by Dee J. Stone
The other heroes, Samson’s agents, try to battle them, too. The Blades are, like, nearly indestructible. And there are so many, shooting all kinds of things at them—fire, ice, spikes, lava. Some have super strength like Stone. Their martial arts kick ass.
“Let’s go!” X jumps into the fight.
“What?!” I yelp.
“They’re getting slaughtered out there,” Kale says.
I watch the action. He’s right. The Blades are owning our League mates. I don’t know if they’ll survive.
A Blade slams Shifter against the wall, lifting him a few feet. I can’t see the Blade’s eyes well, but I bet they’re filled with murder.
I glance around for someone to help him. Kale’s behind a mailbox, narrowing his eyes at the enemy. X fights the guy who can shoot spikes. I can’t let Shifter die.
Taking in a deep breath, I stretch my leg and give the Blade a hard kick. He looks around and when he sees me, he drops Shifter and charges toward me. Oh, crap.
I curl myself into a ball and roll under the dumpster. The Blade flips it over and glares down at me.
I’m shaking so hard and feel sweat all over my body. I slowly get to my feet to meet the Blade’s eye. Laughing evilly, he raises his hand to punch me. I flee from his path, yelling at the top of my lungs. All I need to do is get him to run faster, then my plan should work.
He chases me like a bull. I turn around, make my arms long, and wrap them around his feet. He trips and collides into a fence surrounding the building. The bars go through him.
Dude, I killed him.
“Boys!” Samson yells. I’m thrown against the wall of the building, not hard enough to hurt. I try to move, but I’m frozen in place. Like I’m glued to the wall. X and Kale are right beside me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
But he can’t yell at us for too long. A Blade comes at him, and he drops us in order to attack.
The guys and I slide to the ground. “Are we winning?” I ask, scanning around.
“No,” Kale says. “They’re too strong. But I’ve got an idea. You guys keep fighting. I’m going to find my mom.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
He waves his hand and dashes to Cindy, who seems to be weakening as she tries to attack the villains’ minds. He crouches down near her and tells her something.
A Blade is running around one of Samson’s female agents at a fast speed. Since he’s going so fast, she doesn’t know where to hit. I move closer and stretch my leg to trip the Blade. He slams to the ground, and the woman crushes her fist into the side of his head. I hear the sound of bones breaking.
“Hey,” she says. “Thanks for that.”
“N-no problem!”
I’m so pumped up I want to do it again. A female Blade marches toward X, who’s backing away. Something is wrong with his left arm. It’s twisted. The female Blade’s got such huge muscles that would make any man run for the hills. She can snap X in half like a toothpick. I tiptoe behind her and wrap my arms around her nose and mouth.
She thrashes, trying to push me off. I fly toward the building. But I don’t smash into the wall—someone catches me midair. Samson. He slowly lowers me to the ground with one hand as he presses a villain against the building with the other.
Muscle Blade is about to stomp on X, when she drops to the ground. She’s not the only one. One by one, the Blades collapse, until there are none left standing. Kale and his mom step toward us. “We merged our telepathic attacks,” Cindy explains. “We couldn’t damage their brains individually but together, we’ve succeeded.” She ruffles Kale’s hair. “It was Kale’s idea.” She kisses his cheek.
He pulls off. “Geez, Mom.”
“Are these ShadowBlades dead?” Samson asks. He’s covered in scratches and bruises. So is everyone else. Some are bleeding and holding their aching limbs.
Cindy nods. “Our pooled energy was stronger than I anticipated. All the villains are dead except for that one.” She points to the side, where a Blade is on his knees, clutching his head.
“Keep him alive,” Samson says. “We can use him for hostage negotiations to free Lindsay.” He turns to Stone and a few of his agents. “Let’s go inside to check for more ShadowBlades. I highly doubt Vlayne’s in there. Cindy, stay behind with the Blade and make sure he doesn’t escape.” His eyes flash to us. “You three—stay put.”
“No one’s in there,” X says, clutching his arm to his chest. “Place is deserted.”
“Are you sure?”
“I checked every inch thoroughly.”
Samson’s face falls.
“And Lindsay?” Kale asks.
X checks the place one more time before he says in a low voice, “No one.”
Kale swallows. Hard.
Samson thrusts his palm toward the nearly-dead Blade and yanks him closer. The Blade moans as Samson twists his arms around each other, locking them together so he can’t move. He’s lying on the ground, writhing in agony. Cindy steps closer to him.
“Can I help, Mom?” Kale asks.
“You boys have done enough,” Samson snaps. “How could you defy me after I specifically told you that you were not to join this mission?”
“Sorry, Dad, but you guys weren’t exactly winning...”
“You’d be dead without us,” X says.
Samson’s face reddens with anger. Cindy places her hand on his chest to relax him. “We can argue later. Right now, we need to probe this villain’s mind to learn Vlayne’s location. And I’d like Kale to help me.”
Smiling the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on his face, Kale joins his mom near the Blade. They touch each side of his face and shut their eyes. Cindy frowns while Kale’s mouth is wide. The Blade’s mind is probably protected by Vlayne, but maybe the two of them are strong enough to break it down to get to the information.
The guy’s shouts are so loud I bet aliens can hear it all the way on Jupiter. His eyes look like they might pop out. Blood oozes from his ears and nose. A second later, his head rolls back and his body falls limp.
Kale and his mom remove their hands from his head. “He’s dead,” Cindy says. “But we weren’t responsible for that. He had a good few minutes left.” She gets up. “It was Vlayne. She killed him so we wouldn’t learn their secrets or location.”
“That leaves us with nothing,” Samson says. “We have no means to free Lindsay or save the humans.”
Cindy presses her lips together, shaking her head. Kale drops to the floor, grabbing the sides of his head. Cindy squeezes his shoulder. “We’ll find her, sweetie. We will.”
He doesn’t say anything.
Samson marches around, muttering under his breath. Everything he passes either lifts off the ground or snaps in half. The fire hydrant cracks off, making water spray everywhere.
“We need to relax, Sam,” Cindy says. “We’ll figure it out.”
He sighs, and all the stuff in the air falls back into place. Some topple over. The hydrant rolls around. “All right.” He turns to Regina. “Do you have enough strength to teleport us back home?”
“I can only teleport once,” she says. “I can’t transport everyone individually. You’ll need to grab on to me, or on to each other.”
I wrap my hand around her leg, and the guys hold my hands. When we make it back home, Samson tells us to go to the hospital. It’s not really a hospital, but a room for the sick and injured.
One of Samson’s people, who can heal small wounds, tends to us. As he does that, Samson wastes no time humiliating us in front of everyone.
“Never.” He marches around. “I don’t want the three of you to do something like that ever again. Do you understand me?”
“Dad—”
“Do you?”
Kale hangs his head as the doctor or nurse or whoever he is dabs some alcohol on a tiny cut on his forehead. X winces.
I don’t have any wounds, but X does. The doctor presses his fingers into X’s arm for a few seconds. “All healed,” he s
ays.
“Thanks.”
“I want you to know that I am proud of your bravery,” Samson says. “But this is the last time you defy me.”
“You guys could have died,” Kale mutters.
“The last time.”
“Okay, Dad. Geez.”
Why do I get the feeling it’s not?
Chapter Twenty-One
I’m falling through a black hole. It’s so deep it feels like it’ll never end. But it does, and I find myself kissing the carpeted floor. I sit up. I’m in the dining room of the Tower. Everyone’s here, celebrating something. Kale’s at the head of the table, making a toast.
“Andrew?” Someone runs into my arms. It’s Mom. She holds on to me, whispering things I can’t hear. Arms come over us. Dad. He buries his face in my hair, muttering over and over that this can’t be true.
Mom pulls away and takes my face in her hands. Tears run down her cheeks. The next second, I’m six years old, sitting in bed with her. She’s reading bedtime stories to me. We make the sounds of all the animals together.
“I miss you, Mom,” I tell her. “Wish I could see you again.”
She looks at me like she has no idea what I’m saying. Before she can respond, the room gets blurry. The next minute, I’m flying through the sky before landing hard on the floor.
Opening my eyes, I find myself back in my room. On the floor with my blanket wrapped around my feet. I scratch my neck. That dream…it felt so real, like my dream with Furball.
When will I see my folks again?
Going after the Blades was a bust. We still don’t know how to remove Vlayne’s hold on the humans. Does that mean they’ll die? That we won’t be able to clear our names and get my parents back? Samson, Cindy, and the others have been in the conference room all evening, trying to come up with a solution. They wouldn’t discuss it with us, of course, but X caught most of it. Samson’s really panicking. He’s got no clue what to do.
There has to be something.
I’m not going to fall back asleep. Thinking of my parents creates a hole in my stomach. I go to the kitchen, grab a bottle of water, and sit down at the table. I don’t turn on the lights. All I’m thinking about is my parents and the antidote and Vlayne. I know there’s no way of knowing if Mom and Dad are okay. Samson told us he spoke to his undercover people and they said they’re safe, but what if they’re lying to him? He hasn’t seen for himself, so I don’t want to fill myself with all this hope. But I don’t want to think the worst, either.
“Stretch?” a voice says from across the kitchen. Squinting through the darkness, I make out Furball standing near the entryway. She’s actually talking to me?
“Y-yeah, hi!”
She moves toward the table. “What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep. You?”
She pours herself some juice and sits down near me. “I can’t sleep, either.”
I’m curious why, but she still hates my guts, so I’d better be quiet.
We sit in silence, slurping our drinks. I’m still thinking about my parents. Of Mom and her big smile and awesome spaghetti. The way she yelled at me for causing trouble, but really she’d smile when no one was looking. And the way Dad would snack on extra food behind Mom’s back. How he’d take me outside at night to see the stars.
“Are you okay?”
I sniff. Oh, man. I’m crying. I don’t want to cry in front of Furball. “Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
I don’t want to lie to her. “No. I’m not. I’m worried about my parents.”
“I’m sorry. Didn’t Samson say they’re okay?”
“I guess. I keep having dreams about them. And they feel so real. Like I’m actually there. It sucks. I miss them.” I rub my eyes. I’m not sure if it’s tears or allergies that’s making them itchy.
She rests her hand on my arm.
My nose gets tingly and I sneeze on her. Damn it. “S-sorry!”
“It’s okay.” She removes her hand.
We continue drinking in silence.
“Stretch?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for always being rude to you.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I’m not…I’m not ready to talk about it yet. But I just wanted you to know that I feel horrible about it.”
I nod.
“But there’s something I want to tell you.” She takes in a deep breath. “It’s going to sound crazy, but I’ve been losing sleep over it and I want to tell you. I’ve had a lot of dreams these past few days…about you. They helped me move on. If not for them, I don’t know if I would have survived. I couldn’t even shift into my tiger, only a stupid cat, because I was so scared. I can only turn into a tiger form when I’m aggressive and strong-willed. But I was just so scared I couldn’t do it.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t find you sooner.”
“It’s okay. You did at the end, though. It was because of that dream that I knew where to find you. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Very weird.”
“And so were my other dreams of you. One was where we were pirates on ships, racing each other and throwing canons to blow the other one up. Another one was where we were in a simulation back at the League and we had to grab Vlayne’s head…” She laughs a little. “They were so much fun. I thought about how much I wanted to see you. And everyone else. I want us to be a League again.”
I try not to gape at her. I also had those dreams. Does this mean we had the exact same dreams? That’s impossible. The only way this can make sense is if one of us entered the other one’s dream. I nearly choke on my water. Is that what’s going on here?
“Stretch? You okay?”
“Yeah. At the end of the dreams, did it get blurry for you? Fuzzy? Like you were underwater?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason.”
Does this mean I was the one who entered her dreams? But how can I do that? I don’t want to ask her about it, because if it’s true, I don’t want to freak her out.
Furball squeezes my shoulder. “Your parents are going to be okay.” She gives me a small smile.
“Thanks.”
Quiet.
“I heard a little bit about the humans not taking the antidote,” she says. “Is that true? What’s going to happen?”
I sit back and run my fingers along my water bottle. “No clue. Samson and Cindy are stumped. It sucks.”
“Yeah. Totally sucks.”
We’re quiet again.
“They’ll find a way,” Furball says. “They always do.”
I hope she’s right.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I throw open the door to my room. “Dudes! Something’s seriously wrong with me.”
Kale and X shift in their beds. Kale sits up, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. I need to tell you guys something important.” I turn on the light
“Geez, Stretch,” Kale mumbles, covering his eyes.
“What’s going on?” X asks.
I sit down on my bed and play with my fingers. They’re going to think it’s crazy. “You know how Furball found this place? Because she said I told her in her dream?”
They nod.
“Well…I really did. I went into her dream.”
Their eyebrows scrunch.
“Like, I traveled or something.”
“What the heck?” Kale asks. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. Each time, I’m falling through this black hole. Then I end up in a dream. Then the place gets blurry and I fly out and wake up. I asked Furball about the blurry stuff and she said it didn’t happen to her. That must mean I’m the one traveling.”
They don’t say anything. They look confused.
“And it happened more than once,” I continue. “For the past few days, I dreamed about her. And just now, she told me she dreamed about me, too. They were exactly the same. Dudes, I’m telling you. I went inside her drea
m.” I sit up as something hits me. “I must be going into my parents’ dreams, too. I can’t ask them about it, since they’re not here, but if I went into Furball’s then I must have gone into theirs.” That means they’re alive.
X rubs his chin. “You’ve never done it before?”
“Nope.”
“Hmm. I think your resurrection gave you a new power.”
“What?”
Kale lifts an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
X shrugs. “This started happening to him once he came back from the dead.” He turns to me. “I think you got a new power.”
“Yeah,” Kale says. “It’s like you were reborn. So you got a new ability.”
My legs slope down the bed and to the floor. “Man, why did I have to get such a dumb one? I shouldn’t go into people’s dreams. It’s not right.”
Kale says, “You need to be blocked. Maybe Furball can try to block you out. Or maybe you can learn to control it or something.”
“Yeah, I should probably talk to her about it. It’s not right to keep something like this from her.”
Kale nods. “But not now. She’s sleeping.”
“And I should probably talk to Samson and Cindy about it.”
X waves his hand. “They have too much going on to worry about this right now.”
I guess he’s right. I don’t want to bother them with my useless ability.
“Do you want to test it?” Kale asks.
“Okay. How?”
“Go into my dream.”
Um…do I really wanna know what my best friend dreams about? “You sure that’s a good idea?”
He shrugs. “You want to make sure you really can go into dreams or not?” He points his thumb to X. “Unless you’d rather go into his dream.”
I look at X, who’s got his arms crossed as he stares at the wall. A chill passes down my back just thinking about it. “No…I think I’d have nightmares going to into X’s dreams. No offense, dude.”
X rolls his shoulders. “I don’t blame you.”
“Okay, let’s do this.” Kale turns to X. “You okay?”