by Barry Lyga
“None taken.”
Kyle fished in his pocket and brought out one of the few functioning gadgets he still had — the Bluetooth communicator he had once used. He handed it over to Mike. “With this in your ear, you’ll be able to hear me and talk to me. I can help you figure out the best ways to use your superpowers. Make you more efficient.”
Mike stared at the Bluetooth earpiece. “That … would be most helpful. Thank you.”
“We have a lot of work to do,” Kyle told him. “So you’ll have to listen to everything I say. Like I said, I don’t expect you to understand — not right away, at least. I sent a weapon back through time. Or, rather, my future self will send a weapon back through time. To help me in the fight against Walter Lundergaard.”
“Lundergaard …”
“He’s a madman. He was willing to wipe out the entire town of Bouring. He tortured a … a friend of mine. Made him a slave.”
“He is not a nice man,” Mike said. “And I believe he should be stopped.”
“Excellent. Glad we’re on the same page. But remember: You can’t call me Kyle when you’re out in public,” Kyle told him. “I have to be a secret.”
“Yeah. You’ll need a namecode.”
“It’s ‘codename.’”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m always sure. Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking: Why don’t you call me ‘Erasmus’ …?”
Many years in the future, Kyle Camden staggered backward in pain. His laboratory was in flames and he collided with a control panel. Nearby, the Giggler lay completely still. Dead, maybe. Or maybe just unconscious. Either way, Kyle didn’t care right now — at least that insipid giggling had stopped.
Lundergaard stood in the prototype version of the new chronovessel, a large, clear bubble of thermoplastics and transparent titanium. He was punching buttons, grinning like a madman. The Mad Mask was with him, his wooden mask shattered and hanging in jagged pieces off his face. For a moment, Kyle’s eyes locked with Jack Stanley’s.
And then Jack looked away.
Coughing through the smoke, Kyle shouted, “Don’t do it, Walter! Don’t engage the sequence! It’s a prototype! It won’t work the way you expect it to!”
Lundergaard sneered. “It works. That’s all I care about.” To the Mad Mask, he said, “Kill him.”
The Mad Mask hesitated. “But —”
“Do it!” Lundergaard screamed, and the Mad Mask raised an odd-looking gun.
Kyle tried to dodge as the trigger was pulled, but the edge of the energy burst caught him on the left side of his body. He bellowed in pain and collapsed to the floor. He couldn’t believe this had happened. He’d been betrayed. He had known the betrayal was coming, but not from which direction. He never could have imagined that he would be betrayed by M —
But that didn’t matter. Not anymore. The present was no good, but there was still a chance. In the past.
“I’ll stop you,” he croaked, pulling himself to his feet, bracing against the control panel. “I’m sending a weapon to the past. To stop you.”
“Shoot him again,” Lundergaard commanded, not even looking at Kyle, still fiddling with the controls on the chronovessel.
The Mad Mask stared at Kyle. He shook his head just the tiniest bit and dropped the gun. “It, uh, it’s out of power….” he said.
Kyle felt for the proper buttons on his control panel. He couldn’t stop Lundergaard — not now — but he could …
He bashed a button with his fist. Lights illuminated the control panel. A siren sounded. And as Lundergaard and the Mad Mask began to fade into the timestream, a computerized voice filled the lab:
“Project Irony is now online,” it announced. “Project Irony is now online!”
The chronovessel vanished into the timestream, taking Lundergaard and the Mad Mask with it. And the computerized voice droned on:
“Zero-point energy at maximum! Plasma field intact and ready for transmission!”
Kyle pushed another button. The last button.
“Project Irony, final phase!” the voice announced. “Now inserting the Mighty Mike Matrix into the timestream … Arrival scheduled for pre-designated temporal coordinates …”
Kyle laughed through the pain that filled his body. The weapon wasn’t perfect — its databank was incomplete and it would have computational glitches and difficulties. But that was fine.
He knew what would happen next … because it had already happened. On a warm October night some time in the past, the sky above his hometown of Bouring would light up with the residual plasma effect of the chronometric insertion of the Mighty Mike Matrix into the timestream. To a twelve-year-old Kyle Camden, it would look like a plasma curtain falling in sheets from outer space. To the rest of Bouring, it would look like …
Well, the rest of Bouring would gaze up in wonder, in fear, in awe. And turn to one another and say:
Where were you when the stars fell down?
My thanks go out, as always, to the folks at Scholastic, but especially to Jody Corbett, David Levithan, and Sheila Marie Everett. Also, a long-overdue shout-out to Andrew Trabbold and Christopher Stengel, the gentlemen who bring you those gorgeous covers. Please applaud for them when you have a moment, will you?
I’d also like to thank Faith Hochhalter, who’s read each of these books as I wrote them and offered that special insight that only a first reader can offer.
But the biggest thanks go — no surprise here, really — to the man I still call “my kid brother,” Eric Lyga. Before I even sat down to write the first words of Kyle’s first adventure, I spent an afternoon with Eric, just spitballing ideas. His thoughts, insights, and probing questions forced me to rethink the project and take it a bit further than the original “kid with superpowers plays pranks” I had intended. He’s also the one who read the first book and said, “So, you mention that Kyle’s journal is encrypted — will it ever end up being decrypted by someone?” Heh. Thanks, bro. And I promise to try to stop calling you “my kid brother.” (But let’s be honest — we both know that’s not gonna happen.)
Last but never, ever least — thanks to you, the reader of this book. Writing books is fun; getting them published is great. But it’s all pretty pointless if no one reads ’em. So thank you for being at the other end of the page for me.
BARRY LYGA is the author of Archvillain and The Mad Mask, the first two novels of Kyle Camden’s adventures. He’s also the author of several critically acclaimed YA novels. Barry lives in Brooklyn, New York. When he’s not writing he uses his superpowers to fight crime.
Copyright © 2013 by Barry Lyga
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lyga, Barry.
Yesterday again / by Barry Lyga. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Archvillain; 3)
Summary: Twelve-year-old Kyle Camden is annoyed because his superpower identity, the Azure Avenger (often called the Blue Freak), has been labeled as a villain by the town of Bouring — but when he builds a time machine, so that he can go back and prove that the hero Mighty Mike is an alien, he finds out that all of his assumptions are wrong.
ISBN 978-0-545-19654-3
1. Superheroes — Juvenile fiction. 2. Extraterrestrial beings — Juvenile fiction. 3. Time travel — Juvenile fiction. [1. Superheroes — Fiction. 2. Extraterrestrial beings — Fiction. 3. Time travel — Fiction. 4. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L97967Yes 2013
813.6 — dc23
2012014423
First edition, January 2013
Cover illustration © Andrew Trabbold
Cover design by Christopher Stengel
e-ISBN 978-0-545-52032-4
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publi
cation may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.