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“I think that for our homework we should all have a good think about what it would have been like to be a superhero.”
“A good think?”
“Yep,” Brian said, nodding vigorously.
“Perfect. You all have a good think about it and then, when you’re done thinking, write down those thoughts in the form of an essay.”
Everyone groaned. Someone shouted, “Oh, well done Brian!”
“It won’t be that bad,” Mr Stone said. “There’s no school tomorrow, so you have a three-day weekend in which to get it done. Four pages should be enough. And I want normal-sized paper, too! No more essays written on bloody Post-It notes!”
Colin, Danny and Brian lived in different areas of the town, and every day they followed the same “going home” ritual: they would walk together until they reached the north-west corner of the park, then Colin would go east, Danny would go north to the apartment blocks and Brian would go west. As always, however, they spent an hour or so sitting on the low wall, chatting, arguing and watching out for flash cars or good-looking girls.
It was while they were doing this, sheltering from the rain under the park’s enormous pine trees that overhung the path, that Brian spotted his younger sister approaching on her bike, doing her best to cycle around the puddles.
“Hey, here comes your girlfriend, Danny,” Brian said.
“Oh, ha ha,” Danny replied.
They watched as Susie wobbled her way towards them and stopped right in front of Danny. “Hi, Danny!”
Danny muttered a greeting, but deliberately avoided looking her in the eye.
“What do you want?” Brian asked her.
“Mummy says you’re to come home now and stop dawdling.”
“Does she really?”
“Yes.”
Brian thought about this. “OK… I’ll race you. You on the bike and me running.”
Susie wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to show off in front of Danny. “OK then.”
“I’ll even give you a head start,” Brian said. “I’ll let you get as far as the end of the road.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “No. You’ll cheat or something.”
Brian tried to look innocent. “Cheat? Me? Never! Danny will vouch for me, won’t you, Dan?”
“Sure,” Danny said, reluctantly.
With that, Susie tore off down the road, pedalling like mad.
Brian watched her go. “Sucker.” He turned to the others. “Pretty cool about the homework, isn’t it? A lot better than maths or geography.”
“Couldn’t you have come up with something easier?” Colin asked.
“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t think he’d make us do an essay!”
“I’m going to pick Thalamus,” Danny said. “He’s my third favourite after Titan and Paragon.”
“So why not do Paragon, then?” Brian asked.
“Because he’s everyone’s second favourite. What about you?”
“Thunder.”
Danny laughed. “He’s the one with the dumbest powers! Power over rain! What use is that? You never hear stories about how he managed to use his abilities to do anything other than make a loud bang or cause a sudden downpour! Why not pick Apex? He was pretty cool.”
“Yeah, but no one knows much about him,” Colin said.
“That’s what makes him a good choice.”
Brian said, “Well, maybe you think that Thunder is a bad choice, Danny, but I’ve got a few ideas to make it work. Who are you going to choose, Col?”
Colin shrugged. “I don’t know… I’ll probably end up forgetting again and doing it when I’m having my breakfast on Monday morning.” He grinned. “I seem to work better when my Dad is standing in front of me telling me over and over that I shouldn’t put things off until the last minute.”
“You could always write it from the point of view of one of the villains,” Brian suggested.
Danny raised his eyes in disgust. “Brian, you’re a moron! He said we have to write about one of the heroes, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did. But look at it like this… Suppose that, say, Ragnarök thought that he was a hero.”
Colin looked up at this. “Yeah, he always believed he was doing the right thing.”
Danny nodded. “That’s true, but let’s face it; Ragnarök was a complete nutter. How the hell could robbing banks and holding the world to ransom be anything but the work of a villain? If you do evil things you’re still evil – no matter what the reason.”
They fell silent as they spotted a quartet of girls wearing the uniforms of St Mary’s.
One of the girls glanced at them as she passed. “Hi Danny!”
Danny was taken aback. “Er… Hi, um…”
“Judy,” Brian whispered.
“Hi Julie!” Danny said.
The girl gave him a filthy look and hurried a little to catch up with her friends.
Brian thumped Danny on the arm. “You idiot! I said Judy, not Julie!”
Danny rubbed his arm. “How was I to know? I’ve never even seen her before!”
Brian said, “Danny, two weeks ago she spent an hour listening to you going on about how Manchester City were the greatest football team in the world. She was all over you!”
“That was her?”
“How do you do it?” Brian asked. He got up from the wall, pushed back his sleeves and held out his bare arms. “Look at that! I’ve got muscles! Everyone knows that girls like muscles, but this lanky git gets more action than both of us combined!”
Danny said, “Maybe they go for quality over quantity.”
Brian sighed, shook his head, and sat down again. “So what time’s the party tomorrow night, Col?”
“About eight.” Like many people, Colin’s parents always threw a party for Mystery Day. For Colin’s mother, it was really just an excuse for a family get-together. Sometimes Colin felt that his parents only wanted the party so that they could embarrass him in front of his cousins. “You’re definitely coming, then?”
“Yeah, but… right, here’s the thing, OK? My folks are going out and they said it’s going to be hard to find a baby-sitter for Susie. So they asked me to ask you if she could come to your party.”
“I’m sure my folks won’t mind. And she’ll be able to keep my little cousins busy.”
“Speak of the devil…” Brian said.
The others looked up to see that Susie was cycling furiously back to them.
“She does not look happy,” Colin said.
Susie stopped her bike in the middle of the road and glared at them. “Brian!”
“Now what?”
“I’m telling on you!” She yelled across at her brother.
Brian laughed and got to his feet. “OK! OK! I’m coming.” He turned back to Colin and Danny. “Right, I’ll see you tomorrow. What time did you say the party starts, Col?”
“Eight,” Colin said. “You’ll be there, right, Danny?”
But Danny wasn’t paying attention. He was standing very still and staring into space.
“Danny?”
Suddenly, Danny screamed, “Susie! Get out of the road!”
Colin turned to see the out-of-control bus screeching around the corner. Heading straight for Brian’s sister.
Cell 18 was four metres to each side and a little over three metres high. It contained a narrow, uncomfortable bed, a single chair, a small desk, a large, full bookcase, a hand basin and a toilet.
The walls were made of reinforced concrete. There were no windows. The only light came from two small but powerful bulbs set into the ceiling, shielded by unbreakable glass.
A man stood in the centre of the room, staring at the blank wall. He had not moved for over an hour.
Later, he would sit on the bed, or perhaps lie on it; he hadn’t yet decided. Then again, he might just choose to remain standing.
The wardens referred to him as Joseph.
He was in his early forties. He was tall, thinner now than he had been ten years ago, but by no means skinny, and had long, unkempt black hair and a greying beard.
A decade ago Joseph had been carried, unconscious, into the cell. On his clear days, when he was aware of his situation and his surroundings, Joseph knew that officially he was not a prisoner; there had been no trial and no legal proceedings of any kind. He didn’t even know where this cell was located. But the clear days were few; most of the time, Joseph existed only inside his own head, living with his memories and nightmares.
Joseph continued to stare at the wall. Last night he’d had the nightmare again, the same terrifying, recurring dream: visions of blood, pain, murder and death on an overwhelming scale.
Joseph was often glad of his imprisonment. Here, he was safe. No one could harm him. And likewise, he couldn’t harm any one else.
If I’m here, he would say to himself, then everyone is safe.
This thought was always followed by a conflicting one: But I’m not just here, I’m out there too. And if I’m out there, then no one is safe.
Joseph slowly turned and looked towards the bed. I could sit. Or I could lie.
He smiled.
Why not? I’ve lied before. Sometimes it seems like my whole life has become a lie.
He wondered how long he had been here.
Then he wondered how much time he had left.
How much time the world had left.
2 (#ulink_b508153e-0c12-5d93-9059-4bb5d22d640e)
COLIN UNZIPPED HIS anorak and hung it in the hall. As he was pulling off his rain-soaked runners, he heard his father shouting from the kitchen.
“What time do you call this?”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Colin shouted back. Colin went into the kitchen, where his parents – Warren and Caroline Wagner – were sitting at the table.
“It’s never your fault,” his father said.
“No, really it wasn’t.”
“Your dinner’s in the oven,” his mother said. “Another ten minutes and it would have been in the bin. If you’re going to be late, the least you could do is let us know.”
His father said, “How come your mother leaves the school at the same time that you do and she’s always home hours before you are? Maybe the teachers have access to a special short cut that the students don’t know about – is that it?”
“But it wasn’t my fault!” Colin said. “Let me tell you what happened.” He sat down at the table and looked at his parents.
They looked back at him and he could see from their expressions that they were both thinking, “This had better be good.”
“OK, well… Me and Brian and Danny were hanging around at the corner of the park…”
His mother interrupted him. “What were you up to?”
“Nothing. We were just talking. Anyway, Susie came up on her bike to tell Brian that he had to go home and then…” Colin paused. “I don’t really know exactly what happened – someone said that there was a fight on the bus and the driver turned around to look – but anyway, the thing is, Susie’s there in the middle of the road and all of a sudden the bus comes screeching around the corner. Heading right for her. And the next thing we know there’s this really loud crunch as the bus hits her bike.”
Caroline Wagner put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God!”
“No, no!” Colin said. “Mum, she’s OK, she’s fine! I don’t know how he did it, but Danny saved her! He ran across, picked her up and saved her life! It was brilliant! She went all white and she was shaking and everything, but apart from that she was OK. Her bike was wrecked, though. And she wouldn’t let go of Danny for ages. Now she’ll be even more nuts about him. The police came and an ambulance and everything, but they didn’t need it. No one was really hurt.”
