Strike 2: Dawn of the Daybreaker (4 page)
Jennifer laughed and hugged Tobin.
“I’m sorry, Tobin. I miss you. We all do. Let’s hang out Thursday night, okay? Are you doing anything?”
“I’m supposed to go out on patrol, but I’m gonna tell Orion I have to skip it. It’s time I hung out with you guys again.”
“Okay, it’s a plan then. See you in school tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Jennifer got into her car and drove away. Tobin watched her go. Then he grabbed a handful of popcorn from his bag and shoved it into his mouth.
“This sucks,” he said, chomping away.
The next day, Tobin and
Chad
were playing basketball in the
Bridgton
High School
gymnasium during their Advanced Physical Fitness class (the school had just recently reopened after its extensive reconstruction after being nearly destroyed in Tobin’s battle against Vincent Harris seven months ago.) Advanced Physical Fitness was a right of passage for seniors at Bridgton High, as its loosely monitored syllabus consisted of running a few laps, lifting a few weights, and shooting a few hoops. But, mostly, everyone knew, it consisted of talking with your friends for forty-five minutes each day.
“Why do I feel like I’m missing everything?” Tobin asked, as
Chad
stood at the free throw line and sunk a basket.
“Because you are.”
“Hey!”
Chad
laughed. “You have been incommunicado lately, dude. And by ‘lately,’ I mean the last five-to-six months.”
“I know. I’ve just been out every night, either with Keplar or by myself. It was quiet for a while, but now it’s getting kinda crazy again. Orion says crime gets worse as the weather gets warmer. I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it, bro. Seriously. What you have to do is so much more important than hanging out with us idiots.”
Chad
weighed the options with his hands. “Saving lives, fighting crime? That’s a little more important than sneaking into the beach at night and partying until the cops show up.”
“Yeah, I know, but...god, that sounds like fun.”
Chad
laughed. “I told you a million times, dude, there’s one way we could hang out more often: new sidekick, right here.” He pointed at himself. “And, if I help you, you’ll get done so much quicker.”
“But you don’t have any superpowers.”
“So? Batman doesn’t have any superpowers.”
“No, but Batman is a badass. And he didn’t cry during my seventh birthday party sleepover when we watched ‘Toy Story 2.’”
“Dude, that was like ten years ago. Let it go, please.”
After a quick change out of their gym clothes, Tobin and
Chad
were walking down the crowded school hallway; Tobin was heading to his next class, while
Chad
was heading to lunch.
“So apparently Jennifer hangs out with Tommy Evans now?” Tobin asked.
“Welcome to this century,”
Chad
laughed. “Mr. Hastings practically announces it over the intercom every morning. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“How and why did this happen?”
“Um, let me see: she’s smoking hot and the nicest person ever, and he’s the most popular guy in school? It’s not that hard to figure out.”
“I know. I just didn’t think he was her type.”
“What’s her type?”
“I don’t know. Funny guys. He’s not funny. He may be a lot of things, but he is not funny.”
“I don’t know, dude. He’s in my Photography class. He’s pretty funny.”
“He’s not funny,” Tobin repeated. “If she likes him ‘cuz he’s funny, that’s friggin’ bull.”
“You should just be happy for her, dude. She really likes him, I can tell.”
“What, are they, like, going out or something?”
The bell rang.
Chad
headed down the hall toward the cafeteria.
“Gotta go to lunch,” he said. “See ya.”
Tobin yelled out after him. “Hey—are they going out? I thought they were only… hanging out or something. Are they really going out? Hey—are they?”
Chad
turned around with a wave and a laugh. “Later, Tobin!”
Tobin stood in the hallway as the rest of the students rushed into their classrooms. Soon he was standing all by himself.
“Tommy Evans,” he said with disgust. “I’m funnier than Tommy Evans.”
***
At
that night, Tobin was lying on his bed in his room and staring at the ceiling. He was hoping to get some homework done since he didn’t have to work at the grocery store that night, but, instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about everything he had learned from
Chad
that day.
Tobin reached over to his nightstand and grabbed his phone. He quickly typed out a text message to his friend Julie Meyers:
HEY JULIE. AM I FUNNIER THAN TOMMY EVANS?
Tobin waited for a response from Julie, but instead heard a voice from near his bedroom window.
“Who’s Tommy Evans?”
“Ah!” Tobin screamed. Startled, he looked across the room: his robotic friend Scatterbolt was sitting on the edge of his open bedroom window. The three-and-a-half-foot tall, purple-and-silver robot had recently begun a habit of climbing up to Tobin’s room when he needed to ask Tobin a question, even though Tobin and Orion had repeatedly told him it was dangerous, since it had a good chance of making the evening news if someone saw a robot walking around
Bridgton
,
Massachusetts
. But, Scatterbolt insisted, he always made sure to only visit Tobin when it was safe and nobody was around, so there wasn’t anything to worry about. Plus, it was worth the risk; Earth was so much more interesting than boring old Capricious, anyway.
“Oops, sorry, Tobin,” Scatterbolt laughed, hopping up onto a chair next to Tobin’s bed. “What are you doing?”
“Just talking to my friend. I’m supposed to be doing homework, but…I’m not.”
Scatterbolt looked at the screen of Tobin’s phone.
“Oh. You talk to your friends on this a lot, don’t you?”
“Only about twenty-two hours a day.”
“But you never use it for its intended purpose, right? You don’t use your voice, you only write with your fingers.”
Tobin thought it over. “Ya know what, I actually kind of forgot that I could make calls with this thing.”
Tobin’s phone
BUZZED
; he had a reply from Julie. Scatterbolt leaned over and read the message.
“This girl likes you, you know,” the robot said.
“No, she doesn’t,” Tobin replied.
“Yeah, she does. Look. She sent you one of these guys.”
Scatterbolt mimicked a winking emoticon; he closed one eye and smiled brightly.
Tobin laughed and looked to the screen. Julie had written:
OF COURSE YOU
Tobin was surprised. “Whoa, you’re right. That’s a total sign of flirting. Good call, SB.”
Tobin typed on the phone, then sent a reply. He and Scatterbolt waited for a response, staring at the screen.
“Is she gonna write back soon?” the robot asked. “This is really exciting.” The robot suddenly slapped himself in the forehead. “Oh man, I almost forgot! Orion wanted me to come here so we could head to the police station right away.”
“Why?”
“Officer Randy found something. I don’t know what it is, but Orion sounded pretty worried, so it must be a big deal.”
A
BUZZ!
came from Tobin’s phone.
“Do you think it can wait a couple minutes?” the boy asked.
“Yeah, definitely,” Scatterbolt replied, leaning in closer to get a better look at the phone. “What’d she say? Write back, write back.”
***
Forty miles away, Orion was waiting near the rooftop entrance of the Boston Police Department headquarters. The grey-haired superhero was wearing his usual long, red coat, his black boots, and his quiver of arrows on his back. As he adjusted his glasses, he looked down and checked his watch.
“Teenagers,” he said with a grumble.
Finally, the door opened, and Tobin and Scatterbolt walked into the police station from the rooftop outside. Tobin was dressed as Strike.
“About time you got here,” Orion said. “What took you so long?”
“I was, uh, helping him with his homework,” Scatterbolt replied.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Tobin agreed. “Homework.”
“Sure,” Orion said, rolling his eyes. “Uh-huh. Yeah.” The old man led the boy and the robot toward a stairway. “C’mon, Randy has something to show us.”
After opening the door to the police station morgue, Orion, Strike, and Scatterbolt walked into the dark, metallic-walled room. Keplar was waiting for them there, along with Officer Randy Norris of the
Boston
police department. Seven months ago, when Strike had first begun fighting crime in Boston and its surrounding cities, most of the police officers in the area had looked at the hero as a threat. Some, however, had seen that the mysterious, masked vigilante could be a great help to them, and, if they worked together, the city of
Boston
could be safer than it had ever been. Luckily, Officer Randy Norris was one of the cops who saw Strike as an ally: for months now, he had been helping Strike and his friends from Capricious, and in return they had helped him solve many cases of his own. For the forty-two-year-old veteran policeman, it was a little strange to be dealing with a masked teenager, a talking dog, a miniature robot, and a superhero that appeared to be older than his father, but Officer Norris was almost starting to get used to it. Almost.
“The chief would kill me if he knew I called you guys about this,” Officer Norris said, as he led the group through the morgue, “but hell, we don’t know what to do with it. I thought it’d be more of the type of thing you guys would be used to.”
Officer Norris opened one of the morgue draws; there was a dead body lying on it, covered with a sheet.
“We were getting reports of all kinds of weird stuff from people down at the fishing ports,” Officer Norris said. “People’s stuff getting stolen, fisherman saying something was eating whatever they caught, sightings of weird stuff under the docks. So last night we went down there and got into a fight with this guy.”
Officer Norris whipped the sheet off the gurney, revealing the dead body underneath. It was a man of average height, about thirty-five years old, with dark hair. His skin and lips were blue, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“So the guy could use some sun,” Keplar said. “So what?”
“Look closer,” Officer Norris said, pointing to the man’s neck.
Orion leaned in and carefully moved the dead man’s head to one side.
“This man has gills,” Orion explained.
“What the hell…?” Strike wondered, looking closer. He could see them, too: there were four slits on either side of the man’s neck, a few inches under his ears.