The Ascension: A Super Human Clash (29 page)

Remington shook his head. “McKendrick, that'll take ages to set up if we can't get into the teleporter room. At the subatomic level there's no easy way to differentiate between a person and his surroundings. It took nearly an hour to get the teleporter to lock on to you guys in the Raptor. Anything inside the teleporter room we can send almost immediately, because we know the precise shape of the room and we set up the energy field to match. When we pulled Max out of the swamp, we had to do a best guess. We took a hundred gallons of water and half a tree with him.”

“We have to do
something
!”

Remington shrugged. “What's the point? They're already here. The base will be overrun in minutes.” The first computer beeped, and he returned to its screen. “See that? That was an order to transport someone
inside
the base.”

Lance gritted his teeth. “Shut down the emergency protocols. Now!”

Remington looked up at him. “Chancellor Krodin will—”

“Do you remember the key? Imagine that was your thumb.”

Remington pulled the keyboard closer and began entering instructions. One by one, the pending orders began to disappear.

Josh, standing next to Lance, said, “Teleport Krodin out of here. Send him to the middle of the Sahara desert or some place where there's no one for him to hurt.”

“It doesn't
work
on Krodin,” Remington said. “Not anymore. Anything you do to him will work only once before his powers adapt to resist it, and he's already been teleported.”

“So you can't even send him back to his own time?” Josh asked.

Lance said, “Even if we could, that would be the biggest mistake in human history, Josh! He's immortal, remember? If we did that, he'd have a four-and-a-half-thousand-year head start on us. He'd already taken over the known world by that stage—I hate to think what things would be like now with him having been in charge all that time.”

“So what do we do?”

“I'm thinking.”
We can't send him away, can't send him through time. But we've got an incredibly powerful weapon here…. There has to be
some
way we can use it against him!
Then he smiled. “Got it.”

“What are we going to do?” Josh asked.

Lance ignored him. “Remington, lock the teleporter onto Krodin. Track his position at all times. Wherever he goes, I want the thing targeting him. You can do that?”

“Yeah, but what's the point? I just told you, it won't work on him!”

“Just do it.”

 

Abby let the steel pole clatter to the floor and flexed her hands into fists. Her knuckles cracked.

For the past few minutes she'd been trying to force open the massive steel doors that sealed the teleporter room from the rest of the base. “I'm sorry, Mr. Cord. It's just not working.”

Cord angrily kicked at a lump of fallen masonry. “There
has
to be a way!”

“My strength works best on metal, so I should be able to open the doors, but there's something else holding them closed.”

“We're running out of time,” Cord said.

“I know,” Abby said, then muttered, “What would Lance do?”

“What?”

“Just, you know, wondering how he'd get in there. He seems to be good at that sort of thing.”

Cord laughed. “You're right. If you can't solve a problem, just ignore it. We don't go through the door. We go
around
it. Through the wall.”

“Or the ceiling,” Abby said. “Daedalus crashed the Raptor into the roof—it's already weakened.” She snatched up the steel pole once more. “This way!”

They ran back along the corridor toward the dormitory where she and James had broken through into the base.

As Cord rounded the last corner to the dormitory, Abby grabbed his shoulder and suddenly pulled him back—just as a series of small craters appeared in the wall next to where he'd been standing.

A woman's voice called out, “This is Agent Amandine Paquette, chief of the Manhattan Praetorian Division. The base is completely surrounded! Drop your weapons and get down on the floor!”

Cord and Abby exchanged a glance, then Cord whispered, “I'll let her take me. You stay out of sight. First chance you get, go to the roof and break through to the teleporter.”

“She'll kill you!”

“She won't. She'll want to interrogate me first.” He pushed Abby back and called out, “Don't shoot! I'm alone and unarmed!” He placed his hands on top of his head, took a deep breath, and stepped around the corner into the dormitory.

Abby fought the urge to go after him; she knew he was right. She quietly backed away from the corner. A large section of the ceiling had partially collapsed, hanging at an angle against one wall. Abby crouched behind the array of water-soaked tiles, steel pole at the ready.

Angry voices drifted back to her: the agent yelling, “On your knees, Cord! Now!”

A man: “You two, cuff him, search him.”

Four of them at least
, Abby thought.
He's not superhuman, but he should be able to deal with four.

Then Paquette's voice again: “The rest of you, search the base. Two teams of four.”

Another eight. It's not going to be easy to sneak past them.

She heard approaching footsteps splashing on the damp floor, tightened her grip on the pole.

Through a gap in the tiles she saw shadows stretching across the floor.

Agent Paquette said, “You don't know me, Cord, but I knew the other version of you. I'm the new acting vice-chancellor.”

They might not look here
, Abby said to herself. She held her breath as the first soldier passed, then the second.

Paquette said, “Solomon Cord. By attacking this base you have committed an act of treason against the state.”

A black-gloved hand reached around the edge of Abby's makeshift shelter and began to pull it aside.

“During a time of war there is only one punishment for treason: immediate execution.”

Abby threw herself forward, crashing through the ceiling tiles and into the startled Praetorian soldier. Still gripping the pole in both hands like a quarterstaff, she rolled over him, landed on her feet.

She jabbed one end of the pole into the stomach of the next man just as the two who had passed were turning around.

Abby slammed the other end of the pole into the floor, vaulted over the fallen guard, and crashed feetfirst into one of the remaining men.

The last one had enough time to raise his weapon. Abby ducked and rolled, spun the steel pole around so that it slammed against the side of the man's knee.

He screamed as he collapsed to the side, and his automatic rifle erupted into life.

In the close corridor the sound was almost deafening. Abby kept low until the shooting stopped, then rolled to her feet. The wounded men were still screaming, and it took her a moment to realize that there were more screams than there should be.

Just beyond the corridor another half dozen Praetorian soldiers lay on the ground, shot at close range by their colleague.

Amandine Paquette's voice called out, “Whoever you are—stand down! I've got Solomon Cord here. Drop your weapons, put your hands on your head, and walk backward toward me. You have ten seconds to respond, or I will snap his neck!”

“Just a minute!” Abby replied, in the same tone she used when her mother asked her to wash the dishes. She dropped the steel pole and quickly looked around for something else—anything—she might be able to use as a less obvious weapon.

“Now!”

Abby gave up the search and did as she was told, walking backward into the dormitory and carefully stepping over the wounded Praetorians. As she rounded the corner, she saw, at the edge of her vision, Solomon Cord kneeling on the ground with the woman standing behind him: Her hands were on his neck. There was a gun in the woman's holster.

Superhuman
, Abby thought.
She has to be. Otherwise she'd be using the gun.
She lowered her hands as she slowly turned around, and forced a smile. “You got him, then. Good. I've been chasing him all over the base.” She waved her hand back the way she had come. “Come on, we've got some of his friends holed up in the teleport room.”

Amandine Paquette looked at Abby for a moment, then said, “Huh. How come you're not singing ‘Happy Birthday'? After all, you must think I was born yesterday if you expect me to fall for a line like that.”

“I figured it was worth a go.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them.” Her eyes narrowed. “You're not one of Unity's agents. You're her, aren't you? The one who took down the Raptors in Midway. You simpleminded fools—this country
needs
Krodin! Eight minutes ago more than a million Unity ground troops touched down on U.S. soil. All along the Gulf coast, across the borders from Mexico and Canada. We don't know how they amassed so many troops without our early-warning system alerting us, but they're here. They've got upward of two hundred fighters in the air, and they're locking cruise missiles on to everything we have. Their aircraft carriers are already engaged with ours.” Paquette let go of Cord's neck, then kicked him between his shoulder blades, knocking him facedown to the floor. At the same time she pulled her sidearm from its holster. “If we hadn't been so busy chasing you morons, we might have seen it coming!”

Abby didn't recognize the woman's name or her face.
If she is a superhuman, then who was she back in our world? If I knew that, I might have some idea of her powers.

On the ground beside her, Cord rolled onto his back, then pushed himself up. “We came here to stop Krodin before Unity could strike. We didn't know how insane Daedalus is. We have to stop
both
of them.”

Paquette looked at him with disgust. “You're weak. Pathetic. Our version of Solomon Cord was ten times the man you are.”

Abby had kept constant watch on Paquette's gun. It hadn't wavered once.

A crazy thought struck her:
Bullets are metal, and my powers give me some control over metal…. Maybe I'm bulletproof.

She felt her heart racing at the thought.
Even if I'm not, I'm certainly stronger than Cord. I could take a run at her. If she shoots me, he might get away.

She shifted her weight onto her right foot, tensed her muscles for the jump.

“Go ahead, kid,” Paquette said. “I'm going to execute you both anyway.” Abby jumped, and the gun flared.

SO FAR, THE UNITY JETS had been making only low-level passes, and for that Roz was grateful. But according to Brawn—who seemed to have incredibly sharp eyesight—the whole base was surrounded by a wide ring of copters, all hovering in place. She knew that at any moment they could be given the order to attack: When that happened, it was all over.

Roz let go of Suzanne's hand and dropped the remaining four yards to the hull of the enormous Carrier. She hit the deck hard, rolled, and came to a stop on her feet just in time to see Suzanne streaking toward Krodin.

Suzanne slammed into the small of Krodin's back, sent him sprawling across the deck, ripping up blackboard-sized steel panels in his path.

Even before he stopped moving, Krodin snatched up one of the panels and hurled it at her like an oversized Frisbee.

Roz lashed out at the spinning panel with a telekinetic blast, knocking it a little off course: It sailed over Suzanne's head, missing her by less than an inch.

Then Roz suddenly realized why the Unity forces hadn't launched their attack: They were watching the fight.

Daedalus struck next, his wings folded back as he swooped down toward Krodin at an almost vertical angle. He struck hard, snagged Krodin's head with the claws on his boots, and launched himself upward once more, dragging the Fifth King beneath him.

Krodin reached up, grabbed Daedalus's ankles, and started to pull himself up.

Brawn leaped at them, his massive arms grabbing Krodin around the waist from behind, and held on.

Roz could hear the motors in Daedalus's beating wings begin to whine with the strain of keeping them all aloft.

Krodin roared with anger and started slamming his right elbow back into Brawn's face over and over as he pulled at Daedalus's claws with his left hand.

They were almost a hundred yards above the deck when Krodin broke Daedalus's grip.

As Brawn and Krodin tumbled down, Suzanne rushed at Krodin again, moving so fast that she was a blur. She struck his jaw so hard that the sound echoed across the swamp.

Suzanne held on as they fell, hitting him again and again, not letting go even when they crashed heavily onto the deck.

Brawn had landed on his back, still with his arms around Krodin's waist.

Roz rushed toward them.
Come on! Hit him again! Brawn, squeeze the breath out of him! Don't give him a chance to—

Krodin caught Suzanne's wrist in his right hand, lashed out at her face with his left fist.

He let go, and Suzanne collapsed backward.

Before she had hit the deck, Krodin had pulled himself free of Brawn's grip and pounded down on the giant's stomach with an equally powerful blow.

Brawn screamed, rolled onto his side, doubled up in pain.

Krodin was not even breathing hard as he turned away and began to stride toward Roz. “You're going to die for this, Rosalyn. You, your brothers, your friends. And your friends' families.” He stopped three yards in front of her. “The mark of intelligence is the ability to learn and understand. You fought me before, and I beat you. How could you be so stupid as to think you might win this time? I cannot be beaten.” His face took on a look of exasperation, and he spread his arms wide. “Seriously. What did you think was going to happen?”

“We can't let you do to the rest of the world what you've already done to America.”

“Yes, you can. Because you don't have a choice. You can slow me down, but I'm immortal. You can't stop me.” He looked toward the horizon, and slowly turned on the spot until he was facing her again. “We are completely surrounded.” He tapped a small communicator that was looped over his ear. “And I'm told that our forces are engaged all over the country. My Raptors and Jetmen against their copters and jets, my ground troops against theirs. They outnumber my troops by about three to one. It'll be a massacre. They will win.”

“You knew this was going to happen?”

“Knew? I
planned
it this way, Rosalyn. Unity invades America, they win, they take control, then, in time, I take control of them. Eventually I'll have the whole world in my hands.” He tilted his head a little to the side as he stared at her. “But you won't be around to see that. You are all going to die, and it will happen today.”

“There's nothing I can say that's going to make you change your ways, is there?” She shrugged. “Nobody likes you, you know. After we fought you at Windfield, I read up on you. I know all about your past. No one
ever
liked you. Not your wife or your children or anyone you ever met.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. You're a jerk,” Roz said.

Slowly, Brawn pushed himself into a sitting position. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, brushing away the flecks of vomit.

Krodin laughed. “You say that as if your opinion of me is relevant. Well, perhaps I'll let you live. I've read that often kings would keep a jester in their court, a fool who was brave enough to tell the truth when all the noblemen were too scared to contradict the king. Or perhaps your friend Abby would be a better choice. She
is
stronger than you are, after all. Or maybe I'll let the two of you fight it out. The winner gets to live. But as for your newest companion…” Krodin looked past Roz.

She didn't need to turn around: She could hear the flapping of approaching metal wings, and moments later Daedalus landed close to her.

“He will most certainly die,” Krodin said. “Like your other friend has just died.”

Roz froze. “What?”

Krodin gestured behind him. “The flying woman. Slaughter's counterpart in this reality. She too was strong, but not strong enough.”

“He's telling the truth,” Daedalus said. “Her heart stopped a few moments ago. My armor's sensors can detect—”

Roz glared at him. “When we're done with Krodin, you're next. So shut up, Brandon! Or whatever your name really is.”

Daedalus's full-face helmet split down the middle and folded away. “No, I'm not Brandon Santamaría. I killed him ten months ago, took his place. That wasn't easy. He didn't look like me and was two inches taller. Took a lot of surgeries to get it right. Do you have any idea how painful it is to have the bones in your legs constantly broken, stretched, and reset?”

Krodin said, “And since then you've been a constant irritation to me. You've killed hundreds of my men, caused close to a trillion dollars' worth of damage. And you killed Casey, the only human I've ever met who fully understood our abilities. But everything you've done is pointless. I will live forever. You have another seventy years, at best.”

Daedalus nodded. “Casey was the one who figured out how to turn Solomon Cord into a superhuman genius. Without his skills you wouldn't be where you are, Krodin. You wouldn't have your teleporter, your Raptors, your little power-stripping toy. And without him I wouldn't have this battle suit. It's completely self-repairing, self-sustaining.”

For the first time, Krodin looked hurt. “Casey built that? He betrayed me?”

Daedalus extended his hand palm-down, tilted it from side to side in a “so-so” gesture. “Not exactly, boss. I
am
Casey.” He smiled. “I might not be immortal, but I'm way smarter than you are. You could never find me because
I
programmed your systems to ignore me. Your plan to take control by uniting the world against you? That was my suggestion, remember? But you're just too dumb to see what's really happening.
You're
not going to take control of Unity. I mean, why would I bark when I have a perfectly good dog to bark for me?”

Brawn slowly walked over to Roz. “Oh, he is
so
gonna wish he hadn't said that.”

Daedalus continued, “But smart as I am, I wasn't able to foresee that these people would be pulled over here from their own time line.” He shrugged. “Still not sure exactly why that happened, but I'll figure it out soon enough. You can't beat me, Krodin. I know all the secrets of the superhuman abilities, much more than I ever told you. There are forces at work here you simply cannot understand. There is a…I suppose you could call it a chasm, from which—”

“Enough!” Krodin roared. From his belt he removed a small communicator, raised it to his mouth. “This is Krodin. Priority zero.”

 

Inside the base's dormitory, Amandine Paquette was looking down at Abigail de Luyando's unmoving body when the communicator attached to her uniform's collar beeped twice. “Reading you, Chancellor. Go ahead.”

“I don't care what else is going on in the rest of the country, Paquette: I want every single missile in our arsenal aimed at my position. Blanket the area. Everything within a five-mile radius. You understand me? Everything. Wipe it out.”

“But your work…The teleporter…”

“Let it burn. That's an order.”

“Acknowledged. Paquette out.”

Solomon Cord straightened up, glared at her. “You didn't have to kill her.”

“Of course I did.” She activated the communicator again. “This is Acting Vice-Chancellor Paquette to the fleet. Colonel Stewart?”

“Here.”

“You heard the Chancellor's order?”

“We did. Prepping the weapons now. What about our people at your location?”

“Forget them. But send a squad to pick
me
up.”

“So you're just going to abandon your own people?” Cord asked, gesturing to the wounded men lying on the floor.

“Acceptable losses. It would cost more to patch them up than they're worth. Any survivors will be Unity's problem.”

“You coldhearted…” Cord turned away to face the large hole in the wall. “Then go. Leave me here. At least do me that honor. Let me die with my friends.”

“And give you a chance to escape? Please. I'm no amateur.”

Then behind him he heard a sudden rush of movement, the distinctive sound of a small hard fist thumping against flesh, the clatter of Paquette's gun hitting the floor.

“But you're enough of an amateur not to check whether Abby is bulletproof,” Cord said. He turned back to see Paquette lying facedown on the ground.

Abby had her arms around the woman's neck, her knee in the small of her back. “Call them off!” Abby said. “Call them off or I swear I'll tear out your throat!”

“You wouldn't!” Paquette croaked. “You don't have the guts to kill someone! But
I
do. Right now there's a platoon of my men in Midway. We've got your family, Abby. So you let me go right now or they're dead!”

Abby stopped and looked at Cord.

“All right,” Cord said. “We can talk about this. Abby…?”

Abby relaxed her grip, and looked up at him. “OK, but…” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment. “No. No way. They don't get to win like this. Not by threatening innocent people.”

“You don't have a choice,” Paquette said. “You—”

Abby grabbed the woman's hair and slammed her head facefirst into the floor. “Shut
up
!” Still gripping Paquette's hair, she pulled her arm back and slammed it down again.

And again.

 

Inside Remington's office, Lance and Josh frowned over the computer.

“That one,” Joshua Dalton said, tapping his finger against the screen. “That's the one.”

“You're sure?”

“Oh yeah. Trust me, this is the sort of thing I know about.”

“So how do we…? Ah, got it.” Lance turned to Remington, and grinned. “This is going to really,
really
make him mad, isn't it?”

Remington swallowed. “Yeah.” He paused for a moment. “Yeah, he's not going to like this at all.” Another pause. “Do it.”

 

“What's it going to be, Roz, Brawn?” Daedalus asked. “Who are you siding with? Him or me? He's about to try to wipe you all out. But I can promise you that if you side with me, I'll destroy him forever.”

“He's immortal and indestructible,” Roz said. “What can you do?”

“Oh, I've figured out a way. Trust me.”

Brawn rumbled, “You're kidding. Trust
you
?”

Then Krodin said, “I have a better offer for you. Allow me to destroy Daedalus—without interfering—and I'll let you and all of your friends live.”

“Jeez, man, make up your mind,” Brawn muttered.

“You can't
take
me, old man!” Daedalus roared back at Krodin. His armor's helmet folded back into place. “I've spent years studying your powers, and I built this armor to match everything you can do. Everything.” He thumped his fist against his chest. “You want to know how that's possible? Because it
is
you! This isn't metal. This is a bio-organic compound cloned from your own DNA, infused with the same energy you have. That's why you can't break it. It heals as quickly as you do. This armor is alive. So give it your best shot. And don't be surprised to find that I've been holding back.”

“Then shut up and
fight
me, braggart!”

Daedalus launched himself at Krodin.

What happened next was too fast for Roz to see, but the result was clear: Daedalus hung limp in the air in front of Krodin, with something red protruding from his back.

Brawn slapped his hand over his mouth. “He didn't…”

It took Roz a moment to realize what that red thing was.

It was Krodin's fist.

“Poor, pathetic Casey. He wasn't the only one holding back.” The Fifth King shook his arm to the side, knocking Daedalus's body loose. It slid across the deck, leaving a thick red trail in its wake.

Krodin looked at it for a moment, then glanced at Roz and Brawn. “Why aren't you running?”

“I need to find my brothers,” Roz said. “Say good-bye to them.”

Krodin turned away. “I won't stop you. But you should hurry. You have only a couple of minutes. The missiles are in the air.”