I Am Phantom

by Sean Fletcher

  “Last stage: Fighting Style.”

  “Please, these things can’t—“ One of the holograms punched my chest. A jolt of sharp current coursed through my feet and up my entire body. I leapt back. “Okay! Okay!” This was like Sonam’s test, right? Just…more twisted.

  The holograms approached in a semi-circle, leaving no space for me to break through. My best option would be to take them one at a time, on my terms.

  I went for the nearest one. He tried to block but I guess the simulation was mimicking normal human speed because it was far too slow. I hit him and the hologram dissolved.

  The other holograms didn’t stand a chance. Each one had a different fighting technique but it still wasn’t any different than fighting the drug dealers behind the apartment complex or the kidnapper on Rollins Street. They were slow and hesitant. Scared of me. This was my element. This was what I was good at.

  “Training complete. Time: three minutes forty seconds.” I waited for something else but I guess it was done. I stepped out of the arena. The light behind me dimmed.

  “Please return to your bunk,” the woman said.

  The runway lights flicked off as I walked out of the room.

  Chapter Nine

  Trains, and Other Things that Go Off Track

  “Hold on.” If it was possible, Matt pressed his face closer to the screen. “There’s a train carrying more military tech—at least that’s what the company’s manifesto says—”

  “Did you hack their server again—?” I asked.

  “—heading Northwest straight through the Queensbury rail yard.”

  “So what about it?” Cody said. “A train is coming through Queensbury, we still owe the government taxes and—news flash!—I heard the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Why is that a big deal?”

  “Matt says it’s carrying military tech,” I said.

  “And there has been an increase in theft of military tech,” Matt said.

  “Hold up, I didn’t know that,” Cody said. He looked at both of us. “Who’s been doing that?”

  “Sykes?” I guessed. “I’m pretty sure he wants to get revenge, but I’m not sure how. Maybe he’s stealing stuff and building a weapon or something.”

  “But you’ve talked to him a couple times,” Cody said. “Did he say anything about needing weapons?”

  “Nothing like that, no.”

  I had never told them everything Sykes and I had talked about. That information seemed way, way too personal, like a private club that only crazy super humans could get into.

  “It’s not Sykes,” Matt said. “Police reports indicate these thefts have been going on even before Sykes was in the area.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If it’s not Sykes, then who is it? Maybe Queensbury is full of military tech enthusiasts.”

  “That’s for you to find out,” Matt said.

  “What’s with all the military tech going through here anyway?” Cody said.

  “Queensbury is in the middle of a major shipping lane for military production companies like Coleman Inc and Rogers’ and Makers’ Tech, who have factories in the north.”

  I stretched and grabbed my costume. “Well, we’ll find out who’s doing it tonight.”

  Matt clicked again. “The train doesn’t come through here for another two hours. You can take a look at the end of your rounds.”

  Lucky for me, there was nothing else exciting happening in Queensbury. By exciting I mean I didn’t get shot at, nearly die or watch someone else nearly die. Yay for me.

  So, on to the train yard. I leapt and landed in a roll on the next building. My brain switched instantaneously into Parkour mode, my eyes searching for new launch points or things to swing off. The boots grabbed the concrete beneath my feet and allowed me to vault over the next roof gap, landing with an ease I hadn’t been able to before. I was faster than I’d ever been. In no time I was looking down at stacks of boxcars below me.

  “Dead and desolate,” Cody commented after I’d had a look around. “Just how we like it.”

  “I’m still going to wait for the train to come through,” I said. I took my time walking on top massive stacks of boxcars and beneath loading cranes. There were a few spotlights and some guards in a small house across the tracks so I guessed they assumed the low, barbed wire fence would encourage everybody to stay out.

  From my vantage point I could see the stalks of skyscrapers sprouting above the skyline. Sometimes, late at night, a fog would settle between the streets, maybe coming off the lake nearby. Cody and Matt admitted that it helped me blend in, but thought it was gloomy all the same. I didn’t agree. I found it cleansing. It layered everything in a fine, misty sheen and breathed life into the dank and dirty. It revealed the raw form of Queensbury to me. Others saw only what was bad in the city. I tried to see the good between the crappy, crime-riddled exterior. The layers slowly peeled back and revealed themselves, Queens’ savage beauty. It made me like it all the more.

  “Hey, Cody,” I said hesitantly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is the mic on speaker?” A pause, and then I heard a soft click.

  “Now it’s not. What’s up?”

  “I was just wondering, you know.” I hopped down and over another fence and started walking on the rails. “If you thought, hypothetically, that Liz might, maybe, hypothetically, of course, say yes if I asked her on a date. You know, just for fun.”

  I could practically hear Cody smiling through the speaker.

  “Well, Drake buddy, speaking, hypothetically of course, that, maybe, hypothetically—”

  “Get on with it,” I said, already regretting asking.

  “Yes, I think so,” Cody finished. “Come on, Drake. You guys spar together all the time and you hang out when you’re not doing that. She likes you. Besides, if it doesn’t work out you can always take it out on each other on the mat.”

  “Thanks, Cody. You should go into relationship counseling.”

  “That’s what you get for asking a guy like me about things like that. Next time you should ask Melanie. She’d have a much better idea.”

  “Speaking of Melanie, when are you going to—”

  “Sorry, Drake, mic’s on speaker again. You hear a train coming?”

  The rails started shaking. Its horn blared. As it grew closer I stepped into the shadows of the boxcars as it thundered past, all blinking lights and ringing sirens. The sound was so deafening I had to cover my ears and clench my jaw to keep my teeth from rattling. I looked up to see how much of the train was left.

  That’s when I saw the men leap from the top of a boxcar and on to the train.

  “Really?” I groaned. “They couldn’t have taken the night off?”

  I rushed over to a boxcar closest to the tracks. The train was going a lot faster than I thought. I needed to time this perfectly or I’d be nothing but a splatter on the side of a shipping car.

  “Okay,” I breathed. “Come on, they’re getting away, comeoncomeoncomeon!”

  I sprinted and took a flying leap—and totally screamed like a little girl. I hit the top of the train, rolled and grabbed an edge just as I almost toppled off. After a second of unsure dangling I managed to pull myself up.

  I had to keep pretty low to the boxcar to avoid getting blown off. The cars were all flat, not coal or anything, which made it easier for me to crawl forward, the gloves and boots gripping the rough metal.

  I think Cody was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear over the roar and clatter of the tracks and shifting cars as we barreled through the station and on to the middle of Queensbury.

  The silhouettes of three men crouched on the car ahead of me. As I watched, they pried open a hatch in one of the cars and hopped inside. When had Sykes started employing henchman? That didn’t seem like his style.

  I approached the pried up door and peered down inside. It was pitch black. I couldn’t see the men down there in the little light my mask could amplify.

  I jumped inside. My feet hit
the bottom with a loud clang and I crouched, ready to meet anyone. I could sense, rather than see, that there were other men in the car.

  Then a gruff voice said, “Take him.”

  A net dropped onto me out of nowhere. Men emerged from the darkened part of the boxcar and started hitting me while I struggled to free myself. I managed to grab one and hurl him back but he was quickly replaced by another. I couldn’t tell how many there were before a jolt of lighting shot up my spine and I collapsed in a heap, my earpiece dead.

  A man stepped into the sliver of light from the open panel above us. He wore a ski mask, but the rest of his body was clad in all black, almost like a ninja. It took me a moment to register that it was a uniform. They were all in uniforms. What was this, some kind of cult?

  “That was easier than expected,” the man said. He bent down to look at my face. “What is he wearing? Whatever, let’s get him back to the warehouse. The boss’ll want to see this.”

  Another man kicked my leg, which had begun to regain feeling in it. “He’s strong. You think he’s one of them?”

  “One way to find out. Knock him out and let’s go—”

  Something landed on the roof of the boxcar. Steps sounded, coming closer to the open door. The men looked up and some pulled out pistols and Tasers.

  “Are we expecting company?” The man asked. Nobody responded, their focus on whoever was above them. Somebody dropped in the opening. A metallic glint and I felt a warm spray of blood on my face.

  “Gah! Attack! Attack!”

  The car filled with screams and loud bangs. I managed to push myself over to the edge of the metal and pull the net off me. In the faint light I could barely make out one man sliding between the uniforms, hacking and slashing.

  They were all dead in seconds.

  “You’re welcome,” Sykes said.

  “What are you doing here? How did you know I was here?”

  Sykes emerged from the shadows of the back of the car. He re-sheathed his knife and used his foot to turn one of the dead men’s faces towards him.

  “Stop that!”

  “I just saved you. You should be grateful.”

  “You didn’t have to kill them,” I said. I avoided looking in the dark part of the boxcar, where the rest of the bodies were. Already the smell of blood was beginning to seep from the back.

  “Ahh…but you see I did. You may not be aware of this, but these men aren’t petty criminals.” He bent down and rubbed the black uniform the man had on between his fingers. There was a single sliver of a moon patched on his shoulder that I hadn’t noticed before. “These men wanted you specifically. Why would that be, Drake? Why would they want you?”

  I eased a little closer to the exit of the car. I could probably move faster than him if I needed to. But did I need to?

  “They thought I was in their way, that was all,” I said, not really believing it.

  “They were Project Midnight, alive and well,” Sykes said. “Still up to their old habits. They wanted you because they know what you are, Drake. Project Midnight is still around and they’re still kidnapping and killing. Still trying to perfect what they once had before I…hindered them.”

  “Who’s side are you on?” The words sounded strange to my mouth. Sykes and a ‘good deed’ were two things that shouldn’t have gone together. “You kill without any mercy, but you save me.”

  Sykes stood up. “I’ve told you before, I’m not your enemy. We’re one in the same, and we have to watch out for each other.”

  “And you expect me to believe these guys were part of Project Midnight?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  I couldn’t relax around him, not for a second, but I did walk a little ways around him to have a better vantage point to leave the boxcar.

  “They treated me like cattle,” Sykes said. “Like I wasn’t even human. The moment I got my abilities, I was nothing more than a thing to them.”

  “Didn’t you want those powers?”

  Sykes didn’t answer.

  “Well if you didn’t want those powers then what do you want? Do you want a cure?”

  “There is no cure. Not for this. You know what I want. It’s the same thing you’ll want soon enough. When they start taking everything from you.”

  That made about as much sense to me as anything else he usually said. But I didn’t get the chance to ask again, because Sykes said, “You’re welcome,” again and leapt out the opening, leaving me alone in the boxcar with dead men from an illegal project that should have disappeared a long time ago.

  The smell of death coupled with the shaking of the boxcar started to make my stomach roll. I needed to get out. But before I could, my eye caught something flashing in the pockets of one of the men. It made me sick just getting near his body, but I snatched up whatever it was. It was shaped like a cell phone, with a blinking red dot hovering over a touchscreen map of Queensbury.

  I stumbled as the train bumped again. First things first: I needed to get out of here. I leapt to the top of the boxcar and steadied myself on the shaking metal. The train was just passing a quiet looking apartment complex. The ground was moving way too fast.

  Without thinking, I jumped.

  Soft ground did not greet me.

  I managed to roll when I hit but sharp pain cut in to my stomach and shoulders. A large bush finally stopped me. Nothing felt broken but I would definitely feel this tomorrow.

  “Drake?” Cody said.

  My earpiece was back on. “I’m here.”

  I heard Cody breath a sigh of relief. “You had me worried there, buddy. Something must have severed the connection. We couldn’t see or hear anything once you got into the train.”

  I decided it was best to tell them about Sykes later. “I ran into Project Midnight.”

  “They’re still around?”

  “Apparently.” I glanced down at the small device, still blinking in my hand. “But I want to know for sure. Can you look something up for me?”

  “Industrial park, east side off 3rd and Lillian.”

  I leapt off the building. Whistling air sang around my ears and the familiar freedom of semi-flight made my stomach lurch pleasantly. I landed on the next building and began a sort of dance with the infrastructure, using anything and everything as my jumping off point; my partners for a millisecond as I grappled and jumped from one roof to the next.

  “Here,” I said a few minutes later.

  “Look to the left. Now right. That appears to be the eastern side. The warehouse you’re looking for is at the end.”

  I perched on precipice of a twelve-story building across the street, and surveyed the industrial park below me. My legs dangled off the edge, my body leaned forward. Up here was where I felt most safe.

  Silent supply trucks sat in a vacant lot to my left and an oily smell drifted up to me. The harsh glow of spotlights did not look inviting.

  Not the ideal place to spend a school night.

  “Drake, we don’t know what’s in there,” Cody said.

  “This is where the coordinates on that transmitter I grabbed led us, right?”

  “It could be wrong. Even if it’s not you’re going to walk right to a bunch of people who just tried to capture you.”

  “I wasn’t ready,” I admitted. “It won’t happen again. And I’m not walking in. Stealth will be involved.”

  Cody sighed heavily, but he knew he couldn’t change my mind. Not about this. “Well, let’s get it over with.”

  I stood and scaled my way to the ground. “That’s the spirit.”

  The warehouse was at the back of the lot. The lights were tricky to dodge; I’m sure at least one camera saw me and I didn’t like all the open space, but eventually I made it to one of the open side doors. I busted the lock and went in.

  The warehouse didn’t look like anything sinister. And maybe it wasn’t. But what Sykes had said after he had…saved me (did that really happen?) wouldn’t stop bothering me. He was wrong. The people that
had done this were no more; we had both seen the remnants of their work in that other underground lab.

  And yet…the feeling that maybe—just maybe—he was right, wouldn’t go away. It was stronger than the pull of figuring out if he was lying about my superhuman abilities.

  I peeked my head in the door. No sound. The wind picked up outside and a few snowflakes fell. I made sure the door made no noise as it closed behind me.

  Crates were piled atop one another like Jenga blocks. Hooks and pulleys hung in the darkened rafters. I climbed up to the suspended walkway and crept towards the slightly lit part of the warehouse in front of me. Nothing. I leapt back to the ground again and walked between the boxes.

  “Rats,” Cody said. “Empty and vacant. Oh, well, time to go.”

  “Quiet,” I said. “I need to listen.” For what I had no idea. I hated to admit it, but Cody might have been right.

  I got further into the maze of boxes. All of them had Coleman Inc tattooed on the side.”

  “They’re all the same company,” I said.

  “I’m not finding them listed,” Matt said. “That means they’re not a real company.”

  “We’re on to something,” I said, a second before the ground started shaking and the sound of working gears came from one row over. I leapt to the top of the nearest stack of boxes and peered over.

  The floor was gone where an open space had been. A mechanical hum brought an elevator up to the top and a man got off. He wore the same uniform as the men on the train. The man checked a clipboard and then pulled a dolly over to a stack of boxes and loaded one on.

  “I’m going,” I said.

  “Drake—” The rest of what Cody was going to say was lost as I started running. The Project Midnight guy had returned to the platform and started pressing buttons on the control panel. The elevator began to descend.

  There was nowhere to hide on the elevator.

  Good thing I had no intention of hiding.

  I took a running start and leapt between the closing floor. The man looked up from his sheet and tried to scream, but I struck his windpipe and knocked him out. The ceiling slammed shut and the microphone in my ear began to crackle with static.