by Greg James
But as they started their turn, the bedridden figure spotted the Zeroes in the near distance.
‘Stop turn! Continue wheeling!’ he bellowed. ‘Whatever do we have here, then?’
As the squeaky bed drew closer to the Zeroes, the figure in it became clearer. He was swathed head-to-toe in bandages, with his leg in stirrups, but even so he was unmistakeable.
‘Nektar?!’ declared Hilda, for it was indeed the mad wasp-man himself.
‘Oh, not again,’ sighed Murph.
‘You!’ Nektar glared savagely at Kid Normal. ‘It’s you, isn’t it! My … picnic! No, not picnic.’ As a half-wasp, Nektar was obsessed with picnics. It tended to get in the way of sensible conversation. ‘Argh! What’s the word I want?’
‘Nemesis?’ suggested Hilda.
‘Yes! Nemesis!’ screamed Nektar. ‘My pic-nemesis! You’re the measely waggots who foiled all my evil plans. Well, now it’s time for me to buzz all over your barbecue!’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Mary tetchily. ‘Run us over with the world’s slowest bed?’
Nektar refused to let Mary’s scorn put him off his stride. Nodding towards the figure behind him, he said proudly, ‘Allow me to introduce you to my good friend, and new partner in crime!’
Nektar’s partner in crime was an extraordinary-looking creature. His head was thin and pointed, and his eyes were bulbous and glossy black: one on each side of his face. His broad shoulders were covered by a shimmering orange jacket.
‘He has one of the most evil criminal minds in the world,’ Nektar continued, ‘and with his help I will wreak terrible picnic on you!’
‘Revenge?’ suggested Hilda.
‘That’s what I said. Revenge!’ Nektar shouted. ‘And with the help of this evil genius, it will be a truly, truly terrible picnic. For this … is GOLDFISH!’ He raised both arms in the air as if to say ‘Hey presto!’ But he was so wrapped in bandages he barely managed enough movement to cover the ‘Hey’ element, if we’re being quite honest.
‘Goldfish?’ said Mary. ‘What a rubbish name for a supervillain.’
‘Excuse me, young lady,’ started Goldfish in his slow voice, ‘but as, er, this fellow here rightly said, I am, um, frightfully evil. I just don’t seem to be able to quite recall … um …’
‘He forgets everything,’ Murph realised. ‘Just like a goldfish. I heard about him when I visited this place the first time. Not that he’ll remember that, of course.’
Nektar clearly felt that this was enough chit-chat.
‘SILENCE! Goldfish, let me introduce you to the people we’re about to dispose of. These idiotic termites put me in this blasted bed in the first place. We have … well, we have the umbrella girl, weird inflating boy, the quiet one, horse machine and, of course … my boy. My dear, dear son, Martin. How are you, my child?’
Murph rolled his eyes. The other Zeroes laughed. ‘He’s not your son, Nektar! We went through this last time!’ said Mary, exasperated.
‘Silence! I know the real truth. I AM MARK’S HAMPER! Gah! No, not hamper. Father! I am Mark’s father.’
‘Wait, so who’s Martin’s father, in that case?’ replied Mary, quick as a wink.
‘Enough!’ Nektar screamed, incensed. ‘Goldfish, attack!’ he continued, which is one of the least terrifying orders ever given.
The Zeroes readied themselves for whatever a goldfish’s attack strategy might be. Which, let’s face it, isn’t likely to present much of a problem. Unless you’re a bit of fish food.
‘Right. So, sorry, erm … why am I attacking these children again, Lord Nektar?’ asked Goldfish placidly.
‘I just said this literally three seconds ago, you complete waste of tank space! They ruined everything! They came into my lair, just as I was having a really fun day, and kicked me over the balcony with horses!’ He waved a bandaged finger in the direction of Hilda, who instantly adopted a combat pose but was unable to suppress a small smile as she remembered her horses’ proudest moment to date.
‘Rides a horse, does she?’ asked Goldfish. ‘Talented young lady.’
‘No, she doesn’t RIDE a horse, you aquatic loon. She has these pet ones that go big,’ explained Nektar, badly.
‘Oh gosh, how wonderful,’ gushed Goldfish. ‘I do love the nags. Like a cheeky flutter, you know. Trouble is, I can never remember which one I picked.’
‘Rugs! Sandwiches! Gah! Picnic!’ squealed Nektar. He was growing more and more incoherent in his agitation. He had been hoping for an evil henchman, but this guy was more like a benign old uncle. ‘Just … SEIZE THEM!’ he managed to blurt out finally, jiggling around in his bed like a wasp in a jar.
‘All right, old chap. Don’t get your bandages in a tangle. Why are you all bandaged up, out of interest?’
‘SEIZE THEM!’
‘Right you are,’ agreed Goldfish, leaving Nektar and beginning to march towards the Zeroes.
‘We can’t waste time with this,’ decided Murph. ‘Get ready, Billy.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘All set, Hilda?’
‘Locked and loaded.’
‘GO!’ yelled Murph.
Hilda held out her hand. Her two tiny white friends appeared on her palm.
‘Oh, how charming! Horses, only smaller!’ burbled Goldfish, completely forgetting about his task.
‘No!’ called Nektar, thrashing about in the bed. ‘Don’t get distracted by the horses – repeat, do not get distracted by the horses. They go big.’
‘What?’
‘They GO BIG!’
‘Now, Billy!’ ordered Murph.
‘No! Argh! Sausage rolls! Abort!’ shouted a panicking Nektar, but to no avail. Quick as a flash, Billy had used his Cape to inflate Hilda’s horses.
Goldfish recoiled in fear from the full-sized stallions who were pawing the ground, preparing to thunder towards him. He darted back behind the bed.
‘Argh! They’ve gone big! Why didn’t you tell me they go big?!’ he quavered.
‘I did, you big bald … baldy! Napkins! Just … get us out of here!’
Hilda’s horses reared up and whinnied loudly in the direction of the two cowering supervillains.
Goldfish grabbed the back of Nektar’s bed violently, spinning it round and clunking the wasp man’s elevated feet on the wall as he did.
‘Ouch! Ow! Pork pies! Careful!’ screamed Nektar as the wonky wheel buckled, causing the bed to lurch violently from side to side as they bashed, panged and bumped their way out of sight.
‘Great work, Hilda; excellent from you too, Billy,’ said Murph.
But the smile on his face quickly faded. Nektar being at large once again was the least of their worries right now. Their route down to Sub Level One was clear. The lift was just around the next corner. He only hoped that they had made it in time to help Flora and Carl.
Beckoning his friends onwards, he led them into the lift itself.
They were silent as they packed themselves in. A brief image of a bullfighting poster swam through Murph’s mind as he fought down an urge to panic, and the lift door closed.
Who knew what they would find when it opened again on the seabed?
21
Last Stand of the Blue Phantom
Murph could barely take in the scene that met his eyes as the lift door slid open and they stepped out on to Sub Level One. Magpie was still trapped at the bottom of his stone amphitheatre, but Murph couldn’t be relieved about that. Because now there was a second figure inside the white circle with him.
It was Flora.
Not far from the lift shaft, Carl was standing near the top edge of the stone steps. The old man was staring in disbelief at the scene unfolding below. They rushed over to join him.
He was too distressed to question their arrival. ‘I couldn’t stop her,’ he said weakly.
‘How did she get inside the circle without the cameras seeing her?’ Murph asked urgently.
‘She used her invisibility,’ said Carl. Murph registered,
with shock, that there were tears in his eyes. ‘But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that she’ll never be able to get out. It’s the only chance to save Angel. Our … our daughter. And she took it.’
There was nothing any of them could do. As they watched on, horrified, Magpie held out his palms towards the Blue Phantom. Jets of crackling purple lightning surrounded her, lifting her into the air.
‘NO!’ screamed Hilda, but Carl held her back.
‘She knows what she’s doing,’ he said sadly.
A bluish glow surrounded Magpie, whose mouth was stretched in a grotesque grin. Abruptly, the lightning disappeared and Flora slammed to the floor.
Without a backwards glance, Magpie walked towards the white circle painted on the ground, the cameras above moving to track him.
‘For thirty years, I’ve been watched,’ he said softly, looking up at them. ‘Thirty years.’
And then he vanished.
‘Where’s he gone?’ yelled Mary urgently, her glance darting around the huge space.
‘He could be anywhere! Be on guard! Don’t let him steal your Capes!’ shouted Murph.
‘He’s done it! He’s free!’ squeaked a voice from back near the lift. ‘The Alliance is defeated!’
Murph glanced across to see a little man in filthy rags capering around. ‘Is that … Mr Drench?’ he murmured wonderingly. This was all too much to take in.
All of a sudden, Magpie reappeared right inside the entrance to the lift, holding a metal cube dotted with red lights in one hand.
‘Don’t worry,’ he called out to Carl, ‘I’m a man of my word. I’ll replace the Proximity Detonator, just as I promised. Angel won’t be blown up.’
Mr Drench joined him in the lift.
‘Besides, I’ve got something far worse planned for her,’ Magpie concluded as the lift doors snapped closed and whisked him away.
For a moment nobody spoke, as the clanging of the lift door reverberated around the undersea prison like the tolling of a bell. But then a faint groan from Flora at the bot tom of the amphitheatre sent Mary pelting down the stone stairs.
‘No!’ said Murph. ‘Don’t go near her! Don’t cross the white line.’
Mary came to an agonising halt only a couple of steps above the prone figure of Flora.
‘Then what do we do?’ yelled Mary, looking desperately back up at Murph. ‘We can’t just leave her! She can’t be trapped here forever. She can’t!’
Murph dithered uncertainly at the top of the steps. It seemed like an impossible dilemma. They had to try and chase after Magpie to have any hope of saving Angel. But to do that, they would have to leave Flora imprisoned at Shivering Sands.
‘So, if the cameras see anyone crossing the white line to help her, this place will blow,’ summarised Hilda, joining him. ‘And now Flora has lost her Cape, if she leaves the circle –’
‘This place will blow,’ Murph completed for her.
‘Great set of options we’ve got,’ added Billy.
‘Come on,’ Murph said, beginning to walk down the stone steps to join Mary and beckoning the others to do the same. ‘Carl, you too. Flora’s in a trap. So what do we do?’
‘Spring the trap?’ answered Carl uncertainly, as all six of them gathered not far from the white circle.
‘We spring the trap,’ confirmed Kid Normal.
‘But … this whole place will fill with water,’ said Hilda in a small voice. ‘We’ll never make it.’
‘We came here as a team,’ Murph told her. ‘And we’re leaving together. All of us. Agreed?’
Hilda nodded. As Murph looked around at the faces of his friends, he saw their expressions gradually change from panic to determination.
‘All right,’ said Hilda boldly. ‘Together, then?’
‘Together,’ confirmed Billy.
‘Together,’ said Mary, patting Murph’s shoulder.
‘Together,’ came a soft whisper from behind Nellie’s curtain of hair.
Carl’s eyes were moist as he looked along the line at his five young friends. He nodded proudly. ‘Spoken like true Heroes,’ he told them. ‘You’re on! Together!’
‘Now!’ yelled Murph, and as one they raced towards the fallen Phantom.
‘BOUNDARY ENCROACHMENT. STEP BACK,’ came the automated warning.
They kept on.
‘BOUNDARY ENCROACHMENT. STEP BACK.’
Nobody stopped. All six of them stepped over the line and ran to Flora.
‘BREACH. DANGER. DETONATE. BREACH. DANGER. DETONATE.’
Immediately, there was a series of deafening explosions. The first came from the lift shaft, which erupted in a curtain of flame, cutting off any possible escape. Then, one by one, the red boxes blew up, punching holes in the thick glass wall. Sea water began pouring in.
Carl was oblivious to this as he raised Flora up and patted her gently on the cheek. He checked the pulse in her neck. The faintest of groans brought a radiant smile to his face. ‘Hold tight, Flo,’ he told her. ‘We’ll soon have you out of here.’
‘Yeah, about that,’ said Billy nervously, looking over his shoulder. Freezing-cold sea water was sluicing down the stone steps; the base of the amphitheatre was already knee deep.
‘We’ve got to gain some height,’ Murph told Mary. She nodded.
‘Hold on,’ she told everyone, pulling her umbrella from her pocket. ‘Carl, bring Flora here and grab this.’
She pressed the button and unfurled the umbrella as Carl hoisted Flora up into a fireman’s lift, gasping with the shock of the cold water.
With the weight of two grown adults added to their own, flying wasn’t quite so easy as it should have been, and it was hard for everyone to keep a grip. They rose uncertainly above the lapping water, bobbing and dipping alarmingly.
‘I’m not sure I can hold it!’ Mary screamed. Billy didn’t help matters by inflating both his feet in panic.
Mary steered them crazily towards the lift, swooping so low at one point that Murph’s foot hit the stone floor of the top level. It splashed in icy water, and he registered with shock that already the entire lower sect ion of the amphitheatre was flooded. To make matters worse, now they could see that the lift shaft had been totally destroyed.
‘How do we get out of this one, then, old girl?’ muttered Carl to Flora. Her eyelids fluttered open.
‘Oh, I usually find a solution presents itself,’ she muttered.
They were all so reassured to hear Flora speak that they were starting to feel slightly better even before they saw a pair of bright headlights cutting through the murky water. With a roar and a splash, a silvery-blue vehicle shot through one of the gaps in the glass wall and bobbed to the surface just below them like an extremely welcome dolphin.
As Mary guided them down on to the vehicle’s roof, they could make out Sir Jasper’s grinning face through the cockpit window.
‘Jasper!’ yelled Carl. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s a rescue, old boy,’ Sir Jasper explained as the door opened. ‘I heard explosions and thought, that’s usually a sign someone requires my help. Need a lift?’
‘I’ve never been so pleased to see you, my friend,’ said Carl shakily as they climbed in. ‘Now get us out of here. I never want to see this place again.’
‘So,’ said Murph gently to Carl once they had all squeezed inside, ‘the Banshee can travel underwater then, can it?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied Carl. ‘I told you last time, didn’t I? I’ve made a lot of special modifications.’ A little of the old twinkle reappeared in his eyes.
Leaving a trail of blue bubbles behind it, the Banshee turned and plunged out of Sub Level One, back up towards the rusting towers of Shivering Sands.
Fittingly for this point in the story, the weather had just become more dramatic, and the Banshee broke the surface of the sea into driving rain and gusty winds. Sir Jasper wrestled with the controls as their craft was buffeted this way and that; sea spray spattered the windows as they lurched
upwards. But finally, after a nerve-jangling couple of minutes, he managed to steer them around to the landing platform and set the Banshee down next to Gertie.
‘First things first. Is everyone OK?’ asked Sir Jasper, taking his hands off the control stick and turning around in his seat. The Super Zeroes nodded as they all pi led out of the cramped vehicle to lie panting on the landing platform.
Carl was still in the back, cradling Flora’s head. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked her gently.
She didn’t open her eyes, but it looked as if she smiled slightly as she replied, ‘Normal. I’m feeling … normal. But there’s nothing wrong with that.’
Murph felt a stab of sadness. The Blue Phantom had been one of the last Heroes of the Golden Age – and thanks to him she had become Magpie’s latest victim.
But this was no time for regret: that would come later. For now, there was work to do. Murph decided to channel every molecule of the pain he was feeling into making sure that Magpie got his comeuppance.
‘There’s no time to lose,’ he told his friends. ‘This is where we have the advantage.’
‘How do you work that out?’ asked Billy, who had taken off his wet shoes and was wringing one of his socks out. ‘We almost got killed down there.’
‘Yeah – but we didn’t,’ grinned Murph. ‘And that’s our advantage. He’ll think we’re still down there trying to help Flora. He’ll never know we’re coming.’
‘Coming where?’ asked Hilda blankly.
‘Coming to rescue Angel, of course!’ replied Kid Normal. ‘You heard Magpie; he’s got something planned for her. We’ve got to find her, and bring her home.’
Wordlessly, Carl reached a hand out of the Banshee and grasped Murph’s shoulder. Flora’s eyes flickered open, and she said weakly, ‘You never give up, do you, young Murph?’ She looked at him with so much pride that Murph felt it radiating from her like physical warmth, and all at once he felt less chilled in spite of the sea breeze on his wet clothes.
Suddenly, there was a flash of purplish light from overhead. Murph peered into the sky. One of the huge black Alliance helicopters had just taken off, and Murph could make out crazed veins of purple lightning running along its sides.