by Lucas Flint
I looked at Malcolm. “Yeah, this is where we'll split up.”
“Okay,” said Malcolm. “Do you know when you'll come back to school?”
I shook my head again. “No idea. It all depends on how quickly I find Master Chaos. I don't think he should be hard to find, but you never know. He's been in hiding from the NHA and the G-Men for weeks now and they still aren't any closer to finding him than when he first broke out.”
“But he'll come after you,” said Malcolm. “Can you beat him?”
I shrugged. “I don't know. I'm going to try my best, but it is possible Master Chaos could kill me, so this might be the last time we see each other.”
“Well, I'll be praying for you, then, Kev,” said Malcolm. He grasped my hand and we shook. “See you later and good luck with taking him down once and for all.”
I nodded in return. Then I ran down the left hall, without looking back at Malcolm, because I didn't want to let any second thoughts keeping me from doing what I needed to do.
-
I reached the roof of the school without any trouble, although the door was locked with a thick padlock, which immediately snapped from one quick blow from my fist. Opening the door, I stepped out onto the roof and looked around quickly, just to make sure that I was actually alone. I didn't see any G-Men nearby, so I carefully walked over to the edge of the roof and peered over at the entrance below.
Black Gold and Iron Horn still stood there, their arms folded behind their backs and their eyes fixed on the street in front of the school. They were talking to each other, something about last night's football game or something. Neither of them seemed to notice or hear me moving along the rooftop, but I pulled away from the edge anyway and sat down to make sure they couldn't see me.
I pulled out my phone and quickly texted Malcolm a short message: I'm on the roof. Start.
I received a short message back: All right.
Then I heard the doors of the school open and, glancing over the edge of the roof, I saw Malcolm walk out of the school. But neither Black Gold nor Iron Horn paid him any attention until he walked quite intentionally into Iron Horn, causing Iron Horn to whirl around, raising his fists like he thought he was under attack.
Black Gold caught Iron Horn's arm before he could smash Malcolm into pieces and said, “Whoa, Captain, watch out! He's one of the students here. Looked like he walked into you by accident. No need to turn him into paste.”
Iron Horn relaxed, lowering his large fists, but Malcolm continued to cower beneath him. I wanted to say that Malcolm was acting, but frankly it looked to me like Malcolm was truly afraid of Iron Horn. Not that I blamed him; Iron Horn looked like he was chiseled out of marble.
But the two G-Men were clearly distracted, so I pulled back again, crawled a little ways away from the roof, and then pressed the button on my suit-up watch. My suit shot out and in a second I was suited up again and ready to fly.
Standing up, I looked up at the sky, preparing to take off, when, without warning, a voice behind me said, “Where do you think you're going?”
I looked over my shoulder and saw a woman standing inside the door in the roof that led to the school's interior. She had extremely pale skin and very dark hair. She didn't look much older than me—maybe in her late teens or early twenties—but her short hairstyle looked really old-fashioned.
But what really stood out to me was her clothes. She wore a G-Men uniform, complete with the patch on her right shoulder. That meant that she was a G-Man, but I didn't recognize her at all, though that wasn't saying much, because I didn't know who most of the G-Men were.
“Who are you?” I said, turning to face her. “And where did you come from? I thought the government only sent two agents to protect he school.”
“Call me Shade,” said the woman. “I'm a new agent, having just signed up two months ago. As for what I'm doing here, did you really think that the government would only send two agents to protect a school from Master Chaos himself? Black Gold and Iron Horn are strong, but they couldn't beat Chaos by themselves.”
I stepped backwards. I intended to just fly away and leave this woman behind, but something about her voice made it hard for me to ignore her. I noticed that her shoes seemed to blend in with the shadows, which looked weird, almost like she didn't have feet at all.
“Shade, huh?” I said. I immediately touched my face. “Did you see me suit-up?”
“Sadly, no,” said Shade, shaking her head. “I was doing my rounds and came up here just when you put your suit on. That was your work, I presume?”
“Yes,” I said. “I don't know if you recognize me, but I'm Bolt.”
“I know all about you,” said Shade. “I did my research on Silvers before I was assigned to this place. You're the new kid in town, aren't you?”
I didn't like an established superhero calling me the 'new kid,' because it reminded me too much of Robert, so I said, “Yeah. What about you? What kind of powers do you have?”
Shade chuckled. “Do you really think I'm just going to tell you? You really must be new, because you don't just reveal your powers to whoever asks, especially if they're a stranger or enemy.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Let me guess based on your code name, then. You can control shadow, right?”
“Good guess,” said Shade, which I noticed wasn't an affirmation or a denial. “But I have other powers, too, though I'll let you find out about them yourself rather than tell you. It's a lot more fun that way.”
The way she used the word 'fun' made me uncomfortable, so I said, “Listen, Shade, I don't want to waste time talking with you. I'm trying to leave the school and stop Master Chaos, so if you would just let me leave, that would be great.”
“Sorry, but I can't 'just let you leave,'” said Shade, shaking her head. “Director Smith gave us orders to make sure that no one leaves the school without our knowledge. And Director Smith isn't very tolerant of agents who don't follow orders, so I'm going to have to stop you.”
I sighed. “I don't want to fight you. I don't really know what your powers are, but I doubt you have super strength. If I hit you, I'll probably end up hurting you or even killing you. Trust me, lady, we'd both be better off if we didn't fight.”
“I don't need super strength to hold you down,” said Shade. She smirked. “Look at your feet.”
I looked down at my feet and was surprised to see that they were covered in shadow. I tried lifting my right foot up, but the shadow was like really sticky glue; I couldn't raise my foot even one inch.
I looked up at Shade again, who was still smirking. “What's going on? Why can't I move?”
“It's one of my powers,” said Shade. “You guessed correctly that I can control shadow. What you didn't guess, however, is that I can use my shadow to hold down anyone I want. You can't use your super strength to break it, either, because unlike, say, chains or rope, shadow can't be snapped or broken.”
I tried to prove her wrong by accessing my super strength and yanking my feet out of the shadows, but the shadow was as stubborn as a rock. I struggled, but the shadow didn't even budge.
“You really shouldn't strain yourself,” said Shade, causing me to look up at her. “Just take it easy while I go get Black Gold and Iron Horn. They'll be so jealous when they see that I didn't let myself get distracted by some silly kid.”
“You have to let me go,” I said. I gestured at the sky. “I have to stop Master Chaos. I'm the only one who can.”
“And you have a messiah complex, too,” Shade observed. “I'm not sure if that is a super power or not, though, since most neoheroes tend to have it.”
“It's not a messiah complex,” I said. “Master Chaos is after me, so I'm going to meet him on my own terms. It's the only way to keep my friends and family safe.”
“Oh, right,” said Shade. “I heard Master Chaos tried to kill you with one of the military weapons he stole. But really, defeating Master Chaos isn't your responsibility. You should leave that to the adults.”
I shook my head. “No. It's my duty to stop him.”
“Why?” said Shade. “It's not like you let him out of Ultimate Max or anything. I'll let you go back to lunch if you promise not to run away and try to track down Master Chaos on your own.”
I gritted my teeth. I wasn't going to reveal my secret identity to this woman now. But I still needed to escape. How?
Super strength didn't work, and I had a feeling that flight wouldn't do anything for me, either. That left me with no options, no options except for one: Super speed, perhaps the only power I hadn't actually mastered or even practiced yet. I wanted to, but Dad had insisted on using super strength and flight first.
The problem was that I didn't really know how to use my super speed due to my lack of training. I figured it probably worked the same way as my other powers, so I closed my eyes and started imagining myself running as fast as possible. It was pretty easy to do, because I had already seen online videos of other neoheroes who could run fast, but I didn't know if accessing my own super speed would be as easy as learning how to fly or using my super strength was.
Then I felt something in my legs. I opened my eyes and looked at my legs, which were starting to move, but were not yet free of this shadow. Still, I could tell that if I just kept it up, I might free myself.
I looked up at Shade, expecting her to notice me trying to escape, but instead she seemed focused on her communicator. It sounded like she was telling Black Gold and Iron Horn to get here, which made me want to leave even faster.
I tugged at the shadow holding me down. I wish I understood how it even worked, but I guess it didn't matter. I could feel my legs getting stronger and faster. Although the shadow was still thick and heavy, I could feel it becoming lighter and I knew I could escape as long as I kept it up.
“You've gone awfully quiet,” said Shade suddenly, causing me to look at her again. “Don't have anything else to say to me?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Because I'm going to be getting out of here pretty soon and don't want to waste any time talking with you.”
“How do you plan to do that?” said Shade, folding her arms over her chest. “Are you going to convince me to let you go?”
Again, I shook my head. I glanced at my legs, which were getting faster and faster as I pulled more and more at the shadow clinging to my feet. “Nah. I'm just going to free myself.”
“Impossible,” said Shade. “No one can escape my shadow without my permission or without light powers. Besides, Black Gold and Iron Horn should be here soon, so you don't have the time to escape.”
“Tell yourself that all you like, lady, but it isn't going to help,” I said. My legs were now moving up and down so rapidly that I could barely even see them.
Shade finally seemed to notice my rapidly moving legs, because her eyes focused on them for a second before she looked back up at my face. “What are you doing? Using your super strength?”
I grinned. I could actually feel the shadow starting to become less clingy, which meant that any second now I would be free. “Well, I'm just taking your advice: Never reveal your powers to a stranger or an enemy. And right now, I'd say you count as both.”
Shade stepped forward, but she was too late. I immediately jumped upwards, using my super speed to give me an extra boost. The shadow clung to my legs like slime, but I activated my flight powers and shot into the sky as fast as I could. The shadow actually snapped around my feet, sending me hurtling into the sky almost faster than I could control myself.
Nonetheless, I regained control of my trajectory and flew as far and fast from the school as I possibly could. I glanced over my shoulder to see Black Gold and Iron Horn burst onto the school roof. Like Shade, they were staring up at me in surprise, but they were too far away to catch me now.
And I wasn't going to let them. I increased my speed and flew as fast and hard as I could, not caring what direction I was going in. I just wanted to get as far away from John Smith High School as I could. Once I was safely out of their range, I would figure out where to go from there.
Chapter Eighteen
I flew high into the sky, well above the clouds, until soon the earth was no longer visible to me. Even so, I didn't let up on my speed just yet. I kept expecting the G-Men to follow me, even though I knew that none of the G-Men in charge of protecting the school could fly. If any of them could, they would have come after me already.
But flying wasn't as easy as it seemed, so eventually I slowed down to a much more reasonable speed. I looked over my shoulder again, just to be sure that no one was following, and once I saw that I was alone, I started thinking about where I should go now.
My mission hadn't changed: Find Master Chaos and stop him for good before he could harm anyone I cared about. The only problem, of course, was that I didn't know where Master Chaos was. Texas, after all, was a big state. He could be in the Panhandle, in the hill country, at the Gulf, or anywhere else. And I didn't even know Texas all that well, having just moved down here a few weeks ago. I could probably spend days or weeks flying all over the state looking for him. That would just increase the chance that I would be caught by the G-Men or even by Dad, who I knew would probably start searching for me the second he learned of my little escape.
I stopped in midair, thinking about where I needed to go. Assuming Master Chaos was already in Texas—which I considered a safe assumption, because I doubted that his transforming robot would have been able to fly from New York to Texas without being noticed—then Master Chaos was probably already somewhere near Silvers. He could be hiding in the countryside, which would make sense, seeing as there were fewer people out there, but at the same time, that seemed too logical. I bet the G-Men and NHA were already scouring the countryside for him, which would make it a bad place to hide. Besides, Chaos still needed food and other necessities, which are kind of hard to get if you don't make it yourself or live near a town or city that you can buy it from. And if he was in Texas, then he probably also wanted to be near his family.
That was when I realized the most likely location of Master Chaos: Fallsville, where the Fallsville General Hospital—and his son, Robert Candle—was located.
-
Figuring out what direction Fallsville lay in was a difficult task, mostly because my sense of direction in the sky was shot. I had to look up the directions to the city on my suit-up watch, which showed me that it was about a hundred miles north. That might have sounded far away, but when you can fly as fast as a jet, it usually isn't much longer than a car trip to the supermarket.
Within minutes, the city of Fallsville came into view below. It wasn't exactly a huge city, but it was much bigger than Silvers. I saw lots of cars below on the highways and roads around and in the city, but I stayed as high in the sky as I could so I would not be noticed.
The question now was, where should I go? Fallsville may not have been a huge city, but it would still take a long time to search, especially for a villain as crafty and deceptive as Master Chaos. Besides, I wasn't as familiar with Fallsville as I was with Silvers, so I would probably just end up getting lost.
Then I remembered that Robert was still in the Fallsville General Hospital. I considered whether or not I should go and talk with him, because he might know where his father was. Would Robert actually tell me where his father was, though? I doubted it. Robert obviously respected and cared about his father a lot. There was no way he'd tell me, even if he knew where his father was.
But maybe I could get some clues from him anyway. Or maybe I would find some clues in his hospital room that would help me locate Master Chaos. It was the only option I had at this point, so I flew over to the hospital, which was easy to find, because it was one of the largest buildings in the city.
Landing in the back of the hospital, I hid behind the dumpster and sent my suit back into my suit-up watch. Then I peered out from behind the dumpster, searching for anyone who might be nearby, but like on my last trip, the area behind the hospital was
empty.
Sighing in relief, I walked around the hospital to the entrance. I could have tried breaking in again, but without Dad's gear to make that easy, I couldn't risk it. This was a job for Kevin Jason, not Bolt, although I was ready to put my suit on again if necessary.
The lady at the front desk was friendly and told me where Robert's room was after I explained to her that I was a friend from school who wanted to visit him. That was a lie, obviously, but the lady didn't know that, nor did anyone else in the hospital, either. I noticed a hospital security camera in the corner of the lobby, but I didn't think much of it, because I doubted that the security guards watching the camera would know who I was or why I was here.
Soon I entered Robert's room and found myself standing behind the floral curtains between the door and the rest of the room. Then I stopped and listened. I expected Robert to ask me who I was, but I heard nothing, which made me think that Robert might have perhaps gone to use the bathroom or maybe had even been checked out of the hospital already.
Then I heard loud snoring. Pushing aside the curtains between the door and the rest of the room, I saw Robert lying on his bed. He wasn't in his full-body cast anymore, but his arms and legs were still in casts and he looked like he had a long way to go before he was going to recover. His right hand was stuffed into his shirt, probably to keep it warm or something.
Aside from Robert, the room was empty. I walked as silently as I could, looking around the room for anything that might help me find Master Chaos, like a gift with an address on it or something. But the room looked the same as it had the last time I was here, which meant that this trip may have been pointless. But I didn't give up. I walked over to the drawers under the TV and started quietly pulling them open and searching their contents for anything that might help me find Master Chaos's location.
But just as I opened the first drawer, I heard Robert groan behind me, causing me to freeze. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Robert was waking up. He was yawning and his eyes were starting to flicker open, though he didn't seem to be entirely awake just yet.