The Superhero's Summit (The Superhero's Son Book 3) (21 page)

Maria Candle, the wife and widow of Master Chaos, smiled at me when I said her name. “Hello, Bolt … or should I say, Kevin Jason. It has been a long time since we last saw each other, but it doesn't matter because my face will be the last you ever see.”

Chapter Eighteen

I
blinked several times, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but no matter how many times I blinked, Maria's face didn't change.

“No way,” I said, still keeping my grip on Blizzard, even though she seemed to be unconscious. “Impossible.”

“Impossible?” said Maria. She laughed. “If that were true, I wouldn't even be here right now. But I am pleased to see that you are shocked. It means that you never even suspected that I might be behind any of this.”

I couldn't understand it. The last time I saw Maria, she had been lying unconscious in the warehouse where Dad and I had confronted Master Chaos. I later learned that she had escaped during the chaos of our fight with her husband, but I hadn't thought I'd ever see her again. At the very least, I thought that the G-Men, who were looking for her, would catch her before I did. I hadn't expected to see her on Hero Island, of all places.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “And where did you get the robot?”

“I came here to watch the show,” said Maria. Her mecha gestured at Hero Hall, from which the sounds of battle kept emitting. “And to see your death. As for where I got the robot, I took one of my dead husband's robots with me when I fled that warehouse and then modified it to act as my mecha.”

“So
you
were behind everything,” I said. I rose above Blizzard, letting her go because I frankly didn't think she was going anywhere anytime soon. “Were you that woman who reprogrammed the practice bots to try to kill Blizzard and me?”

“Of course,” said Maria. “It wasn't as easy as it looked, though, because I had a hard time getting in and out of your base unnoticed. I am not a very athletic woman, so sneaking around was difficult.”

“How did you get past Carl?” I said. “That shouldn't even be possible.”

Maria chuckled. “I didn't just steal this robot from Project Neo. I took quite a few other devices I thought could be useful. One such device was an invisibility belt. Not only did it make me invisible to the naked eye, but it also cloaked me from most sensors. It did not, however, make me silent, which was why I needed to sneak around.”

“Then how did we see you on our security footage if you were using an invisibility belt?” I demanded.

“That was intentional, little boy,” said Maria. “If no one had seen me, then it would have been harder to complete my grand master plan.”

“And what would that be?” I said. “Are you trying to pit the NHA against the INJ?”

“But of course,” said Maria. “I am glad you figured it out, though a little surprised, because you aren't nearly as smart as your father. That INJ badge I wore was a fake, but I spent a long time making it, using pictures of INJ badges on the Internet to get it exactly right.”

“And it worked,” I said. My hands balled into fists when I heard what sounded like an explosion come from Hero Hall. “Right now, the NHA and INJ are fighting in Hero Hall, maybe even killing each other. It might even lead to war.”

“I know,” said Maria. She smirked. “I feel so pleased with myself. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I managed to pull it off anyway. Bernard would be so proud of me if your father hadn't killed him.”

“Why?” I said. “Why did you do this? I thought you hated me and my Dad, not the NHA or the INJ.”

“But I hate them, too,” said Maria, “or at least the NHA. After all, your father may have been the one to defeat Bernard the first time, but the NHA helped take him to prison. They broke our family before it could even get started, so I will destroy them by having them get into a senseless conflict with the INJ that will help neither of them.”

“What about Blizzard?” I said. I glanced down at her. “Was she part of your plan, too?”

“Not originally,” said Maria, shaking her head. “But when I learned about her inability to control her own powers, well, I had to incorporate that into my plan, you understand.”

“Incorporate it into your plan?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I had to get her in the right position to use her powers to destroy the NHA and INJ,” said Maria. “I planned, at first, to have her freeze the entire island over, but I think having her assassinate the Midnight Menace is far more effective, because it now has the NHA and INJ trying to kill each other without risk of freezing myself.”

“How did you make Blizzard attack the Midnight Menace?” I said. “She would never do that on her own.”

“Another Project Neo device,” said Maria. “I sneaked into the House last night and placed a device in her head that gives me a little bit of control and influence over her actions. I even tricked her into thinking Omega Man told her to do it. I am so pleased with that.”

My hands balled into fists. “And were you behind the murders of those guys in the Cavern? And that giant lizard creature?”

“Of course,” said Maria. “I used that same cloaking device I used to sneak into your base to sneak into the New Heroes' little base and kill those two, leaving the NHA's initials as 'evidence' that your people were trying to kill their people. As for the lizard, I got it from an old friend of my husband's, one of his supervillain friends from back in the day who is just as eager to see the destruction of the NHA and INJ as I am. I was also the one who shot that dart into Muscle, which would have killed him if you and Blizzard had not gotten him the medical help he needed.”

“Who is that?” I said.

“I'm not going to tell you,” said Maria. “That would be telling. The only reason I came here in person was to ensure your death.”

I still wanted to know who she was working with, but I decided that I would just have to live without that knowledge for now. “But I still don't understand it. You went to all this trouble just because you hate the NHA and the INJ?”

“Yes, but my ultimate plan is a bit simpler than that,” said Maria. Her mecha pointed at me. “You see, I want revenge. I want to avenge my husband and to do that I am going to kill you. I would kill your father, too, but he is in the middle of that battle at the moment and will likely be killed by someone in there, so I'm just going to focus on killing you.”

I took a battle stance. “That's nice, but you are still just a normal human, even if you do have a mecha. Shouldn't take me more than five seconds to take you down, if that.”

Activating my super speed, I zipped around Maria to the mecha's back. The mecha was trying to move around to face me, but it was as slow as mud. I threw a powerful punch at its back, intending to break its back and disable it instantly.

But when my fist hit the back of her mecha, I felt a jolt of electricity flow through my body that sent me flying backwards. I crashed onto the street, stunned by the impact, but tried to get up only to discover that my limbs were practically paralyzed.

“Like it?” said Maria, whose mecha had turned around now to face me. “The surface of this robot is electrified, so if you touch it, you will be shocked … literally.”

I forced myself to get back up to my feet. My body felt as stiff as a stick, but I had to get up. I looked down at my hands, which felt numb, and then looked up at Maria.

“So what?” I said. “I can still take you down some other way.”

Maria smirked. “Let's see you try, boy.”

The cockpit of her mecha closed shut and then the mecha hurled one of its arms at me, which extended like a chain. The chain wrapped tightly around my body, making me gasp in pain, but before I could break it, a jolt of electricity shot through my body. I screamed in pain before I was jerked off the street and then slammed back into it.

Dazed by the blow, I was unable to react when the mecha lifted me into the air and started spinning me above her head. The entire world spun around me so fast that it all blended together into one incoherent mass of color and texture before I suddenly found myself flying through the air, spinning crazily before I slammed into the side of a nearby building.

Shaking my head, my senses recovered just in time for me to see Maria's mecha flying toward me with its fists raised. My adrenaline kicked in and I zoomed out of the way just as the mecha slammed its fists into the building where I had been just moments before.

Stopping hundreds of feet away from the mecha, I groaned and rubbed my back. Though I was strong enough to survive the impact of the crash, the fact was that it still hurt. It didn't help that I was still trying to recover from being electrocuted, which made me slower and less agile than I usually was.

The mecha turned around to face me and then I heard Maria's voice coming from a speaker somewhere on the robot's body, “You cannot run away forever, Bolt! Why are you afraid of a middle-aged single mother? Am I that scary? Because I am about to get a
lot
scarier.”

The mecha aimed one of its hands at me and its fingertips flipped open to reveal gun barrels. Then the mecha started firing dozens of bullets at me. I had to use my super speed and reflexes to dodge the bullets, but I still was too slow and just barely avoided most of them. One of the bullets actually grazed my face, drawing blood, but I had no time to worry about that. I just ran toward the mecha, dodging its bullets as Maria laughed maniacally.

I jumped into the air and then flew into the sky, outracing the bullets and trying to get out of the mecha's range. I heard the bullets cease being fired behind me, but then I heard the sound of engines firing up and looked over my shoulder in time to see the mecha rocketing toward me thanks to the rockets on its feet. I had forgotten that the Chaos bots could fly.

I tried to fly away from her, going high into the sky. I had no idea how high Maria's mecha could fly, but maybe I could make it run out of fuel by out-flying it long enough.

Of course, just as I thought that, the mecha fired its hand at me again and the chain wrapped around my waist. Again, I was electrocuted and jerked down toward the robot, which now had a sharp blade sticking out of its wrist. I would be skewered if I fell on that blade, but it was hard to move out of the way because I was falling so fast and my body was so numb from the electricity.

Nonetheless, I managed to twist out of the way at the last minute, falling past the mecha so fast that I was a blur. But an idea occurred to me as I fell and I shot toward the ground as fast as I could, the numbness from the electricity wearing off as I flew.

I felt the mecha trying to pull me back, but I was going too fast and soon I was pulling the mecha along right behind me. With the wind in my ears, I couldn't tell if Maria was cursing at me or not, but it didn't matter. I was heading straight for the ground as fast as I could, not slowing down at all, because if I did, that would give Maria a chance to recover and stop me.

The ground was coming closer and closer with every passing second. If I didn't move out of the way quickly enough, I'd become a splattered mess on the ground, but the timing wasn't right just yet.

Then, at the last second, I pulled up abruptly, going back up into the sky. I flew past the mecha, but it was falling too fast to change course with me. It crashed into the ground with a loud
boom
and I was briefly jerked back before I put in a burst of speed and tore off its entire arm, allowing me to fly away with the chain still wrapped around my waist.

But then I stopped, tore the chain off my waist, and turned around in midair to get a good look at my work.

The mecha was lying still on its back. Smoke rose from the spot where its arm had been and the rest of its body looked crushed or broken. Its legs, in particular, were smashed to pieces, meaning it probably wasn't going to be standing up again anytime soon. Most of the lights on its body were completely destroyed, though I saw a red one blinking from within its dark cockpit.

The glass of the cockpit was cracked, but surprisingly not destroyed. I listened for any sounds of breathing from within, but it was incredibly quiet.

Was Maria dead? I didn't see how she could have possibly survived that crash. Even for a superhuman, that would have been a hard blow to recover from. If she wasn't dead, she was either unconscious or had every bone in her body broken and probably in a lot of pain. Her mecha, at least, was out of the fight.

So I carefully lowered down toward the mecha, keeping a close watch on the cockpit. If Maria was still alive and her bones were not shattered into dust, then she might try to pop out and kill me.

I landed on the robot's legs and looked closely at the cockpit, trying to see if I could spot any movement within. But it was too dark to see the inside through the cracked cockpit, except for a single blinking red light.

I grabbed the cockpit and ripped off the glass plate, which came off as easily as paper. Tossing it aside, I looked down at the cockpit to see a terrible sight:

Maria Candle lay in her seat, looking as dead as a corpse. Her forehead was bleeding badly and her body looked like it had been crushed by the impact. The fresh, metallic scent of her blood filled my nostrils, which made me cover my nose. But Maria looked dead, just as I expected her to be.

Shaking my head, I stood up. I was relieved that Maria was dead, because it meant that she would never be a threat to me or my family ever again, but I figured that Robert was going to hate me more than ever now, once he learned that she was dead. And I understood that, because he now had neither a mom or dad and I couldn't imagine what that would be like. Of course, he wouldn't actually be able to get back at me, so I wasn't very worried about Robert's reaction, whatever it would be.

Then, without warning, Maria's eyes snapped open. The whites of her eyes were now red, probably due to a popped blood vessel or something, and it made her look crazy, like she had escaped from an insane asylum.

“Die,” said Maria.

Without warning, Maria slammed a button to her right. Immediately, the mecha's remaining arm wrapped around me tightly enough to make me gasp and then shocked me with more electricity. At the same time, a timer appeared on the tiny screen above Maria's head, which displayed thirty seconds on the clock and was rapidly counting down already.