The Superhero's Son (Book 9): The Superhero's End Read online

  I rose to my feet, feeling anger flow through me, but then Renaissance also stood and said, “Bolt, Shade, enough bickering. This is exactly what Mastermind wants. As long as we waste time fighting each other, we can’t spend any time fighting him. We must be wiser than this.”

  Renaissance spoke in a deep, authoritative voice that instantly calmed my temper. It probably wasn’t very rational, given how much stronger I was than him, but given that Renaissance literally couldn’t be killed, I decided that I wasn’t going to piss him off by ignoring his command.

  So I sat back down in my seat and said, “What should we do, then?”

  “We should do what Shade suggested,” said Renaissance. “I know you aren’t happy to hear that, but it’s our best chance at stopping Mastermind. Because the only other alternative is letting you and White Lightning go to him, and he needs you two in order to activate the Apocalypse Switch.”

  I slouched in my chair, but as much as I disagreed with the idea, I also realized that I didn’t have any better options. I wished that Mastermind had not somehow kidnapped Cadmus like that or that White Lightning was more rational, but I guess I would just have to work with what we had, not what I wished we had.

  So I said, in a resigned voice, “Okay. I’ll try. But if I fail—and there’s a good chance I will—you guys better have a good backup plan, because I don’t.”

  -

  White Lightning was tied up to an old metal chair in a room on the opposite side of the hallway. His head was down on his chest, like he was asleep, though he was really more unconscious than anything. The room was pretty dark and grungy, more like a dungeon than a room, but apparently it was normally a cleaning closet, based on the shelves full of cleaning supplies I saw and the mops and buckets against the back wall.

  I stood in front of White Lightning in the room. I had considered having some guards stand inside here with me to help, but we decided that a bunch of armed men in the room with me and White Lightning would be counterproductive. White Lightning might feel threatened at the sight of severak armed, fully-grown men, and if he felt threatened, he might not even listen to me, much less talk. That was the same reason Renaissance and Shade were not with me, either; they were just as intimidating as armed guards, if not even more so due to their powers, and intimidation was the last thing we needed to do to White Lightning at the moment.

  There was, of course, still the possibility that White Lightning would try to harm me, but it was very nil. The guards who had taken White Lightning into this room had sprayed him with powerless gas, and a lot of it, too, based on the thin wisps of yellow gas I saw floating near the ceiling; therefore, White Lightning was entirely powerless at the moment and would remain in such a situation for the next several hours, though his powers would likely return before the twenty-four hours were up.

  Even though I’d agreed to try this, I was still very reluctant about it. I knew just how much White Lightning hated me. He wouldn’t kill me—given that he was probably under orders from Mastermind to kidnap me in order to use me to activate the Apocalypse Switch—but I’m sure he’d love to beat my face in for the fact that I’d already beaten him two times. But I remembered that we had no other option, no other plan, right now, so I ignored my own trepidation and shook White Lightning’s shoulder.

  “Hey, White Lightning,” I said, trying to keep my voice as nonthreatening as possible. “Are you awake, uh, buddy? I’d like to talk with you about something.”

  White Lightning’s eyes flickered open and he raised his head, allowing me to see his eye color for the first time: It was blue, same shade as mine. At first, he looked dazed and confused, probably due to the fact that he’d been knocked out recently, but when he finally focused on my face, a look of seething hatred crossed his features.

  “You …” White Lightning said, his voice strained. “You … you …”

  “Yes, I know, it’s me,” I said. “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

  But White Lightning hardly seemed to hear what I was saying. He seemed to exist in his own little world now; even his eyes weren’t focused on me anymore. “You, you, you, you … you!”

  He immediately began rocking from side to side, trying to break out of his ropes or fall over onto the floor and break his head open. Regardless, I grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted, “White Lightning, no! Stop. You’ll just hurt yourself.”

  “No,” White Lightning snarled, almost snapped, like a crocodile. “Dad gave … mission. Get you. Get you now.”

  “You don’t need to complete the mission that Mastermind gave you,” I said. “It isn’t worth it. If you continue to listen to Mastermind, the whole world will suffer.”

  “Do not care,” said White Lightning in a mad voice. “You try to kill Dad. You … you enemy. Get revenge.”

  “I’m not your enemy,” I said, taking my hands off his shoulders. “I’m your brother, your long-lost twin brother Kevin. We don’t have to fight.”

  “Yes, we do,” said White Lightning. “You … you not brother. You hate Dad. Want to kill him. Want to kill me.”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” I said, finding it harder and harder to keep my voice calm in the face of White Lightning’s unreasonable attitude. “I’m just trying to tell you that Mastermind isn’t on your side. He just views you as a tool and a pawn to use for his own evil deeds. He’s just manipulating you.”

  “No,” said White Lightning, shaking his head. “Dad gave … gave me freedom. Saved me from bad.”

  Bad? I was about to ask him what he meant when I suddenly remembered that White Lightning had been in the custody of the government for nearly all of his life. While I didn’t know exactly what they did to him, I did know that they treated White Lightning like a lab experiment. It had been a traumatic experience, which was exactly why White Lightning acted the way he did.

  No wonder he was loyal to Mastermind. Mastermind really had saved him, really had given White Lightning freedom, or at least more freedom than he’d had while under the government’s watch. It occurred to me that White Lightning probably thought that I was working with the government to recapture him and put him back into whatever hole the government had thrown him into in the first place.

  So I said, in a much calmer tone than before, “I understand, White Lightning. I’m not a fan of the government, either, and I’m not interested in putting you back into wherever the government was keeping you before Mastermind rescued you.”

  All of a sudden, White Lightning looked at me with less hate and more curiosity, though I could tell he still didn’t trust me very much. “You … aren’t?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “What the government did to you was horrible and unjustified. They were in the wrong. And, if you help me, I will make sure that they don’t do that to you again.”

  White Lightning’s rage seemed to have subsided; not completely, but enough that he was finally listening to me, though whether he truly believed anything I said, I didn’t know. “No … government?”

  “No government,” I said. “I know that you trust Mastermind because he saved you. But trust me when I say that he doesn’t actually care about your well-being. Once he completes his plan, he will just discard like you an old rag, assuming you aren’t dead as a result of his plans.”

  “Dead?” said White Lightning. “Dad will discard me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s not what I want to do. I want you to be able to live a normal life. Or at least as normal a life as someone like you could live. I could help you adjust to living a normal life. You wouldn’t have to be locked up in a secret government facility or following the orders of someone who doesn’t care about you. You would be truly free to do what you want and go where you like. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

  White Lightning looked down at his knees, like he was thinking about what I said. “Free … freedom … free …”

  Encouraged by this response, I said, “Yes, freedom is good. You should want freedom. I will make sure that
you get it. And if anyone tries to stop you, I will stop them. Do you understand?”

  White Lightning still didn’t look up at me. He just kept muttering, “Freedom … free … freedom … free …” over and over again, like he was tasting the words in his mouth, trying to decide if he liked them or not.

  “I know we’ve fought several times in the past, but we could work together from now on,” I said. “We could be friends, but not just friends; family. We could be a real family. Wouldn’t you like to have a real family, White Lightning?”

  White Lightning looked up at me. Although he had calmed down considerably, there was a definite look of worry in his eyes. “But … Dad is family.”

  “Maybe, but he’s not very good family,” I said. “He may be related to us, but he doesn’t really care about you or me. He only cares about us insofar as we aid him in his plans. But if we oppose him, he will treat us just like anyone else who has ever opposed him.”

  White Lightning’s expression indicated that he didn’t really understand. Or maybe, rather, he didn’t want to understand. I understood that, because I was in the process of revealing some very dark truths to him and I didn’t know how much of it he really understood.

  “Listen, Mastermind views you as a tool,” I said. “He’s oppressed billions of people in his home universe. And he wants to do even worse here. He wants to destroy this world. I don’t know why, but I do know that that is his ultimate plan.”

  “Won’t die,” said White Lightning, though I noticed some hesitation in his voice. “Said so.”

  “He said you won’t die?” I said. “I don’t think I agree with that. Mastermind will probably let you die if he feels like you are a threat. He’s not nearly as compassionate as he looks. He’ll discard you just like any other tool once you’re no longer useful to him. That’s what he does.”

  White Lightning bit his lower lip. He looked away from me, no doubt because he didn’t want to face the facts. But I could tell I was getting to him, that he was actually listening to me. I just needed to push a little harder to make him break.

  “You know I’m speaking the truth,” I said. “I don’t know what Mastermind told you, exactly, but I do know that he lied. But I’m not lying to you. I would never lie to you. As your brother, I just want what’s best for you, and I know that serving Mastermind is not what is best for you.”

  White Lightning was incredibly quiet now, the quietest I’d ever seen him before. He seemed to be thinking; at least, he was thinking as much as someone as mentally disturbed as him could think. I caught myself holding my breath in anticipation, because I had no idea at this point what he was going to say.

  Finally, White Lightning looked up at me. It was kind of weird, like staring into a mirror, even though I was well aware that he was a completely different person from me. But even when he looked me in the eyes, I didn’t know for sure what he was about to say until he opened his mouth and said this:

  “I believe you … brother.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  One moment, White Lightning and I were standing in the Compound side by side; the next, we were standing in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere, thanks to my handy dandy Teleportation Buckle. While the teleporting hadn’t hurt me, White Lightning was clearly not used to it, given how he clutched his stomach when we appeared in the forest and made choking noises, although based on the few words he’d said to me before we left, he had already teleported many times before, because Mastermind had used his own teleportation tech to teleport White Lightning all around the country, which was how White Lightning always managed to appear and disappear before anyone could stop him. He never enjoyed it, though, because it made him sick for a little while before he recovered.

  Still, White Lightning looked like he was about to throw up, prompting me to ask, “Hey, are you okay?”

  White Lightning looked at me, his face somewhat pale. Since the powerless gas had worn off of him already, his eyes were glowing again, but not nearly as much as before. That was probably because he no longer viewed me as an enemy and so stopped behaving defensively toward me all the time.

  “Me … okay,” said White Lightning. He took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Teleportation … no.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Are you sure about that? Because we don’t have to go to Mastermind right away.”

  White Lightning nodded. “Sure. Better. Can go now. No time waste.”

  “Right,” I said. I looked down at my suit-up watch, which had the coordinates of the fallen alien ship in them, which Mastermind had sent me after I told him that White Lightning and I were coming to see him. “Okay, the ship should be somewhere nearby. But first: Valerie, are the others nearby?”

  “Not yet,” said Valerie, her voice as cool as ever. “But I just received a message from Shade, telling me that she will be bringing Blizzard and the others along very shortly.”

  I nodded. “Good to—”

  I was cut off by rustling in the bushes nearby, which caused both me and White Lightning to look over at those bvushes. White Lightning’s hands immediately began glowing with crackling electricity, while I prepared my super strength instinctively.

  As it turned out, however, we didn’t need to fight anyone, because three familiar figures stepped out of the bushes. One was Blizzard, who in her white hood looked as beautiful as ever, while the second was Shade, who was frowning uncharacteristically, and the third was a large, Russian man in his late sixties who I recognized as Ivan, or, as he was better known, Nuclear Winter, the first supervillain and one of the prisoners to escape from Ultimate Max with me. I almost didn’t recognize him, though; he had ditched the orange prisoner jumpsuit for a pair of jeans and a leather jacket, with a red T-shirt underneath that was stretched against his large chest.

  As soon as Blizzard saw me, she yelped in delight and immediately tackled me. She was a lot lighter than me, but despite that, her tackle caused me to stagger backwards, almost knocking me over before I regained my balance and wrapped my arms around her.

  “Oh, Bolt, I missed you so much!” said Blizzard, hugging me so tightly that it felt like she was never going to let go. “What happened to you? Where were you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Blizzard,” I said, my voice somewhat choked under her iron hug. “Could you please loosen your grip on me a little? You’re hurting me.”

  Blizzard loosened her hug on me, but she still didn’t let go. She looked my face over in worry, like she was trying to make sure there was nothing wrong with it. “I’m sorry, Kev, but I just missed you so much. You were gone for a week in an alternate universe ruled by your evil dad. How can you expect me not to worry about you like that?”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m not faulting you for worrying about me, but I just wanted to let you know that I like to breathe. That’s all.”

  “Kevin,” said Ivan, walking up to me. He held out one of his large hands, a smile appearing underneath his gray mustache. “It’s good to see you again. I was worried about you, too, but not as much as Emily here.”

  “Good to see you, too, Ivan,” I said as I shook his hand. But then I realized what he’d just said and I looked at Blizzard. “Did he just call you by your real name?”

  Blizzard shrugged somewhat sheepishly. “Ivan and I sort of bonded after your disappearance. He’s a real sweetheart when you get to know him.”

  “And Emily is a wonderful girl who will make you a great wife someday,” said Ivan without missing a beat.”

  “Wife?” I said hastily. “Who said anything about marriage?”

  “Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?” said Blizzard with a frown on her face.

  Before I could get myself out of this situation, Shade suddenly appeared from the shadows again, this time with Triplet and Emma on either side. She then vanished into the shadows once more before reappearing with Rime, who, like Ivan, had ditched the orange jumpsuit in favor of more casual clothing; in his case, a sleeveless blue shirt and
some black cargo shorts.

  “Emma, Rime, Triplet,” I said as those three approached us. “Glad to see you guys again. You look better than I remember.”

  Triplet—who was wearing a new trench coat—just shrugged and said, “I’ve suffered worse injuries before. Besides, the INJ’s healer did an excellent job taking care of my wounds, so I doubt they will be a problem in the coming battle.”

  “Are you sure?” said Ivan. “It might have been wiser for you to stay in the INJ’s headquarters, where you would be safer.”

  “I was hired to figure out who Mastermind is and take him down,” Triplet replied. “And I never abandon a case until it’s finished, which this one isn’t.”

  “Same here,” said Emma. “I’m not a detective like him, but I’m also not going to let Mastermind get away with his plans, not if I can help stop him.”

  “That’s also why I’m here,” said Rime, jerking a thumb at his chest. “Bolt, you helped me get out of prison, so I’m going to return the favor.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks to all of you. I knew I could count on you guys.”

  Then I heard a somewhat awkward grunt and looked over to see White Lightning standing apart from the rest of us. He looked pretty awkward, standing there by himself, and looked even more awkward when the others looked at him. The others looked at White Lightning with a mixture of disgust and distrust.

  “What is he doing here?” said Emma. I could see her reaching for her ninja stars. “I thought he was on Mastermind’s side.”

  White Lightning growled at Emma’s tone, his hands sparking with electricity, so I said quickly, before a fight could break out, “Hey, I know how you guys feel about him, given what he did to you, but we can trust him. He’s on our side now. And he’s going to play a very important role in our plan to defeat Mastermind, so he needs to be in good shape to do it.”

  “Are you sure you can trust him?” said Triplet in a skeptical voice. He was eyeing White Lightning like he was a cornered beast. “Because I remember how crazy he is.”