“What?!”

The Commander pulled his head back from me and his eyes glowed yellow. “Djinn, Mute, Miss Celeste--kill this Weakling, please.”

The syllable “What?!” formed on my lips again, but before I could utter it a titanic force smashed into me and knocked me forwards. This time I went tumbling head over heels across the airport floor, denting it as I went, and landed on my front twenty feet away.

I pushed myself up on my elbows, then snapped the handcuffs which had still been uselessly attached to my wrists. What?! No...not Abram, too... And Mute and Djinn too?

Once again, within the space of a few minutes, my whole world was crumbling down around me.

But there wasn’t even time to despair or to assess the situation. Before I could think of anything else, another shockwave of force smashed into me, knocking me sideways so that I rolled over and over on the floor.

I stopped rolling eventually and skidded along my back, knocking into the prone form of Dr Black by a wall. A paramedic had been attending to him, but now the man got up and ran off as fast he could.

“Ow…” I moaned as my limbs and chest compained with pain. These attacks actually hurt me. That wasn’t a good sign. I got shakily to my feet. Dr Black was still out cold; that was a mercy at least.

People were screaming and running away again. A few crazies stayed where they were, holding up their phones to film what was happening.

And there was Aurora, drawing in her breath, her chest expaning, her mouth closed, tilting her head back, about to release another attack at me.

“Shiiii--” I started.

The word got drowned out by another impossibly loud, earsplitting, female shout.

This time I braced myself, managing to put one foot slightly backwards and hold up my arms in an ‘X’ in front of me, fists clenched, just before the force of the impact from Aurora’s sonic scream ripped into my body.

This time I wasn’t knocked over, though as the wave of sound moved through me I vibrated where I stood.

It still hurt though. Lots. It was like being punched everywhere in my body simultaneously.

I’m going to die, I thought as the vibrations subsided. My thoughts became slow and calm in the face of likely death. First Viper, then ‘Dr Darkness’, now this. Abram I had begun to wonder about, but Mute and Djinn--how could you betray me too? I thought you were my friends. I thought you were on my side. What did I do to deserve this?

Nobody heard me. Nobody replied over the mind link.

I lowered my arms. I could see Aurora drawing in another breath. Mute and Djinn stood next to her, and behind them all stood Abram. They all looked on in cold, grave silence. Mute had a hand stretched out behind him and was apparently telekinetically holding a number of the policemen at bay so they wouldn’t interfere.

I looked at my friends, pleadingly. “Mute, Djinn!” I called out. “What are you doing?! Please! Stop this!”

“He’s too close to that wall,” I heard Abram say. “It will absorb too much of Loudmouth’s blasts. Djinn, put him back in the middle of the room. Mute, you hold him in place while Loudmouth finishes her job.”

Loudmouth? I thought. “So she has her own codename already? Or did you already know her before? Was this whole thing some kind of set-up?”

None of them replied, but the air around Djinn and she appeared next to me.

I felt a lurching sensation in my stomach, and all at once Djinn had disappeared again.

A way in front of me, as Djinn reappeared at his side, Mute put out his hands and made a clawed, gripping gesture in the air with both of them.

I felt invisible forces constrict and around my wrists and ankles, pressing down on them. I tried to resist and push back against them, but it was like I was being held in place by a knot of tight, invisible rope that even I could not break out of. My hands pressed involuntarily against my hips, my arms pinned to the side of my body, and my feet stayed stuck to the spot. I stood straight, ready for Aurora’s next blow.

Since when had Mute’s telekinesis been this consistently strong? Had he been lying to me about the strength of it all along? Had that been a deceptive part of this set-up as well?

Or was...was Mute really scared as well right now, just like I was?

Next to Mute and Djinn, Aurora looked intently at me, about to attack again.

I should have tried to put my hands up to defend myself again, but Mute’s telekinetic grip on me was just too strong, and in any case I had now lost the will to fight.

Nobody was my friend. Nobody was on my side. How could they all be working against me?

Aurora opened her mouth and shouted again.

WHAM.

My whole body shook, but I stayed fixed in place. Without being able to fly backwards across the room, my body took even more of the force of the shockwave. My limbs shouted back in extreme pain. My lungs were on fire. I felt a trickle of something run down from inside one of my nostrils and over my lips. Blood.

I was going to die.

WHAM.

This one loosened a tooth in the back of my mouth. My chest felt like it was going to collapse inwards. All of me screamed pain.

I shut my eyes. At least I still had control of those. Mute’s telekinesis was only acting on my arms and legs to keep me held in one place. At least I didn’t have to look at the people I had until recently thought of as my friends while they killed me.

How could they do this? I thought. What was even the point of stringing me along all this time, only to turn against me now... I didn’t understand it… It didn’t make any sense...

WHAM.

It was dark behind my eyelids. Everything had gone still and quiet again. The pain was diminishing, but for the wrong reasons. I couldn’t have long now.

WHAM.

I barely felt that one. Images from my life began to pass across my mind’s eye in the darkness. So this really does happen when you die, I thought somewhere, very quietly.

There was my Dad, smiling and holding me as a baby in the picture I kept on my bedside table at home. Well, he didn’t stick around for long. A useless father he turned out to be. Next, my mother, seated behind a birthday cake with me, then sat pouring over reams of obscure Hebrew poetry, then falling into the arms of...Dr Black. Oh Mom. I knew that guy was bad news. But now I’ll never get to tell you. Now I’ll never get to stop you from marrying him, or even to see you again…

Next came an image of Ali, in her jeans and sweatshirt in Physics class the first time I had met her. Ali...I thought for a while that you were my friend, even that you might like me. But you were just humouring me all along. You thought all of my writing about Miracle Force was made up. Well it’s real, Ali! It’s real! It’s real, and now I’m going to die because of it...

And there, almost at the point of total despair once more, almost at the point of death, that still small voice spoke to me again, in my own voice. It was very small, and very faint, only the quietest little whisper just at the edge of my thought, but it was there:

Come on Gonzalo, it said, we’ve been over this. We’ll go over it as many times as we need to. You’re weak, but you’re not a weakling. You’re Captain Weakling. You must fight. You must not give up.

I must fight. I must not give up.

I opened my eyes.

Aurora. Mute. Djinn.

Maybe Mute’s telekniesis was holding my mouth shut, but at this point I didn’t feel as though I had the strength to move my mouth to speak to them.

I could still think, though.

In desperation, I reached out in my mind. {Mute!} I thought as loudly as I could, selecting him as my best bet. {Mute, why are you doing this?!}

Nothing. Mute continued to frown with concentration as he applied telekinetic pressure to hold me in place.

{Mute, please!} I thought. {Stop this! Aurora’s going to kill me!}

Still nothing.

I remembered something. {Tom, please!}

Still nothing...

...then, miraculously, Mute’s frown cracked, metamorphosing into a furrowed look of concern.

He continued to hold his hands out and to apply the telekinetic pressure as Aurora’s shockwaves slammed into me, but now I heard him speak in my mind, frantic and urgent, {Gonzalo! I’m so sorry! I don’t know what’s come over me! It’s like I’m watching myself attack you but I can’t stop it! It’s like someone else is controlling me!}

A small bubble of hope appeared in my breast, though the pain I was experiencing nearly popped it. Mute wasn’t doing this of his own free will. {I knew it!} I thought. {How--arrrrggggh!} Another shockwave. The pain was almost too much to bear now, but I held onto my mind as tight as I could and forced my thoughts to stay coherent. {How can that be possible? Who is controlling you?}

{I don’t know! I don’t know!}

I swiveled my eyes back and forth to try to see who could be controlling Mute, Djinn and Aurora.

In the end, there was only one option: standing a little ways behind the three of them, but apart from the crowd of policemen and onlookers.

Mute must have realised too, because I heard his voice say the same words inside my mind at exactly the same time that I thought them:

{The Commander!}

Abram's eyes flashed furious yellow at me.

{Abram has powers too!} I added. {How did I not realise this before?}

“Arrrgggrgh!” I exclaimed out loud. Another of Aurora’s sonic assaults had buffeted into me. My chest felt like it was about to rip apart. I blacked out for a moment.

{I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!} I heard Mute thinking when I came to and my vision returned. I must have only blacked out for a second. {I don’t want to be doing this but I can’t resist him! I can’t resist him!}

{Mute.} Once again, my thoughts were slow, calm, deliberate. My very life depended on them. {Mute,} I repeated. {It must be possible to resist him, because I’m doing it right now. He’s never mind-controlled me--as far as I know. You have to try!}

{I am trying! I am trying! I can’t break out of his control!} His hands remained in their clawed posture, though his face was a sweaty, open-mouthed picture of distress.

Next to him, Djinn was just stood still serenely, watching Mute hold me telekinetically in place and Aurora send shockwave after superpowered shockwave at my near-invulnerable frame.

{Mute!} I thought. {Quick, set me up a mind link with Ali--I mean, Djinn! Can you still do that?}

{I--I think so. Ok…}

{Is it on? Have you done it?}

{Is what on?} spoke Djinn’s voice in my mind, as she instantly frowned from within her burka. {Have I done what? How are you speaking to me like this... Weakling?}

{Djinn! Please! I know that Abram’s mind-controlling you into not helping me, but you have to try to resist! If you try you might be able to resist him and save me!}

Another shockwave. I blacked out again.

When I came to from this one, my vision swam. I thought that a few more seconds had passed this time.

By now I had a splitting headache, a splitting everything-ache, but I made myself concentrate until I found Djinn’s form again.

There she was, a dark silhouette that slowly came into focus as a girl in a black burka, with two folded arms and brown eyes that twinkled.

I made eye contact with her and sent another thought out across the void into her mind.

{Djinn, please! You’ve got to try to resist Abram’s mind control and do something, or Aurora’s going to kill me! He’s evil, Djinn, I know it. I’m not sure what he’s been doing with us all this time but there’s no other explanation for it: Abram must be controlling you somehow. You’ve got to resist him and help me!}

{Gonzalo, can’t you see?} she thought back. {I’m not being controlled by him. I’ve been on his side all along. I’m a double agent. Abram controls both Miracle Force and Viper. He’s been using them to manipulate events in order to gain more and more power. And I’ve been working with him. (I’m not sure why I’m telling you this now, but it doesn’t matter--you’ll be dead soon.)}

I nearly died right there and then, from shock and grief and exhaustion and horror and pain.

It was like the time she had called me a poor little boy with mental health problems in front of half the school at Sam’s party.

Ali had been a double agent on Abram and Viper’s side all along?

Why was she telling me all this now?

Was it to humiliate me at the end of my life?

Or was it because, somewhere, on some level...she trusted me?

And wait, hold on just a second; let me live just a second longer...She had called me Gonzalo.

Not ‘Weakling’, not even ‘Captain Weajling’ but just...‘Gonzalo’.

As far as I knew, Djinn had never been told my real name.

Hope fanned aflame in my breast.

But then it was almost knocked out of me as another of Aurora’s attacks wracked my body. The pain was full blown now, nearly unbearable. My limbs tingled and quivered where they hung suspended in Mute’s mind-grip. I had little strength left.

{Ali, please!} I shouted inside my mind with what felt like the very last of my energy.

Her pupils dilated in her eyes, filling them. I had got through to her.

{Yes, Ali!} I thought on. {I know that you’re Djinn! I guess you must have been pretending not be Djinn, when you were ‘Ali’, if you were working as double agent for Abram, but it’s OK! I know we had a connection, Ali! I know that you’re good, really, deep down. I know this isn’t who you want to be!}

{Be quiet, Gonzalo!} Ali thought back. {You don’t really know me at all. You know nothing about me. You don’t know the person I am, the things I’ve done, the reason Abram found me, the things that I’ve done for him.}

{Or been made to by him!} I thought despeately. {Please, Ali, help me! You were my friend! I don’t want to die!}

I looked to the side of her. Aurora was drawing in yet anothe breath for another supersonic shockwave. I wasn’t sure that I could survive any more.

This was my last hope. I turned my eyes back to Ali.

{I know that you’re better than this! I love you, Ali!}

She disappeared from my vision.

“Aaaarrrggghhh!”

I flopped to the floor, landing face down.

Aurora’s sonic blast passed over me, missing me, riffling my clothes and making the hair on the back of my head dance.

Mute’s telekinetic grip on me had been released.

With a huge effort of will, I wrenched my creaking neck up to see what had happened.

Ali wrestled with Abram on the floor.

She had her hands over his face, thumbs over and sticking into his eyes, and they were rolling around on the ground as he writhed and fought and clawed at her, cursing and shouting.

“Get off me!” Abram shouted. “Get off me you treacherous little whore!”

“His eyes!” Ali shouted as she wrestled. “It’s in his eyes! The power’s in his eyes! He has to keep his eyes on you! Don’t let him look at you!”

I looked at Aurora where she still stood a few paces away, to check if she was still a threat.

Her mouth was closed. She put a hand to it and the colour drained from her face, as if she was horrified at what she had just been doing. Then, gently, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fainted, crumpling up and falling backwards to the floor.

No time to check she’s alright now.

My whole body was aflame with pain, but I gritted my teeth against it and spread my palms on the ground. My arms wobbling on like I was doing a press up for the first ever time, before I had superpowers, I pushed myself up off the floor. I slipped once and banged my chin on the ground. But then took a deep breath and tried again.

This push got me up. I staggered to my feet. Ali and Abram were still wrestling on the floor. She still had her thumbs in his eyes but he was the bigger of the two of them, and she was only a young woman--he was starting to get the better of her, to force her down onto the ground and start pulling her hands out of his face.

I started to stumble towards them, step by agonising step.

“Get off me you God-damned little bitch!” Abram bellowed.

“Mute…” I gasped. “Mute...help her…”

{Coming! Oh God, oh God!}

He was here. He was at my side. He was my friend.

Abram and Ali went still, frozen in mid-wrestle. Mute had his hands out again and was holding them telekinetically in place as he walked towards them with me.

Mute was saying something to Abram with his mind, that I could overhear too. {Why, you no-good, scheming, two-timing, manipulative, good-for-nothing son-of-a-bitch…} he said. {I should kill you right here and now…}

“No…” I muttered as we reached him. “Don’t kill him, Mute. I know you wouldn’t anyway… It’s for the… the authorities to take care of him… Just keep holding him there...”

I finally made it to Abram. I held my breath.

I placed one hand over his eyes to cover them, and with the other, and the last of my strength, delivered him a short, sharp punch to side of the head.

Abram’s eyes closed went limp, unconscious.

I breathed out.

Chaos erupted all around me.

Police, firemen, paramedics, journalists, members of the public all rushed in towards us.

I felt someone take my hand.

The last thing I was aware of was that by now familiar sickening falling sensation in my stomach that meant I was being teleported.

I passed out.