“Boys,” said Mum, with the lion-taming tone in her voice.
That was close. From now on I had to be careful not to give myself away. The trick was to behave exactly like Other Luke. He would never be amused by his parents. I figured that impersonating him shouldn’t be too difficult. He was just like me, only not as amazing.
After dinner Dad insisted on going for ice cream to this ancient café where he and Mum used to meet up after school when they were young. Zack said that the café probably qualified as a site of archaeological interest. Mum and Dad just held each other’s hands and shared a knickerbocker glory. I didn’t mind one bit that they were acting all sappy, and I wondered briefly what it would be like to stay in this world with them. But weirdly, seeing them so happy made me feel every light year of the mind-boggling distance from the family I’d left behind.
The night was over. We pulled into the driveway and with a belly full of Chinese food and ice cream I climbed contentedly out of the car.
“Where are you going?” said Mum. “Bed, mister.”
I’d been heading to my usual accommodation in the tree house, having forgotten once again that I was pretending to be Other Luke. It was proving harder than I’d expected.
“Sorry, Mum, miles away,” I said. And I couldn’t help think how perfectly natural it felt calling her that. I wrapped my arms around her, nuzzling in close. She smelled just like my mum. So far away. I wondered if she was thinking about me too.
A cool hand touched my forehead.
“You feeling OK?”
Ten minutes later, as I prepared to slip under the duvet into my soft bed, I glanced out of the window at the dim outline of the tree house. My plan was on course, but I felt a twinge of guilt about leaving Other Luke out there, so when the house was still and everyone else was asleep, I sneaked downstairs and found the doggy bag that we’d brought back from the restaurant.
Other Luke was exactly where I’d left him, imprisoned in the tree house. A regular jailer would have used curtain tie-backs to bind his captive’s wrists and ankles, and Easy Tear Scotch tape across his mouth to keep him from shouting for help. But I had no need of such crude measures. I’d used my superpowers to place an invisible force field around the tree house. Not only did it bar him from escaping and muffle any sound from within, but it also blocked all telepathic signals, preventing him from summoning Zack’s help. As an added bonus, the force field kept the draught out.
“Nice and warm in here,” I remarked. Other Luke studied me in silence as I opened one of the food cartons. “Lot cosier than when you stuck me here.” He remained mute. “I know you don’t believe me, but I am really sorry about having to lock you up like this. C’mon though – we both know you would’ve done the same thing, in my position.”
He broke his silence. “Still sure you’re not my Evil Twin?”
“Would an Evil Twin have brought you this?” With a flourish I offered him the carton of sweet and sour chicken.
He inspected the contents. “It’s cold. And gloopy. I’m not eating that.”
“You’ve got to eat something,” I said. “Flipping heck, I sound like Mum.”
“She’s not your mum,” snapped Other Luke.
“That’s arguable,” I reminded him. “We’re splitting hairs. Except they’re not hairs, they’re smaller than that. We’re splitting atoms.”
“That’s how you make a bomb,” he said accusingly. “It’s called nuclear fission.”
“Aha! You figured out my dastardly plan. I’m travelling from dimension to dimension rigging up the ultimate weapon that will destroy the multiverse by triggering an unstoppable chain reaction of mums.”
He peered at me uncertainly. “Are you?”
“Of course not!” I fished out the prawn crackers and offered him the bag. He shook his head curtly, so I took one. He watched me hungrily as I ate.
“What do you want with my brother?” he said. “And don’t tell me he’s your brother too. Your brother is in your universe. This one is mine. I know you’re trying to trick Zack into coming with you. But what I can’t figure out is why.”
“And you don’t want to know.” I wasn’t discussing it. When he started to object I cut him off. “Trust me.”
He let out a sarcastic laugh. He wasn’t hiding his feelings, but that didn’t mean I had to be unkind to him. I concentrated on a picture in my mind. There was the usual smell of chips, another tremor likely to excite a few seismologists, and a hole in the air materialised. I was getting better at this summoning thing. The ship’s computer had almost blown a fuse at the last dimensional anomaly, but it hadn’t specifically warned me off creating them. Anyway, one more couldn’t hurt.
A toilet bowl whistled out of the hole, thudded to the floor, wobbled once and came to a standstill.
“No need for you to be uncomfortable,” I said. “You’ll find it all works perfectly.” I pushed the flusher button and the bowl filled with water from another dimension. I had one parting shot. “Oh, and don’t count on being rescued by your friends. I plan on rescheduling your regular S.C.A.R.F. meeting. Instead of the tree house, we’ll get together at Serge’s house for a change.”
I could see his face fall. I’d outplayed him again. There wasn’t much more to say, which was odd, seeing as we had so much in common. Perhaps under different circumstances we would have been friends, but I knew it could never be like that. For my mission to succeed, I would be forced to cause him great pain. Other Luke would hate me for the rest of his life. I set the food on the floor, opened a temporary hole in the force field and left.
I paced back and forth across the tree-house floor. Stellar could fudge all he wanted, but anyone could see that he was a supervillain. Who else would turn my sanctuary into a prison? His mind was utterly twisted and he didn’t even realise it: a classic supervillain characteristic. To complete the picture all he needed was a costume made of black leather and some sort of skull motif. Or maybe an octopus.
But if he thought he had the better of me, he was in for a surprise. I’d escaped tougher prisons than this. Just recently alien invaders had failed to detain me in their high-security maths classroom. Compared with that, this would be a breeze. A breeze? He was right about one thing – it felt a lot warmer in here than usual. That force field of his must be blocking the draught. Well, no amount of evil home insulation was going to prevent me from breaking out.
Three and a half hours later all I’d managed to break out was a fresh pad of A4 paper from an economy pack. I’d have preferred to escape using a clever anti-force field device that I’d cobbled together from a car battery, some fireworks and an old sledge, but I didn’t have any of that stuff. I looked around at what was to hand. A stack of comics, a pack of three Pukka Pads (opened), one felt-tip pen (green), assorted novelty superhero lamps, a smoke detector, some Chinese food and an interdimensional toilet that I wasn’t going near if I could help it. Earlier, I’d ventured a glance into the bowl to find it filled not with water but with swirling clouds of infinity and the distant howl of dying suns. I’d flipped down the lid smartish. I wasn’t exposing any part of me to that thing.
I tugged at my collar. It wasn’t just cosy in the tree house, it was hot. Never mind the draught, there wasn’t a breath of air getting in here. An awful thought occurred to me: I wasn’t simply imprisoned, I was entombed. Once I’d used up the existing air supply, I was done for. I began to gasp, even though I knew there was plenty of air left, for now. Did Stellar realise what he’d done? How evil was my twin? Whether by accident or design, he had sealed me in here tighter than a tuna in a can.
I decided my best course of action would be to ignore the rising panic that fluttered in my chest like a flotilla of butterflies and focus on my escape. But everything I tried came up against that impenetrable force field. If I couldn’t figure a way out or Stellar didn’t come back in time, then I was in deep trouble. Eventually, exhausted by my efforts, I lay down on the floor. I felt my eyelids droop. I tried to fight
sleep, but I couldn’t even win that battle. My last thought before I drifted off was: what’s that cat doing there? Just before waves of tiredness overtook me I was convinced that I could see a cat sitting on the floor of the tree house. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate, my last thought before nodding off was, randomly, I wonder which version of the Flash is the best: Barry Allen or Wally West? But the one about the cat was definitely more unexpected. I put it down to a hallucination caused by oxygen starvation – there was no way a cat or anything else could have got past the force field.
Morning came, but with it no Stellar. With a jolt I realised that it was the day of Dad’s comic-shop opening and I was in danger of missing not only the big launch, but the rest of my life. The air in the tree house was definitely thinner. I decided that the important thing was to use as little of my supply as possible, which meant not exerting myself.
I leapt up with a shout as something furry touched my leg. Great – that had to be a mug-full of wasted air right there.
I looked down to find a cat sitting at my feet licking its paws. Its coat was pitch black with a single jagged white streak running along its back. I was baffled. I’d examined every centimetre of the tree house and found not even a chink in the force field, so how had it got in? I inched my way around the walls again, painstakingly searching for the cat-flap-sized hole I’d overlooked. I paused at a crack in the wall. Through it I could see across the garden and into the house. My family was in the kitchen, preparing to leave for the shop. With mounting anger I saw Stellar at the heart of things, pretending to be me. Didn’t they know he was an imposter? Couldn’t they see? Although I knew it was futile, I yelled to attract their attention, but as expected they continued to go about their breakfast routine. Even without the sound-dulling force field, they’d have struggled to hear me. I beat the wooden walls with my fists and was about to turn away in frustration when I glimpsed another cat in the garden. I’d almost missed it sitting there in front of Dad’s shed like a shadow. I peered with growing puzzlement. It was a black cat with exactly the same white streak as the one in the tree house. It had to be the same animal. The cat must have slipped out without my noticing. Cursing myself for not paying attention to its escape route, I looked round only to find the creature nuzzling up to my comic stack.
I glanced out again at the cat in the garden. It sat in the same position.
The cat in the tree house. Same position.
I tried fixing one eye on the cat in the garden while continuing to observe the one in the tree house, but it was impossible to focus on both at the same time.
The obvious explanation was that there were two identical cats, but I had the oddest feeling that I was looking at the same cat in two places at once. How could that be?
I wondered. Stellar’s arrival had created a great deal of disturbance in the universe, leading to the appearance of all sorts of strange phenomena. In a world suddenly filled with space-time gerbil-holes, perhaps quantum cats were only to be expected. Now that I thought about it, I remembered watching a YouTube video about a guy called Schrödinger who didn’t like cats. He did this thought experiment, which meant he used the power of his mind to put a cat in a box along with some poison. And then he killed it. And also didn’t kill it. At the same time. Which I suppose made him a bit like a supervillain with mind powers, like Darkseid or Ultron, although I’m not sure about their feelings towards cats. Just to be clear, no actual cats were harmed in the course of his experimenting, only imagined ones. And apparently all this mental cat-zapping effort was to prove that the universe is a very weird place.
I could’ve told him that.
The tree house cat sashayed to the wall.
I didn’t take my eyes off it as it crossed the room, and for the first time I noticed that it was wearing a collar with a small round tag. A shaft of morning light flashed against the metal circle, illuminating a single letter “Z”. What did it stand for? Zack? Zatanna? Zoom? What about Zorbon? Had he sent the cat, and if so, why? As I pondered the question, the cat squeezed through a gap that seemed far too small for its sinewy body and slunk out. There was a fizz of protest from the force field but the cat didn’t seem to notice. It was already on the other side, having broken through Stellar’s barrier without raising a hackle. When I looked into the garden, I could only see one cat. Now, that was weird.
It was then that I remembered what Lara had said about cats. They were not like other creatures. Cats were uncontrollable. Not even her Dark Flutter animal powers could convince the most ordinary, domestic moggie to do anything it didn’t want to do. Was it possible that cats were immune to superpowers?
Either way, the passage of this one through the force field had certainly disrupted the invisible barrier, which continued to buzz and pop for a few seconds. That gave me an idea – what if I could overload the force field and make it crash? I just needed something to shove in the field that would cause a short circuit. But I was all out of cats.
The dimensional toilet gurgled with the whoosh of a gamma-ray burst.
Of course! Crouching down next to it, I wrapped my arms around the base of the bowl, counted to three and then gave a great heave. It was a lot heavier than I’d counted on – maybe because of all those supermassive stars I’d glimpsed inside. I staggered about the tree house, my muscles burning as I lugged it to the door. With my ear so close to the porcelain bowl I was sure I could hear infinity sloshing about inside. I got into position. I was Luke Skywalker targeting the Death Star’s thermal exhaust port, except that instead of a proton torpedo, I had a toilet.
Rocking on my heels I began to swing the toilet bowl back and forth to build up momentum. When I judged that I had enough force, I let go. It sailed through the air, straight and true. A split second later the door splintered before its porcelain power, and then it impacted against the force field. A direct hit! One in a million, kid! There was a furious crackle accompanied by a shower of sparks and then silence.
To my relief I felt a welcome gust of cold air sweep inside. There was no way of telling whether the force field was down for good, so, seizing my chance, I hurried out.
The house was locked up. Stellar and my family had already left for the comic shop. No matter. Stellar had underestimated me. Without the barrier of the force field I was free to contact Zack telepathically. In my head I formed the words: “Zack, can you hear me? There is no Gorgon the World-Eater. He’s really Gordon, and he’s one of my supervillain Top Trump cards. Stellar’s trying to trick you. Come in. Over.”
I waited for his response. At first there was only empty static, then a voice broke through the silence. But it wasn’t my brother.
“Place the strawberries in the bowl and gently toss through the sugar. Leave uncovered at room temperature overnight. This process helps the sugar to dissolve, ensuring that the fruit doesn’t disintegrate too much and helping to keep its colour…”
Stellar was jamming the signal.
He was one step ahead of me yet again. I set off at a run for the bus stop, vowing that the next time we came face to face I wouldn’t come off second best. I drew out my bus pass. It was time for the final confrontation with my Evil Twin.
So far so good. Other Luke wasn’t going anywhere and I’d fooled Mum and Dad into believing I was him. Zack’s initial doubts about me had vanished into thin air after a simple argument over Shredded Wheat. It left him in no doubt that he was talking to his irritating younger brother.
The short car journey into town passed with great excitement. We arrived at the shop and set about making final preparations for the grand reopening. As the others went inside I paused to check out the sign that hung above the front window. In bold yellow letters with a red drop-shadow against a dark-blue background it read: Parker & Sons – Your Friendly Neighbourhood Comic Store.
“& Sons”. Reading the words, I felt a spasm of guilt like a stitch in my side. I quashed it back down. My mission was all that mattered. I followed the others inside.
&nbs
p; “In the words of 80s poodle-rockers Europe,” said Dad, switching on all the lights and firing up the superhero musical carousel, “it’s the final countdown.”
Soon the doors would be flung wide to welcome Parker & Sons’ first customers. I glanced up at the Kang the Conqueror wall clock that hung over the cash register. I had to keep up my pretence for a few more hours. Could I fool Other Luke’s family and friends for that long? Only time – and Kang – would tell.
Mum and Zack went down to the basement to sort out the Dark Flutter themed petting zoo while Dad and I busied ourselves upstairs with some light shelf-dusting. He paused next to the big front window and stared out.
“What are you looking at?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” said Dad. “I was hoping for a line of customers around the block.” His tone grew anxious. “Maybe I should’ve bought a car for everyone in Bromley, or banned someone famous. Y’know, a publicity stunt.” He rested his forehead on the glass and sighed. “Oh, Luke, what I wouldn’t give for Star Lad to make an appearance.”
That wasn’t going to happen. The plan was for us to rendezvous later at IKEA.
The front door opened and Serge staggered in wearing a green and yellow superhero costume, holding a wobbling stack of Tupperware boxes. Perched on the topmost box was a baguette filled with spanners.
“Are you dressed as Matter-Eater Lad?” I asked.
Serge poked his head out from behind the tower of plastic boxes.
“Oui, so are you going to don the cape of Star Lad?”
“No, I’m Ste—” I caught myself just in time. “Ste-pping over here to do this.” I shuffled a few comics on a nearby shelf.
“Serge, you’re awesome,” said Dad, taking the boxes from him and laying them down on the counter.
Besides dressing up as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Serge’s other contribution to today’s event turned out to be a marathon baking session. Dad and Serge unpacked the contents of the boxes and soon, ranged along the counter, were trays piled high with glossy multicoloured patisseries.
My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain Page 7
