We edged forward for a better look round the corner. The office lay on the other side of the corridor behind a large window. A solitary guard sat with his elbows propped on a desk, helmeted head in his hands, intently studying something I couldn’t make out from here. Behind him on the wall was a keyholder in the shape of the TARDIS. It was very cool and I immediately wanted one for my bedroom.
“The lift key must be up there,” I said. “We need to distract the guard. What’s he doing?”
“I think he’s reading a comic,” said Lara, squinting.
“Then I have an idea. There is one thing a true comic book fan cannot ignore,” I said darkly.
“No,” hissed Serge from behind the corner, realising what I was about to unleash. “You cannot. Must not.”
“We have no other option. I’m sorry.” I steered Lara into the corridor, in full view of the security guard. “Remember our bus journey to Christopher Talbot’s house? When I taught you about superheroes?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“You’re going to have to use all your training.”
“But we only got up to ‘C’.”
I prayed that it would be enough. “I have a question for you,” I said.
Lara braced herself. “Who would win,” I asked slowly and loudly, “in a fight between Batman and Superman?”
I searched her face, willing her to come up with a convincing answer. It was possible that at that moment the fate of two worlds hung on Lara’s knowledge of superheroes.
“Well,” she began hesitantly, “Batman has martial arts training and … and gadgets and stuff.” Her answer gathered pace as she grew in confidence. “But Superman has super-strength and heat vision and can fly. So, it’s obvious. The answer is Superman.”
“Wrong!” the comic-reading security guard bellowed. As I’d suspected, at the first sniff of the question he had leapt from his seat and stormed into the corridor.
I sent a furtive nod in Serge’s direction. He slipped past the guard and stealthily made his way towards the empty office.
As the guard bellied along the passage he launched into his answer to the eternal question, punctuating it with prods of his finger, backing Lara and me against the wall as he talked without taking a breath. “As Frank Miller demonstrated in his seminal work, the four-issue miniseries released in 1986, The Dark Knight Returns, when the US government send Superman to—” he formed air quotes with his fingers “–‘remove the Batman,’ it is ultimately the Batman who emerges victorious from their epic encounter in Crime Alley. Even if he had to fake a heart attack and get Green Arrow aka Oliver Queen to shoot the Man of Steel with a Kryptonite-tipped arrow.” Sweat poured off his forehead and his chest rose and fell like a bullfrog’s. We smiled up at him politely.
Serge strolled past with a wink and quickly opened and closed his hand, flashing the key.
Two minutes later we were back at the lift.
I glanced at the digital countdown displayed on the inside of the volcano walls. It had taken us almost fifteen minutes to find the key and we were running out of time. I turned to Serge. When we’d planned the mission, each of us had taken on a role that suited our particular abilities. I was in charge of planning and tactics. Lara was responsible for investigation and leadership under pressure. Serge was given a task that suited his expertise.
“The vending machine is on the fourth floor,” I said. “You know what to do.”
Serge nodded gravely, took a firm grip on my hand and shook it, and then did the same with Lara’s, before kissing her cheeks, as usual. We were going our separate ways – the next time we’d all be together again the fate of the worlds would be decided.
“Do not forget this.” He presented me with his Chitauri broom-handle sceptre. “Bon chance, mes amis,” he said and, whipping his dressing-gown about him, slipped through the door into the stairwell.
Lara stepped inside the lift, slid the key into the panel and turned it sharply. “Seventh floor, here we come.” Almost instantly we began to move. She frowned. “What’s happening?”
“We’re going down,” I said. “We have to go up to the crater. That’s where they’re holding Zack. Turn the key the other way.”
The lift kept going down. The numbers on the control panel lit up in sequence and there was a ping as we dropped through each floor. And when we reached the ground floor the lift continued to fall.
31
ORIGIN STORIES
We were spewed out in a rocky chamber deep inside the volcano. Next to the lift we’d arrived in was a second shaft and another set of doors. Lara stood in front of them. “Maybe this lift goes to the crater,” she said, but despite a careful search we could find no button to gain access. “It must be controlled from somewhere else,” she said, slapping the metal doors with frustration.
I felt the cold fingers of a current of air on my neck and turned round. A high archway was cut into the solid rock; twice as tall as a man, it was fit for a giant. “Maybe in here,” I said.
Listening to the low moan of the draught we made our way beneath the arch. It was hard to judge the size of the dim chamber beyond, but our voices were swallowed by the shadows and returned to us as faint echoes.
“This isn’t on the plans,” said Lara quietly.
Black walls sprang from the floor, arching to form a curved roof from which clusters of stalactites hung like fangs. The stalactites were edged with faint light radiating from a bank of computer monitors on the opposite side of the room. From there came the soft whirr of air-conditioning units and the chirp of spinning hard drives. I slipped the backpack from my shoulders, the plates inside chinking against each other as they settled on the rough flagstone floor, and leaned Serge’s sceptre up against the wall.
“Over there,” whispered Lara, pointing to a figure in the shadows. “I don’t think he’s seen us.” Something about the size of the figure and how still it stood made me suspicious. I crept over and saw that it was the powered suit Christopher Talbot had worn when he’d kidnapped Zack. Above it on the bare wall were blueprints for a variety of different exosuit designs.
“Lockheed Martin, NASA, Nuytco Research Ltd,” I read. The plans were a mixture of other companies’ designs and Christopher Talbot’s own. He must have stolen them. A glance at the specifications told me that these were far more advanced than the suit we’d already encountered. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I began to make out other shapes in the darkness. Parked in front of a slab-sided section of wall sat the low-slung people-carrier that had spirited away my brother. On the other side of the vehicle lay a row of wooden cases with glass tops, the kind you’d find in a museum. There was a task light set above each case. I switched on the nearest and light spilled on to the contents. Rocks. Dozens of them, each labelled with a date and a location.
“Sahara Desert, 1989,” I read the label attached to a brown and grey rock the size of a fist. My eyes moved to the next one, a lump of smooth metal that might have sheared off the Silver Surfer. “Antarctica,” I read. “Mount Yamamoto, 1969.”
“Meteorites,” said Lara, and I agreed with a nod. Before I could speculate further on the reason for their presence there was a “cluck” from the semi-darkness. I spun round. Ranged along the opposite wall was a series of glass boxes. They were stacked one on top of the other, all the way to the ceiling, and ran the whole length of the chamber. There had to be hundreds of them, and all were occupied. Spiders, scorpions, beetles, fire-engine-red ants wiggling their antennae – each was home to a single creature. The cluck had come from further along where a slightly surprised-looking chicken tapped its beak against the inside of its glass cell. I took a step closer and Lara held me back with an out-thrust arm.
“Be careful.” She cast her eyes up to a sign on the wall. I recognised it instantly. Familiar from all those post-apocalyptic videogames, it was the three-leafed shape of a radiation hazard symbol. “What’s going on here?” she asked warily. “Are these things …” she hesitated, horrified at
the thought, “radioactive?”
“I think this is some kind of laboratory.” I had an inkling of an explanation, but it was so fantastic I didn’t want to speak it aloud. I crossed to the bank of computers and sat down. Screensavers displaying panels from dozens of different comics shimmered across multiple monitors. There was a touchpad beside a keyboard. I woke the computers with a light press and inspected the home screen that bloomed into life.
“What are you looking for?” asked Lara, standing at my shoulder.
“Lift controls. I think you’re right about that other lift – it must go to the crater level.” I scanned the icons dotted across the screen. “Roof Operation, Flight Systems…” I paused. “Flight Systems? Why does he need those?”
Lara didn’t share my curiosity. “What about this one?” She indicated a folder marked “ELEVATION”.
That seemed more promising. I clicked open the folder to find hundreds of video files, many dating back several years. The latest was from just a few days ago.
“Maybe there’s a video on how to operate the elevator,” Lara suggested.
I clicked on one. An image of a figure in a bulky hazardous-material suit appeared on the screen. It was Christopher Talbot. He stared down the lens of the camera. “December 16, the ‘Elevation’ experiment begins,” he said, turning away to reveal the rows of glass cases. “Test subject number one.” He opened the nearest case and reached in. When he withdrew his hand, squatting on his palm was the fat body of a tarantula. “I have irradiated the arachnid with a combination of radioisotopes cesium-137 and cobalt-60.” He held up his other arm. There was an open flap in the sleeve of the biohazard suit, which displayed a portion of bare forearm. He placed the spider against his skin. “I will now stimulate the test subject in order to produce a defensive reaction.”
“What’s he on about?” asked Lara.
“He wants it to bite him,” I said.
“But why would anyone want a bite from an enormous hairy poisonous spider?”
It was so clear to me now. And so … crazy. Everything I knew about Christopher Talbot, from his love of gadgets to his comic book obsession, led to one bizarre but logical conclusion. “He believes it will give him superpowers,” I said, stunned at what I was witnessing.
There was a sharp cry from the screen. The spider had sunk its fangs into Christopher Talbot’s arm. His face shining with excitement, he presented the bite-mark to the camera. “Stage one complete. Now I await … elevation!”
I stopped the playback and closed the window. We watched a few seconds of the next video to confirm that it was the same. Judging by the number of videos in the folder it appeared that Christopher Talbot had been dosing himself with radioactive insect bites for years in the hope that one of them would give him superpowers.
Lara shook her head in quiet disbelief. “And the meteorites?”
I nodded. “In comics there’s a long tradition of people coming into contact with meteorites and acquiring superpowers.”
In the amazed silence that followed my thoughts fell into place like the last few pieces of my S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier thousand-piece jigsaw. I took a deep breath and said, “He’s planning to do the same thing with Zack.”
“What?” said Lara. “Get him to bite him on the arm?”
That seemed a bit unlikely. “He wants to take Star Lad’s powers,” I said.
“Can he do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But Christopher Talbot’s spent years trying to turn himself into a superhero. Look around you. A secret cave, a modified car, supersoldier armour, a hi-tech computer system, giant video screens, a digital countdown, alien meteorites and radioactive spider bites. It’s like every comic I’ve ever read. But that’s all it’s been – a fantasy. Until Star Lad. Until now Christopher Talbot’s never had a test subject with actual superpowers.” Could he have found a way to take Star Lad’s powers? I scrolled to the latest video file on the list, dated just a few days ago, clicked the file and the video began to play.
“June 13, human test subject number one, stage two,” said Christopher Talbot into the lens. The hazmat suit was gone and instead he wore a regular suit. He stepped aside smartly to give the camera a view of the subject in question.
My brother, Zack, lay pinned to an operating table, his arms and legs secured by metal cuffs. A cap bristling with electrodes was clamped to his head, wires trailing to a machine that I guessed was monitoring his brain activity. He looked fast asleep, but then his eyelids flickered and he let out a moan. He was in pain. Fear gripped me and then I felt a surge of anger. How dare Christopher Talbot do this to my brother.
Zack’s chest was bared and it moved up and down to a ragged rhythm. His star tattoos, which had been cold and dark the last time I saw him, now gave off a weak, irregular glow. Christopher Talbot stood over him. I didn’t recognise their surroundings as the chamber we were currently in – it had to be the crater room.
“I have exposed the subject to ten seconds of star light and, as predicted, the luminosity has partially replenished his superpowers.” He gave a thin smile. “Though he remains too weak to break his titanium bonds. I shall now increase the level of star light.” He moved to a touchscreen and selected a control interface from a menu. From above came the hum of machinery and a low, grinding noise. At the top edge of the screen I could make out the crater roof sliding open to reveal the night sky. With the clouds gone, starlight flooded the crater and Zack’s weakened body. His star tattoo began to glow as his superpowers recharged.
“Initiating superpower acquisition process,” said Talbot, placing a second cap on his own head and carefully positioning electrodes all round his cranium. He flipped a series of switches on the control panel and a flying-saucer-shaped device descended from the ceiling to hover inches above Zack. I glimpsed a set of black blades inside the base of the saucer. “Activating Extract-o-Tron with Turbine Tech, patent pending,” said Talbot, adjusting a central slider and pushing it halfway along its length. The blades began to spin and as the rotation increased they let out a whistle that quickly rose to a howl.
Zack’s body bucked and twisted, his limbs thrown hard against the tight bonds. He let out a cry and slumped back, unconscious. His star tattoo fell dark once more.
A shaken Christopher Talbot clutched the control panel to steady himself. He sniffed the air with increasing alarm. His eyes flicked upwards. The electrodes on his head sputtered with bright-yellow flames. His hair was on fire. He ripped off the cap and made a move towards a fire extinguisher on the wall, but then stopped. He stood perfectly still, extended a hand and wiggled his fingers. With a shimmy and a clank the fire extinguisher leapt free from its bracket and flew across the room to land with a slap in his outstretched hand. It was telekinesis. Christopher Talbot began to laugh. Even as he shot a stream of foam into his own face, he continued to hoot with pleasure. “Finally!” he gloated in triumph to the camera. “I. Have. Superpowers!”
He’d done it. Christopher Talbot had successfully transferred Zack’s powers into himself. But I didn’t care about that. I couldn’t get over the image of my brother laid out on the operating table and the sound of his agonised yell.
“We have to get to the crater. Now,” I said. The digital countdown projected on to the walls in the rest of the volcano was displayed on the computer monitors. Its glowing red numerals ran down towards zero hour. We had one hour and thirteen minutes. And counting.
I searched the computer again and this time found an icon marked “Building Systems”. The lift controls were in here and they weren’t too hard to figure out. There was a click from the darkness. And another. And then a cascade of clicking filled the still air of the laboratory, the sound receding into the shadows like an echo.
“That doesn’t sound like a lift to me,” said Lara warily.
“Ah,” I said, staring at the display on the screen, recognising my error.
She folded her arms. “What did you do?”
I gave her
an apologetic look and we both turned slowly to face the banks of glass boxes arranged against the far wall. The door to each compartment lay wide open. Instead of calling the lift I had unlocked all the cells – and the prisoners weren’t wasting their time.
“Luke.” I could hear the dread in Lara’s voice. “The floor’s moving.”
A mass of glossy, hairy black bodies poured from the cases and flowed across the stone floor, chittering and hissing.
Lara’s face froze in horror. “I know why the chicken’s here,” she said, lifting a trembling finger to point. “Food.”
A monstrous spider lumbered out of the shadows of a nightmare, a single chicken feather poking from its glistening black maw.
Without pausing, Lara unhooked her skipping rope from its place on her waist, swallowed hard and marched towards the onrushing horde. She crouched down and swished the rope, scattering them aside by the dozen. But for every squirming, scuttling collection of bodies that she cleared, another took its place. “Luke, is the lift coming?”
“I’m working on it.” My fingers flew across the keyboard as I searched the Building Control interface. Got to focus. Ignore the seething horde of radioactive spiders, scorpions and ants about to sink their fangs and pincers into our soft flesh. Heating. Nope. I switched to the next screen. Security. Uh-uh. Come on, lift, where are you?
Lara’s brave effort to hold off the insects was over. Ants and scorpions surged around her feet and, with a yell, she beat a hasty retreat.
I flipped to the next screen. Transport! “Got it!” I shouted.
The spiders had reached the workstation. They pattered over the desk, swarmed the monitors and clacked across the keyboard.
I felt the brush of a hairy leg as with a trembling hand I tapped the touchpad and called the lift marked “Crater Level Only”. I jumped up from my seat. “Lara, come on. We’re leaving.”
We raced towards the archway, a step ahead of the writhing black mass.
My Brother is a Superhero Page 15