The Ascension: A Super Human Clash Read online

  “Yeah, that’s real cool,” Lance said under his breath. “What about parole?”

  O’Meara laughed again. “Parole? There’s a word I haven’t heard in a few years. There’s no such thing as parole anymore. It was a crazy idea anyway. You sentence someone to ten years, then ten years is how long they should serve. Letting them out early just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I really don’t want to go. I want to see my mom and dad again.”

  “Oh, here we go. Try not to cry, kid. It’s hard to wipe away tears with your hands cuffed behind your back.”

  “In my world they were murdered. And my brother. Three weeks ago. I came here and suddenly they’re alive again. You can’t imagine how that feels. And now I’m locked up and it could be months before I even have a trial.”

  The officer shook his head. “Now the sympathy card. You’re really checking all the boxes, aren’t you?”

  “It’s true. My family was killed by a supervillain.”

  “Is that so? There aren’t any supervillains anymore. They’re all dead. Except for Daedalus, ’course. And they’ll get him soon enough.”

  Lance was about to ask, “Who the heck is Daedalus?” when O’Meara continued, “But I suppose there’s that guy earlier today. The big blue guy. But they’ll catch him too.”

  “He was with me and the others when we fought Krodin. His name is Brawn. I think the same thing happened to him that happened to me. I vanished from where I was in my world and appeared in the same place in this one. In my world, Brawn was in a prison called Oak Grove. That’s where he appeared, right?”

  “Funny you should say that…”

  “That’s what it said on the news. And the me from this world vanished from school. Same time, same thing. We replaced this twisted reality’s versions of ourselves.”

  “I should let you know…Along with the abolition of parole, they did away with the insanity plea. So don’t bother trying to pull a Section Eight on me, kid. It won’t do you any good.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “Then you’re lying to an officer of the law. Haven’t you learned yet how bad that can be? I’ve heard you can be arrested for that.” The officer smirked and let out an annoying laugh.

  After a few seconds, Lance asked, “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Emergency repair work. They need all the strong, able-bodied men they can get.” O’Meara took another look at Lance in the rearview mirror. “Guess they’re really desperate.”

  Lance raised his eyes. “Yeah, you’re hilarious. Just drive the car.” Then he added, “But, y’know, feel free to take your time. I’m not in a hurry to get there.”

  Roz sat side by side with the girl, Victoria, on the edge of the subway platform, their legs swinging free.

  “They dint wake up,” the girl said in a matter-of-fact tone as she picked at a scab on her left knee.

  Roz put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Victoria…Please, you have to understand. They’re gone.”

  “No, they’re still—”

  “They died. Their bodies are left behind but not the…not the spark that makes them people. Do you understand what that means?”

  Victoria shook her head.

  “It’s like…” Roz tried to think of a way to get the point across to the girl. “See that soda can over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s empty. The can is still there, but the soda is gone. That’s what happened to your family.”

  Victoria sniffed, and dragged her bare forearm beneath her nose. “Daddy found some meat an’ he cooked it an’ I dint want any ’cos it smelt bad an’ then they got sick an’ they dint wake up.”

  Could have been poisoned, Roz thought, set down for the rats. How long has she been down here? Must be years. “Victoria, how old are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well…Can you remember your last birthday party? How many candles were on the cake?”

  “Four.”

  “And was that in your house, or down here?”

  “In th’ house, I think.”

  “And is there anyone else down here? Any other people?”

  “I hear their voices, sometimes, but I do hide.”

  Roz got to her feet, then crouched down and lifted Victoria into her arms. The girl was stiff, awkward, unused to being touched. “You really can’t stay here. Do you want to come with me?”

  “Mom an’ Dad…” She sniffed again.

  Roz hugged her tightly. “It’s OK. You can cry if you want to.” This close, the odor from her clothes and body was almost choking, and Roz forced herself to breathe through her mouth. “You come with me. But first we’ll go and say good-bye to your family, all right?”

  “Will I see them again?”

  “No, sweetheart, I’m sorry. You’ll see them in your dreams, maybe, but not in the real world.”

  James Klaus was freezing by the time he and Abby reached the outskirts of Midway. He’d managed to successfully float—he didn’t really consider it flying—over the rooftops without too many problems. Once, an unexpected gust of wind caught him and sent him drifting far from Abby, but he was able to push himself back once he’d stopped spinning and tumbling.

  Now they were resting on the roof of a grain silo. James rubbed his arms to keep warm. “It’s cold up there. Or maybe using my power so much is just draining my energy.”

  “Get over it, you big baby. It’s going to take a long time to get all the way from here to the East Coast,” Abby said. “Unless you can fly me too.”

  “I’m willing to give it a go if you are,” James said. “But it takes a lot of concentration just to keep myself up in the air. Two people could be tricky. It’ll work better if you hold on to me as we fly.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I’m sure your motives are honorable, James.” She stood up. “Want to try?”

  “We should try from the ground. First rule of flying: Never jump off something high enough for the impact to drive your skull into your chest.”

  Abby looked over the edge. “It’s about, what, twenty-five yards? I can survive that easy.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  She turned back to him, stepped close, and put her arms around his waist. “Let’s go.”

  James concentrated and built a series of continuous shock waves around his body.

  “It’s working!” Abby said.

  They rose slowly from the top of the silo, drifted over the edge and down toward the ground.

  “James, we need to go up.”

  “No, we need to go forward. Up is dangerous. And colder. Huh. You all mocked me before because my costume was made from a wet suit. Well, I wouldn’t mind having it on right now. Good insulation in a wet suit.”

  Abby said, “Hold on, this isn’t very comfortable.” She began to squirm around him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’re going to give me a piggyback. And that way I can have my hands free in case I need to shoot at anything.”

  James shook his head. “This is embarrassing. I hope no one sees us. And I really hope that Lance never finds out.”

  “I think he has enough to worry about,” Abby said.

  “Could be. I wonder where he is. I’m assuming that the same thing happened to him. But he’s probably OK—he can talk his way out of anything. He’s probably having the time of his life, wherever he is.”

  Abby said nothing for a moment, then, “You didn’t hear, did you? James…Lance’s parents and brother were killed.”

  “Oh jeez…When?”

  “The night we fought Krodin in Windfield. Slaughter escaped, remember? She went after Lance’s family. When Paragon brought him back home, the house had been half demolished, and Lance’s mother and father and brother were dead. Max arranged for Lance to be put in some secure place. I don’t know where, but it wasn’t with relatives or friends.”

  “And Max didn’t tell us?”r />
  “Apparently he didn’t consider us at risk. Slaughter didn’t know who we were.”

  “That’s not the point! Lance is our friend. Well, kind of. Either way, we owe him our lives. I mean, he could have come and lived with one of us. Not me, though.”

  “Nor me. We don’t have the space.”

  “We do, but my folks would never go for it.”

  “Because he’s white?”

  “No, because they’re miserable jerks. Anyway, my stepdad is white. Oh man…Slaughter just murdered them?”

  “Smashed into their house and broke their necks,” Abby said.

  “Poor kid. He…” James stopped. A thought had occurred to him. “Abby, in this world his family could still be alive. Krodin changed our past, which means that we never fought him and Slaughter at Windfield. She’d know nothing about Lance.”

  “You could be right. If they are still alive, he’ll be better off not finding out about it. Think what that would be like—to lose your whole family and then get them back. That could drive someone insane.”

  The car hit a bump and Lance McKendrick flinched, sat up, and looked around. The car was coming to a stop in front of a set of tall, steel-mesh gates. Behind them, identical gates were slowly swinging closed.

  “Where are we?” Lance asked, blinking furiously. With his hands still cuffed behind his back, he was unable to rub his eyes.

  “So you’re finally awake,” Officer O’Meara said.

  “Didn’t realize I was asleep,” Lance replied. “How long have I been out?”

  “About thirty minutes. We’re here.”

  “And where’s here, exactly?” Through the front windshield Lance saw three men wearing dark-blue uniforms slowly approaching the gates, each with their hands casually resting on their holstered sidearms. Beyond them was what Lance at first took to be nothing more than a large, featureless wall—at least five stories high—but then he shifted his gaze to the right and saw the edge of the wall, and realized that it was the side of a building.

  “A prison? Oh man!” So much for my escape plans. Lance had hoped he’d find an opportunity to pick the locks on his handcuffs—but that wouldn’t be much use if he was trapped inside a locked prison.

  A door in the inner set of gates opened, and the three uniformed men stepped through. One was carrying a long steel pole with a mirror affixed to the end. The men signaled to Officer O’Meara to pop the trunk and the hood.

  “What are they doing?” Lance asked.

  “Looking for bombs, contraband, that kind of thing.”

  Lance watched the men as they quickly and efficiently checked the patrol car.

  Lance could feel the panic begin to rise. If they search me, they’ll find the lock picks! He squirmed about in the seat. “My arms are cramping. Can you unlock the cuffs? It’s not like I’m going to be able to escape.”

  “Just sit still, kid.”

  “You can lock them again in front of me.”

  O’Meara looked at Lance over his shoulder. “What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. I’m just…Look, how am I supposed to do any work if I’ve got cramps in my arms?”

  The officer pointed ahead, toward the far side of the compound. “See those prisoners over there? Repairing the wall? You’ll be with them. But you’re too small and skinny to be much use. They’ll probably just have you sweeping up or something.”

  Lance stared at the prisoners. There were maybe a dozen of them, all wearing orange one-piece suits much like his own. Three of them were clearing away rubble from the shattered wall, and the rest had formed a chain carrying fresh cinder blocks from the back of a flatbed truck.

  In a semicircle around them eight guards stood watch, powerful-looking rifles at the ready.

  “What happened here?” Lance asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “This is where the blue guy appeared,” O’Meara said. “Twelve feet tall, at least. Just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the prison and smashed his way out.”

  So this is Oak Grove Prison, Lance thought, where Max and the others left Brawn after the battle with Krodin. “They, uh, they catch him yet?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. Only a matter of time, though. Someone that big can’t hide for too long.”

  One of the gate guards slapped his hand down on the hood of the car, stepped aside, and waved the car forward.

  O’Meara had driven barely two yards when one of the other guards stopped them. “Prisoner’s name?”

  “Lance McKendrick.”

  The guard examined a clipboard, and nodded. “All right. You waiting around to take him back?”

  “Nah, boss said to leave him here until the work is done. No sense me driving back and forth every day.”

  The guard tilted his head to the side and peered in at Lance. “All right.”

  The inner gates rattled open, and O’Meara drove the patrol car through, then got out and opened the rear door. “Well, this is it, McKendrick. You keep your head down and do what you’re told, and the time’ll pass before you know it.”

  “If I have to stay here, they’ll kill me,” Lance said. “I mean, I know I’m not exactly one of the good guys, but the gangs in here will rip me apart!”

  O’Meara frowned. “Gangs? There are no gangs, kid. You spent most of the journey criticizing our judicial system, but you didn’t take into account that it works. You said that everyone on the planet was insane to accept things as they are, but let me tell you, they’re still smarter than you are.” He pointed toward the prisoners working on the wall. “These are the only guys in here.”

  Abby and James were halfway across Minnesota when he suddenly dropped out of the sky.

  Sitting on James’s back, with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, Abby felt a moment of panic. He’s fainted! “James!”

  “We’re in trouble. We’ve been spotted. Two Raptors coming from the south. They’ve been ordered to capture us if possible. If not, they’re to shoot to kill. We’re not going to be able to out-fly them.”

  “Use your power—make them deaf or something.”

  “I can’t, not right now. It’s all I can do to get us down in one piece. Two pieces. Hold on. I’m heading for that field.”

  They swooped in low over the land, toward a large copse of fir trees, and then James slowed to a stop a few feet off the ground. Abby jumped down, landing in the long grass. “I think this used to be a golf course…. Look, that’s a sand trap, right?”

  “Could be,” James said. “Man, I’m exhausted.” He swiveled so that his body was horizontal, then floated down until he was lying flat in the grass.

  “How long do we have before they reach us?”

  “A couple of minutes.”

  “We could run,” Abby suggested.

  “I can’t. I’m wiped, and I’m freezing. I feel like I’ve spent a week lifting weights inside a fridge.”

  “Oh, thanks a bunch! I’m not that heavy!”

  He smiled. “I didn’t mean that. You think you can take down two Raptors with your bow?”

  Abby looked to the south. She couldn’t see anything yet. “Maybe, yeah. But I’ll have to wait until they get really close—I don’t want them to crash and kill the crew. You could blast them with shock waves until they give up.”

  James raised his head a little. “I’m not sure I’ll have the strength. I can hear the crews talking…. They know we’re the same people they were chasing in Midway.” He reached out his hand to Abby. “Help me up. They’re almost here.”

  She grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet, then unclipped her bow and set it up. “How many arrows do I have left?” she asked as she drew one from the quiver.

  “Lots. About thirty-five, forty maybe. So how do we do this? You shoot first and I hit them with shock waves, or the other way around?”

  “Let’s take one each.”

  “Here they come.”

  The Raptors came in much lower and faster than Abby expected, their under
sides crashing through the trees’ upper branches.

  She immediately loosed her arrow—it punctured the first Raptor’s fuselage close to the edge without doing any apparent damage.

  It shot up and over them while the second Raptor veered to the left, banked full circle as it dropped, then came out of the turn only a few yards above the ground, racing straight toward them.

  “Into the trees!” Abby yelled to James. “They won’t be able to follow us!”

  As she turned to run, James grabbed her arm. “No! That’s where the other one is heading…. They’re going to crash straight down and rip up the forest if they have to. I’ll go after it—you stand and fight, Abby.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, then James ran for the trees.

  Abby whipped out another arrow. The Raptor was almost on her now, and showed no sign of stopping. She loaded the arrow into the bow, aimed it…

  Under her breath, she muttered, “Please don’t make me do this!”

  It wasn’t going to stop. Abby released the arrow.

  It punctured the craft’s cockpit glass, passed through the shoulder of one of the pilots.

  The Raptor kept coming. Abby ran toward it, jumped up at the last second, landed hard on the top of the hull, rolled, and spilled to the ground on the other side.

  The Raptor swerved to the left so sharply that it almost tipped over, then zoomed toward her again.

  They are not trying to capture us!

  Abby ran to the left, but the craft adjusted its course. Come on, then! A little closer…

  She shot another arrow at the cockpit—it clipped the upper arm of the second pilot. For a brief moment she could see the man jerk back in pain, then the Raptor was almost on top of her. Abby dropped flat to the ground.

  It passed over her so close that she could feel it brushing the fletching on her arrows. As the rear of the craft approached, she stabbed upward with an arrow and held on.

  She was dragged on her back through the grass for a hundred yards and crashed through the damp sand of a long-disused bunker before the Raptor slowed to a stop, hovering almost silently two feet above the grass.

  A voice from inside said, “Did we get her? We musta got her.”