Mad Mask

by Barry Lyga

  “We’re gonna watch TV, Lefty,” Kyle declared, hefting the rabbit out of the cage and plopping him on the bed. He reached for his remote and turned on his two TVs.

  Yes, two TVs. Kyle hated TV — the shows were dumb and he despised the slack-jawed expressions of idiocy that people wore while watching it — but lately he had become obsessed with watching footage of himself on the news. For the first few days, he’d just watched on his laptop, but the screen was too small, the connection too slow, the video jerky and pixelated.

  So he’d scavenged at a local recycling plant one night and dug up two truly awesome flat screens. Plasma technology, fifty-five inches. Great stuff. They were a little scuffed and had burned-out power supplies, but Kyle was able to patch them up easily. Then he used a couple of discarded TiVos and voilà! He had his own media recording studio, with magnificent playback.

  The whole thing had to be hidden in his closet, lest his parents ask him where the TVs had come from.

  He locked his bedroom door as the TVs roared to life. Fortunately, he had calculated — correctly, as it turned out — that Channels Five and Thirteen would be the most likely local stations to get news crews to Axis, so he’d set the TiVos to record those two channels.

  “This should be fun,” he told Lefty. Lefty nuzzled Kyle’s arm until Kyle started petting him, then settled in next to Kyle.

  The footage at the chemical factory was better and more impressive than he could have dreamed. With his enhanced intellect, Kyle had no problem watching two TVs at once. He was slightly annoyed by the crawl along the bottom of Channel Five’s screen, which said, “SUPERVILLAIN ATTACKS CHEMICAL PLANT.” Channel Thirteen was a little more diplomatic: “MASKED FIGURE STEALS RARE CHEMICALS.” Which was true, if simpleminded.

  Still, none of that mattered when he focused on the action. He looked amazing floating up there as the cameras tried to track him. He never got tired of watching himself, of seeing something that looked like a movie special effect, but that he knew was real … and was him.

  He heard himself laugh over his built-in PA and watched the cops and the Army guys fire off their fusillade of weapons. But on-screen, he dodged them all. The moment when he knocked aside a rocket was amazing. Channel Five played it a couple of times in slo-mo, which Kyle appreciated. It was important for people to see how cool he was.

  But that paled in comparison to watching himself in action against Mighty Mike. Kyle was enthralled, staring bug-eyed at the TVs as his on-screen self effortlessly dodged Mighty Mike and basically made the kid look like the chump he truly was. To top it all off, the laser-chaff grenade was totally impressive in high-def. Kyle actually gasped out loud and said to Lefty, “Did you see that? That’s mine! I did that!” and rewound it on both screens to watch from two angles as the chaff filled the air. As a bonus, he got to watch again as Mighty Mike flew right into the chaff and got blinded. Kyle cackled. Truly, the simple things made life worth living.

  Kyle watched what had happened after he left: The Air Force jets arrived moments later and their wakes blew away most of the laser-chaff. Mighty Mike shook his head to clear his vision, wobbling in the air as if drunk, then took off in the completely wrong direction. The news cameras showed cops and soldiers running here and there, scattering, then coming back together. It was chaos, confusion. No one had the slightest hope of figuring out where Kyle had gone. Excellent.

  Afterward, Kyle watched as Mike gave a brief, impromptu interview to the reporter from Channel Five. “The Blue Freak can’t avoid me forever,” he said, gazing earnestly into the camera. “Eventually, I’ll hammer him down.” Mike’s brain damage was legendary. Kyle couldn’t keep from guffawing every time Mike misspoke.

  “Of course by that you mean you’ll nail him?” the reporter asked.

  “Don’t help him!” Kyle yelled at the TV. “Let everyone see what an idiot he is!”

  Mike smiled and thought for a moment. Kyle imagined he could see tiny gears turning in the alien brat’s minuscule alien excuse for a brain.

  “That’s exactly what I meant. Thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s not what he meant,” Kyle mumbled. Everyone covered for Mighty Mike. Life just wasn’t fair.

  That night, as Kyle slept and the biochemical forge churned to itself in the basement, as Erasmus dozed in an electronic version of sleep and Lefty pawed at his litter and chewed on blocks of wood (rabbits are normally crepuscular, not nocturnal, but Lefty was an insomniac bunny), the masked figure from the Axis parking lot sneaked through the woods behind the Camden house.

  The lanky, cloaked figure stole through the dark, the eyeholes of his mask now a sickly green … the green glow of night vision.

  He picked his way along carefully, a small handheld gadget held out before him. The gadget beeped slowly, methodically.

  Occasionally, the figure would stop and crouch down, poking at the dirt with one gloved finger or pulling up a weed to scrutinize it with those steadily glowing green eyes.

  The quiet, steady beep continued as he made his way deeper into the woods.

  Then, suddenly, the pace of the beeps increased.

  The figure paused. He swung the gadget to the left.

  The beeps slowed down.

  To the right.

  The beeps speeded up.

  Yes!

  He turned right and walked faster, ducking under branches and gathering his cloak tight around himself to avoid being caught in the brambles. The beeps came faster …

  … and faster …

  … and faster!

  Finally, the figure stopped, double-checked his gadget, and knelt down again. He scanned the ground for a moment, then brushed away some dead leaves and dug out a handful of soft dirt.

  There, in the ground near a large, gnarled tree, was a hatch. It was locked with a very complicated electronic lock — it had a keypad and a number screen that went up to twelve numbers. That meant there were 101 + 102 + 103 … 1012 possible combinations: 1,111,111,111,110 in total. Well over one trillion.

  The masked figure made a single, short noise under his mask. It might have been a grunt. It might have been a chuckle. He fiddled with the lock for a moment and popped it open, then lifted the hatch.

  Underneath was a small, boxy space. And inside …

  The costume of the Blue Freak!

  The rest of the world refers to the creature that attacked Mairi as “the dirt monster,” an appellation that betrays a deadly lack of imagination. It wasn’t a “dirt monster.” It was an Animated Soil Entity — ASE. I pronounce it “ace.” That’s a much better name, and more accurate, too.

  Anyway, a few days after the incident with the ASE, the FBI put me on the Most Wanted list. At number one.

  I’m always happy to be the best at something, but this wasn’t terribly convenient. Basically, every single FBI agent and cop in the world is on the lookout for me now. I am (or, rather, the “Blue Freak” is) considered a “national security risk.” The technical term they use is (get this): “unauthorized supra-endowed civilian actor.”

  This means that I have powers and I don’t let anyone boss me around.

  I am wanted for the following crimes, none of which I committed:

  Destruction of public property, multiple counts (Well, okay, I did that one, but it was an accident.)

  Destruction of private property, multiple counts (All right, they got me there, too, but again — it was an accident. My Pants Laser malfunctioned when I was trying to vaporize Mighty Mike’s pants. If he hadn’t flown up and grabbed the Pants Laser, I could have disabled it without causing further harm to anyone. How is this my fault?)

  Assault (No way! I just tried to vaporize pants! How is that assault? I’m the one who was assaulted — Mighty Mike punched me! In public. Not cool.)

  Assault with a deadly weapon, two counts (One for the Pants Laser — which wasn’t supposed to be deadly! — and one for the ASE, which I had nothing to do with!)

  Unlicensed use of
extranormal powers (This is a crime? Really?)

  In any event, I am clearly misunderstood by The Powers That Be, which only serves to reinforce my long-held conviction that The Powers That Be are, in fact, mentally deficient subhuman drone-brains. These are the kind of people who need help figuring out how to tie their shoes in the morning. They would probably forget to breathe if you didn’t remind them. I would call them morons, but that would be insulting to morons.

  So.

  It’s one thing to have a basement full of gadgets, chemicals, and other assorted detritus of my campaign to destroy Mighty Mike. It’s quite another thing to have the costume of the FBI’s Most Wanted. My experiments are so sophisticated that they would look like incomprehensible junk to most people, but even the stupidest cop would know the “Blue Freak’s” outfit on sight.

  This is why I store my costume off-site, hidden out in the woods. For safety and plausible deniability. Truly I am a genius.

  “Kyle!” The voice yanked Kyle from sleep, pulling him from what might have been the greatest dream in the history of dreams. In the dream, he had just gotten Mighty Mike in a headlock on national television. As an entire brigade of soldiers threatened to open fire on him if he didn’t let the “hero” go, Kyle paused for dramatic effect and then — in one smooth motion — ripped off the special mask Mighty Mike had been wearing as a human face, revealing a greenish-blue, scaly alien face underneath. Kyle was reasonably certain that Mighty Mike did not, in fact, have scaly skin hidden under a mask, but it was a great dream, so he wasn’t about to question it. In the dream, he held the mask up and shouted, “Mighty Mike is not our friend!”

  “Kyle!” the voice called again. Kyle tried to ignore it and sink back into the dream. The dream was great. The dream was awesome. Real life, not so much.

  “Kyle! Please wake up!”

  Groaning, Kyle fumbled at his nightstand for Erasmus, who was yelling at him and flashing his screen to light up the room. “What is it, Erasmus? I need my sleep.”

  “Someone is tampering with the costume bunker!”

  Kyle bolted upright in bed. He had connected the locking mechanism on his costume’s hiding place to Erasmus wirelessly, just in case. He couldn’t imagine how someone could possibly crack his impossible-to-crack electronic lock, but still …

  He quickly threw on a pair of black pants and a black sweatshirt. After a second, he decided to pull on a black ski mask, too. It was sort of cliché, but he had to hide his face. The odds were that some animal had stumbled upon the bunker and somehow activated the alarm, but he couldn’t take any chances. His freedom, his privacy, his very identity were all at stake.

  He opened the window. “Hold down the fort, Lefty,” he said. Lefty, thinking he was getting a treat, bounded over to the side of the cage nearest to the window and started pulling on the wire with his teeth.

  Kyle flew out the window as fast as he dared to go. Even with the light from a full moon, anyone who happened to be looking in that direction at that exact moment might see a blur in the night sky, but that was it.

  He was moving so fast that it only took seconds to get to the costume bunker, weaving through the denuded tree branches, diving low to the carpet of fallen leaves on the ground. Just before he arrived at the bunker, he picked out a figure standing near the tree, almost blending in with the shadows cast by the moonlight.

  And the figure was holding Kyle’s costume!

  Kyle landed a few feet away from the interloper and took him in. He was tall and lanky, draped in a dark green cloak. His hands — the left one held the costume up in the air like a trophy — wore heavy leather gauntlets that matched his buckled boots. But most impressive was the mask.

  It was jet-black, shaped like two half ovals that had been joined off-center, such that one protruded at the top and the other at the bottom. An inlaid ivory tear wept down one cheek. Both eyes glowed green.

  “Greetings,” the figure said. He chuckled, the sound low and echoing in the mask.

  Kyle darted toward him, a blur of speed, reaching out for his costume. Before his fingers could touch it, though, he saw and heard a loud, hot electrical crackle that jerked his arm so powerfully that he felt as if it would come right out of his shoulder socket. At the very same instant, the power of that shock spun him around and threw him back ten feet to smack against a tree.

  What …? What had just happened …?

  Kyle snarled and gathered his wits for another try. But the figure held up his other hand in a warning gesture.

  “Do not attempt to lay hands on the Mad Mask again! This force field is strong enough to deflect any attack … but you are not strong enough to survive its full power!”

  Kyle gritted his teeth together. He wasn’t sure he believed “the Mad Mask,” but that shock had been the only thing to hurt him other than Mighty Mike and the ASE since he’d gained his powers. Maybe this guy wasn’t full of baloney. Maybe his force field really was that powerful.

  “What do you want?” he demanded. “Why do you have my costume?”

  “Your costume. Then you are, in fact, the Blue Freak.” The Mad Mask said nothing for a moment. “Aren’t you a little short for a supervillain?”

  “Turn off that force field and you’ll see that size doesn’t matter,” Kyle retorted.

  The Mad Mask laughed, a throaty, terrifying sound. “Well met, Blue Freak. Or do you prefer to be called the Azure Avenger? Oh, yes,” he said as Kyle’s jaw dropped under the ski mask, “the Mad Mask’s audio enhancer technology detected your conversation while you flew above Axis. Who is your partner? Who is ‘Erasmus’?”

  So, the Mad Mask had heard Kyle’s conversation with Erasmus. “Maybe I’ll tell you that,” Kyle said, “and maybe I won’t. First I want to know why you’re here and what you want.” While he seethed outwardly, inside Kyle was relieved that the Mad Mask obviously didn’t know his real identity. He didn’t need that kind of information getting out there.

  “Your posture is aggressive and worrisome, Azure Avenger. Relax. There is no need to fear the Mad Mask. The Mad Mask means you no harm.” As if to prove it, he held out the costume. Kyle crept closer, wary of the force field, and reached out, half expecting another shock. When no shock came, he snatched his costume away from the Mad Mask.

  “Why did you take my costume? How did you break into my costume bunker?”

  The Mad Mask laughed again. “The Mad Mask sought you, not your costume. Fortunately — and predictably — one led to the other. As to your ‘bunker’ … Your electronic lock may as well have been a bungee cord to the technological genius of the Mad Mask!”

  “But how did you even find it in the first place?”

  “Examine your cape.”

  Kyle pawed at the cape until his finger touched a small, hard nodule that shouldn’t have been there. He groaned.

  “You fired some kind of tracking beacon at me.”

  The Mad Mask bowed with a flourish.

  Kyle made a mental note to install a bug detector in Erasmus so that this couldn’t happen again. He moved that particular to-do item to the very top of the list.

  “Okay, so you tracked me down and you got what you wanted. You found me. I’m assuming you’re not working for the FBI or the government because I would already be surrounded by cops.”

  “The government!” The Mad Mask spat out the words with such a fury that Kyle wondered how gross the inside of that mask looked right now. “Dunderheads! Mewling idiot-children!”

  Kyle decided that maybe the Mad Mask wasn’t all bad.

  “Incompetent, brainless dullards!” the Mad Mask went on. “The Mad Mask recognizes no government, no authority higher than his own inimitable genius!”

  Kyle realized that the guy still hadn’t bothered to explain what he was doing here.

  “The Mad Mask has his own agenda,” he continued. “The Mad Mask hails from nearby, yet the Mad Mask’s genius is too large for this region, for Bouring, for the state, the country, indeed the world! And so,
the Mad Mask has made ready to strike out at the world at large and make his mark upon the planet!”

  Here the Mad Mask paused, as if expecting Kyle to say or do something. Kyle thought quickly and said, “Um, that’s quite an impressive mask you’ve got there.” It was true — Kyle sort of had mask-envy. His own mask was just an old blanket that he had cut and sewed into a new shape. It itched.

  The Mad Mask cleared his throat somewhere in that big cloak. “Oh. Yes. The mask. Thank you. I, uh, made it in shop class.”

  Shop class?

  “Er, I mean …” he said, his voice rising in volume and deepening, “the Mad Mask fashioned and assembled it over many hard and laborious hours in shop class!

  “But let us not speak of such things now!” The Mad Mask gestured with both hands and the cloak rippled and waved very impressively. “The Mad Mask has come here with an offer for you, Azure Avenger.”

  “What kind of an offer?” Kyle had to admit that it sounded pretty cool to hear someone else — finally! — call him the Azure Avenger.

  “The Mad Mask is constructing … Ultitron!” He shouted the last word and then waited, panting slightly, as if Kyle was supposed to know what he was talking about.

  “Uh, what’s Ultitron?” Kyle asked after a long silence.

  “What is Ultitron? What is Ultitron?” The Mad Mask threw his hands up in the air as if to say, Do you see what I have to deal with? “Ultitron is only the ultimate engine of devastation and destruction. That’s all. It’s only an artificially intelligent humanoid techno-configuration that outpaces all current and next-generation and next-next-generation cybernetics technology on the planet!”

  “Right. So it’s a robot.”

  The Mad Mask punched a tree. Kyle couldn’t believe it.

  “A robot? Would you call the Sistine Chapel a church? Would you call the Sphinx a statue? Would you call —”

  “Okay, okay, I hear you. It’s the robot.” Kyle didn’t want to listen to any more ranting. He wanted to get to the point, so: “Get to the point,” he said.