Stronger: A Super Human Clash, page 28
Casey idly fiddled with the trigger device in his hand. “Sure. Why not? But we’re not hanging around. You’ll have to fly alongside us. If you can keep up—this thing moves pretty fast.”
The craft lurched into the air, and in seconds the heroes were just dots on the ground. Abby launched herself after us, flying in parallel with the craft. “Brawn, you’ve got to come back to us. These people are killers!”
“Six of you attacked me in Manhattan, Hesperus! You tried to kill me!”
“It was Max. You know that.”
Casey leaned past me and said, “Of course it was. It’s always Max. Hesperus, when are you going to learn that he is much more of a threat than I am?”
“Shut up,” she said. “This isn’t about you. Brawn, please. Come back. We’ll sort everything out and we can be a team again. When I freed you from Oak Grove prison, I took a chance on you. Now you have to do the same. Trust me. It’s not too late.”
Slaughter peered out the other side of the craft. “We’ve got a couple of folks on our tail. Titan and Energy, I think. Pretty far back, but they’re matching our speed.” She pulled her head back in and nodded at Casey, grinning. “Goes against the rules! Do it! Set the missiles flying!”
Casey shook his head. “No can do. I was bluffing.” He held up the device. “The software bomb exists, but all it will do is shut down the missiles. There’s no way I can launch them remotely. What, you really think I’m that crazy?”
Abby looked at him for a second, her eyes wide, then darted away.
“Slaughter!” Casey yelled. “Stop her!”
“No!” I screamed. I made a grab for Slaughter, but I was too slow.
She launched herself out of the craft, straight down at Abby.
Abby didn’t see her coming.
Slaughter swooped down and pulled the ax free from Abby’s back.
Far below, Energy saw what was happening and zoomed up toward them.
Abby turned in midair, but Slaughter was fast, and stronger.
Energy blasted Slaughter with a lightning bolt so powerful that for a few seconds there was nothing but a blinding glare.
And when my vision cleared, Abby was falling, her own ax buried deep into her side.
I saw Energy catch my friend in her arms. But she was too late. Nothing could have saved her.
At the age of twenty-four, ten years after I met her, Abigail de Luyando died because she tried to save me.
CHAPTER 40
TWELVE
YEARS AGO
TEN MONTHS LATER, in the enormous cavern deep below the base in Pennsylvania, I was helping Casey’s people assemble one of the giant engines for his latest project, a mobile fortress that—when completed—would be more than a hundred yards long and completely bristling with weapons.
As I stepped back to check my work, a voice behind me said, “Hey.”
I felt my blood turn cold, and I forced myself to keep calm as I turned to face Slaughter.
She hovered in the air in front of me, a slight smile on her starkly beautiful face. “So … I understand why you were mad about what happened with Hesperus.”
I walked toward her and she floated back, maintaining the same distance between us.
“Brawn, listen … She would have told the others that Ragnarök was bluffing. They’d have come after us…. We were outnumbered, outgunned. I had to stop her!”
“And you thought that killing her was the only way to achieve that?” I snarled. “You’re sick. Twisted.”
Casey came running, skidded to a stop between us. “Stand down, both of you! If you’re going to fight, you’re not doing it in here. I’ve worked too long and too hard to have it all destroyed because you can’t set aside your differences!”
I glared at Slaughter as I addressed Casey. “How much longer?”
“Soon. A year, maybe two.” To Slaughter, he said, “Leave us.”
As she darted out of the cavern, I said to Casey, “It had better work.”
“I can’t promise you that. I’m certain I’ll be able to permanently strip the powers that make someone superhuman. But … I don’t know if I can change your appearance back to human.”
“Then what’s the point of me even being here? I’ve spent the past fifteen years like this.” I sat down on the ground so our eyes were more or less on the same level. “I want to be able to walk down the street without people running and screaming. I want to be able to go into a store without having to crawl on my hands and knees.”
Casey nodded. “I know. There might be another solution. I’m thinking that maybe I can give you another body. A clone. I’ve already had some success in that field. Problem is, I haven’t yet found a viable way to accelerate a clone’s growth. So if we start growing one now, it’ll be another eighteen years before it reaches adulthood. Of course, we’ll need those eighteen years to find a way to copy your brain patterns to the clone.”
“Suppose you could do that,” I said. “Then what happens to me? To this body? There’d be two of us, right?”
“We’d dispose of your current body.”
“That’d be murder.”
Casey shrugged. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“And if the clone body reaches eighteen years, well, it’ll have a mind of its own. So wiping that mind would also be murder.” I shook my head. “No. We’re not doing that.”
“Then you’ll have to resign yourself to remaining the way you are now. It could be worse, you know. You could be in Dioxin’s situation.” Casey walked around behind me and put his hand on my shoulder as we looked over toward the skeletal structure of the mobile fortress. “This is costing nearly every cent I’ve stolen in the past decade, but it’ll be worth it. It’ll bring the so-called heroes running. The more of them we have in one place, the more energy we’ll be able to siphon from them.”
“They’ll try to stop us,” I said. “They’re going to throw everything they have at us.”
“It’s the right thing to do, you know that.”
“It’ll be all-out war.”
“I know,” Casey said. “It’s going to be great.”
EPILOGUE
THE MINE
NOW
EVERY DAY AT DAWN the guards wake me. They release the mechanisms holding my chains to the wall, then the massive doors rumble open and they escort me out.
I work for eighteen hours, hauling the raw ore from the new mine shaft, without a break. I receive food and water only when my shift is over, and only if I have surpassed my quota of ore.
Sometimes, I think I could snap through the chains if given enough time, but I am watched every moment of every day.
After my rampage through the mine eight months ago Harmony Yuan told me, with glee in her eyes, that I would die here. I am certain that she is right.
Around me the guards are assembling, preparing to once again take me out into the daylight, and I remember one of the last things my father said to me: “You have to be a good man. You have to always do the best you can for other people.”
It kills me that I’ve let him down, that I was so willing to follow Casey Duval, to believe his lies. He used me, just as Harmony and Gordon Tremont used me. Just as Max Dalton did.
For all his faults, at least Max was working to make things better for everyone. Though he was greedy, and vain, and misguided, ultimately he put the human race above himself. But the ends do not justify the means. Despite everything he did, that did not make him a good person.
And I wasn’t a good person either. I’d been selfish. I wanted to be cured…. I wanted a normal life, but now I see that I did little to deserve that. A normal life is not a right, it’s a privilege that each of us must earn, by helping others, by putting their needs ahead of our own desires.
Harmony said, “Whatever you think about this place, Gethin Rao, you do deserve to be here. You sided with Ragnarök when you knew that he was evil.”
She was right.
The mechanism in the walls whirs into action, and the strong metal loops that bind my chains to the floor slowly open, allowing me to move.
I stand and stretch as much as my chains will allow.
Ahead of me, the crack in the doors widens and my guards tighten their grips on their guns.
The last words Harmony said to me were “The age of the superhuman is over. Many of you are dead; all of you have lost your powers. You were an aberration, a temporary flaw. You should never have existed.”
Whether that is true, I may never know.
All I know now is that I cannot escape this place, and that my rampage destroyed the last chance I had to redeem myself. While I was working in the mine alongside the other prisoners, I did whatever I could to help them. It wasn’t much, but in small ways I made their lives better.
But not now, not anymore.
Outside, I hear the workers from the night shift heading back into the dome, their chains clinking, their bare feet scuffing the dust-covered concrete. I desperately want to help them again, to fight for a few concessions from the guards.
I’ve lost that chance forever.
I’m thirty-nine years old, and I’ve been a monster for twenty-seven of those years.
The doors open wider and I see them, my fellow prisoners. They don’t look at me anymore.
Once, they looked to me for salvation. They saw the punishment I’d withstood under Hazlegrove’s rule, and it gave them hope: If I was able to endure that, then they could endure their own suffering.
Not anymore. We work until we die.
All hope is gone.
Last night, during a temporary lull in the noise from the mine, I heard wolves howling in the mountains. The sound took me back, instantly, to the Antarctic blizzard, to the friendly huskies leading my Argentinean rescuers.
But that was a long time ago, when I was young and strong and still superhuman. Before I allied myself with Casey Duval and stepped onto the path that led me to this place.
I once told Abby that if I could go back in time to the day I freed Casey from Max Dalton’s cell, I would do it again. And even now, after everything that’s happened to me, I would still make the same choice. Regardless of his later deeds, back then Casey was innocent. And the innocent should never be imprisoned.
My belief that I made the right decision is a small consolation, but it’s the only thing I have left. The only thing that’s mine.
I am certain that I will never see Max again, but I like to think that sometimes he lies awake at night, haunted by the memories of his actions. And maybe, every now and then, he remembers me and feels a twinge of guilt.
Wordlessly, the guards gesture with their guns, indicating that I should emerge from my cell.
They back out ahead of me, always alert, fingers on triggers. Looking only at me.
They don’t see that some of the other prisoners have turned toward the electrified perimeter fence.
They don’t see the sparks from the fence as something tears its way through.
But they hear the panic of the prisoners, and finally they turn.
A boy, not more than thirteen years old, is racing toward us. Moving fast, faster than I’ve seen anyone move in more than ten years.
His hands are glowing, twin balls of energy forming within them.
He leaps over the line of prisoners, and the guards swing their weapons in his direction.
The boy blasts the guards with his lightning.
I cannot remember the last time I laughed, but I’m laughing now.
Harmony was wrong. The age of the superhuman is far from over.
Lance slammed the door behind him, ran through the musty office and out to the front. He jumped onto his bike, slung the backpack onto the handlebars, and began pedaling like crazy. He couldn’t help grinning. I did it! I got away!
He zoomed around the corner and onto the main road, shifted up a gear, and increased his speed. It was tough going with the heavy jetpack on his back, but he wasn’t going to stop for anything.
Then he heard the roar of an engine coming up fast behind.
He risked a glance back: A large white panel truck was bearing down on him. Two black-suited men were in the cab, the passenger gesturing wildly while the driver sat with a grim, determined look on his face.
Lance took a sudden right into another narrow side road, almost coming off the bike. The driver had to hit the brakes to make the turn.
The road was closed off at the end, with only a narrow pedestrian passage leading through the gap between two buildings. They’ll never be able to follow me through! He mentally pictured his route home. If I cut through the church grounds I can … He stopped himself. No, can’t go home. Not with all this stuff. I have to hide it somewhere.
As he was considering the best place to stash his stolen goods where they wouldn’t be found, he cycled out of the business park and onto the street. The rush-hour traffic was long gone, but the street was still busy.
He slowed a little as he approached the crossroads, weaved in and out of the waiting cars, then turned right, heading toward the mall. There was a dense clump of bushes at one end of the eastern parking lot—he’d often hidden stuff there before, and it had never been discovered.
At the next junction he jumped the red light and almost collided with a white truck that was turning the corner. He pulled hard on the brakes, put his foot down to steady himself, and glared at the driver. His face fell. Oh no. …
The two black-suited men looked as surprised as Lance did. The passenger shouted, “That’s him! An’ he’s the same kid from the accident! He musta got Marcus’s briefcase!”
Lance jumped back onto the bike, darted around the truck and down the road, knowing that they’d have to make a U-turn to follow him.
He heard a loud bang and something shattered a mailbox as he passed. “They’ve got guns? Oh, this just gets better and better!”
Another bang, and Lance felt like something had thumped him in the back. They hit the jetpack! OK, that’s it. I quit. He slowed a little, steered the bike onto the pavement. I’ll say I’m sorry and hand it all back and when their hands are full I’ll run like mad. A hundred yards ahead was the pedestrian entrance to a housing estate. Perfect. Stop there and—
There was a third gunshot. Lance changed his mind about stopping. He hunched forward, keeping his head low, and pushed as hard on the pedals as he could. There were two more shots, and before he even heard the second Lance found himself racing forward, as though he had just crested a steep hill.
But the road was almost flat, and still his speed was increasing. It felt like someone was pushing him from behind. Then a familiar whine reached his ears, and he knew what had happened: The last gunshot had somehow activated the jetpack.
He zoomed out onto the road, his knuckles white on the juddering handlebars. I’m gonna die!
He knew that he couldn’t slow down or jump off the bike. With the jetpack still thrusting him forward he’d have no way of stopping. He couldn’t even lift his head more than a couple of inches.
Lance rocketed across an intersection, overtook a guy on a motorbike, narrowly missed a deep pothole. He could steer the bike, but it wasn’t easy—at this speed, the slightest nudge on the handlebars sent him weaving all over the road. The fuel in this thing has to run out sometime. Need a good long stretch of road …
Ahead, the road branched to the right: the on-ramp for the freeway. He knew that bicycles weren’t allowed on the freeway, but figured that in this case the traffic cops might make an exception. Besides, he didn’t have any other option.
There was a line of cars at the end of the ramp waiting to pull out into the busy traffic. Lance zoomed past the surprised drivers and cut in ahead of a white Toyota.
The speed limit on the freeway was sixty-five miles per hour. Lance knew from being in the car with his dad that most drivers regarded sixty-five as the minimum speed, not the maximum. He didn’t know how fast he was going now, but he was overtaking everything else on the freeway. The bike shuddered and rattled over the asphalt and he prayed to the god of cycling that he didn’t blow a tire.
He tried to remember exactly what the newspaper article on Paragon’s jetpack had said about its range. He had a horrible feeling that there had been something about Paragon being able to make it all the way from New York to Chicago without the need to refuel. And he’s a lot bigger than me too. Plus he’s got all that armor. This thing might not run out before I reach the end of the freeway!
Lance’s back and shoulders were aching from the strain, and he desperately wanted to sit back. He knew that if he did, the jetpack would launch him into the air, bike and all.
Paragon had spent years developing his jetpack. He knew how to control it, how to land safely.
Lance didn’t even know how to undo the clasps.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Six novels, one collection of short stories … that’s over half a million words so far! And none of this would have been possible without the support of some very talented and hardworking people.
First and foremost, my adorable wife, Leonia, who is far more giving and generous than I deserve. It’s no lie to say that she is in many ways the heart of the Quantum Prophecy
series: Leonia reads every book the day after I’ve finished the first draft (which, of course, also means that she gets to read all the bits that later get taken out!), and it’s her reactions to that first draft that shape the final book.
My fellow writers Harry Harrison, Michael Scott, and John Higgins, who have always been there with their liberal feedback and wise advice.
My friends—too numerous to list, but they know who they are—who’ve been behind the books one hundred percent. In this instance, particular thanks must go to Danielle Lavigne, Vicky Stonebridge, Richmond Clements, Dave Evans, and Paul Tomlinson—all of whom are far more talented than I am, but don’t tell them I said that.
