by Matt Blake
I closed my eyes and steadied myself. I was tougher than this clown and his telekinetic tricks. I might not be as tough as I once was, but I wasn’t going to just back down.
I opened my eyes and held myself firm in the middle of the sky.
Catalyst was just inches away from me.
He lifted his hands and went to fire another burst of energy at me. But this time, I lifted my hands and blocked that energy before it could fly at me. I didn’t know where my friends were. They couldn’t be far below. But part of me didn’t even want them to get involved in this, anyway. This was my fight. And I was going to win it.
“You can keep on trying to fight,” I said. “But you won’t win.”
“You’re so full of talk. That’s your problem. You never, ever shut up.”
“Wish I could say the same about you.”
I shot two blasts of ice at Catalyst’s face.
Then he just knocked them away like they were nothing but flies.
“You’re making a mistake by resisting,” Catalyst said. “You have no idea just how special you—”
Catalyst grabbed the sides of his head. He started shouting, crying out.
When I saw Vortex underneath him, I knew exactly why.
She was making him dream. And Vortex-induced dreams were never a nice thing.
I flew at him and knocked him back toward the ground. I was going to fly him so hard into the earth that it was going to kill him. Break all his bones and end him, once and for all.
“Where’s the Failsafe?” I shouted.
Catalyst didn’t respond.
I tightened my grip on him, flew even faster down.
“I asked you a question. Where’s the—”
I felt a hard punch to my kidneys. So hard that it pounded the power right out of me.
And then he pressed an anti-energy gun against my stomach, fired, and shot Vortex out of the sky.
And all of a sudden he was on top of me.
He was the one flying the pair of us down.
Pushing me down, right toward the earth.
I tried to struggle. I tried to kick back. I tried to fight.
But it was no good.
We were crashing to the surface of the earth.
And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
32
I felt myself surging to the earth below and I knew my time was numbered.
I looked past Catalyst at the bright sky above. It looked so peaceful, so serene. And in a way, as the pair of us moved in what felt like slow motion now, I felt totally calm. I’d lost. Simple as that. I’d lost and everything was over.
I had no more responsibilities to worry about. I had no more fight to give.
And I had nobody expecting a thing of me. Not anymore.
Finally, I was heading back to normality.
It was just a shame that normality meant I probably wasn’t going to be around to witness it.
I heard shouting. In the corner of my eyes, I saw my friends and my family emerging. Damon. Stone. Cassie. Vortex. They looked at me with shock as they tried to fly toward Catalyst. But they couldn’t get close. They just bounced off an invisible barrier before they could get anywhere near.
I looked up at Catalyst’s face and I saw him, then. For the first real time, I saw him underneath that hood. I saw the pale skin. The scars covering his cheeks.
And I saw the gaps where his eyes once were.
And as I saw him, it clicked. He was blind. That’s why he hadn’t recognized me right away. He couldn’t see me.
But hell. He might be blind. But his other senses sure as hell made up for that.
I looked over my shoulder and in this weird, slowed-down time, I realized I was just inches away. My powers, Catalyst was repressing them with that anti-energy gun he had pushed into my belly.
And I knew I could fight. If I really wanted to, I could fight.
But I wasn’t strong enough anymore.
All my fight had gone.
I prepared to slam into the ground.
And then the image of everyone that was going to fall—everyone I cared about—because of me giving up filled my mind and made me grit my teeth.
I couldn’t give in.
I couldn’t afford to.
I…
I realized then I’d stopped. Both of us had stopped. We were hovering right above the ground.
I didn’t understand it. Not at first.
Then I saw that Catalyst was bleeding.
He was bleeding, and that blood was dripping down onto me.
I didn’t know where the blood had come from. But wherever it came from, it distracted Catalyst enough to loosen his grip on me, making my fall to the ground much less painful than it could’ve been.
I rolled over to the right, still not sure of what was happening, not quite understanding what I was witnessing.
And then it clicked.
It clicked. Hard.
I didn’t totally understand still. I wasn’t sure how it was possible. How this was happening.
But slowly, I started to see movement.
Really fast movement.
There was someone attacking Catalyst.
Someone really quick.
“A hand here would be nice!”
Right away, I flew at Catalyst. As too did Stone, Vortex, Cassie and Damon.
The five of us hurtled toward him. He was totally cornered now. And we were strong. Together, we were strong.
Catalyst looked around at us as we all surrounded him, that speedy attacker still flying at him, disorienting him, sending him out of control.
Then when we were inches away and I was about to fire a blast of ice at him, Catalyst turned and looked right at me.
“You’ll never take the Failsafe from me.”
“Want a bet?”
He smiled, blood dribbling down his chin. “There are things you still don’t understand. Goodbye, Glacies.”
I shot the ice at him.
Cassie and Damon fired purple electricity at him.
Stone pulled his fists back and went to crack them either side of his head.
Vortex’s eyes rolled back and prepared to send him into a bout of nightmares.
But before we could attack, Catalyst had gone.
We all stopped ourselves before we could attack. With the exception of Damon, who accidentally sent four blasts of electricity into the sky, much to the derision of Stone.
“This guy’s a new troop of ours?” he grunted.
Damon blushed. “Sorry. I… I guess I just…”
Whatever Damon said next, I didn’t process. Not really.
Because there was somebody opposite me who I hadn’t seen for a long time.
Someone I thought we’d lost. A casualty of the Resistance.
At the very least, I was convinced their powers were gone.
But not on that evidence. Not on that evidence at all.
She slowed down and finally came into view. When she did, she smiled at me. “Surprise,” she said.
“Roadrunner,” I said, unable to keep the smile from my face.
33
“So what now?”
They weren’t the three words I was hoping for, really. Because whenever anyone asked “what now?” usually it was directed at me, especially if it was ULTRA related.
A few days ago, I would’ve recoiled at being asked what the plan was. I would’ve shaken my head, done everything I could to avoid making a decision.
But circumstances had changed. The stakes had changed.
Catalyst had got away again. He still had the Failsafe.
And stronger than my will to no longer be a hero—to give up my Glacies status—was the urge to get that Failsafe back and take Catalyst down. Even if that meant the whole world finding out I had abilities once more.
“Glacies?” Stone asked. “You just gonna stand there looking like a tool or you actually gonna pitch in here?”
I looked around at Stone. By his side, Vo
rtex. Cassie. Damon. And now Roadrunner. I smiled when I saw Roadrunner. I still couldn’t believe she was back. And sure, there was a bit of guilt there about the way things had gone when we’d last fought alongside each other. But mostly it seemed like water under the bridge.
She hadn’t said a lot. She’d appeared out of nowhere. So I had to assume all was good, anyway.
She hadn’t tried to kill me. Yet. That had to count for something.
“Where’d he come from?” Vortex asked. “How… how’d he find us?”
“I can answer that,” Roadrunner said, stepping forward and breaking her silence.
In her hands, she held some kind of device. A tablet device.
“I found this tucked in his pants.”
Stone’s eyes widened. “You went down his pants?”
“All in the name of saving the world, I guess.”
She put it in my hands.
It was a tablet-style computer. And on that tablet, in the middle of the screen, a blinking red dot. Surrounding that blinking red dot, a Google Maps style overlay.
And when I zoomed out, it didn’t take a genius for me to figure out that this was a map pointing out where I was.
I was the red dot.
“How did—ow!”
I felt pain in the back of my neck. A real searing pain, like something had stung me.
But then when I saw Roadrunner’s bloodied hand holding on to something, I realized I hadn’t been stung at all.
“Looks like you had some kind of tracking device put inside you,” Roadrunner said. “A way of him figuring out where you’re at.”
I frowned. “But… but he’s never had long enough to do that to me.”
“Then maybe someone else did it to you. I dunno. You’re the genius. Figure it out.”
I frowned as I looked at the little metal chip Roadrunner had dropped into my palm. That thing had been in my neck all this time? When had Catalyst done that to me? When could he possibly have…
It clicked, then.
Maybe Catalyst didn’t do it to me at all.
Maybe Michael Williamson did it to me to keep an eye on where I was at. I didn’t exactly give him my approval, but it’d make sense.
The bad news?
If my suspicions were right, then that meant something bad had happened to Michael Williamson. Something terrible, for him to have to give up his tracking device.
But even so. Why was Catalyst so determined to find me when he had the Failsafe?
What more did he want?
“So I asked a while ago but nobody’s answered me,” Stone said, gritting his teeth quite audibly. “What the hell’s the plan?”
I wanted to answer Stone. But I was still too curious about Roadrunner’s return to think about anything else.
“While you were away,” I said, walking right up to Roadrunner. “Your powers. How did you…”
She turned around and looked at me, narrowing her eyes. She opened her mouth, getting ready to talk. Then she smiled, shook her head. “That’s another story for another time. Another comic for another superhero. Huh?”
I wasn’t totally satisfied with the answer. But for now, I knew it’d have to do.
“What matters now is I don’t have long here to help you with what’s going on. I have my own battles to fight. My own things to think about. My own responsibilities. But I caught wind you needed help and hey, here I am. Looks like I was in the right place at the right time.”
“And we appreciate it,” I said. “Seriously.”
Roadrunner nodded. There was still a glassiness to her eyes though that hinted to me that she was still holding something back. “Anyway. Stone’s got a point. What is your plan? And don’t tell me you’ve done something stupid like given up making plans for everyone, too.”
I saw everyone looking at me, waiting for their answer.
Then behind us, I heard footsteps. Voices. I looked over my shoulder and saw people walking toward us. Locals, a whole crowd of them. They’d come out of their homes, out of hiding. They’d clearly witnessed what had happened with Catalyst.
A balding man with a thick white beard, missing a few teeth at the front, came up to me and glared at me with wide, bulging eyes. “Glacies?” he asked. “Glacies?”
I felt my stomach tense, my arms shake, and I felt myself turning in all over again, like a snail hiding inside its shell for protection.
“Glacies?” more people muttered, surrounding me. “Glacies?”
I looked over at Cassie and I saw her lowering her head. Daring me to step up. To accept who I was, finally. To stop running away from my problems and my responsibilities and to face them, head on.
“Glacies?”
Then I turned to the crowd and smiled.
I took a deep breath.
Tensed my fists.
Ice spread up my arms, and I hovered just above them.
“Glacies,” I said, nodding. “Glacies.”
I saw the momentary shock and panic on their faces and for a moment I was convinced they were going to start attacking me.
Instead, they fell to their knees and started cheering. Applauding. Crying, even.
As I looked around at the people of this small Indonesian village then, I knew how much I was needed. How much my order, my status, was respected.
I knew that I might be ready to finish being Glacies.
But the world wasn’t ready for Glacies to go away just yet.
And it was time to honor that.
34
Catalyst sat alone with the Failsafe, gradually feeling weaker.
It was dark where he was, in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It was cool at night. So cool. Hard to believe a place so warm in the day could be so cool at night. But he liked the solitude. He liked being away from everyone else. He liked being at one with the darkness that he was cast under by his lack of vision, anyway.
Besides, he needed time to recharge.
It started with the showdown with Glacies. He’d been so close to ramming him into the ground. So close to finishing him off. Or at least creating the illusion that he’d finished him off. Because Catalyst had no intentions of finishing Glacies off at all. Glacies was important.
But if he could just make everyone else think that Glacies was finished, well, it’d be easier for the world to understand. It’d be easier to succeed at his goals without much of a fight.
His ears were ringing. He could taste vomit and blood creeping up his throat. Every inch of his body shook, like he had a nasty fever. He wasn’t sure how long he’d felt this ill. He couldn’t pinpoint it, not exactly.
Only that he’d started feeling weaker every time he used his abilities.
That came to a head when he’d been attacked when he was so close to making Glacies disappear with him just hours ago.
He’d been so close. Then some ULTRA he didn’t know about attacked him, disoriented him. And usually he’d be fine just swatting another ULTRA away, like the pest they were. Usually, he’d have the composure and the strength to deal with them.
But not this time.
This time, he’d been unable to recompose himself. He’d kept on getting attacked by that ULTRA, who could move extremely fast, and in the end it had distracted him, disoriented him.
He’d floated there, the remains of the Resistance flying at him, and he’d had a choice. Keep on fighting, or retreat.
And he’d chosen retreat.
As much as he needed Glacies, he’d chosen to retreat.
He leaned back, his neck stiff. He could feel the smooth metal of the Failsafe in his hand. He knew his tracking device was gone. That’d make locating Glacies much more difficult.
But it wasn’t going to stop him.
It wasn’t going to get in his way.
It couldn’t. Because if he let it get in his way, then everything he’d spent so many years working toward was over.
He looked up at the sky and sensed its blackness, its emptiness. And yet it wasn’t empty. Not at
all. There were so many stars up there. And around those stars, there were so many more planets. An uncountable number.
And that was only in this universe.
He didn’t even want to think about the other universes that must be out there. The universes that existed in some kind of parallel reality to his own.
He just knew he could feel something getting closer.
Something accelerating rapidly toward this universe, toward this galaxy, toward this planet.
And whatever it was, it was making him feel sicker.
Which is why he had to activate the Failsafe before he didn’t have the strength left to do so.
He stood up, stumbling to his feet. He took a few steadying breaths of the cool desert air. Total silence all around him. Well. It would’ve been to someone else. But Catalyst could hear every flutter of a bird’s wing miles away. He could hear the footstep of an insect; smell the aviation fuel of an airplane passing overhead.
He steadied his breathing and then he looked back up at the sky, feeling that gravitational pull dragging something closer. Something he didn’t totally understand. Something he wasn’t even sure he’d be alive to face, head on.
Then he looked down at the Failsafe, caressed it between his fingers.
He’d find Glacies because of what he’d learned from Michael Williamson when he put him through unimaginable pain.
The Failsafe was not complete without the Source.
The pair of them went together, like a key in a lock.
And he knew exactly where to get to the Source. How to get to the Source.
But he had to find a new tactic, now he’d lost his tracking device. He had to find a way to draw that source toward him. Like squeezing puss from a zit.
And he had an idea.
He had a very good idea.
He bent his knees and jumped up into the sky, leaving a shockwave of dust beneath.
He’d draw Glacies toward him.
And this time, when he’d lured him close, he’d be ready.
There was no room for failure.
Not anymore.
35
