by Hester, Phil
“Do you see mom?” Fletcher asked.
Josh shook his head as he coughed. She wasn't in the bedroom, and as they searched through the house, they didn’t find her anywhere. The only place they hadn’t looked was under the bus.
The boys made their way back to the living room, afraid of what they would find. The couch was a splintered mess of springs and fabric beneath the bus. Fletcher held up a hand to tell Josh to stay back as he dropped to his knees. He crawled along the ugly carpet, trying not to picture what his mother would look like if he actually found her.
But there was nothing there.
Fletcher heaved a sigh of relief, though he regretted it as soon as his lungs with bus fumes.
"She's not under here," he shouted to his brother.
"Let me see," Josh said, as though he suspected Fletcher might be lying to protect him.
"Go ahead and look," Fletcher repeated, holding up a hand to stop Josh. "But just so you know, the bus driver and a few passengers are still in there."
Josh glanced through one of the shattered windows and retched with his lunch backing up into his mouth. He dashed for the bathroom to throw up.
“Fletcher! Get in here!” Josh shouted.
Fletcher was in no rush to watch is brother puke, but the panic in Josh’s voice drove him to the bathroom in a flash.
Their mother was unconscious on the floor, between the tub and the toilet. Her eyes were glassy and her skin was turning blue.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Fletcher ordered his brother, hooking his arms under his mom’s armpits. “She must have gotten knocked out by the fumes.”
He expected Josh to grab her legs and help carry her, but instead his little brother leaned over the toilet and let loose a torrent of vomit. Fletcher dragged his mother out the front door and onto the landing. He nudged her gently and coaxed her awake with a quiet, “Mom? Mom, wake up.”
When that didn’t get any response, he panicked. He slapped at her cheeks—maybe harder than he’d meant to—and screamed, "Mom! You’ve got to wake up!"
Still, she didn’t so much as twitch.
Josh joined him on the landing, bits of his lunch clinging to his shirt. Josh pinched their mother's nose and covered her mouth with his own, trying to blow life back into her.
"Wake up, Mommy," Fletcher cried into her ear, but no amount of pleading would bring her back.
“It’s not working,” Josh said with tears rolling down his cheeks.
Fletcher laid her head gently in his lap and gently brushed her hair with his fingers, the way she had done to him when he was little. He and Josh each took one of her clammy hands and held them tightly.
Josh took the other hand and let loose a squeal like Fletcher had not heard since Josh was a baby. Because at that moment, the fifteen-year-old Josh really wasn't any different than a newborn who wanted his mommy.
Neither one of them had any idea how long they'd sat there on the staircase. The bus had finally sputtered to a stop a while ago, but they didn't dare go inside. The fumes might clear out eventually, but the memories never would.
After what must have been hours, an explosion in the distance roused Fletcher back to reality. He saw that the sunlight was growing dim. They couldn't afford to be out at night.
"Get up, Josh. We have to go."
"I'm not going anywhere," his brother pouted.
"Josh, I don’t want to go either, but we have to get off the streets or we’ll be dead, too.” He got up and grabbed his brother’s arm.
"We can't just leave her here!" Josh snapped.
"That exactly what we have to do," Fletcher argued. "We can't take her to the hospital. She's dead. And if we don't get inside, we're going to wind up the same way." He grabbed his brother by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet. "We can talk about this later."
With nowhere else to go, they wound up knocking on Miguel’s door again. Their friend’s mother immediately noticed their red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. She looked behind them, hoping to see their mother, alive and well, but when she didn't, she understood immediately. "Oh, mijos," she cried, taking each in one of her arms to embrace them.
"What happened?" Miguel said as he walked in on the scene.
"Miguel," his mother ordered, trying to hold back her own tears. "Go get them something to drink."
He shrugged and went back to the kitchen.
Josh and Fletcher both sat on the couch and recounted the scene for Miguel and his mom, who shared what little food they had for dinner with the two boys. Afterwards, they pulled the cushions off the couch and took them into the basement with some extra sheets and blankets. Miguel and his mom kept their beds down there since it was the safest place in the house.
Fletcher didn't imagine he'd be getting much sleep, though.
Within minutes of her head hitting the pillow, Miguel's mom was snoring in the other room. Fletcher rolled about, trying to be as comfortable as he could be on a dusty old couch cushion. He looked over at his brother's silhouette and could tell he was having the same struggle. They were all each other had left, yet Fletcher didn't know what to say or what to do to comfort his brother.
"Get up and get your clothes on," Miguel whispered in the darkness. He lit a candle and held it up high to light up the entire basement.
"What?" Fletcher said, squinting as his eyes adjusted.
"You're coming with me," Miguel insisted. "But be quiet and don't wake up my mom. We have some people I want you to meet."
"What people?" Josh said.
"The Revolution."
CHAPTER 4
Fletcher remembered the last time he'd been out after dark. He'd been fourteen and his mom, Josh, and he had missed a train because two supervillains were fighting on the tracks uptown. They'd had to walk home in the dark.
There was a saying that once the sun went down, there were only two kinds of people walking the streets: murderers and victims, so if anyone crossed your path, you had to decide which you wanted to be.
Their mom had told them the streets didn't used to be as scary back when the city had streetlights. Most of the lampposts had been ripped away by brawlers with superstrength who liked to swing them like baseball bats in fights, so there wasn’t much light and that made Fletcher nervous. Miguel was half his size, but he didn’t seem the least bit scared.
He moved quietly, slipping down an alleyway whenever a car drove by.
"Are you going to tell us where we're going?" Fletcher asked.
"You’ll know when we get there."
"You can't just drag us out into the streets in the middle of the night and tell us we're going to see the Revolution without explaining--"
Fletcher's complaint was cut off by something clattering inside a dumpster up ahead. A man's head peered above the rim, stopping the three boys in their tracks.
"Revolution?" the man said in a gruff voice as he lifted himself out and blocked the boys' path. "Did you say you're going to see the Revolution?"
"Back up," Miguel whispered, but Fletcher and Josh were already making their slow retreat.
"I bet Technein would pay good money for someone who knew how to find the Revolution." The man pulled a knife from his pocket and took a step toward the boys.
Fletcher's heart was trying to beat its way through his ribcage and he couldn't feel his legs, even though he knew they were slowly backing him out of the alley. The moonlight glinted off the dirty blade in the man's hand and Fletcher's thoughts went to his mother's pale body. Would he wind up like that here, in this alley? Would Josh? He couldn't let that happen. Without Mom, he was all that Josh had left, and he couldn't let anything happen to either of them.
He turned to run back to Miguel's house. It couldn't be more than a half mile. He hooked his arm under Josh's shoulder to drag him along, but his brother stood his ground, anchoring Fletcher like a dog chained up in the yard. The sudden jerk spun him around just in time to see the knife-wielding man attack Miguel.
Effortlessly, Miguel s
ide-stepped the thrust of the knife, grabbing the man by the wrist. He threw an elbow into the man's jaw, then punched the wrist hard enough to loosen the grip and send the knife clattering across the alley. Miguel finished the man off with a head-butt, breaking his attacker's nose and dropping him limply into a pile of garbage bags.
"Hurry up," Miguel whispered as firmly as he could. "Someone had to have heard that."
"No way," Fletcher protested. "We're heading back. I knew we shouldn't have come out at night."
Miguel took off down the alley, and Josh was right behind him. That left Fletcher alone with the man who’d attacked them, and Fletcher wasn’t about to stay with him. He ran after his brother, making sure to avoid the groaning man in the trash.
Eventually, they arrived at the ruins of an old building. Despite being in the heart of the city, it looked more like a jungle. Trees and weeds had grown over the walls that had probably been gleaming white at some point in the past. A fence surrounded the entire plot of land, adorned by signs with radioactive symbols. In no uncertain terms, everyone was to stay out.
Once, long ago, it had been the headquarters for the Global Defenders before Technein had destroyed them all. The story Technein told everyone was that when they realized they had lost, the Global Defenders purposely set off a nuclear reactor beneath the base to meltdown. That was enough to keep everyone out. No one was curious enough to risk radiation poisoning.
"Come on. Before anyone sees us," Miguel whispered, pointing to a hole in the fence large enough to crawl through.
“Wait, we’re not going in there,” Fletcher protested.
“What? The radiation?” Miguel asked with a chuckle. “You afraid you’re going to grow gills and start breathing underwater?”
Josh laughed as he scampered through to the other side of the fence.
A frustrated Miguel grabbed the fence that separated them and locked eyes with Fletcher. "We have to get off the street, Fletcher. Now either follow us or don't, but whatever you do, do it quietly."
Fletcher watched them disappear into the darkness toward the ruins. He gripped the chain link fence with his fingertips and shook it with rage. No good could come of this. If the radiation didn’t get them, some of Technein's goons probably would.
“I guess this makes me an idiot, too,” he muttered as he slipped through the fence and hurried after Miguel and Josh.
The weeds were as high as his thighs and covered pieces of rubble that made it impossible to run without twisting an ankle. He had lost the others in the darkness and didn't dare yell out their names.
As he neared what looked like a broken marble column wrapped in vines, his left foot got caught beneath a piece of slate. He struggled to free it, but the more he pulled, the more entwined it became in the weeds.
As he leaned back to try a different angle of escape, something beneath his foot gave way. His leg sunk into the ground, and with a thud, he found himself hip deep in stone and earth.
“Josh… Miguel…” he called out in a harsh whisper, but nobody answered. Even if they’d heard him, it was unlikely they could have found him. The weeds were now towering above his head.
He pressed against the ground to try to free himself from the sinkhole, but rather than support him, the dirt only followed his leg down into the earth.
The more he pushed to free himself, the less he had to push against. Fletcher could feel the panic rising and his hips began to slide into the sinkhole. He desperately clawed at the weeds, trying to wrap them around his wrists.
Unfortunately, when the rest of the ground gave way, the weeds did nothing to stop him. He plummeted twenty feet or more before he hit a stone slope beneath him. He tumbled down the slope, cartwheeling head over heels—and banging his head, heels, and various other body parts against the stone floor and walls as he went—until he finally came to a stop.
"Hello?" he shouted back toward the way he'd come. He no longer cared if he was discovered. "Can anybody hear me?"
Something beeped, as if replying. Fletcher spun around, not sure where the noise had come from. Did bats beep? Or rats? Or some other horrible creature that lived in caves and feasted on human flesh?
Suddenly, the cave was illuminated in a dim blue light as a gigantic computer monitor flickered to life. Fletcher shielded his eyes as the long dormant computer went through the process of booting up. He scanned the room, looking for an exit. He didn't know where he was, but he knew it was somewhere he didn't belong and he wanted to get away before the people who did belong there showed up.
"Welcome," said a calm electronic voice. "You have accessed the Megamatrix of the Global Defenders." A hologram of a human-shaped... thing with metallic looking skin appeared in the middle of the room. "I am Android 7," it said, "and the fact that you are here indicates we have failed in our stated mission of defending the globe."
The hologram reached out a welcoming hand to Fletcher.
"You may be humanity's only hope."
CHAPTER 5
Fletcher didn't say anything.
"I am sure you have many questions," the hologram of Android 7 prompted.
"Are you talking to me?" Fletcher asked, looking around the room as though he thought someone else might have slipped in when he wasn’t looking. "I thought you were just a recording."
"Before my final battle with a supervillain named Technein, I downloaded a copy of my memories into this computer. I have been left in charge of the Megamatrix and charged with the guidance of those who will inherit its powers."
"Huh?" Fletcher grunted. "Powers?"
"Years ago, the Global Defenders fought a losing battle against evil. It seemed inevitable that supervillains would defeat us and take control of the world."
"Yeah, you figured that out all by yourselves, huh?" Fletcher grumbled.
"In light of this potential danger, Dr. Arnold Slater, known to many as the superhero Max Molecule, suggested we store our powers in order to pass them on if any of us should die. He invented the Megamatrix, a machine capable of replicating, storing, and passing superpowers to a new generation of superheroes capable of succeeding where we failed."
Fletcher stepped out of the corner and examined the computer. "Are you saying this thing can give me superpowers?"
"You and the others. That was our intention when we left the series of clues that led you here. Only by coming together with others and sharing the clues you each found would you ever be able to find this place. Where are the others?”
Fletcher hadn’t found any clues. But somehow he got the impression that if he told this hologram that all he’d done was fall through a sinkhole, he might not get to have any superpowers.
"Yeah, maybe," he replied. "How does this thing work?"
A pillar of glass and metal rose from a hatch in the center of the floor. As it powered up, it glowed blue. A small panel on its side slid open, revealing a line of small electronic devices. "Take one of these and attach it to your chest," Android 7 instructed.
Fletcher picked up the one of the devices to get a better look. It was round and about the size of hockey puck, flat on one side and rounded on the other. He lifted his shirt and pressed the flat side against his skin.
Android 7, "This pain will be momentary."
"What pai--?" said Fletcher as his words were cut off by the sound of his own screaming.
Searing pain shot through him, dropping him to the floor. He clawed at the device in a desperate attempt to remove it, but with no luck. It felt like a mole was trying to burrow its way through his heart. A mole with a million razor-sharp teeth.
"Dr. Slater suggested the installation process might be painful. His hypothesis appears correct.," Android 7 observed.
Though it felt like hours, ten seconds later, the device was firmly attached to Fletcher's sternum. He managed to get back on his feet and pointed an accusing finger at Android 7. "Next time, you should warn people about that."
"I did," Android 7 said unapologetically. "You may now choose which
of the powers you want to download from the Megamatrix."
Another hologram appeared beside Android 7. A man in a orange suit holding a bow with a quiver of arrows on his back stared blankly ahead, as though he was having his driver's license photo taken.
"Archer," Android 7 said. "The legendary marksman who wielded the enchanted Bow of Merlin."
The hologram changed to a woman in a star-spangled and red-striped outfit carrying a torch.
"Liberty Torch, a classic symbol of American patriotism and bearer of the magical Liberty Torch capable of bringing her very thoughts to flaming reality."
The holograms continued along with Android 7's narration. Max Molecule could grow to the size of a giant or shrink to the size of an ant. Red Wraith was a master of stealth and invisibility. Ali Babba could see any place he had ever been and could teleport across a thousand leagues with his Omnipresent Belt. Lord Trident held dominion over the seas.
And then there was Korgus.
Fletcher remembered his mother talking about Korgus. Android 7 called him an "otherworldly berserker," but Fletcher's mom called him a monster. She'd been terrified of the behemoth who seemed as likely to crush someone as save her from a burning building. In the hologram, he gripped a huge iron ball at the end of a long chain that wrapped around his forearm.
Fletcher imagined facing the bum in the alley and his rusty knife, only instead of turning to run, he swung a five-hundred pound iron ball and chain as easily as he would a yo-yo. He imagined what it would have been like that afternoon to not have to duck into the restaurant, but to catch that falling car and throw it back. He imagined how things would be different if he hadn't needed to hide in Miguel's basement and could have been home with his mother when the bus--