The Last Hero (Book 1): Ultra

by Blake, Matt

  There was something in the sky. I thought it was a plane at first. But no, it was too bright for a plane. A shooting star? Nah. Way too big. Unless the government was covering up an impending impact, of course, which I wouldn’t put past them.

  I watched this fireball move through the sky. And soon I became aware of more people looking out of their windows, looking up at the sky. I heard voices. Shrieks. I heard a few televisions inside those houses, a few people speculating that the thing in the sky had caused the alarms in the streets, the crazy things I’d caused.

  I dunno what it was, but I got a real sense of dread inside me as I watched this… this thing move. And the dread linked right to Ellicia, and to Damon and my friends.

  Because this thing was heading right over to the party venue.

  And it looked like it was getting bigger the closer it got.

  I ran down the street. Ran down it, holding my breath and activating my camo as well as I could—which wasn’t easy while I was running. Hadn’t quite mastered the art of movement and invisibility just yet.

  I reached the end of the street and saw the party venue up ahead. Heard the music blaring from it. Saw figures inside, having fun.

  I saw the thing in the sky overhead.

  Only it wasn’t moving anymore.

  It was just hanging there. Hanging in the sky above the party venue.

  I realized then. I understood what this was. What was happening. It didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense. But then, neither did I. I was inexplicable too. My powers couldn’t be explained.

  But there was one thing certain here.

  The thing above the party venue wasn’t a vehicle. It wasn’t a meteor.

  The thing above the party venue was human.

  It was impossible to make out any facial features, anything like that. And suddenly, facial features seemed irrelevant, meaningless.

  The figure above the party venue lowered down, and flames appeared in the middle of its hands.

  It lifted its hands. Pulled back the fire.

  When I saw what was about to happen, I was already too late.

  The figure shot a series of fireballs right at the party venue.

  I watched the moment of stillness, of silence, as those fireballs headed towards the venue. I watched them hurtle from the figure—the ULTRA’s—hands, one after the other.

  Eight of them.

  Ten of them.

  Twelve, sixteen, eighteen…

  It felt like those fireballs hovered for so long that they were never going to hit.

  But they did.

  They blasted into the party venue.

  Sent an explosion ripping across Staten Island.

  And then another fireball hit. And another. And another.

  I didn’t hear music anymore. I didn’t hear laughter. I didn’t smell cheap aftershave.

  I smelled burning.

  I heard screams.

  Screams, as more fireballs ravaged the party venue.

  The venue where Damon was.

  The venue where Ellicia was.

  22

  I wasn’t sure how long I stood staring as my party venue was pummeled with fireballs.

  The light from the flames lit up the night sky. The air was thick with the smell of burning. My ears rang from the sounds of the blasts—not just ringing from the actual blasts themselves, but the echoing they created around my head. I felt sick. Like I could throw up right here. My body was frozen to the spot.

  There was another ULTRA. That’s what I was witnessing. Another person with ULTRA abilities, just like I had.

  And they were attacking my party venue.

  I saw the chaos and for a split second, selfishness kicked in. I understood what this meant in a flash. I’d be hunted down. Hell, I might even be blamed for this.

  But that momentary flash of worry, of concern, disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared in my mind.

  Because I became aware that Damon and Ellicia were inside that party venue.

  I wanted to run. I wanted to teleport myself back home and bury my head under my pillow. I couldn’t be seen out here. I definitely couldn’t use my ULTRA abilities. It was reckless. Dangerous.

  But then I heard the screams, and I pictured the fear that Damon, Ellicia, so many others must be feeling right now.

  I knew I couldn’t just leave my friends—leave Ellicia—in there. Not to burn. I couldn’t just let them die. Not when I knew I had the capability to do something about it.

  I ripped off my tie. Threw off my blazer. I thought about how to go about this. Obviously, I had to disguise my face a little. I couldn’t just appear in there showing everyone my abilities.

  No. I had to do something.

  I ripped a strip of material from my blazer. In the distance, I heard more explosions. Shit. I had to stop dicking around. I needed to be quick.

  I tore off some more of the blazer material, grimacing as I destroyed the most expensive piece of clothing I’d ever owned. I lifted it to my face. Tore a few eyeholes in the material.

  I tied it around my face using my tie.

  It wasn’t the best look. Wasn’t the most intimidating look.

  But it was the disguise I needed right now.

  I started to move quickly towards the party venue. Started to blaze my way towards it. And I heard that voice in my head again. The voice of the wuss I’d been all these years telling me I was an idiot, that I was being stupid and was going to get myself killed. That I should just go back home and let the police and the people in the know deal with this situation.

  I agreed with the voice. I knew I had a fat chance of fighting off whoever was attacking the party venue.

  But I wasn’t going to give up on Damon and Ellicia that easily.

  I had a duty to save them.

  I sprinted towards the party venue. Sprinted across the streets, moving quicker than I’d ever moved before. Sometimes I didn’t even have to run to lurch forward a few steps, like I was combining my teleportation with my super-speed. I wondered if that was how it worked—if I could only teleport short distances.

  I’d have to figure that out another time. If I ever got out of this party venue.

  I felt the heat from the flames getting hotter as I neared the party venue. In the distance, sirens. The police would be here soon. So too would the fire department. And whoever attacked this place seemed to have gone quiet, like their work was done.

  But I wanted to know Damon and Ellicia were okay. If they were in here, surrounded by flames, I could spare their lives. I could save them.

  I had to know they were okay. I just had to.

  I stepped inside the door I’d walked out of not long ago. When I pushed it open, I felt that sickness inside getting stronger, creeping up my throat.

  The party venue was in ruins. In tatters like I’d never seen a place before. There were people with their arms over each other’s shoulders dragging themselves towards the door. People smeared with black marks, coughing up the thick dark smoke.

  But the worst things I saw were the still people.

  The people I recognized lying by the side of the corridor. Dressed in their suits. Dressed and ready for what was supposed to be the happiest night of their lives.

  Motionless.

  I didn’t want to look at the motionless bodies, but I knew I had to. I held my breath as I checked every one, feeling terrible both about the deaths and the fact I felt relieved whenever I saw one of them wasn’t Damon or Ellicia.

  Where were they? Where the hell were they?

  “Get… get out,” I heard a voice say. A guy called Peter Barnes hobbled past me, towards the door. His shirt was covered in blood. “Get out.”

  I wanted to. I wanted to follow Pete out of that door and get the hell out of this place forever. Because this wasn’t a party anymore. This was the scene of a crime. The scene of a horror.

  But I had to know Ellicia and Damon were okay.

  I held my breath and forced the camo, even though
I wasn’t sure how long I could hold it for. Kind of like holding in a piss when your bladder was absolutely bursting in the middle of a three-hour film in the cinema. Which had happened to me once during the Dark Knight, right from the scene where the Joker attacks the hospital.

  This was harder. Way harder.

  I pushed past a few people. Checked the bodies. I flew through the smoke and found myself coughing. For all my powers, it was a pity I couldn’t find a way to stop the smoke filling my lungs. Or maybe I could stop it. Maybe I was already stopping it, filtering it. I didn’t know. Right now, I wasn’t sure how far my abilities went, what restrictions there were.

  I ran a little further, past the bar, towards the dance floor. Despite the heat and the screams, I could still hear that music blaring, which gave the whole place an even creepier vibe.

  Ellicia had been down on that dance floor. She’d been dancing with the guy I’d seen her with. She couldn’t have gone far. I hadn’t left long ago.

  So where the hell was she? And where the hell was Damon all this time?

  I reached the bottom of the steps to the dance floor and looked through the smoke, through the flames.

  It was at that moment that I saw them.

  Damon and Ellicia were close by. Really close by.

  They were both lying down. Still.

  Damon had a cut on his head. Ellicia was covered in a gray, dust-like substance.

  I felt a knot lurching at my throat and flew over to them. I had to get them out. Had to get them away. Didn’t care whether anyone saw me anymore. Didn’t care whether I wasn’t disguised or anything.

  All that mattered was them.

  All that mattered was that they were okay.

  “Come on,” I muttered, lifting Damon in my left arm, and then Ellicia in my right. I felt sad, making contact with her. Like it was something I shouldn’t be doing. Like it should be her boyfriend’s job.

  He was nowhere to be seen. I had to worry for him.

  I pulled Damon and Ellicia under my arms when I heard something split above.

  I looked up and saw a pane of the roof flying down, right toward us.

  I had a flash of it hitting me on the head. Of the flames and the smoke completely engulfing the three of us together.

  And then it stopped.

  It stopped, right in midair, and it flew across the room and blasted through a wall.

  I wondered how that’d happened. I hadn’t caused it. Unless my abilities were coming more fluidly, more natural, I definitely hadn’t focused enough on that section of roof to send it through a wall.

  It was then that I heard the shout.

  It was a voice I recognized, over to my left. When I looked, eyes stinging from the smoke, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

  Mike Beacon was hovering above the ground. He was pressed right up against the wall, clutching at his neck. There was fear in his eyes.

  There was someone opposite him.

  A man, no doubt. Dressed all in silver, like a knight from medieval times. The way he was dressed gave me the creeps. It reminded me so much of Saint, of how he used to dress when he terrorized the world for all that time.

  Maybe he was back.

  Maybe he was…

  “Help! Please!”

  Mike’s shout snapped me out of the moment again. I saw the ULTRA hovering closer towards him. Saw him stretch out his hand and saw Mike’s face go redder, just like when I’d been choking him during the football game. And a part of me felt awful because I knew Mike knew that I was an ULTRA. If he knew, then he could blame me for this. He’d seen me leave. He’d know, and he’d blame me, and I’d be punished for everything.

  But no. I was being selfish. I was being stupid. Mike might’ve been a dick to me all my life, but he was just a guy in my year. He didn’t deserve to die in here. He didn’t deserve any of this.

  I wanted to fly over. I knew I could knock the ULTRA off balance. I knew I could stop them.

  But then something horrible happened in my moment of hesitation.

  Something totally awful.

  The ULTRA lifted Mike higher into the air.

  Right through the roof. So high that he became invisible, just a dot in the sky.

  And then the ULTRA lowered his hand.

  Mike came crashing back down with immense force.

  Disappeared into a crater in the ground.

  The ULTRA turned around from the smoking crater. I swore he looked right across the dance floor, right into my eyes.

  And then he disappeared off into the sky, disappeared into oblivion, as I held on to Damon and Ellicia’s limp bodies and stared down at the crater that Mike Beacon had disappeared down.

  23

  I sat in the hospital for the second time in a week.

  This time, I was here for completely different reasons.

  I sat in the corridor outside the main ward. Nurses dressed all in white kept on walking by and smiling at me, clipboards in hand. Every now and then, patients stumbled past, some of them moving so sluggishly that I couldn’t believe they were still on their feet. There were a constant chatter and a constant bleeping of machinery. The stench of disinfectant and sweat hung in the air. I’d eaten a burger before I made my way down here, and it wasn’t settling well.

  Nothing was.

  Because my best friend and the girl I loved were the ones in the hospital beds, in a condition I didn’t even know about.

  I tried to hold my leg still, but it wouldn’t stop shaking. I told myself they were okay. I’d felt their hearts beating when I’d got them to the hospital. They were lucky. I’d got them here and got rid of my makeshift outfit before everyone else had the chance to be brought here. Not that I was being selfish—there were a lot of injuries after the attack on the party venue. But my friends were at the front of the line for medical attention. To me, that mattered more than anything.

  I’d rang Mom shortly after dropping Damon and Ellicia off. Told her I was fine. That I’d got away before the incident occurred. I called it an incident, but truth be told, I wasn’t the only person who knew exactly what’d happened at the party. I could hear whisperings about it. I could feel the tension in the air; see the startled looks in the eyes of the nurses, the eyes of the terrified classmates who’d been brought in for a variety of wounds.

  Even Mom mentioned it on the phone.

  “Is it true, Kyle?” she’d asked. “The ULTRAs. Is it true that they’re back? That they’re really back?”

  I heard the fear in my mom’s voice, and even though there wasn’t a thing I could do about my own powers and abilities, I felt ashamed of myself for having them. My mom hated the ULTRAs. She hated them for what they’d done. For the destruction they’d caused. But mostly, of course, for the death of my sister. Instead of blaming the governments who created the first wave, instead of blaming Saint for forcing Orion into a climactic showdown with him, she lashed out at the same target as everyone else—all the ULTRAs. Every ULTRA.

  If she knew I was an ULTRA…

  I shuddered at the thought. She’d be even more embarrassed by me, even more ashamed than she must’ve been already.

  I wiped a finger across my head. There was a little blood there. It made it look like I’d been caught up in the attack. The truth was, I’d made it myself not long ago. I didn’t have my story straight, not just yet. I hadn’t decided whether to explain that I’d left literally moments before the attack or not, but then even though I was partly masked when I’d gone back into the party venue, I couldn’t be too sure nobody had recognized me, or that CCTV would find a nifty way of picking me up.

  I’d told Mom I was by the door when it happened. That I got out fine. She told me I had an angel looking out for me. My sister’s angel. Surviving a mass gun attack; surviving an ULTRA attack on a school. An angel on my shoulder.

  To me, it felt like a demon was inside me, shadowing my every move.

  I knew there’d be questions. I knew I’d have to settle on a story. B
ut right now, my brain wasn’t working. All I wanted to know was how Damon and Ellicia were getting along. I’d heard talk about the death toll at the party venue already. At least ten. Not as bad as it could’ve been, but a lot of injuries. And ten too many. Ten preventable deaths.

  I just hoped Damon and Ellicia didn’t make up those numbers. I hoped they weren’t gonna be crippled for life.

  I’d never forgive myself. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have let Mike Beacon’s threats get to me. I was probably just being paranoid about those anyway. God, they seemed so superficial now.

  I felt my body go cold when I thought back to the last time I’d seen Mike. I’d looked down into that crater in the ground; the crater that… well, whoever the other ULTRA was threw him into.

  Smoke steamed from his body. He was still.

  As much as I disliked the guy, I hoped he made it. ’Cause he was just a guy my age.

  Not just that, but I felt guilty. I’d hesitated when I saw the ULTRA attacking Mike. When I saw him holding Mike up, strangling him. I’d actually questioned helping him. What kind of a Hero did that make me? Didn’t that just make me the same morally screwed idiot as every other ULTRA that everyone feared?

  I thought about that ULTRA dressed all in silver armor. Thought about the metal mask, so reminiscent of Saint’s. What was their problem with the party? Why had they attacked the venue? High casualty targets were Saint’s manifesto, sure. But a party venue on Staten Island for a relatively lesser-known high school? Surely that didn’t totally fit in with Saint’s modus operandi.

  I knew right then, sat there, that I was in a dangerous world now. I was so far down the rabbit hole that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get out again.

  I’d hesitated. If I’d acted sooner, I could’ve stopped the ULTRA from causing more destruction, more chaos.

  I was still the weak moron deep down that I’d always been.

  I was about to stand up and see if I could find any news on Damon and Ellicia when I heard a voice to my left.

  It was a doctor. A short, black woman, who I’d seen earlier when everything was still a little blurry.

  “Kyle, right?” she asked.