by Lucas Flint
But the most shocking aspect of the situation was not Thaumaturge or Hopper. Instead, it was the very young man—probably eighteen-years-old or so—lying on his back in the bed, in the same spot where Sagan had been lying in a coma mere moments before.
The young man had dark, almost black, hair that was messy and wild. He wasn’t particularly strong or muscular, but he looked healthier than the old man who had been lying there moments before. His skin was clear and clean, with nary a wrinkle in sight. He looked like your average American teenager, though unconscious.
Then the young man stirred and moaned. He raised a hand to his head and rubbed his forehead, his eyes flickering open. He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes puzzled, as he said, “What … happened? Where am I?”
“Master,” said Thaumaturge, his voice tight with anticipation. “Do you remember who you are?”
The young man looked at Thaumaturge. The confusion in his eyes rapidly melted away, replaced with recognition. “Edward? Is that you?”
“Yes, master, it is me, your faithful and loyal servant, Edward Welling,” said Thaumaturge, putting his hands together like he was praying to his god. “It has taken me longer than I thought, but I have finally saved you, just as I swore to do when you were first captured.”
The young man blinked. He suddenly looked down at his hands. “Wait … my hands. They are so … young.”
“Indeed they are,” said Thaumaturge. “Because they have to be, if you are going to lead us in creating a just and equal world.”
I stifled a gasp. It was impossible. There was no way that this teen could be who I thought he was. But if he wasn’t … then where was …
“Yes, I understand,” said the young man. “I wasn’t complaining, Edward. I was just expressing my astonishment. After all, I was a man in my seventies not even five minutes ago. But now, I am young again … and it feels wonderful.”
I stiffened. “Barnabas Sagan?”
Sagan suddenly looked at me with his young, dark eyes. At first, there was no recognition in his eyes; but slowly, that changed. He sat up in his bed, his body frail and skinny, and he threw his covers off his legs and swung his legs over the side of his bed.
“Master, wait,” said Thaumaturge in alarm as Sagan rose from the bed, using the railing for support as he tore away the life support tubes on his chest and arms. “You still need to rest.”
“Rest? I’ve rested long enough, Edward,” said Sagan. He rose to his full height, turning his head to the left and to the right, probably to get rid of the tightness that had developed in his neck. “There is no rest for the righteous. Or when I want revenge against those who would try to take my life.”
A moan at his feet caused him to look down. Hopper still lay on the ground, looking more like a corpse than an old person now. Hopper managed to raise his head—a gesture that seemed to take all of his effort—and said, in an ancient voice, “Leader, you are alive.”
“I am,” said Sagan. He patted his chest. “Did you give me your youth in order to give me a new body?”
“Yes, sir,” said Hopper. He coughed and hacked for a moment. “Just as we planned, sir.”
“What?” I said in shock. “You mean you gave up your youth to Sagan?”
“Indeed,” said Thaumaturge, causing me to look at him. “That was the plan all along, you know. We were never interested in merely rescuing Sagan. We wanted to make him young and strong again so that he could effectively lead Vision to glory.”
“But how?” I said. “How did you do that?”
Thaumaturge gestured at the machine that lay next to Hopper on the ground. “A portable Rejuvenator. You are familiar with it, yes?”
I nodded. “Yeah. My grandmother had one built to take my youth away from me. But I thought that the G-Men took it into custody after her death.”
“They did, but through our own methods, we managed to get a hold of its specs so we could make our own,” said Thaumaturge. “Technical then built a smaller, portable one that we planned to use to restore our leader’s youth. And it appears that it worked brilliantly, given how young and handsome our leader has become.”
“Indeed,” said Sagan, opening and closing his hands, like he had never seen such interesting things before. “Modern science is truly amazing. Where would we be without it?”
“Did you always plan for Hopper to be the one to do it?” I said.
“Actually, the original plan was for you to use the Rejuvenator,” said Thaumaturge. “That way, we would restore Sagan’s youth while turning you into a crippled old man who couldn’t stop us. It would have taken out two birds with one stone, but alas, you went rogue before we could put the final stage of the plan into action; therefore, Hopper volunteered to be the one to give up his youth.”
“And I would do it again, all for the glory of our leader,” said Hopper. He coughed again. “I would even die for him.”
“Yes, you would,” said Sagan, “but that is not necessary. Not yet. We still need your powers in order to flee.”
“Yes, leader,” said Hopper, who sounded overjoyed at Sagan speaking to him. “I will use what little strength I have left to save us.”
“But not yet,” said Sagan. He looked over at me, hatred on his features. “I don’t want to leave until I get my revenge.”
“What?” said Thaumaturge in disbelief. “I am sorry, dear leader, but we must leave right away. Bolt has already defeated Incantation, Sarah, and Technical. No doubt G-Men agents are already on their way. And Hanson has already set up a safe house for us to flee to; if we waste any time here, we risk losing everything we’ve worked for.”
Sagan looked at Thaumaturge with the most disgusted expression on his face. “Do you question me, Edward?”
“No, I would never question you, sir,” said Thaumaturge, holding up his hands to pacify Sagan. “I trust in your words always. I, too, believe in the vision of an equal and just world where no one will be oppressed by false social constructs. I am merely saying that it would be wiser for us to leave, even if that means allowing Bolt to live, than it would be to waste time here killing him.”
Sagan tapped his chin in thought. “Yes, yes, you make a good point. Revenge is usually a waste of time. But do you know what else is a waste of time?”
Thaumaturge shook his head. “No, sir. What?”
“Questioning my wisdom,” said Sagan.
Sagan’s brow narrowed. Thaumaturge’s eyes widened in horror and his hands flew to his head, but then Thaumaturge’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed into a heap on the floor. Blood leaked from his ears and nostrils and he was so still that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dead.
“Edward was always a doubter and complainer,” said Sagan. He rubbed his forehead. “But I have never crushed an individual’s mind so quickly before. My newly gained youth must have given me a sizable power increase as well. I’ll take it.”
Then Sagan looked at me. A mad grin crossed his youthful features, a grin that made me feel uncomfortable. “But you … I’m not going to kill you as quickly as Edward. I think I will make your death as slow and painful as possible. I will put you into such a deep coma that you will never recover. How does that sound?”
I struggled to break the metal rings that Thaumaturge had put around me, but despite the fact that he was dead, the rings were still as strong as ever. I was now convinced that they were reinforced by magic, but that was pretty irrelevant at the moment when I had no idea how to even break them.
Sagan ran a hair through his dark hair as he walked over to me. His eyes were wide and crazy, made even worse by the knowledge that his mental abilities had been boosted beyond their normal strength. “Bolt, Kevin … whatever you go by, do you know what it was like to be in a coma for nine months?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“I don’t, either, because I was in a coma for nine months!” Sagan yelled. He got right up in my face. “But there was one thing I was conscious of
the whole time: My seething hatred for you.”
Sagan poked me in the chest with his index finger. “By all rights, I should be dead. I should have died sometime since then, but I didn’t. Why? Because my hatred gave me a will to live, a will to survive. I did not know what Thaumaturge and the others were doing, but I knew that someday, I would be free again.”
Sagan put his hands on my head. Although he was a lot skinnier than me, his grip on my head was nonetheless strong. He began squeezing his hands against my head, which wasn’t painful, but uncomfortable, though I sensed a pressure on my mind as well.
“And now, I am not only free, I am young again,” said Sagan with relish. “It has been sixty years since I was last eighteen. I forgot how … energetic it was. I feel like I could run a mile, do heavy manual labor, and make love to my girlfriend all in one day, and still have plenty of energy leftover for anything else. Do you feel that way, too?”
“No,” I said. “I feel better, actually, but thanks for asking.”
Sagan’s twisted grin turned into an angry scowl. “Don’t sass me, boy.”
Suddenly, my brain started hurting. It felt like someone had placed a giant clamp around my brain and was starting to squeeze it. I tried to scream, but Sagan covered my mouth with his hand.
“No, no, no,” said Sagan, shaking his head. “Screaming relieves pain. I don’t want you to experience relief. Relief is only for the innocent. You are not innocent. You ruined my plans, along with that damn detective. I am going to go after him, too, once I kill you, and then Plutarch, and then every other person in this damn world who opposed me. Even June—that damn bitch whose bumbling incompetence put me in a coma in the first place—yes, I will tear her mind apart piece by piece, and she will be awake for every moment of it.”
The pain in my head was growing worse. I remembered what it had felt like the first time Sagan had used his mind powers on me; it had been very painful, but this was worse and I could tell that Sagan was not putting in half as much effort into this one as he did the first time he’d tried to destroy my mind. I wanted to open my mouth and scream, but I couldn’t utter even one word due to Sagan holding my mouth shut.
“I see the begging in your eyes, boy,” said Sagan. “Perhaps I even see your sanity slowing starting to shatter. Maybe, instead of killing you, I’ll just leave you a blubbering mess of a creature that generates feelings of disgust even from your own friends and family. How would that feel?”
There was no way I could have responded even if Sagan hadn’t been holding my mouth shut. The pain … oh, god, it was like someone was dragging a long, jagged knife through the middle of my brain. I could barely think. My consciousness was rapidly slipping away from me, even though I was well aware that if I blacked out, I would die.
“And I see you have a girlfriend, too,” said Sagan. “Oh, she will no doubt be horrified when she sees what I will do to you. You know what? I think I’ll add her onto my list of enemies. She’s never done anything against me, true, but she is precious to you and I believe that the best way to hurt an enemy is to destroy what they value most.”
Sagan moved in closer, his face so close now that I could feel his breath on my face. “Do you know what I value most, boy? If you did, you might be able to harm me. But I’m not going to tell you. You won’t need to know it, anyway, because soon you will be dead, and the dead can’t harm their enemies.”
Anger shot through me when Sagan said that. I wasn’t going to let him harm Blizzard or anyone else I cared for. The anger burst through Sagan’s mental attack, even causing Sagan to gasp and remove of one of his hands from my head.
“What’s this?” said Sagan. Then he smiled in a twisted way. “Yes, feel the anger. I hope you are angry. I hope you hate me. Because that is how I felt toward you for nine months; angry and powerless, just like how you feel now.”
I barely paid attention to Sagan’s words. Instead, I let my anger fill me, give me strength, and I felt the rings starting to give way under my struggling.
Sagan, however, didn’t seem to notice. He just continued speaking like everything was normal. “Inflicting pain on my enemies—the same pain they inflicted on me—is one of my favorite things to do. You don’t have long now. Soon, your mind will no longer exist … and then the whole world and everyone you love will suffer.”
That’s it. With a heave of my shoulders, I snapped the rings off me. A look of pure horror appeared on Sagan’s face before I punched him in the chest as hard as I could.
And I hit him hard. He flew backwards, smashing through the walls of the facility. He didn’t just smash through the wall into the next room; my blow sent him flying through several walls, smashing through wall after wall until he was out of my sight entirely. It made me realize just how big this place was.
But eventually, I stopped hearing him smashing through walls. I couldn’t see him anymore, but given how the mental pressure on my mind had faded now, I knew that Barnabas Sagan was finally, truly dead.
Then I heard a moan from the floor and looked down to see Hopper lying on the floor by the bed where he’d fallen. His ancient eyes watered as he looked over at the Sagan-shaped hole in the wall, his lips trembling.
“Leader …” Hopper said, the emotion in his voice distorting his words. Tears started to flow down his face. “Leader, no …”
“He’s dead,” I said, lowering my fist. “That means that Vision is finished.”
I expected Hopper to get up and try to fight me, since he was the only Visionist left, but instead he just put his hands on his face and began crying. He cried and cried, and for once, I actually felt sorry for a member of Vision, despite everything they’d put me through over the last year or so.
Chapter Sixteen
Then I heard footsteps behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see Shade—who was rubbing her forehead like she’d smacked it against something—step through the doorway. She looked from Thaumaturge’s corpse, to the hole in the wall where I’d punched Sagan through, to Hopper lying on the floor crying his eyes out, and then at me with a very confused look on her face.
“Okay,” said Shade. “I’m not sure I want to know what happened here.”
“It’s a long, crazy story,” I said. “But all you need to know is that Sagan is dead. That means that Vision is no more.”
Shade sighed in relief. “What a relief. Cadmus will be very happy to learn about that.”
“I think everyone will be,” I said, turning to face her. “Vision has caused many people in this country a lot of trouble, including me and my friends. And a cancer has finally been removed from the superhero community.”
“Yeah,” said Shade. “Then again, there are probably still some Visionists in hiding somewhere out there, given how secretive they were.”
“Probably,” I said. “But I doubt they’ll reveal themselves now. They’ll probably just fade into obscurity and try to keep themselves from being found out and ostracized or rejected.”
“Nah,” said Shade, shaking her head. “My guess is that Cadmus will have us hunt them down. Once we get Hanson’s Mansion under our control, I bet we’ll find a bunch of files on the identities and locations of each Visionist who wasn’t here. I imagine that, in a year, we’ll have tracked down and captured every last one of those bastards.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I rubbed the back of my head. “Wish I could help, but I will probably have to go back to the Neohero Alliance and the Young Neos after this. My friends are waiting for me, after all. They need to know that I’m still alive.”
Shade nodded, but then frowned. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
I looked at Shade in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Go back to the NHA and the Young Neos,” said Shade. “I noticed that you and I make a pretty good team. Maybe you should join the G-Men. I think you would make a great agent, and not just because you are powerful.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Sorry, Shade, but you already asked me this the first t
ime we met, remember? At the time, Dad said I couldn’t, but I’ve decided since then that I don’t really want to, either. I’m much happier with the Young Neos.”
“Are you sure?” said Shade. “We could use someone like you, you know.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Being manipulated and tricked by Vision just made me realize how much I value my teammates, plus the adults in the NHA like Mecha Knight and the others. I’m willing to work with the G-Men on missions like these, but aside from those occasional team-ups, I’m not interested in joining.”
Shade looked incredibly disappointed by my answer. “Then I guess that’s your answer.” She looked down at her feet. “Damn it. I was hoping it would be something else.”
“I don’t see what you’re so disappointed about,” I said. “You should have seen this answer coming. You know how I feel about the G-Men.”
“I know, but Cadmus said that if you agreed to join, I wouldn’t have to do …” Shade trailed off. She looked almost guilty now, even though she hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Do what?” I said.
Shade looked at me guiltily. “Please forgive me for this.”
Before I could ask her what ‘this’ is, Shade pulled out what looked like a charger from her pocket. She pressed a red button on top of it, making a small beep that I almost missed.
Immediately, the earcom in my left ear—the one I used to communicate with Cadmus—suddenly became electrified. I gasped in pain and reached for the earcom, but another jolt of electricity sent me to my knees. I tried to stand, but every time I moved, more electricity would go through my body and I would sink even further down onto the floor.
I looked up at Shade. She stood above me, her thumb on the charger’s button, her face still quite guilty.
“Shade …” I grunted in pain. “What are you—”
“Sorry,” said Shade again. “You’ll understand once this is all over. Cadmus told me to do it. Trust me, if I had my way, I wouldn’t be harming you at all.”
