Marrow

by Preston Norton

  Sapphire laughed.

  Flex’s sentence derailed. Both of us turned as her head tilted back. Her laugh was low and drawn-out in an unstable, maniacal sort of way. When she lowered her head, her eyes narrowed on me.

  Except they weren’t her eyes. They were pure white.

  “You kids just don’t stop meddling,” said Sapphire. “I mean…I feel like I’m dealing with Scooby-Doo and the Gang. Like…can we just go five minutes without you brats trying to solve mysteries?”

  “Crud,” said Flex.

  I tripped and fell backwards. Then I backed the heck away from Sapphire in a frantic crab walk.

  As I did, the surveillance room door opened behind me.

  I spun around on the floor. There, standing in the doorway, was the greatest Superhero of all time, framed in his red cape—Fantom.

  His eyes were tainted by something purely evil.

  “And it’s a real shame too,” said Fantom and Sapphire’s combined voices. “Because I was really looking forward to you being my sidekick. It would have made for some great publicity.”

  Fantom stepped forward and shut the door behind him.

  “Now I have to kill both of you.”

  “You…” I said, breathless. “How are you…? What are you…?”

  That was about as far as my coherence seemed to go.

  “What am I?” said Fantom, cracking a smirk. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

  Slowly climbing to my feet, Flex and I backed away in a direction where he and Sapphire were both in sight. My gaze hesitated on Sapphire.

  “You’re a Telepath?”

  “UHRRRRR!” said Fantom, imitating an obnoxious buzzer sound. “Close, though. Try again.”

  My brain was spinning and the word came before I could even process it.

  “You’re an…Omnipotent?”

  “Ding, ding, ding,” said Fantom, smiling wider and clapping his hands. “We have a winner.”

  Even though I’d guessed it, I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible. Unheard of. “So you’re an Omnipotent and you have super speed, super strength, and you can fly?” I asked. My voice came out as practically a squeak on “fly.”

  What kind of Super had that much power?

  “Ah, now that’s where things get a little complicated,” said Fantom. “You see, I actually don’t have super speed or super strength, and I can’t fly.”

  My jaw fell open. “What?”

  “I know, right?” said Fantom, laughing at my reaction. “Who saw that coming? Let’s put it this way: I’m not just any Omnipotent. I am the Omnipotent. I mean…I’m practically God in spandex.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head absently. “I’ve seen you use those other powers! What do you mean you don’t have them?”

  “No, Marrow,” said Flex. “What you saw was good acting.”

  Fantom smiled at this. “Right up there with the great ones like Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart,” he said. “I’ve simply been practicing for a very long time. For example, if I need to pick up something to throw at an opponent…”

  Fantom approached the couch and lifted it off the ground by grabbing one of its legs.

  “…I let my mind do all the heavy lifting.”

  He released the couch and it remained suspended in the air. As he walked away, the couch floated down like a balloon. He began pacing slowly around me.

  “It’s the same for anything else,” he said. “If I want to punch somebody, my mind does the punching. If I get punched, my mind creates a protective telekinetic barrier around me. If I need super speed or if I need to fly, my mind carries me. It’s not even mentally strenuous. The only tricky part is making it look real. So naturally, I take that look on your face as the greatest compliment.”

  “But why pretend?” I asked. “Why not just let everyone know you’re an Omnipotent?”

  “Hmm,” said Fantom, pressing a finger to his lips. “Let’s think about how well that worked for all the other Omnipotents out there. Oh yeah. They’re extinct. Well, how about the Telepaths? Oh yeah. Everyone hates them. But Superman? Everyone loves Superman. I simply did what every kid does: I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be Superman. But that’s only my telekinetic power. The true mastery of my art is in my telepathy.”

  Fantom ended his pacing at Sapphire’s side and placed a brawny hand on her slender shoulder.

  “Some people might call me a puppet master. But I don’t like that title. It makes me sound like a villain. I prefer the title ‘director.’ I like to think of myself as a modern-day Hitchcock of sorts. Cosmo City is my set, and its citizens are my cast and crew.”

  It was both obvious and inconceivable as I realized what he meant.

  “By the way,” he continued, “you don’t have to worry about Specter or Gustav interrupting our little heart-to-heart. They’re in the same state as our dear friend, Sapphire, here.”

  “You were controlling Oracle,” I said. “You were controlling all of those people.”

  Flex tensed as I said this. Even if he didn’t seem surprised at all.

  Fantom’s grin grew sinister. “More than that.”

  “Huh?”

  “‘All the world’s a stage,’” said Fantom, gesturing his arms outward “‘And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.’ Shakespeare, in case you care to know.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and I certainly didn’t know what Shakespeare had to do with anything.

  “This is my story,” he said. “I’ve been in control of everything every step of the way. Every chapter of my success has been carefully scripted. Every fight choreographed.”

  His head lowered, eyes narrowed on me.

  “Every villain has been my carefully selected actor—my puppet.”

  My defensive stance went limp. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t breathe or even blink. But not because of the hundreds of so-called “Supervillains” who were suddenly proven innocent by this single confession.

  My mind was frozen on a single one—my father.

  “It’s not easy making a Supervillain, you know,” said Fantom. “You can’t just take control of someone’s brain and make them go evil. No one’s going to buy that. But say you have a Super with the ability to manipulate fire, and that Super has a brother who means the world to him. If that brother were to be…ahem…mugged and killed, suddenly we have a drive for vengeance. Now you can take control. A few arson-based crimes later and bada bing bada boom, the Supervillain Torcher is born. I mean, with a name like that, the kid was born to be evil! But if you really want to create a Supervillain with reputation, you have him—or her—kill other notable Supers. Like your dear friend from the Final Challenge, Arachnis. A mutated spider lady is scary all by herself—a mutation that I helped to stimulate once I was inside her head, I might add. But a mutated spider lady that can kill an Omnipotent like Cortex? Now that’s something truly terrifying.”

  Fantom mockingly widened his eyes and covered his mouth. “Whoops! I suppose that means I’m partly responsible for the extinction of the Omnipotents. Oh well. Survival of the fittest, right?”

  I was hardly paying attention to a word he said. My mind had only one focus and it was eroding my brain away.

  “My father,” I breathed. “He’s…innocent?”

  “Ah, your father,” said Fantom. “My greatest creation and also the greatest thorn in my side. I spent so much time and energy building him up to be the perfect villain—arranging your mother’s death, letting him spiral into madness. And when I finally seized control of his brain…it was poetic. A thing of beauty. He was the arch nemesis I had always dreamed of. People were terrified of him. When it finally came time to kill him…I couldn’t do it. Not with the reaction I was getting from Cosmo City. Spine was just too good to let go of. So I kept him. Whenever Cosmo City seemed to become complacent about my presence and other villains simply weren’t cutting it, I knew it was time for
Spine to strike back. This, of course, went on for years. Things were going so well…”

  Fantom shook his head with a look of distaste.

  “But alas, all good things must come to an end,” he said with a sigh. “The bone matter in Spine’s skull adapted until it created a brain barrier immune to my telepathy. He simply slipped through the cracks. He vanished before I could do anything. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since, you know. Spine had the potential to ruin this utopia I’ve been striving so hard to create. Until now, that is. I actually suspected that he was keeping an eye on you a while ago. That’s part of the reason why I intervened in your Final Challenge, letting Nero win instead of you. I wanted your father to see his son’s future crumble right in front of him. Any doubt I had about your father watching over you was erased when you were kidnapped by that Nightmare fellow. Your father used Nightmare’s power so the bone matter in your skull could adapt the very same immunity. He obviously didn’t want me using you like I did him—which, I’ll admit, is an extremely tempting notion.

  “Once I knew Spine was watching, I took control of Nero and threatened your life. It helped that Nero was snooping around in places that he shouldn’t have been. Alas, that plan nearly backfired on me when that pathetic little parasite tried communicating to you using his telekinesis as Morse code. I only barely caught him before he could rat me out. Fortunately, I had been planning to frame Oracle for quite some time. All that spying, working endlessly to get inside her head… It was totally on the fly when I had Nero say her name instead of mine. It was rushing ahead of my intended schedule, but I have to say, it couldn’t have worked better. Oracle was the perfect scapegoat, using you and Flex as bait to lure Spine out directly. I’ll be honest. Beating your dad’s head into the ground was the happiest moment of my life.” Fantom rolled his eyes up, his mouth splitting into a sadistic grin of euphoric bliss. “I’ve been waiting to do that for years.”

  I had been completely numb until this point. A tear burned down my cheek like acid. I glanced down to find my hands squeezed into fists and shaking. Electricity surged through my veins. Making my bones light, I screamed and flew forward. My fist exploded with the force and precision of a missile.

  My momentum came to a jarring halt. A dozen invisible hands gripped me, inside and out. I hung hopelessly in the air, gasping, barely able to breathe.

  I wasn’t done yet. I extended my fingers out and pushed the density hard into my fingertips. Twelve-inch bone spikes ripped beneath my fingernails, glistening in a thin layer of mucus. The tip of my middle finger spike barely grazed Fantom’s throat, drawing blood.

  “Son of a bean-dipped mother Frito!” said Fantom. He staggered back and grabbed his neck. He pulled his hand away, revealing a small dab of crimson. “Picking a fight with the most powerful Omnipotent in the world, eh? You’ve got guts, Marrow. I’ll give you that. Unfortunately, guts can be spilled.”

  Fantom reached his arm forward, twisting his curled fingers.

  My insides were suddenly gripped in a vice—twisting, crushing. I gagged and coughed, spitting blood.

  “Marrow!” said Flex. The moment he moved towards me, Fantom raised a hand. Flex went rigid. He contorted like a dying insect. His face pinched, and he screamed through his teeth. “Urrrrrrgh!”

  Fantom quickly flicked his fingers open, thrusting both palms forward. Flex and I flew backward, crashing into the drywall which cracked and caved around us. The tension on my insides was released, however, which was all I cared about at the moment. We remained telekinetically glued to the wall as Fantom approached.

  “You certainly have your father’s fighting spirit, Marrow,” he said. “Still throwing punches, even when the fight’s already over. I like that.”

  “How can you even pretend to be a hero?” I said. “You’re more evil than the fake villains you’re defeating!”

  “Ah, you see, that’s where you and I would have to disagree. Do you remember what I told you the other day? About standing as a symbol for goodness and justice? I actually believe that. I believe that I am that symbol.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, I really do,” said Fantom. His expression was disturbingly sincere. “You don’t know the numbers like I do. When you eliminate all the staged crimes that I’m responsible for, Cosmo City actually has the lowest crime rate of any major city in the world. Criminals in Cosmo City are afraid to commit crimes because of me. And hey, who can blame ‘em? I’ve created a utopia where evil is always defeated and good always prevails.”

  “Yeah, except that makes you the biggest criminal in Cosmo City,” said Flex. “You’re no better than some lousy, mafia warlord. Just because you control the crime doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

  “Flex, Flex…” said Fantom, shaking his head. “You understand so little. Comparing me to a syndicate leader is like comparing God to an annoying televangelist. I don’t need men or guns to get what I want. I don’t need the law to tell me what to do. I am the law. I was chosen for this.”

  “Chosen,” I said. “Wow. Have delusions of grandeur much?”

  “You don’t believe me?” asked Fantom, raising a challenging eyebrow. “You know, I’m surprised, Marrow. You haven’t even asked how I became so powerful to begin with.”

  Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about that. But the way he was bringing it up now, he made it sound like there was some big secret to it.

  “What does that matter?” I asked.

  “Oh, it matters,” said Fantom, his countenance darkening. “In fact, everything centers on it.”

  “Oh really?” I said skeptically.

  “What if I told you that there’s something living inside of me?”

  “Inside of you?” My skepticism upped a notch.

  “Would you like to meet it?”

  This conversation had just gone from crazy to cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

  “It normally speaks directly to my mind,” said Fantom. “But it loves when I let it out every once in a while.”

  Fantom closed his eyes.

  This was ridiculous. I didn’t know what kind of joke this was supposed to be, but I didn’t want to stick around for it. I struggled against the invisible force securing me to the wall. Even without Fantom paying any attention to me, I couldn’t budge.

  Not that it mattered. The moment Fantom opened his eyes, I went rigid.

  His eyes were glowing neon green. Not just his irises. Everything. His pupils, the whites of his eyes—gone. Swallowed in green energy and pulsating with concentrated power.

  I had seen those eyes before—the same eyes from my brief mental breakdown on the Tartarus elevator. The same ones that were now haunting me in my dreams.

  “Hello, Marrow,” said a new voice—a conglomeration of synchronized voices of various pitches and tones. Emotionless. Soulless. Like a choir of the undead. “I told you Brother wanted to kill you.”

  Fantom blinked and his eyes were human again.

  “Now, now,” said Fantom. “What have I told you about revealing my evil plots to strangers, Gaia?”

  Gaia? No. That was impossible.

  “Sweet, merciful mother of crap,” said Flex. “I did not see that coming.”

  Fantom blinked again, flooding his eyes with neon green energy once more. “Their minds are shielded, Brother. Why can’t we see inside of them?”

  He blinked again.

  “Just be patient, Gaia,” said Fantom. “We’ll be able to get in soon enough. If we got inside Oracle, we can hack our way into any brain. You were able to communicate to his mind on the Tartarus after all.”

  “Gaia…” I said in shock. “You…you can talk to the comet?”

  “Not the comet itself,” said Fantom. “The mind of the comet. The spirit of the comet, I suppose you could say. Gaia is a bodiless symbiotic alien life form whose life’s essence is connected to the comet. It is the energy of Gaia’s life force that continually gives birth to Supers.”

  “And you can
talk to it?” I repeated.

  “In a manner of speaking. Gaia’s mind is attached to my mind.”

  “H-h-h-how?” Flex sputtered. “How is that even possible?”

  “Ah, Flex,” said Fantom, shaking his head. “Don’t you know my legend? A young child is sailing on a boat in the ocean with his parents. The Gaia Comet strikes, killing his mother and father instantly, but the boy survives— and emerges as the most powerful Super of all time.”

  Fantom paused, chuckling to himself, as if he were about to let me in on the greatest joke of the century.

  “What if I told you that I did die?”

  Worst joke ever.

  “I died, but Gaia brought me back to life,” said Fantom. “Melded together with my mind. But this isn’t your average Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Gaia agrees with everything I think. Feels everything that I feel. And supplies me with a considerable amount of power to do what I need to do. You could almost say that we are one in the same being.”

  Fantom blinked, and his eyes were glowing neon green again.

  “Do they know our plans?” said Gaia in his haunting symphony of voices. “Do they know how we get our powers, Brother?”

  “How you get your powers?” said Flex. “But I thought—”

  Fantom blinked again, taking control. “—that my power comes from Gaia,” he said, finishing my thought. “And it does. When Gaia melded with my mind, my telepathic and telekinetic powers increased exponentially. But that only scratches the surface of our capabilities. You see, with Gaia and I combined…we can absorb the power of other Telepaths and Telekinetics.”

  “What?” I said. “But how?”

  “Well, I can’t explain the science of it to you,” said Fantom. “What I can tell you is that we can telepathically delve into such a Super’s mind and rip the power right out of his or her brain. When that happens, the power naturally fuses with Gaia and me. That’s the other reason that I was so keen on interfering with your Final Challenge and letting Nero win. Taunting Spine with your loss was appealing in theory, but I also really wanted Nero’s power. It’s not every day that you come across such strong, fresh telekinetic energy.”