The Battle for Earth (Teen Superheroes Book 3) (14 page)

“Now, I want to know about The Solar Accelerator,” Morgan said. “What security is at the installation?”

“Se-security?”

“Yes, you oaf!” Morgan snapped. “Security!”

“Well…they have a lot of security.” Bruce’s eyes were moving about wildly in his head. “They have police and the army and guns…”

“Oh, you stupid boy.” Morgan tut-tutted him. “I hate it when people lie to me. I really do. And people who lie to me must be punished.”

She spent the next hour exacting punishment on the helpless family. The elderly couple were close to death by the time Morgan had finished. Finally she allowed Bruce to speak again and he immediately burst into tears.

“Stop whining,” she snapped. “Now tell me about the security at the installation.”

“There isn’t any,” he sobbed. “It’s a research facility.”

“What about cameras?”

“I…I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think there are any.”

Morgan nodded. It was just as she suspected. Whilst being immortal, she was not impervious to harm; she could be killed by a bullet in the same manner as anyone else. She had not lived this long without being cautious.

“I believe you’re telling me the truth,” she said. “And how many scientists work at the array?”

“A-about half a dozen.”

“Good…good,” she mused. “Well, I think that just about covers it, but I have one last question.”

“Please,” Bruce begged. “My parents…they need medical help…”

Morgan shut him up. She would have to do this herself. She finished her tea – it had gone cold because of that stupid boy – and began a thorough search of the house. Finally she found what she was seeking in a back room of the small cottage.

Paraffin.

Wonderful
, she thought.
A fire on a cold afternoon is so pleasant.

She handed the tin to Bruce and made him splash it throughout the house. Finally Morgan forced him to pour the remaining liquid over his parents and himself. Morgan rooted through a set of drawers until she found what she was seeking.

A lighter.

She offered it to Bruce. The young man struggled against her. She could see him exerting every bit of willpower to stop himself from raising his hand, but finally it jerked into place and he gripped the lighter tightly.

“Good.” Morgan cast a last glance about the small living area. “Now that looks rather nice.”

A shawl lay across the back of one of the chairs.

“I do believe this is alpaca hair.” She fondled it gently. “It’s lovely. Too good to burn.”

Morgan went to the door of the cottage and opened it wide. Grey clouds scudded across the sky. It had grown even colder and she was immensely pleased she had taken the shawl. She wrapped it around her, closed the door and headed up the street. At the top of the hill lay the Solar Accelerator. It was an imposing structure; a large concrete building with a huge antenna pointed skyward. After a moment she gave a flick of her hand. An enormous
swoosh
, followed by a single cry, emanated from the cottage behind her.

She continued up the hill.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I awoke slowly.

I was in a moving vehicle. An aircraft. Lifting my head slowly, I realised I was on a bench with Chad sitting next to me. He was already awake. He looked both scared and angry. Opposite us sat the man named Tasker and two army personnel. One had red hair. The other was blonde. To my left, I could see the pilots at the front of the ship. We were in a vessel not dissimilar in design to the Flex Fighter. Possibly it was a little smaller.

I tried to open my mouth. My jaw hurt like hell.

“Sorry about that punch, kid.” Tasker smirked. “I don’t know my own strength sometimes.”

I looked down at my handcuffs. They were attached to a chain set into the floor. I tried using my powers to break the cuffs apart.

“You’re wasting your time,” Tasker said, glancing up at the roof.

I followed his gaze. Two zeno emitters were set into the ceiling. They produced a dampening field that nullified our powers completely.

“Who are you people?” I asked. “You’re not Canadian Special Forces.”

He laughed. “You’re right about that,” he said. “We’re a group known as Stint. We’re mercenaries. Someone hired us to take you out, and we did.”

“Where’s Alexi Kozlov?”

“In the other Lifter.”

“Lifter?”

“It’s like that clever little ship you boys were flying around in.” He leaned forward. “I’ve got to hand it to you. That was quite a heist you pulled off.”

“Heist?”

“The Russian Premier!” He shook his head in admiration. “You’re all over the news. The United States and Russia are ready to start firing nukes at each other.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I bet you are.” He obviously didn’t believe my expression of remorse. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask.”

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Was it for money?”

“My girlfriend’s being held hostage,” I said. “Look, the world is in real danger. If I don’t –”

“Danger?” Tasker laughed. “I’ll say. The US is at Defcon Two. We might all be eating radioactive burgers for dinner.”

“The Russian Premier –”

“Don’t you worry about him. He’s absolutely fine, and we intend to keep him that way. He’s just the icing on the cake. A bonus.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say we have some contacts that will buy him from us,” Tasker explained. “They’ll resell him back to the Russians.”

“Buy?” I said in amazement. “Sell?”

“Sure,” he said. “Stint don’t do hostage negotiations. We don’t have the contacts, but we’ll pass him onto someone else who does.”

“And what about us?”

Tasker looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, that’s a shame,” he said. “Someone paid us good money to take you down. They want to do some crazy experiments on you. Take you apart to see what makes you tick.”

“Tick?” My voice went up a notch.

“You’re probably not gonna survive it.” Tasker shook his head regretfully. “Sorry. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”

I struggled to put all this together. These people were mercenaries who had kidnapped us at the behest of someone else. They had nothing to do with our kidnapping of Alexi Kozlov. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hell
, I thought.
I’ve really made a mess of this.

Could things get any worse? I should have gone to Agent Palmer in the first place. The Agency would have helped me. Because of the way I had handled this, Chad and I were in this alone.

“Don’t look so glum,” Tasker said. “It’s an eat-or-be-eaten kind of world.”

“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

The mercenary got up and crossed to the pilots. He asked them about the flight plan. I looked at each of the two guards opposite. They didn’t look pleasant. I desperately tried to think of some way out of this. Nothing sprang to mind.

“You kids aren’t so tough without your powers.” The blonde one looked like he had trodden on something unpleasant in the street. “You wouldn’t last a minute in a real fight.”

Then he spat. On me.

“You –” I started forward to hit him, but the chain stopped short.

The redhead laughed at my desperate attempts to break free. “You modifieds look good, but you’ve got no real staying power.”

Chad groaned. “My head…”

I looked over at him. He had not spoken the entire time I had been conversing with Tasker. Now his eyes fluttered about wildly.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“My head…can’t think straight…”

He sagged so far forward his head almost touched the floor. I yelled. Tasker walked back toward us. The other two guards were still laughing, but Tasker looked serious.

“We don’t want that kid dead,” he snapped at the other men. “He’s not worth anything dead.”

He pulled Chad’s body back into an upright position. Much to everyone’s amazement, Chad’s eyes were wide open and he had a small gun in his hand.

“Surprise,” he said.

He fired the weapon and shot out the two zeno emitters. He tried shooting Tasker, but the man was too fast. The older man knocked the gun from his hand and drew back his fist. I focused on the air within the vessel and blasted the rear doors open. Exerting pressure on the floor of the cabin, I pushed the back of the vessel down.

The blonde guard fell out through the rear. Tasker brought his fist down to slam it into Chad’s head, but by now I had an invisible barrier up. He hit the barrier. Recoiled in pain. Chad focused and an instant later the man fell sideways to the floor – encased in ice. The redheaded guard fired his weapon, but by now the bullets were simply bouncing off my barrier. The craft levelled out.

“Let’s get out of here,” I yelled. The aircraft was filled with a hurricane of freezing cold air. I broke the handcuffs and they clattered to the ground.

Chad pointed menacingly at the other guard. “Where’s the other Lifter?”

The redheaded guard looked petrified. He pointed vaguely out through the rear of our craft. I could see a small vessel trailing us several hundred feet below.

One of the pilots turned around in his seat with a gun in his hand. Chad directed a blast of fire at him. The man screamed and the entire front window exploded outward. I felt a tinge of sympathy for the man, but there was no time to reflect.

“Come on!” I yelled.

The block of ice encasing Tasker shattered. Shards of ice flew in all directions. Chad threw up an ice wall. I knew that would only hold for a couple of seconds at most. I glanced toward the front of the craft and saw the remaining pilot desperately trying to get the ship under control. He was fighting a losing battle. Through the shattered windscreen I could see the landscape drawing closer with every passing second.

We were about to crash.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brodie sometimes had to remind herself that Ferdy had a multitude of abilities. Not only was he a genius, but he had super strength. She watched in amazement as he leapt from a standing position straight into the ceiling. Hanging by one hand, he tore a hole in the roof and climbed through. He reappeared a moment later.

“Ferdy has found guns,” he said. “Lots of guns.”

“That’s great, Ferdy,” Brodie said. “We’ll come up and join you.”

The chamber they were standing in was becoming more crowded by the second. It seemed the entire population of Sartaria had decided to participate in the impromptu revolution and had escaped the vast slave city in one enormous wave. The room was some sort of large supply chamber filled with boxes. Someone had broken one open and found food supplies. They had begun to distribute them to the crowd while Brodie and the others stacked a few boxes and used them to climb up into the room above. It quickly became apparent that Ferdy had discovered the mother lode. It was more than a storage chamber. It was a full armory. There were hundreds of rifles lining the walls. People started up the makeshift ladder after them.

Brodie realised they needed a plan and they needed it quickly.

“We need to take command of the bridge,” Zena said. It turned out she had been a military officer on Corrida. “Once we have control of this ship we can go wherever we want.”

“How do we get there?” Bax asked.

Ferdy brought up a schematic on the wall displaying a diagram of the ship. While Bax and Zena studied it, Brodie assembled her friends. The last few hours had been so chaotic it seemed a million years since they had been able to speak.

“How is everyone holding up?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Dan said. “I’m part of a rebellion taking place on an alien ship orbiting the Earth. What more could a boy want?”

The group laughed.

“I’m okay,” Ebony said. “A little tired, but still on my feet.”

“What about you, Ferdy?” Brodie asked.

“Ferdy is having fun,” he said.

“Fun?” Dan said.

“Ferdy likes to be with his friends.” The boy placed his arms around them and they all huddled closer together. “We will meet later with our friends Chad and Axel. We will play some games.”

“I’m sure we will,” Brodie said.

The mention of Axel’s name made Brodie realise how much she missed him. During the last few, crazy hours she had not had a chance to think about him. He had been sent on a mission by the Tagaar to create disharmony. What did that mean? Was he all right? Was he even alive?

She wondered sometimes about her feelings for him. He had never used the L word. What did that mean? Maybe they weren’t in love. Maybe they were just friends. Certainly, he often seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. She had noticed he spent a lot of time with Ebony. Maybe that meant –

She stopped herself.

Shut up
, she thought.
And focus!

Bax and Zena rejoined them.

“We have a plan,” Bax said. “We will make our way through the ship until we reach Engineering.”

“Why Engineering?” Ebony asked.

Zena spoke. “If we control the power supply, we control the ship.”

“Then we need to advance.” The voice came from behind them. It was Ragin. “You should know that I regret my previous actions. I can see we should not have agreed to hand you over to the Tagaar.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Brodie said. “You were doing what you felt was right for your people.”

“I think we need to keep moving,” Dan said. “This room is getting pretty full.”

He was right. The surge of people from Sartaria had not slowed. The armory was almost full to overflowing. More and more people were streaming up the makeshift ladder into the room with every passing second.

Zena yelled a few commands to several of the armed citizens. Someone carefully opened the door leading to the corridor beyond. It was deserted. The crowd swelled through the gap and started pouring down the corridor. Brodie found herself being carried along with it. She caught sight of Ebony and grabbed the girl’s arm.

“Stay close,” she said. “I’m not sure if this is such a good idea.”

“What do you mean?” Ebony asked.

“There are too many people,” Brodie said. “We need to –”