by Lucas Flint
“Yeah,” said Blizzard, nodding. “It was an extra one that was in the House’s storage room. I also got you an extra copy of your costume, which is stored inside the watch. I thought you might need it.”
I was about to thank her for it, but then I froze. “Wait, what if the G-Men use it to track our movements?”
“I had Shell disable it before I left,” Blizzard said. “So it can’t do anything except store your costume. That’s really all it needs to do, if you think about it.”
I sighed in relief. “Good. Thanks for getting it for me. I was worried about getting some new clothes, since Burn Shot created this hole in my jumpsuit. This will do.”
So I put on my new suit-up watch and pressed a button on its side. The watch’s screen flipped open and a second later I was suited up in my costume once again. It felt good to be back in my costume again; in fact, I felt like I was back to being a superhero and not a prison escapee currently on the run from the government.
I stood up and moved my arms and legs around in it. “This feels great. Should be useful for whenever I fight White Lightning.”
“You’re still going to fight him?” said Blizzard. “I thought that you wanted to go to the INJ first.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to fight him right away. I want to go to the INJ first and then look for that guy. Now that I’m out of prison, he’s probably going to start waiting for me to come out and show myself, so it’s not like I’m in a hurry to fight him or anything.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth. I was still thinking about what Grandfather had told me, about Grandmother’s vision of the battle between the gods. I didn’t want to walk into what might be my death. I didn’t know if it was possible to subvert Grandmother’s visions or not, but I had to at least give it a shot, because I liked living better than dying.
“Kevin is right,” said Ivan. “Right now, we need allies, as many as we can get. It would be unwise for us to fight White Lightning in our current condition. Better to find allies who can keep us safe from the government and give us time to come up with a plan of action to take him down.”
“Yeah,” I said. I sat back down in my chair at the table. “But that just brings us back to our old problem: How do we get to California without being seen or caught?”
“M-Maybe we don’t need to,” said Rime. “Maybe we can find help right here in New York.”
I looked at Rime in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, doesn’t the INJ have a-agents all over the c-country?” said Rime. “M-Maybe all we need to do is search for the nearest INJ agent and ask if they can help us.”
I stroked my chin in thought. “The INJ isn’t as big or spread out as the NHA is, but they do have agents all over the country, like you said. But I wonder if they still have any after San Francisco; last I heard, they were all supposed to be in California helping in the rebuilding efforts.”
“True, but what other choice do we have?” said Ivan. “Besides, it is possible that they may still have someone around here, even if it is just one person. We just need to find them.”
“How, though?” said Rime. “We don’t know of the locations of any nearby INJ agents.”
“Actually, we do,” said Blizzard. “Or, at least, I do.”
“Really?” I said. “How?”
“After the Summit earlier this year, when the INJ and NHA agreed to work together, I took it upon myself to figure out where the nearest INJ agents were,” said Blizzard. “My research indicated that there were about fifty INJ members in the state of New York.”
“Fifty?” I repeated. “That’s great.”
“It isn’t nearly as great as it sounds, though,” said Blizzard. “For one, the vast majority of them are located in or near New York City, because that is where most criminals and supervillains in the state tend to hang out.”
“It would be unwise to go near a major city like that,” said Ivan. “The government will probably be watching NYC in case we try to go there. It would be like walking into a trap.”
“The other agents are few and far between,” Blizzard continued. “But from what I remember, there is one agent who is only a couple of hours away from here. She might be willing to help, if we go to her and tell her who we are.”
“Great,” I said. “Who is she?”
“She’s—” Blizzard was interrupted by loud, incessant knocking that came from the front door of the mansion.
All four of us tensed and shared alarmed looks. Who could possibly be at the door? It couldn’t have been one of the other escapees, since they had all left already, but they were the only other people who knew where we were. Had the G-Men somehow tracked us down? If so, we were about to be in for the fight of our lives.
“I’ll go check who it is,” I muttered to Blizzard. “If it’s a G-Men agent, I’ll take him down.”
“And I’ll back you up,” Blizzard said.
I nodded and made my way out of the kitchen and to the parlor, where the front door was. Thanks to the curtains drawn down in front of the the windows on either side of the door, I couldn’t look outside and tell who was there, but the knocking had become incredibly louder. It sounded like the knocking of someone who was trying to get to safety, but I had no idea who that could be. Maybe it was just someone who got lost in the woods and was looking for help.
I stopped in front of the door. I wished it had a peephole, but unfortunately my grandparents apparently had not seen fit to put one on this door.
So I said, in a loud voice, “Who’s there?”
“Bolt, is that you?” came a familiar gruff voice. “Open the door, damn it, it’s me, Triplet!”
“Triplet?” I said.
I didn’t hesitate to yank open the door. I expected to see Triplet standing there in his trench coat, looking as cool and focused as he usually did, perhaps about to stride in and tell me to shut the door so no one would hear what he had to tell me.
What I didn’t expect to see was his face bloodied and bruised and his left hand clutching what looked like a bullet wound in his abdomen. Leaves and twigs stuck to his coat, thanks to the blood splattered all over it, and even just standing there seemed to be taking all of his strength.
His eyes met mine and I saw fear and pain in them.
“Triplet?” I said again. “What … what happened to …”
“Mastermind,” said Triplet in a hoarse voice. “He’s … I … the G-Men …”
Triplet immediately collapsed onto the floor, but I caught him before he could crack his skull against the hardwood floor. I checked his pulse and found that it was incredibly low, so I looked over my shoulder and shouted, “Blizzard! Ivan! Rime! Triplet needs medical attention now!”
Chapter Thirteen
I rushed Triplet to the second floor, into one of the empty rooms, and placed him on the bed. Triplet was barely breathing and bleeding heavily; in fact, he was in such bad shape that I was surprised that he was even still alive.
I was worried that we might not have a first aid kit on hand, but it was only a couple of minutes later that Blizzard and Ivan came up with a first aid kit and a bunch of bandages they’d found in the cabinets of the kitchen. It was Ivan, however, who did the majority of the work healing Triplet, because he said that he’d learned first aid during his brief stint in the Russian army in his twenties, but we helped in other ways, such as taking Triplet’s coat and shirt and getting Ivan whatever he asked of us.
By the time Ivan finished cleaning and patching up all of Triplet’s wounds, Triplet looked much better than he did before. But his skin was paler than it usually was, no doubt due to the blood loss, and he had fallen completely unconscious. His heart, however, was beating and his pulse was stronger than before, so Ivan assured us that he would probably be all right.
“He just needs rest,” said Ivan, wiping the blood off of his hands onto an old rag I’d gotten from the bathroom. “I think we managed to get his wounds cleaned and bandaged just in time. If we had
been too late, they might have gotten infected and he would almost certainly have died.”
“What happened to him?” said Blizzard, looking down at Triplet with worry. She stood next to me, rubbing her hands together in worry. She looked at me. “Did he tell you how he got this way?”
I shook my head. “He only mentioned Mastermind and the G-Men, but he didn’t go into much detail about what he meant.”
“What was he doing all the way out here, I wonder?” said Ivan. “Surely he couldn’t have known we’d be here.”
“Triplet visited this mansion once,” I said, remembering my first meeting with my grandparents what felt like a lifetime ago now. “So he knew where it was. But, yeah, I wonder why he’s here.”
All of a sudden, Triplet’s eyes flickered open. His eyes darted over to me, but he didn’t seem to be entirely conscious.
“Bolt?” said Triplet. He grimaced, probably due to the pain from his wounds. “Ow …”
“Don’t make any sudden movements,” said Ivan. “Your injuries are still quite serious. Best to remain as still as possible.”
Triplet looked down at his bandaged body. “Yeah, I can tell. Better than being dead, I suppose.”
“Of course,” said Ivan.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be talking, Triplet,” said Blizzard. “You need to rest.”
Triplet shook his head slowly. “No. Can’t rest. Not for long, anyway. I need to tell you about my findings.”
“Can’t it wait until you’ve healed a bit more?” I said. “Even talking might be too much for you.”
“No, you need to know this right away,” said Triplet. “And I mean you, specifically, Bolt. At this point, you’re the only one I can trust.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “You don’t seem surprised to see that I’m out of prison.”
“Why should I be?” said Triplet. “I knew that you would break out eventually. Ultimate Max may be secure, but like every prison in the world, it has its weaknesses that you obviously exploited.” He looked at Ivan and frowned. “But I have no idea who this guy is.”
“Ivan Yadernoy,” said Ivan. “Or, as you might know me, Nuclear Winter, the first supervillain and first inmate of Ultimate Max.”
Triplet’s eyes widened and he looked at me in shock. “Bolt, is this guy joking?”
“No,” I said. “He really is Nuclear Winter.”
“But he’s a good guy now,” Blizzard said quickly. She looked at Ivan. “Right, Ivan?”
Ivan shrugged. “I am not and never have been a good man, but I’m no longer interested in committing crimes anymore, if that’s what you mean.”
“Jesus, Bolt, I knew you were going to try to escape, but I didn’t think you’d get help from Nuclear Winter, of all people,” said Triplet. “He’s insane.”
“It wasn’t just Ivan,” said Blizzard. “He also got help from a bunch of other criminals, including a few we’ve beaten ourselves.”
“So you led an actual prison breakout,” said Triplet. “I don’t remember that being part of the plan.”
“We had to improvise,” I said. “But really, you don’t need to worry about Ivan. He’s fine. He’s on our side and isn’t planning to kill us or anything. In fact, he’s the guy who cleaned your wounds and bandaged you up.”
Triplet looked at Ivan skeptically, but then sighed and said, “All right. I’m not sure I believe that, but there are more important things to worry about at the moment, including what Mastermind is up to.”
“And what is Mastermind up to?” I said. “What are you even doing out here in this forest? Why did you come to the mansion?”
“I came because I thought I might find you here,” said Triplet. “Looks like I was right about that. But anyway, I’ve uncovered Mastermind’s identity.”
“You have?” I said in surprise. “Who is he?”
“Cadmus Smith,” said Triplet.
A shocked silence fell over the room. Blizzard and I exchanged surprised looks, while Ivan just stroked his chin, a look of concern and confusion on his Russian features. Only Triplet seemed unaffected by that announcement, but then that made sense, given that he’d been the one to make it.
“Cadmus Smith is Mastermind?” I said. “That can’t be true.”
“It’s what the evidence suggests,” said Triplet. “And it’s why I almost died.”
“Start from the beginning,” I said. “How did you find out that Cadmus Smith is Mastermind?”
Triplet rubbed the back of his head, but stopped and groaned, putting a hand on the bullet wound on his chest. “As you know, I’ve been investigating the identity of Mastermind for some time now under the orders of the Leadership Council of the Neohero Alliance. I’ve been searching for him everywhere, but it wasn’t until recently that I finally began to find some clues to point to his identity.”
“Clues?” I said. “Like what?”
“I found a man who claimed to have met Mastermind once,” said Triplet. “He told me that he’d worked as minion for Mastermind at some point in the past and wanted to talk with me. Unfortunately, when I went to meet him, I found out that the man had committed suicide.”
“That’s horrible,” said Blizzard.
“And not suicide,” said Triplet. “He’d shot himself in the back of the head three times; at least, that is the police’s official report of his death. I tried to investigate the crime scene myself, but the police told me that they had been given orders not to let me onto the scene. It was odd how they were trying to keep me, in particular, from investigating it, but that’s what made me suspicious.”
“What happened after that?” I said.
“I was contacted by Mecha Knight,” said Triplet. “I was told that the NHA did not want me investigating the Mastermind case anymore and that they were instead handing over the investigation to the G-Men.”
“What?” I said. “Why did they do that?”
“He didn’t say,” said Triplet, “but that was shortly after the announcement that the G-Men were going to have a presence on Hero Island, so I suspected that there was something about this case that the G-Men didn’t want me investigating. That was when I heard back from Professor Hernandez.”
“Professor Hernandez?” I said. “You mean the guy who helped me get my powers back and who is also the leading authority on the study of neogenetics?”
“Yep,” said Triplet. “He was helping me with White Lightning. Remember how I theorized that White Lightning might be your clone?”
I nodded. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, I had managed to get some of White Lightning’s DNA from one of the sites of his attacks and sent it to Hernandez for him to study,” said Triplet. “It was tricky, since White Lightning rarely leaves anything that could be used to track him, but through some of my connections in the police force, I managed to get my hands on a strand of hair that had been confirmed to have fallen off of White Lightning’s head from his attack on the White House.”
“But how would that prove if he was my clone or not?” I said. “I didn’t give Hernandez any of my DNA.”
“Got a strand of your hair from Blizzard,” Triplet, nodding at her. “She got it from your bed in the House, so I sent both hair samples to Hernandez to compare.”
I looked at Blizzard in disbelief. “You mean you took some of my hair without my permission?”
Blizzard smiled at me sheepishly. “Hey, Triplet said that it might help us defeat White Lightning. Besides, I didn’t think you’d really care, because you were in prison and that hair was just on your bed.”
I frowned, but since I was more interested in Triplet’s story at the moment, I said to him, “Okay, what did Hernandez find?”
“No idea,” said Triplet, “because the government confiscated the hair samples, his equipment, and his data from him before he could analyze it.”
“What?” I said. “They just took it, without justification?”
“According to Hernandez, the government had told him that they
were confiscating the material because they thought it might put national security at risk,” said Triplet. “Personally, I think that it was because they knew that Hernandez was about to find out that White Lightning is indeed your clone and didn’t want anyone outside of the government knowing that.”
“But why would they be against that?” I said. “Wouldn’t knowing White Lightning’s origin be helpful? At the very least, it might lead us to whoever Mastermind’s friend in Ultimate Max—the one who gave him my DNA in the first place—is, which could then lead us to Mastermind himself.”
“You’re missing the point,” said Triplet. “The government doesn’t want us knowing that White Lightning is a product of Project Neo.”
“He is?” I said in shock. “Why do you think that?”
“Let me finish my story,” said Triplet. He took a deep breath, no doubt due to his painful wounds, and continued. “I found it strange how the government had confiscated Hernandez’s possessions; strange and alarming. So I decided to take a trip to Texas to visit Hernandez himself, but along the way, I was attacked by G-Men agents.”
“G-Men agents?” I repeated. “Who?”
“I didn’t recognize them,” said Triplet. “It was the middle of the night when they attacked me on the road. They forced me to crash my station wagon and flee into the forest, but they didn’t let me get away. They attacked me in the forest and nearly killed me; that’s why I was in such terrible shape when you guys found me.”
“How did you escape?” said Blizzard.
“My Thirds helped,” said Triplet. “I split up into my Thirds and scattered into multiple directions, forcing the G-Men agents to split up themselves. I managed to use the darkness of the forest to my advantage, however, and captured one of them, a scrawny guy with a face like a rat. I interrogated him and he told me that he’d been sent by Cadmus Smith to take me down before I learned the ‘truth’ about Mastermind, White Lightning, and Project Neo.”
“Is that all he said?” I said. “What did he mean by that?”
