The Ables (45 page)

“A shot to do what?” Chad must have thought I was crazy.

“To turn the school’s NPZ against him. At least, that’s the hope.”

“This has to be the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, Phillip. You think you can turn the school’s NPZ against Finch? How? No one knows who the hero is that controls it.”

“Maybe so,” I said, with a bit of pride. “But we do know how the principal activates and deactivates it.”

He thought for a minute. “Chesley?”

I nodded.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to—“

“That’s right,” I interjected. “Bentley hotwired my radio to imitate the school’s walkie-talkie frequency.”

Bentley smiled broadly at this but said nothing.

“You’re going to sneak past the most powerful villain in our lifetimes and then say a woman’s name into a walkie-talkie in the hope that whoever controls the school’s NPZ isn’t already a prisoner—and is willing to follow orders from the voice of a twelve-year-old instead of the principal?!”

I smiled at how ridiculously perfect it all seemed. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“And what if it doesn’t work? We’ll be sitting ducks!”

“Only if Bentley’s team fails, Chad. Because if they succeed, then we’re nothing but a distraction anyway, because the good men and women of Goodspeed will swoop in at the last minute and save our behinds.”

“Either that or the Freepoint prisoners we bust out,” Bentley added.

“Wonderful,” Chad said in mock happiness. “You’re sending a cripple, a blind transporter, a dude with asthma, and your little brother to rescue all the prisoners?!”

I had my own doubts about the plan, for sure. But I wasn’t about to let them show in front of the rest of the group and definitely not in front of Patrick. Besides, we had to do something. Doing nothing would have been unbearable. I couldn’t take much more of Chad’s dissenting opinion, though. We didn’t have time for it.

“Chad, you know what?” I used a gentle, friendly tone. Casual even. “Let’s not worry about that. Okay? Now, unless you want to bow out here, which nobody would blame you for doing …”

He wagged his head side to side, indicating he wanted to stay.

“We’ve got enough to worry about. It’s basically going to take a miracle for us to come out of this alive, let alone victorious. So … I figure … if it’s fate, if it’s out of our hands, then either everything will go wrong, or everything will miraculously go right. Either way, there’s probably not a lot I can do to impact it beyond my own job. Let’s let Bentley and them worry about Bentley and them, you know?”

He nodded. “Okay. Yeah.” He wiped his hands on his knees and shook his whole body as though shaking off a dizzy feeling. “Okay. I’m with you. I’m with you. What’s my job?”

I smiled. “Keep Henry and me invisible, man. That’s all you gotta do.”

“I can do that,” he said with a grin. “I know how to do that.”

“Okay, everyone … hands in.” I put out my hand first, palm down. One by one, everyone else gathered into a small circle, adding their hand to the pile in the center. When we were all in, I turned to James. “If you don’t mind, good sir?”

“Why, not at all,” he said in a terrible British accent.

Ooph!

The cornfield was still peaceful, but there were also distant noises coming from the heart of Freepoint, maybe a mile or two away. An explosion, a few loud banging noises. Fires raged here and there all over town, their light and smoke collecting over the city in a terrible glowing dome of death and destruction. None of us could really believe it, and we stood there, hands still clapped together, staring at what seemed like a simple nightmare, even though we knew it was all too real.

What had happened to our city? Our parents? Our friends? How many had died? Were there any even left to save?

I snapped myself out of it, if only so I could snap the others out of it as well. “Okay,” I said sharply, pulling my hand back. “We know what we have to do, everyone, right?” They all nodded. “We don’t have time for any big speeches or anything, but I just want to say that we’re all going to be fine. We’re going to get through this because we have to. If we don’t, we die.”

There was a group pause as the weight of the situation came crashing down on everyone. We were about to seriously risk our lives on a longshot plan. If we failed, we might not live to see tomorrow. Deep down, we all knew our history of mission planning and execution was spotty at best.

I turned briefly back toward the farmhouse, wondering what Mr. Charles would be up to. Henry looked from the computer screen back up at the orange halo around our city—it was a mesmerizing sight.

Turning back at the group, I couldn’t resist trying to find the perfect thing to say to wrap up what we were all feeling—which was, of course, impossible. “There’s nothing I could say or do to let you guys know how much you all mean to me, you know? But … you’ve been like a second family to me in a year when my real family has been turned upside down. And I appreciate it. I wish I could show you how much I appreciate it.

“I know we face tall odds. We have a flimsy plan, and the enemy probably has a lot of NPZ coverage. In a way, if you think about it, it’s a lot like the original Ables. Outnumbered and having to rely on our smarts … our ability to be more clever than the opponent. The Ables faced incredible odds too, guys, hundreds to a handful, just like us. And just like them, we’re going to defeat the enemy … with our teamwork and ingenuity…” I trailed off a bit, struggling to find a good way to wrap up my speech. “I’m not sure how to end this thing to be honest, guys …” I trailed off again.

Everyone looked around at each other, all feeling a range of strong emotions but none really sure what to say or how to behave. This could be the end for some of us and almost certainly the end of the Ables. We might not see each other again, depending on how things went.

“We could hug,” James offered meekly.

Everyone turned and looked at him. He’d always been so friendly and polite, it probably shouldn’t have surprised us that he would be the one to suggest a group hug.

“You know … if you want. We don’t have to,” he backpedaled, shifting his gaze to his feet as he realized the awkwardness he’d caused.

I looked at Bentley, who was smiling but trying to hide it. I glanced at Henry, who was choking back a laugh. And then I looked at Patrick, who looked back at me with these honest eyes that seemed to genuinely need a hug. And I gave in.

“Okay. I guess.”

James lit up. He stepped forward and wrapped me up with a surprising amount of strength as everyone else piled in on the group hug around us and started to laugh. It was a really nice moment. Sometimes, you don’t realize how much you’ve grown to care about people until something threatens to take them away from you.

It made me really miss Donnie, too.

“Okay, okay,” I said, backing out of the scrum, trying to get us back on task. “Let’s get serious, now, guys. We don’t have time to waste. At all. Okay?”

Everyone settled themselves down and tried to focus.

“Henry, Chad, James? You guys ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Yes, sir!”

We formed a tight square, and the four of us placed a hand inside. “Good luck, Bent,” I said to my friend. “Patrick, you do whatever he says, you hear me? Dad’s going to kill me if you get killed, so don’t die. And if there’s trouble … run, and don’t stop running till you’re three states over.” I turned to James. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Ooph!

Henry immediately looked down at his laptop screen at what my camera was capturing while I scanned my head back and forth looking for movement. There was none. I glanced at James and silently nodded.

Ooph!

He was gone.

We were in the corner of a residential backyard. It was surrounded by a tall wooden fence, and James had plopped us in perfectly, tucked right into the corner where two edges of the fence met. The lights in the home were off, and we appeared to be alone in the yard.

On the other side of the fence was school property—the home’s land backed right up to Freepoint High’s east side lawn, which was mostly used for band and soccer practices. It was a huge amount of distance to cover between our current position and the front steps of the school, easily two football fields.

We peeked through the slats of the fence. It was tricky for me to line up the camera properly, but once I straightened that out, Henry got a pretty good picture to send me—the camera was night-vision capable now, thanks to another round of tinkering by Bentley.

For about a hundred yards or so, roughly half the distance we needed to cross, there was no one. There were two men, Believers in their full robes, standing and talking there at the halfway point, then we saw three more of them walking toward the school another fifty yards in. I briefly wondered what kind of chitchat Believers would be making on a night like tonight. About thirty yards from the main entrance of the school, where we needed to go, stood Finch. His arms were crossed, and there was no movement in him at all. He could have been a statue. He was waiting. For me.

And by golly, I was going to show up. Just not the way he planned.

There were about ten to fifteen other robed sentries scattered here and there, some near the front of the school and others toward the back. But that was all we could see.

The earpiece in my ear crackled to life. “Phillip. Come in.” It was Bentley.

“Go ahead, Bentley,” I whispered in reply.

“Listen, man. Bad news.”

Uh-oh.

He continued. “They’ve been here. They must have known about the emergency communication system to Goodspeed. The entire house is trashed, and the device is destroyed.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Phillip. I’m sure they know about the other similar devices in town and have already destroyed those as well. I think we’re on our own.”

That was a blow I didn’t expect and one I didn’t need. With the activation of that device—one push of a button—our chances for success would go up in a big way. Goodspeed forces had plenty of teleporters on their payroll, just as Freepoint did. They could be here in seconds, but not if they didn’t know we needed their help.

“Bentley,” I said.

“Not now, Phillip.” His voice was suddenly hushed and carried a new sense of urgency. “There’s someone in the house. I think there’s someone in the house, Phillip!”

“Oh crap.” It was Henry. It was a party line, so everyone on the team could hear.

“Bentley!” I whispered, not sure what else to say. But there was no immediate response. I swallowed hard.

“This is bad, Phillip,” Chad whispered, off radio. “This is very bad.”

I nodded, my face surely portraying panic. My heart began to pound a nervous beat. “Bentley!” The silence was killing me.

“I’m here, Phillip. But I gotta be honest.” He’d never spoken more quietly in his life. “I think we’re in trouble here. We can’t use our powers. NPZ. There are several men in the house, Finch’s men, I’m sure. They’re coming up the stairs now and—” he went silent again, but that wasn’t because he had stopped transmitting. My ears were more than strong enough to still pick up the crackle of the open radio connection. He was still broadcasting, just not talking.

I tried to listen more intently. I could hear breathing—no doubt Bentley’s. It was fast and heavy. Without warning, there was an incredibly loud bang, like the sound of a door being kicked in. Then voices. “All right! On your feet!” “Now, now, now! Get up! Get up!” There was a lot of commotion, rustling, and muffled shouting. I couldn’t tell what was going on.

“You move and you die, you hear? I have no compunction about killing you just because you’re a kid, okay?!”

I looked up at Chad again. Even with the night vision, it still looked like he’d turned a few shades whiter.

More voices. “Call it in. Four more prisoners.”

I dropped my head in defeat, exhaling a lot of held breaths at once. Bentley’s team had been captured.

“What in the hell is this? Is that a radio?” There was a sharp popping noise, and the line went dead.

For several seconds, none of us said anything. We were all processing what these new developments meant. Prior to that radio call, we were going out to face a fierce and evil enemy … but we had hopes that either rescued Freepoint citizens or emergency troops from Goodspeed would come to our aid. Now, with Bentley, Freddie, James, and Patrick captured by Finch’s goons … there would be no aid.

We were truly on our own. The three of us against the world. Things had gone from mostly hopeless to totally hopeless, which feels like a bigger drop than you might think, I can promise you.

“Why didn’t James just jump them out of there?” Chad wondered aloud, shaking his head in disbelief at what he’d just heard.

“They had an NPZ,” Henry said.

“Geez, how many does this guy control anyway?” Chad said in frustration. “Aren’t they in limited supply?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “A few of the heroes in Freepoint with that power disappeared this year, though. I’ll bet you anything it was Finch, and he’s somehow using their powers against us.”

“You know, now that you say that,” Chad said slowly, “I think there was an NPZ hero kidnapped or something when I was in Goodspeed.”

“He was probably picking them off one by one,” Henry added.

“So we’re going up against a guy that has every power in existence and also controls most of the world’s population of blockers? We’re screwed,” Chad said. He didn’t say it angrily or argumentatively but rather as a matter of fact.

“We
are
screwed,” Henry agreed. I was surprised he hadn’t said it first.

“We were already screwed,” I offered.

Both of them looked at me at once.

I explained. “Like I said in the cornfield, we had pretty slim odds to begin with, right? This is like going from having a five percent chance of success to having a three percent chance of success. It’s not that big a difference, if you think about it.”

Neither of them appeared to be swayed by my logic, which I knew was flimsy at best. Bentley would have been more persuasive.