The Battle for Earth (Teen Superheroes Book 3) (3 page)

Palmer drew me to one side as soon as we piled out of the elevator.

“Twenty-Two wants to see you,” she said. “Just as soon as you clean up.”

What would the alien commander want with me?

“I have no idea,” Palmer replied when I asked her. “Could be the length of your hair. It is getting a little long.”

Yeah. Sure.

A few minutes later I was back in my hotel room and washed, dried and reclothed. My room was on the fourth floor of a hotel in the middle of Las Vegas. Beneath the building lay the infrastructure of The Agency – offices, training centres, communications rooms. It was a massive complex. Even I had only seen a small part of it. The hotel enabled us to carry out a normal life – or as normal a life as you can have when you’re working as a genetically modified superhero for a secret organisation.

I climbed into an elevator and descended back down into the burrows of The Agency. Twenty-Two’s office was several floors beneath street level. It lay at the end of a concrete corridor where a female receptionist sat typing at a computer. I tried to remember her name. I couldn’t.

“I’m here to see Twenty-Two,” I said.

“Your name?” the girl asked.

And here I was thinking I was famous.

“Axel,” I said. “Smith.”

She spoke into a phone for a moment. “Twenty-Two will see you now.”

I entered his office.

Twenty-Two looked about as ordinary as anyone else. He was tall, thin and bald. Possibly they forgot to tell him about hair when he was instructed on how to look like a human. I had no idea as to the true appearance of the Bakari. Whatever they really looked like, they probably bore little resemblance to a human.

I had seen him around other parts of The Agency complex, but we had not officially met and I had never seen him outside the building.

Maybe the Bakari were allergic to sunlight.

Who knew?

“Axel.” His voice was warm. He sounded so human. Still, I felt a shiver dance along my spine. I had only met one other Bakari. He was known as Twelve – don’t ask me about why they had numbers for names – and he had been responsible for the experimentation carried out on us. Later he had tried to kill us.

I tried to remind myself that this man was a different alien and that was a different time.

It wasn’t easy.

“Please take a seat,” Twenty-Two said.

I slid into a chair. “What’s this all about?”

“I wanted to keep you apprised as to developments regarding your family.”

It took a moment for this to sink in. My family. That’s right. A million years ago Agent Palmer had said The Agency was trying to track down information regarding our true identities. Maybe even reconnect us with our families – if we had any.

I had been told I had a brother, but I had driven this information as far from my mind as possible. After everything that had happened to us, the possibility of a brother was too much to hope for.

Still…

“What have you found out?” I asked.

“Our enquiries have been inconclusive, but we are following a trail of information to its source.”

“What sort of trail?”

“As you know, most of the records regarding the Alpha Experiment were destroyed by the scientists involved and then later by Twelve.”

I nodded. Evil aliens don’t like leaving a trail.

“However,” Twenty-Two continued. “It appears there were some hard copies of documents that were missed. We have people examining them now.”

“Do you think –” I found I could not speak. “What are the chances –”

“We don’t know,” the alien said. “It will take some time to sort out.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know.”

I looked up and realised the meeting was abruptly at an end. Fine. I stood up, shook Twenty-Two’s hand again and left the office. Ignoring the girl at the desk, I made my way through the complex to the main concourse of The Agency. This level had been redesigned the previous month. It was now the size of a football field, with communications screens surrounding the exterior. A park, complete with artificial trees and lawn, filled the centre. It had been christened The Hub.

My phone rang. I glanced at the display.

Brodie.

I had forgotten all about her. Hitting the receive button, I realised she had sent a message with an attached file.

What was this all about?

Not more handbags, I hoped. The Agency gave us an allowance and Brodie’s handbag collection had been increasing at the rate of one per week. If I had to look at another handbag –

I opened the first image. It showed Brodie lying still on a floor. After staring at the image in horror for what seemed like an eternity, the image was replaced by a series of words. They began:

You will follow our instructions to the letter if you want this girl to live.

Chapter Four

Brodie awoke to find her face pressed against a cold metal floor. Her head hurt. Why did her head hurt? It was hard to think. The last thing she could remember was walking down East Charleston Boulevard. Someone had come up behind her. She had turned around, thinking it was some mugger, and then –

Then everything had turned green.

Green.

That was not a good sign. She slowly sat up. She was in a metal room. A
grimy
metal room. It was obviously some sort of cell, and judging by the sway of the chamber, she was on board a ship.

How the hell had she ended up here?

And why?

There was no window in the room so it was impossible to tell if it was day or night. She checked for her phone. Gone. So there was no way to call for help.

Still, whoever had kidnapped her may not know about her enhanced strength or fighting abilities. She went to the door of the cell. Also constructed from metal, it had some sort of complicated electronic locking mechanism. She had never seen anything like it.

Brodie peered around the cell, her eyes finally settling on a metal box set into the wall near the lock. Burying her fingers into the groove around the edge of it, she pulled hard and broke off the cover. A series of blue and orange leads wrapped in translucent silver filaments filled the box. She dragged at the wires.

Bang!

A shower of sparks erupted from the interior and Brodie released the wires.

“Kids,” she murmured to herself. “Don’t try this at home.”

She grabbed the wires again and dragged them across to the electronic lock. Keeping her hands free from the ends, she took a deep breath and touched the ends to the electronic display. This time there was no sound, but the display flickered a few times before failing completely.

“Yes!” She dropped the wires, pulled at the door and opened it easily. “Escape à la Brodie!”

She peered into the hallway. Despite the grimy appearance of the flooring and walls, this was obviously some sort of high tech ship and she was stuck in the bowels of it. She would have to try to get above deck without being seen and then steal a rowboat or send a mayday.

Great.

And all she wanted was a new handbag.

Still, no one ever said the life of a superhero was meant to be easy. Not that she really thought of herself as a superhero. She just happened to be an Australian girl with three times the strength and speed of a normal man, a multitude of martial arts abilities, and an employee of a secret agency operating within the United States.

If that made her a superhero, then –

Actually
, she thought.
That probably does make me a superhero.

Still, she wished Axel were here. A pang of emotion gripped her chest. She might have superpowers, but she was also a girl. She found herself thinking about Axel all the time although she was not sure he felt the same way. He often seemed preoccupied with other things.

Brodie drove the thoughts from her mind. Now was the time for action, not for girly-girly-mush-mush. She hurried down the corridor. There seemed to be doors on both sides – possibly other people were imprisoned within – but she couldn’t do anything about them right now. She had to focus on escaping.

The corridor ended with a set of stairs heading upward. Racing up them, she found herself facing another set of stairs and a passageway identical to the one she had just left. Up had to be the best direction. Brodie ascended again and reached another corridor, but now the stairs had run out. Making her way along the passageway, she sighted an elevator at the end. There were strange symbols on the display.

What language is that?
She didn’t recognise it. The up button was the only thing that mattered and it was obvious enough. She pushed it and waited.

A few seconds passed. The doors opened and –

Brodie’s mouth fell open. The occupant of the elevator was over six feet in height, covered in scales and had a face not unlike that of a fish; its eyes were placed back on the sides of its head. The hairless creature fell back in surprise as it stared in astonishment at Brodie. Its mouth fell open to reveal two thin rows of even teeth. A weapon vaguely resembling a pistol hung from its belt.

“I’m looking for handbags.” Brodie recovered quickly. “Which floor is that?”

She didn’t wait for a reply. The creature reached for its weapon as she leapt into action. Brodie aimed a kick directly at its groin – she assumed its physiology was similar to that of a human – and followed up with three rapid punches to its jaw.

The thing hit the back of the lift before slowly sliding to the floor.

“You’re the ugliest modification I’ve ever seen,” Brodie said. “You make Jabba the Hutt look good.”

She had to hurry now. Dragging the ugly brute out of the elevator, she grabbed his sidearm and jumped into the recess. Her eyes searched the display. Once again, the symbols were unfamiliar, but it was easy enough to ascertain the button for the top floor. She stabbed the control. As the elevator zoomed up through the ship at an amazing speed, she checked the gun. The barrel of it ended in a metallic grill; obviously this thing did not fire bullets. Apart from that, it was a simple enough weapon and seemed to have only one setting.

Shoot
, Brodie thought.
That’s easy enough.
 

Her heart was thumping now. She had the element of surprise on her side, but not much else. This was not going to be easy.

The elevator doors whizzed open.

Brodie realised two things at once. One was that she had successfully reached the bridge of the ship – she could see a massive row of windows. Through them she could see that night had fallen and an ocean of stars filled the glass.

This detail fell to insignificance, however, as she realised the command centre was being run by twenty creatures similar to the one she had just dispatched several floors below. She stood staring at the bizarre-looking creatures for all of five seconds before realising that going down to another floor would be a good choice.

Except at that moment an alarm sounded – a long peal of doom that made every fishhead look up at each other. One of them happened to glance sideways at the open doors of the elevator.

“Nuts,” Brodie said.

She started forward, firing wildly and taking down eight of the creatures in a matter of seconds. At that point one of them fired back, stunning her, and she dropped the gun. Taking a woozy step forward, she shook her head to clear it, slammed her fist into the stomach of one of the nearby creatures and lifted it into the air.

The unfortunate victim then became a live battering ram as Brodie used it as both a weapon and a shield, smashing several of the other creatures to the ground while deflecting shots with its body. She had successfully taken down fifteen of the monsters before one of them came up behind her and stunned her a second time.

She sank to her knees, dropping her living shield head first into the floor. It was only when she was picked up that she looked through half open eyes to see the scene outside the window. It was crisply black, blacker than any night sky seen from Earth.

That’s when the planet rolled into view. She saw the thin layer of atmosphere, an enormous expanse of ocean, layers of cloud and the East Coast of North America.

I am on a ship
, Brodie thought.
A spaceship.

Then everything went black around her.

Chapter Five

I arrived at the warehouse with five minutes to spare. By then I felt so stressed that the back of my head was throbbing with tension. The Agency forbade us from using our powers for anything other than Agency business, but this time I was prepared to make an exception. I had flown around the outskirts of the city before landing behind a warehouse in a rundown section of town where Las Vegas crumbled into desert.

This was the part of town that tourists didn’t get to see. Abandoned buildings fighting a losing battle against nature. Decaying roads in need of repair. Even the homeless didn’t come to this part of town; there was no one to panhandle from and there was nowhere to buy food anyway.

I had done my best to stay focused on how to handle this situation, but by the time I landed I realised I’d barely moved forward an inch in my plans. There was one all-consuming thought that had taken over my brain.

They had Brodie.

They had kidnapped my girlfriend.

I felt as helpless as anyone else who has ever been blackmailed by a kidnapper. My powers had not given me an advantage; at least, not yet anyway. The short message sent on my phone was succinct and straight to the point: the kidnappers would kill Brodie if I did not follow their instructions; I was not to tell another living being about her kidnapping. Not anyone at The Agency. Not the police. Not any of my friends.

I was alone.

Looking out at the desert, I saw the never-ending horizon stretching away into the distance. The warehouse was surrounded by a wire fence. There was no sign of cars or other vehicles. No tracks in the sand. The building was little more than a huge sheet metal shed. It looked like one big wind might knock it down completely. The front door was slightly ajar. As I slowly walked toward it, I threw up a barrier around myself. At least if anyone attacked me, I would be prepared.