The Ables (44 page)

Sure
, he responded, also in thought.

Ask him why a man who has every power—or at least access to them
—
is so obsessed with recruiting a kid who has one power. What does he need me for?
I hadn’t yet told Bentley and the others about Finch’s suggestion that I myself was the prophesied one.

A few seconds went by, and then Henry sent me another silent message.
He said he doesn’t know. That’s a good question.

Another pause, and then Henry followed up with another message from Bentley.
Unless he thinks you’re the next Elben.

What do you mean?
I responded directly to Bentley, even though I knew Henry still had to relay the message.

He’s looking for the one in the prophecy, right? He told you as much. It’s obvious why: because then he’d only need that one person around and he’d have every single superability at once. If he finds the real Elben … well, then he can get rid of them. He’s talked of nothing else. What if he’s convinced, for whatever reason, that you are that person?

It was a pretty obvious explanation. No matter how silly or untrue, Finch was convinced that I was Elben’s reincarnation. It made so much sense, it seemed obvious. I mean, it was ludicrous, to be sure. I had all the powers just about as much as I had sight. But if you accepted the premise that Finch was already kind of crazy just to be devoting so much time and effort to the myth of Elben and factored in the number of times he’d mysteriously bumped into me … it made all kinds of sense.

If Finch truly believes that I have every power and if he really did set up this entire attack on Freepoint as a way to get to me … he’s not going to rest until I show up. He’ll kill everyone
.

You can’t go out there, Phillip. It’s suicide. You’d be walking into his trap.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we can spring a trap of our own.

The silent mission planning went on like that for several minutes as Henry, Bentley, and I laid out each person’s role. It would be the mother of all longshots, but we had to try. The way I saw it, either everyone I loved was going to die, including me, or everyone I loved was going to die, leaving me alone in New York with my festering guilty conscience. Or maybe, just maybe, we could pull off a miracle.

“Okay, listen up, everyone. Here’s what we’re gonna do …” I finally said aloud to everyone. The others gathered in to listen to the details of the plan, though they didn’t know how much of it I left out.

Before putting any plan into action, we first tried to follow my father’s instructions. We called Goodspeed … on the telephone. We knew there were a few emergency call buttons in Freepoint, but it still seemed worth a shot to literally call them first. We phoned several businesses and homes using Bentley’s computer to look up numbers—he’d long ago hacked his father’s personal and official board email accounts—but seeing as Goodspeed was having their own SuperSim that night, no one was answering.

“Why don’t we just GO to Goodspeed?” Freddie asked.

“During a SuperSim? Anyone that even paid attention to us would assume we’re part of the Sim,” I explained. “They might even try to fake-arrest us. By the time we finally tell them who we are and what’s going on, it could be too late. We also can’t be sure Finch’s crew hasn’t attacked Goodspeed as well. Might have an NPZ up, and then we’d be out our transporter … it’s just too risky.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Henry complained.

“He’s right,” I said to the group. “We’re wasting time.”

Bentley thought for a moment, which would count as several dozen for you or me in terms of productivity, and finally announced his findings. “I’ll set the computer to search through all his messages and dial each phone number it finds automatically. Maybe someone will answer before we get to the panic button?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Do it. Let’s get going.”

He rattled the keyboard a few times, punctuating it with one demonstrative keystroke. “Okay, ready,” he said.

“Cool. Henry? James?” Both reached out a hand, which I met with my own in the center.

Ooph!

We’d decided to use the cornfield as a staging ground for our delusional rescue mission. It was the closest thing this group had to a headquarters, and we hoped it would be safe out there on the edge of town. We were counting on the presumed fact that Finch had gotten everything he needed from that field on Halloween.

Henry, James, and I went on a brief scouting mission. We wanted to make sure—I wanted to make sure—we had some idea of whether or not it was safe before we all went. Chad had wanted to go as well and actually seemed to be itching to get involved. But I needed him in the park to protect Patrick—Chad’s invisibility was really the best power in the group for taking cover from potential danger.

The scouting mission itself only took a handful of minutes and then …

Ooph!

… we returned, to find the rest of the group gone. Completely gone, without a thing left behind to know they’d been there in the first place.

Henry looked around the park frantically once he realized we were alone. There was no sign of them.

“How long were we gone?” I asked.

“No more than fifteen minutes,” Henry answered.

“Are we in the right place?”

“Absolutely!” James said, his pride wounded a bit that I would even ask.

“What could they have gotten into in that amount of time?”

“Hang on,” James said. “Let me look around the area. Come on, Henry,” he said, slapping his hand on Henry’s wheelchair so he’d have eyes.

Ooph!

For the next few seconds, I heard faint versions of the familiar popping sound that accompanied James’ teleporting. The noises came from all around me and at various distances as he quickly hopped here and there, surveying the surrounding area.

It startled me when he suddenly reappeared in front of me.

Ooph!

“Phillip, grab on!” he said excitedly.

I did so right away.

Ooph!

We were only a few hundred yards from our previous position, near the edge of a small batch of trees next to a clearing. Another hundred yards or so beyond the clearing, I saw Patrick, Freddie, and Bentley being placed into the back of a police van.

“Oh, no,” I murmured, immediately fearing the worst. Central Park, while huge, was still the site of the only public sighting of a superhero using his powers in generations. And now, with Weatherby completely missing and presumed dead, any custodian activity in public was subject to eyewitnesses, cell phone cameras, and a general lack of the privacy and anonymity my people had enjoyed for decades. People around here, including police officers, were probably a little more sensitive to odd circumstances, but I didn’t have any idea what could have led to them being arrested.

“Where the hell is Chad?” Henry barked.

“Where
is
Chad?” I reiterated.

“Right here,” Chad replied, his voice coming from several yards behind us. We all turned around in time to see him appear out of thin air as he came jogging up. He was clearly out of breath. “We got separated.”

Henry wasn’t buying it. “How did you get separated?!”

“The cops were on us out of nowhere, man. We all split in different directions out of reaction. I didn’t have time to get everyone together and hide.”

I was too busy watching the cops slam the rear doors on the van. “What are we gonna do?”

Everyone turned to look at the van. The officers were climbing into their seats up front, slamming the doors behind them.

“We can’t use our powers,” I muttered.

“Why not? Why not just let James and Mr. Invisible here jump over and pull them out?!”

“Because there’s already been one superhero who was seen using his powers in this park, Henry, and it’s still national news months later, okay? We can’t exactly go prancing around flashing our abilities for all to see, especially without Weatherby’s protection.”

“Phillip, Freepoint is on fire. To hell with the special rules about using your powers in public, man! We need to get those guys out of there if we’re going to have any chance.”

“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it fast,” Chad interrupted as the van began to slowly pull forward.

“Oh, damn,” I said. “Now I’m really in trouble. First I let my brother find out about his powers, and now he’s getting arrested.”

Suddenly the van stopped dead in its tracks with a terrifying screech. The metallic roof and sides shredded into pieces with a deafening roar, as out of the rear of the van rose an enormous giant. All in the span of mere seconds, the vehicle had essentially exploded as Freddie went from normal size to three stories tall, ripping away their metal prison with incredible strength.

As he reached his full height and bulk, he let out a roar like a lion after a kill, only to instantly stagger, bracing himself against the ritzy apartment building nearby and gasping loudly.

Cars on the road slammed on their breaks, and a great commotion rose out of relative silence as people opened their windows and rushed out their front doors to see what had happened.

“Holy crap,” Chad said.

“Well, that’s going to be on the news,” I said matter-of-factly.

“So much for not using our powers, eh, Phillip?” Henry added.

“Yeah. I guess so,” I said, still in shock at seeing the raw destruction Freddie had caused just by turning on his power.

Giant Freddie stumbled again and then quickly started to shrink in size, disappearing from our view behind the crumpled van.

“Do you think,” Henry said, “maybe now is a good time for us to get in there and—”

“Yeah,” I said immediately, cutting him off. “James, Chad, go get ‘em.”

“Right away,” James said as Chad reached out and clasped his hand like a handshake. They both disappeared.

Ooph!

Henry and I immediately turned our heads back toward the van. The crowd was growing by the moment, and who could blame them? Seconds later …

Ooph!

The first thing I looked for was Patrick, and he was standing there grinning as though he’d just spent a day at the amusement park. Then I did a quick head count to make sure everyone else was present. Freddie was sitting on the ground, puffing on his inhaler. James stood over him, rubbing his shoulder and encouraging him to breathe. Chad and Bentley stood behind them, smiling.

“Oh my God, Freddie,” Henry gushed. “That was amazing! Do you have any idea how amazing what you just did was?”

Freddie puffed once more and then looked up. He barely got out a quick smile before being compelled to hit it again. For a few seconds, I grew a little worried he was going to have an asthma attack, but he eventually evened out and started breathing a bit more normally.

“Are you okay?” I asked desperately.

“Yeah,” he said, taking an oversized breath. “I’m fine. Whenever I get big like that, nothing really seems to hurt me.” He looked down, then back up. “I am naked right now, though.”

We all laughed pretty hard at that, but it began to feel awkward when we realized it was basically true. There were a few shreds of his pants left on his body, but not much.

“Here,” Bentley said, offering up a pair of pants he produced from his back pack. “They’re rain pants, but they’ll do the job.”

“You carry rain pants in that thing?” Henry asked in surprise.

“Sure. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

Henry shook his head.

“We need to get out of here before the cops come back this way,” I said. “James, can you take us over to the other end of the park?”

James stepped forward, holding out his arm. We all latched on.

Ooph!

Henry moved his head around a bit, taking in the surroundings. He lingered on Bentley a moment, because Bentley was looking right at Henry and me. He lifted his head a bit, with an inquisitive look on his face. He was asking how our scouting mission had gone.

I gave Bentley a thumbs-up, and he nodded.
You’re not gonna believe it
, Henry said mentally to both Bentley and me.

“Bentley,” I said aloud. “Pop open that laptop, will you?”

“Sure thing,” he said.

“All right, everyone. There’s too much to do and too few of us to do it. So we’re going to have to split up. Bentley, you take Freddie, Patrick, and James, and head to your house.” One of the three emergency call buttons in Freepoint was actually located in Bentley’s home since his father was one of the higher ranking members of the board. We’d seen it that first sleepover at his house. The button, when pressed, notified the leaders of the other hero cities that Freepoint was in trouble.

“Henry, Chad, and I will go after Finch.”

“I can’t tell you how excited I am about that,” Henry grumbled.

“Sorry, buddy. I gotta see somehow. We’ll all jump to the cornfield together, and then James … you can take us to the spot Bentley picked, okay?

“It’s just two blocks from the school, someone’s backyard.” Bentley explained, “But there hasn’t been any activity on that camera whatsoever, so it should be a good spot to get you in close.”

I continued. “James, then you’ll go back to the cornfield and grab the others so you can head off to Bentley’s house.”

“Wait,” Chad interrupted. “Do you have a plan? Are you just going to waltz up to Finch and tap him on the shoulder?”

“Not at all,” I said, smiling, trying to act completely calm. “In fact, your power is going to help us sneak right past him.”

“We’re going past him?” He was confused.

“At least to the front steps of the school, yeah. See, he’s out here … in the east field …” I pointed to the spot on the main camera angle, which showed Finch doing nothing but standing and surveying. Several of the Believers scurried around here and there, wrapping up skirmishes with the last few remaining Freepoint resisters. “But if we can get past him without him knowing we’re there … we just might have a shot.”