School for Sidekicks (29 page)

It was Burnish's turn to roll her eyes, though I could see sweat beading up at her hairline and rolling down her temples, which kind of undermined the effect. “Yeah, we discussed that. Several times. You just need to get the rough details and I'll take care of the rest. Just keep shifting and I'll tell you when—wait. I think that's good enough. Let's try it. Go!”

Emberdown and NightHowl leaned in on either side of Blurshift, addressing the iris scanner and microphone respectively. With a flash and a warble, and a grunt from Burnish, the system activated, “Handprint verified. Voice verified. Retina scan verified. Subject AAA111 verified. Bittersharp full-access status verified.” That was followed by a clunk from the heavy door. A moment later, it began to swing open.

I leapt forward, ready to slip through as soon as the gap was wide enough. “We're in! Come on.”

Burnish started to pull her arm free of the box, then swore and stopped. “Hang on! I feel something…” She pivoted in place and used her free arm to reach around behind her, feeling along the lip of the door. “That's not good.”

“What?” I asked.

“I couldn't feel it through the shielding before, but the door's got a second layer of security. It's right … here.” She touched a finger to a small black circle set into the steel vault's doorframe. “Let me … yeah. Only one of us can go through on a given biometric key without some sort of special authorization—which we don't have. Any more, and the door slams, alarms sound, and all kinds of mayhem breaks loose. Also, we're going to have to close it behind you, because things go boom if it stays open too long, too.”

“Behind
me
?” I whispered.

“Got to,” said Burnish. “It'll take all four of us to open the door again, and we need Blindmark and Speedslick on lookout. Time's wasting, get moving. We'll close up behind you to keep things from going pear-shaped, then crack it open every half hour on the dot until 5 a.m. to give you a way out. Make sure you get back by then, because the school will start to wake up not long after. Now, go! Or, are you too sidekick to handle this on your own?”

I wanted to argue, to tell her I really wasn't ready to go spying through the hidden underbelly of OSIRIS all by myself, but that would have wasted time we didn't have. To say nothing of confirming every bad thing she'd ever said or thought about me. So, I just nodded and ducked through the door. The heavy metallic sound of it closing behind me was the loneliest sound I'd ever heard. I quickly set the vibrating alarm on my uniform's built-in phone to silently buzz me at fifteen-minute intervals.

I hurried down the short hallway, stopping just shy of the big globe room, and creeping forward the last few feet. I couldn't see Backflash or anyone else in the main area around the freaky alien-looking equipment, so I peered down through the clear floor to check if she was in her cubicle. She wasn't, nor at the nearby lab bench where the Spartanicus-styled Mark IX was spread all over the place.

By chance, the head was turned my way.
Ugh
. Seeing those dead mechanical eyes looking up at me gave me the screaming creepies. I really wanted nothing more at that point than to turn tail and head back to the school side of things. But I'd come to unravel the mysteries of Deimos, and this was the heart of it all—probably the exact center of the moon.

Reluctantly, I crept down the ramp and started to make my way into the thicket of candy-colored weirdness that Backflash used to conduct her major experiments. It was only as I waded in that it occurred to me that this might all be technology Backflash had brought back from the future. If so, who knew what it could do?

I froze then for about a dozen heartbeats, and I had to fight the urge to run back to the door and pound on it to have them let me out. I'd never been more aware that I was just a thirteen-year-old kid and not James Bond or some kind of superhacker. I mean sure, I had powers, but aside from my scabwebs, they were pretty minor and not even a little bit reliable. Burnish was right. I was just a freaking sidekick!

Only.

It was the “only” that saved me, because it was a pretty big “only.” It was the one that started the sentence, “Only, I want to be more.” And I did. So
very
much more. I wanted to be a hero someday, even if I did have to start out as a sidekick. I had always wanted that. That was why I'd cared so much about Captain Commanding and been so crushed when he turned out to be a giant jerk. Because being a hero mattered to me, because I wanted to be a Mask so that I could do some real good in the world. Maybe I wasn't there yet. But it had to start somewhere right? Maybe that somewhere was here.

I'd never know if I didn't try. Forcing my feet to carry me forward, I slid deeper into the maze of—possibly—futuristic technology. When I got to the console where I'd first seen Backflash, I took off my right gauntlet and hesitantly reached out a fingertip. The machine felt greasy slick and warm, but faintly prickly, like someone had rubbed olive oil on a piece of wedgwood. But I couldn't detect any residue on my fingertips when I pulled them away. It also gave off a faint, atonal hum that I could only hear through my fingers, if that made any sense.

The terrified voice in the back of my head was saying I should get the heck out of there and that this was the moment in the Mask horror movies where everything goes horribly, horribly wrong. Instead of bolting, I tucked my glove into my belt and climbed into the mesh seat. Predictably, that's when things went horribly, horribly wonky.

The spiky-bright blue-raspberry tentacle suddenly curled down and touched its starfish-shaped tip to my forehead, just as it had with Backflash. Word-tastes exploded into my mind like a sour-candy encyclopedia. My mouth filled with sharp/tart/meaning that had no relation to any human language, yet somehow made sense.

Q
UERY
? U
SER
-
HUMAN
,
UNFAMILIAR
TO
THIS
CANDY
/
KALEIDOSCOPE
/
MACHINE
/
INTELLIGENCE
. I
DENTIFY
YOUR
FLAVOR
/
NAME
/
SELF
?

Evan,
I thought.
I'm Evan Quick.

H
ELLO
,
USER
E
VANQUICK
/
SWEET
/
SHORT
/
BURST
. H
OW
MAY
I
ACCEDE
TO
YOUR
THOUGHT
DEMANDS
?

What are you?

C
ONFUSED
/
BITTER
/
SHARP
AM
I. I
NTELLIGENCE
CRYSTALLIZED
IN
SPIKE
/
CACTUS
/
COMPUTER
. Q
UERY
NOT
SENSE
MAKING
. R
ELATED
MACHINE
INTELLIGENCE
VAT
GROWN
/
SOURSWEET
.

It took me several long beats to figure that out. Whatever the thing was it used a lot of unusual words.

Did Backflash make you?

U
SER
B
ACKFLASH
FIRST
ENTERED
SYSTEM
FOUR
THOUSAND
ORBITAL
CYCLES
OF
THIS
PLANET
/
MOON
/
SAVORY
SOLIDS
AFTER
INITIALIZATION
.

You're four thousand Mars years old?
I guessed.

S
WEET
/
BRIGHT
/
AFFIRMATIVE
.

So, not from the future then.

Who built you? And why? And how did you end up as part of an OSIRIS facility?

C
REATOR
INTELLIGENCES
HOT
/
BITTER
/
BRIGHT
GREW
US
FOR
THE
WAR
WITH
THE
HATE
/
DARK
/
SOUR
. T
HEY
PUT
US
IN
THIS
PLACE
FOR
YOUR
PEOPLE
TO
USE
IF
/
WHEN
THE
HATE
/
DARK
/
SOUR
ARRIVE
. U
SER
B
ACKFLASH
FIRST
ACCESSED
THIS
UNIT
ONE
HUNDRED
AND
FIFTY
-
FOUR
E
ARTH
ORBITS
FROM
NOW
,
AFTER
THE
HATE
/
DARK
/
SOUR
INVADED
/
WILL
INVADE
/
MAY
HAVE
INVADED
—
IRRESOLVABLE
TEMPORAL
ERROR
. U
SER
B
ACKFLASH
HAS
RETURNED
FROM
THE
/
A
/
POSSIBLE
—
IRRESOLVABLE
TEMPORAL
ERROR
—
FUTURE
TO
PREVENT
HER
TIMELINE
FROM
COMING
INTO
EXISTENCE
.

Wait, what? I don't understand. Can you explain?

P
ERHAPS
IT
WOULD
BE
BETTER
TO
LET
SAVORY
-
SWEET
/B
ACKFLASH
TELL
YOU
IN
HER
OWN
THOUGHT
/
MEMORY
/
FLAVORS
.

The bizarre interface vanished and I found myself plunged into Backflash's memories. Two hundred years flashed by in an instant. History that followed our own up to the point of the Hero Bomb—a device Backflash had brought back through time to split our timeline off from her own.

In the other timeline, armadillo-like aliens, the hate/dark/sour—Kith'ara to Backflash—invaded Earth in the 2050s, wiping out most of humanity. A few survivors lived on in the asteroid mining colonies, where habitats had been built in tunnels humanity had found when they arrived. The hot/bitter/bright had bored and shielded them against Kith'ara technology, though the humans didn't learn that until much later.

The surviving asteroid miners weren't able to really fight the Kith'ara until the accidental discovery of the Hero Bomb technology. Originally much more physically destructive, the bomb had been devised as a mining tool. But even with the bomb the human population was simply too small to create enough metasoldiers to defeat the Kith'ara.

Humanity had nearly been wiped out by the time they found the facilities on Deimos. So, when Backflash got her powers, they made a hard decision. She would bring the Hero Bomb back in time to before the invasion and detonate it, erasing her own timeline's present to give humanity a chance at a future.

I wondered then why the machine was giving me such thorough access to a system that ought to have the highest level of classified protection of anything in the solar system.

I
T
IS
MY
PRIMARY
/
BRIGHT
/
SHARPSWEET
PURPOSE
TO
PROVIDE
INFORMATION
TO
ALLOW
YOUR
SPECIES
TO
FIGHT
THE
HATE
/
DARK
/
SOUR
. I
NFORMATION
MUST
NOT
BE
RESTRICTED
/
HIDDEN
/
SMOKY
. Y
OUR
QUERY
IS
NOT
SENSE
MAKING
.

I didn't actually mean it as a query, but—
I shook my head.
Never mind. Can you tell me anything about why Backflash runs the AMO the way she does?

AMO
CREATED
TO
BUILD
/
NURTURE
/
SMOKY
-
SHARP
METAWARRIORS
TO
FIGHT
THE
HATE
/
DARK
/
SOUR
.

How? Our powers are so much weaker than the Hero Bomb generation. And the school seems to create as many Hoods as it does Masks. That can't be right.

H
OODS
AND
M
ASKS
ARE
TWO
SIDES
OF
THE
SAME
SMOKY
-
SWEET
/
GAME
.

What is smoky-sweet/game?
I asked.

H
OODS
AND
M
ASKS
COMPETING
AGAINST
EACH
OTHER
TO
THE
DEATH
/
ENDING
/
SOUR
. O
NLY
THE
STRONGEST
WILL
SURVIVE
TO
FIGHT
THE
HATE
/
DARK
/
SOUR
.