realized how naturally that smile came to him. “Took me years to prove they were the same person. He’d use robots or his shape-shifting superhero friends to trick me into thinking they couldn’t be.”

  A jolt of pity passed through Bethany. Her father had taken this boy in and practically raised him, and then he’d just disappeared from both of their lives, even if it was just a few months of comic book time for Kid Twilight. And as hard as it was for her finding out about this entire other life her father had lived, Kid Twilight didn’t exactly look thrilled about his father figure having an actual daughter, especially one who might know more than he did about the man in some ways.

  She gently laid a hand on his and sighed. “I’m sorry,” she told him.

  He looked confused, but left her hand there. “For what?”

  “Everything. You deserved better.”

  Kid Twilight looked up at her, and she could see that he wanted to say something, his hand still under hers. But finally he looked away and pulled his hand back gently. “See if the banana’s ready. We should get this started.”

  She nodded, though he couldn’t see it. “Right.” She crawled to where the Rotten Banana waited, his eyes on the Observatory. “All set?” she asked him.

  “Is this what it feels like to be a good guy?” he asked, his hands shaking a bit. “Because if so, I’m not sure I like it. I’m terrified!”

  Bethany smiled. “You’re already a hero as far as I’m concerned, since you saved me in the Lawful Legion’s headquarters.” She paused. “Why did you do that?”

  The banana looked away. “I . . . I don’t know. It just felt like the right thing to do at the time. And I usually ignore that impulse. But for some reason I figured with everything as bad as it is, maybe I should try being good for a change. Just to see how it feels.” He winced. “I’m not sure it worked for me.”

  “I think you make a very appealing Heroic Banana,” Bethany told him, and his eyes lit up.

  “I see what you did there!” he said as she moved on to the signal point.

  Everything was now ready, and everyone was in position, just as she’d planned. The villains hadn’t been thrilled with her idea, but Gwen convinced the biggest doubters, and the rest had fallen in line.

  Now Bethany just hoped that her plan actually worked. Though she wasn’t sure if she was more worried about the shadows getting them, or proving Kid Twilight right.

  Either way, it was time. She nodded at her dad’s sidekick and the banana, then stood up on the observatory hill, turned around, and shouted, “Now!” as loudly as she could at the one person standing behind her, back in the observatory’s parking lot.

  That one man wore a business suit and held a briefcase in his one visible hand. He nodded in confirmation at her, then the Invisible Hand raised his missing hand, counted to three, and dropped his invisibility wall, revealing an army of supervillains, all ready to attack.

  “You heard her!” Gwen shouted at the front of the mob, taking to the air with a fiery trail behind her. “Let’s show the Dark that there’s still a light in Jupiter City!”

  The assembled horde shouted in agreement, then started sprinti
ng toward the hill. They passed Bethany, Kid Twilight, and the banana, who all had to dodge out of the way to avoid being trampled.

  Gwen swooped down to their level after the villains passed. “Here they come!” she shouted, pointing ahead of them as the door to the observatory flew open. Like a flash flood of murky darkness, shadows exploded out of the Observatory, crashing down the hill straight at them in a wave that rose at least twenty feet in the air.

  In spite of the plan, Bethany almost froze at the sight of the dark tidal wave coming at her. “There are so many of them,” she said, her whole body going cold with fear.

  “More to shoot,” said an annoyed voice, and Charm slapped Bethany’s arm to snap her out of it. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

  Right. Bethany cupped her hands and yelled, “First wave, attack!”

  The Human Prism, a man made of crystals, and Lady Lasers, the outline of a woman who looked like she was drawn out of sizzling red beams, sprinted forward from the head of the mob, then took position. The Prism set himself in place, aiming his head at the shadows, and Lady Lasers prepared herself. The rest of the villains set their feet and awaited the shadows.

  “You can do this, Prism!” Gwen shouted. “I believe in you!”

  The Human Prism smiled, cracking his crystalline body slightly, then nodded. “Do it!”

  Lady Lasers took a deep breath, then shot her entire body of lasers into the Human Prism. Though she went in as one woman, she sizzled out as thousands of them, each one careening off in multiple directions, burning through the surge of shadows crashing down toward them.

  “Next wave!” Bethany shouted, and DJ Evil stepped up, the speakers on his body humming.

  “Y’all ready for this?” DJ Evil shouted. “Time to Heat. Things. Up!” He began twisting the record on his chest back and forth as dance music exploded from his speakers.

  The vibrations began to tear apart Jupiter Hill, sending chunks tumbling down the other side, and half of the villains actually lost their feet. Bethany fell to the ground, with Charm tumbling to one knee. Kid Twilight just flashed them a smug look as he rode it out, only to come crashing down as Charm swept his feet out from under him with her robotic leg.

  The wave of sound ripped through the shadows, but they just reformed around it, tumbling down into DJ Evil and the Living Prism, who disappeared into darkness.

  “We can’t beat them! Run!” someone yelled, and a few of the villains began to back away from the fight.

  “No!” Bethany shouted. “Stand your ground, this is our only chance. If we can take out the Dark, the shadows all go away too. We just need to clear a path to him!”

  A shadow rose up from the mass and came flying right at her, only to explode in a burst of light as Charm shot it with a light bullet. “Gwen?” Charm shouted.

  “On it!” EarthGirl said, then turned the throttle on her jet pack as high as it’d go and sped off toward the shadows. The creatures reached out for her, but she smoothly dodged in and out of them, the flames from the jet pack burning through their darkness.

  Nearby, a shadow pushed its way into the mouth of the Ice Machine, a supervillain with the power to create as many ice cubes as he wanted. The man shouted in fear at first, then rage, and turned toward Bethany and Kid Twilight. “You did this to us!” he shouted, his eyes black as the shadows. “You’re to blame!” He turned his cube guns on them and shot out ice at lethal speeds.

  “Look out!” the banana shouted, and jumped in front of Bethany, the ice skidding off of his suit. Kid Twilight, though, just strode toward the Ice Machine, stepping around the ice as easily as if he were passing pedestrians on the street. When he was just feet away, the Ice Machine screamed in rage and turned both guns on Kid Twilight. The sidekick dropped to the ground and swept the Machine’s feet out from under him, then knocked him out with one punch. Without even pausing, he turned the Ice Machine’s guns on a black-eyed Punishing Pea.

  “You never let me in the group, Banana!” the Pea shouted as the ice began to build up around him. “I’ll make you pay for that!”

  “That guy was always creepy,” the banana whispered to Bethany.

  “I bet,” she said, then finally found the moment she’d been waiting for. “Look, we’ve got an opening!”

  There, straight up the hill, the shadows had been split down the middle by the supervillains. Though at least half of them had been infected, the rest fought hard against both shadows and their former comrades.

  They weren’t going to last long at this rate.

  “Go!” the banana yelled. “I’ll give you as much cover as I can!” He threw himself in front of an onslaught of lasers, courtesy of a now-shadow-infected Lady Lasers.

  “Gwen!” Bethany shouted, then grabbed Charm and sprinted toward the Observatory. Gwen swept down toward them and picked Charm up beneath her armpits, carrying the robotic girl in front of them to take care of any shadows who tried to stop them.

  “This better work,” Kid Twilight said, falling in beside her.

  “Just show us where the hideout is,” she told him as they passed through the observatory’s entrance. The building was pitch dark, but Kid Twilight clicked his twi-light on and led them through banks of computers and past what looked like a gigantic telescope.

  “Secret door,” Kid Twilight said, typing something into a computer she could barely see. Something began to rumble, and the boy flashed his light on the telescope as it moved to one side, then turned the light back on the wall in front of them.

  Except it wasn’t a wall anymore. Now a staircase led down into darkness.

  “Where’d you point the telescope?” Bethany asked.

  “Where do you think?” Kid Twilight said. “The moon.”

  They raced down the stairs with Kid Twilight leading, his light illuminating their way. They descended what felt like a hundred feet before finally coming to a door, where he stopped them.

  “This is a terrible plan,” he said, handing something to each of them. “I just wanted to remind you of that.”

  Bethany smiled at him. “If you’re right, you have my permission to tell me you told me so over and over when we’re shadow infested.”

  He rolled his eyes, checked to make sure they were all ready, then opened the door.

  And that’s when the last shadows in the Observatory attacked, covering them in darkness.

  CHAPTER 41

  How can the Dark be her father?” Owen said, pushing away from the wall of panels. “I thought Doc Twilight—”

  Nobody gestured, and the pages shifted to show the Doc Twilight that had rescued him and Bethany putting on the costume right before he came back down into the basement at the start of everything. Before he put his mask on, Owen took a good look at his face.

  The man definitely wasn’t Bethany’s father, but he did seem familiar. Maybe a bit older than the last time Owen had seen him. But where—

  “Murray Chase,” Nobody said. “The artist of the Doc Twilight series. He built a house over the portal to Jupiter City, both to guard your world from any fictional visitors, but also to allow Christian and his wife to go back and forth at will. He was the one who saved you from the Dark that first time, having put on the Twilight costume for its weapons.”

  Owen’s mouth dropped. So this entire time, that had been Doc Twilight’s creator? So not Bethany’s father, but her . . . grandfather?

  “Murray had been watching over Bethany for years, of course,” Nobody said. “When word came that Mason Black was writing a new, more extreme comic, Murray looked into it and discovered that Mason was rebooting Doc Twilight, done in a darker style.” Nobody shifted the pages, and Owen saw the reverse of an earlier scene as words popped out of millions of books to reform into Bethany’s father.

  As soon as Mr. Sanderson became human again, he collapsed to his knees, still in the same outfit he’d been wearing at Bethany’s fourth birthday party. A man offered him a hand, and he gratefully took it.

  “Where am I?” her
father asked this new man, who was older and had a pitying look. The two of them were in a room much like the one Nobody had brought Mason Black to, one with no doors or windows, and just a table and chairs.

  “Jupiter City,” the old man said. “I’m afraid I have terrible news, Christian Sanderson. The villain who locked you away in here . . . he took your family. I’m so sorry, but they’re gone.”

  “My family?” Christian said, a look of disbelief on his face. “But I don’t have a family . . . do I? Why is it so hard to remember—”

  The old man put a hand on Mr. Sanderson’s head, and Owen could make out words moving around beneath his skin, as if the old man was changing Mr. Sanderson. His face became enraged, and the former Doc Twilight pushed to his feet. “He took my family from me?” He picked up a chair nearby and threw it into the wall, and as he did, a small black tendril popped out of his eyes, wrapping itself around his arm.

  “I will track whoever did this down,” Mr. Sanderson shouted, breaking the room’s small table. “I will find him and make him pay for what he did!”

  “The heroes never found him,” the old man told him, and he put another hand on Mr. Sanderson’s arm. More words passed under his skin, and Bethany’s father grabbed his head, shouting in pain as more black tendrils pushed themselves out of his eyes. “Some would say that they didn’t try very hard.”

  “They never have!” Christian roared, full shadows of rage now escaping from him. Each one wrapped itself around his body almost like a costume. “They can’t be trusted to keep the city safe. Only I can do that. And I will!”

  “But the citizens won’t listen to you,” the old man said mildly. “How will you keep order?”

  Mr. Sanderson wiped his arm across his face, breathing heavily. His entire body was almost covered by shadows now, all but his face. “It’s time to stop letting the criminals of this town run it. They never respected me as Doc Twilight, so that’s over. I never want to see that costume again. No, this town needs new rules, and there’s only one way to enforce them.” He turned to the old man with a crazed look in his eyes as more shadows escaped, wrapping themselves around his head. “Twilight never had power before. But his time is done, and now the city will see how blind justice is when darkness rules everything.” Now covered, his eyes went from black to a deep, angry red.