by Lucas Flint
“I didn’t want to be depressing, but yes,” said the God Slayer. “Divided, the two of you cannot stop the Dread God. Together, however, your chances are much higher. This is why I stepped in. I needed to make sure you would not fall for the Dread God’s lies—for that was what the Avatar was trying to tempt you with—so you could focus your time and energy on what actually needs to be done.”
Beams’ shoulders slumped. “But I don’t know where Bolt is. How am I supposed to find him?”
“You will,” said the God Slayer. “He is still alive, still searching for his own way back. Simply keep going forward. Your paths may have diverged for now, but they are destined to meet back up, and much sooner than either of you anticipate.”
Beams frowned. The God Slayer seemed to speak in riddles to him, but he sensed that the God Slayer wouldn’t be able to give him better answers than that. “Okay. Well, all I need to do is find Bolt and we’ll be able to stop the Dread God?”
“There is one more thing you need to do before that,” said the God Slayer. “You must also find my sword, the weapon I originally used to slay the Dread God countless eons ago.”
“You mean it’s still around?” said Beams.
“Of course,” said the God Slayer. “It is located in your universe in what you now call Antarctica, where it was hidden in the same chamber as the Dread God’s old body. I put it there when I grew old and unable to wield it anymore, knowing that one day it would need to be used again.”
“A sword …” said Beams. “What is it called?”
“The God Slayer,” said the God Slayer. He smirked. “What, did you think I got this nickname just because I killed the Dread God? That is the real name of the weapon they gave me. I simply became so closely associated with the sword that the two of us have the same name now.”
“That’s confusing.”
“Then call me by my real name,” said the God Slayer. “Arius.”
“Arius,” Beams repeated. He smiled. “Sounds kind of like Alex. Well, there’s an ‘A’ sound, anyway.”
“We are family, are we not?” said Arius. “It is not surprising that our names should sound similar. Anyway, I must go.”
“Go?” said Beams in surprise. “Go where?”
“To the beyond,” said Arius. He took his hand off of Beams’ shoulder and stood up. “I cannot stay in the Dread Realm forever. I can already feel my soul being called back.”
“But we need you,” said Beams. He reached up to Arius’ chest. “You killed the Dread God once before. We could really use your help.”
But Beams’ hand passed through Arius’ chest as if it wasn’t even there.
Arius smiled. “I have already given you all the help I can, Alex. Now it is up to you and Bolt to save your universes. I can only stand by and watch from the beyond. Otherwise, I would help.”
Crushing disappointment fell on Beams’ shoulders like an anvil, but he nodded anyway and said, “I understand. What about Rubberman?”
“Your boss?” said Arius. “He has a role to play as well. He—”
But, though Arius’ lips moved, no words came from them. That was when Beams noticed that the Dread Realm was beginning to turn white all around him. It was like someone was using a giant eraser to erase everything. Even Arius himself was starting to fade, though he continued to speak as if Beams could hear what he said.
Then the entire Dread Realm became white … and Beams fell, screaming his head off the entire time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Put that down, Sasha,” said Rubberman. “Put that down now or else—”
“Or else what?” Sasha’s voice was full of smug satisfaction. “You won’t hurt me. Otherwise, I might just kill you outright.”
“What is going on?” said Bolt, looking from Rubberman to Sasha and back again. “I don’t understand. What is that piece of gum?”
“It’s not gum, Bolt,” said Rubberman. “It’s my life.”
Before Bolt could ask Rubberman to explain, Rubberman launched both of his hands at Sasha. They extended faster than before like they had been shot out of a cannon, and there was no way that Sasha would be able to dodge them even if she hadn’t been an overweight middle-aged woman.
But then Sasha squeezed on the piece of gum and Rubberman’s arms froze. In fact, it wasn’t just his arms that froze, but his entire body became as still as a statue. Rubberman wore an expression of pure pain on his face, as if he was being tortured, though Sasha had yet to lay a finger on him.
Then Sasha loosened her hold on the gum and Rubberman suddenly collapsed onto the floor, panting and breathing hard. His arms did not retract to their natural length. They just lay stretched out across the carpet like a couple of cables, while Rubberman himself was moaning deeply under his breath.
Bolt blinked. “Did you just kill him?”
“He’s not dead,” said Sasha, “though he wishes he were. Don’t you, Dennis?”
Rubberman raised his head and Bolt cringed. Rubberman’s face was long. Literally. It looked like someone had grabbed his lower jaw and stretched his features down to comical proportions. Even his eyes were stretched, making him look more like some kind of surrealist depiction of a human being than an actual human.
“S-Sasha …” said Rubberman, his words slurred. “The Rubber Ball …”
“The Rubber Ball?” said Bolt. He looked at Sasha. “What is he talking about?”
Sasha smirked. She turned the piece of gum over in her hands. “He is referring to the source of his powers. The Rubber Ball, an alien object recovered by an archaeologist fifteen years ago. But it’s not merely the source of his powers. It is also the source of his life.”
That’s the Dread God’s brain, Bolt thought, though aloud he said, “Is that a part of the Rubber Ball, then?”
“It is,” said Sasha, turning the piece over in her hands again. “With this part of the Rubber Ball, I can hurt Rubberman as much as I want without needing to lay one finger on him. I simply need to squeeze it hard enough to send spasms of unendurable pain through Rubberman’s form. I’ve never used it until now, but mostly because I didn’t really need it until this moment.”
If the Dread God’s brain is in his body, then how did Sasha get a part of it? Bolt thought. It doesn’t make sense. Did she somehow get a piece of it before it was put back in his body? Maybe there is an alternate version of the Rubber Ball in this universe. Guess I’ll figure out an explanation later.
“How …” Rubberman’s stretched mouth seemed to make it hard for him to speak clearly. “How did you get it?”
“Oh, I hired a private detective to do some background work on you, Dennis, when I bought your business and hired you to work in my company,” said Sasha. “Through him, I discovered your mentor, Nightbolt, that nice old man who lives out in West Texas all by himself. I paid him a visit about a year ago, shortly after you started working for me, and the two of us had an interesting talk about that nice collection of trophies he kept in his hidden basement.”
“You monster …” said Rubberman,
Sasha’s smirk became even smugger. “I didn’t hurt the old man if that’s what you’re thinking. I simply offered him a good sum of money for the Rubber Ball. He accepted it … after Takeshi ‘persuaded’ him, that is. Takeshi is a very good persuader, dare I say a master at that skill, perhaps even better than me, though that’s pushing it.”
Bolt wrinkled his nose at Sasha’s smugness. “Persuaded, huh? I wonder how much violence that required.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sasha. “What matters is that I got the Rubber Ball and cut off a piece of it which I carry around with me at all times. I hoped to never use it, but I always knew there was a chance you might turn against me, Dennis. You’re a great entrepreneur, but you take this ‘superhero’ thing a little too seriously, to the point where your sense of right and wrong often gets in the way of good business.”
“Superheroes aren’t just about money, Sasha,” said Rubberman, his w
ords barely understandable. “We’re also trying to protect innocent people and make the world a better place.”
“You can believe what you want,” said Sasha, “but in the real world, money is what matters. Morality is for fools and losers who deserve to be stripped of every last penny in their bank account.”
“Better to be poor than to be you,” said Bolt.
Sasha shot a sharp glare at Bolt. “Keep talking, boy, and perhaps I will kill you, too.”
“There’s nothing you can do to kill me,” said Bolt. “If anything, you should be afraid of me, because I’m way stronger than you.”
“True,” said Sasha. She waved the Rubber Ball piece. “But you wouldn’t risk attacking me if it meant Rubberman dying, right?”
Bolt paused. “You wouldn’t.”
“I absolutely would,” said Sasha. “Do you think Dennis is irreplaceable? Not really. The secret of the superhero biz is that you make more money off licensing deals than off whatever contract you’ve negotiated with the local government. If I kill Dennis, then I can still make a ton of money off of the various Rubberman licensing deals I’ve struck with different companies over the last year or so. And, if need be, I can find a replacement, though I will admit that finding another man made of rubber would be difficult even with the wonders of modern science.”
Bolt’s hands balled into fists. He wanted to punch Sasha’s smirk right off her lips, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop her from killing Rubberman even if he used his super speed. Sasha may have been an evil corporate executive who cared more about profit and power than helping the people, but she was also very clever, he had to give her that.
“What do you want from me?” said Bolt. “Is there anything I can give you in exchange for Rubberman’s life?”
Sasha stroked her chin, a thoughtful expression on her face. “What an interesting question. Truthfully, there isn’t. I really ought to kill Dennis here and now. He knows far too much about my various, ah, legal indiscretions and it would be really unwise to let him leave alive. He might just go to the police and blab about all of the various crimes he’s committed while under my orders. Death would be logical.”
Sasha suddenly squeezed the Rubber Ball again. Rubberman screamed in pain and his body became even limper. His body now mostly resembled a collection of rubber ropes than a human body. It chilled Bolt to see Rubberman in such a condition and he wondered how much pain he had to be in.
“But it would also be hard to explain what happened to him if I did that,” said Sasha. “I have a few friends in the local government who I am sure would be more than happy to help me with this little problem. I could convince them that Dennis tried to kill me in order to get my money and that I just barely managed to survive. I could arrange for Dennis to go to jail for life and no one would ever believe his insistence on his own innocence.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Bolt.
Sasha smiled. “If I deemed it profitable, I would do anything, boy. And I do mean anything.”
More than anything, Bolt wanted to take her out now. And he could. He knew he could and she knew that, too. But again, she had the leverage here, not him. He didn’t consider Rubberman a friend, necessarily, but he did think Rubberman was a good man who didn’t deserve to die, especially in such an undignified way.
“As for you, well, I can always have Takeshi call the police on you,” said Sasha. “Even if you attack me after I kill Rubberman, you will still be branded criminals by the police. I might get some of my friends in the press to help push the idea that you and your girlfriend are a couple of dangerous criminals who need to be arrested and executed. In fact, it might even benefit me if you hit me because then I could claim that I was viciously assaulted by an illegal vigilante who will probably strike again.”
Anger rose in Bolt, but all he could do was stand there stoically. It was times like these that he wondered what the point of super strength even was when you couldn’t use it to sock a smug, arrogant businesswoman in the face as she boasted about what she was going to do to you for interfering with her crimes.
Maybe I should just go and do it anyway, Bolt thought. Not like the police in this universe could even catch me, or Shade for that matter. We’re both too powerful for ordinary humans to deal with.
“You’ve gone awfully quiet all of a sudden,” said Sasha, “but I understand. If I were in this same situation as you, I would probably be the same way.”
Bolt opened his mouth to finally say something, but he never did get to say it, because he heard a sudden click from behind the door to the room. Sasha must have heard it as well, because she looked over her shoulder at the door, a frown on her face.
“Michael?” said Sasha. “Is that you? If it is, please go back downstairs. Auntie Sasha is busy at the moment and doesn’t have time to play.”
“Play?” said a familiar feminine voice; it was Greta. “I never said anything about wanting to play.”
The door slowly pushed open, revealing Greta Hammond, garbed in her Silent Shadow clothing, standing there. She was holding her smartphone in her hand, pointing it directly at Sasha like a gun.
Sasha frowned again. “Are you another one of Monsoon’s minions? If so, then you’re out of luck, because I already have these two under control.”
“I do work for Mr. Monsoon, that’s true,” said Greta, “but I’m not going to lay even one finger on you.”
Sasha tilted her head to the side. “Why? I thought he was trying to stop me. Are you smarter than these two?”
“I don’t know if I’m smarter than them,” said Greta slowly. Her eyes shone like she was smiling underneath her face mask. “But I do know that the police will be very interested in finding out why you were bragging about paying off politicians to put your enemies in jail and how you plan to kill one of your employees just to silence him.”
“The police won’t know a darn thing about this,” said Sasha. “They’ll only know what I will tell them, and nothing more.”
“I perfectly agree,” said Greta. She raised her phone. “Which is why I have been streaming your entire little rant behind you back on my phone for the entire Internet to hear. Oh, and tagging the Golden City Police Department on social media so they can watch it, too.”
Sasha’s face became as pale as a ghost. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, but I did,” said Greta, “though I ended the stream a few minutes ago. Still, I caught pretty much everything you said. It’s going to be hard to explain it all away, especially since the Internet never forgets.”
“Greta, you were standing there this entire time?” said Bolt in surprise.
Greta nodded. “Yep. In fact, this was the entire plan right from the start. Mr. Monsoon knew your chances of stealing her laptop were slim to none, especially given how paranoid Sasha would be after your first successful escape. So he decided to use you and Shade as a distraction, knowing that you would probably run into Sasha at some point and that Sasha would brag and taunt you, as she’s generally prone to do whenever she thinks she’s winning.”
Bolt blinked and glanced at Shade, who still lay on the floor unconscious. “You mean Shade and I were being played this entire time?”
“In a way,” said Greta, “but don’t worry. Mr. Monsoon genuinely does want to help you go back to your universe. He just figured the plan would work better if you two didn’t know what was actually going on.”
While he was a bit peeved at being left out of the plan, Bolt had to admit that it was a rather brilliant play on Monsoon’s part. Now the whole world would know about Sasha’s true nature. And, while Sasha may have been a powerful businesswoman with a lot of contacts in the government and media, Bolt doubted she would be able to bribe her way out of this one.
Sasha seemed to realize that, too. She stood as frozen as a block of ice, her dark sin becoming paler and paler with every second. She was even starting to sweat like she had run a mile, even though she was standing perfectly still. She didn’t drop the piec
e of the Rubber Ball she held, but she didn’t seem like she was going to do anything with it, either.
“It’s over, Sasha,” said Bolt. “The police are probably on their way, and once they get here, your career is finished. Drop the Rubber Ball piece and let Rubberman go.”
Bolt’s words seemed to snap Sasha out of her trance, because she shook her head and said, “Monsoon … ah, that jerk. I’ve always known he’s a crafty one, but even I didn’t expect him to come up with a plan like this. He’s too clever for his own good, honestly.”
“More like too clever for your own good,” said Bolt. “Again, drop the Rubber Ball Piece. Now.”
Sasha bit her lower lip. She looked like she wanted to run away, but instead, she dropped the Rubber Ball piece on the floor. The Rubber Ball piece bounced off the floor a couple of times like a bouncy ball before coming to a stop.
“Great,” said Bolt. “Now—”
But Bolt did not get to finish his sentence, because Sasha raised the heel of her shoe and stomped down on the Rubber Ball piece as hard as she could.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Beams started, staring up at the tiled ceiling above him. His heart hammering in his chest, his clothes drenched in sweat, Beams wasn’t sure where he was or what just happened. His memories were a jumble of images and colors which made no sense to him. He felt kind of like he had just bungee jumped off of a very tall tower and the cord had broken at the tightest moment.
But I am alive, Beams thought. I think.
He put a hand on his chest and felt a bandage around it. At first, he wasn’t sure why he was wearing a bandage, but then he suddenly remembered being shot by one of President Sagan’s bodyguards and he remembered everything. He sat up, panting and sweating, tossing the blankets off him. He was still wearing his pants, but he was currently shirtless. He looked around the room in which he lay.
It was not a very big or fancy room. It looked like an old-fashioned bedroom, perhaps from the mid-twentieth century, with fine antique furniture decorating the space. Old yellow wallpaper clung to the walls, while a massive mirror stood on top of an equally massive chest of drawers off to his left. The bed was big and comfy, with a mattress that, though old, was still comfortable to lie upon. The blankets were similarly aged, with neat little tassels at the end which gave them a fancy appearance.
