The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 (6 page)

Danny shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

Max didn’t seem to hear him. He tapped at the screen with the end of a pencil. “I was going to remove the third and fourth fingers to reduce the complexity, but there’ve been a few breakthroughs recently in reading and interpreting nerve impulses. We’ve built a whole array of sensors into the chest harness, and the software is clever enough to be able to differentiate between the nerve signals.”

Despite his misgivings about the mechanical arm, Danny couldn’t help being impressed with the amount of time and money the government was spending on the project.

“So all you’ll have to do is put it on, and within a few seconds you’ll be able to use it like it was a real arm. There won’t be any feedback, but when we really get a handle on the microminiaturization we should be able to build in thermal and touch sensors.” Max stuck his pencil between his teeth and typed a command into the keyboard.

The screen changed to show a wire-frame figure of a man wearing the arm and the chest harness. “It’s still just as heavy as it was, but it’s much stronger and the harness distributes the weight pretty evenly, so you’ll get used to it. I’ve redesigned it so that you’ll be able to put it on without needing someone else’s help. And our tests show that when you switch into hyperspeed mode, the arm will too, so it should be able to keep up with you.”

Without saying a word, Danny turned and walked over to the window, and stared out.

Why can’t they just get the hint that I don’t
want
a mechanical arm? Maybe I should tell them…

But Danny knew that telling them wasn’t an option. Max and Impervia had known Quantum, and they’d seen how his visions had turned him into a broken man.

Danny didn’t want them to know that he had inherited not only his father’s speed, but also his ability to sense the future.

It didn’t work well, and he couldn’t control it, but there were times—like back on Isla del Tonatiuh—when Danny somehow just knew that something bad was going to happen.

And once, shortly before he’d lost his right arm, Danny had seen a vision of himself with a mechanical right arm.

If Quantum’s prophecy was accurate, and I’m going to be responsible
for starting a huge war in which billions of people will die, then…Then there’s nothing on Earth that’s going to make me take that mechanical arm. If I don’t take the arm, then the future I saw can’t ever happen.

His thoughts were interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He looked around to see Renata standing beside him.

“You OK?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. Just…thinking.”

Behind them, the door hissed open and two female guards entered, one of them pushing an old woman in a wheelchair. The woman glanced around, spotted Warren and instantly looked away.

One of the guards put the wheelchair away while his colleague helped her into bed.

“Another interrogation session,” Renata whispered.

Danny said, “I don’t care if Ragnarök was her son. How can they treat an eighty-year-old woman like that?”

“I suppose they think Mrs. Duval knows something that can help them track down Yvonne.”

“What could she know? They’ve never even met each other!”

Renata shrugged.

Warren walked over, avoiding Mrs. Duval’s glare. “Dan? We need to get you checked out.”

“Why do we have to get a checkup after
every
mission?”

“General’s orders,” Warren said. He picked up the chart from the end of Mina’s bed and flipped through the pages. “Back in the old days, we just fought the bad guys and went back to our normal lives. Now, we’ve got the might of the military behind us. Like things weren’t complicated enough. One superhuman we
can’t wake up, one missing in action, one turned against us…Only three of you left.” He put back the chart and smiled at Danny. “But soon enough, there’ll be four.”

“You found a new superhuman?”

“Better than that. Razor’s team almost has the new Paragon armor finished.”

E
VEN BEFORE
D
ANNY AND
R
ENATA
reached the machine room, they could hear a loud pounding echoing through the building. They opened the door and stood on the gantry, looking down at Razor and four other technicians as they worked on what appeared to be the framework of a three-meter-tall bipedal robot.

“All right,” Razor said, standing back from the exoskeleton. He brushed his long hair back from his face. “Everyone get clear…. Let’s try that again.”

The robot’s motors whined as it straightened itself—then, after a moment, it tilted slightly to the right, then stomped its left foot forward. The robot tilted to the left, then moved its right foot.

Danny grinned. “It’s walking! Finally!”

“Shutting down,” Razor said. “Take the readings, Mitch.” He glanced up at Danny and Renata, and beckoned them down.

Danny was instantly standing in front of the machine, staring up at it. “It’s looking good, Raze. Got it flying yet?”

“We’re getting there,” Razor said. “It can’t carry enough fuel to fly more than a hundred meters. That’s ’cos it weighs almost a ton.”

Renata arrived next to them. “Razor, how on Earth is someone supposed to fit inside that thing?”

“There’ll be a lot more space when we tidy all the cables away.”

“Maybe someone doesn’t need to be inside it. You could fit it with cameras. Then the new Paragon won’t even have to go into battle himself.”

“We thought of that, but the general feels that the public will have more confidence if Paragon is a person, not a robot.” Razor scratched at the three-day stubble on his chin. “That’s one of the things we’re arguing about. Piers wants the helmet’s faceplate to be transparent, so everyone can see there’s a person inside. But that’ll seriously weaken the helmet’s integrity, which is not a good thing considering that the armor will be equipped with shock-bombs.”

“What’s a shock-bomb?” Renata asked.

“Another of Max’s inventions. It’s a grenade that only explodes in one direction. You could hold one in your hand when it explodes—they’re about the size of a can of soda—and it wouldn’t do you any damage, as long as the business end was pointed away from you. And there’s no shrapnel.”

“Let’s see one!” Danny said.

Razor’s hair flicked about his face as he shook his head. “They’re way too dangerous to fool around with. How did the mission go? Find the weapons?”

“There weren’t any weapons. It was food.”

“Food? That seems…strange. Do you think Impervia knew?”

Renata shrugged. “It’s hard to say. She didn’t want us going into the building, so maybe she did know. We can’t ask her, because then we’d have to tell her how we found out. You know what she’s like about us breaking the rules.”

Razor asked, “Are you still thinking about leaving?”

“If I had somewhere to go, I’d leave in a second,” Renata said. “We should
all
go. Except Bubbles. But we can’t take Mina with us, and I really think that one of us should be here for her, if she ever wakes up.”

“I talked to Warren,” Razor said. “They’re no happier here than we are, but they won’t leave. He says that this is the best chance they’ll have to find Colin. There’s something else bothering them, but he wouldn’t say what it was. He did say that Sakkara is probably the only place that’s safe from Yvonne’s influence.”

Renata said, “Much as I despised Josh, at least when he was in charge we had some say in the way this place was run. Now if we want anything we have to go through Impervia.”

Razor noticed the expression on Renata’s face. “You really don’t like her, do you?”

“What’s to like? She makes us call her by her superhero name even though she hasn’t had any powers for over ten years.”

Razor’s cell phone beeped. “Oh, what
now
?” He flipped open the phone. “Yo…Oh, hi Caroline. What’s up?” He listened for a moment. “Uh-oh…All right, we’re coming down.”

“What is it?” Danny asked.

“The guys you arrested on the island aren’t terrorists. They’re security guards. The food supplies belonged to the Trutopians. And they’re not happy.”

Colin stood at the back of the room as Reginald Kinsella stepped in front of the camera. Kinsella looked annoyed and a little flustered. He cleared his throat, took a sip of water from a glass.

Harriet, operating the camera, said, “We’ve got the link…. Going live in thirty-two seconds.”

Beside her, Byron tapped at his laptop computer. “It’s coming through fine.”

Despite his reservations about the organization, Colin was impressed with how the Trutopians worked. Everything seemed to be done with tremendous efficiency: Even though the community in Satu Mare was quite small and didn’t have its own official broadcasting facilities, it had only taken Harriet and Byron a few minutes to track down a digital video camera and a powerful laptop computer and connect them to the Internet.

Harriet counted down the last few seconds, then Kinsella stared into the camera and began to speak.

“Good morning. Or good afternoon or good evening, depending on where you are…. As many of you will know, the Trutopian organization does not simply look after itself. Our mission is to help
everyone,
Trutopian or otherwise.” Kinsella took another sip of his water. “In a number of different locations we have been stockpiling preserved foods so that in the event of a disaster—an earthquake, for example—we will be immediately able to ship those supplies to the countries in need. Over the past six weeks, fourteen of our stockpiles have been destroyed or irrevocably contaminated by some unknown outside force. A few hours ago, our enemies struck again, on Isla del Tonatiuh, a small island to the west of Central America.

“After the first few attacks we greatly increased our security measures. Our compound on Isla del Tonatiuh was covered with hidden cameras. We have the perpetrators on film.” He tilted his head to look past the camera toward Byron, and nodded.

The tall man tapped a few keys on his computer.

Colin walked over to Byron and watched the video footage play out on the laptop’s screen.

His heart jumped when he spotted Renata and Butler attacking the guards.

Once the footage was over, Kinsella reappeared on the screen. “Just in case some of you have been living on Mars and didn’t recognize them, they were the New
so-called
Heroes, agents of a government that preaches democracy but apparently does not feel compelled to practice it.” Kinsella paused. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I personally am not impressed with this new generation of superhumans. At least, not those who are still working for the U.S. military.” With that, he cast a quick look in Colin’s direction.

“I want answers. I want to know how they can justify an action like that. What if there is another disaster like the flooding of New Orleans? If the U.S. government comes to the Trutopians for help, what will we say? Will we turn them away? No. We will not. We will help them in any way we can, because the Trutopian organization is made up of the people, by the people and, most importantly,
for
the people. Words with which the powers that be in the USA should be only too familiar.”

Kinsella stepped back a little from the camera. “I want answers. I want those answers to be honest, complete and without condition. And I want them within the next twenty-four hours.” He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “To the ordinary people, thank you for watching. And to the governments of all the countries that are opposed to the Trutopians…
We
are watching
you
.”

I
N SAKKARA
, D
ANNY AND
R
AZOR STOOD
in the doorway of Ops, watching the monitor over the heads of everyone else in the packed room.

“We’re in trouble now,” Razor muttered.

At the far side of the room, General Piers hit the remote control to turn off the monitor, then swiveled back to face everyone.

Danny thought he’d never seen the general look so old, so tired.

For a moment, Piers was silent, then he took a deep breath and looked around the room. “Any thoughts?”

Sitting next to him, Maxwell Dalton quietly said, “Someone set us up. And they did a good job of it too.” He looked up at Impervia. “You scanned the place?”

The woman nodded. “Twice. Danny did a high-speed pass, then I scanned it again as I approached. Obviously, they’ve found a way to mask their cameras from the scanner.”

General Piers said, “Obviously.” He turned to Razor. “How?”

“Probably used fiber-optic cameras. There are models that can run with minimal electricity. The scanners would only pick them up if they were specifically looking for them. You don’t set up something like that because you’re afraid someone
might
attack. They knew.”

At the far side of the room, Caroline Wagner cleared her
throat and said, “I think we’re avoiding something here. Why did you go all that way to destroy food supplies?”

Impervia glared at the younger woman. “We didn’t. We thought we were going after a weapons cache.”

“Either you’re lying or you were wrong. If you were wrong, then what else have you been wrong about? And if you’re lying—”

“All right, that’ll do!” General Piers said. “I’ve had the secretary of defense on the phone three times already, and our press office has been bombarded with calls from every media source on the planet. I’m putting a hiatus on everything but the Paragon project until we find out who set us up. Maybe it was the Trutopians themselves, maybe it was a foreign power. God knows there are more than a few nations jealous that we have superhumans.” He turned his attention to the computer in front of him. “Meeting’s over.”

As they filed out of the room, Renata and Butler caught up with Danny and Razor.

“I’m really getting sick of this place!” Renata said. “
They’re
the ones who messed up, but we get treated like it’s our fault.”

“Right,” Razor said, “and we don’t even get paid. I work at least fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, and in return all I get is food and a bed. I got better food and a better bed in Florida, and all I had to do was take out the trash in the mornings.”