I Am Phantom

by Sean Fletcher

  I broke from cover, clobbering one man and hitting the others before they could run.

  “That’s all of them,” Matt said as the last guy dropped unconscious.

  Getting easier.

  It was the mental preparedness I still had to get used to. Understanding that what I was doing was both right and very illegal.

  A week after my indoctrination as a part time crime fighter, Matt came to my door and thrust a thick stack of comic books into my hand. There was Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man. Lots of –mans. My new role models, apparently.

  Most of them, Batman especially, was on the iffy side with the law but he maintained his ideals, ideals I could stand behind. I was happy with them. Cody wasn’t after he found out Matt had raided his stash of collector comic books.

  But I was doing some good, I thought. After two weeks I was hopefully about to take down Rutherford, a big time drug dealer on Queensbury’s east side.

  Matt’s voice brought me back to chasing Rutherford down.

  “You should duck. Rutherford’s in front of you reloading a—looks like a Glock? No, the outline mirrors that of a Smith and Wesson. Yeah, the lines are definitely more like a—” There was a loud thump as Cody wrestled the mic out of Matt’s hand.

  “Bad guy. Gun. Get down.”

  Good thing I was way ahead of them. I rolled behind a wall and a couple of bullets crackled against the brick above my head. The camera on my earpiece was great for showing what I saw to Matt and Cody. Fortunately I didn’t rely on them for reaction times. It was like having a crazy split personality in my head: Matt with vital information wrapped up in scientific, distracting fluff, and Cody with the bare bones. I needed both but they had to figure a system out, and fast.

  “Die, freak!” Rutherford cried, unloading an entire clip into the side of the dumpster he thought I was behind. I sighed. This guy wasn’t the big time crook we’d thought. He was just a scared small-time dealer with a gun and bad aim. But I had to start somewhere. The work kept me busy while Matt and I tried to find anything on Project Midnight. So far his live stream had turned up nothing.

  “It’s a Glock. He’s out,” Cody said. I sprang from my spot, kicked off the wall and, before Rutherford could react, snapped a kick across his jaw. He collapsed in a heap. Last one down. I turned Rutherford over, pulled his gun and tossed it in the dumpster.

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Avenue and Heartmand. Three cars. Take West Main up to Raleigh’s to bypass them.”

  In time I would have all of this memorized. Clip capacities, streets, best angles of attack. But it felt good to have someone there to have my back.

  “Hey Drak—I mean, uh, well, you know…” Cody came again. “Head back to the Lab. We’ve got a present for you.”

  I smirked at the secrecy. Matt claimed nobody, at least in Queensbury, could hack into our communications. And Matt knew his stuff. But that still didn’t stop Cody from coming up with code names for both of them.

  “Copy that, White Rat.”

  “White Rook! I’m White Rook, Matt’s Golden Eagle!”

  “Whatever.” I clambered up the fire escape on the side of the building and started back, feeling the shadows wash over me, knowing that if anybody looked up they would only see me for a moment.

  The sirens grew louder and converged on Rutherford’s unconscious form.

  “Right on time,” I said, watching them stop at the head of the alleyway. One small-time crook down, a whole lot to go.

  I stopped behind some thick bushes just outside the Lab, took off the robe and mask and walked in.

  I don’t know why they had asked me to go back to the Lab. Their base of operations was in their dorm room. They had set everything up so that it could be easily hidden in record time in case of a random room inspection.

  The light was on in their room at the end of the hallway. The Lab stayed open twenty-four/seven in case the students needed to work. Cody had given me the code to get in, but it didn’t look like anybody else was taking advantage of the extended hours at one in the morning.

  When Cody saw me he rushed out of their room and held up his hands. “Stop! You have to close your eyes.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Cody shook his head and I sighed and did so. I walked hesitantly into the room, bumping my elbow on the doorframe. I heard the sound of something rolling across the floor.

  “Man, I wish Melanie could see this. I guess she will, but—okay!”

  I opened my eyes. Jaws don’t drop but mine slacked a bit—a lot. Cody presented the new costume—my new identity—to me.

  “Ta-da! All custom made and very hard to come by. You have no idea what I had to tell the science board to get approved for these materials. They seemed to think a freshman didn’t need all this stuff.”

  I was still in awe. It had turned out even better than I could have hoped.

  The top part of the costume was like a hoodie, a shiny matte black with a deep hood like the Grim Reaper’s gaping maw. The fabric was completely smooth and flawless except for three claw-like stitching’s curling from the back and running across the chest. It was soft and light, but had thick strands woven tightly together almost like mesh. I picked up a sleeve. It made no sound as I dropped it.

  “It’s Pivount,” Cody explained. “A mix between Kevlar and a compound known as Perilium. That’s what the pants are made of too. The military has just barely started using it but they still have to phase out straight Kevlar. That’s partly why the board let me use it. They wanted to see what I could do with it.”

  The pants, like Cody said, were the same. Slightly loose but still form fitting.

  “Put it on,” Cody said. “Then tell me what you think.”

  As I changed, I felt a strange sort of power coming over me. There was a subtle difference of purpose than that of my robe. I pulled up the hood to complete the transformation.

  “Whoa.” Cody took a step back when they looked at me and Matt’s eyes grew wide.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Im-imposing,” Matt said.

  “Fits great,” I said.

  “Matt helped with that,” Cody said. “He’s awesome at sewing.” He stepped hesitantly up to me. “Like I said the pants are made from the same material as the top. I made them loose for movement and misdirection, but not too much. The shoes are what soldiers wear but Melanie suggested cutting them down for all the jumping you do.”

  “They’re great. And the gloves?” I held them up to the light. They somehow made my hands feel stronger, quicker. Something glinted on the palm and on the outside of my arm, running like a blade all the way up my elbow.

  “You see that, right?” Cody said. “It’s a material called Haldium. That’s what they really didn’t want to give me. Not much quantity but I’ve been working on a way to refine it into the form that’s now lining your palms and the outside of your arm. Gives you better grip on pretty much anything. Any quick movement makes it contract a little bit and solidify; that means you can grip, punch, grapple, whatever, with almost double your strength and stability.”

  Matt tapped the metal table. “Hit this.”

  “Why?”

  “With the outside of your arm. Do it. Hard.”

  Feeling uneasy, I swung. My arm went rigid on impact. The poor table broke in half.

  “Yes!” Cody said. “Contracts against any sudden movement. We think it can even block a knife blade.”

  “Think? Have you tried it?”

  “Would you like to?” He held up a not-so-wicked looking kitchen knife. “I didn’t think Melanie would mind.” I felt a little more confident after the suit had proved itself against a defenseless table. I allowed Cody to take a swipe at me. He was also hesitant but the second the knife hit my arm it glanced off.

  Cody grinned. “Hopefully you won’t have to test that, but the same thing goes for the hoodie and pants. They don’t have Haldium but they’re extremely tough and should protect you
all the way up to a bullet. It’s not fully bullet proof yet. More like bullet resistant.”

  I laughed. “Bullet resistant? I’ll only get hit fifty percent of the time?”

  “Let’s hope not at all. Look at yourself in the glass.”

  I turned. An intimidating figure looked back. The costume gave the illusion that I was taller and broader. The deep hood covered almost all of my face, but I wore a thin black mask underneath similar to what a fencer would wear. Cody said the mask amplified light so I could see well in low light. The sides of the hood, which would normally block my vision, were transparent, like a one-way mirror.

  I moved and a sort of awesome power moved with me. I felt invincible and looked menacing. The perfect opponent for a super human madman. The perfect way for answers.

  “I think you’ll get a good review on your end of the year project,” I said.

  “Yeah…I’ll have to borrow the costume and change it so the Lab doesn’t know. I hope they give it back, or we’ll have to find something else. They still technically own it.”

  I picked up the kitchen knife and bent it in one hand. I felt capable of doing absolutely anything.

  “What’s your name?” Matt asked.

  I glanced at him. “Um…Drake?”

  “No, your other name. If we’re going to help you we can’t be yelling your real name all over the radio.”

  I thought about it. At once the reporter’s voice from the news clip the other night came back to me.

  “All kinds of phantoms about.”

  Phantoms about

  Phantom. The same thing people had once called me out of fear.

  “Phantom,” I said. “I think it should be Phantom.”

  Cody agreed. Matt didn’t say anything.

  “Okay then,” I said with the finality of someone who had just accepted a massive, life changing undertaking. “Okay, from now on, I am Phantom.”

  Part 2

  Falling Star

  Chapter Eight

  Reflections of the Past

  I returned to the Project Midnight lab Sykes had showed me. No matter how many times I told myself that it didn’t make sense, that it didn’t matter, something kept pulling me back. I found myself turning off the earpiece, pulling off the manhole and descending into the chilly sewer again.

  Everything was exactly as we’d left it. The smashed monitors were covered with dust and the blood trays sat waiting, hungry for mine. I ignored them and walked the perimeter of the room, exploring the rest of the place. My mask amplified what little light there was.

  The doors still worked. They were sliding ones like those at the Lab. Dozens of rooms ringed the large room where the monitors were. Most held only old boxes with nothing interesting inside. Old computer parts and beds. Nothing looked even remotely connected to me. It couldn’t.

  The whole time the machine with the blood trays waited. It waited with answers and when I had opened every room and found nothing I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  My deep breath sounded like a shout in the hushed room.

  I walked over and found the control panel. There was a button marked blood analysis. I guessed this interface was made for dummies. I pressed it. A new tray opened. Thankfully. I had no intention of putting my blood anywhere near Sykes’ dry, crusty blood in the other tray.

  It didn’t matter how much he thought we were blood brothers. There was no way I was going to test mine with his. I picked up a shattered test tube and dragged it across my hand until a trickle of blood rolled down my finger and on to the tray. It beeped and retracted. I waited. After a moment a video of blood popped up on screen. My blood.

  It was just like Sykes.

  But maybe…not exactly. They didn’t seem as frenzied as his had; they weren’t crowding together so much. These were different.

  I took a step back to get a better look. Broken test tubes crackled under my feet but I didn’t care.

  My blood wasn’t the same as Sykes. I wasn’t the same as Sykes. I was my own person still! Free and untethered. Wasn’t I proving that by what I was doing? Everything I did was to prove I wasn’t him. Wasn’t that enough?

  A faint noise sounded somewhere in front of me, echoing like I was in a cavern. I stepped away from the screen and walked towards where it had come from. Has Sykes come back? Did he live here? It made sense. But why live in the heart of the very people who had made his life hell?

  The hallway I followed tapered and ended at a stack of discarded boxes. I had been this way before and found nothing, but now I took a closer look, tossing boxes aside and searching for anything out of place. I found the doorway after moving the fifth box. It appeared unassuming so, after double-checking that there were no surprises on the other side, I walked through.

  “Welcome,” a woman said. I immediately dove into the shadows and came up in a crouch, scanning the room for who had spoken.

  “Please come to the control desk to begin.” The woman wasn’t real. I now saw the speakers hanging above a control desk.

  I had found another underground room. The air in here was frigid. Absolute. As if mistakes were not accepted here.

  I stepped behind the control desk and immediately a dull thunk sounded in front and below me and runway light began to click on one by one. This room was a lot bigger than I’d thought. Numbers were painted on the left wall every fifty feet, like stations, and one section of wall was illuminated, display like, like something was supposed to be there. There was a lot of white.

  “Name, please,” the woman’s voice said. I looked down at the screen. As I’d guessed, there were four blocks. Number one was blinking.

  “Phantom,” I said.

  “Phantom. Please go to station one.”

  More lights came on above the station with the giant 1 painted on the wall next to it.

  I cautiously walked over, expecting to be attacked at any moment. Another terminal was at this station, but nothing except a clean white floor was in front of me, looking a lot like the sparring mat at the gym.

  The terminal lit up with three options: START, SIMULATION, RECORDS. I chose RECORDS, expecting to see something pop up on the screen.

  Instead, holograms flickered to life in the arena.

  It was Sykes. He was much younger, probably only a few years older than me. His hologram appeared on the floor as if he had just been shoved from somewhere off screen. He turned around to where he had come from and yelled something, but they must not have recorded sound because I couldn’t hear anything. Without meaning to, I walked onto the floor towards him. He looked terrified, an emotion I could never have imagined Sykes showing. There was something different about him. He didn’t look insane. I’m not pretending I know anything about mental diseases, yet, but there was no hint of the cold, calculating figure I knew.

  Sykes’ hologram took a step farther back into the arena. That’s when the first machine attacked. They rose out of the floor and dropped from the ceiling. Robotic arms, some shooting things or swinging at his head like baseball bats. Sykes took a blow to the stomach and doubled over, just as another arm knocked him from behind and he collapsed. I tried to touch him but my hand passed right through. Tears streamed down his bloodied face but still the arms kept hitting him.

  “Get up!” I yelled. Why was he letting them do this to him? I had seen what he was capable of. He could stop this. “Get up and fight them!” The arms stopped. Sykes’ chest barely rose and fell. Then he lifted his head and looked off behind me.

  And there was the madness and anger I knew.

  Sykes slowly got to his feet. His lips mumbled something, but I had no time to read them because he was suddenly moving too fast. He swiped behind him and one robotic arm went flying. He leapt impossibly high and tore another one out of the ceiling and hurled it at a third. The more he destroyed the faster he went. Mechanical arms sprang from everywhere but quickly fell beneath his onslaught. Nothing could stop him.

  The last arm fell and Sykes stood alone in the center o
f the arena surrounded by destroyed robot body parts. The hologram shut off.

  “Best time: five minutes, thirteen seconds,” the emotionless female voice said. “Phantom, prepare for general test. Warning, these simulations are for Project Midnight candidates only. Any other personal is at great risk of death. Begin.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Test one: reflexes.”

  A robot arm sprang from the ground behind me. I barely had time to duck before it fired a small ball at me. It clanged when it hit the wall. The ball was filled with blinking neon lights.

  “Seriously…” Three more arms appeared from the floor and ceiling and fired. I flipped and stepped back. Every time I tried to take a breath more arms appeared, all tracking me.

  One struck me in the arm but I dodged and hit two others aside.

  “Test two: Strength,” the woman said.

  This time the robot arm swung straight at me. One came from above and tried to squash me. I held it up and kicked another one away. They never let up. I was using all of my skills. I had no doubt a normal human would have been slaughtered.

  “Test Three: Night vision.” The lights shut off. I heard the robot arms retract and then—nothing. I stood there, ready to attack anything that moved, except…I couldn’t see anything. It was just like with the generators went out at Monstaff.

  Had I developed night vision even without the help of my mask? Clearly the other tests were for people like me, so did that mean I was supposed to be able to see in the dark? I slipped off my light amplifying mask. Everything looked just as dark. Maybe there was nothing to look at—

  “Gah!” A robotic arm sent an electric jab in my back. “Ouch!” Another one hit my chest from above. I hurried to put on my mask.

  Nope. No night vision.

  The lights flickered back on the second I got my mask secured. I was surrounded by five holograms shaped like men.