The New Heroes
Absolute Power
Michael Carroll

This book is dedicated to a real hero:

Adam Dodson

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

TEN YEARS EARLIER…

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34

EPILOGUE

Keep Reading

Copyright

About The Publisher

TEN YEARS EARLIER…

HER EYES STREAMING from the smoke that billowed from the burning battle-tank, Energy limped across the shrapnel-strewn battlefield to where Titan was sitting propped up against an overturned jeep. The hero was tearing his blue cape into strips – he’d already used several to bind a stick to his broken right leg.

He looked up as Energy approached. “Hey…You OK?”

“I’ll live.” Holding on to the jeep to steady herself, Energy carefully lowered herself down next to him. “Just so you know, the medics are bringing their own bandages.”

Titan forced a smile. “Had to keep busy. Didn’t want to pass out.”

“So, did we win or lose today?”

Titan dropped the shredded cape and took hold of her hand. “I don’t think that’s something we’re going to know for a long time.”

Energy nodded, then paused. “Diamond didn’t make it. She was in her crystalline form when it happened. Without her powers, she wasn’t able to change back.”

“God…What was her name? Her real name?”

“She never told me. Max said he didn’t know either.”

“How are we going to find her family, tell them what happened?”

Energy didn’t answer.

Titan leaned his head back against the jeep. “She was just a kid.”

“I know.”

A voice called, “So how are you guys doing?”

They looked up to see Paragon striding towards them.

“We’re alive,” Energy said. “Thanks to you.”

“That’s all part of the job description.” Paragon unclipped his jetpack and checked a tiny read-out on the back. “Damn. Left thruster’s just about blown. Not that it’s worth repairing now. If it’s true that you superhumans have all lost your powers, then I’m going to quit the business too.”

Titan began, “No, you should—”

Paragon raised his hand to his helmet. “Hold it…Go ahead, Max…Got it. I’m on the way.” Slinging his jetpack back into place, he said to Energy and Titan, “He thinks they’ve just found Ragnarök’s base.”

He soared into the sky.

Energy activated her communicator. “Paragon, you’re crazy! You can’t go after him without your armour!”

His voice came back. “Dioxin destroyed most of it. But maybe he did me a favour; the armour slows me down. Without it, I can get there a lot faster.”

“I’m on the way, Max,” Paragon said. “Tell me everything.”

“Ragnarök’s battle-tank was built a hundred and fifty kilometres west of here, big warehouse outside Westmoreland. My people have been checking the satellite images and traffic records. Their analysis shows a large SUV making regular trips between the warehouse and Sherman’s Bay, Chatauqua Lake. Same SUV came back today, arrived in the warehouse an hour before the battle-tank emerged.”

Paragon said, “Max, that doesn’t mean it was Ragnarök!”

“They also detected a vapour trail from Ragnarök’s escape craft going in the same direction. They were able to pick it up by analysing—”

“Skip the details,” Paragon interrupted. “Just give me the exact location.”

“I’m sending you the coordinates now.”

Paragon glanced at the map that was projected on to the inside of his visor. “I see it.”

“Checking it against the city’s ordnance database. It’s…Good Lord…It’s an apartment block. We’ve been searching for this maniac for years and he’s been living in an ordinary apartment block!”

The army ambulance raced over the rough ground, hit a furrow and bounced. Inside, lying on the stretcher, Titan gasped as the pain in his right leg flared up again.

“Take it easy up there!” Energy called to the driver. She turned back to Titan and checked the temporary splint on his leg. “You OK?”

Titan gritted his teeth. “Not really.”

The truck bounced again and Energy grabbed a handrail to steady herself. “You’re going to be off your feet for the next few months.”

“I know.” He nodded. “Look, if our powers never come back—”

“We’ll survive.”

“Yeah, but—”

The ambulance swerved sharply to the left.

“Hey!” Energy shouted. “Watch where you’re going!”

“That wasn’t me!” the driver called back. “Something hit—”

Titan was thrown from the stretcher as the explosion ripped through the side wall of the ambulance.

“Paragon, this is General Piers. Back-up is about ten minutes behind you.”

“I’m not waiting,” Paragon said. The visor’s readouts showed that the jetpack’s shuddering was caused by the left thruster. Just hope I can get there before this thing shuts down completely.

He dropped down to fifty metres – high enough to avoid the power-lines, but not as low as he’d have preferred to fly with a malfunctioning jetpack. He knew that even if he’d still had his armour, hitting the ground from this height would be fatal.

OK. There it is. The visor’s map showed the apartment block less than a kilometre ahead.

The homes and gardens of Sherman’s Bay streamed by below him as Paragon steered himself towards the building.

“General, I can’t see the craft…Either he’s already gone or—” Paragon’s jetpack suddenly sputtered, lurching him to the left. “Hell. Jetpack’s on the way out!”

“Pull out, Paragon!”

“No, it can run on only two thrusters…” The apartment block loomed up ahead. “Just not very well.” Paragon angled upwards, slowing as he neared the roof, and switched his helmet to infrared. “I’m getting two heat patterns in there. Neither of them big enough to be Ragnarök. Could be pets. General, better get your people to widen the search radius. Ragnarök’s long gone.” He touched down on the building’s flat roof. “What’s the intel on this place?”

“He’s been living in the penthouse apartment for six years,” Piers replied. “Seems that the building manager thought he was a European rock star living in tax exile. Paid them a lot of money to leave him alone.”

Paragon stopped in front of the door to the stairway and pulled a small device from a pouch on his belt. “Scanning…I’m picking up a lot of sensors on the door. Could be booby-trapped. I’ll check the windows.” He walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, activating his jetpack at the same time.

He hovered in front of one of the large windows. “Sensors on the window, too…The infrared shows—”

The general’s voice barked, “Paragon! We’ve just heard that the ambulance carrying Titan and Energy has been hit! It’s Ragnarök!”

“Damn it! All right, I’ll…Oh my God…That can’t be right!”

“What is it?”

Paragon didn’t reply. He aimed his armour’s grappling gun and fired it directly at the window. The small but heavy hook ploughed through the thick glass, showering the room inside with crystal fragments.

He kicked out at the window, widening the hole, then pulled himself through.

Ahead of him, six large glass canisters were mounted on a workbench. Cables ran from the canisters to a small monitoring computer.

Paragon swallowed. “General…Better get your people in here. Right now.”

“Talk to me, Paragon! What is it?”

“I…I don’t…Four of them are empty. But the other two…”.

“For God’s sake, man! Just tell me!”

“They look like they’re about three years old. They’re suspended in some sort of fluid…There’s…” Paragon walked around the canisters, staring at them. How could he have done something like this?

Floating inside the nearest canister, the black-haired baby girl reached out and placed her hand against the glass.

Paragon stared at her.

She stared back.

And smiled.

A ripple of pain tore through Titan’s body, bringing him back to consciousness. He opened his blood-caked eyes to see a shadowy figure standing over him.

“You’re awake. Good.” Ragnarök leaned close, baring his teeth. “I didn’t want you to die without knowing who killed you.”

Titan looked around wildly. The ambulance was more than twenty metres away, burning. “Energy…”

“She’s unconscious, but alive. For the moment.” Ragnarök locked his massive fists around Titan’s neck and lifted him off the ground. “You ruined everything! I spent over a year working on that machine! I would have been the only superhuman left!”

Gasping, struggling for breath, Titan slammed his left fist into Ragnarök’s stomach.

The villain staggered. “You destroyed my force-field! Now my powers have been stripped too! You realise what that means?”

“You’re…gonna have to…get a real job?”

Ragnarök let go and stepped back.

Titan collapsed to the ground, landing heavily on his broken leg.

Ragnarök lashed out with his foot, catching Titan in the ribs. “Without your powers, you’re no stronger than the average man, are you? Me, I work out.” He grabbed hold of Titan’s arm, and began to drag him along the ground. “There’s enough space in my flyer for the two of us. I’m going to take you somewhere they’ll never find you.” Ragnarök paused, then dropped Titan’s arm. He reached out and tore the mask from Titan’s face. “Huh. So that’s what you look like…You got a family, Titan? A wife? A couple of kids, maybe? I’ll find them.”

Titan scrambled around with his free hand, trying to find something he could use as a weapon.

Then he spotted something in the distance, racing towards them through the sky. “Wait, wait!”

“What now?” Ragnarök said, turning to him.

“I just want to know…Why? What made you like this?”

“You want the whole sob story? How society treated me badly, so I turned to a life of crime?” Ragnarök raised his eyes. “You think I can’t tell when someone is stalling?”

Then Paragon was on them, roaring out of the sky, slamming into Ragnarök’s back.

Paragon took a moment to check that Titan was still alive, then looked back to where Ragnarök was getting to his feet.

The large man balled his fists and launched himself at Paragon.

Damn, he’s fast! Paragon dodged to the left just as Ragnarök reached him, and lashed out with a punch that caught Ragnarök in the chin and sent him staggering backwards.

Ragnarök recovered almost instantly, dropping to the ground and sweeping his right leg to crash into Paragon’s.

Paragon toppled backwards, then whipped out with his left hand, grabbing Ragnarök’s ankle. He activated his jetpack.

He shot backwards along the ground, dragging Ragnarök behind him.

With his free foot, Ragnarök kicked at Paragon’s hand, forcing him to break his grip. “Give it up!” Ragnarök roared, rolling on to his feet once more. “I’m stronger and faster than you are!”

Paragon spun about, raced towards Ragnarök and flipped over at the last second, aiming his heavy boots at Ragnarök’s head.

But Ragnarök suddenly ducked, locked his hands around Paragon’s belt as he passed overhead and used the hero’s own momentum to slam him face-first into the ground.

He tore Paragon’s helmet from his head, then unclipped the jetpack’s shoulder straps and threw it aside.

He locked his hands around Paragon’s neck and began to squeeze. “You’re just as bad as your friends there, Paragon! No, you’re worse! You’re not even one of us! You’re an ordinary man pretending to be a superhuman!”

Paragon struggled to breathe. “We found your apartment…those kids…You’ll pay for what you did to them!”

“What I did to them? You know nothing, Paragon!” Ragnarök smashed his knee into the small of Paragon’s back. “I’m gonna get my girls back, and then I’m gonna kill every single one of you people!”

Then the pressure on Paragon’s back was suddenly gone, the hands whipped away from his neck.

Gasping, Paragon rolled on to his back and looked around wildly. Ragnarök was nowhere to be seen.

Nor was Titan.

Then he heard a scream coming from above.

Paragon looked up and saw Titan soaring into the air, his arms locked around Ragnarök’s chest.

He can fly again! He’s got his powers back!

Paragon squinted, tried to focus.

No…He’s not flying on his own.

“Put me down!” Ragnarök roared. “Put me down or I swear to God, Titan, you and everyone you ever met will regret it!”

Titan felt the straps of Paragon’s jetpack cutting into his shoulders, but he didn’t care. Compared to the pain in his shattered leg, it was nothing. “Shut up, Ragnarök. It’s over. You’re not getting out of this.”

“You don’t even know how to fly that damn thing!”

“I’m learning as I go. Now stop struggling. You wouldn’t survive the drop.”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Titan. I know everything about the powers! I can tell you where they come from!”

“Shut up. You’re going to jail.”

“No…You don’t know what they do with people like me. I’m not going to end up in that God-forsaken hole!”

“You don’t have any choice, Ragnarök. You’re a mass-murderer.”

The jetpack’s left thruster sputtered and died, lurching them to the left. They began to lose height. Aw hell, Titan thought. Can’t set him down: he’s more than a match for me on the ground.

“That thing can’t carry both of us, Titan!” Ragnarök was silent for a moment, then said, “Let go.”

“What?”

“Let go.”

“You’ll die!”

“That’s the point.”

“You really think I’ll just let you fall to your death and deprive the world of the trial of the century?”

“How’s that broken leg of yours?”

Titan glanced down at the top of Ragnarök’s head. “What do you think? Hurts like hell.”

“Good.”

Before Titan could react, Ragnarök jabbed backwards with his right elbow, slamming it into Titan’s leg.

Titan screamed.

Then Ragnarök reached up, grabbed Titan’s hands, broke his grip.

And fell.

White-faced and shaking, Titan drifted back to the crashed ambulance, where he found Paragon tending to Energy.

“She’ll be OK, I think,” Paragon said.

Titan touched down, keeping his weight on his good leg.

Paragon stepped up to him, tucked his shoulder under Titan’s left arm, and lowered him to a sitting position. “What happened?”

“He…He let go. He forced me to…” Titan gasped, and shuddered. “He killed himself. My fault. I shouldn’t have flown so high. I should have stayed only a few metres up.”

For a moment, Paragon was silent. Then he crouched down next to Titan. “It’s not your fault.” He forced a smile. “Damn it, man! Look at you! He had you beaten to a pulp, you’ve got a broken leg, no super-powers, and you still managed to save my life!” He slapped Titan on the shoulder. “It’s not powers that make a hero—”

Titan finished the sentence for him. “It’s courage.”

In the distance, they could hear a helicopter approaching.

“If we can’t get our powers back, then this is the end of the superhumans,” Titan said.

“Hey, I was never a superhuman to begin with.” Paragon grinned. “When you get that leg mended, you come have dinner with me and my wife. She’s always saying she wants to meet the people I work with.”

“You’re married too, huh?”

“Yeah. Five years now. We’ve got twin girls. Cute as buttons and already smarter than their old man. You?”

Titan nodded. “A son. He’s three. Just about.” Titan smiled. “But you already know his mother.” He nodded towards Energy.

“Yeah, I figured that one out a long time ago.”

“Seriously? I thought we were being so careful about it!” Titan held out his hand. “My name’s Warren. Warren Wagner.”

Paragon shook it. “Good to know you, Warren. And I want you to know this…You’ve saved my life before – hell, we’ve all saved each other’s lives dozens of times – but today was different. You ever need anything – anything at all – you come and see me. My name is Solomon Cord.”

1

COLIN WAGNER SAT up suddenly, a gunshot still echoing through his ears. He was on his feet in an instant, looking around wildly for the source of the sound.

His shoulders sagged. Just the dream again…

He rubbed his eyes. Where am I? The smell of dry hay and damp cow manure reached his nostrils. Oh. Right. He remembered sneaking across the farmyard a few hours earlier. Almost overcome with exhaustion, he’d crept into the old wooden barn and climbed up into the hayloft.

Now, spears of sunlight pierced through the cracks and knot-holes in the barn’s wall. Looking at the angle of the beams of light, Colin thought, Sun’s been up for almost an hour and I can’t hear anything moving out there. This has got to be the quietest farm I’ve ever encountered.

Colin sat down again, dangling his bare feet over the edge of the hayloft, and yawned.

The same dream had woken him almost every morning for the four months since he’d left Sakkara; Solomon Cord chained to a chair, Renata Soliz’s family bound and gagged. Victor Cross nearby, talking to Colin on the phone. Telling him that Colin had to choose whether Cord or Renata’s family would die.

And in the dream – as always – Colin chose Cord. Then a man stepped out of the shadows, placed the muzzle of a small handgun against Solomon Cord’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

Colin shuddered. Why do I keep having the same dream over and over? Maybe my brain’s just telling me that I made the wrong choice.

Or maybe it’s because I know I did the right thing. Even though it meant that Sol died, it was still the right thing.

Colin felt his stomach rumble and he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten. Three days ago. The café in Vámospérce. Just before I crossed the border into Romania.

The owner had been at the back of the café as Colin passed, and he offered Colin a sandwich in return for helping him drag the huge, over-flowing bins towards the street.

Good sandwich, Colin said to himself. He glanced down at his bare, unwashed feet. His boots had finally disintegrated over a month before, back in Austria. He didn’t need to wear anything on his feet – his skin was more than tough enough to cope with any environment – but an unwashed, shoe-less thirteen-year-old boy drew attention, and that was the last thing Colin wanted.

I suppose they’re still looking for me. Probably still searching the States. Or maybe they think I went back home.

Maybe I should go back home. See Brian again. God, I wish I’d told him…He must have felt sick every time me and Danny were on the news. His best friends turned out to be the sons of superhumans and we just left him behind.

Colin swallowed. He didn’t want to think about his parents. He wasn’t even sure he ever wanted to see them again.

They betrayed me by bringing Max Dalton to Sakkara. How could they not care that he tried to kill me? Dad always said that…

He shook his head. No. Don’t think about them. Forget them.

When Colin was eight years old, two older boys at school had beaten him up. Colin had taken his revenge by stealing a comic from one and putting it in the other’s schoolbag. The resulting fight had been so ferocious that it took four teachers to pry the bullies apart. Colin had been immensely proud of his act and boasted about it to his parents. Their reaction had not been what he’d expected.

His father had gone ballistic, yelling at Colin, “The ends never justify the means!”

Colin’s mother – who was always much more level-headed than her husband – had taken Colin aside and explained what the problem was. “You stole something. Stealing is wrong. You know that.”

“Yeah, but, see, those two used to gang up on everyone, and now they’re not even allowed to talk to each other in the playground. Maybe I did a bad thing by stealing, but now everyone else is happier ‘cos we don’t have to worry about them two any more.”

“You stole something. Those two boys might be bullies, but you’re a thief. Why is stealing from a bully any better than stealing from a shop?”

“No, but…” Colin’s argument faltered. “See…”

“Colin, you can’t do good by doing bad things.”

Now, as he lay back on the hayloft in a remote farm in northern Romania, Colin Wagner understood exactly what his parents had been talking about.

Yeah, adults are great at laying down the rules, but they’re not always so good at sticking to them. Working with Max Dalton is wrong. I don’t care if he’s the only ex-superhuman with any knowledge of how mind-control works. Max risked my life and the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people when he tried to use that machine. I know he thought he was doing the right thing, but that’s no excuse.

Almost fifteen years earlier, on the day Colin’s best friend Danny Cooper was born, Danny’s father – the hyper-fast superhuman known as Quantum – had received a vision of the future. In that vision, Quantum had seen Danny as a young man leading an army of superhumans against the ordinary people. Billions of people would die in the war.

Max Dalton knew Quantum well enough to realise that the future he’d seen had to be prevented. Max had used his mind-control on Quantum, forcing him to work alongside the villain Ragnarök to create a machine capable of stripping all the superhumans of their powers.

It had worked. For ten years, there had been no superhumans. And then Danny and Colin – the son of Energy and Titan – reached puberty, and their own powers began to appear.

If only Dad hadn’t destroyed Ragnarök’s machine just after it was used…Then none of us would have powers. We’d all still be living at home and we’d probably never have learned the truth about what happened to the superhumans.

Once Max had learned that Danny’s powers were appearing, he’d attempted to build a second power-damping machine. But without Ragnarök’s understanding of how the powers worked, the machine was flawed. It would have killed Colin and Danny and thousands of other people.

We had to stop it, Colin thought. Even if that means that the war might still happen…You can’t sacrifice innocent people just because one half-mad superhuman had a vision of the future.

Colin sat up and looked around the barn. The shafts of sunlight were at a slightly steeper angle now. Better get out of here before the farmer comes to milk his cows.

He froze.

Something’s wrong. A farm is never this quiet.

Colin pushed himself off the edge of the hayloft, dropped the four metres to the ground and landed silently. My God! I’ve gone deaf! But…He shook his head. This didn’t seem possible. Before he’d fallen asleep, he’d been able to hear the old farmer snoring in the farmhouse a hundred metres away. Now, there was nothing.

Then Colin turned around and saw the well-dressed man and woman standing right behind him.

Fifteen thousand kilometres to the west a large, sleek, black aircraft descended quickly and almost silently from the night sky, its six turbine engines blowing a large crater in the narrow, moon-lit strip of sand that separated the island’s dense jungle from the Pacific Ocean.

Danny Cooper couldn’t help but admire the skill with which Renata Soliz handled the new StratoTruck’s controls; the craft touched down with barely a bump.

The others were already out of the craft and running across the beach by the time Danny had managed to unclip his seatbelt.

This was the furthest Danny had ever been from home: Isla del Tonatiuh was situated five hundred kilometres to the south-west of El Salvador. The island was less than thirty kilometres across and was covered in a thick canopy of vegetation: the perfect place for an international arms-smuggling operation.

Danny silently made his way to the undergrowth, where the five others were waiting for him.

Renata Soliz leaned close and whispered, “How is it that someone who can run as fast as you is always the last one out of the StratoTruck?”

Danny grinned. “It would be a lot easier if whoever designed the seatbelts didn’t assume that everyone has two hands.”

“All right,” Impervia said. “You know the drill. We move in hard and fast. Danny, you’re the scout.”

Façade placed his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Ready?”

Danny nodded. He pulled his electronic compass from his pocket and examined it. The tiny screen showed his location and the location of the target. “OK.”

Impervia said, “Take no chances, Danny. If they see you, get out of there ASAP. Do not engage.”

“Understood. But they won’t see me.” Danny stuffed the compass back in his pocket, raised his night-vision goggles to his face and turned them on. The goggles had been specially modified so that he could put them on and activate them using only his left hand.

“And keep the scanner going at all times. The target is two kilometres east, but the vegetation is heavy, so keep the noise level down.” Impervia looked at her watch. “Now…go.”

Danny smiled at Renata, then concentrated. Slipping into slow-time was so simple now it was almost second nature. He pushed his way through the bushes.

There were times when Danny was almost pleased that he was a superhuman. Times like this, when he knew he was doing something good, almost made up for the loss of his right arm. Almost.

Since the start of the year, Danny Cooper, Renata Soliz and Butler Redmond had been involved in over a dozen missions like this one, and each one had been successful.

It’d be a lot easier if Colin was with us, but even so…We’re not doing too badly.

Danny felt a familiar churning in his stomach. Sometimes, when he thought about the way Colin had left Sakkara, it almost made him ill. He should have stayed, given us a chance to explain everything. Now he’s God-knows-where and his parents are worried sick about him.

Danny climbed over a rotting, fallen tree and paused to check the compass. Through the night-vision goggles, everything looked green and washed-out. Worse, because he was in his high-speed mode the computer-enhanced images from the goggles flickered maddeningly.

He glanced behind him and saw that his lightning-fast path through the jungle had shaken the moisture from the undergrowth, marking his trail with a cloud of droplets seemingly suspended in mid-air.

Danny continued on his way, wondering how long it would take for Mrs Wagner to decide that the trip to the jungle would make a good topic for an essay.

That was the worst thing about being a teenage superhuman: he still had to go to school. The previous month, Mrs Wagner had given him grief about not turning in his geography homework in time. Danny had tried to argue that he’d been kind of busy saving the world, but the teacher – a former superhuman herself – had simply said, “Danny, you’re the fastest human being alive. You could probably run to Alaska faster than most people could write an essay about it.”

Life at Sakkara isn’t so bad, Danny told himself. Colin should have stayed with us. Max’s phone-filter thingy means that Yvonne can’t just call us and then use her mind-control, so we’re safe there.

Well, reasonably safe. But Dioxin’s locked away and Victor Cross seems to have completely disappeared.

Ahead, Danny could see a point of light. That’s the place. He lowered his goggles and began to run towards it.

As he ran, a feeling of unease settled over him, like he was being watched. That’s not possible. There’s no way they could know we’re coming. Besides, I’m moving too fast for anyone to see.

He stepped out into a clearing and saw a squat, vine-covered, crumbling stone building. Two men in grubby overalls were standing near the entrance. Danny walked around the edge of the clearing, counted all the people he could see, then headed back into the jungle, towards his colleagues.

He could picture the scene: Impervia bossing everyone about, Façade taking no real notice of her and doing his own thing, Renata doing her best to keep as far away from Butler as possible.

Butler Redmond was definitely a little easier to get along with now, ever since he’d had a panic attack during Dioxin’s attack on Sakkara. Before that, Butler had swaggered about like he owned the place – now he mostly kept to himself, with only the occasional verbal jab at Danny when he was feeling particularly pleased with himself.

Danny walked out of the jungle a few metres away from the others, and took a moment to look out at the sea. The nearest wave seemed to be frozen in mid-splash. Danny concentrated, shifting back to normal time, and the wave crashed to the shore.

“You were gone one hundred and twenty-seven seconds,” Impervia said. “Twice as long as you should have been. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Danny replied. “I took it easy. I might have been in hyper-fast mode, but it’s still two kilometres there and two back.” He pulled the fist-sized scanner from his belt and handed it to her.

Impervia connected the scanner to the small computer screen built into her uniform’s wrist. “All right…We’ve got twelve hostiles. Four on guard duty, the rest inside the building. Renata, you’re on point. Butler will stick close to you. Vaughan? You stay put and monitor. Give us twenty minutes. If we’re not back—”

The young soldier said, “I know. Pull out and get back to the transport.”

“We keep it quiet until we’re on the edge of the clearing, then we take out the guards: make enough noise to bring the others running. When the compound is secure, I’ll set the charges.”

Renata asked, “Wouldn’t it be easier for one of us to go inside?”

“Yes, it would. But what happens if the compound is booby-trapped? You three are too important to lose.”

Danny glanced at Renata, who was looking back at him with a familiar expression, and he knew that they were both thinking the same thing: Impervia wasn’t a superhuman any more, but she still wanted to pretend that she was.

Façade turned to the other soldier, Vaughan. “Get the extraction team ready to pick up twelve hostiles. And watch our backs.”

“Yes sir.”

“Let’s do it. Renata, lead the way.”

Danny followed Renata into the undergrowth.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.

2

THE NEATLY-DRESSED MAN slowly raised his right hand and showed Colin that he was holding a small device about the size of a mobile phone.

Colin stepped back, but the man simply smiled and pressed a button on the machine.

Instantly, the sounds of the farmyard flooded back and Colin jumped: he’d been concentrating so hard on his super-hearing that now the sounds were greatly magnified. He could hear everything: the man and woman’s heartbeats, the noises of the animals – including a tremendous amount of gurgling coming from the cows’ stomachs – birds, insects, the slow ticking of a nearby car’s engine as it cooled down.

“Sorry,” the man said. “We knew you’d be able to hear us coming from miles away so we had to use this. It’s a sound-muffler. It works by inverting—”

Colin interrupted him. “I know how it works. What do you want?”

“We’ve been tracking you for weeks, Colin.”

“Who?”

The red-haired woman gave Colin a warm smile. “Look, we know you’re Colin Wagner. Let’s not bother with all that ‘I don’t know who you think I am’, nonsense, OK? It’ll save time.”

“We just want to talk,” the man said. “I’m Byron, this is Harriet.”

Colin looked them up and down. Immaculate black suits, white shirts, dark-blue ties. Highly-polished expensive shoes. “You’re Trutopians.”

“That’s right.”

“And you want me to join your organisation.”

“We just want to talk to you, Colin,” Harriet said. “That’s all. You’re a hard man to track, but we’ve got people everywhere. You were spotted a month ago outside Budapest, and ever since then we’ve been concentrating on this area.” She paused. “What exactly are you doing here?”

Before Colin could reply, Harriet said, “Never mind that for now. Colin, we didn’t come empty-handed.” She nudged her colleague with her elbow. “Show him, Byron.”

“What?”

Harriet raised her eyes. “What you’ve got in your pocket, you dink!”

“Oh, right.” Byron reached into his jacket pocket, pulled something out and tossed it to Colin.

“A Mars bar,” Colin said.

“Yeah. We thought you might be missing some of the comforts of home.”

Colin briefly wondered whether the chocolate might be drugged, but somehow he couldn’t stop himself from tearing open the wrapper and taking a huge bite out of the bar.

“Reginald Kinsella told us to order that stuff in specially for you,” Harriet said. “And your favourite chips.”

“You mean crisps,” Byron corrected. “Cheese and onion – those are your favourites, right?”

Colin nodded.

Harriet said, “We just want to talk. Mr Kinsella has been in Munich for the past week, but he’s cutting his visit short and he’s coming here to Romania specially to see you. Just give him a couple of days of your time, OK? If you’re still not interested after that, then that’s fine. You know what the Trutopians are all about, don’t you?”

“You claim to be interested only in world-wide peace.”

“Exactly. We’ve got a community in Satu Mare, that’s about twenty kilometres from here, and it’s in the direction you were heading anyway. So it’ll save you half a day’s walking. How’s that sound?”

Colin shook his head. “No.”

Byron started to speak, but the woman put his hand on his arm. “Leave it. All right, Colin. We tried.” She stepped to one side and pointed at the large backpack that had been behind her. “It’s yours. There’s enough food for a week, a new pair of hiking boots in your size, a couple of changes of clothes and a portable phone. I’ve put our numbers on it, just in case.”

Byron said, “I suppose it gets pretty lonely out there on the road, so we’ve also given you an MP3 player. It’s got a couple of thousand tracks on it. We weren’t sure what kind of music you like, but there’s bound to be something there that’ll suit you.”

Then Harriet reached into her jacket’s inside pocket and took out a thick envelope. “Five hundred Euro, five hundred US Dollars.” She handed it to Colin. “And there’s a Trutopian credit card in there too. In case of emergencies. It doesn’t have a very high limit, so don’t go trying to buy a Ferrari with it.”

Colin found that his mouth had gone dry. “You’re just giving me all this stuff?”

Byron nodded. “Yep.”

“Even though I said I wasn’t interested in talking to you?”

He nodded again. “That’s right. Look, Colin…This is how Mr Kinsella put it: you’re a superhuman. And more than that, you’re one of the good guys. That puts us all on the same side. If we make things easier for you to help people, that makes things easier for us.”

“It just seems…” Colin shrugged. “Like a bribe or something.”

Harriet said, “It’s not a bribe. It’s what we do, it’s what the whole organisation is about. We help people who are less fortunate. We’ve been following you long enough to know that you have no money, no change of clothes, no food, and you haven’t had a shower in over a month.”

“Actually,” Byron said, “we could tell that one even if we hadn’t been tracking you. But she’s right. Sure, the Trutopians want you on-board. But if you’re not interested, then what are we going to do? Force you to join? That’s not our style.” He reached down and picked up the bag. “So come on. We’ll give you a lift to Satu Mare, and there’s no strings attached.”

It could be OK, Colin said to himself. They’re not superhuman. If they tried to kidnap me or anything I could just smash open the car door and jump out. “All right,” he said.

“Great!” Byron said. “You don’t mind if we drive with the windows down, do you?”

“I’m right behind you, Ren,” Butler Redmond whispered.

Renata didn’t need to look over her shoulder to know that the older boy was telling the truth: she could almost feel his breath on the back of her neck.

Does he really think that I need protection? She wondered. I’m twice as strong as he is!

“Not too far now,” Butler whispered.

Through clenched teeth, Renata muttered. “Yes. I know.”

“So what we’ll do, right, is wait for Danny to give the signal and then we’ll rush through, smash into the guys guarding the door, then split up. You take the one on the left and I’ll take the one on the right.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Butler paused. “Unless you want to take the one on the right?”

Renata stopped walked suddenly. Butler almost crashed into her. She turned to face him. “Butler?”

“What?”

“Back off. You’re invading my personal space again.”

“Right, right.” He grinned. “But you have to admit, we’re a good team. The way we took down those hijackers last month – that was class!”

Façade caught up with them. “What’s the delay?”

“Just working on the plan,” Butler replied.

“Leave the planning to Impervia,” Façade told him. “You two just do as you’re told.”

Butler raised his eyes. “Why are you even here, Façade? You’re just the pilot! You’re a chauffeur, not a soldier.”

“I’m here just in case you wet your pants again like you did when Dioxin’s men attacked Sakkara.” Without waiting for Butler to respond, Façade said, “Now get moving. And stay alert.”

Smiling to herself, Renata marched on. It’s Butler’s own fault that no one likes him. Before we got to Sakkara the only friends he had were Yvonne and Mina, and they only tolerated him because he was the first person they ever met who was close to their own age.

Renata swallowed. God, poor Mina…

For a very brief time, there had been eight teenagers in Sakkara. Then Yvonne had turned out to be a traitor working for Victor Cross, and had used her mind-control ability to put her sister Mina into a coma. After Solomon Cord had been killed, his daughters Alia and Stephanie had left with their mother. Colin had run away.

Now there’s just three New Heroes left, Renata said to herself. And I’m not even sure that I want to be one of them.

Behind her, Butler crashed through the undergrowth. “Keep the noise down, Bubbles!” Renata whispered.

“Don’t call me Bubbles,” Butler said. “And it’s not my fault. It’s these new boots of mine.”

They’re still not as noisy as that big mouth of yours. Renata knew better than to say that out loud: Butler had a tendency to sulk for days. This is no kind of life. If it wasn’t for Danny…She didn’t allow her thoughts to go any further than that.

She knew that later, when they returned to Sakkara, she would lie awake in her sparse bedroom, staring at the blank walls, wishing that she didn’t have to stay in that horrible place.

I wonder which idiot thought it was a good idea that we should stay there after Dioxin attacked. General Piers, probably. Grumpy old fool. At least we don’t have much contact with him these days. No, we’re all part of the military now. Have to follow the blasted chain of command.

Renata couldn’t see a way out of her situation: she didn’t want to remain in Sakkara, and she didn’t want to go and live with her parents in their Trutopian community.

When Ragnarök’s power-stripping machine had been used, Renata had been in her crystalline form. She’d remained frozen for ten years, until an accident during a test-run of Max Dalton’s machine had somehow freed her. She’d woken into a world where her younger brother and sister were now adults and had left home, her parents had joined the Trutopian organisation, and everyone else she’d known had long since forgotten her.

Physically, Renata was still only fourteen years old, but she’d been born twenty-four years ago. That was the argument the Trutopians’ lawyer was using: from their point of view, Renata was still a minor. But General Piers wasn’t about to give up one of his three remaining superhumans, so the government’s lawyers were arguing that Renata’s chronological age was what mattered, not her physical age.

They’re fighting over me like hungry dogs over a scrap of meat. The Trutopians want me because it’ll be great publicity to have a superhuman in their ranks, but General Piers would probably have me shot before he handed me over to Reginald Kinsella and his people.

Impervia’s voice whispered through Renata’s headset. “Look alive. We’re on.”

There was a shout from somewhere directly ahead and Renata broke into a run, Butler close behind her.

She crashed out through the edge of the clearing and ran straight towards the startled guards.

One of them turned and ran – Butler racing after him – but the other whipped a small hand-gun from his holster and aimed it at Renata, shouting, “iAlto o disparo!”

Renata had grown up speaking Spanish as well as English, and knew what that meant: “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

“iTire al suelo su arma!” she shouted. “Drop the gun! Now!” Oh hell, he’s going to fire!

Renata turned her hands and forearms solid and raised them in front of her face just as the man pulled the trigger. The bullet struck her crystalline arms and ricocheted into the jungle.

The man didn’t have time to get off a second shot: Renata was on him, swinging her fists. A powerful punch to the left temple and the guard crumpled to the ground.

The door directly in front of her burst open and four other guards rushed out, all armed with semi-automatic weapons. Renata turned her entire body solid and watched with interest as a hail of bullets rattled against her now-transparent uniform.

One day I’m going to have to learn how this power of mine works, she said to herself. How come I can turn myself solid, and my uniform, but not anything else?

At first Renata had only been able to solidify her whole body. Since then, she’d learned to control the power with greater precision. Now, she could pick individual parts and change them at will.

It wasn’t easy, and almost every time she did it she got a throbbing headache soon afterwards, but the trick had saved her life on more than on occasion.

Now, the four guards were staring at her in panic.

They clearly know who I am, so they should be able to guess that I’m not here alone.

Two of the guards were looking around and the other two had stopped to reload.

Renata turned herself back and grabbed hold of the nearest two, slamming them into their colleagues.

One of the men recovered quickly and started to scramble away. Renata was about to dart after him when he suddenly collapsed to the ground.

Danny Cooper materialised in front of the guard. “That’s it,” Danny said. “That’s all twelve. Bubbles is around the other side using his force-field to beat up two at the same time.”

They turned at a noise from the jungle to see Impervia and Façade approaching. “All done?” Façade asked.

Danny nodded. “Yep.” He looked at Impervia. “Though we should check inside to make sure there aren’t any others.”

“No need,” the older woman said. “The scanner says they’re all out here.” She hit the switch on her communicator. “Vaughan, you can tell the copter pilot to break cover and start coming this way now. I want them to take the hostiles to the nearest US military base for interrogation.”

“Acknowledged,” the man’s voice replied. “That’d be the USS Ronald Reagan, out of San Diego. She’s currently 300 kilometres due north of our position, en route for Costa Rica.”

“Perfect. Get it done. Butler? You there?”

“I’m here.”

“Good. Carry the hostages clear. Fifty metres at least. I’m about to set the charges.”

“Wilco,” Butler replied.

“You too, Renata.”

Renata nodded, crouched down and grabbed two of the unconscious men by the ankles, then started dragging them away from the building.

She was on the way back for a second run when she saw that Danny was trying to use his one arm to move one of the men.

“Leave him,” Renata said. “I’ll do it.”

“I can manage!”

“I know you can. That’s not what I’m saying.” Renata lowered her voice. “Any luck with that intangibility trick?”

Danny shook his head. “Nah. I don’t think that one’s ever coming back.”

Renata paused and glanced towards the building’s entrance. “When Impervia opens the door, you think you can get inside without her noticing?”

Danny frowned. “Yeah, probably…Why?”

“If this place is a weapons cache, how come not all of the guards were armed? Why were there only twelve of them? The place should have been much better defended.”

“What else do you think could be in there?”

“No idea. But I think we should find out.” Peering over Danny’s shoulder, Renata could see Impervia opening the door. “Go!”

There was a blur, then Danny was suddenly standing in a slightly different position, a worry-line creasing his forehead. “I knew there was something wrong here! You were right. There’s no weapons in there, unless they’re well hidden.”

“So what were they defending?”

“The place is filled with huge crates of dried fruits, flour, cereals, dried meats…All wrapped up in air-tight packages. They’re just like the emergency supplies we have in the basement of Sakkara…It’s food, Renata. We were sent here to destroy food.”

3

THE CUSTOMISED LEAR jet touched down on the runway with such precision that Evan Laurie almost didn’t notice they’d landed.

Laurie was thankful that Victor Cross employed such good pilots: he hated flying.

Sitting opposite him, Cross smiled and said, “We’re down. You can breathe again.”

Laurie felt the tension drain from his body. “Oh, thank God!”

“Why are you so scared of everything, Laurie?”

The nervous man shrugged. “Well, when I was a kid, I used to—”

Cross said, “Wait, wait. Don’t tell me.”

“You’ve already figured it out?”

“No, I just don’t care.” Cross leaned towards the window and peered out as the jet taxied to the small terminal building. “All right…Harriet says they’ve brought Colin to the Hotel Baldigara. He’s settled in and seems to be happy enough for the moment.”

“What if he recognises you, Victor? I mean, even with the beard and padding, you’re still you.”

“Colin’s never met me face-to-face, and the real Reginald Kinsella was such a recluse that even the people who worked closest with him haven’t been able tell I’ve taken his place.”

“But even among superhumans Colin is different. We’ve already seen his powers evolve once. Who’s to say that he hasn’t developed telepathy?”

“I have thought of that, Laurie. I’m willing to take the chance.”

“We’ve already got superhumans. We have you and Yvonne. Why do we need him?”

“Because you just said it yourself: Colin is different. For one thing, he can see the blue lights. For another, he’s the child of two superhumans.”

The jet stopped, and Cross unbuckled his seatbelt. “OK. You know what you’ve got to do?”

Laurie nodded. “Go to Kiev, then catch the cargo flight to Omsk, and from there to Zaliv Kalinina. And don’t let Yvonne know where I really am.”

“Good. Keep me posted. I’ll send you the material as soon as I can.”

“This isn’t going to work, Victor.”

Victor Cross stood up. “Why the pessimism?”

Laurie began ticking off on his fingers. “You underestimated the kids and they destroyed your power-damper. Dioxin got caught. Renata Soliz turned down your offer to join the Trutopians…”

Victor laughed. “That’s true. But we always get the outcome we want. Look at what I’ve already achieved – I’m only twenty-one years old and I’m in charge of the largest and most powerful organisation the world has ever seen. I’ve got more money than I can spend. I’m very definitely the smartest man who ever lived. The only person on this planet who could possibly be a threat to me is Colin Wagner, and I’ll have him on my side in a matter of days.”

“If Colin realises that you’re the man who killed Solomon Cord, he’ll…Victor, he’s got a very strong sense of justice, but I’m not sure that would stop him from tearing your head off.”

“It’s his sense of justice that’s going to persuade him to come over to our way of thinking.”

“I still think it’d be easier to just have Yvonne control his mind.”

Victor removed his suitcase from the overhead compartment. “It would be easier, yes, but less satisfying.”

“You’re just doing this to pander to your own ego.”

Victor sighed. “I don’t know why I let you talk to me like that.”

“Maybe it’s because…” Laurie shrugged. “Actually, I’ve no idea either, but there must be some part of you that needs me. Otherwise you’d just have me killed, or get Yvonne to control my mind and make me only say what you want to hear.”

Cross flipped open his suitcase and checked the contents. “Could be…”

Then Laurie said, “Ah…I’ve just realised why you’re not letting Yvonne take control of Colin.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because her mind-control power makes her very dangerous. You’re doing this to prove to Yvonne that you don’t need her for everything. If she starts to think that she doesn’t need you…”

Victor nodded, and smiled. “Well done, Mr Laurie. And as a reward, you get to spend the next five years in the Arctic.”

“I really don’t want to go, Victor. I don’t like the cold.”

“I know that. But the work is important. Or it’s going to be important.”

“Victor, I was asleep!” Yvonne said. “Do you have any idea what time it is in Wyoming?”

Cross nodded to the guards at the gate and raised the limousine’s window. “Of course I do. I know everything. What’s your point?”

Their inspection complete, the guards waved the car through: Victor was pleased to see that even though they knew who he was, and they’d been expecting him, they still ran their scanners over the car and checked his and the driver’s DNA profiles against the database.

Yvonne said, “My point is that you can’t just phone people in the middle of the night and expect them to be waiting for your call!”

“Whine, whine, whine. How are things back home?”

“They’re fine.”

“No sign of Dioxin breaking through your memory block?”

“No. And even if he does manage it, it’s not like there’s anyone in Lieberstan who’ll be listening to him.”

“True. We’ve just arrived in Satu Mare. I’ll be heading back to the States in a couple of days, by which time Colin Wagner will be on our side.”

“You’re certain you can persuade him?”

“Absolutely. Now tell me what happened on the island.”

Yvonne paused. “What island?”

“Isla del Tonatiuh. Check your computer.” Victor heard Yvonne yawning, then tapping on her keyboard.

“I see it…” Yvonne said. “We had a huge cache of supplies there. Had being the operative word. The New Heroes destroyed it a couple of hours ago.”

“Good.”

“Good? Why is it good? Victor, this is the fifth time they’ve deliberately targeted the Trutopians!”

“I know. Who do you think is feeding them the information? You really should be keeping an eye on the larger picture, Yvonne. We trick the Sakkarans into going on these little missions, and they’re not going to be around to do normal superhero stuff.”

“And the point of that is…?”

“The ordinary people know that there are superhumans again, and they’re beginning to realise that these superhumans aren’t working for them: they’re working for the military. The public backlash will begin very soon.”

“Spurred on by you, of course.”

“Naturally…All right, we’re here.” Victor opened the car door and stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. “Time to meet Mr Wagner and start the conversion process.”

Yvonne said, “Victor, if he kills you, can I take over the organisation?”

Cross replied, “You may take over the organisation. Whether you actually can, well, that’s a different matter.”

“I’m thrilled you have so much faith in me.”

“Go back to sleep, kid. I’ll call you if I need you. Which I won’t.”

The first thing Colin Wagner did when he arrived at the hotel room was to fill the bath with hot, foamy water, strip off his clothes and lower himself in.

Now, two hours later, he was still in the bath, eyes closed, listening to Alphaville on his new MP3 player.

The last track on the album came to an end and Colin popped out the earphones and set the player down on the floor.

I could get used to this.

The phone beside the bath rang. Colin grabbed for it with a damp hand. “Hello?”

“Colin? It’s Harriet. Mr Kinsella has just arrived, and he’d like to talk to you. When you’re ready.”

“Sure. I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”

Colin hung up the phone and stepped out of the bath. He didn’t bother using a towel to dry himself; he just increased his body temperature until all the water evaporated from his skin.

In the bedroom, Colin looked through the spare clothes the two Trutopians had given him, and chose a plain black T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

So what do I tell this guy? I could string him along for a while, make him think that I might just change my mind. Then I get to stay here.

He dismissed this idea almost immediately. Better not. For one thing, it’d be wrong. For another, I’ve got things of my own to do.

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on one of his new pairs of socks. Should thank him for all the stuff at least.

Colin looked at the mobile phone that he’d left on the bedside table. I could phone my parents…No. They’d only try to persuade me to go back to Sakkara, and that’s something I’m not going to do as long as Max Dalton is still there.

Once he’d put on his new boots and tied the laces, Colin grabbed the room’s keycard and made his way down to the lobby.

The red-haired woman – Harriet – was waiting for him. “All clean and shiny?”

Colin nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. I’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to not be covered in dirt.”

“Mr Kinsella’s in the restaurant, if you’re ready to meet him.”

“I’m ready.”

Even though it was now lunchtime, the hotel’s restaurant was almost completely empty. At the only occupied table, Byron was talking to a tall, slightly overweight bearded man.

So that’s him, Reginald Kinsella, Colin said to himself. The leader of the Trutopians and one of the most famous men in the world and he came all the way here just to see me.

Harriet said, “Mr Kinsella? This is…”

Kinsella stood up, and offered his hand to Colin, a big cheesy grin on his face. “Oh, I know who it is! You two take a break…I want to talk to this young man alone.”

Byron and Harriet nodded and left the table.

“Sit,” Kinsella said to Colin. “You must be hungry.”

“I’m OK. I ate in the car. I don’t need to eat very much anyway.”

Kinsella dropped down into his own chair. “Is that one of your superhuman abilities?”

“I suppose so.”

Kinsella nodded. “I read something about you developing necessary powers from your mother. I’ll tell you, that caught everyone out. We all expected you to take after your father.”

“So did I.”

A waiter darted over and placed a menu in front of Colin. “The special today is—”

Kinsella interrupted him. “The special today is whatever this young man wants. Anything he wants. Do you understand me?”

Colin felt the blood rush to his cheeks. He glanced quickly at the menu. “The vegetable lasagne looks nice.”

The waiter nodded. “Certainly, sir.” He bowed and darted away.

Kinsella sighed. “I hate that. I hate it when people think I need special treatment just because of what I do, or that I’m going to fire them for dropping the bread rolls.” He glanced at Colin. “What about you? Is that why you left the New Heroes? Didn’t want the fame and fortune?”

“There’s fortune?” Colin shrugged. “No, I just…There were reasons.”

“Understood. You don’t want to talk about it.” Kinsella placed his elbows on the table and rubbed his temples with his fingers. “Colin…Let’s be blunt here. You and I are probably the two most influential people in the world. You do realise that, don’t you?”

“I don’t see myself like that.” Colin picked up a breadstick and began munching on it.

“No, you don’t. And that’s one of the things I like about you. You’ve got extraordinary abilities, but you’re still just an ordinary kid. My people compiled a very detailed report on Sakkara. Butler Redmond is an ass. Daniel Cooper…Between you and me, I think he’s dangerous.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of his father. His real father, not Façade. If what I’ve heard is true, then Quantum had visions of the future. Visions that eventually drove him mad. And Danny’s inherited Quantum’s speed, so it stands to reason that he might also inherit his visions.” Kinsella paused. “That worries me.”

Colin didn’t know how to respond to that.

“And Renata Soliz…I met her, did you know that? I offered her a chance to join us, but she turned me down. So that leaves you.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Kinsella, but I’m not going to join the Trutopians.”

“Right. I don’t suppose you’ve been following the news over the past four months?”

“It’s not really been possible.”

“Dioxin’s reappearance scared the hell out of a lot of people. If you hadn’t stopped him in Topeka…” Kinsella shuddered. “I don’t even like to think about that. But a lot of people realised that they needed greater protection than the police or the military could provide. They joined the Trutopians. Now…We’re not perfect, and we’ve never claimed to be. But our people know that they can trust us, because we believe in one thing above all: the truth. There are no secrets among the Trutopians. If anyone wants to find out anything about me, all they have to do is ask. If there are no lies, there are no secrets. Without secrets, no one can deceive the people. The details of everything we do are available to the public.”

“Don’t you need to hide the truth sometimes?” Colin asked.

Kinsella shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

“What if my parents had told everyone that they were Energy and Titan? Their enemies would have known how to get to them! By keeping the secret they weren’t just protecting themselves, they were protecting me and everyone else they knew.”

“Right. But suppose the Trutopians are successful, and we do manage to – for want of a better way of putting it – take over the world. No superhero would need to keep a secret identity, because if everyone always told the truth, then no one would be able to hurt them. In an ideal world—”

“But we don’t live in an ideal world, Mr Kinsella.”

Kinsella smiled. “Not yet.”

4

SHORTLY AFTER DAWN, Renata, Butler and Danny walked into Sakkara’s infirmary to find Warren Wagner – Colin’s father – waiting for them. A former paramedic, Warren was currently filling the role of Sakkara’s chief medical technician.

In one corner of the large room, Max Dalton was working at a computer station.

Only one other person was in the room: in the bed closest to the window, Mina looked as though she was asleep.

“So how’d it go?” Warren asked.

“Fine,” Danny said. He and Renata had agreed not to mention what they’d found on the island. “Any word from the people in Hungary?”

“Nothing yet,” Warren replied. “We’re not even certain that the sighting is reliable.”

“We should be trying to find him,” Renata said.

“We are.”

“No, I mean we should be. Me and Danny, you and Caroline. We know Colin better than anyone else. We can persuade him to come back.”

Danny glanced towards Max Dalton and quietly said, “Col won’t come back as long as he’s still here.”

Butler yawned and said, “This gonna take long?”

“It takes as long as it takes,” Warren said. “But you can go first. Get behind the screens and strip down to your shorts.”

While Butler was being examined, Renata and Danny walked over to Mina’s bed.

“God…Poor thing,” Renata said. “Four months in a coma.” She reached out to stroke Mina’s blonde hair, which had now grown to shoulder-length.

“I wonder if she’s dreaming?” Danny said, examining the plastic bag of liquid connected via a tube to Mina’s arm. “She probably is. I just hope they’re not nightmares.”

“She is dreaming,” Max Dalton said, appearing behind them. “At least, according to the EEG readings. And she’s not really in a coma. She’s just asleep. She moves from time to time, just like everyone does when they’re asleep.”

He doesn’t look well, Danny thought. Max’s hair was now completely grey and his once-handsome face was haggard and drawn.

Renata asked, “So the wake-up message didn’t work?”

“Obviously not,” Max said. For weeks, Max and his team had been scouring through thousands of hours of Sakkara’s audio logs, searching for recordings of Yvonne’s voice, and singling out the snippets of her voice where she appeared to be using her mind-control. The idea was that they would compile pieces of Yvonne’s orders into a “wake up” sentence for Mina. “It looks like Yvonne’s hypnotics can only work when they’re issued live. That definitely indicates that it’s more telepathic than vocal.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“We’ve taken X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, ultra-sound images…There’s nothing there. Short of performing exploratory brain surgery, there’s nothing else we can do. Not directly. This is where you come in, Danny.”

Danny looked down at Mina. “So what can I do?”

“You can tell us everything about how you regained your powers.”

“I don’t think I ever really lost them. I think it was the shock of what happened to my arm. I just sort of shut down.” To himself, Danny added, That, and my vision of the future.

“But the powers came back. If we can figure out how, then maybe we can trigger the same thing for Mina. You said that your powers returned when Renata was trapped in the computer room, after Dioxin’s men shot her, right? Sure there was nothing else before that?”

Danny shook his head. “No.”

“Façade said that during Dioxin’s attack you insisted on coming back here instead of going to the safe-house. Why?”

“I just didn’t want to be left behind. I thought I might be able to help.”

“And why did you think that?”

“Just a feeling,” Danny said, shrugging.

Max absently fingered the scar on his neck. “That’s how it started for your father. He used to get ‘feelings’ about things, or he’d know something he couldn’t possibly have known. And then the visions started to come.”

“Don’t ever talk about my father, Dalton. He’s dead because of you.”

“I know, but…” He stopped. “Look, we’ve already had two cases of superhumans effectively losing their powers and then regaining them, and that’s you two.” To Renata, he said, “Your recovery can be tied directly to the power-surge from Victor Cross’s machine—”

Renata interrupted him. “You mean, your machine.”

“Right. But that’s not something we can replicate here. Even if we were to build another one, the power-surge was an unrepeatable accident.”

He’s never even apologised for kidnapping me and Colin, Danny thought. He glanced at the stump of his right arm.

From the far side of the room, Warren called, “Renata? You’re next.”

They looked up to see Butler pulling on his T-shirt as he left the room.

As Renata walked over to Warren, Max said to Danny, “You’re still blaming me for what happened, aren’t you?”

“Who else should I blame? You funded and ran the whole operation. Because of you I’m going to spend the rest of my life with only one arm.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Max said. He led Danny to his computer station, and called up a program. On screen, a three-dimensional model of a mechanical arm rotated slowly. “I’ve been making some modifications to Razor’s design.”

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’s 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 micro-miniaturisation 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 hyper-speed 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 her colleague helped the old woman 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 check-up 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 have the new Paragon armour finished.”

5

EVEN BEFORE DANNY and Renata reached the machine room, they could hear a loud pounding sound 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-metre-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 metres. That’s ‘cos it weighs almost a tonne.”

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 face-plate 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 armour 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 cellphone beeped. “Oh, what now?” He flipped open the phone. “Yo…Oh, hi Caroline. What’s up?” He listened for a moment. “Damn…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 organisation, 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 organisation 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 towards 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 recognise them, they were the New so-called Heroes, agents of a government that preaches democracy but apparently does not feel compelled to practise 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 US 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 US 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 organisation 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.”

6

IN SAKKARA, DANNY and Razor 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 swivelled 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 fibre-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 Defence 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.”

A voice said, “And if you want to return to that life, that can be arranged.”

They turned to see Impervia standing behind them. “Razor, back to the machine room. The rest of you…Go to your rooms and get some rest. I want to see you in my office in one hour.”

In the small town of Moate, Indiana, two teenage girls kept their eyes fixed straight ahead as they approached a large abandoned factory.

Erica van Piet and Karen Zemsty passed the factory every morning on their way to school, and they knew better than to even glance at it. The cluster of half-demolished, graffiti-covered buildings was well-known as a haven for local drug addicts and gang members. This wasn’t the worst part of town – there were places where even the police didn’t dare go alone – but it was bad enough that the girls knew better than to pass through on their own. There was some safety in numbers.

Erica was tall, slim and dark-skinned, while Karen was shorter and pale-skinned with long red hair. The day they met, Karen had told Erica, “The gangs’ll mostly leave you alone, ‘less you draw attention to yourself. Never make eye contact. Never carry more than a coupla bucks. You don’t want them to think you’re worth mugging.”

Erica and Karen crossed the barely-used, pot-hole-riddled street and quietly and quickly walked past the gaps in the rusted chain-link fence.

Only a few more minutes…Erica thought. Her backpack was slung over her left shoulder, and she kept a loose grip on it.

She sensed Karen stiffen as something moved inside the complex – the faint scrape of metal on stone – and they increased their speed.

Someone should do something about that place! About this whole damn town. I wish we’d never come here. I wish—

From behind, a rough, sneering voice called, “Hey, honeys! Hey, I jus’ wanna aks you somethin’!”

“Oh God,” Karen muttered.

“Just keep walking,” Erica whispered. She glanced around to see a teenage boy striding quickly towards them. He had a red bandanna tied around his head, and something sharp and metallic half-hidden in his hand. “Sorry,” she said, “Can’t stop. Late for school.”

I know I can out-run him, but Karen can’t.

Red-bandanna had almost reached them. “Didn’t you hear me?”

Erica took a deep breath and clenched her fists.

Then there was another noise behind them, a brief scuffle of footsteps, a muttered swearword from Red-bandanna. Erica glanced back to see a tall, well-built teenage boy racing across the street, slamming the mugger against the chain-link fence. She stopped and stared.

The boy was wearing a ski-mask and gloves, and a blue t-shirt with a white lightning-bolt painted on it.

Oh no…

The would-be superhero ploughed his fist into red-bandanna’s stomach, doubling him over.

God, I hope he knows what he’s doing! Erica swallowed hard. She knew what was coming next: two other gang members raced out of the shadows. The one with the crew-cut was carrying a short, rusted-metal bar. The other was empty-handed, but it was clear to Erica from his muscular, tattooed arms that he didn’t need a weapon.

The masked boy elbowed Crew-cut in the face, then yelled to Karen and Erica, “Get out of here! I can take care of myself!”

No you can’t, Erica thought. You’re big and strong, but you don’t know how to fight.

She felt Karen tugging at her hand, dragging her away.

“Erica, come on!” Karen said.

But Erica van Piet wasn’t even listening. She was watching the gang members: Red-bandanna was holding the young man down while Tattoo was punching him in the face and stomach. Crew-cut was swearing loudly, nursing his bloodied nose.

Erica winced as Tattoo landed a savage kick square in the boy’s chest.

I promised I’d keep a low profile…But I can’t just…They’ll kill him!

The boy was on the ground now, on his side, curled into a ball to shield himself from the kicking. Crew-cut approached, slapping the short metal bar against his open hand, waiting for his turn.

“For God’s sake, Erica! If they see you watching, they’ll come after us next!” Karen said, almost screaming.

Little louder than a whisper, Erica said, “There’s only three of them.”

“What? What are you saying?”

The dark-skinned girl slipped her backpack off her shoulder and passed it to Karen. “Hold this.” She began to walk back, towards the fight.

“Erica! Are you crazy?”

Crouched over the masked boy, Crew-cut raised the metal bar above his head, aiming for the boy’s head.

Erica leaped forward, somersaulted in the air, landed on her hands and slammed her feet into Crew-cut’s back.

The metal bar dropped from his hands: Erica grabbed it as it fell, swung it upwards, hitting Red-bandanna in the back of his knees.

She whipped the bar in the opposite direction, jabbing the end straight into Tattoo’s bare upper arm, then spun about, a round-house kick that caught Tattoo in the chin.

Erica straightened up.

Red-bandanna was on the ground, clutching his legs. Crew-cut was sprawled face-down across the masked boy, moaning and gasping for breath. Tattoo was flat on his back, unconscious.

Her attack had lasted no more than two seconds.

The masked boy rolled the still-moaning Crew-cut to one side and awkwardly got to his feet.

Deep brown eyes peered from the ski-mask with a mixture of shock and gratitude. “I…How did you…? What just happened here?”

Erica glanced down at the boy’s shoes, then handed him the metal bar. “Next time, leave the superhero stuff to someone who knows what they’re doing.”

She turned around and walked back to Karen, who had turned even more pale and was starting to shake.

“Erica…Where did you learn to do that?”

“My dad taught me.” She took her backpack from Karen’s trembling hands. “Come on. If we’re late, we’ll get into trouble.”

Still staring at the beaten gang members, Karen said, “OK. Trouble. We don’t want to get into trouble…” She began to walk backwards. “Your dad taught you…What was he? A cop or something?”

“Something like that, yes.” Erica put her hand on Karen’s face and forced her to look away. “Karen, listen to me, OK? This didn’t happen. Got that?”

Karen nodded. “Didn’t happen. All right. So what did happen?”

“Nothing.” They had reached the end of the block and Erica looked back to see that the masked boy had disappeared. “Nothing happened.”

They walked the rest of the way to school in silence. Erica was glad of that.

But what about the masked boy? If he starts to wonder about me…

She remembered the final meeting with the agent from the Witness Relocation Program: “You must always keep a low profile. Your family dynamic is unusual enough that if someone investigates, it won’t take them long to put two and two together and come up with the right answer.

“That’s the main reason we’re putting the girls into separate schools,” The agent had told her mother. “There are a lot of people who still believe that your husband was responsible for all those deaths, and since his identity was made public, we must do everything we can to keep you hidden. From now on, your name is Kara van Piet. Your daughters are Tanith and Erica.”

At the end of the meeting, the agent had handed each of them a document. “Sign these, please. They’re to confirm that you’ve understood everything I’ve said.”

When the documents were handed back, the agent had sighed. “Two out of three. Now, Erica, see how easy it is to get it wrong? It’s vital that you remember that from now on, your name is Erica van Piet, not Stephanie Cord.”

The New Heroes gathered in Impervia’s office, a small windowless room situated in the heart of the building. She was already sitting down behind her desk when they entered.

Impervia said, “I know you’ve been expressing some concerns about how we do things here, but that has got to stop. You have to accept things as they are and trust us. Understood?”

“Yes sir,” Butler said.

The others didn’t reply.

Impervia sighed and went on. “On a mission, you do as you are ordered. And you do not question those orders, nor speculate about them. That sort of thing is enough to give any witnesses good reason to believe that we are not acting as a unified team. The media are already asking questions about what we do here.”

Renata said, “Questions such as, why aren’t we actually helping people instead of blowing up the Trutopians’ emergency supplies?”

Before Impervia could respond, Danny asked, “Did you know what was on the island?”

“No, we did not,” Impervia said.

“If you had known, but the general still ordered you to blow it up, would you have?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s crazy!”

Butler said, “No, it’s not. You have to follow the chain of command. Whatever General Piers says, we do. Back when I was in the academy—”

“The academy that threw you out?” Razor asked. “Or was there another one?”

Butler ignored him. “Back when I was in the academy, the first rule we were taught was that people die if you don’t follow orders. The commanders know more than the people under them.” He looked at Impervia. “That’s why you were brought in to be in charge of us, right?”

Impervia nodded. “Because I have military experience as well as the experience of being a superhuman.”

Renata said, “Kinsella wants an explanation. What are you going to tell him? That it was a mistake?”

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