The Ables

by Jeremy Scott

I snapped myself out of it, if only so I could snap the others out of it as well. “Okay,” I said sharply, pulling my hand back. “We know what we have to do, everyone, right?” They all nodded. “We don’t have time for any big speeches or anything, but I just want to say that we’re all going to be fine. We’re going to get through this because we have to. If we don’t, we die.”

  There was a group pause as the weight of the situation came crashing down on everyone. We were about to seriously risk our lives on a longshot plan. If we failed, we might not live to see tomorrow. Deep down, we all knew our history of mission planning and execution was spotty at best.

  I turned briefly back toward the farmhouse, wondering what Mr. Charles would be up to. Henry looked from the computer screen back up at the orange halo around our city—it was a mesmerizing sight.

  Turning back at the group, I couldn’t resist trying to find the perfect thing to say to wrap up what we were all feeling—which was, of course, impossible. “There’s nothing I could say or do to let you guys know how much you all mean to me, you know? But … you’ve been like a second family to me in a year when my real family has been turned upside down. And I appreciate it. I wish I could show you how much I appreciate it.

  “I know we face tall odds. We have a flimsy plan, and the enemy probably has a lot of NPZ coverage. In a way, if you think about it, it’s a lot like the original Ables. Outnumbered and having to rely on our smarts … our ability to be more clever than the opponent. The Ables faced incredible odds too, guys, hundreds to a handful, just like us. And just like them, we’re going to defeat the enemy … with our teamwork and ingenuity…” I trailed off a bit, struggling to find a good way to wrap up my speech. “I’m not sure how to end this thing to be honest, guys …” I trailed off again.

  Everyone looked around at each other, all feeling a range of strong emotions but none really sure what to say or how to behave. This could be the end for some of us and almost certainly the end of the Ables. We might not see each other again, depending on how things went.

  “We could hug,” James offered meekly.

  Everyone turned and looked at him. He’d always been so friendly and polite, it probably shouldn’t have surprised us that he would be the one to suggest a group hug.

  “You know … if you want. We don’t have to,” he backpedaled, shifting his gaze to his feet as he realized the awkwardness he’d caused.

  I looked at Bentley, who was smiling but trying to hide it. I glanced at Henry, who was choking back a laugh. And then I looked at Patrick, who looked back at me with these honest eyes that seemed to genuinely need a hug. And I gave in.

  “Okay. I guess.”

  James lit up. He stepped forward and wrapped me up with a surprising amount of strength as everyone else piled in on the group hug around us and started to laugh. It was a really nice moment. Sometimes, you don’t realize how much you’ve grown to care about people until something threatens to take them away from you.

  It made me really miss Donnie, too.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, backing out of the scrum, trying to get us back on task. “Let’s get serious, now, guys. We don’t have time to waste. At all. Okay?”

  Everyone settled themselves down and tried to focus.

  “Henry, Chad, James? You guys ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  We formed a tight square, and the four of us placed a hand inside. “Good luck, Bent,” I said to my friend. “Patrick, you do whatever he says, you hear me? Dad’s going to kill me if you get killed, so don’t die. And if there’s trouble … run, and don’t stop running till you’re three states over.” I turned to James. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Ooph!

  Henry immediately looked down at his laptop screen at what my camera was capturing while I scanned my head back and forth looking for movement. There was none. I glanced at James and silently nodded.

  Ooph!

  He was gone.

  We were in the corner of a residential backyard. It was surrounded by a tall wooden fence, and James had plopped us in perfectly, tucked right into the corner where two edges of the fence met. The lights in the home were off, and we appeared to be alone in the yard.

  On the other side of the fence was school property—the home’s land backed right up to Freepoint High’s east side lawn, which was mostly used for band and soccer practices. It was a huge amount of distance to cover between our current position and the front steps of the school, easily two football fields.

  We peeked through the slats of the fence. It was tricky for me to line up the camera properly, but once I straightened that out, Henry got a pretty good picture to send me—the camera was night-vision capable now, thanks to another round of tinkering by Bentley.

  For about a hundred yards or so, roughly half the distance we needed to cross, there was no one. There were two men, Believers in their full robes, standing and talking there at the halfway point, then we saw three more of them walking toward the school another fifty yards in. I briefly wondered what kind of chitchat Believers would be making on a night like tonight. About thirty yards from the main entrance of the school, where we needed to go, stood Finch. His arms were crossed, and there was no movement in him at all. He could have been a statue. He was waiting. For me.

  And by golly, I was going to show up. Just not the way he planned.

  There were about ten to fifteen other robed sentries scattered here and there, some near the front of the school and others toward the back. But that was all we could see.

  The earpiece in my ear crackled to life. “Phillip. Come in.” It was Bentley.

  “Go ahead, Bentley,” I whispered in reply.

  “Listen, man. Bad news.”

  Uh-oh.

  He continued. “They’ve been here. They must have known about the emergency communication system to Goodspeed. The entire house is trashed, and the device is destroyed.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Phillip. I’m sure they know about the other similar devices in town and have already destroyed those as well. I think we’re on our own.”

  That was a blow I didn’t expect and one I didn’t need. With the activation of that device—one push of a button—our chances for success would go up in a big way. Goodspeed forces had plenty of teleporters on their payroll, just as Freepoint did. They could be here in seconds, but not if they didn’t know we needed their help.

  “Bentley,” I said.

  “Not now, Phillip.” His voice was suddenly hushed and carried a new sense of urgency. “There’s someone in the house. I think there’s someone in the house, Phillip!”

  “Oh crap.” It was Henry. It was a party line, so everyone on the team could hear.

  “Bentley!” I whispered, not sure what else to say. But there was no immediate response. I swallowed hard.

  “This is bad, Phillip,” Chad whispered, off radio. “This is very bad.”

  I nodded, my face surely portraying panic. My heart began to pound a nervous beat. “Bentley!” The silence was killing me.

  “I’m here, Phillip. But I gotta be honest.” He’d never spoken more quietly in his life. “I think we’re in trouble here. We can’t use our powers. NPZ. There are several men in the house, Finch’s men, I’m sure. They’re coming up the stairs now and—” he went silent again, but that wasn’t because he had stopped transmitting. My ears were more than strong enough to still pick up the crackle of the open radio connection. He was still broadcasting, just not talking.

  I tried to listen more intently. I could hear breathing—no doubt Bentley’s. It was fast and heavy. Without warning, there was an incredibly loud bang, like the sound of a door being kicked in. Then voices. “All right! On your feet!” “Now, now, now! Get up! Get up!” There was a lot of commotion, rustling, and muffled shouting. I couldn’t tell what was going on.

  “You move and you die, you hear? I have no compunction about killing you just because you’re a kid, okay?!”


  I looked up at Chad again. Even with the night vision, it still looked like he’d turned a few shades whiter.

  More voices. “Call it in. Four more prisoners.”

  I dropped my head in defeat, exhaling a lot of held breaths at once. Bentley’s team had been captured.

  “What in the hell is this? Is that a radio?” There was a sharp popping noise, and the line went dead.

  For several seconds, none of us said anything. We were all processing what these new developments meant. Prior to that radio call, we were going out to face a fierce and evil enemy … but we had hopes that either rescued Freepoint citizens or emergency troops from Goodspeed would come to our aid. Now, with Bentley, Freddie, James, and Patrick captured by Finch’s goons … there would be no aid.

  We were truly on our own. The three of us against the world. Things had gone from mostly hopeless to totally hopeless, which feels like a bigger drop than you might think, I can promise you.

  “Why didn’t James just jump them out of there?” Chad wondered aloud, shaking his head in disbelief at what he’d just heard.

  “They had an NPZ,” Henry said.

  “Geez, how many does this guy control anyway?” Chad said in frustration. “Aren’t they in limited supply?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “A few of the heroes in Freepoint with that power disappeared this year, though. I’ll bet you anything it was Finch, and he’s somehow using their powers against us.”

  “You know, now that you say that,” Chad said slowly, “I think there was an NPZ hero kidnapped or something when I was in Goodspeed.”

  “He was probably picking them off one by one,” Henry added.

  “So we’re going up against a guy that has every power in existence and also controls most of the world’s population of blockers? We’re screwed,” Chad said. He didn’t say it angrily or argumentatively but rather as a matter of fact.

  “We are screwed,” Henry agreed. I was surprised he hadn’t said it first.

  “We were already screwed,” I offered.

  Both of them looked at me at once.

  I explained. “Like I said in the cornfield, we had pretty slim odds to begin with, right? This is like going from having a five percent chance of success to having a three percent chance of success. It’s not that big a difference, if you think about it.”

  Neither of them appeared to be swayed by my logic, which I knew was flimsy at best. Bentley would have been more persuasive.

  “Look,” I tried again, “all we need to do to defeat this guy is trap him in an NPZ. That’s it.”

  “You make it sound easy,” Henry scoffed.

  “I admit the Chelsey plan is a little bit of a long shot. But it’s the only thing I’ve got, Henry. Unless you know a better way to find an NPZ we can control, we have to try the one method we’ve seen work before.”

  “There’ll be no cavalry, Phillip,” Chad warned. “No rescuers. Bentley couldn’t call Goodspeed, and now that he’s been captured, he can’t rescue your dad and the other prisoners. It’s just the three of us.”

  “It only needs to be one of us,” I said somewhat angrily, “If we can get his ass in an NPZ. I’ll take him down myself if I have to.” I softened a bit but only a bit. “Now, you two can stay here if you want. But I’ve had it. I’m done. If this is all about me, then it ends with me out there, win or lose. I’m not going to turn and run after all that this jerk has put me through. I’m either going to defeat him, or I’m going to die trying. I can’t ask you to make that same decision, but if you’re going to go … you go now, okay?”

  They looked at each other, both a bit surprised at the edge in my voice.

  “I’m staying, Phillip. I’m with you to the end, buddy.” Henry smiled as he said it, and so did I.

  “I’m in, too. I’ve got nothing better to do,” Chad said. He smiled too, but it was a nervous smile, and I could tell he wasn’t completely sure of himself. But he’d been given a chance to back out. And besides, I needed him for my real plan to succeed—he was kind of essential to it, actually.

  Chapter 28: Showdown

  We had to walk all the way around the interior fence line to the other side of the yard to find a gate in the fence we could push Henry’s wheelchair through. But after that, the terrain before us was all grass.

  Chad turned on his invisibility as soon as we closed the gate behind us. Slapping a hand on each of our shoulders, he turned Henry and me invisible too. It was maybe the ninth or tenth time I’d seen him do it, and it never got any less cool. If I was a normal kid, I would dream about using that kind of power to sneak into a girls’ locker room or pull off some other mischievous task. Instead, I was using it to try and take on maybe the most powerful evil to ever exist. I wasn’t a normal kid, not anymore. There would be no going back to a normal life after what I’d been through.

  We made our way across the field without a problem, going in a wide arc around Believers standing guard on the perimeter. Soon enough, we were nearing the area where Finch himself stood. As it turned out, we would have to go right by him in order to get to the school’s entrance. This was, in part, because of the arrangement of his Believer guards and henchmen, but it was also because of the terrain. The shortest and safest route—the quietest route—just happened to take us very close to the one guy we were still currently trying most to avoid.

  We were invisible, but not silent. So we couldn’t hurry. We couldn’t make much noise at all. And as dangerous as it was to go near Finch, it was probably still safer than trying to push a wheelchair past a grouping of six men without one of them hearing a noise. It was just basic math: better odds. But it sure made for the most nail-biting fifty steps of my entire life.

  We practically tiptoed through the grass, moving at roughly one-sixth the speed of a normal person’s walk. We drew closer and closer to him until we reached the closest we would be while passing him … about twenty feet. We stared at him as we passed, searching his body for some sign that he could see us, but there was none. He really could have been a statue. There was no movement at all in his eyes or his posture. He was totally still.

  Behind him, there were burning embers and charred soil from his challenge to me spelled out in the grass.

  Whatever emotions had propelled me here in the first place—anger, revenge, heroism—they were all gone now, replaced by a suffocating fear. Fear of being discovered too soon and fear of failure and death.

  I’m not sure any of us breathed at all as we inched slowly by, covered only by Chad’s camouflaging power. We didn’t want to make a peep.

  After a near eternity, we finally passed Finch’s position unscathed and began moving away from him. The main entrance to the school was only a few yards away, with no bad guys in between. We were almost home free, at least temporarily.

  I glanced back at Finch again, but he remained unchanged. Did he really think I was just going to waltz up to him out in the open?

  A bit of my nervousness faded with each passing step. There was an entire list of things that needed to go right for us to prevail, and getting by Finch unseen was just the first one. But we’d done it successfully, so I mentally crossed it off the list. One challenge down, one success in the books. It built a little confidence in me, and it was probably just the amount I needed to do what I had to do.

  But my welling pride was harshly interrupted by the sound of Chad tripping on a rock. A dull, loud thud. Then came the physical contact, as Chad lurched forward into my left shoulder and Henry’s wheelchair. I was knocked to the ground, and Chad tumbled after me. His contact with us severed, his concentration broken, Chad’s invisibility simply quit working for all three of us.

  We’d just gone two hundred yards in the quietest manner possible, only to trip all over each other and cause a scene within sight of our goal.

  Instinctively, I turned to look at Finch, but all I saw was the ground—Henry hadn’t yet recovered enough from the jostling to put his gaze back on the computer screen. He started to
move his head to look around, still not remembering how badly I needed his eyes.

  “Well, well, well,” came an all-too-familiar voice. “It looks like we have some unexpected visitors. Or should I say, expected visitors. I did write your invitation in fire, after all.”

  “Henry!” I shouted.

  It worked, jogging his memory and snapping him back to reality. He looked at Finch, then turned sharply to the laptop and my camera’s video feed.

  I jerked my head to my left and finally saw my enemy. He was dressed the way he usually was, the way he had been on the night we’d first encountered him. A long tweed jacket. His customary matching hat. His cane. He was as distinguished-looking as ever.

  “I knew you’d come,” he said gently. “I knew you’d see my message. You know, Phillip,” he continued, bringing his left hand out of his pants pocket to gesture with, “you will have to give my regards to your pal Bentley for me. Those cameras of his have been a godsend.” He pulled his cane out from under his right arm, placed the tip in the grass in front of him, and stacked both hands on top of the handle. I’d wager it was the most casual evil-villain pose in history. “They were very easy to spot and even easier to hack. And I cannot tell you how much they helped us plan this very mission to take over and destroy the mighty hero city of Freepoint.”

  He looked out over the huge field. “We knew exactly where everyone would be, you see. I mean … sure, we would have taken this ridiculous little town either way. The cameras just made it easier.”

  My heart sank a bit at his words. To know that a system we’d put in place to give ourselves an edge had helped lead to the death, injury, and imprisonment of hundreds was a weight I was not prepared to feel.

  “But, no matter,” Finch continued. “You’re here now. Which is all I really wanted anyway. The rest of it is just … icing on the cake, I suppose. Fringe benefits. You’re the real reason I ever came to Freepoint in the first place. And I think you’re ready to embrace your true destiny.”

  Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, and the twelve-year-old in me just had to have his say. “Are you crazy, old man? Do you somehow seriously think I have all the powers in the world?” It was the stupidest-sounding sentence that had ever come out of my mouth, of that I was sure.