The Greatest Power (3 page)

So he answered the policemen with a shy “Uh, never mind” and slipped away the first chance he got.

“So,
señor,”
Sticky said when they were safely outside. “Are you ready?”

“Ready?” Dave asked, looking at the gecko’s expectant face.

“You have walls to walk,
señor
. Bad guys to catch.” Sticky climbed fully out of the sweatshirt and perched on Dave’s shoulder. “Can’t you feel it?” He tugged on Dave’s ear, leading him down the street to the manhole cover. “It’s time for you to be the Gecko!”

Dave found a quiet place to take off his red sweatshirt and put on a dark cap and sunglasses. Then he clicked the Invisibility ingot into the Aztec wristband and,
poof
, he disappeared.

“Now where?” he whispered to Sticky. “To the mansion?”

“Sí, señor,”
Sticky whispered back.

“But … how? I can’t ride my bike … and it’s a long way!”

“Shhh!” Sticky warned as people were passing by. “Leave the bike. We’re taking a zippier way in.”

Now, you may be wondering why two completely invisible beings would have to whisper, and the answer is quite simple.

Being invisible does not make your
voice
invisible.

Or, rather, it does not make your voice
inaudible
.

And hearing voices that are coming from nowhere frightens people. It makes them think they’re in the midst of ghosts.

Spirits.

Poltergeists that will walk through their walls and shake their chandeliers.

Evil entities that will frighten them with chilling gusts of wind and eerie moaning and groaning and
wooooooo
ing in the night.

It is definitely wise to be,
shhhhhh
, very quiet when you’re invisible.

And, you may also be wondering, if Dave,
and
his clothes,
and
the backpack he carried,
and
the talking lizard on his shoulder all became invisible, then why wouldn’t his
bike
become invisible, too, should he hop on it and ride?

Unfortunately, the explanation is not a simple one. It has to do with particle cancellation and ion phasing and a mysterious rearrangement of the visibility spectrum.

In other words, the science behind the magic of invisibility is not entirely understood. It’s a little like electricity. It works the way it does, and we just accept that and get on with things.

What Dave was getting on with at that moment was wrestling back the manhole cover in the middle of the street. “Why am I doing this?” he whispered.

“Ándale, hombre!”
Sticky urged. “People are coming!”

A manhole cover is a heavy thing, and Dave could not help but moan and groan as he scraped it back, and Sticky could not help but tell him, “Shhhh! Shhhhh!”

To the people on the street, it looked as though someone was moving the cover from
beneath
it. So when all that emerged from the opening in the street were intermittent wisps of steam, the moaning and groaning and
shhhhh
ing sounds took on an eerie feel. A ghastly, ghostly feel. A better-run-for-your-life-or-the-sewer-monsters-will-getcha feel.

By the time a brave passerby had shoved the lid back in place (trapping, he hoped, the under-world spirits for at least a little while), Dave and Sticky had descended the cold metal rungs of a ladder and were standing on the cement shore of a dark, lazy river.

“It smells
awful
in here!” Dave whispered (although, at this point, he could really have quit with the whispering).

“Sí,”
Sticky replied.

“What are we
doing
down here?”

“Being superheroes?” Sticky said.

“We are not superheroes! We are… we are …”

“Invisible?”

“Yes! That’s all!”

“But,
señor
, right now we should switch to Gecko Power.”

“Why? So I can be the Gecko? What kind of crazy superhero is the Gecko? I don’t want to be the Gecko!”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky said. “If people want to call you the Gecko, let them call you the Gecko.” He eye-eye-eyed Dave. “There are worse fates,
señor.”

“Never mind. Just tell me where I am and which way we’re going. And what is that
smell
?”

Now, perhaps you’ve given some thought to what’s beneath manhole covers as you walk across them or bump over them on your bike (or, for that matter, thump over them in a car).

Dave never had.

Manholes were manholes. Holes where men could work on … who knows what. He did not realize that beneath the street was a whole maze of
channels and tunnels and corridors. That along the walls and ceiling of some of these corridors were pipes and cables and strange industrial boxes and grates.

He also did not realize that the dark, lazy river that ran through the maze was a collection of many things, but mostly water and waste.

So when Dave said, “Just tell me where I am and which way we’re going,” Sticky very calmly replied, “I think a light-stick would help,
señor.”

He scurried to a side pouch of Dave’s backpack and hefted the small (but powerful) flashlight that Dave had learned to take everywhere. And when Dave clicked it on and took a look around, he said, “What in the world
is
this place?” He shined the light on the lazy river. “And what is
that
?
”

“This is Sewer City,
señor
, and
that
is exactly what it smells like.”

Dave looked at Sticky. “You’re kidding, right?”

Sticky gave a little gecko shrug. “And unless you want to go through it, you should switch to Gecko Power.”

Dave most definitely did
not
want to go through it, so he switched out the Invisibility in-got (being careful not to drop it into the inky, stinky river), then clicked in Wall-Walker.

“Ándale, hombre!”
Sticky said, holding the flashlight like a headlight as he perched on Dave’s shoulder. He pointed upstream. “Thataway!”

So, lickety-split, Dave scurried along the channels, moving like an oversized gecko with his hands and feet against the walls. He turned this way and that as Sticky commanded until, finally, he asked, “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Sí, señor.”

“How
do you know where we’re going?”

“We’re following skid marks,
señor.”

“Skid
marks? What skid marks?”

“See? Right there!” Sticky said, flashing the light over a black gash on the wall. “You should see that
loco
honcho ricky-race around this place.”

“Who? Damien Black?”

“You know any other
loco
honchos?”

“But … on what?”

“Oh, one of his get-there-quick machines.”

Which was just the easiest way to describe Damien Black’s Sewer Cruiser.

(Or, if you will, PU Cruiser.)

It was small like a moped, but with ape-hanger handlebars, and gadgets, mirrors, and gizmos galore. It was (of course) black, with a wicked rocket-fuel-injected motor that could go from zero to one-fifty in four point six seconds and wheels that turned sideways, transforming it into a sewage-spewing Jet Ski.

And as Dave geckoed his way along the walls, he began seeing more and more skid marks left behind by Damien’s Sewer Cruiser. “We’re getting close, aren’t we?” he panted.

“Sí, señor,”
Sticky said, but his voice was small, and his little gecko heart was clacking like castanets.

“You okay?” Dave asked.

But just then they turned a corner, and Dave
saw a strange contraption glistening in the flooding light of a mega-watt bulb.

It had ape-hanger handlebars.

Gadgets, mirrors, and gizmos galore.

And it was parked, kickstand down, next to a narrow spiraling ladder that wound around a wide metal pole.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Dave whispered as he came to a halt.

They were, indeed, there. And although they could have turned around and gone back the way they’d come (or could have found the nearest manhole cover and quickly escaped to fresh air and clear skies), the die had been cast. The momentum built. They’d traveled the entire distance from City Bank to the underbelly of Damien Black’s mansion.

There simply was no going back.

Damien Black’s mansion looms like a monster high above the city on Raven Ridge. It’s a house that seems held together by the unyielding forces of evil. With tall, pointy spires, shutters dangling from a single hinge, and odd, creaky, turning-pulling-cranking thingamajigs mounted in inexplicable places, the mansion appears to have a life, a
purpose
, of its own.

The mansion, however, is but the tip of the iceberg, as what is visible aboveground is a fraction of the vast heebie-jeebie creepiness concealed underground.

Deep beneath the floorboards of the mansion’s first story are odd caverns.

And caves.

And dark, diabolical dungeons.

There is also a massive den of dastardly disguises.

A mammoth chamber for sneaky-peeky surveillance doodads.

An enormous workshop that, besides the standard saws and hammers and wrenches, is chock-full of thingamajigs and thingamabobs, doohickeys and whatsits, and widgety-gadgety gizmos.

I could go on and on about the layered labyrinth beneath Damien Black’s mansion, but for now, let’s get back to Dave and Sticky, shall we? They are, after all, headed (in a roundabout way) straight into danger.

After ascending the narrow spiraling ladder for a few turns, Dave whispered, “I feel like I’m climbing up a big piece of rusty DNA.”

“DNA?” Sticky asked, for he had, of course, never heard of deoxyribo-anything.

“Never mind,” Dave said absently.

“Never mind?
Señor
, how can you say never mind?”

“Easy,” Dave said, looking up, up, up the twisty, rusty ladder. “Like this: Never mind.”

Sticky stood on his back legs and crossed his arms, staring at Dave as they continued up, up, up. “You think you’re such a hotshot,
hombre
, knowing what this DNA is? Well, heeeere’s a leeetle news flash: I know lots of things you don’t.” He got down on all fours. “Like, say, where we’re going.” He gave Dave a sneaky-peeky look and added, “But, then, that’s something you’re probably better off
not
knowing.”