Fall of Heroes

  DEDICATION

  For Meradith, my sister and original partner in crime.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  1. A Tarnished City

  2. Into the Gloom

  3. Family Reunion

  4. Ghosts of the Past

  5. Trapped in a Bubble

  6. Ski Chair

  7. Leader of the Rangers

  8. Groundbreaking

  9. A Death in the Family

  10. Paper Animals

  11. Starla

  12. Overheard

  13. Blackout

  14. Flight Practice

  15. Scylla and Charybdis

  16. Proof

  17. Rebels

  18. Action Figures

  19. Live Broadcast

  20. Alexander the King

  21. Victory Park

  22. The Fate of Sterling City

  Epilogue: One Month Later

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Jeramey Kraatz

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A TARNISHED CITY

  Alex Knight had never worn a mask. The High Council had always been against them.

  “The Cloak Society has no need for such disguises,” his mother once said when the subject came up. “At least, not actual masks. They cut off your peripheral vision and move around too much. Unless you glue one to your face, it’s a liability. Masks are just gimmicks, like capes or sashes. If you really think a few inches of cloth or plastic are going to keep your identity a secret, you’re an amateur.”

  Now, standing in an underground tunnel hidden below Victory Park, Alex hoped his mother was wrong. He placed a black bandit mask over his eyes, tying it tightly at the back of his head, careful not to get any of his brown, wavy hair stuck in the knot. As he adjusted the eyeholes in the front, he used his telekinetic powers to pull the hood of his dark trench coat up. It caused a shadow to fall over him, hiding his face completely except for two faint sparks of blue.

  Beside him, another Cloak deserter, Mallory, superheated one of her index fingers and expanded the eyeholes on a white, feathered mask that would cover the top half of her face. It looked as if the mask was crying runny plastic tears.

  “These things are so tiny,” she muttered. “No one has eyes this small.”

  “How did I end up with this one?” Kyle asked. His face was covered in a clear mask with painted-on, clownish features. It pushed up his blond hair and completely hid his identity. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be.”

  “That’s totally not my fault,” Alex said. “This is all they had left at the costume store nearest to the lake house. Or at least, that’s what Misty told me.”

  “But you just get to wear that domino mask? That’s not even a costume.”

  “Yeah it is. I’m a bank robber.”

  “When I met you, you were robbing a bank,” Kyle said. “That’s not a costume.”

  “You’re a Junior Ranger. People know your face too well. Besides, Kirbie’s not complaining.” Alex turned to look at Kirbie, Kyle’s twin sister, whose face was hidden by a full vinyl werewolf mask.

  “It smells super gross in here,” she said. Her voice was slightly muffled. “But he’s right. People are more likely to recognize us. Let’s just get going before I start to get claustrophobic in this thing.”

  Mallory slipped her disguise on, pulling some of her chestnut hair out from under the elastic band. She gave Alex a thumbs-up, and they were off. The four of them made their way through a series of hidden locks and doors until they were finally passing out of a rusty old drain and into the midday sun. There was a metallic click as the drain locked back into place. Kyle motioned to a clump of vines. They grew over the metal grate as if by magic—though it was really just Kyle’s power over plants—until it was completely hidden. Alex looked around, the autumn trees crackling with the blue layer of energy that had tinted his vision ever since he’d developed his telekinetic powers. They were far enough off the normal trails that no one had seen them. Perfect.

  “All right,” Alex said. “We’ve got a mission to complete.”

  Sterling City had been known as the birthplace of the twenty-first century, a metropolis that symbolized humanity’s future. Some referred to it as paradise, a spring of progress and accomplishment. It had even been called a utopia—the safest and happiest place on earth. This city nestled in the center of Texas had prospered over the years thanks to the watchful eyes of a team of superheroes, the Rangers of Justice, but when Justice Tower had crumbled a little over a month before, it began to rot. Alex feared the people of the city would soon find out just how far it had fallen—unless he and his friends could do something to change things.

  In the city’s heart was Victory Park, a place where you could lose yourself, forgetting that you were in the middle of a sprawling concrete jungle. For Alex, it was where many of his problems had first begun. There, ten years ago, his family had fought against the Rangers and been defeated. At the southern edge of the park was the bank where he’d gone on his first mission—to steal a diamond. And it was where he’d started to question the motives of the Cloak Society. The rest of the world referred to the group as “supervillains,” but Alex knew them as his family—the people he’d eventually turned against.

  “It feels like I haven’t been here in forever,” Kyle said, taking a deep breath as they moved through the brush. “I basically lived here this summer. I know these trees better than I know most people.”

  Soon they came to an actual trail, one that Kirbie and Kyle recognized. From there they walked mostly in silence, and stopped only once, when they came to the statue garden erected as a memorial for all the Rangers lost in the battle against Cloak a decade before. Silvery sculptures of men and women forever stuck in heroic poses. Alex and the others stood silently for a few seconds before trekking on again.

  They couldn’t pause for too long. They had a job to do. Others were counting on them.

  They made it through the park undetected. On the other side, the streets were swarming with people—sidewalks jammed with witches, goblins, and ghouls. A car honked as it sped past a mummy, almost knocking it over. A young ballerina paused and gave Kirbie a curtsy.

  “We never got to go out in costumes on Halloween.” Mallory sighed.

  “People get weird when you can’t tell who they really are,” Kyle said flatly. As he spoke, his breath fogged up the inside of his mask. “Technically this is the Fall Festival. It’s one thing I definitely wasn’t looking forward to policing this year.”

  “Me neither,” Kirbie said. “But I think I’d rather be doing that than what we’re about to do.”

  “There.” Kyle pointed to a street blocked off by traffic cones. In the distance, Alex could make out food trucks and street vendors. Somewhere, a band was playing. “That’s the best way to the museum.”

  They started walking again. More importantly, they blended in. To anyone on the street, they were just four more kids in costumes, not two Junior Rangers and two former supervillain trainees. They were unrecognizable in the throng of citizens and tourists who’d shown up to partake in the city’s annual festival. This was their cover—not the shadows and darkness that Alex had been taught to use to his advantage, but the simple anonymity of being one in a crowd of thousands. They had to play it safe. In the past few weeks, Cloak had made sure all their faces had been on the news. They were Sterling City’s most wanted.

  The area north of Victory Park—the arts district—was a maze of tall, darkly bricked buildings and glass storefronts touting expensive clothing and electronics. The city had strung lights in the trees for the festival, and fake spider webbing hun
g in stringy cotton-candy clumps. There were cameras on every major street corner, too, but those weren’t decorations. They were part of the city’s newly implemented “Ever Watchful” initiative. Alex frowned every time they passed one, resisting the urge to crush it with his thoughts. Instead, he suggested they avoid any big intersections and stick to the side streets. Eventually, they turned a corner, and Alex came face-to-face with his mother: Shade.

  He froze.

  She looked strange to Alex. It wasn’t just that she wore a Rangers of Justice uniform instead of her usual Cloak getup, a golden starburst gleaming on her chest. There was something foreign about her expression. She was radiant. Alex had never seen her lips stretched so wide before, with so many teeth exposed. He could swear that there was a twinkle in her eye, but not the metallic silver flash that meant she was concentrating on using her telepathic powers. Something else. He wondered if it was a trick of the light.

  Or maybe just an effect added to the photo after it had been taken.

  His mother’s image was pasted on the side of a building. She was oversized, at least three times larger than she was in real life. Beside her was Volt, Alex’s father. Photon stood next to the man, and in front of them was Titan—who Alex’s parents now referred to as their son in interviews. Even on a poster, his smug smile got under Alex’s skin. All of them wore Ranger uniforms that matched Shade’s. Above them, in shining gold letters, was RANGERS OF JUSTICE: THE PROTECTORS OF STERLING CITY.

  It had been almost a week since Photon—Dr. Photon, technically—had appeared at a press conference and paraded Alex’s parents and Titan in front of news cameras, calling them his saviors and the city’s only hope against the Cloak Society, who had recently gone public. Everyone started calling Photon and his teammates the “New Rangers,” since it was the first time the Rangers’ roster had changed so drastically in a decade. Part of Alex took delight that this nickname stuck, as he’d previously heard the term used only to describe weak, virtually powerless amateurs wanting to be known as heroes. The city all but turned itself over to the New Rangers, desperate for heroes to fight against the underground supervillain menace they hardly dared speak about. Those who were skeptical of the new team were quickly won over as their exploits began to surface. There were news reports of a Cloak hideout discovered in an old Gothic mansion on the outskirts of town. Photos of the New Rangers standing beneath a crushed silver skull in the entryway of the base popped up in every newspaper and website imaginable. They were on the news every night for vanquishing some great threat to the city. Crime rings were exposed. High-profile robberies were foiled. The cameras were always rolling, and the New Rangers were always there to save the day.

  All of it was an act.

  Shade, Volt, and Titan were members of the Cloak Society. Everything was orchestrated by Cloak’s High Council. Photon had been brainwashed by Alex’s mother, who, to keep the public in the dark about her telepathic abilities, positioned herself as the New Rangers’ weapons expert without any real superpowers. It had been Alex and his teammates—Junior Rangers and ex-Cloak members—who’d stormed the old mansion on the outskirts of Sterling City, taking out a group of Cloak’s elite warriors, the Omegas. But the New Rangers took credit for the event, spinning the news in their favor, turning Alex and his team’s victory into their own.

  While half of the Cloak Society’s most powerful members served as the New Rangers, the others popped up every so often to remind the city that they were still there, plotting its downfall. The grinning silver skulls they wore on their chests became symbols of terror. As the heroes and the villains of Sterling City, the Cloak Society could do whatever they wanted, playing off one another to keep everyone under their control, until the public one day woke up and realized that their city wasn’t theirs anymore. And by then it would be too late to do anything about it.

  Unless someone stopped them. Soon.

  Alex stared at Titan in the photo. His mouth was dry. He couldn’t help but think that in a way, his parents had finally gotten exactly what they’d always wanted: a son who wholeheartedly believed in the glory of Cloak. Shade, Volt, and Titan looked like a model family. It was impossible to tell from the outside what evil lurked behind their smiles.

  Alex gritted his teeth.

  “They changed the uniform,” Kirbie said, stepping up beside him. “It’s a darker blue. The star is smaller and metallic. Everything looks more . . . I don’t know. Textured, I guess.”

  “Probably ballistic fibers woven in, like our Cloak uniforms had,” Mallory said. She batted a big white feather on her mask back, trying to keep it out of her face. “I’d bet these new metal chest emblems are bulletproof.”

  “There aren’t any capes,” Kirbie said. “Lone Star always wore a cape.”

  Alex smiled a little. “My mother never would.”

  “The way the city’s fallen in love with the New Rangers,” Kyle said softly, “it’s like they’re the only ones who ever existed. Like we weren’t the ones protecting them just a few weeks ago.”

  “Shade should have changed her code name,” Kirbie said as they continued down the street. Her voice had a hollow sound to it as it echoed out of her mask. “It just sounds villainous. At least Titan and Volt could go either way.”

  “I think they’re trying to tie it in to the fact that she’s always got on sunglasses.” Alex shrugged. “That it’s, like, her trademark or something.”

  “Back in the day there was a Ranger who had the power to basically scream really loudly,” Kyle said. “She called herself ‘Aria.’ Anyway, she was always carrying these opera glasses around with her and posing with them for pictures. The photographers loved it. Apparently when the Rangers started wearing matching uniforms, they tried to make her get rid of them. She fought them on it for weeks.”

  “Yeah, it’s the same kind of thing. Only with my mother, it gives her a way to hide her silver eyes when she’s controlling Photon. That way no one knows her real power.”

  “Plus, those silver eyes are super creepy-looking,” Kirbie added.

  “You kind of get used to them after a while,” Mallory said.

  “Same with Phantom’s paleness and tendency to walk out of shadows,” Alex said. “And did you know that Barrage always, always smells like a barbecue? It’s some weird side effect of his explosive powers.”

  Kirbie let out a short laugh, and then they walked on in silence. Alex kept thinking about the picture of his mother. With every step he took, he was marching toward a confrontation with her. Not just her, but his father, too, and the rest of the team he’d been raised to think of as his family. Facing them was inevitable. Still, thinking about actually having to fight against his parents made his stomach churn. He’d come to realize that they really were villains, but he didn’t want to hurt them. They were his parents, after all.

  They’d looked so happy in the poster. Would they be happy to see him, even if it was on the battlefield?

  “Deputies at two o’clock,” Kyle whispered.

  Alex turned to see two figures standing on a street corner not far ahead. One female, older, and a boy who looked to Alex as if he couldn’t have been out of high school. Both wore matching black pants and dark blue shirts with silver starbursts on the chests.

  The Deputies had begun to show up after Justice Tower fell, keeping a constant vigil for the Rangers. To some degree or another they all had minor superpowers. From what Alex could tell, their abilities ranged from levitating a few inches off the ground to shooting harmless fireworks from their fingertips. At first Alex and the others had referred to them as “Powers.” They were hardly anything to worry about until the New Rangers showed up and deputized them as their personal task force, doling out uniforms with silver starbursts on them instead of gold ones. Now they patrolled Sterling City, armed with Cloak weaponry they barely knew how to use and nearly unlimited authority—a dangerous combination.

  There were Deputies everywhere. Alex and his companions crossed to opposite s
idewalks as casually as possible whenever they popped up. The Deputies were always stopping someone, frisking them, asking them questions about who they were and where they were going. Alex tried to make some sort of sense out of who they chose to interrogate, but it seemed completely random. Around them, the rest of the crowd seemed blissfully ignorant of what was going on. Alex even heard some passersby thanking the Deputies. They welcomed the added sense of security.

  “The Deputies think they’re doing the right thing,” Mallory said. “They think they’re Rangers.”

  “They’re acting like thugs,” Kyle said.

  “Come on.” Kirbie nodded her werewolf head forward. “We’re almost there.”

  The buildings were getting shorter the farther they walked from the center of the city, until they were only a few stories tall. Still, the streets were scattered with handfuls of people in costumes. After a few more blocks, they finally reached their destination: the Sterling City Museum of Art and History. The museum was open to the public for the festival, but they had no time to stop and admire the ancient stone columns or suits of armor as they hurried through the inside—though Alex made a mental note of all the daggers and swords they passed, just in case they might come in handy. Soon they were on a back lawn surrounded by a tall stone fence. In the center of the space was a sandstone replica of Stonehenge, one of the museum’s most well-known exhibits.

  “Well,” Alex said, turning to the others. “This is it.”

  They nodded to him.

  “Let’s make a scene,” Kirbie said.

  Alex wrapped his thoughts around Mallory and lifted her up onto one of the tallest stones in the exhibit. She slipped off her mask and flung her jacket to the grass, revealing her old Beta uniform top. The silver skull of Cloak gleamed in the sun. Alex, Kirbie, and Kyle stood on the ground below her.

  “Citizens of Sterling City,” Mallory shouted in her most authoritative voice. “My teammates and I demand to speak to the New Rangers. Call for them. Send them here. And then leave this place before you find yourself in harm’s way.”