Stronger: A Super Human Clash (22 page)

The fight with Krodin had really taken it out of us. Max was being hailed by the others as the savior of the day, but that really didn’t sit well with me. I knew him then for what he really was: a coldhearted manipulator who used his mind control to make everyone think he was a hero. But his power didn’t work on me, and I couldn’t tell the others. Even if they had believed me, Max would have used his power again to make them forget.

Or he could get them to turn on me, just like he had the first time I met him, when Roz suddenly went from shouting at Max for attacking me to treating me like a monster.

So I knew what Max was really like, and he knew that I knew.

And I also knew he was scared of me, because I was one of the very few people whose mind he couldn’t read. Max would never know what I was thinking.

As we walked through the swamp, I carried Abby on my shoulder: She’d been injured, and it didn’t make sense for her to walk while I could carry her effortlessly.

This made Lance very, very jealous. It was obvious that he was head over heels in love with Abby. And so was Thunder. That made me feel a little bit sorry for Roz. She was just as cute as Abby, but for some reason neither Lance nor Thunder was interested in her.

Maybe that was Max’s influence again, doing what he always
does: assuming that he knows best and that there’s nothing wrong with controlling people to make sure they act the way he wants.

But I can’t say that
I
was in love with Abby, because I don’t know what that kind of love feels like.

With Thunder flying and leading the way, and me and Max keeping well apart from each other, our ragtag team began the long, painful walk back to civilization.

I DON’T KNOW FOR CERTAIN
whether productivity in the mine decreased after Hazlegrove executed the other trustees, but it’s a safe guess that it did.

I also don’t know how I kept going. True to his word, Hazlegrove worked me twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week.

More than once I fell asleep as I was pushing the heavy carts of ore and had to be kicked awake by the guards. I lost weight: I had one hour a day in which to eat and sleep, and most of the time sleep hit me the instant my shift was over.

To maximize my sleep time I stayed in the mine shaft. I stopped washing—I just didn’t have the time or the energy. Whenever they could, the other prisoners slipped me food and water, and that was probably the only thing that kept me alive and sane.

After the first week I was finding it hard to focus on anything. The guards would issue orders and I would immediately forget them.

By the third week I was starting to hallucinate. This happened so subtly at first that it took me a long time to realize it.

I was reaching the midpoint in my shift, struggling to push the filled cart another couple of yards, when it seemed to me that the walls were starting to move. Not much, just a few inches at a time, and it always happened when I wasn’t looking.

But once, a shadow detached itself from the wall and became a woman who smiled and waved at me as I passed. I remember thinking how much the woman looked like Abby, and then realizing that it
was
Abby, that she had come to take me home.

“Keep out of sight,” I whispered to her. “If the guards see you, they’ll shoot.”

“They won’t see me,” she said. “I know how to hide. Brawn, you’re not looking good.”

“You missed me, yeah?”

“What do
you
think? Of course I missed you!”

I grinned. “Good to know. It’s been a long time. Way too long. Hey, are you and Quinn still together? You two were going to invite me over for dinner, remember? But you never did.”

She put her hand on my arm as she walked alongside me. “You would have eaten everything in the apartment.”

I passed a group of prisoners heading back down the shaft, and they gave me some strange looks.

“What’s with them?” I asked Cosmo.

“Dude, they think you’ve gone crazy because you’re talking to yourself.”

“No, I’m talking to Abby,” I began, and then realized that she wasn’t there. She had never been there. Abby had been dead for years, and I was either dreaming her or talking to a ghost.

“You’re suffering from severe sleep deprivation,” Cosmo said. “Your mind is playing tricks on you. Earlier you thought you were eating an orange.”

“Yeah. I was so sure, I could taste it.” I stopped walking, and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I think I’m losing my mind here.” I looked down at Cosmo. “But, hey, that means I’m not, doesn’t it? They say that if you’re going mad, you don’t
know
you’re going mad. So if you think you are, then you’re not.”

“Yeah, that’s supposed to be true.”

“Like, just for a second there I started thinking that
you
were dead too! But that was just a dream.”

And Cosmo said, “Oh, that was real.
This
is the dream. I died last year, remember?”

I reached my hand out to him and it passed right through his shoulder. “Yeah, of course. I remember.”

But even though he wasn’t real, he stayed with me for a while, and I was glad for the company.

A FEW MILES SOUTH
of the border between Louisiana and Arkansas, we waited at a crossroads for Max Dalton’s people to come pick us up.

“So everything’s back to normal?” Roz asked Max as he stepped out of the old phone booth.

“Seems to be,” Max said. “According to Ollie all of us just disappeared from where we were supposed to be. Josh is fine. He’s used to me and Roz heading off on missions, so he’s none the wiser. From what Ollie says, nothing else has changed. The world is as it should be.”

Thunder said, “Yeah, but he didn’t sound very happy.”

“You should know better than to listen in on other people’s conversations,” Max said.

Thunder shrugged. He’d been right beside me when Max
ordered Krodin’s men to fire at us, but he didn’t seem to remember that.

I was sitting on the edge of the road with Abby on one side and Roz on the other, both pressed up close to me. Not so much because they liked me, but because the mosquitoes always gave me a wide clearance.

Across the street, Lance and Paragon were sitting cross-legged, facing each other and deep in conversation. Paragon’s real name was Solomon Cord. He was about Max’s age, but we all liked him because he wasn’t a self-obsessed jerk.

“Wonder what they’re talking about,” Roz said.

Abby said, “Probably Lance’s family.”

A few weeks earlier, after our first battle with Krodin, Slaughter found where Lance lived and killed his parents and brother. Then when the time line changed, he got them back: In the alternative world, Krodin had wiped out The Helotry before they could recruit Slaughter, so she never encountered Lance and thus had no need to kill his family out of revenge.

But when Lance used the teleporter on Krodin and reset the time line, everything was back the way it had been, and Lance’s family was still dead.

“I’m not sure I could have done that if I were him,” Roz said.

Abby nudged me. “What about you? Do you have a family?”

“Yep. Got a ma and pa back home. They don’t know what happened to me. You?”

“Mom, big sister, and four little brothers,” Abby said. “My
dad’s gone, though. Hey, here’s something. I always thought that my mom and dad just separated, but the version of my mom in Krodin’s world said that he had an affair and she threw him out.”

Roz said, “Wow. So, are you going to mention it to her when you get home?”

Abby stiffened. “Home. Oh, I am going to be
so
grounded! She’s probably going mad with worry!” She jumped to her feet and ran for the phone booth.

“How are you going to explain how you got out of Oak Grove?” Roz asked me.

“I haven’t given it a minute’s thought,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think I’m going back. Not this time. I’ve already spent far too much of my life locked up.”

“Max won’t like that.”

“Max isn’t my boss. He’s not your boss either.”

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

I sighed. “Roz, your brother can control people’s minds. Do you remember what he did when we were fighting Krodin?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He saved us.”

“How? What did he
do
to save us?”

She raised her eyes. “Oh please! You were there, remember?”

“I remember Krodin telling Max to put me and Thunder in front of a firing squad, and he did it. And I remember Daedalus attacking him and knocking him out. So how
did
he save us?”

“Well, he …” She bit her lip and looked away.

“Stuck, huh? Roz, he’s done this before. Back in Windfield
he made you forget about Pyrokine.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Max approaching. “And here he comes now, to make you forget this conversation.”

Roz stood up and walked away.

“You’re going to have to stop that,” Max said to me.

“
I’m
going to have to stop? You’re the one messing with people’s minds. But you can’t mess with mine.” I tapped my forehead. “This is a closed book as far as you’re concerned.”

“I could turn them all against you, you know. I could have the whole world hounding you for the rest of your life.”

“Dalton, if you’re supposed to be a good guy, why are you doing stuff like this? Why don’t you use your powers for good?”

“I do. That’s all I do. All of my plans are for the greater good, Brawn. So don’t screw things up for me. Keep out of my way. And don’t think that I don’t know you just because I can’t read your mind. I know all your secrets. I know your real name, I know what happened to you when you were twelve. I even know the names of the people who held you prisoner in Antarctica for a year.” He tapped his own forehead, mimicking my action. “This is a closed book to
you
, unless you agree to stay out of my business. If you ever want revenge on Harmony Yuan and Gordon Tremont, you’ll need my help.”

“There
was
a time when revenge was all I could think of, but …” I shrugged. “Life’s too short for that sort of thing.”

“Even after what they put you through?”

“If I wanted revenge on them, I’d already have taken it.”

“There’s also the matter of your parents,” Max said. “I know how to get to them.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You push me the wrong way and I can make them forget that they ever
had
a kid.”

I stood up slowly, and looked down at him. “That was a threat, right? You know, for someone who lost his own parents, that’s a lousy thing to say. Your true colors are showing, Max. You’re a bully. And an idiot. Why do you think I haven’t tried to contact my parents? Because I can’t let them see me like this. So, yeah, do it.
Make
them forget. You’d be doing them and me a favor!”

I looked over toward the others. They hadn’t seemed to notice that I was yelling at Max. I sighed. “Got to say, though … That is one very useful ability you have.”

He nodded. “It is.”

“Aren’t you worried that you’re going to do permanent damage to someone?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

We looked at each other in silence for a moment, and I felt my fury at Dalton start to fade. It seemed to me that we’d reached an understanding. My immunity to Max’s control put me in a position that was quite unique for him: He couldn’t lie to me as easily as he could to everyone else.

I said, “Krodin was smarter than the other universe’s version of you. He manipulated him the same way you manipulate other people. Sooner or later you’ll come up against someone else like him.”

“Yeah, maybe. But until that happens, I’ll stick with my plans.”

“And what
are
those plans?”

“Use my powers to build a huge organization to save the human race from destroying itself.”

“That’s what Tremont told me
he
was doing. He wanted me to raid every place in the country that’s developing quantum processors and steal their work. Well, I didn’t trust him and I don’t trust you. Maybe you should team up with him, so I can distrust the one organization and save myself some time.”

“I could actually use you on my side, Brawn. If Tremont’s people
can
get a quantum processor to work, they’ll be able to take control of every nation on the planet. We have to stop them, and we have to do it before he recruits more superhumans. My experts tell me that right now we’re only at the beginning of the bell-shaped curve. In about fifty years there’ll be
thousands
of superhumans. Even if Tremont can’t persuade any of them to join him, the odds are that a few of them are going to have enough power to wipe out the human race. All it will take is one maniac with that sort of power, and we’re done. Hell, there’s already a couple I’m scared of. Terrain, for one. He seems to have complete telekinetic control over inorganic matter. If he applied himself, he could crack the Earth in two.”

“Maybe so, but is he
likely
to do that?”

“So far he hasn’t done anything that suggests he’s got the imagination or the desire. But suppose there’s another superhuman with
my
abilities. Someone completely unhinged. He could make Terrain do whatever he wanted.
Now
do you understand?”

“I understand your reasons, yes. But not your methods.”

“Just … Just don’t get in my way. For all our sakes. And please stop telling Roz that I’m manipulating her thoughts and feelings. She and Josh are the only family I have. I love them, and I will do anything I think is right to protect them.
Almost
anything: I won’t put them—or myself—above the safety of the human race.”

I considered this for a moment. “All right. Let’s say that you and I make a deal…. I’ll do as you ask, but in return you have to find someone for me.”

I told him of the young man who’d tried to recruit The Scarlet Slayer, and how that man had claimed to know everything about our superhuman abilities, about the strange blue lights that only a few people could see.