The Ascension: A Super Human Clash (27 page)

He looked at Suzanne Housten. “I remember you from Windfield.” He began speaking to her in a language Roz was sure she'd never heard before.

Suzanne swallowed and began to back away from him. “I…I don't know what you're saying!”

Krodin said, “So it appears. When we first met, you spoke to me in that tongue. Or your counterpart did. She called herself Slaughter. She was coldhearted, cruel, remarkably violent. Led always by her emotions.”

“That wasn't me!”

“Pity. I liked her.” He looked around at the others. “Solomon Cord, or a shadow of him. Rosalyn and Joshua Dalton—at least Joshua is the same one I've met before. And Max's pilot, Brandon Santamaría. A traitor.” He stopped at Lance. “You I don't know.”

From Lance's expression Roz could see that, despite the situation, he was a little offended.

“Well, we've had some fun, haven't we? But it's over now. You have thirty minutes to say your good-byes. Feel free to use that time to plot a few futile escape plans.” He moved toward the door, and his team followed him.

Krodin put out his hand to stop Max. “Not you. You're with them.”

“But I…”

“Turn around, Max. Go back to your brother and sister. Your journey ends here.”

Max hesitated for a moment, then tried to dodge past him. Krodin grabbed his arm and threw him back into the room. “Remington? Seal the door. And wait here with the device running.”

Max walked over to Roz, and the doors slammed shut behind him. “That guy Remington is the key,” Max said. “That thing he has temporarily strips our powers. It's got an eight-hundred-yard radius. Krodin's immune, of course, because it was used on him before.”

Then the doors opened again, and Krodin pushed Abby into the room. He was also dragging something huge behind him, and it took Roz a moment to realize that it was Brawn. The giant was unconscious, covered in countless bullet wounds.

“Clock's still ticking,” Krodin said. “Twenty-nine minutes.” He used his foot to shove Brawn farther into the room, then left. The doors closed again.

While Cord and Brandon checked on Brawn, Abby walked over to Roz. “Hey. You guys made it.”

Lance said, “Yeah. Just in time, eh? You're, uh, looking well.”

Then Cord stepped up to Abby. “Wasn't sure I'd see you again.”

“What happened to you in Midway?” she asked.

“The resistance found me. They wanted to use me as a hostage.”

Abby started to respond, then Roz saw pure rage in her eyes.

“You!” Abby screamed, pushing between Roz and Cord. “Slaughter!”

Lance grabbed her, wrapped his arms tightly around her. “It's not her, Abby. This woman is…She's not Slaughter.”

Abby looked up at him. “Lance…I'm so sorry about what happened to your family.”

“In this world they're alive. I got them back, Abby. It was only for an hour, but…I got to see my folks again.”

Then Max Dalton called out, “Enough! This isn't the time for sentiment. We have got to think of a way out of this! Cord, you were never a superhuman—you haven't lost anything. How do we get out?”

Still holding on to Lance, Abby turned to face Max. “If anyone here deserves to die, it's you, Dalton! You put Brawn and James in front of a firing squad!”

“I had no choice!” Max said.

“Who's James?” Lance asked.

“Thunder. His real name is James. Krodin ordered Max to take them out and shoot them, and he did it!”

“James escaped,” Max said, “and Brawn's still alive.”

Roz looked at her brother for a long moment, then turned her back on him.

“Listen, this is important!” Max said. “If we can…Roz? Oh, come on! I did what I
had
to do. If…Cord, I know
you'll
understand.”

Cord walked away from him.

“Brandon?”

The pilot glowered down at Max. “You really are a despicable little man.”

Then Josh walked up to his brother. “I thought you were one of the good guys.” He stepped back, found Roz's hand, and clung to it.

The silence that filled the room was eventually broken by Lance: “How much time left?”

Suzanne said, “About twenty-five minutes.”

 

James had hauled himself through the water by holding on to the drooping branches of a mangrove. He pulled himself hand over hand until he reached the bank, then clung to the mangrove's root.

Just a little farther
, he told himself.
Come on! It'll be easier on solid ground. You can do it—you
have
to do it!

The agony in his right leg had faded to a dull throb, and he knew that wasn't a good sign. “Going into shock, James.”

Overhead, to the left, he spotted another Raptor, heading south. He'd already dodged one of the flying craft by submerging himself in the cloudy water and holding his breath for as long as he dared.

He tried to focus his hearing again, but there was still nothing.
Got to be close to eight hundred yards by now.

James knew he couldn't walk, and crawling without the buoyancy of the water was going to be close to impossible.

Then he remembered how his little sister, Shiho, moved around before she learned to walk.
That's it. That's what I have to do.
He clawed his way onto the bank, rolled onto his back, then used the roots to pull himself into a sitting position.
Got to scoot backward on my butt!

He couldn't manage more than a couple of inches at a time, even with his good leg providing traction.

And then he saw the Raptor pass directly overhead, slow to a stop, and come back.
Aw no!
He began to scoot faster, ignoring the pain that juddered through his entire body with every movement.
Keep going! Could take them a few more minutes—there's nowhere for them to land!

A hatch opened in the Raptor and an armored figure dropped out. The Jetman activated his jetpack to slow his descent as he approached James.

The Jetman touched down next to him. “James Klaus.”

“Nah, you got the wrong swamp. James lives three swamps over.”

The armored man signaled the Raptor, and another flyer descended and landed on the other side of James.

“So what now? You're going to shoot me in cold blood?”

The Jetmen looked at each other for a moment. “We've been ordered to, uh…”

His colleague finished the sentence: “We've been ordered to decapitate you and return with your head.” He reached into a compartment on the armor's chest-plate and withdrew a long-bladed hunting knife.

LANCE WALKED UP to the room's massive steel door and pounded on it with his fist. “Hello?”

After a moment, a small screen next to the door flickered to life, and Remington's face appeared. “What?”

“So…You again,” Lance said. “You've never met me before, but I've met your counterpart in my world. He was a sadistic, unimaginative lackey. You don't seem to be that much different from him.”

“You're never going to win the Nobel Prize for flattery, kid. You've got”—the man checked his watch—“twenty-one minutes and ten seconds left to live.”

“Yes, I wanted to know the time too. But more than that. How does your teleporter work?”

Remington smirked. “
Dying
to know, huh?”

Lance let out a very fake laugh. “Oh, that's just hilarious. Seriously, though, how does it work?”

“What do you care? You'll be dead soon enough.”

“Insatiable curiosity.” Then Lance held up his hand. “No, forget it. You're a henchman. You probably don't
know
how the teleporter works.”

“Matter of fact, I do. I majored in theoretical physics. Graduated summa cum laude.”

Lance wasn't about to admit that he was impressed. “Let me guess…. It converts matter to energy and transmits it as a signal, right?”

Remington raised his eyes. “No, that's impractical. It'd take decades to decode a human body in that way. And how are you supposed to reassemble it at the other end? Look, every particle in the universe has a number of different attributes that determine its character and its place. Our teleporter generates an energy field and allows us to instantly redefine the location attributes of any particles within the field.”

“So…You tell something that it is where you want it to be, and it goes there?”

“No. Well, yes. In the most simplistic way.”

“But the thing you're sending doesn't have to be
near
the teleporter, right? You took us out of the Raptor. You can generate the energy field anywhere you like.”

Remington nodded. “We can. It takes a lot more power and it's harder to set up. Much simpler to send things from within the teleporter's room. Why do you want to know all this?”

“Aim your teleporter at the following address: number seventeen Hendricks Avenue, Fairview, South Dakota.”

“What? Why?”

“We want six extra-large pepperoni pizzas, two vegetarian specials—one without onions—and ten sodas.” In a fake whisper he added, “Max wanted a
diet
soda but, hey, what's the point now?”

“Yeah, very funny,” Remington sneered. “Maybe in your reality there are still pizza parlors, but not here.”

“But there used to be, right? Before Krodin showed up and ruined everything, like the ultimate version of your friend's dad turning up at your party. So I'm thinking…these attributes you say are part of every particle…they must also say
when
a particle is, as well as where it is, right? So you could use your teleporter to move the pizzas through time. Just like Pyrokine took Krodin out of the past.”

Remington nodded slowly. “Huh…You might be on to something there.”

Abby appeared beside Lance. “What are you doing?”

“Do you mind? I'm having a conversation with the evil henchman here.”

Remington said, “
What?
I'm not evil!”

“You are, you know,” Abby said. “You're allowing us to die when you could do something about it. You could disable that device that's dampening our powers.”

“What, this thing?” Remington smiled and held up the machine. “No way, José.”

Lance said, “I think you've just blown your chance of Abby inviting you to her prom, Remington. Plus, y'know, you're ugly.”

“At least I'll still be alive tomorrow.” The screen went blank.

“Alive and ugly!” Lance shouted. “Jerk.” He sat down with his back to the door and gave Abby a weak smile. “I was kinda hoping that we'd run into each other again, but not like this.”

She sat next to him.

“So, does this count as our first date, or our second?”

“Neither.” She took Lance's hand and held on to it. “Lance, you're very sweet, but—”

“You're
dumping
me? At a time like this? Man, that's cold.”

“As I was saying. You're very sweet—in an infuriatingly talkative kind of way—but you're not my type.”

“Is it because I'm white? It is, isn't it? Because I can change.”

“If only it was that simple.”

“Thunder, then. I remember the way he looked at you. Like you're a field of carrots and he's a rabbit.” He sighed. “Why do the cute ones never go for me?”

“Do you ever talk to them?”

Lance laughed. “Trick question, right? If I say no, you'll say, ‘That's your problem. How are they supposed to get to know you if you don't talk to them?' But if I say yes, you'll say, ‘That's your problem. You talk too much.' Am I right?”

“Pretty close.”

Roz came over and sat down cross-legged in front of them. “Brawn's actually healing. Even without his powers, he is one tough guy. So what are you two talking about?”

Lance said, “We're wondering why you're so cool and your big brother's such a complete dipstick.”

Roz looked down at the floor. “He's…He's not so bad, usually.”

“Well, he picked me up after I escaped from prison, I'll give him that.”

Abby said, “You were in
prison
?”

Lance nodded. “Yep. But with the aid of a big truck I released myself on my own recognizance.”

“On any other day, that might seem strange.”

 

The two Jetmen stood on either side of James. They both had knives and were arguing over which of them should remove his head.

“
I'm
not doing it. No way!” the one on his left said.

“You hafta. You're the one who found him.”

“Right. I found him, you cut. That's how it goes. That way we both did our part. Otherwise it's me doing everything.”

“We need to kill him first. It'd be easier to, y'know…”

James looked from one to the other, and back.
There could be a way out of this….
He dug his hands into the blood-soaked mud around his legs. “Help me up. Help me to stand. If I'm going to die, I want to do it on my feet.”

The men put away their knives and carefully lifted James up until he was balanced on his left leg.

The second Jetman saw the bone protruding from James's right calf and stepped back. “Man, that's
nasty
.”

“You should be on
this
side of it,” James said. “Then you'd know what nasty really is.” He looked up. “Yesterday I learned how to fly. Not like you guys, with your jetpacks. I could fly under my own power. It's…It's something else. The best feeling in the world.” He looked down again, thinking,
What would Lance say?
“And now you're going to kill me. Everything I've done, everything I never got to do…It'll be gone. Forever.” He turned to the man on his right. “I don't blame you for this. Everyone dies, eventually, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. Except Krodin.”

“I just wish I could fly again. One last time. Can you do that for me? Take me up. Just above the trees—let me feel the sun on my face. Then you can do what you have to do.”

The man nodded. “Yeah. I guess we can do that. Put your right arm around my shoulder, and hold tight. I need
my
right arm free—that's where the jetpack's controls are.” He put his left arm around James's waist. “Ready?”

“I'm ready.”

James looked down, saw the ground fall slowly away.

They passed between the branches of the mangrove trees and then hovered in place.

James smiled. “It really is a beautiful world. The trees, the lakes…Even the swamps have their own beauty. Even the mud.”

The Jetman said, “The mud is beautiful?”

“It can be, if used in the right way.” He lifted his left hand. He was holding a large ball of soft mud. “See?”

The Jetman tilted his head forward. “I don't get it.”

And James slammed the ball of mud into the man's helmet, smeared it across his visor. “
Now
try flying, you sick maniac!”

He grabbed the Jetman's right hand and squeezed on the control pads on the palm of his glove.

The jetpack surged, rocketing them into the air.

And suddenly James could hear
everything
.

He let go of the Jetman, blasted him with a shock wave that sent him spinning and crashing down through the trees.

He directed another shock wave down at the second Jetman, the impact tearing a six-foot-deep crater in the mud. A third shock wave knocked the hovering Raptor half a mile upward, tumbling over and over.

Then James focused his hearing, directed it toward Krodin's building, eight hundred yards away. He remembered the distinctive humming and buzzing of the power-damping device and pinpointed the sound almost instantly.

James grinned. “Zap.”

 

Abby jumped to her feet. “Whoa…What was
that
?”

On the floor nearby, Brawn stirred and groaned.

Standing over with the adults, Suzanne Housten clutched her head and swayed for a moment.

Brandon Santamaría suddenly straightened up, shook his head briskly, looked around, and started to grin. “Power's back. All right, people. The mission's the same—we go after the teleporter. Abby, Suzanne—you take point. Max—”

Max Dalton strode over to Brandon. “I don't think you're exactly qualified to take control here, Brandon.”

Moving faster than even Abby could see, Brandon spun, pivoting on his left foot, planting his right deep into Max's stomach. Max flew across the room and crashed against the wall.

Abby and Cord simultaneously moved toward Brandon, but he took a step back and raised his hand. “Don't.”

Abby stopped. There was something in his tone that told her he was more than willing to attack her too.

Brandon pulled back the left sleeve of his Praetorian pilot's uniform; around his forearm, close to the elbow, was a thin black band holding a single button. He pressed the button. “Ten seconds. Stay close to the walls and cover your eyes, because this is going to get messy.”

For a moment, everyone stared at him. Then Abby grabbed Lance's arm and pulled him away from the center of the room.

Then everything went black, and for a moment the ground seemed to drop away. Abby had the sensation of being caught in the middle of a hurricane. She felt herself slamming down hard onto the ground, felt the walls crushing in. Over a deafening roar she heard a high-pitched shout—a scream—then the grinding crunch of reinforced concrete being pulverized.

The air was thick with gritty, choking dust. In the distance sirens wailed, panic-filled voices rushed back and forth. Somewhere to her left a thick power cable sparked against the floor, providing brief glimpses of the rest of the room.

Lying next to Abby, Lance McKendrick—covered in dust and fragments of rock—was slowly, painfully getting to his feet. Nearby, Roz and Josh Dalton were huddled in the corner, Roz's arms wrapped around her brother.

And in the center of the room, the flashing sparks—maybe one every second—revealed a slide show of Brandon Santamaría.

Flash
: Brandon, seemingly unharmed and unfazed by the devastation, stood looking up at the buckled hull of the Raptor that had crashed through the ceiling.

Flash
: A pair of metal hands tearing another hole in the ceiling next to the Raptor.

Flash
: A gold-and-black man-shaped machine, oddly hollow like an unfinished suit of armor, ripping its way through and landing next to Brandon.

Flash
: The armor disassembling and piece by piece, reforming around Brandon.

Flash
: The armor sealing Brandon inside, a black helmet folding over his head.

And the final flash, before the room faded into complete darkness: Brandon, wearing the heavy armor, striding toward the large double doors, and something large and silver unfolding from his back.

Abby suddenly knew, somehow, who he was and what he had become.

He had become Daedalus.

Then a table-sized section of the ceiling collapsed into the room, allowing the daylight to flood through.

Abby saw Daedalus's gold-and-black-armored arms stretched out toward the steel door, clawlike toes extended from his boots, anchoring him to the ground as he pushed. Metal screamed, inch-thick glass shattered, and the door began to buckle outward.

Another push and he was through, out into the corridor.

Abby felt a knot tighten in her throat, and almost against her will she found herself following him, felt her hands clench into fists.

The dark corridor erupted in light as six of Krodin's Praetorian guards opened fire on Daedalus.

He rushed at the nearest guard, locked one armored hand around the man's face, and slammed his head so hard against the wall that the plaster cracked. Before the guard even hit the floor, Daedalus had launched a vicious, bone-crunching kick at another, picked up the third, and used him as a battering ram to smash his way through the other men.

Abby caught a brief glimpse of the odd framework on Daedalus's back, then he was gone, vanished into the darkness.

Abby stared at the fallen guards and said a silent prayer.
He's a killer. He crashed the Raptor into this building without even caring who might be hurt in the process.

More gunfire echoed through the building, more screams, then Abby heard weak voices coming from the room behind her.

She stepped back through the ruined doors. On the far side of the room, rubble shifted and Solomon Cord's voice called out: “Is anyone hurt? Abby?”