The Gathering: Quantum Prophecy 2 (12 page)

Colin twisted the material around in his hands. “Oops. Tears easily.”

“For you maybe.
I
need a hacksaw to get through it! Your helmets will be made of this stuff too.”

“Helmets?”

“Yeah.” He tapped at the keyboard and another screen appeared, this one showing a rotating head wearing a one-piece cowl. “Covers most of your face, so that’ll help keep your anonymity. Not that there’s any point with you because I doubt there’s a person on the planet who doesn’t know what Kid Titan really looks like.”

“It’s Titan, not
Kid
Titan.”

Razor grinned. “Whatever you say.” He tapped at the monitor with the end of his pen. “The helmets have a two-way radio built in, so that you can communicate with the others or with us here.”

“No cape?” Colin asked. “I want a cape! Capes are cool!”

“Colin, each one of these suits costs about half a million dollars. It’d cost nearly that much again for a cape. So. No capes.”

“But we’re all going to look the same! Can’t we all have a different symbol on the chest? I could have the
T
from the Titan costume. Renata could have a diamond.”

“You’ll have to talk to Josh about that. He’s very into the whole image thing.”

“What about weapons?”

“You don’t need any weapons. But I’ll show you some of the cool stuff we’re working on for the new Paragon armor.”

Razor led Colin over to another workbench, this one covered in odd-looking equipment. “We’re trying to fit most of the weapons right
into
the suit. That’s one of the things that’s been slowing us down.” He pointed to some of the items in turn. “Gas-powered grappling gun, with a fifty-meter line. The line can hold about half a ton. It’ll fit into the suit’s left wrist. The right wrist will have a Taser. Let’s see…” He picked up a bundle of pebble-sized
black objects. “Knockout-gas pellets. We’re building a launcher for them that’ll go on the suit’s right forearm. Oh and there’s
this
beauty!” He grunted as he lifted up a football-sized object. “We call it a blackout bomb. It’s way too big at the moment—we’re trying to get it down to about the size of an apple.”

“What’s it do?”

“It’s basically a smoke-bomb, but instead of smoke it pumps out billions of tiny black particles that just drift about in the air. The cool part is that the labcoats here have come up with a way to generate a small electrical field that’ll prevent the particles from dispersing too far.”

“Which means?”

“If you activate one of these, you get a sphere of solid darkness that’ll fill a large room. It only lasts a few minutes, but even your enhanced night-vision probably wouldn’t be able to see through it. And then there’s the hushbomb. We don’t have a working one yet. The idea is that it takes in all the sound waves around it, and broadcasts them back inverted, canceling out the real sound waves. Throw one of them at someone and he’ll be temporarily deaf. It should be very effective if we can combine it with the blackout bomb.”

Looking around the workbench, Colin spotted a device that looked like a complex handgun. “What’s this?” He grabbed it and started aiming it at various objects around the room.

“That’s a glue gun,” Razor replied.

“Wow! How’s it work?”

“It’s not a
weapon
, Col. We use it to glue things to other things.”

“Oh.” Colin squeezed the trigger and a long stream of glue
squirted out, landing all over a large wrench that was resting on the bench.

“Damn!” Razor said. “Grab it quick before the glue sets!”

Colin took hold of the wrench and picked it up. The heavy steel bench rose in the air, its contents crashing on to the floor. “Strong stuff.”

Razor looked at him. “You or the glue?”

Colin bent down and began picking up the fallen items. “Sorry about that. Hope I didn’t break anything.” As he replaced everything on the bench, he noticed that one of the items looked like a steel glove. “Part of the new Paragon suit?”

“Yeah. Here, let me show you how it works…” Razor pressed something on the inside of the glove and it split open along the palm. “See these little pads? They’re pressure switches. They can sense how much pressure the wearer is applying. There will be hundreds of these all over the suit.”

“What for?”

“The suit’s too heavy for someone to move around in it as it is. These switches read the wearer’s movements and send that data to the computer, which uses the information to decide how to control the motors and miniature hydraulic pumps.”

Colin nodded. “Clever. Sol said that the suit will be like a robot that you wear.”

“Exactly.”

“That gives me an idea…”

At that moment, Colin’s parents and Solomon Cord were in Sakkara’s Operations Room—called Ops—to plan the coming night’s training session.

Joshua Dalton had spread a map of Topeka over the large table. “On a night like this I’m not expecting them to run into any trouble, so they won’t be out long. It’ll be a test of their new uniforms and equipment as much as anything else.”

He pointed out various locations on the map. “We’ll drop them off here, get them to move to here, here and here, then back to their starting point where Renata can do her thing.” He glanced up at Caroline. “You talked to her about that?”

Caroline nodded. “She’s OK with it.”

“Good. Let’s hope it works.” Looking back at the map, he said, “If everything goes well tonight, I’m going to put Colin, Yvonne and Butler on the Alpha team. Sol will lead Renata and Mina on the Beta team.”

“Colin and Renata have been here only for a day,” Warren said. “I’m not sure they’re ready to go out yet. They’ve never even
seen
the city.”

Cord said, “The world knows they exist now. It won’t be long before they’re called to help out in some crisis. We need them ready as soon as possible. And I’m not just talking about the superhumans: I want to fully train my daughters. And Razor.”

“No,” Josh said. “They’ll be a liability.”

“I’m with Sol on this one,” Caroline said. “What if someone else figures out a way to strip their superhuman powers? After Ragnarök’s machine was used a lot of us would have died if Sol hadn’t been there. We need ordinary humans as much as we need superhumans.”

“Right now,” Cord said to Josh, “your people are working around the clock on the new Paragon armor. It’s still months away from completion, but once the prototype is up and running
we will be able to replicate it. We could have more than just
one
Paragon.”

Josh said, “I seem to remember Max making that same suggestion to you about sixteen years ago. You refused. What’s changed since then?”

“With his mind-control powers, Max was one of the most powerful superhumans. I didn’t trust him. And I was right not to.”

“But you trust me?”

Solomon Cord shook his head. “Not yet. But then
you’re
not the most powerful. Of these new heroes…Butler’s self-obsessed and dangerous. Renata’s got a lot of baggage because of the ten years she lost. Danny…even leaving aside the fact that he doesn’t have any powers, we all remember what happened to his father. Let’s just hope that he only inherited Quantum’s speed and not his instability. Mina’s too self-conscious and Yvonne is too flighty. Colin is the only one of them we can fully trust.”

Warren grinned. “He takes after his old man.”

“Colin’s reliable, pretty calm in a crisis, incredibly resourceful…Let’s be honest, Warren, when
you
were his age, would you have been able to do what he did in Jacksonville? He was completely alone, in a country he knew nothing about, no money, no food…The only thing he had was my name, but he managed to get all the way to Virginia and track me down. And he even picked up an ally along the way.”

Josh said, “Actually, I’ve got serious reservations about Razor.”

“I know you do,” Cord said. “But the point is this: of these six new heroes, Colin is the only who has definitely got what it
takes. It’s not superpowers that make someone a hero. It’s an instinctive knowledge of right and wrong, and the courage to always—always—stick to what you know is right, no matter what the consequences might be.”

As Solomon Cord flew the StratoTruck toward the heart of Topeka, Colin looked around at the other teenagers. They were all wearing their new black uniforms. Yvonne and Mina were so close in height and build that with their masks on the others were having trouble telling them apart.

“We definitely need some sort of symbols!” Colin said. “Yvonne, what’s your superhero name?”

“I’m Mina.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. So what name are you using?”

The girl shrugged.

Yvonne said, “She doesn’t have one. We’ve never been able to come up with a good name for either of us. I want a name that sounds cool and describes what I can do.”

“Yeah, but what
can
you do?” Butler asked, then quickly added, “What I mean is, Renata can turn herself into a diamond-hard substance, so Diamond is a good name for her. But what about the rest of us? We need names that are relevant to something that makes us different from each other. I was thinking of calling myself Force Field, but…It sounds kinda lame.”

Renata said, “Your force field appears like a giant bubble, right? So that’s what you call yourself: Bubble.”

The others laughed.

Yvonne said, “He’s right about me though. I can’t go calling myself Brainy or something like that. And Thalamus has already
been used. I want a name like Sage, but people would just think of herbs.”

“Maybe you and Mina could be Sage and Onion?” Butler suggested, laughing.

“I don’t think we need
your
help to solve this one, Bubble.”

Butler looked disgusted. “Yeah, very funny. Joke’s over.”

“Are you still going to call yourself Kid Titan?” Yvonne asked Colin.

“It’s Titan, not
Kid
Titan!” he replied. “No one can ever get that right!” He sighed. “You know, maybe I
will
change it. Yeah, I will. From now on, I’m not Titan anymore. I’m going to pick a new name.”

“One minute!” Cord called. “Prepare yourselves!”

“We’re ready,” Colin said, pulling on his mask.

“You know the route. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour. Caroline’s back in Ops; she’ll be monitoring your positions and keeping you up-to-date over the radio.”

Cord maneuvered the StratoTruck until it was hovering four meters over the roof of a tall building. “Here’s your first surprise: I’m not going to land. You’ll have to jump.” As he spoke, the hatch opened and freezing air rushed into the vehicle.

Renata went first. She stepped out and turned herself solid, crashed to the snow-covered roof below and turned human again.

Butler followed her, his transparent, flexible force field appearing around him as he dropped.

As Yvonne, Mina and Colin jumped down, the StratoTruck rose into the night sky and vanished.

“All right,” Colin said. “I have absolutely no idea where we are. Anyone?”

His mother’s voice came over the radio. “You need to go north from your position, Colin.”

“Yeah, but which way
is
north?”

“Look around: there should be a tall building with twin spires. That’s directly to your east. You can work out the rest from there.”

“Thanks, Mum.”

“You’re welcome. Now we expect you to be able to do the rest of this patrol without any help from us. You’re on your own, in other words.”

Colin walked to the edge of the building’s roof and pointed across the street. “We have to get over there. Any ideas?”

Yvonne said, “We climb down the fire escape, cross the street and climb back up the other fire escape.”

Renata turned to Butler. “How big can you make your force field?”

“Pretty big. I’ve never really tested it for size.”

“And does it have to be round?”

“Any shape I want, but I have to be on the inside.”

“Here’s what we’ll do then. You turn on your force field to cover all of us, extend it across the street to the other building and we’ll walk across.”

“Then how do
I
get over?”

“You walk across on the inside of the force field.”

“But when I move, the force field moves with me! To keep it in one place I’d have to move it backward at the same speed as I move forward…” Butler peered down over the edge. “We’re about fourteen floors up. If it fails…No, I can do this.” He frowned in concentration.

Colin noticed that the wind suddenly stopped. He looked around and saw that they were all now inside what appeared to be a giant, flexible glass shell. As they watched, one side of the shell stretched out over the street and on to the roof opposite.

“Someone want to test it?” Butler asked, his voice strained.

Renata said, “I’ll do it. I’ve got the best chance of surviving the drop.” She crouched at the edge of the roof and reached down with her hand. “Seems solid enough.” Taking a deep breath, Renata stepped out. The force field gave slightly under her weight. It felt like walking on a thick rubber mat. “It’s working!”

She quickly ran across to the opposite roof and the others followed. Colin looked back at Butler and flipped the switch on his radio. “You OK for this?”

“I can do it.”

The force field shimmered and shifted as Butler began to move, but it held. As he stepped on to the roof next to the others, Butler allowed the force field to drop. “That was pretty cool!” he said.

“Nice work, Bubble,” Yvonne said, grinning.

“Do
not
call me that!”

Most of the new heroes were freezing by the time they had made their way back to their starting point. Colin was the only one who didn’t seem to be affected by the cold.

The snow started falling again as they waited for the StratoTruck to return. Butler sheltered them with his force field, opening it briefly every couple of minutes to replace the stale air.

When the StratoTruck arrived and the others were climbing on board, Renata held Colin back. “I’ve got something to show

you,” she said as she led him to the edge of the roof. She put her right hand on his shoulder as she pointed down to the ground with her left. “Look.”