The Ables (42 page)

Immediately in front of me were Bentley and Henry, and their silence spoke volumes.

“I hate it when you do that,” I said quietly.

“What?” Bentley asked innocently.

“When you think about me without including me.”

There was an awkward pause and at least one stammer.

Henry took a shot at responding. “We’re just a tiny bit worried about you, is all.”

“Worried about me?”

“It’s nothing,” Bentley said, trying to dismiss the issue. “We just didn’t know you could do that, and that … was maybe a little more violent than we expected. That’s all.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m in the same boat.”

“Well, just …” Henry said, pausing to word things correctly before just giving up, “just don’t kill anyone on accident and stuff, okay?”

***

I got to see Donnie again, finally. After weeks of his parents being understandably overprotective, they finally agreed to let me stop by for a visit. He was still bedridden, but he seemed happy to see me.

Or maybe he was just happy to see the breadsticks he adored, which I’d brought along to share with him. While he ate, I told him about some of the latest news. I filled him in on how we’d learned that Finch had been a founding member of the Believers. And when I told him about the run-in with Steve Travers, he made a few happy-sounding noises when that story was over.

It was hard to visit him in that state. Donnie was effectively a prisoner in his own home—unable to go to school with us, play after school with us, or even head to Jack’s Pizza for a slice and some conversation.

Most of the town either hated him or feared him, and some were actively trying to pass laws against future Down syndrome kids entering the school system. Stupid adults … as though Donnie’s Downs had caused the real damage at the last SuperSim, rather than my own foolish actions.

I still felt completely responsible for Donnie’s situation; that feeling would never go away. Donnie, for his part, didn’t even seem to remember it.

I felt around in the pizza box and realized he’d already eaten half of the breadsticks. “Man, Donnie, you must have been starving! You sure ate those breadsticks awfully fast.”

“Yeah,” he murmured, “Donnie is fast.”

How do you make things up to someone who doesn’t even know that you wronged them? It’s not easy, I can tell you that. All I knew to do was keep promising I’d try.

“I know, buddy. I know. You’re very fast. Listen, I’m sorry I told you to run fast that one night and that people got hurt. I’m going to make it up to you, Donnie.”

“Yeah,” he allowed, sounding like he was agreeing that it was a nice day outside.

“I’m going to fix this whole mess somehow.”

Shut out of the final SuperSim, the team was gathered at my house for the evening. Since I had to watch Patrick, we didn’t have any extracurricular hero activities planned for the night. I was getting rebellious and reckless, sure, but not stupid. I wasn’t going to put Patrick in harm’s way.

But we’d managed to avoid having to have an adult chaperone for the evening. Most every adult in town was involved in the SuperSim in one way or another, and I think most of our parents had begun to trust us. They wouldn’t have if they’d known what we’d been up to lately, of course. But we figured what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

We rented a few movies with the intent of keeping ourselves distracted so that we wouldn’t dwell on the SuperSim going on without us. The first movie had been going for about twenty minutes, and the popcorn was well-consumed, when we heard the initial air horn rip through the air outside. The Sim was beginning.

Everyone looked around grimly at one another, all of us thinking the same thing:
wish we could play, too
.

“Okay, guys, okay,” I said, trying to diffuse the tension a bit. “It’s happened now … the SuperSim has started. We knew it would. Now let’s just go back to our movie and rest easy in the thought that we’ve defeated more real criminals than any of those kids out there have.” I thought that was a pretty good pep talk, and the group seemed to agree, as they lightened up right away and went back to joking and commenting about the movie.

A few minutes later, there was a loud boom outside, like the sound of nearby thunder, followed by a loud crash. We all tried to ignore it, but I saw Bentley’s eyes look up and widen in surprise.

It sounded like the adults had saved the best for last with the final SuperSim and were pulling out the big guns—perhaps literally. It was excruciating to be shut out of the action.

Another loud boom, like the sound of an explosion, the echo reverberating throughout town. “Whoa,” I said.

“I know,” Bentley agreed.

The explosions and other loud noises continued off and on, getting progressively louder. It sounded as though the SuperSim had turned into a real battle for the ages. And that’s exactly what it was, even though we’d yet to realize it.

Finally, one of the crashes of thunder was so close that it shook the house on its foundation, rattling my rib cage. That sound was followed by several audible screams of panic in the distance. And it sounded like adults doing the screaming.

Something wasn’t right. I wrinkled my brow to try and piece it all together.
These people sound entirely too frightened for a simulation. And why are the adults …

It was then that a very frightening thought hit me, one that I instantly hoped was wrong.

“Bentley,” I said, “did you bring your computer?”

“Yeah,” he replied, just as the character in the movie tripped over a stick and fell to the ground. The rest of the group roared in laughter, ignoring Bentley and me completely.

I waved my hand, signaling Bentley to join me at the kitchen table. We left the rest of the group watching the movie, but Henry had seen us slink off and had gotten curious. It was just as well, as I wanted to be able to see things for myself anyway.

Bentley sat next to me and opened up the computer.

“You’ve still got your cameras set up, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Let’s see what’s going on out there,” I said.

“Sounds like the most serious SuperSim yet,” Henry said, rolling up to the table to join us.

Chad looked over from the living room floor and saw the three of us at the table. He stood up, which got the attention of James as well. Soon enough, we were all crowded around the laptop, waiting for Bentley’s camera feeds to boot up.

Once they did, we knew instantly that something was dreadfully wrong.

The first camera angle we saw showed the Freepoint Circle … on fire and reduced to rubble. There were people on the ground here and there, and some of them looked to be badly hurt. Some weren’t moving.

Bentley clicked a button and changed the view, and a picture of City Hall appeared on the monitor. “This camera’s on the flagpole,” he explained. Three of the giant stone columns were gone, scattered in pieces on the steps below. A section of the exterior wall looked black and charred. There were more bodies on the ground.

Click.

Another angle, this time of the Freepoint Bank. In the parking lot of the bank was a group of students—it was that team with the horrible all-green uniforms, the Vipers. They were under attack. One of them had a force field up in front of them, and it was currently protecting them from a barrage of fireballs.

“I bet that’s the same fireballing bastard from the last SuperSim,” Henry said bitterly.

The Vipers’ attacker was still off camera. I was going crazy with just one angle to view. “Don’t you have another angle?” I asked Bentley.

“Why, yes,” he bragged a little, “I do.”

Click.

This angle was from twice as far away, but the image came from a camera mounted on the bank itself, giving us a wider view of the parking lot. The fireballer was not, in fact, the one who had attacked us in the last SuperSim.

“Dang,” Henry said, disappointed. “Not him.”

I looked at him a moment, then glanced back to the screen. The fireballer attacking the students was tall and skinny, with an entirely black outfit and long black cloak.
One of Finch’s Believers, no doubt.

More men in black outfits walked into the camera’s view. A lot more. There were at least thirty. One of them said something to the fireballer, and the man stopped firing at the Vipers.

“Can these things zoom?” I said anxiously.

“You bet,” Bentley said, punching another button on the controls.

The camera angle lurched forward, quickly focusing in on the villains in question. The fireballer was facing the camera, but the other man—the one who told him to stop—had his back to us.

“Come on … come on …” I urged, willing the man to turn around and confirm what the pit in my stomach had already determined to be true.

Finally, he did just that. He turned to look at the students he’d spared, giving us a great look at the right side of his face.

It was Finch.

Before we could say anything, Finch raised his hand, and a flash of brilliant green light came from his palm and quickly disappeared off camera.

“Zoom out! Zoom out!” I commanded.

Bentley did just that, just in time for us to see the last of the Vipers’ bodies hit the pavement. They looked dead, and I immediately knew that they were. Zapped with the same mind-controlling power Finch had used on my mother, only in this case … no coma. He’d removed their consciousness in a nanosecond. For all the scary moments I’d had involving Finch, this was by far the most horrific and brutal thing I’d seen him do. Here, he was finally the killer I’d always feared him to be.

On screen, Finch was hovering above the ground by a good ten feet, gesturing and speaking to a large group of the black-outfitted villains as though giving marching orders. Flames came out from his fingertips as he talked, like he was moments away from turning back into the fire monster from the cornfield.

“You know …” Bentley said in disgust, “you wouldn’t think an all-powerful bad guy would have much use for henchmen.”

“He needs their powers,” I remarked, “or else he’s not all powerful.”

“Well, for a while he is, though, right?” Henry said.

“Whatever his goal is for all this … he’s going for it tonight.” I was talking to myself as much as the others. “This is it. He said he was going to take the city of Freepoint. This is it, Bentley.”

Bentley turned to face me. “If you’re right, Phillip, that means we aren’t safe here, because he darn sure knows where you live.”

“Why is that?” James asked.

Just then, a phone rang, and nearly everyone jumped through the ceiling. It took a second ring for me to figure out that it was the phone in my pocket. I jammed my hand inside, pulled it out, and flipped it open.

“Hello?”

“Phillip?”

“Dad.” I exhaled, relieved. I’d half expected it to be Finch.

“Get out of the house, Phillip. You hear me? We’re under attack. The city is under attack, and you’re not safe there.”

“It’s him, Dad.”

“I know, Phillip. That’s why I’m calling you. Get your brother and the rest of those kids, and get out now. Go somewhere where you know you’ll be safe … someplace random and far away. I’ll call you when this is done.”

“But, Dad, what about you?”

“I’ll be fine, Phillip. Just go. That’s an order. We don’t have time to argue. Go now.”

I heard the sounds of battle raging behind his voice, and then he hung up.

I looked up at the rest of the group, each of whom had turned several shades whiter upon hearing my side of the conversation—I think they heard the explosions, too.

“The city is under attack. We have to get out of here.” Something snapped and I sprang into military mode. “Everyone come over here—you too, Patrick. We’re leaving, right now.”

No one was in any position to argue with that plan. We gathered our things, huddled around James, and popped off to Central Park and relative safety.

***

I felt guilty the moment we arrived in the park. Even though my father had given me explicit instructions, we had effectively just run out on our city, leaving them to fight a massive evil on their own. I felt like a terrible hero for deserting them.

Bentley’s camera feeds were still accessible. Since he’d hooked them all up wirelessly to his home computer, he could access them from anywhere there was an Internet connection. So we found a bench and sat down to watch our parents defend our city in a movie that was all too real.

I was sick to my stomach as we watched camera angle after camera angle, each showing either tragic destruction of property or horrific brutality against the townspeople.

Finch and his massive army of cloaked Believers—there had to be at least one hundred of them—looked set on destroying the city completely. There were several people injured or killed, but a great many could be seen being led away in chains.

“They’re taking prisoners,” I exclaimed, pointing at the screen where three Freepoint citizens were being led away by Finch’s soldiers. “Do you have a better angle? They’re moving off screen!”

“Hang on,” Bentley said, punching a couple buttons.

A new angle came up on screen, slightly closer to the action but with a view from the opposite side of the street. The prisoners were more centered in the picture on this angle. They came to the intersection, and the street lamp threw light on their faces.

“Oh my God, Phillip, isn’t that your dad?!” Henry gasped.

I instinctively reached out and pulled the laptop on the table into my hands, tilting it toward Henry’s face and focusing on the image of the screen he was sending me.

My father had been taken prisoner along with the two men from the hospital the night Mom died. Three of the bad guys were serving as guards, but I had to assume they were also under an NPZ, because otherwise, I think my father would have been letting them have it. This was Finch’s reason for kidnapping heroes with certain powers—like NPZs—so he could use them to mount his siege against Freepoint.

A sinking feeling came over me … a moment of despair. I nearly had a panic attack, I think, before something unlikely came along and saved me: anger.