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“Oh God,” Paragon muttered. He activated his communicator. “Situation report!”
Silence.
“Max? Apex? Titan?”
Energy took hold of Paragon’s arm and pulled herself to her feet. “Titan’s inside the tank. You’ve got to go after him, Paragon!”
Paragon nodded, then pointed towards the west. “I left Quantum over that way. Find him!”
At least the firing has stopped, Paragon thought as he ran towards the battle-tank, ignoring the stream of Ragnarök’s men who were now fleeing from it, some of them carrying or dragging unconscious comrades.
The machine was still lumbering forward, its enormous wheels gouging deep tracks in the dry ground.
When he was twenty metres from the tank, Paragon flew the remaining distance, straight through the ragged hole where the cannon had been.
He landed in a large room, the walls lined with pipes and tubes. In the middle of the room were the remains of a complicated-looking piece of machinery, now mostly in pieces. At its centre was a large metal ball. Never seen anything like that before, Paragon thought. The engineer in him wanted to know what the machine was, but right now he had more important things to worry about.
As he scouted the room he heard a faint buzzing from a computer set into one wall. One glance at the read-out was all he needed. “Aw hell!” He activated his communicator. “Anyone who can hear me! Get out of the area ASAP! In three minutes this thing is going to self-destruct!”
Dioxin felt sick. He swayed, almost fell.
The three US marines guarding him backed away. “Don’t trust him!” one of them shouted. “Down on the ground!” he roared at Dioxin. “Now!”
Dioxin couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt sick. His pock-marked, acid-seeping skin was starting to itch. He looked down at his hands. What’s wrong with me? He dropped to his knees, leaned over, retched. A thick stream of bile spilled from his mouth, the acid instantly scorching the ground. Oh God. It’s my own poison! I’m not immune to my own poison any more!
Then one of the marines shouted, “Sarge! He’s burning!”
Dioxin could feel his skin starting to blister and bubble. The acid…Need to dilute it. Dioxin looked around in panic, then spotted a large ornate fountain in the middle of the small town’s square. He tried to push himself to his feet. The water…
The marine sergeant cocked his gun. “One more move and you’re a dead man!”
If I can’t get the acid off my skin I’m a dead man anyway! “Help me! The acid…It’s killing me!”
The sergeant paused. “Yeah? Now you know what it felt like for all your victims.”
“Paragon!” Titan’s voice shouted as the armoured man entered the dark room.
Paragon could see one of Titan’s legs protruding from beneath a piece of fallen machinery.
“I’m here!” Paragon said. “Where’s Ragnarök?”
“Gone,” Titan said. “I don’t know what happened…It’s like I’ve lost all my powers! I think my leg is broken.”
Paragon looked around, spotted a thick steel beam and grabbed it. “Hold still. I’m going to get you free.” He wedged one end of the beam under the machine. His muscles straining, Paragon pushed up on the beam. The machine raised a centimetre, then another.
Groaning from the pain in his shattered leg, Titan pulled himself free.
Paragon dropped the beam, allowing the heavy machine to crash to the floor. “We’ve got less than a minute. Can you stand?”
“I don’t think so.”
“OK…Nearest exit?”
“The roof…” Titan pointed to a metal ladder leading to an open hatch in the ceiling.
The armoured man reached down and lifted Titan up, threw him over his shoulder. He grunted. “You’re damned heavy for a man who can fly.”
Paragon pulled himself up the ladder and on to the roof. “Hold on to my legs!” he yelled at Titan, then activated his jetpack. They soared away from the battle-tank just as it exploded in a two-hundred-metre-high ball of flame.
Dioxin saw his chance: the marines were staring off into the distance at the fireball. Pain coursing through every inch of his body, he pushed himself to his feet, grabbed hold of the nearest soldier and put his hand on the man’s neck. The soldier dropped to the ground screaming.
Before the others could react, Dioxin was on them, pressing his venomous, acid-dripping hands against their bare skin.
Then he turned towards the fountain and ran, painfully aware that his own skin was now beginning to peel away. He was sure that if he looked behind he’d be able to see his own blood-stained footprints.
Get to the water, wash the acid off! If I’m lucky, I won’tbe too badly scarred. Since it happened – whatever it was – there hasn’t been any new acid.
I’m cured.
The fountain – filled with life-giving water – was only a few steps away when something hard and heavy ploughed into Dioxin’s back, knocking him face first to the ground. He screamed and rolled over on to his back.
Paragon stood over him, his armoured fists smouldering from the acid. “Stay down, you goddamned psychopath! You just murdered those men!”
Dioxin tried to crawl backwards away from him. “No! You’ve got to let me…”
Paragon slammed his fist into Dioxin’s face. “Let you what? Let you get away?”
Dioxin kicked out at Paragon’s legs, leaving a smoking, bloodied streak across the armour. “I’m not immune to my own acid any more! It’s killing me!”
Paragon glanced towards the fountain. He wasn’t trying to escape. He was trying to get to the water…For a moment, he considered letting the man burn himself to death.
Then he reached down, grabbed hold of Dioxin’s arms and threw him into the fountain. The water hissed and bubbled as it splashed down over Dioxin’s skin, turned red with blood and gore.
Dioxin collapsed, unconscious.
Paragon waded into the water and propped up Dioxin’s head. Don’t want him to drown before he can go on trial for murder.
As Paragon was stripping off his now-ruined armour, a dark green army truck screeched to a halt a hundred metres away. A thin, grey-haired old man climbed down. He was wearing an immaculately-pressed uniform with four silver stars on the shirt’s lapels.
Paragon took off his helmet and walked over to the truck. “General Piers. What the hell happened here today?”
“I wish I knew. Our people are going over what remains of the tank. We’ve already picked up most of Ragnarök’s men. And we’ve got your friends. They’re all in a bad way. Looks like they’re not superhuman any more. What about you?”
“I never was a superhuman, General.” Paragon looked back towards the fountain. “What about Ragnarök?”
“He’s gone. There was an escape pod on the roof of the tank. Moved too fast for us to track.”
The general patted Paragon on the shoulder. “You did good work here today, son.”
“General, you’ve got to keep all this secret. We can’t let people know that the superhumans have lost their powers. It might only be temporary. But if not…”
“There’d be chaos. I understand. Every crook on the planet would think that all his birthdays had come at once. Max Dalton said the same thing.”
A soldier approached. “Sir? Dioxin…”
“What about him, soldier?”
“He’s…” The man looked sick and pale. “He’s gone, sir. There’s nothing left of him. Dissolved by his own acid.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry to hear that,” the general said. “All right. Get a crew on to it and start mopping up. Treat it as a level-one biohazard situation. I want every remaining particle of that man’s body bagged and labelled.” He turned to Paragon. “So what next?”
“Someone has to follow that tank’s path, find out where it came from. I want to know how something that big could have come this far without anyone noticing it. Then we’ve got to find Ragnarök and finish this once and for all.”
1 (#ulink_52644d7d-4888-5825-8d42-cdbb319e9961)
COLIN WAGNER RUSHED towards the burning toy store. Even from a hundred metres away he could feel the heat of the fire.
It was late December, a little after five-thirty in the evening, the streets packed with rush-hour traffic, the pavements blocked with shoppers carrying bags.
Colin and Renata had been on the other side of town, just about to start their Christmas shopping, when Colin heard the screams. They’d run to a deserted alley and changed into their costumes; Colin was wearing his father’s old Titan costume, which his mother had repaired and cut down to size. Renata was wearing black jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt under a short red leather jacket she’d bought for a fiver in the local charity shop, and a mask.
Now the two teenage superhumans pushed their way through the crowds. From far away, Colin could hear the sirens of half a dozen fire engines, all slowly trying to get through the dense Christmas traffic.
“Excuse me!” Colin said to a large man who – like hundreds of others – had stopped to watch the fire engulf the toy store.
The man glanced at Colin, then did a double-take when he saw his costume and mask. “You’re Kid Titan! I saw you in the paper!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Colin saw that Renata was having better luck: she had leaped over the crowd and was now running across the roofs of the slow-moving cars, straight towards the burning building.
Colin ducked past the man, spotted a gap in the crowd and ran for it. He jumped on to the bonnet of a taxi, then on to the roof of a stalled Toyota. The Toyota driver beeped his horn in anger.
Ahead, Renata had reached the building. A frightened-looking, soot-covered woman in a scorched store uniform was talking to her. As he ran, Colin listened:
“We got everyone out of the ground floor, but there’s still people trapped upstairs. Part of the ceiling collapsed! The stairs are burning and there’s no way for them to get out!”
“OK. Get everyone back as far as possible. See if you can get someone to clear the way for the fire brigade.”
The woman nodded and turned back to the crowd.
Colin reached Renata just as she kicked her way through the remains of the burning wooden doors. “What happened?”
“She didn’t know. Said she was working in the storeroom at the back when the alarm went off. She got everyone out of the ground floor. But there’s—”
“More upstairs. I heard that.” Colin squinted around, trying to peer through the thick black smoke. “Stairs are over that way.”
“That woman said the stairs are burning.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Colin said. “Take a deep breath and run for it, OK? I’ll go first.”
“No, let me. I can always turn myself solid if the heat gets too much.”
They ran through the blackness towards the stairway, tearing their way through the displays of burning teddy bears and melting model kits. Renata took the stairs three at a time, with Colin close behind her.
Ahead of them was a wall of flame; Colin could feel the heat beginning to singe his costume. Without hesitating, Renata plunged into the fire. Colin followed and seconds later he crashed into something cold and hard.
Renata had turned herself solid.
Damn it! Colin thought. The heat was too much for her! They were still in the middle of the flames. Colin grabbed Renata’s solid form around the waist and picked her up. He continued up the stairs, moving a little slower now.
He emerged from the flames at the top of the stairway and took a moment to breathe. Ahead was a locked fire door and he could hear something pounding on the other side of it. Knowing that time was crucial, Colin didn’t waste any looking around for something to smash open the door. He muttered, “Sorry about this!” to Renata, then ran straight for the door, using her solid form as a battering ram.
The door crashed open and Colin saw a scared, red-faced man on the other side, holding on to a baseball bat. His name-badge read, “Hi, I’m Dave!”
Colin let Renata drop to the floor and pushed the door closed. “You can’t go that way! The fire’s too hot!”
“What are we going to do?” the assistant screamed. “The sprinklers didn’t come on! We used the extinguishers but they didn’t make much difference.”
Colin looked around. The room was thick with smoke, the only light coming from the fire at the far end of the room. A small bunch of people were huddled together in the middle of the room, coughing, keeping low to the floor where the air was a little more clear. “How many others up here?”
“Five, including me,” the man said. “I tried to break the windows with this…” He waved the baseball bat. “They’ve got wire mesh in them.”
On the ground beside them, Renata turned back to her human form and got to her feet. Colin could see that her hands and arms were covered in large white blisters. “Sorry,” she said. “I panicked.”
“Punch out the windows,” Colin said. “I’ll try to find something I can use to lower everyone down.” To the assistant, he said, “Dave, round up everyone. Get them over to the windows. Tell them to keep low.”
All right, Colin said to himself as Renata ran towards the windows. What’s on this floor? Dolls, action figures, books, puzzles…Nothing I can use.
There was a crashing sound as Renata punched and tore her way through the wire-mesh glass.
What can I do to get everyone out? Need a rope or something…He yelled out to the assistant, “Dave! Skipping ropes!”
“Downstairs, next to the register!” the man called back. “Actually, there’s a special on this week…Sorry. Force of habit.”
“Great,” Colin muttered. He listened carefully: the fire engines were still a few minutes away. Then, from the floor below, he heard a series of small explosions. The paint for the model kits, he realised. It’s flammable! “We have got to get out of here now!” he yelled to Renata.
“It’s too far for them to jump!” she called back.
With a crack, the roof at the far end of the room collapsed, showering them with white-hot sparks.
“You jump!” Colin said to Renata, running over to her. “I’ll drop everyone down to you!”
Renata nodded, then vaulted out of the window. As Colin lifted up the nearest woman, he caught a glimpse of Renata’s skin and costume glistening as she turned solid. Seconds later, he heard her call, “I’m ready!”
The woman in Colin’s arms began to panic as he lifted her over the window ledge. “No! It’s too far!”
“Just close your eyes,” Colin said.
“Can’t you just fly us down? What the hell kind of superhero are you?”
