Strike 3: The Returning Sunrise (6 page)

The morning after the escape from the Time Queen’s island, Tobin, Keplar, Scatterbolt,
Wakefield
, and Orion were in the briefing room on the main floor of the Museum of the Heroes. Orion and
Wakefield
were standing at the front of the room in front of a large screen, while Keplar and Scatterbolt were sitting in a couple of chairs facing them. Tobin, meanwhile—wearing all of his Strike gear except for his mask—was standing in the rear of the room by himself, near a large open window that looked out over the treetops outside of the Museum.

“Okay,” Orion said, holding a remote control in his hand. “Here’s what we know.”

The old man pressed a button, and a long horizontal line appeared on the screen behind him.

“Thanks to Tobin’s completely unauthorized trip to see the Time Queen, we now know that Rigel used the Chrono-Key to travel back into the past. By doing this, he created another timeline. This timeline branches off from ours at the moment I first met Tobin at the supermarket.”

Orion clicked the remote control again, and another horizontal line branched off from the line on the screen.

“By traveling into the past, Rigel changed one incredibly important moment. Instead of meeting me and receiving the picture of his father, the Tobin in this timeline was captured by Rigel and placed in the Daybreaker armor. Rigel and this second Tobin then returned to our timeline. Which is why it is possible we now have two Tobins in our timeline—and it’s also why this other Tobin—the Daybreaker—is so different than ours.”

“That’s it, though?” Keplar asked. “That’s the only difference? I mean, I know our Tobin can have a bad temper sometimes, like when he dies in Mario Brothers or we run out of Nutella, but I can’t believe he would take over the entire city of
Boston
.”

“No, you’re right,” Orion replied. “That can’t be the only difference. And that’s what we need to find out. We need to find out what else has happened to make this Tobin so different from ours.”

Wakefield
—the short, grumpy, balding, robotics-genius senior citizen— stepped in front of the screen.

“Because of our work in helping to cure him of his were-bat disease, Jonathan Ashmore has finally begun to give us useful information about the Daybreaker. And he has told us that he was there when Rigel first reappeared with the Daybreaker in our timeline. And the first thing Rigel and Nova did when the Daybreaker arrived in our timeline was hook him up to some kind of mechanical throne.”        

“We don’t know what that machine did to the other Tobin,” Orion said, “because even Jonathan doesn’t know that. But we can assume, almost assuredly, that the machine somehow affected his brain, his memories—it made him think things that weren’t true. It essentially brainwashed him.”

“Which is why he was so quick to attack us at the pyramid,”
Wakefield
said.

“Yeah,” Scatterbolt said, “and that explains why Rigel was telling him all that stuff about how we were the bad guys.”

Orion nodded. “Yes, exactly. Whatever that machine did to him, it made him think that we are his enemies, that we did something to his family. Which led to him attacking us, and—a few weeks later—to him working with Rigel and Nova to invade
Boston
.”

Keplar turned to Tobin. “See kid, I told ya you couldn’t be that psychotic on your own. Not unless a lack of Nutella was involved.”

Tobin rolled his eyes.

“Which leads us to our next course of action,” Orion continued. “Up until now, we have not been able to get into the Dark Nebula surrounding
Boston
, but I have been able to make contact with someone who has. This contact on the inside has been supplying me with intel, and now we finally have enough to make a move.”

Orion walked to a nearby table and picked up four silver, ballpoint pen-shaped devices with buttons on their tops.

“These are called fakers, and they will conceal our identities, allowing us to walk freely inside the Dark Nebula. Thanks to the holographic technology that Junior and
Wakefield
have created, while using these devices, anyone interacting with us or seeing us will not actually see us—we will be coated with a hologram, and they will instead see four normal, Rytonian citizens. Tomorrow night, using these to conceal our identities, myself, Tobin, Keplar and Scatterbolt will infiltrate the Dark Nebula, and use the information my inside contact has been able to obtain.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Keplar asked.

Orion clicked his remote again, and the screen behind him changed. It now showed a blueprint of the Trident skyscraper.

“Based upon what my contact has told me, it seems that the next phase of Rigel and the Daybreaker’s plan involves two key components. We don’t know what the two components are, or what these next phases involve, but we know where the information on these two components lay.”

Orion clicked his button, and two blinking lights appeared on the blueprint of the skyscraper. One was in the basement, and one was near the top of the building.

“The first component is being worked on in the basement of the skyscraper, in its computer mainframe, and the second component is being worked on here, in a science lab on the 105th floor. I do have concerns about the 105th floor, however, as it is only five floors below the Daybreaker’s place of residence.”

Keplar raised his hand. “I hereby volunteer to be part of the team that goes into the computer basement, rather than the one that goes near the ultra-powerful teenager.”

Orion ignored him. “We’ll decide on the teams later.”

“Okay,” Keplar replied. “But, like I said, I volunteer for the non-super-villain teenager one.”

Orion turned off the screen behind him. “Okay. That’s it for now. Let’s get some rest people. We’re going to need to be as prepared as possible for what’s next. We’ve worked hard to get this information, and it’s the only chance we have to discover what Rigel is planning to do next.”         

The meeting broke apart, and as the heroes headed to the various parts of the Museum, Tobin walked through the building’s main entrance and out its giant glass doors.

“Hi, Tobin,” Orion said, following Tobin onto the museum’s sky-ship landing platform. “Everything okay? Do you agree with what we’ve decided to do next?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Tobin said. He stood on the edge of the landing platform, looking out over the trees. “It makes sense to me.”

“Okay. It’s just that you seemed awfully quiet in there. I’m not used to you not piping in and telling everyone why my plan is all wrong when we have a mission briefing.”

Orion smiled, but Tobin didn’t smile back. He looked down to the ground.

“It’s just…this mission isn’t like any of the others, Orion. This is me we’re going against here. It’s me.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. The Time Queen even said so. Everything you and
Wakefield
have investigated has said the same thing. That’s me, whether we want to admit it or not. It’s me up in that skyscraper. Just a different me.”

“Tobin, sit down. Take a deep breath. Let me tell you what I know.”

Tobin sat down on the landing area, with his legs dangling over the edge, and Orion sat down next to him.

“I know, for a fact, that the Daybreaker is not you. You are right here next to me. Right now. This is you.” The old man poked a finger in Tobin’s chest. “Everything in your life up until this point has made you who you are. Just like everything in the Daybreaker’s life has made him who he is. Your life went one way, and his life went another. We can’t know what terrible things happened to him, or what terrible things he was told. But that’s why he’s done what he has done. You did not, and would not, do those things.”

“But that’s the thing, Orion. I know what you are trying to say, but that’s exactly my point. If those things had happened to me—those exact things that happened to him—I would have made the same decisions as him. Because I am him.”

Orion thought it over. “If my life had gone another way, who knows what I could have turned into. If only a few things had gone differently for Vincent, he could have become the greatest hero in the history of Capricious. I have always known that. It’s all a matter of whatever is thrown at us. And sometimes what is thrown at us is too much to take, without anyone there to help us.”

“I would just think that...even if I was in the worst situation possible like him, no matter what had happened, that I would still do the right thing. But I guess I wouldn’t. Because the Daybreaker—the other me—didn’t.”

“I can understand why you are confused, Tobin. And angry. I completely can. But the first thing we need to do is figure out what has happened to the Daybreaker. What has happened to him to make him make these choices. Only then will we be able to figure this all out.”

Tobin nodded.

“Just know,” Orion continued, “that no matter what you might think, that is not you in that skyscraper. Okay? Because I
know
that is not you. I know it, because I am sitting here with you now. You would not make the same choices that he has. There is only one you, Tobin. And you are who you choose to be.”

As Orion headed back into the museum, Tobin sat on the landing platform by himself, listening to the wind blow through the leaves of the trees.

***

That night, back home in
Bridgton
,
Massachusetts
, Tobin sat on his bed in his room and surfed the Internet on his iPad. He knew he needed to take his mind off the situation and think of other things, but he couldn’t help himself.

Tobin clicked onto the website for the Bridgton Herald. The top headline read:

BOSTON
DOME DEATH TOLL RISES TO TWENTY.

Underneath the headline, there was a smaller headline:

MOST DEATHS OCCURRED DURING INITIAL APPEARANCE OF THE DOME.

Tobin heard his mother calling for him from downstairs. “Tobin? Are you up there? Did you have any dinner?”

“No, Mom,” Tobin said, quickly closing the webpage. “I’m not really hungry.”

Tobin’s mother walked up the stairs and into his room.

“Are you sure? I made one of your favorites. Well, I re-heated some of Grandma’s shepherd’s pie, which is one of your favorites.”

Tobin smirked, but he didn’t look away from his iPad. His mother could tell something was wrong. It was impossible to hide things like that from her.

“Is everything okay, honey? Is something bothering you?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m just...feeling kinda crappy today.”

Tobin’s mother sat down on the bed. “Do you wanna talk about it? Is it the dome in
Boston
? It’s okay to be afraid of it, you know. We’re all a little afraid. I was watching this special with Oprah today, and she was discussing the dome in
Boston
, and she said we should all be talking about it with our families, and that it’s okay to be afraid.”

Tobin felt nauseous. He couldn’t have this conversation. Not now. Not ever.          “No, it’s not the dome, Mom. Really, I’m fine.”

“Okay. But if you ever wanna talk about it, honey, I want you to talk to me, okay? We’re all in this together, and we’re all gonna get through it. And even though none of us know what the dome is, they are gonna find out where it came from, take care of it, and then we won’t have to worry about it anymore. Okay?”

Tobin’s mother walked out of the room.

“Everything will be fine, honey. Just remember that it’s nothing for you to worry about. It has nothing to do with you. Someone will take care of it, someone will take care of whoever did it, and then everything will be fine. It’s not something you should be worried about. It has nothing to do with you.”

Tobin stared at the ceiling, listening to his mother walk down the stairs.

What would she think?
he thought to himself. What would she think, if she knew who really created the dome? Would she ever talk to him again? Would
anyone
ever talk to him again?

***

After yet another useless night of trying to sleep, Tobin used his portal pistol to transport himself out of his bedroom and into the Museum of the Heroes. After walking through the museum’s quiet main exhibit area, he took the elevator down to the holding area, where he knew he could find the museum’s lone prisoner.

At the very end of the holding area, in the last cell on the left, Jonathan Ashmore, the pale man in the purple suit, was laying on his bed with his arms behind his head, staring out the tiny window across from him. Hearing the door to the holding area open, he sat up and looked down the hall.

“Well, look who it is. What the hell are you doing out here so late?”

Tobin pulled up a metal chair and sat down next to the cell. “I need to talk to you. I need you to tell me everything you know about that night.”

Jonathan snickered. “Again? How many times are we gonna go over this?”