by Darrell Pitt
“No-one gave me an instruction manual.” Dan looks at me. “How about you?”
“No.” Although I’m not actually in the super hero club, so I probably shouldn’t be saying anything. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing this for a couple of days. Then we can look at our options.”
“Which are?” Brodie asks.
I sigh. That’s a good question to which I don’t have a good answer. I’m not really sure where we go from here. We tried going back to the office of Cygnus Industries and found nothing there. Brodie has had an image in her head of city surrounding a harbor, but unfortunately half the cities in the world seem to be located next to harbors. She might be referring to Sydney. She even has a memory of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, but she may have picked that up from a tourist brochure.
We seem to have hit a dead end.
I pull out the notebook again and leaf through the pages randomly.
“What’s that?” Dan asks.
I explain to him about the book and he asks to have a look at it. For a long time he examines the pages closely without comment. Then he checks out the spine. His eyes narrow.
“I think there’s something built into the spine,” he says.
I take the book from him. It takes me a moment to realize he’s right. The spine is quite thick. A lot thicker than any regular hardcover book. It’s hard to believe I didn’t notice it before.
“Get me a knife,” I say.
A moment later I’m cutting carefully along the edge of the book. An object slips out into my hand. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks vaguely like a flash drive for a computer, but it’s much thinner. When I hold it up to the light it gets even stranger. The interior is sparkling, but it’s like looking at a precious stone like an opal. It flashes with shades of red and yellow and green.
The others examine it too, but none of us can agree to its purpose.
Brodie thinks it’s a piece of high tech gadgetry. Dan posits that it’s a gem stone that’s fallen out of its housing. I simply have no idea. I search my memory for several more seconds, but nothing comes to mind. At that moment room service arrives with more pizza, so I put the object into my pocket and decide to give it more thought later.
We sit and eat and watch an episode of The Simpsons. It’s a rerun. Everything on the television seems to be reruns and old movies. I wander out onto the balcony where day has begun to give way to evening. Clouds have swallowed the sky again. I haven’t seen the stars since, well, I don’t know when. As the sky darkens, the city lights slowly come to life. It’s a beautiful sight.
After a while I begin to think about Brodie and Dan’s powers. It seems strange they have inherited abilities, but I don’t seem to be any different to any other person. Looking down at my hands, I point them at planter boxes and vases.
Rise, I command.
Nothing happens.
I hear something stifling a laugh behind me.
Brodie.
“Laugh all you want,” I tell her. “I will have my revenge.”
“Good luck with that.”
We both lean on the railing and look out at the city. She is so close her arm is almost touching mine. I get the irrational sense that I want to touch her hand, but I know it would freak her out. Instead, I give her a smile. She doesn’t disappoint me. She smiles back.
“Aarrgh.”
The voice comes from behind us.
Dan.
He stumbles onto the balcony as if in pain. He has his hands clasped tightly over his ears as if trying to shut out a loud noise.
“What is it?” I ask.
He looks at us fearfully. “I can hear voices,” he says. “Two people. Kids like us. They’re screaming.”
Brodie and I exchange glances.
“They’re screaming,” I echo dumbly.
He nods. “Yes,” Dan says. “They’re being tortured by that man Ravana.”
Chapter Twelve
My blood runs cold at the news.
Ravana.
The memories of my time in the room come flooding back. For a few hours I have driven him from my mind. Now that I think about it, I wonder how I could have so successfully avoided thinking about him. It must be my mind shielding me from the pain of the experience. The truth of it is that I will never forget that monster. He will be a part of me for as long as I live.
“How can you know this?” Brodie asks.
Dan shakes his head. “I have no idea. The feeling comes and goes. One second I’m here and then I’m in their heads. Ravana is applying that…probe to their hands. It’s a girl and a guy.”
The probe. The thought of it makes me want to throw up.
Still, we need to help them. If we can.
“Do you know where they’re being kept?” Brodie asks.
Dan focuses for a minute. He looks out across the city. “I’m not sure. I get a feeling the building is over in that direction.” He points to the east. “I think we need to go that way.”
Fortunately we’ve got a car. It’s a late model convertible. Again, thanks to Dan, we were able to purchase one for an apple and a copy of the daily paper. Mind you, I think the man thought he was collecting about twenty thousand in cold, hard cash, but he seemed happy with the deal anyway.
Brodie and I are in the front seat. I drive while Dan focuses on trying to find the building. It’s like driving around with a human metal detector. We spend half an hour with Dan saying things like, ‘it’s getting warmer’ and ‘no, now we’re moving away’. At the end of it I think all we’ve done is driven around in circles and used up half a tank of petrol.
Finally I pull over.
“I think you need to focus,” I tell Dan.
“I’m trying.”
Brodie makes a suggestion. “What if you were to move out of the minds of the kids in the building? Can you do that?”
Dan considers this. “I can try.”
“Maybe you can latch onto someone else’s mind,” Brodie says. “Someone who’s leaving the building.”
Dan takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and focuses. For a few minutes he says nothing. I glance out the window and notice people walking past the vehicle. One glances in. Obviously this must look a little weird; two people staring at a guy with his eyes shut. After a while Dan clears his throat.
“I’m with someone in the elevator. It’s a guy. He doesn’t know Ravana or his organization. He just works somewhere in the building. The elevator is coming to a halt. It’s at ground level. He’s getting out. Leaving the building. I can look back. I can see…”
Dan’s eyes open wide. “I can see it. I can see the building. It’s…”
The moment seems to last forever.
Then he tells us the address of a building on East Seventy-First Street.
Brodie shakes her head in amazement. “You’re incredible.”
Dan wipes sweat from his brow. “I know.”
“Modest too,” I lean over the seat and hit Dan on the shoulder.
I start the car and angle it into the traffic. It doesn’t take long for us to arrive at the address. It’s a tall, modern looking office block surrounded by similar buildings. It’s hard to believe there are two kids being tortured in such a location.
The thought turns my stomach.
We climb out of the car. For the first time, I’m feeling kind of nervous. I feel like I’m the spare wheel in this organization. It looks like Brodie can single-handedly fight an army to a standstill. Dan can move objects with the power of his mind and get into people’s heads. I can -.
Well, I know how to drive. Maybe I can be like Alfred the butler in the Batman comics and drive the others places and make cocoa at appropriate times.
We stop in front of the building.
“I know this is probably too much to expect,” I say, turning to Dan. “But any idea which floor Ravana is on?”
Dan shakes his head. “No. We might just have to wing it from here.”
We enter the main lobby
. Adjacent to the elevators is a chart of the building occupants. There are a lot of them. We spend the next few minutes perusing the list. Finally we turn to each other in frustration.
“Nothing stands out,” Brodie shakes her head. “Why can’t bad guys identify themselves as such?”
“You mean, like Evil Inc?” Dan asks.
“Yeah,” I say, staring at the list. “Or Bad For U?”
At that moment a guy enters the lobby and passes us without a glance. He disappears into an elevator. Dan has been watching him from the corner of his eye. He leans close to us as the elevator departs.
“I picked up something from him,” Dan says.
“The flu?” I ask.
“I couldn’t get a clear picture, but it was a negative vibe.”
We wander over to the elevator and watch the changing display. The elevator stops at the twenty-fifth floor. The directory lists them as Stanley Imports. I glance at the others.
“What do you think?”
Brodie shrugs. “We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s do it.”
It seems strange standing patiently in the ascending elevator. I don’t know about the others, but my throat has gone dry. My heart is beating like crazy. I look at Brodie and a sweat has broken out on her brow. Only Dan seems completely confident.
It’s because he’s younger than us, I think.
A chill runs down my spine. How old is Dan? Maybe fifteen. Brodie and I aren’t much older. We’re a bunch of teenagers about to launch an attack on Ravana and his cronies and we don’t have a plan.
The idea makes me dizzy. We haven’t prepared for this. We’re marching blindly into this place with no clue as to what we’re about to do when we reach the floor or where to go when we get there. It’s absolutely insane. I open my mouth to speak, but as I do the elevator draws to a halt.
The doors slide open.
I think we’re walking into hell.
Chapter Thirteen
The first thing we see is a big empty semi-circular room. A reception desk is set back about twenty feet from the elevator. Beige carpet covers the floor. Behind the desk there’s an empty chair and partition walls. The words Stanley Imports are positioned at eye level in an italicized font. No-one is in sight.
The only other object I can see is a pot plant to the right of the elevator doors.
Brodie and Dan step out of the elevator and stride straight into the heart of the reception area. Instead of following them, I place myself between the two doors to stop them from closing. While the sensors register a blockage, the doors will not close.
I hope.
My stomach is bouncing around like it’s full of jelly. There’s something bad here. I can’t put my finger on it, but something doesn’t make sense. It’s something about the furniture…
Brodie stops in the middle of the reception area. She looks around for a door. Dan strides straight to the reception desk. He looks like he’s ready to pick up pieces of furniture with his mind and start hurling them around.
The elevator doors want to close. The door behind me jars against my back and then slides back into the recess. Brodie turns at the sound and looks curiously at me. Then her eyes shift as she surveys the semi-circular chamber again. Her eyes narrow. Her mouth settles into a frown.
“Where are these turkeys?” Dan asks. “They’re afraid to take us on.”
He turns around and for the first time looks a little unsure of himself. It’s hard to show bravado when there’s no-one to display it to. The door of the elevator tries to close again. There’s probably someone on the fiftieth floor looking at their watch and wondering who’s holding up the elevator.
Let them wait.
“There’s something wrong here,” I tell them.
Brodie looks at me worriedly. “I think you’re right.”
Leaning out into the foyer, I’m just about to tell them to get back into the elevator when I catch movement in two directions at once. Two slots open up in opposing walls. A machine gun appears in both.
Dan looks confused. Brodie takes a single step towards the elevator.
The guns open fire.
One second there is silence. The next there is an explosion of sound that makes your eardrums hurt. I throw my arms out, screaming, but my words are drowned by the explosion of the guns. Both Brodie and Dan are caught between the two weapons. They throw themselves to the ground, but I immediately see bullets slamming into carpet, ricocheting off the ceiling, cutting the reception desk to pieces, slamming into the opposing walls.
It should be a bloodbath, but somehow they start crawling towards the elevator. A bullet ricochets past my ear and smashes the mirror at the back of the elevator. Pieces of carpet are flying into the air. Plaster is reduced to dust. There’s so much debris flying around it’s almost impossible to see the far wall.
Brodie gets to the elevator first. She reaches back for Dan and drags him in after her. Only then does my focus turn away from the arena of destruction taking place outside the doors. I slam the button for the ground floor. Even as I do, I wonder if Ravana and his men have some special control over the elevator that will stop it from moving.
If they do, it’s game over.
It seems to take an eternity, but to my enormous relief the doors slide shut and the sound of gunfire dulls to silence. After another unbearably long second, the elevator starts to descend.
Brodie looks up at me. Her face is stricken with disbelief.
She tries to speak. “It was…it was…”
“A trap,” I say.
Dan is lying on the floor in fetal position. Shaking. I kneel next to him and search for blood. I don’t find any.
“Dan?” He’s looking straight at my knee. There’s drool around his mouth. “Dan? Can you hear me?”
“He’s in shock,” Brodie says.
So is she. Her hair is everywhere. She’s not pale. She’s white. A color so like ivory that it looks like she’s had her skin dyed.
“Are you hit?” I ask her.
“No.” She shakes her head. “Get him on his feet. We’ve got to get out of here.”
I nod. Somehow I physically lift Dan from the ground. I get one of his arms around my shoulders. He looks as pale as Brodie. I wipe the spittle from his mouth and get Brodie to check him again. There’s no blood. Somehow both of them escaped without a scratch.
Dan might be a mess now, but at least he came through when the going got tough.
When the doors open, Dan’s legs start working of their own accord. Obviously his conscious mind is not working, but the automatic functions – breathing, circulation, walking – are still operational.
The only evidence in the elevator that anything happened is the broken mirror at the back. Apart from that, there’s no evidence someone just tried to cut us to pieces in a hail of gunfire. Possibly Ravana and his cronies have their entire floor soundproofed. That’s the only explanation for why dozens of police aren’t pouring into the building. The racket upstairs was so loud it just made the Gunfight at the OK Corral look like a shooting gallery at the fair.
We cross the lobby. A business man, obviously heading back to the office to pick up some forgotten paperwork, gives us a curious glance, but I glare at him and he passes without comment.
We escape the building. By that point I’m able to grab Dan’s shoulder and drag him along as we jog down the sidewalk to the car. My hands are still shaking by the time I climb behind the wheel, but there’s no way I can expect Brodie to drive. Despite her apparent calm, she’s still obviously a mess.
“It was the furniture,” I tell them as we pull into the traffic.
“What was?” Brodie asks.
“I had a strange feeling about that reception area. There was nowhere for anyone to sit. I didn’t realize it at the time…”
My voice trails away to nothing. It’s not important now. I keep checking the rear view mirror to see if anyone’s following. If they are, they’re good, because I can’t see them.
; Dan’s in the back seat. Up till now he’s been sitting up with his eyes staring into nothing. Now I notice he looks incredibly tired. He’s struggling to keep his eyes open. Must be the delayed shock. Sleep is the best thing for him. For all of us.
“Things got pretty hairy back there,” I tell him as I weave around a truck. “But you came through, Dan.” I feel I need to bolster his spirits after the aborted attempt. “You really saved our skins.”
Dan shakes his head. “No. No, that wasn’t me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask him. “You saved the day back there.”
“No I didn’t,” he says quietly. “I was a mess. There were bullets flying everywhere. I couldn’t do a thing. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t even think.” He shakes his head again. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Well,” says Brodie. “If it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Dan…”
I know both of them are looking at me. I don’t know what to say. Up till now I haven’t displayed any abilities. Nothing at all. Now I think back to the hail of gunfire back at the building. It was a turkey shoot. Somebody saved them from certain death.
Was it me?
Chapter Fourteen
It’s a beautiful day in the park. The sun is warm on our shoulders. A breeze is gently shaking the trees. There are clouds in the sky, but there’s no chance of rain. People are flying kites. Kids are playing with their dog. Someone is marching a baby carriage around a lake. A couple holds hands on a park bench.
We’re here for entirely different reasons.
We’re here to see if I have super powers.
Roughly twelve hours have passed since our aborted rescue of the kids in Ravana’s tower. Dan climbed out of bed embarrassed though grateful to be alive. Brodie looked a little stressed, but also determined. She took charge and ordered breakfast from room service for the three of us. We all ate like starving people and finished our meals in silence. Finally Brodie told us to shower because we had a lot of work to do.
“Like what?” Dan asked.
“We’re taking a drive to the country,” Brodie says. “We’re going to test Axel’s powers.”
“What powers would they be?” I ask cautiously.
