by Lucas Flint
“I’m sure,” I said. “He’s not evil. He’s just, well, he was just hurt by the government. He’s under my supervision, so I’m going to make sure that he doesn’t cause any trouble or lose control or anything.”
Emma pulled her hands away from her belt, while the others also relaxed somewhat, but I could tell that none of them truly trusted White Lightning. In turn, White Lightning viewed them all with severe distrust as well, but at least he didn’t seem like he was going to attack them.
“Okay,” I said, drawing the attention of the others back to me. “It looks like everyone is present, so I want to make sure we all remember the plan and what roles we’re going to play in it.”
“Sure,” said Triplet, nodding. “I remember the message.” He pointed at himself and gestured at the others. “While you and White Lightning head into the ship where Mastermind is waiting, the rest of us will be making our way to the back to find a back entrance. Then, while you guys distract Mastermind, we’ll free his prisoners, which will allow you two to take Mastermind down once and for all.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Also, the G-Men, NHA, and INJ are willing to provide backup if we should need it. Let’s not forget about that.”
“I-I don’t see why we don’t just attack him with everything we’ve got now,” said Rime in annoyance. “He’s just one guy. If we all attacked him together, there’s no way he’d stand a chance.”
“Defeating Mastermind isn’t that simple, Rime,” said Triplet, shaking his head. “You see, Mastermind has hostages, including the daughter of the man you murdered, and superheroes generally don’t let the bad guy kill the hostages. We usually prefer to save the hostages rather than let them be killed.”
“Also, Mastermind is smart,” I said. “I imagine that, if he feels overwhelmed, he’ll try to escape to his home dimension using his tech. If he does that, we’ll never be able to get him again, so we need to do this subtly so he won’t feel alarmed or suspicious.”
“O-Okay, fine,” said Rime. “S-Still, I’d rather just turn him into an ice sculpture and be d-done with it.”
“I’d like to do that, too, but Bolt is right,” said Blizzard. “We need to do this right or we risk complete failure.”
“But in the event that somehow the plan goes south, we will make sure to jump in and help you and your brother,” said Ivan, giving me the thumbs up. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. “Anyway, now that we’re all here and all know the plan, I think it’s time to split up. White Lightning and I will head to the ship, while you guys go around it and find a back way inside without Mastermind noticing.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Ivan. “Come along, everyone. We do not have time to lose.”
“Okay,” said Blizzard. She looked at me again. “But be careful, okay? You know how tricky Mastermind can be.”
“I know,” I said. “He is my dad, after all, even if he is an evil supervillain version of him from an alternate universe. And after this, you and I can do something together, okay?”
Blizzard’s smile immediately brightened when I said that. “Okay.”
She kissed me on the cheek before letting go of me and following Ivan, Triplet, Emma, and Rime, who were already making their way back into the trees surrounding us. I watched them go, smiling at the back of Blizzard as she and the others gradually faded out of sight into the trees.
“Her,” said White Lightning, causing me to snap out of my thoughts and look at him suddenly. He was also looking at the trees, though unlike me he was frowning. “You … like her?”
“Blizzard?” I said. “Yeah. She’s my girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend,” White Lightning repeated. He said the word like it was from a foreign language, repeating it carefully. “Never … had one. Nice?”
“Very nice,” I said. “I will have to get you a girlfriend after this. I know some young female superhumans who wouldn’t mind having a boyfriend as strong as you.”
White Lightning shuddered. “No thank. No need girlfriend. Happy.”
Clearly, White Lightning was girl shy, but I decided not to press the point, since we had more important things to worry about at the moment than girls. “All right. Well, we ought to be heading to the ship now, so let’s go before Mastermind gets suspicious and starts wondering where we are.”
White Lightning nodded and the two of us started making our way down the path to the fallen ship, following the directions on my watch. The path was incredibly rough and we wouldn’t have noticed it if Mastermind hadn’t given us the coordinates to the fallen ship. But we did occasionally run across broken branches or crunched leaves and sometimes tire tracks, which I assumed were from government officials who visited the site of the fallen ship, though I didn’t know how often the government visited the ship. It could have also just been from when Mastermind came by here, but I didn’t know for sure.
In any case, the path was pretty long-winded, twisting and turning and going through thick brush and tree branches. You could easily get very lost in here if you didn’t know where you were going, especially at night. It wasn’t night yet—more like late evening—but the lack of sunlight through the treetops made the forest seem darker than it likely normally was. I half-expected Mastermind to have laid a trap for us, but we didn’t run into any traps along the way. White Lightning didn’t seem nearly as nervous as me, though maybe that was because the glow from his lightning powers granted us enough light to see by.
After about five minutes of walking alone in silence, we eventually stepped through the trees and into a far more open space. That was when I saw it.
It was a large crater, as wide and deep as a volcanic crater. It looked like the kind of crater you’d expect a huge meteor to have created and was mostly barren of life, save for a couple of small bushes here and there.
But that wasn’t the most interesting part. The most interesting part was the large spaceship in the middle; at least, I assumed that that was what it was, because it couldn’t have been anything else.
The ship looked nothing like the Pokacu ships I’d seen before. It was bulbous, with long tendrils that looked like octopus tentacles streaming out from its massive body. The tendrils looked big enough to wrap around skyscrapers, though half of them were buried underneath piles of dirt and the other half, while not buried, looked totally nonfunctional.
The ship’s main body—the bulbous part—looked almost like a face, with two large windows that resembled eyes and an entrance area that resembled a beak. It was almost as tall as a skyscraper, although it was leaning over so much that it looked like it was about to snap off from the main body from the pressure.
I tried to imagine what the ship would have looked like in its prime. I imagined a huge space octopus just floating through the reaches of space before it suddenly crashed onto Earth thousands of years ago. It made me wonder where it had come from and what its creators had been like, though I supposed I would never find out.
I looked at White Lightning and was surprised to see how terrified he looked. He took a step backwards, like he was about to run away, but at the same time I could tell that he was trying to fight his fear and not give in.
“White Lightning?” I said. “What’s the problem? Have you seen this ship before?”
White Lightning shook his head. “No. Something like it, though.”
“Something like it?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Government …” White Lightning shuddered. “Don’t want to talk about.”
I understood, even though I didn’t know all the details. The government must have used something that looked like an octopus during their experiments on White Lightning. A part of me was curious to know the details, but I didn’t ask, because I could tell that it had really shaken him and I needed him to be brave right now.
“Well, let’s go inside,” I said. “Maybe it isn’t as scary as it appears.”
“Hope so,” said White Lightning in a voice full of dread.
&n
bsp; We flew across the crater to the beaked entrance of the fallen spaceship. I glanced around to see if I could catch a glimpse of the others who were trying to sneak in from the back, but the surrounding forest was too dark for me to see if the others were nearby.
Landing in front of the beak, we found that it was already open. It looked like the entrance had been forced open a long time ago, based on how it hung limply on its hinges. White Lightning and I exchanged a quick glance before turning to face the entrance and walking inside.
The interior of the ship was surprisingly small, or at least the lobby was. There were a couple of platforms on the floor that were glowing red, while the entrances on either side of the lobby were closed off by rubble. It looked like the ceiling must have collapsed at some point and caved the other two entrances in, which would make it very difficult to go deeper into the ship.
The ship had an old, abandoned feel to it. The floor felt rusted and fragile, like it was going to break if we stepped on it too hard. The walls and ceiling were rusted and it was all very quiet. I didn’t see Mastermind anywhere, but given the size of this thing, that wasn’t too surprising; he was probably in another part of the ship.
Just then, there was a beep on my watch, causing me and White Lightning to look down at it. Its number was listed as ‘UNKNOWN,’ so I tapped it and said, “Hello?”
“Kevin,” came Mastermind’s insidious voice. “I see that you and White Lightning have entered the ship.”
“How did you know that?” I said. “We haven’t called you yet.”
“I’ve been following your progress via your suit-up watch’s tracking feature,” said Mastermind. “I was able to hack into it and track your every movement from here. I didn’t want you to get the drop on me.”
Uh, oh. I worried that Mastermind might somehow also know that I had been in contact with my friends. I had told Mastermind that it was just going to be me and White Lightning, but if he knew that I’d lied, then things were about to get messy.
“Okay,” I said, trying not to show any nerves in order to avoid arousing Mastermind’s suspicions. “So where are you on the ship, exactly?”
“I’m in the control center, which you can only get to by walking onto the teleporting pads that should be directly ahead of you,” said Mastermind. “Do you see them?”
I looked up and saw the red platforms I’d notice before again. “You mean the glowing red ones?”
“Exactly,” said Mastermind. “This ship, unlike human vessels, uses teleporters to allow its crew to move from room to room. It’s actually a fairly simple system that I worked out myself after only a few minutes of study, but it’s quite ingenious and makes me jealous that I had not been the one to invent it first.”
“So the ship’s teleportation system still works?” I said. “Even though the ship has been crashed and inactive for thousands of years?”
“Yes,” said Mastermind. “I don’t understand that myself, but I think it has to do with the durability of the ship. It’s not made out of any Earth alloy, so I imagine that its extraterrestrial properties keep it strong. But don’t expect it to start flying; it appears to be all out of fuel, so it will stay grounded for now.”
“Right,” I said. “So we just step onto the teleportation pads and they will take us to you?”
“Yes,” said Mastermind. “You don’t even need to do anything. Just step onto the pads and you will both be in the same room as me in an instant.”
“All right,” I said. “White Lightning and I are about to step onto them.”
“But only one at a time,” Mastermind warned. “If two people stand on the same pad … well, the results won’t be pretty. So I suggest that you two stand on separate pads in order to ensure your safety and health.”
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll be there soon.”
I hung up and looked at White Lightning. “You take the left pad, I’ll take the right.”
White Lightning nodded and we walked over to the pads. As I suggested, White Lightning stepped onto the left pad while I stepped onto the right.
As soon as we were on our pads, the glowing red lights suddenly became even brighter. In fact, they became so bright that we had to cover our eyes with our hands in order to avoid getting blinded. There was also a strange humming sound in my ears, which as far as I could tell was coming directly from the pads themselves.
All of a sudden, I felt a shift in my surroundings. It’s a hard sensation to describe; it was like the ground had moved underneath me, but I hadn’t moved from where I was standing. I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but in any case it didn’t feel like the sensation of teleportation that I was used to. Maybe alien teleportation worked differently from human teleportation.
But the shifting sensation lasted maybe a second and then the ground felt solid under my feet again. Not only that, but the red light suddenly dimmed, so I lowered my hands in order to see where I had ended up.
I was now standing inside a gigantic test tube, with barely enough room to stretch my arms in front of my body. I was surrounded on all sides by thick glass that was slightly dirty, though still clear enough for me to see through. I looked up and saw that the top was sealed by a large, alien-looking crystal hanging directly above my head.
I heard banging to my left and looked over to see that White Lightning was in a similar glass tube. He was banging his fists against the glass, desperately trying to break free, but the glass of the tube must have been incredibly strong, because all he succeeded in doing was make banging noises. He didn’t even make any cracks in the tube’s surface and I could tell that he was using his super strength due to how hard he made the tube shake with every blow.
“Kevin, Ronald,” said Mastermind’s voice, which now came from outside the tube, “I am pleased to see you two again.”
I looked down and saw that the tubes were raised two dozen feet off the ground. Mastermind stood on a platform below us, his arms folded over his chest. He still wore his helmet, so I couldn’t see his facial expression, but based on the way he stood, I could tell that he was feeling quite smug.
Mastermind stood in front of a huge, drill-shaped machine that was connected to our tubes by way of huge pipes (or maybe wires; it was hard to tell from here) which looked big enough to carry tons of water. The machine looked as old and inactive as the rest of the ship, though it had a large switch on it which looked like it had been rusted to the point where you couldn’t flip it even if you tried.
“Mastermind, what is this?” I said, putting my hands on the glass tube and glaring down at him. “What are these tubes?”
“The energy tubes for the Apocalypse Switch, obviously,” said Mastermind. “These were the tubes in which the old Ciphers were held, before the government took them away and put them inside you and your brother. I teleported you two straight inside them in order to ensure that you would use your powers to reactivate the Apocalypse Switch.”
“Where are Mom and the others?” I said, looking around for them, but not seeing anyone other than me, White Lightning, and Mastermind in the massive engine room. “I don’t see them.”
“Allow me to show you,” said Mastermind.
He snapped his fingers and another platform lowered from the ceiling. This platform was a steel cage, locked tightly, with four people lying unconscious within it: Mom, Malcolm, Tara, and Cadmus. At first I thought they were all dead already, but when I saw their chests rising and falling, I knew they were just unconscious.
“Here are the hostages,” said Mastermind, gesturing at the platform as it came to a stop to his left. “Don’t worry. I’ve kept good care of them. I’m not going to kill them … not yet, anyway.”
“Not yet?” I said. “But the deal was that you’d spare them if me and White Lightning agreed to come here.”
“Oh, I did agree to that, didn’t I?” said Mastermind. “That was a lie, more or less. All four of them—especially Cadmus—will die, since I have no use for them anymore.”
My hands balled into fists. “So you never intended to keep your word at all.”
“Of course not,” said Mastermind. “Did you really think I would be so foolish as to uphold my end of the deal when it wouldn’t benefit me? I am your father, Kevin. I know how you think. I knew that you would work with White Lightning to figure out how to defeat me, so I had you teleported directly into the tubes so you couldn’t attack me. Besides, you clearly never intended to keep your word, either, so I don’t see how you are any better than me.”
“I’m better than you because I want to save the world, not destroy it,” I said. “That’s what you are trying to do with the Apocalypse Switch.”
Mastermind sighed. “Destroy the world … my, my, isn’t that simplistic thinking.”
“It’s not simplistic thinking,” I said. “It’s the facts. The Apocalypse Switch—which I assume is the gigantic machine behind you—will destroy the entire planet if activated. Andy you want us to activate it, so—”
“The Apocalypse Switch doesn’t destroy the world,” Mastermind interrupted me.
“What?” I said. “Of course it does. That’s why it’s called the Apocalypse Switch.”
Mastermind snorted. “That’s just a name that the government gave to it. Did you ever ask yourself how they knew it destroys the world if they have never actually tested it? The government isn’t omniscient; it’s just as limited as us. It was just a theory, a theory I myself believed before I discovered the truth.”
“Well, then what does it do?” I said. “If it doesn’t destroy the world, what else can do it?”
Mastermind pointed at me. “It will permanently negate the powers of every superhuman on the planet; in effect, an ‘apocalypse’ of superhumanity, if you like.”
A chill went down my spine at that thought. “Permanently negate our powers? What do you mean?”
“Do you remember Robert Candle?” said Mastermind. “I did some research in this universe and discovered that your version of Robert had the ability to steal and negate superpowers. The Apocalypse Switch does the same thing, except on a planet wide scale, and its effects are totally irreversible.”
