There was a big flat screen TV on the far wall. Tom found the remote control and turned it on.

On came CNN, with a wide-screen shot of…

…the concrete floor and shop-lined, advert-adorned walls of the Sydney airport arrivals area where we had been only a few hours ago.

Underneath it was a headline in a red font moving along the bottom of the shot, ‘MULTIPLE CASUALTIES IN SYDNEY AIRPORT TERROR ATTACK’.

A newsreader was speaking. “...what we can ascertain from eyewitnesses at the scene is that there has been armed attack, possibly connected with the right-wing extremist terrorist group ‘Viper’. The police have confirmed that eight people have been pronounced dead at the scene and twenty six more have been hospitalised from their injuries. Witnesses also report some kind of fist fight taking place after the shootings, but these reports have been highly irregular. Several people are reporting witnessing highly unusual...phenomena during the fight. One member of the public sent us this footage, which does not appear to have been doctored. Viewers are advised that they may find these images disturbing and want to look away.”

The image cut to a wobbly, but nonetheless high definition shot of the airport arrivals area at ground level. The footage was dark, but discernible roughly in the centre of it two grey, wobbling silhouettes stood facing each other.

“Hey,” I said, “that’s me and Dr Black!”

One of the silhouettes--me--pulled back its arm and shoved a hand into the midriff of the other. As it did so, the picture suddenly lit up, colours springing into life.

Then Dr Black flew backwards out of the shot, from the force of my punch. Off-camera, someone shouted with surprise. The camera-shot panned frantically, the image blurring, but then it found Dr Black again, just in time to capture him slamming into the airport wall and falling down from it to collapse face-forwards on the floor.

{Oh shit…} said Tom.

The shot of the arrivals area returned and the newscaster resumed her commentary.

“We are not at this moment in time sure of who these people were, but eyewitnesses are reporting that there were three young people and one adult at the scene who were manifesting these peculiar phenomena. The whereabouts of these young people is currently unknown. The adult pictured in the previous footage has been taken into custody for questioning, along with one another American man in his forties who seems to have been involved in the incident.”

“Turn it off, Tom,” I said. “I think we’ve seen enough.”

Tom turned off the screen with his telekinesis. He must be anxious.

“Well, crap,” I said. “Looks like the cat’s out of the bag now. I looked at Ali. “What was even the point of this mission, from Abram’s perspective, anyway? Was it only to collect Aurora? Why did Dr Black or Dr Darkness or whatever his stupid name is show up with the Viper thugs this time as well?”

Ali spoke carefully. “It was to collect Aurora, yes. But you’re right...there was more to it too... Dr Black came along to… to kill you, Gonzalo.”

A shudder went up my painkiller-numbed spine. “Well I figured that much. So you knew about that too… Why? Why did he want to kill me?”

“Well, they argued about it, but they had decided that you’d become too dangerous and so they needed to…‘eliminate’ you. They hadn’t planned to modify your genes so that you would grow up to be invulnerable to Abram’s mind control. That was an accident. Once they realised the extent of what had happened, they decided they needed to get rid of you. And doing it publicly was meant to raise people’s panic and hysteria about Viper, so that Miracle Force would be given even more money and authority. After Dr Black…‘eliminated’ you, I was meant to bring Aurora back to the airport so that she could carry out a staged defeat of Dr Black--without realising that was what she was doing, of course. But when you defeated Alistair, Abram must have lost his patience and turned her--and Tom--on you instead.

“And you,” I said. “You were just going along with this.” I didn’t say it as a question, this time. I said it as a statement.

She looked at me pleadingly, her eyes glassy with tears. She was either genuinely upset or she was an extremely good actor.

“I was going along with it,” she said, “but I didn’t go through with it in the end, did I? I stopped him. I stopped him, Gonzalo. I didn’t like the plan from the start. I wasn’t comfortable about it. My feelings about you had been changing for quite some time. I didn’t know what to do. Jacob and Alistair are scary men. They can’t be very persuasive and hard to resist--with or without their powers. I’ve seen them do horrible, terrible things to people. Things you wouldn’t dream about in your very worst nightmares.”

Try me, I thought, remembering my battle in the airport with ‘Dr Darkness’.

“But when you reached out to me,” Ali went on, “when you reached out to me, Gonzalo, when they were hurting you and getting Aurora to turn her powers on you...you tipped me over the edge. I couldn’t stand by and watch any longer. I had to resist. I had to fight back against him.”

The words went into me, and I considered them, eyes locked with Ali.

“Mute, is this the truth?” I said, still looking at her.

This time she didn’t protest at all, or break my gaze.

After a moment Mute said, {As far as I can tell, yes.}.

It was pretty useful having a friend who could function as a lie detector.

I leant in and kissed Ali again. This one was a more gentle kiss. After a moment her lips moved to accommodate my own.

Afterwards, I put my forehead against hers and spoke quietly to her. “It’s ok. I don’t know what you’ve been through. I don’t know what you’ve seen them do. I don’t know what Abram and Dr Black made you do, but it’s ok. I’ll help you get through it. Things will be different now.”

“Thank you. Thank you, Gonzalo…” Her tears were flowing now, heavy and fast. “I...I love you.”

“I love you too.”

In the end, the words just came out of me. It was the most natural thing to say in the world. It was like saying my own name. I had already said it with my actions, with my heart, so why not put words to it to? I loved Ali. And I trusted her.

I kissed her again, on the forehead this time, and then sat back on the sofa, mindful of Tom. When I checked his face had turned pink and he didn’t know where to look.

Just then there was a loud, high-pitched trill.

We all jumped about a foot in the air.

Triiing, triiing. The phone was ringing on top of the kitchen surface at one end of the apartment living room.

{What should we do?} said Mute, his telepathic voice quivering. {Do we answer it?}

“Who could it be?”

Ali had turned almost as white as Mute. “It could be Abram, or Dr Black--if they’ve escaped from police custody. I saw the police putting bags over their heads while they were still unconscious, but they’re powerful men, they’re powerful, Gonzalo…”

{Or it could be someone from Miracle Force HQ or the UN,} said Mute. {They’ll have seen the news reports. They’ll have this number. They might ringing to find out where we are and what’s going on. How do we know which one? What do we do?}

Triiing, triiing.

They both looked at me, a pair of pale ghosts white with fright, helpless as babies.

Captain Weakling, I thought.

“Ali, you had better answer it,” I said. “If it’s Abram or Dr Black, you might be able to bluff and pretend you’re still on their side. Dr Black was still unconscious when I took out Abram. You can pretend that Mute and me are somewhere else and got away. If it’s the Base, you can tell them what’s happened, what’s been going on.”

Triiing, triiing.

Ali was shaking her head at me, holding her hands up. “I--I don’t want to, Gonzalo! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it! If it’s Abram he’ll be furious with me! If it’s the UN then I’m going to be in deep trouble--I’ve been a double agent working against them this whole time! They could want to put me in prison too!”

Triiing, triiing.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “Ali,” I said. “It’s going to be ok. Look, you don’t need to tell the UN that you were a double agent to explain to them what just happened in the airport. You can say later that Abram was mind-controlling you.” Maybe he was a bit, who knows? I thought to myself. “And if it’s Abram, you can say that you had a temporary wobble but you’ve come back round to his side now. We just need to throw him off the scent for a little while if it is him. If you need to, you can always teleport to get away from him anyway. It has to be you Ali. We need you to do this.”

It wasn’t the most chivalrous course of action to recommend as her boyfriend--we had to be boyfriend and girlfriend by now, didn’t we? We had kissed and everything!--but it was the one that made the most sense. You had to make difficult decisions like that sometimes as the leader of a team of superheroes.

Triiing, triiing.

Ali looked up at the ceiling, then took a deep breath and broke my embrace to walk slowly over to the phone. She stood next to it while I continued to ring, her whole body poised tense and taut.

Triiing, triii--

Suddenly the ringing stopped because Ali picked up the phone, pressed a button and put it to her ear.

There was a pause.

“Hello?” she said, with the same cautious timbre that she had used when she had first met me as Djinn. Acting, I thought. But she wasn’t acting, this time.

“Yes, this is Amina,” she said after another moment. Then her whole body visibly relaxed as she breathed out and her shoulders sagged, the tension flowing out of her posture. “Hello, sir…” She spoke with gaps between each phrase. I strained to try to hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but I couldn’t. “Yes, it’s terrible, sir...No, we’re all ok...Yes, Weakling and Mute are here with me as well...I know. I know, sir……...I know, we’re as shocked as you are, sir…….Just make sure they both stay blindfolded, sir……………..Yes, I’m sure we’ll need to have further conversations about exactly what happened--oh!”

“What?” I mouthed at Ali?

She put a finger to her lips and turned away from me, still with the phone to her ear. “Yes...yes…” she said into it. “Ok...ok, then, sir…….No, that’s no problem. We’ll see you soon...Thank you. Goodbye.”

She moved the phone away from her ear and looked at it, then pressed a button on it.

She put it back in its holder on the marble kitchen-top, then let out a long, deep sigh.

She turned to look at us.

“{WHO WAS IT?!}” Mute and I said simultaneously, one out loud and one in our minds.

“It was the Secretary General of the UN,” she said to us. “Both Dr Black and Commander Abram are safe in custody with the Australian special police. Their game’s up. The UN is flying over some troops to keep them under control and take them back to the US to be put on trial.”

“That’s wonderful!” I said. I was nearly crying with relief.

{What was the ‘Oh’ all about?} said Mute. He sounded as relieved as I felt. I guessed he had finally started respecting her wish not to have her mind read at every available opportunity.

“He’s sending a private plane over immediately here to pick us up. He wants to meet with all of us. They want to--they want to give us all a medal to...to recognise the ‘ordeal’ we’ve been through and reward our ‘courage in exposing Commander Abram,’ or something. There’s going to be a ceremony and everything.”

I ran up to her and hugged her, taking care not to crush her in my super strong arms.

Ali buried her head in my neck and began to weep. I knew she was weeping with relief, and joy, though, not with sadness.

“You won’t tell them, will you?” she whispered to me through her sobs. “You won’t tell them that I was on their side for a while?”

“I won’t tell them,” I whispered back to her. “It’s going to be alright, Ali. I’ll protect you.”

{I need in on this one too, guys,} said Mute.

Mute came over to us and put his arms round both of us too. He was crying as well. It could have been awkward, but Ali and I opened up an arm each and welcomed him into our hug.

We stood there in a three-person embrace, our arms around each others shoulders, our heads leaning against each other, eyes closed, and wept for quite some time.