I Am Phantom

by Sean Fletcher

  I stepped lightly into the doorway. Ryans’ eyes shifted to me so fast I thought they would pop out. He stiffened then, all his attention was on me, as though he didn’t care about the gun aimed at his chest. Maybe because this was the first time he had seen me up close, maybe I was that intimidating. Or maybe he was pleading for me to help, though I doubt it.

  I crept closer to the gunman nearest to me, praying Ryans would stop looking at me—

  The gunman’s eyes narrowed. “What are you—?” He turned and saw me. His mouth opened to yell and he fired just before I leapt behind the couch.

  “He’s here! He’s here!” the man yelled. “Michaels! Willis! He’s—”

  My foot met his face with a sickening crack. I scooped up his gun and rolled again behind a plush chair that was soon riddled with holes as the other three fired.

  I grabbed a lamp next to me, threw it and, following its flight path, tossed the gun to Ryans and broke the first man’s arm.

  I turned on the last two.

  BAM

  BAM

  BAM

  The gunshots faded just before the men’s bodies hit the floor. I stared at them in shock and then turned to look down the barrel of Ryans’ gun. He was calm now.

  “Hands on your head,” Ryans said. There was no mercy in his voice.

  I took a hesitant step back and sharp pained roared up my side, buckling my knees. I risked a glance down and found a ragged hole in my costume, tinged with blood.

  “Hands on your head or I will put a bullet through it.”

  Thankfully it looked like that bullet had gone clean through the fleshy part in my side.

  “I just saved your life,” I gasped. “You have to let me go. I need—”

  “I don’t care what you need! Hands on your head!”

  His wife looked between me and the two dead bodies Ryans had caused. The boy hadn’t moved.

  “I’m not scared of you,” he said to me.

  “Shut up, Richard,” Ryans said.

  I pushed myself into a crouched position where the pain was less. I looked at Ryans who hadn’t moved an inch. I could tell every fiber of him wanted to pull the trigger, but I guess a twisted sense of indebtedness stayed him.

  “Phaaaantom…?” A sing-song voice crackled from a radio on the belt of one of the dead men. The hairs on my neck rose. “Phaaantom…? I know you’re there.”

  I looked at Ryans. He didn’t move. I reached for the radio, the gun followed but he didn’t shoot.

  I picked up the radio and took a deep breath. “What, Sykes?” I said.

  “Oh good, you’re not too dense, Phantom. Is my pal Ryans there? I’m sure this is just killing him that you helped save his family. Am I right?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Then I’ll be frank before he shoots you. Ryans, Phantom is going to come to me. He’s going to get the chance to witness the destruction of our enemy. The abandoned oil refinery on the edge of town.”

  “I don’t negotiate with madmen,” Ryans said.

  “You’re negotiating with me. Phantom knows where I am. Phantom knows a lot of things. Don’t keep me waiting.”

  The channel clicked off.

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “Now.” Ryans’ eyes didn’t leave the radio.

  “Why should I trust you?” Ryans demanded.

  “Because you helped make me,” I said. “If anything, I shouldn’t trust you.”

  I stepped over the men and walked towards the front door. At any moment I expected to hear a sharp crack and feel a final pain between my shoulder blades.

  “You heard him. The abandoned refinery,” I said without turning around. “Keep the National Guard off my back. I know you can do that. He wants me and if I don’t play along he could set this whole thing off. Let me try to stop him first.” I didn’t wait for Ryans to answer. I don’t think he would have. I went out the door and back to my motorcycle. The pain in my side flared as I started it up and pointed it towards Sykes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Endgame

  I whipped through the streets, barely registering the shrouded scenery. I was about to ask Matt about any updates on Sykes, but realized I didn’t have my earpiece. It must have fallen out during the explosions or when I had been digging for students out of the remains of the dorm.

  Now that I was aware it was gone I felt exposed, like I’d just lost an eye or some really useful, sometimes annoying, part of my consciousness.

  The abandoned refinery at the western edge of Queensbury loomed above me as I neared it, a smoky black shadow against a dark sky, its iron teeth waiting for me…I was getting too melodramatic with the metaphors.

  I screeched the bike to a halt just outside the padlocked gates. From far away I couldn’t see much. No lights, no sounds save the metal groaning in the wind. No indication that the refinery had been used in years.

  Maybe I had beaten Sykes.

  Then I heard the screams.

  I kicked the gate down and gunned my bike towards where I had seen some people in lab coats run out. My headlight flooded across one of them and he threw his hands up over his face.

  “No! Take them, not me! I have—”

  “Keep running,” I said, jumping off the bike and dashing into the refinery.

  The inside was a jungle, thick with cold steel and caked with years of rust. Gauges held readings frozen in time on bellies of giant tanks I assumed once held oil. Ladders leading to nowhere climbed up metal sides and cut off at overhanging walkways. Gravel crunched under my feet. A faint chemical scent burned my nose. Oil stains on the floor led my way.

  Even though it was supposedly abandoned, floodlights cast everything in a nightmare of contrasting shadows and dank lights.

  I was more jumpy than ever before. Any second I expected Sykes to pop out and attack me. But I didn’t see him, or anything of the lab, for that matter.

  Then I found the first body.

  The man lay face up. A foot-long knife jutted from his eye socket now pooled with blood and dribbling down his cheek.

  I was going the right way.

  The body count didn’t stop there. The next few hallways were a labyrinth, and guiding me the entire way was a macabre display of what had once been workers of Project Midnight.

  Some were splayed in freeze-frame poses, as though they had been in the middle of fleeing when death caught them A couple were skewered to the metal siding with knives. Blood slathered the walls, almost like paintings.

  I’d had enough long before I reached one last man pinned to some double doors. I reached around him, but before I could grab the handle the doors burst open and a couple people ran out screaming. Their lab coats were flecked with blood and they were so terrified of what was behind them they didn’t even notice me slip past and into the heart of the refinery.

  Project Midnight must have built some kind of cloaking device, because what was inside wouldn’t have passed unnoticed for long.

  It was bigger than the inside of a stadium, so far I could barely see the other side even without the smoke from the fires raging everywhere. Floodlights washed the concrete floor bright as daylight. Screams filled the air mixed with gunfire, breaking glass and explosions.

  The bodies were everywhere, and the few people who weren’t dead had banded together and were scrambling towards the exits.

  A small group froze in their escape when they saw me.

  “Don’t hurt us!” one woman screamed, collapsing to her knees.

  “Where is Sykes?” I said.

  The woman paused in surprise that I wasn’t going to kill her and then pointed back to where the screams and gunfire were. I supposed I could have figured out he was over there on my own.

  “We had no idea what Carlyle was doing!” The woman blabbered. “Honest! He said—”

  “Get out,” I said. I wasn’t a killer like Sykes, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hate the people who made us the way we were.

  I sprinted towards the cha
os. I had only now just realized it was another training room, like the one that had been underneath the Lab. There were more workstations too, all beneath a shimmering sort of shield rippling high above, disguising everything. I came around a pallet of weapons and nearly ran into a man fleeing Sykes.

  Sykes was a monster, tearing into everything around him. He was just like I had seen him at the other lab, all traces of humanity gone. He hefted a guard in black armor and hurled him towards others who were advancing on him. They had him surrounded but he dodged their bullets. His knife came up and three more guards fell before he moved on to the next victim. He seemed unstoppable.

  Without thinking, I leapt at him and punched him so hard he flew back and crashed into a stack of crates.

  “Everybody run!” I said, as if it wasn’t already obvious. Some of the guards hesitated, then decided they did want to live. One of them ran close to me and I waited for him to try to attack.

  He pointed and I followed his finger way back to the rear of the facility. “Sykes rigged the power generators with explosives but no one can get near enough to disarm them.”

  “What happens when they go off?” I said, keeping a sharp eye for wherever Sykes would appear from next.

  The guard started backpedaling. “If those reactors go then everything in a mile radius will be gone.”

  Great. Just what I needed.

  Sykes suddenly leapt from the wreckage and landed in front of me. Pieces of his shirt were burned off and the skin on his arms was flayed by debris, flapping in the open air, but he didn’t seem to notice. I could practically feel the rage rolling off him. We circled each other, opposites of the same outcome.

  “You’ve finally arrived,” Sykes said, “to the conception of us. Here’s where things get interesting.”

  “You can still stop,” I said. “Just stop killing. I hate Project Midnight as much as you do but this isn’t how it should be done!”

  “How then?” Sykes yelled. “For years they’ve used fear and violence so why not have a taste of their own?” His eyes remained fixed on me, reflecting the fires growing around us.

  Then he held his hand out in front of him. Another detonator.

  “Prove it. Prove to me you hate them as much as I do, as much as you should. Think of what you can do. Your speed and strength. How different you are and how much others adore and fear you. It may seem great now, yes, but in time,” he shook his head, “it will, like it’s done to me, take everything away. Your friends, your loves.” He smirked. “You were an outcast from all of them the day you were born.”

  “My friends are safe, Sykes,” I said. “You can’t hurt them now.”

  “I can change that,” Sykes said.

  The familiar surge of anger came but I held it in check. Barely.

  “You’ve seen the other side,” Sykes continued. “You’ve seen the darkness this place created. Will you stop it the only way it can be stopped?”

  I felt my hand reaching towards him. I tried to keep looking at him, tried not to blink.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  Sykes’ hand faltered when my fingers brushed the smooth metal of the detonator. His eyes narrowed in rage.

  “You’re lying.” His knife went for my throat. I rolled back but his second attack sliced my upper arm.

  “I thought you of all people would get it!” Sykes screamed at me, stabbing right first, then left. He was so fast, it took everything I had to stay alive.

  “You, the one most like me. I brought you here, told you everything you needed to know to fight them.” He spun and grabbed a fleeing woman by her throat and held her before him. “Look at them! They’re weak and fragile to us. They are nothing. And yet they have more future than we do.”

  The woman clawed at his fingers around her throat, but Sykes didn’t seem to notice.

  “Please!” she choked. “No…please…”

  “Stop it!” I leapt at him. Sykes snapped a kick at my stomach, keeping the woman held in front of him, taunting me.

  “I-gave-you-everything,” Sykes said sadly. “I saved you.”

  “And I’m doing the same,” I said. I shot my grapple at him and it threw him back.

  He stumbled up, laughing, still holding the woman.

  “My oh my, you never give up, do you?” He taunted. “Perseverance, I like it! Reminds me of myself when I was your age. So young…and naïve…and…and…”

  In our little ring, time seemed to slow down, the flames and destruction around didn’t seemed to matter. “We’re so alike, you and me…and now I…”

  Something in his face changed, as if his mask broke, revealing everything underneath.

  The malicious grin on his face dropped off and left nothing but the remnants of that terrified man I had once seen. The woman tried to gasp for air and Sykes seemed to notice her for the first time. He dropped her and she scrambled away. His eyes traveled from his hands to the rest of his body all covered in blood.

  “My God, what have I done?” He whispered. He looked around at the burning lab. The heat was growing unbearable.

  “This is what you do, Sykes,” I said as he continued to swing his head around, bewildered. “All you do is ruin lives. You blow up those generators and you’ll kill hundreds of innocents. You’re no better than they are!”

  Sykes stared at me, but his eyes couldn’t seem to focus. I held my arms in front of me in what I hoped was a calming gesture and started to approach him. “But you can stop. Project Midnight needs to pay for what they’ve done. But not like this. You and I will find the rest of those responsible. We’ll bring them in, have them face justice. This whole thing can stop with you and me.”

  Sykes breathed in deeply and closed his eyes. “So many dead. When does it end? I…” He seemed to have trouble talking, like every word was a battle against an unseen enemy. “I…need you to…kill me…stop…me before—”

  “Sykes!” Sykes’ head snapped up. Carlyle and a few guards stood on the catwalk above us.

  “No!” I shouted as Sykes’ expression fell back to one of pure hatred. He pressed the detonator.

  A deep hum grew steadily louder, and then died. Sykes stared down at his hand.

  “I shut the reactors down, Sykes,” Carlyle said. “You’re done.”

  I moved before Sykes. I could see what he was going to do a second before and shot my grapple up to the catwalk, swung around and knocked Carlyle down.

  Sykes leapt after me, kicking one of the guards over the edge.

  “Let’s go!” I said, grabbing Carlyle and hauling him down the walkway as Sykes turned towards the remaining guards. The catwalk swayed and I tried to steady myself but the flames made the metal too hot to touch.

  “Why are you saving me?” Carlyle asked. Gunfire sounded behind us. Sykes took a bullet to the shoulder but quickly snapped the guard’s neck.

  “I may hate you but I don’t want you dead,” I answered.

  The second we got off the catwalk Carlyle spun and whipped out a gun. I ducked just as he fired.

  Sykes took the bullet in the stomach. I hadn’t realized he was right behind us.

  He looked shocked, going between Carlyle and the bullet.

  Carlyle fired again. Sykes managed to dodge a few but he was sluggish now. Almost mortal. Another bullet grazed his thigh and he dropped to one knee.

  The walls around us shuddered and a monstrous groan rattled the catwalk.

  “The reactors,” Carlyle said.

  “You shut them down,” I said. He shook his head.

  “They’re too powerful to just flick off like a light switch. They were powering down when he detonated.”

  “Will they blow?”

  “Sykes planned to set off a chain reaction and take out a good chunk of the city, along with all of us. The reaction should only be strong enough now to take out the lab.”

  I turned away from him for a half second but felt a sharp stab in my side. My muscles seized and I collapsed.

  “But we’re
leaving before that happens.” Carlyle bent down and tried to heft me. “Word to the wise: You should never trust a man willing to do anything to get what he wants.”

  “I never did,” Sykes said, and lunged at Carlyle. He knocked him over and I hit the ground hard. He must have hit me with another Taser but already I was regaining feeling in my limbs.

  Sykes jumped at Carlyle again, and they both hit the ground. Sykes rolled off the edge and managed to catch the lip before he fell.

  Get up, I told myself. Get up now. Now! Just as Carlyle held the gun up to Sykes’ head I lashed out. My foot caught his wrist and snapped it. The gun went flying.

  Far, far behind us, deep in the darkness of the back of the lab, something exploded. It was distant at first, but grew louder by the second. Carlyle looked behind him, terrified. He began backing away, towards the lab’s exit.

  “I’ll find you again, Phantom.”

  Then he ran.

  I looked down at Sykes, still hanging by his fingertips. Flames from the floor licked at his feet.

  “You’re welcome, Drake,” Sykes said.

  His eyes clouded as though in peaceful bliss. His face was half lit by flames and the other in darkness and then his expression changed to that of someone who had reached the end of his life and did not find what he was expecting.

  He fell.

  I watched his body hit the ground and the flames close in. I wanted to leave, to let him burn and blow up with the rest of Project Midnight.

  But…

  There was still something left of him, however small. I had seen it in his face for only a moment. And no matter how much he’d done and how much I hated him and what he stood for, I couldn’t watch him die. He would face justice, but not this way.

  I leapt down after.

  The heat was almost unbearable. I’m sure without my suit I would have roasted alive.

  Sykes’ ripped and scarred chest still moved up and down. I hefted him up and started dragging him towards the exit. Almost nothing remained of the lab, and what did was slowly being devoured by flames.

  It was all being destroyed, Project Midnight. It was what I wanted.

  Wasn’t it? The man I was carrying was me in the worst way. But still I pitied him. Call it naivety or ignorance, but I wanted to believe there was something good in him still, no matter how deep it was buried, no matter how much he had done, just as I had tried to do with Carlyle. Was I an idiot for trying to save him, too?