“Barbeque,” his dad adds proudly.

  We have nothing to do but celebrate, so Tenchi and I drive his car to a park on the lake. I’m still shaking a little from the adrenaline as he cranks the stereo and we sit on the hood, enjoying the perfect moment. The lake is an intense spectrum of blue, from the very dark to clear turquoise. There isn't a cloud in the sky, and most of my high school is already splashing in the water. A few kayaks float lazily in the lake. One of them is much further out than the others.

  “That’s Stace out there, you know,” Tenchi says with his Cheshire cat grin.

  I can’t recognize her from this distance, but he’s probably right. I’m feeling far too good to blush at his teasing. We walk down to the water’s edge with a fair bit of swagger and look out over the gentle waves.

  “Best day ever!” Tenchi says, slapping my shoulder.

  We are going to be superheroes.

  We are going to be SUPERHEROES!

  Then the music skips and splutters.

  “Just a glitch,” I say, but I pull out my phone to check its status.

  Phones are always the first to go during a saucer attack. Mine seems okay, but the reception is way down. Then the song dies, and my phone screen goes dark. We run over to the car and flip the radio to the emergency channel.

  “Seek…-elter, seek….shelter!” the radio crackles.

  I panic and try to use my dead phone. Tenchi is already moving, climbing onto the shack’s roof.

  “SAUCER! SAUCER! SAUCER!” he screams.

  People start moving fast, racing out of the water and into their cars. High school cliques and divisions are forgotten as people pile into whatever car they can find. I see James and his friends squeezing two nerds into the back of their overloaded car and waving more people on. Tenchi keeps shouting until he can see that everyone has heard him, and then leaps down to his car.

  “We have to wait for Stace,” I yell, and he nods.

  She was the furthest kayak from shore, and it feels like forever before she lands beside us and jumps into the car. Everyone else has already left, and the lake is quieter than I’ve ever seen it.

  “Hi Stace,” I say, and she gives me a worried smile.

  The nearest shelter is across town, which should only be a few minutes away. Tenchi takes the most direct route down the main street, but we are cut off by the ruins of a fallen clock tower.

  “Here we go,” he mutters.

  A lumbering figure stands on top of the ruins. It’s a triclops, an alien with three arms each ending in a laser cannon. Tenchi makes a handbrake turn as the triclops scours the ground around us. We swerve down a side alley, knocking over trash cans as we flee. The car scrapes along a water pipe but we squeeze through and skid into a broad street lined with tall trees. It had been a beautiful area yesterday, but now most of the trees are on fire and the road is already littered with burning cars and glass.

  We start driving, but a car cuts Tenchi off and races down the street.

  “No good!” yells Stacey, pointing out another triclops at it leaps off a roof and right into our path.

  Tenchi hits the brakes and we slide into a tree. The car that cut us off doesn’t stop in time and runs right into the triclops. There is a bright flash that leaves the car as flat as if it had hit a cliff wall, but the triclops is unscathed.

  “Out!” Stacey orders.

  There is smoke everywhere. We escape behind the safety of a SUV and hunker down. The triclops turns and walks away, ignoring us but firing at random into shops. Glass shatters and bricks melt beneath its haphazard barrage, so we keep our heads down. I hear glass crashing further down the street as a kid bursts onto the road. She sees the triclops and freezes in panic. The triclops turns towards her, lasers red and ready.

  We are too far away to do anything.

  James leaps out from behind a tree, grabs the kid and dives back into cover. He moves fast, just not fast enough. The triclops hits the tree, sending James and the girl flying through a cloud of splinters. They land in the street, completely exposed. The girl runs to safety, but James falls over as he tries to stand.

  “He’s broken his leg,” whispers Tenchi.

  We stare in horror; James looks right at me, and I swear his eyes meet mine. We both know what happens next. James shakes his head in disbelief.

  The triclops incinerates him, leaving nothing behind but ashes. Tenchi pulls me aside before we are next, and the building behind us explodes showering us in hot brick and glass. The blast knocks us over, and my ears are ringing as I stand up. Tenchi grabs me, points down the street and says something, but I can’t hear. He shakes his head and points at the ground to where Stace is lying unconscious, then back down the street to where the triclops is heading for us.

  “I’ll distract it, you take Stace and run,” says Tenchi.

  “Wait!” I protest, but he’s gone.

  I throw Stace over my shoulder and I start walking as fast as I can, looking back over my shoulder to make sure Tenchi is okay. I hear lasers firing behind me, and Tenchi yells something that sounds like “faster, dude!” We reach an alley, and I relax enough to look behind me. I can’t see Tenchi. Windows start exploding around us, so I drop Stace and fall to the ground. I’m bleeding pretty badly, but I try to shield her with my body as best as I can. She opens her eyes and smiles a little.

  “Stace? Are you okay?”

  “Idiot,” she says.

  “What? This isn’t my fault.”

  “This is the first time you’ve spoken to me all year, and now we are going to die. Idiot!”

  Ah. I really am an idiot.

  I see a scout ball near us. It’s nothing much more than a laser cannon mounted on two thin legs, but it's more than enough to do us in. I freeze, but it starts walking towards us anyway.

  Stace holds my hand and closes her eyes as she passes out.

  “Sorry,” I say again, but she doesn’t hear me.

  The scout walker explodes in a brilliant flash of white flame. A familiar figure floats over its ruins. It’s The General; we’re saved!

  He flies towards me, staying about three feet off the ground. The General taps a button on the side of his helmet and the faceplate folds away revealing an angry face covered in sweat. Wires and metals plates run over his bald skull and back into his green suit. It’s really him, The General, one of the greatest superheroes who ever lived, the man I've always admired, the man who-

  “Get to a shelter, idiot!” he snarls, swiping the air with a massive blue sword.

  “Huge fan-” I mumble.

  My head is a bit foggy. I want to ask for his autograph, but instead I just roll next to Stace and groan. The General's eyes flick over to Stace and then back to me. The look in his eyes makes my whole body freeze.

  “What. Are. You. Doing. With. MY DAUGHTER!” he roars, and with each word his sword swipes closer to my face.

  “Who-”

  He blasts the ground beside me with a blue laser. I can feel the heat and my mind shoots into overdrive. Stace is unconscious, covered in blood and wearing a bikini. I realize that this doesn’t look good for me, but The General doesn't stop to ask questions before he blasts me with blue lightning that rips through my body. I roll away and open my hands.

  “It's not what you think-”

  A bolt of lightning rips through the air and blasts the wall behind me. I scramble towards Stace; maybe being close to her will keep me safe.

  “MY DAUGHTER!” The General screams, flying towards me.

  He kicks me in the chest and I feel a rib break as my body lifts off the ground. I moan; my childhood hero is trying to kill me. This can't be happening. A car explodes nearby, showering The General in boiling metal that rolls off his shields. Lightning crackles down his arm and leaps into my body. I spasm and scream, dropping to the ground.

  I’m going to die.

  A superhero drops from the sky and glides between me and The General. She hovers in an unusual, cross-legged stance as if she were sitting on an invisible flying carpet. I recognize her as Blizzard Master.

  “Stop!” she says, but The General blasts me again.

  Blizzard Master spreads out her hands and a wall of green ice bursts from the ground in front of me and takes the brunt of The General’s storm. The pain stops, and I breathe again.

  Whew.

  Something heavy hits the dome; cracks appear. I can't see through the dark ice, but I can hear what sounds like explosions. A single spark sneaks through the cracks and hits me in the chest, dancing painfully across my whole body and throwing me hard against the alley wall. The pain is incredible. My vision starts to fade, my heart stops.

  And, for the second time in my life, I die.

  Lesson Two: No One Cares What You Think

  “Superheroes are our brightest and our bravest. We teach them how to use their powers to serve humanity, to be the heroes we all need, the saviors of humanity, the very best of us.”

  -Official Superhero Corps website.

  “Superheroes are ordinary people with extraordinary abilities of destruction. Think about that, and if you aren’t scared then you haven’t been paying sufficient attention to the world.”

  -Email from Dark Fire to an unidentified recipient, read at Dark Fire’s court-martial.

  I wake up on a mattress that smells of old socks and failure.

  I open one eye and find myself in a long hall with a high ceiling. Ropes hang from the ceiling, and I can see treadmills and racks of weights in near, grim rows. A climbing wall dominates the wall near me, promising hours of tricky handholds and painful falls.

  I’ve died and hell is a high school gym class. It’s just like I always feared.

  “Up,” says a stern voice, but I ignore it.

  I know I’m no saint, but no one deserves this. What did I do that was so bad? I can remember trying to save Stace, and being chased by The General, but I can’t quite remember what happened next. Did he really say that Stace was his daughter? Did she survive? Did Tenchi? Cold fear descends on my heart and I desperately try to piece together what happened.

  “Up!” insists the voice again.

  My body doesn’t hurt. It should; I heard bones crack as I passed out. Maybe they gave me a new body when I arrived in hell, but I don’t see why they would bother. Maybe I’m not in-

  “UP!” yells the voice, and my neck erupts in pain.

  I put my hands to my throat and find a thin collar wound tight around the skin. It burns my neck and burns my fingers when I try to tear it off. I scream, and the pain stops suddenly.

  “Get up.”

  I get up clumsily. I’m wearing grey tracksuit pants and a pale orange shirt that has Red Five written on the chest. I haven’t seen the pants or shirt before, which means that somebody dressed me while I was still asleep. Creepy. There are six other people in orange standing in a ragged line beside me. Three are men, two are women and one is androgynous. They all look older than me, decades older in some cases, and they look as confused as I feel. We are all wearing tight metal collars around our necks.

  Facing us are a bald older man and a young woman with short blond hair. They are both in black shirts trimmed with gold, and the way they stand suggests they are in command and take a no-nonsense approach to punishing their new batch of sinners. The man stands upright and in a military manner with his arms behind his back but the woman seems far more interested in the data feed projecting from a pin on her shirt. Both the man and the woman are wearing similar collars as us the seven of us who have just stood up.

  “My name is Past Prime,” says the man, “and this is Never Lies. We are now in charge of your training. Do as we say, or we will initiate your collars.”

  Past Prime looks familiar. Really, really familiar.

  “I’m not meant to be here!” protests the man beside me, and a couple of the others nod in agreement.

  I don’t even know where here is, although my mind is so slow that I’m not too sure who I am just yet either. I’m still trying to work out of this is hell, purgatory or a nightmare. At least I’m wearing pants, so I guess it’s not a nightmare.

  Never Lies sighs theatrically and shakes her head.

  “You are not here by mistake,” Past Prime says, “all of you are here because you have potential, but you failed in some way. Some of you have been kicked off superhero teams, some of you are criminals. What you did, who you were or who you know is no longer important. You will serve in the Cerberus Brawlers, or you will spend the rest of your lives in jail for treason.”

  The Cerberus Brawlers? I’ve never heard of that team, and I thought I knew them all. I’m not the only confused one, and many of my team are unhappy at finding themselves treated so badly.

  “I don’t belong here,” a man shouts, “and when-”

  My collar explodes in red-hot pain and all seven of us hit the mattresses.

  “Up,” says Past Prime patiently.

  I get up, and I’m the first to my feet. I’m still not sure where I am or what is happening, but I’m learning to respect that voice. The others are slower, but Past Prime waits without hurting us further.

  “Service or prison, you decide. The technicians are going to set you up now.”

  Men and women in blue shirts flock to us. One straps a set of sensors onto my arms and the side of my head while another checks the movement of my arms and legs. They take blood samples, test my blood pressure and shine lights into my eyes. They treat me like I’m nothing more than a science experiment, poking and prodding with an enthusiasm that worries me. My mind feels sluggish, so I just sit back and let them do their work. Never Lies wanders over to where I am and gives me a look like she does not like what she sees. She shakes her head and turns away.

  “I’m not a criminal or a failure,” I say loudly to her, “so I think-”

  “No one cares what you think, trainee,” she interrupts curtly and walks away without even looking at me.

  “I-”

  “-set,” interrupts a technician, “now for the suit.”

  The men and women in blue are replaced by a team in green with big boxes. The boxes hold parts of a bulky suit of padded armor, and the technicians start dressing me. Everything fits snugly together, but the suit is bulky and surprisingly hard to move in.

  “Just like the real thing,” says a technician in green, “so get used to it.”

  It feels like I’m wearing three wetsuits all at once. It’s uncomfortable to say the least, but I don’t have time to protest before the technicians walk me to a treadmill and start me running. I fall over a few times until I find my rhythm; it’s like running underwater, only not as fun.

  The running helps clear my head; I’m pretty sure that this isn’t hell. I’ve read Dante’s Inferno, and it made no mention of technicians or blood tests. Plus, the suit I’m wearing looks a lot like the power suits that superheroes wear on their missions. I remember being accepted into the Superhero Corps, so am I in some strange training program? I let the treadmill dump me on the ground and walk over to Never Lies. She doesn’t look surprised to see me.

  “The last thing I remember was my town being attacked,” I say, “I need to know if my father and friends survived.”

  I expect her to shock me or order me back to work, but Never Lies checks the data feed hanging in the air in front of her face. She scans the list quickly.

  “You father is fine. There were thirty-nine deaths from the attack. Check the list.”

  She spins her feed around so that I can read the list. My Dad isn’t on the list, and neither is Tenchi or his family. That’s a relief, but I recognize most of the names of those who died. I don’t know how to feel: I’m sad for the people who were killed, yet happy that my friends and family are okay. Mostly I feel angry; none of those people should have died.

  “Those numbers are two weeks old, and are final,” she says.

  Two weeks? What have I been doing all that time? I have a hundred questions running through my head, but Never Lies looks impatient and there is really only more one answer I need.

  “Will I get to fight saucers?”

  She shrugs.

  “The Cerberus Brawlers kill more saucers than any other unit. Pass your training and we’ll make you part of the team.”

  “Okay,” I say and turn back to the treadmill.

  “Is that all?” she calls after me. “Don’t you want to know where you are, or why you are here? You must have more questions.”

  “My family is safe, and I’ll get to kill saucers. What more is there?”

  I hear her laugh as I get back on the treadmill and start running. I run until my legs hurt, and then I stop and crash onto the ground, bouncing on the soft mats. A women in white brings me a bottle of water and an apple. It’s crisp and juicy, much better than the ones Dad buys from the grocery store. Other men and women in white shirts are handing out water and fruit to the other trainees, almost like the airplane stewards in old movies.

  “Next station!” orders Past Prime.

  The armor is heavy, and it takes two technicians to help me to my feet. The next station tests how fast I can respond to flashing colored lights. I jump for blue, duck for red, turn left or right for green and pink, and freeze for yellow. I’m not great at it, but I do my best. The technicians record my every movement with cameras mounted in floating drones.

  After a while the lights stop, and the green-shirts lead me to a rope hanging from a platform about sixteen feet off the ground. If this was a movie, it would be time for a training montage but I really, really hate gym. I don’t even make it halfway up the rope before I slip back down and land heavily on a mattress.

  “Saucer!” I shout in frustration.

  Superheroes don’t need to climb ropes, they can fly. Why am I doing this? Past Prime walks over to me and looks down. He shakes his head.

  “Up,” he says.

  I don’t get up; I’m exhausted. My collar fires up and pain arcs over my body. I roll around until the pain stops.

  “Up,” Prime says quietly.

 

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