Stronger: A Super Human Clash (16 page)

I peered around the barely lit parking lot, but couldn’t see anyone.

“Up here, genius.” The voice came from above.

I looked up to see a vaguely familiar woman floating down toward me. She was wearing a red-and-purple costume.

I dropped my ill-gotten gains: I wanted to have my hands free just in case she was there to fight me. In the previous five months I’d had four battles with other superhumans: two with Titan, one with Paragon—though that one wasn’t really a fight, he just flew away—and one with a skinless strongman who called himself Muscle.

“Still,” the woman said, “at least this time you had the sense to choose a store that didn’t have an alarm.”

“You’ve been following me?” A few days earlier, in a different store in another town, I’d barely escaped from the cops after the store’s alarms brought them running.

“Brawn, you’re not hard to find, are you?” She hovered in place about eight feet above the ground, so that we were eye to eye. “It’s not like you can disappear into a crowd.”

I picked up the bag of chips and opened it. “Sorry. Haven’t eaten real food in days.” To myself, I added,
and if we’re going to fight, I’ll need to keep my strength up
. I poured half the bag into my mouth, then opened one of my stolen bottles of cola to wash down the chips.

The woman began to drift away into the darkness. “Come on, before someone sees you.”

“I have to find a phone first,” I told her.

“What for?”

“To call the cops.” I pointed to the hole in the wall. “I don’t want someone coming in and completely looting the place.”

She raised her eyes. “Even more pathetic.”

“I took only about twenty bucks’ worth of stuff. That and the cost of repairs won’t set the owner back too much. But if he lost
all
his stock …”

“Well, the cops are already on the way. I can hear the sirens. Come on.”

I scooped up my groceries and followed her out of the parking lot and into a quiet side street. “So why have you been following me?”

“Curiosity, mostly. There aren’t a lot of people like us, and most of those I’ve met are suffering from the delusion that they’re special. They want to be heroes.”

“And you don’t?”

The woman laughed. “I’ve got enough to do without worrying about public adoration.” She looked down at my bags. “So what did you steal? Don’t tell me, it’s the four Cs, right? Cookies, candy, cola, and chips.”

“Yeah. I can eat anything—grass, trees, anything organic—but sometimes you just have to have chocolate, y’know?”

She floated over the wrought-iron fence into a small public park, surrounded on all sides by new apartment blocks. I stepped over the fence and followed, still wondering whether I was going to have to fight her.

She stopped in the middle of a bunch of trees and sat down. “Pass me some of those chips, then.”

I tossed her an unopened bag and sat down opposite her.

As she opened the bag, she said, “I might have a job for you, Brawn. It pays well, and you’ll have a place to live. Hot food too. When was the last time you had a proper meal?”

“It’s been a while.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t choose to be on the wrong side of the law. Circumstances working against you, is that it?”

I nodded, and fed a handful of cookies into my mouth. “So what’s this job?”

She made a face as she flicked crumbs off her costume. “Please don’t talk with your mouth full. No, I can’t tell you what the job is until you agree to do it.”

“Then I’m not interested. I’ve had enough of that sort of thing. Anything top secret or illegal, or both, can go take a running jump.”

“What, you
like
the way you live? Sleeping in forests, eating out of Dumpsters, hiding all the time—that’s your ideal life, is it? Get a grip, Brawn. You’re bigger and stronger than any human. You shouldn’t be hiding from them—they should be lining up to worship you. People like you and me, we’re better than everyone else. In another age we would have been
gods
!”

“But this isn’t another age. This is now.” I finished my third package of cookies and drained the last of my soda, then stood up. “Been nice talking to you, but I think we should go our separate ways. What’s your name anyway?”

“The media calls me Slaughter. It’s not a name I’d have chosen for myself.”

A chill ran down my back. “I’ve heard of you. You’ve got every cop in the country searching for you. You’re a murderer.”

She shrugged. “They were only people.” Still sitting with her legs crossed, she floated up into the air. “You’re not thinking of trying to turn me in, are you? I’m a lot faster than you are.”

I didn’t want to get involved, but this woman was a killer—I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d just let her go and then she’d killed again.

I lunged at her, my hands outstretched, but she zipped away.

“Like I said. Pathetic. If you weren’t such an idiot, you’d have asked me my name first. Then you might have had a chance to catch me.” She began to circle around me. “If you won’t join me, then you’d better stay out of my way. You get me? You think you’re invulnerable, but you’re not. Not against me.” Then she threw her head back and let out a long, loud scream.

“What was
that
supposed to do?”

Slaughter smiled. “It’s supposed to draw some attention.” She screamed again, even louder, and started shouting, “Help! Help! Oh God, he’s
killing
them!”

All around the park, lights were coming on in the apartment buildings.

“You’re crazy!” I said. “Shut up!”

“Someone call the police!” she yelled. “There’s blood everywhere!”

I heard the wail of sirens and the screech of tires. I turned and ran to the far side of the park, jumped over the fence, and narrowly missed landing on a police car.

“It’s him!” one of the cops said, grabbing his radio. “Dispatch, we need backup! Now! Send all units!”

I didn’t wait around to hear any more. I leaped over the car and pounded down the street as fast as I could.

It took me more than an hour to shake the cops. I spent the rest of the night and all of the following day hiding under a low bridge, my head barely above the ice-cold water.

When I finally emerged the next night, I expected the search to have been called off. After all, I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Apart from breaking into the store, that is. But at least the police would have searched the park and not found any bodies. So far, all they wanted me for was breaking and entering. Murder would be a whole different situation.

So I waded to the riverbank and climbed up onto the street. I rested for a while in the alleyway next to a twenty-four-hour Laundromat, warming myself on the hot air that pumped out of its vent.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew the area was awash with red and blue lights, and there were armed police officers slowly approaching me from either end of the alley.

One of them said, “Aw, no … He’s waking up!”

For a few moments, no one moved.

One officer took a few steps closer and held out his free hand, palm down. “All right, big fella. OK. Now, take it easy. My name’s Ridley. I just want to talk to you.”

I started to stand up, and they all backed away. “Relax,” I said. “I’m not going to attack you.”

“All right,” Officer Ridley said. “Why’d you do it?”

“I was hungry. Look, I know it’s wrong, but if I
could
pay for it, I would. But I can’t. And even if I had the money, who’d let me into their store?”

Ridley was breathing heavily, and it looked to me as though he was trying to figure out the best and safest way to get me into custody. “We’re not talking about the store, Brawn. That was wrong, and I’m glad that you realize it was wrong. But
that’s not what we’re talking about.” He continued to speak softly, as if a calm voice would keep
me
calm. It wasn’t really working. “We’re talking about the woman. You remember her? From last night?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I remember. But she’s long gone now.”

Very slowly and carefully, he said, “Yes, she’s gone. Gone to the hospital. Where she’s recovering from a broken collarbone, a concussion, and two broken legs, just to name a few of her multiple injuries.”

“What are you talking about? She flew away!”

“Right. Flew away, as in ‘she flew away in an emergency helicopter.’ Is that what you mean?”

“No, she flew away as in ‘she flew away.’ Up into the air. That’s one of her powers. She can fly.”

The cop frowned. “Wait,
who
are we talking about?”

“Slaughter. You must have heard of her.”

“And you believe the woman in the park was Slaughter?”

“She
was
Slaughter! She saw me, we talked, then when I wouldn’t help her out with some job she kept going on about, she flew away. Right after she started screaming for help, like I was attacking her or something. I mean, I never even
touched
her!”

“
I’m
talking about the woman you beat up. Patrol officers found her in the park a few minutes after you were seen running away.”

“What? Well, that wasn’t me—I’d never attack anyone! It had to have been Slaughter. She set me up. After she flew away, she probably found this other woman and beat her up and left her in the park for you to find.”

“So it wasn’t you?” Ridley asked.

“No!”

Officer Ridley chewed on his lower lip while he thought about this. “I see. In that case I’m arresting you for criminal damage and theft. We’ll sort the rest out after we take you into custody. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney—”

“That’s it. I’m outta here.” I stepped around the policeman, and his colleagues flattened themselves against the alley walls.

Then I heard someone whisper, “National Guardsmen are still a few minutes away. You gotta stall him. Just keep him talking!”

I said, “I can hear you, you know!”

“Come back here!” Ridley shouted. “I’m arresting you!”

“Get lost!” I shouted over my shoulder.

“What about the store owner? How do you think
he
feels about what you did? How are you going to make it up to him?”

“I don’t care. Tell him to charge five bucks for people to see the hole I punched through the wall. Or he’s got security cameras, right? Maybe he can sell the tape to one of those home video shows. Maybe he’ll even make enough money to afford an alarm system.”

Ridley actually began to run after me. “You’re resisting arrest! You know that means I can use any force I deem necessary to stop you!”

“No it doesn’t. Anyway, if you shoot me, all that’ll happen is that you’ll spend the next week filling out paperwork and
I’ll still be gone.” I turned and looked down at him. “Do you even have a cell big enough for me?”

“Probably not.”

“Then I’d let it go if I were you. I’m not waiting around here long enough for the army. They’d end up destroying half your town and I’d still get away.”

He stopped following me then, but he didn’t stop talking. “You’d better watch out for yourself, kid. Someone like you, you’re liable to get into big trouble one day.”

“Been there, done that,” I called back. “Have fun explaining this one to your boss.”

IN THE YEAR SINCE
Keegan’s death, since Hazlegrove established the trustee system, the mine had become considerably more profitable, and not just because of the two new seams of platinum ore.

Cosmo and I worked hard alongside the other trustees to keep everyone’s morale strong. It wasn’t easy, and we faced a lot of resistance from the prisoners as well as the guards, but little by little the conditions improved.

We insisted that once a month all the machinery be taken off-line for maintenance. Hazlegrove wasn’t pleased about that at first, but he stopped complaining when we caught a potentially very serious fault in one of the ore crushers. Had it come to fruition, the crushers would have jammed solid and taken days to repair.

But thanks to us, the process of extracting the crude platinum continued without major interruption. It’s a complex and costly procedure, typically producing only a couple of ounces of platinum for every ten tons of ore.

That was why most of the guards were concentrated on the final stages of the process.

Before the trustee system, we were producing no more than ten ounces of platinum a week, but now—thanks to the new seams and more efficient mining—we had almost doubled our output.

I would have been proud, had we not been slaves.

And then the day came when we actually tripled the pre-trustee output. It was mostly happenstance, thanks to a particularly rich vein in one of the new seams, but it was enough to get Hazlegrove out of his office, something that rarely happened in those days.

Not long after this spike in production, he called the trustees together. The others crowded back into his office while I hunched down just outside the door. I could have squeezed my way in through the door, but it wouldn’t have been easy and there wouldn’t have been enough room for anyone else. “Today was a good day,” Hazlegrove said. “Roesler, can we expect many more like this?”

Ashley Roesler shrugged. “Maybe one or two more from the same vein. We got lucky. There could be similarly rich veins under there, but we have no way of knowing until we dig.”

“All right,” Hazlegrove said. He leaned forward over his
desk so he could see me. “Brawn … I looked into your idea of selling the nickel and the iron. Good news and bad news on that one.”

Conveyors carried the discarded material outside the mine and dumped it onto huge piles, a decision that had been made long before the mine became a prison and had never been reversed. My idea was that the iron and nickel should be stored separately, as they were considerably more valuable than crushed rock.

“It should be profitable for the nickel, but not the iron,” Hazlegrove said. “So we need to find a way to extract one from the other.”

I nodded. “All right, but if we’re not going to sell the iron, we should still keep it separate from the rest of the slag, just in case it’s worth something in the future.”