The Ables

by Jeremy Scott

  And then I felt … nothing. I saw nothing.

  I had expected the fireballs to be doused, but I thought they’d still hurl in and clobber me in the head like stones. I didn’t know anything about how fireballs worked, but I imagined them having a solid center mass surrounded by flame. Instead, despite the massive force with which they crashed into their targets, it turns out there’s nothing but fire inside those things. So the ones doused by my extinguisher merely dissipated into thin air.

  I grinned and lifted my head up to look at the bad guy. He seemed rather annoyed, so much so that he instantly sent off another round of ammunition, this time ten fireballs in one volley.

  It was clear that the extinguisher, while effective, would not last long enough for me to keep this up.

  I tried one last time. “Chad?! Can you hear me?”

  “Where the hell are you, Chad?” It was Henry, sounding just as scared as I was, despite being in the relative safety of his secured position.

  And that’s when a new idea hit me.

  “Bentley, can you hear me? Come in, Bentley.”

  “Yeah, Phillip, we can all hear you. Are you okay? What’s going on with Chad?”

  “I don’t know. But I need James. I need James right now!” I figured with Chad out of commission, James could simply teleport in and grab the hostage lady. There was an urgency to my voice, and Bentley could tell I wasn’t kidding around. But that didn’t mean he could give me the answer I wanted.

  “Um … that’s going to be a little tough, Phillip.”

  “What? Why?!”

  “Well, James sort of got captured.”

  “How in the—” I realized I didn’t have time for follow-up questions. “Crap!” I said in frustration.

  “What now, genius?” Henry shouted, his voice dripping with his signature sarcasm and a touch of fear.

  The fireballs reached the peak of their orbit and started back down toward my position. I lifted the extinguisher again, firing constantly for at least seven or eight seconds. At that point, it was empty, and the remnants of white goop spat out of the nozzle with a hiss. I’d survived the second volley, reducing the ten fireballs to vapor, but I was out of my own ammunition and a sitting duck for the next round.

  “It’s going to have to be Donnie, then,” I said to Bentley over the radio, realizing that the big guy was indeed my only remaining option.

  Bentley sounded confused, like he’d misheard my request. “Donnie?”

  “Yeah, he’s our only chance now.”

  “Sure, Phillip,” he said cautiously. “He’s listening. Go ahead.”

  “Donnie, can you hear me? I need your help, buddy. I need you to use your power—remember when we talked about that? I need you to use your power and run really, really fast over here to the grocery store. There’s a man in the street, and he has a woman in his arm he’s holding hostage. I’m in the parking lot of the grocery store, and I’ll keep him distracted so you can swoop in and grab that woman and take her to safety, okay?” Mr. Villain decided to stop playing games and tossed about twenty-five fireballs my way, which sounded like a machine gun. “Donnie … I need your help, buddy. Go fast—go real fast! Please, buddy, I need you to go now … hurry!”

  I paused a moment. “Is he coming?”

  “Are you kidding?” Bentley asked. “He took off before you were even done talking.”

  I knew that Bentley’s team had been at the car dealership, which was on the opposite side of town. And I had no real idea how quickly Donnie was able to run, so I wasn’t sure how long it would take him to arrive. But if I’d ventured a guess, I would have been wrong.

  Almost as soon as Bentley had ended his sentence, I both heard and saw Donnie approaching from several blocks away. Audio-wise, it sounded a bit like a military jet soaring far above. Visually, it was a tiny but powerful blue light that started as a dot five blocks down the street from where I stood. But I still knew it was Donnie. He was coming to my rescue to help me … as I knew he would.

  It only took a fraction of a second for Donnie to go from five blocks away to right up on us, that’s how quickly he was moving. I’d never seen anything like it.

  But before relief could flood my soul at his arrival, something awful happened.

  We know now that it was Chad. Or I should say, Chad’s body. He was apparently lying unconscious in the middle of the road. And he was somehow still invisible, which meant that Donnie couldn’t see him.

  With Donnie’s speed and size, the crash after he tripped over Chad’s body was colossal. Donnie went hurtling forward, bouncing and sliding across the pavement of the street, yet still traveling at extraordinary speed.

  He plowed directly into the SuperSim villain, sending the man and his hostage flying into the air as though a grenade had exploded nearby. The sound of the impact was sickening.

  When it was all over, they found the fireballer on the roof of a house three blocks over. It took them an hour more to find the woman hostage up in a tree on Fifth Street.

  Donnie himself had careened straight down the road like a rock skipping over a smooth lake. He came to a stop seven blocks away in a pile of clothing, blood, flesh, and blacktop. It’s an undeniable miracle that he didn’t die. The doctors said he had more broken bones than unbroken ones.

  Never before had I experienced such a drastic last-minute shift from near-success to abject failure in anything I’d ever done in my life. One moment my ingenuity was about to score us a major SuperSim victory, perhaps redeeming the reputation of the Ables entirely. The next moment, that same ingenuity was nearly getting several people killed.

  It was a shock to the system, and I wanted to puke.

  Chapter 23: Consequences

  Donnie, Chad, and both adults were taken to Freepoint Hospital, where most of them would stay for a month or more. The woman who had been playing the role of the hostage was actually unconscious for a day and a half. Chad was on a breathing machine; his lungs had collapsed. We still didn’t know what had happened to him, and it would be some time before he would be able to talk.

  Mr. Howard, the fireballing SuperSim villain, was in pretty good shape, actually, considering how far he’d flown. He had six broken bones, a dislocated shoulder, and second degree burns in patches all over his arms—the impact of Donnie crashing into him had been so severe that it had spontaneously caused Howard’s power to go off, burning him as he soared through the air.

  Donnie was probably the worst off of the group. After a twelve-hour surgery to regraft his skin and seal up his wounds, his broken bones were set, and he was placed in a full body cast in the ICU. His condition was officially listed as “stable,” though it had been “critical” for the first couple days after the accident. He almost died.

  Henry and I were fine, of course, and I couldn’t have felt guiltier about it.

  As you can imagine, there were some serious consequences to our actions that night—my actions that night. Some of them hurt.

  The Ables were disbanded, first and foremost. An emergency board meeting had been called in the days following the tragedy, where it was decided that disabled hero kids were too big a danger to themselves and to others and would heretofore be barred from participating in the SuperSim exercises. It had been a closed meeting, but Bentley said his father had told him it was a unanimous vote, which did nothing to improve their strained relationship.

  No public hearing to make our case. No eleventh-hour rescue from Mrs. Crouch. No chance for appeal. As heroes and crime-fighters, we were basically done, at least until we finished high school.

  You can imagine how popular I was with the rest of my team after that little proclamation. Both Henry and Bentley went out of their way to say it wasn’t my fault, but I could tell that on some level, they still thought it was. And I couldn’t blame them, because I agreed. It was totally my fault. All of it.

  If I hadn’t opened my big mouth or executed my idiotic plan … if I hadn’t told Donnie not to let anything get in his
way … if I’d realized he wasn’t ready to actually use his powers in a combat setting or understood exactly how much momentum he could create … everyone would still be okay, and my team would only be mildly depressed at not having scored points in another SuperSim. Instead, four people were laid up in that hospital, and it was a direct result of my actions.

  There were some other people who suffered because of my actions as well. Namely, the owners of one SUV, two pick-up trucks, three Hondas, and an Acura—all of which had been reduced to charred-out vehicle frames after my little ballet of fire in the parking lot. Turns out they weren’t very happy to have had their cars unexpectedly pulled into the action, and I know my Dad had to field several phone calls from angry citizens who wanted full restitution.

  Of all the mistakes I’d made, this one seemed to bother Dad the most. He seemed bewildered that I could be so cavalier about destroying others’ property. He kept saying, “We raised you better than this, Phillip: what’s wrong with you?” And I had nothing to say in response. With the gift of hindsight, it was obvious that blowing up the cars was wrong—I mean a-few-miles-over-the-line wrong. Super wrong. But I was at a loss to explain my actions to my father, because in the heat of the moment, my decisions had seemed perfectly natural and logical. I hadn’t even stopped to think about the consequences of my actions.

  But according to Dad, I would be feeling them for the next ten years since that’s how long he decided to ground me. And even though the city’s insurance covered damage related to the SuperSim, and those people would get reimbursed for the damage to their cars, Dad swore I would be working my tail off to make it up to the victims.

  I didn’t care anymore. I was somewhere between angry, ashamed, and aloof. Didn’t these people know that we all had disabilities? And that maybe we’d break a few eggs on our way to making a superhero omelet? Did they expect perfection? Did the able-bodied kids even attain perfection in their first year?

  The one victim I couldn’t make amends to was Donnie. I figured I would never be able to repay him for the pain I’d caused him. And it wasn’t just physical pain. The entire town had turned on Donnie as though he was some kind of Frankenstein monster, something to fear instead of nurture. The locals had branded him a menace, and there was even some early talk of shipping him off to some kind of mental hospital. Thankfully, that had died down within a few days. But the whispers continued.

  They didn’t know him, and the more they demonized him, the angrier I got about it. This had been my fault, not Donnie’s. Donnie was just a sweet kid who had honestly been trying his best to help. It wasn’t his fault that Chad had been in his way.

  I gave the order, and he followed it, loyally. And now he was bearing the brunt of the punishment for actions that had been my own. I was sick to my stomach about it. The committee’s decision to ban the Ables from future competitions didn’t even upset me all that much. To be frank, I didn’t know if I deserved to be a hero anymore, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be one. But Donnie didn’t deserve this.

  I visited Donnie every other day. It was easy; I had pretty much nothing to do anymore. Most of the team had forgiven me or pointed out how the whole thing was really no one’s fault because it was just a freak accident. But their parents weren’t so forgiving. Bentley’s dad, always concerned with the family’s reputation, advised him to steer clear of me for a while, at least until things blew over. James’ parents weren’t any exactly happy about him spending time with me anymore either—though he was free to give me rides around town as part of his teleporting business.

  Some days at the hospital, Donnie was alert and wide-eyed. Other days he was groggy and tired. The nurses said it would be months before he would even begin to get back to being himself. So I usually just talked to him about mindless stuff like school work or the science fair or even my comic books. I was used to doing most of the talking with Donnie anyway. I guess I just felt like I owed it to him to be there for him. I couldn’t think of any way to repair the damage I’d done, so this was sort of my penance. And Lord knows no one else in town was willing to show him pity.

  On his good days, when he was able to look around and had energy, he was his usual self, aside from the injuries. To his credit, he didn’t seem to blame me for what had happened and appeared to hold no ill will toward me whatsoever. I’m not even sure he remembered the events of that night. He usually smiled broadly whenever I walked in. It made me feel so much worse when he did that. The poor guy didn’t understand much about the world and might never know how bad a friend I had really been to him.

  I told him all the time, of course, but I’m not sure he ever understood. I tried to apologize several times. I just kept saying, “I’m sorry, Donnie. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to make this all better.” I said it every time I saw him, but I never once actually felt better after saying it. Several times I promised him I would never put him in harm’s way again no matter what occurred.

  One night, I stayed really late at the hospital. The nurses were so used to me by now, after all my visits to Mom’s room, that I think they took pity on me and looked the other way on the whole visiting hours thing. Dad was working, and I knew Patrick was at a friend’s house.

  Anyway, I didn’t want to be at home alone, so I put together a comic-reading marathon for Donnie. It was a greatest hits of my own personal collection, the very best of the best. I even did the voices and the sound effects as I read them, which Donnie seemed to enjoy. Around the seventh comic, Donnie fell asleep, but I kept reading silently to myself.

  Until I heard someone clearing their throat. I lifted my head up toward Donnie but could tell he was still asleep. I turned my body around, assuming the nurse was about to finally kick me out. But instead of a nurse, I heard Finch’s voice.

  “What a fine mess this is you’ve created, young Sallinger. A fine mess, indeed.” He sounded like a disgruntled principal looking over the latest batch of hooligans that had been sent to his office. “You know, this one … you can’t pin on me … for once.”

  I instinctively lifted my arms and tried to use my powers to throw the old man back against the wall, but nothing happened.

  “No power zone, son. Did you forget?” My arms dropped in defeat. “I can do all, even if I’m not him, remember?”

  For a moment, I thought about just rushing him and running out the door, but some part of me knew how fruitless that would be. He’d never let me get even two steps before incapacitating me somehow. And if he had come to kill me, well, I was just emotionally exhausted enough not to care anymore.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked with a healthy dose of disdain in my tone.

  “I feel our relationship has become entirely too adversarial, particularly when our goals and life paths overlap so much. So I’ve come to suggest a peace accord between us. And I’ve come to ask for your help, Phillip.”

  “Right,” I uttered, my words dripping with bitter sarcasm. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  He paused to consider my request. “Interesting that you should say that, Phillip, considering this is actually the first of our meetings that I myself have instigated. You entered the library and surprised me that first night. Then you followed me through town on Halloween … that’s hardly my fault. Finally … at the library again, I was merely catching a nap and minding my own business when you and your friends burst in to kill the quiet. So … maybe you should be asking … why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  He had a point. Even though I viewed him as the aggressor in this relationship, technically, he wasn’t. I was.

  “Of course, we both know that’s just a technicality, though, right? And there is something … special about you, isn’t there, Phillip? You’ve felt it, surely. I noticed it the first time I met you. And it’s the reason I’m here right now.”

  Donnie grunted a bit in his sleep, rolled over, and drifted back off to dreamland.

  “This world is changing, Mr. Sallinger. More than you know
. Soon, people who have long been content to be bystanders are going to have to choose sides as the power shifts fully from the humans into the hands of the custodians.”

  Is he talking about the thing on the news?

  “I am,” he replied verbally. “Exactly! Now, I doubt your young friends have stopped to wonder what it might mean if the rest of the world found out about us, but it is going to happen, and there is now no stopping it. The pendulum is swinging with full momentum, and it cannot be unswung. Soon, there will be no line of demarcation between heroes and villains, Phillip. It will only be us … and them. Empowered people … and the rest.”

  “You make it sound like there’s going to be a war.”

  “There will be a war, son. Human nature will not allow any other outcome. The question is … when will the war begin, and when will it end? And, perhaps most importantly, where will you be standing when it does?”

  “On the side of good,” I said, feigning confidence.

  He laughed hard. “It’s been so long since I was your age, it’s easy for me to forget how noble and conscientious children can be.” The smile in his voice faded. “Neither side is good, Phillip. That’s the entire point of what I’m trying to tell you. The world is not a black and white place. I know they tell you it is in school. I know you’re taught to believe there’s a right choice in every situation. But there’s not. Life is a muddled, screwed-up mess of secrets and motives, and everyone’s out for themselves. You’re going to have to make your choice on something other than nobility. Something other than morality.”

  “My father says the board is negotiating with the government.”

  “Sure, sure they are. And I’m sure the esteemed members of the board have only selfless goals in mind with those negotiations.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The board, Phillip, is just another oppressive government looking out for its own interests. You’re going to leave it up to two groups of billionaire politicians to ensure custodians get a smooth transition into public life?”