The Nameless Hero Read Online Free PDF Page B

knee-deep water.
    My friends were looking at me like I was a lunatic.
    “Uh … Joshua?” Milton said. “I’m not sure this is the best time for a bath.”
    Pushing his voice out of my mind, I concentrated my thoughts. A swell of energy gained strength inside me, racing through my veins. I splashed across the pool and slammed my hands against the stone flowers.
    CRRRR-AAAAAACK!
    The explosion of spontaneous combustion knocked me backward into the water. Rising back above the surface, I pushed the wet hair out of my eyes and saw that it had worked. The blast had obliterated the stone bouquet. Insteadof a dozen streams pouring out in all directions, the water gushed upward in a single jet from a busted pipe, straight into the air like a geyser.
    I rose to my feet, gazing up at the tower of surging water. “Now we just need to find a way to get this water to put out that fire.”
    “I can help with that.” Sophie joined me in the fountain. By the time she got to me, her skin had begun to glow. She plunged her hands forward, palms out, over the busted pipe.
    The force of the water would’ve easily knocked away the hands of a normal person. But Sophie wasn’t a normal person. Not at moments like this. She held her hands steadily in place and redirected the water. Instead of straight up, it now shot forward in a long, powerful arc.
    Shifting her hands, she aimed the jet of water toward the giant flaming corn dog. The fire was extinguished within minutes. By the time we stepped out of the fountain, the sign had the charred look of a snack that had been left in the oven too long.
    “What do you think set the fire?” Milton asked.
    “I don’t know.” I squeezed water out of my soaked shirt, gazing up into the sky. “It was like it came out of nowhere.”
    “Whatever it was, it landed over there.” Sophie pointed to a crater in the concrete beneath the corn dog sign.
    We crossed the plaza at a jog, leaving wet footprints to evaporate behind us. I stopped near the edge of the crater and peered inside. The cracked dent in the concrete stretched about ten feet across. And in the center was theobject that had caused all the destruction. Except it wasn’t a missile, and it didn’t look like an asteroid either. It looked sort of like …
    A silver golf ball.
    The little metallic sphere gleamed in the sunlight. Hard to believe something so small could be responsible for so much damage.
    “What is it?” Sophie asked.
    I shook my head. “No idea.”
    “First a mutant librarian and now
this
?” Milton stared into the crater, his eyes wide with bewilderment. “Maybe they’re connected.”
    “I don’t think so,” Sophie said. “The librarian was careful to isolate us so that nobody else was around. This thing hit in the middle of a crowded amusement park.”
    “And unlike with the librarian, this time there wasn’t a warning beforehand,” I said. “So I doubt it has anything to do with Gyfted and Talented either.”
    “Okay, so we’ve got an alien golf ball that doesn’t seem to like corn dogs very much.” Milton nodded once. “Makes perfect sense to me.”
    Our conversation came to a stop when a slot in the silver ball clicked open. A sound buzzed from inside the opening. For several seconds, nothing seemed to be happening. Only the flicker of noise from within the silver object. And then I realized it. Everything had suddenly gotten … darker.
    Sophie and Milton must’ve noticed it too, because they were both gazing upward. I did the same, and that was when I saw something impossible to fathom. Darknesswas forming above us, like a shadow stretching across the sky. Whatever it was, the effect was caused by the silver object. As the thing whirred, the darkness above formed into three enormous black letters, hanging over everything.
    V E X

6
    There was no time to stick around to see if the alien golf ball spelled out anything else. Sirens were growing louder. And with a busted fountain, a gigantic