“Dr Black?” I said out loud. “What are you doing here?” It was definitely him: black hair, slightly wrinkled middle-aged face, sallow eyes.

He didn’t belong here. What in the world was going on? Had I received some kind of concussion from the fight with Viper? Had I entered some kind of dream state where all the different parts of my life were blending into one?

My mind raced with possible answers. This was real—I knew I wasn’t dreaming. So what was Dr Black doing here? Did he have business in Australia? Had he been on our flight without us realising it? Supposedly he was friends with Abram. Was he here to see Abram? Or was…?

And then it happened.

Dr Black’s eyes turned completely black. I took a step backwards and dropped the balaclava.

“You stupid little useless weakling!” he bellowed at me, wrinkly cheeks quivering. “You’re always getting in the way, frustrating my plans! We were meant to win this one! We were meant to capture that Australian hussy for our side to raise our profile! But you’ve made a mess of all of that now, haven’t you?”

I had never heard him shout before. It was horrible. And what was he saying? I couldn’t make sense of it. All of a sudden I had started to feel very cold and afraid and hopeless, like all of my happiness and energy was ebbing out of my feet.

Worse, even worse, as he said these things, a bubble of...darkness started to emanate out of Dr Black. That’s the only way I could describe it. It started growing out of his chest: A blob of blackness appearing in front of him, with crackling sparks at its edge. Then it expanded, becoming a sphere of darkness that enveloped him, and grew further still, reaching out in all directions, including towards me, the electricity at its border hissing and fizzing. To either side of me I was dimly aware of Mute and Djinn dropping to the floor. The air smelled faintly of burning.

I stood rooted to the spot with terror. As the sphere of darkness reached me my face prickled and a shiver ran up my spine. Then it passed through me and I was inside the bubble of darkness with Dr Black.

I could still see him, but only dimly as my eyes adjusted. It was like inside the sphere he had created it had become night. The whole airport arrivals area had been plunged into darkness.

Dr Black was standing cruciform, with his arms stretched out to either side, and laughing again. While I could just make out the pale skin of his hands and face in the darkness, his eyes were two sunken pits of oblivion set in the silhouette of his head.

“Hahahahaha!” he cackled horribly. “You may have fucked up this part of our plan, but I will repay you with what you deserve! You have outlived your usefulness, ‘Weakling!’ You were my greatest mistake!”

I didn’t understand what he was saying? ‘Plan’? ‘Our’? Who was he talking about? I didn’t know, but I knew his words were horrible. I knew this man should not be involved with my mother. I knew I was in danger. I bunched my hands into fists.

“Ha!” Dr Black scoffed at me. “Don’t even think about it!”

A jolt went through my chest and I doubled up. It was a jolt of cold, of grief, like I had just received the news that I had lost a loved one. I had felt cold already, but this was sub-zero. It was like my heart had suddenly turned to ice. And with the ice, with the cold, came a wave of the most overwhelming despair and hopelessness.

I fell to the floor and curled up into a foetal position, clutching my head with both hands, scrunching my eyes up as I was consumed by darkness. I could hear myself screaming somewhere, far and off and distant.

As I convulsed on the floor in the darkness, Dr Black’s voice boomed inside my mind.

“YOU KNOW ME AS DR BLACK,” it said, straight into my head, “BUT YOU CAN CALL ME ‘DR DARKNESS’! YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH POWERS, GONZALO! MY POWER IS TO TAKE DARKNESS WITH ME, TO SHAPE IT TO MY WILL! MY POWER IS TO MAKE YOU FEEL THE TRUEST DEPTHS OF YOUR DEEPEST DESPAIR! MY POWER IS TOTAL, AND IT IS OVER YOU!”

As he continued to shout into my skull, like he was standing right over me now, yelling into my ear, though I couldn’t see him with my eyes shut, other voices joined in with his own, layered one on top of another, shouting simultaneously with him:

“YOU’RE PATHETIC!” said Bill Jackson with him. “YOU ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING! YOU ARE JUST A PITIFUL, USELESS, LITTLE WEAKLING!”

My father’s voice joined the first two voices, shouting “I ABANDONED YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTHLESS!”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“YOU ARE A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT!” joined in my mother’s voice. “YOU ARE A NO SON OF MINE! YOU ARE USELESS AND A FAILURE!”

The voice of Doctor Darkness came in again, even louder. “YOUR MOTHER BELONGS TO ME! I WILL RUIN AND KILL HER! YOU WILL DIE HUMILIATED AND ALONE! I WILL KILL YOU WITH SADNESS! I WILL KILL YOU WITH GRIEF! I WILL KILL YOU WITH DARKNESS! I WILL TEACH YOU THE MEANING OF PAIN!”

“No! No! No! No!” I knew I was crying it over and over but I couldn’t hear myself outside my own head. I thrashed around on the ground still clutching at my head, trying to block out the voices, banging my arms and sides against the floor. Pain in my chest. Pain in my head. Pain in my mind. Deep, dark despair. Sadness. Cold, so cold. Only way out to give in. Only way out to give up. Only way out to…

...die.

I lay still.

The voices continued to shout abuse at me, but gradually they began to dim in volume. They grew angrier and angrier, but also quieter and quieter, as they slowly diminished into silence.

I lay curled up in pitch dark silence.

Was this…

...death?

Am I…

...dead?

No.

It was something else.

I had gone somewhere inside myself to escape from the voices and the horrible things they were shouting at me. It was totally dark, but also silent.

A gentle white glimmer of light appeared in my vision and it was all I knew.

I heard a voice speak in a whisper. It spoke in my own voice, yet it was if someone else was speaking to me with my own voice—though I could not tell you who.

“You are not a weakling,” it whispered to me. “You may be weak, but you are not a weakling. You may be weak, but in your weakness I am strong. You are not worthless. You are not good for nothing. You are worthwhile. You are valuable. You are forgiven for everything you have ever done wrong, if you are sorry, which you are. You are accepted. You are approved of. You are not condemned. You are a beloved son. You will fight now. You are not a weakling. You are Weakling.”

With that, the light disappeared and the darkness enveloped me once again.

The shouting voices returned, at full volume. “YOU ARE A DESPICABLE, DISGUSTING LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT! YOU ARE A PITIFUL USELESS WEAKLING!”

Only now, as well as the voices that bellowed at me in the dark, underneath them, just on the edge of hearing, there was another voice—a still, small whisper of a voice.

I tried to tune out the horrible shouting voices by focusing my attention on the whisper.

“You are not a weakling. You are Weakling.”

Slowly, the cold sensation of hopeless grief began to leave my body, replaced by a warm, kissing fire that spread out from my heart and thawed my limbs, making them begin to tingle.

I opened my eyes.

I was still lying on the cold airport floor in the darkness, but I could see in it again now.

About an inch away from my face were the shapes of two smart, black suede shoes.

I put my hands to the ground and pushed myself up onto my feet.

The shouting voices stopped immediately.

The pale, wrinkly face of Dr Black looked at me in the darkness. His mouth dropped open and his brow wrinkled above his black eyes in confusion.

“What...what are you doing, you weakling?” he said to me in a quavering voice.

“I’m not really a weakling!” I shouted in his face. “It’s an ironic superhero name, you prick!”

Air rushed over my fist as I brought it hard into Dr Black’s gut.

For an instant his middle-age belly flab accommodated my knuckles, moulding around them, and then he was launched backwards into the air.

The bubble of darkness dissolved at once, and the arrivals area was filled with light again as Dr Black flew across it.

He slammed spread-eagled into the far wall with a big ‘Welcome to Australia’ printed on it, hung there for a moment from the force of the impact, and then peeled off, flopping onto the concrete floor and bouncing onto his front.

“That was for my Mom!” I shouted

He lay unmoving. I did not care if he was alive or dead.

I watched him lying there for a moment, my mind lost in a daze. He did not move.

Slowly, I returned my attention to my surroundings and looked around.

Djinn and Mute were getting shakily to their feet, brushing themselves down. They must have all been trapped in the enclosing darkness from Dr Black that I until recently had been trapped inside too.

Beyond them, a circle of people watched us.

There were some regular members of the public—families clutching their suitcases, suited businessmen with laptop bags, backpackers with smartphones aloft and sunglasses hanging on their T-shirts. There were some Australian airport officials and policeman, discernible from their navy-blue uniforms and the firearms at their sides. There were some paramedics beginning to attend to the fallen bystanders and lead relatives away shivering in blankets, but some just stood and looked at me like the others.

They weren’t mocking me.

They weren’t jeering.

They weren’t taunting.

Instead, they were all just standing there, looking at us in dumbstruck, paralysed silence.

Then, after a few moments, someone from behind the front row of them started to call out: “Woooooooo!”

Another voice answered the cheer. Then another and another.

The crowd burst out into applause, clapping and yelling and whooping, jumping up and down and hollering their approval of the scene they had just witnessed before them, of what I had just done in defeating Dr Black—or Dr Darkness, whatever his stupid name was.

After a little while of this, a chant began to rise up from in the midst of the throng. At first it was just one theme among the cries of “Wooo!” and “Yeaaah!” and “Well done!”, but then more voices took it up, and it rose and swelled until everyone who was there joined in with the chant. There was an uplift to the second syllable of each word.

“Weakling! Weakling! Weakling!”

A little boy in a superhero T-shirt beat the air with his fist in elation. A middle-aged lady wept into her handkerchief, I assumed with gratitude. People snapped me with their phones, turned and took selfies with me in the picture.

My cheeks heated with a blush.

Just in front of the crowd, inside our hallowed circle, Djinn and Mute smiled at me and joined in with the clapping. They stood facing me, holding out their applauding hands to me as if to say ‘Well done, leader.’