The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 (19 page)

Danny collapsed on the ground, heaving. He flipped over onto his back and saw that Colin was standing over him, the steel bar in his hand.

Danny swallowed.
If he hits me with that thing I’m dead!

Then Colin crouched down beside Danny and grabbed his arm to prevent him from moving.

He’s saying something
. Danny shifted back into normal-time in order to hear him.

“…ever see you or any of the others again, you’ll regret it. Do not interfere with Trutopian matters! You understand?”

Danny nodded. “Yes, but—”

Colin slammed down with the bar, right for Danny’s face.

Danny rolled his head out of the way just in time; the end of the heavy steel bar plowed into the ground less than an inch from his right ear.

Colin picked Danny up with one hand and flung him out through the hole in the dome that Renata had made when he threw her.

In the air, Danny moved into slow-time.

He looked down and saw the ground approaching.
Even though I’m in slow-time, I’ve still got the same mass. …If I hit the ground at this speed I’ll be liquefied.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Danny swallowed, and could feel himself starting to panic.
If I can twist around so that my legs touch down first, then maybe I can start running…. No, that’s crazy!

Now, he could see his own shadow zipping over the ground to meet him.

Then, only meters away from collision, Danny suddenly felt his body turn rigid. His vision dimmed, and he could no longer hear anything.

He crashed into the ground and bounced three meters into the air, spinning. He tumbled to a stop, faceup. In the corner of his vision, he saw the StratoTruck approaching with Renata at the controls. Crouched on the vehicle’s open ramp was Razor. With one hand, he was gripping the doorframe. With the other, he was holding on to Renata’s arm.

As the StratoTruck touched down, Danny’s vision cleared, his hearing returned and he found that he could move again.

He pushed himself to his feet and painfully made his way over to the StratoTruck.

Renata—shaking, her face drained of color—wrapped her arms around him. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to do that!”

He smiled. “I’m glad you tried. Are you all right?”

She buried her head in his chest. “I…I’ll be OK.”

To Razor, Danny said, “How’s Butler?”

“He’s unconscious, but I don’t think he’s badly hurt,” Razor said. “We just totally got our butts handed to us, Danny. What in the world do we have that can stop him?”

Then they heard the screech of tearing metal and turned to see something burst through the roof of the dome, moving straight upward.

Danny slipped into slow-time to see the object more clearly.
Oh no!
As if this wasn’t difficult enough!

He shifted back to real-time.

“What
was
that?” Renata asked.

“That,” Danny said, “was Colin’s lifelong dream finally coming true. He’s learned how to fly.”

C
ROUCHED ON THE EDGE OF A ROOFTOP
overlooking a quiet street, Stephanie Cord handed the small pair of binoculars to Grant Paramjeet. “Do your lipreading thing.”

Three stories below, a heavyset man in a baseball cap was holding a thick package while he watched the approach of a woman wearing an expensive-looking overcoat.

Grant adjusted the focus of the binoculars. “OK. She’s just said, ‘What do you have for me?’…Can’t make out what he’s saying. ‘How much? …I can give you two now, and the rest tomorrow…’ Now he’s handed her the package, and she’s giving him the money. She’s moved! Can’t see her lips now.” He lowered the binoculars. “Got to be cocaine.”

“What makes you think that?” Stephanie asked.

“It’s a rich person’s drug. And she’s rich. Look at her coat, her clothes, the way she carries herself. Plus that’s a Lexus SC 430. Costs over sixty thousand dollars.”

Stephanie nodded. “OK. Well spotted. What else does the car tell you?”

Grant raised the binoculars again. “Can’t make out the license plate…. Wait, there’s a sticker on the windshield. I don’t recognize it, though.”

“I do. It’s a parking pass for the Donaldson Golf Club. And I see the edge of a child’s seat in the back. So we know that the woman’s married, with at least one kid.”

Grant frowned. “How does the parking pass tell us she’s married?”

“Because the Donaldson Golf Club doesn’t admit women.”

Below, the woman was walking back to her car.

“So do we follow her,” Grant asked, “or the dealer?”

“We
should
follow the woman, but that’s not an option.”

“Why not?”

Stephanie raised her eyes. “Because we’re on foot and she has a car.”

“Right, right. So the guy, then?”

“We definitely don’t follow him. You’re not ready yet. Besides, it’s almost five, and we have to be in school in a few hours.”

They waited until the woman and the dealer had departed, then quietly climbed down the fire escape.

Despite her protests, Grant insisted on walking Stephanie home, even though of the two she was the one who least needed protection.

When they reached the door to Stephanie’s house, she turned to him. “All right, I’m safe now. Go home, get some sleep—” She stopped. Grant was staring over her shoulder.

Stephanie turned to see her mother standing in the doorway, arms folded, a blanket around her shoulders.

“Get in here!” Vienna Cord whispered. “Right now!”

“Oh great.” To Grant, Stephanie said, “I’ll see you in school.”

Grant nodded and left at a run.

As she stepped into the hallway, Stephanie said, “So now what? I’m grounded?”

“Where were you?”

“Out.” Stephanie unzipped her jacket and pulled it off.

“It’s six o’clock in the morning, Stephanie. Why don’t we save time by skipping all the shouting and me telling you how worried I was? Tell me everything. Who was that boy?”

Stephanie followed her mother into the sitting room.
I could tell her that I’ve been seeing him…. No, she’s too smart to believe that.
“That’s the boy I was telling you about. His name’s Grant Paramjeet. He wants to be a superhero. If I don’t train him, he’s going to do it anyway, and he’ll get himself killed.”

“He’s not your responsibility.”

“Mom, I—”

“Sit down.” She picked up the remote control and turned on the television set, switching it to UNC, the Universal News Channel. “You have to see this. They’ve been repeating the same report all night long.”

Stephanie sat down and pulled off her boots as she watched.

The screen showed a view of a large, dark area covered in lights. Stephanie couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to be looking at. The reporter’s voice said, “Details are sketchy as to the exact nature of today’s incident, but there is no doubt that the New Heroes were involved. It is believed that earlier today Daniel Cooper—the son of the legendary superhuman Quantum—contacted the United Nations and presented his findings on the platinum mine. The UN immediately moved into action, freeing the trapped mine workers…. I’m told that we can now go live to the scene.”

“That was the disaster we heard about last night?” Stephanie asked.

The screen cut to some shaky footage, as though the camera
operator was running over rough ground. The camera was moving toward the base of a large, rust-covered metal dome, where Danny Cooper had emerged from a doorway, surrounded by soldiers. Danny was covered in cuts and bruises, his black New Heroes uniform ripped and torn.

A reporter shouted, “Danny? What happened here today?”

Before Danny could reply, Butler Redmond stepped in front of him. “We have no comment to make at this time.”

Danny glanced at Butler, and muttered, “Heck with that.”

He was suddenly standing in front of the camera. “This thing have its own light? Turn it on.”

Danny moved out of shot, then the camera bobbed a little, and Danny’s voice said, “I won’t break it. I just want to show everybody something.”

The camera zoomed around the soldiers, through the dome’s doorway and into a large, open area between some of the dome’s inner buildings. Hundreds of people, all wearing gray, torn rags, were being treated by medical personnel. Danny’s voice came from offscreen. “This is what happened here. These people were not mine workers. They were slaves.”

Someone shouted, “Get that camera out of here!”

The camera zoomed closer, right up to where Renata Soliz was crouched next to an emaciated little girl with a filthy bandage on her left forearm. “I was talking to this girl earlier. Nine years ago she was born here. This is the only life she’s ever known. Her name is Estelle.”

Then the camera was knocked to the side, and a gruff voice said, “Cooper! I told you to get the camera away. You have to…”

Renata got to her feet and moved out of shot. There was a loud
thump
, then Renata crouched down again.

“Thanks,” Danny said. “Something broke on one of the machines they use to process the platinum ore. It took a chunk out of Estelle’s arm. It was treated by wrapping it in these bandages and waiting
fifteen days
for the doctor to make his monthly visit.”

A voice in the distance shouted, “Cut the transmission! I don’t care how you do it. Shut down the feed.”

“They’re going to cut us off,” Danny said. “But before they do…”

The camera pulled back from Renata and Estelle, then zoomed away again. When it stopped, it was out of focus, an indistinct blue shape filling the screen. “Hold on….” The camera moved back a little, and the four-meter-tall man came into focus.

Brawn grinned at the camera. “Hi Ma! If you’re watching, sorry about…uh…well, everything, I guess.”

The screen went blank.

After a moment, the screen cut to the news presenter. The woman looked pale and shaken. “That…Uh…That was…” She glanced briefly off-camera. “And now over to Tom with the weather.”

Vienna Cord hit the remote control’s mute button. “When I realized you were missing, I tried to phone Sakkara. Eventually they put me through to Façade, who told me everything. Danny was right about the mine being a prison camp. A lot of the old supervillains are there. And…” She paused for a moment. “It looks like the Trutopians found out about the place, and sent in someone to free the prisoners.”

“Who?”

“Colin. He’s working for them now. He attacked Danny and the others when they tried to help him. He almost killed them.”

Sitting in the control room of the Trutopians’ headquarters, Yvonne stared at the bank of monitors. At first, as the news reports began to trickle in from Lieberstan, she had been stunned to discover that the New Heroes were still alive.

She had ordered Colin Wagner to kill them all.

He defeated them, but he left them alive.

Yvonne realized that she had been staring at the screens for hours, not taking in what the reports were showing. She sat back and blinked rapidly.

I
ordered
him to kill them! No one has ever disobeyed one of my orders!

She knew that there were some people who were completely immune to her control, but she had never expected that someone might follow her orders only partially.

Once, in Sakkara, she had ordered a man to stand up and sit down at the same time. The man had almost gone mad trying to obey the conflicting instructions.

The New Heroes should have been killed. That had been the plan. Yvonne had everything set up to follow that, and even had the press release ready to go. It explained how the world’s most powerful governments had established the labor camp in Lieberstan, how the Trutopians had discovered it and asked Colin to investigate, and how the New Heroes had been sent in to stop him, and had not proved equal to the task.

But instead, Colin had left them alive. Now there was no way the people would believe that the New Heroes had known about the camp all along.

It’s not over,
Yvonne said to herself.
They’re alive, but I still have Colin on my side. Even if I can’t force him to kill them, he’s still far more powerful than all of them put together.

The phone beside her keyboard beeped once and she picked it up. “Speak to me.”

“This is Clements in Strategics,” a man’s voice said. “We’ve tracked down a direct line to the UN commander in Lieberstan.”

“Connect me to her,” Yvonne said.

The phone rang for almost a minute before a woman’s voice said, “Stonebridge.”

“Commander, you will obey my orders. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“You will issue an order that the prisoners are to be taken immediately to Sakkara. Only the superhumans and the children and teenagers. The human adults will remain in Lieberstan. If your superiors question this, you will explain that the children are potential superhumans, therefore Sakkara is the only facility equipped to deal with them.”

“Understood.”

“You will tell no one about this call.” Yvonne hung up the phone.

There was a
thump
from somewhere down on the work floor. Yvonne leaned over the rail to see that one of the engineers had collapsed at his station, landing facedown on his keyboard.

I suppose I’d better let these people get some rest before they all die on me.

T
HE RADIO HEADSET THAT
K
INSELLA HAD
given Colin had been destroyed in the fight with Butler, so he had no way of contacting the Trutopians. He also had no real idea how to get from Lieberstan to the United States of America. He was aware that America was to the west, but that was about all he knew.

He still couldn’t believe it: He was flying, racing westward, catching up with the sun. Back at the platinum mine in Lieberstan, he had somehow
known
that he could do this. Flying was almost effortless: All he had to do was concentrate, will himself in the direction he wanted to go, and he went.

He had left Lieberstan at a little after one o’clock in the afternoon, local time. By the time he reached Portugal, the sun was low in the sky behind him.