The Gathering: Quantum Prophecy 2 (16 page)

“So does Mina.” Colin sighed. “Just once I wish some girl would show some interest in
me.
”

“What about Stephanie? She’s always teasing you. And it’s pretty clear that you’re crazy about her.”

Colin hesitated. “Clear to you or clear to everyone?”

“Everyone.” Danny trapped the basketball with his foot, then leaned over to slip his hand under it: it was the only way he could pick up the ball.

“There’s just no way a girl like her would go for someone like me,” Colin said.

“Well, you know how to find out, don’t you? When they all get back from the safe house, you could
ask
her.”

“I can’t do that! What if she said no?”

“What if she said yes?”

“She wouldn’t say yes.”

“Then forget about her.”

“I don’t think I can.”

Danny raised his eyes. “God, that’s pathetic, Col.” He spun the ball on one finger. “Hey, I can still do this!”

“Suppose I do ask her out,” Colin said, “and she says no and then tells everyone and laughs about it?”

“Would you go out with the sort of person who would do something like that?”

“Well, no.”

“Do you think Stephanie is that sort of person?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not.”

“There you are, then. Just
ask
her!”

“Or I could get Renata to ask her,” Colin said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, but—”

The alarm sounded. They jumped to their feet and ran toward Ops. As they rushed into the room, Caroline was speaking into the communicator, “No way to tell whether it’s the same people.
A large black copter, coming out of nowhere…Strafing the railway carriages.”

Paragon’s voice replied, “Doesn’t matter whether it’s them or not. Whoever it is has got to be stopped.”

Josh turned to Colin. “Get to the roof! Now!”

Façade was running toward the StratoTruck as Colin emerged on to the roof. “What’s going on?” Colin asked.

They climbed into the vehicle and Façade began the start-up sequence. “Strap yourself in. We’ve just got a report of an unmarked black helicopter attacking the industrial railway station five miles north of here. By sheer luck Paragon was already in the air; he’s gone to investigate. Now sit down!”

“What about Danny and the others?”

“We don’t have time to wait for them.”

Warren reached the jet’s ramp. “Let’s go.”

Colin put out his hand to stop his father. “You won’t be any good to us, Dad! They need you more here!”

Warren hesitated. “Colin…”

“Dad, get back inside and make sure all the doors are sealed!”

“No, I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not!” Colin put his hand on his father’s chest and pushed. Warren tumbled backward down the ramp and on to the roof. “Take it up, Façade!” Colin shouted. “Go! And don’t close the hatch!”

“You’re the boss. Hold tight.”

The force of the sudden vertical takeoff almost knocked Colin
off his feet. When the StratoTruck was clear of the roof, it spun about until it was facing north, then surged forward.

Colin looked out at the lights of the city streaming by below and felt the familiar queasiness and dizziness of vertigo.
What am I going to do?
he wondered.
Jump? What if I miss?

Seconds later, Façade said, “There they are. Dead ahead, moving away from us.”

“Where’s Sol?”

“I don’t see him…”

“Match their speed and course! Get as close as possible to that copter!”

Paragon soared through the night sky, straight toward the large helicopter. As he neared, the copter ceased its attack and banked away.

Have they seen me? Or have they just finished what they came here to do?
He increased his speed, then flipped over on to his back and grabbed one of the copter’s landing struts.

He clawed his way across the underside toward the starboard hatch, then pulled himself up.
This is why I need the new armor! I’d be able to just tear the hatch off!
Holding on with one hand, he removed a small magnetic grenade from his belt and attached it to the door. He set the timer for three seconds and then let go, allowing himself to drop.

Paragon activated his jetpack just as the grenade exploded, ripping the helicopter’s door from its frame. He increased his speed, angled himself correctly, then flew straight through the open doorway.

He collided with a large man, knocking him to the floor.
Instantly—and with no care for their colleague’s safety—two other men opened fire.

The bullets ricocheted off Paragon’s armor. “Cease fire!” A rough voice yelled.

Paragon leaped at the nearest mercenary and smashed him against the bulkhead. “Drop your weapons and set this thing down!”

Dioxin stepped out of the shadows and yelled to the pilot: “Move it! We’ve got what we came for!”

“Who are you? What do you want with me?” Paragon demanded, advancing on him.

Dioxin laughed and held up a small black device. He pressed a button on it…

…and Paragon’s armor instantly powered down.

“We don’t want
you
, Paragon. We want your armor.” He pressed another button and the armor began to unseal itself.

Paragon darted for the doorway, but two of the men grabbed hold of him. He lashed out, hitting one of them in the face with his steel-gloved fist. He jabbed his elbow at the second man’s solar plexus, but the man sidestepped and the blow did little damage.

As Paragon struggled, two more men jumped on him and began to remove his armor. “Who
are
you people?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re the bad guys,” the scarred man said. “But you know who
I
am, don’t you, Paragon? After all, you’re the one who did
this
to me!” He indicated the extensive scarring on his face and hands. “You turned me into a monster. Children
scream
when they see me. Children like Alia and Stephanie.”

Solomon Cord stared at the scarred man. “Oh God.”

“God won’t save you now, Cord! I had a chance for a normal
life and you
ruined
that! You destroyed my future. Now I’m going to destroy something you value just as much!”

“You’re a psycho!” Cord yelled. “I’ve never seen you before!”

Through gritted teeth, the scarred man said, “Ten years ago…I could have washed the acid off my skin. You slowed me down. I had third-degree burns over eighty percent of my body. It’s taken
nineteen
skin grafts for me to look even this good.
You
did this! You stopped me from getting to that fountain!”

“Dioxin. We…Everyone thought you were dead. Dissolved by your own acid.”

For a moment, Dioxin’s snarl vanished. “There were times when I wished I
was
dead. But…there were many more times when I wished
you
were dead. And guess what, Cord? Sometimes, if you believe in them strongly enough, wishes come true.” He nodded toward the doorway. “Throw him out. Let’s see if this superhero can fly without his jetpack.”

“I see him!” Colin yelled. “He’s falling!”

“At this height, he’ll hit the ground in about thirty seconds!” Façade said.

Colin gripped the back of Façade’s seat. “Get after him! We can catch him!”

“But…”

“Quiet!” Colin concentrated.

Faintly, he could hear Solomon saying, “Colin, wherever you are I hope you can hear me. It’s Dioxin! He was after the armor! Tell Razor he has to find a way to disable it!”

The StratoTruck pitched and staggered as Façade manipulated
the controls, attempting to match the speed at which Cord was falling.

Colin stood in the hatchway, one hand gripping so hard it was biting into the metal frame. “Closer…Closer!”

As he fell, Solomon Cord saw the StratoTruck approaching and realized what they were trying to do.

He stretched his arms and legs out, trying to slow his descent as much as possible.

The ground rushed toward him.

The StratoTruck was pointing straight down now, inching closer and closer to him. He could see Colin in the doorway, his hand outstretched.

Come on, come on!
Solomon said to himself. He took another look at the ground.
Too late! They’re not going to make it!
“Pull up!” He shouted to Colin. “You’ll be killed!”

His fingertips brushed against Colin’s for a brief moment.

“Pull up!” he yelled.

Below, he could clearly see the lights of cars on the busy highway.
Oh God, I hope it’s painless!
He closed his eyes. “Vienna…”

Then he felt a strong hand grip his and roughly pull him on board the StratoTruck.

V
ICTOR
C
ROSS
, E
VAN
L
AURIE AND
D
IOXIN
examined the disassembled Paragon armor, spread out on a workbench in front of them.

“We’re trying to reverse-engineer the armor’s control systems,” Laurie said, “but it’s not going to be easy…Not even counting the unique alloys it’s made of, this thing is an absolute masterpiece. You’re sure that Cord doesn’t have any superhuman abilities?”

“He doesn’t,” Cross said. “But he has a tremendous aptitude for mechanics. Plus they have a hell of a lot of resources and experts at Sakkara.”

Dioxin asked, “How long will it take to get it working?”

“A few weeks, maybe a month,” Laurie said. He indicated the circuitry on the inside of the armor’s chest plate. “If they’d used off-the-shelf components it would be a lot simpler, but this is all custom-built, right down to the microprocessors. I’ve never even
seen
anything like this before. It’s got a lot of sensors and technical data-streams, all feeding into the helmet, where the information is projected on to the inside of the visor. Infrared, enhanced night-vision, audio pickups, targeting, fuel optimization…”

Dioxin interrupted him. “Forget all that crap. Just make the damn rocket-pack fly.”

“It’s a
jetpack
, not a rocket-pack,” Laurie said, looking almost offended that Dioxin didn’t know the difference. “A jet engine mixes its fuel with the air. A rocket uses only the fuel it can carry.”

“So what?”

“So if you want to increase the range of either of them, you have to add more fuel. Obviously. But doubling the fuel of a rocket wouldn’t get you double the range because the heavier something is, the more fuel it needs to fly, and the fuel itself adds weight, whereas—”

“Did I ask for a science lesson?” Dioxin snarled. “Make it fly! You
can
do that, can’t you?”

“The fastest way to get it all up and running would be to rebuild the circuitry from the ground up.”

Cross said, “I want to know exactly how they built it as much as you do, Laurie, but we don’t have time for that. Strip out everything you can’t get working immediately and concentrate on the jetpack. And I want weapons. This armor…it’s a flying computer. And we don’t need a flying computer. We need a flying gun.”

As Cross turned to leave, he added, “Commandeer any personnel or equipment you need, Laurie. I want this armor ready for action by tomorrow morning. Dioxin is going to war.”

Laurie muttered, “Thought we already
were
at war.”

Dioxin laughed at that. “You mean all that destruction, all those deaths? Laurie, that was a light rain compared with the storm that’s about to hit them.”

Renata Soliz let go of the underside of the speeding truck and crashed to the ground. She tucked herself into a ball, rolled and landed on her feet.

She walked to the edge of the freeway, then dropped the five meters to the road below and walked toward her hometown of Breckin Falls.

It had been a tough journey. Paragon had flown her to the airport south of Topeka, twenty miles away from Sakkara. Booking a flight would have been impossible, so Renata had sneaked through the airport’s access corridors until she was able to make her way through to the runways, then hid in the undercarriage of the first plane she could find that was going to Cleveland.

Now, at almost two o’clock in the morning, she was walking down Thorndale Hill for the first time in over ten years. Fresh snow had begun to fall and Renata couldn’t help thinking of a huge snowball fight she’d had with her sister the previous winter.
No, it wasn’t last winter
, she corrected herself,
that was eleven years ago.

Solomon Cord had told her that her parents had only recently joined the Trutopians. “They just signed their house over to them,” Cord had said. “In exchange, they were given a small apartment inside the gated community. Your mother now works for the organization, tending the grounds. Your father still has his office-cleaning job, but he’s had to abandon his clients outside the community. They pay fifteen percent of their earnings to the organization. That’s on top of the usual income taxes they pay to the government.”

The Trutopian section of the town was not hard to find. A high fence ran the entire length of Mull Avenue, cutting right across what had once been a busy road. Now, recently erected signposts pointed to alternative routes.

Keeping to the shadows, Renata made her way along the undergrowth next to the fence until she reached the main gate.
Two uniformed men stood outside the closed gates, occasionally stamping their feet to keep warm.
Private police force
, Renata said to herself.
No easy way past them.

She briefly considered walking up to the guards and just telling them who she was, then demanding to see her family, but dismissed that idea: her family didn’t know that she was still alive, and the last thing the new heroes needed was their enemy finding out anything else about them.

She looked up at the fence.
Probably electrified. The current won’t hurt me but it might set off an alarm.
She quietly made her way back along the fence until she found a spot out of sight of the guards. The fence was about three meters high.
I can’t jump that high without a run-up, and I can’t take a run-up because then the guards would see me.

Renata looked around: farther back, right next to the fence, there was a high ridge of packed snow, created by a snowplow that had recently cleared the road.