Stronger: A Super Human Clash (19 page)

I was impressed: It couldn’t have taken the cops more than ten seconds to clear the room.

“You too, Ms. Rooke,” Olafsson said to the lawyer, without looking at her.

“My client has the right to have legal representation at all times….” She slowed to a stop when Olafsson turned toward her. “Um …” She nervously chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, then left the room, closing the door behind her.

“All right,” Olafsson said as he turned back to me. “Surprise me.”

“Man, you really
are
one of the bigwigs, aren’t you?” I looked at his comb-over. “No offense.”

“I never take offense—I don’t have the time. What is it you have to tell me?”

I sat down on the floor. “That can wait a second. First I have to ask you something.”

He didn’t speak, just nodded slightly.

“I get the impression you’re a no-nonsense kind of guy. And I’m sure you wouldn’t be a district attorney if you weren’t smart. On top of that, you’ve got a lot of guts if you’re willing to be alone in a room with me, with only a few flimsy bars separating us.”

“You have a point?”

“Yeah. I’m saying that you
know
I’m not a bad guy. So why not let me go and save the taxpayers a whole lot of money?”

“Because you’ve broken the law. The cost doesn’t come into it.” Then his expression relaxed a little. “I want you to come with me and talk to Judge Khan. There is a prison in Oak Grove that’s recently been modified to house superhumans. Each inmate requires special conditions to render them powerless, but we have an expert who takes care of that. Oak Grove will be your home until we can figure out something more suitable. Brawn, I know you’ve been running for a long time, so don’t look at this as imprisonment. Think of it as an opportunity to slow down, at least for a while. You’ll receive good food, a bed, decent treatment. The prison has an extensive library, a good exercise yard, a TV room. It’s not a hotel, but it’s a darned sight better than sleeping in the woods. This will please the media and get them off your back, so when the time comes to release you, you’ll have served your sentence. There’s nothing the press loves more than a reformed criminal. It will be a new beginning for you.”

“But I haven’t even had a
trial
yet!”

“I have no doubts that you’ll be found guilty. Do you?”

I sighed. “I could break out of here right now, you know.”

“I know you could. Just as I know you won’t. I’ve been in this game a long time. I know the difference between a bad man and a good one who’s never had a chance. This is
your
chance, Brawn. Understood?”

“Yeah.”

“Now. What was it that you wanted to tell me?”

“It’s going to change everything.”

“
Nothing
you can tell me will change—”

“I’m sixteen years old.”

“A minor.” Olafsson’s shoulders sagged, and he slumped forward, his forehead pressed against the bars. “Hell.”

“Told you.”

He remained like that for a few seconds, then straightened up. “Sixteen means that you’d have to go to a juvenile detention center. That would not be a good thing for you. So we stick with Oak Grove. Because of your great size and strength you’ll be housed separately from the other prisoners. And because you won’t tell us your real name, we can’t verify your age. As long as
you
don’t tell anyone, we’re safe.”

I wasn’t sure about this at all, but I could see that it made sense. I
was
tired of running, tired of living on clumps of grass or scraps of food scavenged from bins. After my year in the Antarctic and then months on the military base in Texas I wasn’t keen on going back to prison, but there was still something to be said for it.

“All right, Mr. Olafsson. If you promise me I won’t be there forever, we’ll go talk to the judge.”

There wasn’t any trial. The public believed that there had been, that it was conducted in private for “reasons of security,” but instead I was brought to the courthouse where DA Olafsson and Judge Khan just talked to me in her chambers.

Judge Khan was one of those few people who, like the DA, didn’t seem to be scared of me. She asked me how I’d been
living, whether I had any family, and so on. When she found out I was sixteen, she went very still.

“Now you see the problem,” DA Olafsson said.

The judge nodded. “Brawn, you have broken the law on quite a
few
occasions, but clearly there are extenuating circumstances. If you were anyone else, I’d be willing to strike them and clear your record. Effectively, you’re a teen runaway.”

“Actually, I didn’t really run away from home. I was kidnapped. At least, that’s how it started.”

She went “Hmm …” as she flipped through the pages of a thick folder. “The first confirmed sighting of you was four years ago. You allegedly attacked the First Church of Saint Matthew. You materialized in the middle of a service. It was where …” She stopped, and looked up. “Where that boy disappeared. I think I understand.”

Olafsson said, “Enlighten me.”

“Twelve-year-old Gethin Rao went missing on that day. His body was never found. That’s you, isn’t it, Brawn?”

I nodded.

“Oh, you poor boy! The reports said that you—as Brawn, I mean—were unable to speak at the time. You were chased by members of the armed forces, but they lost you in the mountains.”

“That part’s a lie. They caught me and brought me to …” I stopped myself. “I’d better not say where. I say ‘they’ but I don’t think they’re officially part of the government or the army. I don’t know who they’re working for, but it’s all probably very top secret. The thing is, I escaped more than a year
later. They caught me again last year and tried to blackmail me into working for them. They said they’d kill my parents.”

“How did you get away from them?” the judge asked.

“I told them that if anything happened to my ma and pa, I’d …” I stopped, wondering whether it was a crime to threaten to kill someone. “I made it clear that wasn’t an option.”

“Everything said here is just between us,” Olafsson said. “None of this will go on any record. In Oak Grove you can stop running, at least for a while. Take advantage of what the prison has to offer. Learn a trade. The alternative is that you
keep
running, and that’s no kind of a life for anyone. Take my advice and accept the offer, son. If you don’t, then sooner or later you’re going to hurt someone else—accidentally or otherwise—and then a greater authority than the judge here will order that you be hunted down.”

Judge Khan asked, “Gethin, what about your parents? Are you certain that you don’t want them to know the truth?”

“As far as I know, they think I’m dead. It’s better that way. If they knew I was alive, they’d be searching for me, and that would put them in danger. Besides … I can’t let them see me like this.
Look
at me! I can barely fit in this chair and I have to crawl when I’m going through a door. I know that there are other superhumans, but they’re nothing like me. I’m a freak.”

“You’re certainly unique,” Olafsson said. “I guess there’s a chance that you’ll never have a normal life, that you’ll never change back, but my belief is that we should always prepare for the worst and always hope for the best.”

ESCAPE FROM THE MINE
wasn’t impossible. We’d learned that from Jakob’s team. But there was still a problem that we didn’t know how to overcome: We couldn’t take everyone with us. Not all of us saw that as a problem, though. And that in itself was
another
problem.

At one of our weekly gatherings it became clear that Ashley and Roman had been having meetings of their own. “The five of us,” Ashley said. “That’s all. The more we take with us, the greater the chance of getting caught.”

Cosmo said, “No. Everyone or no one. That’s how it’s going to be.”

“I agree,” I said.

Roman smirked. “Yeah, you would. It’s different for you, Brawn. You’re able to take anything they throw at us, and
you’ve got a champion complex that overrules all logic. You want to save the whole world.”

Ashley said, “We cannot take everyone, Brawn! It’s as simple as that. Even if there were a way to get everyone out, we don’t know where we
are
! Do you really want to lead four hundred people through the mountains without the faintest idea of your destination? We could be out there for months—how would we feed them all?”

“Not to mention that so many people would make for a huge target,” Roman said. “It’s insane. No, worse than that, it’s suicide on a mass scale.”

“I think I know a way it can be done,” I said. “But not in the way you’re thinking. We don’t
escape
from the mine. We take it over.”

The others glanced at each other, then back to me.

“There are forty-six guards,” I said. “They’ve all got Heckler & Koch P9S handguns, and eighteen of them are armed with Remington 870 shotguns. That’s a lot of firepower, especially if concentrated on one target. But not all of the guards are here at the same time. The best time to strike is one hour after their morning shift starts. The night shift will have left by then, and the day shift will only be settling into their routine. We’ve got four half sticks of dynamite and two liters of hydrochloric acid in the stash. We can do a
lot
of damage with that.”

Emily Stanhope had remained silent, but now she said, “No way. It’s not going to happen.”

I ignored her. “I’ll take Hazlegrove in his office. Swinden and DePaiva will be there. Some of the other guards will come running—maybe ten or fifteen if we’re lucky. That should
leave only a couple of guards on each tunnel, a few on the processing station, two more at each door. It’ll be up to the four of you to organize a way to take them out. Once we have control, we should be able to hold the mine long enough to get help. Hazlegrove has a satellite phone and a shortwave radio transmitter in his office.”

Cosmo asked, “Who would we call?”

“The United Nations.”

“You’re assuming that they don’t already know we’re here. Suppose they do? Suppose that this prison is under
their
control?”

“Then we’re screwed no matter what happens,” I said. “Jakob’s team got out and were captured. That suggests to me that the area is patrolled. So we stay put. Roman’s right that the logistics of moving everyone are too complex, too dangerous. We can defend this place for a lot longer than we’d survive in the mountains. We can hold any surviving guards hostage, and if we strike the day after the supply trucks, we’ll have enough food and water to keep going for two months, maybe longer.”

Ashley said, “Yeah, but the problem with that is that the supply trucks take away the platinum after they deliver the food. I say we attack just
before
they arrive. That way we still have the platinum as a bargaining chip.”

“So we’ll be rich when we starve to death,” Cosmo said. “Not exactly the ideal outcome.”

Emily said, “I think you’re all wrong. In our situation, escape is just another word for death, and revolution is another word for murder.” To Roman and Ashley, she added, “If it
were just the five of us who got out, Hazlegrove would come down so hard on the rest of the prisoners, they’d
wish
they were dead.” To me, she said, “And your way means that you would certainly be killed. Even if you managed to kill most of the guards, those who survived would start shooting indiscriminately.”

“We have to do
something
!” Cosmo said.

“Yes. We have to stay put, and keep working to improve the conditions here. We’ve already made good progress. We keep Hazlegrove happy and we will all be better off. Escape is impossible, revolt is suicide at best.”

“The first duty of every prisoner is to escape,” Cosmo said.

Emily shook her head. “No. The first duty is
survival
, and our chances of survival are much, much greater if we maintain the status quo.”

We argued for another half hour, and reached no conclusions. I was sure my way was best. Yes, I would very likely be killed in the process, but I was willing to pay that price.

As I worked my shift that night, pushing the cart up and down the tunnel, I had plenty of time to consider my plan, and by the time my sixteen hours were up, I knew that it had to go ahead, even if that meant doing it without the others’ help.

Some of the guards would have to die. Certainly Hazlegrove, DePaiva, and Swinden, then whoever else came running. I didn’t know if that would make me a murderer, but I didn’t care. All I’d ever tried to do was be one of the good guys. Now I was willing to be the villain they’d always wanted me to be.

I would strangle Hazlegrove and use his body as a club to beat Swinden and DePaiva to death. I would take their guns and kill as many of the other guards as I could before they hit me enough times to kill me. I figured that if I was fast, and my own shots were reasonably accurate, I could get to almost all of them.

Then Cosmo and the others would have no choice but to join in. There would only be a couple of guards left standing.

Perhaps Emily was right, perhaps the surviving guards—in fear for their lives—would begin to shoot at random. But that would only inflame the other prisoners, force them into action.

So, yes, it was possible that some of the other prisoners would be killed. Could I live with that on my conscience?

No. But then, I didn’t expect to live anyway.

I probably should have taken a few days to prepare, but I knew if I waited any longer, reason might get the better of me. At the end of my shift I managed to get a couple hours’ sleep, and then I slowly walked toward Hazlegrove’s office.

I tried to look casual as I walked, but I was carefully taking in everything around me. A bunch of the younger kids were chasing each other in the open area between the mine shafts and the guards’ quarters, so I stopped them and told them to go find their parents.

As they scurried away, my mind began racing.
Am I really going to do this? Am I actually going to take another man’s life?

I had no doubts that Hazlegrove deserved to pay for the way he treated us, but did he deserve to die?