The Last Hero (Book 1): Ultra

by Blake, Matt

  I nodded. I felt my chest tighten. This was it. I imagined a zillion scenarios. A zillion different forms of bad news.

  “Damon Bamford and Ellicia Williams. You were asking about them.”

  This was it. The bad news was coming. I was too late. I hadn’t acted quick enough.

  “They’ve got some minor burn wounds, a little concussion. Otherwise, they’re absolutely fine.”

  I almost lost my footing. “Thank you,” I exhaled. “Thank you so much. Can I… can I see them?”

  “Their families are with ’em right now,” the nurse said, starting to turn around. I could hear a cry from one of the other wards. She had to be so busy right now. “Give it an hour or so, I’m sure your friends can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

  I watched the nurse walk away, and I felt like I was on cloud nine.

  I went to sit down. Heard the crying some more. When I looked over to my right, I realized it wasn’t a patient crying at all. It was a woman in a black coat. Tall. Blonde. Attractive. Beside her, her older husband, holding an arm around her. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  Weird thing about them. They looked vaguely familiar. I swore I’d seen them somewhere before. I swore I’d…

  Then, it clicked.

  It clicked, and I felt all the heat leave my body.

  I did recognize them. I’d seen them at parents’ evenings. I’d even seen them around at my parents’ house back in seventh grade when the bullying first started properly, as they attempted to put an end to it like adults did.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Beacon,” the bald doctor standing opposite said. “I’m so sorry. We tried everything for your son. But we just… I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t have to hear any words to confirm it.

  Just the croakiness in the doctor’s voice. The pain in Mrs. Beacon’s cry.

  Mike Beacon was dead.

  24

  “Seriously, man. The things I saw there. You… you wouldn’t believe it. You missed out. Classic Kyle.”

  I stood beside Damon’s and Ellicia’s beds and felt sick right to my stomach. The ward had quietened down, and it didn’t seem as rushed and panicked as it had earlier when the people caught up in the party attack were admitted in their droves.

  But the sound of Mrs. Beacon’s cries, her grief, didn’t escape my mind.

  The sound of those words from the doctor.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Beacon. We tried everything for your son. But we just… I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s really shitty,” Damon said. “I mean, I swear we’re cursed or somethin’. Terror attack. Now this. One of us has to have broken a window or something.”

  “Broken a window?” Ellicia whispered.

  “Yeah, y’know. Bad luck and all that.”

  “I think you mean a mirror,” I said.

  “What? Nah, man. I definitely mean a window.”

  “He really means a window,” Ellicia said.

  I nodded. I wanted to smile at Damon’s silliness. He was always coming out with stuff like that. But truth be told, I couldn’t laugh at anything. Yeah, I was pleased I’d been the one to drag the two people closest to me out from the wrath of the party venue. But so many others had suffered. People our age had died. There was something wrong about that. Something so damned wrong. As if the world had glitched like a video game and some terrible bug had crept in.

  “It’s kinda cool in a way,” Damon said.

  “What is?” I asked. I hadn’t really looked at Ellicia much since stepping into this room. I couldn’t face seeing the bloodied cut on her forehead and knowing that if I’d been here when the fireballs rained down on the venue, I could’ve stopped even more pain. If I hadn’t walked away like a wuss, I could’ve fought.

  But I hadn’t. And now people were dead. People I cared about. People I didn’t care so much about.

  But still, people. People just like me, coming to the end of their school year, living normal lives.

  “It’s cool that there’s… there’s an ULTRA back,” Damon said.

  Ellicia tutted.

  “What? Don’t you think it’s kinda cool?”

  “In what way is an ULTRA being back ‘cool’?” Ellicia snapped. She didn’t snap much. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever seen her angry before now. Seen the redness to her face.

  But she was mad enough about the thought of an ULTRA being back that she was willing to let her peacefulness slip.

  “They caused so much death. So much chaos. Hell, they even killed Kyle’s sister.”

  I felt my skin turn cold.

  Damon looked down at the bed.

  “Sorry,” Ellicia said. “I… I shouldn’t have—”

  “No,” I said, feeling more deflated by the minute. “No, you’re right. I just…”

  “I’m just saying,” Ellicia continued. “The ULTRAs. Yeah, they mighta been designed to protect us. But we only just made it. Every single one of us only just made it. People were never meant to have powers. It’s just something that was never meant to happen. We got away with it. We got lucky. And now there’s an ULTRA back… well, I just hope the world’s ready again. ’Cause usually we don’t get lucky twice.”

  I heard Ellicia’s words echoing in my ears and knew there was desperation there. Desperation that had hung over everyone since the day of the Great Blast. The fear. The fear of “what if?” another ULTRA were to crop up someday. The government said it was impossible. That the fears were unfounded.

  But what if?

  I knew now it was true. An ULTRA was back.

  Not just one. Two.

  And I was one of them.

  I decided to take my chances and test the waters. “Maybe if there’s a bad ULTRA back, there might be… another. Another like Orion who can stop whoever it is.”

  Ellicia rolled her eyes. “Saint. Orion. They’re all the same at the end of the day.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. She looked me right in the eyes, tears building in the corners. “You only have to see all the destruction they caused trying to save the world in their own ways to know the truth.”

  More than ever before, I felt ashamed about my abilities. There was no winning Ellicia round to my side of the argument. Not that I’d been planning on telling her or anyone about what I was capable of in the first place—there were still so many things I didn’t understand yet. But still, knowing the girl I loved didn’t view what I was as a good thing, as a hero… that was pretty soul destroying.

  “What happened to Mike,” Damon said. “It’s fucked up. I mean, I never liked the guy, but it’s fucked up.”

  My throat was so dry that I couldn’t speak. I nodded.

  “I don’t know how we got out that party venue,” Damon said, shuffling around on his hospital bed. “I just know that whoever it was… well, they were the real hero in all this. The paramedics, whatever. They were the real hero.”

  I was the real hero. I wanted to say it aloud. I was the hero.

  “But before I left. I saw… I saw that look in Mike’s eyes. Just for a split second. He was scared, man. Like he knew. And that’s what creeps me out so much about all this. Mike Beacon, the toughest guy in school, looking at me like I could help him somehow. Like he needed my help.”

  I felt the heat of the room intensifying around me as the memories flooded back.

  I felt the guilt of failure building inside.

  “Visiting time’s over I’m afraid, kiddo,” an approaching nurse said. She smiled at me, scrunched up her face. “Time for your friends to get some rest.”

  I said my goodbyes to Damon. I walked over to Ellicia’s bedside, and as much as I wanted to hug her, I just held my hand up awkwardly, waved at her. She nodded back. Half-smiled. She looked tired, worn down, but still amazingly beautiful.

  If only I could tell her. If only I had the guts to tell her.

  I left the ward and headed back
down the hospital corridor. As I walked, I saw people I recognized in the hospital beds. I saw anguished faces of parents. I saw tears.

  And as I stepped past these people, I couldn’t help feeling guilty that I was here, that I was okay.

  But also, that I had failed.

  One thing was for certain: if I hadn’t been so in denial about my powers, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

  But what could I do about it now?

  25

  “You sure you should be watching this, Kyle?”

  I stared at the television in our living room back home. I hadn’t goosed out and watched TV in what felt like forever. The living room was dark, lights out, like it always was whenever the TV was on. It was also turned down just below comfortable hearing, something Mom and Dad always insisted on ’cause they were worried about the neighbors. My lips felt dry and chapped. There was a constant sickly feeling hanging in my body, like the events—the discoveries—of the last few days were still weighing down on me.

  I was an ULTRA.

  There was another ULTRA attacking people. Killing people.

  The world was changing right before my young eyes all over again.

  “Turn this up,” I said, when I saw the news report flash to an explosion in Cairo, Egypt. “Please.”

  Dad sighed. Then he reached for the remote and inched the volume up ever-so-slightly.

  The report was about an explosion, as I’d noticed. But it wasn’t just any old explosion. There were those fireballs blasting down on the Cairo streets. Fireballs, just like the ones that had rained down on my party venue.

  “And reports at the scene are suggesting an attack just like that at the school party on Staten Island. An ULTRA attack…”

  I heard the fear in the newsreader’s voice. I heard the collective gasps of air of everyone watching this breaking news unfold as if I was in each and every one of their living rooms.

  I saw the fear on my mom and dad’s faces. The same fear that’d been there the day my big sister died.

  “There’s also reports of a YouTube video from the attacker.”

  My ears pricked up.

  “The legitimacy of it was in doubt at first, but now it appears to have been verified.”

  Dad lifted the remote. “Your mother doesn’t need to hear this.”

  “No, wait,” I said.

  I saw Dad’s finger hover over the remote, ready to change channel. I was so close to snapping the remote with my mind. But I had to keep my calm. I couldn’t go giving away my secret identity to my parents. They’d probably disown me.

  I didn’t have to. Dad sighed, lowered the remote.

  The news report changed to some clear footage, shaky but clear. Not the grainy type that is so clichéd in movies and television shows.

  The ULTRA was just like the one I’d seen at the party venue. Dressed all in silver armor, like a knight. Wearing a metal mask over its face, just like the one Saint had worn during his reign of terror all those years ago.

  The ULTRA was hovering above the pyramids of Egypt.

  “When Saint died,” the ULTRA said, its voice impossibly deep, “something in our world died. A vision. A new world order. I’m here to continue that vision. I’m here to carry on what Saint started. To take his vision even further.”

  I saw my father’s face grow even paler than it already was by the second.

  “Humanity has been a scourge on the planet for way too long. Burning fossil fuels. Wasting the earth’s natural resources. Fighting with one another. It’s a virus that has gone beyond control. A virus where the powerful stomp down on the less powerful, and the less powerful who do find power just abuse it like their superiors. Because that’s human nature. To destroy others.

  “But it does not have to be that way much longer. It is time for somebody else to do the destroying. For something else to vet humanity’s actions.”

  I saw the fireball appear above the ULTRA’s free hand.

  “I am Nycto. Night is coming.”

  He let go of the phone and it stayed there, hovered in the air.

  The next thing I saw was Nycto raining down his fireballs on a hotel resort in Egypt.

  The footage cut away. Seconds later, Dad changed the channel. A comedy came on, Family Guy. He smiled right away, started chuckling. But I could tell it was forced. How could anyone laugh anymore? How could anyone laugh when a Saint successor, Nycto, had just declared war on humanity?

  I pulled out my phone and scanned the news. I saw that close up of Nycto’s mask again. Definitely the same guy I’d seen attack my party. What was he doing attacking Cairo? What was the link?

  I scrolled down a little further. Saw there was a statement from President Marko.

  “Nycto is dangerous. And he must be treated seriously. Humanity must come together to defeat this threat. To stand together, just like we stood together last time, and defeat Nycto.”

  There was a question. A reporter asking the president whether there was another ULTRA out there. One like Orion, who could take Nycto down just like Orion took Saint down.

  “Let me be clear,” the president continued. “We made a mistake creating the ULTRAs. And no ULTRA should be glorified. We have no reason to believe there are any other ULTRAs out there. But if there is, well…” He looked right into the camera. Looked into my eyes like he could see me in my living room. “Do the honorable, democratic thing. The American constitutional thing. Turn yourself in. That is the only way you can help us.”

  The recording cut out, and I was left with the president’s words ringing in my ears.

  I knew what President Marko was saying. I knew exactly what he was implying. If I gave myself up to the government, they’d end me. They’d make an example of me. At the very best, they’d use me. Weaponize me in their fight against Nycto.

  But I was just a kid. Just a sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t know how I’d got these powers; didn’t know where they’d come from.

  I didn’t want to be weaponized. I didn’t want to turn myself in. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I stood up, a sudden bolt of life shooting through my body. I felt a sense of purpose fill me. Life filled my lungs as the sounds of the screams, the memories of the flames, all of them filled my consciousness.

  “Where’re you going?” Mom asked.

  I tightened my fist. Felt the electricity fill my body. “Nipping out,” I said.

  I couldn’t just sit by and watch Nycto tear the world apart.

  I couldn’t let more people die.

  I had to do something.

  26

  I stood in the garage and thought about the things that infuriated me most in life.

  I watched the metal bar in front of me lift as I focused my mind on it. I could hear other things in the room clanging around me. Items I was lifting simultaneously along with the metal bar. Loose tires. Spare wheels. Tubs of paint, all of them rising through the power of thought.

  I gritted my teeth, bit down so hard on my bottom lip that I tasted blood.

  And when I tasted blood, I thought about the moment I’d lost my sister.

  I felt the anger within. The anger and the sadness. And after I’d felt that, I saw the metal bar in front of me lift higher. I focused on bringing it towards me. Lifting it closer to my current position. The other items I was lifting around the garage all drifted towards me too; the light above flickered, and I felt a breeze.

  I thought about Mike Beacon. Not just the times he’d bullied me, not just the times he’d tormented me, made my life a misery. But that moment when I discovered he was dead. The moment I witnessed his death.

  Nycto holding him by the throat.

  Then throwing him right down into the ground, slamming him into oblivion.

  I heard Damon’s words in my ears. The words he’d said about the fear in Mike’s eyes. How Mike looked like he just wanted help from somewhere, from someone.

  I knew I could’ve been the one to help. I knew I’d failed Mike Beacon.
r />   I’d killed him.

  And that just made the anger, the fury, the fear and the guilt, all of them build up inside me.

  The metal bar flew towards me. So too did everything else.

  I stopped them. Held them stationary in the air. They floated around me, drifted around in a circle. Heavy items. Metal. Wood. Parts of cars. All of them drifted around me like I was the sun and they were the planets.

  I knew what I had to do. I had to learn to embrace my powers. I had to learn to use them. I couldn’t turn myself in to the government. They’d never let me free, not once they’d finished with me.

  No. I had to get to grips with my powers. Because right now, I knew I was the only person anywhere near capable of stopping Nycto.

  I let out a shout and sent everything inside this garage hurtling towards the other sides of the room.

  As they flew towards the walls, I used my strength to speed towards every item. To stop them, put them back in place before they damaged their surroundings. I grabbed metal vice grips. Grabbed old steering wheels. Stopped a tire from smashing through one of the windows. I kept on going. Kept on getting faster. Kept on using my speed and my pace and everything I had to make sure I didn’t damage this garage.

  When I stopped, I looked around. A few of my targets had hit. A few things had been smashed. So I’d practice. I’d do it again until I was absolutely sure I was stronger, quicker. Because yes, I was scared. I was afraid. But I had to embrace my powers or there’d be a lot more to be afraid about. I couldn’t hide anymore. I had to use my powers.

  I had to be someone.

  Not an ULTRA. No.

  I had to go back before the ULTRAs. I had to give people hope, just as they first had.

  I had to be a Hero.

  I realized I needed something. Something that all Heroes and ULTRAs had. A disguise of some kind. I thought about the movies. The superhero films, the DC classics. All of the heroes had a disguise. A costume.

  I needed a look. I needed to give people hope.

  I had work to do.

  Three hours later, I stared at myself in the mirror.