The 6th Power (16 page)

All of that made sense, but it didn’t really address my chief concerns. I poked Mr. Magellan again, then pointed my pinkie down at my legs. He saw what I was doing and his smile fell.

“I’m sorry, Nate. I truly am. I never…” He stopped, shook his head, and continued. “The doctors say that one of your lower vertebrae is fractured. At this stage, they don’t like to use phrases like, ‘never walk again,’ but…”

One of the monitors beside my bed beeped more quickly. I wanted to scream, but my body just wasn’t up to the task. I’d known that I’d really messed myself up, but I’d hoped that I was wrong about how bad it was. My feet at the other end of the bed were just two indentations in the lumpy yellow blanket that covered me, like a couple of potatoes pressed against a sack. Move! Move, move, move, you stupid potatoes! Every other day of my life, I tell you to move and you move and why are you just sitting there, don’t you know what this means?

No, I couldn’t do this now. I had more important things to do. I’d lose it later.

Taking a deep breath, I gathered my strength and hissed out a single word: “Pill.”

After what felt like a long time, Mr. Magellan nodded and reached into his shirt pocket. When he drew out the little blue capsule, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, the rest of the world seemed to disappear.

My breath came whooshing out, followed by coughing. Mr. Magellan waited for it to subside, then offered me more water. I gulped for a long time and felt like passing out again. Instead, I focused on the pill and managed to keep my eyes opened.

Mr. Magellan was also staring at the pill, and he looked even older than usual. “As you may have guessed, Nate, I did not get this pill from a little herb shop in Queens. I made it, and it is the last one of its kind.”

I looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.

He nodded and said, “It is the last of its kind because I have run out of the herbs used to make them and the herbs cannot be easily obtained again. It is also the last of its kind because I am leaving Coralberry.”

The beeping next to me picked up again. I grabbed at my sheets and squeezed. Mr. Magellan had made the pills, so he had likely known what they were going to do to me. He was, therefore, kind of responsible for all that had happened over the last week, both the good and the bad. Including my being there in the hospital bed. But I needed him to give me answers. I needed for him to explain how he was able to enhance my memory and give me superpowers and what the purpose was to it all. And despite everything that had happened, part of me still needed him as a friend, as the guy I could talk to about the artwork of Greg Capullo or about when they were going to bring Logan back to life or about whether Andrew Garfield or Tobey Maguire was the better Spider-man.

Concern wrinkled Mr. Magellan’s forehead. He put the pill on the table beside me and gave me more water. “Nate, it is going to be all right,” he said. “I need to go home, to go back to where I came from. It is not safe for me to be here anymore. But before I go, I’m going to give you this pill so that you can have one more superpower, and I think we both know the logical choice.”

I blinked and went very still as the words sank in.

Mr. Magellan pulled up a chair, sat down, and looked at me. “You know what these pills can do, Nate. But you’ve also experienced certain… limitations with them. So you have to be very careful and be very sure about your choice, because it will be the most important one you’ve ever made. This choice is going to set the path that you will travel for the rest of your life.”

I opened my mouth to try to ask him what he meant by that, but as I did so, Mr. Magellan simply popped the pill into my mouth and put my oxygen mask back down. Then he leaned in close and said, “Think hard about the path you want to take.”

With that, he stood up and walked out of the room.

I laid there, staring at the door, not able to believe what had just happened. I mean, that was it? I’d been looking for Mr. Magellan for forever and that was all I got? Here’s another pill. Use it wisely. Pardon me while I get all mysterious and bail on you. Again.

My mind cleared as the pill dissolved. The pain was still there, but I was able to push the discomfort into the background as the pathways in my brain opened up. But I couldn’t do anything about my confusion. What had Mr. Magellan been talking about? I used my enhanced memory to replay his words over and over again, trying to make sense of them.

He had talked about the limitations of the pills, and I could figure that out. I was only going to get one power. One power per pill. I was going to be stuck with whatever I chose, so I had only one shot at fixing myself. Because healing was the only option. I wanted to walk again, and there were plenty of superheroes who could regenerate. Think about them and I’d be strolling out the door by lunchtime. That was the only choice to make, despite what Mr. Magellan had said. “Think about the path you want to take.” Yeah, if I didn’t choose to fix my spine, any path I took would be in a wheelchair.

I took as deep of a breath as I could and tried to center my thoughts. So… healing.

But as I tried to focus on regenerating superheroes, something kept tugging at my memory. Mr. Magellan’s words, mixed with plenty of questions, were flying around in my brain, hitting the walls, destroying my concentration.

It was ridiculous. How could I even be considering a different power?

Oh, how Chet would love it if I was stuck in a bed or a wheelchair for the rest of my life, even more defenseless. Chet. Why did all of my decisions revolve around Chet? I’d used my superpowers to get away from Chet or to get back at Chet or to try to clean up the mess I’d made because of Chet. It seemed like my every thought for the last twelve years had been about Chet and how to keep him from hurting me.

If I did heal myself, my immediate problems would be solved, but the rest of my life would be pretty much the same as it had been before. I’d have to spend at least the next three years with Chet the Merciless. I’d have no superpowers, no way to defend myself. It would be like this week hadn’t happened. But wouldn’t I be just as powerless if I didn’t heal myself? I guessed that depended on what superpower I chose as an alternative. I thought about my options, but I couldn’t come up with any ideas.

“Think hard about the path you want to take.” Had Mr. Magellan known what power I should choose? If so, why didn’t he just tell me? Why walk out like that? Why put me into this situation in the first place? Why? Why? Why?

I was so sick of questions.

Huh.

What if… what if I could look in Mr. Magellan’s mind and find the answers? What if I could find out all about the pills and whether he had been telling me the truth about there not being any more? I mean, he had lied to me about where the pills came from. Maybe he was lying about giving me the very last one? Yes, absolutely, it was weird that I was thinking of Mr. Magellan as a friend one moment and a liar the next, and yes, this was all probably wishful thinking on my part, but he clearly had secrets and I would clearly go insane if I spent the rest of my life without knowing what all of this had been about, and what if there were more pills? If so, and if I could find them, then I could take one tomorrow to heal myself and I could use the rest for protection from Chet.

I looked up at the ceiling, not really seeing it, weighing my options. For sure walking again versus maybe walking again. For sure being Chet’s chew toy versus maybe finding a way to fight back. For sure being in the dark versus maybe figuring out what was going on. Ugh. My brain felt heavy, like it was going to just shoot out the back of my head, through the floor, and keep going until it hit the earth’s core. How could I decide this? It was just too big of a decision. I needed someone to talk to. Where was Hannah? I needed her.

Huh. Hadn’t thought of that.

I needed Hannah, but if I healed myself, if things went back to the way things were with Chet, I’d have to cut off all contact with her. No way could I protect her, and I couldn’t have her be Chet’s target again. Yes, I knew that it was ridiculous to base a decision like this on a friendship that had only existed for, what, a day? Particularly when the alternative was a plan that had a heck of a lot of “maybes” in it. But still, the prospect of being alone again, the prospect of not being Hannah’s friend anymore…

Turns out, it wasn’t such a hard decision, after all.

Professor Charles Xavier. Martian Manhunter. Saturn Girl. Aquaman. The familiar warmth spread through me, helping me to push aside the pain, and my brain started to open up again in a completely different way.

Chapter 21

M
y mind went traveling. Out of my room, past the nurse’s station, down the hall, into the elevator shaft, down a floor and out again. It was like being in a shooter video game where you don’t see your body, you just see the world stream by around you as you travel. Pretty cool, kind of freaky. Could have had a lot of fun exploring like this, but I wasn’t sure how far I could send my consciousness away from my body and I needed to catch Mr. Magellan before he got out of range.

With each person I passed, I felt a tug from their mind as if they were inviting me in, and I caught snatches of thoughts, like the bursts of words that come out of radio when you turn the dial. We were in a hospital, so a lot of the people that I passed were worried. The ones in uniforms, however, were usually focused on where they were going or on how bored they were or about how much their feet hurt. Lots of people thought about food. Some thought about other things that made me really embarrassed. I hurried on, reflexively trying to put up walls to keep the stray images out.

Mr. Magellan was in the gift shop, looking over a selection of paperbacks. I stopped and looked at him, suddenly feeling awkward. I mean, there was a right-and-wrong question about snooping around in someone’s head. If the situation was reversed, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone peeping at my memories. But I had decided that I was going to do this, that I needed to do this, so maybe I could just take a peek, get what I needed, and get out.

But when I entered into Mr. Magellan’s mind, of course things got more complicated.

I was in the comic book shop. For a moment, I was worried that I’d accidentally picked teleportation instead of psychic powers, but clearly that wasn’t the case. This shop was perfect. Clean, bright, neat. No destruction. No fire. It was just like I’d remembered it. Just like Mr. Magellan remembered it. It was also empty, except for me. I was standing in front of the new comic book racks.

Standing. I could see myself again, for some reason, and I was upright and unhurt. Guess this was how I still thought of myself, like some kind of video game avatar. Pretty cool.

The racks on the wall were empty. Not a comic book to be found. I turned and looked around the shop. There were no books in the display cases. The little cardboard easel by the register that usually held the week’s “Awesome Issue!” was empty. Even the shelves in the back, the ones that were normally filled with roleplaying source books, were cleaned out.

A comic book store with no comic books. If this store was a representation of Mr. Magellan’s mind, wouldn’t the books have been representations of his memories? And, if so, where had all of his memories gone?

Perhaps they were in the conspicuously locked boxes.

The long boxes filled with back issues of comic books were still lined up in the middle of the store. The last time I’d seen them, they were a column of fire. Now, in Mr. Magellan’s mind, each of the boxes had a lid on it, each lid had a chain running through it, and all of the chains were fastened to a massive lock. Type the correct number on the keypad, the lock opens, the chains fall off, the lids open and then… what? Memories? Secrets? Information about the pills? I hoped so, but clearly, whatever it was, Mr. Magellan wanted to keep it private.

Which was very weird. Why would he choose to lock up his memories? You only lock something up if you’re worried that someone will steal it. You’d only be worried that someone would steal your memories if you thought someone could do precisely what I was doing: using psychic powers to take a peak. I guess that it made sense that Mr. Magellan suspected that I might do this. With his whole “choose your path” speech, he’d practically drawn me a map to get here. But if that were the case, why lead me here and then protect the things I was looking for? And why make his protection so obvious? Mr. Magellan could have arranged things any way he wanted to in his mind. He could have kept his secret memories under the floor boards or upstairs in his office or out back, in the dumpster. Why keep them out in the open? Why show me that they were there and put a big fancy lock on them that I could open, if only I knew the combination?

Only one reason I could think of. He really did want me to open the boxes. Which didn’t make any sense. Which was completely usual for Mr. Magellan. I shook my head, deciding not to focus on the why, but instead on the how. If he wanted me to open the boxes, Mr. Magellan must have already told me the combination. I looked at the lock more closely. There was a display above the number pad with room for nine digits. I searched through my perfect memory of every conversation, every transaction I’d ever had with Mr. Magellan. Numbers had come up a lot, but mostly it was him telling me what I owed him. It’d take a lot of comic books to add up to a nine-digit number.

I looked around the shop. Outside the big front windows, Coralberry looked frozen in time. It was a nice day. The sun was shining. It was a lot like the day that Mr. Magellan had given me the pills, the first day of summer vacation. I had helped Mr. Magellan out with his packages, we had talked about comic books, and…

The trivia contest. The questions about Jason Todd, Batman’s former partner. What issue he first appeared in, what issue he first appeared in as Robin, what issue he first appeared in as the Red Hood. I remembered Mr. Magellan’s answers, of course.
Batman
number 357, 368 and 635, respectively.

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