“Let’s get out of here,” Alex said. The Beta Team hustled up the stairs, their hands throbbing and growing colder with each step.
Inside, it was as if someone had cut two different buildings in half and shoved them together to create Silver Bank. On one side of the room, Lone Star stood six feet off the ground, arms crossed, his eyes blazing with white energy. The area was saturated with warm light, and the hostages lay behind him, still sleeping, completely unscathed. His uniform was riddled with burn marks and smoking holes.
The other side of the bank was draped in shadows, like the light had been completely snuffed out. Volt and Shade stood ragged but not defeated, and above them, floating on what looked like a black cloud, was Phantom. Darkness swirled all around her, making it impossible to tell where her uniform began or ended, and shades of deep blue and purple wrapped around her pale face, mixing in with her snaking black hair.
She raised her gloved hands delicately, and two shadows shot forward. The first was quickly disintegrated by one of Lone Star’s defensive blasts, but the other latched around his ankle, pulling him to the floor. More and more tendrils shot forward, holding Lone Star while the Beta Team regrouped behind Shade and Volt.
“You know your powers are no match for mine,” Lone Star shouted. “How many times must I defeat you before you surrender?”
“What’s the matter?” Volt yelled. “I thought you enjoyed killing our kind.”
Lone Star’s face sank into a contorted frown. He jutted his chest out toward the clustered Cloak members, and a blast of blinding light surged from his body.
Phantom’s lips spread across her face in a chilling smile. She raised her arms, and a great wall of blackness rose around her, absorbing Lone Star’s beam and covering the Cloak Society in darkness.
“What about my cash?” Titan yelled. He pointed toward the heavy bags at the other end of the bank, but everyone ignored him. They had what they had come for; it was tucked safely away in Shade’s pocket.
Alex took one last glance at the Junior Rangers now running toward them from the bank entrance. Amp was yelling, but over the rush of energy, Alex couldn’t understand what he was saying.
With a gust of air the wall of shadows fell over the huddled Cloak members, crashing like a dark wave. It hit the ground, surged forward a few inches, and then sprang back against the side of the bank, seeping into the corners. The Cloak Society was gone.
3
Past, Present, Future
Alex felt as though he were encased in ice as he traveled at breakneck speed, freezing winds blowing against his face. Squinting against the harsh air, he could just make out deep purple and blue swirls around him. An unearthly light was shining dully from somewhere up above. He wanted to yell, but couldn’t catch enough breath.
This was the Gloom, a dismal plane hidden from the normal world. Phantom’s powers allowed her to access the dark place, draw energy from it, and travel through it rapidly. Where others saw shadows, Phantom saw portals into the Gloom, a place she’d come to think of as a second home.
The Betas and High Council all bore marks made up of Phantom’s Umbra energy on their palms. It bubbled up to the surface of their palms whenever her powers were in use nearby and allowed her to pull them through the Gloom safely. Still, Alex was terrified that he might somehow be lost in that wretched place. The High Council speculated that one could exist there indefinitely, never dying—purgatory in a cold wasteland.
There was movement in the near darkness, and Alex sensed there was something lurking, watching them as they passed. All around him, barely audible over the rush of air, he swore he could hear animals howling. And something else was odd, too. Something inside him. It felt as though all his strength was being sucked away, consumed by the Gloom. Alex started to panic. His hand cramped painfully.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the wind died and the darkness was lifted, like a veil suddenly ripped from his face. He was now in the War Room of Cloak’s underground headquarters outside Sterling City. The darkness that had brought them there seeped back into the wall, until nothing was left but the normal shadows. Alex wobbled on his feet, feeling half-suffocated.
“Breathe,” Mallory said to him. She spoke calmly, but her face was pale. Over her shoulder, Alex could see Julie bracing herself against a wall, one hand to her mouth as she watched her brother, Titan, doubled over beside her. He was coughing and dry heaving. Alex would have enjoyed seeing Titan look so vulnerable if he hadn’t felt so awful himself.
Shade ignored her son, attending instead to Titan. His back and arms were scratched in several places, exposing his metal under-skin.
“Titan,” Shade said, putting her hand on the boy’s back as he trembled, fighting to regain his composure. “Are you injured?”
“Nah,” he said, swallowing hard and standing tall. “Just flesh wounds. Nothing that won’t heal in a few days.”
Shade smiled and patted his arm. Her eyes glimmered.
The group fanned out. The War Room was composed of smooth steel walls and fixtures above a darkly stained concrete floor. On one end of the room was a long black table, where Julie took off her new jewelry, laying her prizes out so she could admire them in the bright lights. Flanking the table were rows of countertops piled high with blueprints, legal documents, and grid paper. On the opposite end of the room were several large computer screens and stations, and one whole wall was devoted to various guns, knives, and other gadgets and weaponry.
“Beta Team, line up,” Phantom said. She tossed her trench over the back of a chair and slowly started to remove her long black leather gloves, exposing porcelain hands. The team was quick to assemble.
“It looks as though you were beaten within an inch of your lives just now,” Phantom said. “Who would like to tell me what happened today?”
“Alex wasted our time trying to get into the vault,” Titan said, hardly waiting for Phantom to finish her question before speaking. “If I had been on point from the beginning, we would have been in and out with time to spare.”
“Are you kidding me?” Alex exclaimed. “You had just as many problems with that door as I did.”
“We watched you stand still and sweat for five minutes, and the door didn’t so much as budge. I’m the only reason we even got in there,” Titan said, banging his hand against his chest. It clanged under his fist.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I forgot you could punch through all our problems.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Titan asked. “Why don’t you tell everyone about how you stepped in and ruined my fight with that girl?”
“Quiet,” Shade cut in, casting a cold eye toward Titan as she made her way to the group. She walked back and forth in front of the team. “It’s true, Titan, that the team was able to get into the vault after Alex failed to do so. But it was Mallory’s quick thinking that allowed you to break down the door, not your strength. In fact, if you had continued to bang on the vault by yourself, Lone Star would have shown up before you ever took it down. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, lowering his head. “You’re right.”
Beside him, Julie smirked, stifling a laugh.
“And you, Julie,” Shade continued, turning her attention to the girl. “From what I saw, you were too busy being attacked by a plant to be of any actual use today.”
Julie’s face fell and her shoulders slumped as she mumbled an apology.
“We got the diamond,” Alex said, more an offering of peace than a fact worth celebrating.
“Yes. And how did you manage to do that?” Shade asked, though she did not pause long enough to entertain an answer. “Through teamwork. Cloak survives because it is a single entity whose livelihood and goals we put before our own. But today you were fighting as individuals.”
Heavy footsteps approached from the hallway. The great metal doors marking the entrance to the War Room slid open, and a tall, muscular man entered. His short, dirty-blond hair was pushed bac
k by a pair of weathered goggles. There was a distinct smell about him, not unlike that of charcoal. His name was Barrage, father to Titan and Julie. He was an arrogant man, but with good reason—his powers were unmatched in terms of destructive capabilities. Alex was always awed when he saw Barrage in action, forming small red balls of energy that orbited around his hands before he fired them off in succession, resulting in a series of precise, powerful explosions. With his arrival, all four members of the High Council were now present in the War Room.
Behind him came Gage, the twelve-year-old technological genius behind Cloak’s weaponry and gadgets. He was hunched, an oversized black nylon backpack weighing down his small frame. The Cloak Society had once employed a veritable army of faithful staff and engineers, but the modern High Council found that recruiting and training a fleet of loyal subjects was both impractical and a huge security risk. Instead they whittled down the staff to a few dozen and made do. They were called Unibands, designated by the single stripes on the shoulders of their uniforms. Shade oversaw them, and under her watchful mind, they were devoted to the Society. Gage was one of them, like his father before him.
Gage dropped the pack beside the door and exhaled slowly, stretching his sore muscles and wiping back his black, curly hair. He rested for only a moment before hurrying over to Shade, who was holding her pistol in his general direction. He collected it and, after inspecting the weapon for a few seconds, began to disassemble the gun.
“Barrage, update us on your progress,” Phantom said.
“There is no progress,” he said gruffly, his voice gravelly and low-pitched. “Justice Tower is completely locked down. We ran every test we could without setting off any alarms, but nothing came back conclusive. Whatever shield they have up around that place, whatever alarm system or tech they’ve installed, it’s completely foreign to us.”
Alex wasn’t sure what was going on, but he could tell by the look on his mother’s face that Barrage’s report was not good news.
“Gage,” Shade said, after a brief period of silence, “can you get us past that shield?”
Gage raised his eyes from the gun, which now lay in several pieces on the table beside him.
“The place is coated in an invisible energy shell. Nothing gets in without their knowledge. The force field itself isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know where the power source is coming from, though I suspect it is somehow derived from Lone Star’s powers.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Once I have a chance to analyze the data we brought back today, I may be able to come up with a way to break the shield. But with everything else I am working on right now . . .” He trailed off.
“We’ll discuss this later. Barrage, were you able to assess points of entry?” Shade asked.
“The twelfth floor still seems like our best option. The observation deck. From what I can tell, it’s nothing but reinforced glass behind whatever force shield they have up. It should be simple enough to take out. From there, we could infiltrate both the upper and lower levels. It’s not much, but it’s our best shot. Gage took blueprints.”
“And you were unseen?” Shade asked.
“Lux and Dr. Photon were in Dallas doing charity work. They were on a live video feed with the national news while we were running diagnostics. As for the rest . . .” Barrage motioned with one hand toward the Betas. “Our little distraction kept them busy.”
Distraction? Alex didn’t know what to make of this. He was glad to hear that some part of their mission had been a success—even if it was unintentional on their part. The others were not so pleased.
“You used us as bait?” Titan asked. He started to step forward, but Mallory caught his shoulder with her palm and gave him a hard stare before turning to the High Council.
“We were under the impression that the point of this mission was to acquire the Excelsior diamond,” Mallory stated calmly. “And to mark the reemergence of Cloak.”
“Today’s mission was the first of its kind in almost a decade,” Shade said. She hesitated for a beat before continuing. “When you were all nothing but toddlers, Cloak fell to the Rangers of Justice in Victory Park. We were crippled, most of our powered members destroyed, and we needed time to recover from our losses. And to train all of you. Part of today was to see if you were ready for actual combat.”
“We know this story,” Julie said. “Our mother died in that battle. Why do you think we were so excited to get a chance to fight the Rangers?”
“It wasn’t quite as simple as you’ve been led to believe,” Volt said, stepping up beside Shade. “There were certain failures on Cloak’s part that led to our defeat.”
“For years before the Victory Park incident, we looked on as Sterling City grew and the Rangers treated it as their personal playground,” Shade said. “Meanwhile we were skulking underground, carrying out petty missions and forever waiting for the perfect opportunity to take down the indestructible Rangers. Finally we developed a plan to defeat them. We created a secret weapon called the Umbra Gun.”
Gage looked up from polishing Shade’s pistol, his lips drawn together in a slight frown. The Betas, however, stood enraptured. They had always been told that the battle had led to casualties on both sides and the eventual retreat of Cloak, but none of the council ever elaborated on the specifics when questioned.
“Gage’s father created the Umbra Gun and charged it with my powers,” Phantom explained. “It took the forces I draw on and concentrated them into extremely powerful bolts of energy, which transported whatever they touched—in this case, the Rangers of Justice—into the Gloom, where they were lost, doomed to exist indefinitely with no hope of escape. We couldn’t figure out a way to kill them, but we could get rid of them. And we did. One by one, the Rangers fell, their bodies transformed into shadows and sucked into that dark plane.”
“What happened?” Alex asked, completely drawn into the story.
“Lone Star,” Shade said. “We underestimated him. Or overestimated the Rangers’ moral stance on never killing anyone. It doesn’t matter which. In a single attack he nearly wiped us out.”
“Facing such terrible casualties, we had to get out of there. We assumed the gun was lost in the explosion,” Phantom said.
“Can’t Gage just make us another one?” Julie asked.
“The actual gun, yes,” Gage spoke up, putting a final polish on Shade’s gun. “But my father left no notes on how he managed to harness and concentrate Phantom’s powers. It would take years of testing and research to be able to do so.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Phantom said. “Last month, I felt it: a surge of Umbra energy so strong it could only have come from the gun. It still exists. The Rangers must have taken it to study, and somehow were able to charge the weapon again. It’s locked away inside their sparkling tower, waiting for us to retrieve it.”
“But can’t they use the gun against us?” Mallory asked, ever cautious.
“You’re marked with my energy,” Phantom said. “I can sense each of you when you are close by on this plane of existence or in the Gloom. On the off chance that the Rangers were brave enough to try to use the Umbra Gun against us and succeeded, I’d be able to pick you out of the Gloom and bring you back into this world almost instantaneously.”
“So this is it,” Alex said, smiling. “We can finally defeat the Rangers.”
“We need a few months to plan,” Shade said. “But on the first day of winter, we attack the Justice Tower. We take the Umbra Gun back. This time, the so-called heroes of this city will fall, and once we defeat them, no one will dare stand in our way.
“We’re not just training you to be the next generation of Cloak,” she continued, looking at each member of the Beta Team. “We’re training you to destroy the Rangers of Justice. You will be the rulers of Sterling City. And that’s only the beginning.”
The Beta team stood in the middle of the room with open jaws and wide eyes. None of them knew what to say. They had dreamed of leadin
g Cloak into victory against the Rangers since they had been old enough to say the word “revenge.” Slowly, they all began to react. Alex and Mallory smiled as Titan and Julie began to chuckle, and finally laugh.
“What do we do now? When can we know the details of the plan?” Titan asked.
“You’ll continue to train normally until further notice,” Shade said. “For now, clean up and get some rest. You all have a lot of work ahead of you.”
“Gage. Workshop. Now,” Phantom called over her shoulder, heading straight for the door, not bothering to look at Gage, who scrambled to follow after her.
“I’ll join you momentarily,” Shade said nodding to Phantom.
The Beta Team headed for the door, eager to discuss what was sure to be the most important mission of their lives.
“Alexander,” Shade said. “Wait. I want to speak with you.”
Alex grimaced at the use of his full name, sighed, and slowly walked back to his mother and father.
“I’ll take care of this,” Shade said to Volt, patting his arm. “Why don’t you go change, and I’ll meet you for dinner soon.”
“Of course,” Volt said. “Happy birthday, son.”
He exited, leaving Alex and his mother alone in the room. Shade dug inside her coat for something, and finally retrieved Cloak’s newest prize. She held the diamond up to the light, allowing it to cast brilliant reflections onto the floor.
“You know,” she said, “when the Excelsior diamond was found, it was the largest uncut diamond in the world. Almost one thousand carats. Can you imagine what it must feel like to discover something like that? To hold something so raw and powerful in your hands? It could have been cut into something truly remarkable, something the world would never again produce. It had so much potential. And then it was broken down into smaller stones that were sold off one by one. This is just the largest piece of it, the Excelsior I. Only seventy carats. A pity, to have something so pure and powerful end up so common.”