The Awakening (2 page)

Quantum’s eyes rolled back. “Paragon…” His voice was weak, barely a whisper.

“I’m here.”

“When the boy comes to you, you have to believe him. You won’t want to, but you must.”

“What boy? What are you talking about?”

Quantum smiled. “He will be strong. That’s how you’ll know.”

He reached out and grabbed Paragon’s hand. “You’ve been a good friend.” Then, in a stronger voice, he added, “Next, we lose. We
all
lose. Paragon, don’t tell the others. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Paragon said. “I won’t say a word. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will, Paragon. Not for a long time, but you will.”

1

I
T WAS A
T
HURSDAY IN
O
CTOBER, EARLY
afternoon. Normally at this time, Colin Wagner would be hiding behind the boy sitting in front of him, because Thursday afternoons were what his teacher liked to call “Discussion Time.” This was when Mr. Stone would pick a topic he found interesting and do his very best to make sure that none of the students would ever find it interesting again.

The previous week, Mr. Stone had shown them a five-minute video about how birds build their nests and then proceeded to lead the class in a discussion about birds, nests and why he believed that starlings were more evil than magpies. But today, for a change, Mr. Stone had picked an interesting topic.

Today they were talking about Mystery Day.

Mr. Stone waited until everyone had settled down. “So…Tomorrow is Mystery Day,” he began. “Exactly ten years since the disappearance of all the superheroes. When this all started, nine years ago on the first anniversary, it was supposed to be a day of remembrance. But somehow over the years it’s turned into a bloody holiday! Instead of the heroes being honored for giving up their lives, we get balloons and parties, and people setting up stalls at the side of the road to sell knockoff Titan action figures and T-shirts.”

He picked up his chalk and began to write on the blackboard.

Titan,
he wrote, and underlined it twice.
Poder-meninas,
he wrote next, but he underlined that only once. He followed that with a series of other names:
Paragon, Apex, Impervia, Thalamus, Thunder, Inferno, Energy, Quantum
and
Zephyr.

Then he picked up his red chalk and wrote
Ragnarök.
Underneath that he wrote
Rayboy, The Glyph, Terrain, The Shark, Slaughter, Dioxin
and
Brawn.

“Right…” Mr. Stone turned around to face the classroom. “Superheroes,” he said, pointing to the words written in white. “And supervillains.” He tapped at the words in red. “Who were they? Where did they come from? Where did they get their powers?”

“Nobody knows, sir,” Colin said.

“Weren’t the powers inherited?” Brian McDonald suggested.

“That would certainly explain The High Command: Max, Josh and Roz Dalton,” Mr. Stone said.

Malcolm O’Neill put up his hand. “I heard they all came from another planet.”

“Speculation,” Mr. Stone said. “Pure speculation. Let’s just stick to the facts, shall we? Their capabilities—their powers and strengths. Titan, who could fly and had the strength of a hundred men. Energy, who had the ability to absorb and then release almost any kind of energy. It was said Quantum could move so fast he was able to outrun a supersonic jet. But then ten years ago at least twenty-five superheroes and upward of a hundred villains were involved in a battle just east of Pittsburgh. Ragnarök’s huge battle-tank caused massive destruction as it rumbled toward New York City. Three whole towns had to be evacuated. There are reports of a huge explosion and then…nothing. So what happened to the superheroes? Colin?”

“They disappeared, sir,” Colin answered.

The teacher nodded. “Disappeared. Vanished. Where to? Danny?”

“Nobody knows,” Danny Cooper replied. “But it wasn’t just the
heroes
who disappeared. The villains did too. There weren’t any bodies found in the wreckage. It was probably all covered up by the government.”

“They went back to their home planet,” Malcolm O’Neill said.

Adam Gilmore laughed. “Give it a rest, Mal! They were probably just vaporized in the explosion!”

“They can’t have been,” Colin said. “Brawn or Impervia would have survived any explosion. Energy could have absorbed the blast. Quantum could have just outrun it.”

“Right,” Danny Cooper said. “And Max Dalton and the rest of The High Command survived.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t
there,
” Adam said.

“Mr. Gilmore raises an interesting point,” Mr. Stone said. “Despite what some witnesses claim, the official word is that the Daltons were not present during the attack. As far as we know, they are the
only
superhumans to have survived Mystery Day. Every other superhuman—whether or not they were present during Ragnarök’s attack—has disappeared.” He shrugged. “Tonight Max Dalton will give his first interview in ten years. The first time he’s ever spoken in public since he retired.” The teacher walked around to the front of his desk and leaned back against it. “Anyone want to guess what he’s going to say?”

Brian turned around to look at Malcolm O’Neill. “Hey, Mal! Maybe he’s going to tell us that he’s going to take you back to
your
home planet!”

The class laughed. “Right, Brian…,” Mr. Stone said. “You’ve just won the right to set today’s homework for the rest of the class.”

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

Brian glanced around the room. Every other boy was staring at him with the same expression, doing their best to send Brian the same telepathic message: make this easy on us or you’re a dead man!

Under his breath Colin muttered, “No homework! No homework!”

The teacher said, “Mr. McDonald?”

“I think that for our homework we should all have a good think about what it would have been like to be a superhero.”

“A good think?”

“Yep,” Brian said, nodding vigorously.

“Perfect. You all have a good think about it and then, when you’re done thinking, write down those thoughts in the form of an essay.”

Everyone groaned. Someone shouted, “Oh, well done, Brian!”

“It won’t be that bad,” Mr. Stone said. “There’s no school tomorrow, so you have a three-day weekend in which to get it done. Four pages should be enough. And I want normal-sized paper too! No more essays written on bloody Post-it notes!”

Colin, Danny and Brian lived in different areas of the town, and every day they followed the same “going home” ritual; they would walk together until they reached the northwest corner of the park, then Colin would go east, Danny would go north to the apartment blocks and Brian would go west. As always, however, they spent an hour or so sitting on the low wall, chatting, arguing and watching out for flash cars or good-looking girls.

It was while they were doing this, sheltering from the rain under the park’s enormous pine trees that overhung the path, that Brian spotted his younger sister approaching on her bike, doing her best to cycle around the puddles.

“Hey, here comes your girlfriend, Danny,” Brian said.

“Oh, ha ha,” Danny replied.

They watched as Susie wobbled her way toward them and stopped right in front of Danny. “Hi, Danny!”

Danny muttered a greeting, but deliberately avoided looking her in the eye.

“What do
you
want?” Brian asked her.

“Mummy says you’re to come home now and stop dawdling.”

“Does she really?”

“Yes.”

Brian thought about this. “OK…I’ll race you. You on the bike and me running.”

Susie wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to show off in front of Danny. “OK then.”

“I’ll even give you a head start,” Brian said. “I’ll let you get as far as the end of the road.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “No. You’ll cheat or something.”

Brian tried to look innocent. “Cheat? Me? Never! Danny will vouch for me, won’t you, Dan?”

“Sure,” Danny said reluctantly.

With that, Susie tore off down the road, pedaling like mad.

Brian watched her go. “Sucker.” He turned to the others. “Pretty cool about the homework, isn’t it? A lot better than math or geography.”

“Couldn’t you have come up with something easier?” Colin asked.

“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t think he’d make us do an essay!”

“I’m going to pick Thalamus,” Danny said. “He’s my third favorite after Titan and Paragon.”

“So why not do Paragon, then?” Brian asked.

“Because he’s
everyone’s
second favorite. What about you?”

“Thunder.”

Danny laughed. “He’s the one with the dumbest powers! Power over rain! What use is that? You never hear stories about how he managed to use his abilities to do
anything
other than make a loud bang or cause a sudden downpour! Why not pick Apex? He was pretty cool.”

“Yeah, but no one knows much about him,” Colin said.

“That’s what makes him a good choice.”

Brian said, “Well, maybe
you
think that Thunder is a bad choice, Danny, but I’ve got a few ideas to make it work. Who are you going to choose, Col?”

Colin shrugged. “I don’t know…I’ll probably end up forgetting again and doing it when I’m having my breakfast on Monday morning.” He grinned. “I seem to work better when my dad is standing in front of me telling me over and over that I shouldn’t put things off until the last minute.”

“You could always write it from the point of view of one of the villains,” Brian suggested.

Danny raised his eyes in disgust. “Brian, you’re a moron! He said we have to write about one of the
heroes,
didn’t he?”

“Yeah, he did. But look at it like this…Suppose that, say, Ragnarök
thought
that he was a hero.”

Colin looked up at this. “Yeah, he always believed he was doing the right thing.”

Danny nodded. “That’s true, but let’s face it, Ragnarök was a complete nutter. How the hell could robbing banks and holding the world to ransom be anything but the work of a villain? If you do evil things you’re still evil—no matter what the reason.”

They fell silent as they spotted a quartet of girls wearing the uniforms of St. Mary’s.

One of the girls glanced at them as she passed. “Hi, Danny!”

Danny was taken aback. “Er…Hi, um…”

“Judy,”
Brian whispered.

“Hi, Julie!” Danny said.

The girl gave him a filthy look and hurried a little to catch up with her friends.

Brian thumped Danny on the arm. “You idiot! I said
Judy
, not
Julie
!”

Danny rubbed his arm. “How was
I
to know? I’ve never even
seen
her before!”

Brian said, “Danny, two weeks ago she spent an hour listening to you going on about how Manchester City were the greatest football team in the world. She was all over you!”

“That was her?”

“How do you do it?” Brian asked. He got up from the wall, pushed back his sleeves and held out his bare arms. “Look at that! I’ve got muscles! Everyone knows that girls like muscles, but
this
lanky git gets more action than both of us combined!”

Danny said, “Maybe they go for quality over quantity.”

Brian sighed, shook his head and sat down again. “So what time’s the party tomorrow night, Col?”

“About eight.” Like many people, Colin’s parents always threw a party for Mystery Day. For Colin’s mother, it was really just an excuse for a family get-together. Sometimes Colin felt that his parents only wanted the party so that they could embarrass him in front of his cousins. “You’re definitely coming, then?”

“Yeah, but…right, here’s the thing, OK? My folks are going out and they said it’s going to be hard to find a babysitter for Susie. So they asked me to ask you if she could come to your party.”

“I’m sure my folks won’t mind. And she’ll be able to keep my little cousins busy.”

“Speak of the devil…,” Brian said.

The others looked up to see that Susie was cycling furiously back to them.

“She does
not
look happy,” Colin said.

Susie stopped her bike in the middle of the road and glared at them. “Brian!”

“Now what?”

“I’m telling on you!” she yelled across at her brother.

Brian laughed and got to his feet. “OK! OK! I’m coming.” He turned back to Colin and Danny. “Right, I’ll see you tomorrow. What time did you say the party starts, Col?”

“Eight,” Colin said. “You’ll be there, right, Danny?”

But Danny wasn’t paying attention. He was standing very still and staring into space.

“Danny?”

Suddenly, Danny screamed, “Susie! Get out of the road!”

Colin turned to see the out-of-control bus screeching around the corner. Heading straight for Brian’s sister.

Cell 18 was four meters to each side and a little over three meters high. It contained a narrow, uncomfortable bed, a single chair, a small desk, a large, full bookcase, a hand basin and a toilet.

The walls were made of reinforced concrete. There were no windows. The only light came from two small but powerful bulbs set into the ceiling, shielded by unbreakable glass.

A man stood in the center of the room, staring at the blank wall. He had not moved for over an hour.

Later, he would sit on the bed, or perhaps lie on it; he hadn’t yet decided. Then again, he might just choose to remain standing.

The wardens referred to him as Joseph.

He was in his early forties. He was tall, thinner now than he had been ten years ago, but by no means skinny, and had long, unkempt black hair and a graying beard.

A decade ago Joseph had been carried, unconscious, into the cell. On his clear days, when he was aware of his situation and his surroundings, Joseph knew that officially he was not a prisoner; there had been no trial and no legal proceedings of any kind. He didn’t even know where this cell was located. But the clear days were few; most of the time, Joseph existed only inside his own head, living with his memories and nightmares.

Joseph continued to stare at the wall. Last night he’d had the nightmare again, the same terrifying, recurring dream; visions of blood, pain, murder and death on an overwhelming scale.

Joseph was often glad of his imprisonment. Here, he was safe. No one could harm him. And likewise, he couldn’t harm anyone else.

If I’m here,
he would say to himself,
then everyone is safe.

This thought was always followed by a conflicting one:
But I’m
not
just here, I’m out there too. And if I’m out there, then no one is safe.