The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 (30 page)

Niall jumped off the bed and zipped up Danny’s jacket. “Are you gonna get another robot arm?”

“Yeah. If they’ll make me one. Thanks.”

“But—”

“Sorry, Niall. But I don’t want to talk about that now. OK?”

“Sure. But…”

“What?”

Niall looked away. “What about me, Danny? What powers am I going to get?”

“You might get the same powers Façade had. You know, being able to change your appearance.” He smiled. “Be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess. But Dad was a bad guy. For a while.”

“I know, but he did the right thing in the end. He’s not a bad guy now. You just make sure you always do the right thing, and you’ll be OK.”

Niall looked up at him, unblinking. “
You
did the right thing, and look what they’re saying about you.”

Danny gave his brother another smile, showing a confidence he didn’t feel. “Things’ll work out all right in the end. Now go
on back to your room. I’ve got to go out there and help Colin and the others.”

He winked, then slipped into slow-time and left the room.

Seconds later Danny stood on the roof of Sakkara and looked out toward the city.

Quantum said that I would be responsible for a war in which billions of people are going to die. Well,
I
know I’m not responsible, but everyone is blaming me anyway. Is that what he was sensing?

The visions come without context.

I saw myself leading a group of kids away from an army, and that’s what happened. But in the vision, when they fired at me, I raised my mechanical arm and the bullets bounced off an invisible shield.

I figured that was something built into the arm, but it was Butler’s force-field.

And I wasn’t leading the kids, I was rescuing them.

He stepped up onto the low wall that skirted the edge of the roof, paused for a moment, then ran down the building’s sloping side and through the now-deserted army base.

Despite everything that had happened, Danny was a little cheered up by this.

I can move so fast that gravity doesn’t have enough time to take hold of me.
It reminded him of a cartoon character running off the edge of a cliff. As long as the character doesn’t look down, he’s safe.

In slow-time I can do almost anything. I could—

He stopped himself in midspeculation.

Slow-time. Why
do
I call it that? If anything it should be
fast
-time.

He couldn’t remember when he’d first started to use the phrase, but it felt right.

He remembered his old teacher, Mr. Stone, telling them that speed was “distance over time.” “Thirty miles per hour,” Mr. Stone had said. “That means that in an hour the car would cover thirty miles. Obviously.”

Danny skidded to a stop. He was now in the heart of Topeka, at the northeast corner of Gage Park.

Time.

My powers are connected to
time,
not speed. That’s why I get visions of the future.

He thought back to Max Dalton’s power-damping machine in California. Colin had been trying to break through the machine’s armor plating, and Danny had placed his arm on Colin’s shoulder in the hope of somehow imparting some of his speed to Colin, but it hadn’t worked.

Why did I even think that was possible?

He shifted back into normal-time, and looked around. This part of the city had been relatively untouched by the war, but a few hours earlier it—like the rest of the world—had been completely crystalline.

Renata was able to extend her powers beyond herself, so maybe I can too.

Maybe I can alter
everyone’s
perception of time.

He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his own future, tried to see what was coming.

There was nothing.

After the vision in California, all he’d had since were vague feelings.

But if it happened once, then it can happen again. Everything I saw came true. Does that mean that the future can’t be changed?

Something moving through the night sky caught his attention. Danny looked up to see Colin drifting down toward him.

Colin was grinning, but looked exhausted. “Thought that was you! It’s crazy out there, Dan. I saw a man stuck on the roof of his house and when I went to help him he threw a brick at me. Then he panicked and fell off and I almost didn’t catch him. So, how’s Renata?”

“She was asleep when I left her. I think she’s going to be OK. Apart from losing her powers.”

Colin nodded. “Well, I’m glad you’re with us now. Steph and Mina and Butler are out on the west side trying to persuade a bunch of Trutopians to give up. They didn’t hear Yvonne’s message. There’re probably a lot of them out there still fighting. Come on, I’ll fly you over that way.” He was already rising into the air, his hand outstretched to Danny.

Danny reached out and grabbed hold of Colin’s hand…

…and suddenly he was in a different place. A huge crater. Colin was at the center, lying on the ground, his entire body blackened and burned. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.

Another flash, and Danny was looking at himself, about the same age as he was now, but with both arms intact. And there was another difference: This two-armed Danny had a look in his eyes that chilled him; a glare of pure hatred and ruthlessness.

Then a third flash. Danny was crouched on the ground, looking down at the dead body of a man he didn’t recognize. But now, for the first time, the vision came with sound: A voice behind him said, “You didn’t have to kill him.”

Danny jerked his hand back.

“What? What is it?” Colin said.

“Nothing, I just…Maybe I’d better go back and get some armor.”

“’Kay. I’ll wait here.”

Danny shifted into slow-time, and ran back toward Sakkara.

He couldn’t let himself think about the visions now.
There’s work to be done. People to be saved. That’s what the good guys do, after all. And I’m one of the good guys.

But he couldn’t help asking himself,
Are you sure about that?

Evan Laurie stood on the gantry, looking down into the cavernous room. He was wrapped in a thick coat and gloves. That was one problem with living inside a hollowed-out glacier—it wasn’t easy to keep the place warm.

Almost five months had passed since the war had broken out, and it still wasn’t really over.

Every day for the first month, every television and radio channel in the world broadcast a live message from Yvonne, ordering the Trutopians to stop fighting.

Then, somehow, an unknown assassin had managed to get close enough to Yvonne to put a bullet in her throat.

Yvonne survived the attack, but she would never be able to speak again.

Laurie made his way along the gantry, down the treacherously slippery metal stairs and into the huge room.

Some days he wished that the superheroes would just find this place and arrest everyone. A warm prison cell seemed like a very attractive alternative.

He walked up to the nearest steel pod. It was three meters tall, almost two meters in diameter. He checked the pod’s readout.

Victor Cross strolled over to him. “Have you picked one out yet, Mr. Laurie?”

“What difference does it make?” Laurie asked. “They’re all identical.” He tapped the pod beside him. “This one.”

Victor attached a small keypad to the pod’s control panel and
entered a sequence of codes. There was a sharp hiss as the metal casing split open.

Inside the pod, suspended in an artificial amniotic fluid, was a fully formed baby.

Victor said, “The data on Ragnarök’s technology, which Dioxin’s men stole from Sakkara, was a good starting point, but we’ve surpassed it in every way.”

“He’s perfect,” Laurie said.

“And he’s ready to be taken out. The accelerated growth means that he’s now the equivalent of a three-week-old baby.”

“How long can he stay in there, Victor?”

“Until he gets too big for the pod. Which won’t be for quite some time yet. All right. Good job. Seal it up.” Victor turned his back on Laurie and walked away.

Evan Laurie climbed back up the staircase and stopped again on the gantry.

He looked down at the pods.

All twenty-four of them.

Each one containing a rapidly growing clone of Colin Wagner.

Turn the page for a preview of

SUPER-

HUMAN

4,493 years ago…

The afternoon air was thick with dust and screams, blood and war cries, flashing blades and piercing arrows. So much blood had already been spilled that in places the desert sand had turned to red mud.

Krodin had long since abandoned his shield and was now swinging a sword in each hand, the weapons almost too heavy for the average man to lift, let alone wield.

He was of average height, though well-muscled. His bronzed skin was flawless, completely lacking the battle scars and tattoos of his comrades. He kept his dark beard close-cropped, and his long, sweat-drenched hair hung loose, free to whip around his head as he fought.

He was the greatest warrior the Assyrian empire had ever seen, and today’s battle was only serving to strengthen his reputation.

A desperate Egyptian lunged at Krodin with his spear, but Krodin simply spun: The blade in his left hand severed the spear’s shaft, the tip of his right blade passed through the Egyptian’s torso.

Krodin had already sent another Egyptian to the next world before the spearman’s body had collapsed to the ground.

A quartet of swordsmen surrounded him, rushed at him with their shields raised, their weapons flailing. Krodin leaped at one of the men, ducked under his swinging sword, crashed into the man’s shield. Behind him, the Egyptian’s colleagues slammed into each other, stumbled.

It was a moment’s work to cut them down: He sliced at the knees of the first, punctured the stomachs of the second and third with a double-thrust of his swords, and slashed at the fourth with such force that the man’s feet left the ground.

Krodin’s hands and arms were thick with his enemies’ blood. He dropped both swords and took a moment to flex his fists—the knuckles cracking loud enough to be heard over the roar of the battle—and wipe his hands on a dead man’s tunic.

There was a wound on his upper right arm, a deep cut that seeped his own blood. He didn’t recall receiving it and didn’t care. It was already healing, and within the hour his skin would be as flawless as ever.

From the west came a low rumbling. Krodin didn’t waste time looking to see what had caused the sound—it was all too familiar. He snatched up two of the dead Egyptians’ shields and ducked down behind them.

Moments later the sky darkened. Like rain from Hell, ten thousand arrows fell on the battlefield, piercing friend and foe alike.

Protected behind the shields, Krodin grinned. Only a truly foolish or desperate leader would order his archers to take such action at this stage in the battle.

As the last arrows thudded into the shields, Krodin grabbed his swords and began to run.

For as far as he could see, the bodies of the dead and dying littered the sand. The air was laced with the metallic tang of blood, and filled with screams and moans and panic-filled prayers.

He leaped over bodies, skirted around shattered and burning siege vehicles, and—without slowing—slaughtered every Egyptian in his path, regardless of whether the man was fit enough to hold a weapon.

He knew that somewhere to the west the Egyptian general was watching. And he was sure that the general was praying to the war god Onuris that Krodin would be struck down before he got too close.

Another rumble, another barrage of arrows was loosed.

Krodin took shelter in the lee of a half-dead rhinoceros, tucked himself inside its bronze armor-plating. The stench of the animal was almost strong enough to block out the smell of blood, and the ground shook from its desperate, pain-filled roars.

Then the arrows fell, and the rhinoceros shuddered, bellowed one last time, and was still.

The Egyptian general would be already planning his retreat, Krodin knew. The coward would disappear across the desert and lie to his king about the success of this attack.

In terms of numbers, the Egyptians had already won. They were remarkable warriors, highly trained and well-equipped. Krodin’s own men were also excellent warriors, but the Assyrian empire had been greatly outnumbered and was unprepared for this attack—though Krodin knew that it was hardly unprovoked. It was retaliation for an earlier
incursion into Egypt by the Assyrians, which in turn had been sparked by a previous event.

Krodin didn’t know for certain how many of his men had fallen, but he strongly suspected that by now almost all six thousand of them had been guided toward the short, agonizing path to the afterlife.

But Those Who Dwell Above—the gods of the other world, if they existed—would have to wait a long time before they greeted Krodin at their gates. He would not die this day.

And the Assyrian empire would not fall this day, not to the Egyptians.

He broke cover and raced for the enemy’s encampment.

A frenzied cry rose from their ranks, and their archers began to shoot at will, no longer waiting for orders.

Again, this was a good sign. Krodin grinned, and—still running—he closed his eyes.

An arrow whipped toward his face. Krodin knocked it aside with the sword in his right hand, and with his left sword he split the shaft of a thrown spear.

Less than a minute later he was too close to the Egyptian pikemen for their archers to fire.

A dozen or more pikemen rushed at him at once. Krodin ran, tensed his muscles, leaped over their heads. He spun and twisted in the air, slashing out with his swords, taking down four of the pikemen before he touched the ground.

The Egyptians came at him with swords, and he hacked at them with a speed and fury like they had never imagined.

Now desperate and mindless of their own men, the archers unleashed a thick cloud of arrows, and Krodin dodged or shattered every one.

They launched spears and tridents and nets. His flashing swords moved so fast that nothing could touch him.