Michael had been through so many fire drills in his young life that he could probably stop, drop, roll, and then head out of school even in his sleep. Fire was nothing to play with, this he knew. He believed it. Every single story he read on his e-reader had the bad guys burning something down, or burning the building the good guys were in. And authors, he knew, did not lie.
He wondered if that made him a bad guy. One second the gym was just an HQ for Mr. L’s Omega Syndicate invasion force, the next it was a purple-tinted winter wonderland. Periwinkle foam started to cover everything, shooting down from dozens of the metal nozzles in the ceiling. Everybody was certainly surprised, and nobody more than Archibald Lansing, arch-villain. Before anybody moved, the periwinkle foam was ankle deep and rising.
Michael wanted to be finished with the whole thing. He was tired of being frightened out of his mind, he was tired of people holding him, and most of all, he was tired of being in pain. His dad’s bike hadn’t been nice to his legs. Those holding him weren’t at all gentle about gripping his arms. But there was still a lot to do.
Like, first, he had to stomp on these two peoples’ feet. He didn’t know them, and felt bad about it. They were only following orders, and now they were going to get in trouble.
Both of them squawked out, one after another, but only one of them let go of his arm. The other held on even tighter, and started shaking him. He was about to add whiplash to the list of offenses in this whole thing. That and his plan failing before step three.
Michael had learned, somewhere in one of his books (this might have been one of the Artemis Fowl books, but perhaps not) that a simple plan was most often the best. You get too complicated, with too many steps, and the thing started looking like an NFL playbook, and that’s when you were in real trouble. When too many X’s and O’s started blocking with little arrows, you were doomed. He’d thought that, with only a couple of real important steps, this would work. There hadn’t been enough time or calories in his system to think up a Plan B, or even pay attention to what would happen if something went really wrong. Well it had.
Mr. L was roaring in rage. At least, he was roaring for a few seconds before he took a step towards Michael and nearly did a flip, slipping on the fire suppressing foam. He went down heavily and was lost in a sea of pastel purple.
“Trent!” Michael shouted. “Hey Trent, where are you buddy?”
“Washington?” someone in the crowd said. It was Davey Rightman, sounding like he’d slept for about two hours and was just woken up with a bucket of water.
“Davey, get Trent’s fat, useless, ugly keister out here to fight me. I want my four hundred sixty dollars back, with interest!” Compound interest was currently confusing him in math, but he understood the basic concept of it.
“Washington!” came a roar. This wasn’t Mr. L either. Trent appeared, pushing and shoving people aside. Sparks leapt from his fingertips. The foam was past knee deep, and people were slipping and sliding all over the place, bringing each other down, shouting, purple-covered human dominoes.
Michael was really sorry to do this, but…
“Come on Sparky!” he yelled, then dove aside.
It was just in time. He didn’t get far with the man pulling on his arm, but got far enough not to get smashed with a lightning bolt straight from Trent’s hand. Instead, he got some volts anyway, even as he hit his chin on the floor and bit his tongue.
Michael had a pretty good memory when it came to interesting stuff. He could tell anybody who was interested all the major events that happened in any of his favorite books, for instance. He could also recount a lot of the major wars of the first twenty centuries, about when they were, who was fighting, and who the winners were.
Most people, he knew, just saw lines on maps. Most people also just saw metal nozzles sticking out of the ceiling, if they saw anything at all. They didn’t remember when the fire department guys came in with their axes and Jaws of Life and fire hoses, and set a sample house on fire just outside LADCEMS, then explained all about the properties of the chemical foam fire suppression system used throughout the school system. It was the next fact that most forgot: in addition to being the newest and latest in fire suppression technology, the foam was solidified with other chemicals and used in electrical cables, because it conducted electricity extremely well.
The confused screams of over two thousand people rang out as they were instantly electrocuted. It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t extremely powerful, but even through the pain Michael was worried about Grandpa’s ‘ticker’, and the tickers of all the other old folks who might have caught some of the bolt.
It worked. It only took getting struck by lightning, but it worked.
Michael jumped to his feet, and instantly wished he hadn’t. He was pain all over. Somewhere in the mass of purplish foam pool was Mr. L, and somewhere else was Mr. Jackson. Michael couldn’t be sure that Mr. Jackson had seen the card, and he couldn’t be sure that Mr. L lost the telepathy power. The fire department had said something about just how many gallons of gel were pumped out of the nozzles, and they might have mentioned how much foam that instantly changed into, but he was shaky on his math and didn’t know how long the foam would last.
He wanted to shout to everybody, to get out, but everyone was moaning and groaning. With any luck, the doctors from BH Obama would stroll in at the sound of screaming and start getting everybody out of there. With even more luck, people would be shocked out of whatever stupor Mr. L had put them in, but Michael wasn’t going to count on luck starting now. He had to find Mr. Jackson and put an end to this.
Moving through the gym now was like trying to swim across Niagara Falls. Everywhere someone wasn’t lying on the ground waiting to be tripped over, there was someone’s foot to step on instead. Now the zombie shoes were on the other feet, as Michael shuffled like a blind man toward the place where Mr. Jackson had been.
Michael heard a door creak open, and stared over the chest deep foam at Mr. L’s smirking, disappearing face. He had to get Mr. L, had to put him down, had to blindfold him right after knocking him out. There was no other option. That’s how the plan had ended in the first place, and that’s just how it was going down.
“Mr. Jackson?” he called. “Mr. Jackson!”
“You are an idiot, Washington,” came the groaning reply.
“Just stay down, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll just drown in your... your plan, shall I? The day I follow the orders of a seventh grade student is the day I wake up and heaven’s kicked me out for bad behavior.”
“Don’t let him see you!” Michael shouted, as he ran out the door.
Mr. Jackson was in the midst of saying something sarcastic when Michael hit the door at full speed and sprinted out of the school. The cold smacked into him like one of Trent’s lightning bolts. He hadn’t realized that the foam had started to soak into his clothes. The wind cut into him like his jacket and pants were made of tissue paper. His breath went out of him in a steamy rush. The pain of the bolt of lightning returned, and he gasped out loud with the sudden agony in his legs from all that bike riding. And jumping recklessly in the library. Oh, and the rest of him: ow.
Mr. L wasn’t far off. He had several sets of wireless door openers and keys, and was randomly unlocking doors, laughing quietly to himself.
“You aren’t getting out of here!” he tried to shout. Wheezed actually. Hey, it was the best he could do. He slipped on the fresh snow, wrenched himself trying to stay upright, and steadied himself.
“A kid,” Mr. L was saying, in between his own personal laughter. “A snot-nosed little twerp. Unbelievable.”
Finally one of the cars nearby blinked its lights and bleeped, and Mr. L started to make a beeline for it. Michael drew himself up.
“Stop right there!” he barked. To his surprise, Mr. L did just that. Maybe he was psychic.
“You’re like a festering boil!” Mr. L said. “Go away kid.”
Michael didn’t even know what that was, but r
esolved to look it up on his e-reader after this was over. Instead of saying something clever, he settled for, “No,” then: “Where’s Charlotte?”
“The Mr. L wannabe? Oh, I killed her. Oh, Oh, but don’t worry, she didn’t scream. Much.”
If Michael could have developed his super power right then and there, he would have killed Mr. L with his laser eyes. He’d never really wondered what a super hot, exploding head would look like before, but he was willing to try right now, just in case it happened for real.
“My work here’s done,” Mr. L told him.
“What are you talking about? Trent just electrocuted everybody. Half are unconscious and the other half are rolling around in pain. Plus you don’t have Mr. Jackson’s power anymore.”
Mr. L laughed. “So what? You think I need it now?”
“You can’t tell the Actives what to do.”
“Sure I can,” Mr. L said. “They’re programmed, understand. You think you won this? You better get yourself some seriously reinforced body armor, kid. I wasn’t sitting on my hands while you and your girlfriend made up your little plan. I just planted about five hundred time bombs in peoples’ heads.”
Michael had nothing to say to that. He just stared, then glanced back at the gym as if it was going to start exploding any second. Mr. L chuckled again.
“You’re lying,” Michael said.
“Uh, right, yeah, lying, you got me. Hey listen,” Mr. L said, that lopsided grin appearing. “I got to admit, I made a mistake with you. I tried killing you off. I should’ve offered you a job. That last synergist told me you got something in you, kid. She said you could really be the big one. Of course your mom didn’t want to hear that.”
What was he talking about? Michael didn't bother trying to figure it out. Lansing was only trying to distract him from doing what he needed to do: stop this overweight lunatic from getting away.
“So I tell you what. You get in the car, the whole gym full of purple foam thing: forgotten. The electrocution thing: forgiven. You come to Omega, we treat you right, you get to be a king among kings. You can have your own island. A nice island, where you can have all the little girlies you like, feeding you tropical fruits and massaging your feet and whatever it is you twelve year old kids like doing.”
“I’m thirteen!” he snarled.
Mr. L looked surprised, and raised his hands. “Right, of course. Thirteen. Huge difference. But listen, I haven’t got much time, need to be away. Want to come along? I can only promise riches beyond your imaginings, all the time in the world to do whatever it is you like, pure pleasure, that sort of thing. Eh? Going, going…”
“Gone,” Michael said savagely.
“Oh!” Mr. L said, clutching at his heart. “You wound me, Michael. Anyway, that’ll be it. See ya. Good luck in Bombville, and send my love to your mom and gramps. If they survive.”
With that, he started up the car, drove out of the parking lot, and turned the corner. Michael felt a crushing load of despair shoot through his entire body, helped along by a generous amount of freezing cold and the pain.
Michael howled in frustration, and slammed his fist down on the snowy car in front of him. Mr. L was going to get away. He was going to drive into the sunset. What was Michael going to get out of this? A fresh headache, probably some burn treatment, a bit tongue, a twisted ankle from the library, and the searing anger of watching the car—
Watching the car drive straight into a tornado.
Chapter 20 - Flight of the Alphas