“We’re going to stop the robot,” she said, as if I’d asked her what colour was the sky. “We have the element of surprise.”
She needed a reality check. “Uh, we’re in here with a villain wearing a powered suit that’s almost certainly designed to boost its wearer’s strength, speed and stamina, making them capable of ripping off our arms as easily as you or I would tear off a square of toilet roll and you think that we have the element of surprise?”
“If you’re scared, then stay here,” she said, padding into the hallway.
“I’m not scared,” I said, sticking out my jaw and following her.
We crept into the silent and dark hall. The front door hung awkwardly from one hinge, like a climber clinging to a mountain by his fingertips. The coloured glass panel that formed the top section lay in jagged pieces on the carpet. Next to it the hall table wobbled. I spotted a black coil wrapped around its legs and knelt down for a better look.
Plugged in to the wall socket beneath the table was what looked like a flex from a vacuum cleaner. Something tugged on the flex, causing the table to sway. I traced its path, which snaked along the carpet, out past the demolished front door. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I muttered.
I ran into the driveway only to see the back of the powered suit as its wearer pounded across the street. The flex wound its way out along the driveway and into a socket located on the back of the metal suit.
There was a sound, faint but audible. A computerised voice warbled out of the suit. Some kind of on-board tactical battle computer interface, I presumed. The voice uttered a command. “At the end of the driveway, make a slight left. You have arrived at your destination.”
The figure stomped towards a parked car, a people-carrier with blacked-out windows and no number plates. It was only as the figure paused to search the powered suit for its car keys that I saw my brother, semi-conscious, held in its massive, hydraulically boosted arms.
“Zack!” I shouted.
The figure turned at my voice. For a second we locked eyes across the street. From behind its metal mask two pinpoints glowed red. Some kind of laser rangefinder or infrared vision, I guessed. The figure opened the people-carrier door and easily tossed Zack inside.
“How do we stop it?!” yelled Lara.
Half an hour ago I’d been so angry at Zack that if someone had offered to arrange for him to be kidnapped by a supervillain in a powered exoskeleton I would have bitten their augmented hand off. But when it happened in real life, I felt differently.
“I’m on it,” I said, running back into the hallway. I dropped to my knees and slid along the carpet. Ducking beneath the table I yanked the power cable from the socket. I heard Lara’s shout. “It’s stopped moving. Hurry!”
I leapt up and bolted out of the house to save Zack.
In the road the figure stood like a statue, crippled just as it was climbing into the people-carrier, one cybernetic gloved hand clamped to the door-frame, one leg poised above the sill. But not for long. There was a hum as it rebooted under an onboard battery pack. Good for a few minutes of juice, but not as useful as mains.
The suit whirred back to life, and as we rushed towards it the figure wedged itself into the driver’s seat and fired the ignition. We were too late. The people-carrier pulled away with a crunch of gears. Without thinking I ran into the road to block its path. As I faced it down, I realised it wasn’t going to stop.
My legs were knocked from under me and I felt the breath go out of my body. I lay by the side of the road and looked up to see Lara lying on top of me. The people-carrier hadn’t struck me – she had, tackling me out of the path of the car.
We untangled ourselves and caught our breath, helpless as we watched the car disappear along Moore Street. The weight of the suit too much for the chassis; it bottomed out leaving a trail of sparks along the road like the afterburner of a fighter jet. With a complaining squeal of tyres the car turned the corner and disappeared from sight. For a second or two the silver sparks glowed in the night air and then, as they hit cold tarmac, sizzled and went out.
“We have to call the police,” said Lara, leaping to her feet.
“No. Wait.” I couldn’t let her do that. The police would ask too many questions. It was all happening too fast – I needed time to think.
“But your brother’s been kidnapped! By a … by a … what was that thing?”
“Not what,” I said. “Who.”
I had no doubt. She had chosen her moment perfectly. She had kept out of the headlines, lurking in the shadows waiting for Star Lad to be at his weakest. “That,” I said, “was Nemesis.”
20
YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE
“Who’s Nemesis?” asked Lara.
“No one,” I said hastily.
Lara stood with a hand on one hip, wearing an expression I had once observed on my PE teacher’s face just after I’d informed her that I couldn’t possibly participate in that afternoon’s dodgeball tournament owing to an old bullfighting injury.
I started to walk back towards the house, hoping she wouldn’t follow.
“Luke?” My mum stood in the gaping doorway, trying to figure out why her front door was lying in the hallway, smashed to pieces. “What happened here?”
A supervillain in a futuristic exoskeleton abducted your firstborn who, by the way, is not just a regular schoolboy but in fact the internationally famous superhero known as Star Lad…
…Is what I didn’t say.
Part of me wanted to tell her the truth. Tell her about Zack and Star Lad and Nemesis. Tell her to call the police, the army, the Justice League. But what could the police do? Nemesis was a supervillain. In comics the police are always hopeless when faced with technologically superior evil. And forget about the army – they shoot first and their weapons are always useless. And I couldn’t call on the Justice League because, well, to the best of my knowledge they weren’t real. The only actual superhero in the world was my brother. And telling Mum that would take away the last power he still had – his secret identity.
I looked into her questioning face and struggled to come up with an answer. The longer I hesitated the more I could see her suspicion grow. I had to say something. Something simple. Something believable. Something fast.
“It was a gust of wind,” said Lara.
Something like that.
“Yes! That’s it. Wind.” I jumped in, adding a great whooshing noise for effect. “Whoooshhh … whooooshhh…”
“Yes, Luke, I think your mum knows what wind sounds like.”
Mum appeared to consider Lara’s explanation. “Well,” she said at last, “there has been a lot of strange weather recently.” It was true; storm-force winds tearing up trees followed by eerily calm, cloud-filled days like the last few.
“Yes, very strange,” I agreed, nodding far too enthusiastically.
“Just so long as the two of you are all right.” So saying, Mum gathered Lara and me to her in a huge hug, her concern for the broken door replaced by motherly concern.
“We’re fine, thanks, Mrs Parker,” mumbled Lara from somewhere inside Mum’s coat.
“Where’s Zack?” asked Mum.
Uh-oh. “You know him,” I said. “Nothing disturbs him when he’s doing his homework.” Well, apart from being kidnapped by a supervillain.
Mum nodded. “I’d better clean this up before someone has an accident,” she said, picking her way across the glass-strewn hall to the cupboard under the stairs. As she rummaged inside for a dustpan and brush, she called over her shoulder, “Lara, it’s late. I think you should be going home.”
“Yes, Mrs Parker.”
“I’ll walk you,” I said. There was something I needed to say to her. In private.
“All right,” Mum said. “But come straight back.” She peeled off the vacuum snake and waved it in our direction. “And no canoodling until you’re twenty-one.”
Lara steered me through the doorway. I wasn’t sure which hit me hardest, the cold night air or
the words that she hissed in my ear: “You’re going to tell me everything. Right now. Or I’m going to march back in there, inform your mum that there was no gust of wind and tell her exactly what happened tonight.”
Could have been worse. She could have wanted to canoodle.
I took a moment to organise my thoughts. What I was about to do would change everything. The fact was that Nemesis had kidnapped Zack and it was only a matter of time before my parents realised their eldest son was not in his bedroom doing his geography homework. They’d call his friends, and when he didn’t show up after that they’d contact the police. There would be tears, an anxious wait, maybe even a TV appeal for information ending with a heartfelt plea for him to come back home. Only I knew he wasn’t coming back. Without his superpowers, he was too weak to fight a cold, let alone a supervillain. He was just Zack Ravilious Parker, gold-medal winner for do-goodery, the most annoying big brother ever to walk the Earth.
He needed my help. And I needed Lara’s.
She was smart and fearless, and she’d demonstrated her quick thinking already tonight by pulling out that explanation about the freak gust of wind. Sure, she wanted to reveal Star Lad’s true identity, but if anyone could help me rescue my brother it was Lara Lee. There was only one thing for it.
“Zack is Star Lad,” I said.
In comics when a superhero reveals his secret identity no one believes him at first. So I knew what Lara would say next. She’d splutter something about that being impossible, ridiculous, completely un—
“I know,” she said.
“You … what … urr … how?”
She drew a hand from her jeans pocket and slowly opened her palm.
S. L.
Star Lad’s sigil glittered under the streetlight. The one I’d made for him by gluing old Christmas decorations to one of Mum’s brooches. It had become one of the most photographed symbols in the world, recognisable to anyone who followed my brother’s exploits.
“I found it on the street,” she explained. “Where the car was parked. It must have fallen off when – what did you call it? Nemesis? – bundled him into the back seat.” She narrowed her eyes. “I always wondered how Zack managed to rescue Cara’s phone from that drain – now I know. Telekinesis. But that’s all I know. And I want the whole story. Spill it,” she barked. “From the top. Page one. Go.”
For the next five minutes Lara listened as I filled her in about Zorbon the Decider bestowing Zack with superpowers. How Nemesis threatened two universes and only Star Lad could stop her. How he’d lost his powers. How Zack refused to wear the cape I’d made him from the curtain in the downstairs loo. You know, just the important stuff.
When I’d finished I looked her straight in the eye and said, “I need your help to rescue him.”
She displayed a knowing smile that wasn’t exactly reassuring and said, “You can count on me.” With a sweep of her arm she drew an imaginary headline in the night air, declaring, “Girl Reporter Saves Star Lad. Now, that’s a story.” She rose slowly on to the tiptoes of her trainers. It’s possible she was levitating with excitement.
But before I could reply, something strange happened.
“Luke, it’s me,” said Zack.
“Zack?!” I spun round at the sound of his voice, expecting to see him standing there. But the street was empty.
“Luke, are you there? Can you hear me?”
It was definitely his voice, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” said Lara. “Is he communicating with you through telepathy?”
Telepathy? Mind-to-mind communication. Of course that was it. Zack’s voice was in my head, projected by what must be the fifth of his superpowers to reveal itself. But hadn’t he lost all of his powers?
“Zack.” I formed the words in my head. “I can hear you. Your powers are back!”
“No, they’re not. I think this is like an emergency beacon, activated in times of distress. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. Luke, I’m in terrible trouble.”
“I know. I watched Nemesis kidnap you. There was nothing I could do to stop her.”
“Ask him what he can see,” said Lara. “If he recognises a landmark then we’ll be able to narrow the search area, otherwise it’ll be like looking for a noodle in a haystack.”
She was right. Not about the noodle, but definitely about tracking down Zack. “Where are you?” I said in my head.
“Tied up in a car,” said Zack.
“Can you see anything?”
“Nothing. I’m lying across the back seats.”
“You have to tell me what you can see. Something memorable. A landmark.”
“Good thinking. I’ll try to wriggle to the window.”
I glanced at Lara – seemed she was full of good ideas.
“Y’know, sometimes I wish I’d been the one who’d gone for a wee that night,” he sighed. “Zorbon the Decider picked the wrong brother.”
I’d been thinking that for weeks, but at that moment I realised it wasn’t true. Zack had sacrificed the thing he loved (OK, it was homework and that was weird, but whatever) in order to fulfil his responsibilities as Star Lad. He hadn’t asked to be a superhero, but even so he had taken on the job – if not the mask and cape. I felt closer to my big brother than I had in years, which was upside down and back to front, since right then he was as far away from me as he’d ever been. I experienced a strange telescoping sensation, as if I was standing at the peak of the tallest mountain in the world and all the stars in the night sky were rushing away from me. I realised I might never see Zack again. I wanted to tell him that everything would be all right, but I didn’t know if it would be. Star Lad was powerless and I was just an ordinary schoolboy up against the sinister scheming of a supercriminal. I didn’t even have a secret weapon.
“Wait, the car’s slowing down…” said Zack.
All went quiet. “Zack?”
“Still here. We’ve stopped. I can lift my head a little. I might be able to…” There was a pause. “No way. That’s impossible. There’s no such thing.”
“What? What is it?”
There was the sound of the car door opening and Zack being lifted out. “We’re going inside,” he said.
“Inside what, Zack?” I said in my head, and then in desperation repeated it out loud. “You’re going inside what?”
“I can hear voices… They’re taking me to the … crater level.”
“The crater level? What does that mean? Crater level of what?”
He answered through a crackle of static and then the telepathic connection died and all I could hear were my own thoughts swirling madly inside my head.
Lara looked at me expectantly. “Well? What did he say?”
I couldn’t be one hundred per cent certain since the connection had been lost at the crucial moment, but I was pretty sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Luke, where is Zack being held?” demanded Lara.
I blinked and met her gaze. “A volcano.”
21
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
When Zack failed to appear for breakfast the following morning, Mum and Dad immediately knew that something was wrong. Zack and his Cheerios were never separated willingly. Mum knocked on his door and when there was no answering teenage groan she went in to find that his bed hadn’t been slept in. I felt bad keeping what I knew from my parents, but it’s not as if hearing the truth would have made them feel any better. As I’d predicted, following a round of increasingly frantic phone calls to Zack’s friends, Dad called the police.
In no time at all a policeman and policewoman showed up on our doorstep, removing their caps and speaking in soft voices. First they took statements from Mum and Dad, and then it was my turn. I knew it was bad when they sat me down on the sofa with a can of Fanta and a plate of Jaffa cakes, neither of which I’m usually allowed near unless I’ve first eaten my own bodyweight in salad. I answered their questions as best I could. Had Zack met anyone
unusual recently? Yes, a trans-dimensional being sent by the High Council, oh, and a supervillain called Nemesis. Had he been behaving oddly? Well, he’s been running into burning buildings, holding up collapsing bridges and generally saving people. So no, not odd at all – for a superhero. Of course, I didn’t say any of that out loud. I gave them bland answers that wouldn’t freak them out – or get me locked up in an institution for mad younger brothers.
When the interview was over I told Mum and Dad that I wanted to go to school. They seemed surprised. Was I sure? If, under the circumstances, I wanted to take the day off they’d understand. I nodded my head firmly. I was sure – I had important business to take care of. Both of them insisted on driving me right up to the school gates. Mum would have held my hand and walked me in to class if I hadn’t stopped her. I gave them each a hug and said I was sure Zack would be home before we knew it. Which he would, if I had anything to do with it.
After that, Zack was officially a missing child, which seemed strange to me. The police had ticked the wrong box on their paperwork. He was a missing superhero. But only I knew that.
Correction. I knew and Lara Lee knew. And before the day was out, I would have to let one more person in on the secret.
Children milled about the playground, blissfully unaware that as sporty boys kicked footballs and big kids kicked little kids, the meeting that was taking place on the far side of the netball court could well decide the fate of two universes. The time was half-past eleven, or Zero Bark Thirty as we called it, owing to the springer spaniel that lived in one of the houses opposite the school gates and jumped up and down in the window barking its head off every morning at break-time. Lara arrived on the dot and Serge rocked up moments later. He was unaware of the incredible events of last night – but all that was about to change.
“Bonjour, Lara. It is dee-lightful to see you once again.” He pressed his lips to the back of her hand and then took a pull on his inhaler.
Why did we need Serge? It was simple. Although, like an answer to one of Mrs Tyrannosaur’s fiendish book quizzes, it was also an answer in two parts. If we were going to track down Nemesis, i.e. a supervillain, then we had to think like one, and not only did Serge possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of heroes and villains that rivalled my own, but last summer something had happened which suggested to me he would have a deep understanding of the criminal mind.
My Brother is a Superhero Page 10
