It took a few days for them to put together the information Alex had in mind. In that time, things seemed to stay the same in Sterling City—meaning, things were still bad but the city hadn’t been sucked into the Gloom or anything.
They hated to wait. But it was worth it.
What Alex realized as he and his teammates discussed how and where they would make their final stand was that he’d been carrying proof of Cloak’s connection to the New Rangers ever since he’d left the underground base. He had photos. In one picture, his parents stared into the camera, grinning. They held him between them, nothing but a brown-haired infant. On the back was Shade’s handwriting: Alex—6 months.
That was a start—their “son” Titan was blond, after all—but it really wasn’t much. The other photo was far more condemning. It was the Polaroid that had hung on the Rec Room wall in the lake house, a picture Alex had pocketed before the groundbreaking ceremony. It had been taken less than a year before: Alex, Mallory, Julie, and Titan, all four of them wearing their black Beta uniforms with grinning silver Cloak skulls on the chest.
The people of Sterling City knew that skull all too well now. They just never imagined their hero, Titan, wearing it.
From there, Alex’s brain bloomed with possibilities. In taking the identity of the Rangers, Cloak had overlooked all the years of evidence that had piled up. Every time Cloak had gone anywhere in public together, they were exposed to surveillance cameras and recordings. It had never occurred to them to hide their identities because they saw no reason to: soon the world would know them as their Cloak rulers, anyway. That was something Alex and his team could take advantage of.
Between Alex, Mallory, Misty, and Gage, they created a list of all the places they’d recently been to on Thursday outings—those brief hours every week when they’d been allowed to leave the underground base and see movies or go get ice cream. They figured out places the High Council had been together, too. And then, they went hunting.
Carla and the former Betas carried out the assignments, since theirs were the faces least likely to be recognized. From across the city, security tapes went missing. In a bookstore on the south side of town several rows of shelves toppled over mysteriously. By the time they were put back in order, the computer hard drive that held all the store’s backlog footage was missing. In the arts district, someone managed to melt through a museum’s thick basement window and make off with several components of its security systems. And on the western edge of Sterling City, a checkout clerk swore she saw a box of tapes float through the air as she locked up.
Back at Carla’s, the Junior Rangers watched hours and hours of footage, putting together a sort of highlights reel. Phantom and Shade were clearly visible shopping together at a high-end boutique. Barrage and Volt picked up rare, special-order books for the Tutor. The Beta Team threw popcorn at one another as they exited a movie theater.
Evidence, all of it. Proof that the New Rangers weren’t who they said they were.
One of the tapes came from an outdoor shopping center. Alex was with Kirbie in the upstairs den as she discovered it.
“Look!” Kirbie shouted, jumping to her feet and pointing at the parking lot on the screen. “It’s you. I mean, it’s all of you.”
Sure enough, the Betas stood at the back of a black SUV as Barrage and Shade talked to them. Alex shook his head. It seemed so long ago.
“This is good stuff,” Kirbie said. “Not only does it have all of you guys, but it’s got Shade and Barrage, too. Look, you can see them both clearly getting back into the car together.”
“Do you know what day that was?” Alex asked.
“No, should I?” She trailed off as she fast-forwarded through the footage. “Wait, is this when . . .” The camera angles changed a few times as she sped through, until suddenly she saw herself, chasing after a skeezy-looking man carrying a purse.
“Yup,” Alex said.
“This is the day I ran into you at the mall,” she said quietly.
The camera angle shifted again, and they saw the whole encounter play out. Alex was nervous for some reason as they watched. There was no sound, but he remembered the scene like it had happened yesterday. He’d lied to Kirbie, telling her that he was thinking of leaving Cloak, even though he’d had no intention of doing so at the time. It was almost funny now given the mess they were in. Eventually, she’d flown away to her team, and Alex had gone back to his.
Kirbie paused the video and smiled a strange, small smile.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Nothing.”
“Oh come on. We’re almost, like, at the end of the world.”
“No, it’s nothing,” she said. “I was just remembering how I thought I could turn you into a Ranger, and we’d all just ride in and take Cloak by surprise and save the day. I was so . . . I don’t know, what’s the right word? Just dumb, I guess?”
Alex wrinkled his brow as he stared at her.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “If I’d never met you—if I’d never fought you—I don’t know if I’d ever have realized what the Cloak Society was really all about. I would have raided Justice Tower along with them. I wouldn’t have been able to see just how insane my family is.”
“You did this on your own, Alex.”
“No,” he said. “I did it with you by my side. And with Kyle and Amp. With everyone.”
Kirbie smiled and let her eyes drop to the floor. Her golden hair was usually in a ponytail, but it was down now, falling over her shoulders.
“If—no, when we make it out of all this, what are we all going to do? You’ll stick with us, right? As a Ranger?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I don’t think any of us have really thought about it much since we’ve been so caught up in what to do about Cloak. I mean, of course we’ll figure something out. But me and Mal and the others, we weren’t really brought up for that kind of spotlight. Besides, there’s so much we were trained to do that’s not even legal. We’d have to completely relearn everything we know if we were going to be some kind of superheroes.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Kirbie said. “Look at all the good you’ve done in the last month.”
“Are you talking about things like destroying museum exhibits and crashing press conferences or just generally causing a public panic anywhere I go?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Let’s just make it through the next few days,” Alex said. “Then we’ll have all the time in the world to figure out where we all belong in this city.”
When they weren’t collecting data and research and evidence, they were training. Nothing that would give them away—there would be no giant, flailing trees or window-breaking bursts of sound—but they could shoot targets in the backyard and spar.
A few hours after watching the video with Kirbie, Alex sat against a wall in the basement with Amp. They watched Lux and Lone Star train. The two Rangers had very different ways of fighting. Lux was an acrobat, lithe and agile, twisting her body at lightning speeds as she jabbed forward with a bladelike palm. Lone Star was a brawler. He was all fists and grunts, throwing his body at the swinging sandbag in the room with seemingly no regard for himself.
Alex had never been especially good at fighting hand to hand—that was always something Titan and Julie had excelled at. He was impressed by how naturally it seemed to come to both of the Rangers. Alex kept a few things he’d brought down from around the house darting about through the air, giving them plenty of moving targets. They seemed in high spirits.
“Remember that time the robber dressed in a weird animal costume got you in a headlock at that jewelry store?” Lux asked. “You know, the one in the modified mascot costume.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Lone Star said. “I was flying. How was I supposed to know he could jump that high?”
“He did call himself the Jackrabbit.” Lux tossed her pale hair back as she slammed her leg against a floating couch cushion in a swinging kick.
“I thought he could punch really fast.” He smiled and loosed a mighty right hook on a decorative pillow zigzagging in front of him. “I didn’t expect him to have gas-powered springs in his boots.”
“You’re just lucky Photon was there to rip him off you.”
Alex smirked at the exchange and willed the soft targets to dive and move at a faster pace.
“Hey,” Amp said to him. “Can you hear anything weird?”
Alex turned to the Junior Ranger, who was pointing a finger out in his direction. He shook his head.
“How about now?” Amp moved his finger so that it was in line with Alex’s chest.
Alex shivered. Suddenly it was like he had a silent drum pounding in his ribs.
“Whoa, weird,” Alex said. “I can’t hear it, but I can feel it. Is . . . this safe?”
“Totally,” Amp said, looking pleased with himself. “Just trying to work on making the most focused audio stream I can.”
He got a mischievous look in his eye, and before Alex could say anything, the Junior Ranger flicked his wrist, drawing his finger in a quick line across Alex’s face.
Alex felt like he had his head shoved into the world’s most powerful speaker for a split second.
“Gah!” he shouted, clutching his ears. Near the center of the room, one of the pillows exploded as he lost control of his telekinetic powers.
“Hey, hey,” Lone Star said, his voice low and chastising as feathers floated in the air all around him. “What are you two up to?”
“Dude, Alex, I’m so sorry,” Amp said. “I didn’t think it was that bad. It was half the power I’ve been practicing with.” He lowered his voice. “That should be enough to throw Shade off, at least.”
Alex took his hands off his ears and narrowed his eyes. Amp started to speak.
“Whatever it is you’re think—”
He was cut off by a series of five cushions and pillows smacking against his body.
“Alex, that’s hardly fair,” Lux said, trying not to smile.
Amp was just starting to climb out from under the pile of cushions when Gage swung open the door at the top of the basement stairs.
“We’re done with the footage,” he said, rubbing the dark bag under one of his eyes. “We’ve got everything we can. The plan can move forward as soon as you’re ready.”