The Gathering: Quantum Prophecy 2 (13 page)

Colin looked. He always felt a little uncomfortable being so far from the ground. “What?”

Renata pushed.

Colin barely had time to see the look of anticipation on her face before he was suddenly tumbling down through the air.
Oh crap! I’m going to die!

“Fly, Colin!” Renata shouted. “Fly!”

You can do it!
His mind screamed.
Fly! Fly! Fly! FLY!

Colin hit the ground facefirst.

G
OD
,
THAT HURTS
! C
OLIN SAID TO HIM
self.
Am I alive? Must be if it hurts.

His father’s voice said, “Didn’t work, huh?”

Colin painfully raised his head to see Warren standing in front of him wearing a heavy overcoat and a woolen hat. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, then reached down and helped Colin to his feet.

From behind them came a resounding
crash.
They turned to see Diamond—in statue form—topple over on to the street. A second later, she glistened and turned back to her normal self, then stood up.

“What the hell were you
thinking
?” Colin shouted at Renata.

She shrugged. “We thought it would be a good idea.”

“A good idea? Look!” Colin pointed up. “That’s where we were! Fourteen floors up! And
you pushed
me!”

“I see it didn’t do any damage to your complaining glands,” his father said.

“Dad, I could have broken my neck!”

“But you didn’t.”

“The two of you, listen to me very carefully: I. Cannot. Fly.”

“Well, we know that
now
,” Renata said.

“You think I haven’t tried? I try every day! I do it the clever way, by trying to take off from the ground.”

“Is your headset still intact?” Warren asked. “Caroline, can you hear him?”

Caroline’s voice said, “There’s a sort of high-pitched squealing coming through. So yes, it’s working fine.”

“Great,” Colin said sulkily. “You’re all against me.”

“Hold the chatter,” Caroline said. “I’m getting a report of a disturbance three blocks east of your position. Go and check it out.”

Renata looked around. “Which way is east?”

“That way,” Colin said, pointing.

“Make it fast,” his mother said.

Leaving Warren behind, Colin and Renata started to run along the deserted street.
This is why we need Danny with us
, Colin said to himself.
He’d be there and back by now, if he had his powers.

“What’s the situation, Mrs. Wagner?” Renata asked as she ran.

“It’s a domestic disturbance. A known wife-beater. A lot of shouting, glass breaking.”

“Do we have the right to enter someone’s house?”

Colin said, “Let’s just make sure that everyone is safe.
Then
we can worry about whether we’re trespassing.”

They rounded the last corner on to a quiet, dark street. Six-story-tall tenement buildings loomed over them. “We’re here. What’s the address?”

“Number three-seventeen, second-floor apartment, at the front.”

“I see it,” Colin said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Colin dashed across the street.
I might not be able to fly
, he said to himself,
but I’m strong enough to jump!
He leaped on to the iron railings in front of the building. The window above his head was open and a light was on. As he was about to leap, Renata shouted, “Wait!”

At that moment, another scream echoed through the street.
Don’t have
time
to wait
, Colin thought. He crouched and jumped—diving straight through the open window. His hands hit the rough, bare floorboards and he flipped over on to his feet.

Right in front of him, a large heavyset man had his arms wrapped around a scared-looking woman.

Without a word, Colin grabbed the man, lifted him off his feet and threw him to the floor. “How does
that
feel?” Colin asked. “You like being on the
receiving
end of a beating for a change?”

Something bounced off Colin’s head, but he barely noticed it. “You think it’s OK for someone who’s strong to pick on someone who’s weak? Because from where
I’m
standing,
you’re
the weak one. You ever lay a hand on this woman again and you’re going to have a hell of a time trying to pick up your teeth with broken fingers!”

“Leave him alone!” the woman screamed. He turned to see that she was hitting him across the head with a ceramic lamp.

“Please stop that,” Colin said.
God, I’ve read about how abused wives sometimes stand up for their husbands, but this is crazy!
She kept hitting him. “Stop, please.” The lamp finally shattered across Colin’s face. “I promise that you’re safe now. He won’t hurt you again.”

“He has
never
hurt me!”

“Um…Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure? We’ve been married for twenty-six years! He’s never so much as raised his voice to me!”

Colin cringed. “But…There was a police report. About a domestic disturbance.”

“Yes! Next door! We’re the ones who called the cops!”

“Your light was on…,” Colin said, realizing that it was a very weak argument.

“Sure it was. The noise next door woke us up.”

Caroline’s voice came over the radio. “You got the wrong apartment, Colin!”

“Aw crap!” He looked sheepishly at the couple. “Sorry about that.”

“Renata’s already taken care of it,” his mother said.

“OK. Thanks.”

The woman was helping her husband into a chair. “Who are you talking to?”

“My mo…” Colin paused. “Er…Headquarters. Sorry about the mistake.”

“No harm done,” the man said. “And you meant well. What’s your name, son?”

“Wait a second,” the woman said. She stepped up to Colin—she was a little taller than him—and looked closely at his face. “It’s hard to be sure with your mask on, but it’s you, isn’t it? Rube, this is the new Titan!”

Great
, Colin thought.
I decide I’m going to change my superhero name and then someone finally gets it right!
“Uh, no, I’m not Titan. I’m new at this. As you can tell. Sorry again about the mistake.”

There was a screech of tires from outside and the room was filled with flashing blue and red lights. Colin looked out the window and saw Renata pushing a scrawny, wild-looking man out to a waiting squad car.

Rube stood next to Colin, looking out. He rested his hand on
Colin’s shoulder. “So you got the wrong apartment. At least you tried. You did more than most people do.”

“What
is
your name, anyway?” the woman asked.

Colin shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”

The helicopter swooped so low over the trees that Dioxin was sure he’d be able to hear the branches hitting the landing struts any second now. Far ahead, he could see the lights of the small airport.

He glanced around. The copter was filled with mercenaries, a handpicked team. Dioxin had worked with all of them before at various times. He knew all their strengths and weaknesses.

The pilot said, “Three minutes! Hold tight.” The copter swerved to the left and began to drop.

“All right, people!” Dioxin shouted. “You know the job. We go in hard and fast. I want a high rate of property damage and casualties. In and out as fast as possible. Got me?”

As one, the soldiers nodded an affirmative.

“You’ve been briefed on the two targets. Find them first; separate them from the others. Shoot them if necessary but do
not
kill them! Anyone else is fair game. Remember, this is a PR exercise. We
want
them to know what hit them.”

The pilot’s voice said, “We’ve got their attention. ATC is ordering us to back off.”

“Ignore them!” Dioxin shouted. “Continue as planned!”

“Wilco.”

The copter touched down right outside the passenger terminal. “Go!” Dioxin shouted.

He watched as the soldiers leaped from the copter and burst into the terminal, guns firing. Even over the roar of the rotors, he could hear screams from inside the building. He counted to twenty, then followed them.

Even though only seconds had passed, the terminal was almost completely gutted. There were bodies everywhere. Dioxin looked around. “No one left for me?”

“No, sir,” one of the mercenaries replied, “just the two targets.” He gestured toward a middle-aged man and woman lying on the floor. “Unconscious. Nonlethal wounds.”

“Good work.” Dioxin strode through the wreckage, stepping over the bodies, occasionally prodding one with his foot. Satisfied, he turned to the nearest mercenary. “Make the mark.”

The man looked around and spotted a blank wall that was relatively undamaged and free of blood-splatters. He unclipped a can of spray paint from his belt and began to scrawl a message.

“If you don’t want to be Titan anymore, Col, I’ve got a good name for you,” Razor said over breakfast the next morning. “Pancake!”

“Let it go, Razor,” Colin said, spooning up the last of his cereal.

“How about…The Apologizer!”

Danny laughed. “Gravity Boy!”

Stephanie said, “I’ve got it…Downfall!”

This sparked another round of laughter from the group. Despite his embarrassment, Colin couldn’t help smiling at that one.

Yvonne said, “Forget about it, Colin. I’m sure that every superhero has a night like that when they’re starting out.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Roadkill.”

Everyone erupted again.

“God, you lot are so immature!” Colin said. He looked at Razor. “Especially
you.
Garland.”

Razor almost dropped his coffee cup. “What did you just say?”

“Nothing. Garland.”

The older boy’s eyes blazed. “Who told you?”

“Who told me what, Garland?”

“Oh, for the love of…It was Sol, wasn’t it? I begged him not to say anything!”

Grinning, Colin said, “So what’s your middle name, Mr. Lighthouse?”

Razor slumped forward and put his head in his hands. “I can’t believe he told you
that
too!”

To the others, Colin said, “The first time I met Mr. Garland Lighthouse here he refused to tell me his real name. Now we know why.”

They all jumped when an alarm rang out.

“What the hell is that?” Butler asked.

Josh’s voice boomed out of some hidden speakers. “This is a priority-one alert! All senior members to Ops immediately!”

“This is
not
a drill! All nonessential personnel will be evacuated immediately following this meeting,” Josh said.

On one side of the briefing room, Colin stood with Danny, Renata, Yvonne, Mina, Razor and Butler. On the other side were Josh and Solomon, wearing his Paragon armor.

“Until further notice,” Josh continued, “we run with a skeleton-crew
only. I’ll be honest: we don’t know exactly what we’re facing. We don’t know when it’s going to happen, but we do know that it’s not going to be good. What bothers me most is that outside of this building, only a handful of people know where we are. I would trust each one of them with my life. They will never talk. No one else even knows that this place
exists.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you’re all currently somewhere in New York City. But somehow our security has been breached. It can’t be by someone on the inside because we monitor all communications in and out.”

“So how do you know that there
is
a breach?” Danny asked.

“Because of this…” Josh hit a switch on his console and a large screen lowered from the ceiling. “Last night, a small airport in Nevada…” The screen showed security camera footage of eight well-armed men bursting into the airport. They fired indiscriminately and continuously. Then a ninth man entered, looked around and seemed pleased with the results.

“Two survivors. Almost one hundred fatalities,” Josh said.

“My God…That’s…Who
are
they?”

“We don’t know, Renata. They came out of nowhere. Whoever they are, they knew exactly what they were doing. This was not a random strike; from the security camera footage it’s clear that they knew the layout of the place and where all the staff would be. The man with the serious facial scarring appears to be the leader, but we don’t know anything else. The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security are at the scene now, but it’s doubtful they’ll turn up anything useful.”

Renata said, “If these people were professionals, why did they leave all the security cameras running?”

“They wanted us to know,” Solomon said coldly. “They did it because they wanted us to know that they
could
do something like this, that they were willing to do it and that they know about us.”

The screen showed a large white wall, with a single word spray-painted on it:
SAKKARA.

J
OSH LEFT THE ROOM TO PREPARE
everyone for the evacuation, but Solomon remained behind to talk to the teenagers. “They know where we are. We don’t even know
who
they are. Façade believes that the attack was a deliberate attempt to provoke us and I’m inclined to agree with him.”

“So if these killers know about us,” Renata said, “then that might mean that someone on the inside told them.”

Razor said, “Sol, this might sound dumb, but…Couldn’t it be a coincidence? For all we know there could be an old rock band called Sakkara.”

“Think about that for a minute, Razor…A team of ruthlessly efficient, highly trained soldiers attacks an airport and murders almost a hundred people just so that they can spray-paint the name of their favorite band on the wall. I really don’t think so.”

“They’re going to come here,” Danny said. “We have to prepare for war.”

Colin—who had remained silent throughout the meeting—said, “We have to assume that they know everything about us.
Everything.
I don’t think that it’s a good idea to evacuate. That only means that we’d have to protect our people somewhere else. They’re better off here, for now.”

“So what do you think we should do?” Butler asked angrily. “This is a textbook terrorist strike: they come out of the blue, hit a random target and disappear.”