The Last Hero (Book 2): Rise of the Ultras (14 page)

“
T
his isn’t going
to be easy. It’s going to take everything we’ve got, and a little of what we don’t. It’s going to break us. It’s going to hurt us. It might well kill us. But it’s what we have to do. It’s what we’re
here
to do. And if we don’t do it, everything we care about will fall. Everything we’ve fought so hard for will fall. And I do not want that. None of us want that. So let’s not let that happen.”

I stood amongst the ULTRAs now, right in the middle of the row of them. Orion was opposite, pacing side to side, giving a speech. He had a plan. A plan he wanted to talk about. A plan he wanted to execute today. Because time was of the essence.

I couldn’t deny I was feeling a little shaky, the taste of sick still clinging to my throat. When I’d agreed to join the Resistance, I’d expected it to be much like it was in the movies—months and months of planning signified by dialogue-free dissolve cuts into one another—
then
a foolproof attack.

But only an hour had passed since I’d agreed to help the ULTRAs fight against the ULTRAbots and we were gearing up for action.

I looked along the line at the ULTRAs. I knew all their names now. The guy with the rocky hands called himself Stone. The man with the blades, Slice. There was Vortex. Aqua. Roadrunner. Ember. All of these people—these ULTRAs—and I wasn’t just staring at them anymore, like they were different. They were what I was. They were ULTRAs. They were the last remaining troops of the Resistance.

Together, we were all that was left. The only force that could stop the ULTRAbots taking down every last ULTRA, and then tightening their grip on humanity in general, as Orion theorized they would, ushering in a new era of witch hunting, paranoia and increased security unlike anything the world had seen before.

“Roadrunner managed to locate a compound where the ULTRAbots are being produced. Now we are well aware that there are several of these compounds around the globe, but we believe this to be their main hub. If we can strike there, we can severely limit their numbers and make our job a whole lot easier.”

“Cut ’em by thousands,” Roadrunner said, still struggling to keep still, like a child after a load of Hershey's.

“Destroying the production compounds where the ULTRAbots are created means we have a finite number to deal with, not an infinite number. We cut off the head of the snake, and then we deal with the body. We also believe that the compounds contain the very power source giving the ULTRAbots their strength. If we can destroy that source, then we can destroy the ULTRAbots. We can turn this battle in our favor.”

I nodded, tried to look sure about myself. I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. How could anyone be?

But now wasn’t the time for worrying about what might be, of what might’ve been.

Now was the time for action.

“Every hour, Roadrunner observed that the ULTRAbots switch shifts. Half of them go in for servicing and recharging; another half leave to attack. During that window, there’s a ten-minute lapse in security where the ULTRAbots in for re-charging are too weak to report any anomalies, and the ULTRAbots sent out are technically cut off from the main hub. We strike when the first half go back for their recharging. That way, they’re at their weakest. Glacies will teleport us all there, and we’ll strike as effectively as we possibly can. Subtlety would be nice—sneaking past these creations and destroying the source would be preferable—but we have to prepare for the worst.”

Orion walked us through the Plan A. I teleported everyone over there. Roadrunner ran Stone into the middle of the compound, past the cameras and the booby traps, where he would change his form and take on all the heat from the weapons and the bullets. After that, the rest of us would make our move to sneak inside the compound itself, and in our own ways, we’d fight off whatever stood in our way. We’d battle through the ULTRAbots, who should be weakened. And then we’d destroy the power source, thus destroying the supply chain
and
every ULTRAbot produced at this facility.

“Any questions?” Orion asked.

Nobody said a word. There was something niggling at me, though. Something I felt the need to address. “Your powers,” I said. “You said… you said they’re weakened. Are you going to be okay out there?”

The silence around me reassured me that I wasn’t the only one worried about Orion.

“Trust me, Glacies,” Orion said. “I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

He kept his stare on me for a few seconds. I got the feeling he wasn’t so convinced by his own abilities anymore.

“No more questions?”

“Yeah,” Stone said, his fists and body turning to stone. “Who wants a bet on who’ll smash up the most ULTRAbots?”

“I’ll challenge you on that,” Aqua said, spraying water out of her palms so fast and so powerful that she hovered into the air.

“Me too,” Slice said, sharp knives unfurling from his skinny hands, covering his arms.

I watched the rest of the ULTRAs reveal their powers. I watched them all standing there beside me, freaks like me. Except I was different. I had many abilities. Teleportation. Telekinesis. Strength. Speed. The ability to heal.

I’d never believed Orion when he said I was different; that I was special.

Now, I started to wonder if maybe it was true.

“Make peace with the lives you’re leaving behind,” Orion shouted, as the ground began to shake with the power rattling against it. “Say farewell to the existences you thought you knew. There is no time for sentimentality. Not anymore.”

He put on his black coat and bowler hat, covering up who he really was.

“We are ULTRAs,” Orion said.

“We are ULTRAS!” the group echoed.

“And we are going to fight for this planet.”

“Yes we are!”

“Link hands, Glacies. Link hands with your people and do what you have to do.”

I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to teleport all of us away from here. But then I remembered I didn’t have to be. Because Orion could teleport, too.

And the power in this room was tangible. I’d never felt more excited and afraid at the same time in my life than right now.

“Link hands!” Orion shouted, reaching for my hand.

I held on to Vortex’s hand. Squeezed my grip around it as the rest of the group kept their powers charging up. I saw Cassie in my mind. Ellicia. Everyone back home who I was doing this for. The life I’d left behind to protect those people.

This wasn’t for me. It was for them.

It was what I had to do.

“Hold on!”

I looked at Orion’s hand. Saw heat simmering from it. A blue hue rising from it. I felt his power. Couldn’t explain it, but there was just a feeling to it. A strength and a force to it unlike anything I’d ever felt.

I closed my eyes. Listened to the shouting, to the powers raging all around me. I felt the floor shaking. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“Hold on,” I whispered.

I took a deep breath.

Let in all my anger, all my pain, every last bit of it.

Then I reached out for Orion’s hand and an enormous explosion rippled through the room.

P
aul Wilkinson
always thought there was something different about himself ever since he was a little boy.

It started when they first got a cat. A ginger tabby called Brutus. She never liked him, even though he tried loving her, stroking her, giving her attention. She always spat at him, scratched him, like there was something threatening about him that nobody understood.

And then it turned out that
all
animals hated him.

Seriously, all animals. Birds would fly at him when he approached their nests. Dogs would bark at him, desperate to escape their driveways to deal with what they saw as a threat. Even flies bumped into him, like they knew exactly what he was and were trying to ward him away.

His parents didn’t take him seriously, of course. They said it just probably meant he wasn’t an animal person. But that was the thing—he
was
an animal person. He wanted nothing more than to cuddle up to a dog, to stroke a cat, to feed a little lamb some milk. To walk through a field of cows and not be chased.

But to this day, he found himself carrying the remarkable ability to turn even the most unintelligent creature against him.

It never struck him that it might be some kind of ability.

Not until he met X.

Now, aged seventeen, he stood in a dark cavern in the middle of the Scottish Highlands. He’d come here because X asked him to come here if he wanted to be a part of something. Just like he’d asked so many people already.

And Paul
did
want to be a part of something. He’d spent his whole life trying to be a part of something, trying to chase up his desires, only to deter people and animals away from him.

When X came to him three months ago, he told Paul what he was capable of. That he had a rare manipulative ability to shift the attitudes of the people and the animals around him. By default, because of his misunderstanding, he turned those attitudes against him.

But X had helped him hone it. Helped him focus his attentions.

And now, well. Let’s just say he had a few too many cats crawling around his house.

He saw X at the back of the cavern, standing completely still. He was shaded, covered up, like he always was. Inside this icy cavern, biting cold, there were others, too. Lots of others. And as terrified as Paul was about being here with people like
this
, he couldn’t deny that he was with his own kind.

He was an ULTRA.

So too were these people.

“We don’t have long to wait,” X said, his voice disguised by some kind of gadget. “In two days’ time, the ULTRAbots will defeat what they believe to be the final ULTRA. Only they don’t know about us. They can’t know about us. I’ve made sure of that.”

Paul knew what X referred to. The mark he’d given them, branded onto the backs of their necks. He claimed it carried a trace of his power, and he was
very
powerful. That mark acted as an on-off switch. A way of hiding in plain sight from the ULTRAbots that roamed the skies.

A switch that came in very handy, but would be unnecessary soon when the world was theirs.

“You all come from different places. From different backgrounds. Some of us have spent our entire lives with these abilities, fearful of what they mean. Others spend the last few years of their lives in prisons, which I helped you break out of. But we are all united in one way: humanity has robbed us of a normal existence. They have stamped on us. Trodden on us. And now they use
our
powers to create those ULTRAbots? To stand against us with our own abilities? Do they really believe they are stronger than us? How arrogant is the human spirit?”

Paul heard a few claps around the cavern. A few cheers. He felt himself clapping, too. X always spoke with such purpose. Such meaning. Such truth.

“This world isn’t humanity’s. Humanity had its time. Sure, they get their little short-term victories. They get their moments of peace. Their moments of calm. But they always just assume that things will get better. That things will get back to normal again. We’re going to use that naivety, and we’re going to take everything away from them.”

More applause. More cheers.

“This world is ours for the taking. The governments don’t know it, but the moment the ULTRAbots think they destroy that last ULTRA, we strike. We show them what we’re capable of. What we’ve spent the last few months training to do. We show them that nothing can match our strength. Nothing.”

X looked right at Paul then. And he felt his cheeks flushing. Paul knew what he wanted him to do. He could manipulate humans and he could manipulate animals, so he could manipulate ULTRAbots, right?

They’d tested it out. Tested it on one they’d captured. It was hard. The hardest thing they’d tried in their entire lives.

But right now, in this cavern, an ULTRAbot stood with them.

An ULTRAbot Paul manipulated. Trained to switch off recognizing them as ULTRAs.

They were hiding in plain sight, and they were going to use Paul’s powers to turn the ULTRAbots against themselves.

“There is something else, though,” X said. “Something… more personal. An ULTRA. An ULTRA I’m very keen on capturing for myself. An ULTRA who has evaded us so far. A dirty ULTRA who sides with the humans. An ULTRA you might’ve thought was dead, but I assure you, is very much alive. Glacies.”

A hushed silence filled the cavern. Paul heard water dripping from the rocks above. Felt his teeth rattling against one another in the cold.

“I want Glacies for myself. But first, I want to take everything away from Glacies, just as he thinks he is winning. I’ve thought long and hard about this. I could’ve acted months ago, but I wanted to wait for the right moment. I wanted him to
feel
like his life was perfect, then to
feel
like he was strong again, and then I wanted to destroy everything he stands for. I wanted to wait for the right moment. And the right moment is now.”

X hovered above the ULTRAs below. His dark shadow filled the cavern with even more darkness.

“You may know him as Glacies. But I know him by his first name.”

X threw down a load of photographs. Poured them down onto the ULTRAs, hands reaching up, catching the photographs.

There was a mumbling around the cavern. Some whispers. Some questioning. A lot of disbelief.

Paul looked into a photograph and saw a young boy on there. Dark hair. Probably around the same age as Paul. Skinny. Smiling.

“The boy in the middle of the photograph is Glacies,” X said.

The gasps filled the cavern. Paul stared into the eyes of the boy on the photograph, silent.

“And if we do not stop Glacies, we will not achieve our goals. We will not take the world for ourselves.”

Paul heard more applause then. Then, stomping on the ground. Cheering. “Death to Glacies, death to Glacies!”

All this time, X hovered over the ULTRAs, shrouded in darkness. Watching. Waiting.

“Glacies’ real name is Kyle Peters. He lives on Staten Island. And we’re going to tear his world apart. Starting now.”