“Hello?” I shouted. “You still there?”

  She said, “Um … Listen … Do you know what’s going on?”

  “A plague, right?” I said. “Pretty much everyone who’s over the age of twenty is infected. It was on the radio before it went off the air. Is that what’s happened?”

  “Yeah. Look, it was done deliberately. There’s an organization called The Helotry who’ve done this for, well, it’s too complicated to get into it now. But I need to stop them, and I can’t do it on my own. So I need two things from you before I let you out. First, I don’t care what you’re in here for, but if you’re a superhuman, then I need your help. The Helotry’s plague is going to kill millions of people if we can’t stop them. So you have to swear that you’re going to help me.”

  “I swear!”

  “OK. And the second thing … you’re definitely a superhuman?”

  “No doubt about that.” I was just about to ask her to find a couple of guys to help her unlock the door when I heard the mechanism begin to ratchet open, so I figured she wasn’t on her own.

  But when the heavy bolts were drawn back and the door was pulled open, I was surprised to see that she was alone.

  As soon as she saw me, she backed away. Why is no one ever pleased to see me? I wondered. Of course I knew the answer, but just once it would be nice for someone new to smile when they met me.

  I did my best not to smile at the girl, though. She was African-American, about fourteen or fifteen years old, and absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. I’d never had any time for girls before I became Brawn, and few opportunities to meet them afterward.

  “Remember the deal?” she asked.

  “I remember. You know who I am?”

  She nodded. “Of course I do. You’re Brawn.”

  For once I didn’t hate that name. Not when she said it.

  Her name was Abigail de Luyando. Though at first we stuck together only because of circumstance, looking back I can see that she was the best friend I ever had. And even to this day, I can’t think about her without my heart aching.

  CHAPTER 23

  FOR A SHORT WHILE—not nearly long enough—we were kind of a team. There was me, Abby, Max Dalton’s sister Roz, a guy called Thunder who could control sound waves, and a kid with no powers who somehow just kept tagging along. That was Lance. If he’d had a superhero name, it would have been Big Mouth.

  The organization that Abby mentioned—The Helotry—had plans to take over the world. It seemed like that was everyone’s plan in those days. I remember thinking that anyone who really wanted to take over the world should be locked up for their own safety. I mean, most people can barely organize a dinner party without messing up some part of it.

  The Helotry had worked in secret for thousands of years, worshipping a long-dead warrior called Krodin who was apparently the first-ever superhuman. They brought him to our time, and, man, he was one tough opponent.

  He was only average sized, but he was as strong as I was and much, much faster. He was a vicious fighter, too, and he was invulnerable. Not in the same way as, say, The Shark, who just couldn’t be damaged. Krodin could be hurt, but he healed almost instantly, and anything you did to him usually worked only once. His body could adapt to anything.

  The Helotry had recruited Slaughter. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to take her on, and in light of what happened a few years later, that is my single biggest regret. They’d also recruited Pyrokine—that was why they’d attacked the prison—and used his power to help transport Krodin from the past.

  But, with some help from Paragon, Quantum, and Max Dalton, we beat them, and we saved the world. It wasn’t without cost: Pyrokine switched sides, and sacrificed himself to destroy Krodin. It was a massive, powerful blast that, we later learned, wasn’t simply a big explosion.

  After that, I returned to Oak Grove. It wasn’t really my choice: Officially I was still a prisoner, and since the whole Krodin situation was kept secret, having me wandering free would have raised far too many questions.

  But three weeks later we discovered that Krodin hadn’t died in Pyrokine’s blast. Instead, he’d been sent back in time about five or six years. Without any of us around to stop him, he began to work his way into a position of power. He recruited Max Dalton, who used his ability to read and control minds to make sure that things went Krodin’s way.

  Krodin became the chancellor of the United States of America, responsible for the nation’s security, and he used that position to build his own army.

  Max and Krodin enlisted the help of a young superhuman genius called Casey Duval to create powerful weapons and advanced machines, and it wasn’t long before they had sealed off the United States from the rest of the world.

  Casey later turned on them, mostly because Krodin kind of brings that out in people, but one of his inventions was a teleporter that would allow Krodin to transport his soldiers instantly to anywhere in the world. The technology was based on the method Pyrokine had used to bring Krodin out of the past.

  Of course, we didn’t know any of this…. By sending Krodin back in time, Pyrokine had split the time line in two. In the “real” time line, we carried on as normal, but in the alternate one Krodin materialized five or six years earlier and set about creating his empire.

  The first time Krodin’s teleporter was used, those of us who’d been present for the battle with Krodin were somehow dragged into that alternate version of Earth.

  It was not a nice place. The people lived in constant fear, every aspect of their lives monitored at all times. Almost all of that world’s superhumans had either been killed or recruited by Krodin.

  At his base in the swamplands of Louisiana, we fought Krodin alongside his former ally Casey Duval, who had taken on the identity of the armored superhero Daedalus. But Casey wasn’t fighting Krodin because that was the right thing to do: His plan had been to allow Krodin to build his empire, and then Casey would kill Krodin and take it from him. I guess if you’re desperate to rule the world, that’s the way to do it: Let someone else do all the work, and then step in at the end.

  But Casey’s plan didn’t take into account the fact that Krodin was much, much tougher than any of us had guessed…. After a battle that pretty much tore the base apart—and almost got me killed in the process—Krodin punched his fist straight through Casey’s armor, killing him instantly.

  In the end, Krodin was defeated by his own technology. Because his body could adapt to anything, we couldn’t use the teleporter to send him far away. It had been used on him once, so it wouldn’t work again.

  Or so we thought … But Lance turned out to be smarter than we realized. He set the teleporter’s controls to pick Krodin out of the past, from the very moment he materialized after his battle with Pyrokine. Back then, you see, Krodin hadn’t experienced the teleporter, so his body had no defense against its effects.

  Lance sent him somewhere far away. He wouldn’t say where, just that Krodin would not be coming back.

  The instant Lance activated the teleporter and pulled Krodin out of the past, the time line was corrected and everything went back to the way it should have been. Krodin’s empire vanished, because it never existed.

  But, as before, those of us who were caught up in Krodin’s blast somehow remained unaffected by the shift in time lines…. We stayed in the same place while the world restructured itself around us: We were suddenly stranded in the middle of a swamp in Louisiana.

  The fight with Krodin had really taken it out of us. Max was being hailed by the others as the savior of the day, but that really didn’t sit well with me. I knew him then for what he really was: a coldhearted manipulator who used his mind control to make everyone think he was a hero. But his power didn’t work on me, and I couldn’t tell the others. Even if they had believed me, Max would have used his power again to make them forget.

  Or he could get them to turn on me, just like he had the first time I met him, when Roz suddenly went from shouting at Max for attacking me to treating me like a monster.

  So I knew what Max was really like, and he knew that I knew.

  And I also knew he was scared of me, because I was one of the very few people whose mind he couldn’t read. Max would never know what I was thinking.

  As we walked through the swamp, I carried Abby on my shoulder: She’d been injured, and it didn’t make sense for her to walk while I could carry her effortlessly.

  This made Lance very, very jealous. It was obvious that he was head over heels in love with Abby. And so was Thunder. That made me feel a little bit sorry for Roz. She was just as cute as Abby, but for some reason neither Lance nor Thunder was interested in her.

  Maybe that was Max’s influence again, doing what he always does: assuming that he knows best and that there’s nothing wrong with controlling people to make sure they act the way he wants.

  But I can’t say that I was in love with Abby, because I don’t know what that kind of love feels like.

  With Thunder flying and leading the way, and me and Max keeping well apart from each other, our ragtag team began the long, painful walk back to civilization.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE MINE

  TWO YEARS AGO

  I DON’T KNOW FOR CERTAIN whether productivity in the mine decreased after Hazlegrove executed the other trustees, but it’s a safe guess that it did.

  I also don’t know how I kept going. True to his word, Hazlegrove worked me twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week.

  More than once I fell asleep as I was pushing the heavy carts of ore and had to be kicked awake by the guards. I lost weight: I had one hour a day in which to eat and sleep, and most of the time sleep hit me the instant my shift was over.

  To maximize my sleep time I stayed in the mine shaft. I stopped washing—I just didn’t have the time or the energy. Whenever they could, the other prisoners slipped me food and water, and that was probably the only thing that kept me alive and sane.

  After the first week I was finding it hard to focus on anything. The guards would issue orders and I would immediately forget them.

  By the third week I was starting to hallucinate. This happened so subtly at first that it took me a long time to realize it.

  I was reaching the midpoint in my shift, struggling to push the filled cart another couple of yards, when it seemed to me that the walls were starting to move. Not much, just a few inches at a time, and it always happened when I wasn’t looking.

  But once, a shadow detached itself from the wall and became a woman who smiled and waved at me as I passed. I remember thinking how much the woman looked like Abby, and then realizing that it was Abby, that she had come to take me home.

  “Keep out of sight,” I whispered to her. “If the guards see you, they’ll shoot.”

  “They won’t see me,” she said. “I know how to hide. Brawn, you’re not looking good.”

  “You missed me, yeah?”

  “What do you think? Of course I missed you!”

  I grinned. “Good to know. It’s been a long time. Way too long. Hey, are you and Quinn still together? You two were going to invite me over for dinner, remember? But you never did.”

  She put her hand on my arm as she walked alongside me. “You would have eaten everything in the apartment.”

  I passed a group of prisoners heading back down the shaft, and they gave me some strange looks.

  “What’s with them?” I asked Cosmo.

  “Dude, they think you’ve gone crazy because you’re talking to yourself.”

  “No, I’m talking to Abby,” I began, and then realized that she wasn’t there. She had never been there. Abby had been dead for years, and I was either dreaming her or talking to a ghost.

  “You’re suffering from severe sleep deprivation,” Cosmo said. “Your mind is playing tricks on you. Earlier you thought you were eating an orange.”

  “Yeah. I was so sure, I could taste it.” I stopped walking, and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I think I’m losing my mind here.” I looked down at Cosmo. “But, hey, that means I’m not, doesn’t it? They say that if you’re going mad, you don’t know you’re going mad. So if you think you are, then you’re not.”

  “Yeah, that’s supposed to be true.”

  “Like, just for a second there I started thinking that you were dead too! But that was just a dream.”

  And Cosmo said, “Oh, that was real. This is the dream. I died last year, remember?”

  I reached my hand out to him and it passed right through his shoulder. “Yeah, of course. I remember.”

  But even though he wasn’t real, he stayed with me for a while, and I was glad for the company.

  CHAPTER 25

  TWENTY-THREE

  YEARS AGO

  A FEW MILES SOUTH of the border between Louisiana and Arkansas, we waited at a crossroads for Max Dalton’s people to come pick us up.

  “So everything’s back to normal?” Roz asked Max as he stepped out of the old phone booth.

  “Seems to be,” Max said. “According to Ollie all of us just disappeared from where we were supposed to be. Josh is fine. He’s used to me and Roz heading off on missions, so he’s none the wiser. From what Ollie says, nothing else has changed. The world is as it should be.”

  Thunder said, “Yeah, but he didn’t sound very happy.”

  “You should know better than to listen in on other people’s conversations,” Max said.

  Thunder shrugged. He’d been right beside me when Max ordered Krodin’s men to fire at us, but he didn’t seem to remember that.

  I was sitting on the edge of the road with Abby on one side and Roz on the other, both pressed up close to me. Not so much because they liked me, but because the mosquitoes always gave me a wide clearance.

  Across the street, Lance and Paragon were sitting cross-legged, facing each other and deep in conversation. Paragon’s real name was Solomon Cord. He was about Max’s age, but we all liked him because he wasn’t a self-obsessed jerk.

  “Wonder what they’re talking about,” Roz said.

  Abby said, “Probably Lance’s family.”

  A few weeks earlier, after our first battle with Krodin, Slaughter found where Lance lived and killed his parents and brother. Then when the time line changed, he got them back: In the alternative world, Krodin had wiped out The Helotry before they could recruit Slaughter, so she never encountered Lance and thus had no need to kill his family out of revenge.

  But when Lance used the teleporter on Krodin and reset the time line, everything was back the way it had been, and Lance’s family was still dead.

  “I’m not sure I could have done that if I were him,” Roz said.

  Abby nudged me. “What about you? Do you have a family?”

  “Yep. Got a ma and pa back home. They don’t know what happened to me. You?”

  “Mom, big sister, and four little brothers,” Abby said. “My dad’s gone, though. Hey, here’s something. I always thought that my mom and dad just separated, but the version of my mom in Krodin’s world said that he had an affair and she threw him out.”

  Roz said, “Wow. So, are you going to mention it to her when you get home?”

  Abby stiffened. “Home. Oh, I am going to be so grounded! She’s probably going mad with worry!” She jumped to her feet and ran for the phone booth.

  “How are you going to explain how you got out of Oak Grove?” Roz asked me.

  “I haven’t given it a minute’s thought,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think I’m going back. Not this time. I’ve already spent far too much of my life locked up.”

  “Max won’t like that.”

  “Max isn’t my boss. He’s not your boss either.”

  “You don’t like him much, do you?”

  I sighed. “Roz, your brother can control people’s minds. Do you remember what he did when we were fighting Krodin?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. He saved us.”

  “How? What did he do to save us?”

  She raised her eyes. “Oh please! You were there, remember?”

  “I remember Krodin telling Max to put me and Thunder in front of a firing squad, and he did it. And I remember Daedalus attacking him and knocking him out. So how did he save us?”

  “Well, he …” She bit her lip and looked away.

  “Stuck, huh? Roz, he’s done this before. Back in Windfield he made you forget about Pyrokine.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Max approaching. “And here he comes now, to make you forget this conversation.”

  Roz stood up and walked away.

  “You’re going to have to stop that,” Max said to me.

  “I’m going to have to stop? You’re the one messing with people’s minds. But you can’t mess with mine.” I tapped my forehead. “This is a closed book as far as you’re concerned.”

  “I could turn them all against you, you know. I could have the whole world hounding you for the rest of your life.”

  “Dalton, if you’re supposed to be a good guy, why are you doing stuff like this? Why don’t you use your powers for good?”

  “I do. That’s all I do. All of my plans are for the greater good, Brawn. So don’t screw things up for me. Keep out of my way. And don’t think that I don’t know you just because I can’t read your mind. I know all your secrets. I know your real name, I know what happened to you when you were twelve. I even know the names of the people who held you prisoner in Antarctica for a year.” He tapped his own forehead, mimicking my action. “This is a closed book to you, unless you agree to stay out of my business. If you ever want revenge on Harmony Yuan and Gordon Tremont, you’ll need my help.”

  “There was a time when revenge was all I could think of, but …” I shrugged. “Life’s too short for that sort of thing.”

  “Even after what they put you through?”

  “If I wanted revenge on them, I’d already have taken it.”

  “There’s also the matter of your parents,” Max said. “I know how to get to them.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

 

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