by TJ Klune
“You thought there’d be a secret lair, didn’t you?” Gibby asked.
Nick sighed. “Is it too much to ask?”
“You didn’t know about this room,” Martha pointed out.
“Which has a pocket door,” Bob said. “I could show you how it opens again if you missed it the first time.”
“And there’s a computer and everything,” Jazz said.
Nick squinted at the monitor on the desk. “What is that? What does that say? Systemax? What the hell is a Systemax? That doesn’t even sound like a real brand!”
“I got it at a garage sale,” Martha said. “Paid twenty dollars for it.”
Nick put his face in his hands and groaned. “Worst superhero backup team ever.” He dropped his hands. “Okay. You know what? I can work with this. We can worry about upgrading everything later.”
“On it,” Jazz said. She smiled when they all looked at her. “My parents are rich. They have more money than they know what to do with. Upgrades, we can do. They’ll consider it a philanthropic tax write-off even if we don’t tell them what it’s for.”
“Awesome,” Nick breathed. “And then we can talk new costumes for—”
“I sewed Seth’s Pyro Storm costume myself,” Martha said. “It’s flame retardant and breathes really well. I got the material from the fabric store and a military surplus shop.”
Nick groaned. “Why are you continuing to punch my dreams? Do you enjoy seeing me like this?”
“A little,” Bob admitted. “It’s nice to see you finally pulled your head out of your—”
“Robert,” Martha said. “Honestly.”
Nick didn’t mind. He deserved it. In fact, it was probably time to man up for real. “I’m going to date your nephew so hard,” Nick told them. “We need to help him so I can tell him that. Also, I like his hair and the way he smells and how he makes me laugh. And he needs to wear bow ties forever because there is nothing in the world more adorable than Seth Gray in a bow tie.”
There. He felt better.
Jazz burst out laughing.
Gibby sat back in her chair, sighing as she stared up at the ceiling.
Martha and Bob were smiling.
“What?” Nick asked, confused. “What did I do?”
“Seth heard you,” Gibby said. “So. Good job on that one.”
“He what now?” Nick said, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“Uh. Hi, Nicky,” Seth said, his voice crackling from a speaker next to the monitor.
Nick stared down at it in horror. He opened his mouth to try and say something to salvage the situation, but all that came out was, “Eep.”
“Oh man,” Gibby said. “Seth, if only you could see the look on his face. You know what? I can make that happen.” She pulled out her phone and snapped a photo. She hooked it up to the computer and tapped a few keys. “There. I uploaded it to your lenses.”
Seth coughed. “Um. Thank you. That’s … that’s a good face.”
“He can see that?” Nick managed to ask.
Gibby shrugged. “His mask is basically a computer. We can load things like maps and queer boys who’re stunned for hysterical reasons to an interface.”
“That’s so cool,” Nick said weakly. “And also so embarrassing. I’d be fine if we never brought up this moment again.”
Gibby snorted. “We all know that’s not going to happen.”
“How’s your dad?” Seth asked.
They all looked at Nick. “Um. Good? He’s awake. And really annoyed he has to stay in the hospital.”
“That’s good, Nicky,” Seth said. Then, “Hey, I need to … I’m sorry. For everything. I wish I’d done things differently. I never meant to hurt you. And I didn’t hurt your dad, okay? Not on purpose.”
“I know,” Nick said quietly. “We’ll figure it out. Where are you?”
“Looking for Owen.” His voice hardened. “I don’t know what he’s trying to do, but he’s dangerous. He’s hopped up on those damn pills. They’ve made him too strong. More people would have been killed if I hadn’t—”
“What do you mean more?” Nick asked, feeling cold. “I thought you stopped the antenna tower.”
“He did,” Martha said, as Bob put a hand on her shoulder. “But there was nothing he could do about the helicopter.”
“It crashed into the side of a building,” Jazz told him sadly. “They don’t think anyone survived.”
“Shit,” Nick breathed. “He said—I think she was working with him, somehow. Rebecca Firestone. Building him up. Discrediting Pyro Storm. She made Shadow Star the hero and turned Seth into the villain. But why would he turn on her like that? It doesn’t make sense.”
“He’s lashing out,” Seth said. “I don’t even think he has a plan. At least not anymore.”
“What was his plan to begin with?”
No one answered.
“Uh, guys? Maybe fill me in here?”
Gibby sighed. “We think his plan was you.”
Nick laughed.
No one else did.
Nick stopped laughing. “Oh, crap. You’re serious.”
“He took you to Burke Tower,” Seth said. “To his father’s laboratory. Why?”
Nick pressed his hands flat against the desk. “I asked him to. He said that his dad had found a way to turn someone Extraordinary. I refused at first, but then—” He shook his head. “Stuff happened. And I thought I didn’t have a choice. So I asked him. And he did. This is my fault. All of this.”
“No, son,” Bob said. “It’s not. He manipulated you. You were vulnerable, and he took advantage of that.”
“I let myself be played,” Nick said bitterly. “Regardless of what he did, I allowed it to happen. I should have seen it for what it was.”
“You aren’t responsible for what he’s done,” Martha told him. “If anything, it’s on us. We knew who he was, and so did Seth. We thought we could help him. That we could get through to him somehow, make him listen to reason. And at first, he wasn’t bad. Seth could handle him himself.” Her smile wobbled. “And then he started in with you, and things … stopped for a little while.”
“It was a game,” Seth said. “He was taunting me, I think. Or at least that was part of it. He had you, and then he didn’t, and then he tried to pull you back in again. He was trying to use you against me.”
Nick groaned. “This sucks. Not only am I the comedic relief/love interest, I’m also the clueless comedic relief/love interest who is a pawn in a game I didn’t even realize was being played. God, my life is so cliché.”
“But why would he want Nick to be an Extraordinary?” Jazz asked. “Why take him to Burke Tower at all? If his plan was to change Nick, why not just bring a pill to him?”
“Would you have taken a pill Owen pulled out of his pocket?” Nick retorted. “It wouldn’t have been the same. He knew I wouldn’t trust it coming directly from him. But from a secret basement in Burke Tower? I’m a sucker for secret basements.” He looked around the room. “Which is why this one is such a disappointment.”
“And he saw how much Nick wanted it,” Gibby said. “Especially when it started out being about Shadow Star.” She grinned. “Remember the mugging in the alley?”
Nick winced. “Not my proudest moment.”
“He would have made Nick an Extraordinary,” Seth said, sounding grumpy. “At least temporarily. Give him a taste of power, get him hooked. And then he’d tell Nicky who he was. Who I was. He would’ve turned Nick against me. Convinced him that I was the villain all this time, that I needed to be stopped. He knew I’d follow you to Burke Tower. That whole scene was staged. Just like the apartment building.”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” Nick snapped. “It wouldn’t have worked.” Suddenly unsure, he added, “Right?”
Except it almost had. If Pyro Storm hadn’t shown up when he did, wouldn’t Nick have done exactly what Owen wanted him to do? Taken a pill. Become something else. Who knew what would have happened then?
“Yes,” Nick said immediately. Because of course he did.
“And you know Owen is the bad guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Which means he has to be stopped.”
Nick blanched. “Are you—are you going to kill him?”
“No,” Bob said sharply. “We don’t kill people. Ever. We have to find a way to subdue him. He needs help, Nick. More than anything. We’ve waited this long because we were so scared Seth would be unmasked alongside him. But now we need to take that chance. If it happens, we’ll deal with it then, as a family. The world needs to know who Shadow Star is and what he’s capable of. He can’t hide.”
“How?” Nick asked.
Silence again.
“Seriously? You guys don’t have a plan? Any plan? You have a Systemax computer in a basement of a row house and no plan?”
“Sometimes we have muffins when Seth gets back,” Gibby said. “They’re pretty good. Martha makes them.”
Nick threw his hands in the air. “Useless. All of you. You’re lucky I know everything there is to know about being an Extraordinary. I’m pretty much an expert. I write fanfiction, after all. Thank god you have me.”
“Fanfiction?” Bob asked, brow furrowed. “What is … that?”
“I don’t have time to answer your ridiculous questions right now,” Nick told him. “I have a city to save. Move, Martha. I need the computer.”
Martha glared at him.
“Oh, crap. Sorry. Move, please? Ma’am? Please?”
Martha rose from the chair. “Just because a villain is trying to take over Nova City doesn’t mean we forget our manners.”
Nick took her place, pulling the keyboard toward him. Next to it sat a small mic on a stand. The computer screen already showed a map of Nova City, a blinking light somewhere near Burke Tower. “Is that Seth?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Tracker. Figured it’d be best in case something happened. He’s been staying in the one place we thought Owen would come back to.”
“Good,” Nick muttered. “Okay, so in the outline of my real-person fanfiction, This Is Where We Scorch the Earth, there was going to be a point where I—I mean Nate Belen—was going to help—”
“Oh my god,” Gibby mumbled. “We’re doomed.”
“—was going to help Shadow Star defeat Pyro Storm before they lived happily ever after.”
“What is he talking about?” Bob asked Martha.
“I have absolutely no idea,” she replied. “I think it’s a Myspace thing.”
“What’s Myspace?”
“It’s like Ask Jeeves.”
Nick felt like he was dying a little inside, but he pushed on. “Part of the plot would have eventually led to Pyro Storm capturing Shadow Star, and I—Nate would have needed to come save him.”
“I can’t believe you made Seth beta read this,” Jazz said. “In hindsight, that was a terrible decision.”
“In hindsight, many decisions are bad,” Nick said through gritted teeth. “But we don’t dwell on them because they help us to grow as people and learn from our mistakes.”
“Huh. So, you must have done a lot of growing lately—”
“Gibby!”
“Right. Shutting up now.”
If they survived whatever came next, Nick was going to need to look into getting new people for their superhero backup team. The current roster was severely lacking. “As I was saying, Pyro Storm was going to capture Shadow Star, and Nate would have come in to save the day. But seeing as how everything I’ve ever known is a lie, we don’t need to worry about the whole saving thing and focus on the part where we capture Shadow Star instead.”
“He’s never going to let that go, is he?” Bob asked Martha.
“Probably not,” Martha said. “Teenage boys need to compensate for their shortcomings somehow.”
“What was the plan?” Seth asked, voice crackling through the speakers. Nick watched as the dot on the screen moved slowly around Burke Tower. The fact that his best friend and potential future boyfriend was flying was not lost on Nick. He was going to have to ask later if he could ride on his back as Seth flew around. He was owed this. Big-time. He decided to put it aside for now because he was sitting near Seth’s aunt and uncle, and he didn’t want them knowing he was thinking about riding their nephew.
“Just to be clear,” Nick said, “I haven’t written it yet. But I did have it in an outline which had bullet points. Everyone knows that a good outline has bullet points, so I think we’ll be fine.”
“Dooooomed,” Gibby moaned.
“I believe in you, Nicky,” Seth said, and Nick thought back to the chubby boy on the swings, chocolate pudding on his chin. “If you think it’ll work, we have to try.”
“You need to burn away the shadows,” Nick said into the mic. “That’s his superpower. He can manipulate any shadow. You need to burn so brightly that all he sees is light. At least long enough until the pills wear off. Do we know how long it takes?”
“Too long,” Seth said. “We have to stop him now.”
“The bracelets,” Gibby said thoughtfully. “The ones on his wrists. They have LED beams. Get rid of those and he won’t be able to make new shadows. At the very least, it’ll slow him down.”
Bob leaned toward the speaker. “That level of power has gotta be strong, Seth. Stronger than anything you’ve ever done before. You need to keep it out of the city if you can. Can’t let people get hurt.”
Seth laughed, though it sounded strained. “Like when we first started?”
“You got it, son,” Bob said. “Just like when we first started. But you’re not like that anymore. You have control now. I don’t need to worry about getting my eyebrows burned off these days.”
It boggled Nick’s mind, this history that he’d grown up alongside but had never known about. He had so many questions, but he’d save them for later.
“And what then?” Jazz asked. “If Seth’s able to get him in a place where he can stop him, what happens next?” She looked troubled. “You said we won’t kill him, and that’s good. But what happens to him?”
Nick thought quickly. “That’s not up to us, is it? If he’s done all these things, if he’s hurt people before, then he needs to answer for it. We’ll turn him over to the police. Cap and my dad will know what to do.”
“Do you think his dad knows?” Gibby asked. “I mean, if Simon Burke knows how to make Extraordinaries, don’t you think he’d know about one living under his own roof?”
Nick’s stomach sank to his feet. “Seth didn’t tell you?”
“Little busy,” Seth muttered. “Haven’t had time.”
Well, shit. “Burke knows,” Nick said as he closed his eyes, thinking about Owen telling him how he’d been in the hospital because he’d seen things. Darkness. Shadows. He’d been given medicine to make it stop, but what if that had been a lie? “He’s the one who made Owen who he is.”
Jazz squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”
Nick opened his eyes, shaking his head. “Something Owen told me. He said he was sick when he was younger. Got put on medication. He was all but telling me he was Shadow Star, and I didn’t see it. I was so focused on—I wasn’t thinking. But all of this seems to go back to Burke Tower, right? What if Owen is trying to get revenge against his father for what he did to him? Burke Pharmaceuticals. For every experiment, for every creation, there have to be tests. On subjects.”
“Simon Burke experimented on his own son?” Martha asked, hands clutched against her chest.
“He did. To be his own personal guard dog.” Everything was falling into place, pieces of a puzzle coming together to form a terrible picture. “All those attacks on Burke Tower. His father used him to protect what was hidden inside, to keep the secrets safe. But it doesn’t matter, at least not right now. We need to focus on stopping Owen first. All the rest we’ll deal with later.”
�
��We have to find him before we can stop him,” Gibby said, leaning over Nick’s shoulder to look at the screen. “Anything, Seth?”
“No,” Seth said. “Nothing. It’s like he’s disappeared.”
“Or he’s waiting for the perfect moment to strike,” Jazz said.
They all turned slowly to look at her.
“What?” she asked. “It’s what I would do if I were a supervillain.”
“And I thank god every day you’re not,” Gibby said, kissing her cheek. “Always remember to use your powers for good.”
Jazz rolled her eyes. “Like I could ever be evil. I’m too cute to be a bad guy.”
Maybe the current roster for their superhero backup team was actually perfect.
* * *
It was dark when Nick stepped out of the Gray house onto the street. The streetlamps were lit along the sidewalk, casting shadows on the cement. The air had a bite to it, and Nick pulled his jacket tighter around him as he took his phone from his pocket.
He’d turned it off after he’d left the hospital, knowing his dad would be calling. It was a dick move, but he had to do what was necessary in order to help Seth stop Owen. And knowing his dad, he probably would have had Nick’s phone traced to find out where he was. Nick knew all about cell tower pings.
Sure enough, as soon as he’d turned the phone on, a notification came up telling him he had seven voicemails. He ignored them, looking for a number on his phone.
It only rang twice before a breathless voice picked up. “Nick? Is that you?”
“Hey, Cap,” Nick said, looking up at the dark sky. There was too much light pollution to see even the brightest of stars.
“Oh, don’t you Hey, Cap me. Do you have any idea how worried your dad is? They had to sedate him when he tried to leave the hospital!”
Nick’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “Yeah, sorry about that. But I had to. Things are happening, Cap.”
“Where are you? I’m going to send a patrol car to come get you.”
“Can’t do that. Not yet. And I’m keeping this short, so don’t try and ping me.”
