Stronger: A Super Human Clash, page 9
* * *
The following morning Keegan was buried. All of the prisoners gathered in the small patch of ground just outside the dome that served as a cemetery, the last resting place of twenty-seven other prisoners whose lives had been lost while working in the mine.
There was no priest, but we did our best to remember how a funeral should be conducted. Prayers were said, speeches made, and as I lowered my friend’s cloth-wrapped body into the grave, Cosmo said, “I’ve got something to say. Everyone, please … If you’ll bow your heads for a moment?”
Everyone lowered their heads.
Cosmo cleared his throat. He hesitated for a second, then said, “When someone we love dies, it breaks all of us. We’re damaged, fractured, but we’re not weakened—never that. Instead, we’re united in grief, in love, in hope. That unity gives us strength, and we will need that strength to survive.”
Cosmo glanced back over toward the dome, where many of the guards were watching with vague interest, then continued: “Keegan believed that the taking of human life—no matter what the reason—is an unforgivable sin. Even in a situation where the only way to survive is to kill another. Even then. Unforgivable. I ask you to honor our friend by living as she would. I know that many of you are filled with rage over our situation here, and that our freedom seems an impossible goal without more blood being shed, but you must never, never take the life of another.”
He knelt down beside the grave and tossed in a handful of dirt. “Rest in peace.”
Cosmo straightened up, looked at me for a moment, then backed away into the crowd. A line formed, and one by one, everyone present said their good-byes.
I had my head down, my thoughts on Keegan, when I heard one of the guards raise his voice: “Where d’you think you’re goin’?”
I looked up to see Cosmo walking past the guards. “I need to talk to Mr. Hazlegrove,” he said.
As he passed through the doors, I thought, Whatever you do, Cosmo, don’t be a fool. If you antagonize him, you’ll end up in the hot box, or worse.
I could picture Cosmo marching up to Hazlegrove’s office and tried not to think of him as “the Mouse That Roared.” A stick-thin figure barely strong enough to stand upright, raging at the man who cared so little about other people that he ordered a woman to be killed and then only grudgingly allowed the woman’s friends to use a shovel to dig her grave.
Whatever argument you have with him, Cosmo, you’re not going to win, I thought.
And then another thought struck me: What if he’s not going to Hazlegrove to argue with him? What if he’s planning to—?
I was already running, the startled guards darting out of my way and reaching for their guns at the same time.
Normally I had to crouch way down to get through the doors, but on this occasion I didn’t have the luxury of taking my time: I made a low jump, throwing my legs forward and my head back, skidding through the open doors like a baseball player sliding into home plate.
Then I rolled forward onto my feet and ran, ignoring the shouts of the guards behind me.
Ahead of me, just outside Hazlegrove’s office, Swinden and Donny DePaiva had just grabbed hold of Cosmo, pulling something sharp and metal from his skeletal hands.
“No!” I roared. “Let him go!”
Hazlegrove emerged from his office, and Swinden said, “Caught him, sir. Coming for you. Had this in his hand.” Swinden held up the metal object, a small piece of plating from one of the carts that had been sharpened to a point.
I slowed as I reached them. “Let him go—he’s not thinking straight! He wouldn’t have done it!”
Cosmo turned to look at me. “I would! I was gonna slit that monster’s throat!”
Hazlegrove said, “You better talk some sense into your friend, Brawn. Otherwise there’s going to be another grave out there before the day is out.”
I crouched down in front of Cosmo. “Listen to me, man! This is not the way! All that stuff you said outside about not taking a life …”
“That was Keegan’s belief, not mine!” Cosmo bared his teeth. “He has to die. He deserves to die!”
“Maybe, but what then? The warden will just bring someone else in. Someone worse.”
“Coward!” he spat. “That’s what you are, Brawn. A coward! You’re so scared of them that you’re letting them treat us like dirt!”
“Yeah, I’m scared! But not for me. Cosmo, they can’t hurt me. But they can hurt you and everyone else. These people … They’re not human.” I looked at DePaiva and Swinden, then at Hazlegrove. “They’re scum. And they know they’re scum. Swinden’s a barely literate moron who in the outside world would have a hard time telling the moon from the sun. DePaiva is the biggest—and laziest—brownnoser who ever lived. And Hazlegrove … he’s just a weak-minded, evil, petty little man.”
Hazlegrove said, “You mind your words, Brawn. You’re not—”
“Shut up!” I turned back to Cosmo. “We will get out of this place, all of us. But it’s better that we leave on our feet than in a box. So we have to stick together. You said it yourself. We’ll need our strength to survive. Because above all, we have to be around to watch these men get the justice they deserve.”
Cosmo looked down at his feet. “One day, Hazlegrove. One day it will happen. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”
Hazlegrove said, “Take him away. Two weeks in the hot box.”
I stood up. “No, you can’t do that. He might not survive that long!”
Hazlegrove considered this. “Hmm … You’re right. Better make certain, then. A month in the hot box.”
“That’s a death sentence! You might as well shoot me now!” Cosmo yelled.
“If you wish.” Hazlegrove reached for his gun and pulled it from its holster.
I grabbed his hand, squeezing my fist around his just as he pulled the trigger.
The gun exploded, and Hazlegrove screamed. He staggered back with blood pumping from his charred, misshapen right hand.
CHAPTER 13
TWENTY-FOUR
YEARS AGO
“YOU ARE TO BE our secret weapon, Brawn. Our last resort.”
I was, finally, back in America, in a decommissioned military base somewhere in northern Texas. Still far from home, but at least it was the right continent.
Harmony Yuan’s people had reconditioned a corner of an old aircraft hangar as my quarters. It wasn’t that much different from the cell in Antarctica, but it had the illusion of freedom. And it was only an illusion: I was not allowed outside the hangar during the day, and at night I was supervised at all times.
Right now, Harmony was in my quarters talking me through a slide show of other superhumans. Most of the photos were blurred, and sometimes there was nothing but a sketch. In all, more than forty superhumans featured on Harmony’s list.
“The rest of the team won’t even know about you unless it’s absolutely necessary. Now, some of these people we are certain we can trust. They—so far—have worked only for the good of humanity. We’re aiming to recruit as many as possible. But there are others …”
The screen switched to a photo of the ugliest guy I’d ever seen. His skin was completely covered in red and yellow sores, like the world’s worst case of acne. “This is Dioxin. He’s a few years older than you. The sores on his skin constantly seep a viscous, poisonous acid. His strength and speed are maybe a little above average, but it’s the acid you need to watch out for: It can burn through pretty much anything.”
Another picture: a woman. Very good-looking, but stern. “Slaughter. We figure she’s about twenty-one, but that’s only a guess. We know nothing about her background. She can fly under her own power, and she’s strong and very fast. And utterly ruthless. She’s a killer, Brawn. Dioxin has also killed, but Slaughter actually enjoys it.”
Another woman’s face appeared. “Impervia. As far as we know, she has pretty much the same abilities as Slaughter, although she isn’t a bloodthirsty killer. She hasn’t yet done anything that puts her on one side of the law or the other, but we’re watching her.”
The screen changed again, this time showing nothing but a silhouette with a question mark. “This man is potentially one of the most powerful. A telekinetic we call Terrain, because that’s what he can control. His ability allows him to move soil and rocks and sand in great quantities. If he put his mind to it, he could sink a continent, or create earthquakes or volcanoes. That’s an incredibly potent ability in anybody’s hands.”
“But you don’t know his name or what he looks like?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
The next picture showed an extremely thin man with deep-set eyes and mottled gray and white skin. “This man’s real name is Ferdinand Nikolai Cosby, known as Cosmo to his friends. Eighteen years old. American born of Russian descent. Like you, he was perfectly normal until he hit puberty. But unlike you, his change was more gradual.”
“What powers does he have?”
“None, that we know of.”
“Well, what’s he done?”
Harmony raised an eyebrow. “Done?”
“If he’s one of the bad guys, he must have done something bad, right?”
“So far, he’s not done anything. He’s on the list because he’s a superhuman. And lastly …” Again the picture showed only a silhouette. “The shape-shifter. A photo of him would be useless. He can become anyone, and that makes him very hard to find, and potentially very dangerous. All that we know is that he calls himself Façade.” Harmony walked over to the screen and tapped it with her forefinger. “He’s one we’re very eager to find.”
“How come?”
“Because he’d be the ultimate spy.”
“You really think you can build a team from these people?”
“We do. We have access to almost limitless resources, and we operate totally off the books. We don’t cost the taxpayer anything.”
For the first few weeks in Texas, Harmony’s people thought it would be a good idea to train me. After all, I was still only fifteen and, in their opinion, just a kid. They figured that I ought to receive the same basic training as everyone else in the military.
That quickly proved to be a waste of time: I could already run much faster and for much longer than even the fittest of the instructors, and the weights were a joke to someone who could bench-press a school bus. I demolished the punching bag on my first go, and it was pointless teaching me how to use a gun when my fingers were too large to easily fit the trigger guard.
So Harmony decided that it would be more beneficial to train my mind instead. “It’s time to hit the schoolbooks, Brawn. Six hours a day, six days a week,” she told me. “English, math, history, geography, the works. You’d be in high school by now, tenth grade, so you’ve a lot of work ahead of you if you want to catch up.”
“Who’s going to teach me?”
“We selected an old friend of yours. You’ll meet him this evening. Lessons begin tomorrow morning.”
The old friend turned out to be Dr. Gordon Tremont, the man who’d taught me how to speak when I was in Antarctica.
In the three years since we’d last met, he’d lost some of the excess weight he used to carry around, and looked stronger and more confident. “Gethin Rao,” he said with a broad smile as he entered my quarters. “They didn’t tell me that you were to be my new pupil! I honestly never thought I’d see you again.”
“How are you, Doc?”
“As well as can be expected, young man. How old are you now? Fourteen?”
“Fifteen.”
He nodded at that. “Fifteen. Well, well. As they say, time flies like an arrow. And fruit flies like an apple.”
“Er, pardon?”
“I’ll leave that one with you.” He sat down on the wooden chair opposite me. “I am now your teacher, so they tell me. Hmm. It’s been a long time since I taught anyone of your age, but I’m sure that together we can muddle through. Tell me … Did you escape or did they release you?”
“I escaped. About a year after you left.”
“A year? Dear Lord, what’s wrong with these people? But you escaped, that’s the key thing. Excellent. I do hope you caused a lot of damage along the way!”
I nodded. “Yep. And it took them another two years to find me.”
“And now, here we are, together again.” He looked around. “The décor has changed, at least that’s something. And your door is open. But I suspect that your movements are still restricted, yes?”
“Well, yeah. But they tell me that’s more for my own safety than anything else. I don’t know how much Harmony’s told you, but I’m being kept secret for now.”
Dr. Tremont shrugged. “I’m sure they have their reasons…. How’s the food here? I recall that it wasn’t up to much in Antarctica.”
“It’s a lot better. We even get pizza on Fridays.”
“That’s good to hear. Even the soldiers in Antarctica had to eat that slop. An operative in the computer room once told me that they had to wolf down their food before it froze.”
I grinned. “I don’t feel sorry for anyone who was there voluntarily.” That triggered a thought that had never occurred to me before. “They were volunteers, right?”
“I believe so,” the doctor said. “I could name a dozen computer experts who’d jump at the chance to work on cutting-edge microprocessor design, despite having to work in subzero temperatures.” Then he added, “Computer processors work faster in the cold, you see.”
“Why’s that?”
I couldn’t help noticing the flash of disappointment across his face. “Ah. You don’t know anything about how computers work?”
“You mean, like, on the inside? Not a lot. In school we learned about binary numbers and that computers have got billions of teeny on-off switches inside them, and if a switch is off, that represents zero, and if it’s on, it represents one.” I shrugged. “That’s about it.”
“Pity. Computers are what it’s all about, Gethin.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and pursed his lips as he thought. “How can I best put this? Computer processors are dumb. All they can really do is count and compare values. But they can do that extremely quickly. Say you want to crack an encrypted file but you don’t know the password. All you know is that it’s a six-digit number. You could start with all the zeros and work your way up. That’s a million combinations, right? Let’s say for the sake of argument that you have to go through all the combinations, and each one takes one second. A seven-digit password would take ten times as long, right?”
I nodded. “OK …”
“But how long does it take to crack a password that’s thirteen characters long? Assuming that you have to check every combination.”
I had to think about that. “If seven digits is ten seconds, then eight is a hundred, nine is a thousand seconds…. A thirteen-digit combination would take ten million seconds.”
“Correct. If you’d given any other answer to that, I’d have abandoned this right now! So, ten million seconds is about one hundred and sixteen days. Fourteen digits would take ten times that long, about three-point-two years.”
“Wow.”
“Wow indeed. But our files here, for example, have twenty-four-digit passwords.”
I did my best to run this through my head. Fourteen is three-point-two years, so fifteen would be thirty-two years, sixteen would be three hundred and twenty. … When I got to the end, I said, “That can’t be right.”
“What answer did you get?”
“Thirty-two trillion years.”
The doctor grinned again. “It really messes with your mind, doesn’t it?”
“But if you have lots of computers all working on it, they could divide up the numbers to check. You know, each one checks a different range of combinations.”
“Ah!” the doctor said, grinning. “But suppose you have a password that’s not twenty-four digits long, but fifty? Even with a million computers checking, the process would take so much time that the universe would come to an end long before you were finished. What you’d need is a computer that could check all the combinations at the same time.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
Dr. Tremont leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “With current technology, yes, it’s impossible. But not with quantum computing. Quantum theory—nothing to do with the superhuman who uses that name, by the way—basically tells us that all possibilities exist at once.” He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “It’s hard to get your head around this, I know, but it’s real. Think of it like this: What if an infinite number of universes exist parallel to ours? In each one there’s the same computer attempting to decrypt the same file. If you can establish communication between each of those computers, and you assign them a specific code to check, then your answer comes back almost instantly.”
This was really making me dizzy. “No … But that’s impossible!”
“That’s not actually how quantum computing works, but it’s a handy way to visualize it. As for whether it’s possible … A lot of people seem to think it’s not only possible, but inevitable. Right now, there are more than a dozen companies and institutions in the USA trying to develop quantum processors, a hundred more throughout the rest of the world. If anyone can get quantum computing to work, the possibilities are endless. People talk about artificial intelligence as the ultimate goal of computer technology. Brawn, those people are thinking small. … Quantum computing would allow us to create something a lot more exciting: artificial omniscience.”
“Omniscience,” I said. “That’s all-knowing, right?”
“Exactly. An omniscient computer would change the shape of human civilization forever. If you wanted to know the answer to even the most complex problem, you could just ask it and it would tell you.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
I said, “Wow … But wouldn’t a truly omniscient computer know that you wanted to know the answer before you asked it?”
Tremont smiled and nodded. “Bingo! Gethin, I’ve been through many conversations like this with many other students, and you’re the first one to make that deduction. Yes, whoever creates the first working quantum processor will instantly become the most powerful person in the world.”
