 
### Upbeats

By Erin Sheena Byrne

Copyright 2012 Erin Sheena Byrne

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Upbeats does not contain inappropriate material for children and is suitable for young teenagers to adults.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Epilogue

Observer Scene

About the Author

# Prologue

Rockwell was a fairly normal city. You had your shops, your apartments, your suburbs, your downtown, and your outskirts nearer the country and, of course, your crime.

Nothing the police couldn't handle.

Break-ins, robbers, hold-ups, high-speed chases . . . those were a little more on the unusual side, though.

So it was here that the newest criminal mastermind decided to set up shop.

He didn't consider himself the greatest in the country or the world.

No.

He viewed himself as the greatest in the whole _universe._

But even that . . . he didn't want to brag. It was strictly business, as far as he was concerned.

No one would ever be able to stop his plans . . . he would pull off the greatest crime in the history of planet Earth and no one on this planet, or on any other planet, for that matter, was going to stop him.

Not police, not detectives, not the military, not the CIA, FBI or MI5 . . . not even Area 51 or District 61 . . . they'd all just be speed bumps along the road.

He could put up with them easily enough.

Not even some of his older enemies would pause his work this time around.

It was a fool proof plan. One he had been coming up with for years.

He was going to succeed this time.

And he vowed not to let _anything, anyone,_ stop him . . .

# Chapter One

I don't sleep in late often. I'm normally the first to wake up and the first to be ready. I am obsessively punctual.

But I do have a tendency to sleep in late if I read too much action before bed . . .

I had been sure to set the alarm clock for seven but Bailey; a happy-go-lucky Golden Retriever, my loyal and trustworthy yet bumbling idiot of a dog; knocked it over, causing it to smash into a dozen pieces as well as scattering a million nuts and bolts all over my bedroom floor.

Bailey isn't one for subtle interruptions, but I still slept through it as if nothing had happened.

It was about eight by the time Jemima (my little sister) bounded into my room and woke me up by shaking me vigorously and shouting: "LUKE, THE BUS LEAVES IN TEN MINUTES!!!" in my ear.

(She may look all sweet and innocent with her big blue eyes, dimpled, gap-toothed smile and bouncy blonde pigtails but she is just as loud, noisy and as rough as any boy her age.)

"Huh? What?" I mumbled, drowsily. I tried to lift my head up but just ended up rolling over, away from Jemima.

Jemima wouldn't stand for it: she rolled me over and pushed me out of the bed before I could even protest.

I landed with a muffled _thud_ on the hard wood floor. At least I was bundled up in the duvet and that had softened my landing a little.

It was a brave attempt on her part but I only propped myself up for a couple of seconds to survey my surroundings through half closed, blurry eyes. I barely made out the small figure of my little sister. I flopped back down and pulled a pillow over my head. "Jem, go away, you're up too early . . ."

"Am not," Jemima replied. "You're up too _late._ You've only got eight minutes to get dressed and grab breakfast, Mom says."

I didn't respond.

I could hear Jemima take up her stance of uncompromising impatience: crossed arms and a tapping foot. "Don't you make me get the bucket of cold water, Luke Rosenhart . . ."

"You wouldn't," I said, warily.

She ran with dainty footsteps out my room. "I'm running the tap right now!" she called from down the hall, in the bathroom.

I groaned, deeply, and untangled myself from my soft and warm cocoon. It was getting colder and colder as winter approached. I'd have to pull out my quilt soon. . . .

I groggily made my way to the bathroom, turned off the tap, shoved Jemima out and closed the door.

"Good, you're up," she said, sounding far too pleased with herself.

I mumbled something, splashed water on my face and looked at my reflection in the mirror.

Luke Rosenhart, your average fourteen year old.

Green eyes that were only now starting to clear up and see the world for what it was; blonde hair I'd have to comb before I went out into public and a fairly tall frame I was still getting used to.

Your typical, run of the mill teenager. You would walk past me in the street and not even stop to look at me.

I'm nothing special.

Now, I know you've probably heard a thousand times that there's no such thing as ordinary.

But . . . there actually is.

People try to buck against the whole "normal" story by doing something crazy like dying their hair green and wearing torn up or crazy, mix-matched clothes.

And in the process they forget that that's just another aspect of normal. People don't like the classification of "ordinary" so they go and do something crazy, not fully seeing that . . . they've lost what really would have made them special: their own personality.

I accept the fact that I really was a regular kid. I never struck anyone as someone who'd go on to . . . save the world.

I never did anything that would make me seem like I was special. Maybe it was just that I didn't like the lime-light and preferred to just stay low profile, or could I really have been born ordinary?

I shook myself from my thoughts and got back to brushing my teeth while I pulled on my jeans. It's a skill. One I am yet to master.

I hopped down the stairs as I yanked socks over my still dripping wet feet. In the rush, I hadn't even bothered to dry myself properly after my shower.

I ran through the kitchen, grabbed a slice of buttered toast that was probably meant for my Dad, and shot out the house, racing to get to the bus stop before they left without me. Fortunately, we live only down the road from the bus stop.

"Hey, Dude, what's with the 'Just jumped out the shower, had no time to eat' look?" Ned Detwiler, my best friend who can sometimes be a pain, commented as I got on the bus, seconds before the doors closed and the bus pulled away from the curb.

"Because I did just get out the shower and had no time to eat," I panted, taking a bite of my toast as I bent down to tie my shoelaces.

"You've been reading too much action again, huh?" Ned crossed his arms, satisfied that he had worked out a probable diagnosis.

"You never read, how can you talk?" I grumbled.

"I do read," Ned protested.

" _1000 jokes, 500 practical jokes_ and _7500 homemade bombs_ ," I replied, listing everything my friend has ever read.

"I only got up to 4900 in the homemade bomb book, by the way," Ned said. "I just can't get a hold of Iron Oxide . . ."

"Rust," I supplied.

"Oh, good, then I've got that."

I had other friends besides Ned. But Ned was my most loyal, most dependable friend. I could always count on him even if I don't see eye to eye with him most of the time.

We're polar opposites, Ned and I, and not just on the outside. (I have fair skin and hair and he's black African.) But also in personality. Ned is funny and jovial and I'm too serious, he claims. I aim to do my best in school; Ned would rather fire spit balls at the teacher during Math. I never, ever get detention; Ned gets it because he annoys the teachers till they crack.

But, despite all his nonsense, Ned is, in fact, quite smart. He may be drawing silly cartoons of the teacher in his notebook, but I think he's got one of those minds that remember things better when they don't focus on the subject too much.

Ned also makes issues about small things; things I can let go easily but he won't.

Like today . . .

"The zoo," Ned started ranting. "A dumb zoo that isn't even finished yet. Whose bright idea was that? I mean, c'mon. There's only like five major habitats that are finished and there's not even any animals in them yet . . ."

"It's not that bad," I tried to say.

"They put a vote to the whole school: a day at an unfinished Zoo or Aquarium," Ned said, apparently choosing to ignore me entirely. "They listen to all the votes for the zoo but they shut the kid up who votes for the Aquarium."

"Ned," I reasoned. "You do realize that's how a vote works. Majority rules. You were the only one who voted for the aquarium. Everyone else voted for the zoo. You were outnumbered. Badly."

Ned rolled his eyes. "I hate it when you're right, Luke."

"Yeah, but one of us has to be, and you aren't going to be right anytime soon, so, that leaves me," I said, logically.

Ned nodded in unconditional agreement and went back to the debate of Aquarium vs. Zoo.

I eventually tuned out to all of Ned's ranting and stared out the window at the rain cascading down. It was autumn and rain was a common occurrence. I had never been a fan of getting wet, though. But, it was a zoo and the outdoor habitats weren't done yet so I'd be inside most of the time.

Looking back, I don't actually know why the zoo was even an option. Or why everyone had voted for it. The zoo was only halfway done. Construction was still going on.

Only the arachnids and reptile enclosures, the aviaries, and the penguin habitats were finished. The other ones, like the African Safari and the Asian Jungle, were still to be built.

It was a two hour drive, and I had to listen to Ned, voicing his complaints, the whole way. Eventually, it just sounded like a constant droning and I didn't even make out individual syllables.

We eventually arrived at the zoo.

Kids filed out the bus, pushing, shoving, accidently elbowing some poor unsuspecting teacher and then running into the building, into the lobby.

Each kid had probably only spent twenty seconds in the rain. But, scanning the lobby, every kid was wet. And not just slightly wet. No. _Sopping_ wet: hair plastered to foreheads, jackets hanging with rain water and shoes squeaking on the clean but now slippery linoleum.

You know, when there's a huge crowd of people and they're all talking, how everyone is saying something, you can hear them but you can't make it out because someone else is always crowding their words out with their own? Do you know how they used to get that effect in movies? They don't make everyone just say random things. They make everyone mutter "rhubarb" over and over again and you get that effect.

Well, all I heard in that lobby was a droning of "rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb."

The teachers were trying to get everyone to quiet down. "Settle down, kids," Ms Ling, who was in charge of the whole operation, was shouting.

"Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb."

The young teacher sighed, defeated. But as she resorted to her fellow teachers, a slim, athletic girl with shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair, stood up on a chair, slid her fingers into her mouth and made the loudest whistle I had ever heard. It split your eardrums in half.

Everyone spun around to see where the shrill noise had come from. "BE QUIET!!!" she shouted. I doubt she could have been any louder if she had used a megaphone.

Everyone got the hint. They tend to get the hint when Brooke O'Mackey steps up and demands it.

Ms Ling thanked her and took over from there.

Brooke got down off the chair and a slender, curvy girl with long chocolate brown hair, dark eyes and tanned skin, high fived her.

Robyn Diaz.

She was a beautiful mix of Spanish and a hint of Asian. Her mother was, somewhere along the genes line, half Asian, with black hair and sort of almond shaped eyes. Her father was Spanish, with thick dark brown hair and tanned skin. Robyn took after her father mostly. She even spoke Spanish and tended to mix a bit of a Spanish accent in with her normal accent. She had her mother's eyes and shaping.

Robyn was one of a kind. Quiet, extremely shy, but if she could help, she was never afraid to do it.

Brooke was just fierce and tough.

I guess that's why they were friends, too.

Opposites attract and complement.

# Chapter Two

"Now, we don't have enough teachers to make proper groups," Ms Ling, the youngest and newest teacher in Rockwell, was explaining. This was to be her first field trip. "So we'll go with the buddy system. I will team you all up into groups of four. It will be a random selection . . ."

Ned groaned. "I'm gonna get paired with a bunch of dorks, aren't I?"

"Should fit right in," I muttered.

Ned playfully batted me on the arm. "If I'm going down, you're coming with me, got that?"

"Shush," I hissed. "Ms Ling just said my name."

" . . . Rosenhart, if you would go with . . ."

"Say my name, say my name, say my name," Ned begged under his breath.

"Fred Detwiler," Ms Ling said.

"Close enough," Ned shrugged, satisfied. "You can't ask for everything, can you?"

"And, um, Robyn Diaz and . . . let's see Brooke O'Mackey, oh, yes!"

"Oh, great!" Ned exclaimed, throwing his arms up. "We get stuck with a bunch of dumb girls!" He didn't know Brooke or Robyn then.

"Who are you calling 'dumb?'" Brooke demanded as she marched over, a stormy expression plastered on her face, arms folded.

"No one, no one at all, sir . . . um, ma'am," Ned said, shrinking behind me, eyes wide and scared. "Luke," he whispered. "Protect me, please, old pal of mine?"

I crossed my arms. "Ned . . ." I shook my head. "Sorry, he has issues. Most of them in his head."

Ned rolled his eyes. "Some help you are . . ."

"Oh, well," Robyn said, gesturing almost unnoticeably with her arm, motioning for Brooke to cool it. "Hey, Luke, how's Jemima?"

"She's good, tried to splash ice water over me this morning. She's enjoying the first grade. The house gets invaded by her friends every Thursday. I'm getting sick of Flora the Adventurer."

"They so don't make shows for little kids like they used to," Brooke agreed.

"You know them?" Ned interrupted, disbelievingly. I guess, when you live in the Downtown area of Rockwell, you don't really get to meet people in the country or suburbs much.

"Known them as long as I've known you," I said. "And they're not dumb. This one could break your neck," I jerked a thumb in Brooke's direction.

Brooke huffed and folded her arms, her angry expression fading. "Doesn't matter: let's just go and check out this place."

Brooke started walking and we were following, but Robyn wasn't. She tugged on her friend's sleeve and pointed to the teacher. "Ms Ling's confused about something."

Brooke shrugged, nonchalantly. "Probably can't pro-nounce that new French kid's name. The whole 'Jean' thing got me good . . ."

But Robyn shook her head. "Listen."

"...Um... it seems I miscalculated," she said. "Er... there's someone left out..." Ms Ling frowned, bewildered, and whispered something to an older teacher, who was assisting her. The more experienced teacher took the clipboard out of Ms Ling's hands, examined it, shrugged and nodded.

Ms Ling didn't look satisfied. "Well, he'll just have to come with me, then. The new kid."

"He can come with us," I heard Robyn call. She didn't hesitate. Everyone in the lobby turned to see who had volunteered.

I don't know if Robyn knew who the new kid was when she made that in-a-heartbeat decision. Robyn is kind to everyone and would never let someone stay left out.

Ms Ling didn't show a smidgen of reluctance. "Okay, fine, alright," she said, glad to have one less worry on her mind.

Robyn stood on tip toes, searching the faces in the crowd for the kid. She knew every face in town, even if she didn't know the person it belonged to. She memorised them all. She must have spotted him because she waved him over.

Maybe he was embarrassed, maybe he was just uncertain. But he didn't take long to think it through. He walked over. He was a tall kid, nearly a full head taller than me. And skinny. Not skeleton skinny but skinny. A breeze could have knocked him over but I could tell that he was too quick for a breeze. He had brown hair that was slightly curly and brown eyes that looked sad, grateful and hopeful, all at the same time.

When he joined our group, he looked completely out of place. He was used to being lonely in a crowd.

He kept his head down and stared at his feet. No one said anything, the constant "rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb," drummed on in the background.

The silence was uneasy, daunting. I decided to break it.

"I'm Luke," I said, sticking out my hand to shake. He awkwardly shook it.

"Smithy," he replied.

The others got the idea and followed my lead, introducing themselves to Smithy and shaking hands in turn.

"Robyn," she said, when it came to her turn. She smiled, gently. "Welcome to our little group."

I stood there, taking in "our little group." And... I don't know if it's just now looking back that I remember it but... I was actually proud of "our little group." It felt good to have a team. I promised myself, somewhere in the back of my mind, right there and then, that we would always stay that way.

I smiled. "C'mon, let's get a move on. We've got all day."

# Chapter Three

We made our way through the deadly snake enclosure. We were just about the only ones there. The other kids seemed more interested in the spiders and lizards in the enclosure before this one.

The room was painted black, with eerie red lights glowing, dimly, just enough for us to see the creatures in the habitats and to see the steps in front of us. Snakes slithered in their homes, the sound of their scales creeping in on the silence, making it just that tad bit unnerving.

It was warm in the reptile enclosure, made so as to make it comfortable for the cold blooded creatures. We had shed our jackets and coats the moment we walked in and were hit by the puffs of warm air coming through the air system, all except Smithy, who kept his jacket on.

"You know, I think we're a bit old for the buddy system, don't you?" Ned said as we strode along the ample aisle lined with glass tanks; forked tongues flickering at us.

"It works, don't knock it," I said, examining a Black Mamba. Native to tropical Africa. Highly dangerous.

(Good thing it was behind toughened glass . . .)

Ned shrugged. "Yeah, but . . ."

"We could always leave Ned behind," Brooke cut in, hopefully. "All he does is whine and complain."

I could tell Ned and Brooke were starting a small rivalry. Not something full blown or vicious. Just a subtle digging in. They were not enemies. Far from it. They just . . . I'll think up a good term later.

"Well, _sor-_ ry _,_ " Ned exclaimed, throwing his arms up and folding them across his chest, dramatically. "But I don't see what the big deal is about the zoo. I mean, _come on_. We see enough of lions, tigers and bears . . ."

"Oh my," Robyn giggled.

"But we don't see that much of _sea_ lions, tiger _sharks_ and, um . . . is there an aquatic creature with 'bear' in the name?"

That got us thinking. We were quiet as we thought of possible answers. The only sound that met our ears were the flickering of forked tongues, slithering and our own, slightly muffled footsteps on the carpet.

"I have no idea," I eventually said, mostly just to hear my own voice and reassure myself I was still there.

Brooke was going to prove a point, though. The rest of us just let it fly but she was still puzzling over it.

I glanced back and saw Smithy, walking quietly, lost in contemplation, a few steps behind the rest of us. Maybe it was that we had not paired him off. I stuck by Ned, because he was my pal and Robyn and Brooke stuck by each other because they were best friends. That's what we had always known. But when I looked behind me, I could see that actually, that wasn't the case. Brooke and Ned were deep in a debate about 'bear fish' and Robyn was by me, chatting casually every now and then. Smithy . . . he wasn't used to being around people: people who were trying to be friendly.

I know little about Smithy. I didn't then and I still don't. He came to school at the start of fall and just faded into the background immediately. He never spoke to anyone and everyone else avoided him. He always had a thinking look on his face, like he was working something out constantly. It was as if he had a secret and hadn't even figured it out himself. He spent all his time figuring out that secret as well as keeping it.

I went back to examining the snakes in the glass tanks and was getting interested in a short, stout snake with a fascinating pattern when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ned stiffen and stop walking. We all stopped in our tracks.

"Ned, what is it?" I asked.

"Shush," Ned hissed.

We held our tongues. But I couldn't get what it was he was straining to hear.

"Ned . . ."

I could tell he was serious. Ned rarely has a solemn look on his face so I made sure I paid attention because he was not joking around.

"It's . . . buzzing. Don't you hear it?"

I was about to say _no_ , but then I listened and I heard it. Faint, barely there, but I heard it.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

"I hear it, alright," Brooke said. "I wonder where it's coming from."

We fell absolutely silent, battling to make it out.

"It's coming from over there," Smithy said, that marking the first time he ever spoke since his introduction that day. He pointed to a spot just above a glass tank containing a deadly python.

Brooke fearlessly stepped forward and examined it. "It's a . . . bee hive," she declared.

We slowly, cautiously, approached the hive. "What's a _bee hive_ doing in a reptile enclosure?" Ned wondered.

"I haven't got a clue," I said, rather distractedly. I had heard another noise, far away, barely audible, and I was somewhat more interested in that. It sounded like tiny footsteps, creeping closer. I just hoped it wasn't an escaped animal.

"I wonder what kind of bees live here," Brooke mused, gazing at the hive like it was an interesting puzzle she had to solve.

"Obviously ones who enjoy the protection of dangerous reptiles," Ned said. "Can a bee sting a snake?"

"I don't think they need to," Robyn said. "Snakes aren't really threats to bees."

Brooke poked the bee hive gently. "How do you think they got here?" she asked.

"Do you think it's such a good idea to poke it?" Smithy replied.

Brooke lowered her hand, slowly, and clasped it in her other. "I don't think so," she admitted. "But I don't think it will anger them much . . ."

As she said it, the buzzing grew louder and more agitated. We all took an instinctive step backwards before they suddenly shot out, hovered in midair like a pepper cloud, trying to work out where to go next, and then darted straight for Ned.

Terror shot through Ned. "AHH!" he screamed and ran for his life down the corridor and out the reptile enclosure. Without realizing, or thinking, he turned and ran into a part of the zoo that was still under construction, flapping his arms wildly to chase away the bees.

"NED! Don't go there," I called, helplessly.

"We might have to run too," Robyn pointed out, shakily. "Not all the bees went after Ned!"

I spun around in a flash and had a second to take in a larger cloud of aggravated bees shooting out the hive.

"Run!" I yelled, jerking my head towards the exit Ned had taken.

Robyn and Brooke ran. Smithy and I followed behind the girls, waving our arms wildly to stop the bees from stinging them. Smithy was very efficient with his long, skinny arms.

We skidded around corners, jumped over chunks of construction materials and dodged jutting bricks and planks. It was like running through an obstacle course, an upside down one. We did little jumping and more ducking and weaving around hanging wires.

We dodged and skidded, until we came to a dead end in an unfinished hippo habitat with high, bare, white plaster walls like blank canvasses still to be painted. Bare patches of grass scattered here and there where the landscapers obviously hadn't finished, and a small lake covering most of the ground.

It was a dead end. I could hear the bees, getting closer by the moment, their droning buzzing growing by the second.

"Now where do we go?" I asked the walls.

No answer. Figures.

# Chapter Four

You know how sometimes you're in a situation, like you've just dropped glitter or pencil shavings all over the carpet, and you believe it's a perilous position till you see the rug? You just immediately pull the rug over the spilled art supplies and don't even think of using the vacuum cleaner, which would have had a better outcome.

You see the problem, and you see your first solution, thinking of only that solution and none other. You don't realize that there may be a much better solution just under your nose and in the end that latter solution is usually the better one.

I don't know if that's _exactly_ like that day, by that lake, but I'm sure it's close. I saw the hollow bamboo sticks, thought only of a strategy involving those straws, and went with it.

I didn't have time to work through options and conjure a better one. If I _did_ have the time . . . the entire outcome of that day would have been different.

But I saw Ned had already thought of it, so I went with it.

"Quick, everyone grab a stick and jump in," I ordered, tersely, as I started breaking off sticks for the others. I made sure everyone had a stick before I jumped in behind them.

Without hesitation, I plunged right in.

It was so cold, I got a fright when I splashed in. I don't know if it was the icy coldness of the water, or the excitement from the chase, but I felt a bit tingly.

The water seemed to slap me in the face. It soaked my jeans, making them heavy, causing them to drag me down and slow my pace. The lake was deep and muddy. It had to be, for the hippos.

I struggled for a second, trying to regain control of my freezing limbs. I bobbed to the surface and used all my might to keep my head under the brim of the water, breathing awkwardly through the straw, desperately hoping a bee didn't fly down the tube, into my mouth.

The water in the lake was murky, from having us jump in and turn up the beds, but I could make out the silhouettes of my friends. Ned wasn't too far from me. He looked my way and waved with his arm in acknowledgement.

My heart was racing from the adrenaline of the chase. During the few minutes spent under the water, I managed to calm down. After a couple of minutes of being immersed in the freezing cold water, I stuck my head out. The bees had left. The others got the idea and did the same.

"Did anyone get stung?" Brooke asked as she swam over to the edge and pulled herself up.

Robyn appeared at the far side of the lake. "I _nearly_ did. But I smacked it before it could plant one."

She took a deep breath, dived under and within a few seconds was at the other side. She swam so swift, she didn't even create a single ripple.

Smithy swam to the bank and lifted himself up onto the partly grassy ground, flopped down on his back, panting heavily for a few seconds. I don't know if it was from the running, jumping, ducking and weaving or the cold of the lake.

He sat up after a moment. "Well, that was exciting," he puffed.

"I wonder why they left so quickly," I said. "I mean, I was the last to jump in and by then, the bees had all just about left. Only a few hung around. Or maybe it's just my imagination . . ."

Ned frowned and hauled me out of the water then joked: "The water probably just got to your brain so you couldn't think straight."

"No, you've got a valid point, Luke," Brooke agreed. "Something else must have caught their attention."

"But what . . .?" Robyn trailed off as her question was answered.

"It was me," a mysterious voice said.

# Chapter Five

We all jumped out of our skin.

"Who's there?" I called, worried it may have been some staff member. I was running through what I was going to say in my apology. Would they have known about the bees?

My eyes shifted to different directions. It's hard to address someone when you can't see them.

"Who's there?" I called again.

"It's just me," a kid said as he stepped out of the shadows. He was our age. He had hair in between brown and blonde, a frame in between tall and normal and eyes in between brown and green. Hazel.

Ned let out a breath of relief. "Dude, don't scare us like that again."

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to startle you," the kid raised his eyebrows. He had no particular accent. It was neutral. "I only wished to get your attention."

"Well, you've succeeded," Brooke quipped.

"It's okay," I said, reasonably. "We're just a bit skittish, that's all. Um . . . I'm Luke, this is Ned, Brooke, Smithy and Robyn." I gestured to each one as I introduced them.

"My name is Kevin."

"How did you get rid of the bees?"

Trust Robyn to ask the question everyone is thinking but has lost track of.

Kevin grinned. "These bees seem to be interested in nectar. So . . . another bee comes along and tells them where they may find the sweetest flowers in the vicinity. They followed, no questions asked."

Brooke put her hands to her hips. Even dripping wet, she still managed to look intense and fierce. "And how would you know if another bee told them that?"

Kevin sighed and lost his grin. He looked as though he was remembering the very thing he was struggling to forget. Like he realized he would have to let go of a fantasy and live in the real world. He wandered over to a patch of bright red flowers.

"I have a long story to tell you . . ." Kevin started. "You won't believe me if I tell you exactly how I got rid of the bees. I need to explain . . ."

"We're all ears," I said, kindly.

Kevin blinked at me. I took it as a look of gratitude. "Earth is a beautiful planet," Kevin started. "The most spectacular in the whole universe, with designs and creations that not many planets possess."

"Well, yeah, I guess so," Brooke said, crossing her arms. "But what has that got to do with all this?"

Kevin turned his hazel eyes on Brooke. "You're brave to talk to a stranger," he said, fascinated. Then, in a split second, he got serious again. "My point is this: Earth is in danger."

The words had so much weight, even then, I felt it. I may not have understood it _at all_ but I felt it.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "How would you know?"

Kevin stood up straight, preparing himself for what he had to say. "I am not from this world," he said in the tone that meant he was not kidding.

Ned smirked. "Of course you're not. Well, let me tell you about an Earth traditional dress called a strait jacket. You may end up in one . . ."

I elbowed Ned in the ribs to keep him quiet. He didn't even flinch, and yet I had done it quite hard, by accident.

"What I say is true," Kevin insisted. He sighed. "Allow me to demonstrate."

And with that, Kevin changed. He wasn't Kevin for much longer. He changed, smoothly, gradually, into a skunk. Yes, a skunk, I'm not joking. His face turned black and furry, his nose pointed and he shrank and stood on all fours.

He was a skunk: small, little furry black body with a white stripe running from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. He was kind of cute, with his beady black eyes and his little head turning to look at each of us.

I saw the others go green and could feel myself pale too.

"That's seriously weird," Ned said, lamely.

"It's not _that_ weird," Kevin-the-skunk replied. "I am a shape-shifter. This is my natural form. I changed into a bee and communicated with the other bees to get them away from you. It's not that strange."

"Um, yeah, it is," Ned persisted. "It just shouldn't happen. How is it possible?"

"Simple, you see . . ." System started but Ned cut him off. He shook his head, like he was waking up from a bad dream. "Wait, no, this is crazy. I'm talking to a skunk, and it's talking back."

"Can we just hear Kevin out?" Brooke said. She had been the first to recover.

"Actually, my name is Joncelrin System. I prefer to go by System. Kevin is just a cover. I am a Systematic, not a skunk, though I can see the confusion. It's a long story. I'll tell you another time, gladly. But right now, I ask for your full, undivided attention."

"Oh, goody, story-time," Ned muttered.

System waddled over to the flowers, sniffed them, happily, and then turned back to us. "I come from a planet far, far away, in another galaxy. And, yes, everyone on my planet, looks like a skunk. When I was young and in school, I was very interested in this planet. Because, you see, our planet has very dull colouring and Earth . . . it's unparalleled.

"Not too long ago, I heard your planet was in trouble. So, I set about coming here, to warn and to help. I tried to convince my people that you were in peril. They did not listen. So I took it upon myself to inform you. I'm here now and I need your help."

Aliens, like from a movie. This was probably a dream. I tended to get weird dreams when I had hot chocolate before bed. But, I decided to go with it. If it was only a dream, what did it matter? "What kind of trouble is Earth in?" I interrupted. I looked at my group. "We have a right to know, don't we?"

System nodded his tiny skunk head. "Of course, of course. You see, Earth is one of the few inhabited planets that remain unaware of the rest of the universe. Most planets teach their young about Earth in school. It's such a beautiful, complex and creative planet. The inhabitants of these planets want to travel, explore, and see Earth for themselves.

"But not all are friendly adventurers," System's tone jumped from admiration to darkness. "Many want to take over this planet. Rule it, get rid of the dominant species, maybe keep the squids . . . either way, they won't do it the nice way. You people have . . . _movies_ . . . about this, don't you?"

System was an alien, but he understood a lot of our common speech and culture on Earth. That confirmed it was dream.

"Um . . . yes?" I replied, accidently making it sound like a question. "Yes, we do," I said, firmly.

"Well . . . while those are works of fiction, this _is_ real. There are races out there that would jump at opportunities to destroy you. And . . . it's happening soon. I can't do anything without assistance . . ." he trailed off.

We all exchanged looks of amazement, shock and terror. Ned, though, just kept shaking his head and repeatedly saying how crazy this all was.

The silence set in as we took in what System told us. I couldn't exactly see what was going on. But System had just changed from a kid to a skunk. I had visual evidence. It was mad, as Ned kept saying. But, somehow, I couldn't walk away.

"You said you needed help," Brooke said, thoughtfully, as she tapped her chin.

"That is correct," System answered.

Suddenly, Brooke slammed her fist into the palm of her other hand. "Then, System, my friend, we're in. Tell us what we have to do . . ."

# Chapter Six

"Okay, first things first," System said, standing erect on his hind legs like a human. He rubbed his little paws together. "I need to explain what's happened to you kids because, frankly, I can't reverse it. So . . . it's permanent. It shouldn't affect your lives _too_ much . . . well, not _badly . . ._ I mean _. . ._ not _terribly . . ._ you _should_ survive . . ."

"What happened to us?" I said through clenched teeth. System was stalling. That could be a bad thing.

System sighed. "My ship crashed in that lake. It was broken badly. There's no way I'm going to be able to fix it. But some . . . _cargo . . ._ sustained severe damage . . . in other words, broke."

"And what _'cargo'_ would that be?" Ned asked, suspiciously.

"Vials containing _Amepips._ You won't know what that means. It's the Martian word for 'special ability'."

"Uh-huh . . ." I said, not quite following.

"It's given you enhanced special abilities you did not already have," System tried to explain. "Like, flying, super-strength, invisibility . . . don't humans have comics?"

"We do," Robyn answered. She didn't strike me as the kind of girl who read comics, though.

"Oh, good, then we're on the same page," System sounded satisfied. Looking back, I wonder if he intended on a pun there.

"So . . . are you trying to say that we got . . . powers?" Smithy said. (I'd forgotten he was there.)

"Yes," System said. "Well . . . I'm not truly sure. The process of transferring _Amepips_ wasn't done properly. You're not supposed to just jump into a vat of it and hope to get powers. It might have been diluted by the water . . . I can't tell for certain."

"What kind of powers _exactly_?" Smithy asked. He sounded determined, as if he was on a mission. I don't know why, he just came across that way.

System shook his head. "I won't know until you discover it for yourselves."

"Well, that's helpful," Ned rolled his eyes.

Brooke glared at him. "After he changes from a kid to a skunk, _er_ , Systematic, after he tells us he's here to help, after he explains that Earth's in danger . . . you don't believe it?"

Ned shrugged. "Oh, I believe it. But it is nuts."

"Tell us how we can help," Smithy said, getting us back on track.

"Good," System fell back onto all-fours and waddled into some bushes. The leaves shook as System searched for something. He reappeared holding a small device that resembled an old Game-Boy, just smaller and with more buttons. "First, you need to know your enemy."

System pressed a button on the device and a 3D image sprang into life, rotating slowly so we could identify all angles.

Robyn whistled, softly. "A hologram," she said, admirably.

"Cool," Brooke agreed.

The hologram was shimmery and in dull colours, sort of like an old television set. But it was clear, the most life-like I would ever see without it really being in my presence.

The image was life size and of a man, tall, thin, with jet black hair and pale colouring. Thin lips, a thin face structure and silvery eyes.

I blinked and took an automatic step backwards. Something about his face struck me as familiar . . . I looked sideways at Smithy and I could see it: a subtle resemblance. This man looked like he could be Smithy's father.

I could see Smithy thought the same. His eyes had grown wide and his mouth hung open. He noticed me looking and resumed an air of cool. But the look in his eyes didn't change.

The man in the hologram looked like an ordinary guy, someone who'd walk past you on the street, maybe a teacher, maybe a taxi driver, maybe a shopkeeper. He didn't give the impression of being someone who'd stand out in a crowd . . .

. . . Till your gaze fell on the left side of his face.

It was completely metal. Like a mask, the work of a talented make-up artist. But it was a strangely, realistic kind of mask. It caught and reflected the light like stainless steel. It _was_ stainless steel to me. It started at the hair-line, ran down the face, curving around the nose and mouth, leaving them uncovered, but covering his left eye.

"Who is _that_?" I asked, trusting myself only to say as much.

"Gemini," System answered in a flat-tone. The name rang through our heads. I had a feeling I would hear that name every day of my life from that day forth. "He's evil. He contacts alien explorers and assists them on their journey to Earth. He's good at disguising them so they can blend in . . ."

"So, he's like a travel agent?" Robyn interrupted.

"No, more like a tour guide _slash_ travel agent," Ned corrected, sounding wise.

"But that doesn't sound so bad," I said, considerably confused.

"It isn't," System agreed. "But that's just a part of his cover so he doesn't get in trouble with the Intergalactic Police. What he _really_ does is help a lot of species to invade. He has been waiting for a potential buyer."

"Right, so, he's incognito," Ned summarized.

"No, I believe he is based in a city called Rockwell," System said, his little brow furrowing.

"No, no, no," Ned said, quickly. "It's just a . . . oh, never mind."

System shook his little head. "Anyway, as I was saying: he's helping aliens that wish to invade, invade. He is a deadly enemy. I need some help. I would have done this on my own but I require assistance. You five have to aid me in stopping his evil schemes and bring him to justice. Reinforcements will come, in time. But this planet requires help _right this instant._ But I will not put this upon you if you refuse."

We fell silent for a long time. What System was saying was crazy, enormous, and _impossible_. But it made sense that he would need our help. He was only a little guy, after all.

Since I was small, I had loved to imagine what it would be like if aliens existed. Now . . . they did. And it made perfect, logical sense. That or the cold, muddy water was getting to me.

I could have walked away, there and then, and not turned back. I could have carried on checking out all the exhibits, enclosures, habitats and aviaries; all without a worry in my mind. I could forget about all of this nonsense and just live my life. Grow up, graduate, get a job, live my life . . . but this was happening _now_. And I didn't understand why it was so real, so serious. But I could not walk away and just go on as if nothing had happened.

The image in the middle of the room, flickering gently, proved to be a dangerous reminder of the situation. This guy, Gemini, was evil. I had never met him before but just looking at him, I could tell he was bad news.

Robyn looked worried.

Ned looked disbelieving.

Brooke looked determined.

Smithy looked certain. He spoke first. "Guys, there's nothing else we _can_ do."

I could see Ned was about to argue.

"No, there's a lot we can do. We can forget this. I mean, if it was so urgent, why on _planet Earth,_ excuse the expression, would he tell it to a bunch of _kids_?"

(I was right.)

"We can't do _anything_. Even if we do have . . . powers. There's nothing we can do to stop this ' _conspiracy_.' System, if you're not lying, why didn't you go to someone in a position of authority? Someone who _could_ actually make a difference? We have no influence, there's _nothing_ we can do . . . we're kids."

System grew quiet. Either he agreed with Ned all of a sudden, or he already knew this. Or . . . he knew that Ned was _not_ right. That . . .

"Luke Rosenhart's group, are you in there?" Ms Ling's voice bounced off the white walls and echoed around the cavernous room.

The sudden call somehow jerked me back to my senses. I stared at System, the skunk, and found myself forgetting that he had just spoken to us.

"We have to go, _now,_ " Robyn said, urgently.

I didn't move. Then I glanced at the hologram and realized this was no joke. Ned was wrong to be come across as such a sceptic. This was real.

The panic suddenly rose in me. "System . . ."

"Don't worry," System said, rushing to hide behind a shrub. "I know where you are, I'll find you. Now, go!"

Ned suddenly looked like he wasn't so sure of what he had said. He had sounded as if he wouldn't believe any of it. But I know Ned. He believed it. He just wasn't sure there was anything we could do to help.

Ned, as I have seen over the years, is the kind of person who always has an air of cool, indifference. But when it comes down to the crunch, he's the one who will take any chance to make a difference.

# Chapter Seven

I wonder what went through Ms Ling's head when she found her students, soaking wet, shivering cold and standing around as if we didn't know what to do next. (Which, we didn't.)

I'd love to be a teacher someday, just so I can deal with crazy situations like this one.

We explained everything to her: being chased by bees, jumping into the lake, breathing through straws but omitting the part about System, the talking skunk. She already thought we were lying about the whole bee chasing matter, till Brooke showed Ms Ling her arm, which had two bumps from stings.

She handled it okay, though. She gave us towels and applied some ointment to Brooke's stings. Then she ordered us onto the bus with the rest of the kids.

We sat in different places on the bus, none of us together. Maybe it was just that we didn't want to talk about it. I was sure no one wanted to forget it.

I sat on the back row of seats, in wet jeans that refused to dry, a towel slung over my shoulders, and kids snickering in my direction. They wouldn't think it so funny if _they_ had been in my shoes. My _wet_ shoes.

But I couldn't care less. I was tired, cold, wet, and just wanted to go home. So much had happened, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and wake up, this whole nightmare forgotten in an instant. But I sat there on the bus with the image of Gemini imprinted on my mind for life.

It was too real to have been any work of imagination.

♫

We got back in the dark. Not too much of surprise, the sun sets early at this time of year, the whole school had taken a few hours extra in their browsing of the zoo and they took a while to find us, as well.

When I got home, I crawled up the stairs, said a weak "hello" to my parents, skipped dinner (what's the point?), slunk into bed, and then, as an afterthought, took off my damp and muddy clothes.

I slept like a log that night. Though, I did have a few strange dreams. Like one of a hippo shooting bees the size of pineapples at me.

Besides that, everything was fine.

I woke the next day, a Friday, to more rain outside, Bailey, and a sense of pessimism. I would have to face the world, against my will. I really wanted to stay home and just forget about school, people, the whole world . . .

But I vowed to go to school, on the condition that every moment eyes were off me, I'd experiment and discover my power.

At breakfast, I stared at the milk, trying to burn a hole through it with my eyes.

It didn't work.

"Luke," Jemima walked into the kitchen and shook her head in pity, making her curly blonde ponytails bounce. "I've tried, mind control doesn't exist."

Normally, I would have laughed and ruffled my sister's hair. She didn't know, but, she had just given me an idea.

Mind control . . .

I quickly gave it a go. I willed the milk to quake. No such luck, it sat there on the counter like . . . like a carton of milk.

Now I laughed and ruffled Jemima's hair.

"You're weird, Luke," Jemima said with a concerned look.

"Thanks, sis," was all I said.

Later, I tried to turn invisible. Then I walked in front of my mother and asked her what she thought of my hair. "Fine, it always looks the same," she said.

On my way to the bus stop, I paused for a second and tried to pick up my dad's car. It didn't budge. I pretended to pick something off the ground, just in case someone was watching me.

I scanned the seats for any of the others. Brooke had just gotten on but I wasn't going to start sitting next to her. So I sat on my own. Ned would be picked up next, Robyn last, as she lived in the countryside and I had no idea where Smithy lived. Probably Downtown.

I don't know why but on that particular school day, it was busy and overcrowded. I managed to bump into every other person, but kept missing my friends.

I was still trying to figure out what power I might have gotten so, in every class, I tried something different.

Mind reading . . . didn't work.

Super speed . . . nope.

See through walls . . . I just stood staring at a blank wall for ages.

Maybe it hadn't worked. Maybe I didn't get anything. System said it hadn't been done the way he wanted it to be done.

So I let it go. I stopped worrying about the whole power thing completely and got back to just being a regular, normal, not special in the least, kid.

I focussed a lot better in my classes and everything went smoothly.

I went skateboarding after school with some other friends of mine down by the boardwalk, near the beach, I went home and did my homework, I did my chores, I walked Bailey and I just spent time with my family watching some old black and white film.

Nothing spectacular, nothing amazing . . . just the normal kind of stuff people tend to take for granted.

I chose to lose myself in the mundane world I had been brought up in. System, Gemini, _Amepips . . ._ I let it slide. I forgot it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still had the image of Gemini, flickering, but even that managed to fade.

Until Friday, a whole week later.

Mr Johnson's chemistry class, the class I have just before lunch. Among all the kids rushing in, I saw Robyn, sitting a few chairs away from me. Robyn looked sideways at me as she pulled books out her backpack. I couldn't tell if it was disappointment or sadness or trust but she was trying to say something. It was almost like I could hear it . . .

I hadn't seen any of the others for an entire week. Not even a glimpse. The memory of everything that had happened a week ago came flooding back suddenly as a strange wave of nausea washed over me.

I had given up trying to find my power. I felt relieved. I couldn't be a part of this crazy thing if I didn't have powers.

But, for that same reason, I felt disheartened. The planet was in danger. How could I feel comforted that I was not going to be a part of it?

How can you ever feel relief when the rest of the world was going to fall into the hands of some evil, crazed madman with half a metal face, like Gemini?

All my worries were laid to rest during that chemistry class, though.

Mr Johnson, the teacher, was gesturing wildly, as he explained something about ionisation energy, putting many glass objects on his desk in jeopardy.

He brought his right arm up in a wide circle and brought it down in a low swoop, sending a glass beaker to its doom. It crashed onto the floor and shattered into a million pieces.

"Oh, brilliant," Mr Johnson muttered, all the gesturing put on hold as he brushed glass off his papers. He scanned the class for someone to clean the mess.

I was sitting in the front. And I was just about the only one who had not jumped when the glass broke. I may have been sitting there, but I was miles away.

Mr Johnson, who has always had a soft spot for me, noticed this. "Luke, my boy, would you mind running to the storeroom closet and fetching a broom?"

He broke me from my trance.

"Um, sure," I said, lamely. I shuffled out the classroom with a blank expression. I guess the other kids took it as embarrassment or something: they all started giggling.

Rockwell High School is an oldish, long, rectangular shaped, double storey building. Mr Johnson's chemistry class is at one end, and the storeroom closet is on the other end, far away.

Oh well.

I skidded around corners in a hurry. I had missed so much of the lesson anyway so I don't know why I was rushing. In hindsight, I should have slowed down . . . then I may have been able to see the WARNING: WET FLOOR sign.

A dumb mistake.

"Be careful!" Janitor Joe shouted in his heavy Scottish burr. He temporarily halted, mop in hand, as I blew past at top speed.

"Huh?" I said, glancing over my shoulder. Bad mistake. It sent my balance spiralling. My left foot landed in a bucket of soapy water, sending the rest of me tumbling, arms flying, desperately trying to keep me up.

I cried out just as I was about to smack into a wall of lockers that would knock me out cold.

I closed my eyes just inches away from slamming into the metal doors, knowing my fate was sealed.

I felt myself hit something. But it didn't feel like the locker doors. It was softer than that, hard, but soft at the same time. When I came to a halt, I felt around and identified it as a backpack full of books.

I opened my eyes, only to find myself _inside_ the locker. No joke. I was _in_ the cramped locker. Maybe a door had been left open . . .

Then I looked up and saw slivers of light drifting in through the slits in the locker door. It smelt like stale bubblegum in there.

I tried to sit up. But I couldn't. As soon as I tried, I found my arm was wedged in something hard. My eyes adjusted to the faint light and I nearly screamed again, had it not been for the fact that someone would have heard me. As it was, I was lucky Janitor Joe hadn't decided to turn the corner and see what had become of me.

My arm was _stuck inside the wall._ Up to the elbow. It just disappeared inside a solid wall.

And my leg was sticking out the door. _The closed door._

The locker was solid metal. But my arms and legs were sticking out of it.

I went through a solid metal locker door and got myself stuck.

Some kids get their heads stuck in pans or in between the rungs of a ladder.

Me?

I somehow got stuck in a locker. A closed, cramped locker.

How was I going to explain this one to my parents?

Would I ever get free?

I struggled for ages, endeavouring to free myself, but it was impossible.

I tried to calm down and retrace my steps. How had I done this in the first place?

Simple physics. Solid objects just _don't_ go through other solid objects. It is just plain old _unachievable._

Maybe . . .

Could it be that I had discovered my special ability?

I had once read a comic book about a hero who could go through solid objects.

It made perfect sense. It was the only way I could explain this breach of the laws of physics.

Maybe I could go through things!

But . . . how?

I closed my eyes and concentrated hard on just pulling my arm free. Slowly, painfully slow, I managed to get my arm out. I had to really focus. At any moment, if I just let another thought pop into my head, and let myself get the slightest bit distracted, though I was still feverishly concentrating on my arm, it would stop, go solid again.

The process didn't hurt. It actually felt like I was slipping my arm through a wall of water or unsettled jelly, just, it wasn't so wet.

Eventually I got the hang of it.

I climbed out of the locker, shaky with the kind of feeling you get when you survive something horrific. That, and achievement.

Fortunately, no one was around.

No one had seen.

But I had discovered my power.

# Chapter Eight

The bell rang the instant I got out of the locker. Kids stampeded out of class rooms and nearly knocked me over.

It was as if some sadistic person was getting me back for missing Mr Johnson's chemistry class.

I didn't fight it; I let myself melt into the sea of kids making their way to the cafeteria, chatting as loudly as they had been in the lobby of the unfinished zoo.

The cafeteria had its usual gloomy look it always puts on when the heavy grey clouds blocked out the sun. White linoleum, greyish white walls, huge windows overlooking the dark, childless playground, and uniform tables.

The only real colour in the room came from the kids and their colourful attire.

I balanced on the balls of my feet and searched the faces in the crowd for my friends.

A kid standing in the queue turned around for a second and I thought I recognized him, but he turned away again and I forgot about it as someone was suddenly tugging my arm.

I spun around and saw Ned.

"Hey, Dude, haven't seen you for _ages_. How you been keeping?" Ned said, sarcastically.

"What's with the tone?" I asked.

"Because that skunk, alien, kid . . . _thing_ . . . we met, wasn't lying," he said, flatly.

I nodded. "Yeah, I know. Have you seen the others?"

Ned started scanning the crowd. "There," he pointed to a table near a roof to floor window where Robyn and Brooke were chatting over trays of unidentifiable gloop.

"Come on," I said, dragging Ned behind me as I weaved through the crowd to the girls.

"Oh, hey, Luke," Brooke said, brightly, as we approached. "Hi . . . Ned," she added in a monotone.

Ned pretended to smile. "Hi to you, too."

I pulled up a chair and sat down. I looked down at the food, courtesy of Lunch Lady Gertrude. They only keep her on because she's dating the Principal.

"You gonna eat that?" Ned asked, disgusted.

"No, I got it as a gift for you," Brooke said, shoving the tray over to Ned. "It doubles as a pet. It even barks."

Ned pretended to throw up.

"Anyway," I said, trying to get everyone on track. "Has anyone seen Smithy?"

Brooke and Ned looked at Robyn.

She shrugged. "What are you looking at me for? Just because I asked him to join our group, doesn't mean I'm his keeper."

"Do you know where he is?" I asked again.

Robyn stared at her food. "He never said anything," she eventually said. "I met up with him when I was running some errands for my mom in town. He seemed . . . excited. I guess he found out he had a power. . . . I haven't seen him since."

"And now you have."

The sudden interruption shocked us. We looked up and saw Smithy, tall as ever, slap his tray on the table and sit down.

He poked his food with a plastic fork, ignoring the stares he was getting. He lifted his head and frowned. "What's everyone looking at me like that for?" he asked.

Brooke and Ned turned away, finding something else more interesting to look at.

Robyn smiled.

"Nothing, we just didn't know what had happened to you. No one's seen you for ages," she said.

"I keep a low profile," he answered, simply. Smithy always has a way of sounding vague, even when he's telling it to you straight, it still sounds like only half the story.

He scooped a portion of the gloop onto his fork and examined it. After a second, he put it down and shoved the tray away. "On second thoughts, I've decided I'm not hungry," he said, trying to make the silence at our table a little more manageable. He turned his attention to us. "So . . . what's going on?"

"Um . . ." I tried to remember what exactly we _were_ talking about. I hadn't really started the whole conversation when he piped up. "Our powers," I said. "Has anyone found out their powers?"

Everyone put their hands up, high, as if they were in class. Except Smithy who only slightly raised his hand.

"Okay, then . . . Robyn? You want to go first?" I offered.

Robyn chewed her lip, organizing her thoughts. She breathed in deeply. "Okay. On the Sunday after the whole zoo incident, I was at home with my mom, watching TV. I got up, went to the kitchen and was going to get some popcorn—"

"Say no more: you shoot popcorn out your ears, don't you?" Ned said, eyes wide with fake excitement.

"Eh . . . no. I was trying to find it in the pantry but my mom's known for disorganization and I couldn't find it anywhere. Eventually, I was so fed up, I demanded, silently, not out loud, that the popcorn just drop off the shelf. And . . . it did! Hit me on the head, actually."

"So . . . what's your power?" Brooke asked, confused.

Robyn was giddy with excitement now. "Mind control," she said. "I tried it with quite a few things and whenever I asked them to do something, in my head, they did it! Here, watch."

Robyn picked up a fork and laid it on the middle of the table. We instinctively leaned closer so no one could see. She concentrated on the fork and ever so slightly, almost unnoticeably, it twitched.

Ned jumped back. "Cool. Can you do it to humans?"

"I tried it with the farmer across the road, I tried to make him lift his left arm, but it's hard to override free will and I don't . . . like doing it," Robyn said, shyly, the idea of robbing someone of their free will too much for her.

She looked at me. "And you? What did you get?"

I quickly explained how I tripped and fell _through_ the lockers. I could go through solid objects. I demonstrated by picking up Brooke's juice box and sticking my finger through it.

"I don't think I want to drink that," she said.

"Your turn," Robyn said, eager to find out what power her friend may have.

Brooke smiled. "Alright. I found this out straight after I came home from the zoo. I took a shower—"

"No more details, thanks," Ned said.

Brooke glared at him, momentarily, then went back to retelling her story. "Anyway, I was in the shower, and I reached out for a towel on the rack. And my arm elongated! It stretched like a piece of gum!"

"Ew," Ned wrinkled his nose.

Brooke glared at him again. "Alright, what can you do, Captain Annoyance?"

"Far from it, my dear," Ned said, sounding like an eighteenth century detective. "My power is much more magnificent than you may think."

"Spit it out," I said.

"Fine . . . I was hit by a car."

Automatically, Robyn gasped.

Ned rolled his eyes. "It's okay, I survived it. I was walking home from school on Wednesday and this car just came out of nowhere. It slammed straight into me. I was sure I was done for. But when I opened my eyes . . . I was alive. Not a bruise or a scratch on me. But the car has a huge indentation on it . . . shaped like me. I'm thinking of making it my trademark."

"So, you're invincible?" I said, making it sound like a question. "You can't die?"

"Well, I don't know about that . . . it's not really a theory I want to test . . ." Ned said, looking a little nervous.

"It's a useful power, nonetheless," Brooke said. "You know, for saving the world."

"And you, Smithy, what did you get?" Robyn asked, kindly.

(I hated to admit it, but, I had forgotten about Smithy the moment we all started talking.)

He looked up at her. "I, um—" he started.

But he was interrupted by a sudden cry, filled with delight and anticipation: a shout every kid longs to hear and every janitor loathes . . .

"FOOD FIGHT!!!"

# Chapter Nine

Gloop of the day, quiche, egg salad, various homemade sandwiches, meat pies, mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup . . . anything that would have been consumed (or thrown out the window when eyes were turned) was being flung across the vast cafeteria. The floor was covered in a mat of colourful mush in minutes. Kids yelled, shrieked and cried with delight as they jumped up on tables and launched their lunches at schoolmates. A few kids, like Lewis Jacobs who would be dead if he came home messed up, ducked under tables, knowing his life depended on it.

"Whoa, cool, I've wanted to start one of these for years!" Ned cried with glee as he climbed onto the table and fired Smithy's food at one of the school bullies who probably started the fight, as I suspected.

"Take that, Jefferson!" Ned yelled. Maybe his indestructibility was going to his head.

I yanked Ned down under the table where the rest of us had taken refuge.

"Ned," I hissed. "You've already gotten yourself into Brooke's bad books. Do you really want to get into Jefferson's?"

Ned shrugged. "It's a food fight, Luke. No rules, no boundaries and no mercy. The strong will be defeated by the weak, if it comes to it."

Robyn crawled to me on hands and knees. "Who started this one?"

I shook my head as a grenade of salad landed where I had been two seconds ago. "I don't know. Probably some bored kid. I don't know: it's not like I can see through stuff, I can only _go through_ stuff."

"Molecular Density control," someone to my left said.

"Huh?" I said, turning around. Some kid had crawled under the tables to our spot. I couldn't figure out who he was, his face was covered with a mixture of black cherry yogurt, quiche Lorraine and cement-resembling gloop.

"Molecular Density control," he said again, excitedly. "Going through stuff, as you described it. I so hoped someone would get that one. You can make your molecules so sparse that they can go through solid objects . . ."

"Excuse me, who are you?" I asked, hoping I hadn't ended up sharing shelter under a cafeteria table with a psychotic maniac.

The kid tilted his head like a cat and frowned. "Don't you recognize . . . oh, of course." The kid wiped his messy face with his sleeve.

"Kevin?" Brooke whispered.

He nodded. "I believe I accidentally started this 'food fight,'" he said.

"What . . .? How did you do that?" Ned asked, astonished.

"I did not mean to," Kevin said. "I was just following the lead of everyone else, picking up a tray, receiving some 'nourishing' substance, when someone bumped me from behind. Without thinking, I threw my hands up . . . while still holding the tray."

"Well, at least lunch isn't going to be dull," I said.

"How did you find us?" Ned enquired.

"I followed the bus as it left the zoo," Kevin said. "It came to this school, so I decided to try and find you four."

"There's five of us . . ." Robyn said. But she looked around her and couldn't spot Smithy anywhere. She shrugged. "He probably ducked under a different table . . . or he can turn invisible . . . or shrink . . ."

"I didn't have any of those _Amepips,_ " System said, obviously doubtful that Smithy's intention was to avoid the food fight.

"He probably just didn't want to get into this whole mess, or he crawled under a different table, like Robyn said," I said, reasonably. I didn't want people to distrust Smithy. Even though I knew nothing about him, it was no reason not to trust him. "Anyway, what does it matter?"

Everyone sort of shrugged and let it slide.

I turned to Kevin. "System, we've all found out what powers we have . . . now what? How do we stop this Gemini guy? I mean, do we intercept some kind of coded message and stop his evil schemes like in the movies or what? Could we even do that?"

Ned looked at me with half closed eyes. "Really, Luke, _really_? Even _I_ know that sentence sounded dumb."

I opened my mouth to try and redeem myself but Kevin got there first.

"No, it's actually a good point. Gemini has extensive alien technology at his grasp. And he needs to contact his customers via some kind of communication system. Thing is, no human technology can intercept the messages: it's far too primitive for that."

"Thanks," Brooke said, sarcastically.

"Er . . . sure," Kevin looked confused. He spoke an awful lot like a normal Earth teenager, but his understanding of our speech patterns was still minimal.

"So . . . what do we do?" Robyn asked.

Kevin nodded, back on track. "Yes, well, I would really like to train your powers so that they will be at top performance but . . . I haven't got anything to accomplish that. Training powers, especially ones that are not your own, requires instruments. Ones that were destroyed in the crash of my ship."

"Can't you train us by telling us to, say, walk through walls a hundred times, do a thousand stretches and make that bench move?" Ned asked.

Kevin shook his head. "No, I cannot do it that way. It requires more than that, I'm afraid. You can already do all that, I suppose. But . . . because you're young, and the power transfer wasn't done as it should have been, your powers will have to develop as you grow. You'll find that, as you mature, your powers will be more reliable, they will come to you quicker, become second nature and may improve to points where they can achieve far more than the powers you have now."

"Big words, yet again," Ned commented.

I peeked my head over the edge of the table. Kids were still engrossed in flinging their lunches at their fellow classmates. Enemies were being made, bread was being wasted, memories were being created, teachers, lunch ladies and Janitor Joe were going ballistic . . .

*Sigh*

High school.

"Maybe we should discuss this later and somewhere a little more . . . private," Brooke suggested as a helping of macaroni flew past.

"Where?" I said. "Someone's house?"

"My brother comes home same time as I do," Brooke said.

"My brother Simon will be home soon, too," Ned said. "And my dad's got Fridays off."

"My mom's home," I said.

"My mother's got nightshift," Robyn piped up, fiddling with the locket she always wears around her neck. "We can go to my place . . ."

"What about you, System?" Brooke looked over at Kevin, who was wiping something off the table leg and licking it. "Where have you been staying?"

Kevin blinked at her.

"Oh . . . around. . . . Do any of you know where Earth skunks usually reside?"

"Caves, burrows," Robyn listed. ". . . Caves," she repeated, thoughtfully. "Hmm . . . anyone thinking what I'm thinking?"

"That Parker kid didn't get the trajectory right with that casserole," Ned said, gazing out at the loud, mushy melee.

We all looked at him.

"No," Robyn said. "I was thinking about the caves . . . there's one not so far from where I live. It's empty; no one lives there except for a couple of spiders and creepy crawlies. And this isn't bear country . . . as far as I know."

"Caves it is," I said. "We'll meet there after school."

"What about Smithy?" Robyn asked, concerned.

"If you see him, tell him," I said, simply.

I peeked over the table again. The fight was still raging, kids laughing with pure delight. "Come on, gang. Let's make them eat gloop!" I proposed as I left our hiding spot, jumped onto the table and threw some "nourishing" substance in the direction of Jefferson, the tormenting bully.

Boy, the rush you get from pelting a bully with unidentifiable gloop.

Ned was right.

# Chapter Ten

The moment the last bell rang, I was out of there.

I raced home, ran in, showed my face, ran back out, grabbed my bike and cycled like mad for the woods.

I live in one of the neat suburbs, in a double storey house with a vast backyard and a fair sized front lawn that I mow every second Saturday.

Rockwell City is fairly big but it's known as one of the most isolated cities. At the heart of Rockwell, there are tall buildings housing offices, banks and whatever. There's an underground shopping area, too, that spans the entire area underneath the city.

But as you head in any direction away from the tight cluster of slick buildings and offices, you come to either apartments; cheap and expensive, Downtown and Uptown, run down and pristine, or suburbs; usually tidy houses, vaguely identical, in rows, or the beach, if you go west, and if you head away from the suburbs, east, north or south, you'll come to the country outskirts; farms, barns and woods. It's completely different to the city, but it's still considered a part of Rockwell.

Robyn lives in the country outskirts, in a small double story house with creaky floorboards, a fireplace, shuttered windows and a front porch, surrounded by woods.

She's not _too_ far from my neighbourhood but it's still quite a way to pedal.

When I got to her house, the others were already there. They must have come straight there after school.

They stood in a casual semi-circle in Robyn's front yard, which had a wide range of wild flowers growing happily.

"Well, is everyone here?" I asked, trying to make sure I wasn't forgetting someone again.

"Not Smithy," Brooke said. I chose to ignore her tone.

"He'll show up," I assured, glancing at Robyn, who seemed determined not to let go of her faith in Smithy. "I know he will."

"You're right, I will," Smithy said, firmly.

I spun around and looked up, to see him casually hanging out in a tree.

"Would you stop that 'sneaking up behind someone and answering their questions' thing?" Ned said, sternly. "You can really make a person a nervous wreck with your whole disappearing and reappearing act."

"Yeah, well, I meant to explain it to you before that food fight broke out," Smithy said, sounding a tad defensive. "Listen: just watch and see for yourselves. But blink and you'll miss it."

I was about to enquire as to what it was we were to watch for when Smithy disappeared. Like a magician, with a cloud of transparent, pale blue mist left in his tracks. One second there, next second, gone.

"Over here," Smithy called. He was standing on Robyn's roof. We looked up but by the time we all saw him there, he did it again, in the, bad expression, blink of an eye.

"Here," he said, standing in our midst.

"But how did you . . ?" Robyn looked from the roof back to where Smithy was currently standing. "Huh . . .?"

"It's called teleport," Smithy explained, "one moment I'm here, the next, I'm gone. I'm the ultimate escape artist."

I nodded, impressed. Everyone's powers seemed ten times more interesting than my own. "I can definitely see that one coming in handy. Can you transport passengers?"

Smithy shrugged. "I've never tried it, but, yeah, I guess so . . . it should work on the same principle."

"Impressive," System said, waddling up to us in his usual skunk-resembling form. "Teleport is a useful power to possess."

"Well, now that we're all here, let's get a move on," Robyn said, walking fearlessly into the woods she knew so well. We all followed her.

Trees towered above us, their leaves a mixture of brown, mustard, yellow, orange and red. Snatches of grey clouds blocking the blue sky and the suns light could be seen through gaps in the tree tops. Twigs and dried leafs crunched under our feet as we trekked behind our guide, Robyn. She made it look so easy, just strolling through the woods. A fallen tree branch, no problem, she just skipped over it. We all stumbled on it like sacks of potatoes with wheels for legs by getting our jeans caught on one of the jutting out twigs.

A tight cluster of trees? Nothing to it, she just slipped in sideways. Robyn wasn't skinny but she was petite. The rest of us? I scrapped my arms and back through the material of my jacket on the bark and when I got through the trees, I had a damp, muddy black mark on the back of my jacket. I suppose I could have used my power to just go through it but so far I had only used my power once.

A low branch?

Robyn ducked and now the rest of us have bruises on our foreheads.

Robyn knew every square inch of the forest. She was familiar with every tree that had fallen, every branch, what it looked like, how low it was, when to duck and when to jump over . . . and she was thus able to guide her way through the terrain using the natural landmarks mapped out only in her mind.

It's impossible to travel in a straight path through a forest. If a tree doesn't set you off, a boulder or a pile of logs will. So either you have to have an incredible sense of direction, a compass, be able to tell the directions using the sun or stars or you have to have a Robyn, who just knows her destination and a thousand ways on how to get to it.

"Here we are," she announced as we came to a clearing, at least a kilometre or more in the woods away from her house.

The cave was really a huge rock formation with a hollow alcove set in a distance above the ground, with a ledge jutting out like a balcony.

It was at least two metres off the ground. "Uh, Robyn?" Ned said. "How are we going to get up there? It completely slipped my mind to bring a ladder and as much as we could just get Rubber Band here to stretch into a ladder," he jerked his thumb in Brooke's direction, "I doubt she will do so willingly and without a great deal of mumbling."

Brooke scowled at the name Ned had bestowed upon her. She hoped it wouldn't stick.

Robyn strode up to the cave and grabbed hold of a smooth, hand-size lump of rock protruding out of the base of the cave. "Don't any of you know how to rock climb?"

We watched as she swung herself up and grabbed more handholds, placed her feet carefully and firmly and eventually managed to hoist herself up onto the balcony. She stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans. "Nothing to it!" she called down.

She had made it look easy again, I knew it, but there wasn't much else we could do.

"Shouldn't be so hard," I said as I bravely leapt to the challenge. I felt for the handholds and footholds Robyn had used, grabbed some and tried to yank myself up.

Scrap that.

It's fairly difficult.

I tried to pull myself up but all I ended up doing was hurting my hands and falling backwards onto the mat of leafs.

My fingers stung, horribly.

"That's not as easy as I thought it would be," I said. But I tried again. I got back up and launched at the rock without giving myself time to recover from my first attempt.

This time, I was able to do it. I don't know if it was speed or my mind taking over, but I drove myself up and before I could think of my aching hands, I was standing up beside Robyn.

She gave me a pat on the back. "You did great, Luke," she said, proudly.

Ned climbed up like I did, failing at first but succeeding on the next attempt. System changed to Kevin and did it, realizing he just couldn't do it as a skunk, and he didn't know what a bird looked like. But he was still not used to his long human arms and strong human legs. He didn't know how to control them. He was used to tiny limbs. He kept falling over and over again. Brooke could see this wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

"System, go back to skunk form," she instructed as she approached the cave, stretched her arms up, grabbed hold of the ledge and pulled herself up, effortlessly. Once she was up, she lowered her arms, held onto System and pulled him up.

Smithy simply teleported onto the balcony.

"Alright, now that we're all here," I said, somewhere in the back of my mind vowing to take rock climbing lessons if this was to become a regular happening. "What do we do to stop Gemini?"

# Chapter Eleven

System pulled the Game-Boy device out of nowhere and started pressing buttons. "You see, that's really the same problem I've been having since I came here. Back when I was in my ship, I could pick up alien transmissions, track them and decipher them. But here on Earth, I haven't the tools to do so."

"But you do know that Gemini is up to something, right?" I asked.

System nodded his little head. "Yes. Minutes before I crashed I got a signal that he was sending information to a cloaked ship in orbit. Problem being, I had an abrupt introduction to planet Earth before I could take it to pieces and discern what was happening."

Silence fell. We were at a dead end and we hadn't even begun yet!

We'd have to start this whole thing without even knowing where we were at or if we'd make it out.

Options flashed through my mind. What we could do, what we should do and what we _would_ end up doing were entirely different matters. Could: anything that was plausible. Should: what was paramount. Would: what we ended up actually doing.

"What _should_ we do?" I asked after minutes of thinking it over in my own head.

"We should stop Gemini," Ned answered.

"We should find out what he's doing," Smithy said, quietly.

I considered both replies: both were important and needed to be done.

"What _could_ we do?" I put the question to them.

Everyone frowned, deep in thought. As deep in their thoughts as they were when Ned asked if there was a fish with "bear" in the name or description.

Brooke snapped her fingers. A brilliant idea had just struck her. "Gemini's an alien, right? Well, he's on Earth, so he has to blend in _somehow._ So he must be staying somewhere, like in an apartment or a house. I say we—"

She was interrupted by a sudden country violin solo breaking the conversation.

We all turned to Robyn, who went bright red. She fished out her cell phone from her pockets. "I better take this," she said as she flipped open the phone, checked the caller ID, pressed the answer button and put the phone to her ear.

"Hi, Mom," she said, pulling her face in a look of apology. "Yeah, I'm fine . . . no, I'm near home . . . with some friends . . . no . . . yeah . . . no . . . uh huh . . . Downtown? . . . When did it start? . . . Yes, I promise . . . no . . . okay . . . bye."

Robyn shut her phone and thrust it back in her pocket. "Guys; that was my Mom on the phone. She says there's a fire Downtown by some cheaply built apartments: an entire building is in flames. She was checking where I was. She says the fire fighters are on their way but she doesn't know if it's any use: the building's structural integrity has been in question for decades. It only needs a nudge to topple. She says there are still people inside and they don't know if they'll get them all out in time . . ."

I wonder if Robyn knew she had just spelled out our next steps in big red, flashing lights.

I took only a moment to look at my team and decide that this was going to be big.

"Gang, I know what we're going to do: we're going to go there and we are going to do what every superhero does..."

"We're going to save someone," Smithy finished for me, a grin spreading on his face.

"Let's rock and roll," I said, thinking it'd never stick.

# Chapter Twelve

We jumped on our bikes and pedalled, as if the flames were at our heels, till we got to a bus stop. The Downtown area is miles and miles away from Robyn's place so pedalling all that way would be close to foolish.

I could have asked Smithy to teleport us there but I wasn't sure if he had a limit as to how many he can teleport at any given time.

And I was a bit hesitant about teleporting myself. The idea of having your molecules scrambled so that you can move through solids is bad enough. Having them transported to a different location was a bit worse. Especially as I couldn't control it and would have to put all my trust in Smithy.

As we boarded a bus going downtown, I thought of our team's trust situation.

Everyone trusted someone, but not everyone. And even the ones they had some faith in . . . that faith would only go so far.

Our team was only in the early days, and I accepted, right then and there, that, though we knew a bit about each other, full dependence on our teammates was going to take a while.

I sorely hoped, deep down inside, that we could trust each other long enough to save the day, just today. That's all that was needed.

The bus was stopped by police officers as we came close to the burning building.

Smoke rose in a thick, black cloud into the grey sky. The smell of burning wood, cracked paint, and furniture filled the air, making people cough.

A crowd had gathered and police officers were trying to keep them well away from the crumbling building.

It was a ten storey apartment building, built three decades ago. Cheaply and quickly done, it was never meant to last. A fire was inevitable.

Fire fighters arrived at the same moment we did.

"Just back up," the police officer instructed the driver of our bus.

"Yes, ma'am," the driver said, obligingly.

"Quick, let's get off here," I hissed.

I had waited at that bus stop for an older model of bus to come along for this very reason: there was an emergency trap door on the roof near the back of the bus.

Smithy unscrewed it and we all climbed onto the roof. Thankfully, there was only one other person on the bus and he was engrossed in reading his newspaper, unaware of anything that was going on.

Once we were all up, we jumped down, one by one, bending knees on impact. I hadn't jumped a height like that without a skateboard beneath me for ages.

The bus reversed course and rolled away from the scene. The officer wasn't looking our way, allowing us to slip past her and into the crowd with ease.

It wasn't the crazy, hysterical kind of audience you'd expect to crowd around a fire. The residents who lived in the building were few and far between. They looked a bit upset, but they had lived in that building, all along keeping close in mind the fact that at any given moment, it could fall over. This was an eventuality that they awaited every day of their life. No loss. They'd been cleared out, they were alive, and that was it.

But one lady; wearing a pink, faded dressing gown; pale, dusty blue slippers that were at some stage in their life fuzzy; with her lank grey hair in curlers; was going hysterical.

Salty tears stained her cheeks, her chest heaved with every desperate cry. She was trying to talk to one of the fire fighters, begging something of him. The fire fighter, sadly, shook his head and said something we couldn't hear.

I pointed her out to the others. "I wonder what's got her in such a phase," I said.

"Too bad none of us got mind reading . . ." Brooke said, gently.

Robyn bit her lip. "Actually . . . I think I _can_ read people's minds," she said. "I'm not really _sure_ but I think that's what it is. I tried it out with someone at the food fight. At first I thought they had said it out loud but they hadn't . . ."

"Well, I don't think we really need to read her mind to find out what's wrong," I said. "Robyn, you go up to her and ask what's wrong. See if there's something we can do and then relay the information back to us. Got that?"

She nodded. "Got it, chief."

"Don't call me chief," I said, disliking the title from the moment it left Robyn's lips.

Robyn left us and started mingling in with the crowd, ducking, swerving and making her way over to the old woman.

Sirens blasted, people gasped and coughed, the fire raged and orders were being thrown here, there and everywhere so I couldn't hear what was being said between Robyn and the woman, but I could see Robyn's sincere look of concern as she asked the lady what was the matter. The woman was pouring her heart out to Robyn, by the looks of it.

<Her granddaughter's still inside,> Robyn said.

Ned looked at me. "You did hear that, right?" he said.

I nodded, disbelievingly. "I heard it . . . sort of."

<Does this work? I sort of thought if I could read minds I could also, like, send you messages. Can you hear me? Luke, scratch your head with your left hand if you can hear me.>

I did as Robyn instructed and saw her smile. <Good, okay, listen: the woman's granddaughter, Lucy May, is only five years old. When the fire started, she tried to grab her and get out. But then a neighbour grabbed her and yanked her out, leaving Lucy May behind. She should be on the seventh floor but her grandmother is crying so much, she can't tell me _where_ on the seventh floor.>

I tried to think of how I could reply. I just nodded.

<Luke? I can read your thoughts, so if you want to reply, just think it and I'll hear it. Kind of like when you're talking: just think out loud.>

I thought of a strategy of rescue and hoped Robyn could understand.

She nodded, unnoticeably, in answer. She'd heard.

"Alright," I said to the others, who were still by me. "Here's the game plan: Robyn will stay down here on the ground and mingle in with the crowd to see if there's anyone else stuck up there and direct us to them as well as keep tabs on all of us. Brooke and System: try and find a way of getting in through the fire escapes. Check every floor but don't go in if the fire is too far spread or is blocking a means of exit."

Brooke nodded. "Aye, aye, chief," she said, and before I could tell her not to call me that, she grabbed Kevin by the arm and pulled him towards the building.

I ignored the title for the moment. "Ned: you're invincible so I'll need you to just blunder forth, go through the fire and see if anyone's still in there. If they are, think out loud to Robyn and she'll relay the message to us and we can get them out."

Ned shrugged. "I wonder if my clothes will burn up . . ." he said as he dodged people and made his way, stealthily, to the building. No one noticed him and he got in without even an innocent bystander turning around.

I turned to Smithy. "You and I are the escape artists," I said. "We go in, we search the seventh floor, we find that little girl and we get her out. Come on, times a wasting."

Smithy quickly looked around, saw that no one was looking, and teleported behind the building. I had to weave through the crowd till I got out and then made my way to the rear of the apartments.

It's not easy, just walking up to a burning building and stepping inside. You have to watch out for fire fighters, police officers and regular good-willed civilians trying to drag you _away_ from the danger.

Also, you don't want to distract the emergency teams so you have to proceed in a very clandestine manner.

I met up with Smithy. I jerked my head towards a crumbling back door.

He nodded in answer. We were going in . . .

# Chapter Thirteen

We stepped through and immediately the strong, intense fumes hit us. The fading light from outside vanished. Breathing in, it felt like a ton of bricks piled up in your lungs.

I coughed, uncontrollably, after only a few breaths. The smoke wasn't that bad, as the fire was only on the top two floors, but it was enough.

Smithy only started coughing after we reached the third floor and we were bombarded with the black smoke.

"Crouch," he instructed. "There'll be more fresh air the lower we go."

I bent my knees and lowered myself and found that to be true. It wasn't much better but it was a significant improvement.

"Let's just get to the seventh floor and get out," I said.

The elevator was a clearly ruled out, not-going-to-happen option. The stairs were safest but the problem was that some staircases were either broken or littered with ceiling beams and other debris.

It wasn't an issue for Smithy and I: he teleported over it and I walked through it.

On some floors, the smoke wasn't too bad and light was able to drift in through the smashed windows or gaps in the walls, allowing us to see more of the eerie scenes in the building.

The sun was setting fast. One second it was hovering over the tops of buildings, the next, it just plummeted straight down and out the sky.

By the time we reached the seventh floor, the sun was completely gone and we were relying on our other senses to guide us.

When we approached the seventh floor, so did the fire.

Orange flames were eating at door frames, tearing at the floorboards and raging on items of furniture. The heat intensified and the smoke just got a hundred times worse.

All that I heard was the aggravated rage of the fire, the crackling of wooden items and the destruction of property.

But Smithy's hearing is fantastic. I don't know why his is any better than the rest of us but it is.

"Don't you hear it?" he whispered. His eyes darted around, searching for the source of a noise I hadn't heard.

"No," I answered.

He pointed to a door that was hanging off its hinges, a little faded flower sticker peeling off. It led to a small apartment.

Smithy cautiously walked up to it, stuck his head in, checked it out and stepped further in, gesturing for me to follow.

Furniture was turned upside down, paintings were hanging in odd positions and objects were strewn everywhere. The fire hadn't reached here yet. So either that old grandmother was a terrible interior decorator or . . .

"I think I know how the fire started," I said, sick at the idea of how someone could do such a thing.

Smithy nodded, frowning in complete disgust at the circumstances and agreement with me. "Thieves, vandals, thugs . . . they start a small fire, get everyone out in a panic and then see what they can lay their hands on. Here."

Smithy steered off into a room, a bedroom. Though it was trashed, you could still see that there was a small, white bed with pink butterfly patterned sheets, a dozen soft toys, a little doll house that looked like it had seen better days and a little child's painting of a squiggly rainbow on the wall.

The bed had been stripped of its sheets, the toys had either been ripped apart or torn to shreds, clothes had been thrown all over the floor and there was even graffiti on the walls.

Smithy fell to his hands and knees and started digging through the mound of clothes and toys, searching for something. I could tell that the mound wasn't _just_ made up of clothes and toys. I joined in shoving clothes out the way and after a few seconds, we came to the bottom of the pile.

A little girl, a bit younger than Jemima, was curled up into a tight ball, crying. Her brown hair was a mess, she had only one shoe on and she was scared as any child would be.

I knew what to do, after years of learning how to calm down Jemima when she was scared. I reached out and gently stroked her shoulder. She didn't seem to have any injuries so it was okay to move her.

Lucy May jerked off my hand and scooted backwards, away from Smithy and I.

"Hey, it's okay," I said, softly. "We're here to help get you out. Your grandma's really worried about you."

She was sniffing loudly and hiccup-crying. "But how do I know . . . that you'll . . . take me . . . to her?"

I looked at Smithy. "We've got time: demonstrate."

Smithy stood up, closed his eyes and teleported to the other side of the small room. Then he teleported back again.

"He'll get you out," I assured.

Lucy was still understandably afraid. "Is that safe?" she sniffed.

"It's safer than staying up here," I reasoned.

Lucy May stood up, slowly. She looked, uncertainly, from Smithy to me.

"It's okay, we're quite professional," I said.

Smithy held out his hand to Lucy May. She studied it, considered her options but still didn't do anything.

"I'll teleport you to the kitchen so you can see what it's like," Smithy offered.

Lucy May looked up at him with big eyes and slipped her tiny hand through Smithy's long fingers.

This was the first time Smithy was going to teleport a passenger. So he was probably doing this mostly so he could test it out himself.

"I suggest you close your eyes," he said. "It's so sudden; it kind of hurts your head to see everything change."

Lucy May nodded and closed her eyes, tightly.

Smithy nodded to me and vanished, taking Lucy May with him to the kitchen. It was spot on. One second, they were in the room, the next they were in the kitchen, just opposite the bedrooms.

Lucy May giggled. "That was fun," she said.

Fire was starting to lick at the door to the apartment.

"Okay, let's get out of here," I told Smithy.

There was a look to him that I didn't pick up on. Something was up, but I ignored it.

He chose to pay no attention to it as well. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He faded, but he didn't completely disappear.

The fire was coming fast, smoke was filling the room, filling me with a developing dread.

"Smithy, we have to get out _now,"_ I said, all niceties pushed aside.

Smithy tried again but he didn't vanish. He only faded.

"Smithy, no more games," I said, urgently. Why was he delaying? "We have to get out, _now_."

"I know, I know," he replied, frantically trying again, but still, only fading.

The fire was starting to eat at the overturned couch.

" _NOW,_ Smithy, and that's an order," I said, sternly. What was Smithy up to? Why wasn't he doing it?

"I . . . can't," Smithy said, defeated.

"What do you mean you can't?" I exclaimed. "You just did it from the room to the kitchen!"

"I'm trying but I just _can't_ do it . . ." Smithy let go of Lucy May and examined his hand. "I just can't do it," he said under his breath.

The fire was approaching. I had thought this plan out well, but I had forgotten something: human error.

"Listen, Smithy, we have to get Lucy out _now._ Just do it."

Smithy looked up at me with a glint in his eye of . . . something. I should have taken the time to notice it and figure it out but suddenly, there was a knock on the door that led to the fire escape. The door slid open. "Anyone here call for a split-second, didn't think you'd make it, was about to kiss yo' mamma goodbye, rescue?" Ned said, cheerfully.

I could have punched the air, we had a fall-back, a way out. Even if it was an unplanned Plan B.

Relief washed over me like a tidal wave. We got lucky this time: Ned had been climbing the fire escapes and had found us.

I picked up Lucy May and handed her to Ned. She was small and Ned did have boosted strength, thanks to his invincibility, so she wasn't a burden. He hoisted her onto his back, as if he was giving her a piggy back ride.

"Going down," Ned said, brightly, as Lucy May held tightly onto his back as he climbed down.

"Luke, I . . ." Smithy tried to explain.

I don't know why I was angry. Maybe it was because of our failure. Maybe I had just panicked and the fear overwhelmed me. I shouldn't have been so short.

I wasn't, in truth, disappointed with Smithy, as if he had any bearing on the behaviour of his power.

Perhaps, at that moment in time, I was, in some way, cross at Smithy for not fulfilling his role.

But I was, and I have to admit this right here and now in plain black and white, ashamed of myself for how I acted.

"Let's just get out of here," I said, stonily.

I climbed down the fire escape. I calmed down within those few seconds it took me to get to the other side of the room. But when I paused to say I was sorry to Smithy, he had already vanished.

I climbed down that fire escape, disgusted at myself, and trying to remember what it was that I saw in Smithy's eyes. What had he been trying to say?

I sighed. I knew what it was. And it only added to my guilt.

# Chapter Fourteen

Back on the ground, the crowd was gathering around Lucy May as she walked away from the building and into a hearty embrace with her elated grandmother.

Ned had done the right thing: when he touched down, he told Lucy to just walk out and give no details about her rescuers. We wanted to stay . . . unknown.

It would make the news that a group of unidentified teens had saved her . . . but no one would know what we looked like, what we sounded like or what our names were.

It was dark and blurry up there, as Lucy May claimed.

Paramedics crowded around Lucy May, checking her over for any injuries and treating her for smoke inhalation. One of the paramedics looked behind him, as if searching for her saviours. His eyes fell on me and my team but he had to get back to his job.

I met up with the others on the ground. Everyone was thrilled and ecstatic about our first ever victory. We were heroes, through and through.

Brooke and System had managed to find someone's little puppy, Robyn had guided them to the ground and Ned to us and, really, Smithy and I had located Lucy May. If it weren't for us, she wouldn't have been found in time.

But, while my friends were all going on about how a rush the whole evening was, I couldn't help but feel terrible, like dirt.

I hadn't intended to sound harsh and disappointed in Smithy. I was, slightly, but I shouldn't have come off like that. And I couldn't feel proud of our success when one of our own was feeling unwanted, unneeded, a failure and excluded.

Try as I might, I couldn't find Smithy in the horde of people. I guess he teleported far away, perhaps he went home, or just someplace no one would bother him.

When we had left the scene and were walking to the bus stop to retrieve our bikes, I pulled Robyn aside.

I took a deep breath of the fresh night air. I still reeked of smoke, though.

"Robyn . . . do you know what happened up there on the seventh floor?"

She nodded, her expression blank. She wasn't impressed with me.

"I didn't mean to sound so harsh," I explained.

"Uh-huh," she crossed her arms.

"I just . . . I panicked and I shouldn't have sounded like that," I said. "I didn't know what Smithy was up to—"

"Smithy hadn't teleported a passenger before, Luke," Robyn said, icily. "And he hadn't done it from such a distance, either. We're all new to our powers and we mess up sometimes. How many times up there didn't you get stuck in a pile of wood?"

Robyn was a gentle person. But don't you ever mess with someone she likes because that just seals your fate.

I nodded. "I know. I was scared and I didn't think. But that's not why I wanted to talk to you."

Robyn gazed at me with a stormy expression I hadn't ever seen on her face. "Uh-huh?" she said.

"I don't know how to find Smithy. I don't know where he lives, where he goes or anything. I might see him at school but not until Monday. I have to know what was going on and . . . if it turns out to be an error completely on my part, which I sincerely believe it is . . . I'll say sorry. I need to make sure that he knows he's a part of this team. You all call me chief, as much as I dislike it, and that title comes with a responsibility of making sure everyone in the team works well together. If I'm not working with someone, and I'm called chief, then how can I ever tell any of you what to do and how to do it?"

Robyn softened a bit. "I'll find him," she said, kindly. "I'll tell him what you said and I'll make sure he's alright."

"Thanks," I said, gratefully. "When you see him, tell him to meet up with the rest of us at your place tomorrow: we have to figure out how to stop Gemini and we can't do it without our escape artist."

"You got it . . . chief," Robyn smiled.

I walked away, towards the bus stop, to collect my bike. When I turned around, I saw that Robyn was walking in the opposite direction, away from her home. She wouldn't sleep till matters were straightened out . . . good ole Robyn.

♫

It was about eight 'o' clock by the time I got home. I opened the door, quietly, and closed it as noiselessly behind me.

But when I turned around, I saw that Dad was in the front room and was the first to see me. He closed the book he had been reading and stood up. He jerked his head towards the kitchen.

I knew what that meant. He was about to give me one of those heart to heart talks he's been into a lot lately.

Since the day I turned thirteen, Dad has been giving me these talks any moment he has free. More than a year and a half later, it hasn't ended.

I followed, obediently. I was too tired to fight and I knew when the game was up.

Dad didn't launch straight into the lecture immediately. He took a few moments and piled plates and glasses in the sink, turned on the tap, and got out a sponge for him and handed a drying cloth to me.

Nothing better than a captive audience, I guess.

"Did you go Downtown?" my father asked, conversationally, as he started calmly washing a plate.

How could I hide it? I smelt like a wood-fire, my hair was quite a few shades darker than it should be and there were a couple of black marks on my jeans and my shirt that Mom would have a fit about when they went through the wash.

"Yeah," I answered as he handed me the plate to dry.

He didn't show if he was perturbed by my reply. "You don't look like you were just a casual observer," he said.

I set the plate down and accepted the next one he passed to me. "No," I answered.

"What were you up to, then?" Dad asked.

I don't know how he does it. How he manages to go about his interrogations with that nonchalant air, as if he were just talking about school or my future or my report card, which he was seldom dissatisfied by.

What could I say?

To say that we were _in_ or _near_ the crumbling building, would throw up a thousand possibilities and a parent somehow always comes up with the worst possible one.

To say I just got in the way would prove just as fatal.

But, standing there, drying the dishes my dad passed me, I had a strong desire to just lay it all out and tell him that I had powers, that all my friends had powers, that there's this alien, looks like a skunk, that can shape-shift, how there's _another_ alien with half a metal face and how we have to stop him before he destroys our planet . . .

I just wanted to say it all, get it off my shoulders and just let my dad tell me what would be best to do next.

But . . . just looking over at him . . . I knew I could not do it. As much as I longed to get it off my chest and have someone to help me figure out what to do, I couldn't do it.

There was no way I could tell him I could go through walls, my friends could either teleport, command popcorn to obey their every word, stretch their arms to grab something metres away, or be hit by a car and survive . . . really, if you were a parent, how would you respond?

"There was a little girl, trapped inside," I said, concentrating on drying the plate as if were as delicate an operation as brain surgery. "Me and some friends went inside and saved her."

It wasn't lying. We'd done exactly that.

I didn't mention powers. I guess, I didn't have to.

My dad dropped a glass into the soapy water, splashing a shower of suds at me.

He ran his eyes over me, as if to confirm my story was true by seeing the various signs I bore on my clothes and face.

"Is that true?" he said in a voice barely audible.

He sounded angry but he wasn't, I knew that much.

I nodded. "Yes, it is. You can ask my friends, you can ask Brooke or Ned, and you'll probably see it in a newspaper. Her name was Lucy May; she was five years old and scared to death."

The rush of information poured out before I even thought about it. When I realized I was doing it automatically, I stopped, afraid I might say something about my powers.

Dad stumbled backwards onto a chair and just kept staring at me in total disbelief.

I threw the drying cloth onto the counter and headed out the kitchen for the stairs, suddenly the day was catching up with me. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the rail, and turned to my dad. "I asked her not to give our names," I said. "I didn't want it to be a big thing."

I went upstairs before I could hear a reply from my dad. Maybe he was proud. Maybe he was afraid that I may not have made it home. Maybe he was upset. . . .

I'd never know because that was the last time we spoke about it. The next day, the newspaper did in fact showcase the story, as told by Lucy May Rogers. Dad looked over at me and winked. Mom and Jemima read the story but they didn't know it was me. Dad didn't tell. He understood, if not completely, that I didn't want it to be a major thing.

I'd saved a life.

It was a big deal.

But anyone, in the right mind, with any trace of kindness and goodness in their hearts, would have done the exact same thing. . . .

Our names were not mentioned. Our age, our appearances . . . not even a hint. Lucy kept her promise and told them nothing about us.

I vowed, silently, to myself, that if she ever came home from school with Jemima, I'd play tea party with them, happily. She deserved as much.

# Chapter Fifteen

The next day was a Saturday.

Any other kid would have been out, enjoying the break in the rainy weather, playing in the park, shooting baskets, skating with friends or just hanging out somewhere where they could soak up the few precious rays of the sun.

Not me.

I woke up with a keen sense of optimism. The victory of yesterday's rescue was finally dawning on me. Maybe it hadn't gone all entirely to plan, but we had succeeded, nonetheless.

Now we were going to tackle the next big assignment: locating Gemini.

As soon as I was awake, I switched on the home computer and got onto the official City of Rockwell website.

On our first encounter with System, he had mentioned that Gemini was based in Rockwell. That could have meant a number of things: he had a secret lair here, he had an organization here or he resided in this town.

I decided to take a long shot and see if he had set up some sort of business in his name. It was a gamble but I concluded that anything was possible and nothing can be ruled out if you don't try it.

I typed **Gemini** into the search engine and waited a few anxious seconds for results to come up.

There were three results: Gemini Plumbing, Gemini Dental Clinic and Gemini Foot Wash and Scrub Co.

I discarded the last possibility as that was just not something I could imagine a felon from outer space getting into.

Gemini Plumbing was a possibility. A slight one, but it could just pan out into something.

The dental one, though, struck me as a career a villain would willingly pursue.

I printed out the list, as well as directions on where to find the buildings, and wasted no time in getting dressed and running out the house. I had to get to Robyn's: we had to use today wisely and work out where Gemini was.

System said that, before he crashed, he got a signal from Gemini. That signal could mean anything but I'd bet my life that it was something dangerous and fatal to the human race.

We needed to find Gemini, find some obscure clues, paste them together and see if we could piece together the mystery. And then we would have to work on how to stop Gemini before he carried out whatever plot he was plotting.

As I darted out my house, I ran into a group of neighbourhood kids. I had grown up around them. They were my friends.

Johnny, the kid who lived next door to me, waved to me as he brushed past on his scooter. We'd gone to preschool together.

I felt a strong urge to drop the hero act and join in their carefree day.

But I turned away and raced to the countryside, not slowing down for a second. I was going so fast, the message that I needed to take a breather never even reached my brain.

I got to Robyn's. Knocking on the door would have woken up her mother who would be sleeping in today. Saturday was her day off work. The hospital she worked in ran her ragged.

So I searched the driveway for a small stone and hurled it at Robyn's window. It made a cracking sound that echoed through the trees and then it bounced off the glass, hitting me in the face.

As I was rubbing my cheek, Robyn opened her window.

"Hi, Luke," she said, happy to see me.

"Are the others here yet?" I asked.

Robyn spun around, as if to remind herself. "Brooke's up here. Ned's just out collecting System and Smithy said he'd come. He promised."

Good, Smithy was coming. Whether he harboured bad feelings toward me or not, at least I could tell him I was sorry and that he was still a member of this team.

I'm not one for touchy-feely stuff.

But I had to make sure Smithy knew he was needed and that we couldn't proceed without him.

"Climb the gutter," Robyn called down. "The front door squeaks."

I bit down on the papers I had printed, to free my hands, and climbed up.

It was slippery and mushy, courtesy of the rain and wintry weather. By the time I got to Robyn's window, my hands were a mix of pale tan and blue from the cold.

"Hey, Luke," Brooke said, cheerfully, as I fell, clumsily, onto Robyn's floor.

"Hey," I replied, picking myself up and rubbing my hands together, feverishly, to warm them up.

Robyn's room is rather big. It's about two times as big as my room. And it was decorated in a classic style with Robyn's own personal touch. A king single, dark, oak wood bed with little roses curved into the wood, a hand-sewn quilt, a desk and a dresser with a mirror made from the same wood as the bed and a huge book shelf filled with hundreds of books. Robyn was a known bookworm.

A few seconds after I had hauled myself through the window, Ned climbed through the window with System clutching onto the back of his shirt.

"For a skunk, you're actually quite heavy," Ned said as System hopped off.

"I am a Systematic," he corrected. "And I am denser than normal skunks."

"Good, better remind me of that one when we come to an underwater lair," Ned mumbled. "Speaking of which, we're going to have to figure out where Gemini is hiding."

"He's not really 'hiding,'" I said. "He's just keeping a low profile. He hasn't got anything to hide _from._ Unless he's got eyes and ears everywhere, he doesn't know we exist."

"And, even so, I don't think he'd be that terrified by our existence," Ned added.

"Could you at least _try_ not to be such a pessimist?" Brooke said, indignantly.

"It's a gift," Ned shrugged.

"Anyway," I said, stopping Brooke and Ned's argument. "As soon as Smithy gets here, I'll tell you what I've found."

Silence descended. Ned tilted his head to the side.

"Luke, say that again."

"Say what?" I asked.

"Well, you know how it works: whenever you say aloud: 'I wonder where Smithy is,' he turns up, gives everyone a mild heart attack, and fades straight into the background again," Ned summarized. "Go on, try it, you know it works."

I had to admit, Ned was right. Every time, so far, when someone had said 'Where's Smithy?' he appeared.

"I don't think it actually works that way," I said, eventually.

Just as I said it, Smithy appeared in the middle of the room, as if on cue. "You're right, it doesn't," he confirmed. "But I do get it pretty spot on."

I wasn't sure if the rest of the team knew of what happened up in the apartments. I could trust that Robyn wouldn't have gone around telling everyone.

So, I didn't say anything about it. I just had to have faith that Robyn had said enough last night to cover it over.

"Alright," I said, getting down to business. "I figured Gemini would try to blend into the background, lay low and maybe even create a cover for himself," I said. "So, I did a little bit of digging and found that there's three businesses in Rockwell that have the name 'Gemini' in them. Gemini Plumbing, Gemini Dental Clinic and Gemini Foot Wash and Scrub Co. Now, I don't _really_ think the last one is a possibility but the first two I'd like to consider. Do you guys know anything about those two businesses?"

"The Gemini Dental Clinic opened only two months ago," Smithy supplied. "Around the same time I came."

"Gemini Plumbing has been open for ages," Robyn said, looking like she was thinking aloud. "Decades, actually. It doesn't stand to reason that Gemini would be operating that one. But a dental clinic . . ."

"That dental clinic has a great reputation," Brooke said. "I went there just last month and they are really good."

"To think that a sinister, intergalactic criminal could be managing your local friendly dental clinic . . . it's just nuts. What is this world coming to?!" Ned exclaimed.

"It could come to nothing if we don't act now," I said, flatly.

Ned shut up.

"What do you plan on doing now?" Brooke asked.

I sighed. "I don't actually know. We need to find out what Gemini is up to. We have to just start somewhere and I think an examination of his office would help . . ."

"We can't be sure that Gemini is a dentist," Smithy said. "He might just be the founder and the clinic was named in his honour."

"It's an outside chance, I admit. But we can at least give it a shot. Perhaps it'll pan out into something and if it doesn't, then we haven't lost anything except maybe our Saturday."

Smithy considered it and seemed to agree with me.

"How exactly do you plan to get into a dental clinic?" Robyn asked me.

I cringed. This was the part I hadn't been looking forward to having to say aloud. "It's not a fantastic idea, but, hear me out: we can't just break in and spy out the place. Because, if it leads us to a dead end, then we're liable for a number of criminal charges. So . . . we're going to have to make an appointment with the enemy."

No one was leaping at the opportunity. And I could understand: who, in their right mind, would schedule an appointment with a dentist, for the sheer thrill of it?

"Three of us go in," I explained, as if it would make the situation sound any more appealing. "Robyn has to come with to keep tabs on the other two. Someone has to get into the offices and check them out. That should either be me, as I can go through walls, or Smithy, who can just teleport in and out and around. Then . . . we're going to need someone to keep the dentists busy . . ."

Everyone looked at each other, reluctant to offer themselves for the mission.

"We'll draw straws," I eventually said, tired of all the waiting.

# Chapter Sixteen

Robyn was a fixed component in the plan. Out of Smithy and I, I got the job to do the sneaking. So then the unwelcome job of playing patient was open to the rest.

We used some of Robyn's art pencils. They were all the same brand and colour and some were a lot shorter than others. She made them look the same size as she held them out to Ned, Brooke, System and Smithy.

Everyone drew a pencil.

"Phew," Brooke breathed as she pulled out what was obviously the longest pencil in the lot.

System's was only a bit smaller than Brooke's.

Ned's was only as long as his ring finger. He groaned. "I hate this game," he grumbled.

Then Smithy pulled out one that was barely two inches big. He frowned. "You use 4B's a lot," he commented.

Roby shrugged. "It's perfect for cartoons and dark shades," she admitted.

"It's okay," I tried to reassure Smithy. "If we can get this plan to go according to the book, the dentist may not even go _near_ your teeth . . ."

Smithy sighed, not happy but not about to back down. "When's the appointment?" he asked.

"I'm going to phone right now."

♫

The dentist wasn't full today. We managed to get an appointment for eleven.

We were given our choice of dentists. And guess who the head dentist was?

None other than Joseph Gemini.

I figured it had to be a fake name. It was a good one, though.

If it was who I thought it was, than this was going to be the first time we'd come face to face with our enemy.

Only the three of us were going to the dental clinic. I asked System to do a bit of digging and see if he could find where Gemini was living. As soon as he did, he was to take Brooke and Ned along and see if they could find anything there that could help.

So, that was the game plan. Now we had to start moving.

Brooke, Ned and System went to the cave carrying an assortment of wires, map books, an old phone, parts of computers and Brooke's laptop.

Robyn, Smithy and I caught a bus going straight into town. Gemini Dental Clinic was located in the heart of the business district.

"Okay," I said in a low voice as the bus started rolling. "Let's go over this one last time: Smithy has a dental appointment and isn't happy about it in the least."

"Got that right," he muttered.

"So he's kicking and fighting and refusing to go in. His parents couldn't bring him because . . .?" I waited for Robyn to answer. We'd been through this thing a thousand times, she knew it off by heart.

"Because they're busy. They've asked you and I, his closest friends, to take him to the clinic, against his will."

"Good. As soon as Smithy is in the dentist's chair, I'll go off, on a search for the bathroom. I see which offices I can get into. I guess all. If I find something, Robyn, I'll let you know. If the mission is in jeopardy or something's not going right, we get out as fast as we can run. We clear?"

Robyn and Smithy nodded. "We're clear."

I sat back and pretended to relax. "Alright, this shouldn't be too hard . . ."

We got off at a stop that was around the corner from the dental clinic and as soon as the bus started rolling away, Smithy leapt straight into his amazing, though short-lived, acting career.

He did it so suddenly, for a second I actually forgot that he was just faking it.

Smithy tried to make a break for it but Robyn and I grabbed him and pulled him towards the clinic. There wasn't a single moment he stopped fighting.

The clinic was an old building with thick, double brick walls; thick enough for me to hide in. It may have been eight or nine decades old but it had been recently refurbished. A rounded rectangular sign boasted **Gemini Dental Clinic** in metallic lettering.

I was getting a strong vibe that this was the right place.

Robyn opened the door, using her elbow and together we dragged Smithy in. He had calmed down the vigorous resisting but was still as rigid as stone with a gloomy expression as real as if he really _was_ going to the dentist's against his will.

The clinic's waiting room was immaculately clean and reeked of a heavy overdose of floral air freshener.

White-washed walls, teal carpeting, semi-comfortable but cold plastic moulded chairs and pictures of grinning people, paintings of pristine beaches and exotic animals as well as abstract art consisting of splattered rainbows of colours and sequins, made it your typical waiting area.

The only other patients were an elderly couple and a mother trying to soothe her small son who obviously feared sitting in the dentist's chair.

Smithy crossed his arms and kept up his air of reluctant patient. Robyn and I were sitting on either side of him to make sure he didn't make a run for it again.

"So far so good," Robyn whispered to me.

"Let's keep it up," I suggested.

The receptionist, sitting behind the counter, was scrolling through information on the computer and tapping loudly on the keyboard. A rather plump nurse, maybe in her thirties, with mousy brown hair tied into a loose bun, strode over to the desk, examined her clipboard and said something to the receptionist. The receptionist pointed at Smithy.

The nurse did a double take and asked the receptionist something.

I wish there was super hearing in System's odd brew of _Amepips_.

She shrugged. "Smithy?" she said.

Smithy looked up at her with his stormy expression. Robyn and I yanked him to his feet.

"Go on," Robyn said. "Stop being so otherwise."

Smithy rolled his eyes. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Fine," was all he said.

The head dentist came out of his office and walked up to the receptionist.

He pulled down his face mask and for a moment all I could do was stare. Then I realized it was rude to stare as well as the fact that I didn't want him to remember my face if he ever saw it again.

Being in his presence, I saw that the hologram hadn't really done him justice.

He was tall, a head taller than Smithy, taller in real life than he was in the hologram.

As menacing as the left side of his face, covered by the metal, seemed in the hologram, it was ten times scarier when you see it close up.

He looked half robot.

The receptionist pointed to Smithy again and Dr Joseph Gemini spun around. For a second, he just stared at Smithy, as if he had seen one of the chairs spring to life and start tangoing with the X-ray machine.

He blinked and resumed his air of friendly, great-to-see-you dentist.

Smithy pretended to be taken back by Gemini's appearance. I knew Smithy had been expecting this, but maybe he was really freaked out by seeing Gemini's metal face.

"Right this way, Mr Smith," Gemini said, spreading his arm, motioning to the corridor.

"It's just Smithy," Smithy mumbled. "Nothing more, nothing less."

Gemini smiled. "Of course. That's a fad, isn't it? Just going by one name."

Smithy shrugged and followed Gemini as he led him down the corridor.

I started to get up but Robyn reached out and pulled me back down. "Wait till he's in," she whispered.

I waited but I couldn't exactly tell when he'd be in.

"Alright," Robyn said, letting go of my arm.

I casually walked up to the evacuation plan that was hanging on the wall near the entrance to the corridor. The sound of drills and other dental equipment getting louder as I got closer.

The evacuation plan showed the building. If anyone was watching me, they'd think I was just trying to find where the bathrooms were located. I pretended to find it and walked down the corridor.

I walked past the room Smithy was in. I casually glanced in. Smithy hadn't started fighting just yet. He was sitting on the edge of the laid back chair, arms crossed, and waiting for Gemini to finish preparing his equipment. Gemini was calmly chatting to Smithy.

"What's with the metal face?" Smithy asked, bluntly.

"I was in an accident when I was younger," Gemini explained. "The skin on the left side of my face was torn off and my left eye was blinded. The metal shields it."

I didn't think that was the truth. If you had an accident where something like that happens, I doubt they'd weld metal onto your face.

It was definitely alien. Though I didn't see what purpose the metal really served.

I had to move on. If I hung around, someone was bound to see and then they'd start asking questions. Questions I didn't want to answer.

Fortunately, Gemini's office was just next door.

The door was closed and I didn't want to find out if it would squeak, so I looked up and down the corridor and walked through it.

I had only discovered my power the day before but I was getting the hang of it already.

The office was tiny. It consisted of a kitchenette, with a kettle, a microwave and a small fridge; a filing cabinet, a bookshelf and a wall shelf housing an enlarged model of a tooth and various other models; a pile of medical equipment in one corner; and a desk with papers scattered everywhere.

I immediately got down to searching through the papers to see if Gemini would keep a To Do list.

What exactly did I expect to find?

To Do:

6:30 a.m. Go to work.

12:00 p.m. Have lunch.

4:40 p.m. Pick up car from workshop.

7:55 p.m. Destroy Planet Earth.

I doubted he would write something like that down.

But I kept looking through the various papers to see if I found anything of interest or out of the ordinary.

I was five minutes into my search when I heard a loud crash from next door: Smithy had begun his active resistance.

# Chapter Seventeen

"Don't touch me!" Smithy yelled.

"Just sit back down, Mr Smith: it's only a dental clean, nothing to it, it'll be over soon and you'll be better for it," Gemini said, calmly.

I could hear a struggling going on. Smithy was a very unreasonable patient. At least, today he was.

"Nurse McMillan! Get a sedative!" Gemini called. He probably had Smithy pinned.

"You can call me Brandi!" she replied in a giggly manner.

"Just get the sedative from my office!" Gemini shouted back, impatient.

"Anything for you, Gemmy, dear," she answered.

<Is it just me or is she hitting on Gemini?> Robyn couldn't help but giggle in my mind.

<Creepy,> I replied.

The handle started turning. Panic washed through me. Brandi was going to find me here and then what would she do?

I ran straight into the wall. It was thick enough for me to hide in but I constantly feared going solid.

I stuck my head out the wall, just enough so I could see the stout nurse stumble into the office. She headed straight to the corner of the room where the medical equipment was piled. She found the sedative in no time at all, so spared a few seconds and ran her eyes over the papers on Gemini's desk. She obviously liked to keep up with his schedule.

She found a scrap piece of paper and scanned it. She had a habit of moving her lips while reading.

"Monica Mia!" she exclaimed aloud, indignantly.

"NURSE MCMILLAN!!!" Gemini shouted.

Brandi dropped the piece of paper and scurried out the office.

Before I went over and picked up the piece of paper, I walked over to the other wall, stepped into it and stuck my head through the other side to see how Smithy was doing.

(Fortunately, my head came out of a poster of a family smiling crazily with white, sparkling grins. So I just blended in. But it made me look like I wore pigtails and a polka dot dress.)

Smithy was being pinned down by the receptionist and Gemini, as he waited for Brandi to bring the sedatives. Smithy lashed out and kicked and tried to squirm free but Gemini was stronger than him.

Smithy's eyes grew wide with real fear as he saw the sedative injections.

"Here you go," Brandi said as she arrived.

"Just use the strongest," Gemini ordered, tersely.

Brandi read the labels on the injections and found the one Gemini required. She leaned in to inject Smithy. Now he was fighting for real. No one likes to be knocked unconscious.

"No, let me go!" he cried.

Brandi swiftly injected him without wasting a second of time. Smithy kept struggling for a minute but his eyelids started to grow heavy and his efforts were more subdued.

Eventually, his head fell, limply, to the side.

Gemini and the receptionist eased up. "I'm calling the boy's parents," Gemini said. "This kid is a delinquent."

Gemini brushed past Brandi to get to the phone. As he did, her eyelids fluttered. "Oh," she said.

Brandi obviously forgot she was still clutching four other sedatives. She let her hand drop, accidently injecting herself in the thigh by so doing.

She started swaying immediately, like a large, unstable building in a wild storm. She stumbled and then pitched forward. "Catch me, my love!" she exclaimed as she fell straight towards Gemini, flabby arms spread wide.

Gemini was taller but about five times smaller than Brandi. As she came crashing down, Gemini was knocked backwards by the force, hidden by the huge mass of Nurse McMillan.

He managed to stick his head out. "Don't just stand there, you bumbling idiots: get her off of me!"

The receptionist seemed to recover from her shock. She took one look at the bulk of Brandi crushing Gemini and decided to get some extra help. She left the room and called some nurses in to assist.

Brandi was snoring as the receptionist and a few other nurses worked to get her off of poor Gemini who didn't stand a chance.

My time was up. We had to get out of there before Gemini or anyone else could call Smithy's parents, whoever they were.

<Robyn, quick. Help me get Smithy out of here.>

I ran back through the wall into the office, picked up the note that Brandi had dropped, stuffed it into my pocket, darted through the door and into the room where all the commotion was going on.

Smithy was lying unconscious on the laid back dentist chair, five staff members were working desperately to free Gemini and Gemini was trying to shove the limp body of Nurse McMillan off of him.

Robyn walked in and gasped as she saw the hullabaloo.

"What did I miss?" she asked me as I slipped past the staff that were so focussed on freeing their boss, they didn't notice us.

"Just grab Smithy and let's get out of here!" I instructed as I lifted Smithy up by the armpits. Robyn got the idea and grabbed his feet. We heaved him off the chair and carried him through an exit further down the corridor.

What do you think we were going to do? Walk out the front entrance?

That little kid out there was already upset about going to the dentist's, why add a new fear to the list?

# Chapter Eighteen

"You think that was our man?" Robyn asked as we dragged Smithy out of the city. To avoid suspicion, we took back streets.

"Had to be," I said. "You don't miss something like that."

Robyn looked, sadly, at Smithy. "I hope he's alright . . ."

"It was just your run of the mill anaesthetic. Bit more powerful then what I thought they'd use on a rowdy patient but he'll pull through . . ."

"Do you think Gemini recognized him?" Robyn asked, suddenly.

The question hit me like a fist and made me stop walking and think. I had noticed that look on Gemini's semi-metal face when he saw Smithy. Maybe he was just seeing the striking resemblance between them. Smithy had reacted in much the same way when he first laid eyes on Gemini.

I carried on walking. I didn't respond because I wasn't sure. "Let's go to the cave, the others are probably still busy."

We continued our journey in silence. I was avoiding the subject. The truth was that I just didn't know Smithy and I couldn't understand him. He was always off on his own and trying to evade eye contact but if he could help, as much as he didn't want to do it, he would buckle down and do it.

We were halfway to Robyn's house when her phone started going off again with the violin solo. Robyn lowered Smithy down, gently, onto the damp road and answered her phone.

I listened to this half of the conversation. "Uh huh . . . yeah, we've just finished now . . . yup . . . yeah . . . no . . . uh huh . . . your place . . ? We'll be right over."

Robyn shut her phone. "They've found something," she announced, excited all over again. "They're at Brooke's place: her brother Arthur's out. C'mon, we're not far from there."

Distances seem to stretch further when you have to drag an unconscious person along with you.

We got to Brooke's house. She only lived across the road from me so standing on her front step, I could see my house. I thought for a second I saw my sister looking out through her bedroom window. I shook my head: I was getting paranoid.

Robyn knew where Brooke kept a spare key: under a flat stone in the front garden. She unlocked the door and we carried Smithy inside and up the stairs to Brooke's room.

By the time we got inside, our arms were sore from carrying Smithy. Whatever that Brandi gave him, it knocked him clean out.

Everyone raised an eyebrow when we walked in half carrying, half dragging the limp body of Smithy.

"Is he dead?" Ned asked.

"No, but my arms feel dead," I replied as Robyn and I hoisted him onto Brooke's bed.

"What happened at the dentist's?" Brooke asked, suspiciously.

"Well, it's definitely Gemini running that dental clinic," I said, sitting down on Brooke's desk chair and rubbing my aching arms. "He even recognized Smithy. Well, I can't say for sure but maybe he knows Smithy from somewhere. Smithy never said _he_ doesn't know him."

"Luke, enough with the suspicions," Robyn chided. "Smithy hasn't done anything . . ."

"That's where you're wrong," Ned said, suddenly. "Up there in that building, Smithy didn't get that little girl out when Luke ordered him to . . ."

"He couldn't do it!" Robyn defended, hotly. "He tried and tried and tried but he just plain old couldn't teleport a passenger further than a couple of metres."

Robyn had a way of making people shut up when she got defensive. It's probably because she was the last person you'd expect to explode.

Smithy stirred. He groaned and rolled his head to the other side but he didn't fully wake up.

"We're still young," Robyn said, resuming her air of gentle grace. "And we don't have proper powers. We're bound to stuff up sometime. We shouldn't jump on each other when we do. I even forget how to tap into people's thoughts, singularly. I was hearing everyone's thoughts for a moment. It was crazy. And I was scared. Because I didn't like not being in control even for a second. I felt lost. Smithy probably felt all that and more when he couldn't rescue that little girl."

Brooke found something interesting to look at on the floor, Ned bit his lip and looked away and I turned to each one of my friends. "Robyn's right: we can't just distrust someone because their power goes on the fritz. We're team, let's stick together and help out each other."

Everyone nodded and we calmed down. Smithy groaned again and sat up, dizzily. He held a hand to his head, as if he had a headache.

"Next time, remind me to teleport far away when Luke suggests we go to some medical establishment to spy on some intergalactic felon," Smithy said, dazed.

"Did you find out anything else?" System enquired.

"Um . . . yeah, the dental nurse has a thing for Gemini," Robyn said, giggling.

That reminded me of the note. "Oh, yeah. When she was in Gemini's office, she took a quick peek at his papers and when she saw this:" I pulled the note from my pocket and unfolded it, "she freaked."

I read the note out loud:

"Phone Monica Mia, midnight, Sunday."

"So, he has a girlfriend and it isn't her," Ned shrugged. "What's the problem that could mean our death and the death of this planet?"

"What makes you think he has a girlfriend?" Brooke asked.

Ned shrugged again. "That or it's his mother or his sister. Whoever it is, it would have to be someone he knows well to phone them at midnight."

But System had stiffened all of a sudden. He was standing on his hind legs, his black beady eyes wide.

"System? What's up?" Robyn said, softly.

"Monica Mia . . ." he echoed.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

System shook his head, as if to get out of his trance. "Well, it could just be a coincidence, maybe it is just the name of someone he knows but . . ."

"Spit it out," I ordered, wearily.

"Monmia," System said, darkly. "Monica Mia is their nickname. They're a race of backwards speaking, honourable in their own minds, dictating, pathetic, cowardly creatures with only a sense of hearing and power. They've been known to destroy entire races so that they could inhabit their planet. Earth has been their main target for many centuries. But Intergalactic Police have been keeping a constant guard on Earth so the Monmia, try as they might, have been unable to sneak even a simple cherry bomb through Earth's atmosphere."

If System's words didn't carry so much weight, I would have asked how he knew what a cherry bomb was.

"It makes so much sense," System continued, as if talking to himself. "We found something, a blueprint, if you will, in Gemini's apartment. A blue print of planet Earth."

"And those grey patches?" Brooke asked. "Do they have something to do with the Monmia?"

System blinked, thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, I remember my teacher once saying that Monmia have many methods of destroying races. They generally like to do it so that there is no mess left over when they want to start inhabiting it. They use a kind of artificial chemical gas that would reduce the predominant species . . . to dust, literally."

I raked a hand through my hair and yanked on a handful. I had been doing that since I was little. It was my way of coping with something distressing.

Humans could be destroyed soon. A bunch of aliens would come in and live in our houses, eat our food, sleep in our beds, deface our property . . . and who was standing in the way?

If the rest of the world knew that five ordinary kids who had powers they couldn't control and a major trust issue, along with a skunk that talked and knew more about stars than any scientist alive, were going to save them all . . . I doubt the order "Don't Panic," no matter how big and friendly the letters, would be obeyed to any degree.

I found it hard to keep the panic down myself. All I could think of was: "We won't make it out. There is no way we can make it through something like this . . ."

"What did you find at Gemini's apartment?" I asked, steadily.

"The guy has a thousand and one collection of Atlas's," Ned commented. "And coins, and stamps, and shells, and stones, and international knick-knacks . . . honestly, that chap has more collections than a museum."

"He also keeps his apartment very clean," Brooke remarked. "It looks just like a normal apartment."

"No, I mean, what did you find, like that blue print?"

"I only found the blue prints of Earth and a map of Rockwell," System said. "The grey areas in the blue prints of Earth are probably to show the holes in the O-Zone layer. The Monmia will need that information to blast the gas into Earth. The shells that carry the gas are so fine and fragile; they need a weak spot to get in."

"I saw the blue prints as well," Brooke said. "That big grey area I saw, where was that over again?"

"An island called Australia," System said.

"Makes sense," Ned muttered. "That sun bites you there. You don't just burn silently, no. It likes to make sure you know you're being burnt."

"How would you know?" Robyn asked.

Ned shrugged. "My family travels . . ."

"So Gemini has gathered all of this information," I said, mostly to myself. "He knows where to let the gas through, we know he has to tell the Monmia, he's going to do that at midnight, tomorrow, I'm assuming. But where is he going to do it and what can we do?"

# Chapter Nineteen

This mission was getting graver by the second. What started out as just a simple scouting mission to see if our local friendly dentist was an alien, turned out not only to be entirely worth it and a bit nuts but it also turned the tables.

I thought with that bit of knowledge, we would know what to do next and maybe succeed.

I didn't stop for a moment to realize that maybe once we found the clues it would lead to something even bigger and more questions than answers.

We spent the last waking hours of Saturday in Brooke's room. Smithy had a throbbing headache but he still joined in helping us figure out what to do.

Just as the sun began to sink below the horizon, something occurred to me.

I clicked my fingers, shattering the silence, making everyone jump. "System, that map of Rockwell, in Gemini's apartment, do you remember what page it was open on?"

System shut his eyes, as if the answer was printed on his eyelids. "Um . . . an area called 'Downtown.'"

"Did Brooke or Ned see it?"

"I did," Ned answered.

"Did you see a circle around anything in particular?" I was getting excited now.

"Yeah . . . you know those old warehouses, near the Dump, the ones they rent out to companies or people for storage? There was a red circle drawn around the vicinity. I wonder if . . ."

"Gemini could easily have rented a warehouse," Smithy said, hazily. "It's out of the way and phone signals are terrible there."

"Why would that be a good thing?" Robyn asked.

Smithy shrugged but it turned into a cringe halfway. He wasn't a hundred percent yet. "Where our phones don't work, because we're far from towers and so forth, non-Earth transmitters work best because there's less interference."

"How do you know that?" Brooke cocked an eyebrow.

"System told me," Smithy replied, simply.

"Oh."

"Well, then we know where, when, what, why and who," I said. "But we just don't know how. How are we going to get into that warehouse? How are we going to stop that transmission?"

"It's impossible to terminate the transmission," System said. "Not with your primitive Earth technology, anyway."

I thought that was an insult for a moment.

"Okay," I said, slowly, as if an idea would occur to me in the time it took to say it. "So we can't put an end to the actual transmission . . . but what if we can butt in somehow?"

"Butt in?" Ned repeated, like he hadn't heard right. "Why would we want to do that? I'm too young to be writing out a will."

"It won't come to that, I promise," I said it with all my heart, just to reassure my team and myself.

"How would we do that, though?" Robyn said. "It's one thing to try and end the call from a safe distance with some technical equipment but it's another thing to go storming in there. What do you have in mind, Luke?"

I took a deep breath. No one was going to like this suggestion . . . "If we can get in there and somehow convince the Monmia to back off . . ."

"Monmia _never_ back off," System said. "They have never done it and they never will. Even if Gemini called them up and said that the hole in the O-Zone was only as big as his thumb and that it would not work, sorry, the Monmia would just keep dropping bombs till they found the hole or made the hole."

"Then . . . couldn't we just tell them that the hole is . . . somewhere else?" Brooke said. "Tell them the hole is somewhere above the ocean, at a spot where it's actually strongest. Wouldn't that work? I mean, the bombs will drop and won't be able to break."

"You. Are. BRILLIANT!" I cried, two hairs from hugging Brooke. If I did that, though, I was likely to be beaten black and blue. "Could it work, System?"

System rubbed his little chin as he considered it.

"It just may . . . but we would have to tell them to use all their bombs and leave nothing behind. Once they find out that they've been tricked, they'll return with more resources. Unless . . ." he trailed off.

"Unless what?" I prompted.

"Well . . . the Intergalactic Police really should be guarding Earth. They've been doing so for millenniums. Why do you think you haven't been invaded yet? If they aren't, then either Gemini has managed to take down entire squadrons, or he's cloaking his transmissions with something new, something the police haven't gotten a hold of yet—"

"Then how did you manage to detect Gemini's transmissions?" I interrupted.

System shrugged. "I create transmission detectors as a hobby. I can detect any signal, frequency or transmission known to Systematics. And we know a lot."

"Oh, okay."

"It is possible, too, that he sent them on a wild goose chase to get them away from Earth. Gemini wouldn't consider leaving anything to chance; he would have gone to the highest precautionary measures thinkable."

"So, the Intergalactic Police are no help," I sighed and sat back in the chair. "And it's a bunch of high school kids up against a superior race of ruthless aliens. Terrific."

"I wouldn't say 'superior,'" System muttered.

Robyn was fiddling with her locket, as usual.

Smithy was still rubbing his head.

Ned sat on the edge of Brooke's bed with crossed arms, a frown set on his face, he was deep in thought.

System was tinkering with something that looked like a TV remote.

And Brooke looked like she was on the verge of saying something.

"We have to get to that warehouse," I said, as if to remind everyone what our main objective was.

Robyn looked sideways at Brooke. To this day, I don't know if Robyn used her mind messaging service or if it's some kind of girl thing, but they were thinking the same thing.

Robyn looked Smithy up and down. "You know, you _do_ look an _awful_ lot like Gemini . . . the human part, I mean. Maybe we can't completely destroy the transmission or fuzz out the signal. But we could, shall I say, _assist_ in the transmission . . .?"

Smithy groaned. "I'm gonna hate this, aren't I?"

Brooke nodded, enthusiastically. "I have _always_ wanted to try out my make-up skills on a live subject," she said with an evil grin.

Smithy looked terribly nervous all of a sudden.

# Chapter Twenty

We decided to regroup at Brooke's the next day, at nine, so that we could do everything, get Smithy ready, prepare ourselves, and get some "supplies."

We were going to be heroes. This was something I had wanted ever since I could read. How many nights had I spent, curled up under the sheets with a torch and a comic book? Old and new, I loved anything that had a cape, dumb catch phrases and super powers.

The evil villain plotted to destroy a city, or the world. He would be rich, badly dressed and have a ridiculous, laugh-inducing hair-do. Sometimes he'd be famous and maybe even with a good reputation in the community.

He would laugh, crazily. So wrapped up in himself and his "gifted brilliance" that he wouldn't think of all the people he crushed beneath him.

He'd do things, incredible acts of felony, but the police and even intelligence agencies wouldn't be able to pin anything on him.

He would have a girl tied up. She'd be a noisy reporter, journalist or just plain old curious.

But that's where the evil villain slipped up.

The girl just has to be the superhero's do-anything-for, move-mountains-for, just-wish-I-could-tell-them, love.

Just as the criminal-mastermind's finger is hovering over the big red button, the curtains would balloon, a burst of wind would swoosh in and standing, framed by the moonlight (these things only _ever_ happen at midnight) would be the hero.

He'll storm in, stop the bad guy, save Planet Earth, rescue the girl and drop the bad guy in federal prison.

Then the comic would end with just your ordinary out of costume hero, sitting at a cafe. The girl he rescued last night would be going on and on about her hero. And he'd just sigh, shake his head and smile. She'd never know . . .

But at least _Superman_ or _Spiderman_ had saved the day and crushed the psychotic dreams of one bad guy.

Planet Earth could rest in peace till the next issue and the next lunatic came along.

Now, that was the part everyone saw. The flashy outfits, the quick-wit, the dashing rescue missions, the split-second costume changes in telephone boxes and the fast escapes.

But what I was really focussing on now was the outfits.

There was no way I was going to wear capes or tights, let alone wear my underwear on the outside.

(I could count seven reasons why they did that, but none could convince me.)

As I was lying on my back, staring up at my ceiling, the light from the full moon drifting in through the slits in the blinds, I thought about what it was going to be like, being a hero. I wondered if we'd ever get in papers. I didn't want to become public. But, how can you hush up something like this?

I surrendered and fell asleep to my many, many thoughts that swam around with no direction in my mind.

The next morning came, little birds singing, a soft breeze blowing in through the blinds and the sun shining as if it knew no Sunday was complete without sunshine.

The optimism that seemed to accompany every morning didn't fail today. Things just seemed more manageable in the morning. Anything I had worried about the day before just seemed to have faded with my consciousness.

The task of facing Gemini was daunting. But it was far enough away that it didn't overwhelm my day. And that was where I made my mistake.

I spent the day just being a regular kid. I didn't want to think about Gemini, System, Monmia, Intergalactic Police . . . nothing. I just wanted to forget it and be a normal kid.

I shoved it to the back of my mind and lost myself.

I sat down and had a proper, traditional breakfast with my family. I'd flown out the door so fast and just grabbed breakfast for the last couple of days and I wasn't too sure how tonight was going to work out. I wanted to spend a meaningful morning with my parents and my little sister.

I spent the day with some other friends of mine from school. We grabbed our skateboards and just had fun in the skate park. I fell only twice, grazed my leg on the second fall, but besides that I was fine. It's normal to fall at least once when you're skateboarding.

And I was normal.

Till night fell.

It was half past eight when I remembered what I was supposed to be doing.

Jemima was asleep. My parents were watching a movie that I would have joined in watching if I had not had a sudden, inexplicable urge to go to bed and sleep.

"Alright," my mother said, pleased. "That's good, you'll be up early for school, then. They say it should start raining soon and you sleep in late with the rain."

If only she knew that I'd probably only be home at like two in the morning . . .

I went upstairs to my room, pulled on a faded pair of black jeans that were more grey than black, a black T-shirt, jacket and sneakers.

It was a night time mission: I had to blend in.

I turned off the light in my room and stuffed pillows under the blankets to make it look like I was asleep if my parents or Jemima just decided to start checking up on me at odd hours in the night.

And I slipped out the window, silently, like a spy. Fortunately, we have a big old oak tree with thick, twisting branches that's growing in between our house and our next door neighbour's so I could climb down that with ease.

I ran across the street and to Brooke's house.

I could see the light was on in her room so I climbed up a conveniently placed ladder and into her room.

# Chapter Twenty-One

Everyone, it seemed, had the same idea to dress in black. Even System was wearing a small black beanie.

"Howdy," Ned said. "Was wondering when you were going to show."

"No way was I going to miss this," I replied.

Ned was playing some card game with Robyn on the floor, Smithy was sitting at Brooke's desk/make-up station; a sheep ready for the slaughtering; and System was holding his Game Boy steady as it sported the hologram of Gemini, in vivid colour, so Brooke could get the right shapes and shades.

Brooke studied the picture. "Is it real metal?" she asked.

"Well, it _looks_ real," Smithy said. "It has that metal shine to it."

Brooke rummaged in a pink and purple, decorated box that held all her make-up supplies.

"I have metallic face paint," she said, holding up a small, transparent tub so we all could see.

I nodded. "That'll do."

She twisted off the lid. "Okay, Smithy, hold still, close your eyes and just think the happiest thoughts you have ever thought," she said as she chose a paintbrush and started to apply the metallic paint to the left side of Smithy's face.

He flinched.

"Hey, System, why do I even have to pretend to look so much like Gemini if the Monmia don't even have a sense of sight, like you said?"

"Because, the Monmia don't have any other sense than hearing. But their leaders are chosen specifically because they _do_ have sight."

"So, some have eyes and others don't?" Ned summarized.

"Sort of like . . . your Earth ants," System explained. "Some are born to be drones and some are born to be . . . something else, I didn't pay that much attention in that class. But, same with the Monmia. Most are born blind, without eyes. They have to follow someone who can see and some Monmia are born with eyes. They are born leaders. The Monmia that will be on the other end of the video link will have sight. We have to convince him."

"Fair enough," Smithy said without moving too much of his face.

Robyn dropped her cards and stood up. "Well, Smithy is covered for now," she said. "Unless Gemini puts two and two together, he should stay hidden. But the rest of us need something to hide behind."

Ned jumped up and clicked his fingers. "Bright colours, capes, hideous tights, plastic boots, and, for extra measure, we could each come up with some corny, yet effectively popular, catch-phrases."

I shook my head. "Ned, the idea is to get there, get the job done, and get outta there. We do not want to be famous, we don't want to get into newspapers or headlines, we just want to stop Gemini. The bright colours and cape thing just may give us away."

"Not to mention that the cape may just get in the way of our escapes," Ned admitted, thoughtfully. "But the catch-phrases inspire hope. Shall we keep those?"

"What do you have in mind?" I ignored Ned and asked Robyn.

She walked over to a corner of Brooke's room and dug around in a black back-pack. "Ned had a point," she said as she fished around in her back-pack. "I decided we really needed things to hide who we were. But I couldn't sew five ugly Lycra suits in one day. And none of us wear glasses so it's useless."

"I apologize for my twenty/twenty eyesight," Ned said.

"So Superman is out the window. But Spiderman might work . . ." Robyn trailed off with a grin. She was purposefully creating an air of mystery.

"What do you mean?" Brooke paused halfway through painting Smithy's face.

"I mean masks. Like the Incredibles, just a simple black eye-mask. It'll only hide a bit of our faces but it should be enough. And we can also do wigs."

Robyn pulled out a plastic packet full of black eye-masks.

"Hey, that can work," I said, seeing the potential. "It may not be much, and we'll still look an awful lot like ourselves but something like that can really throw people off."

"We can at least have stupid, ridiculous names, can't we?" Ned piped up.

"Ned . . ." I started.

"I'll be called . . . Luke!" Ned sounded far too satisfied with himself.

"Hey!" I exclaimed.

Ned shrugged, nonchalantly. "What? It's the name of a superhero! You should be proud."

"Stupid? _Ridiculous_?" I said.

"Well, if we're going with names that fit that description," Brooke said, concentrating on Smithy's ear. "Call me Ned."

"This conversation is getting old," Ned said, flatly.

"I spent at least an hour at the costume/drama club at school today," Robyn said, ignoring the senseless natter. "And they said that it only takes a dash of make-up and a life-like wig to throw people off the scent."

"But we can't keep on wasting time applying make-up," Brooke said. "What if we see something happening right there and then? We have to just slap on a mask and get to it."

Robyn nodded. "I know. That's why I decided only a few of us should have wigs. Like Brooke, Ned and I. But for Smithy and Luke, I thought we could just throw some charcoal on their hair: making it black."

"If it works . . ." I said.

"Good. Then, this is for me," Robyn said as she tied up her long hair and fitted a wig of short, dark brown, bouncy curls on.

"What do you think?" Robyn asked, posing. Curls bounced as she twirled. She looked like a spy with her black pants, shirt, jacket, eye-mask and boots.

"Cool," Ned said, approvingly. "What have you got for me?"

"I don't know how you'll like this one..." Robyn rummaged through the rucksack and handed Ned a huge afro that was a lot bigger than the bag.

"You did say you wanted to be a stupid, ridiculous hero," I commented as Ned fitted the afro over his head.

He glared at me. "The things I do to save the world . . ."

"And I got Brooke a bob," Robyn said, combing through the blonde strands. "Thought it would be a good idea just to have short hair and preferably something that looks entirely different from our usual hair. No one can pin anything on us now."

# Chapter Twenty-Two

"You could be Gemini's twin," Brooke stated as she finished rubbing charcoal in Smithy's hair.

Smithy frowned. "You guys make it sound like it's a good thing."

"Yeah, well it isn't," Robyn admitted. "But for now, it could mean the difference between life and death."

"There's just one thing missing," I said. "Your eye, Smithy. Gemini's is metal, like the rest of his face, but yours is just grey and normal. How are we going to fix that?"

Brooke thought about it over for a moment then snapped her fingers. "Of course: contact lenses! This girl at Arthur's work is forever giving him assorted contact lenses. She works in the undercover department. I think she's trying to say she likes him. He doesn't know what to do with them so he gives them to me."

"Do you have a metallic one?" Ned asked.

Brooke rummaged through the drawers in her wardrobe, her bedside draw and desk. "I just might . . . aha! Here we go."

She held up a tiny, clear plastic packet that contained minute metal discs: contact lenses.

"Now, Smithy, this may feel a little . . . uncomfortable," Brooke warned. "So, um, don't scream, whatever you do."

Smithy seemed edgy at Brooke's un-assuring assurance. "Have you ever actually done this before?" Smithy asked, uneasily.

"Um," Brooke bit her lip. She plunged forward and placed the contact lens on Smithy's left eye before he could even teleport.

He winced but then blinked normally.

"That was the first time I ever did that," Brooke whispered to me.

"Right," Smithy said, looking in the mirror and admiring Brooke's handy-work. "I thought it was."

"You weren't supposed to hear that," Brooke said, a little surprised.

"I know," Smithy replied with a shrug. "But I did."

"Are you sure super-hearing wasn't in that mix?" Ned asked System.

System looked up at him. "No, it wasn't."

"Just checking."

"Well," I said, checking my watch. "We're as well as getting a move on. We have to allow some time for error."

Brooke fitted on her wig. You know how sometimes, when someone you've known a long time changes their hair colour, it takes you forever to get used to it? Well, not with Brooke. She looked good blonde.

Everyone put on their masks. We were ready.

We were heroes. The motliest crew of heroes you may ever come across but we could be worse.

"Is everyone in?" I said. "Anyone who wants out now, speak now or forever hold your peace."

Everyone exchanged looks.

"I'm in," Brooke said, determinedly. "No way am I missing out on this."

"I can't exactly back out now," Smithy pointed out. "But, for what's it's worth, I'm all in."

"I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't," Robyn said, quietly.

"Hmm . . . stay home, watch TV, maybe do that homework I've been putting off for ages or go and save the world from an alien that can't even smell?" Ned considered.

"So," Brooke said, cleaning up the dressing table. "Which is it gonna be?"

Ned rolled his eyes. "Nothing's good on TV and that homework can wait another week or so. I'm in!"

That was the Ned I knew. He would argue, he would disagree and he would refuse to ever put himself in a situation he describes as "Nuts."

But if he can help, if he can make a difference, he will do it, as much as against his will it may be.

I smiled. "Then, c'mon. Let's go!"

We climbed out Brooke's window, one by one. She was the last out.

I frowned. "You all brought your bikes?"

Ned shook his head. "Duh! None of us can exactly fly, now can we?"

"I'll be back," I said and quickly ran across the street. Fortunately, I have a bad habit of leaving my skateboard leaning against the side of the house. I grabbed it and rolled up to the others.

"Alright, take two," I said, taking the lead. We were headed Downtown for the final showdown.

I shuddered. Everything was really going to my head, I was even rhyming.

# Chapter Twenty-Three

The night was cold and windy and it threatened to rain any second. The moon was still full and managed to shine through the heavy clouds just enough so we could see where we were going.

As we got closer to the warehouses, orange streetlights became more regular.

This side of Downtown was the most decrepit part of town. Most of it was covered in graffiti, abandoned and left to crumble. People with no homes and no future hope of homes spend their days and nights in this area.

The apartments, simple blocks about ten or twelve storeys high, were cheaply built and cheap to rent but not too many people wanted to live there unless they had no other choice or they didn't know what it was like.

Parts of Downtown were okay, like where Ned lived. Other parts were patrolled by ruffians and were often visited by the police: you didn't go near there unless you were in a large group.

This was the warehouse, factory and electrical-plant side of town.

The warehouses were on the outskirts of the 'left to crumble' area. They were huge, empty buildings. There was a whole block of them all clustered together. But they weren't too popular as it was situated right by the dump.

No one in their right mind would be here for fun.

Except us, of course.

There was a tall, wire fence around the perimeter, guarding the block of warehouses. It was a known fact that it was once an electrical fence. _Once._ It's not a shocking experience anymore to climb over it.

Robyn ran at it and climbed up, using her speed to propel herself over. Ned tried the same thing. But he just ran straight into it and fell backwards.

"Okay, let's try that one again," he said, picking himself up and brushing dirt off his shoulders. Then he tried again and got it right, throwing himself over and landing like a squashed bug the other side.

Brooke stretched her arms over it, placed them on the ground on the other side, and did an amazing back flip over the fence.

"Style," she said. "I have it."

Ned rolled his eyes. Brooke punched him, playfully, on the arm.

Smithy teleported over and I walked through. No biggy.

"Um, where's System?" I asked, looking around me, searching for our furry friend.

"I can't get over!" System was pawing at the fence, with big sad eyes. He looked like Bailey when I left him outside in winter and he wanted, desperately, to come in.

"Oh, sorry," Brooke stretched her arm over, wrapped it around little System, and brought him over. She set him down, gently, on the ground.

"Thanks," he said.

My team was likely to be spotted at any moment, it suddenly occurred to me. Thankfully, the shadows were hiding us for now. But that didn't change the fact that I could hear low voices. "Duck!" I hissed. Everyone dropped to the ground, lying flat. It was muddy and cold and didn't smell too appealing but we blended in perfectly and no one could detect us.

"This ain't my idea of a good time," Ned muttered.

"At least you don't have to do the laundry!" Brooke and Robyn said, hotly, in unison.

"Shush," I warned.

The voices talked for a few minutes. Then I heard chuckling.

I crawled, army-style, to a pile of long metal pipes and peeked over. I saw two men, dressed in black uniforms that resembled SWAT uniforms, holding strange looking guns.

Laser guns, I guessed.

It would just fit in with the whole evil villain from space theme.

I leaned forward in the hope of hearing more but my hand slipped and smacked against the metal. A hollow, metallic clang ran out. I tensed.

The guards stopped their lively conversation and looked around with all seriousness.

I ducked back down just in time.

"There are guards here," I whispered.

In the darkness, most I could see of my friends was the white of their eyes and the shimmer of Smithy's face paint. My eyes were still trying to adjust to the faint light.

"Okay, then all we need is a distraction," Brooke said, simply, as if this was a walk in the park for her. She slowly pumped her fist into the palm of her other hand. "You guys wait here: I'll go and— _distract—_ the guards."

Robyn laid a restraining hand on her friend's shoulder. "Brooke, don't, just . . . don't. Let Luke tell us what he had in mind. I'm sure he's got it all worked out."

To be honest, I didn't have things planned to the bone. I was winging it badly. "No, let's hear what you guys have in mind," I said. "Just, whatever it is, remember that we can't be seen. We don't want them to know we're here. We want to keep them in the dark. Ignorance is bliss."

Everyone fell silent as they thought up potential distractions.

Ned put up his hand like he was in class.

"Yes?"

"We could start a fire," Ned suggested.

"Ned, that'll put their lives at risk and ours," I reasoned. "For all we know, they could be completely innocent."

"Not to mention I think my matches got all soggy when I fell in that mud," Ned muttered.

"Anyone else?"

Brooke raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"We could throw a stone," Brooke offered. "It works in movies."

"It won't be enough," I said.

Smithy lifted his hand.

I sighed. "This isn't school, people."

"I have an idea," Smithy said, quietly.

"Go on," I permitted.

"What if I put this make-up to work? Walk on up to them and see if I can fool them. See if it's really that convincing."

"That can work," I said. "Just tell them to knock off for the night and if they object, roar like a tyrant."

Smithy nodded and straightened up. When Smithy stands his full height, he just seems to keep growing.

He was nervous but he walked with confidence, like a businessman, sure of whatever he was about to do.

"Do you really think it will work?" Robyn asked me, careful to keep her voice low.

"I hope so . . ."

Smithy approached the guards who looked at him as if he had walked off the surface of mars.

"Sir? What are you doing out here?" the tall one asked.

"Fresh air," Smithy replied, deepening his voice to match Gemini's. I must say, I could have mistaken him for the in disguise dentist.

"But the transmission is in half an hour," the shorter one pointed out.

"Well . . . that transmission is off now," Smithy said.

The guards looked at each other. "But, Sir . . . I was all ready to send the information off. I promise you I won't mess it up."

"That's not it. I've decided that if they're not going to pay full price, then I am not going to hold my end of the bargain."

"Sir . . ."

"Tell the others to take the night off, too."

The guards were still unconvinced. "Sir . . ."

"DO I LOOK LIKE I WANT TO BE QUESTIONED?" Smithy roared.

The guards shut up and whimpered away.

When they were gone, Smithy looked over his shoulder at us and grinned. We came running to his side.

"I can't believe that worked," he exclaimed.

Robyn smiled. "You are a fantastic actor, Smithy."

"Don't you think that was a bit easy?" Ned said, warily. "I mean, in movies, when things are that easy, it's either a corny, cheesy, ill-directed and badly written movie or the bad guys are trying to get us into their trap."

"Or . . . Smithy's just a dead ringer for Gemini," Brooke said. She crossed her arms. "Ned, you gotta stop being so pessimistic."

"What is the point of this 'pessimism?"' System asked.

"Absolutely nothing," Ned answered. "But it's better to at least expect the worst so that when it hits you in the face, it doesn't sting so bad and no one can then say: 'I told you so,' with any more right then you."

"Oh," System nodded, wisely.

"Can we get a move on?" I asked, impatiently.

"Oh, sure," Brooke nodded.

The door to the warehouse was wide open, inviting us in. "Too easy," Ned chimed.

"Be quiet," Brooke said.

# Chapter Twenty-Four

The warehouse was just a big, open construction with panelled walls painted black with darkly coloured velvet curtains hanging as if they were leaning against the walls, half-heartedly and a rusty tin roof that only stopped rain from getting in. A couple of industrial lights hung from the ceiling, shedding just enough light for us to see where we were.

The air inside the warehouse smelt dusty and stale, as if no one had been in here for ages, let alone set a cleaning tool to any of the surfaces.

"Now, stay hidden," I whispered, adjusting my mask. "The longer they don't know we're here, the better. And remember: we just want to get in, get done and get out. And these are innocent people. No one does _anything_ to harm anyone else. Watch out for each other and compensate if something, anything, goes wrong. You all got it?"

Everyone nodded.

"Good. Then we have to get into Gemini's office, find his computer and tell the Monmia to—"

"Get lost?" Ned supplied.

"Yeah, that'll work. Smithy, if you're having trouble with the communication, just look to me or one of the others, we'll help."

"Okay," he said.

"Then . . . let's rock and roll, people."

"See? You're already starting with a catchphrase!" Ned pointed out as we sprang from our hiding place.

"Not now, Ned," I said through gritted teeth.

We ran to the far wall and pressed our backs up against it, as if that would make us invisible.

The warehouse was just one big open room. There was nothing else to it. Inside, there were just some towers of wooden crates and a variety of huge props used in theatres. Cardboard cut-outs of aliens, monsters and horses. Big foam sculptures of teddy-bears, castles, trees and marble pillars. I could guess smaller props were held in the crates.

There was no office, much to my disappointment. I don't know what I expected to find there but I had at least hoped that what we found would assist us in our quest.

"We have to find an entrance to a basement," I eventually said. "It's the only possible explanation. He must have set everything up in a basement."

"Do warehouses even have basements?" Brooke asked as she started running her hands over a foam marble pillar, feeling for an entrance.

"He's an evil criminal from space," I said. "Anything's possible."

"Not 'anything,'" System stated. "We are bound by a lot of rules and regulations, too, you know."

Spreading out, we started our clandestine search for an entrance to a basement.

As quiet as possible, we checked every prop, every tower of crates and every inch of wall.

"Find anything?" Brooke called out in a whisper.

"Just an abandoned spider web," Ned answered. Then a second later: "Ow! No, not abandoned. That little spider just bit me!"

"Great, now you can be _Spiderman_ , at least," Brooke muttered.

"I heard that."

"Check the floor," I ordered. Everyone dropped to their hands and knees and started feeling for a trap-door.

The floor was cold to the touch and coated in a thick layer of dirt and grime. I'm not a germaphobe but I hate things being dirty. But I pressed on.

I couldn't find anything. I was starting to wonder if maybe it wasn't a basement we were looking for when I heard: "Hey, guys! Over here!"

Music to my ears.

Grateful and thankful that I didn't have to spend another moment on the icy ground, I abandoned my search and ran over to Ned's success.

He had lifted up a fairly small rug of fake grass, revealing a small, square door underneath.

"Jackpot," he said, his eyebrows dancing.

I checked my watch. "Quarter to midnight," I announced, gravely. "Gemini will be here any minute and raging like a midsummer storm when he sees we've stopped the guards sending the message. Let's get going."

I tried to lift it but only ended up stumbling backwards. My first attempt of lifting it only ended with the conclusion that the door was heavy: solid concrete.

"Need a hand?" Ned offered.

Everyone bent down and assisted in trying to budge the stubborn door.

It took all of us to lift it. Once it was up, I could just faintly see a ladder leading into complete darkness.

I held the door up while everyone else climbed down. System clung to the back of Brooke's shirt as she lowered herself down.

When they were all down, I started to follow. I slowly let the concrete slab of a door lower till it sealed us in. Getting out was going to be a bit of an issue but that was far enough away for me to not worry about it.

There was another problem facing us, anyway.

"It's dark," Ned stated, unimpressed.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Brooke grumbled. I couldn't see, but I could tell she was rolling her eyes.

"Would those matches of yours work, Ned?" I enquired.

"They might . . . but I think they're too wet."

"In future, water-proof may be a better idea," Robyn said, gently.

"Yeah. But I didn't think we'd be trying to foil an alien plot to turn us all to dust when I bought them."

I turned around, slowly, taking in the complete darkness. It was the kind of darkness you could feel, the type that hurts your eyes because they can't adjust.

I was thinking of retreating when I saw a small, red LED flashing a small distance away from me. I carefully made my way to it, walking as if through molasses, and feeling in the empty darkness for any piece of furniture that would potentially trip me over.

I thought against using my power and going through the furniture in case I missed something vital.

I calmly touched the little light. I ended up nudging something else. Suddenly, a bright white light exploded, blinded me.

I shut my eyes, instantly.

"Hey! What's the big idea?" Robyn demanded.

As I opened them they adjusted, gradually, to the light.

It wasn't as bright as I thought it was.

It was just a computer screen. I must have nudged the mouse, deactivating the screen saver. But the sudden change from total darkness had startled my eyes, making them think I was suddenly staring at an exploding star!

"Aha!" I exclaimed. "Take that, Gemini!"

I don't know why I said it. I sounded like Ned.

I looked over my shoulder. The others had responded the same way to the sudden light.

"Hey, close the door, I feel a draft," Ned said, blinking like crazy.

The computer background was a metallic grey. I clicked a couple of links and typed on the keyboard.

"Do you really think a highly intelligent alien overlord would use a computer to communicate?" Ned asked, flatly.

"Yes," I replied. I clicked a few more buttons and then found the message link. I opened it. It took a while to load.

"You think it would be harder," Brooke commented.

"It's as easy as buying an elephant off e-Bay," I muttered.

"Have you ever tried doing that?" Brooke mumbled in a dead tone.

"Twice. Ten dollars I'll never get back."

"Would that really be so easy?" Robyn asked.

"You'd be surprised."

"Okay . . ."

The link opened. "Smithy, quick: sit here and everyone else, out the picture," I instructed, urgently, as I backed away from the computer.

Smithy wheeled a swivel chair in front of the computer, adjusted the height and sat down, positioning himself perfectly. He squared his shoulders and signalled to me that he was ready.

"Three, two, one . . ." I whispered as the video loaded. "You're on."

The video burst into life.

And that's when I saw my first, or third, alien.

This one actually looked like an alien, though.

# Chapter Twenty-Five

Think butternut, five eyes in a pyramid formation, a funny branch thingy on the head, no feet; it hovered, and it had only one ear; one ear where the mouth should have been.

And, to add to the villain look, it wore a dark, purple cape.

Smithy looked sideways at Robyn. It was easy to see his trepidation. He really didn't want to do this.

But Robyn nodded, encouragingly.

Everyone fell silent, the kind of silence you could almost hear; buzzing in your ears, giving you a headache.

"Captain Monmia, I am. Would you be who?"

Smithy blinked. The little colour he had left in his face drained. It took him a minute to understand the Monmia. His voice sounded like someone talking through a mouthful of peanut-butter. Smithy coughed into his sleeve.

"I would be Gemini," Smithy said, trying to sound older. "Sorry. I mean, I _am_ Gemini.

"The information, have you?" the Monmia asked.

I knew I had to keep on my toes, ready to help Smithy, but I couldn't stop my mind from wondering.

You know how when you have to have focus on something, you suddenly get all these questions flying through your mind?

What exactly was Captain Monmia speaking through? He didn't have a mouth. Was he talking through that ear thing?

"Um, yes?" Smithy said, nervously making it a question. He cleared his throat, straightened up and spoke confidently. "Yes, I do."

"To me, you must give," Captain Monmia demanded.

The Monmia obviously didn't know how to speak English properly. His grammar education must have been from _Yoda_.

"Admit, I must. You coming through, I didn't expect. Back-bone, you don't have. But good, this is."

"Uh . . . thanks? Anyway, do you want to know where the thinnest part of the O-Zone layer is?" Smithy said.

"Information to me you must give," the Monmia confirmed.

Smithy nodded. "The information, I have. _I mean_ , I have the information."

"This is where?"

System quietly, unnoticeably, waddled over and slipped a small USB stick onto Smithy's lap. Smithy held it up to examine it. He was slightly confused at first but trusted System had already figured everything out.

"Um, the co-ordinates are on this information holding device," Smithy said. He glanced, quickly, out the corner of his eye at System who nodded in confirmation. Smithy plugged it into the computer. "Sending you information, I am. _I mean_ : I'm sending you the information now." There was a single folder on the stick. He attached it to a message and sent it off to the Monmia. I was surprised at how easy it was. It couldn't have been easier if I had been emailing a picture to a friend.

The Monmia hovered out of camera shot for a moment, probably to check his email. It gave us a better view of his ship. It looked exactly like a space ship design from an old seventies sci-fi movie. White structures with lots of brightly coloured, flashing buttons and small tiles in rows that changed colours in sync to each other.

"Over the ocean, that is," he said when he came back into view. He sounded sceptical.

"Well, yeah, it's extremely weak there. In fact, the sun has been known to cook the fish there," Smithy said, wisely. He was settling into the acting occupation very well.

"Sure, you are?" the Monmia sounded doubtful.

"Sure, I am. _I mean,_ I'm sure."

"Gemini, thanks. Shells, must I deploy, how many? Effect, what we want?"

Smithy blinked, trying to decipher the question.

The Monmia had a terrible voice. You could barely make out the words. Then, on top of that, you had to rearrange his sentences, mentally, and contemplate your answer.

Smithy nodded, finally understanding. "You must deploy all of the shells you have," Smithy said, firmly. "We need this to happen quickly so the Intergalactic Police don't have any time to respond. They won't even know what hit this planet."

Smithy was keeping the act up pretty well.

"Sure, you are?" the Monmia didn't sound too convinced.

An abrupt sick feeling hit me like a brick wall. I pressed my back up against the wall, suddenly tired.

The terrible thought that had been eating away at the back of my mind finally had the nerve to surface. What would happen if this whole operation went south?

If the Monmia didn't buy our story, would tomorrow happen? Would kids, reluctantly, get up, get dressed and rush off to school? Would the city streets be stampeded upon by thousands, even millions, ever again? Would another song ever be sung, another picture ever be painted and another view ever be seen? Would anyone ever laugh, cry or smile again?

Or would the Monmia move in?

I had a picture in my head of Monmia playing in the parks, eating at the restaurants and sitting in classes.

_My_ classes.

That couldn't happen. And I had to trust in Smithy not to let it ever happen.

"Yes, sure, I am. _I mean,_ of course I'm sure, like I said before."

We all held our breath as the Monmia stared at Smithy. Smithy didn't budge. He was holding his ground, flawlessly.

The Monmia said nothing more and cut the link.

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was breathing and the technology in the room humming its soft, constant rhythm.

Smithy closed his eyes and let his shoulders sag, relieved.

The rest of us started breathing, too, having forgotten we were holding our breath.

"Well, that went," Ned burst into laughter.

"It wasn't exactly _fun_ ," Smithy pointed out.

"At least we saved Earth," Robyn reminded us.

"Yeah," Smithy admitted. "But I don't think the Monmia really bought that. Holes in the O-Zone layer are created by humans. Why would there be one over the ocean? Especially over a part of the ocean that's so vast, there is no way they could have destroyed it yet. The Monmia aren't going to like it when they find out we tricked them."

We all heard a faint rumble of thunder.

"That will be the shells breaking," System informed us.

"How do you know?" Brooke asked.

"Because, if the shells didn't break and actually completed their mission, you wouldn't have heard anything: they are designed for noiseless operation. And, also, you would be dead by now."

"I wonder what they'll think of that," Robyn mused.

My temporary relief wore off. I jerked my head towards the computer. "You don't have to wonder much longer. Look."

A message had popped up on the computer, announcing an incoming call.

Smithy quickly straightened up and accepted the call.

The Monmia was fuming. Literally. Smoke was coming out of his branch thing.

"Work, it didn't. Broken, the shells are," the Monmia said, sharply. "Lie, you did."

Smithy shrugged. "Oops."

"Tricked me? Trick Captain Monmia, you didn't!"

"Yeah, I just did. See, I didn't think your offer was good enough. You want to destroy a whole species; you're going to have to pay more than that."

Captain Monmia narrowed his five eyes at Smithy. If looks could kill, then Smithy would have been fried.

"Forgotten, you have. The deal: let you live, was."

We probably should have gotten better bluff material, I thought to myself. I noticed Robyn nod in agreement with me.

"Two hours, you have to live," Captain Monmia said, darkly. "Return, I shall. Pay, you will."

The call dropped.

Smithy ran his hands through his charcoal stained hair. He rested his elbows on the desk and held his head in his hands.

The failure hung on all of us. But it weighed Smithy down most of all, it seemed. "I'm sorry, guys," he said in choked voice. "I let you down."

I looked at my team. Brooke looked away and didn't meet anyone's gaze. A tear rolled down Robyn's cheek. She fingered her locket, sadly. Even Ned was quiet, which was a first for him.

I couldn't tell what System was thinking. He didn't seem too worried.

"Come on, guys," I said, trying to establish some kind of hope. "This isn't that bad."

"No, it's that bad," Robyn said, quietly. "When the Monmia comes for Gemini . . . he's going to find us. And if he doesn't find us, he'll find Smithy. And if he doesn't find him, he'll find someone else. He'll be back and I don't want to know who's going to be on the receiving end of his anger."

Robyn has always been one for optimism. It scared me to hear her say something like that. "What can we even do about it?" I asked, hopelessly.

"I guess . . . we just go home and enjoy our last two hours alive," Brooke said.

"Or we can run away," Ned suggested. At first, I thought it was his dark humour shining through.

It was the kind of humour I didn't want to hear. Not at that moment when it seemed like we had saved Earth, only to have another horrible fate inflicted upon it.

"Ned . . . now's not the time . . ."

"What? Captain Monmia isn't after a bunch of kids. He's after Gemini. If we leave town, he's only going to find our pal: the _real_ Gemini. Not us. Then the Monmia will worry about him, leave everyone else alone, and humans shall live on!"

"I cannot believe I am saying this, but . . ." Brooke said, under her breath. Then, louder: "Ned is right."

"You agree with Ned? Wow. That is a first," Robyn conceded.

"We've got two hours," I said. "Let's see how far away from Rockwell City we can get in that time."

# Chapter Twenty-Six

We climbed out the basement, one by one. It was a lot harder to get the door open, standing on the ladder, but we somehow managed it.

When we were all out, Smithy and Ned helped me to lower the heavy concrete trapdoor, sealing the dark basement shut.

We stood in the dark warehouse, solemnly. There was nothing more to be said.

Huge sculptures and props gazed down at us in disappointment. They weren't real, but I could still feel them watching us as we walked, defeated, among them.

I stopped at the door to take a good long look at my team. I didn't know how far we'd have to go. I didn't even have the faintest idea of how long we were going to be gone.

Hopes were depleted. Enthusiasm was left behind in the basement.

"Guys . . ." I started but something interrupted me.

I could have sworn I heard footsteps. I thought we'd gotten rid of the guards . . .

"Quick, hide!" I ordered, urgently.

No one hesitated, which was just as well because moments later, Gemini, the real deal, burst in, followed by two armed guards.

We scattered like broken glass. It struck me that none of us fled in the same direction. Ned crawled under a mass of velvet material, hanging from a rod running along the length of the warehouse roof. Smithy teleported behind a fake marble pillar, Brooke grabbed System and sprinted for a faded purple cardboard castle, Robyn slipped, stealthily, and was completely hidden by a tower of crates and I took refuge behind a huge, pink, foam teddy bear.

(Believe me, if I had had time to choose, I would not have chosen the bright pink bear. But it was good coverage.)

Gemini surveyed the scene, silently; a stormy expression set on his half-human, half-metal face.

"I can't believe you let this happen!" Gemini suddenly erupted at the guards. I could feel the silence shatter.

"He looked _exactly_ like you, Sir," the guard we saw earlier said, shakily.

Gemini glared at the guard. "Look: I don't want to be messed with right now. The Monmia are angry and I do not want to have to deal with those unreasonable _idiots_ right now. Just find that imposter and deal with him."

Gemini walked slowly, confidently but calmly. He didn't look evil. He looked like some guy I might know. My neighbour. My teacher. My friend's father . . . he just didn't strike me as someone sinister.

But the metal side of his face was the cold reminder of who he really was.

I searched, frantically, for an escape route.

As my eyes furiously scanned the cavernous warehouse for an exit, my eyes fell on Ned. He was covered by the folds of dark velvet but I could just see the faint movements he made that resulted in the curtain waving and trembling. He was fiddling with something. I regret now that it was too dark for me to see or else I would have stopped him. But, I also have to admit that I am glad he did what he did.

As I watched, I saw a tiny flame flicker into life and the velvet slowly caught alight.

The matches. They weren't all soggy!

Ned held up a corner of the velvet curtain to let himself out.

Gemini's back was turned. One of the guards had only just noticed the velvet on fire.

Ned crawled to a new hiding spot, struck a match across the sole of his shoe and held the match to a bunch of rags that made up the clothing of an oversized Roman soldier.

It caught alight, immediately. The fire consumed the soldier's uniform faster than the velvet had been taken.

A warm orange glow brightened the room, getting brighter by the second. It was strangely comforting. There's just something about fires . . .

"Boss!" one of the guards yelled, realizing how serious the fire was, serious enough to alert his already furious boss.

Gemini spun around and saw the flames. "What do we have here . . .?" he said, not perturbed in the least. He sounded puzzled, rather.

He slowly made his way over to the burning prop. As he did, I saw Smithy run, fast as an Olympian, from his hiding spot.

# Chapter Twenty-Seven

When I ordered everyone to hide, Smithy had sprinted to the farthest side of the room. He was now running toward Robyn.

He was fast, as I had earlier expected. Nothing could catch him. Nothing could stop him.

He was only a few metres away from his target, when his foot got caught on a thick, black wire. Time slowed and he seemed to be falling forever through molasses.

Real time resumed when he landed with a loud, bone-crunching _thud._

The sound echoed through the warehouse and, of course, Gemini heard.

We had drawn attention to ourselves. Great.

Robyn sprang from her hiding place and helped Smithy to his feet. The rest of us knew that the game was up, so we felt as if we were as well as leaving our hiding spots, too. We all immerged, slowly, out into the open.

We collected around each other, a pack of kids, determined not to be killed before we reached the eligible driving age.

"A whole team of you," Gemini commented as if he was genuinely impressed. "I was wondering when a couple of new heroes would come along. I guess you stopped the Monmia, huh?"

We said nothing. I wanted to stall for time but I couldn't think of anything to say at that moment. My heart was pounding so hard, I was sure Gemini could hear it.

You know how all those heroes, in the comics, movies and TV shows, how they can always say something to the bad guy. They always think of something funny, quirky, stinging or thought-provoking right at the moment they need to.

My mind went as blank as a piece of clean note-paper. It was like suddenly being chosen to give a speech to the entire world. No time to prepare, you just had to get up there and wing it.

That's pretty much how I felt.

Well, to be honest, my mind wasn't a complete sheet of white paper. But things like: "You'll never get away with it," or "We know what you're up to," just didn't seem to fit the occasion.

I decided to rather get Gemini talking.

"Why do you want to destroy Earth?" I asked, more like squeaked.

If you were a bad guy, how would you respond?

I didn't know what kind of evil villain Gemini was supposed to be. Evil, cruel and violent or stupid, dumb and incapable of thinking long-term?

Maybe he'd be the "shoot now, ask questions later," type.

I sincerely hoped he wouldn't.

Or would he be patronizing enough to allow my stalling?

Gemini turned to us. With every moment of silence that followed, the dread piled up higher, like a growing mountain.

_Why didn't I just run?_ I asked myself.

Then Gemini said the very last thing I expected. "You want the truth?"

Avoiding the strong urge to let my mouth drop open, I looked at my team, for support. I nodded, uncertainly.

"I've seen some human entertainment. I'm not going to start telling you my whole plan so you can just figure out some ingenious way to stop me."

"Well, the Monmia are coming in less than two hours," Smithy said, reasonably. "Could you at least tell us why you want to do this?"

Gemini raised an eyebrow. He paced, calmly, around us. Some might have interpreted it as a predator circling its prey. But, somehow, it didn't quite feel like that to those of us who were actually there.

"Fair enough, you have a right to know. It's simple, really. These humans have an amazing planet. I mean, there is no other planet _in the universe_ that rivals it!" Gemini was getting enthusiastic about his story. He was even smiling. "Colours, sights, sounds . . . everything people dream of. There is no planet in the universe as beautiful and diverse as Earth. And what do humans do about their planet? They ruin it. They couldn't care less. They dump toxic waste, destroying other ecosystems, they don't care much about the forests they flatten, they don't think ahead, they try to fix the problems by just making a hundred new ones, and so few even appreciate what they have _right in front of them_! I mean: they even think this planet came about by chance! I can tell you, something so intricate and beautifully functioning like Earth does _not_ just come about by chance.

"Humans are so selfish and so wrapped up in themselves, they don't even care about others! This planet deserves people who will care for it. That's why I need to get rid of humans. They are so angry, ungrateful and . . . downbeat. This planet deserves to be cared for and appreciated. And that's why humans need to go."

I couldn't argue with _everything_ he was saying, I realized. I mean, the heroes never see eye to eye with the villains! But I couldn't say he was totally wrong: a large majority of people _were_ acting the way he described.

The fire two days ago. It was started by a bunch of selfish, uncaring people who only thought of themselves. They didn't think that what they were doing was going to hurt others. Or, they did, but couldn't care less.

But this was taking it to the extreme.

"Not everyone is like that," Robyn said, echoing my and everyone else's thoughts. "There are some people who care. And, anyway, what right do you have to kill an entire race? That's genocide!"

"What right do they have to live if they will not even appreciate their planet and everyone else who lives on it alongside them?" Gemini countered.

"Because if you destroy _everyone_ you'll destroy the ones who _do_ still care," Smithy said, smiling, briefly, at Robyn. He faced Gemini, determined, unwavering. "Some of us will do _anything_ for our friends. We'd go as far as to lay down our lives for them. Yeah, maybe you're right: not everyone on this planet is like that. But for the few that are . . . it's worth going through all the bad to find the good, wouldn't you agree? Out of a hundred people, someone will be grateful. Out of everyone . . . some will be . . . upbeat. We're upbeat."

I looked over at Smithy. He really was full of surprises: I couldn't have said it any better myself.

But Gemini wasn't as touched by the speech.

"Well, now thanks to you I'll have to ward off the Monmia," he said, sharply. He snapped his fingers and the two guards levelled their guns like executioners. "Great to meet you, you did a fantastic job, I hate you . . . what more can I say? I don't do the whole 'sinister laugh' thing."

Everything happened so fast after that.

The fire spread, fast and angry, roaring like a lion and caught more props. It was clear that the warehouse was going to burn to the ground. No question as to whether we had to get out or not.

Smithy grabbed Robyn's hand in his left and in his right; he grabbed hold of Ned's. Robyn got the idea and reached for my hand. Ned gripped Brooke's hand, no qualms. He didn't have time.

System jumped up and Brooke caught him in her free arm. He curled up like a scared kitten; eyes wide, making him look like a cartoon animal.

"Guys, I don't know if this is going to work so . . . see you on the other side . . . hopefully," Smithy quickly whispered to us.

I couldn't believe he was going to try this again.

He couldn't do it with one little girl, how was he going to do it with all five of us, plus a skunk?

I didn't want him to do it. I was about to yell out for him to stop and think but I didn't get a chance to argue.

I shut my eyes tight.

I heard the fire crackling, devouring everything in the warehouse it could. I heard Gemini bark orders. I heard the bang of a gun. And an instant later, I heard all of that, still . . . but it was further away.

I opened my eyes. Saw night sky, full of clouds but a little patch of stars managed to shine through; saw dirt littered with crushed cans and other miscellaneous junk; saw flames.

Smithy hadn't teleported us far. Just outside the warehouse. But it was good enough. It wedged just enough distance between us and a fuming Gemini.

Smithy crumbled to the ground, as soon as we were on the other side of the teleport. Teleporting must've taken it all out of him.

Robyn gasped and dropped to her knees.

"Smithy? Come on, wake up, Smithy," she begged, shaking him gently.

"Is he okay?" Brooke asked her, softly.

"He's breathing but he's unconscious," she said. "And I think the bullet grazed his shoulder, badly."

Well, good thing we got out that situation quick enough.

I was ready to start giving orders at top speed, get my team to safety, when suddenly a bright light flooded the gloomy stage and a strong wind kicked up, whipping dirt into clouds around us and nearly lifting System off his little feet.

I shielded my eyes from the harsh, white glare and looked up.

I grinned with excitement and triumph.

"Reinforcements," I said, approvingly. "It's about time."

# Chapter Twenty-Eight

I could hear sirens in the distance. Fire trucks, ambulance, police, I wasn't sure but probably all the above.

The fire was in full swing now. Thick, black smoke billowed into the night sky, blocking out the few stars that dared to shine. The odd, hideous smell of burning wood and plastic filled my nostrils.

But it had started to rain, like in a movie. The fire was fighting to stay alive but the gentle rain made its efforts futile.

The bright light lowered itself to the ground gently.

It was a space ship. Not a flying saucer, like the ones you see on those poorly made 1960's movies held up by strings, this one was modern, clean-cut and resembled a fighter jet.

But it was ten times the size.

"Intergalactic Police?" Ned exclaimed. He threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, sure, _now_ they decide to show up."

The hatch dropped open, slowly, touching the soggy ground, gingerly.

It looked so out of place. This clean, futuristic, space-age aircraft touching down in grubby Downtown, Rockwell. It was worthy of a better audience, but we'd have to do for now.

An alien strolled out, walking upright and confidently. The sound of clicking heels as they walked down the polished ramp echoed through Downtown.

She didn't look alien. She looked human.

Tall, slender, with white blonde hair neatly cut in a bob style. She had intelligent eyes and a kind smile. She wore a black outfit, like a spy, with a black leather jacket and boots.

She surveyed the scene that stood before her, awaiting its inspection. "My, but this place is in bad shape," she said with an elegant, English accent.

Two uniformed aliens marched out the ship. They wore white suits, much like what someone going into a radioactive zone would wear. But I could see their basic shapes, anyway. One looked like a dinosaur, the other looked like a praying mantas.

They turned their heads to her for direction. She nodded towards the warehouse. "He's probably in there. Go get him, read him his rights and then report back here. We still have to hand-cuff the Monmia. We finally caught them red-handed. We can throw them in prison for life for this."

The two officers nodded and sprinted for the warehouse.

The lady smiled and shook her head, rather pleased with the accomplishment of this night. Her eyes fell on me and my motley crew. "So, who are you?" the lady asked.

"Well, now, before I answer that, I'd like to know who you are," Ned said, crossing his arms. "I'd also like a lawyer and possibly a Mars bar. I skipped dinner."

"Angela Spike," she replied, smiling at Ned's joke. "Yes, I am human. Yes, I am with the good guys. I head the Intergalactic Police Station, Solar System sector 3."

"How come you've only shown up now?" Brooke asked. "Not to be ungrateful, but you are a bit late."

"Our sensors only now picked up the transmission from Gemini's computer. It seems when you staged your fake transmission you forgot to activate Gemini's ingenious cloaking program. We've been trying to find the dirt on the Monmia for ages. This is just what we need to throw those scum-bags in prison. Now, I know you probably have a thousand questions of your own but I'd like to be the one to ask the questions, for now. Starting with who you are."

"Um . . . I'm Luke. This is Brooke, Ned, Robyn and Smithy is our Gemini impersonator," I introduced us.

"And _what_ are you?" Angela asked.

I shrugged as if the answer was standing out in the open with a big red neon sign announcing its presence.

"Human." To be honest, it sounded like an understatement, a bit insignificant. But it was so much more than that.

"And you have powers?" Angela raised a dark eyebrow.

"That would be thanks to System here," I said, nodding to System who was standing behind Brooke's leg, hiding.

" _Joncelrin_ System?" Angela tilted her head to one side. "Did you give these kids powers?"

System stepped out of his hiding spot, faced Angela and stood tall. All two feet of him. "Yes, ma'am. I did."

"You know the universal laws of power exchange," Angela said, sounding uptight. "Did your people approve of this?"

". . . No," he said, shamefully.

Angela raised both eyebrows and was ready to say something.

"But I knew Earth was in danger. I tried to tell them but, you know Systematics. They're stubborn about that dumb unwritten rule of not helping a species that doesn't ask for help. I had to help but . . . I'm only one person. I could never do any of this on my own. You _have_ to understand that."

Angela nodded, understandingly. "Don't worry; I'll make an exception for now. Someone once did for me. But . . . by law, I'll have to exile you to Earth."

System stumbled backwards in shock. "What . . .?"

"Joncelrin," Angela bent down and stroked System's little head. "It's for your own good. If you return to your planet, you will be punished, severely, no matter the amount of good you have done. I don't want that to happen to you. Live here with these humans, they'll be good friends to you."

System nodded, sadly. "Yes, ma'am. I am grateful."

Angela straightened up. "I thank you for your courage, children. If it were not for you, the human race wouldn't be able to wake up to another Tuesday."

"Monday," Ned corrected. "It's Monday."

"Oh, is it? Sorry, you'll have to forgive me. Haven't been on Earth for quite some time. I often forget the day. Anyway, thanks."

The two officers returned, pushing a resistant Gemini, hands cuffed behind his back, onto the ship.

"Tie him up and make sure he can't escape," Angela ordered. "Remember, he has powers: lock him up in the Crystal sector."

"Yes, boss," the dinosaur officer replied in a voice that sounded like the voice of a weedy teenager.

Gemini resisted the officers exactly like how Smithy resisted the dentist.

A fire truck rolled onto the premises, siren blaring.

The firemen leapt to action, hauled out hoses and wasted no time in assisting the rain in defeating the fire.

An ambulance had come with them. I bent down and helped Robyn in hoisting Smithy up.

"I think he could use some medical assistance," I said.

Robyn and I shared his weight between us and carried his slim frame over to the ambulance.

There were two paramedics. The one that had been driving hopped out and opened the doors at the back of the ambulance vehicle. The other one jumped out, saw us coming and leaned against the vehicle, waiting for us.

As we got closer, and the light of the fire enabled vision, I recognized the paramedic who was hanging around for us.

Tall frame, dark hair, square jaw, late twenties or early thirties . . . I'd seen him on Friday, at the other fire.

He recognized me as well.

"Luke Rosenhart?" he said with a tinge of surprise. He tried to hide it.

_And I thought my disguise was brilliant._ "Um . . . what if I say yes?"

He smiled, lopsidedly. "I know it's you. I've known you since that time when you fell off your bike and somehow managed to break your wrist."

"Fine, I'm Luke."

The other paramedic came around, lifted a stretcher out the back of the ambulance and got us to help lay Smithy on it. Smithy groaned, softly.

"Sorry, who are you?" Robyn asked the paramedic who had recognized me.

"John McGill," he answered. "I know your mom, Kelly Diaz. She's a great nurse. I thought I saw you kids the other day, leaving that fire. You saved Lucy May, didn't you?"

I cringed. Should heroes cringe even though they know what they did was right, honourable even? If they have parents, I guess they can. "Um . . . you aren't going to tell my folks . . . are you?"

John thought it over for a second, but shook his head. "Nah. I know you rescued that little girl. I'm proud of you guys." John gazed at the fire. "But I'm not too sure I should be so proud of this . . ."

"Depends . . . do you believe in aliens?"

John looked past me, at the ship.

When I was younger, I'd spend ages imaging how someone would respond to seeing actual, real-life aliens.

John didn't faint. He didn't go crazy. He didn't say, in a satisfied, but slightly Looney Toons, way: "I've known it all along."

He stared at the ship for a few seconds in absolute silence.

"Gotta say, I'm not totally surprised."

"Really?" I said, halfway to an exclamation. I was the surprised one. "This doesn't seem that strange at all?"

John shook his head. "It's strange, can't deny that. But I can live with it. Can't change it, can I?"

John hopped into the back of the ambulance and he and the other paramedic tended to Smithy.

They took off the worn, weather-beaten jacket Smithy had been wearing. It was already ripped in places, but now it had a new story to tell with the slice across the right shoulder seam.

The bullet hadn't gone straight through his shoulder, but it nearly had. It had done about the same amount of damage.

John and the other paramedic cleaned the wound and bandaged it up.

"We'll have to take him to hospital, just to make sure the bullet didn't damage anything vital," John said.

"Okay," I nodded, a bit in a daze. It was past midnight and I was dead tired.

I climbed into the ambulance along with Robyn. Smithy was lying on the stretcher. He was slowly coming around.

"Hey, Smithy," I said. "Thanks for what you did."

"Second time I'd been knocked out in one weekend. All in a day's work, I guess, chi—" Smithy stopped himself.

"It's okay, you can say it."

Smithy smiled, weakly. "Okay, chief."

"Hey, what was that name you gave us?" Robyn asked, out of the blue. "Upbeats?"

Smithy furrowed his brow for a second. "I didn't intend on naming us."

"No, I like it," Robyn insisted. "It's got a cool ring to it, Upbeats. We're the Upbeats, forever and always."

# Chapter Twenty-Nine

Robyn hung around. She'd go with him to the hospital and she'd make sure he got home alright.

I slipped away and returned to the others. The ship was still standing there, looking completely out of place. Angela was talking to one of her inferiors.

"I think it's about time we turned in," I announced to my friends. "We've had a big night. We could use an hour or two of sleep. We've still got to go to school, tomorrow."

Brooke groaned. "You think we could just skip it?"

"Then they're going to connect this to us. No, we'll have to grin and bear it," I said.

"Okay, but I will not like it," Ned said, stubbornly.

"You don't like school normally," I pointed out.

"Yeah . . . I have to admit, though, last week I was worrying about my reputation in detention, now the biggest thing I'm worried about is if someone's going to figure out who I really am after this whole stunt," Ned shook his head. "What is my life coming to?"

Angela walked up to us. She smiled. "Well, I'll be off now. Thanks . . . um . . ."

"Upbeats," I said. "It's our name."

"Cool," Angela said, approvingly. She turned to walk back up the ramp when the dinosaur officer with the weedy voice, walked up to Angela, sheepishly.

"Um, Boss?" he said, guiltily.

"Yes, Momix?" she said, tolerantly.

Momix hung his head in shame. "Uh . . . he's escaped."

"Did you close the cage door?" Angela asked, calmly.

"Yes, boss," Momix replied, like a good little boy.

"Did you _lock_ the cage door?"

"Ooh . . . boss?"

Angela slapped her forehead and slowly slid her hand down her face, which was not a happy one. "Did you at least close or lock the outer hatch?"

Momix held his tongue for a moment. "Boss?" he said eventually, quietly, shamefully.

Angela was silently fuming but she kept her composure. "Momix, I swear . . . I don't know how you got out the academy with an IQ like yours."

Momix slinked back into the ship.

Angela sighed, irritably. She turned around to us. "Upbeats, I'm sorry to say this but you might have to deal with this Gemini chap a bit longer."

Ned's shoulders sagged. "Seriously? Please tell me you're a practical joker."

"I apologize," Angela said, sincerely. "Momix is new and a little . . . dim."

It felt like the bullet that barely missed Smithy had slammed into my chest. We'd won . . . but we were really defeated. We had done so much and now . . . _this_.

"Can I ask a huge favour of you Upbeats?"

"Shoot," Brooke said.

"Will you continue to defend this planet? To be its official protectors, till such a time as it no longer needs fortification?"

I didn't have to think. This was my planet. We'd risked so much already. I wasn't going to let that be forgotten.

"We'd be honoured to," I said, earnestly.

"Then I declare you the new defenders of Planet Terra: commonly referred to as Earth."

Angela turned and started walking away. She paused for a moment and looked over her shoulder at us. She smiled and winked. "I trust you."

"Hey, wait a minute," Ned called. "Why can't you just send out a search party made up of your officers and find him?"

"Because we can't risk someone seeing us," she replied.

"Why?"

"It's a universal law. Earth, as a whole, must not find out about aliens for as long as possible."

"Who made a law like _that_?" Brooke asked, probably already disliking the person who declared the law.

"He had his reasons. He's dead now but he had his reasons. And he was right. Earth must not know about aliens for as long as possible. Someday you'll understand why. But for now, _Adios_ , _Totsiens, Bon Voyage_ , _See ya,_ Goodbye."

She left. The ship blasted off. I could hear a sound like exploding thunder as it left our atmosphere.

And we were left standing there in the dark, the rain pouring down, soaking our clothes and washing away some of the charcoal in my hair.

It was so late, it was early. Soon the sun would rise.

I looked at my team, the ones that were left, the ones who hadn't been driven off to hospital or anything.

Everyone was just about falling asleep on their feet.

"Let's go home," I said, wearily.

# Epilogue

We were all at school the next day. Even Smithy. He had his upper right arm in a bandage but besides that, he was his usual quiet but content self.

"That was so cool," Ned was saying. We were in the cafeteria, lunchtime. Kids chatted, excitedly, all around us. They were going on about their "incredible" weekends. They had no idea that while they were out having fun, we were saving them from destruction.

"I wonder why the Monmia talk so funny," Brooke said.

"Yeah . . . maybe they just don't really know English," I said. "Oh, and, Robyn? Thanks for the charcoal suggestion. That stuff didn't come out that easily."

"Sorry . . . I was trying to work out a better solution for that one. Maybe we can just get you a small wig. That'll work."

"Our hero costumes could use a little work," Ned agreed. "I was thinking about inflatable boots, you know, for those hard landings . . ."

Brooke didn't waste any time in whacking Ned, playfully, on the arm.

"You do realize you can hit me harder than that, right?" Ned said.

Brooke brought back her fist and punched Ned as hard as she could. Ned grinned, crazily. "Told you."

(If Brooke had hit any of us, who do not have invincibility, it would have left a bruise. A _bad_ bruise.)

"I wonder how we're ever going to keep this up," I said, quietly, as if I were talking to the mystery meat sitting on the tray in front of me.

"Keep what up?" a cheery voice enquired.

Our lively conversation and playful banter stopped dead. We pretended not to have been talking at all.

Sabrina Ride, a girl who was relatively new to Rockwell, but had already been signed up to write for the school's paper, slapped her tray down and took a seat.

"Nothing," I said. "I was just talking about my grades."

Sabrina narrowed her eyes and adjusted her glasses. "You always get straight A's," she pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but . . ." I closed my eyes and shook my head.

So this is how all those heroes feel when they're not in costume. They're not invincible, not amazing, just ordinary people, trying to cover everything up.

It's like two people exist. You're trying to be one, but you have to be the other as well. And when you're one, you have to cover up for the other.

"Nothing," I said. "Just . . . nothing."

Sabrina shrugged and brushed a lock of her wavy brown hair out of her face. "Hey, did you guys hear about that fire Downtown? A whole warehouse burned to the ground. Some people say they saw a group of kids running from the scene."

Brooke looked away. Robyn stared at her food. Smithy shuffled, uncomfortably, in his chair. I tried to think, fast, of what I could say.

I looked across from me and saw a grin creeping up on Ned's face.

"Ned, don't . . ." I started but he ignored me.

"Yeah, I started that fire. I'll let you in on a little secret. Keep it between you and me," Ned lowered his voice. "You see, there was this evil alien overlord who was going to pump poisonous, lethal noxious gas into Earth's atmosphere and only I and a few others who I will not name, knew it. So I made up a disguise, snuck out last night when everyone else was asleep and set his evil lair alight. Stopped him right in his tracks. Now the world is safe . . . for now . . ."

We all stared at Ned. Even the ones of us who knew what he was talking about, more or less.

"Why else do you think you're alive right now?" Ned's eyebrows danced.

I could have slapped Ned, for real, right there and then.

"Ned . . ." I hissed, horrified.

I was terrified of how Sabrina would take it. But Sabrina stood up and picked up her tray to take her leave. "I should have listened when they told me not to ever get information for a story from you, Ned Detwiler."

Ned grinned and leaned back in his chair, far too satisfied with himself. Sabrina left to find some "sane" kids to hang out with.

"One thing I believe in: if you want to hide something, put it out in plain sight," he said. "People will trip right over it and never figure out what it is."

I should have been mad.

But I just found myself laughing.

And soon we were all laughing.

We'd risked our lives.

We'd come out on top.

Sure, Gemini had escaped and was still out there, plotting his next evil plan.

But we could at least carry on trying to put a stop to it.

We'll stop him, one day. That much I know for sure.

But, for the time being, people could carry on with their ordinary lives and only see us as average kids. I didn't mind.

Because . . . I am normal. For all you know, I'm just going to be Luke Rosenhart: Straight A student, skate-boarder, lover of classic Rock & Roll, big brother, obedient son.

I'm just your average, ordinary, everyday kid . . . who just happens to have powers.

# Observer Scene

You know how at the end of movies or comics, there's always a little scene where you get to see something the heroes don't? Like what the bad guy is planning next?

I call it Observer scenes.

I will not tell you who I am, how old I am or where I come from.

All you need to know is that what I say is true.

I don't get involved. I refuse to. I am merely an observer.

I admit, though, I did help a little bit in this story.

I placed the bees in the reptile enclosure to get the kids to run into the hippo habitat. I couldn't imagine anyone just going there for fun.

I even rigged the votes for the trip to the zoo. Everyone wanted the Aquarium. But System didn't land there, he landed in the zoo.

But besides that, I only watched as the Upbeats discovered who they were and as they stopped Gemini.

I watched as the Intergalactic Police finally arrived.

I made sure they did.

I watched as the warehouse burned to the ground.

I watched, the next day, in between classes, as Robyn pulled Smithy aside in the corridor.

"Smithy, just something I wanted to quickly ask you . . ." Robyn started, shyly.

He shrugged. "Shoot."

Robyn chewed her lip for a moment, quietly debating the matter in her head. "Do you know Gemini?" she blurted. "I mean, it's not that I'm accusing you of anything but . . ."

"But you just want to know," Smithy finished. He sighed and looked past Robyn, into the distance. I ducked, so he couldn't see me. Then he nodded. "Don't worry, I get it. And, no. I don't know him. I want to find out why he looks so much like me as much as you do. It could be a total coincidence, you do realize. I mean, he's from another planet, galaxies away."

Robyn nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. I just wanted to know. It had been bugging me."

"No problem."

I watched as Gemini escaped . . .

He ran to his apartment. He didn't know who the kids were. He had a suspicion they were human, from the way they sounded but, then again, they may only be _part_ human.

He was angry. But he wasn't about to rage around like a madman. He was older than that. Far too professional.

He'd just start again. There were thousands of potential bidders out there that wanted to destroy humans. The Monmia had gotten in first but he could just as easily find someone else.

He just wanted to know who those kids were. Maybe they were working for the Intergalactic Police.

He wouldn't put it past them.

If they were human kids then they would give themselves away, sooner or later.

In his experience, human kids weren't all that intelligent . . .

# About the Author

Erin Byrne is a 15-year-old home-school student in Australia. She wrote Upbeats when she was 14 and submitted it in a national competition in 2012 for writers under 35. She has drafted a few more adventures of the Upbeats and other similar novels which she also intends to publish. Her inspiration comes mainly from reading books (such as Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Animorphs, S.T.O.R.M., Anne of Green Gables), and watching science fiction and comedy shows. She also enjoys playing acoustic guitar, exploring the woods around her house, and DSLR photography.
