The Last Hero (Book 1): Ultra (12 page)

I
sat
in the hospital for the second time in a week.

This time, I was here for completely different reasons.

I sat in the corridor outside the main ward. Nurses dressed all in white kept on walking by and smiling at me, clipboards in hand. Every now and then, patients stumbled past, some of them moving so sluggishly that I couldn’t believe they were still on their feet. There were a constant chatter and a constant bleeping of machinery. The stench of disinfectant and sweat hung in the air. I’d eaten a burger before I made my way down here, and it wasn’t settling well.

Nothing was.

Because my best friend and the girl I loved were the ones in the hospital beds, in a condition I didn’t even know about.

I tried to hold my leg still, but it wouldn’t stop shaking. I told myself they were okay. I’d felt their hearts beating when I’d got them to the hospital. They were lucky. I’d got them here and got rid of my makeshift outfit before everyone else had the chance to be brought here. Not that I was being selfish—there were a lot of injuries after the attack on the party venue. But my friends were at the front of the line for medical attention. To me, that mattered more than anything.

I’d rang Mom shortly after dropping Damon and Ellicia off. Told her I was fine. That I’d got away before the incident occurred. I called it an incident, but truth be told, I wasn’t the only person who knew exactly what’d happened at the party. I could hear whisperings about it. I could feel the tension in the air; see the startled looks in the eyes of the nurses, the eyes of the terrified classmates who’d been brought in for a variety of wounds.

Even Mom mentioned it on the phone.

“Is it true, Kyle?” she’d asked. “The ULTRAs. Is it true that they’re back? That they’re really back?”

I heard the fear in my mom’s voice, and even though there wasn’t a thing I could do about my own powers and abilities, I felt ashamed of myself for having them. My mom hated the ULTRAs. She hated them for what they’d done. For the destruction they’d caused. But mostly, of course, for the death of my sister. Instead of blaming the governments who created the first wave, instead of blaming Saint for forcing Orion into a climactic showdown with him, she lashed out at the same target as everyone else—all the ULTRAs. Every ULTRA.

If she knew I was an ULTRA…

I shuddered at the thought. She’d be even more embarrassed by me, even more ashamed than she must’ve been already.

I wiped a finger across my head. There was a little blood there. It made it look like I’d been caught up in the attack. The truth was, I’d made it myself not long ago. I didn’t have my story straight, not just yet. I hadn’t decided whether to explain that I’d left literally moments before the attack or not, but then even though I was partly masked when I’d gone back into the party venue, I couldn’t be too sure nobody had recognized me, or that CCTV would find a nifty way of picking me up.

I’d told Mom I was by the door when it happened. That I got out fine. She told me I had an angel looking out for me. My sister’s angel. Surviving a mass gun attack; surviving an ULTRA attack on a school. An angel on my shoulder.

To me, it felt like a demon was inside me, shadowing my every move.

I knew there’d be questions. I knew I’d have to settle on a story. But right now, my brain wasn’t working. All I wanted to know was how Damon and Ellicia were getting along. I’d heard talk about the death toll at the party venue already. At least ten. Not as bad as it could’ve been, but a lot of injuries. And ten too many. Ten preventable deaths.

I just hoped Damon and Ellicia didn’t make up those numbers. I hoped they weren’t gonna be crippled for life.

I’d never forgive myself. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have let Mike Beacon’s threats get to me. I was probably just being paranoid about those anyway. God, they seemed so superficial now.

I felt my body go cold when I thought back to the last time I’d seen Mike. I’d looked down into that crater in the ground; the crater that… well, whoever the other ULTRA was threw him into.

Smoke steamed from his body. He was still.

As much as I disliked the guy, I hoped he made it. ’Cause he was just a guy my age.

Not just that, but I felt guilty. I’d hesitated when I saw the ULTRA attacking Mike. When I saw him holding Mike up, strangling him. I’d actually questioned helping him. What kind of a Hero did that make me? Didn’t that just make me the same morally screwed idiot as every other ULTRA that everyone feared?

I thought about that ULTRA dressed all in silver armor. Thought about the metal mask, so reminiscent of Saint’s. What was their problem with the party? Why had they attacked the venue? High casualty targets were Saint’s manifesto, sure. But a party venue on Staten Island for a relatively lesser-known high school? Surely that didn’t totally fit in with Saint’s modus operandi.

I knew right then, sat there, that I was in a dangerous world now. I was so far down the rabbit hole that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get out again.

I’d hesitated. If I’d acted sooner, I could’ve stopped the ULTRA from causing more destruction, more chaos.

I was still the weak moron deep down that I’d always been.

I was about to stand up and see if I could find any news on Damon and Ellicia when I heard a voice to my left.

It was a doctor. A short, black woman, who I’d seen earlier when everything was still a little blurry.

“Kyle, right?” she asked.

I nodded. I felt my chest tighten. This was it. I imagined a zillion scenarios. A zillion different forms of bad news.

“Damon Bamford and Ellicia Williams. You were asking about them.”

This was it. The bad news was coming. I was too late. I hadn’t acted quick enough.

“They’ve got some minor burn wounds, a little concussion. Otherwise, they’re absolutely fine.”

I almost lost my footing. “Thank you,” I exhaled. “Thank you so much. Can I… can I see them?”

“Their families are with ’em right now,” the nurse said, starting to turn around. I could hear a cry from one of the other wards. She had to be so busy right now. “Give it an hour or so, I’m sure your friends can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

I watched the nurse walk away, and I felt like I was on cloud nine.

I went to sit down. Heard the crying some more. When I looked over to my right, I realized it wasn’t a patient crying at all. It was a woman in a black coat. Tall. Blonde. Attractive. Beside her, her older husband, holding an arm around her. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Weird thing about them. They looked vaguely familiar. I swore I’d seen them somewhere before. I swore I’d…

Then, it clicked.

It clicked, and I felt all the heat leave my body.

I did recognize them. I’d seen them at parents’ evenings. I’d even seen them around at my parents’ house back in seventh grade when the bullying first started properly, as they attempted to put an end to it like adults did.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Beacon,” the bald doctor standing opposite said. “I’m so sorry. We tried everything for your son. But we just… I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t have to hear any words to confirm it.

Just the croakiness in the doctor’s voice. The pain in Mrs. Beacon’s cry.

Mike Beacon was dead.

“
S
eriously
, man. The things I saw there. You… you wouldn’t believe it. You missed out. Classic Kyle.”

I stood beside Damon’s and Ellicia’s beds and felt sick right to my stomach. The ward had quietened down, and it didn’t seem as rushed and panicked as it had earlier when the people caught up in the party attack were admitted in their droves.

But the sound of Mrs. Beacon’s cries, her grief, didn’t escape my mind.

The sound of those words from the doctor.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Beacon. We tried everything for your son. But we just… I’m so sorry.”

“It’s really shitty,” Damon said. “I mean, I swear we’re cursed or somethin’. Terror attack. Now this. One of us has to have broken a window or something.”

“Broken a window?” Ellicia whispered.

“Yeah, y’know. Bad luck and all that.”

“I think you mean a mirror,” I said.

“What? Nah, man. I definitely mean a window.”

“He really means a window,” Ellicia said.

I nodded. I wanted to smile at Damon’s silliness. He was always coming out with stuff like that. But truth be told, I couldn’t laugh at anything. Yeah, I was pleased I’d been the one to drag the two people closest to me out from the wrath of the party venue. But so many others had suffered. People our age had
died
. There was something wrong about that. Something so damned wrong. As if the world had glitched like a video game and some terrible bug had crept in.

“It’s kinda cool in a way,” Damon said.

“What is?” I asked. I hadn’t really looked at Ellicia much since stepping into this room. I couldn’t face seeing the bloodied cut on her forehead and knowing that if I’d been here when the fireballs rained down on the venue, I could’ve stopped even more pain. If I hadn’t walked away like a wuss, I could’ve fought.

But I hadn’t. And now people were dead. People I cared about. People I didn’t care so much about.

But still, people. People just like me, coming to the end of their school year, living normal lives.

“It’s cool that there’s… there’s an ULTRA back,” Damon said.

Ellicia tutted.

“What? Don’t you think it’s kinda cool?”

“In what way is an ULTRA being back ‘cool’?” Ellicia snapped. She didn’t snap much. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever seen her angry before now. Seen the redness to her face.

But she was mad enough about the thought of an ULTRA being back that she was willing to let her peacefulness slip.

“They caused so much death. So much chaos. Hell, they even killed Kyle’s sister.”

I felt my skin turn cold.

Damon looked down at the bed.

“Sorry,” Ellicia said. “I… I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” I said, feeling more deflated by the minute. “No, you’re right. I just…”

“I’m just saying,” Ellicia continued. “The ULTRAs. Yeah, they mighta been designed to protect us. But we only just made it. Every single one of us only just made it. People were never meant to have powers. It’s just something that was never meant to happen. We got away with it. We got lucky. And now there’s an ULTRA back… well, I just hope the world’s ready again. ’Cause usually we don’t get lucky twice.”

I heard Ellicia’s words echoing in my ears and knew there was desperation there. Desperation that had hung over everyone since the day of the Great Blast. The fear. The fear of “what if?” another ULTRA were to crop up someday. The government said it was impossible. That the fears were unfounded.

But what if?

I knew now it was true. An ULTRA was back.

Not just one. Two.

And I was one of them.

I decided to take my chances and test the waters. “Maybe if there’s a bad ULTRA back, there might be… another. Another like Orion who can stop whoever it is.”

Ellicia rolled her eyes. “Saint. Orion. They’re all the same at the end of the day.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. She looked me right in the eyes, tears building in the corners. “You only have to see all the destruction they caused trying to save the world in their own ways to know the truth.”

More than ever before, I felt ashamed about my abilities. There was no winning Ellicia round to my side of the argument. Not that I’d been planning on telling her or anyone about what I was capable of in the first place—there were still so many things I didn’t understand yet. But still, knowing the girl I loved didn’t view what I was as a good thing, as a hero… that was pretty soul destroying.

“What happened to Mike,” Damon said. “It’s fucked up. I mean, I never liked the guy, but it’s fucked up.”

My throat was so dry that I couldn’t speak. I nodded.

“I don’t know how we got out that party venue,” Damon said, shuffling around on his hospital bed. “I just know that whoever it was… well, they were the real hero in all this. The paramedics, whatever. They were the real hero.”

I was the real hero. I wanted to say it aloud. I was the hero.

“But before I left. I saw… I saw that look in Mike’s eyes. Just for a split second. He was scared, man. Like he knew. And that’s what creeps me out so much about all this. Mike Beacon, the toughest guy in school, looking at me like I could help him somehow. Like he needed
my
help.”

I felt the heat of the room intensifying around me as the memories flooded back.

I felt the guilt of failure building inside.

“Visiting time’s over I’m afraid, kiddo,” an approaching nurse said. She smiled at me, scrunched up her face. “Time for your friends to get some rest.”

I said my goodbyes to Damon. I walked over to Ellicia’s bedside, and as much as I wanted to hug her, I just held my hand up awkwardly, waved at her. She nodded back. Half-smiled. She looked tired, worn down, but still amazingly beautiful.

If only I could tell her. If only I had the guts to tell her.

I left the ward and headed back down the hospital corridor. As I walked, I saw people I recognized in the hospital beds. I saw anguished faces of parents. I saw tears.

And as I stepped past these people, I couldn’t help feeling guilty that I was here, that I was okay.

But also, that I had failed.

One thing was for certain: if I hadn’t been so in denial about my powers, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

But what could I do about it now?

“
Y
ou sure
you should be watching this, Kyle?”

I stared at the television in our living room back home. I hadn’t goosed out and watched TV in what felt like forever. The living room was dark, lights out, like it always was whenever the TV was on. It was also turned down just below comfortable hearing, something Mom and Dad always insisted on ’cause they were worried about the neighbors. My lips felt dry and chapped. There was a constant sickly feeling hanging in my body, like the events—the discoveries—of the last few days were still weighing down on me.

I was an ULTRA.

There was another ULTRA attacking people. Killing people.

The world was changing right before my young eyes all over again.

“Turn this up,” I said, when I saw the news report flash to an explosion in Cairo, Egypt. “Please.”

Dad sighed. Then he reached for the remote and inched the volume up ever-so-slightly.

The report was about an explosion, as I’d noticed. But it wasn’t just any old explosion. There were those fireballs blasting down on the Cairo streets. Fireballs, just like the ones that had rained down on my party venue.

“And reports at the scene are suggesting an attack just like that at the school party on Staten Island. An ULTRA attack…”

I heard the fear in the newsreader’s voice. I heard the collective gasps of air of everyone watching this breaking news unfold as if I was in each and every one of their living rooms.

I saw the fear on my mom and dad’s faces. The same fear that’d been there the day my big sister died.

“There’s also reports of a YouTube video from the attacker.”

My ears pricked up.

“The legitimacy of it was in doubt at first, but now it appears to have been verified.”

Dad lifted the remote. “Your mother doesn’t need to hear this.”

“No, wait,” I said.

I saw Dad’s finger hover over the remote, ready to change channel. I was so close to snapping the remote with my mind. But I had to keep my calm. I couldn’t go giving away my secret identity to my parents. They’d probably disown me.

I didn’t have to. Dad sighed, lowered the remote.

The news report changed to some clear footage, shaky but clear. Not the grainy type that is so clichéd in movies and television shows.

The ULTRA was just like the one I’d seen at the party venue. Dressed all in silver armor, like a knight. Wearing a metal mask over its face, just like the one Saint had worn during his reign of terror all those years ago.

The ULTRA was hovering above the pyramids of Egypt.

“When Saint died,” the ULTRA said, its voice impossibly deep, “something in our world died. A vision. A new world order. I’m here to continue that vision. I’m here to carry on what Saint started. To take his vision even further.”

I saw my father’s face grow even paler than it already was by the second.

“Humanity has been a scourge on the planet for way too long. Burning fossil fuels. Wasting the earth’s natural resources. Fighting with one another. It’s a virus that has gone beyond control. A virus where the powerful stomp down on the less powerful, and the less powerful who do find power just abuse it like their superiors. Because that’s human nature. To destroy others.

“But it does not have to be that way much longer. It is time for somebody else to do the destroying. For something else to vet humanity’s actions.”

I saw the fireball appear above the ULTRA’s free hand.

“I am Nycto. Night is coming.”

He let go of the phone and it stayed there, hovered in the air.

The next thing I saw was Nycto raining down his fireballs on a hotel resort in Egypt.

The footage cut away. Seconds later, Dad changed the channel. A comedy came on, Family Guy. He smiled right away, started chuckling. But I could tell it was forced. How could anyone laugh anymore? How could anyone laugh when a Saint successor, Nycto, had just declared war on humanity?

I pulled out my phone and scanned the news. I saw that close up of Nycto’s mask again. Definitely the same guy I’d seen attack my party. What was he doing attacking Cairo? What was the link?

I scrolled down a little further. Saw there was a statement from President Marko.

“Nycto is dangerous. And he must be treated seriously. Humanity must come together to defeat this threat. To stand together, just like we stood together last time, and defeat Nycto.”

There was a question. A reporter asking the president whether there was another ULTRA out there. One like Orion, who could take Nycto down just like Orion took Saint down.

“Let me be clear,” the president continued. “We made a mistake creating the ULTRAs. And no ULTRA should be glorified. We have no reason to believe there are any other ULTRAs out there. But if there is, well…” He looked right into the camera. Looked into my eyes like he could see me in my living room. “Do the honorable, democratic thing. The American constitutional thing. Turn yourself in. That is the only way you can help us.”

The recording cut out, and I was left with the president’s words ringing in my ears.

I knew what President Marko was saying. I knew exactly what he was implying. If I gave myself up to the government, they’d end me. They’d make an example of me. At the very best, they’d use me. Weaponize me in their fight against Nycto.

But I was just a kid. Just a sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t know how I’d got these powers; didn’t know where they’d come from.

I didn’t want to be weaponized. I didn’t want to turn myself in. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I stood up, a sudden bolt of life shooting through my body. I felt a sense of purpose fill me. Life filled my lungs as the sounds of the screams, the memories of the flames, all of them filled my consciousness.

“Where’re you going?” Mom asked.

I tightened my fist. Felt the electricity fill my body. “Nipping out,” I said.

I couldn’t just sit by and watch Nycto tear the world apart.

I couldn’t let more people die.

I had to do something.