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“He’s been living in the penthouse apartment for six years,” Piers replied. “Seems that the building manager thought he was a European rock star living in tax exile. Paid them a lot of money to leave him alone.”
Paragon stopped in front of the door to the stairway and pulled a small device from a pouch on his belt. “Scanning…I’m picking up a lot of sensors on the door. Could be booby-trapped. I’ll check the windows.” He walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, activating his jetpack at the same time.
He hovered in front of one of the large windows. “Sensors on the window, too…The infrared shows—”
The general’s voice barked, “Paragon! We’ve just heard that the ambulance carrying Titan and Energy has been hit! It’s Ragnarök!”
“Damn it! All right, I’ll…Oh my God…That can’t be right!”
“What is it?”
Paragon didn’t reply. He aimed his armour’s grappling gun and fired it directly at the window. The small but heavy hook ploughed through the thick glass, showering the room inside with crystal fragments.
He kicked out at the window, widening the hole, then pulled himself through.
Ahead of him, six large glass canisters were mounted on a workbench. Cables ran from the canisters to a small monitoring computer.
Paragon swallowed. “General…Better get your people in here. Right now.”
“Talk to me, Paragon! What is it?”
“I…I don’t…Four of them are empty. But the other two…”.
“For God’s sake, man! Just tell me!”
“They look like they’re about three years old. They’re suspended in some sort of fluid…There’s…” Paragon walked around the canisters, staring at them. How could he have done something like this?
Floating inside the nearest canister, the black-haired baby girl reached out and placed her hand against the glass.
Paragon stared at her.
She stared back.
And smiled.
A ripple of pain tore through Titan’s body, bringing him back to consciousness. He opened his blood-caked eyes to see a shadowy figure standing over him.
“You’re awake. Good.” Ragnarök leaned close, baring his teeth. “I didn’t want you to die without knowing who killed you.”
Titan looked around wildly. The ambulance was more than twenty metres away, burning. “Energy…”
“She’s unconscious, but alive. For the moment.” Ragnarök locked his massive fists around Titan’s neck and lifted him off the ground. “You ruined everything! I spent over a year working on that machine! I would have been the only superhuman left!”
Gasping, struggling for breath, Titan slammed his left fist into Ragnarök’s stomach.
The villain staggered. “You destroyed my force-field! Now my powers have been stripped too! You realise what that means?”
“You’re…gonna have to…get a real job?”
Ragnarök let go and stepped back.
Titan collapsed to the ground, landing heavily on his broken leg.
Ragnarök lashed out with his foot, catching Titan in the ribs. “Without your powers, you’re no stronger than the average man, are you? Me, I work out.” He grabbed hold of Titan’s arm, and began to drag him along the ground. “There’s enough space in my flyer for the two of us. I’m going to take you somewhere they’ll never find you.” Ragnarök paused, then dropped Titan’s arm. He reached out and tore the mask from Titan’s face. “Huh. So that’s what you look like…You got a family, Titan? A wife? A couple of kids, maybe? I’ll find them.”
Titan scrambled around with his free hand, trying to find something he could use as a weapon.
Then he spotted something in the distance, racing towards them through the sky. “Wait, wait!”
“What now?” Ragnarök said, turning to him.
“I just want to know…Why? What made you like this?”
“You want the whole sob story? How society treated me badly, so I turned to a life of crime?” Ragnarök raised his eyes. “You think I can’t tell when someone is stalling?”
Then Paragon was on them, roaring out of the sky, slamming into Ragnarök’s back.
Paragon took a moment to check that Titan was still alive, then looked back to where Ragnarök was getting to his feet.
The large man balled his fists and launched himself at Paragon.
Damn, he’s fast! Paragon dodged to the left just as Ragnarök reached him, and lashed out with a punch that caught Ragnarök in the chin and sent him staggering backwards.
Ragnarök recovered almost instantly, dropping to the ground and sweeping his right leg to crash into Paragon’s.
Paragon toppled backwards, then whipped out with his left hand, grabbing Ragnarök’s ankle. He activated his jetpack.
He shot backwards along the ground, dragging Ragnarök behind him.
With his free foot, Ragnarök kicked at Paragon’s hand, forcing him to break his grip. “Give it up!” Ragnarök roared, rolling on to his feet once more. “I’m stronger and faster than you are!”
Paragon spun about, raced towards Ragnarök and flipped over at the last second, aiming his heavy boots at Ragnarök’s head.
But Ragnarök suddenly ducked, locked his hands around Paragon’s belt as he passed overhead and used the hero’s own momentum to slam him face-first into the ground.
He tore Paragon’s helmet from his head, then unclipped the jetpack’s shoulder straps and threw it aside.
He locked his hands around Paragon’s neck and began to squeeze. “You’re just as bad as your friends there, Paragon! No, you’re worse! You’re not even one of us! You’re an ordinary man pretending to be a superhuman!”
Paragon struggled to breathe. “We found your apartment…those kids…You’ll pay for what you did to them!”
“What I did to them? You know nothing, Paragon!” Ragnarök smashed his knee into the small of Paragon’s back. “I’m gonna get my girls back, and then I’m gonna kill every single one of you people!”
Then the pressure on Paragon’s back was suddenly gone, the hands whipped away from his neck.
Gasping, Paragon rolled on to his back and looked around wildly. Ragnarök was nowhere to be seen.
Nor was Titan.
Then he heard a scream coming from above.
Paragon looked up and saw Titan soaring into the air, his arms locked around Ragnarök’s chest.
He can fly again! He’s got his powers back!
Paragon squinted, tried to focus.
No…He’s not flying on his own.
“Put me down!” Ragnarök roared. “Put me down or I swear to God, Titan, you and everyone you ever met will regret it!”
Titan felt the straps of Paragon’s jetpack cutting into his shoulders, but he didn’t care. Compared to the pain in his shattered leg, it was nothing. “Shut up, Ragnarök. It’s over. You’re not getting out of this.”
“You don’t even know how to fly that damn thing!”
“I’m learning as I go. Now stop struggling. You wouldn’t survive the drop.”
“I’ll make a deal with you, Titan. I know everything about the powers! I can tell you where they come from!”
“Shut up. You’re going to jail.”
“No…You don’t know what they do with people like me. I’m not going to end up in that God-forsaken hole!”
“You don’t have any choice, Ragnarök. You’re a mass-murderer.”
The jetpack’s left thruster sputtered and died, lurching them to the left. They began to lose height. Aw hell, Titan thought. Can’t set him down: he’s more than a match for me on the ground.
“That thing can’t carry both of us, Titan!” Ragnarök was silent for a moment, then said, “Let go.”
“What?”
“Let go.”
“You’ll die!”
“That’s the point.”
“You really think I’ll just let you fall to your death and deprive the world of the trial of the century?”
“How’s that broken leg of yours?”
Titan glanced down at the top of Ragnarök’s head. “What do you think? Hurts like hell.”
“Good.”
Before Titan could react, Ragnarök jabbed backwards with his right elbow, slamming it into Titan’s leg.
Titan screamed.
Then Ragnarök reached up, grabbed Titan’s hands, broke his grip.
And fell.
White-faced and shaking, Titan drifted back to the crashed ambulance, where he found Paragon tending to Energy.
“She’ll be OK, I think,” Paragon said.
Titan touched down, keeping his weight on his good leg.
Paragon stepped up to him, tucked his shoulder under Titan’s left arm, and lowered him to a sitting position. “What happened?”
“He…He let go. He forced me to…” Titan gasped, and shuddered. “He killed himself. My fault. I shouldn’t have flown so high. I should have stayed only a few metres up.”
For a moment, Paragon was silent. Then he crouched down next to Titan. “It’s not your fault.” He forced a smile. “Damn it, man! Look at you! He had you beaten to a pulp, you’ve got a broken leg, no super-powers, and you still managed to save my life!” He slapped Titan on the shoulder. “It’s not powers that make a hero—”
Titan finished the sentence for him. “It’s courage.”
In the distance, they could hear a helicopter approaching.
“If we can’t get our powers back, then this is the end of the superhumans,” Titan said.
“Hey, I was never a superhuman to begin with.” Paragon grinned. “When you get that leg mended, you come have dinner with me and my wife. She’s always saying she wants to meet the people I work with.”
“You’re married too, huh?”
“Yeah. Five years now. We’ve got twin girls. Cute as buttons and already smarter than their old man. You?”
Titan nodded. “A son. He’s three. Just about.” Titan smiled. “But you already know his mother.” He nodded towards Energy.
“Yeah, I figured that one out a long time ago.”
“Seriously? I thought we were being so careful about it!” Titan held out his hand. “My name’s Warren. Warren Wagner.”
Paragon shook it. “Good to know you, Warren. And I want you to know this…You’ve saved my life before – hell, we’ve all saved each other’s lives dozens of times – but today was different. You ever need anything – anything at all – you come and see me. My name is Solomon Cord.”
1 (#ulink_90d2d27d-4670-5048-a649-ecc9518c11a5)
COLIN WAGNER SAT up suddenly, a gunshot still echoing through his ears. He was on his feet in an instant, looking around wildly for the source of the sound.
His shoulders sagged. Just the dream again…
He rubbed his eyes. Where am I? The smell of dry hay and damp cow manure reached his nostrils. Oh. Right. He remembered sneaking across the farmyard a few hours earlier. Almost overcome with exhaustion, he’d crept into the old wooden barn and climbed up into the hayloft.
Now, spears of sunlight pierced through the cracks and knot-holes in the barn’s wall. Looking at the angle of the beams of light, Colin thought, Sun’s been up for almost an hour and I can’t hear anything moving out there. This has got to be the quietest farm I’ve ever encountered.
Colin sat down again, dangling his bare feet over the edge of the hayloft, and yawned.
The same dream had woken him almost every morning for the four months since he’d left Sakkara; Solomon Cord chained to a chair, Renata Soliz’s family bound and gagged. Victor Cross nearby, talking to Colin on the phone. Telling him that Colin had to choose whether Cord or Renata’s family would die.
