“Probably not,” Martha said. “Teenage boys need to compensate for their shortcomings somehow.”
“What was the plan?” Seth asked, voice crackling through the speakers. Nick watched as the dot on the screen moved slowly around Burke Tower. The fact that his best friend and potential future boyfriend was flying was not lost on Nick. He was going to have to ask later if he could ride on his back as Seth flew around. He was owed this. Big-time. He decided to put it aside for now because he was sitting near Seth’s aunt and uncle, and he didn’t want them knowing he was thinking about riding their nephew.
“Just to be clear,” Nick said, “I haven’t written it yet. But I did have it in an outline which had bullet points. Everyone knows that a good outline has bullet points, so I think we’ll be fine.”
“Dooooomed,” Gibby moaned.
“I believe in you, Nicky,” Seth said, and Nick thought back to the chubby boy on the swings, chocolate pudding on his chin. “If you think it’ll work, we have to try.”
“You need to burn away the shadows,” Nick said into the mic. “That’s his superpower. He can manipulate any shadow. You need to burn so brightly that all he sees is light. At least long enough until the pills wear off. Do we know how long it takes?”
“Too long,” Seth said. “We have to stop him now.”
“The bracelets,” Gibby said thoughtfully. “The ones on his wrists. They have LED beams. Get rid of those and he won’t be able to make new shadows. At the very least, it’ll slow him down.”
Bob leaned toward the speaker. “That level of power has gotta be strong, Seth. Stronger than anything you’ve ever done before. You need to keep it out of the city if you can. Can’t let people get hurt.”
Seth laughed, though it sounded strained. “Like when we first started?”
“You got it, son,” Bob said. “Just like when we first started. But you’re not like that anymore. You have control now. I don’t need to worry about getting my eyebrows burned off these days.”
It boggled Nick’s mind, this history that he’d grown up alongside but had never known about. He had so many questions, but he’d save them for later.
“And what then?” Jazz asked. “If Seth’s able to get him in a place where he can stop him, what happens next?” She looked troubled. “You said we won’t kill him, and that’s good. But what happens to him?”
Nick thought quickly. “That’s not up to us, is it? If he’s done all these things, if he’s hurt people before, then he needs to answer for it. We’ll turn him over to the police. Cap and my dad will know what to do.”
“Do you think his dad knows?” Gibby asked. “I mean, if Simon Burke knows how to make Extraordinaries, don’t you think he’d know about one living under his own roof?”
Nick’s stomach sank to his feet. “Seth didn’t tell you?”
“Little busy,” Seth muttered. “Haven’t had time.”
Well, shit. “Burke knows,” Nick said as he closed his eyes, thinking about Owen telling him how he’d been in the hospital because he’d seen things. Darkness. Shadows. He’d been given medicine to make it stop, but what if that had been a lie? “He’s the one who made Owen who he is.”
Jazz squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”
Nick opened his eyes, shaking his head. “Something Owen told me. He said he was sick when he was younger. Got put on medication. He was all but telling me he was Shadow Star, and I didn’t see it. I was so focused on—I wasn’t thinking. But all of this seems to go back to Burke Tower, right? What if Owen is trying to get revenge against his father for what he did to him? Burke Pharmaceuticals. For every experiment, for every creation, there have to be tests. On subjects.”
“Simon Burke experimented on his own son?” Martha asked, hands clutched against her chest.
“He did. To be his own personal guard dog.” Everything was falling into place, pieces of a puzzle coming together to form a terrible picture. “All those attacks on Burke Tower. His father used him to protect what was hidden inside, to keep the secrets safe. But it doesn’t matter, at least not right now. We need to focus on stopping Owen first. All the rest we’ll deal with later.”
“We have to find him before we can stop him,” Gibby said, leaning over Nick’s shoulder