by Sevan Paris
Somehow, Rock manages not to kill or even hurt me with his tumbling body. Guy probably weighs a ton. Literally.
I lay there, unable to move for a moment. Thoughts all hung up on living through something I probably never should have.
Rock yanks me up. “Yo’, it’s not nap time, girly!”
I reach up, swimmy head wondering about my pigtails—but a sudden thought snaps me out of the fog: “Mystick! Sentinel and Thinkor!”
If Rock is the slightest bit shaken by any of the almost dying stuff, he doesn’t show it. He calmly points a finger in the sky: “There.”
I turn and look up. Two pterodactyl-looking things circle around Liberty and Sentinel, shouting gusts of blue flame at them. A yellow beam zig-zags out of Sentinel’s energy lance, vaporizing the wing of the closest one. The creature screams and flaps its one remaining wing all the way to the ocean. It splashes down beside the battered, floating bodies of at least ten more creatures just like it.
Liberty slams into the other one—but Rock grabs my arm, spinning me around before I can see what happens.
From out of the nearby tree line, five Zyborg robots lurch toward us …
One of their thin legs loosely flops in front of the other in perfect time. Long, whip-like arms stretch in front of them. And on top of their circular torsos—right where a metal box with one, red eye should be—sit human heads.
The researchers.
Their eyes look around without really seeing anything. The ones that have enough of a mouth left to articulate something murmur the same thing in unison: “You … will … leave.”
“That is just about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” I say. “Ever.”
Rock backs up a step. “Yeah, that’s definitely pegging my freaky-deaky meter.”
One lunges for us, with a lot more speed than I would have thought his zombie-like movements capable of. “You will leave!”
I don’t even have time to think about raising a bubble.
Rock steps in front of me and backhands it. “Heard you the first time!” The upper body spirals into the ocean at our side. The robot legs walk in a half-circle before falling into the sand.
The others move towards us, unfazed by the fate of their BFF. Hidden compartments open in their torsos, extending appendages tipped with whirring saw blades, blowtorches, laser weapons, and pincers.
“Time to Rock and Roll!” Rock jogs a few steps then hunches over, pulling his legs to his chest. His back and arms hook together, forming a boulder four feet across.
He slams into three of the robots, knocking the head off one and completely crushing the other two. It reminds me of the way Blake Whaley, our high school quarterback, used to crush two beer cans simultaneously on his forehead. Just infinitely grosser.
Rock rolls right into the tree line, unable to stop the momentum. Palm trees explode out of his way.
I turn, facing the last robot. It slowly points a thin arm at me, tipped with a nozzle of sparking red energy that does God knows what.
I still can’t do offense that well with my bubbles (honestly, I’ve only tried it out on a really mean cat one time). But Rock has already taken out four all by his lonesome; I’ve got to at least freaking try.
I hold out my hand, palm out: The bubbling starts in my brain, but I concentrate, forcing it to go down my arm and well up in my wrist. The pink energy blasts out of my fingertips, pinging the robot in the skin-covered face. Sparks shoot out of the neck and the human head rolls to the right, loosely clinging by something ropey and wet.
The sparking weapon fires with a whine. A red beam burns my temple, spinning me to the ground. The pink domino mask falls off my face and slaps onto the wet sand under my chin. I look up in time to see the robot raise its weapon again …
And Liberty lands right on top of the robot, smashing it into a metallic heap. He looks at me, eyes glowing red. “Defense before offense, Bubble Trouble. Your life may depend on it. So might your teammates.”
I nod, quickly trying to find something else to look at.
Ms. Mystick comes in for a landing behind me, carrying both her and Thinkor on a disk of light, circled by spinning hieroglyphics. Sentinel lands beside Liberty, his boot jets throwing sand in every direction.
Liberty’s eyes return to a normal shade of blue. “Where’s Rock?”
“Here!” a gruffly voice says from the trees. Rock steps out of the thick vegetation, peeling robot chunks off his back. “What were these things?”
“They’re Zyborg stormtroopers,” Sentinel says, kneeling down for a closer look at the remains. “Or at least part of them. I’ve seen plenty in my time, but I’ve never seen them—anything like this.”
“I couldn’t get a read on them either,” Thinkor says.
“It’s part technological and part Magickal,” Mystick says, looking in the direction of the mountain at the center of the island. Seagulls flap and screech close by, undaunted by Magick, alien technology or zombie heads scattered along the beach.
“No way,” says Sentinel. “Those researchers were hand-picked by us—” he points at a few of the heads—“They were the top of their fields. If they couldn’t figure out how Dr. Villainous’ Zyborg tech works in under a year, Macabre couldn’t have just—”
Mystick returns her gaze to us. “Macabre wouldn’t have needed to ‘figure out’ anything. The Magicks would have figured it out for him, while creating these … abominations.”
Rock shakes loose the last piece of robot from his leg. “So, you telling me in under a day, Macabre had time to do this to those guys and transform this place … into this?”
Mystick places her hands on her round hips and looks at the rocks on the far side of the beach. They’re just like the ones we saw in the hologram: a silently screaming face, wrenching back and forth like they’re having the worst hair day ever. “No, I don’t believe so. In all likelihood, the island hasn’t been changed at all. Macabre may be using Magicks to alter our perception of reality, rather than reality itself.”
Sentinel crosses his arms. “Then why didn’t the satellite imagery pick it up?”
Mystick raises her chin slightly. “You use your senses to perceive the data, do you not?”
“Well, my ‘senses’ told me those things that destroyed the Icarus were real enough,” Sentinel says. “As were these robots.”
“I simply inferred that the island itself hadn’t been changed. The Magickal beasts we encountered and these robots were obviously as real as your juvenile attempts to put me on the defensive.”
With a spectacular crack of energy, Sentinel’s yellow lance forms in his right hand. “You wanna see defensive?”
Liberty steps between them, hands raised. “Stop.” His tone leaves no room for debate.
My feet shift in the sand.
Liberty steps back far enough so that he can see everybody. “Okay, assuming you’re right, Mystick, what would be the point of Macabre’s transforming the island?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Quite simply? To induce fear. And then probably use that fear to feed some other type of Magicks.”
“Is that really possible?” I say. Trying to ignore the frog in my belly. And also trying to ignore the fact that we’re facing someone who could literally put a frog in my belly.
Mystick shrugs. “With the right words, Magick makes anything possible.”
Waves come in, lapping at our feet and sweeping away some robot parts. One of the researcher’s heads stares at me with dead eyes, mouth moving a little.
“Villainous’ old hideout is up there,” Liberty says, looking at the mountain. “It’s the best possible place to find Macabre. Do you agree, Mystick?”
Mystick stares at the mountain and nods.
Silver Sentinel raises his finger at Mystick and takes a breath to say something, but he stops short with a slight tilt of his head. “Liberty, I’m picking up ten more of these stormtroopers. They’re converging on this location.”
“Okay, Rock and Bu
bble Trouble, you stay here. Keep everything else off our backs.”
If he’s having me run interference because of my botch earlier, that’s totally unfair to Rock. But if Rock leaves, I’m fighting Magickal alien zombie robots by myself … I decide to keep my pretty little mouth shut.
“What if they decide to come after you?” Rock says.
Liberty shakes his head. “Stay on the beach unless Thinkor calls for help.”
“Wait, if things are bad enough that YOU guys need help, what are we supposed to do?” I say as the others fly off.
Liberty takes a moment to study me with his eyes. “You’re ‘supposed’ to defeat Macabre.”
And with a swish of air he shrinks into the distance, towards the mountain.
***
“What do you think he meant by that?” I say, plopping down on a boulder next to Rock. We’ve been waiting fifteen minutes for the first sign of Zyborg zombie robots. So far, zip. Since we don’t have Sentinel’s sensors, there is no way to know if the robots went to backup Macabre or if they’re waiting freaking ten feet away in the bushes.
“What do you mean?” Rock gruffs.
“Before he left, Liberty said I’m supposed to defeat Macabre … the way he said it: Do you think he’s mad at me?”
Rock moves out of the way of a silently screaming skull, twirling out of the sand. “I don’t know. Ask him when he gets back. Liberty got his faults, but bush beating ain’t one of ‘em.”
“What are they?”
“What?”
“What are his faults?”
“Well, his idea of what this team should be is very … precise.”
“He’s mad at me.” Another skull forms under the sand to my right. I stomp my pink croc through the sand, scattering the face into a hundred chunks. These things aren’t scaring me now; they just seem silly. Why couldn’t all of it have been silly earlier?
“If he is mad at you, the two ‘a you will talk about it and settle it.”
“Talking about talking to Liberty and actually talking to Liberty aren’t the same thing.” I shake my head. “I have to stay on this team, Rock. I can’t go—I’m not going back to live with my Mother.”
“Ain’t no problems like family problems.”
“To say the least.” A silence passes, feeling like an invite … “The first time I used my powers was when my dad, he and I—we wrecked on I-75. I formed a bubble around me. But not him. Mom never really said anything about it, not even after the funeral. Not until I said I wanted to join HEROES. She said how could I save other people when I couldn’t even save her husband?”
Rock shifts in the sand, the same way I did earlier.
“So yeah … ain’t no problems like family problems.”
He rubs his stony grey forehead. “Sorry, didn’t know.”
“No big.” I clap my thighs and stand. “And I’m happy now. This is the kind of thing I’ve always wanted, always dreamed of. I’m even talking sponsor contracts with Cover Chick Cosmetics—which seems totally unreal. As long as I can get through this probationary period, I … wait, look at that.” I point at the sand.
Rock looks down. The skulls, both in the sand and boulders along the shore line are gone. The sky seems to get a little brighter, a little bluer. For all intents and purposes, the island is back to being a regular old island. Or at least as regular as an island with a huge stash of hidden alien technology can be.
Rock turns to face the mountain. “Well, I guess that’s it for Macabre. The others did it.” The corners of his mouth go up a little.
I return the best grin I can.
***
Liberty, Sentinel, and Mystick returned under their own power and sent the rest of us back in the Icarus-2, which Sentinel brought to the island by remote.
Two hours later, we’re meeting for a debrief in the conference room of HEROES Tower. On the other side of the massive windows, the people of Prose scurry back and forth on the sidewalk like ants.
I can’t help but wonder if I’m gonna be an ant soon.
The door slides open and in walks Liberty and Mystick. The rest of us are already seated.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, team, but Mystick and I wanted to make sure Macabre was safely stowed away downstairs before we debriefed.” Liberty takes his seat at the head of the massive, black marble table. Mystick sits at his left.
Rock leans forward. “So what happened?”
“Long story short?” Liberty says. “We won. Mystick placed Macabre in … what are they called again?”
“Bands of Continuous Containment,” Mystick says.
Liberty gestures vaguely. “While we distracted him.”
“I’m not sure who was distracting who,” Sentinel says. “I wasn’t expecting to see anything like that … I threw everything I had at him: photon cannon, energy lance, gamma bombs, sonics … all of it for a full ten minutes before I realized I was fighting a wall. But when I did see him …” Sentinel shakes his head, then looks at Thinkor. “And then there was …”
Thinkor nods and whispers in our minds: “During my time with HEROES, I’ve had my fair share of challenges: other telepaths, the strong-willed, and even a handful of people with telepathic blocks. But I’ve never encountered anyone who could do what Macabre did: Every time I thought I’d seized control of his thoughts, I found that he had tricked me into taking over one of your minds instead.”
“Subterfuge is often a Sayer’s most efficient weapon,” Mystick says.
“Well now that we have him, what are we going to do with him?” Sentinel shifts in his seat. “It’s not like we can just send him to The Bend.”
“My colleagues and I have a way to imprison him,” Mystick says. “But it will take some time to prepare. I recommend we keep him here in the meantime. Macabre has followers all through Old Prose.”
“Then why not just execute him and be done with it?” Sentinel says. “Thing like that seems too dangerous to live.”
“Because, as I told Liberty this morning, Macabre’s power will go to the person that slays him. Thereby, turning an already dangerous situation into a potentially apocalyptic one.”
Sentinel shakes his head. “The thought of a bunch of you people living under our streets …”
Liberty places his palms on the table. “I think we can all agree that Ms. Mystick proved, yet again, to be an invaluable member of the team. Which brings us to the next topic …” Liberty looks at me.
My heart pummels against my chest.
“Bubble Trouble, your performance in the field—how would you describe it?”
“Well, I took out one of those robot things. And I did save Rock. After he saved me. Sorry, Rock, I wasn’t trying to sound …”
Rock waves it off before more words dig me into an even deeper hole. He’s so totally cool.
Liberty leans back in his chair, looks at Rock and then back at me. “When I told you to raise your force field on the Icarus, I understand from Rock that you didn’t for some time. Why?”
I throw a quick glance at Rock, wondering exactly what he said to Liberty. Rock returns my look, evenly. “I … was—I don’t know. I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t?” Liberty says. “Are your powers always inconsistent?”
“No, that’s—that’s not what I meant. I mean I was weirded out by all of the fire and fire breathing dinosaurs and stuff. It took me a while to get it together, but I did.”
A silence passes. Is he expecting me to say something else?
“But it won’t happen again.” I laugh nervously. “I’ve had my trial by fire. Literally.”
Liberty swivels his chair to face Mystick. “Ms. Mystick, what is your assessment?”
Mystick takes a deep breath. “Bubble Trouble took appropriate action, though somewhat late. She could, over time, prove to be a strong member of HEROES, but it’s the time that it would take to get there that concerns me. Or more specifically the lives that would be endangered along the way.”
I squint�
��forcing the tears to stay in my stinging eyeballs.
“Silver Sentinel?” Liberty says.
Sentinel faces Mystick, like he wants to address just her. “Kid came through in the end. I got no problem with her.”
Mystick raises an eyebrow.
“Thinkor?”
Thinkor nods his brain-y head. “As I relayed to everyone earlier, my telepathic scans of Bubble Trouble both before and during the confrontation, revealed a level of anxiety that—although is certainly understandable—would render her a danger to herself, us, and those we try to save on a daily basis. And her reasons for being here …” He tilts his head, pointing his brain at me.
Icy cold fingers crawl into my head … details about the fight with Mom that I’ve never even thought about haul ass to the surface: what we were wearing, the burnt smell coming from the living room fireplace that hadn’t been used in days, a stain on the dining room tablecloth …”
“Stop!” I say, shaking my head as if it will somehow clear him out. “What do you think—what are you doing?”
Thinkor squares his shoulders. “I apologize if my actions seem invasive. But you did grant permission for this whenever you signed the paperwork to grant yourself probationary status.”
As if I read it. That thing was thicker than a phone book.
Thinkor crosses his arms. “As I was saying, I believe her reasons for being here have less to do with concern for the wellbeing of humanity, and more to do with social status. Furthermore, her constant need for the validation of others will, I fear, force her to second guess herself. Something our responsibilities do not allow.”
It’s all I can do to stay in my chair.
“I see,” says Liberty. “And you, Rock?”
At least I’ll have another vote on my side. That will be two on two, giving the swing vote to Liberty. I start thinking about his possible arguments against my being on the team, and what I can say in response.
“She doesn’t need to be here,” Rock says.