The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 (29 page)

“My God…Danny! Take my hand! We have to—”

They were too late. The energy wave was on them.

Three miles west of Sakkara, Butler Redmond and the children from the platinum mine were motionless inside Butler’s now-solid force-field.

The helicopters carrying the refugees from Sakkara turned to glass and dropped out of the sky, tumbling end-over-end.

In Indiana, Alia Cord and Grant Paramjeet watched the TV news with growing horror as the screen showed the spreading crystalline transformation of a battlefield. Then the picture was replaced with static. Alia reached out and took hold of Grant’s hand, and then they too were suddenly solid and unmoving.

The energy wave continued.

Everything it touched was turned to crystal.

Everything.

The people. The animals. The land. The sea.

The entire planet.

R
ENATA
S
OLIZ SAT UP AND WIPED THE
blood from her face.

She looked around, squinting against the sunlight that was reflected from every surface.

She pushed herself to her feet, swaying a little. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the pain had eased a little, and she no longer felt like she was going to throw up.

Everything, as far as she could see in all directions, appeared to be made of glass.

The silence was almost overwhelming.

Then, from far away, there came the sound of something crashing to the ground, then another, and another. For almost a minute the same sound seemed to be coming from everywhere.

What
is
that?
“Hello?” Renata called. The echo of her voice seemed to go on forever.

Something landed on the roof, and Renata saw that it was a bird. She picked it up. It appeared to be completely intact. She set it down again.
So that’s what all the noise was.

Now…Where did Steph say she was? Four miles southwest, near the water tower.

Renata looked over the edge of the building. It was a long way to climb, but she didn’t have a choice: The building’s doors would be completely sealed.

She picked up Niall and threw him over the edge, then started
to climb down. After a few meters, she thought,
Why am I doing this the hard way?

She let go, turned herself solid and crashed to the ground.

With Niall Cooper now returned to his human form, and holding her hand, Renata made her way across the crystalline landscape. It took them almost two hours to find Yvonne and Stephanie, close to the crashed escape craft.

“Wow! It’s on fire, but the flames are frozen,” Niall said, looking at the pod. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“I turned the whole world into crystal and
that’s
what you find cool? You are one weird little kid, Niall.”

“And you’re not?”

Stephanie Cord was lying faceup on the ground.

“You should stand her up,” Niall said, “because when you change her back her jetpack will start working again.”

“No, it won’t,” Renata said. “The StratoTruck’s engines were shut down after I changed
it
back.” She walked toward Yvonne. “So what do you think, Niall? Should I change her back first, or everything together?”

“Just her,” Niall said. “That’ll scare the pants off her.”

“You think so?”

“It bloody scared
me
.”

Renata laughed. She focused on Yvonne and turned her back to human.

Yvonne screamed. She backed away from Renata and started to run.

“Where are you going to go?” Renata called. “It’s hard to find a hiding place in a glass world.”

Yvonne skidded to a stop and looked around. “Oh my God, Renata! What have you done?”

“I did the only thing I could do to stop the fighting. I froze the world.”

“Everything?”

Renata nodded.

“How long…?”

“A couple of hours, I think.”

“But that’s…This could cause irrevocable damage to the ecosystem!”

“What, more damage than your war has caused? I don’t think so.” She walked over to Yvonne. “I’m going to change it all back, and
you
are going to order your people to stop fighting. Understand me?”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I will solidify you and leave you. You will be a crystal statue, aware of everything around you but unable to eat, or sleep or move. The war will come to an end one way or the other. In about five billion years, the sun will burn itself out, and turn into a red giant, forcing the Earth out of its orbit. You’ll remain on this spot, drifting through space on a dark, dead planet, until the universe itself comes to an end.” Renata shrugged. “After that…who knows?”

Yvonne sank to her knees. “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll end the war.”

On the plateau in Arizona, Danny and Colin collapsed into a heap.

“What the hell just happened?” Colin said, rolling aside.

Danny zipped away. “Renata—she must have changed us.”

“Not just us,” Colin said. “Everything.”

They looked at each other for a moment.

“Wow.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Colin said. He started to move toward Danny, then frowned and raised his hand to his communicator. “Getting a message.” He grinned. “Yes!”

“Yes what? Should I be worried?”

“Yvonne’s just canceled her orders.” Colin ripped the communicator from his head and crushed it in his hands.

Danny realized he’d been holding his breath, and let it out suddenly. “Oh thank God!”

Danny’s own radio came to life. “Danny? Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Steph. What’s the situation?”

“We’ve got Yvonne. It’s over.”

In Sakkara’s half-destroyed infirmary, the New Heroes were crowded around Renata’s bed.

Colin Wagner asked, “And you’re
sure
you’re all right now?”

“Yes.” Renata said. “I wish people would stop asking me that!” She glanced at Mina, who was staring at her. “What?”

“Your aura…”

“What about it?”

“It looks normal,” Mina told her.

“Well, that’s good to know,” Renata said.

Mina frowned. “No, I mean—”

They looked up as Colin’s father entered the room. Warren was leaning heavily on his crutch. His right leg was encased in a tight plastic frame that held it immobile. The base of the frame
was fitted with a small wheel that allowed him to move around using only one crutch: His broken left hand prevented him from using two.

Warren limped over to the chair. “Up, Danny. I’ve got a broken arm
and
a broken leg, you know.”

“Sorry, Mr. Wagner.”

Warren carefully lowered himself into the chair and turned to Renata. “We got the results of the scans back. Apart from being exhausted, you’re in perfect health. We didn’t see anything that indicated the source of the pain. A couple more days in bed and you’ll be fine.”

Renata said, “There was no pain when I changed everything back. Maybe I just needed to get used to using the power that way. But I tried to turn myself solid this morning and it didn’t work. And I don’t seem to be strong anymore.”

“You probably just overloaded something in your brain,” Danny said. “Like blowing a fuse.”

Colin said, “Yeah, it’s just temporary. Your powers will come back, like Danny’s did.”

Then Mina said, “It’s
not
temporary.” She looked at Renata. “When we were in the Trutopian headquarters I told you I could see your aura, and that every time you changed something you were making your condition worse. And now your aura is normal.”

“That means I’m not dying or anything,” Renata said.

“No, it means your powers are not coming back. Ever. You’re no longer a superhuman, Renata. You’re normal.”

The silence that followed was finally broken by Renata. “I see.” She glanced at Mina. “You’re certain?”

Mina nodded. “Every superhuman—even former ones like Mister Wagner—have an extra twist to their aura. You used to have one, but not anymore. You’re just like everyone else now.”

After a moment, Warren reached out his good hand to Colin and pulled himself up. “She needs rest, and a lot of it. Everyone out. Now. You too, Danny.”

“No,” Renata said. “He can stay.”

“All right. But everyone else, get out. Move!”

Colin followed Mina, Razor and Butler from the room, then stopped at the door and looked back. “If you need anything…”

Renata smiled at him. “I know. Thanks.”

Colin closed the door and turned to see that his father was standing a few meters away.

“You’d better get that broken nose seen to, Colin.”

“Yeah, I…” He looked away. “Dad, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”

Warren nodded. “Come on, I’ve got something to tell you.” He turned and began to slowly make his way down the corridor.

They reached Sakkara’s dining hall, where Colin’s mother was talking to Vienna Cord.

Caroline jumped to her feet and ran to Colin, throwing her arms around him. “Do you have
any
idea what you put us through?”

Colin stepped back. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t me! Yvonne was controlling me.”

“
Before
that. No one’s blaming you for what she made you do. But she didn’t make you run away, Colin. You did that by yourself. God only knows what could have happened.”

“I’m able to look after myself. I’m more powerful than you
and Dad ever were. There’s no one else who has
two
superhumans for parents.”

“That’s only going to be true for the next few months.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Sometime around the start of October, you’re going to have a little brother or sister.”

Colin stared at his mother’s stomach. “Seriously?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Warren said, “So no running away again, got that? We’re going to need you to help out.” He raised his plaster-covered left hand. “In fact, if this hasn’t healed by the time the baby comes you’re going to be doing
everything
around the apartment.”

“OK,” Colin said, then froze. He could hear a familiar sound approaching the building’s roof. “I’ve got to…I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Colin left the dining hall and made his way to the stairs. He didn’t bother walking up them: Stairs seemed kind of pointless now that he could fly.

He emerged onto the roof and looked toward the west, where a figure was zipping through the sky.

Stephanie Cord switched her jetpack to hover mode as Colin approached. She removed her helmet and held it by her side. “Hey.”

Colin floated in place a couple of meters away from her. “You OK?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I…Colin, I’m sorry about everything I said to you after my dad died. I shouldn’t have blamed you. Cross didn’t give you any choice.”

“I don’t blame
you
for being angry with me. I shouldn’t have
promised you that I’d get him back. Sol was…He was a great man. He was the only one of the old heroes who didn’t have any powers, but he never let that stop him. I’ve only met one other person with as much courage as he had.”

“Who?”

He smiled. “You.”

Stephanie returned the smile. “What do we do now?”

Colin looked around. On the horizon, fires were still burning. On the ground below, in front of Sakkara, some of the younger children from the platinum mine were using Brawn as a jungle gym. The giant seemed to be having the time of his life.

“Now we have to clean up this mess,” Colin said. “Put everything right.”

“I mean, what do
we
do now? What happens to you and me?”

“Let’s just see what the future brings us.”

Danny sat by Renata’s bed until he was sure she was asleep, then he gently pulled his hand free from hers and walked over to the window. Night was creeping over the horizon, the clouds orange-tinted from the fires in Topeka.

He knew he should be out there with Colin and the others, helping to restore some semblance of normality to the world, but they hadn’t asked him and he hadn’t felt inclined to offer.

The vision came true.

A sudden violent shudder rippled through him.

Oh God, it came true.

He realized now that he’d been scared ever since he’d seen the vision of his future self in the California desert.

Quantum had foreseen the deaths of billions of people, and had known—somehow—that Danny would be responsible.

That didn’t happen,
Danny thought.
Thousands died—maybe even hundreds of thousands—but not billions. So either we changed the future Quantum saw or his vision wasn’t about the Trutopian war.

What scared him most was that Quantum’s visions had driven him almost insane.

Is that what’s going to happen to me?

How long do I have before I can’t take it anymore?

He checked once more that Renata was sleeping comfortably, then silently left the infirmary and made his way to his own room.

As his bedroom door hissed open, the door to the next room did the same. Niall leaned out, grinned and padded barefoot toward him. “Is she gonna be all right?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

Niall followed his brother into his room. “Can’t you, like, see into the future and tell for sure?”

“Doesn’t work like that,” Danny said. “I can’t control it.”

“Dad said that the visions are like watching a tiny bit of a movie you’ve never seen before. You can see what’s happening but you don’t know exactly what it means. Is that right?”

“That’s it exactly.”

Niall climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged, absently picking at his toenails as he looked at Danny. “They keep talking about how it’s all your fault.”

Danny stopped in the middle of pulling on his jacket. “They?”

“The news. They’re saying that you forced everyone into going to Lieberstan, and if you hadn’t done that then there wouldn’t have been a war.”

“The war has nothing to do with Lieberstan, Niall.”

“Yeah, but they keep saying—”

“I know. They do that because if you tell the same lie over and over and don’t give anyone a chance to hear the truth, then eventually you’ll get enough people believing your story that the lie becomes the truth. Give me a hand with this, would you?”