The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 (27 page)

He began to walk.

“Fly there, Colin. As fast as you can,”
Yvonne added.

Danny led the freed children and teenagers across the rough ground and over a low hill. “Come on, for crying out loud! Move! They’re going to be coming for us!”

Don’t be so hard on them,
he said to himself.
Most of them can barely walk. They’ve spent their entire lives in the platinum mine. They’ve absolutely no idea what’s going on.

“Please!” he shouted. “You have to trust me!”

One of the children nearby said, “Sir?”

He turned to look at her, and realized that this was the same little girl he’d met in Lieberstan. “Estelle? Is that you?”

She nodded.

He did his best to give her an encouraging smile. “Well, look at you. All cleaned up and out of those rags.”

“Mr. Danny, the bad people are coming. A lot of them.”

Danny paused. “Why do you think that, Estelle?”

She pointed back the way they had come, toward the trucks. “They’re coming from over there. Cassandra told me.”

“Cassandra?”

One of the older girls moved closer to him.

“Are you Cassandra?”

The girl nodded, and inside Danny’s head her voice said,
I am
.

Got to be telepathy,
Danny thought.
She’s about my age, so she’s old enough to have powers.

Cassandra nodded again.

“All right, everyone. Run! If you’re strong enough, carry the smaller ones!” Danny scooped up Estelle in his arms.

He desperately wanted to go into slow-time, and carry the little girl to the relative safety of Sakkara, but that would mean leaving the others behind.

One of the smaller boys stumbled. He was grabbed by two others, not much bigger than he was, and hoisted back on to his feet.

They must have learned how to look after each other in the mine.

That’s right,
Cassandra’s voice said inside his head.
It was the only way to survive.

God, I wish she wouldn’t
do
that!

“Sorry,” the girl said. She moved closer to Danny. “Let me take her. You have work to do.”

Danny pointed east, toward Sakkara. “Lead them that way.”

He watched as the children and teenagers streamed past.

A line of Trutopian soldiers appeared over the crest of the hill, carrying large, powerful-looking weapons.
What
are
those things? Something familiar about them…

Cassandra’s voice said,
They think of them as rail-guns. I don’t know what that means.

I do,
Danny thought,
and it’s not good.
He remembered the power of the rail-guns protecting Victor Cross’s power-damping machine back in California. He prayed that these handheld versions weren’t anywhere near as dangerous.

He looked back toward the others.
Cassandra, the kids are all grouped too close together. Get them to spread out.

Why?
she asked.

Because then they’ll be harder to hit. The way they are now, they could all be wiped out with a single burst from one of those guns.

Danny looked around.
We are not going to make it.

Then he felt something wash over him, like a cool breeze.

Oh God, the Trutopians aren’t even bothering to run! They
know
they can stop us with those things. I could run now, but the longer I stay here, the better chance the kids will have to get away. In slow-time I might be able to disarm some of them…but I can’t take the risk that one of the others would have a chance to fire at the kids.

He glanced around, and for a moment he thought he saw one of the teenagers standing right behind him. He shuddered.

One of the soldiers shouted, “Shoot him!”

Danny instinctively raised his arm to protect himself, though he knew that it wouldn’t do any good. He slipped into slow-time, and everything fell silent.

I hope Renata can get away from the town before the VX gas hits—
I hope she comes back here and beats the living snot out of these guys!

I hope she can stop Colin.

I hope she doesn’t miss me too much.

I hope she lives a good life, a long and happy one.

The soldiers fired.

And I
really
hope this won’t hurt.

Danny Cooper closed his eyes.

“A
NYTHING THAT GETS ANYWHERE
NEAR
that building will be ripped apart by the guns,” Stephanie said.

She and Renata were standing on the roof of a tall building a block away from the Trutopian headquarters. “The army launched rockets right at it, and they were shot down before they got close to it. How much time do we have left?”

“That depends on how long it would take you to fly me out to the five-mile limit.”

“About three or four minutes, but—”

“Then we have about twelve minutes to get in and stop Yvonne.”

“The nerve gas will stop her.”

“We can’t be certain of that. But even if it does, then how are we going to reverse the brainwashing she did on all the Trutopians? They’ll just keep on fighting. Are you
sure
there’s no way past their guns?”

“I really can’t see it. I don’t think they’d be able to damage you when you’re completely solid, but then you can’t move.”

Danny opened his eyes.

In a perfect semicircle around him, the ground was littered with thousands of small silver pellets.

The Trutopian soldiers were still shooting at him, the pellets
from their rail-guns bouncing harmlessly off an invisible shield.

Thank you Butler Redmond!
Danny said to himself.
I’ll never call you Bubbles again.

Over the radio, Butler’s voice said, “Good thing I followed you. You OK, Dan?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He looked around: In the distance, the teenagers and children were huddled on the ground, with Butler standing in the middle of them. “You’ve got the force-field around the kids too?”

“Yeah, but if I release it to let you out, then they could be hit.”

“Extend it outward, push the Trutopians back. You just need to knock them off balance for a second, then I can take them out.”

“You’re sure?” Butler asked.

“I’m sure. As soon as you see me disappear, put the force-field back around the kids.”

“All right…
Now!
”

The Trutopian soldiers were suddenly knocked back, some of them losing their grip on their weapons.

Danny shifted into slow-time, darted toward the nearest Trutopian, grabbed the barrel of the rail-gun with his mechanical hand and crushed it, then punched the man in the face.

He moved on to the next one, and did the same thing, and the next.

From Danny’s perspective it seemed to take forever to defeat them all, but he knew that less than a second had passed.

He moved back to real-time and watched with satisfaction as each of the Trutopians crumpled to the ground.

Then something slammed hard into his legs, grabbing them at the same time, pulling him high into the air.

Panicking, Danny looked up to see Colin holding on to his feet at the ankles. The ground raced away from them.

Six hundred miles to the northwest, Renata Soliz was also being carried through the air.

“Anyone tries to get out of that building—” Renata shouted to Stephanie.

“I’ll stop them. You ready?”

“Do it!”

Stephanie let go of Renata’s wrists.

Renata curled herself into a ball and turned solid, praying that Stephanie’s judgment was accurate.
This is the only chance we’re going to get. If I miss…

Arcing through the air, Renata couldn’t feel anything, but she could see from the muzzle flashes on the automated weapons on the building’s corners that she was being shot at.

As she crashed down on to the HQ’s roof, the firing stopped, just as Stephanie had predicted. The automated guns were still tracking her, but not firing. This low, they couldn’t shoot at her without damaging each other.

Renata turned to flesh again. “I’m down!” she called over the radio.

“I see you. Good luck!”

One of Impervia’s lessons was that on any mission it was vital to secure an escape route. Renata ran to the nearest of the automated guns and tore it apart. She picked up the gun’s barrel and used it to smash the remaining weapons.

She looked around. A pair of large steel doors was set into the roof at the far end.
Some sort of hangar. If there’s a craft in there I might be able to use it to get out.

The hangar doors looked too strong for her to break through, but then she spotted a smaller metal hatch close to the edge. She ran toward it, punched her powerful fingers through the metal, tore the hatch off and dropped down.

Trutopian guards were already streaming toward her position.

Renata locked her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. She smiled at them. “All right. Let’s do this.”

Got to put him where he can’t do any harm,
Colin thought.

He didn’t know how his powers enabled him to fly, and he didn’t want too think to much about it. He remembered learning to ride a bike—for the first few months he’d had no problems unless he thought about exactly what he was doing, at which point the wheels would wobble and he’d topple over.

But falling off a bike was one thing; losing the power of flight at the height of half a mile would be a lot messier. Colin knew that he would survive the fall, but wasn’t sure about Danny.

He’d found Danny several miles west of Sakkara, surrounded by a ragged line of unconscious Trutopian soldiers.

Colin had dropped to ground level, flipped over so that he was flying upside down, grabbed hold of Danny’s ankles and soared into the air.

After the initial shock, Danny had begun to struggle, to try to pull himself free of Colin’s grip.

Colin held on as tight as he could without breaking Danny’s
ankles—though a part of him knew that a broken ankle would definitely slow Danny down—and whipped through the sky on as erratic and unpredictable a course as he could manage.

He looked down and saw Danny’s body blur as he shifted into and out of his high-speed mode.

Colin desperately wanted to set his friend down and let him go, but the feeling was overwhelmed by Yvonne’s orders, which seemed to be burned into his brain.

He realized that this was more than just an inability to resist her commands; there was something about her that made him
want
to do what she told him.

Is that how her power works? Not so much by controlling us, but by making us want to please her?

Again, he considered letting Danny go free, and again that thought was drowned out by the need to obey Yvonne.

But I won’t kill for her,
Colin thought.

No matter how strong the need to obey was, it was nothing compared to his inherent revulsion at the thought of killing someone.

Renata tore her way through the last set of doors leading to the Trutopian control center. The men and women working at their computer stations didn’t even look up.

She moved to the nearest computer and punched her fist right through it.

A voice from above said, “I wouldn’t bother if I was you. Everything is protected with a triple backup system.”

She looked up to see Yvonne on the gantry, smiling down at her.

“Your armies have retreated, Renata. You’ve lost.”

Renata glanced at the clock on the wall. Eight minutes until the countdown expired. “No,
you’ve
lost, Yvonne. You know why they’ve retreated?”

“They’ve realized they can’t win.”

“They’ve been prepared for a superhuman threat ever since your father’s last battle. In less than eight minutes a missile will detonate over this town, showering it with VX gas. I’m sure you know what that is.”

Yvonne hesitated. “I do. But this building is completely self-contained and sealed off from the outside world. Our air and water can be recycled for years. We can just wait it out.”

Renata began to climb the steps to the gantry. “You mean, the building
was
sealed off from the outside world. Until I tore my way in.”

Yvonne backed away.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Renata said. “You can’t control me. And I know I’m stronger than you are. So surrender now. This doesn’t have to go any further. You’re already responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. But if you give yourself up then maybe you won’t be executed.”

The girls were now almost face-to-face.

Yvonne said, “I may not be stronger than you, Soliz, but I am smarter. I don’t do
anything
without having a backup plan.” She smiled. “You remember my sister, don’t you?”

Behind her, Mina stepped out of the shadows, her hands locked around Niall Cooper’s neck.

“One word from me, and Mina will kill him.”

Yvonne started to descend the stairs. Renata reached out to
grab her, but Yvonne stepped aside. “One word, remember? And just in case you’re thinking of using your power to solidify me, Mina’s also been instructed to kill him if that happens. So whatever way you look at it,
you
lose.”

She turned to one of the engineers. “Prepare the escape pod.” To Renata, she said, “I have to give you people credit, Renata. I really didn’t think you’d ever get this far. Mina?
If she tries to follow me, kill the boy, then do whatever it takes to stop her.
”

Yvonne raced down the metal stairway, and darted from the room.

Renata turned back to Mina. “Can you hear me?”

Mina nodded.

“You do know that she’s controlling you, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Still as talkative as ever, I see. Can you find a way to resist her control?”

“No. I…We’re clones. We’re closer than sisters. She can control me more efficiently than anyone else. I’m sorry, Renata. I can’t help myself.”

Renata looked down at Niall. “I’m sorry too, Niall. I did my best.”

“I don’t want to die, Renata!”

“I know,” she said. She glanced at the clock:
Only six minutes to go before the nerve gas hits.
To Mina, she said, “You won’t do it.”