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This book is dedicated to a real hero:
Adam Dodson
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
TEN YEARS EARLIER…
1
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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.