Super Human (30 page)

“A—an hour, maybe a little more. The leaders of The Helotry will be coming to greet him.”

Roz dragged Abby aside so that the man couldn’t overhear. “So we have time to stop all this,” Roz said. “But . . . we need The Helotry to tell us how to cure the plague before the virus’s timer hits its target. So what do we do?”

“Slaughter’s got to be pretty high up the chain of command. We get to her, force her to tell us.”

“This close to the end, she’s not going to be playing nice. She’s going to live up to her name. Last time I got away through luck more than anything else.”

“But now we have something that we didn’t have before,” Abby said. “Brawn.”

 

Slaughter clicked off her radio again. “They’re doing well—I thought the men would hold them off for longer. But there’s nothing they can do now anyway. So, Fabian . . . Ready?”

He jumped. “What? You mean we’re doing this right
now
?” His eyes were wide with fear. “No way!” He started to get out of the chair, but Slaughter put her hand on his chest and pushed him back.

“What do you want?” she asked. “A fanfare? A digital counter that will activate when it reaches zero? We’re all set up and ready to go. As soon as the power surge hits, close your eyes and let the machinery guide you.”

“But you said we have to wait until the old woman gets here!”

Slaughter smiled. “Kid, you’ve got a lot to learn about people. That disease-ridden old bat has been running The Helotry for a very long time. She worships the Fifth King. She thinks he’s going to bring about a new golden age on Earth. Well, he is, but she’s not going to be a part of it. Her day has passed. I’m in charge now.”

“She’ll have you killed when she finds out!”

“No she won’t.” Slaughter lightly ran her fingers over a large red button on the arm of the chair. “See, The Helotry want to be his
slaves
, that’s the saddest part of it all. For forty-five centuries they’ve been worshiping a man who wouldn’t think twice about killing them all if he was in a bad mood. Now, we’re going to bring back the Fifth King and he’s going to need someone to guide him through this world. I don’t want that someone to be a crazy old woman. I want that someone to be
me
. So . . .” She raised her hand over the button.

“Well, give me a count to three at least!”

“All right. On three. . . . Three.” Slaughter slammed her fist down on the red button.

The machinery hummed into life. Pyrokine screamed, his body erupted into cold blue fire, twitched and shuddered. Luminescent sparks rippled across his body, blinding arcs of light leaped from his fingers and toes into the metal framework of the chair.

And just as suddenly it was over. The fire enveloping his body melted away and Pyrokine slumped down in the chair. He took a long, deep, ragged breath, shuddered once more, and opened his eyes. “That
hurt
!” His voice was weak, almost inaudible. “You said . . . it was safe!”

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“So . . . Now what? The next part better not hurt that much!” Pyrokine rolled his shoulders back and flexed his arms. “How long do we have to . . . ?” He froze, staring past Slaughter’s shoulder.

She turned around.

There was a man standing in the room, naked from the waist up. He was bearded, heavily muscled, bronzed from the sun.

Slaughter dropped to her knees. “Hail the Fifth King.”

Now...

Krodin stared at the pale-skinned woman kneeling before him.

Moments earlier he had been on his balcony in Alexandria, glaring at the woman after whom he had named his city.

There had been a flash of black, excruciating agony, and now he was in a metal room with a strangely dressed woman and a pale young man sitting on an elaborate silver throne.

The woman was speaking in an incomprehensible language, but she knew the protocols: She was staring at the ground, unwilling to look him in the eye.

The boy, however, clearly did
not
know how to behave in the presence of a king. He was staring openmouthed at Krodin.

The warrior-king ignored the woman’s babbling and slowly turned around.

In his long life he had seen many things, heard many strange tales, yet he had rarely encountered anything that gave credence to what the humans would call magic. But this . . . He shook his head.

Through a transparent portion of the wall he could see many people in a much larger room. They were all on their knees, facing his direction.

Behind him, the woman continued to talk, and Krodin realized that she was trying to use one of the Sumerian dialects. He turned back and addressed her in the same tongue. “Who are you?”

“I am your servant, Lord Krodin.” Her accent was unlike any he had heard before.

“Where have you taken me, servant?”

She hesitated for a moment. “You are safe, Lord.”

Krodin recognized the woman’s evasiveness.
She thinks I will not understand.
“Where am I?”

“A land called America, Lord Krodin. On the other side of the world.”

“You lie. It is not possible to travel such a distance in so short a time.”

“Lord Krodin, it has not been a short time. Please allow me to explain.”

He nodded. “Proceed.”

“This is not the time in which you lived. That was more than four thousand years in the past. Our records show that you died on that morning in Alexandria. We have used our science and our powers to take you from your time before your death could happen. It was the only way to save you.”

“If you are lying I will kill you and every other human in this America of yours.”

“I do not lie, Lord Krodin. And I am not human. I am like you:
more
than human. Superhuman.”

“The boy does not show the proper respect.”

“Forgiveness, Lord Krodin. He is not familiar with the customs.” The woman turned to the boy and hissed at him in her strange language. After a moment, he climbed down from the silver throne and got to his knees beside the woman.

“What is your name, woman?”

“I am called . . .” She frowned as she sought the correct word in the Sumerian tongue. “Slaughter.”

“Slaughter. You are a warrior.”

“The greatest warrior of this time, Lord Krodin. Until now, of course.”

Then the building trembled. From far away came the sound of crumbling stone and the clash of metal on metal.

“What is happening?” Krodin asked.

“Our enemies, Lord Krodin. They have come to destroy you.”

“Destroy
me
?” A smile crept across his face.

“They too are superhuman. A girl who can move objects without touching them, another girl who is as fast as a cheetah and stronger than ten men. And a giant.”

“Then let us greet them, Lady Slaughter. And when they are dead you will show me this America. I expect that it will be a little different from the Egypt of my time.”

Roz used her telekinetic shield to protect herself and Abby from the flying debris and concrete dust as Brawn tore his way into the side of the building.

Most of the remaining guards inside the complex had scattered and run when they saw Brawn, but a few had stayed to fight. They’d shot at him, driven a truck at high speed into his leg—Brawn had angrily kicked it over—and two of them had even leaped onto his back and tried to strangle him. They’d been there for almost a minute before he’d noticed them and flicked them away.

And now a handful of civilians were trying to sneak past the blue giant.

Roz decided that she wasn’t about to let them escape. They might not be soldiers, but they were part of The Helotry and therefore bore a responsibility for everything that had happened.

“Abby? On your left.”

“I see them!” Abby called. She grabbed the nearest one—a woman covered in dust and scratches—and threw her to the ground. “Who’s in charge?”

The woman’s eyes were wide with fear—she couldn’t stop staring at Brawn.

“Answer me or I’ll turn him loose on you!” Abby yelled at her. “What do you know about the virus?”

“N-nothing! That’s a separate division.”

The woman’s colleagues abandoned her, running in every direction.
All right,
Roz thought.
The older ones are usually in charge, and they’re the ones who can’t run too fast.

She picked a white-haired man and telekinetically tripped him up, then dragged him facedown toward her, his hands desperately scrabbling at the rubble.
Either this guy’s very light or I’m getting stronger.

She crouched down next to the man. “Same question. The virus.”

“I swear, we don’t know anything about it! Our task was just to get the reactor online and hooked up to the Pyrokine!”

“You must know
something
. How come you’re immune?”

“They injected me with a vaccine last month.”

“Where?”

He looked confused, almost embarrassed. “In my left buttock.”

“I mean where did it
happen
? Where can we find stocks of the vaccine?”

“A place about sixty miles north of Dallas. A ranch. We were brought there, injected, brought back. That’s all I know!”

“No, you knew that this was going to happen!” Roz balled her fist and slammed it down into the man’s face. “Billions of people are going to die because of you!”

“Please! It’s not like that!”

Roz hit him again. There was a walkie-talkie clipped to the man’s belt—Roz pulled it free, hit the talk button. “This is Roz Dalton trying to get in touch with anyone in the CDC.”

There was only static in reply. Roz repeated her message. After a moment, a voice said, “Roz? Doctor Gertler. Where are you?”

“At the Windfield power plant. Some of The Helotry are already here. They’re going to try to bring back the Fifth King as soon as the leaders arrive. That’s only a few minutes away. We . . .” Roz realized that both Abby and Brawn had stopped fighting and were backing toward her. The walkie-talkie slipped out of her hand and clattered to the ground.

Two figures were coming out of the dust-filled building.

On the left was Slaughter. She grinned at Roz, nodded, then drew her index finger across her throat.

The figure on the right was Pyrokine, floating a few feet above the ground. Blue-white fire wreathed and swirled around his body.

Roz felt her heard skip a beat. “Oh my God. . . . Pyrokine.”

“Watch him,” Abby said quietly. “He’s not as crazy as Slaughter but he’s much more powerful. He can—”

“I know what he can do,” Roz said. “I don’t know
how
I know, but I do.” The half-remembered dream was closer now, so close she felt as though she could almost touch it.

And then a third figure emerged from the dust. A tall, bronze-skinned, bare-chested bearded man. He was looking at them with curiosity, as though wondering in which order he would kill them.

“Three against three,” Slaughter said. “I’d advise you to stand down, but there’s no point. We’re going to tear you apart anyway.”

Beside Roz, Brawn went into a crouch. A growl rumbled in his throat. His muscles tensed.

He launched himself at the Fifth King.

 

“How much longer now?” Lance asked. The jeep raced along the deserted freeway—Thunder was keeping them a mile behind The Helotry’s forces—and the wind whipped at his hair, stung his eyes. He found it hard to believe that less than a day had passed since he’d been rocketing along a similar freeway on his bike.

“Not sure,” Thunder said. “They’re not talking much.”

Lance grabbed Thunder’s arm and pointed to the left. “There! Those towers—that’s the place!”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, it’s not Disney World. Point your super-hearing over that way and see what you can pick up.”