Gamma Accidents #2: Creatures from the Deep

by Erin Sheena Byrne

  But changing Hero High and Hero College regulations, curriculums and standards impacted the entire Superhero Community.

  Urban Danger vowed to make it right, and so, make it right, he would. It was just going to take a considerable amount of time and effort. He understood a few people would be outraged and he knew he wouldn’t be popular.

  But the right course is never the popular course.

  So, after a long morning of angry phone calls, heated arguments, tense board meetings and more than a few death threats, Director Urban Danger enjoyed the solitude in his now quiet office.

  The office had been his father’s. As much as he and his father argued, disagreed and refused to see eye-to-eye on basically any and all subjects, Urban still felt the pain of his father’s passing. He couldn’t handle sitting in this office without first removing and replacing the furniture, the paintings, even the lighting fixtures that reminded him of his stubborn, late father.

  At least his secretary didn’t hate him. When his position changed to Global Director, she faithfully followed him. When he made changes to the curriculum, she didn’t threaten to remove him from authority by declaring him "mentally unstable."

  They knew each other back in Hero College, back when they worried about final exams, stupid pranks and nothing else.

  Said secretary politely knocked on the closed door before stepping into her boss’s office, her head down, gaze focussed on a journal. Frankly, she surprised Urban at just how calm she remained despite having to keep up with the constantly changing schedules, the threats and the outraged Board members.

  "Hey, Mindy," Urban said, welcoming the company. "Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you a-?"

  "The principal of a Hero High in Mexico is on line one, sounds like he wants to talk to you about the new curriculum," Mindy interrupted, her tone overbearingly official.

  Urban rolled his eyes and shifted his feet off his desk. Work was not over yet, it seemed.

  "The Head of the Board of Hero Education and Training is on line two. I don’t need to tell you what he wants to say, nor do I want to repeat it. And Mr Russell Swift is on line three." Having sifted through her official business, she raised her glasses-framed gaze and smiled, fondly and knowingly, at the global director she remembered as a dreaming, prank-loving youngster from decades before. "And, yes, I have thought about it."

  Urban returned the smile. "I’ll take the call on line three. Old Rust won’t be threatening me this early..."

  Mindy respectfully left the office while Urban took the call.

  One wouldn’t say Urban and Rust were exactly "friends," but they had known each other for many decades. It was thanks to Rust that Urban felt moved to lift the unfair bans imposed on gamma accidents, and it was with Urban’s help that Rust could start getting back on his feet.

  "I assume you’re in Crashton by now, right?" Urban warmly greeted the forgotten hero.

  "Yes, yes I am," Rust replied. "And do you have any idea what else is in Crashton?"

  Urban frowned. "Is this a trick question?"

  "Flying sharks, Danger. Flying. Great. White. Sharks," Rust said, his tone straining to sound casual. It didn't fool the director.

  "Uh-huh," Urban said, leaning back in his chair and kicking his feet back up on the desk. "Care to give me more details?"

  "Not really. I have a few questions of my own."

  "Okay, you called so you get to go first," Urban said, fairly.

  "Do you remember that alien invasion thirty years ago?"

  Urban frowned as he searched through his memory for any scrap of information to assist this conversation. "Do you mean the one with the little aliens that looked like a bouquet of roses with the eyes of a deer?"

  "No, the other one."

  "Rust, I know of at least twelve alien invasions that happened three decades ago. Would it kill you to be more specific?"

  "The one with the flying cows," Rust answered.

  "Oh, yes. The Gypes. I do remember that." Urban involuntarily shivered. "Still can't handle milkshakes."

  "What happened to the tech they left behind?"

  Urban shook his head, even though he knew Rust didn't see the gesture. "Russell, no technology from the Gypes' invasion was left behind. And if anything was left behind, I'm sure it would have been destroyed."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Because that was dangerous technology. There's no way the Superhero Community would have allowed it to just hang around."

  "Really, Danger, really?" Rust said with heavy disbelief. "I know I was only a teenager at the time, my team was new at the whole hero game and we still believed there was an actual difference between good guys and bad guys. But I know nothing has ever been so black and white. Did District 61 get involved?"

  "Rust, it was a long time ago -"

  "Did they?" Rust interrupted, tersely.

  Urban remained silent for a moment. Despite his position and title, he shared Rust's mistrust of the Superhero Community. And he had never put any faith in District 61: the government sanctioned department designed to deal with aliens and supers.

  Suddenly serious, Urban again removed his feet from the desk and sat forward. Speaking in an honest, low tone, as if he were afraid of eavesdroppers, he said, "Rust, I don't know if any tech was left over. And if any was left behind, I don't know who would have it... but I can find out for you."

  "Thank you," Rust said, sincerely.

  "If I do find something," Urban continued. "Can I count on you and those kids to sort it out? Completely off the record, of course."

  "Shouldn't you send some trained-and-ready hotshots to deal with it?" Rust questioned, confused.

  "Those kids are not like other Hero High students," Urban told Rust. "You know as well as I do that they can do amazing things. We had that demonstrated right before our very eyes not so long ago. Remember? They’re strong, they’re brave and they’re a team unlike any in history. We saw a team like them once before, and G-4 will be eternally remembered, Rust. But, right now, you have to give those kids a chance to prove themselves. Crashton is their town: let them save and protect it. Believe in them, let them go, support them and watch them shine. Are we clear?"

  Rust breathed in, deeply. "Yes."

  "Good. Now, get off this line. I'm gonna get right on your case of stolen alien technology, but before I can, I have to deal with an angry board member and a Mexican principal, both of which might be plotting my demise as we speak."

  Rust laughed, lightly. "I don’t envy you, Danger."

  "Don't hesitate to call me if you need someone to play bait for the flying sharks... I don't think I can get through this week, Swift..."

  15

  The teens stood around, straining to listen in on Rust's phone call to the Global Director. Well, all those who did not possess enhanced hearing strained: Jack easily heard the entire exchange.

  "Okay, it's official," Rust declared as his call ended, "we are completely involved in this case."

  "Fantastic!" Caleb exclaimed, ever excited.

  "I don't know if I'd say 'fantastic,'" Rust said. "This is gonna be a lot of work. We have to figure out what's going on, stop it, and try to keep a low profile so this doesn't explode all over the news."

  Dean shrugged, carelessly. "It can't be that hard: superheroes have been doing this for ages."

  "Superheroes normally know what they're dealing with," Rust pointed out, gesturing with his phone. "We have no idea if there's a supervillain behind this or just some smart idiot wanting attention."

  "Whatever. I think we have another pressing matter on hand," Ethan spoke up. He waved an arm through the air, drawing everyone's attention to the garage, which was in a disastrous state with various tools and painting supplies haphazardly strewn everywhere. "This place is a total wreck."

  "You kids have superpowers," Rust said, slyly making his way towards his van. "Trust me, you can clean this place up in five minutes flat. In the meantime, I gotta hit the road."
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  No one stopped him from leaving. They hardly acknowledged his absence.

  "Maybe I should call Mom and Dad, convince them to stay a little longer at their art expedition," Ty proposed, fishing in his pocket for his phone. He froze, all of a sudden, his eyes growing wide. "Uh, guys..." he said, slowly pulling a sleek smart-phone out the pocket of his board shorts and staring at it. "We have another problem..."

  "Where'd you get that?" Bella asked, peering at the phone, curiously.

  Ty slapped his forehead as he remembered. "Yesterday, when Jack and I were wandering around that underwater lair. I found a bedroom and this was on the nightstand. I picked it up and I totally forgot about it."

  "This could be useful," Ethan said, slipping the phone out his brother's hand and inspecting it.

  "What do you think you're gonna find? An evil to-do list?" Jack asked, sarcastically.

  Ethan gave him a deadpan look. "That is just stupid."

  Jack shrugged it off.

  "No, there can be contacts on here. Messages, memos, photos - scraps of information we can use to figure out who's behind this," Ethan explained.

  "First you have to get past the lock-screen," Dean pointed out as Ethan switched the device on and a prompt for a passcode popped up.

  "Eh, give me a day and I'll crack it," Ethan said, confidently.

  "Well, unlike some of us, you actually have all day," Jack said, splitting away from the group. "I'd better scoot back to work before anyone notices I'm gone. Don't hesitate to call if you need me."

  "We won't," Bella called with a fake, sickly-sweet tone.

  "I know," he replied, rolling his eyes and taking off.

  "I'm gonna get started with this," Ethan said, his eyes glued to the phone as he stepped away from the garage, towards the door leading into the renovated fire station.

  "And we're gonna come watch you," Caleb said.

  "Yeah, the garage ain't going anywhere," Ty agreed, shrugging his shoulders. "And, let's face it: out of everything we've ever done, this is probably on the bottom of the list of reasons Mom and Dad are going to disown us for."

  And so, despite the fact the garage demanded an immediate spruce-up, the teens retreated, following Ethan as he led the way up to the triplets' large, shared bedroom.

  With his brothers and friends peering over his shoulder, Ethan set to work. His brothers and friends could hardly understand what he was doing as he plugged the phone into his computer and began pulling up programs on screen, his fingers flying across the keyboard. They quickly became bored. Their interest waning, they peeled away, some making their way to the kitchen, some flopping on couches in the living room. Regardless of their disinterest, Ethan continued.

  Although he would never claim to be a technological mastermind, Ethan Black's skills were unmatched. His friends and brothers well knew of his prowess when it came to all things related to technology.

  Within half an hour, he achieved success. With excitement that rivalled his youngest brother's, he quickly sprang up, ran from his room and down the stairs. From the landing, he exclaimed, "I'm in!"

  As soon as he made his announcement, he turned around and headed back to his room. The others, who heard him from the various different areas of the fire-station-turned-family-home, understood the cue and followed after him.

  "It's a good thing he's on our side," Bella commented, jokingly, as the group sprinted up the staircase, clumsily tripping over each other.

  "Ethan Seth Black is a formidable force to be reckoned with," Ty agreed.

  "So, what do you do now?" Dean asked as the group entered the triplets' shared room.

  "Now I rummage through some unsuspecting individual's personal information," Ethan declared, cringing when he realized how criminal it sounded. "It may or may not be legal."

  "Flying sharks may or may not be legal," Bella said, crossing her arms. "Just start rummaging."

  Once again intrigued, everyone crowded around Ethan and leaned in close to watch. With flippant flicks of his hands, he shoved them away.

  "I've got it hooked up to the computer," he said, waving to the desktop stationed amid a clutter of paper, pencils, rulers, books and various other odd items, such as socks. "Watch from there."

  Obediently, his brothers, Dean and Bella turned their attention to the computer screen, displaying whatever Ethan saw on the phone in real time.

  "Go to the contacts list," Bella suggested.

  "No, go to the memos and the notepad," Ty countered.

  "Oh, come on, everyone knows if you want to find out about a person, you have to search through their photos," Dean said. "Check the photo library, Ethan."

  "Read through his emails, that's where important stuff happens," Caleb said, joining the melee of ideas.

  "Guys!" Ethan exclaimed over the loud din of suggestions. "I'm hacking a phone, not playing a video game!"

  "Sorry," the others responded, simultaneously.

  "One thing at a time. All your ideas are good, but I can only try one at a time. I'll check photos, first, and then messages."

  With an edge of suspense, the friends and brothers watched on as Ethan opened the photo application and began scrolling through. It wasn't a very long scroll: the only photos the phone contained were standard wallpapers for the lock screens.

  "Well, that was a bust," Bella said, mightily disappointed. "Not even one picture of our mastermind. Nothing incriminating. What are they doing with their life?"

  Ethan gave no reply as he closed the photo library and proceeded to go through the sent and received messages.

  "Okay, who owns a phone and doesn't have history of at least one text message?" Ty questioned, confused, as the group stared at a blank screen.

  "I'm gonna guess our guy's not popular," Dean commented.

  Ethan opened up the email application next. Involuntarily, he exclaimed, triumphantly, as he saw a long list of unread emails. Excitedly, he began scrolling through the unread mail.

  "In the past twenty-four hours, he's had a lot of people contact him," Ethan deduced.

  "Hey, it could still be a 'she,' you know," Bella pointed out. "And I'm not saying that because I happen to be the only girl here, I'm saying that because we already got the gender of a shark wrong today so I don't think we should jump to conclusions."

  Ethan rolled his eyes. "Fine. He/she has had a lot of people contact him/her. But they don't look like personal emails, you know, like from a friend to a friend."

  The others could see that, as they read the basic information of the emails as Ethan slowly scrolled through them.

  "Mission Warehouse... isn't that the name of some company that supplies parts for radios and stuff?" Bella asked, squinting at the screen.

  "Yeah, that's where I get all the stuff to make and improve our walkie-talkies," Ethan said.

  "So our guy or girl is building handheld radio sets?" Dean concluded, looking mightily perplexed.

  "Not necessarily. Mission Warehouse does pretty much everything from spare parts for car stereos to big time radio transmitters. The local radio station tower was built by them, and they maintain it," Ethan explained. He paused for a minute as he opened a few emails and sped-read through them. "Whoever we're dealing with, they're ordering enough stuff to build about fifty transmission towers."

  "That is one hardcore project," Caleb remarked, nodding his head slowly as he tried to imagine the scope of such an endeavour.

  "Wait, hold up. What do flying sharks have to do with radio towers?" Ty questioned.

  Ethan shook his head, exhaling loudly and taking his glasses off to rub his eyes. It wasn't even lunchtime, but it had already been a long day. "I don't know. None of this makes sense."

  "Nothing's made sense since we saw jellyfish impersonating kites," Bella said, blatantly honest. "But it doesn't have to make sense, we just have to keep rolling with it. One thing at a time, like you said. We know someone is behind this, we know they're planning to build radio towers, and lots of them. Now, we just have to t
hink up our next crazy, stupid, ridiculous move and go for it."

  "You pep-talk way better than Jack," Caleb commented.

  "Thank you," Bella said with a mock-smug grin.

  "Well, if you want crazy, stupid and ridiculous," Ethan said, repositioning his glasses and redirecting his attention to the phone he held in his hands, "then I might have an idea."

  He scrolled through the emails and opened the most recently received one.

  "It seems our person of interest has a major shipment coming in late tonight," Ethan said, highlighting specific parts of the email to validate his statement. "Obviously, they don't want their purchases delivered to their suspicious underwater dome, so they've put in a request that the deliveries take place in person, by the docks, not far from the bay."

  "So... we sneak over to the docks and ambush our suspect?" Dean said, again confused.

  "No, that would totally not work out for us," Bella said. "But it might be worth hanging around, anyway. Watch the whole exchange, see if we can't get any more information."

  "This seems completely dumb," Ty piped up.

  "Yeah, well, this is us we're talking about," Bella countered.

  "That really has to stop being our excuse for making bad decisions and running with them."

  16

  Urban Danger had every intention of responding to the calls from angry Hero High principals and fuming board members, but the very thought of helping Rust Swift and the Gamma Accidents appealed to him like a long vacation after a year of hard work. Urban was all too eager to pack his bags.

  Taking his phone off the hook and locking the door to his office to deter disturbances from outsiders, Urban Danger set to work.

  He searched non-stop, straying into restricted files he wasn't necessarily privy to, hunting for any scrap of information even remotely related to the Gypes' invasion.

  Rust, Jason, Will and Carla Swift weren't officially "G-4" when the little purple men sprang their invasion attempt. Back then, the Swift siblings were just foolhardy teenagers going up against an alien armada with the help of a few superpowered but equally inexperienced friends.

  Urban was one of the few people in the Superhero Community who was actually impressed by the courage and determination displayed by the young members of an outcast minority group of supers.