Mad Mask Read online

  Praise for Archvillain:

  “Good, snide fun.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “[Kyle] plays the antihero part with comic aplomb.”

  — Booklist

  “Lyga laces his story with ample humor…. Readers will find plenty to ponder, from guessing Mike’s true motivations to debating whether Kyle is a hero — or a villain in the making.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “Who is the good guy and who is really the archvillain? Tune in next time….”

  — School Library Journal

  Praise for The Mad Mask:

  “A fizzy mix of multilayered comedy and awesomely destructive battles, presented from an unusual narrative angle.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “Lyga packs the story with enough bombastic mayhem and light moral ambiguity to keep the pages flipping faster than a speeding you-know-what.”

  — Booklist

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Previously in Archvillain

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Preview

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Barry Lyga

  Copyright

  Kyle Camden has superpowers!

  You’d think this would be great news, but nope! Kyle got his powers one night when he witnessed a “plasma storm” on the outskirts of Bouring, the town where he lives. At the same time, he also saw the arrival of Mighty Mike, a superpowered alien kid who has become a superhero and the darling of the town and the news media.

  So Mighty Mike is now the most popular kid at Bouring Middle School, a role that was once occupied by Kyle. But Kyle’s famous, elaborate pranks — which make adults look like fools — just can’t compete with Mike’s superpowers. And when Kyle tried to pull a superpowered prank on Mike — by, uh, erasing his pants with a high-powered laser — it didn’t go well and chaos ensued. (Good news: Kyle was disguised as the “Azure Avenger” at the time. Bad news: Everyone calls him the “Blue Freak” instead.)

  Only Kyle knows that Mike is from outer space. He can’t tell anyone, though, because then they would know that he had witnessed Mike’s arrival … and they would know that he’s the Blue Freak. Kyle doesn’t want people with inferior intellects mucking around with his powers, like the doctors and scientists who are always studying Mighty Mike.

  (Oh, yeah — Kyle’s intelligence is also off the charts. He was smart before the plasma storm, but now he’s even smarter.)

  Things got even worse when a dirt monster (you had to be there) tried to kill Kyle’s best friend, Mairi MacTaggert. Kyle saved the day, but he did it from behind the scenes — to everyone else, it looked like Mighty Mike saved Mairi … and like the Blue Freak made things worse, not better.

  So now Kyle has decided it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy. With the help of Erasmus — his specially programmed iPod — he’s going to do whatever it takes to destroy Mighty Mike. So far, that has meant lots of run-ins with the law, as Kyle tries to track down the components he needs for various gadgets that will help him to:

  A) Expose Mike as an alien from another world, OR

  B) Wipe the alien punk out, OR

  C) Embarrass him to the point that he leaves town (and, preferably, the planet), OR

  D) Some combination of all of the above.

  It’s not easy being Kyle….

  “BLUE FREAK! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED! PLACE THE BARREL ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!”

  Kyle grumbled under his breath, hovering a hundred feet over the parking lot at Axis Research & Consumer Products (motto: “Your world revolves around us!”). He counted quickly. There were sixteen Rent-A-Cops down there under him. He wasn’t worried about them.

  There were also about a dozen real cops. Guys from the Centre City Police Department, including the guy with the bullhorn. He wasn’t worried about them, either.

  Add to that a couple of FBI agents. Eh. No big deal.

  But the platoon of Army guys? Yeah, that he was the tiniest bit worried about!

  Fortunately, there were also reporters and cameramen down there. It looked like Channel Five (“Alive @ Five!”) and Channel Thirteen (“Thirteen’s Your Lucky Number!”). Good. Kyle liked being on TV. He was certainly more important than the usual garbage they showed.

  He cleared his throat and glared down at more than fifty pairs of eyes and a couple dozen guns all pointed at him. Then he spoke through the PA system he’d installed in his mask:

  “ATTENTION COPS AND OTHER IDIOTS! FIRST OF ALL, MY HANDS ARE ABOVE MY HEAD!” (It was true — Kyle held a barrel of extremely rare chemicals over his head.) “SECOND OF ALL, I’M NOT THE BLUE FREAK! I’M THE AZURE —”

  He was cut off by a hail of bullets from below. They whizzed and sang as they flew past him.

  “Idiots,” he mumbled as he twisted in the air to avoid being hit. Kyle was bulletproof, and everyone knew it. They were just trying to intimidate him. But the barrel of chemicals wasn’t bulletproof — those morons could rupture it and destroy the very thing they were trying to save. Plus, they might poke holes in his costume. There was no way in the world Kyle was wasting another night with a needle and thread, patching this thing. (How was it that the guys in the movies got into fight scenes every five minutes and never had to sew up their costumes?)

  “ATTENTION, MORONS!” Kyle called out. “YOUR BULLETS CANNOT HURT ME!” He wanted to just fly away, but he couldn’t let anyone see which direction he was flying. The authorities believed that the “Blue Freak” was based in or near the town of Bouring, and Kyle didn’t want to give them any more evidence. Or lead them straight to his house. He could just picture the looks on Mom’s and Dad’s faces when they opened the door to see the FBI and half the U.S. Army standing there.

  The thought made him laugh out loud. Oops. He had forgotten to turn off his PA — his laughter boomed out over the parking lot.

  “WE’RE GLAD THIS IS SO AMUSING TO YOU!” the cop said through his bullhorn. “HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS?”

  Just then another wave of ammo came up from the ground. But this time, it was a new kind of ammo — smoke grenades and rocket-propelled nets. There were also some long, skinny silvery things that Kyle quickly identified as tranquilizer darts. Were these people completely brainless? If a bullet couldn’t go through his skin, did they really think a dart would do the trick?

  “Oh, you’re kidding me,” Kyle said (this time with the PA turned off). “Are these jokers for real?”

  “Stop wasting time with them,” Erasmus said through his earbuds as Kyle deftly dodged the nets and flew higher than the smoke. A stray smoke grenade came near him and he knocked it aside with an effortless kick, easier than tapping a soccer ball into the net. “We have more important things to do than to play with the cops.”

  “It’s not just the cops,” Kyle told the artificial intelligence. He had programmed Erasmus based on his own thoughts, so why did he have to keep explaining things? “It’s the Army and the FBI, too. I’m not playing — I’m studying their patterns.”

  “They have idiotic patterns,” Erasmus said. “They can’t get to you from the ground.” He paused. “Oh. I just intercepted a signal.
They have fighter jets scrambling from an Air Force base fifty miles from here. They’ll be here in —”

  “ATTENTION, BLUE FREAK!” Now it was an FBI agent in shades and a boring gray suit with the bullhorn. The cop who’d had it was kicking at the ground as he stalked off. Kyle felt momentarily bad for him. “WE HAVE SUMMONED MIGHTY MIKE!”

  Kyle stiffened at the mention of his nemesis. “Of course you have …” He seethed under his face mask.

  “Cowards,” Erasmus spat. (A neat trick, considering Erasmus didn’t have any spit. Or a mouth, for that matter.)

  “SURRENDER NOW AND HE WON’T HURT YOU!”

  “TELL YOU WHAT,” Kyle blared, “YOU TELL HIM TO SURRENDER!”

  “T-minus three minutes to the jets,” Erasmus warned.

  “Wait for it,” Kyle said, executing some more aerial acrobatics in order to dodge the latest pathetic volley of bullets, nets, and grenades from below.

  “Kyle …”

  Kyle hated the way Erasmus could seem to talk down to him just by saying his name. He figured maybe it was time to reprogram the AI to call him “Master” or something a little more respectful.

  “I want him to see,” Kyle said.

  And just then — as if summoned by Kyle’s desire — a dark pinprick on the horizon moved and became clear.

  Mighty Mike.

  The do-goodingest do-gooder on the face of the planet. Resplendent in his green-and-gold costume, the cape fluttering in the wind as he soared toward Kyle, his fists ahead of him, his blond hair blown back. He looked like some kind of movie hero, but Kyle knew better. Mighty Mike was up to something here on Earth. He could just tell. He knew it deep down in his gut.

  Kyle chuckled to himself. “Wait for it,” he told Erasmus again. “Almost.”

  Down below, Kyle watched as the cops and the others scattered. No doubt they didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire when Kyle and Mike pounded each other, with Air Force jets firing air-to-air missiles at the same time. There would be a lot of shrapnel dropping out of the sky.

  Well, there would be a lot of shrapnel. If Kyle wasn’t about to escape, of course.

  Mike was now so close that Kyle could see the curl of his upper lip as he bore down, snarling. Kyle wished other people could see Mighty Mike like this — angry, not the infuriatingly nice vibe that he threw out to the rest of the world. If he could figure out a way to show people this version of Mighty Mike, they might chase the brat off the planet without any further prodding from Kyle.

  Oh, well. He would have to do things the hard way. A genius’s path is never easy.

  “Kyle!” Erasmus actually sounded panicked.

  “Don’t worry —” Kyle said, making a split-second decision. As much as he wanted to make a clean getaway, he couldn’t resist the chance to tussle with Mighty Mike. So even though Erasmus was screaming in his ears, Kyle maintained his position, dodging aside at the last possible second as Mike hurtled through the air past him.

  “Whoops!” Kyle jeered. “Missed me!”

  Mike spun around and came back, leading with a fist. Kyle ducked under it, careful to keep his grip on the chemicals. For a few moments, he led Mighty Mike like a bullfighter, constantly out of his grasp. Mike’s eyes burned with rage and he snarled. Kyle wished he had a camera so that he could take a picture of this, the real Mighty Mike. Something to show to the world.

  “Kyle!” Erasmus cried. “Those jets are almost —”

  “Fine, fine. Razzle-dazzle.”

  At just that moment, from a small copse of trees on a strip between the Axis parking lot and the highway, a tiny, almost imperceptible puff of smoke rose up. A second later, a small rocket — no bigger than a large firecracker — exploded in midair near Kyle’s position.

  The air filled with color and light.

  Down below, everyone shielded their eyes from Kyle’s latest, proudest invention: laser-chaff. It was sort of like special glittering confetti, only instead of reflecting light, it also produced powerful multicolored beams that shot out in all directions. The effect was like an endless series of fireworks and strobe lights in the sky, blinding and confusing anyone who looked at it.

  Kyle, of course, was prepared for the laser-chaff. He’d built special filtered lenses into his mask, so that he could still see clear as day. Everyone else, though, was either looking away or completely helpless.

  Including — Kyle laughed again — Mighty Mike. As Kyle watched, Mighty Mike flew straight into the laser-chaff. He pulled up — too late — and spun around, blinded, his hands coming up as if he could claw the lights away from his face.

  “Sucker!” Kyle crowed. He wanted to stick around for a while to watch his nemesis flail about in the laser-chaff, but those Air Force jets were hovering into view over the horizon. Time to burn some air and get out of here.

  He flew south at top speed. Bouring was to the east, but he knew the government was probably trying to track him with a satellite. He would fly south and then — when he was sure he’d flown fast enough to outpace the satellite — zigzag to the northeast and go home. The idiots watching him fly away would think he was headed somewhere other than Bouring.

  Kyle’s plans didn’t always pan out precisely the way he hoped, but even his worst enemy would have to admit: His escapes were pretty spectacular.

  He’d figured there was a chance he’d be caught trying to steal the chemicals, so he’d concealed a rocket launcher in the trees before breaking into the lab, with a voice command to Erasmus set to fire a grenade full of laser-chaff. It had worked without a hitch.

  “Forgetting something?” Erasmus asked, a little too snidely.

  “Flame out,” Kyle told Erasmus, and the AI sent a second signal down to the rocket launcher that opened an ampoule of powerful acid, reducing the launcher to a puddle of metal. Untraceable.

  “You’re welcome,” Erasmus said, a hurt tone in his voice.

  Kyle sighed. Why did he have to have an AI with a martyr complex?

  He kicked in a bit of extra speed. A successful heist. He was one step closer to destroying Mighty Mike.

  Kyle was miles away from Axis Research & Consumer Products when a figure stepped out of the trees, not far from where the rocket launcher had slowly dissolved into a pile of shiny goo. The figure was slender, wearing a long cloak. It also wore an ornate mask, carved out of ebony. The mask was as black as midnight except for a single tear made of ivory, frozen as it trickled down the cheek from the left eyehole.

  In the air, the laser-chaff was still flashing and sparking. Two Air Force jets blasted overhead, scattering some of the chaff in their wake. As the masked figure watched, Mighty Mike shook his head, clearing his vision, and spun around in rapid circles before finally giving up.

  Meanwhile, the ground was a chaos of cops, agents, and soldiers. No one noticed the masked figure who simply gazed up at the sky, nodded as if pleased with itself, and then melted back into the cover of the trees.

  Today’s “heist” was a complete success. Not only did I take possession of the drum of synthetic chemical compounds needed for my experiments, but I also held off a force of police, federal agents, and soldiers, to say nothing of escaping from the scene without Mighty Mike being able to follow.

  I’m getting better at this whole “supervillain” thing.

  Of course, I’m not really a villain, super or otherwise. The appearance of villainy is a necessary fiction, required by the fact that the average person is too mentally challenged to understand anything beyond a simple dialectic of good vs. evil. Therefore, if Mighty Mike is “good,” then anyone who opposes him must, perforce, be “evil.”

  Ha!

  Furthermore, anyone who “steals” must be “evil” as well. This is the worst of reductive morality, but it is to be expected from the ignorant masses.

  Someday, long after Mighty Mike has been destroyed and the world has come to understand my genius, I will decipher this journal and publish it for all to see. With that in mind, let me dumb down my thinki
ng now so that my future readers can follow along:

  I am not evil. My stealing is not evil. It is necessary, for I am at war with Mighty Mike.

  If the rest of the world knew that Mighty Mike was an alien, I would not be acting alone. But, unfortunately, I cannot reveal Mike’s origins (for good reasons, all explained earlier in this journal).

  Therefore, I must find a way to expose Mike for what he is. Since people love and worship Mike, anything I do to him will be seen as “evil,” until the moment I succeed. At that point, I will no longer be seen as “evil.” So until that time comes, I must endure being called the “Blue Freak” and being at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and all the other indignities visited upon me.

  I have my standards, though. There are lines I will not cross.

  I steal, yes. I admit this. However! However, I only steal things that are absolutely necessary to defeating Mighty Mike. I do not steal for myself, you see? I steal to make the world a better place.

  I refuse to steal money, for example. And I would never and will never steal anything irreplaceable. The chemicals I stole today are rare, true, but they are not irreplaceable. The chemists at Axis can eventually reproduce the process in question and create more chemicals. Yes, it will take time and money, but that’s what they’re there for. They work for Axis to make that stuff.

  Still, I have to admit…. Pulling off a heist like this was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I started out doing it because I had to, because I needed the chemicals and there was no other way to get them. But around the time the cops arrived and thought they could shoot me out of the sky, it sort of became fun. Like a game.

  Or actually … It was like a prank, really. I play pranks in order to remind people that they aren’t as serious or as important as they think they are. Stealing the chemicals from Axis was really the same thing — they were foolish enough to think that they had safeguarded their precious chemicals, that no one could ever steal them. I swooped in and proved them wrong. They’ll have to rethink all of their security procedures and improve dramatically.