Stronger: A Super Human Clash (23 page)

When I was finished, Max said, “I know who that was. I’ve been trying to track him down for the past two years. I’m certain that everything he claims is true. His chief superhuman gift is the ability to see the power in others. With the right resources—which I can provide—he’ll be able to manipulate the energy however he sees fit.” Max paused for a moment, as though wondering just how much he should tell me. “And now I know his name. We met him, in Krodin’s universe. I told you that there were a couple of superhumans I’m scared of. Well, Krodin’s one and he’s the other one. His name is Casey Duval.”

“Daedalus?” I said. “Oh
man
… !”

He began to pace back and forth. “In Krodin’s world Casey Duval’s skills were a lot more advanced than they are in ours. Krodin recognized his abilities and provided him with unlimited resources. That’s why we have to find him as soon as
possible, before some other group discovers him and starts feeding him what he needs.”

“Then we might have a problem,” I said. “Because I’m pretty sure that someone else already
has
found him. Gordon Tremont.”

Max’s face drained of what little color it had. “I pray that’s not true.”

On the far side of the road, Lance got to his feet and started walking toward us. Max glanced at him, and Lance instantly turned around and went over to Abby instead.

It disturbed me that Max could so easily and so casually mess with someone else’s mind, but this wasn’t the time to bring that up again. “Look, who
is
Tremont?” I asked him. “What’s his organization?”

“Their organization formed three decades ago, a splinter group from The Helotry of the Fifth King. The Helotry believed that the human race could be saved only by bringing Krodin out of the past. Their plague was designed to weaken the humans so that Krodin could rule. But Tremont’s people came to believe that their true purpose was to end all human life.”

“They want to destroy the world?” I shook my head. “No. Come on, no one’s
that
insane!”

“Brawn, you need to get this through your thick skull: The end of the human race wouldn’t be the end of the world. Humanity is just
one
species out of millions. Tremont’s people want the humans gone so that the superhumans can have the planet to themselves.”

“There’s not enough superhumans for that to work.”

“Not yet. But they were thinking long-term. Krodin was immortal, remember? But the point is that Tremont recruited you because he suspected that
you
would be the instigator of the Armageddon he wanted, that you were very close to their image of the perfect superhuman. Twice as tall as any human, practically invulnerable, inexhaustible, with incredible strength.”

I sat down again. “Then they’re crazy!”

“I never said they weren’t crazy, Brawn. Look … You remember your history lessons, the ideal of the perfect Aryan man from Nazi Germany? The concept of the master race? Well, that’s what they saw in you. An almost perfect superhuman who was young enough to mold to their will.”

“Max, how do you
know
all this?”

“Because once a month a team of Tremont’s people visit Manhattan on business, and they always stay in the same hotel suite. I stay in the suite next door, and I read their minds. But they messed up with you. They thought that since you were so young, they could frighten and manipulate you into working with them. Tremont almost lost his mind after you escaped from Antarctica.” Max suddenly smiled. “They still don’t know how you managed to get to South America, by the way, and that
really
bugs them.”

I couldn’t help smiling back. “Good. They’re never going to find out.”

Max finally stopped pacing and sat down opposite me. “You remember how they completely changed their approach when they caught you again in Venezuela? Suddenly they were your friends. Harmony Yuan told you the circumstances
had changed. If their resident genius
is
Casey Duval, then I know now that was true. What had changed was that he’d heard about their attack and how you survived it, and he decided that you’d be a good ally.”

“I don’t see how he made
that
connection.”

“It wasn’t
because
you survived, it was
how
you did it. You destroyed two helicopter gunships without batting an eyelash. That, and the way you escaped from their base in Antarctica, showed him that you were someone he wanted on his side.”

Thunder suddenly called out “Incoming! Copters … Three at least, maybe four.”

“Finally,” Max said. He stood up and stretched. “Look, Brawn, all this is almost as new to me as it is to you. I’m still only putting the pieces together. But after what we saw in Krodin’s universe, I’m pretty much convinced that Casey
is
Tremont’s genius superhuman. And if so, if Tremont has convinced Casey that the Earth should be wiped clean of ordinary humans, we have to move fast to stop them. Otherwise their organization’s name will become a prophecy. If anyone’s smart enough to get a quantum processor to work, it’s Casey Duval.”

“So what
are
they called?”

“When they broke away from The Helotry, they chose a word that summed up exactly what they believe. They wanted something that meant Armageddon. The Apocalypse. The End of Days. They finally settled on an old Norse word. It means ‘the final destiny of the gods.’ That’s how they see us superhumans: as the gods who will inherit the Earth.”

“And that word is?”

“Ragnarök.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, WE GATHERED
in a warehouse on the edge of a small town in northeast New Jersey. The warehouse belonged to one of Max’s many companies. From the outside it looked like an ordinary facility owned by a furniture store, but inside, it was equipped with living quarters, meeting rooms, a secure steel-barred cell, a gymnasium, and an armory.

Ox, one of the former U.S. Rangers who worked with Max, drove me to the warehouse in the back of a truck. He reversed the truck in and closed the doors before letting me out. Thunder, Abby, and Lance were already there.

Abby was wearing her homemade armor with her heavy sword slung on her back, and Thunder was in a new costume. This one had the black and green colors of his old wet suit, but looked to be a bit more practical.

“All right, guys,” Ox said. “Max and Roz are only a few minutes away. I’ll set up the meeting room.”

“So where have
you
been?” Abby asked me as I climbed out of the truck.

“Maryland,” I said. “Another one of Max’s places. What about you? Did you get into trouble with your mom?”

“Yeah, but Max visited her and did his thing to make her forget that I’d disappeared for a few days.”

Thunder said, “Same here. But he probably didn’t need to use his powers on
my
mom and my stepdad: They were already impressed that Max showed up in an expensive car.”

Lance said, “Well,
I’ve
been living here with the Rangers.” He made a face. “I think they’ve sort of adopted me or something. They wake me up at six in the morning.
Every
morning. And they work out for an hour and then they go for a run. Down to Ridgefield, over to Edgewater, up to Fort Lee, then back here. That’s nearly eight miles! All that before breakfast.”

“It’ll do you good,” Abby said.

“Hey, I never said I went
with
them! I go back to bed.”

“You should join them,” Thunder said. “You’re never too young to start a good exercise regimen.”

Lance went, “Pfff! It’s easy for you guys. You’re superhuman.”

“My powers don’t make me any stronger than an ordinary person,” Thunder said. “I have to keep fit too.”

Abby looked at me. “What about the prison thing? Did Max sort it out for you?”

“Yeah. He persuaded them to release me into his custody.”
I explained about my agreement with District Attorney Olafsson and Judge Khan.

“Cool. So you can be a permanent member of the team, then?”

At the same time, Lance and I asked, “We’re a
team
?”

Lance shouted, “Jinx!” and pumped the air with his fist. “Yes! You can’t talk until I say your name!”

I was immediately tempted to say, “Oh yeah?” but there was something so childish about being jinxed that I couldn’t help smiling. It had been four years since I’d last hung around with people my own age, and I was struck by how much I had missed out on years of silliness, dumb games, and stupid jokes.

Abby thumped Lance in the arm. “Don’t do that!”

Thunder said, “Yeah. Superstition brings bad luck, everyone knows that.”

Lance grinned as he rubbed his arm. “I
might
say his name if he buys me a soda.”

Abby asked me, “Do you even have any money?”

I shook my head.

“Lance, say his name.”

Lance faked a cough. “Oh man, I’m real
thirsty
all of a sudden.”

From the far side of the warehouse Ox called, “Meeting’s on, kids.”

Unlike the rest of the warehouse, the ceiling in the meeting room was only average height. I had to sit cross-legged on the floor.

Max and Roz were wearing their black uniforms, which suggested to me that we were going into action.

Max projected a schematic of a large building onto the whitewashed wall. “This is Gordon Tremont’s main facility in Pennsylvania, about twenty miles east of Pittsburgh. My sources tell me that Casey Duval is there right now. Security is unknown, but we should expect strong resistance. Certainly live ammunition and very probably a superhuman element. We’ll be approaching in silence. Thunder, you can take care of that, right?”

Thunder nodded.

“We need to get close enough that I can scan the minds of the guards, see what we’re up against. But regardless of what we find, we’re going in. We’re the Alpha team. Our primary goal is to get Casey out alive. And we do whatever it takes.” He looked around at us. “Abby, Thunder, and I will go in first and punch a hole through their defenses. Roz, Brawn, and the Rangers are our second wave: Once we give the word, they’ll come in after us.”

Roz said, “But Brawn’s the strongest. He should go in first.”

Lance said, “No, Max is right. If they see Brawn coming, they’ll immediately start locking down everything. We need to already be in there before they even know they’re under attack. A mission like this, you have to think of it as surgery. You go in like a scalpel, not like a chain saw.” To Max, he said, “And what’ll
I
be doing?”

“Your role is just as vital as everyone else’s.” Max looked
at his wristwatch. “At precisely nine thirty this evening, you’ll be in the monitoring station here. You will tune the TV set to channel thirty-one. Are you taking this in, Lance?”

Lance nodded.

“Good. There’s a documentary about jet engines. Your mission is to press ‘Record’ before the show starts, then press ‘Stop’ when it’s over. The timer’s broken.”

“Oh, very funny! That’s all you think I’m good for?”

“That’s something I won’t know until about ten thirty. Don’t mess it up.” Max returned his attention to the image on the wall. “All joking aside … The Beta team’s goal is to access their computers and extract every byte of data they can get their hands on, then wipe their hard drives and destroy any backup tapes. It’s not enough that
we
have Ragnarök’s data: We have to make sure that
they
can’t use it.”

Abby asked, “Who’s on the Beta team?”

A woman’s voice behind me said, “We are.”

I turned to see four people standing just inside the door, one woman and three men. The woman called herself Energy. She was about twenty, very good-looking, with red-blond hair and wearing a white-and-green costume. Next to her was Solomon Cord, now in his full Paragon armor. Beside him stood Quantum, also wearing white. The last of them was looking right at me. We’d had a couple of run-ins before.

He nodded to me. “Brawn.”

“Titan,” I said.

Lance shouted, “Hey, you were jinxed! You’re not supposed to talk!” Then he turned bright red when everyone stared at him. “Uh, sorry.”

Max said, “First things first … We keep identities secret, understood?” He glanced at Paragon, then back to Lance. “If you know someone’s real name, you keep it to yourself unless you’re certain that everyone else knows it. Titan?”

Titan said, “Paragon has the hardware and skills to access their computers. Quantum and I will run interference while he does so. Tremont’s got a lot of people on call—superhuman and otherwise—and right now we don’t know who or what we’re going to find there. When we’ve got what we need, Energy will blast the entire facility with a contained electromagnetic pulse. That’ll fry every computer circuit in the place.”

Energy said, “Max, I’m not sure that letting the kids go in first is the right move.”

“Everyone’s got to learn sometime,” Max said. “Besides, they might be young but they’ve seen a
lot
of action. They’re good. And they’re not much younger than we were when you first came to me, remember?”

Paragon asked, “But Lance stays here, right?”

“Absolutely,” Max said. “I’m not putting him anywhere that’ll get him into trouble.”

Titan said, “There’s still a question mark hanging over Brawn.” He glanced at me, then back to Max. “Not all of us are convinced he’s got the right attitude. We know he’s quick to anger, and his reputation is sketchy, at best. He’s a known criminal, and I’m not sure it’s in our best interest to have any involvement with him.”

I asked, “Isn’t it customary to add the words
no offense
to the end of a statement like that?”

“If I’d intended no offense, I’d have said that.”

“Still annoyed after that last beating, huh?” To the others, I said, “That was in Colorado. He attacked me out of nowhere. Just flew in and started punching me. Titan, remind me again how many times I hit you before you ran away. Once, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t run away—there was an emergency that required my attention.”

“Yeah, and the emergency was that you had to find a quiet place to have a good cry.”

He glowered at me. “No, the emergency was a four-car pileup on the interstate! I saved eight people’s lives that day!”