School for Sidekicks (19 page)

“There's a koi pond?” said Emberdown. “Seriously? Man, that makes the little fish tank in Watchdude's Guard Shack sound even lamer than usual. What else?”

So I gave them a quick description of the Den, and Denmother, the
Flying Fox
, and the Foxmobile, and even my pizza, because Jeda wanted to hear about the robo-kitchen. Blindmark kept right on being too cool for the rest of us— reading, or at least pretending to—I didn't know enough about Braille to tell. And somehow in there I found myself talking about the Foxsnooper and the burglars and Foxman telling me that if we were going to do anything about them, I was going to have to drive.

“Wait,” said Jeda, “
you
got to drive the Foxmobile? The real honest-to-god Foxmobile? That is so awesome!”

That's when Blindmark finally bothered to say something again. “Give it a rest, Jeda. There's no way even a maniac like Foxman is going to let some thirteen-year-old kid drive his car.”

I was about to say something like “that shows what you know,” when I remembered Foxman reminding me not to let
anyone
know about our adventures. So, I snapped my mouth shut instead.

Blindmark set aside his minitab then and sat up, turning to face me without opening his eyes. “Or did he?”

I just shrugged, knowing that Blindmark would be looking at me through at least one of the others. “I'm not saying anything about that.”

“He did, didn't he?” said Blindmark.

I looked at the floor.

Blindmark shook his head. “I'm not sure who's stupider here, Foxman or you …
Meerkat
.”

The way he said my handle made me want to change my name, or maybe punch him in the nose. “You going to snitch on me?” I asked.

I could see Blindmark roll his eyes through closed lids. “No. I might think your Mask is an idiot for risking his license that way, and that you're even more of an idiot for doing something that might keep you from ever getting one, but I'm no rat. OSIRIS knows way too much about what we do without me helping them out. Honestly, I don't think there's a kid in this school who would snitch on anyone for anything where it comes to OSIRIS.”

Emberdown nodded. “Amen to that.”

There was something about the way Blindmark said “OSIRIS” that made me blurt out, “You don't much like the way they run things, do you, Eric?”

“OSIRIS?” Blindmark finally opened his eyes, and though I knew he couldn't see, I felt like he was looking straight into my soul. “No, I don't. You shouldn't either, little Meerkat. The Franklin Act gives them way too much power over people like us, and I don't think they're very responsible in the way they use it. Did you know that Spartanicus has already escaped?”

I blinked. “What? No way! When?”

“This afternoon, while you were out catching petty burglars with Foxman.”

“Meta
max
prison, my aunt Fanny,” said Emberdown. “Those places are more like short-term hotels for Hoods. Nobody ever stays locked up.”

“No one competent, anyway,” said NightHowl. “It's like OSIRIS
wants
them to escape.” I was reminded of what she'd said about Hoods the day she and Speedslick took me up to the surface and showed me Mars. “I think there's something rotten at the core of OSIRIS.”

A thought occurred to me. “Any of you ever go to Camp Commanding?”

“Sure, lots of times,” said Speedslick. “Why do you ask?”

“I'll get there. Anyone else?” Everyone but Blindmark nodded. “Any of you ‘win' a uniform?”

“I did,” said NightHowl. “The measuring booth creeped me out something fierce.”

“Me too,” said Speedslick.

“Not me,” said Emberdown.

“Not there,” said Blindmark. “Tell me about this measuring booth.”

So I did, including the itching sensation.

“Sounds kind of like this truck at the mall in Chicago,” said Blindmark. “My mom got a free invite to have the whole family laser-fitted for clothes. No more guessing what size everyone was, just step into the booth and you can order anything you want to wear online after that. A whole bunch of e-tailers had signed on to the new system. It's the itching that reminds me of it, because my parents said they didn't get the itchies. But I sure as heck did.”

“They had one of those trucks come to my school in DC,” said Emberdown. “Itchies and everything. Now you've really got me curious, Evan. Where are you going with this?”

“That booth is the new version of the Hero Bomb,” I said. “It's a ray now, and OSIRIS is using it to
make
metas.”

“That's a mighty big jump you just made there,” said Blindmark. “But it makes sense. You got any proof?”

“Mike pretty much admitted it when I asked him. He said he'd tell me more about it later if I insisted, but I don't think I want to remind him that I know about it if I don't have to. He said it was classified OSIRIS A1 and he seemed very worried about talking about it.”

“I wonder what else they're hiding,” said NightHowl.

“I don't know,” I replied, “but I think we need to find out.”

 

15

School Daze

School … The AMO was the most amazing place I'd ever been in my life. Bits of it blurred by like something out of
Scenes from a Week of Classes at the School for Sidekicks
:

Putting on a cape is like sticking a “kick me” sign on your back.

Bullet holes in Armex are remarkably easy to patch. You simply …

A well-timed quip can save your life.

A domino mask is pretty much the same as no mask—you might as well pretend that glasses and a different hair style will protect your secret identity.

No one knows for sure why most Mask-built technology can't be mass-produced, though one popular theory holds that gadget-driven Masks are really using technokinetic powers that manifest themselves as shiny hardware.

High-end superspeed without some sort of concomitant friction reduction—usually of the general slipstream or vacuukinesis types—is a fast track to sudden human combustion.

The spork is the most underutilized flatware item when it comes to combat.

And some of it dragged—my math classes, for example.

But what I liked the most was learning to do things that no other school would have taught us. Things like the care and feeding of uniforms.

Professor White held up a small power buffer. “I know Metamorphosis Day is still a couple of months away, but there will be a major memorial held here on Deimos as always. You'll want to look your best with most of the major Masks a-visiting, and Invulycra and Armex take a lot of work to clean and buff properly.”

I know, I know, cleaning technology doesn't sound like the most exciting thing since ever, but when he said that a bell went off in my head. I realized I now had the answer to the M-Day Mystery. When meta activity went dark for a day,
this
was where they all went! And this year, I would be among them. How amazing was that?

*   *   *

There we were, walking down the street, me, Speedslick, Emberdown, NightHowl, Blurshift, and Blindmark. Heropolis, downtown east, near the capital. Not that far from the museum, actually.

We thought we were ready for anything, but we didn't even see it coming, not even Blindmark with his fancy optical telepathy. Just
bzzt
and a huge green flash that put Emberdown out of it before things really even started.

Speedslick reacted first—go figure—blurring away ahead of us. Briefly. Whether Spartanicus had anticipated him or it was plain dumb luck didn't really matter. The results were what counted, and Speedslick versus the banana peel and its buddy, the concrete wall, was a short and ugly fight.

I dived behind a parked car as the second blast came in. It wasn't elegant, and NightHowl landed on top of me when she had the same idea, but the beam that KO'd Blindmark missed us both. I'm not sure what happened to Blurshift at that point. I lost sight of them, and,
poof
, gone.

“What was that?!” NightHowl demanded angrily from her place in the middle of my back.

“Spartanicus,” I said over my shoulder.

“Are you sure?” Her voice slipped an octave higher. “That can't be right!”

“If there's one thing I'm
sure
of about this Mask business, it's what it's like to have Spartanicus taking pot shots at you.”

A heavy
thump
sounded from somewhere on the other side of the car.

She scooted off me, staying low and angling forward to the next car in the row. “We're not ready for this!”

Before I could answer, a deep gravelly bass spoke, “No, children, you aren't. You never will be.”

The car I was hiding behind rose up on one end as Spartanicus lifted it aside. But I was already moving. With NightHowl going forward, I scrambled back, ducking around behind the tailgate of an old station wagon. I don't think the scarred Hood saw me.

“Hide-and-seek won't save you for long,” Spartanicus said, hurling the first car aside. “Why don't you come out and get this over with? I promise none of you will be seriously injured.”

“What about Emberdown?” NightHowl yelled from somewhere on the far side of our attacker—brave but stupid.

“The girl is merely unconscious,” said Spartanicus, followed by something else I missed as I scrambled under the delivery truck behind the station wagon.

When I peeked my head out past one of the wheels, I saw Spartanicus heading to the center of the street, his head turning this way and that as he looked for NightHowl. Now would have been a great time for an energy beam or sonic blast or, well, anything really. Unfortunately, my powers didn't include anything by way of a ranged attack. If I was going to do something that Spartanicus would even notice, I had to get in close. Just like last time.

As I looked around for a route that might let me do that and arrive in one relatively leak-free piece, I spotted Emberdown. She didn't look unconscious. She looked dead, with blood leaking from her nose, and an obvious dent in her forehead. Blindmark lay nearby, likewise limp and bloodied.

I went from frightened to furious in about four-fifths of a second. The six of us against Spartanicus was so ridiculous there wasn't even a word to describe how unfair it was. Like a bunch of Chihuahuas taking on a grizzly. We couldn't possibly win, but I was too angry to give up. When I felt my meager powers welling up in response to that fury, I charged. I knew it was insane when I did it, but I couldn't help myself.

Pivoting on the heel of one hand, I launched myself out from under the truck and onto my feet. I had enough presence of mind to try to run quietly, but that was all the caution I could manage. I didn't even have a weapon. If I'd been more than about twenty feet away, or Spartanicus had been more on his guard, I'd never have made it. But, I don't think he really saw any of us as a threat.

When I was five feet behind him, I leapt into the air and made my best attempt at one of the flying side kicks that Professor Ivanova had been drilling us on. For once, I got the move about right. The heel of my right foot connected with the back of Spartanicus's head with a really satisfying crack. Unfortunately, it was the sound of my foot breaking.

Spartanicus barely moved. No, cancel that. My kick barely moved him—half an inch, no more. Yet, somehow, he managed to spin and catch me by the calf of my kicking leg before I could drop back to the ground. I ended up hanging head down by one leg.

“Still more brass than brains,” he said almost gently. “That's going to cost you badly some day.”

“Not today?” I asked, somehow managing to keep the shake out of my voice—maybe because the pain in my foot was distracting me.

“No.”

Spartanicus froze then and another voice spoke from his lips, “That can't be right.” It was Backflash—I recognized her accent. “Why didn't he kill the boy?”

The sky above me suddenly pixilated and vanished, leaving behind a high-domed ceiling of fused moon rock. The cars went next, exposing NightHowl as she crept toward Spartanicus's back. Then the buildings, leaving only the street and the people in it. For one brief instant, the bottom five feet of the streetlight right behind Spartanicus remained, then it slowly shifted from steel gray to the urban camouflage pattern of Blurshift's uniform.

Blurshift was holding a heavy tire iron. “Really, you're going to freeze the simulation now? Two more seconds of slow shifting and I'd have had my shot. I was practically on top of him!”

The street vanished at that point and Emberdown, Blindmark, and Speedslick—all unharmed—got up from the KO positions they'd assumed when the sim declared them casualties. Spartanicus remained—though a much more plastic-looking version, as the holographic overlay faded out, taking much of his apparent animation with it.

The main door slowly opened then, and Professor Ivanova stormed into the huge room and stopped in the middle, looking up. “Backflash! You are interfering with my training regime again.” The tiny Russian combat instructor's hair was on fire. Literally. A long burning mane of yellow flame roared and snapped behind her like a banner in the wind. “Why is it this time?”

The Spartanicus dummy spoke again. “There's something wrong with the programming. Give me a moment.”

Ivanova said something very fast and very angry in Russian, but then crossed her arms and assumed a patient waiting posture. I felt a lot less patient myself, but then I was hanging upside down from the fist of a large robot.

“What's going on?” NightHowl asked me very quietly as the others came to stand around the deactivated combat bot.