The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 (24 page)

Another hit, this one to his throat. Colin gasped, and began swinging his arms wildly.

His left hand collided with the invisible force, and a shock of pain ran up his arm.

Got to get some distance! Cold didn’t work—maybe lightning will.

Colin turned and ran, charging across the market square. He sensed something brush past him, but before he could react he was hit once more, the blow to his chin sending him reeling backward.

The invisible object slammed into his chest, then his left side. A sharp blow to his right arm left it momentarily numb and useless.

Then the rain of blows turned into a storm: Colin staggered under the onslaught.

Every part of him was being targeted. His head, arms, chest, stomach and legs were being hit so fast that he didn’t have time to react to each blow before the next one landed. The skin on his arms and chest began to erupt in cuts and bruises.

No, this is wrong! This can’t happen to me! I’m one of the good guys!

Then a small part of his brain added,
If I’m one of the good guys, what am I doing working for Yvonne?

Colin crumpled to the ground, unable to take anymore, and the pounding stopped.

I’ve sided with someone who doesn’t care if she kills thousands of people.

He wiped the blood and tears away from his eyes.

I attacked my friends…I nearly killed my dad!

“Go on then!” Colin said. “Whatever you are! Finish this! After what I’ve done, I
deserve
to die!”

Then a figure materialized into existence, silhouetted against the midday sun. Colin blinked rapidly, trying to focus his eyes on the half-man, half-machine standing before him.

“What kind of creature
are
you?” he cried.

The figure said, “Jeez, that’s a fine thing to say to your best friend.”

D
ANNY
C
OOPER HAD NEVER FELT MORE
powerful than he did now. Or more ashamed.

He looked down at the mechanical arm that was attached to his body by a complex harness. With this weapon, he had beaten his best friend almost to a pulp.

Now, Colin was slowly, painfully, getting to his feet.

“Stay down,” Danny said.

“Danny, I… I can’t help myself. I have to fight you.”

“You stopped a few minutes ago. You just gave up.”

“That’s because I didn’t know what I was fighting. Yvonne ordered me to fight the Trutopians’ enemies. She didn’t tell me to defend myself.” Colin leaped forward, at the same time blasting at Danny with a powerful lightning bolt.

Danny immediately shifted into slow-time, and dodged to the left. As Colin passed, Danny slammed down on the back of his head with his metal arm.

He switched back to normal-time, and watched Colin crash to the ground. “Just stop, Colin. You can break her programming.”

“You think I haven’t
tried
?”

“She ordered you to kill us before, back in Lieberstan, right? You had plenty of opportunities, but you didn’t do it. If you can break that part of her programming, you can break all of it.”

Colin wiped the blood from his nose and mouth. “Not that easy, Dan.” He began staring at the mechanical arm.

Danny could feel the arm growing hot. “What are you doing?” He switched to slow-time, and examined his arm, flexing its artificial joints. It seemed to be working fine, but a couple more seconds and Colin could have melted it.

I’m going to have to beat him into unconsciousness,
Danny thought.

He ran around to the opposite side of Colin, raised his arm and brought it down hard on his friend’s head. He struck again, and again.

As before, it was like pounding a stone wall with a hammer. But no matter how tough the wall, sooner or later, it was going to crack.

Then, as Danny watched, Colin turned his head and stared at him.

He shouldn’t be able to do that! I’m in slow-time!

Colin grabbed hold of the man-made arm with his left hand and hauled himself to his feet.

Danny tried to pull away, but Colin’s grip was unbreakable.

Colin clenched his right hand into a fist and pulled it back.

No!
Danny did the only thing he could: He grabbed for the harness’s quick-release catch and ran, leaving behind the only chance he had of beating Colin. He’d sprinted six blocks before he risked looking back.

Colin was twenty meters behind him, flying along just above ground level.

Far ahead, Danny spotted the StratoTruck.
Can’t go that way, don’t want Colin to try to use Renata against me.

He changed direction, put on another burst of speed, heading
south, away from the StratoTruck. He wished that he was still able to move as fast as the day he’d lost his powers—and his arm. That day, he was sure, he’d moved faster than the speed of light. Somehow he knew that he’d never be able to move that fast again.

Danny risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The street behind was empty. He turned left at the next corner. He slowed down, shifted into normal-time, and looked around, hoping to spot a familiar landmark.
There!

The mechanical arm lay on the ground almost directly ahead. He raced toward it, snatched it up, and had just clipped it into place when Colin was suddenly on him, crashing down from above, knocking him to the ground.

Stephanie Cord adjusted the jetpack’s controls to set her down on the roof of a large apartment building next to the Trutopian town’s main square.

I must be mad, doing this. It’s been ages since I used the jetpack, and I’ve never been in combat.

She activated her helmet’s radio. “Razor?”

“Steph? What’s your status?”

“I don’t think I’ve been seen yet. I’m trying to home in on Yvonne’s position, but I’m not exactly sure which building she’s in.”

“Danny and Renata?”

“Renata’s not doing so well. It hurt her a lot to change us. Now she’s turned herself solid to try and wait out the pain. I don’t know where Danny is. He went after Colin.”

“Steph, we’ve got to put an end to this soon. The Trutopians are fighting like maniacs. You’ve got to get to Yvonne and force her to order them to stop.”

A small crater appeared in the roof close to Stephanie, showering her with tiny fragments of concrete.

“What the… ? Someone’s shooting at me!”

She hit the jetpack’s controls and soared into the air, spinning about in the hope of spotting the sniper.

A bullet plowed into her side, knocking her off-balance. She immediately dropped down and checked her abdomen. The bullet hadn’t penetrated her uniform, but it felt like she’d been punched in the kidneys.
God,
that’s
going to leave a mark.

As she looked, a red dot of light appeared on her stomach.

Stephanie hit the jetpack’s afterburners and shot straight up. She switched her helmet’s visor to infrared mode, then looked around again. Almost directly ahead of her, on one of the other rooftops, was a bright human-shaped image.

Stephanie darted to the right, curved around one of the larger apartment blocks, dropped down to ground level and headed straight toward the sniper’s building.
Can’t hit me from this angle…I hope.

When she reached the sniper’s building she executed a perfect ninety-degree turn, heading straight up, only inches away from the side of the building.

Ahead, she could see the muzzle of the sniper’s rifle protruding over the edge of the roof.

She reached out her hand, adjusted her course a little and grabbed hold of the barrel, snatching it from the sniper’s grip.

Stephanie set down on the roof a few meters away from the astonished sniper.

The man made a grab for his sidearm, but Stephanie was already striding forward, his own rifle trained on him. “Don’t even think about it.”

The man froze.

“Now…Thumb and forefinger only…Remove your weapon, drop it and kick it over to me. That’s it…. Put your hands on top of your head and turn around. Walk to the edge.”

The man shook his head.

“Do it!”

He slowly turned around, and took three steps. The toes of his boots were over the edge of the roof. “Don’t kill me!”

“Where’s Yvonne?”

The sniper pointed. “That apartment block. The top five floors are the control room.”

“Defenses?”

“Automated weapons on the roof. Anything that gets closer than thirty yards will be shot down. What are you going to do to me?”

Stephanie jabbed the butt of the rifle into the back of his neck.

The sniper pitched forward and Stephanie grabbed the collar of his uniform, pulling him back. He dropped to the roof, unconscious.

Stephanie activated her radio. “Razor? I’ve pinpointed Yvonne’s location. Trouble is, I won’t be able to get close to it.”

“All right. Just send me the…Aw hell!”

“Razor? What is it?”

•  •  •

In Sakkara’s machine room, Impervia placed the muzzle of her gun inches from Razor’s head. “You are
so
under arrest.”

“Don’t do this, Impervia. We’re fighting your battle for you.”

“You’re using our resources to do it. Who were you talking to?”

“No one.”

“Where are Danny Cooper and Renata Soliz?”

Razor straightened up. “I’m saying nothing.”

Impervia lowered her gun and leaned back against Razor’s bench. “Damn it, Razor! Why didn’t you just come to me?”

“We don’t trust you to do the right thing.”

“What are you talking about? We’re trying to stop the war.”

“Yeah, and at the same time you want to get rid of the Trutopians.”

“They’re the
enemy,
you stupid little punk!”

“No, they’re being controlled. They’re just innocent people. We’re trying to get to Yvonne, force her to put an end to the fighting. If she’s killed then she can’t reverse her order, and the Trutopians will keep fighting until every last one of them is dead. Or every last one of
us
.”

Impervia’s radio beeped. “Commander? We’re picking up a lot of activity outside the base. Better get down here.”

“Give me details.”

“They’re coming from the north and west, upward of twenty heavy APCs, hundreds of foot soldiers…Don’t know how they got this close without us spotting them.”

“Put the base on full alert and remove all nonessential personnel from the perimeter. Anything tries to breach the fence, terminate with extreme prejudice. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Impervia glared at Razor. “You’ve got forty minutes to get your people to Yvonne. If you fail, and if it doesn’t look like we’re making any progress, I’m going to order a full retreat from the Trutopian town. Do you know what that means, Razor?”

“You’re going to surrender?”

“No. We’re going to do the only thing we can do to ensure that Yvonne is taken care of. The Department of Defense has given us permission to end the war by any means necessary. If we have no other choice, we will kill Yvonne and fight the rest of the battle the hard way.”

“How are you going to do it?”

“After the last battle with Ragnarök it was decided that the world could never again allow a superhuman to become so powerful. There is a plan. Razor, very soon now I will be told to put that plan into action. Once I give the order a twenty-minute countdown will begin. That’s how much time you’ll have to withdraw your people from the area.”

Yvonne checked through the reports coming in from the other Trutopian communities throughout the world.

The news wasn’t as good as she’d hoped. Nowhere near as good.

The communities in Lesotho had completely fallen to the South African National Defence Force. The New Zealand communities
were about to be defeated, and the Peruvians had apparently managed to quell the fighting without any loss of life.

Yvonne estimated that close to thirty thousand Trutopians had already died.

Her monitors showed her that Colin Wagner and Danny Cooper were still slugging it out, only a couple of miles from her position.

The Trutopian guards had found Renata Soliz: She was in her solidified form, still in the StratoTruck. The troops had set motion-sensitive mines all through the vehicle: If Renata turned back to human, she’d be blown apart.

So there’s only Butler to worry about,
Yvonne said to herself,
and he’s back in Sakkara, protecting the civilians and the kids they rescued from the platinum mine.

Yvonne sat back and studied her monitors.
It’s time to put Plan B into action.

She reached for the phone, dialed a number. Seconds later, a man’s voice said, “Hello?”

“You will listen to me.”

“I…I’m listening.”

Yvonne smiled. “You put a device on all the phones in Sakkara to filter out the controlling frequencies from my voice. Very clever, Mr. Dalton. But you should have anticipated that we already had people inside Sakkara. Two months ago one of them swapped your cell phone for an identical, unfiltered model.”

“Oh my God!” Max Dalton yelled. “Somebody—”

“
Shut up. You will not call for help.
Where are you now, Max?”

“Fourth floor. The infirmary.”

“Good. You’re exactly where I want you to be. Put your cell
phone into loudspeaker mode. Walk over to the bed next to the window.”

“I’m there.”

“Place the phone on the pillow.”

“It’s done.”

“Good.” Yvonne took a deep breath.
“Mina. Wake up.”

D
RIFTING ABOVE THE DEBRIS-COVERED
town, Colin knew that the battle was a stalemate. He could fly up and out of Danny’s reach, but then Danny simply kept dodging his fireballs and lightning bolts.

This is the way it should be,
Colin thought.
If Danny’s keeping me busy, then I’m not hurting anyone else
.

His heightened senses scanned the area, searching for the telltale signs of movement. When Danny was moving at top speed, Colin couldn’t see or hear him, but he still left a trace: a sudden rush of wind, tracks in the concrete dust, objects appearing and disappearing.