The Ascension: A Super Human Clash (19 page)

Behind him Brawn's crashing footsteps came to a stop. “I'm gonna sort these guys out!”

“Wait…”

But Brawn wasn't listening: In the dim light James saw him leap high into the air to land on the upper branches of a tree—and he was carrying a boulder the size of a car.

James winced as he watched Brawn throw the boulder—it plowed straight through one of the Raptors, clipped a second, and sent it spinning into a third.

“Three in one go! Did you see that? Tell me you saw that!”

“I saw it,” James said.

Then something flared on one of the other Raptors, and a bolt of light streaked toward Brawn.

“Missile!” James yelled.

At the last second Brawn jumped, soared over the missile, and came crashing down on top of the attacking Raptor. The craft juddered, tilted to the left, and Brawn punched one massive fist through the hull.

As the Raptor began to fall, he leaped for another one, caught its edge with one hand, swung his left leg back, then kicked out at the hull.

The entire side of the Raptor came away in his hand. “Uh-oh.”

Brawn fell, crashing through the branches of a fir tree. The ground trembled when he landed, but he instantly rolled to his feet and jumped again, hauled himself onto a thick branch, then reached up and easily grabbed hold of another that was at least fifteen feet higher.

How can something so big move so fast?
James wondered.

Brawn leaped from the tree and snagged another Raptor, but this time he punched his fist through the cockpit glass, grabbed hold of one of the crew, and hauled the man out. “Can you fly, mister?”

James heard the man shriek, “No!”

“Well, let's find out!” Brawn casually tossed the man over his shoulder, then reached into the hull for another one.

He's nuts!
James thought. He darted through the air after the thrown man. He snagged the soldier's foot moments before the man slammed facefirst into the ground. James pulled back, slowed the man's descent almost to a stop, then let go.

He returned too late to catch the second soldier: Brawn threw the man straight through the cockpit of an approaching Raptor.

“Brawn, take it easy! You'll kill them!”

“Like I care!”

“Well, which is better? A bunch of dead guys here, or a bunch of wounded, terrified men scaring their colleagues with stories about how powerful you are?”

“They were going to kill
me
. In cold blood. I really don't see the problem here!”

The remaining Raptors began to peel away.
Is it over? Have we…?

Then James heard the voice of their commanding officer. “All ships—lock on to the monster and fire!”

Another voice said, “Ma'am, our men are still—”

“That's an order!”

“Brawn!” James yelled. “Incoming!”

The giant looked around. “Incoming what?” Then he saw the approaching missiles—twin streaks of fire from each of the remaining twelve Raptors. “Aw, rats on a
raft
!”

Brawn let go of the damaged Raptor and allowed himself to plummet toward the ground.

The missiles altered course to follow him.

James didn't have time to warn Brawn to cover his ears: He blasted the area with a long, sustained shock wave. It ripped out from him at the speed of sound, striking Brawn, the Raptors, and the missiles and knocking them all clear out of the valley.

He felt suddenly drained of energy, barely able to keep his eyes open.
Too much…Got to rest, recover, and…

The ground seemed to be moving up to meet him, and he puzzled over this for a second before he realized that he was falling.

Got to wake up…Wake up!

A branch struck his right leg; another caught him in the face and scraped a deep cut from his eyebrow to his hairline.

He hit the ground hard.

IN THE NEW JERSEY resistance cell's meeting room, Roz turned to look at the older man. “I'm number three on your hit list?”

He nodded. He was maybe fifty years old, she guessed, of average height and build. Quite handsome in a stern, emotionless way.

“Who are you?”

The man turned to Ted. In a strong, crisp Scottish accent he said, “Thank you, Silvestri. We can carry on without you.”

Ted nodded, and as he was leaving the room said to Roz, “I wish you luck.”

As soon as he was gone, the older man looked at Roz. “General Christopher Westwood, formerly of Her Majesty's Special Air Service, currently assigned by Unity to assess the situation here.”

Joe Ward said, “Krodin's got this country sewn up so tight that nothing can get in or out. Or so he thinks. He doesn't know about Suzanne—he thinks he has control of every surviving superhuman. Suzanne's been able to fly in a few specialists like the general here.”

Westwood continued: “Your arrival has changed everything, Ms. Dalton. We had certain plans in place that must now be abandoned. To get to Krodin we needed leverage. We had teams in place to take out two key people. A man called Solomon Cord—the prime architect of Krodin's latest weapon—and yourself. The only person Krodin really needs is your brother. Without him, Krodin would have to rely on brute strength and fear to hold on to power. But of course your brother's abilities mean that he is almost impossible to reach.”

Roz said, “You were going to get to him through me. Kidnap me, threaten to kill me if he didn't do as you asked.”

“Correct.”

Joe said, “Tell her the rest of it, General.”

Suzanne Housten cautioned, “Joe…”

“No, she needs to know the whole story. No more secrets. Roz, we were going to go after your little brother too.”

“But that's…! You can't
do
something like that—Josh is only ten years old!”

“This is war,” the general said. “More than a hundred thousand people have already died at Krodin's hand. He now has the weapons and technology he needs to wage war on every nation on Earth. We will do whatever it takes to prevent that.”

Then, cheerfully, Joe said, “But sure that's all in the past now. It's all water that never went under the bridge. Now we have a new plan. We're going to infiltrate the Citadel.”

“But even if you can get to Krodin, you're not strong enough to stop him,” Roz said.

“It's not him we're after. Krodin's day-to-day operations are run from the Citadel. You think he oversees everything that happens in this country? No, he delegates to a whole bunch of advisers and lieutenants. They're human. With them gone, the whole infrastructure will fall into chaos. And while the rest of them are running around in a panic trying to sort out the mess, our counterparts will strike at the base in Louisiana.”

“Louisiana…,” Roz said. “That's where Max was—the
other
Max—when he disappeared. What's there?”

Housten said, “Something that we cannot allow them to use. Until you arrived, we didn't know how they got it to work, but now…It's already working. You saw the evidence of that yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

Joe said, “That guy from your world, Pyrokine, was a superhuman who had the ability to convert matter into energy. The Helotry hooked him up to the output of a nuclear reactor and used his power to punch a hole through time and take Krodin out of the past.”

“Right. Max said it's called Quantum Mechanical Tunneling. I know all this.”

“I know you do. But let me finish, 'cos there's a good bit coming up at the end. When Pyrokine tried to kill Krodin, he released enough of that stored-up energy to partly reverse the effects of the time-travel process. So Krodin reappeared just about six years ago. And the reason we figure it didn't send him all the way back to his own time is that Krodin's ability to adapt prevented that from happening. He put the brakes on, so to speak. Are you following me so far?”

Roz nodded.

“Good stuff. So, Krodin twigged what had happened, and he figured that since he was in the past, he was free and clear to do whatever he liked without you and your pals messing it all up again. He recruited your brother, whose mind control and telepathy no longer worked on him. He built his little empire bit by bit, bringing in Solomon Cord and his brainy assistant Casey. And all the while Krodin and Max had a plan. See, at the base in Louisiana they've built the one thing Krodin needs to complete his takeover of the world. They built a teleporter. You know what that is, right? A machine that can instantly transport something from one place to another without having to cover the intervening distance.”

There was a sharp knock on the door and a young man rushed in, whispered something to Housten and the general, and then left.

“Where was I?” Joe asked.

“They built a teleporter,” Roz said. “And?”

“
And?
Roz, if what we've heard is true, then this thing is capable of sending anyone or anything to wherever Krodin wants. Anywhere at all. Our guess is they nicked the idea from the way your version of Pyrokine took Krodin out of his own time. Nowhere in the world is safe from Krodin. Think about that. Krodin throws a dart at the map and says, ‘We're invading
that
country today.' His people in Louisiana gather their soldiers in groups and send them right into the heart of the target country's most sensitive areas. Then he sends another group, and another. And he can keep doing it as long as he has soldiers to send.”

Suzanne said, “Roz, their teleporter works. Yesterday morning Krodin's people teleported him from one side of his base to the other, about three hundred yards. Then they teleported a platoon to capture you. They didn't know it was you, they just saw the alert and figured it would be a good test. We are up against a deadline here: We have to find a way to destroy that machine before Krodin can mobilize his men. If we
can
destroy it, it'll set back Krodin's plans for years.”

“But he'd just make another one,” Roz said.

General Westwood said, “We don't think he can. The Solomon Cord who built it is gone, replaced by yours.”

“What about the assistant?”

“Casey's dead. Daedalus killed him almost a year ago.” The general looked down at his clasped hands. “Ms. Dalton, Krodin's teleporter was triggered for the first time yesterday at exactly eleven-forty-two Eastern Standard Time. Do you know what else happened at exactly eleven-forty-two Eastern Standard Time?”

She shook her head.

“You and your friends arrived in this reality.”

 

Abby didn't need super-hearing to locate Brawn and James—the sounds of the giant's screams echoed through the entire forest—but as she crashed through the undergrowth and the low branches whipped at her face, she wished she had enhanced vision.
Or a flashlight
, she thought.
Never going anywhere without one again.

Her neck and her left side were aching from her collision with the ground, and she'd badly wrenched her right foot. She tried to ignore the pain, but that would have been difficult enough over flat ground. The forest floor was uneven, spongy in places, tangled with roots, bushes, and fallen branches.

Worse, she was running in almost complete darkness. The only light came from the Praetorians' Raptors, hovering overhead half a mile away.

The air was thick with the cloying scent of moss and sap, the tang of burning plastic and scorched metal.

She heard Brawn bellowing, the crash of metal on metal, then felt as though she'd slammed into a brick wall—a moving wall that smashed into her, forced her backward.

Abby lost her footing and toppled onto her back as the invisible force washed over her.

A second later, and the forest was still, silent except for the rustling of branches. She glanced up: Most of the lights of the Raptors were gone.

Shock wave
, she thought.
Thunder's blasted them all with a shock wave! But if it was powerful enough to take down the Raptors…

She jumped to her feet and ran, no longer caring about the cuts and bruises, the aches and pains.

In moments, she heard a low, constant moan. It was deep, rumbling, so strong that she imagined that even the ground was trembling. And then she saw him. Brawn, lying faceup, sprawled over the crushed trunk of a massive tree.

Abby leaped over the tree's shattered branches and onto the trunk, ran to Brawn, and crouched down next to his oversized head.

“Brawn, it's me, Abby. Are you OK?”

He didn't respond, but in the half-light, she saw his eyelids flickering open. She couldn't tell whether he was looking at her: His eyes were solid white, lacking both iris and pupil.

She patted him on the cheek. “Can you hear me? Brawn, where's James?”

A weak voice right beside her said, “Abby…”

She jumped, spun around. There was no one there. “James, where are you? I can't see you.”

“Over here. I'm trapped. Follow the sound. And quickly—I can hear them regrouping.”

Abby gave Brawn a last look, then scrambled back down to the forest floor. She was about to ask, “What sound?” when she heard it: a soft beep that seemed to be coming from the bushes to her right.

When she reached the bushes, she heard the sound again, a few yards away, leading her deeper into the forest.

She leaped over a recently fallen tree, pushed her way through a thick bush, and saw the front half of a downed Raptor protruding from the ground. Her first impression was that the back half was buried deep in the ground, but then she saw the ragged torn metal along the lower edge and realized that its hull had been split in two.

Something inside the craft was burning, providing enough flickering light for her to see James. He was lying facedown, his legs trapped under the Raptor. The ground in front of him had been swept of debris, and there were deep finger marks in the soil.

“Trying to dig myself out,” James said. “Give me a hand, will you?”

“Are you hurt?”

“I'll live. It's not crushing me, but I'm pinned. See if you can find something to use as a shovel. Dig out the ground under me. Quick as you can—they'll be here in a couple of minutes!”

Abby got down on her hands and knees beside James and peered at the torn edge of the Raptor's hull. “You were lucky. Another couple of inches and it'd have cut you in two.”

“I know. We're running out of time here, Abby! Just dig!”

Abby smiled back at him. “No need.” She shifted forward, reached out to the edge of the hull, and pulled.

There was a
ping
from beneath the hull. Then another, and a third. The Raptor's armor plating shifted in her hands, warped as though it were nothing more substantial than a sheet of copper, and the craft rose by a couple of inches. “That enough?”

“Think so…” On the ground next to her, James squirmed free.

She let go and the Raptor crashed back to the ground.

As she reached out her hand to help him up, James's grateful expression collapsed. “Oh no.”

Around them the trees' upper branches began to rustle, the sound growing steadily. “It's raining,” Abby said.

“That's not rain.”

A long red-tipped dart hit the Raptor's hull with a soft clink. Another landed on the ground close to her right foot.

In seconds the darts were coming down all around them. Abby grabbed James's arm and pulled him up. “Come on!”

A dart struck James's back, and he instantly collapsed.

The Raptor!
Abby thought.
I'll be safe there!

She had barely gone two steps when she felt the sting of a dart hitting her arm.