Rise of the Heroes (18 page)

“Now talk!” shouted Toby through gritted teeth. “Where is my mom?”

“My … my base …”

BLAM!
Toby fired a flaming ball against the deck, close enough to Tempest's head to singe his hair.

“Not good enough! Where?” persisted Toby. “Antarctica!” spat Tempest. “But you won't be going there.”

A shadow fell across the deck. Both boys saw the second barge had positioned itself close to theirs, bow facing them so they had a close-up view of the gunturret aimed directly at them. Using it on them would be like using a cannon on an anthill.

“End of your brief careers as troublemakers, I think,” Tempest jeered, already scrabbling away from the boys. Then he yelled: “Fire!”

Frozen to the spot, Pete and Toby saw a small flicker
of light deep within the gun barrel as the energy cannon charged up.

But then the barge shuddered violently. Everybody watched in amazement as a silver streak erupted from its side, leaving a gaping hole!

Emily had punctured the prow of the barge, weakening the superstructure so much that it could no longer support the weight of the cannon. The prow tipped forward, then fell from view as the front end of the barge snapped off with a horrendous screech of tearing metal.

With the antigravity system severed in two, the remainder of the barge plunged like a rock.

Doc Tempest jumped to his feet and ran to the edge of the deck to watch the stricken vessel fall. Emily landed on the deck, the silver sheen covering her melting away, returning her to normal.

“Hi,” she said, almost too casually.

Pete looked at her, openmouthed. “You are … uh, I mean, that was incredible!”

“Em! Am I glad to see you!” Toby asked, never taking his eyes from Tempest. “Where's Lorna?”

“I don't know. I thought she was with you,” said Emily. She glanced at Pete in such a way that he was sure she knew what he had done.

Doc Tempest turned to face the trio, anger etched on his face. “You will pay for this!”

“Try me!” said Pete, suddenly feeling angry.

A chorus of guns
click-clacking
made the three heroes look up. The remaining henchmen had finally stopped looting the gold and rushed over to help their boss. About thirty glider-discs hovered around them. Thirty resin-rifles pointed in their direction.

“I'd rather turn you into ice sculptures,” Tempest growled.

The next set of events seemed to happen in slow motion. Emily took several steps forward, chrome slivers already forming across her slight frame.

BLAM!
Thirty guns erupted as one.

A mass of glue-bullets headed straight for them. Toby and Pete just had time to raise their hands as if that feeble attempt would stop the barrage.

Half a dozen bullets clobbered Emily, the impact propelling her against the wall of gold as the gummy resin swelled on impact with her body.

The remaining shots were aimed at Toby and Pete, but they didn't reach their target. Instead the bullets struck an invisible shield Toby had created in front of the boys, taking the full brunt of the assault.

Real time seemed to have caught up. Toby and Pete powered into the air, mustering all the speed they could. Below, the glue-bullets had adhered Emily firmly to the gold stacks. It was clear she was going nowhere.

“We've got to go!” urged Pete.

“We can't leave Emily. And where's Lorna?”

Pete licked his dry lips. “Tobe … buddy.” Now was not the right time for explanations. “We
have
to go!”

Toby allowed Pete to pull him toward the edge of the hurricane wall before they turned around; thirty gliders were in hot pursuit.

“Come on!” screamed Pete. “We can't leave them!”

“If they've been caught then it's up to
us
to get your mother! There's no way we can beat all those guys on our own! Not right now!”

Tempest's soldiers were gaining ground fast. They would be back in firing range soon.

Toby was paralyzed with indecision. Pete grabbed his friend's shoulder so hard it hurt.

“Listen to me. They're more use to Tempest alive than dead if he knows we're still around!”

That made some fractured sense to Toby.

“They're catching up!” persisted Pete. Several bullets whooshed past as if to emphasize his point.

Toby cast one last look at the barge where Emily was stuck fast. He wondered where his sister was. More bullets zipped past, forcing them both to fly through the hurricane wall. By the time the pursuing thugs had followed them through the fierce winds, the sky was empty.

There was nothing but the echo of a double thunderclap.

Anger muddled Toby's mind, making any rational thought slip away. They had arrived back at Pete's house, appearing in his backyard amid a heavy shower of rain that hadn't done much to lift their spirits.

Inside, Toby was ignoring Pete's pleas to stop pacing the floor. Before they had disappeared through the turbulent hurricane wall, Toby claimed he saw the distant figure of Doc Tempest bearing down on Emily, who was caught like a fly in a web. She was struggling, which was a healthy indication she was alive.

For now.

But what about Lorna?

Pete had excused himself, saying he needed to find his second pair of glasses, the free ones with the thick frames. Then he spent a harrowing thirty minutes in the bathroom, replaying the events at Fort Knox over and over. Lorna had swooped into his line of fire … had he hit her? Or had she been caught in the explosion? It was impossible to know. But what should he tell Toby?
That Lorna might be dead, but it wasn't Pete's fault? That it had been an accident?

That didn't stop him from feeling guilty. He stared at his pale reflection in the mirror. If he didn't own up, was he as bad as a villain? And if he told Toby he thought he'd killed Lorna, would that destroy Toby's confidence about finding his mother and Emily? As bad as he felt, Pete eventually convinced himself that it would be better to suffer alone. Thinking his sister was missing was bad enough for Toby. Thinking she might be dead would be too much.

Meanwhile, Toby felt hollow inside. First he'd lost his mother, and now his sister and Emily. He regretted all those pointless arguments he'd had with them … even if it seemed
they
had mostly started them. Worse still, he had never told them how much he really did love them, and the opportunity to do so seemed to be fading with each passing minute. If the four of them hadn't been able to stop Doc Tempest, what could two of them do?

Pete reappeared and nudged his friend out of his stupor, thrusting a cup of hot chocolate in his hands. “That'll keep you awake.”

“Yeah, like I need it. I haven't slept since all this started.” Toby sipped the dark brown liquid in the cup and winced. It tasted terrible. “It's like finding that Web site was a curse.”

Pete didn't reply. He had no doubts at all about the value of their discovery. “Look at it this way,” he said thoughtfully. “We didn't get to use
all
of our powers against him.”

“So? We did nothing! We didn't get my mom, we didn't stop the raid and, to top it off, we lost Lorna and Emily!”

The mention of Lorna made Pete's cheeks burn red. “But
they
didn't get to use everything they downloaded either!”

Toby thought about that. There had seemed to be more than enough Heroic points after Mr. Patel had paid them, so they'd greedily clicked on the mouse button, scooping up every icon that appealed to them. Lorna had explained that by downloading multiple powers the chances would be low that they would download completely useless ones; if they had several, then
one
of them had to be practical.

Only afterward had Emily wondered what they'd do if there were side effects to possessing so many powers at once. This had caused Pete to tread carefully as they left the house, muttering that he was worried that he might explode at any moment. This train of thought nudged something in the back of Toby's mind.

“They can teleport!”

“So?”

“If they can still teleport, then why don't they just get out of… wherever it is they are and come home?”

Pete was about to say, “
Maybe they can't,”
and confess his fears, but he stopped himself. “They could have found something interesting and got distracted, or maybe only one of them has been captured and the other doesn't want to leave … or maybe they've found your mom already?”

“Or maybe they're dead,” Toby finished darkly.

A minute's silence passed between them, Toby deep in thought, Pete in an agony of guilt. Finally Pete summoned the courage to speak again.

“Look, it's only been about an hour since we were there. Chances are that Tempest hasn't even returned to his secret base! Besides, you know how difficult these powers are to control.”

Toby slid the cup onto the table and cradled his head in his hands. He felt miserable.

“We have to think this through,” said Pete, regarding his friend sympathetically.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we still have powers. We've got them for the whole day.” One of the advantages of them paying for the powers was the time they could retain them, in addition to the greater choice on offer.

“Which means we can still save your mom and Emmie,” said Pete with conviction.

“And Lorn.”

“Mmm, yeah.”

Toby looked up sharply and Pete felt his stomach churn. Then he noticed that Toby was almost wearing a smile.
“Emmie?
”

Pete looked away quickly. “Shut up.” Finding the Web site had given Pete a confidence he had been lacking. In private he had flexed his muscles in the mirror, and he was sure there was a
slight
twitch in his biceps.

Toby's thoughts turned dark again. “Do you realize just how big Antarctica is?” He thrust himself back in the chair.

“Yes, it's a continent,” retorted Pete. “But are you forgetting we have this?”

With a flourish, he placed Tempest's broken command wristband on the table. Toby didn't move, but his eyes fixed on it.

“Have you found out how to use it?”

Pete looked away, prodding the device with his finger. “No … but parts of it work.” He strapped it to his wrist and the screen immediately lit up. He held it up to show Toby the cracked display. It simply showed an arrow—with the words “SUPPLY CONVOY LOADING.”

“What use is that? What does it even mean?”

Pete flicked on the television in the kitchen. The news was reporting on the hurricane that had flattened Fort Knox, and a White House spokesman was assuring a press conference that it was just a weather
abnormality and the U.S. gold reserves still were perfectly intact.

“That's right, intact in somebody else's pocket,” mumbled Toby.

The White House spokesman skillfully spun the press conference toward the threat of global warming, and away from the fact that the country was almost bankrupt.

The news report switched to a confused meteorologist who stood in front of a giant satellite image of the storm.

“Now the weather system has performed an extraordinary U-turn and is heading out to sea at an incredible speed … I've never seen anything like this before!” Toby glanced at Pete, who was also listening intently. The weather woman continued as computer graphics overlaid the hurricane with speeds and wind directions.

“The storm must be trapped in an atmospheric super jet stream. Over land the winds have died almost to nothing as the storm passed back into the Gulf of Mexico. Although ground damage is high—never before has a storm moved with such speed—at this time official estimates are …”

The woman hesitated on-screen as she read the teleprompter that rolled invisibly across the camera. To Toby and Pete it looked as if she was staring right at
them. “A thousand miles per hour and increasing? Of course that's impossible—”

Pete turned the television off. Toby threw him an angry glance.

“Hey! I was watching that!”

“No, you were feeling sorry for yourself! Think! We're heroes! Heroes have good times and bad times—but they don't sulk about it.” He waved a comic for emphasis.

Toby shook his head. “So the storm's gone! We know he's headed back to a base somewhere in Antarctica—but that still doesn't help us. I bet he'll be there by now.”

Pete sighed but said nothing. Instead he stared at the wristband. “If only it worked,” he thought, “we could have maybe figured out a way to track Tempest down—”

The arrow on the wristband's screen pointed over Toby's left shoulder. Pete frowned. “The arrow's pointing that way.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Doc Tempest's secret base is in your kitchen?” Toby quipped.

Pete said nothing. Instead he turned himself completely around. The arrow remained true, pointing beyond Toby's shoulder. The flicker of a smile started to crack Pete's face. “It's pointing the way!”