Fall of Heroes (7 page)

“Uh-uh, Alex,” Mallory said. She held a hand out, heat radiating from it. “I know what you're thinking. If those things come anywhere near me, you'll find out how fast I can melt a foot of ice under you.”

“That's assuming I'm on the water,” Alex said. As he spoke, he raised the raft—and himself—until he was floating several feet above the surface of the cove on his own personal flying carpet.

“Are you forgetting?” Kirbie asked, taking off her jacket. Her face was hinting at transformation, lips and nose jutting forward, beakish. “You're not safe from us in the air, either.”

Somewhere inside Alex a voice was telling him to enjoy himself.
Have fun while you have the chance. Forget that you're now targets, just for this one hour.

Alex grinned. The raft started forward. Mallory reared back, ready to strike. Kirbie jumped into the air.

And then a voice from the patio stopped them all.

“They're awake!” Amp's words boomed.

There was a pause on the ice, and then all at once they scrambled across the lake as fast as they could. The time to play was over.

7
LEADER OF THE RANGERS

D
espite his sunken eyes and pale skin, Lone Star had an imposing presence, tall and barrel-chested. He stood in the Rec Room, staring at the wall covered in note cards and lists and yarn that mapped out the Cloak Society's reach and resources. Lux sat on the arm of a chair beside him, looking run-down but with a dignified posture. As the Junior Rangers introduced the other residents of the lake house, Lone Star took an interest in Alex. The man towered over him, looking down at the boy with his chin jutting out. For a moment, Alex thought that the great Ranger might hit him, or yell at him—after all, it had been his fault that Justice Tower had fallen so quickly, and that Lone Star had been trapped in the Gloom for the last month.

“Alex Knight,” he said. “I know your parents.”

Alex stared up at him and nodded slowly.

“Well, we have much to discuss,” the Ranger said, turning his attention to the rest of the group.

The others methodically spelled out everything that had happened in the heroes' absence—the crumbling of Justice Tower, infiltrating Cloak's underground base, the ordeal with the Omegas, the sudden rise of the New Rangers. Amp spoke the most, the words spilling out of his mouth so fast that they were at times half-garbled, and Lone Star or Lux would have to ask him to repeat things. He didn't seem to mind. There was something about the way that Amp interacted with the adult Rangers that brought out a side of the boy Alex had never seen. He wanted to impress them. He wanted to make sure they knew he'd been fighting for them.

“This is incredible,” Lone Star said. He finished the last of a granola bar and pulled another from a box on the billiard table. Both he and Lux had hardly stopped eating since they'd woken up. It seemed like the Gloom had drained them of so much. “It's remarkable you've been able to put all this together and make so many jabs at Cloak's plan without our help.”

“The plans we
knew
about,” Kyle said. “Ever since they appeared as the New Rangers, I keep thinking we have no idea what their next move might be. So we've really just been focusing on getting you two out of the Gloom.”

“What are these?” Lux asked, picking up a set of sketched blueprints from a side table. “This looks like . . .” She trailed off.

“We found them at the underground base,” Kirbie said. “We think they're plans for Cloak's new headquarters. For the New Rangers.”

“On the ruins of Justice Tower,” Lux said. “It certainly makes a statement.”

“Let's go over the safety of
this
base,” Lone Star said, walking over to a map focusing on Silver Lake and the area around the lake house. “I want to know everything. What kind of security do we have?”

“Motion, infrared, a veritable truckload of cameras set up around the premises,” Gage said. “Access to the cove is protected, which should take care of any boats wandering in.” He held up an electronic screen. “There are alarms in here and in my garage, and everything can be adjusted and controlled from here or one of the laptops.”

“I've got scouts out every hour on the hour when I'm awake,” Bug said. “Which is more often than I should be, probably.”

“It's been years since we sanctioned this place as a safe house, but if I remember correctly, there's a long path from the yard that leads to a gate somewhere off a dirt road,” Lone Star said.

“There
was
,” Kyle said with a hint of pride in his voice. “But I've overgrown the old path to the point that no one would be able to find it, much less drive anything down here. If we're attacked, it'll probably be from Phantom's transportation or the air.”

“Oh yeah,” Kirbie chimed in. “Cloak's got a helicopter now, too. It's what brought the New Rangers to the museum.”

“We haven't come across the resources to install any antiaircraft measures,” Gage said. Alex couldn't tell whether he was joking or not.

“As soon as I can fly again, the helicopter will be no problem,” Lone Star assured them.

There was a cockiness in the man's voice that—combined with his hulking body and brassy blond hair—couldn't help but make Alex think of Titan.

“And you're sure your mother didn't figure out where we are while she was in your head?” Lux asked.

“Positive,” Alex said.

“But that brings up a good question,” Mallory said, twisting a few strands of her brown hair between two fingers. “Why
haven't
we been attacked yet? Photon must know about this place, right? Amp said you guys went through psychic training or something, but it doesn't seem to be doing him much good against Shade.”

“After Victory Park, we didn't know who had survived on Cloak's side, but we were pretty certain Shade was still alive,” Lux said. “We'd heard her shouting after the explosion. Knowing there was an enemy with such powers on the loose, we sought out other telepaths across the world, who taught us how to protect ourselves in the event of psychic attacks. We hadn't thought the Junior Rangers were in danger of needing such training yet.” She took a glance at Kirbie. “Obviously we were wrong.”

“So why isn't Photon fighting back against my mother's powers?” Alex asked.

“He
is
,” Lone Star said. “From what you've told me, it sounds like Shade has to be near him at all times to keep him in line. A lesser mind would just be her drone and follow her blindly. Don't doubt the power of a Ranger for a second. There are levels to these kinds of things. Up against her powers, he may give his body over to her control, but that's just so that he can focus on keeping important things locked away inside his mind.”

This made sense to Alex. It wasn't unlike what he did with his telekinesis.

“He's still in there,” Kyle said, his hazel eyes looking soft. “When I yelled at him today, there was a moment where I could tell he recognized me. I could see it in his eyes. Then Shade touched him and he was a zombie again.”

“My mother once told me it was difficult for her to control strong minds,” Alex said quietly. “Even if it's within her power to break down every barrier in Photon's head, with everything going on she must not have had a chance to interrogate him and completely rewrite his brain. That's good news, at least.”

“We haven't gotten to the important thing yet,” Amp said, finally speaking up. “We've been waiting for you two to be back in this world for a month now. How soon can we take down Cloak?”

“This isn't the sort of thing we should rush,” Alex said. “Now that you're out of the Gloom, we should—”

“We'll go public as soon as we can,” Lone Star said.

“But we need to talk about—”

“We don't have time to argue about how almost a dozen people think we should be doing things. The longer we wait, the more time it gives Cloak to plan. This is our city. It always has been. The people love us.” He turned to Gage. “Now, what can you tell us about our powers?”

Gage frowned. He rolled a pen back and forth between his palms.

“Not much, I'm afraid. I'd thought the homing device I built to zero in on your powers was just not effective long-range, but it appears that's not the case. Even in the same room with you, I'm getting a fuzzy reading when I should be getting a strong signal. I think . . .” He hesitated a beat before continuing. “I think the Gloom has drained you of most of your powers. Both of you.”

“But they'll come back, right?” Kyle asked.

“Amp,” Kirbie said, “when you were training in the Gloom, how long did it take your powers to come back all the way?”

“Usually just a few minutes,” Amp said. He moved his hands to the back of his head, digging them into his short black hair. “I guess it took a little longer if we spent a lot of time inside. This last time in, it took me half the ride back to the lake house before I started feeling up to full strength.”

“There's where our answer lies, I think,” Gage said. “The longer inside, the longer it takes for your powers to return.”

“So, how long, then?” Kyle asked.

“That's the thing. We have no way of knowing. It's not a standard amount of time, obviously, since Amp's back to full power. If it normally takes, say, half the time spent in the Gloom back in the real world—which would correlate with Amp's experience—we're looking at maybe three weeks.”

“But it could be anything,” Lux said. “The time needed to recover could be exponential when compared to the time spent inside.”

“That's correct,” Gage said.

“But Photon's powers are fine,” Kyle said. His voice was getting higher. Alex could almost see his already fair skin paling as he tried to figure out a way to prove that the Rangers would return to full power.

“Yes, but he seems to have spent much less time away from the normal world. Lone Star and Lux might never get their powers back at all. Or at least not to the full extent that they had them.”

Alex closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The entire point of the mission—the thing they'd worked toward since Justice Tower—was to bring the Rangers out of the Gloom so that they could defeat Cloak. And now, all he was hearing was that they had taken yet another small step forward when they needed to be sprinting in leaps and bounds in order to stop whatever Cloak had planned for Sterling City—and them.

“I want to make it clear to everyone that this is nothing more than a guess,” Gage said, his eyes staring at a spot on the floor. “This is science that's so far beyond my area of knowledge that everything I say could be wrong. I'm simply going off what we know, which at this point is very little.”

“We don't need powers,” Lone Star said. “We just need the people of Sterling City on our side. Cloak is strong, but they can't win if we have the entire city behind us. When the public realizes that Lux and I are back, and the so-called heroes they're looking up to are actually supervillains, most of their power is gone.”

“Cloak . . . I can't imagine what they'll do after today,” Mallory said. “We can expect some sort of retaliation.”

“Right now they're figuring out all our possible moves,” Alex said. “Will we go to the police? Will we try to get Lone Star and Lux on TV? Will we stage some sort of attack? And they're figuring out ways to block us at every turn. We have to assume they're going to expect anything we do and have some sort of counter ready.”

“What could counter Lone Star and Lux?” Amp asked. “Even without their powers.”

“Alex is right,” Mallory said. “The New Rangers—”

“Would you all stop calling them that?” Lone Star asked, his voice growing louder. “They're
not
Rangers.”

“We know that,” Misty spoke up from one of the sofas. “We're not
dumb
.”

“This city has lost its mind if it thinks these people are anything like us,” Lone Star said, motioning widely to the wall of cards and yarn.

“Star, the people of the city are just scared,” Lux said softly, trying to calm her teammate down a bit.

Alex turned to her. “They should be.”

There was a brief silence, finally broken by the lake house computer beeping across the room. Kyle rushed over to it and tapped on the keyboard.

“Oh no.”

“What is it?” Kirbie asked.

Kyle clicked on a video and spun the computer around to the others. Photon stood at a podium onscreen, Shade and Volt on either side of him. A huge crowd of onlookers quietly waited for him to speak.

“After a ruthless attack on innocent citizens during the city's Fall Festival, the Rangers of Justice have unanimously decided to implement a city-approved curfew from sundown to sunrise until the Cloak menace has been eradicated. Only authorized parties will be allowed on the streets during the curfew period. All others will be charged with violating a direct mandate from the Rangers of Justice and Sterling City, and will be prosecuted as criminals.”

“What?” Lux asked, jumping out of her chair. “The people won't stand for this. It'll be met with revolts. Riots.”

“We can do this,” Photon continued on the video. “Together, we can defeat the villains known as the Cloak Society and usher in a golden age for Sterling City.”

He stepped away from the microphone. All around him, the crowds cheered. Alex noticed something off about his mother. At first he couldn't place it, but then it dawned on him. Something was odd about her posture. It was rigid. He could see her left fist at her side, clenched and shaking slightly. Her knuckles were white.

The video ended.

“I know we can't trust the media here,” Kyle said quietly, “but all reports say that the people are happy about this. They support the New Rangers. They want the city to be safe.”

Lone Star took a long look at Kyle, then turned to Gage.

“You seem to be the authority on electronics around here. Do you have a burner phone I can use, or do I need to find a pay phone to keep things anonymous?”

Gage grinned and dug through a duffel bag he'd brought in from the garage. After a little rummaging, he pulled out a small black device.

“It's a modified satellite phone,” he said, handing it over. “It'll bounce your signal halfway across the country before it connects.”

“Who are you calling?” Kirbie asked.

“A friend in the city.”

Lone Star walked to the other side of the room, standing in a corner near the unused billiard cues and a dusty stack of old board games. He dialed slowly, as if he had to talk himself into pressing each number. Finally he raised the phone to his ear.

The others watched in a mixture of confusion and anticipation. Alex glanced around the room, making eye contact with the Junior Rangers, but they all looked as puzzled as he felt. He took a step forward, ready to point out that the last thing Lone Star should have been doing was acting without their knowledge, but Kirbie shot him a concerned look.