Marrow (25 page)

“In the…puddle?”

“Like a reflection or something,” she said, nudging me out of the way and claiming my seat in front of the VCR. “Here, I’ll show you.”

A blue fingernail tapped the rewind button, reversing out of the birthday party and the TV snow in between. She quickly hit play.

“Why are you trying to get inside my head?” said Oracle.

The camera was too far forward for me to make out the puddles on the porch. I inched closer to the TV in anticipation.

Oracle lowered the camera, and Sapphire hit pause.

The camera fell squarely on the largest puddle. The reflected image was the roof ledge…and a silhouette perched atop it. The silhouette was blurry, but I had seen this person too many times to not recognize him. Though most of his body was in shadow, his signature red cape was unmistakable.

“Fantom,” I said.

Sca-REEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!

It came from outside—the sound of rubber screaming against asphalt. A car door opened and slammed shut, and then the most familiar, psychotic voice in the world started screaming, “Marrow!
Maaaaaar-rooooow!
Where the heck are you, Marrow? Dang it—MARROW!”

Sapphire raised a blue eyebrow. “Is that Flex?”

I couldn’t even register life at the moment. I couldn’t process what I had just seen on the video.
Fantom
was spying on Oracle? And now Flex, who was supposed to be in jail, had tracked me down to Specter’s house and was screaming my name like a maniac?

I rushed to the window of the of the surveillance room and slid it open. From this third-story perspective, I had a perfect view of the Specter Estate.

“Flex?” I said—loud enough that he could hear me. Flex was already storming towards the front doors of the manor, seconds away from barging in like he owned the place.

Flex halted, whipping around in every direction until his eyes locked on me. “Marrow!”

“What are you doing? I thought you were in jail.”

“I was. I broke out.”

“You what?” I said, blankly.

“Long story. Listen, we need to get out of here, like, five minutes ago, okay? We gotta go.”

I glanced from the crazed, wild-eyed look on Flex’s face to the retro Chevy Impala parked crookedly in front of Specter’s house. “Whose car is that?”

“I dunno. The prison guard’s, maybe? I broke in and hotwired it.”

“You WHAT?”

“
Guuuuuuuhhhhh!
” said Flex, pretending to strangle some invisible thing in each of his hands. He then whipped his elastic arm and flung it at me. I backed away because I knew where this was going, and it was a health hazard on multiple levels. Flex’s hand latched onto the open window frame, and then the tension in his rubber limb ripped him off his feet. He slingshotted towards the window and
whoooooshed
inside.

And splatted against the wall—squished flat like a cartoon character.

His right hand was the first thing to peel away, and he proceeded to peel his face off the wall. He puffed out into his normal three dimensions and staggered away from wall, slightly disoriented.

“Listen, we need to go,” said Flex. “NOW.”

I was still blinking, trying to register everything, and Flex’s irrational urgency was only making it worse. It was only when my gaze drifted back to the TV screen—to Fantom’s blurry reflection—that my bearings realigned.

“It was Fantom,” I said. “Fantom was spying on Oracle. Not Spine.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Flex.

“You
know
?”

“Look, there’s no time to explain. We need to get the heck outta here right now or we’re—”

Sapphire laughed.

Flex’s sentence derailed. Both of us turned as her head tilted back. Her laugh was low and drawn-out in an unstable, maniacal sort of way. When she lowered her head, her eyes narrowed on me.

Except they weren’t her eyes. They were pure white.

“You kids just don’t stop meddling,” said Sapphire. “I mean…I feel like I’m dealing with Scooby-Doo and the Gang. Like…can we just go five minutes without you brats trying to solve mysteries?”

“Crud,” said Flex.

I tripped and fell backwards. Then I backed the heck away from Sapphire in a frantic crab walk.

As I did, the surveillance room door opened behind me.

I spun around on the floor. There, standing in the doorway, was the greatest Superhero of all time, framed in his red cape—Fantom.

His eyes were tainted by something purely evil.

“And it’s a real shame too,” said Fantom and Sapphire’s combined voices. “Because I was really looking forward to you being my sidekick. It would have made for some great publicity.”

Fantom stepped forward and shut the door behind him.

“Now I have to kill both of you.”

“You…” I said, breathless. “How are you…? What are you…?”

That was about as far as my coherence seemed to go.

“What am I?” said Fantom, cracking a smirk. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

Slowly climbing to my feet, Flex and I backed away in a direction where he and Sapphire were both in sight. My gaze hesitated on Sapphire.

“You’re a Telepath?”

“
UHRRRRR
!” said Fantom, imitating an obnoxious buzzer sound. “Close, though. Try again.”

My brain was spinning and the word came before I could even process it.

“You’re an…Omnipotent?”

“
Ding, ding, ding,
” said Fantom, smiling wider and clapping his hands. “We have a winner.”

Even though I’d guessed it, I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible. Unheard of. “So you’re an Omnipotent
and
you have super speed, super strength,
and
you can fly?” I asked. My voice came out as practically a squeak on “fly.”

What kind of Super had that much power?

“Ah, now that’s where things get a little complicated,” said Fantom. “You see, I actually
don’t
have super speed or super strength, and I
can’t
fly.”

My jaw fell open. “What?”

“I know, right?” said Fantom, laughing at my reaction. “Who saw that coming? Let’s put it this way: I’m not just
any
Omnipotent. I am
the
Omnipotent. I mean…I’m practically God in spandex.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head absently. “I’ve
seen
you use those other powers! What do you mean you don’t have them?”

“No, Marrow,” said Flex. “What you
saw
was good acting.”

Fantom smiled at this. “Right up there with the great ones like Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart,” he said. “I’ve simply been practicing for a very long time. For example, if I need to pick up something to throw at an opponent…”

Fantom approached the couch and lifted it off the ground by grabbing one of its legs.

“…I let my mind do all the heavy lifting.”

He released the couch and it remained suspended in the air. As he walked away, the couch floated down like a balloon. He began pacing slowly around me.

“It’s the same for anything else,” he said. “If I want to punch somebody, my mind does the punching. If I
get
punched, my mind creates a protective telekinetic barrier around me. If I need super speed or if I need to fly, my mind carries me. It’s not even mentally strenuous. The only tricky part is making it look real. So naturally, I take that look on your face as the greatest compliment.”

“But why pretend?” I asked. “Why not just let everyone know you’re an Omnipotent?”

“Hmm,” said Fantom, pressing a finger to his lips. “Let’s think about how well that worked for all the other Omnipotents out there. Oh yeah. They’re extinct. Well, how about the Telepaths? Oh yeah. Everyone hates them. But Superman?
Everyone
loves Superman. I simply did what every kid does: I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be Superman. But that’s only my telekinetic power. The
true
mastery of my art is in my telepathy.”

Fantom ended his pacing at Sapphire’s side and placed a brawny hand on her slender shoulder.

“Some people might call me a puppet master. But I don’t like that title. It makes me sound like a villain. I prefer the title ‘director.’ I like to think of myself as a modern-day Hitchcock of sorts. Cosmo City is my set, and its citizens are my cast and crew.”

It was both obvious and inconceivable as I realized what he meant.

“By the way,” he continued, “you don’t have to worry about Specter or Gustav interrupting our little heart-to-heart. They’re in the same state as our dear friend, Sapphire, here.”

“You were controlling Oracle,” I said. “You were controlling all of those people.”

Flex tensed as I said this. Even if he didn’t seem surprised at all.

Fantom’s grin grew sinister. “More than that.”

“Huh?”

“‘All the world’s a stage,’” said Fantom, gesturing his arms outward “‘And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.’ Shakespeare, in case you care to know.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, and I certainly didn’t know what Shakespeare had to do with anything.

“This is my story,” he said. “I’ve been in control of everything every step of the way. Every chapter of my success has been carefully scripted. Every fight choreographed.”

His head lowered, eyes narrowed on me.

“Every villain has been my carefully selected actor—my puppet.”

My defensive stance went limp. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t breathe or even blink. But not because of the
hundreds
of so-called “Supervillains” who were suddenly proven innocent by this single confession.

My mind was frozen on a single one—my father.

“It’s not easy making a Supervillain, you know,” said Fantom. “You can’t just take control of someone’s brain and make them go evil. No one’s going to buy that. But say you have a Super with the ability to manipulate fire, and that Super has a brother who means the world to him. If that brother were to be…
ahem
…mugged and killed, suddenly we have a drive for vengeance. Now you can take control. A few arson-based crimes later and bada bing bada boom, the Supervillain Torcher is born. I mean, with a name like that, the kid was born to be evil! But if you
really
want to create a Supervillain with reputation, you have him—or her—kill other notable Supers. Like your dear friend from the Final Challenge, Arachnis. A mutated spider lady is scary all by herself—a mutation that I helped to stimulate once I was inside her head, I might add. But a mutated spider lady that can kill an Omnipotent like Cortex? Now that’s something truly terrifying.”

Fantom mockingly widened his eyes and covered his mouth. “
Whoops!
I suppose that means I’m partly responsible for the extinction of the Omnipotents. Oh well. Survival of the fittest, right?”

I was hardly paying attention to a word he said. My mind had only one focus and it was eroding my brain away.

“My father,” I breathed. “He’s…innocent?”

“Ah, your father,” said Fantom. “My greatest creation and also the greatest thorn in my side. I spent so much time and energy building him up to be the perfect villain—arranging your mother’s death, letting him spiral into madness. And when I finally seized control of his brain…it was poetic. A thing of beauty. He was the arch nemesis I had always dreamed of. People were
terrified
of him. When it finally came time to kill him…I couldn’t do it. Not with the reaction I was getting from Cosmo City. Spine was just too good to let go of. So I kept him. Whenever Cosmo City seemed to become complacent about my presence and other villains simply weren’t cutting it, I knew it was time for Spine to strike back. This, of course, went on for years. Things were going so well…”

Fantom shook his head with a look of distaste. 

“But alas, all good things must come to an end,” he said with a sigh. “The bone matter in Spine’s skull adapted until it created a brain barrier immune to my telepathy. He simply slipped through the cracks. He vanished before I could do anything. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since, you know. Spine had the potential to ruin this utopia I’ve been striving so hard to create. Until now, that is. I actually suspected that he was keeping an eye on you a while ago. That’s part of the reason why
I
intervened in your Final Challenge, letting Nero win instead of you. I wanted your father to see his son’s future crumble right in front of him. Any doubt I had about your father watching over you was erased when you were kidnapped by that Nightmare fellow. Your father
used
Nightmare’s power so the bone matter in your skull could adapt the very same immunity. He obviously didn’t want me using you like I did him—which, I’ll admit, is an extremely tempting notion.