“Yeah,” Charles said. “We’re one team member down but I’m ready.”
Later that evening, when everyone was back at home after school was over, Clark hugged both of his parents. Knowing that John had no one left made Clark think of his own family. He had a mother, a father, and a sibling on the way. He was proud to know they loved him and had no intentions of ever leaving one another. Then Clark waved as he exited the front door of the house. He told his parents he was going to hang out with a few friends on Friday night. So, technically, he wasn’t telling a lie. He merely kept from them the fact that he was going out to fight crime as a costumed vigilante with super powers.
Clark arrived at the warehouse at the same time that Charles did. Sarah followed soon after and then Donny showed up with Chloe.
“So does anyone know anything about John?” Donny asked.
“We’re pretty sure he robbed a bank last night,” Clark said. “But that’s about it.”
“He was sort of unhinged,” Chloe said.
“He’s gonna be fine,” Charles said as he pointed a finger at her. “That’s my brother you’re talking about.”
“Hey, back off,” Donny told Charles.
“Everything’s gonna be alright,” Charles said. “John is just a little upset. Who wouldn’t be if their dad just died? He’ll come back and then we’ll get him the help he needs.”
Clark knew that was a stretch. Even if John did return, things could hardly go back to normal after he robbed a bank. But Clark didn’t verbalize this. He simply gave Charles a smile and told him he was right. “Everything is going to be alright.”
Then they got dressed as superheroes for what they agreed would be the last time. Clark’s blue suit, cape, and goggles made him Night Wolf. Sarah’s silver costume turned her into Summer Saturn. Donny’s red outfit sans cape transformed him into Tracks. Chloe’s pink cape and matching skirt made her Surefire. And Charles’s green outfit and cape turned him into Shadow Fly.
They each stacked their gloved hands on top of one another in a circle. They cheered and raised their hands up for their last big hurrah. The five of them flew off into the night with a frequency signal that was meant to dispatch law enforcement officers.
“Where to?” Sarah yelled out.
Clark placed his hand up to his ear in order to listen to the police radio as they all flew through the air. Then he told them, “Let’s head West.”
They swooped to the left and glided through the air. Then Clark heard an interesting static from his earpiece and listened in.
“Wait!” he shouted to his crime fighting friends. “Not west. Back east. I’m getting a report on another maniac with a flamethrower.”
They all turned in midair and headed back from the direction they had just traveled.
“Another guy with a flamethrower?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah,” Clark said. “That’s what I just heard.”
“You think it’s the same maniacs from last time?” Charles asked.
“Well John did kill one of them with their own rocket launcher,” Donny said as they sped up and reached the downtown area.
Minutes later they reached a downtown street that seemed to have been evacuated. In the middle of the street was large man wearing a black Kevlar suit. He had a flamethrower backpack on and yelled for the superheroes to show themselves.
They all lowered to the ground near him. Clark look at the handle of his flamethrower and it twisted downward.
“How the hell did you do that?” the man asked.
“What do you want with us?” Clark asked him. “We’re tired of your tricks. We have streets to patrol.”
“We want you dead,” the man spat.
Another man dressed in similar clothing jumped from around a corner and pointed an automatic rifle at the five teens. He fired the gun off. He unloaded several rounds and bullet after bullet stopped in midair. Clark, Charles, and Chloe each had their arms lifted. They were preventing the bullets from reaching any of them. Donny turned around and punched the man who held the flamethrower. The man fell to the ground as he held his bloodied nose.
The bullets being held in mid-air dropped to the ground. Clark ripped the gun out of the mercenary’s hands and pinned him to the ground. Clark jumped on top of him and grabbed him by the collar.
“Why are you doing this?” Clark yelled.
The man said nothing and Clark punched him in the face repeatedly. The man finally gave in after Clark had ravaged his face.
“We’re mercenaries,” the man said as he held his hands up to his face.
“What?” Clark asked.
“We were sent to kill you,” the man told him.
“By who?” Clark demanded.
“Zhang Wu,” the man cried out.
Another mercenary was across the street and he went unnoticed. He quietly pulled out a long gun-like weapon and shot it at Chloe. The weapon was silent as it shot a tracking devise onto Chloe’s right boot.
“Who’s Zhang Wu!?” Clark growled at the man who was pinned to the ground.
The man said nothing but the mercenary who stood across the street and went unnoticed pulled out a gun with a scope. He looked through the scope and fired the gun. Before anyone could stop it, the bullet hit Charles directly in the back.
Time seemed to slow down as Charles felt an intense pain hit him. His friends turned to face him as Charles dropped to his knees and fell over.
“No!” Clark yelled. He and Sarah rushed to Charles’s side while Donny and Chloe rushed after the mercenary who shot him.
“Charles,” Clark begged as his friend lay bleeding on the ground.
“This really hurts,” Charles whispered. His hand was holding his chest. The bullet had pierced through his entire body.
Donny and Chloe returned with the man who shot Charles. The man was suspended in air, completely unable to move.
“We’ll handle this guy,” Donny said.
“You have to get Charles to a hospital,” Chloe told Clark and Sarah.
“Wait,” Charles whispered. He was breathing very slowly. “You’ve got to take this costume off me first.”
Sarah removed his mask while Clark took his cape and top off. Then Clark held Charles in his arms as he lay dying. Sarah backed away as Clark shot into the air with Charles.
“It’s going to be okay, buddy,” Clark said to him as they flew through the air. Clark went faster than he ever had before. There even came a loud boom as he broke the sound barrier. Seconds later Clark descended in front of St. John’s Hospital. He pulled down his goggles and ran into the reception area with Charles in his arms.
“What’s wrong?” the receptionist asked.
“He was just shot in the back,” Clark said urgently.
“We need paramedics now!” the receptionist yelled.
Clark placed Charles on the reception table. When the woman told him he would need to stay and answer some questions, Clark told her that he had no time. He ran out of the hospital and flew off.
Charles was moving in and out of consciousness. The paramedics entered the reception area and placed him on a gurney. They rushed him into the back of the hospital after placing an oxygen mask over his face. Charles could only make out bright lights and various figures weaving around him. They wrapped up his chest with gauze, stuck him with needles, and told him he would have to undergo immediate surgery. He passed out and could remember nothing else.
After he dropped Charles off at the hospital, Clark rushed back to the scene of the crime. The cops had arrived but he noticed Chloe, Donny, and Sarah standing on top of a building. They went unnoticed by the cops and Clark joined them.
“What happened?” Sarah asked.
“I dropped him off at the hospital,” Clark said. “I think he’s going to live─ who did this to him?”
As they stood on top of the building, Donny pointed up. The man who shot Charles was still suspended in the air. Charles pointed his hand out and took over.
“H
ow could you?” Charles angrily asked the man.
Clark directed his hand as the man swayed over the building. Using his powers, he dangled the mercenary hundreds of feet in the air, away from the building.
“I have every sense to kill you right now,” Clark told him.
“I was just doing a job,” the man said cowardly.
“By trying to kill my friends─ Who is Zhang Wu?” Clark demanded.
“Wu is leader of the criminal underworld in Cincinnati.”
“Why does he want us dead?” Clark asked.
“You’ve scared away the drug dealers, the burglars. You’ve cost Wu too much. So he hired us. I know you’re going to kill me… so just do it.”
Clark’s expression turned to pure rage as he tightened his fist. The man plummeted hundreds of feet from the building’s top and Sarah gasped. She looked over the building and watched the mercenary fall. The man screamed as he dropped. But right before he reached the ground, he stopped in mid-air. Then he slowly dropped one foot to the cement. The cops surrounding the area raced toward the unharmed man with handcuffs.
“You didn’t kill him,” Sarah said.
“Because I didn’t want to become him,” Clark said snidely.
“Wow,” is all Donny could say.
“I can’t believe what just happened,” Chloe said.
“So this is how we end,” Clark told them angrily. “So this is how we disband. By losing John while Charles lies in a hospital bed in critical condition.”
“Clark, please,” Sarah said as he reached for him.
“No,” he told her. “This is the curse we have to live with. Which one of us will be the next causality?”
Clark dropped to his knees and began sobbing. Sarah hugged him as wept.
“It’s my fault,” Clark said. “This is all my goddamn fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Sarah tried to comfort him.
“I’m the only person to blame. This was my idea. I had to get you guys to agree to this stupid game. And now it’s cost us everything.”
“Please, Clark,” Donny said. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“But I should,” Clark cried. “I really should.”
CHAPTER 13
Charles awoke the next morning on Saturday. He was in a cozy hospital bed and was surrounded by various devises that monitored his heart rate and blood pressure. There was an I.V. in his right arm which was filled with various medicines that kept him lucid. Charles could move his head but he could not lift himself up. He turned to his left, near the window, and saw his father.
“No,” his father said benevolently, “Don’t try to move, son.”
“Dad,” Charles whispered.
“You’ve been sleep since last night.”
“Am I gonna live, dad?”
“Yes, you’re going to live, son. You required a few surgeries but the bullet missed your spine. That means we’ve got a long process ahead of us but one day you’ll be back to normal.”
“I’m so sorry, dad,” Charles whispered as tears streamed down his face.
“No, it’s alright,” his dad said as he held Charles’s hand. “Please, just tell me what you were doing out last night.”
“There’s some things I haven’t told you, dad.”
“What?”
Charles lifted his hand up just slightly and the pen that was in his father’s breast pocket flew into his hand.
“My god,” his father said. “How did you do that?”
“The crystal, dad. The missing crystal from your lab did this to me.”
“What? How is that possible!?”
“I don’t know how the crystal was moved from your lab. But we found it in a barn over the tracks. It was huge. Like seven feet tall. We only touched it for a second and then we developed these powers. We’ve been going out at night using these powers to help people. Kind of like superheroes. And then last night I was shot in the back.”
“Son, why didn’t you tell me this sooner? Where is the crystal? Is it still in some barn?”
“I don’t know,” Charles lied. “I don’t know where it is now.”
“Who else touched it?” his father asked.
“Me and John,” Charles lied again in order to keep his other friends safe. “But John disappeared on Thursday. He robbed a bank and now he’s gone.”
“My God,” his father said. “I knew that thing was dangerous. That’s why I ordered it to be put away until it could be stabilized. You shouldn’t have touched it, Charles.”
“Yeah,” Charles whispered. “I’ve kinda realized that now.”
His father smiled. “At least that sense of humor is never going away.”
A doctor entered the lab with a needle and syringe in his hand. His name, “Dr. Hewer” was patched onto his lab coat.
“Alright, Mr. Walsh, we’re going to need to do a little blood test now,” Dr. Hewer said.
He stuck the needle into Charles’s arm and drew a vial of blood.
“This should be enough,” the doctor said.
The doctor left the room and Charles’s dad told him that he would be immediately hiring two security officers to guard his hospital room. Charles said it wasn’t necessary but his father insisted.
“Your mother was in Germany last night but she took the next flight back home and should be here by nighttime,” Charles’s dad told him.
“Good,” Charles smiled. “I could really use my mom right now.”
Clark and Sarah were standing right outside of the hospital. Clark was afraid to go into the hospital because the receptionist had seen his face the night before. When Sarah told Clark that the staff rotates each shift, Clark slowly walked into the hospital and peered around the reception area. He was relieved to discover that Sarah was right. There was a different receptionist who took one look at him and went right back to reading her paperback novel. It was something titled “A Clockwork Plagiarism.” Clark had never heard of it but she was clearly engrossed in it.
Clark and Sarah took the elevator up to the eleventh floor. When they exited the elevator they approached the main desk and asked if they could see Charles Walsh. The nurse at the desk told them to wait a moment. She hurried off down the hall and returned a minute later.
“Alright,” she said. “You’ve been okayed to see him. Just head down the hall. Room 11-3.”
They headed down the hallway and noticed two bodyguards outside of room 11-3. One of the bodyguards opened the room’s door and said, “Okay, Charles, your friends are here to see you.”
The two bodyguards moved aside and allowed Clark and Sarah into the room. The door was shut behind them.
They looked around and noticed the entire room was filled with balloons and flowers.
“Wow,” Clark said. “Lots of balloons and stuff. I was going to get you one but the shop is closed right now.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” Charles said. “Don’t worry about it. My dad just got all of this stuff for me.”
“Are you going to be okay, Charles?” Clark asked him.
“Yeah, man,” Charles answered. “I’m going to be okay. The bullet missed my spine. That means I should be able to walk again. One day.”
“I’m so sorry, Charles,” Clark said. “I feel responsible for what happened.”
“Don’t,” Charles whispered. “You didn’t know some asshole was going to shoot me. But that was a hell of a night to end our reign on. I’ll never forget it, I tell you that much.”
“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Sarah said.
“Well, Sarah,” Charles addressed her. “I’m going to live but this morphine drip is keeping me out of pain. I feel almost like this is my deathbed so I think I should confess that I’ve slept with just about every girl on the cheerleading team except you.”
Sarah laughed, “Stay classy, Charles.”
“I just had to get that off my chest,” he whispered as he laughed.
“Anything else you need to tell us?” Clark asked.
�
�Nah, that’s it, brother. Where do we go from here?”
“I guess we try to live normal lives,” Clark said. “We wait for you to heal. And we’re going to be there for you every step of the way.”
“Sounds good,” Charles said. “No more costumes?”
“Never again,” Clark nodded.
“Oh,” Sarah reminded Charles. “Donny and Chloe are coming to visit you later today.”
“Great,” he said. “Then it’ll be a party.”
“We’re going to get something to eat,” Clark said. “And then we’ll be back for you. You’re not going to be alone, are you?”
“Well my dad was just here,” Charles told him. “I don’ know where he went but he should be back soon. So I won’t be alone for long. And besides, there are two huge bodyguards right outside my room protecting me.”
“Yeah,” Sarah smiled. “I imagine it’s hard to get past those guys.”
Dr. Hewer entered the room. “Hello, are these your friends, Mr. Walsh?”
“Yeah,” Charles told the doctor. “They’re good friends.”
“Okay,” the doctor said. “I’m afraid it’s time for another I.V. This next one is going to sedate you so your friends will have to leave for about an hour or so.”
“Oh, we were just leaving,” Clark told the doctor.
“Alright, I’ll see you guys soon,” Charles said as he lifted his arm in an attempt to wave.
Just as Clark and Sarah were leaving the room, they heard the doctor ask Charles something else.
“Charles,” Dr. Hewer said, “you don’t remember who brought you here, do you?”
“No,” Charles said. “I don’t recall.”
“The receptionist said that someone wearing a costume brought you here. Some believe it may have been one of those so called superheroes that have been making the news rounds.”
“No,” Charles said again. “I don’t remember.”
Clark heard the conversation and became slightly nervous as he and Sarah were leaving the hospital.
“Do you think they might try and connect us together?” Clark asked Sarah as they walked out of the hospital.
“I hope not,” Sarah said. “Charles told the doctor he didn’t remember how he got there.”
Ascension (The Ascension Series) Page 23
