The Sidekicks Initiative

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Sam shook his head. “No. I wonder what it means?”

  Before anyone could speculate, a solid pillar of flame appeared in the sky, exploding from the cathedral’s roof and stretching upward like the beam of a high-powered torch. Even from this height, Sam heard the screams of the people below.

  “Uh-oh. That can’t be good,” said Anna.

  “You think that’s him?” asked Randy. “You think that’s Savior?”

  “It’s a column of fire coming directly from the roof of his headquarters, Randy. Who else would it be?” asked Anna.

  “We have to get down there. And fast,” said Sam.

  The butterflies surrounding him parted momentarily, and he dropped several feet in one sudden lurch.

  “Jesus Christ!” Sam yelped, scrambling to grab hold of something, but finding nothing solid. The butterflies tightened around his top half, leaving his legs windmilling frantically in thin air. “Not that fast!”

  Through the mass of flapping wings, Sam caught Randy’s reproachful look. “Butterflies are very literal creatures, Kid Random,” he said. “You might want to be careful what you say around them.”

  More screams rose up from the streets below. Magma-Mutts were leaping from the fire column and bounding off into the city. Even from way up here, they could hear the growling and snarling.

  “God, it’s getting worse,” Sam fretted. “We need to get there quickly. Without dropping me!” he added, for clarity.

  “I have an idea,” said Anna. “But it’s dangerous.”

  “I’m in!” Randy snarled.

  “Wait. How dangerous?” asked Sam. “More dangerous than this?”

  Anna made a weighing motion. “Actually…” she said. “Yeah.”

  Sam dangled from the cloud of butterflies, his legs kicking frantically, his words coming as short, sudden sounds like, “Welp!” and “Unk!” and “Ohfuckfuckfuck.”

  Just a few feet below him, the roof of an Elevated Train whizzed past, the train’s wheels clattering and clacking on the raised track.

  “Ready?” Anna called, shouting to make herself heard above the din.

  “No!” Sam cried.

  “I was born ready,” Randy growled. “Follow my lead!”

  He dropped before anyone could stop him, pulling off a textbook landing on the roof of the train.

  The train’s momentum immediately whipped him off his feet and he screamed as he plunged over the side of the roof, before his cape snagged on a pointed overhang, jerking him to a stop.

  “Totally meant that,” he insisted, but the carriage he had landed on had whooshed ahead, separating him from Sam, Anna, and his butterflies.

  Several coaches back, Anna reached out from her own cloud and caught Sam by the arm. The slipstream of wind from the train was peeling butterflies away by the dozen, and both clouds were rapidly thinning. It was now or never.

  “We’re going in three, two…”

  “No! Don’t! Don’t you dare!” Sam protested, but an increasing lack of butterflies took the decision out of their hands. Sam flailed wildly with his arms, legs, and—for reasons he’d later come to question—tongue as he plunged the few feet onto the roof and slammed hard against the fast-moving metal.

  Both Anna and Sam bounced, tumbling together toward the back of the train, and the almost-certainly deadly gap between this coach and the one behind.

  When they landed after the second bounce, the weight of the few thousand remaining butterflies pressed down on them, stopping them sliding any further. Sam felt like he should probably say, “Thanks,” but there were so many of the insects sitting on his face he was terrified he might inadvertently inhale one.

  Now that the immediate danger of sliding off the roof had passed, Sam and Anna were able to look ahead in the direction the train was going. Memetzo’s cathedral was a mile ahead on the right, the column of flame still stretching up from within it.

  The El Track passed pretty close, and while a human driver would almost certainly have stopped well before now, the AI steering these things obviously didn’t share the same concerns about dying horribly in a big fire as their human counterparts did.

  “Is Randy alive?” Sam asked.

  “His cape is,” Anna replied, squinting against the oncoming wind. “It’s pulled pretty tight, so hopefully he’s still on the other end of it.”

  Holding onto one of the roof ridges, Sam risked a glimpse over the side. He regretted it at once. He’d been on the Elevated Train a handful of times in the past, but he’d never quite realized just how elevated it actually was. From where he lay the current situation went roof, train, tracks, a forty foot sheer drop, then the ground. Hitting anything after that first one spelled instant death if he was lucky, prolonged death if he wasn’t.

  “This was a great idea,” said Anna. “Seriously, should’ve thought of it before.”

  “Was it?” Sam said, fighting the urge to sob.

  “We’re almost there. We’ll be level with the place in a couple of minutes,” Anna pointed out. “The butterflies would’ve taken hours.” She smiled at the sea of colorful insects that covered her, Sam, and most of the carriage roof. “No offense, guys.”

  “What then?” Sam asked.

  Anna raised an eyebrow. “Hmm?”

  “When we get there, what then? How do we get off?”

  Anna’s other eyebrow raised. She inhaled slightly like she was about to speak, but nothing came out.

  “You don’t know, do you?” said Sam, his voice rising in panic. “You didn’t think that far ahead.”

  Anna wrinkled her nose. “I’m kind of an act first, think later kind of person,” she said. “Sometimes that’s to my credit. Occasionally, it is not. This would be one of those occasions.”

  “Hey, guys.”

  Randy’s guttural growl startled them both. They raised their heads to find him standing upright atop the train, his cape whipping around him.

  “Where the…?” Anna peered along the train to where Randy had been. “How the fuck did you get here?”

  Randy frowned and glanced back over his shoulder. “I walked. It’s not far.”

  “We’re on a moving train!” Sam yelped.

  “Uh, yeah. Obviously,” said Randy.

  Sam looked him up and down. Mostly up, given that he was still lying flat on the roof. “I mean… But… Aren’t you scared?”

  “Of trains?” said Randy, appearing genuinely perplexed by the question.

  “Of falling!”

  “Oh. No,” said Randy. “I mean, I used to be, but not anymore.” He tapped the side of his head. “Brain damage. Everyone talks about it like it’s a bad thing, but… I don’t know. It has its perks.”

  “Brain damage made you stop being scared of falling?” asked Anna, genuinely intrigued despite the urgency of the situation.

  Randy nodded. “Falling. Ghosts. Being stung in the eyes by wasps,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers. “Oh, and dying alone in a filthy alleyway with a bullet in my gut.”

  Sam and Anna both stared up at him, saying nothing.

  “But mostly falling,” Randy concluded.

  He turned away, checking how close they were to Memetzo’s cathedral. Close. Very close.

  “We should probably get off soon,” he said, turning back.

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” yelped Sam, his knuckles white from gripping the ridges of the roof. His heart leapt into his throat as Randy picked his way through the carpet of butterflies and stopped right at the edge.

  “We jump,” Randy said.

  “We can’t jump from up here!” Sam cried. “We’d be splattered.”

  “Not if we do the superhero landing,” Randy countered.

  “Especially if we do the superhero landing!”

  Anna raised herself shakily onto her knees, keeping her gaze focused on the roof. “I hate to agree with Sam on this one—”

  “Kid Random,” Randy corrected.

  “But if we jump off we’ll defi
nitely die.”

  Randy pressed his fingers to his temples. “Not if my butterflies help.”

  “Uh, hate to break it to you, pal, but we lost half of the butterflies. Maybe more,” said Anna, jabbing a thumb back over her shoulder. “They’re somewhere that way.”

  “Maybe they can’t carry us, but they can slow our fall,” said Randy. “Probably. I mean, they look pretty confident.” He pointed to one of the insects. “Maybe not that guy.”

  Anna wobbled unsteadily on her feet, half-squatting against the wind. Reaching down, she tried to pull Sam up, but he clung to the roof like a limpet.

  “Come on, it’s the best plan we’ve got,” said Anna.

  “It’s not a plan. It’s not even an idea. It’s… it’s a notion. And it’s also suicide!” Sam babbled.

  Anna pointed to the column of fire that now loomed almost dead ahead. Screams and cries for help rose up from the streets below the speeding train. Overhead, the sky was filling with a layer of thick, black smoke clouds.

  “You see that, Sam?”

  “Kid Random,” Randy grunted.

  “You see what’s happening? You hear those people?” Anna demanded. “Tell me something, Sam—”

  “Kid Random.”

  “Why did you come back? Why did you come back and get me?”

  Sam’s mouth flapped open and closed a couple of times. “I didn’t want my son to be in danger.”

  “Bullshit,” Anna barked. “If that was it, you’d have stayed with him. You came back because you didn’t want anyone in danger, and you knew—God help them—that we were the best shot at making that happen. We’re the only ones who can stop this, Sam.”

  “Kid Random.”

  Anna twitched and Randy clutched at his throat, unable to draw in enough breath to contribute any more to the conversation.

  Holding a hand out to Sam, Anna raised her eyebrows. “So, are you going to lie there and let everyone die? Or are we going to jump off this fucking train right now?”

  For a moment, Sam just stared at the outstretched hand. He studied it, like he’d never seen one before, then finally slipped his own hand into hers.

  “We’re going to jump off this fucking train right now,” he said, gritting his teeth, steeling his nerve, and girding his loins as he rose first onto one knee, then the other.

  Some of the butterflies that had been on his back clambered up onto his shoulders as he got to his feet. He felt the spandex costume go tight as thousands of tiny legs gripped him, and thousands of fragile wings fluttered wildly in the wind.

  The insects that had been on the roof climbed up onto Randy’s back, taking up positions on his costume and cape. Anna turned to the half-dozen or so butterflies perching on one of her shoulders. “Good luck,” she whispered.

  The heat from the fire was intense now. Sam could feel it licking across the exposed part of his face, and the strip of belly visible between the costume’s top and bottom halves. They were almost there. Time was running out.

  “OK, we go on three,” said Anna. “You guys ready?”

  “I was—”

  “Sorry, yes, you were born ready, I forgot.” She took Sam’s hand and held it. “Ready?”

  Sam squeezed her hand but didn’t look at her. The track was a blur beneath them, the ground all-too-solid thirty feet below that.

  “Sure,” he croaked. “Why not?”

  Anna drew in a deep breath. “OK. On three. One…”

  Sam closed his eyes and said a quick prayer to anyone who might be listening.

  “Two…”

  “This is going to be awesome!” Randy growled. “Don’t forget the superhero landing! It’s totally worth it.”

  Anna’s voice came out as a shrill yelp of panic.

  “Thr—”

  The train slowed rapidly as it pulled into a station. Sam and Anna both held their hands out, frantically trying to surf through the sudden change to the train’s velocity. Randy, on the other hand, appeared completely unperturbed by the deceleration.

  With a hiss and a screech of brakes, the train stopped at a platform.

  “Shit. Yeah. Probably should’ve seen that coming,” Anna muttered.

  “Oh, thank God,” Sam sobbed, then he and Anna both quickly slid over the edge and clambered clumsily down onto the platform.

  A moment later, Randy superhero-landed between them, the butterflies fluttering crazily on his back.

  “Boom. Nailed it,” he announced, then he sprung to his feet and raced toward the railings at the station’s edge. “Let’s do this!” he roared, throwing himself over the railings and tumbling out of sight.

  Sam and Anna exchanged shrugs.

  “Stairs?” Anna suggested.

  Sam nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Stairs.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “What kept you?” growled Randy, when Sam and Anna reached the bottom of the stairs, both wheezing slightly, out of breath.

  “Uh, we’re not insane. That was the main hold-up,” said Anna. Turning to Sam, she added: “You’re right. He is alive. I owe you twenty bucks.”

  This close to the cathedral, and without the wind from the train to cool them, the heat was immense. Sam’s spandex clung to him with sweat. Dark patches bloomed from beneath his armpits and dotted his front. The costume hadn’t been a great look to start with, but it was rapidly going downhill.

  He took a deep breath, but the air was tainted with smoke, and he coughed it back up again. “I guess we should go do this,” he squawked, half-choking on the words.

  Anna patted him on the shoulder. “Great pep-talk there, Sam. Really inspirational. Doc Mighty-esque, even.”

  Randy opened his mouth to complain about her use of Sam’s real name, but she shot a warning look at his throat. “I wouldn’t,” she said, then she gestured in the direction of Memetzo’s cathedral. “Now, let’s go get ourselves killed.”

  Memetzo’s cathedral had always been an imposing place, its dark towers and Gothic spires standing in stark contrast to the sleek and modern skyscrapers surrounding it. It stood almost at the heart of Cityopolis on a square of green-blue grass that shimmered with magic when the stars were properly aligned, and visitors to the city would flock there on a regular basis, hoping to catch a glimpse of some sorcery or another.

  Now, the blue-green grass was gone, the earth below it scorched and blackened. Flames licked across the cathedral’s walls. Their movements were like the bowing and scraping of worshippers before the great god of the fire column roaring up through the building’s roof.

  Sam, Anna, Randy, and several thousand butterflies took cover behind an abandoned delivery truck. It had tipped over onto its side, blasted away from the cathedral by a wave of heat that had blistered the metal.

  “OK, what’s the plan?” asked Anna.

  “We run in there and kick his ass!” Randy spat. “Sidekick-style!”

  “No! That’s insane! We need to find out what he’s doing,” Sam whispered, even though they were still fifty feet or more away from the building. “We need to get eyes on the inside.”

  Randy nodded slowly. “Yeah. OK, that makes sense,” he said, a little begrudgingly. “But how are we supposed to do that?”

  Sam gestured to the butterflies covering every available surface. “Well, I mean…”

  Randy frowned, not yet getting it.

  “I think what he’s trying to say is, maybe you could do that thing where you look through the eyes of a butterfly?” Anna suggested. “If, I don’t know, if that’s even a real thing.”

  “It’s totally a real thing,” Randy snarled. A smirk appeared somewhere in his beard as he placed his fingers to his temples. “But why look through the eyes of just one butterfly, when I can look through the eyes of all of them?”

  He concentrated briefly, then his whole body was wracked with violent spasms. He dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, thrashing violently, foam bubbling from his lips.

  “Jesus,” Anna muttered, watching
him twitch and convulse.

  “Too… many,” Randy wheezed, his limbs jerking. “Too… Oh God. Kill me. Too…”

  He retched violently, shook his head a number of times, then shakily rose to his feet. “On second thought, it might be best if I stick to just one.”

  A single butterfly fluttered into the air and landed on Randy’s outstretched finger. “It’s all on you, Callum,” he said. “Get in there, get yourself in position. You can do this!”

  Anna leaned in closer to Sam. “Did he just call it ‘Callum’? That’s weird.”

  “Seriously? That?” Sam whispered. “That’s way down my weird list for today.”

  “You don’t think it’s weird he has such a close relationship with them that he knows them by name?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t find that any more weird than the fact that he has any sort of relationship with them at all, no.”

  They all watched as Callum fluttered out from behind the truck. His wings flapped furiously in the heat-wind, and then he was off, powering his way toward the cathedral.

  “We should probably give him a few minutes,” Randy said.

  “Sure,” said Anna.

  “God, I hope he does this,” Randy said. “He has self-confidence issues. This’ll really give him a boost.”

  Sam met Anna’s eye. “OK, that just bumped it up a couple of places,” he said.

  “Believe in yourself, Callum,” Randy called, as the butterfly fluttered toward an open window. “Like I believe in you!”

  “Yes, fine, it’s weird,” Sam conceded.

  “Thank you,” said Anna.

  Randy pressed his fingers to the sides of his forehead. “OK, let’s tune in and see what Callum can… Oh. Wait. No, he’s dead.”

  “What? Damn it!” Anna groaned.

  “He totally just caught fire,” said Randy. “We probably should’ve seen that coming.”

  “Shit,” Anna spat. She clicked her tongue against her teeth a few times, then stood up. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to go with Plan A. Charge in and hope for the best.”

  “Finally!” Randy growled.

  “Wait, no, we can’t,” said Sam, stopping them before they could make their run. “I don’t know if you noticed, but the whole building is cocooned by fire.”