The Superpower Project (6 page)

“You're really heavy for someone so skinny,” said Megan. She carefully dropped the stunned Cam behind the fence, some way back from the building. “Back soon. Stay here.”

Megan flew back, entering the building through the hole Resilience had punched in the wall. The damage had already started bringing down huge chunks of the old building. Resilience was currently struggling under some rubble it had brought down upon itself, and TJ was trapped beneath a massive girder that had slipped from the cracked roof.

Megan skirted around Resilience towards him. “You ok?”

“My arms are bending, Megan. The wrong way.”

“I'm going to get you out of here,” said Megan, glancing around her.

“You are flying,” said TJ, “like Sarah.”

“Wait, what? Gran could fly too?”

The building rumbled again.

“Tell me later,” said Megan.

She pulled and pulled at the girder trapping TJ, and as she did, she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye: a dark grey blur. Resilience had freed itself from the rubble and was crashing towards them, bringing beams and rubble down with it.

“Come on!” Megan hauled at TJ's metal arm, pleading with him to move, but she could not budge him.

Then, something was beside her, pulling at TJ's other arm with the same urgency. She turned to look into the eyes of a huge silverback gorilla. It grinned at her and continued pulling.

Trying very hard not to panic and fly away, despite the kind of day it had turned into, Megan pulled too. Finally the three of them tumbled back down the steel steps of the fire escape and out onto the streets.

The building collapsed further in on itself (like the flan Cam made in home economics last month) then burst into flames (like the flan Cam made in home economics last week).

Resilience was having trouble standing up under the crumbling wreckage, but it was still slowly moving torwards them. Next to Megan, TJ lay crumpled, sparkling and fizzing in a puddle.

“We have to get away!” Megan yelled towards where she'd left Cam – but he was gone.

There was a tremendous thud and a crack, then another. Megan looked back to see that the gorilla had returned to smash Resilience with one of the girders. There was a massive square dent in the side of Resilience's pyramid head as it crashed, at last, to the ground.

Panicking, Megan scanned the area. She knew Cam wouldn't have run off without her. She glanced back at the building, terrified that he might have run back in without her noticing.

Megan turned to TJ, who was still fizzing. “Where's Cam? Did you see him?”

TJ didn't speak, but a low growl from over by Resilience made Megan realise that, in addition to a broken sculpture and a collapsed building, she had another problem to deal with: What do you do with an escaped gorilla?

The big animal was now curled amid the rubble. Maybe it was hurt? Megan was fairly sure that ‘Do not approach the gorilla as it may be dangerous' was the usual advice in these situations. So why was she walking towards it?

I can fly away – straight up if I need to,
she kept thinking to herself.

Curiously, as she drew closer, the great beast seemed to shrink. Its thick black hair receded until there was no gorilla, only the awkwardly crouching body of a boy. He turned to Megan and grinned wonkily.

“You never told me you could fly,” Cam said.

Just for a moment, Cam seemed to enjoy having the upper hand. He smiled.

Megan stared, open-mouthed and stunned. And then she punched Cam very hard on the arm. “You were a gorilla!”

“I know,” said Cam, rubbing his arm. “I'm not one now though.”

“How were you a gorilla?”

“I… can change into animals.”

Megan had known Cam since they were three years old. She saw him every single day. How had she not known? “That's… that's really weird Cam.”

“So's being able to fly. Or having a pet robot.”

“How do you do it?” she asked.

“I'm not actually sure how it works yet,” explained Cam. “I can only do a few, and one of those is hamster. How do you fly?”

Megan had trouble explaining this to herself, so she had no idea how to tell someone else. “It's a bit like… the ground and everything else is falling, but I'm standing still. And I just… let it all fall.”

“It looked really cool.”

“Well, you were an endangered species. Cam this is amazing. I've been keeping this a secret for months. I thought I was going to burst!”

Cam nodded. “I was going to tell my dad, but he's quite allergic to animals. Except snakes. But I can't do snakes.”

“I don't know how, but my gran knew,” said Megan. “She left me a note with the map. TJ said she could fly too!”

“Your gran could fly? Really?”

“Maybe having superpowers runs in the family?”

“My gran wasn't super,” said Cam. “She mostly knitted and drank whisky. Mind you, if she turned into animals it might explain why Dad avoided her so much… maybe he was allergic to her.”

Megan hugged Cam happily. Cam patted her on the shoulder, not really sure how best to react. They ran over to TJ, who had stopped sparking by this point, and was gathering himself up.

“We must go. Quickly,” he said.

“You're coming to stay with me, TJ,” said Megan, as they walked briskly away from the devastation behind them. “And Cam has superpowers too!”

“Yes. I saw,” said TJ. “Though I think flying is superior.”

For a change, Cam politely ignored TJ.

“How did you find out?” Megan asked Cam, after a thoughtful silence.

Cam knew what she meant. “One morning I woke up and I didn't know where I was. Everything was black, my heart was pounding. I was terrified.”

“Oh, Cam,” said Megan, “that sounds horrible.”

“I eventually saw light and headed towards it, and I fell right out the end of my bed and onto the floor in front of my mirror. It was so strange. I knew I was looking at myself, but it wasn't me in the mirror. It was a hamster. I totally panicked, started screaming, and then all of a sudden I was myself again, shouting at the top of my voice. My mum came running up the stairs; she thought I'd broken something…”

“That's awful,” said Megan.

“Wasn't too bad. I did get a day off school out of it,” said Cam. “It's happened quite a few times since then, but I'm more in control of it now. I get this sort of fizzing… it starts in my stomach and moves up into my chest,” said Cam.

“I get that too! Like fireflies in your tummy.”

“That's it, yeah. Been happening for about six months.”

Megan frowned. “Seriously, what are the chances of us both having strange powers? Something really weird is going on.”

“You're telling me. Secret maps, robots, superpowers. I wonder if we could get special circumstances at school for all the stress we're under?”

“
Should
we tell someone?” asked Megan. It felt more possible now she was no longer alone.

“Tell them what?” said Cam. “No one's X-raying me and putting me in a freezer. So let's forget telling anyone. It's just us.”

“It isn't just us, though, is it?” Megan looked at TJ. “You said my gran could fly too. Do you know what's going on?”

Beneath his blank expression, Megan could tell he was working something out.

“This… has happened before,” he said.

“With Sarah?” asked Megan.

“Yes… something… in the water,” said TJ. He stared out towards the river, as if hoping that whatever it was would suddenly float to the surface. It didn't.

“That explanation actually hasn't made anything clearer,” said Cam. “Do you know why we have superpowers?”

“I can't remember.”

“What exactly
can
you remember?” asked Cam angrily.

“Cam!” said Megan. “He's been hidden away for ages; it's all still coming back to him.”

“Well, take your time TJ,” said Cam. “It's not as if we were just deliberately attacked by a giant robot sculpture.”

“Let's hope we finished it off for good,” said Megan.

“Yep. Especially because it saw us using our powers.”

Megan hadn't thought of that. She didn't mind Cam and TJ knowing she could fly, but Resilience seemed a little less trustworthy. It was the way it had tried to crush her under a building that had really put her off.

“Do you think it was only after TJ?” said Cam. “Maybe it's just like a robot thing.”

“It did not seem interested in getting to know me,” said TJ. “I seemed to be in its way.”

Megan took the coin out of her pocket. “What if it's something to do with this and my gran's map?”

TJ took the coin from Megan, and stared at it once again. “It is possible.”

“How would Resilience know about your gran's map?” asked Cam. “Maybe that's just how Waterworx destroys old buildings.”

“Wait!” said Megan. “Do you think the other sculptures might be robots too?”

Cam stared at her like somebody who felt that two robots was more than enough to be worrying about right now.

“Remember at the shipyard…” said Megan, “lights and tapping noises were coming from inside Phoenix Egg!”

“And what – you think there was a robot in there waiting to… hatch?”

“It's all got to be connected, don't you think?” said Megan. “The powers, the map, the big robot… we just have to work out how.”

“Yeah,” said Cam, “piece of bun really.”

“We should go to the next place on the map as quickly as we can.”

“Oh,” said Cam, who had been hoping that getting attacked by a big angry sculpture might have put Megan off exploring for a bit.

Megan smiled. “Me, you and TJ – we just proved we can do anything!”

Cam tried to look inspired and brave, but mostly just managed to look queasy and tired.

Mr Finn watched Megan, Cam and TJ struggle through Megan's front door. He had followed them home from the ruined warehouse, and even though he was annoyed about his sculpture getting smashed, it had saved him a lot of bother sorting out building demolition. Every cloud had a silver lining.

Plus, he had always wanted to see the real Tin Jimmy, so that had been nice.

I wonder if they have any idea what they're getting themselves into
, mused Mr Finn as he turned back to the warehouses to scrape up all the pieces of Resilience. He didn't want any of the parts getting into the wrong hands and ending up on eBay. Again.

***

At the demolished warehouse, Mr Finn ran his hand over Resilience's battered head. It was going to take quite a bit of hammering back into shape. That wasn't all bad news, though, because Mr Finn actually quite enjoyed hitting things with hammers.

The Waterworx security team were busy hoisting the sculpture onto the back of a truck, while some of the guards were trying to fend off a nosy photographer from the local newspaper.

“Where you wanting this dumped, sir?” said head-of-security Davy. “Scrap yard?”

Mr Finn glared. “Take it to my house, please. I will see to the repairs personally.”

“You sure, sir? Because me and the boys reckon you could get a few grand from Big Shug at the yard.”

“Thank you for the suggestion,” said Mr Finn in a way that made it clear that any further suggestions would result in being sacked, “but this isn't a mashed-up Ford Focus, this is
art
. Big Shug wouldn't know what to do with it.”

“Oh, he'd love it. He'd probably just melt it down. He melts most things down.”

The rest of the security team backed slowly away from Davy and started looking in other directions.

“Yes. I do enjoy a bit of melting, myself,” said Mr Finn. “Of course, I'm more of a dabbler, not a skilled craftsman like Big Shug, art genius.”

Too late, Davy realised his mistake. “No sir, I didn't mean… I was trying to be helpful…”

“Being helpful is a pointless waste of time, Davy. Just like you. And to help you remember that in future, you're fired. As of now.”

Davy turned to his workmates, hoping for support, but they had all wandered off whistling and looking at their phones.

“Bye Davy,” said Mr Finn, waving. “Hurry along now before my terrible sculpture falls on you. You know how easily accidents can happen.”

Mr Finn laughed as Davy quickly walked away. The sculpture was carefully loaded onto the truck and driven off into the night.

TJ had been in Megan's house for two days now, and so far absolutely nothing had exploded or burned down. No one had mentioned that though, just in case they jinxed it.

Rather than jamming him into a cupboard or under a bed, Megan had decided to stick with her story that the robot was a project from school. After all, she did intend to do a bit of reprogramming, so it wasn't a complete lie. This meant that TJ could just stand in her room, plugged in and recharging, in full view of her family. The only tricky bit was making sure no one saw or heard him walking about. So far, so good; her mum had already started hanging Megan's jackets on his outstretched arms. Thankfully TJ was too polite to complain about it.