Lucas leaned against the elevator wall with a sigh. “It wasn’t embarrassing enough, now you want me to relive it?”
“That’s how we learn,” Hartwell said, pulling his own mask off as the doors to the elevator opened onto his elaborate workstation.
Lucas followed. He was finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other.
“Take the costume off and get up on the examination table,” Hartwell ordered. He went to one of the control panels and flicked a few switches, activating the tools he would use on Lucas.
Lucas did as he was told, but waited until his father wasn’t looking to remove the folded piece of paper Katie had given him from inside his boot. There was a bathrobe hanging from a hook nearby and he put it on, sliding the paper into the pocket.
Hartwell turned from the instrument panel. “So, shall we begin?”
The tests went on for hours. Lucas swore there wasn’t a part of him that didn’t get scanned or poked. He lay on the table, having great difficulty keeping his eyes open as his father went over screen after screen of data.
“From the looks of this,” Hartwell said, startling him awake, “you’re lucky to be alive right now.”
I don’t know if I’d call it lucky, the way I feel, Lucas thought.
“Your nanites were seriously damaged in the attack. They actually had to repair themselves before they could repair you,” Hartwell explained gravely.
“That’s probably why I feel like I got hit by a bus,” Lucas said, remembering that, in fact, he had been hit by a van.
“I’m surprised you’re not feeling worse,” Hartwell said, wheeling his chair over from the computer screens to sit beside the examination table. “Where did you go after getting out of the Kessler Building?”
Lucas shrugged. “I just ran,” he lied. “I wasn’t sure I could survive another blast from one of their guns.”
“So you just ran until I found you?” Hartwell asked.
“I think I might’ve passed out for a few seconds here and there, but yeah.”
Hartwell nodded and stood, placing a strong hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “You did well tonight,” he said.
Lucas smiled. “How come I get the idea you’re lying through your teeth?”
His father laughed. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m just glad to see you in one piece. For a while there, I thought you were dead.”
He went back to the computer to check the diagnostics on the costume, which had been hooked up to a series of sensors.
Lucas wanted to tell him who he had met, but Nicolas Putnam’s words echoed through his mind, rendering him mute.
All I’m asking is for you to trust us.
“I’m probably going to be pulling an all-nighter down here,” Hartwell said, turning from his work. “Why don’t you go get something to eat and hit the sack? We’ll see how you’re doing in the morning.”
Much relieved, Lucas jumped down from the table and padded across the cold floor of the underground lab to the elevator. He pushed the button, and as the door slid open, he stuck his hands into the pocket of his robe. The folded paper from Katie was still there.
“Clayton,” he called out.
His father turned toward him. “Yes, Lucas?”
Lucas closed his hand around the mysterious list.
He killed my father, he heard the cute girl say again, each word dipped in pain.
“Thanks for coming for me tonight,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” Hartwell turned back to his work. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Lucas responded as the elevator door closed and the car began its ascent back up to the manor house.
Good night, Lucas thought wryly. With all he had to think about, he wondered if he would ever have one of those again.
10
His sleep that night was marred by bizarre dreams. He was back on the streets of the War Zone, but all the buildings were burning, and his father—fully costumed—stood staring at the neighborhood engulfed in fire.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Lucas heard his father say, before the Raptor leapt into the air.
A voice he could barely make out whispered in his ear, and he looked to see the girl—Katie—standing beside him.
Her eyes were fixed on the sight of his father—of the Raptor—circling the sky above the flames.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“He killed my father,” she said, her voice louder as she began to cry tears of blood.
The air was suddenly filled with the sounds of screaming, and Lucas saw that his father had come down to the street, fighting a gang that attacked him.
There was something different about him now. He seemed larger, the black and red Raptor’s colors he wore looking less like a costume and more like his actual skin.
The gang had dropped to their knees, covering their heads in submission. But that didn’t stop the Raptor. He attacked with abandon, picking up the surrendering gang-bangers and tearing them limb from limb.
The victims screamed as the Raptor laughed, moving from one to the other without a sign of mercy.
“You don’t want to do this!” Lucas found himself screaming, running toward the ominous figure.
The Raptor whirled on him with a snarl, eyes like two burning coals floating in the darkness. He was holding bloody, dripping pieces of one of the gang members in large, clawed hands.
“It’s time for you to wake up, Lucas,” the monstrous version of the Raptor growled, its eyes burning brighter.
“Wake up.”
Lucas awoke bathed in warm sunlight. The sudden exposure made him squirm, sending him scrambling beneath the covers like a vampire.
“What’s going on?” he grumbled, his voice rough from sleep. His heart was still racing as he remembered his dream. His nightmare.
“I’m going to be gone for most of the day,” Hartwell said, pinning back the curtains, allowing the sun’s full effect to flood the bedroom. “And I want to be sure you’re up and around.”
Lucas slowly emerged from beneath the sheet and blanket. His father was dressed in a tailored black suit and was normal size again, nothing like the monster in his dream.
“Where are you off to?” Lucas asked, pushing himself up in the bed.
“Every once in a while I have to go into the city and show my face to the board of directors,” Hartwell explained.
He didn’t look at all pleased, and Lucas was sure the man would have prefered to be back in the lower levels of the manor, in the nest, working on some new kind of gadget.
“I like to remind them I’m still alive,” the man added.
Hartwell leaned on his cherrywood cane, and Lucas noticed he looked a bit paler this morning.
“Are you feeling all right?” the boy asked, pictures of a brutish Hartwell flashing before his eyes.
“I’m good,” the older man said gruffly, turning on his heels and limping toward the door. “Our activity last night has taken a bit more from me than expected. I’ll be fine.”
Lucas threw back the covers and climbed from the bed.
“There’s plenty to keep you busy while I’m gone,” Hartwell said in the doorway. “I’ve set up a computer tutorial that will tell you about all the catalogued supervillains in the world. I’d like you to read up on them … get to know them … their strengths and weaknesses. You never know when you might run into one.”
Lucas shook his head. “You’ve catalogued all the known supervillains?”
“Do you find something strange about that?”
The boy walked stiffly to the chair in the corner and retrieved his robe. “No, it’s just that sometimes I wonder how you have time to fight crime with all your research and cataloguing.”
“It hasn’t been an easy life,” the older man said. “I made a lot of sacrifices. And I guess you could say I’m paying for them now.”
The room became deathly quiet, and Lucas felt awkward.
“I’ll see you sometime tonight,” Ha
rtwell said, quickly turning to leave.
Lucas sat down heavily on the edge of his bed. The previous night’s activities and the memories of his nightmare flooded into his mind. What was he going to do?
Putnam had asked for time to prove he was telling the truth. Should Lucas give it to him? What should he do until then? The questions gave him a headache, but Lucas really didn’t see that there was much of a choice.
He stood up, deciding that the best thing he could do was to have some breakfast and feed his nanites. Then maybe he could start that tutorial on supervillains his father had left for him.
He put his hands into his pockets as he padded toward the door, and found the paper Katie had given him.
Again, he read the nine names. They still meant nothing to him.
He left the bedroom and went down to the kitchen for something to eat, already knowing what he would do after that.
* * *
Four bowls of cereal and two large glasses of juice later, Lucas found himself down in the lower levels of the manor, in the Raptor’s nest.
He still felt uneasy down there, as if he didn’t belong.
His costume had been laid out on a worktable, and it looked as though his father had already made some repairs to it. Lucas picked up the black mask; the cracked lenses had been replaced.
He’d be back to training again in no time.
Crossing the lab, he approached one of the smaller computer setups and booted it up. He’d surfed the Web a few times on these computers while waiting for his father to finish his own work, so he knew there was Internet access along with all the crime-fighting functions.
He sat down in the chair and took the list of names from his pocket, typing the first into a search engine.
Thomas Stanley.
He hit Enter and waited. There were a lot of Thomas Stanleys out there, involved with all sorts of things. He found one who had given a speech about advances in water purification, and another who had just been accepted into a high-profile California legal firm. Nothing out of the ordinary that he could see.
Bored with Mr. Stanley, he tried the next name.
Sheila Walker.
It was pretty much the same—multiple Sheila Walkers doing multiple things across the country. Hooray for Sheila Walker.
Lucas scrolled down the list, reading the descriptions of the various Sheila Walker Web sites. He found a Sheila Walker who had been killed in a motor vehicle accident not too long ago. That sucks, he thought, and a morbid curiosity made him click on the story. It really did suck; she was a year younger than him.
Lucas punched in the next name.
Scott Wallace.
Lucas sighed. All kinds of people floating around out there named Scott Wallace. But then something caught his eye.
Leaning closer, he scrolled down to see that a Scott Wallace had died as well. The story was from another newspaper archive, and this particular Scott Wallace had died in a mysterious house fire.
He’d been right around the same age as Lucas.
The boy’s heartbeat did a little jump. He quickly went to the next name.
Marc DiPietro.
Marc DiPietro the Elvis impersonator; Marc DiPietro with a blog about his love for pirate films. And strangely enough, Marc DiPietro who died while hiking late last summer.
Lucas’s heart began to race even faster as a picture began to come into focus. A nasty picture.
He went back to Thomas Stanley and scrolled through page after page until he found it.
Death.
On page seven of twelve, Thomas Stanley, only twenty-one years old, had passed away quite suddenly of heart failure.
He went to the next name on the list.
Tyler Devin.
A Tyler Devin had died while vacationing in Florida. Although he’d been captain of the swim team in high school, he appeared to have drowned.
And that was how it went for the remaining four names—all of them dead, all of them only a few years older or younger than Lucas. Was this what Katie and Putnam had wanted him to discover? And if so, for what reason?
Lucas’s thoughts raced, and then his mouth went dry.
What if this has something to do with my father?
Lucas quickly erased his Web history before signing off and shutting down the computer.
He picked up the crumpled piece of paper and read the names again. It wasn’t a list of strangers anymore; the names had gained an ominous new meaning.
Lucas didn’t know what to do. The supervillain tutorial was what he should have been doing, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. He stood up and began to pace.
Thomas Stanley. Sheila Walker. Scott Wallace …
Lucas wanted to shut his brain off, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Lucas Moore.” A tiny voice suddenly interrupted his troubled thoughts.
Now he was really beginning to think he was losing his mind. He listened for the sound of his name again.
“Lucas Moore, can you hear me?”
“Hello?” he asked, walking in a circle, trying to pinpoint the location of the voice. He knew that all his senses had been enhanced by the nanites in his bloodstream, and that included his hearing.
“Lucas Moore … calling Lucas Moore.”
The voice was coming from somewhere across the room. He moved in that direction.
“Hello?” he called out again.
“Lucas?” the tiny voice squeaked. “Is that you?”
It was coming from the vicinity of the workstation where his father had been making the repairs to his costume.
“Are you here?” Lucas asked, approaching the table.
“Lucas, it’s me … Putnam,” said the voice, and finally Lucas realized it was coming from the communications system built into his mask. His father must have repaired that as well.
“Putnam?” he asked, picking up the mask and speaking into it.
“Yes, hello, can you hear me all right?”
“Took a minute to find where your voice was coming from,” Lucas said. “How are you doing this? I thought this system was exclusive to Hartwell.”
Lucas put the cowl on over his head. In his ears he heard the man laugh.
“I got a chance to study the system in your mask while you were unconscious,” he explained. “Figured it might come in handy if I needed to get in touch with you.”
“Does this have anything to do with the list?” Lucas asked.
“The list?”
“The names Katie gave to me,” Lucas answered.
He could hear Putman speaking to someone in the background. His voice sounded tense, suddenly upset.
“Hey!” Lucas called out. “Where’d you go?”
“Lucas, have you done anything with that list?”
“I did a search online,” he answered. “I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I found something sort of scary. Each of the names … they all died in accidents.”
There was a deathly silence on the other end, and a cold finger of dread ran up his spine.
“Was that it?” Lucas asked. “Was that what you were hoping I’d find? What does it mean? Because right now—”
“You need to get out of there,” Putnam said firmly.
“What are you talking about?” Lucas asked, trying to keep calm.
“You need to come to me,” Putnam stated. “You need to come to me, and I will explain everything.”
“No,” Lucas answered, anger growing from his frustration. “No, I will not come to you.” He started to pace, his voice growing louder. “I don’t even know who you people are, for God’s sake.”
“And you know who Hartwell is?” Putnam asked bluntly. “A man suddenly walks into your life, says ‘Hey, I’m your father—and oh yeah, by the way, I’m a superhero,’ and that’s perfectly easy for you to accept? Come on, Lucas.”
“He’s proven to me who he is,” Lucas said, wanting desperately to remove the cowl and throw it across the room so he wouldn??
?t have to listen anymore.
But he didn’t.
“And who’s that? The Raptor? The hero of Seraph City?” Putnam asked.
“Yes, he’s a hero,” Lucas argued. “I’ve been hearing about him for as long as I can remember. … They build statues to him and everything.”
“We saw what he did to that gang member last night,” Putnam said.
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Somebody in one of the apartments filmed it with their cell phone. He looked as though he wanted to kill him,” Putnam went on. “But you stopped him.”
“He was just trying to scare him,” Lucas said, remembering how frightened he had been.
“Do you really believe that, Lucas?” Putnam asked. “If you do, we can end this here. You’ll never hear from me again.”
“He’s a superhero,” Lucas replied, certain what he was saying was true.
But is it? He remembered the horrific dream, and the reality that had spawned it.
“He would never—”
“Goodbye, Lucas,” Putnam said.
“Wait,” Lucas said suddenly. “Tell me about the list.”
“For that, you have to come to me.”
Lucas didn’t know what to say. He felt himself being sucked down into the darkness, deeper and deeper. But what if that was where the answers were?
“Will you do that, Lucas? Will you come to me and let me tell you everything?” Putnam asked.
Lucas had to know the truth.
He stopped fighting and allowed himself to be drawn into the depths.
“How do I find you?”
* * *
Lucas had actually learned to hotwire a car before he could even drive.
His mom had always said that hanging around with the wrong crowd would bring him nothing but trouble, but if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to do what he was doing now in the front seat of his father’s vintage Ford Mustang.
The man seems to love his Mustangs.
Lying across the seat, head bent beneath the steering column, he managed to get at the ignition wires and twist them together. The car’s powerful engine turned over with a roar and then idled to a purr.
“Sorry, Mom,” Lucas said beneath his breath, knowing how horrified she would have been.