Kyle wondered — briefly — where the Mad Mask went when he wasn’t in Kyle’s basement. He had said that his parents no longer talked to him, so Kyle figured that he wasn’t living at home anymore.
“He mentioned a lair of some sort,” Erasmus said at one point. “He must have a hideaway somewhere.”
“That’s true …” Kyle mused.
“Maybe you should follow him one night. Find out where he goes.”
Kyle was horrified by the idea. The Mad Mask was his partner. There was a trust between them, and he wouldn’t violate that by sneaking around and stalking. He told Erasmus this, but the AI was one step ahead of him.
“He followed you, remember? Twice!”
“We weren’t partners yet. He’s been fine since we teamed up.”
Erasmus grumbled, but Kyle took out the earbuds. He didn’t feel like hearing it. He had more important things to do than listen to Erasmus complain.
At the same time he was assembling parts for Ultitron, Kyle had to work on his joint science project with Mairi. When the weekend came, he spent the days working with Mairi and the nights working with the Mad Mask; he was becoming more and more exhausted. Still, despite all his hard work, he felt that he wasn’t making enough progress on Ultitron, so he started staying up late into the night after the Mad Mask had left, working on what his partner called “the motivational engine.”
“It doesn’t work!” he complained in the early hours of Sunday morning, his eyes bloodshot and his fingers trembling from hours of intricate wiring and soldering in the basement. He slammed a fist down, shaking and denting the workbench at the same time. “Why won’t it work? I followed the schematic perfectly!”
In frustration, he nearly threw it across the room but checked himself. He couldn’t lose his temper. The Mad Mask was counting on him. Kyle didn’t want to disappoint his new ally. While he hated to admit it (and never would admit it to anyone but himself), there was so much he could learn from the Mad Mask. For starters, the secrets of the teleportation device and the force field that was so powerful it could repel even Mighty Mike.
“I have to get this working,” he muttered to himself, bending over the motivational engine again. “Once Ultitron is finished, we can send it to wipe out Mighty Mike. That’s what matters.”
His fingers slipped as he tried to thread a wire into the engine, and Kyle found himself chuckling. “I’m so tired I’m even talking to myself….”
Yawning, he went to his bedroom, tossed some yogurt drops into Lefty’s cage, and fell into a short, dreamless sleep that ended when his mother woke him up for breakfast. Kyle dragged himself through the early day, resisting the urge to sample coffee again, regardless of how badly he wanted and needed the caffeine boost.
At noon, Mairi came over and they finally finished the science project. Kyle wanted to break into applause that the stupid thing was done. Over the past few days, he’d come to hate the project, to resent it for taking away time that could have been spent working on Ultitron. But he was careful not to let his animosity show to Mairi.
“Are you all right?” she asked him as she shrugged into her coat, ready to leave. “You look really tired.”
Her concern gratified him and even perked him up a little. “I just had trouble sleeping last night. I’m fine.”
Before leaving, Mairi did something she never did: She hugged Kyle. Perplexed, he didn’t think to hug her back until it was too late and she had already pulled away. “Thanks for your help. I know this wasn’t the project you wanted to work on originally, but you did a great job,” Mairi said. Then she waved to him and left.
Kyle didn’t know how to feel about that, especially since he knew that Mairi was going straight from his house to Mighty Mike’s house, where she planned to have dinner with Mike and his foster parents. He idly wondered what the odds were of the same girl becoming friends with the two kids in town with superpowers. It seemed almost impossible for it to be a coincidence. What if it wasn’t? What if Mike had some reason for being chummy with Mairi? That was a frightening thought: the idea of Mairi being in Mike’s sights for some nefarious reason. He would pretend to be her friend and then do … Who knew what?
By the time the Mad Mask arrived for their nightly work session, Kyle wasn’t tired anymore. The thought of Mairi in Mike’s clutches had given him a second wind and he was once again downstairs, slaving over the obstinate motivational engine. No matter what he did, he just couldn’t get it to work!
So absorbed was he in his task that he didn’t even look up when the basement door opened and the Mad Mask entered.
“Good evening, Azure Avenger!”
“Hey, Mask.”
“Mad Mask. The Mad Mask, preferably.”
“Right.”
“Frustration is evident in your voice, Azure Avenger. What troubles you, my friend?”
Kyle let out a sigh. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had to: “I’ve been working on the motivational engine for days and I still can’t get it to work.”
The Mad Mask stroked the chin of his mask as if it were his own chin. “Interesting. Have you followed the schematics?”
“Exactly!” Kyle’s frustration bubbled over and he threw down the screwdriver he’d been holding. “I followed them to the letter! They didn’t make any sense to me, but I assembled it exactly the way you laid it out on the —”
“Then it must work. The plans are flawless.” The Mad Mask spoke in a tone that left no room for disagreement.
Kyle disagreed anyway. “But —”
“Flawless,” the Mad Mask repeated, and came over to stand behind Kyle. “Try it again.”
Kyle rolled his eyes but went ahead and fiddled with the control mechanism built into the motivational engine. To his utter shock, the engine lit up and the tiny servomechanisms deep inside began to rotate and shoot out the information lasers that would carry data to Ultitron’s limbs.
“How …” Kyle’s eyes bugged out at the fully functional motivational engine. “How … It didn’t …”
“Again: The plans are flawless,” the Mad Mask said smugly, and went to examine another component.
Kyle shook his head as if to wake himself up. What had changed? Had he not triggered the controls properly before? After a few minutes scrutinizing the schematics and the engine, he couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong … or what had eventually gone right. The Mad Mask might be smug, but he totally deserved to be. Clearly his genius was leagues beyond Kyle’s own. It surprised Kyle that he could think this without being angry or offended. Maybe if it hadn’t been a friend, he would mind. But since the Mad Mask and he were allies, it didn’t bother him the way it might have otherwise.
“Kyle,” said the Mad Mask. It was the first time he had ever used Kyle’s real name, and the sound of it in that deep, booming voice, echoing in behind the ebony mask, jolted Kyle.
“Yes?”
“During our hours together, you have explained your philosophy and your ‘Prankster Manifesto.’” Kyle had rambled at length about the Manifesto and about his history of pranksterism. And the Mad Mask had actually been listening, it turned out. “The Mad Mask has given careful and due consideration to this doctrine and has concluded that it has merit.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Watch the road carefully on your way to school tomorrow. You will be … amused. Of this, I have no doubt.”
Kyle wondered what the heck that meant, but he knew better than to ask. The Mad Mask only doled out information on a need-to-know basis. He was like his own personal top secret spy agency. If Kyle didn’t absolutely, positively need to know something, there was no way the Mad Mask was going to reveal it.
Still, Kyle was pleased that he’d made such an impression on the Mad Mask. Now that he thought about it, the Mad Mask was the first convert to the ideals of the Prankster Manifesto, and what a convert he was! A beyond-genius-level intellect had examined Kyle’s personal ethos and agreed with it. Kyle couldn’t keep from beaming.
“A thought,” the Mad Mask said. He’d wandered over to the biochemical forge and struck his usual stance, hands clasped behind his back, standing stiffly upright. “This machinery has useful components. We should disassemble it.”
At first, Kyle thought he must have misheard or misunderstood. “You want to cannibalize the biochemical forge?”
“‘Want’ does not enter into the equation. We require certain components to finish Ultitron. Your ‘biochemical forge’ contains those components. Hence and therefore. And ergo.”
Kyle gnawed at his bottom lip. What the Mad Mask said made perfect sense, but still — he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It had taken him weeks to assemble the biochemical forge. Originally, it was to be powered by the small nuclear reactor he’d built in the corner, but then he’d had to take apart the reactor in order to save the world from the ASE. So he’d found a way to power the forge with sunlight, and he was enormously proud of that innovation. And then there was the matter of the Axis theft, a daring broad-daylight heist of the necessary, rare chemical compounds. Even now, within the forge bubbled the chemical stew that would eventually yield the bacteria that would rob Mighty Mike of his powers.
Taking Kyle’s hesitation for outright mutiny, the Mad Mask fiercely stomped over to Kyle, towering over him. “Does your confidence waver, or merely your courage?” he jeered. “Speak now! Are you uncertain about your destiny, or merely afraid of it?”
Even backed up against the workbench, Kyle bristled at the taunt. He was afraid of nothing and no one. “I’m just wondering … Isn’t there another way to —”
“Do you think the Mad Mask would suggest a course of action without contemplating all possible, indeed all conceivable, alternatives? Do you? Do you?”
Kyle had to admit that was pretty unlikely.
Over the Mad Mask’s shoulder, he could make out the control panel to the biochemical forge. Two steadily blinking lights told him that the internal processes were well within tolerances.
But if Ultitron was everything the Mad Mask promised …
(And Kyle had no reason to doubt that it would be.)
… if Ultitron was as powerful as the schematics made it seem …
(And why wouldn’t it be, having been designed by the inventor of that amazing force field?)
… then what on earth did he even need the bacterium for? Ultitron would wipe up the ground with Mighty Mike, and when the alien pretender fled back to whatever planet he’d come from, it would prove to the world once and for all that its “hero” was nothing but a phony and that only Kyle (and the Mad Mask, of course) could be relied on to tell the truth and do what was right.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. “Let’s take it apart.”
He handed a wrench to the Mad Mask, who stepped back without taking it. “It is your handiwork. You must dismantle it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Kyle shut off the forge, drained the tank back into the barrel from Axis, and then began the process of stripping down the biochemical forge. The Mad Mask supervised, occasionally picking up and examining a part or piece, then setting it in a special pile.
In a soft voice, the Mad Mask said, “I admire your dedication.” It was one of the few times he used the personal pronoun, so Kyle paid special attention. “Not everyone would discern the greater good to be had by destroying their own work for the betterment of mankind. You can and did. You are a rare individual, Kyle Camden.”
Kyle’s chest swelled with pride, but he didn’t want to appear arrogant in front of the Mad Mask. “Well,” he said humbly, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” It was one of his father’s more obvious clichés, but it suddenly seemed very appropriate.
“Omelets! The Mad Mask enjoys omelets!”
“Um, okay.” Kyle struggled with a wrench and finally disconnected a hose from the intake valve in the forge.
“Especially with mushrooms and peppers. But only when the peppers are diced very finely.”
“Got it.”
Kyle worked late into the night, carefully dismantling his handiwork as the Mad Mask described his favorite omelet and then proceeded to hold forth on the best way to make hash browns.
The next day, an exhausted Kyle dragged himself to the bus stop. He’d considered trying to choke down the hot swill of coffee, but even as tired as he was, he couldn’t visit that torture upon his taste buds once again. So instead he just asked Erasmus to play a subsonic alpha wave booster through his earbuds, a frequency designed to stimulate all the right parts of his brain. By the time his bus arrived, he was nearly awake.
“Did you notice the Mad Mask talking about Mairi last night?” Erasmus asked.
Kyle couldn’t really talk back without arousing suspicion. He ducked low behind his seat and murmured, “He was talking about omelets.”
“After that. I guess you were too focused on the forge to listen. He kept talking about Mairi and how beautiful she was.”
“What?” Kyle wanted to say more, but the bus had stopped and the object of the Mad Mask’s attention had just gotten on. Mairi made her way to the back of the bus and slid into the seat next to Kyle.
“Good morning!”
“Uh, hi.”
“Are you okay?” Her brow furrowed with concern. “Why are you staring at me?”
Kyle blinked. “Oh. Nothing. Sorry.” Beautiful? Mairi? Well, maybe. He’d never really thought of her that way before. She was just … Mairi. She wasn’t beautiful; she wasn’t ugly. She was just Mairi. Scrutinizing her now, he tried to see her the way the Mad Mask had seen her. That red hair, those green eyes that almost glowed …
“Kyle, you’re still st —”
The screaming cut her off.
In an instant, Kyle realized what was going on: the parking meters. The parking meters along Major Street, where the bus now trundled and shook its way to school.
The parking meters were exploding.
“Watch the road carefully on your way to school tomorrow,” the Mad Mask had said the night before. “You will be … amused. Of this, I have no doubt.”
Did he mean this? He couldn’t! This wasn’t amusing — this was dangerous!
Each parking meter was stuffed full of quarters from the early-morning commuters who parked along Major Street. As a meter exploded, quarters flew out in all directions, moving at such speed that they were like hot, deadly ninja throwing stars. As Kyle watched, a meter blew up and windows across the street shattered. Car alarms whined into the morning sky. Commuters and pedestrians dove for cover.
Another meter exploded and the school bus lurched as the tires on the right side deflated, punctured by blazing fast quarters.
An instant later, windows on that side of the bus started breaking, glass showering inward. Kids screamed and ducked as shards rained down over them.
Major Street became chaotic: Cars slammed to a halt, while other cars sped up. Traffic jammed and snarled. Horns blared. Alarms sang. People ran; people dived; people stood still in terror.
“What have you done?” Kyle whispered.
“I’m picking up a remote detonation signal,” Erasmus reported. “I might be able to jam it by modifying my Wi-Fi band.”
“Do it,” Kyle said.
Mairi spun around to look at him, her eyes wide in fear. “Who are you talking to?”
“I said, ‘Duck!’” Kyle said, and grabbed Mairi by the shoulders and pulled her down just as a large, jagged sheet of glass spun through the air where her head had been. It missed her by a whisker and smashed into Kyle’s face. Kyle blinked at the impact and looked around to make sure no one had seen.
“Stay down,” he told Mairi. The bus limped along on two good tires and two flats. The bus driver was yelling for kids to get down and stay calm, but it was tough to hear him over the panic. Kyle kept his hands on Mairi’s shoulders, forcing her down as he furiously looked around for some way he could help.
There was no pattern to the explosions. Parking meters
lined both sides of Major Street. Sometimes one from the north side would blow, sometimes one from the south. Sometimes two next to each other, sometimes two from different ends of the block. It was like being caught in an ambush, with a hundred insane gunmen all firing whenever they felt like it.
Kyle didn’t want to reveal his powers to everyone on the bus, but he didn’t think he had a choice. Someone could get really hurt —
Just then, the bus’s brakes screeched so loud that the sound made Kyle’s teeth vibrate. A car had slammed to a halt in the intersection in front of them, its windshield a spiderweb of fissures, and the bus driver had to hit the brakes to keep from colliding with it. But the bus was so unbalanced, its right side low on the deflated tires … Kyle could tell from the wobble of the bus, from its velocity and torque …
He did the calculations quickly in his head.
“We’re gonna tip over,” he said.
Sure enough, a moment later, the bus jackknifed and filled with the screams of kids as it pitched this way and that, finally tipping over onto the right side, the one with the two punctured tires.
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then everyone started screaming again. The bus was on its side, and all the kids who’d been sitting on the left side of the bus had collapsed and dropped onto the kids on the right side. Moans and groans filled the air.
Fortunately, Kyle had seen this coming. Even though he was sitting on the left side, he’d managed to brace himself between the wall and the seat back, then looped an arm through Mairi’s backpack so that she was hanging from it instead of dropping like everyone else had. She looked up at him in confusion and gratitude and fear, and in that moment Kyle thought that maybe he saw what the Mad Mask saw. Maybe Mairi was beautiful.
“Gonna let you down now,” he told her, pretending to be straining with the effort of holding her up.
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
Kyle had to laugh in the privacy of his own head. He could pick up the entire bus and not feel it.