Fall of Heroes (9 page)

Novo alighted on the stage and walked to the podium. She smiled and waved as if she were in some sort of pageant. The crowd cheered and backed farther away from the five intruders at the foot of the stage.

“You have no idea how happy I am to be back, my friends,” she said into the microphone, her voice a lilting singsong. “The New Rangers have rescued me from a terrible fate. In the coming days, I'll be sharing the story of how Shade, Photon, Volt, and Titan faced great evil to save me. But for now, I'd just like to thank them, publicly, and to say to the
real
Lone Star, wherever he is: we will find you, and you'll rejoin our ranks.” She turned her head down to the Gloom-weathered man at the foot of the stage. “Soon.”

“No!” Lone Star shouted. “You are
not
Lux. Lux is
here
.”

“If that's true,” Shade said, leaning over the microphone, “why doesn't she show us some of her powers? Why don't both of you fly up here and prove to the good people of this city that you are who you say you are?”

Lone Star and Lux stared back at her.

“I thought not,” Shade said.

There was a gasp somewhere off to the right side of the stage, which morphed into screams. A pillar of darkness had grown out of the earth, and out of it walked three figures clad in black, hooded trench coats. Phantom. Barrage. Julie.

Alex's hand went icy as the mark of Cloak surfaced on his palm. A grinning, inky-black skull.

“Oh crap,” Misty said.

“Villains!” Photon took the microphone. “You would try to trick the public with henchmen made up to look like the heroes of this city?”

Phantom stepped forward. Even far away, Alex could see the glee on her face. They'd expected this, had turned it into an act for their benefit. A farce. In a single move, they'd taken all credit away from Alex and his team.

“Just a little joke, Rangers,” she hissed. “But now comes the real fun.”

Beside her, Julie's fingers stretched out into long, diamondlike talons. Razor-sharp spikes ripped through the upper arms of her coat.

“Deputies, take these agents of the Cloak Society into custody,” Photon commanded. “That's a direct order.”

“Move in,” Alex shouted. He started forward, but someone grabbed his arm. Before he could cry out, several people in the crowd nearby turned to stare at him. All of them had the same face and body, with brown hair slanted off to one side. Beneath their hooded sweatshirts, they wore Deputy uniforms.

“Going somewhere, Knight?” they spoke in unison.

“Legion,” Alex muttered.

And then, chaos.

9
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

A
lex unleashed a telekinetic wave, pushing Legion and his clones back, giving him and his teammates some space. At the front of the crowd, Deputies swarmed Lone Star and the other Rangers as civilians darted in every direction, panicked, trying to fight through one another to get out of the way of what was fast becoming a war zone.

“I hope you've been working on your aim,” Gage said, pulling two laser pistols from his pockets and handing one to Bug.

“Go,” Mallory said to Alex as she incinerated one of Legion's clones. “Misty, take him to the front. We'll handle the others here.”

Misty nodded and grabbed Alex's sleeve, and then they were tumbling over the yelling crowd, molecules veering and swerving through the air, until they were put back together again between Kirbie and Amp, who were dodging stray punches from the Deputies trying to arrest them.

Two beams of light shot from a female Deputy's eyes, landing on Kirbie's shoulder. She looked down at the marks. A faint wisp of smoke drifted up from her hoodie. She took a single step toward the woman, transforming to her wolf form and loosing a terrifying roar. The Deputy retreated.

An explosion shook the ground near them. Thick black smoke billowed across the crowd. Barrage wasn't pulling any punches—he was using his power to create explosive balls of energy right beside hordes of civilians.

“We've got to take him down,” Alex said.

“I'm on it,” Misty said.

“Wait, don't—” But she was gone before Alex could finish his sentence. His gaze shot to Barrage. Suddenly Misty was beside the man, and then they were both gone.

“In the name of justice, I demand you—,” one of the Deputies began, but Amp silenced him with a sonic blast.

A few yards away, Lux fought several opponents hand to hand while Kyle roused a few plants from Justice Tower's trampled garden back to life, sweeping them back and forth and knocking down Deputies while at the same time attempting to keep Julie from rampaging into the battlefield. Volt and Phantom pretended to fight, putting on a good show for any cameras that were still rolling.

Onstage, Shade stood between Titan and Novo, the Lux impostor, surveying the scene with what looked to be deep satisfaction. Photon floated above them, blank-faced. From the corner of the stage, Lone Star approached.

“You sadistic people,” he said. “Don't think for a second that this means—”

In a flash, Shade drew a Taser gun from her belt and fired. An electronic charge sailed through the air, striking Lone Star in the chest. He hit the stage, convulsing.

“We've heard enough out of you for one day,” Shade said, holstering her weapon.

“Lone Star!” Kyle shouted from the ground. He started toward the stage. A crackle of purple electricity snaked over his body, taking him down. Volt stood grinning behind him.

Alex leaped onto the stage, boosted by a telekinetic blast. With a nudge of his thoughts, he knocked Lone Star's body to the ground below, where Amp fought off wave after wave of Deputies. Shade reached into the podium and pulled the cord of the microphone out. She smiled at Alex, then her arm and the Taser shot out to her side, pointing at the crowd.

“No! You villain!” she shouted. “No! Don't make me fire!”

Electricity shot out of the gun. It hit one of the Deputies—the woman with the failed laser eyes—in the shoulder. The woman was knocked back, screaming, and fell to the ground.

Oops,
Shade's voice rang in Alex's head. He tried to pull the gun from her hands, but there was an impossibly strong resistance. And then he realized what was happening: Photon was making sure the weapon stayed right where it was. She was using Photon's powers to combat his telekinesis.

Settle down, or it will be your fault when half the crowd ends up collateral damage.
His mother was in his head again.
I'd hate to lose that many loyal followers.

“Titan!” she yelled, more to the crowd than her teammate. “Quickly, son. Grab him. He's using his telekinetic powers to make me fire on my own Deputies.”

Titan grinned and walked around Alex, taking him by the shoulders and lifting him off the ground.

“Guess this didn't go like you wanted it to, huh?” Titan sneered into Alex's ear.

Alex focused his thoughts on his mother. She sparked a bright blue under his gaze and flinched.

“There you go again,” she said. “What exactly is your plan here, Alexander?”

And in that moment, Alex didn't know what to do. He had his mother wrapped in his crackling telekinesis, but he didn't know how to proceed. She gestured out to the fighting on the ground at her feet. Several dozen Deputies were swarming Lux and Amp. Kyle had regained consciousness and now had Volt wrapped up in a mass of vines, while Kirbie slashed away at tendrils of shadow conjured up by Phantom. Farther back, Mallory, Gage, and Bug took on swarm after swarm of replicating Legions.

He could put an end to it right there. He had the power to do so. All it would take was a squeeze of the energy around his mother. It would release Photon and cripple all of Cloak's plans. One squeeze. That's all it would take. . . .

What was he thinking? He shook his head, frustration boiling in his brain. How was he supposed to protect his teammates and the city
and
his enemies? He felt helpless.

Shade smirked.

“Novo. Go untangle my husband from that overgrown shrub. Titan, help Legion.”

“But—,” Titan started, dropping Alex.

“Go,” Shade commanded. Her eyes flashed behind her sunglasses. Photon's arm shot forward. Titan flew through the air, over the crowd, landing somewhere in the back near Legion and the others.

Novo hissed at Alex as she passed by, slamming one fist into the back of his head, causing his vision to blur and spark. He stumbled forward. Shade looked at him with consideration.

“You know,” she said, “if we really wanted to, we could have gotten rid of you at any time. Found out all your secrets. Had you killed. Imprisoned. I could've locked you all away and made you live out every nightmare you've ever had in your head over and over again. Or slowly rewritten each of your minds like I'm doing to Photon. It would have taken a lot of time and a lot of work, sure, but we'd have had your powers on our side in the end. So I've taken it
easy
on you for the past month, treated you as a potential resource. If you were smart, you would have laid low. I might even have overlooked you. But then you had to go and
complicate
things.”

Alex almost laughed at the idea that his mother might ever “overlook” him and his teammates.

“You can't keep this up forever, acting as both hero and villain.”

“Of course not,” Shade said. “Though I'd say you're hardly one to talk. To be perfectly honest with you, I still haven't figured out which way things will end. Becoming the Rangers had never been the plan—not until we realized what
potential
there was in having one of them on our side. At first I thought we'd just expose ourselves as being Cloak once we were in complete control, when it was too late to do anything about it. But it's so much easier to get what you want when the people think you've got their best interests in mind. Maybe we'll just absorb Cloak into the Rangers. Barrage and Julie will have changes of heart and pledge themselves to us. The public does love a reformed criminal.”

“You always told us we would rule out of fear,” Alex said. He knew there was no talking sense into his mother, but he could still keep her attention on him, off the others. Besides, he had to admit to himself that he was curious about what she was saying. He couldn't fit it all into the long speeches and manifestos about Cloak's superiority he'd grown up listening to. “The Cloak Society is better than normal people, right? Why care about what they think?”

“I thought the Tutor made you read Machiavelli. To be feared is to have power over someone, true, but it's always better to be feared
and
loved.
That's
real control. Besides, look how easily they accepted us. They can't be trusted on their own. The people need us to tell them what they should do.”

“You won't get away with this. Even if you stop us, someone else will oppose you. Some other force.”

“Other force?” Shade asked. “Look at Lone Star and Lux, Alex. They're the heroes. They're supposed to be the most powerful beings on earth. And what are they doing? Fighting for their lives. They're powerless. Nothing.”

“You're insane,” Alex said, his mouth hanging open.

His mother's face grew dark as she clenched her jaw.

“That's not a very nice thing to call your mother.”

Her eyes flashed silver behind her sunglasses and she took a few steps back. Above her in the air, Photon's face strained, the veins on his neck popping out. At first Alex couldn't figure out what the man was trying to do, and hoped that maybe he was waging a war in his head and about to break free from Shade's control. Then Alex turned and saw the police motorcycle from down the street flying through the air, sailing right toward him. Its speed shocked him so much that for a second he didn't move. And then it was upon him, closing in, faster and heavier than he could have any chance of stopping with his powers.

He ducked and weaved at the last possible moment. The back wheel of the motorcycle—still spinning—came within an inch of his nose. It splintered the wooden podium before rolling several times and exploding somewhere atop the ruins of Justice Tower.

Shade didn't let up. As Alex tried to make sense of the fact that his mother had just hurled a motorcycle at him, Photon shot straight down, all fists. Alex barely had time to catch him and hold him in midair. Suddenly Julie was on him, too, charging at him from behind. Alex thrust his right hand up, wrapping her with his thoughts, keeping her trapped in the air. She let out a howl and slashed at the empty space in front of her. Spikes jutted out from her shoulders and elbows.

“Let me down and fight me, you idiot!” she shouted.

“Tell me, Julie,” Alex said as he poured everything he had into his powers, “how mad are you that your brother got picked to be on the Ranger team while you're still stuck underground?”

Julie's lips drew back in an angry sneer. “My role in all this is very important.”

Alex started to sweat. His breathing grew labored. He slowly turned his head back to his mother.

“Is this it, then?” Alex asked through gritted teeth. “Are you going to make an example of me here on the stage?”

Shade shook her head slowly.

“For a while I wasn't sure what to do with you,” she said. “If it came down to it, how would I end my only son? Could I? But the answer was simple. I
don't
destroy you. I make you watch as we triumph, knowing that you can't stop us. We're gathering arms, Alex. Gathering comrades. While you were breaking into the underground base to help rescue your useless Rangers, we were visiting the Guild of Daggers in New York. In exchange for leaving the Northeast to their control, they're making all sorts of fun things for us.” She raised a hand, as if to stop him from speaking. “Don't worry. The Guild will eventually kneel to us once they've served their purpose. With Gage's notes and drawings and Photon's brilliant mind, you can't imagine the surprises we've designed.”

Alex's head spun.

“You mean
weapons
,” he said.

Shade shrugged. “We'll really only need to make an example of one or two major cities before the rest of the country does whatever we ask of them. Scare them into trusting us or scare them into fearing us.”

“The rest of the country?” Alex asked. His mind raced. Photon was inching closer to him. He couldn't think straight. “What are you talking about?”

Shade's face lit up with laughter, as if this were the silliest question she'd ever been asked.

“My dear Alexander. You didn't think we were going to stop with Sterling City, did you? This is just the first step. And look how easy it was.”

“Impossible. You'll never be able to—”

“But you're going to see it, Alexander! All of it! And when you break, I'll know your thoughts. I'll know all your secrets. And then I'll rewrite you. I'll rewrite all of you. And in the end you'll look at me with nothing but unshakable love and respect.”

Suddenly his mind was clear. Her threats had struck a nerve. For the first time Alex understood that Shade was a villain first and a mother second. She had always told him that Cloak was to be put before everything in life—that it was priority above all else. Up until recently, that had included Alex. He realized that somewhere deep down he'd been hoping that her love for the Society would carry over to him even if he wasn't a part of it. But it didn't. He was a means to an end. And that
hurt
.

Alex began to tremble. His hair and clothing started to billow, as if he were underwater. Power welled up inside him like he hadn't felt in weeks—since he'd faced off against the Cloak Society in that very spot. He started to rise up off the stage, until he floated several yards in the air. There were flashes where he was sure that the others could see his energy, like crackling light wrapped around Julie and Photon. A radiant blue poured out of his eyes as he stared down at his mother. Shade took a few steps back. There was the slightest twitch of worry on her face.

I have to do something,
Alex thought.
I have the power. I'm in control. I have to do something and then get us all out of here.

“That's it,” Shade whispered. “Burn out. Put on your big show and then end up cowering on the floor. I'm going to lock you down in the depths of the underground base and make you watch as I reprogram every one of your new friends.”