‘No!’ Dan said. ‘No shrinking!’ Sighing, he peered into the grill. ‘Ferdy, I’ll need your guidance.’
‘Of course, friend Dan.’
Gripping the sides of the shaft, Dan hoisted himself in. It was a tight fit—a very tight fit. I’m never doing this again! Never! He dragged himself along the shaft. There was no light, but fortunately, his wristcom gave him illumination. The shaft continued for about twenty feet before turning a hard right.
‘Ferdy,’ he whispered. ‘Am I going the right way?’
‘There is no other way to go.’
Oh, Dan thought. That’s true.
He struggled around the corner. It was so tight a squeeze that it was like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube. Grunting, Dan maneuvered around the bend and was puffing and sweating by the time he did it.
‘Dan?’ Brodie’s voice came over his wristcom. ‘How’s it going?’
‘I’ve only gone five feet!’ Dan said.
‘Okay. Just checking.’
He continued along the shaft until he reached a T-intersection.
‘Ferdy,’ he said. ‘Which way should I go?’
‘Straight ahead,’ Ferdy said. ‘You must make a hole in the wall and climb through to the next shaft.’
Focusing on the metal, Dan tore it away, aware of the racket it made in the confined space. Another wall of sheet metal lay beyond. Dan told Ferdy about it, and he said to break through this as well.
‘Thew,’ Dan said, recoiling from the smell that came from the shaft. ‘What is that?’
‘A garbage disposal shaft, friend Dan.’
‘Oh, no.’ He held his nose. ‘It’s terrible!’
‘Such places are not known for their pleasant fragrance.’
‘Don’t tell me I have to crawl in.’
‘Ferdy is afraid so. After climbing in, Dan must drop thirty feet to another level before breaking through into a parallel shaft. That will allow him access to the Dante room.’
Dan groaned. His abilities didn’t include flying. In fact, the idea of flying without a ship always frightened him, but he never told the others. Sighing, he focused on the shaft's metal sides, forcing small sections to bend a few inches outwards. These were like makeshift steps. Now he gently eased himself into the shaft, cautiously stepping from one to the next.
He had to be careful; the metal was slippery because of the rubbish dumped in the shaft. Slowly, Dan made his way down. He’d descended about twenty feet when a racket came from above. He made the mistake of glancing up—just as a massive pile of trash landed on his head.
Choking, he brushed it off. Food scraps were all over him: his hair, clothing, even on his face.
‘Dan,’ Ferdy said. ‘Is everything all right?’
Is everything all right?
He felt like exploding. ‘Well,’ Dan said through clenched teeth. ‘I’m halfway down a dark chute covered in trash.’
There was silence from Ferdy before he spoke. ‘So everything is not all right?’
Dan groaned. ‘Let me know when I reach the next shaft.’
He continued down. After a few minutes, Ferdy told him he had reached the spot where he had to break into the next shaft. Without hesitating, Dan forced the metal back and found himself peering at another parallel shaft. He broke through this shaft and peered in.
He inhaled deeply. A least the air here was fresh.
‘Ferdy? Where to now?’
‘Dan needs to descend down the second shaft another fifteen feet.’
Groaning, Dan climbed into the next shaft and repeated his trick of creating small metal steps to climb down. Finally, he spotted a metal grill just below his feet. Continuing down, he gazed through the grill. Boxes blocked the grill, but faint light crept in from beyond. At least he could push his way past.
Focusing again on the screws, he undid these and wriggled into the gap behind the boxes. Again, there was no room to move, just a thin gap between the wall and the boxes. He squeezed past these to a cramped space where he lay huddled on the ground, sucking in mouthfuls of fresh air.
This is terrible. I’m never doing this again.
Finally, he climbed up over the nearest box and peered beyond.
‘Wow,’ he breathed.
Ferdy had described Dante as a maximum-security vault. What he hadn’t mentioned was its size. This place was as big as a football stadium. It contained thousands of boxes as well as odd pieces of equipment. It reminded Dan of the storage room of a vast museum that hardly anyone ever got to see.
Floodlights hung from the ceiling; above these lay darkness. Dan was just about to creep out from behind the box when he heard a slight ding. An elevator at the end of the room had just arrived at the floor.
Watching in horror, Dan expected a team of security guards to come crashing through the doors. Instead, a scientist in a lab coat stepped out with a trolley. He made his way past Dan before stopping at some boxes about twenty feet away.
The man opened one of the boxes and removed some jars of liquid. He checked them against a datapad in his hand. Then the man stopped. Peering about, Dan watched him looking about in confusion.
What’s he doing?
The man lifted his arms and sniffed under them.
He can smell me!
Shaking his head, the man returned to his work and finally selected one of the jars. He closed the box, sat it on the trolley, and wheeled it back to the waiting elevator. The doors shut, and he was gone.
Dan let out a long breath as he emerged from his hiding spot.
‘Ferdy?’ he said.
‘Yes, friend Dan.’
‘Remind me never to do this again.’
‘Yes, friend Dan.’
He asked Ferdy to direct him to the location of the reader. Ferdy steered him down various aisles, weaving around stacks of boxes that reached to the ceiling. Dan finally came around a corner where some items sat on pedestals and raised platforms.
‘The reader should be directly before Dan,’ Ferdy said.
Dan’s mouth dropped as he stared at the object before him.
‘Dan?’ Ferdy said. ‘Is Dan all right?’
It took Dan a moment to find his voice. ‘Ferdy,’ he said. ‘Are you sure about the reader’s location?’
‘Yes.’
Dan stared at the platform before him. On it stood the metal statue of a man. Or, at least, it appeared to be a statue. The figure stared upwards, its hands raised as if in anguish, an expression of hatred and pain on its face.
The reader was encased in Twelve’s body.
Chapter Nineteen
It all came back to Dan as if it were yesterday.
The Bakari, known as Twelve, took the remainder of the potion used to make them superheroes. Losing his mind, he’d pursued them around The Agency complex, determined to destroy them. They had only triumphed over him when they’d worked together by making him fall into a pit before dropping molten metal on him.
‘Dan?’ Ferdy said.
‘Hang on a minute.’
Dan continued to stare at the figure. They’d not gotten a good look at him when he was killed. Now he studied the expression on the man’s face.
What a horrible way to die.
Connecting through to Brodie and Ebony, Dan told them what he’d found. After a moment’s silence, Brodie came back with an explanation.
‘Twelve must have had the reader on him,’ she said. ‘He was probably after the other two as well, but Doctor Richards hid them.’
‘So, the reader is still on Twelve’s body?’
‘It must be.’
Dan could manipulate metal, but this was a horrible prospect. It meant breaking through the metal and searching the pockets of the dead alien’s clothing.
‘Um,’ Dan said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s another way of doing this?’
‘Like what?’ Brodie asked. ‘You want to carry him up in the elevator?’
Sighing, Dan thanked her and spoke to Ferdy instead. ‘Ferdy,’ he
said. ‘I need you to tell me exactly—and I mean exactly—where the reader is on Twelve’s body.’
Dan didn’t want to remove all the metal from Twelve’s body to find the device. That was too ghastly to contemplate. Ferdy scanned for the next few minutes before getting back to Dan. ‘The reader appears to be in Twelve’s top, left pocket,’ he said. ‘Removing the metal from there should expose the device.’
Ferdy made it all sound so easy, but it was a lot like grave robbing to Dan. He made his way to the metal-encased body and focused on the area. The metal groaned as it peeled back from the body like a bandage from a wound. Underneath lay scarred tissue and burnt cloth.
Yuk!
Dan pulled more of the metal back.
There!
There was no mistaking the small lump in the material. Dan tugged at the pocket, the fabric ripped, and the device dropped into his hand. Gasping with relief, he stuffed it into his pocket and merged the metal back into position again. It wasn’t perfect, but no one would notice.
‘Mission accomplished,’ Dan said into the wristcom.
The others congratulated him, Dan returned to the air shaft, and soon he was back in the room where the girls were dragging him free of the vent. Ebony and Brodie both stood back.
‘Great job,’ Ebony said, wrinkling her nose.
‘Yes,’ Brodie said, swallowing. ‘You’re amazing.’
Dan groaned. ‘Okay!’ he snapped. ‘I know I stink!’
‘It’s not too bad,’ Brodie said, although without much conviction. ‘Anyway, let’s get out of here.’
They navigated back through The Agency to the Flex fighter. On the way, they bumped into Agent Kent.
‘How did you go?’ the woman asked.
‘Oh…good,’ Brodie said, glancing sideways at Dan. ‘We made a bit of a mess of the office but found what we needed.’
‘Excellent,’ Agent Kent replied, inhaling and glancing about. ‘That’s a terrible smell. Where’s it coming from?’
‘Might be a blocked drain,’ Dan suggested, reddening.
‘Yes, my goodness. It’s terrible. I’ll follow that up.’
She wished them well and headed on her way.
‘Blocked drained?’ Brodie said to Dan.
‘It was the best I could come up with.’
The three of them returned to Liber8tor, where Dan clicked all three readers into the onboard computer as they took off. Brodie put a call through to Mister Brown.
‘We haven’t made any headway on the hive,’ Mister Brown said. ‘One of our scientists thinks there may be a time shift happening at the interface. It’s too dangerous to send anyone in.’
‘Time shift?’ Brodie said. ‘So it’s some kind of time travel device?’
‘Possibly.’
Brodie thought back to the body of Glen Johnson in the room. What if the hive has sent Axel back in time and he’s stuck in the past? But what about Chad and Liber8tor? Where were they?
Ebony cut in. ‘So how are we getting them back?’
‘We’re still working on that. Rest assured that we’ve got the best and the brightest working on it.’
Brodie offered to return and help, but Mister Brown declined.
‘We might need you later,’ he said. ‘Head back to the office. We’ll contact you once we know something.’
Reluctantly, they flew back to New York City. Brodie peered down despondently at the passing landscape, her mind a million miles away.
We should never have let Chad probe the hive. Then Axel shouldn’t have gone in after him. They might never return.
Reaching the office, Brodie retrieved the original book and reader from Axel’s room. She was sure he wouldn’t mind her taking them. A few minutes later, she met Ebony and Dan in one of the meeting rooms.
‘Ferdy,’ Dan said. ‘Have you been able to work out anything from the readers?’
‘It appears the readers are designed to work in conjunction with each other. It is clear that the device is now complete.’
‘And what about the books?’ Ebony asked.
‘They appear to contain a complex code revealed from a selection of letters and numbers in the addresses and formula.’
‘What does it say?’ Brodie asked.
‘Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell. Including Axel’s original book and reader, we now have three readers, but only two and one-third books. The contents of our two books are now scanned into Ferdy’s system, but Ferdy cannot crack the code with only a third of the last book.’
‘So having the third reader hasn’t helped at all?’ Brodie said.
‘Only that the three readers are required to understand the code.’
Brodie rolled her eyes. She was feeling tired, stressed, and she had a headache. ‘I vote that we sleep on this,’ she said. ‘I’ll contact Mister Brown again later to see if they’ve had any success accessing the hive. If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Where did that come from?’ Chad yelled.
I checked the sensors. More robots were in pursuit.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think we need some evasive maneuvers.’
Another blast hit the rear of the ship.
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Chad asked.
‘I’m heading out there,’ I said. ‘Keep the ship steady.’
Racing to the back door, I opened it and leaped out into the turbulent sky. The wind tore past me as I soared through the air. There were three robots in pursuit, but the closest was less than a mile. I fired a series of air cannonballs at it. The creature recoiled but kept coming and fired a barrage of power blasts at me. At the same time, the other two strangers came within range. Soon, dozens of blasts were fired at me simultaneously, and I was darting about like a Whack-a-mole.
Got to hit them hard.
Gathering the wind into a cyclone, I kept adding power to it as the strangers drew closer. Within seconds I had a category five cyclone happening.
Got to keep going.
I kept the wind flowing in an anticlockwise direction, making it stronger and stronger. Pieces of the landscape were swept up into it: trees, rocks, vehicles that had never been driven, and buildings that had never been lived in. Everything was being sucked into the maelstrom.
Come on…come on…
The three robots were flying in the same direction as the wind. They headed into the eye of the storm, where it was clear. Increasing the speed again, I focused on driving the cyclone into them. One of them was caught by the gale and flipped backward. One second it was there; the next, it was in pieces.
Focusing again, I swerved the cyclone towards another robot, catching it by surprise. First, it lost an arm. Then one of its legs. Finally, it was swallowed entirely by the storm, its body reduced to pieces.
Wham!
The last robot slammed into me in midair, firing beams from its hands. I struggled to aim its hands away from me. The power beams missed, but I could still feel their intense heat. I headbutted the robot, but there was no response at all.
It’s like hitting a brick wall.
It swung a fist about, slamming it into my jaw, and I went flying. The cyclone caught me up, and I was dragged away by the wind. Then the robot hit me again, pummelling me with its fists. I retaliated with more air cannonballs, but they had no effect at all.
Bang!
One of its power beams had struck my chest. I flew backward, end over end, into the eye of the whirling maelstrom. I couldn’t tell up from down.
Got to get my head together. Clear my thoughts.
Then—
Bang!
I was sent flying again. The ground raced up to meet me, and I narrowly avoided crashing into it. Sweeping low over a field, I unsteadily landed, scanning the skies for the robot. My cyclone had dispersed into a soupy mess. The robot had to be here somewhere but—
Slam!
My body was driven into the ground as the robot tackled me. I tasted grass and
dirt as I struggled to fight back. I twisted about, bracing myself against the ground as I attacked, my fists flailing against the creature. Using my powers, I tried pushing it away but couldn’t concentrate. The robot swung a fist into my jaw, and I saw stars. Focusing my last remaining will, I shoved its arms back. Okay, that’s working. The robot still straddled my chest but was unable to hit me.
Then there was a whirring of machinery, and its head collided with my face. Blood gushed down my chin. I tasted it in my throat. The robot headbutted me again. The pain was excruciating. Focusing all my power into a tiny pocket of air, I drove it into the robot’s throat. Again, I heard machinery grinding—and then one of its fists collided with my chin.
Everything started to go black. I saw the blood-red sky. Remnants of grey cloud. Debris hitting the ground from the cyclone. Glimpses of field.
I’m not going to make it, I thought. I’m going to die in this horrible place.
Brodie’s face came back to me.
I shouldn’t have left things unsaid. That was a mistake.
Another fist collided with my face. Everything was darkening. Then—
Ka-boom!
‘Leave my friend alone!’
A searing blast of fire struck the back of the robot’s head, hurling the machine from my body. The robot went flying end over end across the grassy field. Chad appeared in the periphery of my vision. I tried to move, but everything was a world of pain.
‘Supernova!’ Chad yelled.
He poured on the heat. The creature started forward but was suddenly enveloped in a mist of heat and light as white fire struck it. The robot tried shooting back, but its aim went wild. Chad stepped forward and poured on even more heat until the robot seemed to exist as the heart of a small sun.
The glare was so intense I closed my eyes.
Seconds passed. When I opened them again, I saw the field was smoldering, and a pool of black liquid lay in the middle of the burnt patch. The robot’s head and a solitary arm lay in the midst of this.
Chad staggered back a step and landed on his butt. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That really took it out of me.’
Groaning, I sat up. ‘They’re not easy to kill,’ I said. ‘Just ask my face.’
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 103
