The Nameless Hero

by Lee Bacon

  Mom and I followed Brandy into the parking lot, where Dad was staring down sadly at the squished robotic insects around his feet.

  “Took me six months to build those metal-eating ants,” he said in a regretful voice. “And six minutes to destroy them.”

  Elliot didn’t sound nearly as upset. “Baaad ants!” he droned, stepping on a few of them to make sure they’d been completely destroyed.

  “Here.” Mom handed the plastic container to Dad. “At least we managed to retrieve a few.”

  Around us, streetlights glowed in the darkness. My pulse quickened as I thought of the others down in headquarters, still unaware that Gavin was working with Vex. We had to help them before it was too late.

  If it wasn’t too late already.

  Brandy led us across the parking lot, past other stores in the shopping center. “Most of these are just ordinary shops,” she explained. “But Tantastic wasn’t the only portal to headquarters. Vex needed a secret way to transport cargo that wouldn’t fit in the tanning bed. Something much bigger. So he used this place.”

  Brandy came to a stop at a glass storefront. I looked at the logo on the door.

  Smoothie Sensations

  “The supersecret cargo transport is … a smoothie shop?”

  “Exactly.” Brandy inserted a key and pushed open the front door. The rest of us followed her inside.

  “So where’s the elevator?” I asked, looking around.

  “You’re standing in it.” Brandy moved behind the counter, past gleaming refrigerators and sinks, until she reached a row of blenders. Stuck to one of these blenders was a sign that read, OUT OF ORDER. Brandy removed the sign and pressed several of the buttons that lined the base of the blender—one after the other—as if punching in a security code.

  CHOP … CRUSH ICE … LIQUEFY … CHOP … DELUXE

  All at once, everything shifted into motion. I watched with surprise as the sidewalk rose higher and higher in the window. But the sidewalk wasn’t rising. We were sinking. Before long, the smoothie shop had submerged beneath the earth completely.

  “Quite a cargo elevator you have here,” Dad said, sounding impressed.

  Normally, I would’ve been pretty amazed too. Heck, I probably would’ve made myself a smoothie for the ride. But right then, I was too worried about the others.

  Along the way, we discussed what to do once we reached headquarters.

  “Nobody else knows the truth about Gavin,” Brandy said. “Not even Trace. Multiplier has them all locked in a holding cell. That way, Gavin can claim he’s innocent.”

  “But if Multiplier heard the alarm, he’ll be expecting intruders,” Mom pointed out.

  “And if we try to take him by surprise, there’s a risk that he’ll harm the other children,” Dad said.

  “Don’t forget, everyone trusts Gavin. And they think you’re a traitor,” I said to Brandy.

  The conversation dropped away into silence. I listened to the groaning of cables carrying us deeper into the ground.

  It wasn’t until we’d nearly reached headquarters that Brandy’s eyes lit up and the faint trace of a smile appeared on her lips. “I think I might know a way.…”

  30

  When the smoothie shop finally came to a halt, Brandy led us hurriedly through headquarters. Except she didn’t look like Brandy anymore. She’d Shifted along the way, changing into someone who was shorter, balder, and fatter.

  She looked exactly like Gavin.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” I asked.

  “Not entirely,” Brandy said in Gavin’s gravelly voice. “But it’s the best chance we’ve got.”

  At a pair of double doors, she paused, taking a deep breath and mumbling something about “getting into character.” Then she grabbed hold of my mom and shoved a plasma gun into her side with one hairy-knuckled hand.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “Now, remember, you’re my hostages. Got it?”

  Dad and I held our hands above our heads, trying to look scared. Elliot paddled from side to side, letting out an electronic moan.

  “Good enough.” Brandy pushed a button on the wall, and the doors slid open.

  Multiplier spun around. His face filled with shock at the sight of Gavin. And I could understand why. Inside the holding cell was another Gavin, who looked identical to the one Brandy was impersonating. A surge of relief shot through me when I saw who was with him in the holding cell: Sophie, Milton, Miranda, nFinity, and Trace. Their weapons and utility belts had been taken, but at least they looked okay.

  Multiplier fumbled for his plasma pistol and aimed it at us.

  “Put that thing down,” Brandy snapped, doing a perfect impression of Gavin. “I’m on your side. Caught these two supervillains in the tanning salon, along with their robot. They dematerialized your clones before I captured the Botanist here.”

  Brandy jabbed my mom with the plasma gun.

  “Don’t hurt her—please!” Dad wasn’t the best actor, but his fear sounded real enough.

  “It was too dangerous to leave them in the salon,” Brandy said. “So I triggered the alarm and brought them here. We’ll wait and see what the boss wants to do when he arrives.”

  Multiplier stared at us for a moment longer before he finally found his voice. “Y-you can’t possibly be here,” he stuttered. “You’re over there.”

  He pointed across the room at the holding cell. From behind the clear wall, Gavin looked pretty surprised to see himself standing in the doorway. Then recognition passed over his features.

  “Brandy!” His voice was muffled behind the wall of the cell, but his anger was clear enough. “She must’ve come back and Shifted to look like me.”

  “Don’t listen to that imposter!” Brandy-Gavin said. “She tied me up, faked her disappearance, and has been impersonating me ever since.”

  “Nonsense!” The real Gavin pounded against the clear wall of the holding cell.

  “She was sick of taking orders. She wanted to lead the group. So she took my place.”

  Multiplier glanced back and forth from one Gavin to the other, looking more frazzled by the second.

  “I’ll prove that I’m the real Gavin,” Brandy-Gavin said next to me. “Only I know about how we’ve been working together with Phineas Vex the whole time. Stealing the Liberty Bell was really just a ploy to capture the Nameless Hero.”

  “She’s lying!” Gavin shouted. “I’m the one who arranged everything with Phineas Vex! I’m the real G—”

  Gavin slapped a hand over his mouth before he could blurt out anything else. But he’d said enough already. It no longer mattered which one was real—they’d both just admitted that they’d been lying to us the whole time.

  With Multiplier distracted, Dad stepped forward and karate-chopped the plasma gun out of his hand. Mom grabbed hold of Multiplier’s arm and twisted it until he fell to his knees.

  “Baaaad guy fell dowwwwwn!” Elliot hopped from side to side, his eyes glowing excitedly.

  Now that Multiplier had been disarmed and was groaning on the floor, Brandy-Gavin began to Shift. His stomach shrank while his limbs grew. Auburn hair sprouted from his bald head. The stubble faded from his face. A moment later, Brandy was standing in front of me.

  “Okay, I admit it,” she said. “He’s the real Gavin.”

  “Glad we’ve cleared that up.” Trace turned on Gavin, his hands clenched into fists. “So you’ve been working with Vex, huh? Were you ever planning to tell me this little piece of info?”

  Milton looked just as angry. “You were going to hand my best friend over to Phineas Vex?”

  “How could you?” Sophie asked through gritted teeth.

  “Everybody just calm down.…” Gavin staggered backward until he was up against the wall. “I can explain.”

  “I think you’ve done enough explaining already,” Miranda said.

  “This was the only way I could—could start the Alliance,” Gavin stammered. “After what happened with the X-Treme Team,
nobody would finance a new group. Then Vex came along. He offered to pay for everything. A state-of-the-art facility, uniforms, equipment. All I had to do was bring him Joshua Dread. He said he wouldn’t hurt the boy. Said he needed him for something else.”

  “For what?” I stepped forward, glaring through the clear divider between Gavin and me. “What did Vex want with me?”

  “I d-don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. I tried to convince him to leave you out of it—”

  “Sure you did,” Brandy scoffed. “After the Nameless Hero became famous.”

  “Fine, I confess—I saw an opportunity for you! For all of us! Is that such a bad thing? I thought I could protect you by moving you out of headquarters—away from him. At least until he sent those blasted scorpions.”

  “So they were from Vex!” I said.

  Gavin nodded, frowning. “I couldn’t say so at the time, but yeah—those robots were a message. Vex’s way of saying, ‘You can run, but you can’t hide.’ ”

  “In one of the surveillance videos, Vex said something about taking a new form,” Mom said. “What was he talking about?”

  Gavin’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a heavy sigh. “These headquarters were never intended for training superheroes. Vex started building this place a year ago. He was going to use it as his secret lair. But after nearly dying, his plans changed. He was confined to a single room.”

  “The black room,” I said.

  “That’s right. He’s been in there ever since. Unable to move. Hooked up to machines that tend to his injuries. His body may have been ruined, but his mind … his mind is just as warped as ever. He brought in a team of experts to build him a new body. A bionic form that won’t just keep him alive. It’ll make him invincible.”

  My memory pitched back to the conversation I’d had with my parents over the phone about the world’s best doctors, scientists, and engineers going missing.

  Turning to my mom and dad, I said, “That’s the secret project they were working on! They were building Vex some kind of new bionic body!”

  “It all makes sense now,” Dad said. “The last time we spoke, we started to tell you about one of the scientists with a tracking chip in her wristwatch.”

  I nodded, remembering how Elliot had eaten the phone before my parents could say where the scientist had been taken. With the insanity of the Nameless Hero’s schedule, there hadn’t been a chance for Mom and Dad to fill me in on the rest of the details. Until now.

  “The abducted scientist,” Dad said. “She was tracked back to Sheepsdale. And now I understand why. Vex was holding her in this underground facility, along with all his other hostages.”

  “How’s that possible?” Sophie asked, astonished. “We never saw any sign of them.”

  “That’s exactly what Vex had in mind,” Gavin said. “He kept the doctors and scientists trapped, isolated in a separate part of the facility. Told them they wouldn’t be released until they’d completed his bionic form.”

  A grave expression crossed Mom’s face. “And when will that be?”

  “Tonight. At midnight.”

  Dad checked the watch on his wristband. “That means we have less than an hour.”

  “Then we’d better move quickly,” I said.

  Mom stepped forward. “What do you mean we? I don’t want you going anywhere near Vex.”

  “I’m the one Vex wants,” I said, clenching my jaw. “And I want to be there when we stop him.”

  I could see the concern on my parents’ faces, but there wasn’t any time to argue. Reluctantly, they agreed that I could come along. “As long as you stay close to us,” Mom insisted.

  Brandy opened the holding cell, releasing everyone but Gavin. She shoved Multiplier inside and locked the cell again. With Trace and Elliot standing guard outside the cell, the rest of us set out for the black room.

  Since she knew headquarters better than the rest of us, Brandy led the way. My parents jogged alongside her, their plasma pistols out and ready. I trailed behind, alongside Milton, Sophie, Miranda, and nFinity.

  “Are your Gyfts working yet?” Milton asked.

  Without breaking stride, I exchanged a glance with the others. Sophie’s expression fixed into the look of concentration that she got whenever focusing on her power. A moment later, she shook her head. “Nothing.”

  nFinity and Miranda said the same.

  Whatever had been in the gas that had knocked us out earlier, it was still neutralizing our powers. Even without really trying to use it, I could somehow just tell that my spontaneous combustion wouldn’t work. It was as if something inside me had gone missing, something I hadn’t noticed until it was no longer there.

  We turned right and headed down a hallway that led us to the training hall where we’d fought the GLOM. We’d nearly reached the other end of the room when the door slid shut in front of us.

  Brandy and my parents barely avoided colliding with the closed doorway. I barely avoided colliding with Brandy and my parents.

  “Uh—what’s going on?” Mom asked.

  “The door,” Brandy muttered, knitting her brow. “Someone must be controlling it remotely.”

  “But that’s impossible,” nFinity said. “I thought Gavin was the only one with a remote.”

  “He is.”

  “So now the doors are just closing themselves?” nFinity wondered.

  “There must be someone else.” Brandy’s expression darkened. “Someone who can control headquarters and knows where we are right now.”

  My eyes turned upward. Perched in the corner, pointed right at us, was a small black surveillance camera. And with a sickening revulsion, I knew instantly who was on the other end.

  “Vex,” I said.

  31

  A shiver worked its way down my spine, the feeling you get when you’re being watched. But Vex wasn’t just tracking our movements. He was controlling the headquarters.

  A panel in the wall opened up, spraying a burst of fire that would’ve roasted Milton if he hadn’t ducked at the last second.

  “We should probably get out of here,” Milton said as smoke trailed up from his mask.

  “Come on!” Brandy yelled, rushing back the way we’d come. “We’ll have to find another way!”

  We were halfway across the room when another section of the wall opened and three robotic lunch ladies emerged in hairnets and aprons. Except Vex must’ve done something to reprogram them, because now the robots didn’t look like they were here to fix us a late-night snack. They had something else in mind.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!” they chanted, zooming toward us. Each had a spatula in one hand and a butcher knife in the other.

  With the lightning-fast reflexes of a guy who’s been in deadly situations plenty of times before, Dad reached into his utility belt and removed the small plastic container that held his remaining metal-eating ants. After opening the cap, he tossed the ants at the killer cafeteria workers.

  “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” The robotic lunch ladies scattered across the room, trying to slap away the ants that were gnawing into their circuitry.

  “This entire room is rigged with traps!” Brandy screamed.

  Every surface of the training hall was designed to test our skills with deadly technology. A battering ram swung down from the ceiling, nearly taking my head off. nFinity stumbled into a pit of quicksand. He would’ve been buried alive if Milton hadn’t pulled him out.

  “As long as Vex can see us, he can keep attacking us!” Sophie yelled. “We need to take out the security cameras!”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem!” Mom aimed her plasma pistol and shot the two security cameras. She did the same thing to the closed door, blasting it apart bit by bit until we had an opening big enough to escape through.

  “This way!” Brandy said, climbing through the opening. “We’re almost out of time!”

  We might have made it out of the training hall, but that didn’t mean Vex was done with us yet. Buzz saws sliced through the floor like sha
rks’ fins, chasing us down the hallway. After emerging into the next room, I staggered to a halt just in time to avoid tumbling into a stream of molten lava. The boiling red liquid gushed through a channel stretching from one wall to another.

  There was only one way across. We would have to jump.

  I didn’t have time to contemplate whether I’d make it or not. Backing up, I gave myself a head start. Then I took off at a run and leaped.…

  There was a moment of flinging through the air when all I could feel was the heat rising from the roiling lava beneath me.

  Then I landed on the other side—but just barely. A few inches less and I would’ve taken a lava bath.

  Sophie and Miranda jumped after me, each clearing the gap with even less room to spare.

  The boiling stream of lava looked wider from this side. Another second passed before I realized why: the channel was expanding. The distance from one side to the other was steadily increasing.

  nFinity charged forward, launching into the air before I could warn him. For a split second, I was sure he would plunge into the lava, but somehow he made it across. Milton would never have made it if it weren’t for his jet-shoes.

  By the time my parents and Brandy arrived in the room, the stream of lava had grown too wide to jump. Milton, Miranda, Sophie, nFinity, and I inched backward to avoid falling in.

  “You’ll have to go on without us!” Brandy called.

  I stared across the widening gap separating us from the adults. “Isn’t there some other way?”

  “Not if you want to stop Vex by midnight!” Brandy said.

  “You can do it!” Mom’s voice was firm. Her eyes never left mine. “You have to.”

  “Here—take this.” Dad tossed his plasma pistol. It landed on the other side and skidded across the floor. nFinity bent down to pick it up.

  “The black room is that way!” Brandy pointed toward an arched doorway. “Into the next room, then turn right.”

  Her directions led us to the long corridor that I’d been down once before with Miranda. Except this time, instead of avoiding the security cameras that lined the walls, we raced past them. The clatter of our pounding footsteps echoed in my ears.