The Ascension: A Super Human Clash (4 page)

SOLOMON CORD COULD feel the skin on his arms begin to tighten into gooseflesh as he approached the entrance to the alley.

“I do
not
like this,” Cord muttered. “Abby, stay put. I want to take a look first.” A line of cold sweat ran down between his shoulder blades, but he suppressed the shudder. Abby was unsettled enough already; he didn't want to make her any more nervous.

With his back pressed against the alley's brick wall, Cord slowly peered around the corner.

The street was empty, and almost spotlessly clean. No cars, no pedestrians, not even the gang of teenagers loitering at the intersection who earlier had stopped whatever they were doing to watch his car as it passed them.

We're not where we should be.

He moved a little farther out, and a shadow momentarily fell across his face. Cord shielded his eyes against the sun and looked up. There was a tall metal lamppost almost directly in front of him.
OK. I know
that
wasn't there before.
If the post had been there when he'd driven into the alley, he'd have had to come from the other direction to make the turn.

Then he noticed the thick cables radiating from the top of the post. Each of the six cables led to other posts. Each post had a cluster of at least three security cameras.

Cord ducked back into the alley. “We're in trouble.”

Abby walked up to him. “What is it?”

Cord absently chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “Not
exactly
sure.”

She leaned past him and looked out at the street. “It looks different. All the lampposts…”

“That's just it—they're not all lampposts. Look up.”

“Cameras. Those things
definitely
weren't there before. And the billboard…” She pointed to the side of a building on the far side of the street, close to the intersection. “That was an ad for Uncle Harry's Ice Cream. They just put it up the other day.” The billboard had been replaced with a large array of black panels. “What do you suppose that's for?” Abby asked.

“Could be solar cells,” Cord said, peering around the corner again. “I can see four more of them from here.”

Abby bit her lip. “Mr. Cord…Where
are
we?”

 

James walked across the farmyard. “Faith, what's going on here?”

His father's wife shrugged. “You tell me. How did you get here from Midway?”

“Look, I've been here since yesterday afternoon. You don't remember that? Dad made us eggs on toast this morning.”

“He makes eggs on toast nearly every morning.” Faith looked James up and down. “You're seriously telling me that you got here
yesterday
?” She reached out and placed the palm of her right hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling all right? Why aren't you in school?”

“But it's summer break.”

“Don't play games with me, James! Schools haven't had summer breaks in
years
.”

To himself, James said,
Either I've gone mad, or everything has changed without me knowing about it. Or maybe I was
already
mad and this is the way things have always been. No, that can't be right! Everything's changed, and the only way that could happen is…if this isn't my version of reality. This is a parallel world.

He knew that some scientists believed that, in theory, time wasn't just a straight line flowing from the past to the future: It branched constantly, like an infinite number of forks in the road. Every decision—no matter how small—gave birth to a whole new universe for each possible outcome. Some physicists even theorized that it might be possible to jump from one universe to another.

But it was all theoretical—there was no way to prove that there was anything more than one universe.

If it
is
true
, James thought,
and somehow I've been pulled into a parallel universe, then…Then there could be another
me
here.
“Call my mom,” he said to Faith. “See what she has to say.”

“What?”

“Just do it, please. Ask to speak to me.”

She nodded, and he followed her back into the house. Her hand was trembling a little as she picked up the phone and dialed the number. James's mother, Shawna, answered on the third ring. “Shawna? It's Faith.”

James listened in: One advantage of having superhuman hearing was that other people's phone calls were no longer private.

“
You
again. What do you want now?” James always felt a little embarrassed at how rude his mother was to Faith. It wasn't as though his father had run away with her—Shawna had thrown him out after she met Rufus.

“Is James there?”

“Of course not. He's in school.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I'm sure! He wouldn't cut classes.”

“Just check, will you?”

There was the sound of the handset being dropped, and then Shawna called out, “James!”

There was no response: James could hear his mother's soft breathing on the other end of the line as she waited. She called again, and a third time, then, “Told you he wasn't here. What's this about? If he
did
cut classes, his teacher would phone here first.”

“OK, never mind. I just—” The line went dead.

Faith hung up the phone and started to tell James what had happened.

“I heard. Look, I've got something important to tell you…. Don't tell Dad, OK?”

“What is it?” The familiar frown line creased her forehead. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“I don't know.” He took a deep breath while he mulled over the best way to tell her. “I'm a superhuman.”

She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

“No, seriously. I can control sound waves. I can hear things happening miles away, and I can even create sounds.”

“Can you fly?”

“Well, no.”

“Pity. What's your superhero name, then? Are you famous?”

“I'm not famous. I call myself Thunder.”

Faith laughed. “You're joking!”

“I'm
not
joking. Listen.” The room was suddenly filled with music, as though a full orchestra was playing invisibly in the room.

Faith jumped back, looking around wildly for the source of the music.

After a few seconds James allowed the music to fade away. “That was Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor,
allegro moderato molto e marcato
. All the right notes,
and
in the right order.”

Faith had been staring openmouthed at him. “How did you
do
that?”

“I can re-create any sound I hear. I can invert it, modify it, do anything I like to it. I can nullify sounds too. Pretty handy for sneaking into and out of the house at night.”

“OK. You're a superhuman.”

She still doesn't believe me
, James thought. “I am. Maybe that's got something to do with what's happening here, maybe not. The reason I'm telling you is that either I'm not where I should be, or the whole world has changed. Things are suddenly very different. Like the soldiers camped in the north-forty fields. How long have they been there? What are they there
for
?”

“It's a training camp. Back when things got bad, the army told your father that everyone had to do their part. He had to give up the forty acres, and provide the soldiers with milk and cheese and vegetables.”

James bit his lip. “How do you mean, ‘back when things got bad'?”

“How could you not remember this? The terrorist attacks, the bombs, closing the borders? Anchorage?” Faith ran her hands over her face. “You're scaring me. You really don't remember any of this? You don't remember Anchorage?”

“I don't remember it because it never happened!”

“How can you say that? A hundred thousand Americans
died
in Anchorage!”

“You're talking about Anchorage, Alaska? What happened there?”

“There was a bomb. Daedalus planted it. He tried to hold the city to ransom, I think…. No one knows for sure what happened, but the bomb detonated. Anchorage is gone. James, the whole of the United States of America has been under martial law for the past three years.”

 

The building in Central Park dwarfed everything around it. It was rectangular at the base and tapered slightly until a quarter of the way up—about forty floors—where it broke into a series of tall, thin towers, some of which were still under construction.

I'm dreaming
, Roz thought.
That has to be it. This is a dream.

The lack of noise was almost as disturbing. Instead of the constant rumbling of countless engines all she could hear was wind rustling through the trees and a faint, but continuous, ringing from somewhere nearby.

As she watched, a pair of large, flat, roughly rectangular craft detached themselves from one of the towers, their battered yellow paintwork giving them the look of construction vehicles. They drifted smoothly away from the tower, one descending toward the northern end of the park, the other passing almost directly overhead.

It moved steadily, unwavering, following the course of the street below, and in complete silence. Its undercarriage featured a series of eight circular blue-white lights, but she could see no other source of propulsion.

At the end of the block the craft banked to the left, heading south, and Roz looked back toward the towering building.

A third flying craft appeared, coming in over the east side of the city. At first Roz thought it had to be some sort of misshapen zeppelin, but as it slowed to a stop alongside the tallest tower, she could clearly see that it was no helium-filled airship; it was hundreds of yards long and four or five stories tall. Its sides were punctuated with windows, and its hull glinted like polished steel.

Roz shook her head.
No way. No way can something that big move so silently!

Another, smaller vehicle detached itself from the giant craft and gracefully drifted upward; it resembled one of the flying construction vehicles, but was painted a dark green.
Military colors
, Roz realized.
The big one is the equivalent of an aircraft carrier!

She reached out for the phone she'd left resting on the wall; it was gone.
What? I'm sure I—

Movement to her right caught her eye, and she turned to see—through the now-closed glass doors—a terrified-looking young couple staring out at her. The man was brandishing a large ornamental poker.

The poker wavered in his grip. His voice muffled by the glass, he shouted, “Who are you? How did you get up here?”

Roz shook her head.
No, this can't be happening.
The apartment's décor was all wrong, as though she'd somehow ended up on the wrong floor, but this was the only apartment in the building that had a balcony.

With her hands raised in the hope that the people inside would understand she meant no harm, Roz stepped up to the door. “Please, don't panic.” She very carefully slid open the door.

“Who are you?” the man asked, almost shouting to make himself heard over a constant ringing noise. “What do you want from us?”

“I don't know…. What's going on here?”

The woman said, “She must have climbed up the outside! Henry, she climbed up the outside!”

“I…I fell, I think.” Roz raised her right hand to her head. “The last thing I remember, I was with the construction crew and we were coming from the park.” She pointed in the direction of the new building in Central Park. “The hatch was open. We were joking about. I must have slipped.”

“No,” the man said. “No way. You're only a kid. They'd never let you on one of the flyers.”

“My dad is the overseer. I must have hit my head. Is there any blood?” While the couple peered at her, Roz desperately tried to think of a way out. The ringing noise was still reverberating through the building, and she suddenly realized what it was: an alarm. “I should go. I'm sorry I frightened you.”

The woman said, “You
can't
go. You know the rules. Once the alarm goes, everyone has to stay where they are until the Praetorians get here.” She frowned. “What's
wrong
with you that you don't know that?”

“I told you. I must have fallen.”
Who are the Praetorians?
Roz wondered. She decided that she didn't want to wait around to find out.

She concentrated on the poker in the man's hand, used her telekinesis to pluck it from his grip and pull it across the room toward her. She snatched it out of the air and tossed it to the floor behind her. To the woman, she said, “You. Cancel the alarm.”

The woman was staring at her in complete shock. “It…It can't be canceled. Only the Praetorians can do that.”

“How long will it take for them to get here?”

“Not long.”

“
How
long?”

“Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”

“Good. OK, I want you to—”

Then the apartment door was smashed open, and within seconds Roz was looking down the barrels of six high-powered assault weapons.

 

Lance slowly walked into the kitchen. His mother was carefully pouring something from a saucepan into a dish. The air was heavy with the peppery tang of her homemade tomato soup—an odor that Lance had never expected to experience again.

The TV was chatting to itself in the corner, and Lance's father was sitting at a small desk in the corner wearing headphones and typing at a computer terminal Lance had never seen before. His father saw him, hit a few keys on the keyboard to clear the screen, then removed the headphones. “What happened now? How come you're not in school?”

His mother stopped what she was doing. “You didn't get suspended again, did you?”