The Gathering: Quantum Prophecy 2 (8 page)

Maneuvering slowly and carefully through the snowstorm, the StratoTruck touched down on the wide, flat roof. “All right,” Cord said. “It’s freezing out there so no hanging around! Grab your bags and let’s go, people!”

The hatch opened and the wind howled through the vehicle. Colin was the last to leave—it didn’t seem all that cold to him—and he took a few seconds to look around. He guessed that the roof of the building was about the length of a football field in each direction. It was almost featureless except for a wide stairway that led down to a set of steel doors and a hangar that was just large enough to take the StratoTruck.

“Come on, Colin!” his father shouted from the top of the stairwell.

Colin hurried over to the others and followed them down to the doors.

As he got closer, he saw that the man he’d spotted from almost a mile away was wrapped in a thick coat. He was smiling at them, his cheeks red with the cold.

“Hi, I’m Josh Dalton.” Josh was in his early thirties, with thinning hair and a touch of flabbiness around his face and neck. “So everyone’s here? Great!” He pointed to a glowing glass panel next to the doors. “Handprint reader,” he explained. “These doors are impossible to open to anyone not registered on the system. Right now, you’re all being scanned to check your identities. It’ll take a couple of minutes.”

“What other security does this place have?” Warren asked.

“Very thick walls,” Josh said, with a sly smile. “Seriously. The whole shell of the building is four-foot-thick concrete reinforced with steel beams. Its pyramidal shape means that structurally it’s very sound. The windows are two-inch Plexiglas, completely bulletproof. Nothing short of a nuclear weapon is going to breach this building. This is the
only
way in; the doorway on the ground level is fake. Inside, every room has only one doorway and all the doors can be sealed remotely. In the unlikely event of someone breaking in, we just seal all the doors and they’re trapped.”

“What about people? I mean, actual human security guards?”

“We have two security specialists; they’re the men currently guarding your homes.” Josh smiled. “With our system, we don’t really
need
security guards.”

Rose Cooper said, “That’s all very well, Mr. Dalton, but locking all the doors doesn’t sound too safe if there’s a fire!”

“Every room is equipped with at least two CDH delivery systems. CDH is Carbon Dioxide Hydrate. If a fire is detected the system shoots out hundreds of tiny CDH pellets. They react to the heat and release water and carbon dioxide.” Josh smiled again. “Trust me on this, Rose…Your boys will be safe here.”

The glass panel beeped once and a green light came on. Josh pressed his hand against the panel and the doors slid quietly open. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your new home, headquarters and general base of operations. Welcome to Sakkara.”

W
HILE THE OTHERS WERE BEING SHOWN
to their rooms, Solomon Cord took Colin, Renata and Danny on a brief tour of Sakkara.

Their first stop was what Cord called “Nostalgia Central”—a large, mostly empty room that contained a dozen life-sized mannequins, each in its own glass case. Most of the mannequins were bare, but three of them wore replicas of the costumes once worn by The High Command.

“Josh says he’s been planning to turn this room into a sort of superhero museum,” Cord explained. “If you ask me, it’s a little self-indulgent.”

Colin stopped in front of the mannequin wearing Max Dalton’s costume. “Doesn’t look much like him.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “Shouldn’t it be wearing a prison uniform?”

Renata walked around the blank mannequins and said, “Hey, most of these things have names on them! Apex, Titan, there’s Energy over there! What’s this empty one for…? Oh.” Her face fell.

“What is it?” Danny asked, walking over to her.

“It’s me.” Renata pointed to the small plaque on the base of the empty glass case. “Diamond. Real name unknown. Why is there no mannequin in it?”

Solomon Cord said, “When you got frozen, everyone thought you were dead. Josh was going to put you there.”

Renata shivered. “God, that’s just creepy!”

“Max had put your body into storage. Josh said that he’d never been able to figure out a way of getting you back without alerting his brother as to what he was up to.”

“So Max didn’t know that Josh was involved?”

“No,” Cord said. “Max was too well-known to be brought in. With a place like this, even the slightest hint that something is going on and it would become public knowledge.”

Cord led them back out into the stark, empty corridors. “Josh knows a lot more about the history of Sakkara than I do. But I can fill in some of the background for you…A little over forty years ago the U.S. government established a facility for research into superhuman activities. They tried to understand why some people developed powers. Was there any connection between these people? Perhaps some similarities on a genetic level? Had any of them been exposed to unusual radioactive or biological substances?”

“And that’s this place?” Colin asked.

“No. After the attack on Ragnarök’s battle-tank, when the superhumans all lost their powers, that facility was officially disbanded. The people who ran it were blamed for everything that Ragnarök did.”

“Right,” Renata said. “Because he was their prisoner and they let him escape.”

“That’s just the
official
story,” Solomon said, then paused. “The man who became Ragnarök was not a prisoner. He worked for the facility. He was the only one who had any real understanding of how the powers worked. He was involved in certain experiments—I’m not sure exactly what, Josh won’t tell me—and he wanted to take those experiments further. When he was refused
permission, he left. Disappeared for years before resurfacing as Ragnarök. At some stage before the last battle, much of the research carried out at the facility somehow found its way into Max Dalton’s hands. It’s generally assumed that the information was stolen by Quantum, under Max’s control.”

Danny cringed.

“Regardless of how it happened, the truth is that the facility was not disbanded. This place was built and everything was relocated here. Outside of those who work here, only a handful of people in the political and military world know of Sakkara’s existence.”

“Sakkara…,” Renata said. “The name sounds familiar.”

“Well, it’s not a name I would have chosen,” Cord said. “About four thousand years ago Sakkara was part of the necropolis of Memphis, the Egyptian capital during the first and second dynasties.”

“A necropolis,” Danny said. “Remind me again what that is?”

“A tomb. Whoever chose the name Sakkara was obviously a fan of ancient Egypt. Either that or they didn’t know the names of any other pyramids.”

“So how
did
Josh get involved?” Colin asked.

“He’s a smart guy, plus he used to be a superhuman, which made him doubly qualified.” Solomon paused. “He wasn’t their first choice. I was, but I didn’t want the job. Until a couple of years ago, Sakkara was run by an air force man, General Scott Piers. When he retired, Josh was appointed chief of operations. His primary goals are to continue his research into the superhuman phenomenon, and to track down and investigate any other potential superhumans.”

Renata said, “Mr. Cord, I don’t like the idea of working for a government.”

“Right now there’s no other option,” Solomon replied.

“There’s the Trutopians. That guy Kinsella wants us to work for him.”

“You don’t know anything about him, Renata.”

“We don’t really know much about this place either,” she replied.

“At Sakkara we have resources and equipment you wouldn’t believe. We will train you three and the others. Trust me: this is the best approach. Between myself, Warren, Caroline, Josh and Façade we have a
lot
of superhuman experience.”

Their next stop was a large dining hall that took up half the top floor of the building. Some of the tables were occupied by people in white coats who couldn’t help staring at the teenagers as they stood in the doorway.

“Dining hall,” Cord said. “All the meals are served here. There are forty-six people in Sakkara, so it can get pretty crowded at times.”

Danny walked over to one of the large windows and looked out. He could see the lights of Topeka, the capital city of the state of Kansas. The heavy snow clouds above the city were orange and yellow from the city’s lights. “Sol, I can’t believe that a building this large—and this close to a city—could stay a secret.”

“The people who designed this place were smart; they landscaped the entire area so that unless you’re right next to it, the building can be seen only from the air. And if anyone
does
see it from the air, it looks just like a water-treatment plant. In fact, part of the facility is given over to that function, just in case
anyone ever investigates. We take a minimal amount of power from the local grid; the rest of it is supplied by a geothermal energy converter.”

“A geo-what?” Colin asked.

“It takes the heat from deep within the Earth and converts it to electricity.”

Renata asked, “Couldn’t someone just find the place by following the StratoTruck?”

“We’re right in the heart of a no-fly zone; any aircraft coming within two miles will be ordered to change course by air traffic control.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then there’s an air force base not far from here. The ATC people think that’s what the no-fly zone is protecting. Everything we need—food, clothing, electronics, whatever—comes to us through disguised channels. Basically, unless you actually work here, there’s no way to tell that it exists.”

Colin said, “I know I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but…what about school?”

“We have a full-time tutor,” Cord replied. “And your mother’s a teacher too, right? She’ll be able to make sure you get all the education you need.”

Renata turned to him. “Mr. Cord, how long are we going to be here?”

Cord shrugged. “I don’t know. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place.”

He led them to a dark, windowless room in the heart of the building. It was filled with large white metal objects, each over two meters tall. “The computer room,” Cord explained. “Seven
custom-built machines linked to a bank of Cray XD4s. I’m told that this is the single greatest concentration of computing power in the country.”

“Wow!” Colin said, walking around one of the featureless white boxes. “What do you need them for?”

“Number crunching and data processing. We have permanent high-speed links to NASA and most of the large universities in the U.S. Josh tells me that’s one of the ways this place can keep running: we process their data for them and charge them for it. There’s stuff that goes on here that even
he
doesn’t have access to.”

“Yeah, but can you play games on them?” Danny asked.

Renata walked over to one of the computer terminals. On screen was a complex, rotating three-dimensional image. “What’s this?”

“DNA analysis,” Cord said. “That’s one of Josh’s pet projects. They’re still trying to figure out whether superhuman powers come from your DNA or somewhere else.”

“Where else
could
the powers come from?”

“Aliens,” Danny said. “At least, that’s what Niall thinks.”

“Hey, look at this!” Colin called from the far side of the room. “There’s lots of videos of the old superheroes back when they had their powers!” He used the computer’s mouse to select a video from the list. “It’s…” He looked up at Danny. “It’s your father. It’s Quantum.”

Danny and Renata watched over Colin’s shoulder. The computer monitor showed a paused video of a dark room with a single white-clad figure sitting in the middle. Quantum’s hood had been pulled back and he bore a startling resemblance to Danny.

“How old is this?” Danny asked.

Colin checked the date in the corner of the screen. “Fourteen years and…” Colin paused. “This is the day you were born.”

Cord said, “Wait a second! That terminal should have been locked!” He leaned over Colin’s shoulder. “Danny, if that video is what I think it is, it might not be a good idea to watch it. It concerns the prophecy.”

Danny bit his lip. “The one about me?”

Cord nodded.

Colin looked at Danny, his finger hovering over the mouse’s button.

Danny nodded. “Play it!”

Colin hit the button and the video began to play.

On screen, Quantum was rocking back and forth. A voice from an unseen person asked, “What happened?”

“Twenty-two minutes ago,” Quantum said, his voice weak. “Eight pounds exactly. A boy. He’s perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes. He didn’t cry. That’s strange, isn’t it? Don’t all newborn babies cry? He’s…”

“He’s what?”

“We have to do something, Max. My son…I saw something when I held him.”

“What did you see, Paul?”

“The end. The end of everything. He was there, leading them. None of
us
were there. None of us. Do you understand what that means?”

“I’m afraid I…”

“You
should
be afraid, Max. We should all be afraid. The end
is coming and my son is at the heart of it.” Quantum stopped rocking, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “There’s war and death. The skies are black with smoke and dust. The ground is red with blood. The seas are burning. There’s anger in him, a raging fury that nothing can stop. No, his friends are there. They fight for those who can’t fight back.”

“When will this happen?”

Quantum shook his head. “Difficult to say…He’s tall, strong, muscular. A teenager at least. But not much older than that. Why can’t I see his eyes? No, he’s gone now…But there’s something else. A rip.”

“A rip?”

“A chasm. Something is torn.”

“Paul, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ah…I see him again. He knows, Max. The war is coming and he knows that he’s at the heart of it. Billions of deaths on his hands.”

“How can we prevent this?”

“We can’t,” Quantum said. He paused, then added, “
We
can’t. We won’t be there.”

“Is this war inevitable?”