Stronger: A Super Human Clash, page 10
“You think that’s what they were working on in Antarctica?”
“It’s possible. It would certainly explain the large number of computers they had and the extreme cold of some of their labs. It’s my guess that they intend to raid every other facility working on quantum processing. They’ll use you as muscle to get in, then send in their hackers…. But that’s a discussion for another day, I think….” His knees cracked as he stood up, and then he stretched and yawned. “Look at that—dark outside already. They’ve set me up with an office on the far side of the base. It’s got a bed, a hot plate, and a TV set. All the comforts of modern life.”
I stood up too. “I’ll walk back with you. I’m allowed out when it’s dark. During the day there’s the chance that I’d be spotted by airplanes passing overhead.”
He walked ahead of me, moving quite slowly. “Very sensible. Can’t have fresh photos of you appearing in the newspapers, can we? Not if you’re supposed to be a secret.”
I ducked my head as we passed through the hangar doors and out onto the concrete. It was still warm under my bare feet from a day of sunlight. The two soldiers posted at the doors fell into step behind us.
“True. Though if anyone did publish new photos, I suppose that they wouldn’t be …” I stopped walking, and the soldiers almost crashed into me.
Dr. Tremont also stopped, and looked back at me. “Something the matter?”
“I’m not sure…. Doc, I always thought that commercial aircraft weren’t allowed to fly over military bases. So why would Harmony tell me to stay out of sight?”
He looked puzzled for a moment. “But the base was officially decommissioned. I expect that the no-fly restrictions were lifted.”
We resumed walking. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Things have changed, Gethin. I’m sure that Ms. Yuan and her people have only your best interests in mind.”
“Ha!”
“You don’t agree? You don’t trust them?”
“She says everything’s changed, but after the way they hunted me down? No, I don’t trust them. I think they stopped trying to kill me only because I was costing them a fortune. Eight and a half billion dollars, she said. I can’t believe it cost that much.”
“Well, I’m sure that those two helicopters you destroyed weren’t cheap,” Dr. Tremont said. “It’s not like damaging a car. Cars can be repaired, but I can’t imagine anyone brave enough to get back into a helicopter that’s already crashed!”
I stopped again, and turned to the two soldiers. “Guys, can you give us a minute?”
“We’re sposta—” Technically they were disobeying orders by not sticking close to me, but I could tell from their expressions that they were just as scared of me as most people were.
“Just wait over there,” I said, pointing back toward the hangar. “I’m not going anywhere.”
We watched the soldiers walk away, and then the doctor asked, “What’s bothering you, son?”
“It’s the whole secrecy thing they’ve got going on. A huge base in Antarctica, this place here, everything else. I mean, they took you in the middle of the night, right? Blindfolded you so you didn’t even know where you were going!”
“That’s the way these sorts of people operate, Gethin. They can’t trust anyone.”
“Can I? Can I trust anyone?”
He smiled. “Well, you can trust me.”
“Yeah … Y’see, Doc, that’s what’s bugging me. How did you know that we were in Antarctica?”
“Surely you don’t suspect me, do you? Gethin, I’m one of the world’s foremost experts in computer technology. I recognized some of the hardware they were using. It was bespoke stuff—handmade, not off the shelf. When I was brought home, I hacked into the manufacturer’s files. I found out who paid for it—turned out to be a dummy company—but tracking the hardware itself was rather simple.”
I knelt down, and sat back on my heels so that we were almost eye to eye. “How did you know about the helicopters?”
“Gethin, really! You’re becoming paranoid!”
“But if she told you about that, why were you so surprised to see me? Your story doesn’t add up, Doctor.” I leaned closer. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am!”
“It’s all fake, isn’t it? You’re working for them, and you have been all along. In Venezuela they discovered that they couldn’t kill me, so instead they decided to recruit me. They made up a bunch of lies to get me on their side, and they brought you in because they figured I’d trust you.”
Dr. Tremont ran his right hand over his chin as he stared at me. “You’ve got it all wrong. I swear, I do not work for them.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. It’s just another trick.”
“You’re big, and strong, and fast, Gethin. Powerful enough to kill everyone on this base. But before you go flying off the handle, you have to ask yourself one very important question, OK?”
“What’s that?”
“You must ask yourself if you’re sure—if you’re absolutely certain—that you are fast enough and strong enough to find and rescue your parents before we kill them.”
He turned around, and as he was walking away, he called over his shoulder, “But there is one thing I wasn’t lying about, Brawn. I don’t work for them. They work for me.”
CHAPTER 14
I DIDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I rarely slept much anyway, but that night I lay on the ground just outside the hangar doors and looked up at the stars.
I couldn’t think how to get out of the situation. There was no way to know whether Tremont’s people had my parents held prisoner somewhere, or if they were just watching them. Whatever the case there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to help them.
Harmony came by once, at about two in the morning. “You need your sleep. Lessons start in a few hours.”
Without looking at her, I asked, “Is that an order? Are you going to murder my folks if I don’t go to bed?”
She didn’t respond, and soon the echoing click of her heels on the concrete faded away.
At dawn the guards’ shift came to an end, and fresh ones took their place. “Inside,” I was told. “You know the rules.”
“Make me.”
Harmony turned up shortly afterward. “Brawn, if you insist on behaving like this, it’s not going to end well.”
I yawned and rolled onto my side, my back to her.
She walked around to face me again. “You don’t understand what’s happening here. You think you do, but you’re wrong. The human race is on the edge of a precipice, looking down into oblivion. Two centuries ago there were a billion people on the planet. After one hundred years it had almost doubled. Since then, it’s more than tripled to six billion. What do you think it will be like in another hundred years? Do you know how to calculate exponential growth?”
“Skip ahead to the bit that you think is going to make me care.”
“If the population doubles in the first century and then triples in the next, the pattern suggests that in the following hundred years it will quadruple. That’s twenty-four billion people, Brawn. A hundred years after that, and it’ll quintuple: one hundred and twenty billion. Another hundred years, we’re looking at three quarters of a trillion people. Do you want me to continue?”
“I didn’t want you to start.”
“The Earth is already overpopulated. We’re consuming resources faster than the planet can replenish them. Ninety-nine percent of the world’s wealth is controlled by less than one percent of the population. Half the world is starving, and what’s the reaction from those of us in the lucky half? We hold rock concerts and telethons to raise enough money to feed the hungry children of the third world. We give them a chance to live, to grow up, and have children of their own. We like to think we’re saving them from famine, when what we’re really doing is breeding new generations of starving people.”
I sat up. She can’t be serious, I said to myself. This has to be just a ruse to get me on their side again. “Do you really believe that?”
“Whether I believe it is not important. What is important is that most people are content to sit back and watch the human race suffocate itself, or just pretend that it’s not happening. But some of us are in a position to make things better. What’s the solution, Brawn? If you were in charge, what would you do?”
“I don’t have to play this game.”
“Just humor me. What would you do to reduce the rate of population growth without culling the poor?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Take the money away from the rich and use it to educate the poor. Teach them how to work the land so that they don’t have to rely on handouts.”
“But suppose the land’s a desert and nothing can grow. What then?”
“Then you bring water to the desert. Most of the planet’s surface is covered in water, so there’s plenty to go around.”
“OK. Suppose you can do that, that you have a way to desalinate the seawater and irrigate the deserts, but the governments of those starving countries won’t allow outside interference on that scale. What then?”
“Then you make them do it.” I knew that I was being manipulated again, but I couldn’t help being drawn into the conversation.
“And if they resist? If they’d rather fight than lose their control? What do we do then? Go in anyway and fight them if we have to? Break international laws?”
“If we have to, yes! Because people are more important than governments.”
“Well, is there another way? Think, Brawn.”
“You want me to say that people like me should take control.”
“Shouldn’t you?”
“No. Just being stronger than other people doesn’t make me better than they are.”
“But if you can do something to help others, and you don’t, what does that make you? Selfish? Cowardly? Detached?” She raised an eyebrow. “Inhuman?”
“What help would I be? Being able to lift several tons isn’t going to help irrigate the deserts!”
“Not directly, no. But you’re powerful enough to capture Terrain, and he could do it quite easily.”
Tremont’s people were trying to guarantee the survival of the human race. Or so they wanted me to believe. But I had to ask myself why they hadn’t mentioned this when they’d caught me three years earlier.
Though I was sure that they were lying, I had no choice but to play along. These people had tried to kill me, and they’d had no qualms about putting their own soldiers into the line of fire: I had no doubt that they would kill my parents if I disobeyed them.
Dr. Tremont did not show up for lessons that first day, or any other. Instead, a box of twenty textbooks was delivered, all of my other books were removed, and I was told that my TV set would be operational for only a couple of hours in the evenings.
It was a pretty effective way to get me to study: I didn’t have anything else to do.
A month after Dr. Tremont revealed his true colors, I was woken shortly before midnight by the sound of powerful rumbling engines outside the hangar, and I opened my eyes to see Harmony standing at the door to my quarters. “You’re going into battle. You leave in five minutes.”
The tone in her voice told me that this was not a good time to complain or delay. I quickly dressed in the combat gear that had been specially made for me: fireproof black shorts and T-shirt, and thick leather gloves, but no boots—they hadn’t yet found anyone able to make boots strong enough or large enough for me. There was also a leather helmet and a pair of goggles, but the helmet’s only purpose was to house a two-way radio transceiver, and the goggles, I was pretty sure, were included as part of the outfit only so my colorless eyes wouldn’t freak everyone out.
With the shorts, T-shirt, gloves, leather helmet, and goggles in place I looked like a guy from before the First World War who couldn’t make up his mind whether to go swimming or fly his biplane.
Outside the hangar was a Lockheed Hercules, its rear ramp already down, waiting for me. “Get in and hold on,” Harmony said as I passed her. “It’s going to be a fast and turbulent ride.”
“Where are we going?”
“Not we. Just you. You’re going three hundred and sixty miles due west. I’ll explain the rest when you’re closer to your destination.”
I nodded. “All right.”
“Brawn … Don’t mess this up. And don’t even think about trying to double-cross us.”
I crawled into the back of the Hercules and sat down: There wasn’t enough room for me to stand. I’d expected a bunch of soldiers there too, but there was just me. The aircraft was taxiing toward the old cracked-concrete runway even before its massive ramp had risen.
The plane juddered along the runway for a while, then suddenly lurched into the air, and I skidded on my butt toward the ramp before I grabbed hold of the straps fixed to the inside of the hull.
Harmony’s voice came through the transceiver. “Brawn, do you read me?”
“Like a book.”
“The correct response is ‘Loud and clear.’”
“Loud and clear, then. But don’t call me Brawn. I want a new code name. A proper superhero name.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I dunno….” I looked around the plane to see if there was anything that might inspire me. “How about Hercules?”
“Fine. Hercules it is. Your destination is fifty miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Flying time is a little under one hour. Sit tight and try not to break anything.”
Harmony refused to tell me what I’d be up against—“for reasons of security”—so there was nothing for me to do on the plane but sit in the dark and worry.
All too soon Harmony was on the radio again. “Look alive, Brawn. Touchdown in ten minutes.”
“It’s Hercules, not Brawn. So what am I doing here?”
“U.S. military forces are in a standoff against a man called Norman Misseldine, fifty-eight years old. Misseldine is the leader of a radical survivalist group that claims to be dedicated to bringing about a new world order. There are a couple dozen groups like that scattered throughout the U.S., and normally they’re of little concern. They content themselves with fortifying their defenses and broadcasting their anti-establishment rants, but two days ago Misseldine issued a direct and credible threat against the government.”
“How credible?” I asked.
“He contacted the authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, and directed their attention to the sea one mile southeast of Sullivan’s Island. At the predicted time, a new, small island rose out of the sea. It remained in place for only two minutes, but that was long enough for Misseldine’s point to be made. If his demands aren’t met, his next target will be Washington, D.C.”
“Well, how do they know that the island wasn’t just some freak occurrence?”
“Because it happened exactly when and where Misseldine predicted, and it was perfectly circular. That’s not likely to happen in nature. We believe that Misseldine hired Terrain to create—and then destroy—the island.”
“So I’m going up against another superhuman?”
“Probably not—no one has entered or left Misseldine’s fortress in months, and everything we know about Terrain suggests that he can’t trigger seismic activity from a distance—he has to be present for it to work. The military has cut off all communication from Misseldine’s base so he won’t be able to contact Terrain for help.”
“OK, so where do I come in?”
“The army hasn’t yet been able to breach Misseldine’s defenses, so Dr. Tremont has offered them our help. We’ve told them we can get in and capture Misseldine without the loss of a single life.”
The pilot’s voice boomed out of a loudspeaker. “Four minutes.”
“OK, then. How do we do this?”
The plane had set me down a mile from the fortress, where I was picked up by a large flatbed truck driven by a U.S. Army colonel who didn’t seem at all surprised that I was thirteen feet tall and blue. “In the back,” he said. “An’ hold tight. I drive fast.”
As I climbed in, he popped open the window at the back of the cab. “Dunno what your people told you, kid,” he bellowed over his shoulder as the jeep bounced and careened over the ground, “but word’s come down the line that you’re gonna be able to get in without causing any casualties along the way.” He gave me a quick glance. “Me, I think that’s a buncha horse hockey, but I just do what I’m told.”
A minute later I saw lights ahead in the darkness. Driving on the wrong side of the road, we overtook a pair of jeeps, three armored personnel carriers, and a couple dozen soldiers on foot.
“Misseldine’s base is a fortress. Literally. Two stories above ground, reinforced walls two feet thick.” He looked back at me again. “You think you can get through that?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” He was still looking at me. “Maybe? What kinda talk is that? How many times you been deployed, son?”
“This is my first time.”
The colonel let out a very exaggerated sigh, and finally returned his attention to the road. “Wonderful. The fortress’s got strong bars on all the windows, and the walls have got those little slots in them here and there. Y’know, like in an old castle? So Misseldine’s goons can shoot out through them. You bulletproof?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of, he says. ’Cause that’s exactly what we need. We coulda taken the place hours ago. But no, we hadda wait for you. Kid, you don’t even know your own specifications, do ya?”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said. “Another way of looking at it is to say that I haven’t yet found my limitations.”
The colonel laughed. “That’s more like it. Now, lissen up. The fortress is surrounded by a wall. It’s about eighteen feet high an’ topped with coils of razor wire. Outside that they got a forty-yard-wide ring of thornbushes. You gotta get through the bushes first, son. There’s a narrow road through them leading to the gate, but that’s the most heavily guarded.”
