10. Soul-Searching Sharks in Formaldehyde
TWO DAYS. That was all the time it took for news of Red Soldier, NYC's newest superhero, to go absolutely viral. I was scared, I admit it, seeing the grainy store surveillance footage of me kicking that guy get broadcasted on the local news. I was kind of paranoid that I would be recognized, even though my face was barely visible, and it wasn't like anyone outside of school even knew who I was. Except Jenny. And Ms. Henderson. And Kavanagh. And Tatiana Castro.
Okay, I supposed there was a small, minuscule handful of people who would know, but they already knew, and they wouldn't be a bother. I've already been told that the police have rules for these kinds of things, rules from Revere's days that were slowly forgotten when he retired. Now, with me around, the police would be revisiting those rules. They were not to bother me, as long as I didn't interfere with them, and that was fine by me. They had the right to pursue me if they saw me as a threat, and as long as I proved that I was a hero, not a villain, there would be no conflict.
The rest of my weekend had been rather uneventful. I spent Sunday studying for an English quiz on Brave New World and helping Mom at the bakery. It had taken three good rinses to get all of the flour out from beneath my fingernails.
It was Monday morning now, and I held my hand over my mouth, stopping myself from yawning. I adjusted my Yankees baseball cap so that my eyes were shaded from the bright sunshine that penetrated the bus windows. One-fifth of my entire grade was on this bus; the other four-fifths were spread evenly between the other four buses. Despite the fact that not all of us took art class, the eccentric art teacher, Mr. Davidson, decided to take all of us to a museum today for a full-day field trip.
I poked Ben, who was sitting next to me, on the shoulder. He closed his book and raised an eyebrow. "How much longer?" I whispered.
Ah, whispering: the thing that one does when everyone else on the bus seems to be asleep or taking some sort of pledge to shut their mouths. I'd have thought that a bus full of rambunctious teenagers would result in more noise, the ear-splitting kind, but it seemed that no one was in the mood to be rowdy on a Monday morning.
Ben shrugged, looking down at his pamphlet of the museum—which he'd been using as a bookmark—and pointing to the address. I just shook my head at him; the museum was new, none of us actually knew where it was, and the address only told me a name and street that I didn't even recognize.
"Gee, thanks," I said sarcastically, and he smirked and went back to reading.
I turned back to the window, sticking my earbuds in, turning up the volume a little bit. The last thing I needed was to fall asleep—mostly because I was afraid that someone would put me in a stupid position and take a picture.
After about ten more minutes or so, we reached the museum. I grabbed my backpack from underneath our seat and stepped off the bus. I stopped a few feet away and stretched a little, my limbs happy to be straightened out.
I shrugged my backpack straps closer to my neck and stood at the very back of one group with Ben. Our chaperone was my English teacher, Mrs. Hoede, and she passed out maps of the museum. I had to admit that the museum wasn't at all what I had expected. I was picturing a center-of-city architecture-extraordinaire building with a considerably large audience. While there were other people milling about here and there, this building didn't seem so sophisticated. It was rustic and floral, with large lawn space surrounding it and a few sculptures along the sides.
We stepped inside, each group taking a different tour with a different route so that we weren't just one big mass of kids that needed to be controlled. Everytime the tour guide stopped to show us something, I slipped Mom's camera out of its little case and snapped a picture. Most of the museum was history and historical art, with a few modern things thrown in here and there. I stopped at Damien Hirst's stuff and stared at it, opened-mouth, until Ben shoved me and told me to get a move on, so then I walked and twisted myself sideways at the same time to get the picture of a shark in formaldehyde as we left that room.
At this point, Ben and I were lagging just a few steps behind the back of the group. "That shark." I shook my head, shuddering.
Ben did some jazz hands. "Welcome to modern art."
"It was cool," I said. "But I felt like it was looking into my soul."
"It probably didn't find much."
I rolled my eyes.
And then I stepped in something. I stopped and brought my foot up so I could see dirty pink gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. It wasn't old, either; it was fresh and gooey. "Great," I muttered. I dragged my shoe across the polished floor, trying to get the gum off, but it was stuck.
I looked up at Ben, who had stopped for me. "Do you think water would get it off?" I asked, because I sure as heck wasn't about to touch it myself, but I wasn't going to walk around with it, either.
He made a face. "Water and gum? That's gross."
"Worth a shot?"
He shrugged. "Maybe."
I glanced around until I found a bathroom. "Go ahead, I'll catch up."
He nodded and turned back to the group, and I watched them round a corner before I started heading towards the men's bathroom, which was across the hall. Stupid gum, I thought, although I was madder at whoever spit it on the floor than the gum itself.
And just a few steps before I could even reach the door, someone shoved past me, nearly making me fall forward onto my face.
"Hey!" I exclaimed angrily, turning around only to see a man dressed in all black running away from me. He skidded to a quick stop, turned around, stuck up the finger at me, and then kept running.
My heart froze; he had been holding a black bag, and considering the fact that he'd shoved me aside and was dressed like that, he was definitely a thief. I started running after him, and he didn't notice, and I looked around as I ran to find somewhere to change. It was a good thing I'd brought the suit with me.
I kept running, keeping my pace a little slower than his so that he didn't notice me following him. He ran straight through the doors to the side garden outside, and I was just a few steps behind. I slowed my pace to a speed-walk, pretending to be an observer before I realized that there was nothing valuable out here, and that there were no security cameras.
I stopped close to the cold brick wall and opened my backpack, taking out my jacket that I'd folded and placed neatly behind my laptop. I didn't have time to even bother with the pants, but I was wearing jeans, and jeans were a very normal thing that no one would associate with specifically me. I hastily shoved the mask onto my face, took one glove, threw my Yankees cap into my backpack, threw my backpack into a bush, and then zipped up the jacket as I ran further ahead, getting the man in my sights. He was a slow runner, thank goodness for that.
"Stop!" I yelled.
He stopped and turned around. He clearly wasn't expecting to see Red Soldier, because he startled a little, but then he started running again. I picked up a rock and threw it at his legs, and he tripped and fell flat onto his face, and I caught up to where he was in a second.
I was about to reach forward and yank him up when he abruptly turned over to his back on the ground, his fist pointed at me, some sort of golden-metal cuff on his wrist pulsing with purple light.
Within a second, the cuff emitted a little shriek, and a short purple beam of light blasted me into the air.
Well...that was unexpected.
I hit the ground several yards away, creating little divots in the otherwise perfect lawn as I skidded to a quick and short stop. Neither the blast nor the fall had hurt me, but I looked down, relieved that I hadn't been set on fire or anything. I scrambled to my feet, spitting dirt and dewy grass out of my mouth as I ran at him before he could get away from me.
He stood up and pointed the cuff at me again, but I dove forward before the purple light could hit me. As I hit the man's legs and toppled him over, the purple blast hit a tree instead, the impact forcing the poor tree to bend backward and splinter.
I pinned the man down on the ground with my knees and grabbed his cuff with both of my hands, trying to keep it pointed away from me as I tugged at it. It came off easily, thanks to my strength, but I only had a moment of triumph before another purple blast hit me in the side, and I was once again sent flying backward.
I landed on my back this time, my vision going a little blurry from the second impact, my hand still gripping the cuff. I looked up to see a second man—with the cuff that had just blasted me—helping up the first one. They stared at me for just a second before they ran off faster than I could get up and get my bearings.
I stood up slowly, brushing the dirt off my jacket and readjusting my mask. I stared at the black bag they'd left behind as I walked over to it. There was a vase inside, an old piece that had clearly seen better days, and I thought it would be best if I left it, because the museum workers would find it and know how to take care of it. As for the cuff...
I looked down at it. It was a little large, made of rusty gold metal, with a single button on it. A clear little dome was above the button. My guess was that the dome generated whatever that purple energy thing was, and then it could be pointed and shot at something. I glanced up at the poor tree.
The cuff was dirty, like me, and I rubbed my ungloved hand over it to uncover a tiny, minuscule label written in black, italicized letters on the inside of the cuff, just above the rim. Henderson Technologies.
Something that Ms. Henderson had said to me resurfaced in my mind. The guy who threw the syringe at me was one of many robbers who'd stolen Henderson's tech. He got caught, but his accomplices were still out there with what they stole. These men in the museum got these goods illegally, whether they had stolen it themselves or gotten it from the people who did.
I had to think about it later, though—right now I had to get out of these clothes, get clean, and get the stupid gum off. I'm sure there were already alarms going off, and that they would see the footage of the large back lawn and understand what had happened.
I ran back to where I'd left my backpack, hating myself for how out in the open all of this was, but there really had been nowhere else for me to quickly change without losing the man. I was lucky that there were barely any windows, and that there had been no one outside.
I took my jacket, glove, and mask off, holding all three in one hand as I stuck the other in the shrub, pushing aside the leaves and branches to look for my backpack.
I froze. It wasn't there.
Where could it have gone? Is this the wrong shrub? Am I on the wrong side of the building?
I turned to run to other side, but I stopped short, because Ben was standing there with my backpack in his hand, his eyes wide as he stared at my jacket and my gloves and my mask.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top