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I was torn. As much as I disagreed with what was happening, I hardly thought that made Fantom a bad guy. My mind drifted to what Fantom had told me last night.

“Maybe he’s trying to stand for something…more,” I said, hesitating. “You know, more than just being a Superhero”

Flex cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“I just think you’re only looking at the situation from one side. I think Fantom is trying to be a symbol that stands for more than all that.”

“Why are you defending him?”

“I’m not defending him.”

“You are
so
defending him,” said Flex. “What’d he tell you last night that’s suddenly made you his biggest fan? Did he ask you to be his new sidekick or something?”

Flex had the biggest smirk on his face when he said this last part. It made it that much more awkward when I didn’t respond to his sarcastic question. The words became a hairball lodged in my throat.

Fantom was having me picked up tonight, and I still hadn’t told Flex that I wasn’t his sidekick anymore. At this point, though, I couldn’t just dance around it. I had to tell him.

My delayed response and awkward expression seemed to speak for itself.

“What?” said Flex. He suspiciously analyzed my gaze for several long seconds, then shook his head. “No…he didn’t.”

I had no idea what to say at this point. So I said nothing. My continued silence waved like a giant red flag.

Flex’s eyebrows lifted. “He did?”

After another brief hesitation, I slowly nodded. “He asked me last night.”

“He asked you to be his sidekick,” said Flex.

“Yeah.”

Flex’s mouth grew small as he absorbed my one-word response. “What’d you say?”

Did he seriously need to ask that? Would it be this awkward if I had simply turned down Fantom’s offer?

“Well of course I said yes,” I said. “What else would I say?”

“Oh, I dunno,” said Flex, staring at the floor and kicking it with his foot. “Maybe ‘No way, Fantom! Flex and I are the coolest team since Batman and Robin. Thanks, but no thanks.’ Something like that?”

I didn’t have a response for that.

“But I guess we’re not,” said Flex, filling in the silence. “So I guess it’s good you didn’t say that.”

“C’mon, Flex,” I protested. “You didn’t even want a sidekick to begin with. Heck, you only signed up as a possible trainer for the money. But hey, we’re both famous now, so money isn’t a problem anymore! This is good for both of us. You get what you want, and I get what I want. I mean, you’re a loner, aren’t you?”

Flex looked like a dog that had just been kicked by his owner.

“I’m a loner because my hero turned his back on me,” said Flex. He opened his mouth as if to say more but hesitated and then closed it again. With that, he turned and started for the door.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Out,” said Flex.

“Where?”

“OUT,” he said even louder.

“WHERE?” I shouted back.

“I don’t know,” said Flex, rolling his eyes. “Probably to the bar where I’m going to consume copious amounts of alcohol. And when I can’t possibly drink anymore, I’ll probably keep drinking. Anything else you’re dying to know?”

I sputtered as he reached the door. “Wait! When are you going to be back?”

“I don’t know. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” I repeated. “But…Fantom’s going to have someone pick me up tonight.”

“Well that’s great,” Flex muttered. “Guess I’ll see you…never.”

Flex exited and started to slam the door behind him.

I tapped into my skeletal structure, and flew across the floor. Pounding the density into my arm, I shoved my hand in the door before it could close. I winced as the door slammed on my hand and bounced back open. I bit back the pain and met his glare.

“What are you doing?” asked Flex.

“Wait,” I stammered. “Just…wait a sec, okay?”

“What do you want from me, Marrow?” he demanded, throwing his arms in the air. “You want me to congratulate you? Tell you how happy I am that all your wildest dreams are coming true? Fine. Congratulations. Now get lost before I throw you out the window.”

My arm sank.

Flex slammed the door again.

Yep. So much for nothing bringing Flex down today. I slowly shuffled to the three-story window overlooking the filthy, graffiti-stricken street below. Only a short moment later, Flex stormed outside. He attacked the first thing he saw which happened to be a trashcan, kicking it out into the street. It happened to roll in front of a moving car which screeched to a halt. The driver exited the vehicle and started yelling and shaking his fist at Flex.

Flex yelled back even louder as he started towards the vehicle.

The man hastily jumped back inside his car, squealed around the trashcan, and sped off.

Flex only got halfway across the street before he dropped his head in his hands. His shoulders heaved and then his entire body started shaking.

A part of me wanted to go outside and talk to him. Say something—anything—that would end things on a better note than they currently were.

But what?

There was nothing I could say. The damage was already done.

Flex finally composed himself, shaking his head. Even from a distance, I could tell that he was blinking back tears. He shuffled around the corner and disappeared.

For all of my wildest dreams coming true, today didn’t feel like it could get any worse.

The long-anticipated knock practically rattled Flex’s front door off its hinges. I leapt off the couch to answer it. As if I wasn’t anxious enough already.

“Hallo,” said a burly man with beady eyes and a handlebar moustache. “My name is Gustav. I am Fantom’s butler. He asked that I pick you up.”

His accent was thick with clipped vowels. The guy looked less like a butler or a chauffeur and more like a foreign spy or even an ex-con. I could see the tips of tattoos creeping across his wrists beneath the sleeves of his suit jacket.

“Oh,” I said.

If I felt just a little disappointed that Fantom hadn’t bothered to pick me up himself, it all vanished when Gustav led me outside to the limousine parked in the street.

“A limo?” I said, wide-eyed. “You came here in a limo?”

“No, I rode my magic unicorn across a rainbow to get here,” said Gustav. He snorted his amusement into his immense moustache. “Of course I came here in the limo.”

Sarcasm sounds a lot more deadly and serious in a Russian accent.

“Don’t poop your pants, kid,” said Gustav. “Just vait until we get to the submarine.”

I nearly pooped my pants.

Gustav opened my door, gesturing for me to enter. If the limo looked big on the outside, the inside was practically its own club. Sleek TV screens adorned every corner, edges were lined with neon lights, and there was even a bar with shelved glasses of varying shapes and sizes.

I hated that the limo bar immediately reminded me of Flex.

“Fantom also asked that I give this to you,” said Gustav.

He extended his beefy hand. Clutched in his thick palm was something that resembled a wristwatch, but bigger and shinier.

“It’s a vrist communicator,” said Gustav. “He left a message for you on it.”

I hesitantly took the wrist device. The head was an empty reflective surface that didn’t respond to my touch. The band was a soft synthetic material that somehow maintained a firm, circular shape. When I inserted my hand, it instantly closed around my wrist, forming comfortably around it. I jumped. It was all I could do just to keep myself from screaming like a little girl. The screen immediately lit up with the words
One new message
. The words then vanished, replaced by Fantom’s face.

“Hello, Marrow,” he greeted, a smile stretched across his square jaw. “I’m sorry I couldn’t pick you up personally. If all this Cronus Order business isn’t enough to keep me busy, we’ve had an…er…issue…come up. I hope you’ll understand. You can trust Gustav, though. He’s the best there is at what he does.”

The best there is at what he does? What could that be? Sticking people’s feet in concrete blocks and dropping them to the bottom of the ocean?

“I’m looking forward to us working together,” Fantom continued. “We’re on the verge of something huge with the Cronus Cannon. I have a feeling that fighting crime is never going to be the same. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I have every confidence that you’ll be up to the task. Fighting today for a perfect tomorrow, Marrow. That’s what we’re doing.”

Fantom winked. With a
bleep
and a brief flash, the message ended.

The limo ride was a thirty-minute trip to the coast. As the ocean sparkled into view, we found ourselves winding across slanted cliffsides which gleamed white in the sun. As we swerved around yet another curve, a monolithic structure appeared on the other side, built into the mountain. It was all rigid slabs of concrete bleakness, towering over a tunnel illuminated by eerie underwater lighting. Not that I know anything about submarines, but this thing looked like it belonged on the set of a Bond movie.

“Velcome to the Tartarus Submarine Base,” said Gustav. “The technology is state of the art, but the architecture is modeled after the old nuclear submarine base in Balaklava.”

“Lava what?” I said.

“It’s in Ukraine.”

“Oh.”

The road descended until we were skimming beside the water. The tunnel gaped open like a hungry, toothless mouth devouring the road ahead of us. Gustav turned, and we were swallowed in shadow.

It took several seconds before my eyes adjusted to this new lighting. The interior was a ghostly concrete tunnel with thick arches and pipes running across the ceiling. A wide channel of water rippled and swayed down the long, gritty corridor, slapping gently at the ledge. A distant light emerged up ahead—multiple lights, all attached to some ominous form lurking out of the water, still and massive.

The submarine.

Actually, this thing was simply a submarine about as much as a Lamborghini is simply a car. Like the other submarines I had seen on the Tartarus, this one was whale-shaped with an insect-like exoskeleton structure. Glowing, yellow-tinted windows bubbled outward. A ramp was extended from the hull to the ledge. Men crossed it back and forth with dollies, hauling massive crates aboard. Gustav parked the limousine by the ramp, and we exited.

“That?” I said. “We’re riding
that
to the Tartarus?”

Talking was basically the only way I could keep my mouth from gawking wide open.

“No, this is vhere the unicorn lives,” said Gustav. “Ve’re going to frolic across the rainbow to the Tartarus.”

Again with the rainbows and unicorns?

“It was a rhetorical question,” I muttered.

Gustav laughed at my response. Or maybe he was just laughing at my sour expression. Either way, he was laughing and I was scowling as we merged into the lane of cargo traffic boarding the sub.

***

Submarines are cool for about the first fifteen minutes. Then it’s all groaning metal, creaky pipes, and staring through thick, tinted windows into murky blue nothingness.

As exciting as it was on the outside, the inside was claustrophobic and boring. The cargo overload certainly wasn’t helping the situation. We might as well have been in a high-tech underwater U-Haul. The vessel was so jam-packed with crates and junk that Gustav recommended I stay in my room for the duration of the trip. If you could even call this box a room. It was more like a metal closet with a poorly cushioned rectangle that was theoretically supposed to be a bed. The so-called bed reached from wall to wall, and the room was just as wide in the opposite direction. No decorations. Just a bare light bulb with a dangling switch and a single round porthole window about the size of my head.

I left the heavy steel door open just so I didn’t feel like I was in a prison cell. Heck, prison cells were better than this. At least they had bars so you could breathe. The floor outside my room was made of metal panels that clanked and clamored under the lightest step. Even a ninja couldn’t sneak around this tin can.

I had switched the light off long ago, allowing a pillar of blue light to spill from the window across the opposite wall while red light flooded in from the outside corridor. If I had hoped to fall asleep, I was sadly mistaken. Even with the lights out, I was haunted by Flex’s face. That hurt, empty face.

Was this a bad idea? Being Fantom’s sidekick?

I mean…career-wise it obviously wasn’t a bad move. With my name next to his, I would be remembered. And with me fighting alongside him, we would always win. Always. I would have the jumpstart I need to make my Superhero legacy last forever.

So why did this feel so wrong?

Rolling onto my stomach, I screamed into my pillow.

Why why why why why why why why why why? I didn’t even know what I was asking “why” about anymore. It seemed to embody a million different questions buzzing inside my skull. Why was Flex so upset? Why couldn’t I be happy about this? Why did my chest feel like it was caving in, and I could barely breathe?

Lying face-first into my pillow wasn’t really helping the situation, so I rolled onto my side. This was going to be a long ride.