Kid Normal

by Greg James

  The white-coated man took the opportunity and stood up. He was a twitchy kind of person, with food stains down his front, thick black-rimmed glasses, and hair that looked like it had gone crazy. Oh, and he had a strong German accent, which was odd as he’d actually grown up about a mile away and had never been to Germany to his life. We’ve just put it in to keep you on your toes.

  “My name,” he began (in his strong German accent, remember—no slacking), “is Professor Graham Smith. And I would like to share with you my dastardly evil invention. Behold!”

  At this, he whipped the cloth in front of him away, revealing a decidedly normal-looking spoon with a red button on the handle.

  “The Ultra Spoon!” gloated Smith, looking around in triumph at the other two candidates. “Never again will we suffer the indignity of stirring our own coffee.” He tried to think of another word for “behold” but couldn’t, and instead shouted, “Because!” for no reason.

  The room fell silent. Someone coughed.

  With a dramatic flourish, Smith pressed the button on the spoon, and there was a tiny whizzing noise as the end of it began to spin around. Smith laughed delightedly, only stopping when Nektar got to his feet, leaped around the table, and stung him unconscious. It was only a little sting, mind you. But Smith suddenly took on the demeanor of a businessman who had fallen asleep on the last train home after one too many drinks at the Christmas party. He slumped sideways off his chair, dribbling.

  “Next!” Nektar yelled at the top of his voice.

  “Penny Percival, evil Lord Nektar,” said the female candidate primly. “As you know, I have been in charge of your robotic insect program. Using your research, we have developed a fleet of spy drones to do your bidding. To the human eye they are almost indistinguishable from normal wasps. But, in fact, each contains a sophisticated camera, microphone, and guidance system. They are the most advanced spy robots ever built.”

  She glanced smugly at the motionless form of Graham Smith on the floor beside her, where he was collecting a sizable puddle of drool around his mouth. Nektar smiled.

  “But what I have to show you today is something else altogether,” she continued. “I have become a little concerned that we haven’t really been doing much to help the planet . . .”

  The smile instantly vanished from Nektar’s face. Unfazed by this, Penny removed the white cloth in front of her to reveal a bowl with a single rainbow-striped fish in the bottom of it. Beside it was a glass jar of foul-looking brownish sludge.

  “This robot fish is the answer to all the world’s clean water problems,” announced Penny. “Please observe.”

  She tipped the stinking liquid into the fish bowl, and through the murk, Nektar’s bulbous eyes could just make out the small fish beginning to swim backward and forward. The pointy-shoed man leaned forward with interest.

  Gradually, as the fish swam around, the liquid in the bowl began to clear, until a few minutes later the fish was swimming contentedly in perfectly clean water, an adorable smile on its face. To anyone who wasn’t an evil wasp-based hybrid, this would be the most remarkable thing in the whole world.

  But, sadly, Nektar was evil, and so he hated it. He jumped up, darted to the other end of the table, grabbed the fish out of its bowl, and stamped on it repeatedly, yelling, “What”—STAMP—“is the point”—STAMP—“of that? How am I supposed to be a supervillain”—STAMP—“if all I do is clean people’s ponds?” STAMPSTAMPSTAMP.

  Penny Percival gathered up the remains of her miraculous fish and ran from the room in tears.

  Nektar returned to his seat, laced his hands behind his head, and turned his attention wordlessly to the sharply dressed man.

  “Knox, sir. Nicholas Knox,” the man said. “I joined the company three months ago to work on your personal robot strike force and have been eager to meet with you. Your reputation precedes you.”

  For a man who’d just watched one of his colleagues get stung until he passed out and another have her invention stamped on repeatedly, Knox didn’t seem nervous. He had indeed only started at Ribbon Robotics recently, but had risen quickly up the ranks with a delicate combination of oiliness and acidity, like a sneaky salad dressing. He flicked a lock of his carefully arranged hair back from his face, and calmly removed the white cloth from his own invention.

  It looked not unlike a yellow-and-black-striped bicycle helmet, though it was thinner and more delicate. But this was no ordinary bicycle helmet, as Knox was about to reveal.

  “This is no ordinary bicycle helmet,” he confirmed. “I wonder if we might have a volunteer, sir?”

  Nektar pressed his intercom. “Gary, would you step in here a moment?”

  There was silence.

  Impatiently, Nektar strode to the door and flung it open. “Gary!” he bellowed at the top of his voice.

  “Yes, my lord?” replied Gary, who was squatting on a small stool in the corridor in case he was needed.

  “Go to the intercom in the antechamber,” commanded Nektar.

  “But I’m already here, your waspishness,” began Gary desperately, before seeing the expression on Nektar’s face and scuttling away.

  Nektar returned to his chair. He waited a moment, then pressed the button in front of him again: “Gary, would you step in here a moment?”

  “Yes, Lord Nektar,” replied Gary, secretly rolling his eyes. A moment later, he traipsed back into the boardroom. “How can I be of service, sir?”

  “Try this on for size,” Knox instructed. Gary did as he was told and carefully placed the black-and-yellow hat onto his head.

  “It fits!” he exclaimed.

  “Of course it fits,” replied a smug-looking Knox. “It’s a one-size-fits-all mind-control helmet . . .”

  “A what-control helmet?” squeaked Gary.

  “Nothing!” fluted Knox guiltily. “Now, Mr. Gary,” he went on. “Your challenge is a simple one. I’d like you to run at the wall as fast as you possibly can.”

  “What? I’m not doing that. It’ll hurt,” said Gary.

  Knox reached up and pushed a button on the back of the helmet. Lights flickered into life along both sides of it, and immediately Gary’s eyes widened and, more worryingly, changed color. The whites had become a bright yellow, with huge black pupils in the center.

  “Now, let’s try again, shall we?” said Knox forcefully. “Drone, I want you to run at the wall as fast as you can,” he repeated.

  Immediately Gary ran at full speed straight into the wall. His face hit it with a crack and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Nektar roared with delighted laughter: “He’s been Knoxed out cold!”

  “Ah! Good one, sir,” lied Knox. “So, as you can see, I’ve managed to find a way of controlling the human brain. I can make anyone do anything.”

  “You mean . . . WE can make anyone do anything?” said Nektar.

  “Yes, that’s what I said, sir,” said Knox, with a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “We can make anyone do anything. So, do I get the job?”

  “Oh yes,” said Nektar greedily as he reached out for the helmet that Knox had removed from the motionless Gary. “Welcome to the hive, Knox.”

  “That’s bees, you idiot,” sighed Knox, but not loudly enough for Nektar to hear.

  9

  The Alliance

  It’s always a strange experience walking into class late. It’s even stranger when you’ve just gone to see the headmaster and he’s threatened you with physical violence.

  Murph headed back to the room where he’d left the rest of his class and creaked open the door, which seemed like the loudest noise on earth. Every single head in the room turned toward him as he scuttled in sideways like an unusually shy crab. He noticed several different expressions as he went to his seat: surprise, confusion, annoyance, and really needing to pee. This last one had nothing to do with him. Murph couldn’t have known this, but Sophie Clark’s parents insisted she drink two gallons of water every day.

  “Welcome, wel
come,” said the teacher at the front of the class, who was sitting at a large grand piano. As she said each word, she played a chord, which gave Murph the impression he had walked into Weirdo School: The Musical.

  The tinkling teacher was The School’s head of music, Mrs. Baum.

  “Today I’m going to be playing you one of my favorite pieces of music,” continued Mrs. Baum. “As I was just saying, Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ is all about friendship, and how your friends can inspire you.”

  This was literally music to Murph’s ears. It almost sounded like a normal lesson, and after being allowed to stay at The School by the skin of his teeth, any class where he might be able to make head or tail of what was going on was a bonus. He sank gratefully behind an empty desk.

  “Now, have a listen as I play the piece for you,” said Mrs. Baum in soothing tones. She cracked her knuckles and lifted her hands above the keys. Nearby, Murph noticed Mary wince.

  Mrs. Baum froze for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts, then began to play. And immediately Murph realized that, of course, this was nothing like a normal lesson. Here at The School, the teachers had Capes just like their students. Mrs. Baum’s was the ability to move her hands with lightning speed. She finished Elgar’s lovely, inspiring piece of music in just under two seconds.

  It sounded like . . . well, it’s difficult to describe what it sounded like. It sounded like someone was pressing five thousand notes at once. It sounded like a musical nosebleed. It sounded like a really fat otter had scurried across the piano keys on its way to an otter party.

  Mrs. Baum opened her eyes and looked expectantly at her class. “What did you think?” she asked them innocently.

  Murph looked around blankly, then bowed his head until it touched the desk in front of him. He sighed a sigh that actually lasted longer than Mrs. Baum’s Elgar concert.

  The lesson ended twenty minutes later, after Mrs. Baum had played them the complete high-speed works of Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and, oddly, several TV theme tunes from the 1980s. Everyone spilled out into the hallway, wondering how they were ever going to learn anything about music . . . and what on earth was Press Your Luck?

  Murph heard several mutterings. “What you still doing here, Kid Normal?” asked Timothy as he and his friends jostled past him. The rest of the class seemed to have decided to ignore him, and the hallway quickly emptied. Only Mary stayed behind, along with Hilda the tiny horse girl, though she didn’t seem eager to hang around either. “Hang on,” he heard Mary hiss to her as they approached him.

  “Right, what on earth is going on?” Mary asked Murph, giving him the full raised-eyebrow treatment. “Why did you tell me you could fly?”

  “Actually, I didn’t ever tell anyone I can fly,” replied Murph matter-of-factly. “I think you asked me if I was a skimmer, and I had no idea what you were talking about.”

  Mary pursed her lips and looked at him with her head on one side. “You are a puzzle, aren’t you? So what happened with Mr. Souperman? We thought when Deborah Lamington came and dragged you off to his office, you were going to be kicked out.”

  “Deborah what-ington?”

  Hilda piped up. “Deborah Lamington—she’s, like, the coolest girl in The School. Her and Dirk—that’s the boy who was with her—are actually operational. Someone was telling me about it in the bathroom the other day. They’re, like, so awesome.”

  “All right, Hilda, calm down,” said Mary. “They’re not that cool. Hilda wants to be a Hero, you see,” she continued to Murph. “She’s desperate to get noticed by the Alliance—”

  “Whatareyoutalkingabout?” blurted Murph, cutting into the stream of gibberish. “Okay—can we start from the beginning, please? I have quite literally no idea what is going on. I have ended up at this school by accident. So humor me, okay? Start with the basics, and every time you say something I don’t understand, I’m going to hoot like a confused owl.”

  Mary looked at him with exasperation, then seemed to relent and smiled. “Fine, we’ll start from the beginning. I told you about Capes, right?”

  “Right,” confirmed Murph.

  “Short for ‘Capabilities,’” Hilda added excitedly.

  “Hoooot?” said Owl Murph.

  “If you find out you have a Capability, you’re invited to come to a school like this one, where they train you to use it—and more importantly to hide it,” Mary said.

  “T-wooot?” asked the owl. “How does The School know you have a superpower?”

  “‘CAPE’!” Hilda corrected him.

  “Well, it’s secret, of course,” said Mary, “but I think they have contacts in the police and hospitals and stuff. They always seem to find out when someone’s Cape starts appearing.”

  “The doctor must have told them about mine,” Hilda said, “because my parents sent me to talk to her when I told them that I could make tiny horses appear. It wasn’t a normal kind of doctor’s office, though. There was carpet on the wall and very few windows. Anyway, I think she must have passed it on somehow. Mr. Souperman came to see my parents the next day.”

  “Yeah, I think the fire department said something about me. My parents had to call them to get me down off the roof,” said Mary. “That was two years ago. Mr. Souperman said it was very early for a Cape to start working—it’s normally when you’re about ten.”

  “So,” continued Hilda, “you come to The School to learn to control your Cape and practice it, develop it, so you can work out if it’s good enough for you to become fully operational one day.”

  “Hoooo?”

  Mary rolled her eyes.

  Hilda, who still had some patience remaining and actually seemed to be rather enjoying Murph’s turn as a confused owl, carried on: “Operational. You know? As in actually using your Cape to fight crime, catch the bad guys? They don’t tell us much about it, but I bet you get a costume, a cool car, catchphrases, and EVERYTHING!”

  “Look in here,” said Mary, leading Murph into the lunchroom/auditorium, which they were just passing. Murph had been in there for lunch yesterday, but now it was deserted. “This is what it’s all about.” Mary was pointing upward to a stone plaque he hadn’t noticed before, set into the wall above the stage.

  THE HEROES' VOW

  I promise to save without glory,

  To help without thanks,

  And to fight without fear.

  I promise to keep our secrets,

  Uphold our vow,

  And learn what it means

  To be a true Hero.

  “That’s the promise you make if you get to join the Heroes’ Alliance,” said Hilda reverently. “I knew it by heart by the end of the first day—”

  “But hardly any of us get to join the real Heroes,” Mary interrupted, bursting Hilda’s bubble. “Mostly The School just teaches you to control your Cape so you can hide it. Only a few Capes are any good for real crime fighting, you know?” She glanced uneasily at Hilda as she said this. “Only the really great ones. The rest of us will have to try to keep them under wraps so we can have a normal life after school. Some people’s Capes are really random, actually. There’s a kid in the final year called Barry Talbot who can make his teeth scream. What use is that? It frightens the dentist, I suppose.”

  “Still, there’s nothing wrong with dreaming, is there?” said Hilda determinedly. “Whether you make it or not, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a Hero. Or designing your costume or working out what your Hero name would be. Not that I’ve done any of that,” she added quickly, blushing.

  “Okay—so most of you are here to learn how to hide your superpowers?” asked Murph, dropping his owl act for a moment. “Sorry—Capes. You’re supposed to pretend you don’t have a power? Well, for the first time in forty-eight hours, that sounds like something I can actually do.”

  Murph felt a little more optimistic after his chat with Mary and Hilda. His mind was still humming with questions, but at least he felt like he knew the basics, even if the basics could be summarized w
ith the following words:

  Secret bonkers school. No Cape. Trapped. Can’t tell anyone about it.

  The next day, on the other side of town, Nicholas Knox was striding through the reception area of Ribbon Robotics as if he owned the place. His hair was swept back into a greased wave, and at the end of his long legs his shiny shoes stole everyone else’s light and flicked it back at them contemptuously. He had a black leather briefcase that looked very much as if it might be full of evil plans tucked under one arm.

  Since Nektar had taken over, security had become much tighter. At the back of the reception area was a row of new revolving glass doors. To enter, you had to swipe your pass on a pad beside the doors, which made a slightly annoying bleep. Then you stepped inside, and the doors revolved so slowly that you were forced to inch forward on tiptoe, squeezed tight into a glass triangle. The security systems had been personally designed by Nektar himself, whose wasp-infused brain liked nothing more than causing people a bit of needless irritation at the start of their workday.

  Behind the revolving doors were three elevators. The one with a bright yellow door could only be accessed by staff with top-level security clearance. It took you up to the area prowled by Nektar—the glass-walled fourth floor of the factory. Beyond that was the tall tower at the far end of the building, but only Nektar himself had access to that.

  Knox swiped his security pass beside the yellow elevator and stepped inside.

  “Ah, Knox,” buzzed Nektar as he watched his henchperson enter the boardroom, “I like your briefcase.” Then, worrying that this wasn’t a particularly evil thing to say, he followed it up with a dastardly chuckle. But all this did was make him sound as if he found briefcases mildly amusing.