Virus Attack (23 page)

Toby gritted his teeth because of the pain. It seemed they were losing against the more experienced villains.

Worm stood over Lorna as she struggled to get her breath back. He pressed his foot against her throat, choking her. “In my day, girls knew that their place was to be unseen and silent!”

“Let her go!”

Worm's eyes grew as wide as saucers. He didn't have to look to know whose voice that was. “As I live and breathe! Commander Courage!”

Eric Kirby was standing calmly on the deck, both hands resting on his cane. “I thought I'd seen the last of you.”

Worm was genuinely shocked to see how his nemesis had aged. “Commander, you look … so
old
. I think you did me a favor leaving me in suspended animation for all those years. I look
much
better than you.”

“You couldn't look better than me, even if I were dead!”

The two adversaries circled one another. Lorna rubbed her throat, unable to say a word. But she knew the old man didn't stand a chance. Eric Kirby unsheathed a long sword blade hidden inside his cane and swished it expertly through the air. Worm retaliated by extending long thin claws from the fingertips of one hand—four blades against one.

They clashed in a whirl of claws and steel. Eric Kirby was still as nimble as an Olympic gymnast. He somersaulted over Worm's head as the villain charged—causing him to run headfirst into a set of steel pipes.

Basilisk glanced at the fight behind him, and assumed he was winning with the three kids down. He turned back, just as Pete leaped to the air like a jack-in-the-box, dripping an assortment of liquid powers that were burning his skin. His glasses had been knocked aside, but remarkably he could see perfectly.

“You're going down!” he bellowed at Basilisk.

Pete spread his arms wide and his entire body glowed
with an intense silver light—a shock wave rippled out, sending Basilisk reeling to the ground; a glass tank cushioned his fall as it shattered.

Pete burned like a supernova, forcing Worm and Eric Kirby to shield their eyes. It was enough of a distraction for Worm, who blindly lunged, cutting Kirby across his chest. The old man staggered backward.

Worm followed it with a backstroke. Kirby parried the blow and delivered a devastating swing that cleaved Worm in half.

Lorna had been watching in fascination and grimaced, expecting a lot of blood. Instead she blinked in surprise.

Worm was still alive.

The villain looked at his two halves in despair. Amazingly a brand-new lower torso formed on one half—and a duplicate upper torso on the other. It was like watching a balloon expand as the second-Worm's features slowly formed.

Then the two duplicates stared at each other and laughed.

“Two against one,” they both said simultaneously. “Time for revenge!”

Eric Kirby was too astonished to defend himself as eight claws slashed at him.

“No!” screamed Lorna, and she unleashed powerful
energy darts from both hands that smashed into the duplicate villains.

At the moment Trojan was about to finish Toby off, the blinding flash from Pete caught her attention. Without a moment to lose, Toby blew his hurricane breath straight into Trojan. It caught her cape and lifted her backward against a storage tank. The glass cracked but didn't break.

Toby followed it up with a fireball that smashed across her chest and shattered the glass behind her. Trojan was lost in the wall of liquid powers, but Toby could see her arms waving as she battled to stay afloat. The liquid flooded the deck like a tidal wave.

Toby suddenly felt a new wave of energy. He was the group's leader; he couldn't let the villains win this one. They had suffered failure time and time again as Basilisk or his cronies had slipped through their fingers, kidnapped Pete, and now infiltrated the Hero Foundation headquarters.

He struggled to his feet, looking around at his battling friends. “Come on! Fight them! We can win this! We are
heroes
!”

Lorna felt surprisingly motivated by Toby's battle
cry and tore her gaze from the Worm duo to assess the situation. She noticed that Emily was lying unconscious in the path of the tidal wave.

“Em!”

The wave scooped her up and dragged her toward the edge. Lorna leaped into the air and raced forward—plucking Emily out just as she reached the rim. She watched helplessly as Trojan was swept off, limbs flailing as she fell into the clouds.

Basilisk shrieked in pain as the liquid superpowers burned his skin. He knew high dosages were dangerous, even to Primes. He had seen what moderate quantities had done to Jake Hunter, his old protégé, but Pete was practically swimming in them—absorbing the raw, undigitized powers through every pore in his skin.

Basilisk took flight but Pete swooped in and tackled him. Entwined, they both spun through the air, trading punches.

Basilisk used his petrification power on the boy, but Pete's face suddenly burned blank and featureless like a mask. It was a mass of golden energy making him resemble a living statue. He didn't feel the effect of Basilisk's powers.

“That's all you've got?” he taunted the villain.

Basilisk was amazed. “What's happened to you?”

“I've become more powerful than you can imagine!” said Pete.

They were not just empty words. Pete
felt
it.

Basilisk knew he was outclassed. But he had one trick left. He concentrated on his own body. While he could turn others to stone, Basilisk also had the power to increase his own density. He grabbed Pete around the neck and willed himself heavier.

Even with the new power he felt, Pete couldn't prevent himself from being dragged to the deck like a meteorite. He hit the steel superstructure with such force that the entire carrier rocked. The impact caused dozens of other holding tanks to smash in a wide shock wave around them. The thick fluids surged over Pete and Basilisk in a kaleidoscope of sizzling superpowers.

Toby raced toward Viral, and found the man lying at an awkward angle amid the pipes. Anywhere his body touched it, the metal was rapidly corroding, and the colorful superpower liquids squirted out at high pressure. Toby avoided the spray and prepared a fireball … but he hesitated. Viral looked pathetic, just like a neglected kid. He was an outcast. Toby felt a pang of sympathy. His adventures were beginning to make him wiser, and he now realized that not every
situation was a black-and-white one. His sense of compassion and reasoning was truly developing.

“Don't move, we'll get you help when this is over.”

Viral laughed, but the action caused pain. “Course I believe you. A nice cell on Diablo Island, right?”

“That's not what I mean.”

“You were just yelling that you were a hero. You're all the same. Lock away what you don't understand.”

“That's not true.”

The deck shuddered again as Pete and Basilisk rolled around, locked in a deadly struggle. A loose pipe fell across Viral, causing him to howl in pain and crushing his arm.

“Understand this,” he said through gritted teeth. “I have set a virus in the main computer. Something I can control remotely.”

“Don't do it!”

“I never liked flying. Always preferred to have my feet on the
ground
.”

Viral closed his eyes—and at that exact moment the whole Foundation carrier lumbered to one side as Viral's infection deactivated the anti-gravity system. It was like being on the deck of the
Titanic
as it sank—the carrier plummeted through the clouds, earthbound. Everybody slid down the incline.

* * *

Lorna was still holding Emily as she hovered over the Foundation complex. Smashed pipes and utility vehicles around the complex rolled down the slope and off the edge of the floating carrier.

Toby took to the air with his sister. A waterfall of debris flowed off the edge of the carrier and poured into the clouds.

Pete and Basilisk were still embraced in combat. The superpowered liquid clung to them both in thick, gloopy strands.

Then Pete suddenly extinguished his glowing appearance, reverting to normal as the carrier lurched, pouring the liquid over the edge and almost driving him and Basilisk with it.

Basilisk pushed Pete aside and took to the air, leaving the boy to slide down the slope. Pete smashed through tank after tank, more powers washing over him.

Toby darted forward like a missile to save him.

At the same moment Emily came to and noticed that Eric Kirby was sliding off the edge. He was bleeding badly but still alive. She broke from Lorna's grasp and flew toward him, grabbing his hand just as he sailed off the side.

“Em, wait a minute,” shouted Lorna. Then she noticed that the Worm twins were hanging from a pipe, feet flailing in the air as the incline increased. She shot forward, but before she could do anything to help, a heavy steel tower that supported pressure pipes broke away with a screech of steel and slammed into the twins. Lorna saw them burst into particles, but then a wave of congealing superpowers washed over them with an acidic hiss.

“Lorn, help me!” It was Emily. Eric Kirby's weight was dragging her back down to the sloping carrier. Lorna flew across and helped her friend.

Toby was an arm's length away from Pete as Pete smashed through another vat. A rainbow of gunk clung to Pete, and he no longer seemed conscious.

“Pete! I'm here!” screamed Toby.

He clutched his friend's sleeve, which was slick with ooze—and then felt a blast knock him sideways into a gantry. He had to shield his eyes from the sun as Basilisk dropped on him.

“You've lost!” roared Basilisk. “Don't you see I've won? The Hero Foundation is falling apart around you!”

The fact hit Toby like a physical blow. Basilisk was right. The moment they hit the ground the Foundation and Hero.com would be no more.

Basilisk pinned Toby against the pipes with his full weight. “I just wanted you to know how badly you've been defeated, before I kill you!”

Toby noticed two things at once. Pete's body was slipping over the edge in a waterfall of artificial superpowers, and that Basilisk looked vaguely like Pete, which alarmed him.

Basilisk's eyes started to glow. Toby felt his skin become instantly dry and he screamed as it cracked. Toby held up his arm to try to block Basilisk's eyes, but all that happened was that the skin on his forearm turned gray.

Toby took a deep breath—then teleported away. Basilisk stumbled and looked around, furious that he had been cheated out of the kill.

Toby reappeared slightly below the carrier, at its edge. Teleporting in the middle of the sky was an unpleasant experience as he immediately plunged, and had to initiate his flying power. He looked around for Pete and spotted him falling faster than the carrier, amid a sea of debris.

Toby spurred forward and swept up Pete, unsure if his friend was still alive. He blanked out those negative thoughts and concentrated on staying airborne with his friend's weight. Commander Courage had said the powers packed a punch. Toby just hoped he was right about that.

He was relieved to see Emily and Lorna swoop down with Eric Kirby strung between them.

“We have to get out of here!” warned Lorna.

“What?”

“The carrier … has a nuclear reactor …,” wheezed Kirby. He mimed an explosion with his fingers.

“I just used my teleport!” said Toby. He knew with Pete's additional weight there was no way he could outrun an explosion—and the carrier was seconds away from impact with the desert.

“Grab hold!” said Emily.

Toby kept a firm grip on Pete and clutched Emily's shoulder …

Just as the city fell from the sky.

Explosions popped across the deck as power plants overloaded. As the central hub hit the ground, the elegant towers toppled into one another like dominoes and the nuclear reactor exploded with a blinding flash.

The heroes teleported away just as an expanding radioactive shock wave tore the Hero Foundation into billions of pieces. A mushroom cloud punched a fist toward the sky as the explosion echoed across the Gobi desert.

Basilisk had been defeated for now, but the Hero command center had been destroyed.

* * *

The rhythmic bleep of a life-support machine was the only sound in the room. Toby, Lorna, and Emily stared at Pete, who was covered in bandages and motionless. They were in a sterile private room in one of the Foundation's private hospitals.

“How long will he be like this?” said Emily. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying. Toby had been surprised when she hugged him tight for comfort.

Eric Kirby stood behind them. His wounds were healed, and he wore a fresh linen suit. He still had his cane for support. He shook his head. “We don't know. He's in a very deep coma, after direct contact with so much raw hyper energy.”

“I thought these powers were supposed to be safe?” snapped Lorna.

“In small doses, yes. And even in higher quantities, we Primes have a certain natural tolerance. But in a normal person … well, we simply don't know what effect that is going to have on him. This is unprecedented. To be honest, I'm amazed he's still alive.”

Toby left the room, and stood on the small balcony that overlooked the hospital grounds. Since they had returned he had thought of nothing but the welfare of his friend. They had all contacted their parents to say they were safe and had given convincing alibis. Kirby had assured them that he would contact Pete's parents directly and inform them of their son's condition.

Toby thought about how out of control things had become during the events leading to the downfall of the Hero Foundation, and he felt guilty. They had had a responsibility and they had failed.

Eric Kirby laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You did well, you know.”

“We failed.”

“You all saved my life. That's no failure. And you interfered with Basilisk's plans just enough to give us time to evacuate our staff to other bases.”