The Ascension: A Super Human Clash Read online

  Lance grinned. “You think I’m dumb enough to tell you that? I might need to escape again one day. Anyway, I’ve already figured out six other ways out of that place.”

  “Then you won’t be going back there.” The woman looked around the sitting room of the McKendrick house. It had been almost demolished in Slaughter’s rampage. “I’m sorry about what happened to your family.”

  “Yeah. Me too. I had to come back. They wouldn’t let me see the place after…” He looked down at his hands and realized they were clenched into fists. “What makes someone do something like that?”

  “I wish I knew. I’ve encountered Slaughter a couple of times. She’s…insane. That’s the only way I can get any sort of handle on her. As for why she came here…From what Max learned from the minds of The Helotry’s leaders, they were after you ever since you broke into their warehouse and stole their prototype jetpack. They had you down for execution.”

  Lance brushed the splintered remains of a wooden lamp off the arm of the sofa and sat down. “But they caught me when we were in Oak Grove. They brought me to their HQ. They could have killed me then.”

  “They needed to know what you knew. Plus you managed to talk your way out of being killed. More than once, I’m told. Why did you come back here, Lance?”

  “I wanted to collect some stuff. And…I had to see where it happened.”

  “You put yourself at risk, leaving the prison. For all we know Slaughter could be watching you right now.”

  “I couldn’t stay there any longer. I mean, apart from the boredom, the security was a joke. No disrespect to you and the rest of Dalton’s hired help, but I’m fourteen and I don’t have any superpowers, and I still managed to break out and find my way home.”

  “Go and get what you came for. You’ve got five minutes, and then I’m taking you to our backup location. You cannot come back here. Ever. Do you understand that? If you value your life at all, you’ll never even set foot in Fairview again.”

  Lance nodded, and stood up. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Amandine Paquette. Call me Mandy. But if anyone else is around, use my code name: Impervia.”

  He walked over to the ruined bookcase and rummaged through the books on the floor. “I’ve heard rumors about you. You’re supposed to be super-strong or something like that, right?”

  “Close enough.”

  Lance picked up two heavy volumes of his mother’s prized Encyclopedia Britannica and handed them to Mandy. She had to put her gun back into its holster to take them.

  He pointed to the wall behind her. “I was going to take that too…. But I don’t suppose you’ll let me.”

  Mandy turned to look at the large photo. It showed Lance and his brother in their best clothes, sitting on the floor in front of their parents.

  “No, it’s too big.”

  “I wasn’t going to take the frame and the glass. Just the picture.”

  “Probably not a good idea. You’re supposed to have a new identity. That wouldn’t really work if you’re carrying around a huge photo of yourself with your family.” Then she turned back to face him. “And don’t think I didn’t notice what you were doing, Lance.”

  Lance did his best to look surprised and a little hurt. “What?”

  “You lifted my gun from the holster and tucked it into the back of your jeans.” She let the books drop to the floor. “Hand it over.”

  He took a step backward. “I’m not going with you.”

  “Slaughter will find you.”

  “Don’t you get it? I want her to find me! And when she does, I’m going to kill her!”

  “Her skin is bulletproof, Lance. You know that—you were right there in Midway when that soldier shot her in the head.”

  “Right. And later when she was unconscious, he put his gun in her mouth and wanted to blow the back of her head off. Well, I’m liking that plan more and more. She murdered my family!”

  “And you want to make her pay for that by letting her murder you too? Get real, kid. You have less chance of hurting her than you’d have of knocking the moon out of its orbit by throwing stones at it. I’ve read your profile, Lance. I know you. Even if by some miracle you managed to get Slaughter into a position where you could kill her, you wouldn’t do it.”

  Lance pulled the gun out of the back of his jeans and handed it to Mandy. “She took everything from me.”

  “I know.”

  “My mom and dad worked for years to buy this house. It was way out of their price range, but they wanted the best for me and Cody. They both had to take second jobs.” He suddenly laughed. “Dad took guitar lessons. I was about four, I think, when he started. He borrowed a guitar from a friend, and every Tuesday night he took lessons at the community college. On Thursday nights he had a bunch of people here teaching them what he’d just learned. He was always just one step ahead of the people he was teaching, but he had them believing he was an expert.”

  Mandy smiled. “Now, who does that remind me of? Come on. We’ve been here too long already. You’d better just get your things.”

  Roz watched as the heavy gray clouds rolled in from the east. They were coming in fast and low, obscuring the buildings on the far side of Central Park, then over the park itself, until all she could see was a thick mist.

  It lasted only a moment, and then the sky was clear again.

  The ever-present hum of Manhattan’s traffic was gone.

  And in the middle of Central Park, where there once had been grass and trees and people, there was now a one-hundred-and-fifty-story glass-and-steel building.

  James Klaus suddenly realized that there were voices coming from the north forty acres. Thousands of voices, mixed with the hum of hundreds of electronic machines, the roar of dozens of powerful engines.

  Behind him, Faith came running from the kitchen. “James? Is that you?”

  He turned around, confused. “Of course it’s me. I…” He stopped. Faith had been wearing a loose sweatshirt and faded jeans. She was now wearing a long off-white dress belted around the waist.

  “What are you even doing here?” Faith asked. “Is this some sort of trick or something? How did you do that?”

  “What do you mean? I’ve been here since yesterday! And when did you get time to change your clothes?”

  They stared at each other, then Faith said, “How did you get here without the Praetorians seeing you? I know your dad’s made friends with some of them, but they wouldn’t allow this.”

  “Praetorians?”

  “Over in the north forty. The training camp. The soldiers, remember?”

  “What? This isn’t making any sense,” James said, looking around. He walked over to the half-closed barn door. “Look, the tractor is in there—there’s no way Dad could have gotten back and parked it without me hearing him!”

  “Your father hasn’t used that old thing in years. I doubt it still even runs.”

  “No, I saw him driving off in it this morning—and I could hear him driving it just a few minutes ago!” He walked into the barn and placed his hand on the tractor’s engine casing. It was cold.

  Lance slung his brother’s backpack onto his shoulder and held up the yellow tape outside his house as Mandy ducked under it.

  “I’m parked on the next street,” she said. “Then we have a three-hour drive to the rendezvous point, another two to the backup hideout.”

  “Do you have anything to eat in the car?”

  “No, but we can stop on the way.”

  Lance ducked back under the tape. “No need. I’ll get something from inside. Otherwise it’ll all go to waste. Got the keys?”

  Mandy tossed the keys to him, then he ran back up the drive and unlocked the door, trying to remember whether he’d eaten the last of the chocolate-chip cookies he had stashed in his room. Need my toothbrush, he remembered. And a towel. The towels in his cell in Hawksley had been paper-thin and fraying along the edges.

  He pushed the door open. The hallway was clean, and comp
letely free of debris.

  Lance stopped. What the…?

  He looked back toward Impervia, but she was gone.

  Then, from the kitchen, a familiar voice: “Lance? Is that you? What are you doing back so early?”

  Lance dry-swallowed. “Mom?”

  CHAPTER 3

  SOLOMON CORD COULD feel the skin on his arms begin to tighten into gooseflesh as he approached the entrance to the alley.

  “I do not like this,” Cord muttered. “Abby, stay put. I want to take a look first.” A line of cold sweat ran down between his shoulder blades, but he suppressed the shudder. Abby was unsettled enough already; he didn’t want to make her any more nervous.

  With his back pressed against the alley’s brick wall, Cord slowly peered around the corner.

  The street was empty, and almost spotlessly clean. No cars, no pedestrians, not even the gang of teenagers loitering at the intersection who earlier had stopped whatever they were doing to watch his car as it passed them.

  We’re not where we should be.

  He moved a little farther out, and a shadow momentarily fell across his face. Cord shielded his eyes against the sun and looked up. There was a tall metal lamppost almost directly in front of him. OK. I know that wasn’t there before. If the post had been there when he’d driven into the alley, he’d have had to come from the other direction to make the turn.

  Then he noticed the thick cables radiating from the top of the post. Each of the six cables led to other posts. Each post had a cluster of at least three security cameras.

  Cord ducked back into the alley. “We’re in trouble.”

  Abby walked up to him. “What is it?”

  Cord absently chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “Not exactly sure.”

  She leaned past him and looked out at the street. “It looks different. All the lampposts…”

  “That’s just it—they’re not all lampposts. Look up.”

  “Cameras. Those things definitely weren’t there before. And the billboard…” She pointed to the side of a building on the far side of the street, close to the intersection. “That was an ad for Uncle Harry’s Ice Cream. They just put it up the other day.” The billboard had been replaced with a large array of black panels. “What do you suppose that’s for?” Abby asked.

  “Could be solar cells,” Cord said, peering around the corner again. “I can see four more of them from here.”

  Abby bit her lip. “Mr. Cord…Where are we?”

  James walked across the farmyard. “Faith, what’s going on here?”

  His father’s wife shrugged. “You tell me. How did you get here from Midway?”

  “Look, I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon. You don’t remember that? Dad made us eggs on toast this morning.”

  “He makes eggs on toast nearly every morning.” Faith looked James up and down. “You’re seriously telling me that you got here yesterday?” She reached out and placed the palm of her right hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling all right? Why aren’t you in school?”

  “But it’s summer break.”

  “Don’t play games with me, James! Schools haven’t had summer breaks in years.”

  To himself, James said, Either I’ve gone mad, or everything has changed without me knowing about it. Or maybe I was already mad and this is the way things have always been. No, that can’t be right! Everything’s changed, and the only way that could happen is…if this isn’t my version of reality. This is a parallel world.

  He knew that some scientists believed that, in theory, time wasn’t just a straight line flowing from the past to the future: It branched constantly, like an infinite number of forks in the road. Every decision—no matter how small—gave birth to a whole new universe for each possible outcome. Some physicists even theorized that it might be possible to jump from one universe to another.

  But it was all theoretical—there was no way to prove that there was anything more than one universe.

  If it is true, James thought, and somehow I’ve been pulled into a parallel universe, then…Then there could be another me here. “Call my mom,” he said to Faith. “See what she has to say.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, please. Ask to speak to me.”

  She nodded, and he followed her back into the house. Her hand was trembling a little as she picked up the phone and dialed the number. James’s mother, Shawna, answered on the third ring. “Shawna? It’s Faith.”

  James listened in: One advantage of having superhuman hearing was that other people’s phone calls were no longer private.

  “You again. What do you want now?” James always felt a little embarrassed at how rude his mother was to Faith. It wasn’t as though his father had run away with her—Shawna had thrown him out after she met Rufus.

  “Is James there?”

  “Of course not. He’s in school.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes I’m sure! He wouldn’t cut classes.”

  “Just check, will you?”

  There was the sound of the handset being dropped, and then Shawna called out, “James!”

  There was no response: James could hear his mother’s soft breathing on the other end of the line as she waited. She called again, and a third time, then, “Told you he wasn’t here. What’s this about? If he did cut classes, his teacher would phone here first.”

  “OK, never mind. I just—” The line went dead.

  Faith hung up the phone and started to tell James what had happened.

  “I heard. Look, I’ve got something important to tell you…. Don’t tell Dad, OK?”

  “What is it?” The familiar frown line creased her forehead. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

  “I don’t know.” He took a deep breath while he mulled over the best way to tell her. “I’m a superhuman.”

  She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

  “No, seriously. I can control sound waves. I can hear things happening miles away, and I can even create sounds.”

  “Can you fly?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Pity. What’s your superhero name, then? Are you famous?”

  “I’m not famous. I call myself Thunder.”

  Faith laughed. “You’re joking!”

  “I’m not joking. Listen.” The room was suddenly filled with music, as though a full orchestra was playing invisibly in the room.

  Faith jumped back, looking around wildly for the source of the music.

  After a few seconds James allowed the music to fade away. “That was Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, allegro moderato molto e marcato. All the right notes, and in the right order.”

  Faith had been staring openmouthed at him. “How did you do that?”

  “I can re-create any sound I hear. I can invert it, modify it, do anything I like to it. I can nullify sounds too. Pretty handy for sneaking into and out of the house at night.”

  “OK. You’re a superhuman.”

  She still doesn’t believe me, James thought. “I am. Maybe that’s got something to do with what’s happening here, maybe not. The reason I’m telling you is that either I’m not where I should be, or the whole world has changed. Things are suddenly very different. Like the soldiers camped in the north-forty fields. How long have they been there? What are they there for?”

  “It’s a training camp. Back when things got bad, the army told your father that everyone had to do their part. He had to give up the forty acres, and provide the soldiers with milk and cheese and vegetables.”

  James bit his lip. “How do you mean, ‘back when things got bad’?”

  “How could you not remember this? The terrorist attacks, the bombs, closing the borders? Anchorage?” Faith ran her hands over her face. “You’re scaring me. You really don’t remember any of this? You don’t remember Anchorage?”

  “I don’t remember it because it never happened!”

  “How can you say that? A hundred thousand Americans died in Anchorage!”

&nb
sp; “You’re talking about Anchorage, Alaska? What happened there?”

  “There was a bomb. Daedalus planted it. He tried to hold the city to ransom, I think…. No one knows for sure what happened, but the bomb detonated. Anchorage is gone. James, the whole of the United States of America has been under martial law for the past three years.”

  The building in Central Park dwarfed everything around it. It was rectangular at the base and tapered slightly until a quarter of the way up—about forty floors—where it broke into a series of tall, thin towers, some of which were still under construction.

  I’m dreaming, Roz thought. That has to be it. This is a dream.

  The lack of noise was almost as disturbing. Instead of the constant rumbling of countless engines all she could hear was wind rustling through the trees and a faint, but continuous, ringing from somewhere nearby.

  As she watched, a pair of large, flat, roughly rectangular craft detached themselves from one of the towers, their battered yellow paintwork giving them the look of construction vehicles. They drifted smoothly away from the tower, one descending toward the northern end of the park, the other passing almost directly overhead.

  It moved steadily, unwavering, following the course of the street below, and in complete silence. Its undercarriage featured a series of eight circular blue-white lights, but she could see no other source of propulsion.

  At the end of the block the craft banked to the left, heading south, and Roz looked back toward the towering building.

  A third flying craft appeared, coming in over the east side of the city. At first Roz thought it had to be some sort of misshapen zeppelin, but as it slowed to a stop alongside the tallest tower, she could clearly see that it was no helium-filled airship; it was hundreds of yards long and four or five stories tall. Its sides were punctuated with windows, and its hull glinted like polished steel.

  Roz shook her head. No way. No way can something that big move so silently!

  Another, smaller vehicle detached itself from the giant craft and gracefully drifted upward; it resembled one of the flying construction vehicles, but was painted a dark green. Military colors, Roz realized. The big one is the equivalent of an aircraft carrier!