‘You know what Ferdy would say,’ Dan said. ‘It would be a gross violation of the space/time continuum—’
‘Sounds serious,’ Chad said.
‘—and the annihilation of everything.’
‘Okay, it sounds really serious.’
Ebony spoke up. ‘Did you actually see James Price die?’
‘No. But Price was inside the building.’
‘Are you sure?’
The seed of an idea began to grow in my mind. ‘I didn’t see him die,’ I said. ‘I might be able to save him if I can get back before I destroy the house.’
Dan frowned. ‘But you can’t let you...er...your past self, that is, see your current self.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It would be a violation...space/time...thing...’
We hurried to the time machine. Climbing aboard, I adjusted the dial for five hours before our original departure. ‘That should give me enough time to get to James Price’s house and save him.’
I activated the machine. Once again, it shuddered badly in flight as it returned to the past. We tumbled out of the craft. We had used up the temporal resonators sent with the time ship to the past. There would be no other opportunities to change history. It was this or nothing.
We ran from the cave into the light of a new day. The forest was fresh and green as we had left it the first time. The others started towards Liber8tor.
‘I think you guys should lay low,’ I said.
‘But we can help you,’ Brodie protested.
‘There are already enough versions of ourselves running around. We can’t risk you running into yourselves. I’ll see you back here in twelve hours,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘Go and drink hot chocolates.’
I leaped up into the sky. Dawn broke, casting yellow fingers of light across the landscape. It was a beautiful day on a beautiful world. Who in their right mind would want to destroy it?
Arriving in New York with an hour to spare, I made my way to James Price’s address. Careful to stay out of sight, I hid under a tree in the backyard where I could watch the driveway. Only a few minutes passed before I saw someone I recognized all too well walking down the street, their eyes fixed on the house.
Me.
It was strange, like watching a distorted version of myself in a mirror. I looked so suspicious, so angry, I was amazed a neighbor hadn’t rung the police. A chill danced up and down my spine. I recognized something else too: the same bitter expression that Old Axel had worn.
Finally, I heard a car pull into the driveway. James Price climbed out and went inside. Creeping to the back door, I used my powers to force the lock. By the time I found James Price, he was already putting his groceries away into the refrigerator.
His mouth fell open in amazement. ‘Who on Earth are you?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing in my house?’
I glanced out the window where a storm was starting to build.
‘Saving your life,’ I said, forming a barrier around us.
Chapter Forty-Five
We sat in Liber8tor’s galley, eating in silence. We were all there; Brodie, Chad, Dan, Ebony, and—of course—the ever-present Ferdy. We’d been back on the island for three days taking much needed R&R. There had been no sign of Old Axel; he had not returned. Whatever we had done in the present had changed the future. How much it had changed was impossible to say.
James Price had been grateful I saved his life. In return, I asked him for a favor. ‘Please try to do good,’ I said. ‘For everyone’s sake.’
He promised he would, but there was a problem with that. Everyone’s definition of good is different. Through some misguided sense of right, he might still become the head of The Agency. He might still become a dictator. He might still destroy the planet with his experiments.
Ferdy broke the silence. ‘Ferdy believes he has an explanation for the boy that Dan met,’ he said. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
Anything to break the silence.
‘It would seem that Doctor Satou was partially successful in his attempts to create a hybrid plant/animal,’ Ferdy continued. ‘His final work would seem to have been a combining of human cells with mold.’
‘That’s...revolting,’ Ebony said.
‘So Henry was...mold?’ Brodie asked.
‘Mold spores,’ Ferdy said. ‘And so was the creature.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘Mold is microscopic. It would seem the spores were able to combine and manipulate its appearance into either the character of Doctor Jekyll or Mister Hyde.’
‘But why was he a boy?’ Dan asked. ‘And whose skeleton was in the cell?’
‘The skeleton would appear to have been a US Navy seaman who was captured during the war. We’ll never know his identity, but his one personal possession was the copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. The man was infected by Doctor Satou’s spores and eventually died.’
‘And he became...’ Ebony’s voice trailed away.
‘Something new,’ Ferdy said. ‘A new form of life with no identity of its own.’
‘So it took the identities of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?’ Chad asked. ‘But Doctor Jekyll isn’t a child in the book.’
‘We’ll never know why Henry took the form of a child. Maybe he was responding to Dan or possibly the seaman’s last memories were of his childhood. That will forever remain a mystery.’
Everyone finished eating and went away to do other things, leaving Brodie and me alone in the galley.
‘I can understand if you want to be with Chad,’ I said.
Brodie rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t want to be with Chad!’ she said. ‘Chad’s just a friend. He’ll never be anything else.’
‘Never?’
That made her pause. We had both discovered that nobody—with the possible exception of Ferdy—knew the future.
‘I’m not interested in being with him,’ she said, firmly. ‘I’m not even sure I want to be with you.’
I nodded. My heart was breaking, but I understood what Brodie was saying. We’d been through a crazy couple of months. Our memories were taken, we were given superpowers, and then Brodie and I were involved in the greatest love story since Gone with the Wind. It was a lot for anyone.
‘Is it Dan?’ I asked. ‘Do you want to be with Dan?’
Brodie burst out laughing. ‘I don’t want to be with anyone!’ she yelled. ‘I’m not an accessory. I can exist without being attached to a guy!’
The intercom buzzed. ‘This is Ferdy,’ he said. ‘Agency ships are heading in our direction. They appear to be on an intercept course.’
I sighed. That was the end of our island hideaway.
We assembled on the bridge. Dan took his place at the helm while the others checked their consoles. Ebony suggested possible escape routes as Chad brought up the weapon systems. He glanced at me. I nodded, and he returned the gesture. Our bruises were fading, but some wounds would take longer to heal. I still felt a deep hurt, but I had seen the path of hatred. I knew where it could lead, and I wouldn’t let it control my life.
Liber8tor soared into the sky. None of us knew what the future held. Our friendship had taken a battering, but it wasn’t too late to mend fences. Where we would end up was anyone’s guess.
Only time would tell.
TO BE CONTINUED IN…
Teen Superheroes
Book Five
Terminal Fear
The Story So Far…
My name’s Axel, and I’m a teenage superhero.
I know that sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. I’m one of five teenagers who had their memories wiped and were given incredible powers by a secret organization known as The Agency. Now we’re on the run from them, and if we’re caught, we’ll end up in jail—or worse.
My name is Axel, but it could be anything. We were given names corresponding to the first five letters of the alphabet. I’m the A part of the alphabet, and I can control air, turn it
into weapons, create barriers, or fly on it.
B stands for Brodie. She’s a red-haired Australian girl with the strength and agility of three grown men. You wouldn’t want to be in a fight with her. You might win, but it’s unlikely. She was my girlfriend until recently, but all that changed because of Chad.
Which brings me to the letter C. Chad is a Norwegian who can control fire and ice. Oh, and he’s a complete pain. He’s also my friend, but our friendship was tested in our last adventure when we saw a future where he and Brodie were a couple. Mind you, we’ve changed that future, but history might repeat itself. That possibility is never far from my mind.
Now you’re probably wondering what D stands for. Well, it’s Dan. He’s the youngest of us. He’s Chinese, but speaks perfect English and can control metal from a distance. Dan can also read and manipulate minds, but those powers don’t work all the time.
Then there’s Ebony. She’s Chad’s sister and entirely unlike him. Quieter and easygoing, there’s a tiger beneath her shy exterior. Able to change one substance into another, she can turn a wall into air or transform granite to lead. It’s a good talent to have. Turning iron into gold is handy, too, when you need money—and we always do.
And now, I come to the final member of our team—Ferdy. He started off like the rest of us. Sort of. He’s a savant, and suffers from autism. He recently had his consciousness converted to energy. It should have been a death sentence, but he somehow survived the whole experience, and he now lives in the computer of our spaceship, Liber8tor.
In a way, Liber8tor has become a member of our crew. Once owned by a race of beings known as the Tagaar, it has become our home, and it allows us to travel anywhere around the globe. Without Liber8tor, The Agency would have caught up with us long ago.
The world has changed a lot in the last few months. There are superheroes in every country, and The Agency has branches everywhere. There’s also a town—New Haven—in the state of Virginia where the occupants of a recently crashed spacecraft now live.
And that’s about it. We’re trying to discover our true identities while staying one step ahead of the law. It’s not an easy life, but it’s the only one we’ve got. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
But then—who does?
Chapter One
‘Felix?’ Mavis Shaw said. ‘Is that you?’
If Felix had answered with anything other than a meow, she would have been amazed. Felix was her seven-year-old cat—an American shorthair—and had taken to wandering late in the day. Now it was 5pm, and there was no sign of her.
Mavis sighed. She was seventy-seven years old, and although she would never run another marathon, her health was generally good. Privately, she hoped to see another dozen summers before her mind went. Luck could be on her side. Her husband, Harry, had been spared the indignity of dementia. He had passed quietly in his sleep two years ago.
Her two sons had moved away from the little town of Targo, leaving her alone, but she wasn’t lonely. She had lived here all her life and was known and respected. Maybe that didn’t mean much in a lot of communities, but it did in Targo. It was a good town. A nice place to raise kids, grow old, and, yes, even a good place to die when the time came.
It’s My Life was about to start on television, and she would miss the beginning if she went cat hunting. Groaning, she threw on a coat. Mavis didn’t relish problems, but life had a way of dishing them out, anyway.
You’d think I’d be used to trouble, she thought.
Her screen door squealed open as she peered out at the same vista she had seen for the last half a century. Hers was the second last house in the street, the final one being the old Cooper place. Beyond it was miles of forest.
Felix was nowhere to be seen among the potted plants that crowded her veranda. Nor was she lurking under the rose bushes in her busy front garden.
Across the road, it was quiet. Dead quiet, those with a sense of humor would say, because it was the Targo town cemetery. Lord knows she and Harry had told, and retold, every bad joke about the place over their fifty-year marriage.
Everyone’s dying to go there.
You need a skeleton key to get out.
A guy over there’s looking for his ghoul friend. Get it? Ghoul friend...
Ha ha. Or as the young folks would say, LOL.
Whatever that meant.
Darkness fell early, here in the mountains. There was no reason to suspect anything had happened to Felix. Maybe she’d just gone wandering, searching for a boyfriend. The Smiths, who had just moved in down the hill, had a cat—an Abyssinian. Maybe Felix was on a date.
Skeeeeeellllll.
‘My goodness,’ Mavis muttered.
The sound had been barely recognizable as a scream. It wasn’t human. But it did sound—horribly—feline.
Felix.
Mavis peered up and down the street. The Smiths were half a mile down the hill. There was no movement at their place, and they didn’t arrive home till late anyway. They both worked in town—Bert at the library and Sarah at a legal firm. There wasn’t anything at their place that could hurt Felix anyway. Cats weren’t stupid creatures, and Felix wasn’t an exception.
Her eyes strayed to the old Cooper House. It was an old building. Not derelict by any means, but nobody had lived there for twenty years. It belonged to her and Harry, or her, now that Harry was gone. As investments went, it was a stinker. They’d never been able to rent it because of the home’s history. Their accountant had urged them to sell it a dozen times over the years, but they had hung onto it for the land value.
The building even scared her. Targo cemetery wasn’t haunted, but the old Cooper place was a different matter...
Felix wouldn’t have wandered up there. That old cat would have no reason to—
The scream rang out again.
Skeeeeeellllll.
Choking back a cry, Mavis charged up the road, but not before snatching up the rake from her front yard. Maybe that fool cat had gotten herself into trouble, or maybe somebody had brought trouble to her, but either way, she wasn’t losing her cat. Not so soon after Harry.
Mavis had noticed someone near the house recently: Joey Kent. He was a bad boy, all right, his father in jail, and his mother an alcoholic. Bad kids were always looking for mischief, and they all too easily found it.
Reaching the front gate, Mavis paused. The house was an old gothic building, the paint peeling, the roof missing tiles, and the iron fence red with rust. Chickweed, kudzu, and ground ivy choked the grounds. Buried under that jungle were rose bushes and cheerless garden gnomes.
Pushing the front gate open was like hearing something in pain. Making her way up the cracked front path, Mavis suddenly noticed how hard her heart was beating.
Mavis Shaw, she thought. You’re a tough old bird. Haunted houses don’t scare you. Or delinquent children.
And she had her rake for protection. A poke to the eye or a jab between the legs would bring down any assailant. Joey Kent might be bad, but she could handle him.
So why was she so terrified?
As always, the front door was closed and locked. So were the windows. All looked fine. Mavis squinted through the dusty glass. The room beyond looked identical to how she remembered it; a few pieces of furniture with dust sheets to keep them protected.
We should have burnt this place down years ago, Mavis thought. And collected the insurance.
But she and Harry didn’t operate that way.
The sound came again, louder this time, and obviously from the rear. Tightening her grip on the rake, she rounded the building, trampling through the undergrowth. Night was near. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and insects were starting to chirrup in the undergrowth.
Mavis shivered, as much from the cold as the fear jangling her nerves. The back yard was silent and deserted, the rear porch drowned in shadow.
Cautiously creeping up the back steps, Mavis glanced in through the back window, but it was too dark to make out
anything.
‘Felix?’ she called. ‘Here, Felix.’
A tiny squeak came from inside. Felix must be in the building. But how? Maybe that brat, Joey Kent, had locked her in. Gripping the door handle, she gave it a twist and shoved it open.
‘Felix?’
No answer. Even the buzz of the insects had faded. It was so quiet, Mavis could almost hear her own heart beating. A vein throbbed uncomfortably in her throat.
She was scared, and she didn’t like being scared. ‘Joey Kent,’ she said. ‘You’ll be in big trouble if you’ve hurt my cat.’
Shaking the rake threateningly, Mavis stepped into the room. At first, she could see nothing. Just more furniture shrouded in sheets and gloomy shadows. Then one of the shadows moved.
Mavis gasped. Feeling light-headed, she grasped the doorframe as a man stepped from the dark. He looked like something from a nightmare. Wearing a long coat, buttoned to the neck, the only visible skin was scarred, as if he had survived a terrible fire. His hair had been reduced to a few clumps, and his eyes seemed to poke out from his face like two perfectly white golf balls. The fire had taken his lips too, reducing his face to a grinning skull.
‘Who...’ Mavis struggled to speak. ‘Who are you?’
The man strolled across the room until his face was only inches from her own. His breath was all too human; it smelt of onions.
‘Who I am is not important,’ he said. ‘But, I would advise you to think of something pleasant.’
‘Why?’ Her terrified voice was like a squeak. ‘What are you saying?’
She tried lifting the rake, but the scarred man already had an object in his hand. The size of a pen, the end glowed cornflower blue.
‘You should think nice thoughts at the end,’ he said.
That was the last thing Mavis heard. Her vision went dark, and she was only dimly aware of the rake falling from her grasp. She didn’t hear it clatter to the floor because she was already dead when she joined it a moment later. Her body hit the floorboards hard, making a wuumf sound in the silent house.
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 64