Invincible (22 page)

I ignore the rest as I look at Brad, who stares at the TV screen, and then at me. After repeating the action a few times, he then fully returns his attention back to me.

“Impossible,” he says. “You’re just a kid. You can’t be-”

“But he is,
” says Jack, stepping forward.

Brad turns to Jack in surprise and whips his head back to me.

“He knows about this, too?!” he says.

I hesitate for a moment, taking in Brad
’s reaction, and think of how much time I had to turn back and pretend I was lying. But both of us knew it was beyond that point. So I take in a deep breath and stiffly nod my head.

I would’ve expected to him to scream for help, for him to call Ryan and have me arrested, or at least for him to fear for his safety. But to m
y surprise, he starts to laugh.

“I don’t believe this,” he says. “I don’t believe this.
You’re
Lion-Man.”

He then continues to laugh, which starts to freak out Jack and Alex, but instead I smile, realizing that the only
explanation for Brad’s laughter was because he was happy.

“You mean you’re not mad?” I ask.

“No, not at all,” he says, his laugh slowly fading away.

“I don’t get it. Why aren’t you scared or confused or angry with me?”

“Didn’t we have this conversation yesterday?” Brad says, his laughing finally gone, leaving behind only a smile. “No matter if you’re a superhero or not, you’re still my son.”

I wanted to laugh at his comment, to feel relief at the fact that Brad was okay with my secret. But I

couldn’t do it. It just didn’t feel right, and neither was his reaction to my news.

How could he be so calm about all this, so willing to accept to it? But I realized that didn’t matter, because the real question was how much did he already know to be comfortable with it?

“I told my dad I’ll be back in a little while,” says Jack, putting his phone into his pocket.

“Is he worried?” I ask, sitting on my bed, looking out the window.

“A little,” he says. “But what do you expect? He was just terrorized by a psychotic colleague, and now his son’s school was just attacked.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess you’re right.”

Jack was on the computer, looking up information on the school’s progress. He originally wanted to find out more on Davidson, but I rejected the idea, seeing that Davidson wasn’
t much of a problem to me now.

T
he Catchers were nowhere to found when the police—including Ryan—had arrived there. The news leaves an empty feeling in my stomach, the hairs rising on the back of my neck.

They’ll never stop,
I think.
As long as I’m alive, I’m a marked man.
Fear then changes into frustration.
If I only knew what they wanted. If I only knew…

“Let me know if there are any updates, okay?” I tell Jack, jumping out of bed.

“Okay,” he says, returning his fingers to the keyboard.

I then head downstairs
to the living room, where I find Alex on the couch talking to Brad, who was sitting across from her in the chair.

They turn their h
eads to me as I enter the room.

“You said you would explain everything to me,” I say to Alex. “I’m ready.”

Alex hesitates for a moment, then nods her head. “Okay,” she says. “What do you want to know?”

I take a seat next to Alex on the couch. There was so much I wanted to know, so many questions I wanted to ask, but once again, there wasn’t enough time. So as disappointing as it was, I had to face the fact that there was only room for one question, and one question only.

“Why are the Catchers after us?” I ask. “Who are they, and what do they want from us?”

Alex hesitates again, observing my eyes for a moment. She then sighs and begins to speak. “The Catchers are a group of aliens from the planet Letum, sent to destroy us because of our
gifts
.”

I turn to face Brad, expecting an expression of surprise, but there wasn’t. He was relaxed, calm. As though what Alex was saying wasn’t even news.

But then the words play back in my head, and suddenly I snap my head back to Alex.

“Aliens?” I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

Alex, with her expressions content, slowly shakes her head. As ridiculous as it sounds, I could see she was telling the truth. That aliens had come to our planet to hunt us down.

“But why?” I ask. “What’s so special about our gifts? That they had to come here to kill us?”

There was a brief moment of silence as Alex gazes upon Brad, staring at him as if waiting for a response, an approval. I didn’t look at him to make

sure of this, but suddenly she stops looking at him and turns back to me
.

“Troy,” she says softly, being as innocent and sympathetic as possible, “they weren’t the first ones here.”

The words caught me off guard. I wasn’t really sure what to think of it.

They weren’t the first ones here.
The words bounce through my brain like a ball in a tiny space. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it started to make.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

But then it hits me. I realized it before she could even say the words, and I wished I hadn’t stop her, because having them come from
my
mouth makes it all the more frightening. The reason for my powers, the reason for the Catchers, the reason for everything that has happened to me. It was all because of one thing. The one thing I was too scared to realize.

“I’m an alien.”

I sat there motionless, staring at Alex as if she had just pointed a gun to my head. I thought that the fact of me being an alien was at least going to sink in, but the more I thought about it, the more terrified I became.

How could I’ve been so stupid
? I think.
So blind?
All the signs were there, right in front of me. My blood with the green specks when Rick kicked me, gaining superpowers from nowhere, what Davidson was trying to tell me in the lab, and the reason why the Catchers seemed so familiar to me…

“W-what kind of alien am I?” I ask unknowingly, afraid of the next answer I might receive. “Are we Catchers, too?”

“No,” Alex says, shaking her head. “We’re Iarnamians.”

“Iarnamians?” I say.

“Yes,” she says, nodding her head, “from the planet Iarnam.”

I tried to process as much as I could without screaming to the top of my lungs, or trying to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. But I wasn’t dreaming. That was one thing I was sure of. I couldn’t escape from this nightmare that I was experiencing, and frankly I wasn’t even upset. I wanted the truth, I asked for the truth, and now I’ve got it. It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected, but now that I know, I felt a sense of relief. That a sudden weight had been lifted from my shoulders. That I was somehow free.

“Are you okay?” Alex asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, snapping back to reality. “I’m just confused, though. If you’re here, then where are the others? Where are my parents?”

Alex stares at me for a moment and then looks down in disappointment, as if she was about to say something she was ashamed of. She lifts her hand up to her face and wipes it, which starts to worry me. Then as soon as she lifts her head up and I see her teary eyes, I knew she was going to tell me something I wasn’t ready to hear.

“They’re dead, Troy,” she says.

A sudden feeling rushes through me. I didn’t want to scream. I didn’t want to cry. I just stared at Alex as my body began to tense, my blood slowly boiling in my veins.

“How did this happen?” I say, my voice slowly rising. “Why are they doing this?”

Alex observes my expression for a moment, taking in every feature of my anger, and then takes a deep breath, wiping away more of her tears before she speaks. “Almost everyone on our planet was gifted. We were incredibly strong and incredibly skilled, able to do things no other human could do. But there were others who could do more than that. Things like invisibility, controlling the elements, telekinesis, and mind-reading. Some Iarnamians are born with one major gift, and develop less significant ones. The Council, who were the rulers of Iarnam, was born with all of them.”

I notice Alex’s expression begin to change, shifting from one of grief into some sort of trance. It led me to believe that she was not in the room anymore. That her
mind was in a place somewhere far, far away. Somewhere in Iarnam.

“We found Earth by accident. One of our ships failed while trying to find another planet
, and we decided to land here. When we arrived, we discovered a rich, beautiful environment, filled with life. It was then that we saw the humans, who resembled us, but

strangely enough, did not possess any of our gifts. During that time, Earth was in an age of war, and we couldn’t just stand aside and let a planet this extraordinary turn to ruins. It needed to be sa
ved. So we decided to help it.”

As Alex talked about the history of the Iarnamians—which I really wasn’t expecting to hear, but interested in nonetheless—something began to cross my mind. Something that I had vaguely remembered.

“What kind of war?” I ask.

Alex snaps out of her dream-like state, scans her eyes up to the ceiling for a few seconds, and then
returns them back to my direction.

“From what I believe,” she says, “the humans call it the Trojan War.”

So that’s it! That was why I recognized the statue in Brad’s kitchen, the reason I knew about the war at the flip of a switch, the reason I had suddenly came up with my name out of nowhere. It was all because of the Iarnamians’ involvement in the war.

“But I thought the Trojan War was a myth?” Brad says.

The sound of Brad’s voice takes me by surprise. First, that it was unexpected, seeing that I almost forgotten he was in the room. And second, that he’s actually participating in this conversation, which in some cases would’ve put Alex and I in straitjackets if discussed in public.

“That was what you humans were forced to believe,” Alex responds. “Why do you think there aren’t any accurate records of the event?” Brad considers this for a moment, then shrugs his shoulders. “It’s because of us.”

It takes me a while to turn my gaze away from Brad. I don’t know why, but his whole behavior