My Brother is a Superhero (17 page)

I flipped to the next screen.
Transport!
“Got it!” I shouted.

The spiders had reached the workstation. They pattered over the desk, swarmed the monitors and clacked across the keyboard.

I felt the brush of a hairy leg as with a trembling hand I tapped the touchpad and called the lift marked “Crater Level Only”. I jumped up from my seat. “Lara, come on. We’re leaving.”

We raced towards the archway, a step ahead of the writhing black mass.

As we sped under the arch, I reached down to collect my backpack, and Lara snatched the sceptre. The open lift beckoned and we threw ourselves inside.

There was only one button on the control panel. “Punch it!” I yelled and Lara smacked a palm against the chunky button.

The lift machinery whirred as the metal doors began their painfully slow journey to come together. She mashed the button repeatedly. The gap was down to an
inch when a wriggling pair of sticky spider legs forced their way between them. It was the chicken-eating monstrosity. There was the sound of scratching and more legs speared their way inside. Lara and I pressed our backs to the compartment wall as far from the clawing legs as we could squeeze. Surely the spider wasn’t strong enough to force open the doors. Was it? Just as I began to wonder if this one might have super-strength, the doors closed, severing its legs. They fell to the floor and immediately curled up like paper tossed on a fire.

With a grumble of hydraulics and a whine of high-tension cable the lift began to rise. There was barely time to take a breath. We were heading to the crater. To Christopher Talbot. To Zack.

To save two worlds.

32

SECRET WEAPON

A brightly lit corridor led directly from the lift to the main crater room. Halfway along it another passage branched off to what on the official layout was labelled a children’s crèche, but which we strongly suspected to be a guard room. As soon as our presence was detected reinforcements would come from there. On the ceiling the bulbous eye of a CCTV camera swivelled to find us. I could hear the whir of its zoom lens as it homed in on our faces. They’d found us even faster than I’d hoped. No matter. We had planned for this. I dumped my backpack at the junction, removed the plates and saucers from inside, then tipped it upside down. Sand spilled
out revealing the object I had secreted beneath. It was in two pieces, which I snapped together. I was effortlessly familiar with its design and construction, having spent countless weekends helping to build the thing.

“Is that it…?” Lara asked.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “The plate rack. Hand me the sceptre.”

She passed it to me and I unscrewed the top section. It was the final part of the plate rack, which we’d cleverly disguised as an innocent Chitauri sceptre.

It came together with the mechanical precision of an assassin’s sniper rifle. “She doesn’t look like much.” I slotted the final piece into place. “But she’s got it where it counts.”

“She? Who calls a plate rack ‘she’?”

There was a clatter of boots as Christopher Talbot’s security guards pounded along the corridor. But we were ready for them. We had done our homework (not our actual homework, I mean our mission preparation) and carefully studied all of the council plans, which included an electrical wiring scheme, showing where all the wall sockets were located. I unspooled a power cord from the back of the plate rack and plugged it in, flicked a switch and the plate rack hummed into life.

This was no ordinary plate rack. When we’d started
building it together my dad intended to produce something traditional, but I persuaded him we should include a few special modifications. Zack was firmly against the idea, saying it was dangerous to meddle with things we didn’t understand. But he was outvoted. So the uber-plate rack was born. Designed to sit on the wall above the dishwasher, it had an extending mechanical arm that plucked the freshly cleaned plates and stacked them automatically. Unfortunately, Zack had been right. The plate rack did not operate as planned. Far from it. However, if I had judged correctly, my dad’s terrible DIY skills were about to hold off a frontal assault by determined security forces.

“Lock and load,” I said.

Lara quickly slotted the plates we’d acquired from the buffet into the grooves on the rack. When all of them were filled I flicked another switch and stood back.

“Fire in the hole!” I yelled.

The first of the security guards rounded the corner just as the plate rack burst into action. The extendable arm gathered a plate and with a flick of its mechanical wrist hurled it like a Frisbee into the lumbering pack. It caught the leading guard square in the stomach. His head flew back, knocking his plexiglass helmet off. He doubled over with an “oof” and crumpled to the floor.

I grinned at Lara. “Less a plate rack, more a fully automatic sentry gun.” The plate rack was a blur, launching salvo after salvo of serving plates and saucers at the startled guards. The whistle of high-speed attack crockery split the air. As the fierce barrage held them at bay, Lara and I hurried off along the corridor. So far so good. The plate rack would buy us time while we gained access to the main crater room.

When we had planned our raid on the volcano, we’d established that the door to the crater room was secured with a state-of-the-art keyless digital lock from Homebase. A glance at the specs told me the bad news: it was even more secure than the Kryptonyte™ Supalok that Zack had for his Carrera Vengeance Mountain Bike with twenty-inch wheels, and that was practically unbreakable. However, there was one chink in the device’s technological armour. The lock was mains powered with a built-in battery back-up. According to the very helpful man at Homebase I had spoken to, the battery didn’t kick in the instant that mains power was lost. It took two seconds for the lock to reboot using the internal battery. In those two seconds its defences were down – the door would be unlocked. All we had to do was trigger a power cut throughout the entire volcano.

I dug out my mobile phone and speed-dialled Lara’s My Little Phoney.

“Allo?” answered Serge.

“Are you in position?”

“
Oui
. I have located the vending machine on the fourth floor.”

As well as being an expert on comics, Serge was a whiz with vending machines. During our mission preparation we had determined that the flagship store, like the rest of Crystal Comics’ stores, was fitted with the finest vending machine in the world, the Supasnax MMS Combo Fusion.

This was crucial to our plan.

Several months ago, during a particularly fierce sugar craving, Serge had ordered six chocolate bars, two packets of crisps and a can of Tango from one of these Supasnax machines all in
under thirty seconds.
The shock and awe of the order had overwhelmed the machine’s delicate internal systems, causing the Supasnax to crash, tripping the electrical circuits and plunging the store into darkness. A sweep through the vending-machine-repair online discussion forums revealed this to be a “known issue”.

“You know what to do,” I said into the phone.

“Affirmative,” came back Serge’s response.

“And Serge?”

“
Oui
?”

“Good luck, my friend. We’re all counting on you.”

“I will not let you down,
mon ami
.”

“Go on my signal.”

“Roger that.”

Outside the door to the crater room I turned to Lara. “When Serge cuts the power, we’ll have two seconds to get inside.”

She narrowed her eyes. “My middle name is two seconds.”

“Lara, can you just tell me if you’re ready or not?”

“Flip’s sake, Luke. I’m ready.” She pressed her shoulder to the door. “Now, tell Serge to blow this thing!”

I lifted the phone and barked, “GO!”

“No go! I repeat, no go!” Serge’s voice clamoured from the handset. “We have a problem. There is no Twix. I repeat, no Twix in the Supasnax.”

This was disastrous. There was just a single combination of chocolate bars and crisps that would cause the vending machine to malfunction. I glanced down the corridor. The plate rack’s ammunition was depleted – only a few saucers remained. In less than thirty seconds the security guards would break through
our last line of defence.

Although my heart was racing, I tried to keep my voice calm. “Serge, listen to me very carefully,” I said into the phone. “Tell me what you see.”

I could hear Serge’s shallow breathing as he ran through the list. “Mars, Snickers, Maltesers, Bounty, Galaxy.” There was a pause. “Wait
un
moment.
Galaxy?
That is not correct. I have never seen such a chocolate bar within a Supasnax before. It is an
anomaly
.”

“I thought he said it was a Galaxy?” puzzled Lara, who was listening in.

“I think per’aps this is the answer,” said Serge with growing confidence. “The Twix, it has been substituted with the Galaxy.” I heard the crack of knuckles as he faced off against the vending machine. “So, Supasnax MMS Combo Fusion,” he growled, “now it is just you and
moi
.”

There was the speedy chink of coins dropping through a slot and then a series of rapid-fire taps on the keypad. I’d never heard anyone select confectionery so fast.

“Luke, the plate rack’s out of ammo,” yelled Lara. “Here they come!”

The snarling security guards leapt over the now useless weapon. They were almost on top of us.

The corridor lights flickered, there was a whine of
air-conditioning fans slowing and we were plunged into darkness. Serge had done it!

“Lara, go!” I cried. We had just two seconds. In the pitch black Lara shouldered her way through the unlocked door and I hurled myself after her. Once inside we quickly heaved the door closed. The guards were hot on our tails. One of them forced a boot through the closing gap. But he was too late. The weighty door squeezed his foot like a melon in a vice, and with a shout of pain he yanked it out. The door clanged shut.

The electrical power reset itself, the overhead lights sprang back to life and the air-conditioners began once more to pump cool air.

We’d made it inside the crater room.

But we were too late.

33

THE QUINTESSENCE

The video we’d watched had given us an impression of the crater, but only now that we were standing there did we appreciate its true scale.

It was a lot smaller than it looked on TV.

I reckoned our school gym was bigger, though not as well equipped for world domination. Rough stone walls rose to the height of a double-decker bus, sloping up to the perfectly flat disc of a steel roof. Light came from high-intensity spotlights set into the walls and from vertical glass tubes containing blobs of fire that mimicked lava eruptions, which were dotted across the floor like glowing exclamation marks. Around the edges
of the room stood metal lockers, directly above them ran some kind of monorail, and in the centre squatted the doughnut-shaped control panel, made up of a ring of sleek, curved touchscreens set above a series of buttons and levers. Christopher Talbot stood with his back to us, hunched over the controls, hands skimming across the touchscreens like a pair of insects skating over a pond. Next to him my brother lay manacled to the operating table. Zack was conscious, but barely.

Something didn’t make sense. Christopher Talbot appeared to be draining Zack’s superpowers from him. Again. The power transfer was almost over and the roar of the fan device filled the giant crater. It was as if we were watching the same video as the one we’d pulled up on the computer in the cavern – except for one crucial difference. Christopher Talbot had changed his outfit. No longer in his regular suit or his biohazard gear, he wore a skin-tight blue top that showed off his muscles. and clingy trousers that made his thighs bulge. A dark-blue cape edged in silver trim hung from his broad shoulders, and a silver mask sat high on his forehead, ready to be pulled down to complete his super-costume. A sigil shone from his chest. It was similar to Zack’s star tattoo, except that it looked more professional, as if he’d hired some fancy design agency to reinterpret
it. I glanced down. On his feet he wore a pair of tartan slippers like my Grandpa Bernard’s.

My brother twisted and writhed on the table. His lips parted to let out a shattering cry.

“Zack!” I called out to him.

“Luke?” His voice was weak.

“I’m with Lara,” I said. “We’re here to rescue you.” Before I had taken two steps towards him a gang of Tal-bots converged on us from the edges of the room. “Don’t-even-think-about-it!” the leader squawked as they pressed us back towards the door. These were not like the robots serving snacks at the party below. Their vacuum cleaner bodies were armoured and instead of trays they sported slim metal wands whose ends crackled with vicious blue sparks.

Christopher Talbot didn’t seem surprised to see us. With the superpower transfer complete, he switched off the machine and removed his electrode cap. His thick hair (less thick now, more patchy and burnt) smoked gently while flames licked about his forehead. Casually he extended an arm and used his freshly acquired telekinesis to activate an extinguisher, dousing the fire.

“Luke, Laura, how nice to see you both again.”

“It’s Lara,” said Lara tightly. Christopher Talbot made a face as if to say, really who cares? “I confess I didn’t
expect you to make it this far. So, bravo.” He applauded, but it was a hollow, mocking sound. “However, your brave but foolish attempt to rescue Zack is over. You failed. See that?” He lifted a hand and zipped it through the air, making a whooshing noise as he did so. “That was ‘the nick of time’. And you didn’t make it … in.”

I felt my blood boil. The smart part of my brain was telling me to wait for a better opportunity, but it was being shouted down by the angry and illogical part. I balled my hands into fists at my side and started towards the smirking Christopher Talbot.

“Ah-ah.” He wagged a finger and then dipped it down to point at the jostling ring of robots blocking my path. “Allow me to introduce my Assault Tal-bots.”

“Assaultalbots?” Lara frowned.

“No,” he grumbled. He spoke slowly, forming each syllable with immense care. “Assault. Tal-bots.”

As if to underline its role as Christopher Talbot’s mechanical thug, one of the robots trundled its fat, cylindrical body over my toes. I winced. It waved its crackling wand and squawked, “Ex-trapolate … Expurgate … Ex-cavate.” The other Tal-bots joined in, screeching words beginning with “Ex”. Though I noted that they were all very careful not to say “Exterminate”.

“I’d stay put, if I were you,” warned Christopher
Talbot. “One zap from that weapon will cause instant neuromuscular incapacitation.” He shrugged. “Non-lethal, but
extremely
painful.” He gestured towards Zack. “As your brother will confirm. Or at least he would, if I hadn’t drained him of his superpowers, leaving him a husk of his former self.”

“You’re a monster,” spat Lara.

“On the contrary,” said Christopher Talbot, offended. “I’m the hero.”

“You’re diluted,” she said scornfully. He looked understandably puzzled.

“Deluded,” I explained.

“Yeah,” said Lara. “That too.”

I had to agree with her. He was kidding himself if he thought he was the good guy. “Look around you, Christopher Talbot,” I said. “We’re in your secret volcano headquarters, surrounded by your robot henchmen, with a genuine superhero –
who you kidnapped
– hooked up to your superpower-sucking machine, while you put the whole world at risk. Face it, doesn’t get any more villainous than that.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he spluttered. “You have no idea what I’m
really
doing here.”

“Yes we do,” I said. “We watched a video.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Well, good. Saves me having
to waste precious time explaining it to you. And since you so clearly understand
everything
,” he said bitterly, “you’ll know that I have
heroic
work to do and not much time to do it. So, if you’ll excuse me…” With a snap of his cape he turned his back and started swiping at the touchscreens again, muttering to himself.

I could tell that he was disappointed at not getting to make a big speech explaining his plan in detail. Classic supervillain behaviour.

I had an idea. If Christopher Talbot wanted to be the hero so much, then perhaps if I proved to him he was behaving like the villain he’d see sense and stop. “So what’s your superhero name then?” I asked.

He spun round, bursting to tell us. “The ancients believed that there were
five
elements, not four,” he began. “Earth, air, water, fire and the stuff that stars are made of, the fifth element, the
quintessence
.” He gestured to the pattern of stars on his chest. Now I could see that they vaguely formed the letter “Q”. “For I am The Quintessence,” he declared, putting his hands on his hips and puffing out his chest.

“Oh come on,” I said, “that’s clearly a supervillain name.”

“It is not,” he protested. “It’s classy. Enigmatic. And anyway, it’s a lot better than Star Lad. I mean, what a
stupid name. What happens when he grows up? You can’t be a thirty-year-old man running around with a name like Star
Lad
.” He tapped the side of his head. “Didn’t think it through, did he?” He returned to the control doughnut. “Besides,
you
are the ones dressed in supervillain outfits!”

“Yes, but only because it said so on your invitation,” said Lara.

He prodded his chest. “I’m the only superhero. I’m the one.” He sounded like a spoilt brat. I was determined to prove to him that he was the Lex Luthor of this situation.

“So,” I said, picking my words as carefully as if I was laying a minefield, which I kind of was, “would you agree now that you’ve neutralised us as a potential threat, there are no significant obstacles left between you and your ultimate goal?”

He nodded smugly. “As you say … nothing can stop me now!” A laugh burst out of him like an evil burp. With a look of horror he clamped both hands over his mouth.

“Ha!” I pointed an accusing finger. “Only the villain would say that.”

He gazed slowly round the crater room and I could see the terrible realisation dawn. He knew what he was.
But plenty of villains experience a change of heart at the end of the story and turn into heroes. Would he be one of them?

“No matter,” he said at last. “Once I’ve knocked out Nemesis and saved the world no one will care how I got there.”

There was my answer – a villain to the end.

“The world will be eternally grateful to …” he lowered his voice, “The Quintessence.”

“Two worlds,” I corrected him.

“How’s that?”

“Star Lad was chosen to save this world and another parallel world where red is green and sponge cake tastes different. Not completely different. Just a bit different.”

A look of uncertainty flashed across his face. “No one said anything about saving
two
worlds.”

“Well, there it is. Now, it’s a big job. So you’ve got to ask yourself, are you up to it?”

He sniffed. “The Quintessence is up to any challenge. The bigger the better. Two worlds? No problem.” He waggled his fingers. “Bring it on.”

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” said Lara. “You have to let Star Lad fulfil his mission. He was chosen to save us from Nemesis.”

“Oh really? He’s the Chosen One, is he?” Irritated, he
swished his cape in Zack’s direction. “Explain to me why some random kid from a suburb in south London should be given superpowers, hmm? Who decided that?”

“Zorbon,” I said. “The Decider.”

Christopher Talbot frowned. “Well,
Zorbon
clearly made a mistake. I’ve spent my whole life and every penny I’ve earned trying to turn myself into a superhero. Y’know, I could’ve lived like a king, bought myself an actual mansion, but a long time ago I said to myself, no, Chris, that’s not the way. Sacrifices had to be made. And if living in a miserable semi in Bromley and driving a ten-year-old Grand Picasso meant I could spend more on superpower research then so be it.” He reached for the control panel and snatched up what looked like an Xbox controller from its cradle. “But I have to thank your brother for something. When he bounced on to the scene as Star Lad I realised that my dreams were in reach. If powers could be given, then they could also be
taken
.”

“But you didn’t have to take Zack’s powers,” I said. “Not every superhero needs superpowers. A lot of them train for years, honing mind and body to become crime-fighters. You could have gone the Batman route.”

Talbot held up his hands. “You don’t think I tried?!” He crossed to one of the lockers that ringed the room and
pulled open the door. “Do you know how many secret orders of martial-arts-practising monks there are in the snow-capped mountains of Tibet?” I shook my head. “None,” he said. “Not one. And I searched. Boy, did I search. There wasn’t a temple bell in that place I didn’t ring.”

“They do Judo classes at the sports centre,” I suggested.

He made a face. “It’s not the same.” Inside the locker hung a rack of spare superhero costumes identical to the one he was wearing – capes on coat hangers, masks on the shelf above. He reached down and collected a pair of shiny black boots. “Now, I really must save the world.”

“Worlds,” Lara reminded him curtly.

Ignoring her, he slapped a sequence of buttons on the game controller and waggled the joystick. From the back of the room came a rumble and then a massive shape swung out of the shadows. It was the biggest exosuit I’d ever seen. Twice as large as the one he had used to kidnap Zack, it hung from the monorail, a giant’s suit on a hanger. This must have been what the plans in the basement laboratory were for.

The giant suit consisted of a hard shell with arms and legs as thick as tree trunks, and was topped with a bulbous helmet with a wraparound glass visor that gleamed dully
under the lights. The casing was painted in the same blue and silver colours as Christopher Talbot’s clingy superhero suit. The chest was dominated by the “Q” sigil, but the bulk of the machine lay around its middle, where a ring of solid rocket boosters was slung like a bandolier of ammunition. The suit was so big there were metal handholds on the surface to help with climbing in and out.

Christopher Talbot wiggled the joystick on the controller. The suit shot along the rail towards him and stopped, swaying gently. There was a click, and the suit released from the rail and dropped to the floor with a thud, its knee-joints bowing under the enormous weight before straightening. It stood like a tower.

“Behold, the Mark Fourteen Sub-Orbital Super Suit.” He tucked the game controller into his belt, kicked off his slippers and began to pull on the boots.

“Sub-orbital? Does that mean you’re going to the edge of space in this thing?” I asked.

Pulling on the second boot he hopped to the control doughnut. “Indeed! I shall ride my white charger into battle with the dragon Nemesis.”

“Does it work as well as your coat-rack thing?” asked Lara with a raised eyebrow.

“Listen, I don’t have to stand here answering cheeky
questions from the likes of you. I’m on a schedule. But for your information, Miss Smart Alec, I will pilot the Mark Fourteen to the vicinity of the asteroid and once in position I will save the world using my superpowers.”