by Peter Moore
“Can we just get on with this?” I said.
Javier sneered at me. “This is a big deal. I believe someone would want to say something…profound. Words that will be recorded in history e-books one day.”
“I really should’ve taken a leak before we left,” Peanut said, his voice muffled a bit by the bison-bone helmet. “It would be so sucky if Baculum had a pee spot on his pants during this whole thing.”
“That’s great,” Javier said. “You just ruined this whole thing, you idiot.”
“Why? Because I gotta whiz? It’s natural!”
Stupid as the conversation was, it helped to make me less nervous. “Whatever you do, just don’t think of a drippy faucet or rainwater running out of a gutter,” I said.
“Oh, thanks! That’s just great! Now I need to go more.”
“No, no. I’m saying don’t think of those things. The more you picture drops of water plopping into a bathtub, or that hissing sound when—”
“All right, stop this now,” Javier said. “You boys are spoiling the moment.” He gave a harsh look to Layla, who had been laughing during our childish exchange.
“We really should go,” Boots said. “I can’t keep up this interference too much longer before someone figures out there’s a disruptor in the area.”
We adjusted our masks. Javier slung a heavy rucksack over his shoulder. Peanut picked up one that was twice as heavy.
“This is it,” Javier said.
I nodded and we moved out of the alley and to the soon-to-be scene of the crime.
Depth Charge
Standing flattened against the wall on the staircase, three steps up, I wondered how things had come to this. I was looking down at the floor of the lobby where Boots lay, unmoving, facedown in a pool of blood. I glanced up to where Javier was crouched a few steps above me, a worried expression on his face.
I turned back to look again at Boots. The blood was soaking into the collar of her tan jacket. I’ll admit it now: I was scared. But I didn’t dare move, not one inch.
The elevator door opened, and Rotor hustled down the lobby hallway to crouch next to Boots. He reached to help her when Peanut’s twenty-two-inch-circumference arms wrapped around him and lifted him right off the ground. Rotor craned his neck and saw a huge, horned bison-skull mask. The man looked like he was going to puke.
The elevator door started to close. Javier stepped out of the shadows next to the elevator and jammed in a steel pipe to hold it open.
“What are you doing?” Rotor asked in a choked voice, thanks to Peanut’s bear hug. “I was just down in my workshop and I heard some noise. I came up to help the girl. What the hell are you doing?”
Boots sat up, took the towel that Layla handed her, and wiped the fake blood off her face. Layla repositioned some of the zebra stripes for Boots, making sure they were straight.
“You missed some there,” Layla said. She took the towel and wiped more of the blood off Boots’s neck.
“Down in your workshop, eh?” Javier said. “And you heard a noise? Or did you see something on one of your monitors?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rotor said.
“Let’s take a look together, then. This sounds good?”
We dragged the bags and the rest of the stuff, and then we all squeezed into the elevator. I pushed the button for the basement. We went down and then the elevator stopped.
I thought to Rotor, There’s nobody else down there, correct? He snapped his head to the right, then left, trying to figure out what he was hearing, or thinking. I’m in your mind. We know you work alone. But is anyone else in the surveillance lab right now?
His voice was high and choked with panic. “No. Nobody else is down there. How did you know… ?”
I motioned to Peanut, who was still holding Rotor, whose feet hadn’t touched the floor of the hallway or the elevator since Peanut had first picked him up. I didn’t want to take any chance that Rotor might recognize my voice, so I stayed silent when I flipped up the emergency stop switch to expose the retinal scanner. Peanut held Rotor’s face close to the spot.
“Open up your eye,” Javier said. “We know what we’re doing. Unless you want Baculum here to tighten his grip, you had better let that reader check your retina.” After Rotor opened his eye and the retinal scanner blinked red twice, then green once, Javier held up Rotor’s hand and looked to me.
I held one thumb up.
As soon as Javier pressed Rotor’s thumb against the reader, the back door opened up to the steel elevator.
“Let’s do it,” Layla said.
We began unpacking the bags. Javier affixed the charges he’d built against several spots in the steel elevator. He attached the detonators and timers.
“It’s ready to go,” he said.
You’re sure? I wrote in his mind.
He glared at me. He didn’t like me going in his head. “It should work,” he said out loud.
I looked over at Layla. She had a smile of excitement on her face.
This is so cool! she thought.
If it works. I hope Javier knows what he’s doing.
He does.
“Okay,” Javier said to Rotor. “How do we send this elevator down to the surveillance lab?”
Rotor didn’t say a word.
“Tell us now,” Javier demanded.
Rotor stayed silent.
I took over and thought to him. Either tell us how to send the elevator down automatically—and tell us now—or Snakebyte will figure it out, and if we have to go to that trouble, we’ll send you along for the ride. It’s your choice.50
Rotor took a look at all the explosives that were loaded into the elevator, and he didn’t waste any time telling us how to send it down remotely.
We had handcuffed Rotor to a park bench and we were in another alley four blocks away, changing out of our costumes, when we heard the muffled BOOM and felt the pavement vibrate as the timed detonator went off, destroying the surveillance lab.
When the fire department trucks arrived—along with any heroes who were summoned to the scene—they would find a message spray-painted on the sidewalk across the street.
Aftermath
Blake had gotten the communication about the destruction of the Justice Force surveillance lab minutes after it happened. When I got home, he was still checking the online paper to find out how much of the location’s actual purpose was known or revealed. “I cannot believe this!”
Mom was on the couch, flipping through the channels on the TV. Nothing at all about the incident; it was being covered up. “Well, at least there were no casualties, you said,” she noted.
“No, and that’s fine, but this was a major surveillance lab. It covered eight states and fifteen international airports. You know what it cost to build that place?”
Mom said, “And on the bright side, it’s great that the papers didn’t let on what was down there. What’d they call it again?”
Blake ran his finger over the computer screen. “They said it was, wait…right. Here: ‘An underground steam-pipe explosion.’ And they just left it at that.”
“So, that’s good. It won’t be revealed what the place really was. The entire building was destroyed? All of it?”
“Yeah, well, it was like a sinkhole. Everything above the lab collapsed, so the lab has probably been crushed to dust. That was a lot of expensive equipment. And we’re even out the cost of what we paid for the building.”
“Maybe the government, or one of your sponsors, will absorb the cost,” Mom said.
“No, no. They won’t, because we didn’t get the purchase preapproved. They can’t help.”
“Where was it?” I asked. Blake said the address. I pretended to think for a second or two. “Wait, isn’t that where we w
ent the other day?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it. Completely destroyed.”
I did my best to approximate a look of shock. “We could have been there when it happened.”
Blake grunted with disgust. “No, no. They lured the attendant, that sorry-ass loser Rotor, up before they sent the charge down. They weren’t out to kill anyone. Just to kick the Justice Force in the nuts. Damn it!” He pushed the computer away.
Mom took another look at the screen. “You ever hear of this group? The Hellions?”
“No,” Blake said. “They came out of nowhere.” He shook his head. “I can’t stand these upstart groups. Even though I haven’t been on active duty for too long, I’ve already seen a change. When I started, the bad guys needed to have big ambitions, world domination and all that, if they wanted to play in the big leagues. Nowadays, you don’t need to be so special to attack a group like the Justice Force. Makes me sick.”
“Were they Phaetons?” Mom asked.
“Of course not,” I said before I could stop myself. They both turned to me.
“How do you know?” Mom asked. “You didn’t even read the article.”
“Well, he’s right,” Blake said. “Most Phaetons don’t have the brains to pull off something like this. They didn’t attack us, not for real. They hit us in our money belt. They’re not a real threat. We don’t even know if they have any powers. They’re nobodies.”
Mom, ever reasonable, said, “Well, they made themselves somebodies. They got the public’s attention. And yours.”
It took a real effort not to smile.
It was equally hard to keep from smiling at school. Everyone—teachers, students, custodians—who talked to us or passed us in the halls or sat next to us in class had no idea at all of what we were capable of doing. What we had done. The five of us had a secret—a huge secret—that made us all feel pretty damned special.
After science, I was walking toward the cafeteria with Layla and Peanut when Travis called my name. He was across the hall, and he waved. I was in the middle of a sentence, so I smiled and nodded to him. Granted, it wasn’t exactly an astonishingly enthusiastic response, but we didn’t really even see each other outside of passing in the hallways once in a while. Other than a shared history, we just didn’t have a thing in common anymore.
Without question, my old friends would have been astonished and horrified to find out what I had done. Not that I ever would have told them. Their little honor code would trump any nostalgia or loyalty they might have felt toward me, and they would have reported the five of us to the school administration and the civilian police, at the very least.
So did I feel guilty for not giving Travis a great big greeting? Nope. Should I have felt guilty? Whatever. It doesn’t matter much now.
We were heading to meet up with Javier and Boots at the usual place near the caf where we would slip out the doors to escape for lunch.
“They’re not here yet,” I said.
“They’re probably back there by the other door,” she said. When I turned around, I bumped into someone. I practically bounced off him, he was so big.
Rick Randall. “Watch where you’re walking, little man,” he said. He was with his usual thick-necked pals. “Hey,” he said, “I remember you. How you doing? Everything better?”
I nodded. His concern was not exactly overwhelming.
“Cool,” he said. As he walked off, I heard him laugh. “That was the kid I busted up in PT class when we were playing flashbang that time.”
“Yeah, he got hurt pretty bad, right?” one of the guys said.
“Hey, at least I didn’t leave him crippled for real. Dude, he’s lucky he just got a little rattled. That’s what happens when a lightweight goes up against the big man.”
A little rattled. It was a broken neck. Guys like Rick Randall, born with powers and strengths, feeling like they were the rightful rulers of the world—they always got to me.
And the way Randall had laughed about how I was lucky he hadn’t hurt me worse in that flashbang game? It made me send some evil thoughts his way. I seriously wanted to take him down a peg or two.
I watched him and his boys head toward the caf, and then he suddenly stopped walking. “I’ll catch up with you guys. Gotta make a pit stop.” He turned and jogged the other way through the crowded hallway, not seeming to care if he bumped into people.
I shook my head and turned back to my friends.
“That’s the dick who practically killed you, right?” Layla asked.
“Yeah, well. Don’t worry,” I said. “He’ll get his.”
We went to a deli nearby and ordered sandwiches. We ate in the car, parked a few blocks from school.
“I think I might lose my sanity,” Javier said. “The waiting is horrible.”
“Waiting for what?” Peanut asked.
“To hear from Mutagion. We did what was asked. We showed him that we are committed.”
I shook my head. “Javier, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I don’t think that you should expect Mutagion to contact us. Even with what we did, he’s…he’s Mutagion. He’s got better things to do than deal with a bunch of kids.”
“We are a bunch of kids who destroyed a Justice Force surveillance lab. That is something.”
Nobody said anything more about it. I thought that even if we all wanted to graduate to the big leagues and maybe hear from Mutagion, it really wasn’t very likely to happen.
When we pulled into the school parking lot, there were two ambulances parked by the front entrance and a crowd of students gathered around. We headed over.
“What’s going on?” Boots asked a kid.
“Totally crazy. From what I heard—and I’m an Audiate, so I hear pretty good—one of the PT teachers was in the gym supervising flying drills ran up to the locker room to investigate these, like, unbelievably loud bangs. I heard them, too, even from here. I mean, how could I not?”
“So what was it?” Peanut asked.
“A teacher went up to the locker room and found this kid lying on the floor. He had four flashbangs, two in each hand, that he detonated right next to his head. You believe that? They’re saying he won’t be able to fly right for at least a year.”
“I didn’t think that he had flying powers,” I said.
“Who?” Javier asked.
“Rick Randall,” I said.
“How did you know that’s who it was?” the excitable Audiate asked me.
“Lucky guess.”
The front part of the crowd parted as four paramedics wheeled the oversize gurney, which was loaded up with a writhing and moaning and head-clutching Rick Randall, to the back of the ambulance, where they wrestled it inside.
The Audiate couldn’t seem to stop talking. “Well, I heard he was starting to get flying powers, but that could just have been a rumor. I hear all kinds of things. Obviously. Anyways, even if he did get flight, four flashbangs at once? Who could fly after that?”
“Why’d he do it?” Boots asked him.
“Who knows?”
Well, I knew. Of course.
And Layla knew. I didn’t have to read her thoughts. I could tell from the sly smile she gave me. “Very bad,” she said.
“Yeah, well. What goes around comes around. Sounds to me like he went out with a bang and a whimper.”
At eleven forty-eight that night, I got a text from Mary Sunshine. This was our code name for messages sent through the scrambler Boots used to keep our electronic communications hidden. It showed up on my screen in coded symbols. I ran the decoding program Boots had loaded up, and it turns out she was forwarding a message to us from Javier:
Our new pal made contact with us. Impressed with our winning shot. Willing to meet
us. Tomorrow nite. Big score!
Some Assembly Required
Iwas tired in school the next day. I had been up most of the night. It’s pretty hard to sleep when you’re expecting to meet one of the biggest public enemies at large in less than twenty-four hours. Part of the excitement was knowing that Blake, the world-renowned Artillery, was sleeping like a baby down the hall from me, and he didn’t have a clue.
So I was on the verge of dozing during the discussion of the bubonic plague in humanities class when there was an announcement over the PA system: “Teachers and students in the A-program eleventh and twelfth grades, we have a surprise visitor today who has taken time out of a very busy and highly important schedule to speak with you. A-program teachers, escort your classes to the small gym at this time.”
From time to time, celebrity heroes who happened to be in the area and wanted some youthful admiration51 for an ego pump dropped in to pontificate to students. As we walked down the hallway toward the small gym, there was a buzz among all the A-holes. Usually these suck-up sessions happened in the Academy.
We made our way to the auxiliary gym and settled in on the wooden bleachers. It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes before the Colonel came in with our special guest.
Layla put her hand on my knee as Blake waved to all of us, giving us his famous two-thousand-megawatt smile, as if the polite (but far from excited) applause was deafening. He called out “Hey!” and “No, thank you!” a few times and pointed at random people in the small crowd.
It made me want to puke.
Take it easy, Layla thought to me.
The Colonel glared at all of us and rolled his hands in a way to signal he wanted more gusto in the applause. The A-holes, of course, overdid it, clapping and cheering like we were thrilled to the point of delirium at being in the presence of such a luminary as Artillery, fan favorite of the Justice Force. Blake had such a big ego that it would never occur to him that he was being mocked. He soaked up what he thought was adoration.
