Fall of Heroes (18 page)

Kyle got on his knees, sitting on his feet with his hands on the ground. He murmured words that Alex couldn't make out, his fingers dug into the earth, mingling with the roots and soil.

“What's he doing?” Alex asked.

“Preparing for war,” Kirbie said.

There was a swirl of wind, and Gage, Lone Star, and Misty assembled in front of them. Misty exhaled a long sigh when they were all solid.

“I'm not saying I'm tired,” she said, “but that was a
lot
of misting around.”

“Good job,” Alex said. “All of you. That was perfect.”

“And now we wait,” Lone Star said.

“Bug's got eyes all around,” Mallory said. “We should see them coming.”

Lone Star nodded and turned away, walking the perimeter of the tree line and stretching his arms and back. Alex took a few steps from the Rangers. Mallory and Gage joined him at his sides, watching the sky.

“Thanks,” Alex said. “Both of you. For sticking by me. I know it hasn't been easy.”

“Don't be dumb,” Mallory said. “We should be thanking you.”

“I guess I'm just trying to say that it means a lot to me that you're here right now.”

“She's right, Alex,” Gage said. “I'm not one to be overly emotional, but I can't imagine being anywhere but here.”

Alex smiled, despite knowing what was to come.

Gage continued. “That's not
exactly
true. I could imagine being in plenty of other places right now. Many of which don't include battles that will potentially decide the fate of humanity. Places where they've never heard of the Gloom.”

“Places where people have never seen your face on the news or a wanted poster before,” Alex added.

“Cities in mountains,” Mallory said. “Or on beaches, even.”

“When this is all over, I think we all need a vacation. Except since I've never actually been on vacation, I don't know what we would do.”

“I want a clean workshop,” Gage said.

“I just want my own room,” Mallory said. “Do you have any idea how much Misty kicks in her sleep?”

They all laughed a little, quietly, nervously. Then they just stood there together for a few moments.

“You've got weapons, right, Gage?” Alex asked.

“You don't have to worry about me,” Gage said, lowering his goggles over his eyes. “I can take care of myself. Even with only one functioning arm. You worry about keeping your mother occupied and us out of the Gloom.”

Alex nodded.

“I'm going to put up a telekinetic shield around us. Just in case there's some sort of surprise attack. I have to do something, or I'll go crazy waiting.”

He raised his hands and started gathering energy together.
We can do this,
he told himself.
We have to.

Then Alex blinked, and the world changed.

20
ALEXANDER THE KING

A
lex stood on the open lawn in Victory Park, but he was alone. Where Mallory had been a half second before, there was nothing but grass. He did a double take.
Green
grass. He could see the world in
color
. The greens and yellows and reds of the plants and trees were so vivid that they seemed unreal to him. That's when he realized that his powers felt strange. The telekinetic energy was everywhere—the earth beneath his feet felt as though it were
made
of the stuff—and yet, he couldn't see it. Not like he had every day since his powers had developed.

He spun around in circles, confused, looking for the others, panic gripping his chest.

“They're not here.”

It was his mother's voice, at once all around him, as if spoken from every direction.

“Don't worry. We haven't harmed them yet.”

And then she was there in front of him, where before there had been nothing. She materialized out of the air, sitting in a floating chair that looked as if it were made completely of glass. She wore a T-shirt and jeans, clothing he'd only ever seen her wear on the most relaxed days growing up. The light from the sun created a sort of halo around his mother's dark bob of hair. Alex was suddenly aware of the fact that it was warm outside, as if it were spring.

“This can't be real.” Alex blinked.

“No, my darling boy,” Shade said. “It's not. We're in your head. I thought we could have a moment to ourselves before this fight you've forced upon us gets underway. Just you and me. Mother and son.”

“How is this possible?” Alex glanced around nervously. Where were his teammates? If this was in his head, what was happening in the
real
world? Was he just standing there, staring into space?

“It's not a very
practical
use of my abilities. It takes an awful lot of concentration that's usually unnecessary when I can just let my voice ring out in your head, but then this is a special occasion. Just think of it as a lucid dream, or a trip through your own imagination. I doubt the others even realize anything's odd about you. I'm influencing the way you comprehend time. Seconds feel like minutes. It's a very useful trick. It works wonders when it comes to interrogations.”

Alex stared blankly at his mother for a few moments before his lips spread in a smirk. The sky above them crackled with blue lightning. From nowhere, a cage appeared, imprisoning Shade. The space around them seemed to shrink as his thoughts squeezed in, encasing the borders of the open lawn with popping blue energy.

“If we're in my head, I'm in control,” Alex said.

“For the most part, that's true,” Shade said from behind him. He turned and there she was, standing just a few feet away. He looked back at the cage, only to find it empty. “But I'm very good at navigating other people's minds. I wouldn't bother with any more traps. It was a good idea, but it was
only
an idea, if that makes sense. As you said yourself, none of this is real.”

“Give me one reason I shouldn't force you out of here right now.” The sky lit up with energy and grew closer to the earth. Alex imagined that thunder would follow and suddenly there it was, so loud that it shook them both.

“Because then you'd never hear what I had to say. We're about to meet on the battlefield. If something were to
happen
to either of us, would you really want to have missed this opportunity to speak to your mother? I know I'm not your favorite person in the world right now, but I think you owe me one last little chat.”

Alex opened his mouth to immediately dismiss this idea but was struck by what his mother was implying. They were about to fight each other. It was very possible that one of them, even both of them, might not survive. Or worse, he thought, one of them might die at the hands of the other, by accident or by design. It had happened with Phantom so quickly, in an instant. And when faced with the idea that this might in fact be the last time he ever spoke to his mother, part of him said,
Yes, stay in this moment while you can
. Even though he knew deep down inside that the woman in front of him was the enemy and someone who couldn't be trusted, she was also his mother.

“Make it fast,” he said through gritted teeth.

Shade smiled.

“Let's go somewhere a little cozier, shall we?”

A bright light suddenly radiated from his mother's eyes, causing him to raise his arm against the glare. When he uncovered his eyes, he stood in his old bedroom in the underground base, beneath the Big Sky Drive-In. Every detail was exactly as he remembered it, from the humming of the overhead light to the pictures pinned up on the wall—there were even piles of his dirty clothes lying around on the floor. The room smelled so
familiar
. A flood of memories rushed through his mind. He could see faint outlines of himself working at the computer and curled up in bed reading. And of his friends on the Beta team—Misty and Mallory milling around, laughing, helping him cut out newspaper clippings to hang over his desk. Even Titan and Julie, from better, friendlier days. They were like ghosts, barely visible shadows of a less complicated time.

Alex began to panic. For every thought that said,
No, this is wrong
, there was an equal force inside him saying,
Don't you want to just climb into your old bed and forget all this ever happened?
He couldn't tell if it was his mother's doing or his own subconscious.

“Stop trying to soften me up with old memories.” He rubbed the side of his head and steeled himself. “It won't work.”

“That wasn't my intention. I just miss this place. This time. With my son.” His mother leaned against his desk, dressed now in her Cloak mission attire, and looked with admiration at an origami swan cradled in her hand.

“I guess it must be a strange sensation to suddenly be
home
after being gone for so long,” she continued. The swan began to flap its white, blue-lined wings and glide through the air. “This was one of the first pieces I taught you to make after your powers developed. You went through half a notebook before you got it right using your telekinesis, but we were both so thrilled when you'd done it. Your father, too. Do you remember that?”

“This isn't my home anymore,” Alex said, ignoring her question. “Why are we here?” His voice was loud and caused the air around them to pop with blue sparks. He tried to calm himself down and think rationally, but he didn't even know how to begin to do that. They were inside his head. None of this was real. And yet, it
felt
real. And all the anger he'd built up against his mother and Cloak and his past was now all mixed up with the smell of recycled air and the sight of the room he'd spent most of his life in.

“For you to remember,” Shade said. “What it was like before everything went wrong. All the dreams and hopes we had. How proud and useful and
safe
you felt down here. It's been difficult for you since you've been gone. I don't have to be a telepath to know that—it's written on your face.”

Alex remained silent. He
was
tired. Even if he put on a brave appearance for all the others. A feeling of longing welled up inside him, and he had the sudden urge to hug his mother. He bit his tongue, dispelling the emotion and reminding himself that this was all just some weird delusion. He couldn't trust anything here. Not any strange feelings, and certainly not his mother.

“You've been trying to outrun your past, Alex, but the past will always be there. It's one of the few things in life that's permanent. You can try to cover it up all you want. You can put on a new uniform and do everything the opposite of how we raised you, but your history is still there.” She waved her hand around his room. “It's here. Unchanged in your memories. A part of who you are.”

She motioned to the mirror above the sink in the corner. In his reflection, he was wearing a Cloak uniform, the silver skull grinning at him. But it wasn't just in the mirror—his clothes had changed. He reached up to his chest and let his fingers trace the hard outline of Cloak's mark, as he'd done hundreds of times before.

Shade bent down and picked something up off the floor, then walked over to her son.

“If you'll allow me,” she said, reaching out to his shoulder. Alex flinched. “Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you're complete.”

She placed two silver bars on each of his shoulders, the markings of rank within the Cloak Society he'd ripped off and left behind the night he'd decided to flee the underground base and warn Kirbie of the impending attack on Justice Tower. The bars fastened themselves to the coat as if by magic, glinting under the fluorescent light.

“There now,” Shade said. “All better.”

“You're wrong,” he said. “It's what I do
now
that matters. Not my past.”

Shade reached out a hand, slowly, and tousled Alex's hair.

“My brilliant son. You're right, of course.” She smiled at him before stepping away to the door that led out of the room. “Come with me, Alex. I want you to see something.” The door slid open. The paper swan flew after her.

The exit opened not into the concrete-and-steel hallway of the underground base, but a huge open space of dark marble and pillars. The walls were made of glass, looking out at the sunny skyline of Sterling City. There was something familiar about the place that Alex at first couldn't pin down, until he realized that it was strikingly similar to the twelfth floor of Justice Tower, where Cloak had left him to die as the building had begun to fall apart.

It took his breath away.

“It's only an imagining of what it will look like eventually, but it'll have to do. We've only just had the groundbreaking, after all.”

Shade was now dressed in her Ranger uniform. She stood beneath a gold starburst that floated high above her in the center of the room. It spun slowly, casting a warm spotlight around her.

“Of course it won't just be Sterling City,” she said, gesturing to the outside world. “Pick a place. Anywhere you like. You've spent your whole life in this city. Don't you think it's time to travel a bit? We have people everywhere, Alex. Our core has always been here, underground, but our reach is farther than you could imagine. We have plants all over the country, all over the
world
. Sterling City was always just the first rung of the ladder.”

Outside, the buildings flickered and morphed. He and his mother were in Los Angeles, and then Chicago, then looking out at Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, the streets of Moscow and glittering lights of Tokyo. Alex's head spun, not just because of the rotating skylines, but the implication behind each change: Cloak's headquarters could be in any of these places. Their rule could span continents.

“Let's get down to business, Alexander. What I'm offering you is a free pass. A clean slate. I'm giving you the chance to rejoin our ranks with no questions asked. We can put the events of the last few weeks behind us.”

“I don't want—,” he started.

“Just hear me out.”

“I thought you'd have come up with something new by now. I'm not coming back to Cloak to be your mindless slave.”

“You misunderstand,” Shade said. “I'm not offering you a place back on the Beta Team with the promise that one day you'll be in charge. I'm offering you a place on the High Council. Not as my subordinate, but as my peer. Not as someone who takes orders but as someone whose thoughts will shape the future of this world. Look at everything you've done in the past month. Even though it was all against us, I'm
impressed
by what you've accomplished. You were obviously born to lead, Alex. And as you know, the High Council is a little low on membership these days.”

The origami swan flew in front of Alex's face and landed on an outstretched palm. Phantom's. She'd appeared out of nowhere. The woman smiled at the bird. She looked up to Alex, and then both she and the paper turned an inky black and flaked apart, drifting through the air and into the shadows of the room.

“That was an accident,” he said firmly, but his hands were trembling at his sides.

“Was it?” she asked. “If you say so. Do you know what she said to me, when I was in her head just before she melted away? She pledged her allegiance to Cloak for the last time. ‘For the Glory,' and then she was gone.” Shade's voice was firm but her eyes looked sad. “Even in her final breaths she could think only of us. Her family. The common good. If you really regret what happened to her, what better way is there of showing that than by honoring her dying words?”

Alex said nothing. His knees shook.

“Just think of it, Alex,” his mother continued. “You'd be ordering Titan and Julie around. I know you'd like that. You could do anything you wanted. Could
be
anyone you wanted.” She pointed to his chest. His Cloak attire had been replaced with a Ranger uniform. “Even a Ranger. You could create your own team.”

In the place where Phantom had stood, a long table materialized. Gathered around it were Kirbie and Gage and all the others he'd spent the last month training with and fighting alongside. All of them were dressed as Rangers and staring at the head of the table, where Alex now stood. His mouth fell open. Their eyes widened, waiting to hang on his every word.

“It's a tempting offer, isn't it?” Shade whispered, suddenly beside him. “We don't have to go through the bother of fighting today. You can prevent any more casualties in this rebellion against us. Come and rule by my side, Alex.”

“And what about them?” He pointed to the others sitting at the table. “Are they to be reprogrammed to be my servants?”