Stronger: A Super Human Clash (30 page)

Abby let go of her ax and freed her sword from its scabbard
on her back. She slashed down at my left arm, aiming for the elbow.

I leaped forward, crashing into her and ruining her aim: The edge of the blade bit deep into my right upper arm.

Still holding on to my left wrist, she pulled the blade free—I felt it scraping off the bone—and kicked out at the same time, planting her heavy left boot into my stomach with much more force than I would have thought possible for someone so small.

I doubled over, then—
wham!
—there was a pinpoint blow to the back of my head, so sharp and precise that I was certain Abby had hit me with the point at the tip of her ax.

But even through my dazed vision I could see that her free hand was still by her side. That could only mean that Thunder’s accuracy had greatly increased.

Another piercing pinpoint blow, this one to the nerve cluster in my left upper arm, causing a dam-burst of pain to surge through my body and rendering my arm useless at the same time.

Abby jerked my now-deadened arm forward again and lashed out with another kick, this one to my throat.

Gasping for breath, I collapsed to the ground.

“You had enough yet?” Thunder asked.

Abby finally let go, and stepped back to join Thunder.

Unable to push myself to my feet with one arm numbed and the other severely wounded, I rolled onto my back.

“Give … me a … minute,” I choked.

“While you’ve been hiding these past four years,” Abby
said, “we’ve been out in the world. Fighting. Training. Either one of us could beat you. So give it up, Brawn. It’s over.”

“Not over yet,” I said. The feeling was starting to return to my left arm, and the wound in my right had stopped bleeding. Slowly, I sat up.

Thunder said, “Then it’s only fair to warn you that we were not trying hard. That wasn’t our best stuff. If you want to continue this fight, you have to take that into consideration.”

I pushed myself to my feet and looked down at them. “In that case, I should point out something you might not have noticed.”

“And what’s that?” Abby asked.

“You called that a fight,” I said. “But that wasn’t a fight. A fight is when your opponent hits back. So … If you
really
want a fight, let’s see how far you’re willing to go.”

IT WAS NOT A FAIR FIGHT
. Hesperus and Thunder were more experienced, had received much more training, and had the advantage of being able to fly out of my reach. Plus there were two of them.

It’s often said that you should use your opponents’ strengths against them. Me, I prefer to use their weaknesses.

Abby attacked first, swinging her sword and ax at the same time, a whirlwind of razor-sharp metal before her as she launched herself at me.

I dropped to the ground and she passed overhead, the edge of her ax missing me by inches. She instantly pivoted about, darted back down at me, threw her sword directly at me, and—I noticed at the last moment—threw her ax straight into the spot where I had been about to jump.

Instead, I dodged to the right, putting a thick-trunked tree between us.

Thunder blasted the tree from above, shattering the entire thing into a cloud of splinters. Which was exactly what I’d hoped he’d do.

The air was dense with slowly drifting fragments of bark, leaves, and wood, obscuring Abby’s vision as she pulled her weapons out of the ground. I rushed at her, grabbed her around the waist with one arm, and kept running. Before she had time to react, I slammed my free fist against the side of her helmet—feeling absolutely sick about hitting my friend—then pulled my arm back and threw her semiconscious body high into the air.

I crouched, braced my feet against the trunk of a tree, then leaped after her.

As I cleared the treetops, I saw Thunder flying toward Abby.

Thunder’s greatest weakness was that he was still in love with her. If it had been anyone else, he’d have had the presence of mind to use his powers to catch her. Instead, he went after her himself, briefly forgetting about me.

He was only a few yards from grabbing hold of Abby’s limp arms when he realized I was coming down right on top of him. The look on his face was almost worth the beating he’d given me.

He tried to dart to the side, but he was too slow. I grabbed his leg and, as I fell, started swinging him around my head like a lasso, as fast as I could. “How’d you like
that
, huh?” I yelled.

Thunder didn’t like it much at all. I felt his muscles tense
and flinch, and then he threw up, spewing a wide arc of aerial vomit over a very large section of the forest.

Just ahead of me, only a few seconds from crashing facedown through the trees, Abby regained consciousness, saw where she was, and put the brakes on. Another mistake: That put her directly in my path.

I couldn’t help myself: I hit her with Thunder’s swinging body. The impact knocked Abby clear across the forest.

I crashed down through the trees, still swinging Thunder over my head. I figured he was unconscious by now, but I didn’t want to take a chance.

I landed heavily, my feet sinking deep into the forest floor. As the twigs and leaves drifted down around me, I dropped Thunder to the ground and propped him up with his back resting against a tree.

He was groaning, his face spattered with vomit and his eyes rolling. I leaned close to him. “Hope you’re awake enough to hear me, Thunder…. Don’t come after me again, got that?” I held my hand up in front of his face, pulled my middle finger back with my thumb, and flicked him in the forehead.

His head smacked back against the tree trunk, and he passed out.

My intention was to travel north and cross the border into Canada, but first I had to make a detour.

It was dangerous, I knew, and probably unwise, but I had to do it. I went east, into Vermont. It took me three weeks to reach my destination.

The house was in the middle of a sprawling estate. Thousands
of identical homes on identical streets. I reached the edge of the estate early in the afternoon, and had to wait until darkness before I could venture out.

Finally, long after midnight, I left the cover of the woods and walked through streets I hadn’t seen in eight years. I passed the First Church of Saint Matthew half expecting it to have been demolished, but no, it was still there, looking somehow smaller and much less significant.

A few minutes later, I stood outside my parents’ house, egging myself on and at the same time telling myself that this was a bad idea.

Ma and Pa slept in the bedroom upstairs at the back of the house, so I carefully stepped over the gate and walked around to the backyard.

The old swing was still there, slowly rusting away, the seat now tied to the frame. I noticed that the grass under the swing had grown back—it had been a very long time since it had been used.

I’d expected the crab-apple trees to have grown much taller, and perhaps they had, but it was hard to tell, as I was considerably taller myself.

I took a few deep breaths, steeled myself, and gently knocked on the bedroom window. Voices stirred inside, faint murmurs that I instantly recognized, and again I felt like running.

But I knocked again, even more gently this time.

My father, sleepily: “What? What
is
that?”

“Don’t open the curtains,” I said softly. “Please. Don’t look out.”

A moment of silence, then Ma’s hushed voice: “Call the police!”

“No, don’t!” I said. “I promise you, you’re safe. Just listen, OK?”

More silence.

“Are you listening? Say something if you can still hear me.”

Pa, his voice quavering, said, “We can hear you.”

“Good. Now …” I paused. I hadn’t actually planned what I was going to say. “Um … When your son was six years old, he painted the stairs. Remember that? And when he was ten, he didn’t talk to either of you for about a month because he came home from school to find that you’d thrown out all his comic books. And you used to tease him about Kristi Janveski, who lived in number eighty-eight, remember? You’d pretend that you and Mr. and Mrs. Janveski had made an arrangement that Gethin and Kristi would get married when they were eighteen. He’d get so mad about that.”

My mother said, “Gethin? Is it you?” I saw the curtains twitch and I ducked down.

“Don’t look out!” I said. “Please!” I used the back of my hand to brush away tears I hadn’t even realized were there. “Yes, Ma, it’s me. I didn’t die that day in Saint Matthew’s. Instead, I … I
changed
. I couldn’t talk at first. Couldn’t make anyone understand me.”

I glanced up at the window, and was relieved to see that the curtains were still closed. I stood up again. “I couldn’t come back before now—the people who took me threatened to hurt you. You could still be in danger, and if so, I’m sorry. But I—”

There was a sound below me, and I looked down to see the back door opening.

My father, wearing the same old bathrobe he’d worn every morning when he went out to pick the paper up off the lawn, stared up at me.

“You’d better come in … um, if you can.”

It wasn’t easy, but I managed to squeeze through the doors and into the sitting room. It had been redecorated, but it still felt like home.

I sat on the floor—I figured that the new sofa wouldn’t be strong enough to take my weight—and Ma and Pa plied me with cookies and cake while I did my best to explain what had happened.

“But the newspapers are saying that you’re one of the criminals,” Ma said.

“Well, they’re wrong. I’ve never committed a crime.” Then I thought for a moment. “Well, OK, I have committed a
few
, but only when I really had to. I promise I’ve never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. I’ve tried to be a hero, but … It’s not always that straightforward.”

“Everyone told us you were probably dead,” Pa said. “But we never gave up hope. Not even when that woman on the psychic hotline told us that you’d been killed and we’d find your body in water. Seven hundred bucks, she charged us!”

“Don’t tell anyone I was here,” I said. “Promise me! If the authorities found out, they’d … Well, they’d probably take you away. Try to use you as bait to catch me.”

Pa said, “We won’t say a word.” He pulled a handkerchief
from his pocket and blew his nose. “Well, we might mention it to Pastor Cullen because he—”

“Not him!” I said. “That guy …”

“But the pastor has been very kind to us,” Ma said. “Every year, on the anniversary, he holds a special service for you.”

“He’s a coward. No, worse than that. If he’s kind to you, it’s only because he feels guilty. After I changed, he begged me not to hurt him. He told me to ‘take the boys instead.’”

Ma shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. He’s a
good
man. He’s a man of God!”

“I’m not wrong. And he might be a man of God, but he’s still just a man. I can sort of understand the way he acted, and I can even forgive it, but I can’t forget it. Ma, he’s been telling everyone I’m a killer! He’s caused me more trouble than anyone else!” I rolled forward onto my knees. “I should go. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back…. Certainly not as long as I’m like this. But there’s a man who once claimed to have the power to turn me back to normal. If that happens …”

Ma said, “But what if something happens to you? These other superheroes … One of them might hurt you. They might even
kill
you. I don’t think I can go through that again!”

Pa stood up. He reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “There’s so much a father should tell his son about being a man. You’re twenty years old now, Gethin. You’ve got a life we can only barely imagine. I know it’s not going to be easy, but … You have to be a
good
man. You have to always do the best you can for other people.”

I left them soon after that. There were awkward hugs and assurances that they wouldn’t tell anyone I’d been there. Ma
made me promise that I’d keep out of trouble. I told her that trouble seemed to find me no matter what I did, but I promised her anyway.

I spent the next few years in Quebec, Canada, on the western edge of Lake Manicouagan, living on leaves and strips of bark.

In the trash cans in the public parks I’d sometimes find old newspapers that kept me informed about what was happening in the rest of the world. Max Dalton’s empire expanded, Titan’s reputation grew. Pastor Cullen published a book about me—it made a big splash when it came out, but I don’t think it sold many copies. Ragnarök and his people carried out a whole series of attacks on military bases and laboratories, each time disappearing without a trace.

Of Abby—or Hesperus, as she was known to the public—there was little mention, though Thunder and Apex had formed a team and an ax-wielding woman was one of their members, so I guessed that was her.

Then one day I found a newspaper that was dated July 27th. My birthday. I was twenty-three.

That discovery brought with it the realization that, barring unexpected illnesses or accidents, I probably had sixty or seventy more years of life—unless I turned out to be immortal, which was something that
really
didn’t appeal to me.

I knew that I couldn’t spend the rest of those sixty or seventy years living in caves and eating bark. I had to return to civilization. But I wanted to do so on
my
terms, not Max Dalton’s or anyone else’s.

“THEY’RE BRINGING IN AN EXPERT
,” DePaiva told me as we surveyed the now barely profitable mine.

When speaking to me, DePaiva had taken to saying “they” to mean the guards, and “we” to include himself with the downtrodden workers. It didn’t fool me, but I pretended to accept it, and I did the same, because it told me that he knew which way the wind was blowing.

I could have been reading too much into it, but I liked to think that DePaiva knew that the mine’s days were coming to an end. Perhaps he thought that once it became unprofitable, the prisoners would be shipped elsewhere, and if that happened, it would only be a matter of time before the truth about this place was leaked to the public.