Summary: By Nathaniel Lee Read by Mat Weller Guest host: Dave Thompson of PodCastle Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by Nathaniel Lee All stories read by Mat Weller Rated 13 and up for violence Nemesis by Nathaniel Lee It was the middle of second-period Spanish when I felt my cell phone go off in my pocket. Three pulses, then two. That meant one of my alerts had hit paydirt. I’ve got newsfeeds filtered for keywords, pairing “emergency” and the names of every local school and business I could think of, plus I got Kenny from sixth period computer Science to cobble together a kind of hack on the actual first responders’ radio channels. If my phone had gone off, then there was trouble. If there was trouble, then the city needed Atom Boy. So where was he? Well, if I was in Spanish, then he was in History. No, wait, he’d dropped the AP course. Did he have some kind of math now instead? Crud. I had no idea. I’d lost our hero. “Miss Ramsey?” “Ahem!” “Uh, um, I mean, uh, Señora Ramsey?” ” Sí, Quentin?” “Yo, uh, yo poder uso el baño?” “Puedo. Y sí, se puede. Andale.” I clapped a hand over my pocket to keep my phone-bulge hidden and ran out of the classroom, careful to turn to the right as if I were heading for the boy’s room. A couple of months ago, that wouldn’t have been a bad idea; I’d discovered Adam’s secret when I walked in on him trying to get out of his tights at the end of fourth period. Which he’d missed, by the way, and I’d had to cover for him and pretend like I’d gotten a text from his mom about an emergency dental appointment. Nowadays, I made him use the locked room in the old elementary school building, next door to the art room. I had a key because Mr. Adelaide trusted me to use it only to work on my project. I felt bad about abusing that trust, but I figure helping a superhero save the world every week counts as some sort of civic duty. I checked there first. Adam was sitting at one of the old desks, his feet sticking out about a mile because it was designed for five-year-olds. He had his suit half on. His pale chest was bare, exposing those three wispy little curls that he was so proud of. He didn’t look up when I came in. “Adam? What’s wrong?” “I’ve lost my powers.” His voice was dull, his eyes unfocused. He sounded grim and deadly serious. “Oh, for crying out loud, Adam, we’ve been over this. Remember, last month? You thought it was some kind of lingering effect from the Recluse’s poison bite, but it was all psychosoma-whosit.” I ran in and snatched up his backpack, rummaging for his pill-box. “Have you been taking your Paxil?” “It made me gassy. I’m on a new one now. Starts with an ‘s,’ I think.” “Well, whatever it is, have you been taking it?” “No! I want to be me, not what some drug makes me.” I resisted the urge to punch him. It would be like hitting a steel wall, anyway. Instead, I found the box and opened it. The previous week’s pills were all still in their slots. White pills, red pills, blue pills. Patriotic. “Which one is it?” Adam shrugged. “Argh!” I pulled out one of each, thought about it, then made it two of each. He had superpowers. He could take it. “Here. Take these and get a move on.” Adam picked the pills up. “I told you, I lost my powers.” “You did not.” “Did so.” I glared at him. This called for drastic measures. I turned, picked up a wooden dowel from the supply table, closed my eyes, and whacked him over the head. I used my right hand this time; my left is my drawing hand, and I didn’t want to lose it for two weeks. The actinic flash was blinding even through my eyel[...]
