She disappeared into the hallway and returned with Carla and Lone Star, the latter of whom leaned against the wall, bleary-eyed.
“What is it?” he asked through a yawn.
Alex looked around, locking eyes with his teammates. They nodded, or just stared back, or smiled a little, despite what was ahead of them. Alex jumped to his feet.
“What do we know?” he asked.
“They’ve got a new Umbra Gun,” Gage said.
“The way Lux—sorry—Novo spoke on the news, it sounded like they were planning on making a bunch of weapons.”
“It could be a bluff,” Gage said.
“We can’t take that chance,” Amp said. “Can you imagine trying to go up against Deputies armed with those things? Even if they didn’t end up shooting each other, there’s no way we could risk that.”
“Then we need to act. Soon.” Alex closed his eyes, racking his brain. “The Guild of Daggers is helping them with the weapon creation, but they’re based out of New York.”
“Wait,” Kyle said. “Could we, I don’t know, recruit them and make some sort of deal to get them on our side instead?”
“We don’t exactly have their phone numbers,” Gage said. “Besides, there’s nothing we could offer that the High Council couldn’t trump. They’re probably as afraid of Cloak as we are. It’s too far away for us to stop production, but maybe we can cut Cloak down before they ever get a shipment.”
“Then we go after the Guild.” Misty smacked her fist into one of her palms.
“They’ve lost their way into the Gloom, right?” Kirbie asked. “I mean if we could get the Umbra Gun from them somehow, we could use it against them.”
“We’d have to have Photon back on our side first,” Alex said. “That gun’s metal. If he’s under Shade’s control, it’s not going anywhere she doesn’t want it to be.”
“Can we assume that they can turn it into a bomb like the last one?” Mallory asked.
“Undoubtedly.” Gage nodded. “That’s far simpler than the construction of the gun itself.”
“That makes my mother our main target,” Alex said. “She’ll have the gun, and she’ll be controlling Photon. We’ll need to incapacitate her and get him back on our side. That’s the goal. We need him.”
“We can’t afford to lose people to the Gloom,” Amp said.
“I can keep us shielded.” Alex started pacing back and forth. His mind was racing. “I’ve deflected Umbra Gun bullets before. She might not even fire. I sent my father into the Gloom when she shot at me in Justice Tower, and they won’t want to have anyone melting into the shadows either. We’ll just need to break her connection with Photon in some way.”
“A Gasser?” Kyle suggested. “Or we could use one of the Tasers on her.”
Alex shook his head.
“I tried that at the museum. She’ll see them coming and dodge, or use Photon to deflect them.”
“Actually, we should rule out all weapons with electronic components,” Gage said. “One electromagnetic pulse and they’ll be worthless. Same with communicators. I’m guessing it was Photon who took out the power grid last night, not Volt.”
“I’ll do it,” Amp said. And as he spoke, Alex could see him putting things together in his brain, forming a plan. “Like when I faced off with the horde of Legions at the Cloak mansion. A high-frequency tone focused directly on her. She’ll hardly be able to think, let alone control someone else.”
“Yes!” Alex cried. “That’s perfect.”
“If we can keep her preoccupied,” Gage said, “I’d suggest getting Photon as far away from her as possible. Maybe we can break her hold on him with some distance and a few familiar faces. He seemed to be somewhat conflicted when the Rangers first showed up yesterday.”
“No problem,” Misty said. She flicked her curly red hair back. “As long as he doesn’t have, like, metal bones or something, I can get him somewhere else once Shade’s distracted.”
“How do we find them?” Kirbie asked. “How do we take them by surprise?”
“They’ll show up wherever we tell them to,” Alex said. “There’s no way Cloak’s going to turn down a fight—not when they think they’ve got us so outpowered. Plus, the city thinks they’re unstoppable right now. We just have to challenge them.”
“Television,” Kyle said. “They’ve been using it against us this whole time. What if we issue them a challenge on TV? For the soul of Sterling City. Everyone will know. It’ll spread. Cloak will have to show up. We’d just have to get on the air.”
Gage shrugged. “That should be relatively simple.”
“We give them a half-hour notice. Don’t let them have time to plan anything.”
“Just like their surprise press conferences,” Kirbie added with a grin. “We use their tactics against them.”
“We need some way to take the Deputies out of the equation,” Amp said, his fingers twitching. “The last thing I want is to be gassed by one of them while I’m focusing on Shade.”
“We need a force of our own,” Alex said.
“Look hard enough and you’ll find rebels in even the most utopian setting,” Gage said. “Think about it: Who has a grudge against the New Rangers’ private security force?”
“The Sterling City police!” Kyle exclaimed. “Carla already said they weren’t happy, right? Can’t we get them to handle the Deputies?”
“The police commissioner and I go way back,” Lux said. “He’s a good man. We can trust him.”
“Do we have any info on him?” Kirbie asked. “Any Cloak relations?”
“He’s as clean as they come, as far as I know. We’ve done thorough background checks on him. If he’s under their thumb, I don’t know that I would trust anybody in the city.”
“We need a way to talk to him alone,” Alex said.
“That’s not a problem,” Carla said. “He’s working sixteen-
hour days right now. Just visit him sometime after dark, once the curfew’s in effect. Most of the force will have been sent home by then, I imagine. The Deputies are the ones enforcing this whole no-one-out-after-dark policy.”
“Headquarters is on the other side of the city, right?” Misty asked. “It’s a long way to mist.” She eyed Lone Star. “And you’re very heavy. But I can get us in once we’re there if it’s a small team and someone can tell me where his office is.”
Lone Star stepped forward, raising his hands up. He looked like he was still trying to process the rapid flow of information.
“Whoa, whoa. You all are talking about a head-to-head battle with the Cloak Society—do you have any idea how dangerous that is? We almost didn’t defeat them a decade ago and we certainly couldn’t yesterday.”
“We also knew how dangerous it was to go into the Gloom and rescue you,” Amp said. “We didn’t do that just to call it quits after one setback. I didn’t leave my parents in that place just to give up when things got rough.”
“Amp, think about this,” Lone Star said.
“We can face them,” Alex said. “We can defeat them. One on one. Power for power.”
“Lux and I don’t have powers, though.”
“But you still have arms and legs, right?” Alex asked. His voice rose in volume. Frustration was bubbling up inside him. He had to convince Lone Star that he could still fight, even without his powers. “I’ve seen the Junior Rangers at work. The fact that they can fight hand-to-hand and bounce around like acrobats means that you must be able to, too.”
The others stared at Alex and Amp. Bug looked shocked that either of them would talk to the leader of the Rangers in such a way. Even in his current state, Lone Star was a man who commanded a certain level of respect and awe.
“It’s not your power that defines you,” Alex said, more softly, calming down. “It’s your actions. That’s something I’ve had to learn recently.”
“He’s right,” Lux said. “We’ve gotten so used to our powers that we’ve forgotten they’re not what make us Rangers.
”
Lone Star turned his head slowly, locking eyes with everyone in the room before nodding.
“I can see now how you managed to do everything you’ve accomplished so far. But this needs to be planned out. We can’t just rush into battle without all our bases covered.”
“Where do we make our stand?” Amp asked.
“To carry on with Lone Star’s baseball metaphor, my first reaction is a stadium, but that seems a little too formal,” Gage said.
“You guys, isn’t it obvious?” Misty asked. She waited for someone to respond, and when they didn’t, she rolled her eyes. “Victory Park! It’s the perfect place. Kyle will have his pick of plants and trees, and, you know, there’s history and stuff there.”
“I want to make sure we all know what we’re talking about here,” Lone Star said. “This is so dangerous . . . it’s something I never wanted you to face as Junior Rangers. Or that anyone would have to face, for that matter. I want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with backing out of this. If any of you don’t want to risk this fight, you can stay behind.”
Everyone stared at him. They all knew what he meant. They could be hurt. They might not even make it out of a fight like this. A quiet fell over the room, until the youngest among them finally spoke.
“With all due respect, Lone Star.” Misty grinned. “You don’t know us very well.”
“If we fail,” Gage said, “this will go down as a heroic win for the New Rangers. They’ll twist the story to make us the villains. It’ll give them that much more power and sway.”
“Then we don’t fail,” Kirbie said. “We can’t.”
“We choose Scylla. We don’t let the whole ship go down.”
“Except we don’t lose six teammates, Gage,” Mallory said. “You’ve got to start choosing your metaphors more carefully.”
Gage gave her a grin.
“We save the city,” Kirbie said.
“We save the world,” Alex suggested.
“It would help if we had any sort of evidence that connected Cloak to the New Rangers,” Amp said. “Just for a worst-case scenario. Something we could leave behind.”
“Everything was incinerated at the lake house,” Kirbie said, falling back against the couch. “And all of that was just our notes and stuff.”
“Shade seems a little crazier than normal,” Mallory said. “What else was she saying onstage? Anything we can use?”
Alex’s thoughts raced. He started babbling everything he could think of.
“The Umbra Gun, the Guild of Daggers, how they want to make us suffer by watching the city fall, how the people were so quick to believe them . . .”
“Too bad the microphone wasn’t on for all that,” Lux muttered.
Alex nodded. Shade had ripped out the microphone. Even if someone had managed to capture video of the whole thing, there’d be no sound. And what would it show? Just the heroic Shade taking down another bad guy. If only they had video of the New Rangers before they were the new Rangers.
“Wait,” Alex said. He stopped. Something his mother mentioned popped into his mind. They hadn’t always planned on becoming Rangers. That had been a new development, something they’d come up with after Alex had defected.
“What are you thinking?” Amp asked.
“The Cloak Society doesn’t wear masks.” Alex started across the room.
“Well, we know that,” Kyle said, seemingly deflated.
“No, you don’t understand. I’ve got it.” Alex found his Cloak trench draped across a chair. He slid two photos out of the inside pocket. “We’ve already beaten them.”
16
PROOF
It took a few days for them to put together the information Alex had in mind. In that time, things seemed to stay the same in Sterling City—meaning, things were still bad but the city hadn’t been sucked into the Gloom or anything.
They hated to wait. But it was worth it.
What Alex realized as he and his teammates discussed how and where they would make their final stand was that he’d been carrying proof of Cloak’s connection to the New Rangers ever since he’d left the underground base. He had photos. In one picture, his parents stared into the camera, grinning. They held him between them, nothing but a brown-haired infant. On the back was Shade’s handwriting: Alex—6 months.
That was a start—their “son” Titan was blond, after all—but it really wasn’t much. The other photo was far more condemning. It was the Polaroid that had hung on the Rec Room wall in the lake house, a picture Alex had pocketed before the groundbreaking ceremony. It had been taken less than a year before: Alex, Mallory, Julie, and Titan, all four of them wearing their black Beta uniforms with grinning silver Cloak skulls on the chest.
The people of Sterling City knew that skull all too well now. They just never imagined their hero, Titan, wearing it.
From there, Alex’s brain bloomed with possibilities. In taking the identity of the Rangers, Cloak had overlooked all the years of evidence that had piled up. Every time Cloak had gone anywhere in public together, they were exposed to surveillance cameras and recordings. It had never occurred to them to hide their identities because they saw no reason to: soon the world would know them as their Cloak rulers, anyway. That was something Alex and his team could take advantage of.
Between Alex, Mallory, Misty, and Gage, they created a list of all the places they’d recently been to on Thursday outings—those brief hours every week when they’d been allowed to leave the underground base and see movies or go get ice cream. They figured out places the High Council had been together, too. And then, they went hunting.
Carla and the former Betas carried out the assignments, since theirs were the faces least likely to be recognized. From across the city, security tapes went missing. In a bookstore on the south side of town several rows of shelves toppled over mysteriously. By the time they were put back in order, the computer hard drive that held all the store’s backlog footage was missing. In the arts district, someone managed to melt through a museum’s thick basement window and make off with several components of its security systems. And on the western edge of Sterling City, a checkout clerk swore she saw a box of tapes float through the air as she locked up.
Back at Carla’s, the Junior Rangers watched hours and hours of footage, putting together a sort of highlights reel. Phantom and Shade were clearly visible shopping together at a high-end boutique. Barrage and Volt picked up rare, special-order books for the Tutor. The Beta Team threw popcorn at one another as they exited a movie theater.
Evidence, all of it. Proof that the New Rangers weren’t who they said they were.
One of the tapes came from an outdoor shopping center. Alex was with Kirbie in the upstairs den as she discovered it.
“Look!” Kirbie shouted, jumping to her feet and pointing at the parking lot on the screen. “It’s you. I mean, it’s all of you.”
Sure enough, the Betas stood at the back of a black SUV as Barrage and Shade talked to them. Alex shook his head. It seemed so long ago.
“This is good stuff,” Kirbie said. “Not only does it have all of you guys, but it’s got Shade and Barrage, too. Look, you can see them both clearly getting back into the car together.”
“Do you know what day that was?” Alex asked.
“No, should I?” She trailed off as she fast-forwarded through the footage. “Wait, is this when . . .” The camera angles changed a few times as she sped through, until suddenly she saw herself, chasing after a skeezy-looking man carrying a purse.
“Yup,” Alex said.
“This is the day I ran into you at the mall,” she said quietly.
The camera angle shifted again, and they saw the whole encounter play out. Alex was nervous for some reason as they watched. There was no sound, but he remembered the scene like it had happened yesterday. He’d lied to Kirbie, telling her that he was thinking of leaving Cloak, even though he’d had no intention of doing so at the time. It was almost funny now given the mes
s they were in. Eventually, she’d flown away to her team, and Alex had gone back to his.
Kirbie paused the video and smiled a strange, small smile.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Nothing.”
“Oh come on. We’re almost, like, at the end of the world.”
“No, it’s nothing,” she said. “I was just remembering how I thought I could turn you into a Ranger, and we’d all just ride in and take Cloak by surprise and save the day. I was so . . . I don’t know, what’s the right word? Just dumb, I guess?”
Alex wrinkled his brow as he stared at her.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “If I’d never met you—if I’d never fought you—I don’t know if I’d ever have realized what the Cloak Society was really all about. I would have raided Justice Tower along with them. I wouldn’t have been able to see just how insane my family is.”
“You did this on your own, Alex.”
“No,” he said. “I did it with you by my side. And with Kyle and Amp. With everyone.”
Kirbie smiled and let her eyes drop to the floor. Her golden hair was usually in a ponytail, but it was down now, falling over her shoulders.
“If—no, when we make it out of all this, what are we all going to do? You’ll stick with us, right? As a Ranger?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I don’t think any of us have really thought about it much since we’ve been so caught up in what to do about Cloak. I mean, of course we’ll figure something out. But me and Mal and the others, we weren’t really brought up for that kind of spotlight. Besides, there’s so much we were trained to do that’s not even legal. We’d have to completely relearn everything we know if we were going to be some kind of superheroes.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Kirbie said. “Look at all the good you’ve done in the last month.”
“Are you talking about things like destroying museum exhibits and crashing press conferences or just generally causing a public panic anywhere I go?”