Super Human (33 page)

Lance backed away. “Wait! Wait! You shoot me and you’ll lose the chance to
really
save the Fifth King’s life!”

“What do you mean, boy?” the woman asked.

“He’s bluffing—again!” Remington snarled.

“No! Speak. What do you mean?”

Lance pointed to the battle. “Look. He’s weakening. Three teenagers are defeating your mighty immortal warrior. But if he’s half as good as you people seem to believe, he should be able to overpower them with ease. So why is the fight still going on? It’s because you geniuses haven’t figured out what you’ve done to him. You pulled him through time and dumped him here. What was it like, four and a half thousand years ago? A lot different, I’m guessing. The people were different, the cultures were different . . . and so was the environment. Your homemade plague is still around. You think
he’s
got any resistance to it?”

The old woman froze. “The boy is right. The Fifth King is infected. Remington—your hand!”

Remington reluctantly stretched out his right hand toward the woman. Her lined face frowned in concentration for a moment, then she pressed her hand into his. “A counter-virus—it will instantly nullify the effects of the first. Run to the Fifth King, touch his skin!”

Remington swallowed. “He . . . He won’t know that I’m on his side.”

Lance stepped up to Remington. “You have to do it! If you don’t, he’ll die!”

The soldier was trembling. He looked toward the battle—Brawn had recovered and was locked in a strangling embrace with the Fifth King.

“Look, she was right about me. I don’t want
anyone
to die,” Lance said. “Especially not me. I know we’re not going to win this. I just want you to cure him and make him promise not to hurt the others.”

“Go, Mr. Remington!” the old woman snapped.

He swallowed again, and nodded, but still didn’t move.

Lance said, “Approach him from the front, OK? Let him see you coming, openhanded so that he knows you’re not a threat. You can do this.” He grabbed Remington’s hand and shook it. “Good luck.”

The man’s eyes were wide with fear as he passed his gun to one of the other soldiers, then turned and walked slowly toward the battle.

To the old woman, Lance said, “You’re sure this will work?”

“It will work. The moment Mr. Remington’s bare skin touches the Fifth King’s, the counter-virus will be passed to him. It will race through his system and override the first virus. He will recover his strength in seconds.”

Lance nodded. “Good.” He carefully lowered himself into a sitting position. “I don’t know about you people, but this has been a tough couple of days. I could do with a rest.”

He watched the woman and the soldiers, and—sure that their attention was on Remington—he reached out and placed his right hand on Max Dalton’s neck.

Max groaned. His eyes flickered open. Lance whispered, “Read my mind.”

A voice inside his head asked, “Who are you?”

Never mind me,
Lance replied,
these people are trying to kill your sister.

The three soldiers instantly screamed, dropped their weapons, clutched at their heads, and dropped to the ground twitching and convulsing. Seconds later the old woman toppled over on top of them.

“That guy too!” Lance said, pointing toward Remington. He toppled over on the battlefield and lay still.

Lance helped Max to his feet. “Over there—the guy fighting Brawn. Stop him!”

Max briskly shook his head. “No, I can’t. I’ve never been able to control Brawn. It just doesn’t work on some people.”

“Not Brawn,” Lance said. “The
other
guy!”

Max suddenly flinched, as though hit by something invisible. “Whoa. . . . Who is he? I’ve never met anyone with a mind like that. . . . It’s . . . My God, so much
power
! It’s not going to be easy to get in.” He looked around at the battlefield, then turned back to Lance. “What is going on here?”

“Too long to explain,” Lance said. “Just try to knock him out. Or at least slow him down.”

We need help,
Lance said to himself.
If Dalton can’t stop the Fifth King then who can? All the other superheroes are out of action because of the plague. Right—
that’s
what we need to do!
To Max, he said, “Listen, that mad old woman created a plague. That’s what made you and your guys sick back in Midway. Everyone in the whole world is infected. But you’ve got the counter-virus in your system now. The old woman gave it to Remington, I got it when I shook his hand, and now I’ve passed it to you—you need to get to other people, spread the counter-virus. Get to Quantum and Titan and all the others. All you have to do is touch their bare skin and they’ll recover. Then you can all gang up on the Fifth King.”

Max was staring at the Fifth King. “That’s
not
the best use of our resources. I’ve got a better idea.”

Lance hated to leave the others behind, but Max Dalton’s idea made sense.

Far behind him the battle still raged: the Fifth King against Roz, Abby, Thunder, and Brawn, while Max tried to find a way into his mind. The King had been weakened by the infection, but he was still almost impervious to their onslaught.

“Faster!” Lance said to the copter’s pilot.

“Already at top speed, sir,” the pilot said.

Lance was astonished at how simple Max had made it look: The superhero had simply ordered The Helotry’s pilot to do whatever Lance asked, and the man seemed more than eager to obey. Now the copter rocketed over the Nebraskan landscape, aiming for a specific destination.

“We’re close, sir,” the pilot said. “Two minutes.” He tapped at one of the screens with his forefinger. “That’s got to be it there.”

The screen showed an aerial view of a large, ramshackle farmhouse. “Set us down as close as you can!”

The copter descended at a dizzying, stomach-churning speed, but Lance wouldn’t allow himself to throw up.

Lance jumped the last two yards, raced up to the farmhouse’s front porch. There was a wooden barn star next to the door: Lance ripped it off to reveal the hidden keypad. He entered the ten-digit code Max had given him, and the door swung open.

The inside of the farmhouse was completely at odds with its weathered and faded wooden exterior; it was bright, sleek, modern, and very much the style Lance always associated with ultrarich people like Max Dalton.

Lance took the stairs three at a time. One of the bedroom doors was open, and lying on the bed was a man in his early twenties, barefoot, dressed in only a sweat-soaked T-shirt and jeans. His entire body was trembling, and he was moaning softly. Lance put his hand on the man’s bare arm.

Instantly, the man was off the bed and staring at Lance. “What the—? Where did
you
come from?”

“Are you Quantum?”

“What? Who, me? No, I—”

“We don’t have time for all that,” Lance said. “You’re Quantum and you’re the fastest human being who ever lived. So listen. Everyone—pretty much the whole planet—has been infected with an artificial virus. That’s why you got sick. But you’re carrying the cure now. You have to spread it to everyone. Just touch their bare skin.”

The young man looked at him. “Everyone?”

“The whole world. You’re going to have to become Santa Claus. Every home in the world in one day. There’s going to be a lot of locked doors, so I don’t know—”

There was a blur, and the man was now dressed in Quantum’s all-white costume. “Locked doors are not a problem for me.”

“Then get moving. And try to find people like Titan and Energy—they’ll be able to fly you anywhere you need to go. Oh, and you need to get to the CDC in Atlanta—give them a sample of your blood so they can replicate the cure.”

“This is for real?”

“Yes. Just go.”

The man nodded, and vanished.

Five minutes later, as the copter began its journey back to Windfield, they passed low over a small town. Lance looked out to see that some of the people were already beginning to emerge blinking and confused into the sunlight.

 

Why do they not submit?
Krodin wondered.
They must know they are beaten.

The children shouted orders to each other in their strange language, but it was clear to Krodin that their desperation was growing by the minute.

The white-skinned girl used her power to raise a thick cloud of dust, caused it to fly at the Fifth King, to swirl and condense around his head.

Krodin closed his eyes, stretched out with his senses. He allowed his consciousness to rise up, out of his body, to float over the battlefield and see everything at once.

The sound-controlling boy was keeping his distance from Krodin, but then he did not need to be close to use his power. The boy still blasted at Krodin’s body with tremulous shock waves, but their effect was considerably less now.

The sword girl continued to attack though her weapon was now lodged in Slaughter’s midriff. She had found a long metal bar and was striking over and over—Krodin snatched the bar from the girl’s hands, spun around, and struck back at her.

She raised her forearm at the last moment—the metal bar slammed into her arm with enough force to split a normal man in two, but had no such effect on the girl. Instead, the bar twisted around her body as though it was a rope and she was a stone pillar.

She pulled the bar back from Krodin’s grip—that in itself impressed the Fifth King, for no one had ever been able to break his grip—and tossed it aside. She launched herself at his legs, seeking to topple him.

In his mind’s eye Krodin saw the blue giant approaching him from behind.
Ah. She tries to distract me.

He grabbed the girl’s arm before she reached him, threw her back over his shoulder and into the blue giant’s face.

Krodin allowed his mind to stretch further. On the edge of the battlefield a man stood still, staring at him.
Another of these superhumans? What strange abilities does
this
one have?

And then he felt something rip into his skull, a pinpoint of agony that ruptured, filled his head with incomprehensibly alien words and images.

 

Roz groaned, and sat up. Her body was a mass of bruises and she knew that even if they survived this day she’d never be whole again: Pyrokine’s fireball had almost completely burned the skin from her left hand. The pain was almost unbearable; the stench of burned flesh was worse.

Nearby, Brawn and Abby were still pounding the Fifth King without much sign of damage.

Inside her head, Max’s voice said, “I’m in, Roz. . . . His mind is very strange. Not like any other I’ve ever seen.”

A few minutes earlier, Max had taken over the minds of The Helotry’s soldiers, woken them, and ordered them to open fire on the bronze-skinned warrior. Somehow he had successfully dodged every bullet. Roz had once seen Quantum in action—or rather she
hadn’t
seen him, because the man moved so fast he was invisible—but this was different. The Fifth King seemed to be able to anticipate where the bullets were going to strike. And he did it with his eyes closed.

Roz limped over to her brother.

“It’s working,” Max said. “He thinks he’s invulnerable, but he’s not. At least, not in the way we think of the word. His power enables him to adjust to any situation. If we were able to shoot him, the bullets would do some damage, but he’d heal quickly and then next time they wouldn’t affect him at all. That’s why he doesn’t age and doesn’t get sick. He caught the plague that old woman created, and it slowed him down for a few minutes, but now he’s adapted. He’s immune. My God—he’s going to outlive the entire human race! And he’s alone, so alone . . .”

Is he kidding?
Roz thought. “Max, if you can’t stop him he’s going to
kill
us!”

“He’s hundreds of years old. Everyone he’s ever known is dead.” Max turned to Roz. “You can’t imagine what that feels like—to know that you’re going to be here long after everyone else is dead.”

Roz grabbed her brother’s arm. “You’re letting his feelings infect you. You have to put that aside. Just force him to stop fighting!”

Max nodded, looked back to the Fifth King. “You’re right. . . . I’m pushing through. I can see his memories. . . . He’s killed hundreds of people with his bare hands, thousands more using swords and spears. And he doesn’t care. He’s never regretted anything. But he’s not evil, Roz. Not the same way that old woman is. He’s better than us—our morals don’t apply to him. Krodin knows that he was born to rule. He’s above good and evil.”

“No, he’s not. Just stop him!”

“I’m not sure I can. I . . . I’m not sure I
should
.”

“What!?”

“Roz, the whole world’s in a mess. Always has been. People just don’t
want
to live in peace. Krodin thinks—he
knows
—that his function is to unite the entire human race. He could be right. Think about it, Roz. . . . What if there were no nations, no discrimination, no war?”