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  Masks: Rise of Heroes

  By Hayden Thorne

  Published by Queerteen Press

  Visit queerteen-press.com for more information.

  Copyright 2013 Hayden Thorne

  ISBN 9781611525069

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America. Queerteen Press is an imprint of JMS Books LLC.

  Other books in this series include: Masks: Rise of Heroes, Masks: Evolution, Masks: Ordinary Champions, Curse of Arachnaman, Mimi Attacks!, and Dr. Morbid’s Castle of Blood. Visit haydenthorne.com for more information.

  * * * *

  Masks: Rise of Heroes

  By Hayden Thorne

  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

  Chapter 1

  My day began with my mom’s voice in my ear, going on and on and on about my grades and the crap dye job on my hair, blabbity-blah-blah-blah. Dad had already gone off to work, so he was spared one more coronary moment by my hands. Liz just stared at me from across the table. Her mouth hung open.

  “Wow, Eric,” she breathed, giving me a disgusting view of half-eaten cereal in her mouth.

  “Look, if my prescription were updated, we wouldn’t be having these accidents with Punk ‘N Go, would we?” I retorted.

  Mom rolled her eyes as she set down empty glasses by our plates. I immediately filled mine with milk. “All you need to do is tell us if you think your eyes have gotten worse, for heaven’s sake. It’s not as though setting up appointments with Dr. Stubbs means cutting your jugular open and sticking a straw in it.” Mom glanced at Liz, who’d redirected her jaw-dropping to her. “What?”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll make an appointment, but I’m not changing my hair color. Seriously—what’s the fuss? So I’ve got blue streaks in my hair. Big deal.”

  “Streaks?” Liz echoed. “What streaks? You look like you’ve just shampooed in Smurf blood.”

  I narrowed my eyes at my sister but took the high road.

  In boring arguments like this, it was always best to keep that stiff upper lip thing and not respond. It said a lot about character, especially with me being three years younger than Liz. What was it about adults that they forgot what it felt like being a teenager?

  “Anyway, Eric,” Mom continued, “there’s this matter about your grades.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

  She kept talking as she bustled around the kitchen. My grades stank, what was up with my Chemistry exams, why couldn’t I demonstrate as much interest in Geometry as I did Art, yadda, yadda, yadda? I waited until her back was turned before fishing out my little vial of blue food coloring from my jacket pocket, which I quickly unstopped and emptied into my milk. There were only a few drops left as I’d made good use of my supply, and I made a mental note to wander off to the supermarket for refills after school. The resulting color wasn’t as deep as I’d hoped. Nothing stole one’s thunder more than a sky-blue concoction, when one intended something along the lines of denim. Because, you know, art.

  Liz watched me in horrified fascination as I drank my Blue Breakfast Beverage in three massive gulps, hoping that my milk moustache made the perfect complement to my hair despite its wimpy shade.

  “You’re so mature,” she muttered, shaking her head.

  I pushed back my chair and stood up just as Mom turned around, eggs and bacon neatly piled on the platter she held.

  “I gotta go,” I said. “I’ll be late for school.”

  “As if punctuality made a difference before,” Liz said.

  “What about breakfast?”

  “Can’t. Sorry, no time.”

  I gave Mom a purposefully loud, sloppy kiss, leaving a sky-blue smear on her cheek, and then shuffled off. I only had two pieces of toast with butter and blue milk, and I knew Mom was about to pounce on me with that grease pile she was going to set down on the table. I was sure she also knew that her efforts wouldn’t have made a smidge of difference. I wasn’t going to risk a premature heart attack over a full belly; besides, solid sustenance was bad news to the ethereal.

  After brushing my teeth, I gave my hair one more critical look. My home dye job wasn’t as bad as everyone insisted, but then again, my family had always been a bit drama queen-ish over the smallest, most insignificant things.

  They’d voiced concerns over my complexion as if genetics didn’t play a part. I could trace my paleness back to my great, great grandmother, who was, by all accounts, this delicate little thing who couldn’t stay out in the sun for too long. They’d complained about my skinniness, too. Well, Mom had, anyway, and she never bought into the “late bloomer” argument. My hair was too shaggy, though it never reached past the top of my ears, with the back cut close and super short and the layers growing longer the higher they sprouted on my skull, spilling over my face in a dark, uneven fringe.

  Their complaints placed more weight on the fact that my bangs covered my eyes. They shouldn’t whine, really. I used to edge my eyes with a thin line of black. I could still remember that odd sound my dad made when I came down for breakfast looking pale, sullen, and kohl-rimmed for the first time. He made me think of a squirrel with TB. Knowing their responses to eyeliner, I thought that hiding my eyes under my bangs would be a kindness to them, but no. They were only slightly appeased when I began to wear glasses, which served as another shield, but they knew they couldn’t do crap about my fashion sense.

  I mean, Jesus, I was sixteen—not to mention bored out of my mind.

  A stern warning from the principal’s office killed the eyeliner use after a week, but I found comfort in the thought that my glasses served as replacement eye edging.

  The frames were black, plastic, narrow rectangles, and they worked, I guess, well enough for my purpose.

  Now, of course, my problematic black shag had been given a bit of a facelift, and I’d worked random blue streaks all over: Punk ‘N Go, the best hair color brand for penny-pinching teenagers. Smurf blood? Whatever.

  * * * *

  School was school that day. Same tired classes, same tired teachers, same struggle between the boring-ass elite and everyone else. Same longing stares behind my sketchbook, all aimed at Mr. Cleland, my art teacher, same smirking j
okes from the Dumb-As-Bricks In Crowd, a few grimaces of disgust from God-Shoot-Me-Now-You’re-So-Freaking-Boring conservative types, a smattering of appreciative comments from random kids here and there. “Cool hair! Can you do mine in magenta?”

  The Quill Club—also known as the Queer Club since, apparently, aspiring teenage poets were believed to be angst-filled queer kids or plain touched in the head—didn’t seem too keen on meeting that day, but a couple of people in the group tried to organize an impromptu wiener gorge at Dog-In-A-Bun, which was smack in the center of downtown Vintage City.

  “I just got myself a copy of Wilfred Owen’s poems at Olivier’s,” Peter said as we ambled out of Renaissance High’s main building. Really, the school was only one building. “Took me forever to find it, but for fifty cents, the dust and asthma were well worth it.”

  “Are you going to bring it to the wiener gorge?”

  Peter flashed me an iffy grin. “You want to see it?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, why not? You’ve been geeking out a lot over his work, so I’d like to check it out.”

  Surprise turned to open pleasure. “I have to go home for it, though. I’ll meet you at the Dog.”

  “We’re all supposed to be there in an hour.”

  “Right. Later, Eric.”

  I watched him jog toward his car, his tattered denim jacket nearly sliding off his shoulders with the weight of his backpack dragging it down. Peter Barlow was my best friend—the stereotypically quiet and overachieving mixed-Asian kid from an aloof and overachieving interracial family. Unless pissed off at me, he couldn’t express himself very well but for poetry and an occasional rebellious fashion statement: his old denim jacket. It was a thrift store buy, which he’d purposefully ripped up, marred with paint, and covered in all kinds of buttons with anti-censorship slogans (found them online, he said). He only wore that jacket once he was within school borders. Then he’d take it off and stuff it in his backpack before showing up at home. Sometimes I’d keep it for him. Otherwise, he was this clean cut, neatly dressed boy from one of the swankier neighborhoods of Vintage City.

  As for me, I usually rode a fixed gear bike to school, but I decided to ditch the bike that day for a casual stroll. Nothing really fed a bored artist than an occasional walk through Vintage City’s gray and grimy landscape.

  With the architecture mirroring European cities from two hundred years ago—which included the filth and stench of decaying brick, stagnant pools of water, and assorted refuse from homeless people peering out of the shadows of dingy alleys—Vintage City nicely lived up to its name. We were subjected to occasional fog with a sickly cast, no thanks to our chemical-belching factories, as well as rain that seemed to be made of liquid metal.

  The city had always nurtured a love-hate thing with technology. We’d actually had a humble biotech industry several years ago, but bad management, shady practices, corruption, and several accidents that maimed, killed, or exposed workers to hazardous materials led to the closure of the largest genetics company and the migration of the rest of the smaller ones.

  What a totally weird thing to turn the clock back as though everyone was determined to blot things out and pretend like we were better off returning to what used to be.

  Technological advances were almost always disguised in two-hundred-year-old masks, so that shiny new conveniences still appeared dated, and people were pretty keen on maintaining the city’s old school charm.

  Heck, City Hall always boasted about the Department of Antiquaries, whose main job was to maintain a certain old-fashioned aesthetic from one end of the city to another. There was even a proposition drawn before about the use of gas lamps over electric bulbs, but that was one step too far for everyone, and the voters took care of that. Besides, how could one justify the presence of television and computers in houses that weren’t allowed electric bulbs? The Department of Antiquaries obviously enjoyed one too many hours on their two-hundred-year-old bongs.

  That said, we were never high on tourists’ itineraries.

  In fact, it’s safe to say that we were never anywhere near anyone’s itinerary. I guess we were either too ugly or too much of a cliché, but no one in the city seemed to mind because in the end, the world left us alone to wallow in our dinginess and phony baloney historical glamour.

  Since I didn’t ride my bike to school that day, I took the “flying” train to downtown Vintage. It was one of two rail systems we had, and it was an aerial train—efficient and convenient and appropriately rickety and seriously faux-weathered. The cars were full as usual. It was always my luck, no matter what time of the day I boarded. I was forced to stand by the door of the last car, staring blankly ahead or with my nose between the battered pages of a two-dollar novel.

  Then it happened.

  Chapter 2

  I was on page fourteen when an explosion rocked the train, throwing people off their seats and knocking them against the floor, the windows, and each other.

  I dropped my book as I pitched forward, a quick grab of the vertical handrail that secured one of the side seats saving me from being crushed by catapulting bodies. The lights flickered violently and then died altogether. People’s screams filled the air. I clung to the bar with both hands, dazed, barely taking note of the odd angle of our car as it sat on the tracks.

  “Oh, my God, we’re going to fall!” a woman shrieked.

  “The door! Quick! Go to the next car!”

  We were on the verge of losing our footing. Our car leaned at a slight angle, with the front end being the highest point.

  Smoke began to filter inside, and when I looked around, I found the car now sported a burned rear, and small flames sliced through the thickening clouds of smoke that were slowly filling the air. People who sat at the back clawed and stumbled their way to the front, their clothing scorched, with some of them trailing smoke behind.

  I saw no one left on the floor or the seats, thank God.

  The side door at the spot where I stood had slid partly open and was rattling dangerously. I never knew until then just how flimsy and light those doors were. At the front end of the car, another door had been forced open, and people were pushing their way to the car ahead. I could hear the creaking and groaning of metal from outside, and then our car lurched, tipping some more, and it swayed a little. I could barely stand up. My feet kept slipping over the floor, and in an effort to pull myself up, I kicked hard against the weakened side door. It rattled, beeped a couple of times, and then slid fully open.

  “Shit!”

  I could see the city from where I now dangled, my hands aching as they held on to the bar, my legs poking out the door, unable to find purchase because of the car’s incline.

  Screams mingled with the smell of burning rubber, wires, and steel. It felt as though the car now half-hung in space, its front barely clinging to the car ahead of it, which was well on its way to being dragged off the rail, too, to plunge several stories below, where traffic lay snarled.

  Amid the confusion, I thought I heard laughter—hysterical laughter—and frenzied violin music coming from somewhere. No, really. What the hell? The car shuddered once again, the sudden jolt loosening my grip, and I slid away, howling. I bumped against one of the side seats that flanked the broken door before falling out completely and tumbling into space. I heard the damaged car finally tear off the rail, taking everyone else with it.

  The descent was quick. I fell a few feet, screaming my throat raw, and then all of a sudden got caught in a strong circle of arms. Instinct took over, and I immediately squirmed around and clung to whoever—whatever—caught me, my arms looped around hard, muscular shoulders. What little air that was left in my lungs got knocked out of me completely, and all I could do was squeak and gasp for breath. My vision swam. My glasses clung to my head by one temple with a death grip around my right ear. There was something else—something much closer—and it flapped before me in a dark flash of fabric.

  A cloak? A curtain? A cape? In the midst of the conf
usion and the noise, it moved in the wind with a thick rustling sound that made everything all the more surreal, and time seemed to slow to a crawl though things happened in mere seconds. The thought that I was hanging from someone’s shoulders lost its bizarre impact on me.

  In fact, I’d actually ignored it. Instead, I remembered the train and realized that it was all over for me. I waited to be crushed and so braced myself.

  Oh, God, I thought, pinching my eyes shut. What a way to go. I’m too young for this shit.

  I could hear the passengers’ muffled screams, more breaking glass, and the groaning of steel. Any second now, I kept telling myself, and it would be over. Hopefully it would be quick, and I wouldn’t feel a thing.

  The mangled car, rather than catch up with me and totally obliterate me with its weight, never touched me, though I could feel and hear how close it was, like the voices and the heat from the fire that, I was sure, continued to spread inside.

  No, it never touched me. The car had been cushioned by something and now gently glided down to earth with me.

  There was a jolt. Then I felt someone’s hand grab the back of my jacket and pull me down, and I was dragged off my safety perch to land with an embarrassing plop on my butt on the pavement.

  “Jesus, what the hell?”

  I blinked and looked up to find a tall, broad figure looming before me, its thick arms stretched up, the damaged train car held securely above me as though it weighed nothing. A pair of dark eyes flashed. “Move,” a low voice growled, and I did, scrambling to my feet and stumbling several yards away. There was a grunt, more metallic creaking, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the car set down with a clumsy bump.

  The large figure quickly leaped inside the smoke-filled compartment. Within seconds, bruised and frightened passengers swarmed out in various states of shock.

  The damage was at the rear, and it was extensive.

  Twisted and blackened steel, broken glass, and dying flames were all that were left of the car’s second half. I looked up to find a section of the aerial tracks obliterated.