Stronger: A Super Human Clash (29 page)

Ahead the sky was a flickering blue and red: more police cars coming. Those behind me were already racing along Fort Lee Road, less than a minute away.

And then I saw them, on the overpass: Abby had her sword drawn, its point only inches away from Casey’s throat. Casey had his arms raised with his back to the high wire-mesh fence. Behind him was a forty-foot drop onto the interstate, which was already heavy with traffic.

“Abby!” I roared. “Don’t!”

She didn’t alter her position. “Stay back, Brawn!”

I slowed as I reached her, approaching from her left. “Lower the sword. I mean it, Abby!”

The sirens were all around us now, half a dozen police cars stopped at either end of the overpass.

“Shouldn’t have come after me, Brawn,” Casey said. “I could have handled this. But now that the cops have seen
you
, they’ll be more inclined to open fire.”

I ignored him. “Abby, please … You don’t know what you’re doing. Max has been tinkering with your mind, making you believe that Casey is one of the bad guys. But he hasn’t done anything wrong! Sure, the people he was working for are dangerous, but not him. You have to let him go.”

The point of the sword wavered. “Back away! I don’t want to have to hurt you too!”

“Neither of us wants that. But you’re threatening an innocent man!”

An amplified voice boomed out: “This is the police! You on the bridge—all of you, get down on your knees, hands behind your head!”

“Do as they say, Abby. OK? Let the police sort it out.” Even as I said that, I realized it was probably a mistake. If Max got to the police, he could make them believe anything he wanted. But the only other option was for me to attack Abby, and then—I was sure—the police would start shooting.

She nodded. “All right … OK. Casey, you first. Slowly.”

“Lower the sword first,” Casey said. “I don’t want that thing anywhere near me! It looks razor sharp.”

“It is,” Abby said. She took a step back and slipped the sword into the sheath that was slung over her shoulder.

I was already kneeling with my hands behind my head, fingers laced together.

Casey glanced behind him, down through the wire-mesh fence to the interstate below. Then he put his hands behind his head and started to lower himself to the ground.

Abby dropped to her knees—

—And then Casey grabbed the top rail of the fence behind him. In one swift movement he pulled himself up and over, flicking his legs out and clipping Abby across the chin, sending her sprawling onto her back.

I lunged forward, just in time to see him land on the roof of a large truck heading north.

Casey grinned at me, and saluted.

Then the police opened fire.

A bullet struck me in the hip, another hit the side of my head.

I knew that I had no choice now. Even though it had been for the right reason, I had betrayed my friends. They would never trust me again. I vaulted over the fence and landed in a crouch on the interstate. A speeding white Toyota swerved around me, and then I began to run.

I HAD BEEN IN HIDING
for almost four years before I met another superhuman.

After I left New Jersey with half of that state’s police force chasing me, I traveled north into New York State and lived in the woods next to Meacham Lake.

A young family had a vacation home overlooking the lake, and sometimes in the evenings I would creep up to their house and listen as they watched the news on their TV.

From the news reports, and the papers they left in the recycling bins out back, I learned that Thunder and Abby had parted company with Max Dalton, though I had no way of telling whether that was because they saw him for what he really was or because he dumped them.

Thunder’s skills—and his reputation—grew rapidly. Though he mostly kept out of the spotlight and rarely spoke
to the press, he was very highly regarded. But most of the public’s attention was on what became known as The Big Four: Titan, Energy, Quantum, and Paragon. They worked alongside Dalton occasionally, but I knew what he was really like. Dalton didn’t like to share the front pages with anyone other than family.

When Roz and Max’s younger brother, Josh, turned fourteen, Max held a big press conference announcing that the three of them would thereafter be known as The High Command. They would operate as a team. This was greeted by the press and public as the greatest news ever, though in the newspaper photos it seemed to me that Roz wasn’t comfortable with it.

More and more superheroes appeared, as did more superpowered villains. They clashed frequently, but sometimes the villains were released soon after they were captured, because their lawyers argued that they were innocents who had been targeted by vigilantes.

Casey Duval’s name was never made public, but a supervillain using the name Ragnarök became very prominent. He was seemingly impossible to capture, as he was armed with devices that could disable any other superhuman’s powers.

I tried to tell myself that I’d done the right thing, but I still didn’t feel any better about it. Every time I saw the name Ragnarök, my heart sank. That was my fault. Max Dalton had been right about him.

Ragnarök generally focused his attacks on military bases. Not just in America, but all over the world. There were reports
of him in China, Russia, Australia, Mexico, England … Each time, he would cause millions of dollars’ worth of damage before the target country’s superheroes caught up with him, and most of the time he escaped. On those rare occasions when he was caught, he broke free.

Then a new hero appeared, and for a time he really captured the public’s imagination: Apex was strong, fast, and incredibly agile. He was also quite brutal in his methods. Crooks and supervillains quickly learned not to even attempt to fight him—they would often just surrender immediately, because if they did run and he caught them, he wouldn’t just handcuff them: He’d beat them to a pulp.

The Age of the Superhumans had entered a new phase … the rise of the antihero. Apex rarely spoke, and quickly proved to be an equal-opportunities thug: He would use the same force to attack an ordinary mugger as he would a supervillain.

His methods sparked a series of copycats, usually ordinary nonpowered people who thought it would be good fun to be a superhero. After the fifth or sixth copycat was killed, the police started to come down very hard on nonpowered vigilantes.

Like Thunder, Abby kept her head down most of the time. She finally took on a superhero name: Hesperus. She had started using an ax as well as her sword, and was a formidable fighter. One news report showed her taking on thirty of Ragnarök’s mercenaries single-handedly, and winning without issuing a fatal blow. Though quite a few hands and feet did get lopped off.

Sometimes my name was mentioned in the papers. Occasionally
there were unconfirmed sightings of me in various parts of the world, but there was never anything substantial.

I was careful. I ate only from the forest, and didn’t stay in one spot for too long.

But my curiosity kept getting the better of me. I wanted to know what was happening with my former friends. So time and again I returned to the house in the woods.

One particularly cold night, as I was sitting outside with my back against the wall, listening to their TV set, I was so focused on the news report that I didn’t realize it had started snowing.

By the time I did notice it, the snow was about three inches deep. I returned to the woods to the makeshift shelter I’d built from branches and leaves. I pulled my old tarpaulin over me—it was my only possession, stolen from a construction site—and fell asleep.

I was woken around dawn by the sound of dogs barking and men shouting. There were flashlight beams bobbing through the trees.

I ran, but it’s hard to be stealthy when you’re thirteen feet tall, and hard to blend into the green-and-brown forest when your skin is blue. They spotted me, and set the dogs loose.

I knew the forest well, knew the rivers and ravines I could cross where the dogs couldn’t follow.

As I ran, I tried to figure out how they had found me. Then I darted across a small, snow-covered clearing and the answer struck me like a sledgehammer: When I walked away from the house, I’d left a trail of giant footprints in the snow.

Maybe some hiker had seen a glimpse of me before, or perhaps there had always been rumors that I was in the forest and the footprints were enough to lead them right to me. I didn’t have time to wonder about it.

I leaped over a fast-running stream, scrambled up the steep bank on the other side, crashed through the undergrowth and up a sharper incline, then skirted the rock-topped hill just below the tree line.

I half ran, half skidded down the other side, heading north.

After a solid fifteen minutes, I slowed down and stopped. I could no longer hear the dogs.
Too close,
I said to myself.
Gonna have to be more careful in the future.

I started to walk, and stopped again.
Oh no
…

My feet had made no sound on the forest floor, and I could no longer hear my own breath.

Slowly, I turned in a full circle, scanning the trees for any sign of movement. Nothing.

Aloud, I said, “I know you’re there, Thunder. Show yourself.” At least, that’s what I tried to say, but I couldn’t hear my own voice.

Then to my left, on the edge of my vision, something moved, darting between the trees. When I turned to look, it was gone. Seconds later, another movement, this time to my right. And much closer—close enough for me to see the brown leaves falling in its wake.

I had been too long without the company of other superhumans: I’d forgotten one very important thing about my own kind…. Some of us were not restricted by gravity.

I looked up.

Two figures were floating above me, silhouetted against the morning sky, not more than twenty feet above my head.

Then the sound returned, and a deep voice said, “Tag. You’re it.”

I squinted at them. “Who … ?”

They moved apart and drifted down, one on either side of me. A man and a woman, both African-American. The man was large, very muscular, and wearing a green-and-black costume. The woman was toned, wearing a silver helmet that put most of her face in shadow, plates of silver armor, and carrying a sword in one hand and an ax in the other.

“We’ve been looking for you for four years,” the woman said.

“Abby? Is that you?”

She stabbed her sword into the ground point-first, and removed her helmet. Her hair was in cornrows in neat, intricate patterns, and her face was leaner than I remembered but no less beautiful. It was certainly Abigail de Luyando.

Behind me, the man said, “You betrayed us, Brawn.”

“And that has to be you, Thunder. Figured it was when everything went silent.” I turned to face him. “You’re a lot bigger than I remembered. Been working out?”

Abby said, “We don’t want to do this, but you’ve left us no choice.” She replaced her helmet and grabbed her sword.

“What have I done?”

“You freed Ragnarök!” Thunder said. “Do you
know
how many people have died because of that? That’s
your
fault, Brawn. You’re responsible for their deaths!”

I shook my head. “No way. I freed him because it was the right thing to do. And because I was the only one who could see the truth. Max Dalton was messing with your minds, making you hate and fear Casey Duval for no reason. What had he done that was against the law? Nothing!”

“Don’t you feel
anything
for the people he’s killed?” Abby asked. “Or have you really become the monster everyone believed you to be?”

“Of course I feel something! I let him go. And if I could go back in time to that day, I’d do it again! You don’t imprison someone for something he
might
do! How do you know that it wasn’t the way we treated Casey that turned him bad? Look at it from his point of view: He gets locked up without any hope of a trial, then hounded as a criminal when he escapes. Is it any wonder that he has no faith in the law? Yes, he’s done a lot of cruel, vicious things since. I won’t deny that. But we locked up an innocent man. And we were supposed to be
heroes
.”

“We’re taking you in,” Thunder said. “It’s up to you whether you want to do it the easy way or the hard way. And before you decide, bear in mind that we’re not kids anymore. If you don’t leave us any choice, we can and we
will
hurt you.”

I looked at Abby. “What about you, Abby? You feel the same way?”

Her lips narrowed. “Don’t call me that. You lost the right to use my real name a long time ago. As far as you’re concerned, my name is Hesperus.”

“Hesperus. Yeah, I read that in the paper a few months back. They said that in Greek mythology Hesperus was the son of the Dawn Goddess.”

“I like the way it sounds.”

I sighed. “So that’s who you are now.” I turned back to face Thunder. “Do you really think you can beat me?”

His face grim, he said, “I know we can.”

“I see. Just out of curiosity, how much punishment can you take? So I’ll know when to stop hitting you.”

“Actually, it’s not me you should be worried about,” Thunder said. “Hesperus is the dangerous one.”

I took a glance at Abby just as the flat side of her ax was swinging at my head: Her sounds muffled by Thunder, she had taken a leap at me.

I ducked my head and lashed out with my left arm at the same time, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her down out of the air, slamming her heavily into the ground in a shower of dirt and snow and dead leaves.

Thunder hit me in the back with a sonic blast so powerful, it sent me tumbling.

But I held my grip on Abby’s arm, dragging her along with me. I rolled to my feet and started to run—

—Then was suddenly jerked back. Abby had slashed her ax at a tree, burying its head deep into the trunk.

She twisted her trapped arm around, and suddenly she was holding on to me, her small fingers biting deep into my forearm.

As I tried to pull free, Thunder hit me again, from the front and rear at the same time. The twin sonic blasts shuddered through me, and I could feel my entire skeleton vibrate.