“Perhaps I can help.” It was Appleton. He stepped through from the balcony, the swirl of the gate behind him. The office caught his attention and he looked around in wonderment. “Fascinating.”
Charlotte looked startled at his sudden appearance. He walked past her to the edge of the desk and leaned on it for support. He stared down at his twin.
“We return to my world,” Appleton said. “Brendan’s world. Let me call off the guards, and we can talk. You can either send me back to your Earth to destroy the machine, or go yourself. We close off all the machinery and destroy it. I’ll find a place for your father.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, don’t trust him,” the other headmaster said. “We’ve spoken, he and I. He wants what I want and will never relinquish control. Charlotte, with your guidance I can correct the problems with the machine. I see you’ve mastered it. You can help me, even oversee the program. But it’s too important a discovery to just switch off. We can work to correct any wrongs committed. If it turns out we need to dismantle what I’ve made and start anew, I will listen.”
Brendan found this exchange surreal, as both sounded the same, looked the same, and apparently wanted the same thing. Charlotte clenched her jaw.
“Lots to think about,” Brendan said to her. He examined the ring on his finger
“You should give it to me,” Charlotte said.
“Maybe. But that will leave you with all the cards. Let’s pass through. Let’s get back to where most of us belong, at least. The longer we stay here, the more complicated this will become.”
“Go on. Check on Tina. I’ll be right behind you.”
He approached the swirl in the air, still uncertain if he was supposed to do anything. He found himself holding his breath as he stepped forward.
***
Brendan had never been on the admin building’s fifth-floor balcony in person before. It wasn’t large and had no furniture or anything else to inform him as to which Earth it belonged to. He looked down and realized that if the gate had opened a few more feet away, the fall would have been fatal. Cold air came from the office, yet hot air blew out from vents he hadn’t seen before.
But he was home. Inside the office, the desk was made of dark wood.
Tina still lay on the floor. He checked on her. She was breathing, her pulse strong. The knockout drug, if it was like anything his real father concocted, would last about an hour. He got both arms under her shoulders and lifted. She was heavier than he expected, but he managed to shuffle towards the outer office and plop her on the couch.
Officer Foster and Officer Glenn, along with a third guard, came in through the door to the hallway.
“There you are,” Foster said.
Brendan was up and backing away into the office. Foster unholstered a pistol. “Brendan Garza. I told you you were on my radar. Now you’re in my sights. I’m sure we can come up with some sort of plausible story to explain your disappearance. Troubled home, troubled life follows youth to prestigious school.”
Officer Glenn was smirking, clearly taking pleasure from the promise of violence. The third officer looked surprised at the gun being drawn but didn’t say anything. Foster wasn’t quite pointing the pistol at Brendan, but it was being waved about in his direction.
Brendan dove for the balcony and the gate. He felt nothing and wasn’t sure he had passed through again until he almost collided with Charlotte on the other side. He pushed her away as Foster and Glenn came stepping though.
“This makes it easier, being here,” Foster said.
He thinks he’s on his own Earth. Then Brendan saw confusion cloud Foster’s face. He was looking at both headmasters standing by the blond wood desk.
“Grab her,” one of them said, pointing at Charlotte.
“Put that gun away, you idiot,” said the other.
Glenn lunged for Brendan. Brendan twisted away, knowing that if he was taken hold of he wouldn’t be able to break free. Glenn was ungainly but fast as he chased after him. Brendan picked up the first thing he could lay his hands on: the brass submarine from the shelf. He pitched it at Officer Glenn.
It struck him in the chest with a meaty thwack, and the man doubled over coughing. Brendan had never thrown anything that hard. This was the downstream Earth effect: Nurse Dreyfus’s special water boost had felt like this. He was stronger, which meant Charlotte’s father and the security guards were stronger still. But judging by Officer Glenn’s pained expression, they weren’t invulnerable.
Foster leveled the pistol at Brendan. “That’s enough. Hands where I can see them.”
“Stop aiming that gun at children,” a headmaster said.
But Foster clearly had figured it out. “I don’t take orders from you. What do we do with them?”
Charlotte’s father was up and moving towards her. Charlotte had her hand on her glove and was pushing at the button. Whatever she was trying to do wasn’t working.
“Don’t do this, Father,” she said.
“Hand over your tools,” he said. “It’s time to take you home.”
As he got closer, she slumped in defeat. The strong-willed independent girl had lost out, and she nodded slowly in surrender. Then her finger released a button on her glove. The shimmer behind her vanished. With a gesture, she waved the glove in Foster’s direction. The air melted around him and he disappeared.
“Enough of this.” The headmaster grabbed her glove arm.
Brendan grabbed at the closest thing to him. Myron Reece made for a poor missile, but Brendan snatched him up and flung him as hard as he could at the headmaster. They went down in a pile of limbs, and the headmaster was knocked unconscious. Brendan was laughing. He could hardly believe how easy it was to pick the man up and how satisfying the sound of the collision was. He felt an instant pang of guilt at finding joy in the violence.
“Get them through,” Charlotte said.
They pitched Myron, the more or less compliant Officer Glenn, and the headmaster into the new gate.
“What’s to stop Foster from coming right back?” Brendan asked.
Charlotte went to the desk. Appleton got out of the way. She took the massive piece of furniture and shoved it towards the gate. Sure enough, Foster appeared, gun in hand, standing with his back to them as he got oriented. He turned, saw the desk coming, and jumped back through the gate. Brendan put his hands on the desk to help her. They sent the piece of furniture forward and into another world.
“The gate I just opened is right next to the other one. Anything that goes more than a couple of steps through takes a trip through the next gate to my world.”
Brendan wondered what effect the desk from downstream would have on the one upstream if they touched.
“What’s next?” he asked. “That won’t stop anyone for long.”
She touched her glove. The gate vanished and a new one opened near the office’s double doors. She gestured them through.
They were back in his world. The dark desk here was still in its place and the artifacts on the shelves matched what Brendan knew was supposed to be there. In that moment, all he cared about was that he was home.
“Thank god,” Appleton said. “This has been all too much.”
“Quickly, Brendan,” Charlotte said. “Use the ring and close the gate to my world.”
Brendan moved through the chilly room and waved at the air. The distortion disappeared and he felt the room began to warm. Charlotte made her own gesture and the gate to the downstream Earth closed.
The third security guard stood there, mouth agape. He turned and ran.
“Let him go,” Charlotte said. “I think he actually belongs here.”
“Your dad and the others?”
“They’re home. You turned the machine off.”
“We still need to find Brian and Paul,” Brendan said. Charlotte nodded. “And your father’s machine has to be destroyed from his side. Will your gate take us to his world?”
“No. I managed to connect to the one downstream
only. I have no way of connecting to home. My dad’s ring can still connect, but even his machine only ties together two worlds at a time.”
“When do we go back over?”
“Soon.”
25. The Morning-After Bitter Pill
The Poser and Paul from Not-Earth sat in the headmaster’s chairs, looking confused. They kept a careful eye on Appleton as if expecting that any moment the man would attack them. Perhaps the other one had. Brendan had no idea what the two boys had been through, but his gut gnawed at him as he wondered where his friend was. He even felt bad for the real Paul stuck over on the parallel Earth.
Five security guards brought Lucille and Vlad to the office. Brendan waited at the door. Charlotte remained at the ready with her glove recharged. If any of the security staff were from Not-Earth and tried anything, Charlotte said she had enough juice to send one of them away to the downstream Earth or to drop a portal in the middle of them. They’d still be horribly outnumbered, but the effect of such a display might dissuade the others, especially if Charlotte embellished upon where exactly she could send people.
“Tell them you’ll send them back in time,” Tina whispered. “Like to the Jurassic period. Or Triassic. Or Pleistocene. Saber-toothed tigers everywhere.” She hadn’t stopped talking since the drug from the drone wore off.
“That’s a good suggestion,” Charlotte said.
“Explain it to me again what happened on the third Earth,” Tina said.
“Later, okay?” Brendan said. “We’ve got a lot on our plate right now.”
“I just think we should know if people from there or Charlotte’s world are going to start showing up. We’re going to get invaded by two other Earths, and we’re just sitting here with our pants down.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Says you.”
Appleton asked the guards to step out into the waiting room and closed the door without offering an explanation.
Brendan caught the others up with what had happened. He hoped Charlotte would step in to clarify, but she let him speak and only nodded occasionally. He concluded by telling them they had to open the gate to the world he had dubbed Not-Earth once again so they could rescue Poser and Paul. If their own security guards would listen to the real headmaster, they might have enough backup. Brendan hoped that the nurse would show up. Charlotte had left her a message and asked her to come. With more of the special water, a rescue began to sound feasible.
“Let me get this straight,” Lucille said. She was rubbing at her wrists, where angry red lines marked where the restraints had bitten into her skin. “You think we can open the door back up to Not-Earth and have them just hand over Poser and Paul?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Brendan said. “That headmaster’s game is up. He can’t just come back here without a fight. There’s nothing to be gained by keeping anyone prisoner.”
“Agreed,” said their headmaster. “We need to set everything straight. Are you sure you don’t want me to go across alone and talk to him?”
“I’m sure. My apologies, but I don’t trust you enough. I’ll go. You have your security here. We’ll be able to respond to anything they might try. If we have to, we’ll go there in numbers, but I hope nothing that dramatic will be necessary.”
He looked at Charlotte. Charlotte checked her phone and shook her head. They couldn’t wait any longer for the nurse.
“Going alone sounds dumb,” Tina said.
“Once I’m there, if I see anything I can’t handle, I come right back. We can’t risk anyone else.”
“What do you want me to do?” Vlad asked.
“Keep everyone here once I go over. No one else goes through.”
Brendan got nods from everyone except Appleton. Brendan waited, and the man finally said, “Go ahead.”
Brendan went to the phantom spot where he could access the machine on Not-Earth and touched the air. He flexed his hand, then repeated the motion several times. The gate didn’t open.
As he kept waving his hand about like he was trying to catch an evasive moth, Lucille said, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Charlotte came up behind him. “It’s gone.”
They all stared at her for a moment in silence.
“I thought the ring activated the machine’s power,” Brendan said.
“It can. But if the machine was unplugged or the generator turned off, the ring won’t do anything.”
“What does that mean?” Poser asked, his voice full of worry.
“My father or someone else broke the connection,” Charlotte said. “It means until they plug it back in, you’re here to stay.”
“But I want to go back. The other Mr. Appleton said when it was over I could. This place feels so wrong. It’s hard to even breathe.”
“We’ll figure out how to fix this,” Tina said.
“What other options do we have to get back to the other Earth?” Brendan asked.
“Not-Earth,” Lucille corrected.
“Maybe this is Not-Earth,” Tina said, “and theirs is the normal one.”
“They’re all Earths, just different,” Charlotte said. “But the machine is the only option. All we can do is wait for someone to turn the machine’s generator back on.”
“Poser’s not well. We need to get him back.”
“I don’t have all the answers. I know that being here made me sick for a while. Maybe it was psychological, having things being so close to the same yet not. But there was a physical side as well. It took time.”
“I can help with that.” Nurse Dreyfus entered the office. She had on a dark peacoat. With her hair down and with no makeup, she looked like she had just rolled out of bed, but her face held the usual serene look.
She approached the headmaster. He shrank in his chair as she got close. She ran her fingertips along the surface of his desk and then looked around at everyone gathered. She brightened as she considered Poser and Paul.
“If you boys will allow me, I’ll see if I can make you more comfortable.”
“It’s true,” Charlotte said. “You can trust her.”
They hesitated. Paul got up first, and Poser followed. The nurse led them out of the office.
“You’ll explain her role in all of this eventually, right?” Brendan asked.
Charlotte nodded towards the bookcase. “Try one more time. To be sure.”
It didn’t open. And when Charlotte tried to get the ring back, Brendan said, “No. I’m going to hang on to this for a little while.”
Tina pointed to the headmaster. “And what about him?”
One of the security guards stood in the doorway, obviously nervous. The man looked to the headmaster for guidance, but Sperry Appleton had sunk into his chair, a hand covering his eyes.
“Mr. Appleton will continue to look after the interests of the students under his charge,” Brendan said. “Won’t you?”
“I will,” the headmaster said, still not looking up. “But I believe I’ll need to change offices.”
“Probably a good idea.”
***
Brendan walked out of the building and was surprised to see that the sky was starting to lighten. He left campus and found himself at the Bean. The lights were on and the door open. He didn’t see Champ, but the television was on. A pair of local kids were at one table drinking iced coffees. They ignored him, their eyes fixed on the monitor. It took a moment for Brendan to realize the program wasn’t a canned recording but an actual live report.
“Information Denial Attack Over?” read the bright-red bottom half of the screen. The question was accompanied by a busy stack of scrolling feeds that marched right to left at different speeds. Brendan took a chair and watched, a tired smile crossing his face. It comforted him to see that the world still existed.
The news update covered the ongoing investigation into the bomb that had gone off in the financial district in the middle of the Mannequin Gang robbery and the subsequent supers fight. It turned out that a
lmost a hundred people had died, including most of the costumed participants. Silver Eagle had been hospitalized but was expected to be released shortly. Several villains and at least one hero tried taking responsibility for the bomb, but the FBI had taken into custody one Robert Smith, the father of a woman who had been killed during a supers fight one year prior in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Smith had called to turn himself in, stating that he had underestimated the force of the explosives he had planted inside his van.
“Is this the beginning of a supers backlash?” the anchor asked.
There were too many unanswered questions for Brendan’s comfort, most of which surrounded the headmaster from Not-Earth. Charlotte had to know more than she was telling. But for now, the gate was closed. If the other headmaster still lived, he could no doubt make a duplicate of the ring and could reopen the door eventually. The admin building was being evacuated and sealed. What happened next was slipping out of Brendan’s hands, and he was tired enough to be fine with that.
The real headmaster had made phone calls, and real police officers were now on campus. Brendan had slipped away before he could be questioned, but what did the authorities actually know?
His phone came to life. It buzzed and kept buzzing. Notifications of missed messages, missed calls, voicemails, and necessary updates began to pile up, the backlog of data-age flotsam rushing in like a minor tsunami. Most of the phone calls were from his mother, but not all. There were a half dozen others from different phone numbers, all in the New York area. It took him a few tries to get the voicemails to play. He put the phone’s data on pause, as all of his apps were trying to connect and vying for primacy.
He listened to the last message, which had no caller ID. He heard his father’s voice.
“I know your phone is probably still out,” his dad said. “I’m on another landline, a different number, just to check in to see how you’re holding up with the emergency. An update from my end. You might have seen or heard some news—I’m fine. I checked myself out from the hospital, if you know what I mean. I got a place lined up that will get me patched up with a few less questions. Anyway, we’ll have to talk once the phones start working, as it’s been too long. Stupid hackers. Now that you’re out west, I realize how far away you are, and it’s killing me.”
The Supervillain High Boxed Set: Books One - Three of the Supervillain High Series Page 22
