School for Sidekicks (7 page)

“Absolutely not,” the Captain said rather bombastically. “That would go against the Commanding Code!”

“Not to mention being crazy dangerous,” Agent Brendan added cautiously. “And violating the daylights out of OSIRIS regulations regarding metahuman conduct.”

The Office of Strategic Intelligence and Research, International Section, had originally been tasked to deal with the aftermath of M-Day and the Hero Bomb. These days OSIRIS was in charge of pretty much everything related to Masks or Hoods, and it was undoubtedly the agency Agent Brendan worked for.

“Right,” said the Captain, “that, too. Anyway, I was only worrying about the boy. He's had a rough day—going up against Spartanicus and all that. He helped me out and I wanted to make sure he'd be all right.”

“He'll be fine. OSIRIS plans on taking very good care of this one. Good-bye, Captain.”

“Good-bye,” the Captain said, and his voice sounded stiff and irritated.

“Interesting stuff you've wrapped yourself up with, Evan,” Brendan said, and I heard the hollow thunking again. “The lab techs are gonna love it.”

Silence followed. At that point staying awake became too much work.

*   *   *

A dull thump brought me suddenly and completely awake, and I jerked upright. Or, I tried to at least. My brain told my body to move, that's for sure. But nothing happened.

There was another thump. “Looks like some cracks are starting to form.” It was a woman's voice with a distinct but completely unfamiliar accent. “Hopefully that means he's going to wake up soon, and not Contingency Beta.”

A man answered her. “Contingency Beta? How likely is it that he's going to explode at this point, Backflash? The X-rays and ultrasounds all show that he's nearly healed.”

“I don't expect a problem, Mike, but you never know. That's why we put him in a blast vault. If we do go Contingency Beta, the armor in the walls and floor should direct the force upward.”

“And blow out the ceiling, venting the chamber.”

“Not an ideal outcome,” replied Backflash, “but infinitely better than having him go Contingency Beta in a populated zone, don't you think?”

Mike replied, “I don't like it. I suppose the whole chamber's rigged for jettison in case of Case Omega, too.” He didn't sound at all happy.

“Of course. Case Omega is simply too dangerous to allow.”

Where was I? And why couldn't I move?

Mike spoke again. “He's just a kid. They're all just kids these days. We shouldn't have to treat them like this.”

“So, what would you have us do?” Backflash sounded more weary than anything. “Take no precautions at all? Let meta events run and see what happens? That's how we got Spartanicus.”

“I don't know. This just feels wrong.”

I wanted out. Now. I pushed and twisted … and something gave with a crackling sound like a thousand people opening candy wrappers all at once.

“Something's happening.” The woman's voice again. “I'm moving to the monitoring station and you are, too, Mike. Come on.”

“I'm staying here. The techs all think the cocoon's nothing more than a healing mechanism. He shouldn't have to wake up alone. He's going to be disoriented enough as it is.”

“Don't make me make this an order, Mike. You know the protocol.”

“All right, but I'm doing this under protest.” The man's voice was slowly receding.

“Noted.”

A sharp metallic bang followed.

I jerked again, harder this time. That produced more crackling, and a flood of bright light as I forced myself into a sitting position.

I don't know what I expected to see at that moment—my bedroom back home … the museum lobby … a hospital room …

I got … well, none of those. I found myself sitting in a large room shaped like the inside of a Chinese takeaway box, with its walls sloping outward. The walls were thick and made of steel—obvious from the heavy rivets holding them together, like pictures I'd seen of armor on a battleship. The floor was the same construction, though; there the rivets had been sunk in to provide a flat surface. The ceiling looked like it might be concrete, and everything was painted a dreary industrial gray.

What was going on?

I tried to move and discovered something was still keeping my legs from moving. A quick look showed me that from the hips down I was covered in what looked like spray-foam insulation stuff after it's been exposed to the weather for a year or two. More of it lay around me in lumps and shards. I picked up a piece and squeezed. It was much harder than it looked and I realized that it must be a thicker version of the scabweb I'd found on the back of my head at Camp Commanding.

Weird. Apparently
I
was what lay at the center of the candy coating.

I tried to move my legs again. Fractures spiderwebbed their way across the stuff, with more of that same candy-wrapper crackle I'd heard earlier. A moment later, the covering fell away and I was free. I turned and put my feet down on the floor—my cocoon had been sitting on a low steel table. I didn't stand up right away though since I felt a bit wobbly.

I poked at a chunk of scabweb. It fell to the floor with a soft crunch and I thought about the fact that the stuff had come from within me after Spartanicus nailed me with his death beam. It was surreal and kind of creepy. To distract myself, I looked around the room again. There was nothing but me, the table, and a heavy bank-vault-style door. The door had a small metal box welded to the center where I would have expected one of those big ship's wheel handles. I felt like I ought to have been frightened, but I was curious more than anything.

Where was I?

It was time to find out. I stood up, took two steps, staggered, and then face-planted on the steel floor. My left cheekbone made a horrendous cracking noise and then went numb. When I reached up to touch it, I could feel a thick and greasy liquid sludging its way out of my pores. Yay, more scabweb …

I was more cautious when I got up the second time, balancing carefully with outstretched arms as I made my way to the door. My legs felt like old sponge cake.

There was no handle, but the box in the middle looked like it might be some kind of electronic lock. It was about five inches square, with a shallow divot in the center the size of my fingertip. I poked at it, but nothing happened. Yeah, big surprise, there, Evan. If it
was
some kind of fingerprint scanner, it sure as snot wasn't going to be keyed to me. I sighed. It looked like I might as well get used to this room, because I wasn't going anywhere soon.

I half turned to go back to the table, then stopped as I felt a flash of that same rebellious spark that made me talk back to Spartanicus. Something crackled above me, like a speaker turning on, but no one said anything. I ignored it. I was
not
going to just sit here and wait for things to happen to me. Not if I could help it, anyway. I wanted to be a Mask, right? Masks rescued themselves; they didn't wait around for someone else to do it for them.

But really, what could I do? My arms felt almost as weak as my legs, and that door was thick enough that I couldn't have done much about it if I were as strong as I had been when I smacked Spartanicus with that piece of rebar. All I had on me were the clothes I was wearing when I went to the museum: sneakers, jeans, a long-sleeve tee, and underneath it all, my Dorkman uniform. Well, that and my OSIRIS ring. I looked at the box on the door again. What were the chances?

Zero.

Still … I pressed the emblem on my ring against the circle in the center of the lock.

Nothing.

“Wait, he's up already.” It was the woman's voice from when I started to wake up—Backflash. “And, he's got his school ring, how'd he get that in with him?”

“I don't know,” replied Mike's voice. “I suppose no one was really thinking about what he had with him in the cocoon.”

I tried to pull my hand away from the door so I could turn to see the speakers—maybe there was a camera, too—but the ring was stuck tight to the reader.

“Well, it's too late to get back up there now,” said Backflash. “Let's see how this plays out. Hey, is that microphone live? Shut it off.”

“That's hardly—”

Backflash cut him off sharply. “It wasn't a suggestion, Mike.” The overhead speaker crackled off.

At the same time the lock buzzed, and a metallic voice began to speak, “Signet verified. DNA sampling … Subject FLR871 verified. Student status verified. Authorization for all grade C and lower hatches verified. Updating user profile. Hello … Evan … Quick.”

There was a sharp
click
followed by multiple deep
clunks
like metal bars moving. The door opened and I found myself facing a short hallway with an elevator-like door at the end. When I started toward it, I almost face-planted again. My legs were still really shaky, and I had to move slowly. It wasn't so much that I felt weak as that I felt weird, like I'd forgotten how to walk properly somehow.

When I got closer to the far door I saw there were no buttons. But there was another box. I pressed my ring to the circle in the middle. The process was faster this time.

“Door authorization verified. Summoning tram,… Evan … Quick.”

The ride was really long. Long enough for my cheekbone to finish healing and for me to notice and peel off the scabweb. That was after I slid down to the floor because my legs didn't want to hold me up. Eventually, the trip ended, the doors opened, and I stood. I got off and moved slowly down another hall that opened into a much larger space.

I halted on the threshold, too stunned to do anything but gape for several long beats. I had entered alien territory—a huge globular room opened out in front of me. Big enough to play a football game inside, it arced both up and down, with a thick clear ramp of some glasslike material leading down to an equally transparent floor that seemed to have been poured into the lower half of the globe.

A brilliant point of light, like a tiny sun, hovered above the exact center of the dome. It was almost too bright to look at. That kept me from realizing what it really was for several long heartbeats—an actual miniature representation of Earth's sun, with even smaller planets hanging in the space around it.

Various bits of high-tech gadgetry were scattered around. Some of it pierced the matrix of the big transparent floor and extended into what I now recognized as a second open space below. But what really drew my eye was a huge and very alien-looking device? Sculpture? Growth? Whatever it was, it lay directly beneath the projected sun.

It looked like someone had crossbred a cactus with a whole school of jellyfish, dipped the results in a bright candy coating and then tried to build an orchestra's worth of musical instruments out of the results. Looking closer, it became clear that there were actually several dozen loosely interconnected whatever-they-were, with one particularly large pipe-organ-like device roughly in the center of the cluster.

 

7

Schooled

“Welcome to the AMO,” a gentle voice said from just to my right, and I almost jumped out of my skin.

An older man was leaning against the wall beside the door. He wasn't trying to hide, and if it hadn't been for all the wild alien gadgetry I'd never have missed him. Mid-forties maybe. Fit, with a broad face and dark hair in a buzz cut. He was big and burly and kind of scary looking, but his eyes were a soft brown and strangely gentle.

He nodded when I looked at him. “Hello, Evan. I have to apologize for not being there to meet you when you woke up.” His voice was quiet, and almost as gentle as his eyes. “I was … unavoidably called away, and by the time I got back here … well, you heard some of that over the intercom. This is a school for Masks and our Chancellor wanted to see how you'd do in strange circumstances.” He smiled ruefully. “I am truly sorry that your first day at the new school started off with a test.”

There was something about him that just made me want to trust him, and I briefly considered telling him that I had heard him as I was waking up. But then I thought about the woman's harder voice and all that stuff about Contingency Beta and Case Omega—and somehow it didn't seem like a good idea to let
anyone
know I'd overheard any of that.

“Where am I?” I asked. “And who are you? And how long have I been asleep? And where are my parents? And did you say this was a school for
Masks
?” Somehow, once I started asking questions, I found that I couldn't stop, even though my voice was rising wildly.

The man held his hands up in a slow-down gesture and smiled a reassuring sort of smile. “First and probably most importantly, your parents. They should be on their way to OSIRIS headquarters right now. They've been waiting to hear from you, and I promise you can talk to them in a few minutes, once I've had a chance to answer a few questions you might have and given you a quick explanation of where you are and what's been happening since the attack at the museum.”

He extended his hand. “I'm Professor Matheny, by the way, but you can call me Mike if you'd like. I teach music among other things. I'll be your advisor here at the AMO.”

“Music? AMO? Advisor? I'm lost.” And I was, though far less scared about the whole thing than I felt I ought to be.

“The AMO is the Academy of Metahuman Operatives. It's a school for people like you. It's run by OSIRIS and even its existence is classified.”

“People like me? So this really
is
a Mask school?” That's when my legs gave out and I landed on the floor with a dull thump. I
was
going to be a Mask!

“I'm sorry.” Mike squatted down and put a hand on my shoulder as I tried to get up. “Are you all right?”