by Barry Lyga
He lowered Mairi safely to the “floor,” what had once been the right-hand side of the bus, then joined her there.
“We have to get out of here,” Mairi said.
“No,” Kyle told her. “This is the safest place right now.” The roof of the bus was just ahead of him — he reached out and rapped it with his knuckles. “This is good-old-fashioned steel. Best protection against what’s going on out there.” Kyle glanced over to the front of the bus — the driver was slumped in his seat, dangling from his seat belt, unconscious.
“See if you can get everyone organized and have them gather in toward the front, against the roof, okay?” Kyle headed for the emergency door.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Outside. To, uh, see what’s happening.”
Mairi leveled a gaze at him for a moment, then relented. “Just be careful, okay? You’re not Mighty Mike, you know.”
He grinned at her and gave a thumbs-up. “I don’t have to be.”
Mairi crawled along the seat backs to the center of the bus, gathering kids and urging them all to the front. Kyle checked the emergency door. It had been crumpled shut by the crash. He applied a little strength to it and forced it open with a grating whine.
“I think I’ve blocked the Wi-Fi signal,” Erasmus reported.
“Good. I have to check out the damage.”
He crawled out of the bus into madness. Major Street had become a war zone. Cars had bumped up on the sidewalks, slammed into fire hydrants, collided with each other. Drivers sat collapsed behind the wheel or staggered around the street in a daze. The smart people had hit the ground, curled into protective fetal positions or lying prone with their hands over their heads.
Up the street, a parking meter exploded.
“Oops. Missed one,” Erasmus said.
Kyle hesitated for a moment. Just a moment. He could rush to intercept the quarters before they caused further havoc, but people would see, people would know —
“Oh, thank God!” someone called, and Kyle didn’t even need to look to see that Mighty Mike had arrived.
“What took you so long?” he mumbled, and retreated back into the bus.
It was an hour before the police signaled that Major Street was clear and safe for people to emerge from their hiding places. Ambulances lined the street now, and the entire Bouring Police Department had arrived for crowd control. Kyle cynically thought that this would be the perfect time for someone to pull a crime somewhere else in town. He filed the information away for the future — create a big enough disturbance and you could get every cop in Bouring to abandon their posts.
Fortunately, no one had been killed. There were plenty of injuries, some of them serious, but from the chatter Erasmus was picking up on the police band, it had been a lucky day for everyone involved.
Kyle stood with the rest of the kids from the bus in a line near one of the ambulances. His parents — like every other parent in Bouring — had rushed to Major Street in a panic as soon as they heard what happened. They stood on the other side of a police barricade, and Kyle waved to them to show that he was fine. Everyone caught in the crossfire had to be checked out by paramedics, then either sent to the hospital or released to go home.
Mighty Mike, of course, had set things to rights as soon as he’d arrived on the scene. He had decapitated the remaining parking meters and tossed them sky-high. Kyle wondered where they had landed — he didn’t really trust Mike enough to assume that the kid was smart enough to hurl them somewhere safe.
But in the meantime, Mike had managed to stop four more car collisions, rescue people trapped under fallen debris, and generally do all of the things you’d expect a hero to do in this situation. He even made sure the paramedics came first to a pregnant woman who’d gone into labor with the shock of the explosions. (The baby was fine, and the woman swore she would name her new daughter “Mike.”) It was pretty much the only time Kyle had seen Mike in action and not seen him make some sort of mistake. As long as those discarded parking meter heads hadn’t landed anywhere dangerous, Kyle had to grudgingly give Mike a passing grade. This time.
Now Mike lingered, hovering over the scene, arms folded over his chest, watching. Kyle didn’t like having him floating overhead. Like he was somehow surveilling everything and everyone. It made him shiver.
As Kyle waited in line, Sheriff Monroe strode over to him. “Camden! I wanna talk to you.”
Kyle gritted his teeth. “I’m a little busy,” he said.
“Waiting in line? I don’t think so.” The sheriff grabbed Kyle’s arm and pulled him out of line.
“Hey!”
“We need to talk. You and me.” Monroe leaned in close, his dirty yellow mustache quivering. “This time you’ve gone too far. People could have been killed. You hear me? You think that makes your point? You think that’s funny?”
Kyle jerked his arm back. “Are you nuts? I didn’t do this! I was on the bus when it happened!”
Mairi stepped out of line and stomped over to the sheriff. “Sheriff Monroe! Kyle did not do this! He was with me in the bus and he kept me from getting hurt.” She stamped her foot for emphasis and glared with her piercing green eyes.
Monroe’s lips quirked. He looked like he was about to say something, but just then a shadow fell over him and a soft voice from above said, “Can I be of assurance, Sheriff?”
They all looked up to see Mighty Mike, arms still crossed over his chest.
“You mean ‘assistance,’” Mairi said helpfully. “And I think everything’s under control. Isn’t it, Sheriff?”
Monroe squinted at Kyle, who tried to look as innocent as possible. He’d had nothing to do with this insanity, but he knew who did, and he didn’t want Monroe to pick up on that.
“We’re done for now, Camden.” He stalked away.
Mighty Mike landed between Kyle and Mairi. “Are you KO’d, Kyle?”
“I’m fine,” Kyle said, ignoring his goof.
“And Mairi.” Mike turned to Mairi and took her hands in his own. “I was so worried you might be mingled in the disaster.”
“That’s ‘mangled,’” Kyle informed him.
“Kyle kept me from getting hurt,” Mairi said. “Don’t worry about me. There are other people who need your help.”
Mighty Mike nodded curtly. He turned to Kyle and smiled. “Thanks for your help.”
“Sure thing,” Kyle said, hatred seething inside him.
Mighty Mike took off. Mairi and Kyle stared at each other.
“Kyle, what happened here?” Mairi asked. “Is this what it’s going to be like now? Is the Blue Freak always going to be attacking the town?”
Kyle opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t the Blue Freak, but realized that there was no way he could know that for sure, unless he was the Blue Freak. And he couldn’t tell Mairi that.
Instead, he just shrugged his shoulders and then the two of them got back in line.
Kyle paced impatiently as he waited for the Mad Mask in the basement that night. As soon as the door opened, Kyle started in on him, yelling in the loudest whisper he dared to use.
“Are you insane?” he demanded. “Have you completely lost your mind? People could have been killed today! Your little stunt today could have —”
The Mad Mask drew himself up to his full height. “The Mad Mask will not be spoken to thusly! Comport yourself with respect and dignity!”
He didn’t say “or else.” He didn’t have to. His posture and the memory of that powerful force field were enough to make Kyle take a step back and draw in a deep breath.
“Look,” he said, “what you did today was really dangerous. I almost had to reveal my identity. Do you get it?”
The Mad Mask tilted his head. “I merely attempted to place your ‘Prankster Manifesto’ into greater context.”
“No. You … you executed a terrorist attack on a town! That’s not a prank.”
The Mad Mask snorted hollowly in his mask. “Your Manifesto
’s stated goal is to elucidate people’s own innate absurdity. To wit, showing them not to take themselves so seriously. Showing them their own foolish natures. My prank did this. It forced people to confront what is truly serious and meaningful — their own lives. It compelled them to put aside the silly notions of the workaday world and focus on the core matter of living. As such, it is a highly successful prank.”
“You’ve got it all twisted up!” Kyle protested. He held up a sheet of paper on which he’d written the Prankster Manifesto:
“You made people more serious!” Kyle told him. “And besides, a prank is supposed to be funny.”
“I found it quite amusing to watch the denizens of Bouring running hither and yon, looking for shelter from an attack that was as nonsensical as it was unexpected.”
“You’ve got a weird sense of humor,” Kyle muttered.
The Mad Mask shrugged. It was the most humble, most normal thing Kyle had ever seen the Mad Mask do. “Do not attempt to understand the mind of the Mad Mask.”
“Maybe from now on, I should stick to the pranks and you should stick to the … to the … giant robot building and teleporting and force fielding.”
Again the Mad Mask shrugged, as if to say, Makes no difference to me.
“Just one thing,” Kyle said. “You need to understand this: Pranking is about showing people they’re stupid. It’s not about hurting people. There’s no point to hurting people.”
The Mad Mask stood silent for a long moment and then, in a voice chillingly cold, said, “The world must feel the pain the Mad Mask feels.”
I have to admit today made me nervous about working with the Mad Mask. Anyone who could wreak the kind of havoc he wreaked on Major Street … That’s just crazy.
I spent most of the day trying to decide what to do. A part of me wanted to attack him as soon as he came into the basement, but I realized that would be no good. With that force field, he’s strictly a hands-off kind of guy. There’s no way I can stop him.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that talking to him was the only way to go. Fortunately for me, it was also the best way.
I think basically he just didn’t get the Prankster Manifesto. It’s very clear to me because 1) I created it, and 2) I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. But the Mad Mask approaches it from a genius perspective. He cut straight to the core — make people realize how foolish they are, make them less serious — and he decided that the quickest way to do that was to put people in fear for their lives.
In a way, it’s elegant in its simplicity. It’s sort of like Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot. The Gordian knot was this big, complicated knot that no one could untie. People spent years trying to figure it out, and then Alexander came along and just cut the thing in half with his sword. Ta-da! Problem solved, right?
Alexander went on to rule most of the world of his time and became one of the most famous figures in history.
That’s sort of how the Mad Mask thinks, I guess.
He just forgot that a prank needs to be clever. It needs to be funny. It needs to make people think. Not think as in, “Oh, my God, I’m about to die!” but as in, “Oh, gee, I sure do act stupid most of the time; how can I change that?”
We spent some time talking about it and I think he gets it now. Now that we’re focused on Ultitron again, things are back to normal. The Mad Mask has chilled out about his very poorly thought-out “prank.” I don’t think he’ll try anything like that again.
Once we had all of the pranking issues straightened out, we were able to get back to work on Ultitron. We made a lot of progress! In fact, we have the motivational engine ready to be connected, and all of the subsystems are working and online. The Mad Mask says we only need one more specialized component … and that we can’t build that one. We’re going to have to steal it.
I’m fine with this. It’s just one more thing, after all. We steal this last little piece of gadgetry, we install it in Ultitron, and then everything will be fine. Ultitron will wipe out Mighty Mike and then the world will finally see the truth: Mike the pretender, the alien. And the Azure Avenger ready to guide the world into a new age of perfection.
If I have to commit some little crime to get there, what’s the big deal, right? I just have to stay focused on what matters: exposing Mighty Mike. If he is really the good guy everyone thinks he is, then why hasn’t he told the world he’s an alien? Why hasn’t he revealed his true purpose on Earth? I don’t like the idea of him being here and not owning up to who and what he is. So whatever I have to do … I’ll do.
Erasmus, though, is not happy. About anything at all.
He’s still obsessed with the Mad Mask’s attempt at a “prank” earlier today. “He’s dangerous, Kyle. How can you trust someone who thinks like that?”
I tried to explain that the Mad Mask just made a mistake. That he didn’t really understand the Prankster Manifesto. Maybe there’s even a teeny, tiny chance that I could have explained it a little bit better. I’ve been so tired lately that maybe — maybe! — I gave the wrong impression.
Plus, Erasmus couldn’t see the Mad Mask when we were talking. Erasmus is a great artificial intelligence, but he doesn’t have eyes — he couldn’t see the slump in the Mad Mask’s shoulders or his posture or anything like that when I was explaining where he went wrong with the parking meter prank.
I mean, “prank.”
Erasmus doesn’t want to hear anything like that. He keeps swearing that the Mad Mask is bad news. So I had to make a decision.
I didn’t want to switch off Erasmus or remove his power supply, but he was nagging an awful lot. So finally I came up with a compromise: I hooked him up to the brain-wave manipulator and told him to fix it.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“The side effects are getting ridiculous. Mom’s twitching like she’s possessed and Dad can’t stop stuttering. See what you can do about fixing that.”
“But —”
I removed my earbuds and that was that.
Time for bed. Tomorrow’s a busy day.
The next day, after school, Kyle and the Mad Mask went to commit their final crime.
It was strange for Kyle to fly during the day and especially without Erasmus at his side and chattering in his ears. He sort of missed the electronic pain in his butt.
The Mad Mask had told Kyle that they would meet on the highway just across from Lundergaard Research (slogan: “We gaard more than just lunders!”), a local think tank and technology firm with mostly military contracts. “Within the bowels of Lundergaard Research,” the Mad Mask had intoned, “we shall find the final component that shall bring the mighty Ultitron to life!”
Sounded good to Kyle.
He flew high so that no one could see him. Soon enough, he saw the massive spread of the Lundergaard facility below him. It was like a school campus, more than a dozen interlinked buildings sprawling over what had once been acres of soybean fields. Kyle supposed that it was a blight on the natural beauty of the area, but he didn’t really care for soybeans, so it was no big deal.
“I’d rather have technology than soybeans,” he said out loud.
Usually, Erasmus would have chimed in with some snarky fact about soybeans. Kyle sighed into his mask and scanned the area across the highway from Lundergaard for the Mad Mask. A flashing bright light nearly blinded him — the Mad Mask’s signal. Kyle blinked to clear his vision, then darted downward as quickly as he could, hoping no one would spot him.
Among some bushes and trees, the Mad Mask stood tall and confident, a tiny mirror in one hand. That’s how he had signaled to Kyle: reflecting sunlight back into the sky.
“Welcome, Azure Avenger! Are you ready for the penultimate step in the birthing of the glorious Ultitron?”
Kyle’s pulse pounded just a bit harder and faster at the question. He was ready. Ultitron was the Mad Mask’s “baby,” not Kyle’s, but in the past week or so, Kyle had come to think of the gigantic robot as ju
st as much his project, too. Now — soon — Ultitron would come to life. And the world would never be the same.
“I’m ready,” Kyle said. “Look, while I was flying overhead, I, you know …” He unsnapped one of the pouches on his belt, took out a pair of high-powered binoculars, and gestured with them. “I checked out Lundergaard from above. Their security is —”
“Pah!” The Mad Mask waved a dismissive hand. “Bother me not with such things! The Mad Mask knows of their security, having hacked into a military satellite weeks ago to observe them. Their security forces cannot withstand the combined might of the Mad Mask and the Azure Avenger!”
“Well, maybe not, but still —”
“We go now!” the Mad Mask crowed, pointing across the highway. “We march … into history!”
Who could argue with that? Not Kyle. “Let’s go!” he shouted.
A moment later, as they pressed through brambles to the highway, he thought to ask, “Um, how are we going to get in?”
He couldn’t see it, of course, but Kyle imagined that the Mad Mask smiled.
Quite unbelievably, they walked up to the front gate.
Kyle was nervous as they strode across the highway together and approached it. The gate was a huge, twelve-foot-high affair made of steel that stood between thick concrete walls that ringed the entire Lundergaard complex. Kyle knew from his flyover that the concrete walls were more than five feet thick. A sign hanging on the gate said:
LUNDERGAARD RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGIES
THIS FACILITY IS FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!
ARMY CODE USC J-783681-1951 APPLIES!
NO PHOTOGRAPHY PERMITTED
A guard stood at attention near a control panel built into the wall. He looked bored, but he perked up as Kyle and the Mad Mask approached. He had a very serious-looking rifle slung over one arm, and while he didn’t point it at them, he kept one hand on it.
“Halloween isn’t for another week, kids,” he said. “And we don’t give out candy anyway.”
“Open the gate,” the Mad Mask said in utter seriousness.