‘Like its own country?’ Brodie asked.
‘Almost, but not quite. The United States is not so ready to give up its territory, even to us. But we are left alone and given supplies when requested.’
‘There have been quite a few changes,’ Bax said. ‘I’m not sure if you’re aware of everything that has happened.’
‘Maybe you can fill us in,’ I said.
What she had to say showed me how out of the loop we were. Each branch of The Agency used to have a Bakari working with them. Then one morning, every single Bakari vanished. No goodbyes. No explanations. They were just simply gone. It meant The Agency was now on its own. As was Earth. It was a disconcerting thought.
The Tagaar had already tried once to invade our world. It had taken the combined efforts of every superhero on Earth to drive them away.
‘There is an Intergalactic Union of Planets,’ I said. ‘Have you been in contact with them?’
‘We have tried,’ Tomay said. ‘But our messages have had no response. We believe a dampening field is stopping messages from getting through.’
‘Is that why you called us?’ Ebony asked. ‘You need our help?’
‘Actually, our intention is to help you,’ Bax said. ‘A woman came here one day, desperate to speak to us. She said she had important information.’
‘What did she want?’ Brodie asked.
‘She had seen a picture in one of your newspapers,’ Tomay said. ‘Taken when our ship crashed, the picture is not very clear. It shows a number of our people and other military officers.’ He turned to me. ‘It also shows you.’
‘Me?’
Tomay nodded. ‘The image was fuzzy,’ he admitted. ‘But it was enough to bring the woman to us.’
‘What’s so important about this picture?’
‘The woman said she recognized you,’ Tomay said. ‘She said she is your aunt.’
Chapter Four
She said she is your aunt.
The words rang in my head. My aunt. It was almost too much to take in. I had wondered about my true identity ever since I’d awoken in a hotel room, months before. My clothing had identified me as Axel. No last name. Just Axel. It may not even be my real name. The others had been through a similar experience, their memories wiped and given new identities. A day had not passed where I had not wondered about my family, my real identity, the life I had led before my modification.
I felt numb. I should have been overjoyed, but I felt nothing at all.
‘Your aunt,’ Brodie said to me. ‘Someone who knows you from...before.’
Everyone was staring. ‘Did she leave a way to contact her?’ I asked. ‘An address?’
Tomay produced a scrap of paper with an address of a town called Halliford in Ohio. ‘That’s not far from here,’ I said absently. ‘We could be there in an hour.’
‘Was there anything else?’ Chad asked Tomay. ‘Did the woman say anything about the rest of us?’
‘No.’
‘We should probably leave,’ I said. ‘It’s not safe to stay.’
‘I hope this is good news for you,’ Bax said.
‘It is,’ I said. ‘The best.’
We said our goodbyes and crept through the settlement without speaking. I tried to stay alert for guards, but my brain wouldn’t work. My stomach was a hive of anxiety.
The place where we had passed under the fence looked the same. Within seconds we were on the other side.
Bang!
Ebony cried out. Turning the corner, the guard had spotted us at the last moment. Chad threw up an ice wall as another shot rang out, and it bounced off. We raced down the trail, bullets stinging the undergrowth like bees.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked Ebony.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘It’s just a flesh wound.’
Reaching Liber8tor, Dan had us in the air in seconds.
‘There are three Flex craft approaching,’ Ferdy reported. ‘They will be in firing range within one minute.’
‘They can’t see us,’ Chad said, looking alarmed. ‘Can they?’
‘Ferdy does not believe so.’
Within minutes we would be miles away. Looking at the makeshift town, I thought about what Tomay had told me. The whole thing could be a complete accident. The photo wasn’t clear. Maybe the woman claiming to be my aunt had mistaken me for—
‘One of the Flex craft has fired,’ Ferdy said.
‘On what?’ Brodie asked. ‘We’re not visible.’ She stabbed at her console. ‘I’m raising shields.’
The Liber8tor was rocked by a blast.
‘We’re visible to them!’ Dan said.
‘Can you get us out of here?’ I asked.
‘I’m trying.’
‘Ferdy,’ Ebony said, ‘do you know how they’ve penetrated our cloaking device?’
‘It appears to be completely operational,’ Ferdy said. ‘However, the trajectory of the missile followed Liber8tor’s heat signature.’
Liber8tor’s engine produced heat just like any other, emitting it via exhaust manifolds at the base of the ship. The missile must have followed the heat trail.
‘Any ideas?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got one,’ Dan said. ‘But you may not like it.’
He threw the ship into a sharp ascent. Was he planning to outrace The Agency ships? Our shields might not last that long. Another missile hit the shields, and we shuddered.
‘Shields are down to seventy percent,’ Brodie said.
Dan leveled out, increased speed again. ‘On my mark, Ferdy,’ he said, ‘cut all power except life support and sensors.’
‘Dan,’ Ferdy said, ‘that will mean—’
‘I know what it means,’ he said, tightly gripping the control column. ‘Hang on.’
Throwing Liber8tor into a tight spiral, I was glad I had eaten a small meal. Glancing over at Ebony, she gave me a sickly smile. I remembered she had asked for seconds at lunch.
‘Ferdy,’ Dan said. ‘Cut power.’
The bridge went dark except for emergency lighting, casting everyone’s faces in an eerie crimson glow. The ship fell, slowly at first, and then picked up speed. I understood what Dan was trying to do. Without a heat trail, The Agency ships had nothing to follow.
‘We are at 20,000 feet and falling,’ Ferdy said. ‘Nineteen thousand.’
‘Are the Flex ships following?’ Brodie asked.
‘They are combing the area without success. Eighteen thousand.’
‘This may have worked,’ I said.
‘Hopefully,’ Brodie said.
‘Seventeen thousand,’ Ferdy said. ‘Sixteen thousand.’
‘We need to break out of this dive,’ Chad said. ‘We’re dropping like a stone.’
‘Not yet,’ Dan replied. ‘Just a bit longer.’
‘Where are The Agency ships now, Ferdy?’
‘They are still where we left them,’ Ferdy said. ‘We are at twelve thousand feet and continuing to fall.’
‘Restart the engines,’ Chad said.
‘Belay that order,’ Dan said.
‘Belay that order?’ Chad looked at Dan as if he’d grown a second head. ‘Where did you get—forget it, just restart the engines.’
‘Don’t restart the engines,’ Dan said.
The engines stayed off.
I cleared my throat. ‘Altitude?’
‘Six thousand feet.’
‘Dan?’ I said.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Ferdy, tell me when we’re at one thousand feet.’
‘One thous—’ Chad looked like he was choking. ‘Ferdy! Restart the engines!’
‘Dan is Liber8tor’s helmsman,’ Ferdy said. ‘Four thousand feet.’
No one spoke. It hadn’t occurred to any of us that Dan—the smallest and youngest of us all—could override our commands. But now wasn’t the time to argue about it. Not with death only seconds away.
‘Two thousand feet,’ Ferdy said. An eternity seemed to pass. ‘One thousand feet.’
‘Now
!’ Dan snapped.
The thrust pushed us so far back in our seats that my eyeballs hurt. Brodie screamed. Chad had been in the process of climbing from his seat and was thrown to the floor. A distant rumble came from behind. At first, I thought it was an explosion. Then I realized it was a sonic boom as we broke the sound barrier.
Dan only spoke again after a minute. ‘Ferdy, what’s the location of those Agency ships?’
‘They have lost us. Dan’s plan has succeeded.’
Chad stood up, groaning. He started towards Dan, but Ebony was already in his way. ‘Back off!’ she said.
‘Out of my—’
‘I said, back off!’
She shoved him. They stared at each other without speaking. Then Chad dropped his gaze and made for the exit.
‘Someone’s got to be in charge here,’ he said. ‘And it can’t be him.’
Chapter Five
I woke early the next morning, washed, dressed, and made my way to the galley where I found the others gathered.
Chad glanced up from a bowl of cereal. ‘Ready to visit Auntie?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘I’ll just see what happens,’ I said. ‘It may all be a case of mistaken identity.’
Dan spoke up. ‘Or not.’
Brodie asked if she could go with me, and I said it was fine. Saying goodbye to the others, we silently left Liber8tor. Dan had put the ship down in a clearing in some woods a couple of miles south of Halliford, Ohio. Following an overgrown trail, we reached a tarred road and headed towards the morning sun. Mist filled the fields. A redbird broke from a copse and flitted into the sky. It was so quiet it could have been the first day on earth.
I should have felt elated, or excited, but instead, I felt a strange compulsion to burst into tears.
What’s wrong with me?
‘How do you feel?’ Brodie asked.
‘Great,’ I lied. ‘This probably won’t lead to anything. A blurry photo in a newspaper doesn’t mean a thing. It could have been Abraham Lincoln in that picture.’
‘Probably not.’
As the road turned left, we spotted a homemade mailbox: an old dairy can, painted canary yellow, with a slot cut into it. Behind it was a farmhouse, set back a hundred feet, white, with a tin roof and wide eaves. A knee-high hedge and a flower garden surrounded it.
I suddenly realized my heart was racing a mile a minute. This is stupid, I thought. I’ve faced aliens and supervillains and bombs. Why am I afraid to face a bunch of country bumpkins?
But I already knew.
It might mean the end of everything. An end to the only life I’ve ever known.
The front screen door swung open, and a woman stepped out. Aged about sixty, she looked like something out of an old depression-era movie. Dressed in a checkered apron, loose shirt, and with graying hair pushed up in a bun, her mouth dropped open as she saw us.
‘Adam,’ she said, taking a faltering step. ‘Dear Lord, is it you?’
Adam?
Almost falling, she yelled over her shoulder. ‘Henry! Come quickly! Adam’s here!’
Running over, she scooped me up in her arms and hugged me tightly. She smelt of lilac. Drawing back, she stared into my uncomprehending eyes. ‘Adam?’ she said. ‘You remember me? I’m your Aunt Louise.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. My whole world was spinning. ‘I...I’ve had amnesia.’
Louise threw her arms around me again. ‘Dear Lord, you’ve returned Adam to us,’ she said, tears in her eyes. ‘Back from the dead.’
A man appeared on the porch. He came towards us, open-mouthed, stopping a few feet away.
‘I didn’t think—’ he started. ‘I didn’t believe it, but it’s true. You’re alive.’
These people remembered me. They knew me. I’d like to say there was a rush of memories, that my whole past life returned in a flash, that everything I had lost had been restored, but it didn’t happen. I didn’t recognize them. Not one bit.
If they were related to me, then the process The Agency had used had been terribly successful; Louise and Henry had been completely wiped from my memory.
Henry was like a stereotypical man on the land. Lean, clean shaved, graying hair, face tanned by years in the sun.
Louise turned to Brodie. ‘Is this your friend?’ she asked.
‘This is Brodie...Smith,’ I said. ‘I’ve been staying with her family.’
They gave her a hug, and she looked as surprised as me.
‘Come inside,’ Henry said. ‘Tell us what happened. Where you’ve been. How you finally found us.’
The living room had white walls, floral floor coverings, and old English pine furniture. Pictures sat over the mantelpiece. My eyes focused on one in particular. Stumbling towards it, I saw a photo of a younger version of me with two people, presumably my parents. The man was taller. I couldn’t see any similarity between us, except for the height, but I was the spitting image of the woman. She was attractive and thin, with a pleasant smile, and brown hair and eyes.
‘What do you remember?’ Louise asked.
I wanted to cry. Coming here, I had doubted these people knew me. Within seconds, all that had been turned upside down. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I...tell me everything.’
As I shakily slumped into a padded lounge chair, Henry went to get us lemonade. He returned with a jug and poured drinks. Glancing over at Brodie, I saw her lips were pursed, her eyes narrow. She was staring at me, but I couldn’t read her face.
‘Do you remember the accident?’ Louise asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened. Tell me about...me.’
Louise took a deep breath. ‘Your name is Adam Baker,’ she said. ‘You’re sixteen years old. Your mother was my sister, Mary, and your father was named Tom. You lived on a farm in Kansas until earlier this year when there was an accident.’
‘What happened?’
‘There were floods. You and your parents were in a car trying to cross a river. According to the coroner, the car filled with water. They found your parents in the vehicle the next day. You were nowhere to be found.
‘We thought you must have been killed too, your body washed away by the flood.’ Louise wrung her hands together. ‘Then I saw that picture in the newspaper. I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure. We’ve hoped you would be returned to us. Now our prayers have been answered. We know you’ve...changed.’
Changed. That was a diplomatic way of putting it. ‘I’ve got powers,’ I said. ‘I’m sort of a superhero, but then you’d know that.’
‘When we spoke to that alien man—Tomay—he mentioned you and your friends. We put two and two together and realized you had gotten into some trouble. That the government was chasing you.’
‘We weren’t sure what to do,’ Henry said. ‘We gave him our address, but we didn’t know if you’d ever find us.’
‘But you have,’ Louise added. ‘Now you have a home—a real home—and maybe one day your memories will return.’
She stared at me, expectantly, and I couldn’t return her gaze. My stomach was turning over. I glanced around the living room. This was a home. This could be my home.
‘I need to think about this,’ I said. ‘About all of this. It’s a lot to take in. I’ll come back tomorrow.’
Henry scribbled down a couple of phone numbers. ‘Please come back,’ he said. ‘Don’t just walk out on us.’
‘Where are you staying?’ Louise asked.
‘In a motor home on the other side of town,’ Brodie said.
‘I’ll be back,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
After a few more minutes of saying our goodbyes, Brodie and I returned to the road heading back to Liber8tor.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I wish I did.’
Chapter Six
‘They’ve been gone a long time,’ Dan said. ‘I wonder what’s keeping them.’
He and Ebony were sitting in his room onboard Liber8tor. Dan often spent his
free time playing video games in his cabin. He was up to level sixty-eight of Zombie Moon. With a bit more effort, he would crack it in the next day or so. His other interest was studying the schematics of the ship. He had made up his mind to become an expert in operating the vessel, and had been learning more with each passing day.
But now he found he couldn’t focus. He couldn’t believe they might be losing Axel. It was like losing part of his own body.
‘It probably isn’t him in the picture,’ Ebony said. She had a soft spot for Dan. The youngest of the group, he always seemed to bear the brunt of things. ‘Anyway, even if it isn’t, it doesn’t mean he’s going to leave.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Dan asked. ‘What would you do?’
Ebony sighed. He had a point. She had wondered about her past every single day since acquiring her powers. Where were her parents? Were they still alive? She and Chad were Norwegian, yet neither of them had any memory of their past lives. They could speak four languages, but couldn’t remember learning them.
Everything before waking up with superpowers was a complete blank.
Would she return to her parents if they found her?
‘I suppose I’d go,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘If the opportunity came up.’
Chad appeared in the door. ‘Hey, you two,’ he said, ‘what’s happening?’
‘Nothing,’ Dan said, frowning.
‘You’re not still mad about that thing on the bridge, are you, Mister Squirt?’ Chad asked, grinning. ‘I was just giving you a hard time.’
‘You’re not in charge.’
‘Neither are you.’
‘I got us away from those Agency ships,’ Dan said. ‘Your butt would be in jail if it weren’t for me.’
‘I would’ve just flown away. Unlike you, Mister Squirt, I don’t need a spaceship.’
Ebony held up her hands. ‘You’re both driving me crazy,’ she said. ‘And this isn’t about who’s running the ship anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’ Chad asked.
‘I mean you’re fighting because you’re upset about Axel,’ she said. ‘And him leaving us.’
They stared glumly at each other.
‘A few things have changed lately,’ Chad said.
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 66
