The Ascension: A Super Human Clash (18 page)

ABBY COULD BARELY believe how much control James had over his flight. It had been only a few hours since he first learned to use shock waves to lift himself into the air, and he had found it exhausting. Now he was a master, carrying the two of them over the North Dakota landscape at a speed she couldn't even begin to estimate.

He's a strange guy
, she thought.
Carrying a lot of weight on his shoulders
. She guessed that could be because of his super-sensitive hearing.
It can't be easy, knowing so many people's secrets.

She was sure he had a crush on her.
Why else would he have kept coming back to the diner? It certainly couldn't have been for the food. I'll just have to find a way to discourage him somehow
, she thought,
before he completely falls in love with me.

Still, it was comforting to think that he liked her, even though he really wasn't her type. Lance, too, had seemed to take an interest in her, but she didn't expect to ever meet him again, so that was less of a problem.

“They're almost there!” James told her. “They're going to reach him before we do!”

“Warn him!” Abby shouted over the roar of the wind. “You can throw your voice, can't you?”

“It's taking all I've got just to keep us moving at this speed.”

“Then you need to go on without me—you'll get there quicker!”

“You sure?”

“Do it!”

“All right,” James said. “I'll set you down on that hilltop. Don't go anywhere—I'll come back for you.” He paused for a moment, then added, “And if I
don't
come back, you get away from here. Find somewhere to hide and lie low for the rest of your life.”

Abby saw the small round-topped, grassy hill approaching. “Don't waste time slowing down—just take me in close and let go—I'll be OK.”

They swept in so low over the grass that Abby could see it ripple from their wake. “Now!”

James opened his hand and zoomed away.

For a few seconds Abby remained on course, and then she began to drop.
This is a lot faster than it seemed when we were up in the air!

Twenty yards from the crest of the hill she hit the ground hard and slid across the long damp grass on her side. She tried to dig her hands into the dirt to slow her speed, but instead it caused her to start tumbling and rolling.

She reached the crest of the hill and suddenly there was nothing beneath her but three hundred feet of empty air, and, below that, an abandoned quarry littered with jagged fragments of shattered rock.

“James! Help me!”

But even as she called out, she knew it was too late: James was long gone, his attention focused on reaching Brawn as fast as possible.

The unforgiving ground rushed toward her.

 

“I was with the patrol searching for Brawn,” Max Dalton said, leaning back against the side of the truck with his arms folded, “and then we intercepted a call from the warden at Oak Grove.”

“Whose side are you on, Max?” Lance asked.

“Mine, of course. Lucky for you it's also
your
side.” He sighed. “I'm not going to turn you in, Lance. Your escape is considered a low priority. They've got Brawn to worry about, there's a huge man hunt out for Roz in Manhattan, plus Abby and Thunder destroyed one Raptor in Midway and another in Minnesota. So what have
you
done today, aside from getting yourself arrested?”

Lance shrugged, and gestured to the truck.

Max gave him a slow hand clap. “Wow. You're a genius.”

“Well, what have
you
done?”

Inside Lance's head, Max's voice said, “I'm the Vice-Chancellor, Lance. I can't exactly keep a low profile. Come on. Into the Shrike.”

Lance looked over at the flying craft. “So where are we going?”

Inside Lance's head, Max's voice said, “As far as anyone else knows, you're being taken into Praetorian custody for interrogation.”

“Where are we really going?”

“Just think the thoughts, Lance. You don't have to say the words. And don't worry about all those memories coming to the surface of the times you called me a jerk. I'm well aware of that. But maybe you'll think differently now that I'm getting you out of here. You owe me.”

You still owe
me
for saving your life back in Windfield
, Lance thought, but Max didn't respond, so Lance couldn't tell if he was listening.

As Lance climbed the ramp, the pilot turned around and nodded to him. “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning to you too,” Lance said.

Max got in beside Lance. “Take us to the Citadel, Brandon.”

“Certainly, Vice-Chancellor.”

The door beside Max hissed shut and the craft surged into the air, then Max hit a switch on the panel behind the pilot's seat, and a screen rose up separating the cockpit from the rest of the craft. “We can talk safely now,” Max said.

“Thanks for picking me up.”

“Don't thank me yet. If the Chancellor finds out, he'll come gunning for both of us.”

“What's this Citadel we're going to?”

“It's a palace Krodin's having built in Manhattan, in Central Park. But that's not our destination—just somewhere for the pilot to aim at until we can decide what to do next.”

“We?” Lance asked. “A few weeks ago you barely acknowledged that I existed.”

“I had a lot on my mind back then. Still do, in fact.”

“Do you know how to reverse what happened to us?”

“No. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I don't know how to send us back.”

“Well, do you know
why
it happened?”

“Not quite,” Max said, “but I do have a few ideas. The Praetorians' technology is much more advanced than ours.
Why
that is…well, I'll get to that in a minute. In theory they should be on pretty much the same level that we are.” He slapped the door of the craft. “Take this Shrike, for example, and the Raptors. They fly through some kind of gravity-nullifying system. We're
decades
away from that. Centuries, possibly. From what I can gather, most of the technology is the brainchild of one man. We need to find him before we can answer all the questions.”

“Who is he?”

“Solomon Cord. Otherwise known as Paragon. The trouble is, the Paragon from this reality is gone, replaced by the one from
our
reality. Just like you replaced the Lance McKendrick from here…. You don't have any of his memories, do you?”

Lance shook his head. “No. But if we're here, where did
they
go?”

“I don't think it's like that, Lance. It seems to me that there were never actually
two
of each of us. We haven't gone anywhere; the world changed around us.”

Lance considered this. “But why didn't
we
change?”

“I'm guessing it's because we were all caught up in the blast when Pyrokine attacked Krodin. That affected us, probably.”

“
Probably?
That's not a lot of help! You can read minds, you should—”

“That's useful only if I can access the mind of someone who knows the answers.”

“What does any of this have to do with finding Paragon?”

“Everything. That's part of the problem. Even if we can find him, he'll be
our
Paragon, not the one who put all this together. Our Paragon is a mechanical and electronic genius, but he's human, with human limitations. I'm not certain, but I'd lay down good money that the one from this reality was a superhuman.”

“Wow…Wait, that can't be right,” Lance said. “You people get your superhuman powers when you reach puberty, don't you? Well, if the world only changed a few years ago when Krodin appeared, then both Paragons should be the same. They should both be human.”

“That's the other part of the problem, and one I haven't been able to figure out. Something—or some
one
—turned this reality's Paragon into a superhuman.”

 

James was able to pinpoint Brawn's location from the sound of the giant's breathing, but he was still thankful for the powerful searchlights beaming down from the Praetorians' flying craft. He counted at least twenty Raptors hovering in place in a wide circle above a shallow valley.

The commanding officer's voice said, “Everyone in position? We don't know what this creature can withstand, so I want everything to hit it at the same time.”

James threw his voice into the cockpit of her Raptor and added a background hiss to make it sound like it was coming from the radio: “Just one minute, ma'am. We're reading a minor power imbalance in the engines. Running a check on it now.”

Without having to carry Abby he'd been able to increase his speed by half, and was now approaching Brawn's position at what he estimated to be more than a hundred miles an hour.

“Make it fast!” the officer said.

“Roger,” James responded. He was closer now, almost there.
Time to add some more confusion to the mix.
He had heard enough of the commanding officer's voice to be able to mimic it. He directed his voice to every Raptor but hers. “All ships, stand down and withdraw. New orders from the Chancellor—the creature is to be left alone. Repeat: You will stand down and withdraw immediately. Return to base and await my instructions. I will follow shortly.”

This had better work
, James thought.
If it doesn't…

There was a chorus of acknowledgment from the other Raptors' commanders, and the ships began to depart.

He threw a cocoon of silence over the commander's ship to prevent her from countermanding his orders, then darted in directly toward the giant's location. “Brawn, can you hear me?”

He heard a muttered grumble in response.

“Brawn. Wake up!”

“Aw…five more minutes, Mom.”

He heard the rustling of bushes as the giant rolled over. “Wake up! Now!”

James could see him now, in a small clearing among the trees. He was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, the dew on his blue skin glistening in the starlight.

James came to a stop a few yards from him. For a second James was unsure just how far away Brawn was: His great height made him seem a lot nearer than James's hearing was telling him. Part of James's brain was telling him to run away: Nothing that big could be safe. He took a step closer. “Brawn, you're in danger.”

The giant's colorless eyes turned in James's direction. “What? Who are you?”

“Thunder. We met at Windfield, remember?”

“What do
you
want? If you've come to take me back to Oak Grove, then you're going to have a fight on your hands.”

“We've already got one. Look up.”

Brawn raised his massive head and did a double take when he saw the cluster of Raptors. “UFOs! I
knew
there was life on other planets!”

“They're not UFOs. They're called Raptors. They're crewed by the cops of this world, and they're hunting you.”

“Oh. I'm guessing that's not good.”

“You need to get out of here, right now. They're planning to use napalm on you. I've distracted them, but there's no guarantee it's going to work for long.”

Brawn jumped to his feet. “You strong enough to fly me out of here?”

“Maybe, but not fast enough to escape the Raptors. We might have to fight our way past them.”

“That's not going to be a problem. I can take them.”

“Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Come on.”

Brawn began to stride off through the woods, and James had to run to keep up with him.

“What did you say your name is?” Brawn asked. He stepped over a meter-thick fallen log that James had to climb over.

“Thunder.”

“Oh, right. You were the dude in the wet suit.”

James stopped. “Hold it…. They're slowing down, turning back.”

He lifted the cocoon of silence in the commander's Raptor. There was no one talking, but he could hear the rapid clicking of a keyboard. “She's figured it out already. She's smart. Sending them instructions over the computer.”

“Right.” Brawn stomped over to the nearest tree. He wrapped his massive arms around its trunk and ripped it out of the ground. He held the trunk over his head and, just as he was about to throw it, stopped and looked at James. “Wait, are we allowed to kill these guys?”

“Uh, no.”

“Even though they're trying to kill us?”

“Right.”

“No fair.” He threw the tree trunk anyway. It sailed into the air and slammed into the side of one of the Raptors in a shower of sparks and splinters, shunting it a good hundred yards back before it steadied itself. “Yeah, they'll probably survive that. C'mon!” He took off again through the trees, his heavy footfalls crashing through the undergrowth.

James rose into the air and followed. He directed his voice toward Brawn. “Where are you running to?”

“Away from those things! I don't know what's going on. One minute I was in my cell in Oak Grove and the next…It wasn't a cell, it was a storeroom. With an ordinary door instead of the bank-vault door that used to be there. So I punched my way through it and ran. The prison was…different. They all acted like they'd never seen me before. Running and screaming and all going like, ‘Aah! It's a monster!' Which is all anyone ever does when they see me coming.”

There was a splintering crash as Brawn chose to run through a small oak tree instead of going around it.

James raised himself over the treetops and turned around so that he was flying backward. “They're coming.” The remaining Raptors had deactivated their searchlights, but James could tell where they were from the sound of their engines and the faint glow from the circular lights on their undercarriage.