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And in the dream – as always – Colin chose Cord. Then a man stepped out of the shadows, placed the muzzle of a small handgun against Solomon Cord’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
Colin shuddered. Why do I keep having the same dream over and over? Maybe my brain’s just telling me that I made the wrong choice.
Or maybe it’s because I know I did the right thing. Even though it meant that Sol died, it was still the right thing.
Colin felt his stomach rumble and he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten. Three days ago. The café in Vámospérce. Just before I crossed the border into Romania.
The owner had been at the back of the café as Colin passed, and he offered Colin a sandwich in return for helping him drag the huge, over-flowing bins towards the street.
Good sandwich, Colin said to himself. He glanced down at his bare, unwashed feet. His boots had finally disintegrated over a month before, back in Austria. He didn’t need to wear anything on his feet – his skin was more than tough enough to cope with any environment – but an unwashed, shoe-less thirteen-year-old boy drew attention, and that was the last thing Colin wanted.
I suppose they’re still looking for me. Probably still searching the States. Or maybe they think I went back home.
Maybe I should go back home. See Brian again. God, I wish I’d told him…He must have felt sick every time me and Danny were on the news. His best friends turned out to be the sons of superhumans and we just left him behind.
Colin swallowed. He didn’t want to think about his parents. He wasn’t even sure he ever wanted to see them again.
They betrayed me by bringing Max Dalton to Sakkara. How could they not care that he tried to kill me? Dad always said that…
He shook his head. No. Don’t think about them. Forget them.
When Colin was eight years old, two older boys at school had beaten him up. Colin had taken his revenge by stealing a comic from one and putting it in the other’s schoolbag. The resulting fight had been so ferocious that it took four teachers to pry the bullies apart. Colin had been immensely proud of his act and boasted about it to his parents. Their reaction had not been what he’d expected.
His father had gone ballistic, yelling at Colin, “The ends never justify the means!”
Colin’s mother – who was always much more level-headed than her husband – had taken Colin aside and explained what the problem was. “You stole something. Stealing is wrong. You know that.”
“Yeah, but, see, those two used to gang up on everyone, and now they’re not even allowed to talk to each other in the playground. Maybe I did a bad thing by stealing, but now everyone else is happier ‘cos we don’t have to worry about them two any more.”
“You stole something. Those two boys might be bullies, but you’re a thief. Why is stealing from a bully any better than stealing from a shop?”
“No, but…” Colin’s argument faltered. “See…”
“Colin, you can’t do good by doing bad things.”
Now, as he lay back on the hayloft in a remote farm in northern Romania, Colin Wagner understood exactly what his parents had been talking about.
Yeah, adults are great at laying down the rules, but they’re not always so good at sticking to them. Working with Max Dalton is wrong. I don’t care if he’s the only ex-superhuman with any knowledge of how mind-control works. Max risked my life and the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people when he tried to use that machine. I know he thought he was doing the right thing, but that’s no excuse.
Almost fifteen years earlier, on the day Colin’s best friend Danny Cooper was born, Danny’s father – the hyper-fast superhuman known as Quantum – had received a vision of the future. In that vision, Quantum had seen Danny as a young man leading an army of superhumans against the ordinary people. Billions of people would die in the war.
Max Dalton knew Quantum well enough to realise that the future he’d seen had to be prevented. Max had used his mind-control on Quantum, forcing him to work alongside the villain Ragnarök to create a machine capable of stripping all the superhumans of their powers.
It had worked. For ten years, there had been no superhumans. And then Danny and Colin – the son of Energy and Titan – reached puberty, and their own powers began to appear.
If only Dad hadn’t destroyed Ragnarök’s machine just after it was used…Then none of us would have powers. We’d all still be living at home and we’d probably never have learned the truth about what happened to the superhumans.
Once Max had learned that Danny’s powers were appearing, he’d attempted to build a second power-damping machine. But without Ragnarök’s understanding of how the powers worked, the machine was flawed. It would have killed Colin and Danny and thousands of other people.
We had to stop it, Colin thought. Even if that means that the war might still happen…You can’t sacrifice innocent people just because one half-mad superhuman had a vision of the future.
Colin sat up and looked around the barn. The shafts of sunlight were at a slightly steeper angle now. Better get out of here before the farmer comes to milk his cows.
He froze.
Something’s wrong. A farm is never this quiet.
Colin pushed himself off the edge of the hayloft, dropped the four metres to the ground and landed silently. My God! I’ve gone deaf! But…He shook his head. This didn’t seem possible. Before he’d fallen asleep, he’d been able to hear the old farmer snoring in the farmhouse a hundred metres away. Now, there was nothing.
Then Colin turned around and saw the well-dressed man and woman standing right behind him.
Fifteen thousand kilometres to the west a large, sleek, black aircraft descended quickly and almost silently from the night sky, its six turbine engines blowing a large crater in the narrow, moon-lit strip of sand that separated the island’s dense jungle from the Pacific Ocean.
Danny Cooper couldn’t help but admire the skill with which Renata Soliz handled the new StratoTruck’s controls; the craft touched down with barely a bump.
The others were already out of the craft and running across the beach by the time Danny had managed to unclip his seatbelt.
This was the furthest Danny had ever been from home: Isla del Tonatiuh was situated five hundred kilometres to the south-west of El Salvador. The island was less than thirty kilometres across and was covered in a thick canopy of vegetation: the perfect place for an international arms-smuggling operation.
Danny silently made his way to the undergrowth, where the five others were waiting for him.
Renata Soliz leaned close and whispered, “How is it that someone who can run as fast as you is always the last one out of the StratoTruck?”
Danny grinned. “It would be a lot easier if whoever designed the seatbelts didn’t assume that everyone has two hands.”
“All right,” Impervia said. “You know the drill. We move in hard and fast. Danny, you’re the scout.”
Façade placed his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Ready?”
Danny nodded. He pulled his electronic compass from his pocket and examined it. The tiny screen showed his location and the location of the target. “OK.”
Impervia said, “Take no chances, Danny. If they see you, get out of there ASAP. Do not engage.”
“Understood. But they won’t see me.” Danny stuffed the compass back in his pocket, raised his night-vision goggles to his face and turned them on. The goggles had been specially modified so that he could put them on and activate them using only his left hand.
“And keep the scanner going at all times. The target is two kilometres east, but the vegetation is heavy, so keep the noise level down.” Impervia looked at her watch. “Now…go.”
Danny smiled at Renata, then concentrated. Slipping into slow-time was so simple now it was almost second nature. He pushed his way through the bushes.
There were times when Danny was almost pleased that he was a superhuman. Times like this, when he knew he was doing something good, almost made up for the loss of his right arm. Almost.
Since the start of the year, Danny Cooper, Renata Soliz and Butler Redmond had been involved in over a dozen missions like this one, and each one had been successful.
It’d be a lot easier if Colin was with us, but even so…We’re not doing too badly.
Danny felt a familiar churning in his stomach. Sometimes, when he thought about the way Colin had left Sakkara, it almost made him ill. He should have stayed, given us a chance to explain everything. Now he’s God-knows-whereand his parents are worried sick about him.
Danny climbed over a rotting, fallen tree and paused to check the compass. Through the night-vision goggles, everything looked green and washed-out. Worse, because he was in his high-speed mode the computer-enhanced images from the goggles flickered maddeningly.
He glanced behind him and saw that his lightning-fast path through the jungle had shaken the moisture from the undergrowth, marking his trail with a cloud of droplets seemingly suspended in mid-air.
Danny continued on his way, wondering how long it would take for Mrs Wagner to decide that the trip to the jungle would make a good topic for an essay.
That was the worst thing about being a teenage superhuman: he still had to go to school. The previous month, Mrs Wagner had given him grief about not turning in his geography homework in time. Danny had tried to argue that he’d been kind of busy saving the world, but the teacher – a former superhuman herself – had simply said, “Danny, you’re the fastest human being alive. You could probably run to Alaska faster than most people could write an essay about it.”
Life at Sakkara isn’t so bad, Danny told himself. Colin should have stayed with us. Max’s phone-filter thingy means that Yvonne can’t just call us and then use her mind-control, so we’re safe there.
Well, reasonably safe. But Dioxin’s locked away and Victor Cross seems to have completely disappeared.
Ahead, Danny could see a point of light. That’s the place. He lowered his goggles and began to run towards it.
As he ran, a feeling of unease settled over him, like he was being watched. That’s not possible. There’s no way they could know we’re coming. Besides, I’m moving too fast for anyone to see.
He stepped out into a clearing and saw a squat, vine-covered, crumbling stone building. Two men in grubby overalls were standing near the entrance. Danny walked around the edge of the clearing, counted all the people he could see, then headed back into the jungle, towards his colleagues.
He could picture the scene: Impervia bossing everyone about, Façade taking no real notice of her and doing his own thing, Renata doing her best to keep as far away from Butler as possible.
Butler Redmond was definitely a little easier to get along with now, ever since he’d had a panic attack during Dioxin’s attack on Sakkara. Before that, Butler had swaggered about like he owned the place – now he mostly kept to himself, with only the occasional verbal jab at Danny when he was feeling particularly pleased with himself.
Danny walked out of the jungle a few metres away from the others, and took a moment to look out at the sea. The nearest wave seemed to be frozen in mid-splash. Danny concentrated, shifting back to normal time, and the wave crashed to the shore.
“You were gone one hundred and twenty-seven seconds,” Impervia said. “Twice as long as you should have been. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Danny replied. “I took it easy. I might have been in hyper-fast mode, but it’s still two kilometres there and two back.” He pulled the fist-sized scanner from his belt and handed it to her.
Impervia connected the scanner to the small computer screen built into her uniform’s wrist. “All right…We’ve got twelve hostiles. Four on guard duty, the rest inside the building. Renata, you’re on point. Butler will stick close to you. Vaughan? You stay put and monitor. Give us twenty minutes. If we’re not back—”
The young soldier said, “I know. Pull out and get back to the transport.”
“We keep it quiet until we’re on the edge of the clearing, then we take out the guards: make enough noise to bring the others running. When the compound is secure, I’ll set the charges.”
Renata asked, “Wouldn’t it be easier for one of us to go inside?”
“Yes, it would. But what happens if the compound is booby-trapped? You three are too important to lose.”
Danny glanced at Renata, who was looking back at him with a familiar expression, and he knew that they were both thinking the same thing: Impervia wasn’t a superhuman any more, but she still wanted to pretend that she was.
Façade turned to the other soldier, Vaughan. “Get the extraction team ready to pick up twelve hostiles. And watch our backs.”
“Yes sir.”
“Let’s do it. Renata, lead the way.”
Danny followed Renata into the undergrowth.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.
2 (#ulink_5da71a3e-4d40-5502-a55b-278c4c527034)
THE NEATLY-DRESSED MAN slowly raised his right hand and showed Colin that he was holding a small device about the size of a mobile phone.
Colin stepped back, but the man simply smiled and pressed a button on the machine.
Instantly, the sounds of the farmyard flooded back and Colin jumped: he’d been concentrating so hard on his super-hearing that now the sounds were greatly magnified. He could hear everything: the man and woman’s heartbeats, the noises of the animals – including a tremendous amount of gurgling coming from the cows’ stomachs – birds, insects, the slow ticking of a nearby car’s engine as it cooled down.
“Sorry,” the man said. “We knew you’d be able to hear us coming from miles away so we had to use this. It’s a sound-muffler. It works by inverting—”
Colin interrupted him. “I know how it works. What do you want?”
“We’ve been tracking you for weeks, Colin.”
“Who?”
The red-haired woman gave Colin a warm smile. “Look, we know you’re Colin Wagner. Let’s not bother with all that ‘I don’t know who you think I am’, nonsense, OK? It’ll save time.”
“We just want to talk,” the man said. “I’m Byron, this is Harriet.”
Colin looked them up and down. Immaculate black suits, white shirts, dark-blue ties. Highly-polished expensive shoes. “You’re Trutopians.”
“That’s right.”
“And you want me to join your organisation.”
“We just want to talk to you, Colin,” Harriet said. “That’s all. You’re a hard man to track, but we’ve got people everywhere. You were spotted a month ago outside Budapest, and ever since then we’ve been concentrating on this area.” She paused. “What exactly are you doing here?”
Before Colin could reply, Harriet said, “Never mind that for now. Colin, we didn’t come empty-handed.” She nudged her colleague with her elbow. “Show him, Byron.”
“What?”
Harriet raised her eyes. “What you’ve got in your pocket, you dink!”
“Oh, right.” Byron reached into his jacket pocket, pulled something out and tossed it to Colin.
“A Mars bar,” Colin said.
“Yeah. We thought you might be missing some of the comforts of home.”
Colin briefly wondered whether the chocolate might be drugged, but somehow he couldn’t stop himself from tearing open the wrapper and taking a huge bite out of the bar.
“Reginald Kinsella told us to order that stuff in specially for you,” Harriet said. “And your favourite chips.”
“You mean crisps,” Byron corrected. “Cheese and onion – those are your favourites, right?”
Colin nodded.
Harriet said, “We just want to talk. Mr Kinsella has been in Munich for the past week, but he’s cutting his visit short and he’s coming here to Romania specially to see you. Just give him a couple of days of your time, OK? If you’re still not interested after that, then that’s fine. You know what the Trutopians are all about, don’t you?”
“You claim to be interested only in world-wide peace.”
