The Return of the Titans (27 page)

“Okay, everyone. Let's
head for the Ocular room.” Denise moved forward, touching people on
the shoulder, turning several of the girls who were watching in
horror toward the back of the courtyard. Justin stood there,
staring up at the minotaur.

“Come on, Justin. Let's
go,” Aaron said, trying to pull him away. Justin shook him off and
Aaron staggered back. “Justin, come on! We have to go!”

He just looked up. “You have to help us. You
have to protect us.” Justin looked over at the battle. Mr.
Fitzgerald was still standing there, watching the leader. Justin
could see at least six Destroyers on the ground. Whether dead or
hurt, he couldn't tell. The leader was now roaring with laughter,
summoning fireballs and grinning horribly.

The rage in Justin threatened to choke him.
He fell to his knees, tears of anger and futility filling his eyes.
With a gesture of useless fury, he slapped his palm on to the
Sentinel's leg and gave it a push. “Help us!” he yelled. His head
felt like it was bursting at the sound. The echoing of that voice
rang in his ears until the sound of it forced him to cover his
head. Whose voice was that? he wondered. It was deep and deadly and
shook the courtyard. Above him, the Minotaur's eyes suddenly blazed
with red flame and it bellowed with fury. The two Sentinels on
either side of it also roared, and the six immobile Sentinels near
the door raised their weapons and leaped forward to attack.

Justin knelt there, gaping as the minotaur
lowered it's huge head and charged. The other two Sentinels
followed. As it ran, it moved faster and faster. And it hurled
itself straight at the leader of the invaders.

Justin watched as the invading Titan stared
in disbelief at the attacking Sentinels. Justin had a momentary
glimpsed of the man's eyes widening with terror before the minotaur
slammed into him, and crushed him to a pulp against the wall of the
courtyard. The other Sentinels had caught the invaders completely
off guard. Several were smashed to jelly by huge, titanium fists.
One invader was grabbed by the ogre Sentinel and literally torn
apart.

He saw the last of the attackers back away
from the Sentinels and Destroyers. Her hood had fallen back and she
looked straight at him. “Cronus!” she screamed and ran straight at
him. Justin stared at her, unable to move as she raced forward. But
at the last minute, she swerved and ran toward the fountain.

“Stop her!” the leader of
the Destroyers yelled. “Don't let her reach the water!” But it was
too late. She dove into the fountain, there was a flash and she was
gone.

Justin turned his head away. He couldn't
seem to care at the moment about one of the invaders getting away.
But as he looked around he had to close his eyes. The remains of
the battle were too horrible to look at. Then he glanced down at
his hand. It was no longer numb. Instead, it was throbbing with
pain and covered in blood. As he tried to move his fingers,
piercing stabs of agony made him hiss and grit his teeth. So much
for Titan toughness, he thought wildly.

Someone crouched down beside him. It was
Aaron. He looked at Justin with a mixture of concern and caution,
as if he wanted to help but was too scared to really do
anything.

“Justin?” he said
tentatively. “Are you okay?”

Justin slumped back on his heels with a sigh
and then almost fell over. Aaron grabbed him and put his arm around
his shoulders, helping him stay upright.

“Thanks Aaron,” he said.
It was barely a whisper. His throat was so raw he could hardly
speak. “No, I'm not okay. I think my hand is broken.” He tried to
smile at his friend but he had a feeling that it was more of a
grimace of pain.

Aaron held him tighter and looked around.
“Looks like we're safe now. If you can stand up, I'll get you to
medical.”

Before Justin could try to stand, Norm and
Gerry appeared. Gerry took hold of Justin's other side and Norm
crouched behind him. “We'll help you move him, Aaron,” Gerry said
with a quick grin at Justin. Aaron nodded.

“Thanks guys,” he said. “I
think he's put on a few pounds in the last couple of weeks. Must be
that growth spurt that Miss Takomo warned us about.”

“Hey guys, are you saying
I'm fat?” Justin asked hoarsely.

They all looked at him, then Norm started
laughing. So did the other two. “No bud,” Aaron said, grinning.
“You're just big boned.”

The laughter helped relieve the tension a
bit, and his three friends got Justin slowly to his feet. He looked
around the courtyard.

The remaining Guardians who could stand,
perhaps fourteen of them, were administering first aid. Justin was
relieved to see Mrs. Mallon bustling around the room, carrying a
first aid kit from one injured person to the next.

The Destroyers had disappeared. Justin
looked around but saw no sign of them or their casualties. Puzzled,
he looked at Aaron. “Where did the Destroyers go?” he asked.

Aaron looked around. “Um, good question,” he
answered, sounding bewildered. Then he looked at Norm and Gerry.
“You guys see them leave?”

Both of them shook their heads. Justin
shrugged. He had more important things to worry about at the
moment.

They had only taken a few steps toward the
entrance when Mrs. Mallon hurried over.

“Hold on, boys. I'll have
to wrap that before you move him,” she said.

“But we have to get him to
the doctor, Mrs. Mallon,” Aaron argued, trying to push past her.
She planted her fists on her hips and glared at him.

“Aaron, if we don't stop
the bleeding now, by the time you reach medical, he won't need a
doctor, he'll need a coffin.”

“What?” Aaron looked down
at Justin's hand. So did Justin. Instead of a few drops of blood
dripping from his fist, there was a steady flow of blood dropping
on the ground. Justin had left a trail of blood from where he had
fallen. He saw Aaron's face turn pale.

“Put him down, guys!” he
said urgently to the others. They let him down gently and Mrs.
Mallon took some long bandages from her kit.

“I don't understand,”
Aaron said in a shaky voice. “Why's he bleeding so
much?”

Mrs. Mallon gently opened Justin's fist
while he gritted his teeth against the pain.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “He
bleeding from that blasted mark on his palm. As to why, Aaron, I
have no idea.” She put a thick pad on the wound and then wrapped
Justin's hand tightly. The bleeding seemed to be contained for the
moment.

“All right, boys. Get him
to the doctor while the bandage holds.” She patted Justin on the
shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile, then moved off toward
another fallen defender.

Chapter 19

Justin spent some days in bed in the medical
center. Aaron came by to see him several times, as did Norm and
Gerry but they weren't allowed to speak to him. They just waved
from the doorway and smiled encouragingly. When Justin complained,
the doctor only shrugged.

“I'm sorry Justin, but I
need you to focus on healing and you can't do that with people
sitting around and talking to you all day.” He noticed Justin's
expression and smiled in sympathy. “And don't look at me like that.
It's only for a few days. Once you're feeling better, you'll have
all the time you want to spend with your friends. So, concentrate
on feeling better. You'll be surprised at how quickly the time will
pass.”

Doctor Smythe had a difficult time
staunching the bleeding in Justin's palm.

“It's the titanium,” he
replied when Justin asked why the bleeding wouldn't stop. “The skin
split open right along the lines of the rune on your hand, and it
was the contact with the metal on your open wound that caused the
excessive bleeding. It seems to have counteracted your blood's
ability to coagulate, at least temporarily.” The doctor was busy
changing the dressing on the wound yet again. Justin had lost count
of how many times Doctor Smythe had already done this.

“I didn't realize that
titanium was so dangerous to us,” Justin said as he watched the
doctor wrap gauze over a pad on his palm yet again.

“Normally it isn't,
Justin. I'd say that because of your age, you and your fellows are
particularly vulnerable to titanium right now. I expect that when
you are older, it will take more than the touch of that metal on a
cut to hurt you this badly.” He finished wrapping Justin's hand and
stared at the palm intently. As he watched, the gauze began to
slowly darken with blood again. “I do wish it would stop bleeding,”
he muttered.

Mr. Fitzgerald visited Justin once in the
middle of his convalescence, to thank him for his role in defending
Sanctuary. While he was there, Justin tried to get answers to some
of the many questions that were swirling around in his head since
the battle.

“Sir,” Justin said. “Could
you tell me why the Sentinels finally attacked the invaders? They
didn't even move for the Guardians.”

“As I'm sure you've
already guessed, Mr. McLeod, it was in response to that mark on
your palm.” Mr. Fitzgerald regarded him soberly. “It would seem
that the power of the blood of Cronus can command them even now,
millennia after his death. We don't really know how the rebel
Titans were able to hold them frozen like they did, but your
intervention cut through their command. You saved us all, young
man.”

Justin felt his face get red and hurried on.
“Thank you, sir. But it was sheer luck really.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Fitzgerald
said almost to himself.

“Another thing, sir. Those
people with that Titan leader. They weren't wearing bracelets like
we have, were they? Instead, they had on some kind of spiral band.
So did the Destroyers. But they used powers like Titans. How was
that possible?”

Mr. Fitzgerald took his time answering. “We
really did not want to expose you young people to some of the
more...darker aspects of titan lore, at least not right away. But I
know you're intelligent enough to make a fairly accurate guess
about those bands. So I'll be straight-forward with you.” He sighed
and shook his head. “In the final days of the battle for Atlantis,
after the death of Cronus, his followers were losing badly. And in
desperation, one of their scientists found a way to harness titan
energy, mold it into those bands that you saw, and pass those on to
humans.”

Justin's eyes widened. “Then you mean those
guys that we saw, and the Destroyers, aren't Titans?”

“That is correct, Mr.
McLeod. The rebel leader, and your group, were the only Titans
involved in the attack. The Destroyers are descendants of a group
of bodyguards that were loyal to Cronus, as we Guardians are
descended from the human allies of the Titans themselves. They are
independent, under no command other than their own. I was more than
grateful that they answered my summons that day; they weren't
obligated to do that.”

“But how did the rebels
get their hands on those bands?” Justin asked anxiously.

Mr. Fitzgerald just shrugged. “How did
Hyperion get his DNA into the human gene pool? How did he manage to
program those genes to resurface a generation before your? All good
questions. But I don't know the answers.” He stared off into space
for a moment, frowning in thought. “But personally I think the
larger question is, where is their base? Where are they coming
from?”

“Why is that more
important than knowing the rest, sir?” Justin asked,
puzzled.

“Because, young man, we
have heard rumors that some of the genetic monstrosities created
back in the time of the Titans were possibly preserved, ready to be
resurrected and used by the rebels today. Which to my mind means
that their base may be as large and as old as Sanctuary itself.
Large enough to house perhaps hundreds of Titans. Large enough to
launch a war on humanity itself. And that is not a comforting
thought.”

After Mr. Fitzgerald left, Justin lay there
feeling even more worried and confused than he had before the
visit.

It took a couple of days for the bleeding to
stop and a few more before the doctor was satisfied that Justin
could close his hand without it starting to ooze blood again.
Finally, on his eighth morning in medical, Doctor Smythe told
Justin he could return to his quarters.

“But I don't want you
doing anything strenuous for a while,” he told Justin forcefully.
“Don't even write in class for at least a week. Come back to see me
in two days and we'll see how it's going.”

Justin thanked the doctor gratefully and
headed quickly for the door.

“And come back immediately
if it starts to bleed again,” the man called after him. Justin
waved over his shoulder and kept walking. He had had his fill of
lying in bed for quite some time.

When he got back to his room, Justin was
surprised to realize how much it felt like home. Aaron was out and,
as Justin glanced at the clock, he realized that everyone was still
in class. He was exhausted, a condition that the doctor said was
caused by his body working hard to heal his wound and replenish his
blood. He sat down slowly on his favorite couch and just relaxed
for a few minutes.

“Justin, you're
back!”

Justin sat up with a jerk and looked around
in confusion. Aaron was standing in the open doorway, Gerry and
Norm crowding behind him and looking over his shoulder.

“Oh, hi guys,” Justin
mumbled. His head felt fuzzy and he realized that he must have
dozed off.