by Darrell Pitt
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” she replied.
So three hours later we’re not in the country, but we are in a large parkland area on the outskirts of the city. We wander through the park until we find a secluded corner surrounded by trees. A rock in the middle seems to be the perfect target upon which to practice. We sit around the rock in a circle.
“We’ll start with you trying to move the rock,” Brodie says. “Now, just focus on it. Get a sense of its size and weight and dimensions.”
“Okay,” I say after a moment.
“Now try to lift it.”
I stare at the rock intently, willing it to rise up off the ground. I imagine myself under it, lifting it off the grass, making it rise into the air and making it soar high above the trees.
It does none of the above. It sits there like a rock.
I continue to stare at it.
“Really focus on it, Axel,” Dan says.
“I am.”
“Imagine you’re surrounding the rock. Trying to lift it.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“You’re making it rise -.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do -.”
“Be the rock,” Dan urges, his eyes growing wide. “Be the rock.”
“I am a rock,” I tell him. “I’m lumpy and bored.” I shake my head in frustration. “Nothing’s happening. It won’t move.”
“You need to concentrate on it longer,” Brodie says. “Really get into it.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” I tell them. “Why do I need to focus now? Last night it looked like I could deflect bullets with ease.”
Neither of them have an answer.
“Maybe you need a smaller rock,” Dan suggests.
“Maybe.”
My eyes search the field for a smaller boulder, but instead I find myself staring at the sky. I revise my earlier weather report. It could rain later. The wind has picked up in the trees. They are being tossed around more ferociously with every passing second. I decide to focus on one of the trees. Maybe if I can make the branches stop moving -.
They stop.
It’s an eerie sensation. All the other trees are still being tossed about by the breeze. The single tree I’m looking at is stationery. In fact, the longer I look at it the more I can see a cocoon, like a transparent bubble, encasing the branches.
I grab Brodie’s arm.
“What is it?” she asks.
“The tree.” I point with a shaking hand. “Look.”
Both she and Dan look at the still branches. After a moment, Dan says, “How are you doing that?”
I let out a deep exhalation and realize I’ve been holding my breath. “I don’t know. I was looking at the branches and sort of willed them to stop moving.”
“And they did,” Brodie says.
I nod.
“Try lifting the stone now,” Dan says.
I give it another attempt, but still it won’t move an inch. I even go over to it and lift it up with my hands to make certain it hasn’t been cemented into the ground. No. It’s just a plain ordinary rock.
Holding it in my hand, I focus on it until my head hurts.
Nothing.
Brodie has been watching me and frowning. Now she looks back at the moving trees and I see a determined expression cross her face.
“Axel,” she says. “I’ve got an idea. Try the trees again, but this time make the branches move more instead of standing still.”
“That’s right,” Dan says, nodding. “You could be a new type of superhero. You might be Tree-man.”
“Tree-man?” I repeat.
I hope not.
Dropping the rock, I turn my attention to the trees again. This time I focus on trying to make the branches move even more. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I’m on a roll now and I don’t want to stop.
Holding out both arms, I give it all I’ve got.
And nothing happens.
“Okay,” I say. “This is no fun.”
I stare impatiently at the trees, watching the branches move gently in the breeze. Slowly, an idea occurs to me.
This time I focus on the wind in the branches. The effect is instantaneous. It’s as if there’s a breeze coming from our direction, blowing the branches away from us; it’s like the exhaust from a jet engine. Excitedly, I push even harder until I hear the sound of cracking boughs from the tree. Within seconds, branches are breaking loose and flying away out of sight.
“Holy -.” Dan begins.
“It’s the air,” I tell them. “I can control air.”
Now I turn back to the rock. This time I don’t think about moving the rock. Instead I think about using the air to do all the work. The boulder trembles, shudders and starts to roll away from us. Finally I pretend to use it like a bowling ball and it bounces away from us at high speed and disappears into the bushes.
“That’s amazing,” Brodie says. “Air…” She starts thinking. “Air is pretty powerful. Think of hurricanes and tornados. They can slam pieces of straw into timber like nails.”
“And knock down houses,” Dan says. “Flatten towns.”
“And lift things,” I say. “They can make things airborne. Carry things away.”
“You’re not thinking…” Brodie’s voice trails away to nothing.
I gather the air around and under me.
A moment later I’m flying.
Chapter Fifteen
Brodie and Dan stare at me in astonishment.
“That’s awesome,” Dan says, his jaw dropping open. “Do it to me! Make me fly too!”
“Hold on, hold on,” I reply. I’m about a foot off the ground and I’m already terrified. I remember that I don’t like heights. Having nothing under your feet is a disconcerting sensation. I don’t know how the astronauts handle it. There’s no way I’m taking any passengers.
Not yet, anyway.
Looking down, I can see the same transparent bubble under me, lifting me up off the ground. Now I focus on making it lift me even higher. Within seconds I’m about six feet off the ground and rising.
“Pick up a rock,” I tell Brodie. “And throw it at me.”
She picks up something about the size of a coin and hurls it at me. I form a shield and it bounces off and hits Dan on the head.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry.”
So that’s how Brodie and Dan were kept safe when the guns opened fire. I formed some sort of solid wall of air between the bullets and them. The physics of it is beyond me, but even air can be compressed so tightly that it’s impenetrable.
Air. Who would have thought it?
I’m Air Man.
Hmm, might work on the name.
The sensible thing now would be to descend from my lofty perch. Instead, I can’t help but feel so elated by the experience that I want to keep going. My fear of heights seems to be evaporating by the second. I hear a sound from below and realize it’s Brodie calling to me. She looks terrified.
“I’m okay,” I call back to her.
She yells something out, but I can’t hear her.
Now I work on changing my direction. I imagine a bed next to me and then I try lying on it. Well, it seems like a great idea, but instead I find I’m leaning against a wall of air.
Okay, so then I imagine extending the platform under me. I kneel down onto it and then lay down flat. Straight down beneath me I see Dan and Brodie staring up at me in astonishment. They’re not half as surprised as I am. Or as frightened. I can feel the platform beneath me. I can even see it shimmering slightly. But I’m still floating in mid air. It’s a strange combination of elation and terror.
I stick out an arm over my head.
Okay, it’s corny, but it works for Superman.
I will myself forward. For a few seconds I think nothing’s happening. Then I realize I’m slowly moving away from the clearing. I head towards a cloud. The wind tears at me as I fly higher. It gets colder by the second. Mist whirls around me. I sho
uld be concerned, but I’m momentarily beyond fear.
I’m flying.
Looking down, fear comes back with a vengeance. Actually I almost die of fright. I’m so far off the ground I can no longer see Brodie and Dan. The park is a maze of shapes. Green ovals. A pond. A river. The suburbs surrounding the city are a patchwork quilt. The city rises in the distance, a cathedral of steel and glass.
I fall.
It happens so suddenly that I’m not aware of it for a few seconds. Then I realize the bubble that has been supporting me has disintegrated into shards. I force my eyes shut. It’s the last thing I feel like doing, but it helps me to focus. When I open my eyes again the platform has regained its integrity.
I decide to go higher. It’s crazy because I don’t know anything about my powers. I might run out of oomph a thousand feet up, but I don’t care. My fear of heights has disappeared, replaced by an unhealthy confidence. As I zoom straight up, the air continues to get colder and thinner. There is a strong cross wind and I’ve got to say it isn’t the pleasant experience I was expecting.
I veer towards the city.
It would be insanity to be seen. I can imagine the headlines. Boy Spotted Flying Over City! Air force Shoots Down Flying Boy! Post-Mortem Reveals Drug Use! Those sort of headlines, I don’t need.
I’m determined to stay fairly high up. I’m still hundreds of feet above the tallest buildings. I can see a number of helicopters cruising across town, but I stay well away from them. I have no intention of scaring any chopper pilots. The city below me is a complicated network of streets and unfamiliar landmarks. I don’t recognize anything at all until I catch sight of the Hudson and the East River. They start to put things into perspective.
That’s when I hit the blimp.
One second I’m focused on working out the relationship between the streets. In the next, I’m aware of an odd droning sound and a big silver wall cuts across in front of me. The helium filled balloon is advertising Toto’s Donuts. I slam into it at an angle and the whole thing wobbles uncontrollably. Even its engine whirrs erratically.
Fortunately it’s automated. No-one’s in the gondola that hangs beneath, but the episode is enough to makes me realize I’m acting stupidly. These things are made for people to see from ground level and I’ve positioned myself right next to it.
Real clever.
I zoom up higher again and follow a main arterial road out of the city. More out of luck than design I locate the park and start to descend. Once again, I find it incredibly difficult to orientate myself. Finally I see our little clearing. Dan and Brodie have taken refuge under a tree.
I’d like to say that I gracefully descended like a God from the heavens, but that would be a lie. Actually I come in too fast at too steep an angle and I land sideways, my legs skimming along the ground for several feet. Finally the rest of my body hits the grass and I roll over several times to disperse my momentum.
Brodie and Dan race over to me. To their credit, they don’t give me a hard time about the landing. They’re impressed I can do the flying thing at all. They help me to my feet and brush me off.
“You should have seen Dan after you took off,” Brodie laughs. “He thought he might have a latent flying ability. He kept on leaping up and down like a jumping bean.”
“Did you get anywhere?” I ask him.
“Naaa,” he shakes his head. “I’m earthbound.”
I glance at Brodie.
“I’m a landlubber too,” she says. “But something did happen while you were away.”
“What?”
“I had those voices in my head again,” Dan says. He actually looks a little sick at the thought. “They were screaming again.”
“They’re being tortured,” Brodie says. “Somehow, we’ve got to-.”
I hold up a hand. “I’ve got a plan.” On the way back down to the ground I noticed the weather was changing. Good. It will work in our favor. “We’re going back to Ravana’s building, but this time we’ll be prepared.”
Chapter Sixteen
By the time we’re in position, the weather has disintegrated. And in a big way. Driving back into town, storm clouds swept over the city. The radio station warned there was rain on the way. Even a chance of hail.
All the better.
We’re standing on the roof of the Lexor Building. It’s just another skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan, but it’s important to us because it’s right across the road from Ravana’s building.
Everything has worked according to plan, although there are a couple of things we didn’t take into account. Thanks to Dan, the electrical substation that controls this side of town is out of commission. He was able to project a piece of metal into the heart of the thing, knocking out power to an eight block city grid.
We were pleased with our efforts until we realized we still needed to get to the roof of the Lexor Building without elevators. This meant walking up thirty flights of stairs.
Even for young, fit teenagers such as ourselves, it was a struggle. By the time we reached the roof, our legs were jelly.
“Are you sure you couldn’t just fly us up here?” Dan asks.
I shake my head. “I want to keep that to a minimum. The less chance that people have of seeing me, the better.”
This is an era where anyone with a cell phone is a journalist. I want to stay off YouTube for as long as possible.
There’s only about fifty feet between us and the other building. Back in the park, I practiced lifting Dan and Brodie into the air and landing again. While I wouldn’t carry both of them at the same time, I found I was able to master keeping two of us in flight at the same time. I hang onto the other person and extend the flying platform under both of us. It’s not elegant. I don’t have the Superman technique handled yet, but it works.
It starts to rain, a driving torrential downpour driven by high winds. In one way it’s a nuisance, but at least it creates another diversion and we need all the help we can get. First I fly Brodie across to the other building. It’s windy, but we make it across without incident. By the time I return to take Dan, the winds seem to have doubled. The only way we make it is that I stay completely focused on the task at hand. Our landing is a little rough, but it’s one we can live with.
“Dan, we need the door open,” I tell him.
“Gotcha,” he replies.
It takes him longer than expected. The driving wind and rain don’t help things. Finally the lock breaks and the door swings loose in the wind. We hurry in from the rain and find ourselves in a darkened stairwell. The only lighting is an emergency exit sign above the door; it must be operated either by a generator or stored solar power.
“I don’t hear an alarm,” Brodie says.
“Let’s hope there isn’t one,” I say.
We make our way down the stairs. Fortunately the doors are marked with the floor number in large letters. We listen closely at the fire door leading to the twenty-fifth floor. Silence. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a guard at the door. There could be ten guys on the other side waiting for us.
We just have to take our chances. Dan focuses on forcing the lock open. He does it as quietly as possible, but it sounds like a train wreck in the silence of the stairwell. Every cracking of the metal is magnified tenfold.
Finally, Brodie eases it open and checks in both directions. She waves us in after her. From here, we don’t really have a plan except Dan has been able to give us a general idea of where he thinks the other teenagers are being held. It’s on the other side of the building, so our intention is to get there without being seen.
We go down the corridor and turn left into another passageway. We’re half way down it when two guys come through a doorway. At first we’re lucky. They turn immediately away from us, but at the last instant one of them must have spotted us from the corner of his eye. He stops and starts to turn.
That’s enough to get Brodie moving.
Man. Is she fast or is she fast?
In about two
seconds she’s covered the distance between us and them and she’s knocked one guy’s head against the other. It’s like something out of The Three Stooges. They go down in an untidy pile with barely a sound. Both men are security guards armed with guns, batons and mace. We drag them into the room they exited. It’s some sort of meeting area. Hopefully they won’t wake up any time soon.
We continue down the corridor. After a moment, Dan grabs our arms and drags us to a halt.
“I can feel them.” He rubs the side of his head. “They’re close. And in pain.”
I think again of Ravana’s device and I feel the hatred bubbling up inside me. I push the emotion to one side. Later there will be time to dwell on him. Now we need to focus on the task at hand.
We reach another corridor. Brodie peers around the corner. There is the sound of a door closing followed by receding footsteps. She waits until the footsteps have gone silent before she turns to us.
“I got a glimpse of the room those guys left,” she says. “It’s some sort of guard room. There’s about a dozen guys in there. If we can trap them in there…”
She looks at Dan.
“Consider it done,” he says. “They don’t call me Metal Boy for nothing.”
Personally, I’m unaware that anyone has ever called him Metal Boy, but I let it pass.
Seconds later we’re hurrying past the door. Dan has somehow melted the lock together. Just as we turn into the next corridor we hear someone trying to exit the room. There’s the sound of a commotion.
“We need to hurry,” Brodie says.
We turn another corner. This time our luck goes south because there’s two security guards heading straight towards us. We adopt a maneuver we talked about in the car heading over here.
I throw up a shield as the guys pull out their guns. They start firing, but the bullets bounce off and ricochet into the side walls. Dan focuses on their weapons. As we advance towards them I can see the barrels of their guns bending back on themselves. One of the guys doesn’t notice his gun has turned into a pretzel. It blows up in his hand. At the same time I drop the barrier and Brodie moves in on them.
All of five seconds later we’re stepping over their unconscious bodies.
