Hero (42 page)

I scrambled across the jagged floor for the ring, but Justice intercepted and kicked me across the face. The skin on my forehead ripped open, and I felt my skull crack. I reached up with burning hands and patched my forehead.

Then I caught a purple glow out of the corner of my eye. The ring was levitating into the air. Purple reflected off the crystal floor and cast us all in an eerie grape hue.

Suddenly the invisible force that had tied up Warrior Woman and pushed her over the ledge revealed itself. My mother willed herself to become visible. Her jaw was clenched with determination, her body shaking. Clearly the act of making herself visible brought her great pain.

Dad's lips parted, but his dry throat couldn't find a way to produce any words. Mom looked over in his direction, but she wouldn't make eye contact with him. Her head hung low.

"I'm sorry."

That was all she said. She held up the ring in Justice's direction. I lashed out at Justice with a kick, but without even looking at me, he stepped over my leg and made his way to my mother.

"Welcome back," Justice said, expressionless. "And goodbye."

He fired two death blasts from his eyes, and they found their way directly to my mother's rib cage. In the millisecond it took for the blasts to obliterate my mother, she raised her head and met my father's gaze.

"Hal—!" She threw the ring toward him before she disappeared.

The resulting explosion wiped her off the face of this earth.

Dad screamed out Mom's name as she vanished into the air—no bits, no pieces, no smell of gardenia—as if she'd never been there in the first place. My stomach dropped to my feet, and I went numb all over. I couldn't find the breath to scream. Mom was gone. The detonation blew a chunk of wall out of the monument steeple, which towered five stories above the observation deck. Debris showered us, and I could barely see my dad through the falling rubble.

The ring skidded across the crystal floor, slipped past my father, and landed on the ledge of the observation deck, eighty stories aboveground. It was now impossible for my father to reach it, even with his teeth, which was about all he had left to use.

I ran to help my father, still broken, and took the mangled ends of his arms in my hands.

"Dad!"

"Never mind, Thorn. Get the ring. You've got to bring me the ring!"

I grabbed the two nubs where his hands used to be and squeezed and prayed with all my might that I had enough strength in me to do what had to be done. I ignored the pain for as long as I could—my hands almost caught fire with more energy than I'd ever emitted—and just before I passed out, I heeded my dad's advice and raced for the ledge to get the ring.

I nearly made it to the ring, but Justice fired an eye-blast that shot straight through my left arm at the bicep as I reached for it. I didn't wince at the pain; I kept moving. He clasped both hands together and brought them down on the back of my neck like a sledgehammer. I felt my neck snap and my legs go numb; then I crumpled to the floor.

He stood above me, his eyes lit with fury and rage.

"You."

He kicked me in the stomach, and I felt my organs burst and rupture. I opened my mouth to scream, but shut it because it was spurting out blood.

"What the hell do you care for the people of this planet?" He kicked me in the face as he ranted. "They hate you, they call you names and are ashamed of you. You know I'm telling the truth. You're all so stupid, you're killing this world anyway. I'm just giving you a little nudge, a gentle push."

He lifted me off the ground, pulled me up by my collar with one hand. I dangled like a noodle, my insides were liquefying. I glanced at the hole in my bicep. It sealed, and I felt a strange crackle of energy work itself up from the base of my spine. I could wriggle my toes.

I spit a bloody tooth at him. I wasn't about to agree with him on anything, and I needed some time for my body to recover.

He then took two fingers and pushed them toward my eyes. I shut my eyelids as he thrust his fingers forward. I clenched my teeth and strained, and sent all the energy and heat and power I could muster to my face to defend myself. The pressure was shocking, unbearable. I struggled desperately in his grasp, but he clutched me tight and kept pressing, pressing. . . . I could heal fast, but not fast enough to survive this. I gritted my teeth but couldn't help crying out in agony.

This was the moment of my death. Ruth had foreseen it, and I had failed to prevent it. Get the ring or help my dad. I had chosen to help my father, and the choice had sealed my fate.

But suddenly the pain stopped. I opened my eyes and I could see again. Justice's fingers were gone. He dropped me and whirled around to face a new threat.

Dad stood behind him, two perfect new hands raised in fists.

"Get— "

He smashed Justice's jaw with his right fist.

"Your— "

He slammed him across the head with his left hook.

"Hands—"

A deep punch to the gut.

"Off— "

He brought Justice's face down to his knee and jammed it into his nose.

"My—"

He head butted him.

"SON!"

With that, Dad pulled the purple ring from his pocket and plunged it into Justice's chest, where his heart should have been.

The death of Justice was anything but peaceful. His body convulsed and broke apart, and bright violet lasers shot out of him in all directions as the life poured out of his body. I saw a dazzling purple ray blow a hole wide open through the crystal floor in front of me. Beams of light tore out of him and ripped into the surrounding buildings. He gurgled and shook and wailed as his thunderous life surged into the world and dissipated.

I dropped to the floor to dodge the destructive force of the beams. Dad ignored them and held on to Justice tightly with one hand, while still pressing the ring into his chest with the other. The world depended on it.

With an ear-piercing shriek and a final giant blast of his life's essence shooting up into the Memorial steeple, Justice collapsed into a lifeless heap on the shiny crystal floor, his body a husk held together by powerless atoms. Dad finally let go of Justice and slumped to the deck. He grabbed his abdomen and struggled to catch his breath.

The steeple had suffered a crushing blow from Justice's final blasts of life, and it rocked and moaned and began to fall. I watched its shadow creep over my father. I felt the crackle of energy in my spine ignite every molecule in my body as my powers grew within me, and I leaped up and flew to the base of the steeple and propped the towering structure up with my back, like Atlas with the weight of the universe on his shoulders.

Not only did I have enough strength to keep the building up, but I could hear things, see things, like I'd never been able to before. Down below, I could actually see hordes of people

staring up and pointing. I could see the details of their faces, their fingers. Photographers and cameramen documented every action. I wanted to tell them to move, to get out of the way. If the steeple came down, thousands would die. My thigh muscles shook, and suddenly I wished I wasn't alone, that there was another hulking hero standing beside me, someone else to shoulder the burden. I looked at my bad knee and prayed the joint would hold together. My legs bounced up and down with tremors. I couldn't let go, not now.

Dad pushed himself off the ground with his hand, one arm still wrapped around his stomach. He stumbled a little, held himself up on the ledge, and then stood up straight.

"Well, I'll be," Dad muttered when he saw me. His eyes moved from me up to the top of the steeple. It was so high that his pupils almost disappeared up into his head. "Nice catch."

"Dad, I—I don't think I can hold it."

"Of course you can," he said. "You're my son."

It was a matter of fact. Dad believed in me. And if he believed in me, I believed, too. He looked at me in that moment the way he had when I'd won each basketball game, when I was named citywide volunteer of the year, when I got second place in the forensics tournament, when I made him my first Father's Day card with construction paper, safety scissors, and glue.

My legs stopped shaking.

In front of Dad's feet lay Justice's body. Justice's index finger shook with a tiny twitch, a tremor. Dad and I stared and waited a tense beat to see if this was significant. Then Justice's entire hand twitched with spasms of life. Its fingers scraped at the crystal, looking for traction, a way to push the body up.

He was reanimating himself.

Dad's demeanor darkened, and he staggered with weariness, but he held his head high, his jaw resolute and strong.

He walked over to a spot on the floor and picked up the old gloves and mask from his costume. He wedged the gloves back into his belt. He used both hands to put the old mask back on his face, which had grown slightly too large for it over the years. When he raised his hands to put on the mask, I saw what he'd been clutching.

A crimson hole gaped wide open in his abdomen. He hadn't been able to avoid the blasts that shot out of Justice, at least not all of them.

"Dad?"

The pressure from the building on my back was enormous. It felt like it would snap me in two.

Dad walked over to Justice. Thick, dark blood leaked in waves from his stomach with each step, but he moved like it was nothing more than a hangnail.

"Dad!" I shouted, desperate. "Let me help you!"

He crouched down beside Justice and looked up at me. He knew as well as I did that I couldn't let go of the building.

He hoisted Justice by the back of his neck and dragged him over to the rocket. Then he turned to me with a sad smile.

"This is what we do, son—we save people."

He tossed Justice up onto the rocket, punched in the code with his fresh, new fingers.

"Dad." I began to cry.

He strapped on his old gloves, one at a time, and straddled the rocket alongside Justice. He pulled the belt over his shoulder and fastened them both in.

"I will always be proud of you."

"Dad!"

"Promise me one thing, Thorn."

"DAD!"

"Promise me"—he snapped Justice's neck out of joint. Then he took his wedding ring and thrust it down Justice's throat the way you force-feed a dog a pill—"that you will love as much as you can."

He looked up at me and waited for an answer. He wasn't going anywhere until he knew I wouldn't make the same mistakes he had. Justice's neck slumped over his collarbone.

My legs felt like they would buckle any minute. I struggled and strained, and tears trickled down my face. This was the real choice Ruth had warned me about. I wanted to save my father; I thought it was the only thing that mattered in the universe. But he and I both knew it wasn't.

I felt the air escape my lips. "I promise."

With that, Dad punched in the final numbers on the pad.

"Dad, please don't—" I begged and shifted my weight and tried to reach out to him with one hand. The building lurched, and I propped my back up against it. I couldn't move.

My whole life I had been convinced that my father didn't know me, didn't understand me. But the truth was that he knew me better than anybody, and he loved me more than anybody in the universe. He even knew what to say in his last moment.

"It will be all right, Thorn." His eyes were fixed on me, strong but gentle, and his voice was firm but assuring. I looked into his face and saw only truth.

I tried not to weep. I didn't want him to think I was a baby, that I wasn't strong enough to bear the hardest choices in life. But he could always see right through me, and this our last moment together was no exception. He said it one last time to make sure I knew it would be true. The first time he said it partly to convince himself. This time he said it to convince me.

"It will be all right."

The last thing I remember before the rocket fired was that he took off his mask, tossed it aside, and he smiled at me. The proudest look I've ever seen.

The rocket launched, and he graced across the heavens, and then he exploded like a million rounds of fireworks put on for everyone around the world to see. I watched the glorious display of light envelop the planet, and then waited breathlessly for them to fade. I stared into the nova where my father had been, and I quietly said good-bye.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I KNEW IT MUST have been important when Uberman asked me to meet him on top of the observation deck of the Wilson Memorial. I hadn't been there since we'd saved the world.

"It's good to see you, Thorn." Uberman flashed me a half-smile. I hadn't seen him smile since before the news coverage of the heroes' possession at the hands of one of their own, and the death and destruction they had unwittingly caused. Their names had been cleared ultimately, but their bravado had eroded along with the world's confidence in them. After she recovered from her injuries, Warrior Woman had returned to her island and vowed never to visit Man's world again.

I'd ridden a wind current down to the observation deck and spotted Uberman sitting on the ledge with his legs dangling off the side. He stared off in the distance, his mind somewhere else. It was strange to see him slouch.

"I have something to ask," he said. He kept his eyes on his hands, folded in his lap, and he picked at dead skin around the nails. "It hasn't been easy ever since, well, you know. I don't think people have much faith in us anymore."

His muscles had grown noticeably softer in the stomach and around his neck. He wiped a greasy streak of blond hair from his forehead.

"What I'm getting at is we really need you, Thorn. People know what you did, what your father did, and well, you'd really help us out here if we could add you to our permanent roster. Now that you're A-level."

His nose started to drip. Jeez, what a mess. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and handed it to him. He blew his nose, loud as a foghorn, and tossed the wadded tissue off the side of the building. A draft caught the tissue and carried it up. Uberman incinerated it with a weak blast of heat vision.

"Can't be seen littering," he said.