I Am Phantom (12 page)

The
pants, like Cody said, were the same. Slightly loose but still form fitting.

“Put
it on,” Cody said. “Then tell me what you think.”

As
I changed, I felt a strange sort of power coming over me. There was a subtle
difference of purpose than that of my robe. I pulled up the hood to complete
the transformation.

“Whoa.”
Cody took a step back when they looked at me and Matt’s eyes grew wide.
       

“What?”
I asked.

“Im-imposing,”
Matt said.

“Fits
great,” I said.

“Matt
helped with that,” Cody said. “He’s awesome at sewing.” He stepped hesitantly
up to me. “Like I said the pants are made from the same material as the top. I
made them loose for movement and misdirection, but not too much. The shoes are
what soldiers wear but Melanie suggested cutting them down for all the jumping
you do.”

“They’re
great. And the gloves?” I held them up to the light. They somehow made my hands
feel stronger, quicker. Something glinted on the palm and on the outside of my
arm, running like a blade all the way up my elbow.

“You
see that, right?” Cody said. “It’s a material called Haldium. That’s what they
really didn’t want to give me. Not much quantity but I’ve been working on a way
to refine it into the form that’s now lining your palms and the outside of your
arm. Gives you better grip on pretty much anything. Any quick movement makes it
contract a little bit and solidify; that means you can grip, punch, grapple,
whatever, with almost double your strength and stability.”

Matt
tapped the metal table. “Hit this.”

“Why?”

“With
the outside of your arm. Do it. Hard.”

Feeling
uneasy, I swung. My arm went rigid on impact. The poor table broke in half.

“Yes!”
Cody said. “Contracts against any sudden movement. We think it can even block a
knife blade.”

“Think?
Have you tried it?”

“Would
you like to?” He held up a not-so-wicked looking kitchen knife. “I didn’t think
Melanie would mind.” I felt a little more confident after the suit had proved
itself against a defenseless table. I allowed Cody to take a swipe at me. He
was also hesitant but the second the knife hit my arm it glanced off.

Cody
grinned. “Hopefully you won’t have to test that, but the same thing goes for
the hoodie and pants. They don’t have Haldium but they’re extremely tough and
should protect you all the way up to a bullet. It’s not fully bullet proof yet.
More like bullet resistant.”

I
laughed. “Bullet resistant? I’ll only get hit fifty percent of the time?”

“Let’s
hope not at all. Look at yourself in the glass.”

           
I turned. An intimidating figure looked back. The costume gave the
illusion that I was taller and broader. The deep hood covered almost all of my
face, but I wore a thin black mask underneath similar to what a fencer would
wear. Cody said the mask amplified light so I could see well in low light. The
sides of the hood, which would normally block my vision, were transparent, like
a one-way mirror.

I
moved and a sort of awesome power moved with me. I felt invincible and looked
menacing. The perfect opponent for a super human madman. The perfect way for
answers.

“I
think you’ll get a good review on your end of the year project,” I said.

“Yeah…I’ll
have to borrow the costume and change it so the Lab doesn’t know. I hope they
give it back, or we’ll have to find something else. They still technically own
it.”

I
picked up the kitchen knife and bent it in one hand. I felt capable of doing
absolutely anything.

“What’s
your name?” Matt asked.

I
glanced at him. “Um…Drake?”

“No,
your other name. If we’re going to help you we can’t be yelling your real name
all over the radio.”

I
thought about it. At once the reporter’s voice from the news clip the other
night came back to me.

“
All kinds of phantoms about.”

Phantoms about

Phantom.
The same thing people had once called me out of fear.

“Phantom,”
I said. “I think it should be Phantom.”

Cody
agreed. Matt didn’t say anything.

“Okay
then,” I said with the finality of someone who had just accepted a massive,
life changing undertaking. “Okay, from now on, I am Phantom.”

Part 2

Falling Star

Chapter
Eight

Reflections
of the Past

I
returned to the Project Midnight lab Sykes had showed me. No matter how many
times I told myself that it didn’t make sense, that it didn’t matter, something
kept pulling me back. I found myself turning off the earpiece, pulling off the manhole
and descending into the chilly sewer again.

Everything
was exactly as we’d left it. The smashed monitors were covered with dust and
the blood trays sat waiting, hungry for mine. I ignored them and walked the
perimeter of the room, exploring the rest of the place. My mask amplified what little
light there was.

The
doors still worked. They were sliding ones like those at the Lab. Dozens of
rooms ringed the large room where the monitors were. Most held only old boxes
with nothing interesting inside. Old computer parts and beds. Nothing looked
even remotely connected to me. It couldn’t.

The
whole time the machine with the blood trays waited. It waited with answers and
when I had opened every room and found nothing I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

My
deep breath sounded like a shout in the hushed room.

I
walked over and found the control panel. There was a button marked blood
analysis. I guessed this interface was made for dummies. I pressed it. A new
tray opened. Thankfully. I had no intention of putting my blood anywhere near
Sykes’ dry, crusty blood in the other tray.

It
didn’t matter how much he thought we were blood brothers. There was no way I
was going to test mine with his. I picked up a shattered test tube and dragged
it across my hand until a trickle of blood rolled down my finger and on to the
tray. It beeped and retracted. I waited. After a moment a video of blood popped
up on screen. My blood.

It
was just like Sykes.

 
But maybe…not exactly. They didn’t seem
as frenzied as his had; they weren’t crowding together so much. These were
different.

I
took a step back to get a better look. Broken test tubes crackled under my feet
but I didn’t care.

My
blood wasn’t the same as Sykes.
I
wasn’t the same as Sykes. I was my own person still! Free and untethered.
Wasn’t I proving that by what I was doing? Everything I did was to prove I
wasn’t him. Wasn’t that enough?

A
faint noise sounded somewhere in front of me, echoing like I was in a cavern. I
stepped away from the screen and walked towards where it had come from. Has
Sykes come back? Did he live here? It made sense. But why live in the heart of
the very people who had made his life hell?

The
hallway I followed tapered and ended at a stack of discarded boxes. I had been
this way before and found nothing, but now I took a closer look, tossing boxes
aside and searching for anything out of place. I found the doorway after moving
the fifth box. It appeared unassuming so, after double-checking that there were
no surprises on the other side, I walked through.

“Welcome,”
a woman said. I immediately dove into the shadows and came up in a crouch,
scanning the room for who had spoken.

“Please
come to the control desk to begin.” The woman wasn’t real. I now saw the
speakers hanging above a control desk.

I
had found another underground room. The air in here was frigid. Absolute. As if
mistakes were not accepted here.

I
stepped behind the control desk and immediately a dull thunk sounded in front
and below me and runway light began to click on one by one. This room was a lot
bigger than I’d thought. Numbers were painted on the left wall every fifty
feet, like stations, and one section of wall was illuminated, display like,
like something was supposed to be there. There was a lot of white.

“Name,
please,” the woman’s voice said. I looked down at the screen. As I’d guessed,
there were four blocks. Number one was blinking.

“Phantom,”
I said.

“Phantom.
Please go to station one.”

More
lights came on above the station with the giant 1 painted on the wall next to
it.

I
cautiously walked over, expecting to be attacked at any moment. Another terminal
was at this station, but nothing except a clean white floor was in front of me,
looking a lot like the sparring mat at the gym.

The
terminal lit up with three options: START, SIMULATION, RECORDS. I chose
RECORDS, expecting to see something pop up on the screen.

Instead,
holograms flickered to life in the arena.

It
was Sykes. He was much younger, probably only a few years older than me. His
hologram appeared on the floor as if he had just been shoved from somewhere off
screen. He turned around to where he had come from and yelled something, but
they must not have recorded sound because I couldn’t hear anything. Without
meaning to, I walked onto the floor towards him. He looked terrified, an
emotion I could never have imagined Sykes showing. There was something
different about him. He didn’t look insane. I’m not pretending I know anything
about mental diseases, yet, but there was no hint of the cold, calculating
figure I knew.

Sykes’
hologram took a step farther back into the arena. That’s when the first machine
attacked. They rose out of the floor and dropped from the ceiling. Robotic
arms, some shooting things or swinging at his head like baseball bats. Sykes
took a blow to the stomach and doubled over, just as another arm knocked him
from behind and he collapsed. I tried to touch him but my hand passed right
through. Tears streamed down his bloodied face but still the arms kept hitting
him.

“Get
up!” I yelled. Why was he letting them do this to him? I had seen what he was
capable of. He could stop this. “Get up and fight them!” The arms stopped.
Sykes’ chest barely rose and fell. Then he lifted his head and looked off
behind me.

And
there was the madness and anger I knew.

Sykes
slowly got to his feet. His lips mumbled something, but I had no time to read
them because he was suddenly moving too fast. He swiped behind him and one
robotic arm went flying. He leapt impossibly high and tore another one out of
the ceiling and hurled it at a third. The more he destroyed the faster he went.
Mechanical arms sprang from everywhere but quickly fell beneath his onslaught.
Nothing could stop him.

The
last arm fell and Sykes stood alone in the center of the arena surrounded by
destroyed robot body parts. The hologram shut off.

“Best
time: five minutes, thirteen seconds,” the emotionless female voice said.
“Phantom, prepare for general test. Warning, these simulations are for Project
Midnight candidates only. Any other personal is at great risk of death. Begin.”

“Wait,
what?”

“Test
one: reflexes.”

A
robot arm sprang from the ground behind me. I barely had time to duck before it
fired a small ball at me. It clanged when it hit the wall. The ball was filled
with blinking neon lights.

“Seriously…”
Three more arms appeared from the floor and ceiling and fired. I flipped and
stepped back. Every time I tried to take a breath more arms appeared, all
tracking me.

One
struck me in the arm but I dodged and hit two others aside.

“Test
two: Strength,” the woman said.

This
time the robot arm swung straight at me. One came from above and tried to
squash me. I held it up and kicked another one away. They never let up. I was
using all of my skills. I had no doubt a normal human would have been
slaughtered.

“Test
Three: Night vision.” The lights shut off. I heard the robot arms retract and
then—nothing. I stood there, ready to attack anything that moved,
except…I couldn’t see anything. It was just like with the generators went out
at Monstaff.

Had
I developed night vision even without the help of my mask? Clearly the other
tests were for people like me, so did that mean I was supposed to be able to
see in the dark? I slipped off my light amplifying mask. Everything looked just
as dark. Maybe there was nothing to look at—

“Gah!”
A robotic arm sent an electric jab in my back. “Ouch!” Another one hit my chest
from above. I hurried to put on my mask.

Nope.
No night vision.

The
lights flickered back on the second I got my mask secured. I was surrounded by
five holograms shaped like men.

“Last
stage: Fighting Style.”

“Please,
these things can’t—“ One of the holograms punched my chest. A jolt of
sharp current coursed through my feet and up my entire body. I leapt back. “Okay!
Okay!” This was like Sonam’s test, right? Just…more twisted.

The
holograms approached in a semi-circle, leaving no space for me to break
through. My best option would be to take them one at a time, on my terms.

I
went for the nearest one. He tried to block but I guess the simulation was
mimicking normal human speed because it was far too slow. I hit him and the
hologram dissolved.

The
other holograms didn’t stand a chance. Each one had a different fighting
technique but it still wasn’t any different than fighting the drug dealers
behind the apartment complex or the kidnapper on Rollins Street. They were slow
and hesitant. Scared of me. This was my element. This was what I was good at.

“Training
complete. Time: three minutes forty seconds.” I waited for something else but I
guess it was done. I stepped out of the arena. The light behind me dimmed.

“Please
return to your bunk,” the woman said.

The
runway lights flicked off as I walked out of the room.