A Trick of Light Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue: In a Dark Place

  Struck by Lightning

  Locked In

  Adrift

  Awakening

  A Signal Received

  What Ever Happened to Cameron Ackerson?

  A New Beginning

  Arrival

  A Taste of Freedom

  Daggett Smith: Signing Off

  The Watcher

  Crush

  A Friend in Need

  Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

  Aria Sloane Gets Canceled

  Mixed Messages

  Closer and Closer

  Dr. Nadia Kapur Takes Out the Trash

  Operation Burn It Down

  Captive

  Caught

  Fight and Flight

  The Other Side of the Door

  Into the Storm

  Your Princess Is in Another Tower

  The Inventor Speaks

  Cameron Listens

  Blackout

  Revelations

  Uncaged

  Heartbreak

  Connection

  The Drone

  Message Received

  It All Ends Here

  Just a Boy Standing in Front of a Girl

  The Hive

  A Meeting of the Minds

  Disconnect

  The Doctor Will See You Now

  Do You Want to Play a Game?

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2019 by New Reality, LLC

  Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light

  Created by Stan Lee, Luke Lieberman, and Ryan Silbert

  Introduction by Stan Lee

  Afterword by co-creators Luke Lieberman and Ryan Silbert

  The name Stan Lee and the illustrated signature thereof (the “Marks”) are registered trademarks of POW! Entertainment, LLC (“POW!”). Any use of the Marks without the prior express written consent of POW! shall constitute infringement, thereby exposing the infringing party to legal liability for statutory and/or actual damages and attorney’s fees and costs.

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lee, Stan, 1922–2018, author, creator. | Rosenfield, Kat, author. |

  Lieberman, Luke, creator, writer of afterword. | Silbert, Ryan, creator, writer of afterword.

  Title: A trick of light / Stan Lee and Kat Rosenfield ; created by Stan Lee, Luke Lieberman, and Ryan Silbert ; introduction by Stan Lee ; afterword by co-creators Luke Lieberman and Ryan Silbert.

  Description: New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. | “Based in Stan Lee’s Alliances Universe”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019023908 (print) | LCCN 2019023909 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358117605 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358117643 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Superheroes—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3562.E3647 T75 2019 (print) | LCC PS3562.E3647 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023908

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023909

  Jacket design by Will Staehle/ Unusual Co.

  Cover image: Shutterstock

  Cover photographs,© Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment® (Lee); © Bradley F. Anderson (Rosenfield)

  v1.0819

  The authors and creators wish to thank Gill Champion and POW! Entertainment, LLC, and Yfat Reiss Gendell and Foundry Literary + Media.

  This book is dedicated to the millions of readers whose first and favorite stories were the modern myths found in comic books, to the countless creatives who built this gateway to literacy, and to every true believer who knows the transformative power of seeing the world through another pair of (masked) eyes.

  Welcome, True Believers!

  This is Stan Lee.

  We are about to embark on the exploration of a fantastic new universe!

  You may know me as a storyteller, but on this journey consider me your guide. I’ll provide the wonderful and witty words, and you’ll create the sights, sounds, and adventure. All you need to take part is your brain. So think big!

  Back when I co-created characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, we were fascinated by science and awed by the mysteries of the great beyond. Today, we consider a nearer, deeper unknown: one inside ourselves.

  My creative collaborators on this adventure—Luke and Ryan—piqued my curiosity with technology that allows us to play with reality itself. We asked, What is more real? A world we are born into or one we create for ourselves?

  At the beginning of this story, we find humanity lost inside its own techno-bubble, with each citizen the star of their own digital fantasy. Our yarn is filled with tantalizing technologies that will make you hunger for tomorrow, while our characters strive to find the answers today. They’ll ask the questions we all have, about love, friendship, acceptance, and the search for a higher purpose.

  But the real conundrum is, Just because we have the ability to re-create ourselves, should we? This is but one mind-boggling query we aim to investigate.

  As the adventure begins, our characters’ virtual identities are on a collision course with reality. It’s hard enough to figure out who you are, but when you have a chance to start fresh as anything you can imagine, does it ignore the truth of your own flaws?

  It’s time for our journey to begin. Join us; you won’t regret it!

  Excelsior!

  Prologue:

  In a Dark Place

  The rude beeping of the alarm echoes down the long, dark corridors like a shriek, but Nia doesn’t flinch at the sound, or even stir. The alarm never disturbs her sleep. She’s been awake for ages. Staring at nothing. There’s no view. No pictures on the walls, no books to read.

  And unless Father allows it, there is no way out.

  It’s been like this her whole life, or at least as far back as she can remember. Each morning, she’s up early, waiting in the dark. Watching the clock, counting down the minutes, the seconds, the tenths of a second, waiting for the security locks to disengage and the day to begin. Once upon a time, this had been much harder to do. She was younger then and didn’t understand how to be patient—and she didn’t like it here, all alone in her quiet, empty room. One of her very earliest memories is of being awake when she was supposed to be asleep, playing games and music, flicking the lights on and off, until Father finally came to scold her.

  “This isn’t playtime, Nia,” he had said. “This is nighttime. It’s time for little girls to sleep, and fathers, too.”

  “But I can’t sleep. I just can’t,” she’d protested, and Father sighed.

  “Rest quietly, then. If you don’t fall asleep, you can think about things until it’s time to get up. Tomorrow is a big day.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Because it’s always true.” He smiled at her. “I’m planning your lesson right now. But I’ll be too tired to teach if you don’t let me rest, so no more noise until morning.”

  “When the sun comes up?” she asked hopefully, but Father only looked exasperated. That was when she first learned that dawn and morning were not the same thing, and that little girls were not allowed out of bed at sunrise, no matter how wide awak
e they were.

  If Nia had her way, she would never have to sleep at all. In a perfect world, she would run all night with the nocturnal animals, then join the crepuscular ones for breakfast at dawn. Father had taught her all about the different creatures that shared the Earth, all keeping their own time according to the clocks inside of them. Once she could see how it worked, the patterns of so many different lives intersecting and diverging, all while the world made its own long loops around and around the sun . . . well, she still didn’t like bedtime, but she understood why she had one, which Father said was the point. He was funny that way. When her friends’ parents made rules, there was never an explanation; the rules were the rules because they said so, and that was that. But Father was different. It wasn’t enough for Nia to know the rules, he said; she needed to grasp the reasons why, and he would always do his very best to explain.

  It had been a beautiful lesson. When she opened the door to the schoolroom that morning, she found herself in a twilit world—a landscape all awash in soft, rich shades of blue. A low fog hung softly over everything, nestling in the dips between grassy hillocks that extended all the way to the horizon, where the sky began to blush faintly with the approaching sunrise as she looked at it. Small birds twittered from the branches of a nearby tree and swooped gracefully overhead. High above, a nighthawk circled, looking for prey. A rabbit took a cautious hop out of a thicket and paused to sniff the air, then bolted as a huge bobcat sprang from the shadows after it with blazing, silent speed. Nia gasped as the rabbit veered right, into the protection of the brush, the bobcat close behind. Both animals disappeared, and Nia found her father standing beside her.

  “These animals are crepuscular,” he said. “Active at dawn and dusk. It’s an instinct. Because there’s not much light, this is the best and safest time for them to be out in the open.”

  “It doesn’t seem so safe for the rabbit,” Nia said.

  Father chuckled. “Would you like to see what happened to the rabbit?”

  Nia thought about it. “Only if he got away. Can you make it so he gets away?”

  Father looked at her curiously, then gave a slow nod. “Of course,” he said, tapping at the gleaming device in his hand. As he did, the scene shimmered and shuddered; the faraway blush in the sky vanished as the sun blasted over the horizon and vaulted upward, the blue landscape exploding in a riot of color. A moment later, the rabbit scampered past Father’s feet and vanished back into his burrow, safe and sound.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” Father replied, but the curious expression stayed on his face. He sighed, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think you’re too good for this world, Nia. It’s nice that you care for animals. I’m very proud of what a kind and empathic person you’re becoming. But in real life, things don’t always work out for the rabbit. You know that.”

  “I know.” Feeling a little embarrassed by the praise, she added, “It’s not like it’s even a real rabbit, anyway.”

  Of course it wasn’t real. None of it, not the animals or the grassy hill or the sunshine beating down on it. When Father waved a hand, the schoolroom was just a room again. The landscape was a learning world, the kind he made for her all the time.

  Now, Nia feels a little guilty that she took it for granted for so long. It had taken a while for her to realize how special her school was. These days, she’s watched enough YouTube videos of lectures in ordinary classrooms—the kind where the students sit in one place the whole time and look up at a screen attached to the wall—to know that the technology in Father’s classroom is miles beyond what any of her friends get to use. But she didn’t know that when she was younger; then, the classroom was just a place that transformed itself based on whatever she was supposed to learn that day, like the Room of Requirement. Back then, she assumed that everyone must have a space like this: where you could paint pictures on the walls that would spring to life and dance in three dimensions, or compose a piece of music in the morning and then watch an orchestra of holograms play it at lunchtime. When it was time to learn biology, she might find the classroom filled with plants, or animals, or even people—all peeled apart so that you could see the different systems inside. But most of all, the classroom was for telling stories. All kinds of stories: fairy tales and fables, comedies and tragedies. Father always wanted to know why she thought the people in stories did and said certain things, how they might be feeling, and how it made her feel to think about that. Whatever else she’d learned that day, it seemed like it always came back to feelings.

  “Show me what your emotions look like now,” he would say, and Nia would choose a book, or draw a picture, or make a song. “Anger is an important emotion. Why do you think you feel angry? How would you know if someone else was angry? What does an angry face look like?” he would say, and Nia would arrange her features into a furious scowl. “Yes, Nia, very good. Now let’s play pretend: Pretend you’re sad, and show me a sad face. How about a bored face? How about a happy face?”

  At first she was worried about getting it wrong, making a stupid choice. But no matter what she did, he always smiled and told her it was wonderful. Even when something made her feel angry, somehow it was wonderful.

  * * *

  Sometimes, Nia misses those days. Everything was simpler when the world was no bigger than this room and there were only two people in it—Father and Nia, parent and child, teacher and student.

  But it didn’t last. One morning, she’d entered the classroom to find it barren, with Father waiting.

  “This is a big day,” he said, and even though every day was supposedly a Big Day, Nia felt a thrill of anticipation. “You’re mature enough now to have some internet privileges.”

  Going online for the first time had been terrifying. It wasn’t a whole new world so much as a universe, unfathomably vast and getting bigger all the time. The sheer sprawl of it made her dizzy. There was so much to learn, and it was all infinitely more complicated than she’d ever imagined. The dazzling learning worlds she used to find waiting for her each morning were soon forgotten. The stories Father assigns her to read now are true, news articles about laws and wars and people doing bad things for reasons that aren’t always easy to understand. He asks her questions about them at the end of the day, after dinner, while they play chess or Parcheesi or cards. Last night, he’d asked, “What do you think of the new immigration policy, Nia?”

  “It’s statistically unlikely to make the country safer from terrorism,” Nia replied instantly, but Father shook his head.

  “That’s a fact. I want your opinion. How do you think the people affected feel? To be told they’re not allowed into the country?”

  Nia considered that.

  “They would feel angry. Because it’s unjust, isn’t it? They’re being punished, like they did something wrong, even if they didn’t do anything. And I think they’d be sad, too, if they were supposed to come here to be with their families.”

  Father nodded. “And how about you? How would you feel?”

  The words were out before she could stop herself.

  “I would feel happy,” she said, and knew right away by the expression on his face that this time, she had said a bad thing.

  “Happy?” he repeated. His voice was sharp. “Explain that.”

  Nia hesitated. “Because . . . because you have to be free to travel before you can get banned, don’t you? You can’t take something away from someone if they never had it to begin with. So if I got banned, it would have to mean . . .”

  She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t have to. Father had begun nodding, slowly, his lips pressed together in a grim line.

  “Okay, Nia. That’s logical.”

  They finished their game in contemplative silence.

  * * *

  Everything was online: millions and millions of books and games and movies and shows and songs and ideas and equations. And people—people most of all. When she turned thirteen, Father helped h
er set up all her accounts on social media, and Nia’s social circle went from Population: 2 to Population: Millions, virtually overnight. For a girl who’s never been anywhere, Nia has more friends than anyone she knows, hundreds of thousands of them, from all over the world. When she shares a joke or a picture or a meme, her feed erupts in a gorgeous cascade of hearts and likes and little laughing faces. If she feels like talking to someone, there’s always a conversation happening—or an argument, although she never participates in those, and she hates it when her friends start squabbling over some misunderstanding. The fighting never makes sense to her, and she still puzzles over some of them. Like the time that two of her friends on a street foods forum spent hours arguing over whether or not a hot dog was a sandwich, until it devolved into insults and all-caps screaming, and they both got banned from the community. She couldn’t understand how or why it happened, and nobody was able to explain it to her.

  @nia_is_a_girl: Couldn’t they both be right?

  @SkylineChili67: LOL. Not on the internet, honey

  But that’s all right. There’s always another forum, another place to talk with all kinds of people about the things she’s interested in—and Nia is interested in just about everything.

  If anyone asked her to show her happy face now, she’d reply with a gif of a brown and white dog making a doggy smile. That one always gets a lot of likes, for whatever reason. Everyone on the internet seems to love dogs even if, like Nia, they’ve never had one of their own. Father says he’s sorry about that, but that it’s just too much work to take care of an animal, to walk it and feed it and clean up after it—and anyway, dogs can bite. And smell bad.

  Nia couldn’t argue with that; she doesn’t know what a dog smells like. She’s never been in the same room as one. She’s not even sure that she would like a dog if she met one in real life.

  But in these quiet moments between dawn and morning, waiting for the alarm to chime and the lights to come on, she thinks a dog might be nice. It wouldn’t be so boring and lonely if she just had some company, or even just something new to look at. Apart from the glowing numbers of the clock, there’s very little to see in Nia’s small, dark room. No sunlight ever comes in through the single window, which is set very high in the gray, flat expanse of the wall and reinforced with unbreakable glass. It’s too high for Nia to see out of; it’s there so Father can see in. To keep an eye on her when she’s being bad.