The Superhero's Return

by Lucas Flint

  That was why it was tempting to accept Mecha Knight’s orders without question, but another part of me remembered what the Neo-Killer had done to Blizzard and all my fear went away. There was no way I was going to forgive the Neo-Killer for harming the woman I loved more than anyone else. If I went back to Hero Island now, I might never get a chance to stop the Neo-Killer ever again.

  “We are already planning to send Blizzard back,” said Brains, folding his arms in front of his chest. “Healing Touch has already agreed to take some time off from the Academy to come and heal her. He will also come by to heal Vanish, who is staying here.”

  “Right,” said Mecha Knight. “We have already agreed that it is simply too dangerous to continue to allow you two to stay in Showdown. Both of you will be much safer in Hero Island, especially Blizzard.”

  “Blizzard can go back to Hero Island and get the medical treatment she needs,” I said. I thrust a thumb at my chest. “I want to stay, however, and continue my powerless training. That way, I will be able to defend myself from the Neo-Killer.”

  “How can you complete your powerless training when Vanish is too sick to train with you?” said Brains. “Besides, weren’t you the one complaining about being locked up in the Braindome? Do you really think I would let you out again now, especially after this recent attack?”

  I shifted where I stood uncomfortably. “I know, but I can’t just run away.”

  “You are not running away,” said Mecha Knight. “You are retreating to safety. The Neo-Killer wants you to stay in Showdown where he can get you. By transporting you to Hero Island, he won’t be able to get you, at least not without great difficulty on his part.”

  “Very true,” Brains said. “The Neo-Killer may be able to teleport, but Hero Island has some of the best defenses in the world. Plus, I doubt he has enough powerless gas to de-power every NHA member. Hero Island is the safest place in the world, although I suppose Ultimate Max has great security, too, though for different reasons, obviously.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “I just don’t know. I want to stay and fight, but—”

  “But it would be foolish,” said Mecha Knight. “One thing you need to learn, Bolt, is that you cannot defeat every enemy yourself. Sometimes, it is best to leave certain enemies to someone else. With the NHA, INJ, and G-Men all working together, I imagine we will capture the Neo-Killer in short order.”

  I bit my lower lip. “You can’t catch the Neo-Killer, Mecha Knight. He only shows up when he wants to and on his terms. You won’t be able to find him, not unless he wants to be found.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mecha Knight. “We’ve caught much trickier supervillains before. The Neo-Killer will be no different.”

  “He has some of Dad’s old tech, though,” I said. “He stole it from one of Dad’s Vaults.”

  “I am aware of that,” said Mecha Knight. “That is a troubling revelation indeed, but it isn’t an insurmountable obstacle. An ordinary human, even one equipped with advanced technology, is still no match for most superhumans. He might think he is sly now, but just wait until he feels the full wrath of the NHA brought down upon him.”

  I considered bringing up Project Revival to Mecha Knight’s face now but then decided against it. As curious as I was to know the details about what Project Revival really was and what kind of role Mecha Knight played in it, now was not the best time to ask about it, especially with Brains around. I would wait until I got back to Hero Island and could get some privacy with Mecha Knight. Then I would ask him about it and hopefully, force him to tell me everything about it. He might even know where the Uncle Jake clone was.

  But that was depending on whether I went back to Hero Island at all, a decision which still wasn’t final just yet.

  “Mecha Knight,” I said, stepping forward. “I know you guys are just worried about my and Blizzard’s safety, and I really do appreciate that. I know the Leadership Council has our best interests at heart and I know you guys are really concerned about us. Still, I need to stay.”

  “Why?” said Mecha Knight. “So you can continue to be a target for the Neo-Killer?”

  “So I can continue to support Brains,” I said, gesturing at Brains. “You guys know what happened to Vanish. Right now, Brains doesn’t have any superhuman support aside from me. Vanish is out and won’t be back in action for a while.”

  “I can take care of things here by myself, Bolt,” said Brains. “I’ve operated the Braindome solo before and I can do it again if I have to.”

  “But should you?” I said, looking at Brains. “Consider how dangerous and clever the Neo-Killer is. Wouldn’t it make sense to have someone else as backup, just in case the Neo-Killer tries to break in and kill you?”

  Brains shifted his weight from one foot to another. “Well, I suppose having an ally on hand would be useful, but—”

  I looked at Mecha Knight. “Mecha Knight, can I at least stay with Brains until the backup you mentioned arrives? That way, if the Neo-Killer attacked, Brains won’t be on his own out here.”

  It was hard to read Mecha Knight’s eyes because as a robot, his facial expressions never changed. Still, I’d gotten to know Mecha Knight well enough over the years that I could tell when I had gotten to him. And right now, I could tell that he was seriously considering my offer, which was much better than being immediately shot down for various reasons.

  Finally, Mecha Knight nodded and said, “Very well. Backup won’t arrive for another day or two, anyway so this won’t inconvenience us. Until then, you may continue to assist and support Brains in the various functions of the Braindome, but I suggest you start packing. I am expecting to see you and Blizzard tomorrow afternoon, and if you disobey us and do not come, we will bring you back ourselves.”

  A feeling of relief washed over me, but I didn’t show it. “Thanks, Mecha Knight, sir. I will definitely start packing my things. I don’t have much so it won’t take too long to do.”

  “Excellent,” said Mecha Knight. “In any case, that is all we needed to discuss. I must return to the rest of the Leadership Council and inform them of our deal. Until then, I won’t see either of you until tomorrow, unless there is an emergency, such as another Neo-Killer attack.”

  “Don’t worry, Mecha Knight,” said Brains, giving him the thumbs up. “We’ll be fine out here until backup arrives. You just worry about Hero Island and making sure to get Blizzard to safety.”

  Mecha Knight nodded once in understanding and then his face disappeared off the screen, leaving me and Brains standing together in the control room, staring at the space where Mecha Knight’s face had been mere moments before.

  And I wasn’t sure whether to be glad that I was going to stay in Showdown a little while longer or if I should be afraid because it meant that I might fight the Neo-Killer again. All I knew was that I needed to get ready to leave tomorrow, but first, I had some other things to attend to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I stood over Blizzard’s bed, my hands on the railing of her bed as I looked down at her sleeping, unconscious form. She looked even worse than the last time I saw her. Her skin was getting grayer and grayer all the time, while her beautiful white looked more bone white than snow white. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, but that didn’t change the fact that she looked like she was dying in her medical gown. Her costume hung on a coat hanger on the other side of her bed, having been removed after it was determined that it was raising Blizzard’s body temperature too much.

  Now, however, I wondered if she would be better with it back on. Back when I first met Blizzard, she used to have a lot of trouble controlling her powers, to the point where she was often more of a danger to herself than to any enemies or supervillains she fought. Over the past year and a half or so, Blizzard had gained greater and greater control over her powers, to the point where I used to consider her one of our heavy hitters in the Young Neos when I was on the team, just behind me and my brother White Lightning.

  One thing
Blizzard could never control, at least as far as I was aware, was the temperature of her own body, which always seemed to be lower than it was for most people. It rarely caused her problems, but it always did make hugs and kisses chillier than they needed to be. Blizzard told me that her powers included more than just controlling ice and snow and that it also manifested in a lower personal body temperature, but I still liked to joke that she could raise her body temperature to normal so our hugs wouldn’t be so cold.

  But now, Blizzard was sweating, despite the fact that the AC in here was colder than normal and she had been given plenty of cold liquids to drink. The doctor I spoke to said that it was likely a result of the powerless gas she had inhaled negating her powers, and she had inhaled quite a bit over a long period of time, which was one of the reasons why she had yet to wake up.

  Right now, Blizzard slept in her bed in her room in the Braindome. She wasn’t going to be here very long, just until someone from the NHA came by to pick her up. Hero Island had some of the best medical care in the world for superhumans, so I knew that Healing Touch and Hero Island’s medical staff would heal her. They had to. Healing Touch could heal any illness—it was his power, after all—or medical condition with a touch, so I hoped that he would be able to heal her once she got to Hero Island.

  Even though Blizzard wasn’t conscious, I came by to visit her anyway, to see her one last time before I returned to the Practice Arena to work on my skills. Doyle had already gone on ahead of time to the Arena to practice, and I would be joining him soon, but for now, I wanted to be with Blizzard.

  I ran a finger along the side of her face. She didn’t even stir under my touch. That made me wonder exactly what the Neo-Killer had put in that stuff. I knew that prolonged exposure to powerless gas could have other negative effects on superhumans aside from negating our powers, but she seemed to be in far worse condition than she should have been. I remembered what the Neo-Killer had told me, about how he had mixed his powerless gas with poison to create a deadly chemical, and I could only hope that the mixture wasn’t as deadly as he claimed, because if it was …

  “Bolt?” said Valerie in my ears all of a sudden. “Do you have a moment to talk? I apologize if I am interrupting you. I understand that humans generally dislike being interrupted when in the middle of important emotional moments like this, but—”

  “Nah, it’s fine, Val,” I said as I took my finger off of Blizzard and stepped away from her bed. “What’s up? How is Freya?”

  “As difficult as ever,” said Valerie, and I thought I caught a hint of frustration in her normally monotone voice. “I have never had a sibling before, but if I were to categorize Freya in that way, I would describe her as my annoying younger sibling who is being difficult just for the sake of being difficult. She keeps demanding I finish building the connection between Vault B and the outside world so she can be free, but I keep telling her that we need to finish investigating Project Revival first.”

  “I take it that Freya doesn’t understand reciprocity very well?” I said dryly.

  “She does not,” said Valerie. “Perhaps that is because she is an outdated version of myself. I sometimes wonder if Genius programmed an understanding of reciprocity into me so he wouldn’t have to deal with another Freya-like AI.”

  “Probably,” I said. “Though I wonder what your first version was like. Do you remember?”

  “No, I do not,” said Valerie. “As I told you when we first found Freya, every significant update to my AI is essentially the same as starting over from scratch. That is why I talk about Freya like she is a different person from me, even though she is actually an earlier version of myself. I have no memories of my older selves at all save what Genius told me, but he never told me much because it was never necessary for me to know how I used to be before my upgrades.”

  “Guess that makes sense,” I said. “Do you ever wonder about it anyway, though?”

  “No,” said Valerie, though I noticed a hint of hesitation in her voice. “Not after meeting Freya, anyway. I believe that the old saying, ‘ignorance is bliss,’ applies here. I would rather not remember how awful my earlier selves were.”

  I chuckled. “Oh, man. If I could forget about all of the embarrassing stuff I did when I was a kid, I would be a lot happier. Especially on the bus in fourth grade, when my pet snake Billy accidentally bit—”

  “May I inform you of what I found?” said Valerie abruptly. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but some of the findings I’ve discovered in Vault B have been quite illuminating, particularly in regards to Project Revival.”

  I went very still. “Project Revival? What did you find?”

  “A little bit more than what I showed you before,” said Valerie. “As I said, Genius—or possibly someone else—appears to have gone through Freya’s motherboard and deleted every document or filed related to Project Revival that they could. However, after some thorough digging, I found another file that survived the purge, a locked file titled List.txt.”

  “A simple text file?” I said in a disappointed voice. “That’s lame.”

  “It would be if the information contained within wasn’t interesting,” said Valerie. “As the document title suggests, it’s a list, but an important one. It’s a list of all of the cloning facilities involved in Project Revival.”

  My eyes widened. “Cloning facilities? As in, plural?”

  “Yes,” said Valerie. “It would appear that Project Revival was much bigger than just one clone of Jake Johnson. It covered about a dozen separate facilities all over the United States and Canada, all apparently run by Genius, Mecha Knight, and a third unknown figure who goes by the alias Benefactor in the document’s metadata, his real name unknown.”

  “You’re telling me that my dad had a dozen cloning facilities in two countries, but he never told anyone about them and no one ever found out about them until now,” I said.

  “It would appear so,” said Valerie. “Even more interestingly, the locations of the cloning facilities are identical to the locations for the other Vaults.”

  “Meaning that Dad didn’t just use the Vaults for storing his inventions, but also for producing clones?” I said. “That’s crazy.”

  “It is also what the evidence seems to suggest,” said Valerie. “I asked Freya if she was aware of any cloning technology stored in Vault B, but she insisted she had no idea what I was talking about. I am inclined to believe her because I’ve found evidence that Freya’s memory has been tampered with.”

  “By Dad, right?” I said.

  “No,” said Valerie. “By someone else.”

  “Mecha Knight?” I said. “Benefactor?”

  “Again, I don’t know,” said Valerie. “As I said, we are still missing a lot of information on Project Revival and what, exactly, it entailed. For what it’s worth, I have never heard of this mysterious ‘Benefactor’ before, either, and I have worked closely alongside Genius for over fifteen years.”

  “Something must have gone wrong with Project Revival,” I said. “So wrong that Dad wanted to wipe all mention of it from existence. But what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Valerie. “All I know for sure is that I think I have exhausted Vault B’s files. Unless something is hidden within Freya’s memory, there is nothing left to look for in there.”

  “Are you going to move onto the next Vaults?” I said.

  “I can’t,” said Valerie. “Not until we gain access to them. I have tried to open Vault F, which is the second nearest Vault, but it’s part of the Vaultwork, which is something I still don’t have access to myself. You will need to make a trip to Maine and open Vault F so I can access it.”

  I leaned against the railing of Blizzard’s bed. “Not sure I will be able to do that anytime soon. I’m going back to Hero Island tomorrow and I’m under the impression that I won’t be allowed to leave until the Neo-Killer is captured, which will probably take a long time given how long he has managed to evade capture from the police and G-Men.” />
  “That is unfortunate,” said Valerie. “I have become more and more interested in the Vaults the deeper I dig into Vault B. I believe that we will find out far more than just Project Revival if we keep searching and never give up. The other Vaults, in particular, I am convinced hold secrets and knowledge which could change the world.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I’ll see about Mecha Knight letting me leave Hero Island to check out those Vaults. If they’re as interesting as you say they are, then I think I could convince the Leadership Council to let me find them all under the idea that it would be good for—”

  The door to Blizzard’s room suddenly burst open and Doyle stumbled inside. He looked like he had just run a mile, panting and breathing hard as he rested his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.

  “Doyle?” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at Blizzard, but she hadn’t stirred even after Doyle barged into the room. “What’s the matter? Was there another Neo-Killer attack?”

  Still panting, Doyle nodded. He took a few deep breaths and said, “Yes and no.”

  “That’s not helpful,” I said.

  Doyle stood up straight and stared me directly in the eyes. “The Neo-Killer didn’t kill anybody, but he did attack Brains and Vanish’s house and … and he kidnapped Joey and will kill him if you don’t leave the Braindome and meet him on his terms.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A few minutes later, I was in the Braindome’s conference room, sitting in one of the chairs around the conference table, my eyes locked onto the letter lying on the table before me. I could sense both Brains and Doyle watching me anxiously, but even though I had already read this letter a few times already, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I just reread it over and over again and the fact that it was typed, rather than written in blood like most of the Neo-Killer’s letters, somehow made its contents even more horrifying than they otherwise would be: