Fall of Heroes (15 page)

“With all due respect, Lone Star.” Misty grinned. “You don't know us very well.”

“If we fail,” Gage said, “this will go down as a heroic win for the New Rangers. They'll twist the story to make us the villains. It'll give them that much more power and sway.”

“Then we don't fail,” Kirbie said. “We can't.”

“We choose Scylla. We don't let the whole ship go down.”

“Except we don't lose six teammates, Gage,” Mallory said. “You've got to start choosing your metaphors more carefully.”

Gage gave her a grin.

“We save the city,” Kirbie said.

“We save the
world
,” Alex suggested.

“It would help if we had any sort of evidence that connected Cloak to the New Rangers,” Amp said. “Just for a worst-case scenario. Something we could leave behind.”

“Everything was incinerated at the lake house,” Kirbie said, falling back against the couch. “And all of
that
was just our notes and stuff.”

“Shade seems a little crazier than normal,” Mallory said. “What else was she saying onstage? Anything we can use?”

Alex's thoughts raced. He started babbling everything he could think of.

“The Umbra Gun, the Guild of Daggers, how they want to make us suffer by watching the city fall, how the people were so quick to believe them . . .”

“Too bad the microphone wasn't on for all that,” Lux muttered.

Alex nodded. Shade had ripped out the microphone. Even if someone
had
managed to capture video of the whole thing, there'd be no sound. And what would it show? Just the heroic Shade taking down another bad guy. If only they had video of the New Rangers
before
they were the new Rangers.

“Wait,” Alex said. He stopped. Something his mother mentioned popped into his mind. They hadn't always planned on becoming Rangers. That had been a new development, something they'd come up with after Alex had defected.

“What are you thinking?” Amp asked.

“The Cloak Society doesn't wear masks.” Alex started across the room.

“Well, we know
that
,” Kyle said, seemingly deflated.

“No, you don't understand. I've got it.” Alex found his Cloak trench draped across a chair. He slid two photos out of the inside pocket. “We've already beaten them.”

16
PROOF

I
t took a few days for them to put together the information Alex had in mind. In that time, things seemed to stay the same in Sterling City—meaning, things were still bad but the city hadn't been sucked into the Gloom or anything.

They hated to wait. But it was worth it.

What Alex realized as he and his teammates discussed how and where they would make their final stand was that he'd been carrying proof of Cloak's connection to the New Rangers ever since he'd left the underground base. He had photos. In one picture, his parents stared into the camera, grinning. They held him between them, nothing but a brown-haired infant. On the back was Shade's handwriting:
Alex—6 months.

That was a start—their “son” Titan was blond, after all—but it really wasn't much. The other photo was far more condemning. It was the Polaroid that had hung on the Rec Room wall in the lake house, a picture Alex had pocketed before the groundbreaking ceremony. It had been taken less than a year before: Alex, Mallory, Julie, and Titan, all four of them wearing their black Beta uniforms with grinning silver Cloak skulls on the chest.

The people of Sterling City knew that skull all too well now. They just never imagined their hero, Titan, wearing it.

From there, Alex's brain bloomed with possibilities. In taking the identity of the Rangers, Cloak had overlooked all the years of evidence that had piled up. Every time Cloak had gone anywhere in public together, they were exposed to surveillance cameras and recordings. It had never occurred to them to hide their identities because they saw no reason to: soon the world would know them as their Cloak rulers, anyway. That was something Alex and his team could take advantage of.

Between Alex, Mallory, Misty, and Gage, they created a list of all the places they'd recently been to on Thursday outings—those brief hours every week when they'd been allowed to leave the underground base and see movies or go get ice cream. They figured out places the High Council had been together, too. And then, they went hunting.

Carla and the former Betas carried out the assignments, since theirs were the faces least likely to be recognized. From across the city, security tapes went missing. In a bookstore on the south side of town several rows of shelves toppled over mysteriously. By the time they were put back in order, the computer hard drive that held all the store's backlog footage was missing. In the arts district, someone managed to melt through a museum's thick basement window and make off with several components of its security systems. And on the western edge of Sterling City, a checkout clerk swore she saw a box of tapes float through the air as she locked up.

Back at Carla's, the Junior Rangers watched hours and hours of footage, putting together a sort of highlights reel. Phantom and Shade were clearly visible shopping together at a high-end boutique. Barrage and Volt picked up rare, special-order books for the Tutor. The Beta Team threw popcorn at one another as they exited a movie theater.

Evidence, all of it. Proof that the New Rangers weren't who they said they were.

One of the tapes came from an outdoor shopping center. Alex was with Kirbie in the upstairs den as she discovered it.

“Look!” Kirbie shouted, jumping to her feet and pointing at the parking lot on the screen. “It's you. I mean, it's
all
of you.”

Sure enough, the Betas stood at the back of a black SUV as Barrage and Shade talked to them. Alex shook his head. It seemed so long ago.

“This is good stuff,” Kirbie said. “Not only does it have all of you guys, but it's got Shade and Barrage, too. Look, you can see them both clearly getting back into the car together.”

“Do you know what day that was?” Alex asked.

“No, should I?” She trailed off as she fast-forwarded through the footage. “Wait, is this when . . .” The camera angles changed a few times as she sped through, until suddenly she saw herself, chasing after a skeezy-looking man carrying a purse.

“Yup,” Alex said.

“This is the day I ran into you at the mall,” she said quietly.

The camera angle shifted again, and they saw the whole encounter play out. Alex was nervous for some reason as they watched. There was no sound, but he remembered the scene like it had happened yesterday. He'd lied to Kirbie, telling her that he was thinking of leaving Cloak, even though he'd had no intention of doing so at the time. It was almost funny now given the mess they were in. Eventually, she'd flown away to her team, and Alex had gone back to his.

Kirbie paused the video and smiled a strange, small smile.

“What?” Alex asked.

“Nothing.”

“Oh come on. We're almost, like, at the end of the world.”

“No, it's nothing,” she said. “I was just remembering how I thought I could turn you into a Ranger, and we'd all just ride in and take Cloak by surprise and save the day. I was so . . . I don't know, what's the right word? Just dumb, I guess?”

Alex wrinkled his brow as he stared at her.

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “If I'd never met you—if I'd never
fought
you—I don't know if I'd ever have realized what the Cloak Society was really all about. I would have raided Justice Tower along with them. I wouldn't have been able to see just how
insane
my family is.”

“You did this on your own, Alex.”

“No,” he said. “I did it with you by my side. And with Kyle and Amp. With everyone.”

Kirbie smiled and let her eyes drop to the floor. Her golden hair was usually in a ponytail, but it was down now, falling over her shoulders.

“If—no,
when
we make it out of all this, what are we all going to do? You'll stick with us, right? As a Ranger?”

“I don't know,” Alex said. “I don't think any of us have really thought about it much since we've been so caught up in what to do about Cloak. I mean, of course we'll figure something out. But me and Mal and the others, we weren't really brought up for that kind of spotlight. Besides, there's so much we were trained to do that's not even
legal
. We'd have to completely relearn everything we know if we were going to be some kind of superheroes.”

“I don't think that's true,” Kirbie said. “Look at all the good you've done in the last month.”

“Are you talking about things like destroying museum exhibits and crashing press conferences or just generally causing a public panic anywhere I go?”

“You
know
what I mean.”

“Let's just make it through the next few days,” Alex said. “Then we'll have all the time in the world to figure out where we all belong in this city.”

 

When they weren't collecting data and research and evidence, they were training. Nothing that would give them away—there would be no giant, flailing trees or window-breaking bursts of sound—but they could shoot targets in the backyard and spar.

A few hours after watching the video with Kirbie, Alex sat against a wall in the basement with Amp. They watched Lux and Lone Star train. The two Rangers had very different ways of fighting. Lux was an acrobat, lithe and agile, twisting her body at lightning speeds as she jabbed forward with a bladelike palm. Lone Star was a brawler. He was all fists and grunts, throwing his body at the swinging sandbag in the room with seemingly no regard for himself.

Alex had never been especially good at fighting hand to hand—that was always something Titan and Julie had excelled at. He was impressed by how naturally it seemed to come to both of the Rangers. Alex kept a few things he'd brought down from around the house darting about through the air, giving them plenty of moving targets. They seemed in high spirits.

“Remember that time the robber dressed in a weird animal costume got you in a headlock at that jewelry store?” Lux asked. “You know, the one in the modified mascot costume.”

“That wasn't my fault,” Lone Star said. “I was flying. How was I supposed to know he could jump that high?”

“He
did
call himself the Jackrabbit.” Lux tossed her pale hair back as she slammed her leg against a floating couch cushion in a swinging kick.

“I thought he could punch really fast.” He smiled and loosed a mighty right hook on a decorative pillow zigzagging in front of him. “I didn't expect him to have gas-powered springs in his boots.”

“You're just lucky Photon was there to rip him off you.”

Alex smirked at the exchange and willed the soft targets to dive and move at a faster pace.

“Hey,” Amp said to him. “Can you hear anything weird?”

Alex turned to the Junior Ranger, who was pointing a finger out in his direction. He shook his head.

“How about now?” Amp moved his finger so that it was in line with Alex's chest.

Alex shivered. Suddenly it was like he had a silent drum pounding in his ribs.

“Whoa, weird,” Alex said. “I can't hear it, but I can
feel
it. Is . . . this safe?”

“Totally,” Amp said, looking pleased with himself. “Just trying to work on making the most focused audio stream I can.”

He got a mischievous look in his eye, and before Alex could say anything, the Junior Ranger flicked his wrist, drawing his finger in a quick line across Alex's face.

Alex felt like he had his head shoved into the world's most powerful speaker for a split second.

“Gah!” he shouted, clutching his ears. Near the center of the room, one of the pillows exploded as he lost control of his telekinetic powers.

“Hey, hey,” Lone Star said, his voice low and chastising as feathers floated in the air all around him. “What are you two up to?”

“Dude, Alex, I'm so sorry,” Amp said. “I didn't think it was that bad. It was half the power I've been practicing with.” He lowered his voice. “That should be enough to throw Shade off, at least.”

Alex took his hands off his ears and narrowed his eyes. Amp started to speak.

“Whatever it is you're think—”

He was cut off by a series of five cushions and pillows smacking against his body.

“Alex, that's hardly fair,” Lux said, trying not to smile.

Amp was just starting to climb out from under the pile of cushions when Gage swung open the door at the top of the basement stairs.

“We're done with the footage,” he said, rubbing the dark bag under one of his eyes. “We've got everything we can. The plan can move forward as soon as you're ready.”

17
REBELS

A
fter the sun had been down for several hours, Lone Star and Lux squeezed into the backseat of Carla's SUV while Misty and Alex sat in the far back trunk. Fortunately, the windows were already darkly tinted, meaning that if they kept their heads down, they might be able to make it to the other side of town without rousing any suspicion. Maybe.

“Please don't let this end up being some sort of high-speed car chase,” Carla said as the garage door opened. She tightened her hands around the steering wheel. “I really like this car.”

“If we just stick to the plan and all stay calm, I'm sure we'll be fine,” Lux said, though Alex couldn't help but wish she'd sounded more sure herself when she spoke.

“Besides,” Lone Star added, “you did a great job jetting us away in that van the other day. I'd say you've got a knack as a getaway driver.”

Carla stared at her brother, not amused, before starting the car.

The city was eerily quiet and seemed darker than normal, even with the streetlamps back on. Rain had fallen earlier, and heavy clouds still floated thick in the sky, obscuring the moon and stars. Alex watched the wet street pass by through the back window of the SUV, illuminated every few blocks by the vehicle's brake lights. The streets around them were ominously serene.

“I've got Deputies up ahead,” Carla said as they drew nearer to town, driving through the financial district. “But they've got a couple of kids or something with them. I think they're making an arrest.”

As they got closer, the scene began to make sense. Two Deputies had three college-aged citizens lined up against a wall, laser pistols drawn. One of the civilians wore a shirt that said
WE DIDN'T VOTE ON PHOTON
. Above them was one of the giant posters of the New Rangers. Horns and mustaches had been drawn on all the figures. In neon-green letters, someone had spray-painted over parts of the text so that it read
NO RANGERS. JUST US
. And in the white space on the side of the poster was a giant skull painted in dripping silver.

Everyone but Carla kept their heads down as they drove past, slowly.

“Should we help them?” Misty asked.

“That's a bad idea,” Lone Star said. “The best thing we can do for them is continue on our mission.”

Alex pressed a finger over his lips to Misty and concentrated on the two laser pistols pointed at the civilians. He waited until their SUV was a few blocks away, then pulled the weapons out of the Deputies' hands with one thought and pushed the two lackeys to the ground with another. The three kids made a break for it. Carla turned a corner, and Alex couldn't see them any longer.

“That was a Cloak skull, right?” Alex asked. “That can't be coincidence.”

“They've adopted it as a symbol of rebellion against the Rangers,” Lux said. “It's not exactly uncommon in a situation like this. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' and all.”

“Great. Cloak groupies.”

“Will you all please stay down back there?” Carla commanded more than asked as she noticed Alex's head in the rearview mirror. “I thought you were supposed to be masters of stealth.”

They continued in silence for a few more blocks as they drew closer to the heart of the city, where the streetlights and building marquees kept the roads better lit. An electronic billboard on the side of a building flashed a single message:
CURFEW IN EFFECT. AS YOUR EVER-VIGILANT PROTECTORS, WE ARE WATCHING.—THE RANGERS OF JUSTICE
.

“Well,
that's
comforting,” Alex muttered.

“Misty,” Carla said, her voice steady, but with a slight edge. “You're on deck. I've got a roadblock up here.”

“Got it!” Misty said. She reached over the backseat and grabbed Lone Star's and Lux's shoulders, while Alex held on to the sleeve of her coat. “Ready.”

The car stopped in front of a female Deputy standing in the middle of the street and waving a glow stick. Her partner approached the driver's side of the car, one hand on his belt holster.

“Now,” Carla said, as she began to roll down her window.

The four people in the back atomized, until they were nothing but a thin haze that settled on the seats and floors in the dark of the car.

“You'd better have clearance to be out here, ma'am,” the man said in a thick Texas drawl, “or else you're going to be meetin' a bunch of new friends soon. Or I guess I should say ‘cell mates' instead.”

He smiled a wide, self-satisfied grin, looking positively giddy to have stopped someone. Carla pulled a leather rectangle from her jacket pocket and shoved it in the man's face.

“I'm chief assistant district attorney of this city, young man,” she said, her voice firm and annoyed. “I have full clearance to be out.”

“Well, well, well, now,” the man said. “I don't know about that. You did say
assistant
, right? Not
the
district attorney. Maybe I need to call this in to the Rangers and make sure that an
assistant
is high enough on the food chain to be out at night.”

Carla pulled her ID back inside the car and narrowed her eyes.

“I'm sure Photon and Lux have nothing better to do than field the questions of a Deputy who didn't bother to learn who does and does not have the right to be on the streets tonight. Especially when the person you're asking about is a city official who specializes in the prosecution of criminals, making every second you keep me here an obstruction of
justice
. So by all means, call this in and find out if you're doing your job or not. I can wait. I'll just make sure that when a Cloak henchman goes free because my time was wasted at this checkpoint, you're the person who gets to explain why to the Rangers.”

The Deputy stuttered for a bit before taking a few steps away from the SUV and waving them on. As they drove away, the others began to materialize in the backseats.

“You were
amazing
,” Misty said as she put everyone back together again. “Even I was kind of scared of you.”

“Now you see why I wanted Starla as a Ranger,” Lone Star said with a grin.

Carla glared at him in the rearview mirror, and then let out a long breath.

“If that's who we've entrusted the city's future to, we're doomed,” she said.

“They'll learn,” Alex said. “My mother will whip them into shape. Trust me. I've seen her do it with the unpowered Unibands back at the Cloak base. We're just lucky she hasn't had time to devote to these guys.”

They drove on, until finally they came to police headquarters. Carla parked in the alley out back, far from the lenses of any security cameras, her SUV blending in with the shadows.

“All right,” Alex said. “Misty, you know the way around inside?”

“Please,” Misty said. “Thanks to Carla's help, I know this place inside and out.”

Everyone in the back grabbed on to one another. Lone Star held a hand out to Carla. She looked skeptical for the first time that night.

“Don't worry,” Misty said. “I do this all the time.”

“I just don't want to come out of this on the other side with my head on someone else's body,” Carla said, taking Lone Star's hand.

“Huh,” Misty said as she began to break apart. “I wonder if I could do that.”

Before Carla could protest, they were shooting out of a cracked car window, flying over the parking lot and through a vent in the top of the roof. It was dark and hot as they sped through the ventilation system and into a hallway, where they paused just briefly before traveling to a room at the end of the corridor.

They rematerialized in the commissioner's office. Alex closed the blinds on the windows looking out into the hallway with a flick of his thoughts. Carla doubled over, staggering, reaching out to the wall for support.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” she muttered.

“What in the—,” the commissioner started, jumping up from his desk. Alex recognized him from photos and news broadcasts, an older man with dark, wrinkled skin and salt-and-pepper hair slicked back neatly. He reached for his desk drawer, but when his eyes fell on Lone Star, he paused, staring at the Ranger.

“Commissioner, please don't be alarmed,” Lone Star said, raising his hands up in front of his chest to try and calm the other man down. “It's Lone Star. You know me. I've just come to talk.”

“Don't be alarmed? You tell me that after you just
appear
in my office? I saw the look-alikes on the news. How am I supposed to know you're real?”

The man eyed Lux, who was dragging a chair over for Carla. Alex could see him doing calculations in his head and wondered if he might call for help or try to pull a weapon on them. Not that it would matter—he could have the man immobile in an instant, but he didn't want to have to resort to that.

“I can vouch for him, sir,” Carla said, but the man's face didn't look very relieved by that. Instead his eyes drifted over to Alex and Misty. He gave them curious looks.

“Not only have you shown up after having
no word
from you for a month, but you've brought a missing little girl and a boy wanted on suspicion of being a Cloak agent with you. And I'm supposed to remain calm.”

“I believe Alex is wanted in connection to my disappearance, too,” Lone Star said. “Which is obviously not the case.”

The commissioner turned his gaze back to Lone Star and regarded him with suspicion.

“All right,” he said. “If you're really Lone Star, prove it. Tell me something only you would know.”

“You once gave me a bronzed version of the official Lone Star action figure as a birthday gift, only on the base's engraving you misspelled my name. L-O-A-N. Loan Star. You realized the mistake right after you'd given it to me and took it back to be corrected.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Finally the commissioner spoke.

“That was the
engraver's
fault, not mine.” He sat slowly back down in his chair. “It's good to see you. I hadn't let myself get up too much hope that it was actually you after seeing how things went down at the press conference. Lux, I assume this is the real you, too.”

“You never misspelled my name, but you did once ask me on a date to the Mayor's Ball. I said no.”

The commissioner winced a bit.

“Well, now that we've gotten all that out in the open, someone tell me what's going on in this city. It's been a rough few weeks, and I'm guessing that two missing superheroes showing up in my office looking like they've been put through the wringer doesn't mean things are going to start looking up anytime soon.”

Lone Star and Lux briefed him as quickly as possible, leaving out the Gloom entirely and simply explaining that Cloak had them trapped and a group of Junior Rangers and former Cloak kids had managed to rescue them. Alex finished up the rundown, explaining who Novo was and exactly how they'd managed to have
two
Luxes at the groundbreaking ceremony.

When Alex was done, the commissioner sat back in his chair, sighed, and rubbed his temples with thick fingers.

“I appreciate you coming here to tell me this,” he said slowly. “And I really am glad you're alive. But I just don't see what I can do. My hands are tied as far as the New Rangers go. The mayor and city council have handed them the city on a silver platter. I'll happily tell everyone I know that you're the real Rangers, but it sounds like I wouldn't get very far before being silenced.”

“We're going to make a move against Cloak,” Lux said. “To right all of this.”

“Good. Do it. Then I can start trying to get this city back to normal.”

“We need officers,” Lone Star said. “Men and women with an allegiance to you, not to the New Rangers. We've heard that there are some among the police force who aren't exactly happy with the way the Rangers have taken over security in Sterling City.”

“That's an understatement,” the commissioner said, getting up from his desk and walking toward the front windows of his office. He peeked through the blinds as he spoke. “I've got officers who've had badges for decades suddenly outranked by people barely old enough to drive. A lot of these men and women weren't even happy about the Rangers when
you
were in charge, much less now.”

“Could you find out who they are and mobilize them if you had to?” Lone Star asked. “Soon.”

The commissioner let the two blinds he held open snap shut, turning to Lone Star.

“What
exactly
are you planning?”

“A battle for the fate of Sterling City,” Alex said. “More or less.”

“We need to take these Deputies out of the equation,” Lux said, stepping toward the man. “But it would have to be a fast operation. We don't want to give Cloak time to retaliate. We need your men and women to take them into custody.”

“On what grounds?” The commissioner spread his arms wide. “I don't like this any more than you do, but I'm not putting my officers at risk just to have
them
all dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night and thrown into some secret prison.” He crossed to a window near his desk, glancing down at the parking lot below with a wary eye. A long sigh escaped his lips. “Do you have any idea how many of my people I've lost just because they questioned a Deputy's actions?”

“If our plan fails, this city is doomed anyway,” Alex said.

“We don't need them to actually be
arrested
,” Lone Star added. “They just need to be detained for a few hours.”

“You know they're getting their orders from criminals,” Lux said. “What more do you need?”

“
Proof
that they're criminals,” the commissioner said, his voice growing louder. “I can't just call in a couple dozen officers and tell them Lone Star visited me in the middle of the night and told me the New Rangers are actually supervillains.”