The Ascension: A Super Human Clash (11 page)

And now she was in trouble. Big trouble, by the looks of things. She was on her knees, hands cuffed behind her back, facing a soldier wearing sergeant's stripes.

He was only thirty yards away now: He'd blocked the sound of his footsteps from reaching the soldiers, but at any moment one of them would spot him.

James let loose a narrow-band low-frequency sonic blast, directed it at one of the flying soldiers. The man's jetpack suddenly sparked and shuddered. He clutched his helmet and screamed. As his colleagues looked on in bewilderment, the man crashed to the ground and started desperately scrabbling at his helmet.

“Get it off! Get it off! The noise—it's killing me!”

Two of the other soldiers moved to help him, and James hit them both with similar blasts, knocking them off their feet. Then he directed his voice to Abby. “Run. Now!”

He saw Abby look around, confused. “It's me, Abby. Thunder. Coming up on your left. Get out of there—I can't blast them all.”

Abby tensed her arms, snapped the cuffs binding her wrists, and threw herself at the sergeant. She slammed her fist into his stomach with enough force to lift him off the ground, then—using him as a shield—rushed at two of the other soldiers, knocking them aside like bowling pins.

“Move!” James shouted.

He saw her throw the sergeant into a cluster of three other soldiers. Then she jumped backward, somersaulted in the air to land next to her bow, snatched it off the ground, and started running.

“Head down Tormey Avenue,” James shouted. “Your next left.”

He raced across the street and caught up with her as they entered the avenue. “How many more of them are there?”

“You tell me,” Abby said. “I was too busy to count them.”

Halfway along Tormey Avenue they took a right, then a left into the grounds of a small warehouse. Abby pointed. “Over the wall.”

“Abby, it's fifteen feet high!”

Without slowing, Abby leaped for the wall, caught the top, and pulled herself up. She lay flat along the top and stretched her arm down to James. “Grab my hand!”

He jumped, caught her hand, and was hauled straight up and onto the wall, landing in a crouch with Abby still holding on to him. “Whoa!” On the other side the drop was much greater than he'd expected—at least twenty-five feet.

As he tried to steady himself, his hand slipped out of Abby's. He toppled over, headfirst toward solid concrete.

Oh no!
Instinctively he generated the same kind of shock wave he'd used to propel himself on his skateboard—and found himself slowing down.

He landed facedown with barely a thump.

Abby dropped down beside him, landing lightly on her feet. “How did you do
that
?”

James rolled onto his back and sat up. “Not sure.”

“Are they following us?”

James held his breath while he listened. “No. They're still trying to figure out what happened.” He exhaled, took a few more deep breaths. “OK. Give me a minute here.”

“What did you do to them?”

“Just a sonic blast—shouldn't be any permanent damage.” James shuffled to the side and rested with his back against the wall. “Abby, what's going on here?”

“I'm not sure. I was with Paragon when it happened.” She handed him the bow and quiver, and sat down next to him. “He made me this, and we were testing it out in the alley behind my apartment building when…” She shrugged. “Everything changed.”

“I was at my dad's farm, talking to Faith—my stepmom—and I suddenly noticed that all the ambient sound in the area was different. And she acted like I'd come out of nowhere. Abby, I'd been there since yesterday, but she didn't remember that at all.”

“There was a thing on the news—Brawn mysteriously appeared in Oak Grove Prison.”

“But that's where
we
left him.”

“Right,” Abby said. “And then we got a call from Max Dalton. The same thing happened to him and Roz. All of us who were there when Krodin was killed. Or when we
thought
he was killed.”

James nodded. “So that means Lance could be affected too. Have you heard from him?”

“No. Well, Sol and Max are the only ones who know how to contact him.”

“Sol?”

“Solomon Cord. That's Paragon's real name.”

“I see. From what I've learned, it's looking like Pyrokine's blast didn't kill Krodin but sent him back in time instead. How far back I'm not sure, but he resurfaced about five years ago. Since then he's been working his way into power. He's the one who turned the whole population into terrified slaves. People aren't allowed to gather in groups of three or more without a permit—and that includes visiting their friends. All public events are gone—no sports, concerts, movies…Basically anything that's hard to police has been banned.”

“Sol said it's done through fear. Make the people believe that their lives are in danger and that you're the only one who can protect them, and you can do anything you want.” Abby jumped to her feet. “He was with me just before I got caught—but I don't know what happened to him. We need to find him.”

“I don't think that's the wisest path right now.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“If we're going to have any chance of fighting back, we need to get to Roz and Max. Maybe Brawn too, if we can find him before Krodin's people do. Paragon's not a superhuman, is he? And I'm guessing that he doesn't have his armor with him. An ordinary human is going to slow us down.”

“We can't just leave him!”

“We don't know where he
is
, Abby. Where would we even begin to search for him?”

“After we got separated, I was heading for the diner—it was the only place I could think of that we both knew, not counting my apartment.”

James stood up and brushed the dust from the backside of his jeans. “He's not there now. I can't hear anyone inside the diner, or even near it. Whatever we do, we can't stay here…. There are more of those flying machines coming. Five, no, six of them. And smaller ones—one-man craft. And another four guys wearing jetpacks.”

“Max told Paragon that the rest of the world has united against Krodin. They're planning an invasion. Max said we've got to find a place to hide out.”

“What sort of invasion?”

“I don't know. Max didn't have many details.”

James bit his lip. “If they know anything about Krodin, it's that he's practically invulnerable. They're going to hit him as hard as they can…. But they must know he was in Anchorage and survived the nuclear blast.” James sagged against the wall. “The invaders won't just be targeting Krodin—they'll go after everyone who works for him, and they're not going to be too concerned with who gets in the way. They'll wipe this country off the face of the Earth. We
can't
go into hiding, Abby. We're going to have to stop Krodin ourselves.”

AN HOUR AGO AGENT Paquette had directed the pilots to land the Raptor in Manhattan's Flatiron District.

Roz had followed the others out of the vehicle and, on Max's signal, simply walked away. He had communicated with her telepathically for the first few minutes, but she soon passed out of his range.

Now she stood on the corner of East Eighteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. The city looked much as it always had, but the differences—though small—were striking.

There was very little traffic, no cars parked on the side of the street. There were few billboards left in place: Most of them had been replaced with panels of solar cells. There was no one standing on the sidewalks handing out fliers, no one trying to sell fake Rolex watches or Gucci handbags, no one pan-handling for change. No news vendors, no pretzel carts, no taxis, no tourists. The pedestrians all walked at the same speed, mostly in single file and on the correct side of the sidewalk, and no one spoke to anyone else.

Without all the cars and buses, the city even smelled different: The air was crisp and fresh, and Roz was almost sure she could smell the ocean.

There was something else missing from the city, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

What this version of Manhattan did have, in abundance, was surveillance: a dozen or more cameras on each corner, watching everything and everybody. At the center of each junction was a raised concrete platform housing four-man squads of armed Praetorian guards.

Roz became aware that she was the only one standing still, so she slipped into the middle of a line of people crossing Fifth Avenue, heading west. She kept her head down as she passed the Praetorians, all too aware that her face would be recognizable to many of them.

How am I going to get to Midway from here? It's got to be a thousand miles, maybe more. I don't even have any money with me.

Do these people even still
use
money?
She hadn't passed any open stores, so there was no way to tell.

Another of the squat Raptors passed overhead, and Roz resisted the temptation to stare at it—no one else paid it any notice.

That's what I need
, Roz thought.
Get myself one of those things and just
fly
to Midway.

It had been an idle thought, but after a moment Roz realized that it might be a viable plan.
If I could
get
to one of the Raptors, there's a chance that no one would stop me. They're so conditioned to obeying orders that they might not expect someone to break the rules.

A siren blared nearby—two short bursts—and it seemed to Roz that the pedestrians had increased their speed a little. She glanced at her watch: It was five minutes to seven.
Curfew's nearly started. What do I do then?

A few minutes later she reached Seventh Avenue, and as she passed the entrance to the subway, she realized what else was missing from the city: the ever-present rumbling of the subway trains. At the bottom of the subway steps the heavy gates were padlocked.

A faded poster next to the gate read, “CLOSED—Access to NY Subway System prohibited until current security crisis has passed, by order of Chancellor Krodin.”

Roz smiled to herself.
That's how I'm going to get out of the city!
She quickly descended the steps and examined the padlock. Three weeks ago, in a town called Greenwood, Roz had faced a similar situation. She'd tried to use her telekinesis to pick a lock, but failed because she didn't know how they worked. Since then, she'd been reading up on locks.

The padlock was heavy, but it was a fairly standard make.
All right…
She reached out telekinetically—at times she thought of her power as an invisible and highly flexible tentacle—and began to probe the inside of the lock. She knew that inside a standard lock was a cylinder containing a sequence of pins, each one cut into two uneven parts. When the correct key was inserted, its teeth pushed up the pins so that the cuts in the pins lined up, allowing the cylinder to be turned—this pulled a lever that then opened the lock.

She could sense the pins inside the lock, and her telekinetic control was now fine enough to allow her to manipulate them. One by one, the pins clicked into place, and she sensed the lock's cylinder turn and heard a soft click as it opened.
Yes!

On the street above a siren blared, a warning that curfew was about to start.

Roz quickly removed the lock from the gate, pulled the gate open, stepped through, and closed and locked it behind her.

She darted down the remaining steps into complete darkness.
Should have a flashlight. If I ever get out of this, I'm going to bring a flashlight with me everywhere I go.

Her foot collided with something—a discarded cardboard box, she guessed—and she heard the sound of tiny feet scuttling across the tiled floor.

“Oh good,” she said aloud. “Rats.”

She reached out with her left hand and found the wall again. It curved slightly to the left, and she followed it. Roz wasn't afraid of the dark, but she knew she had to be careful. She might crash into something and knock herself out—and wake to find rats scurrying all over her body—or she might step off the edge and tumble onto the tracks.

The curve of the wall continued for what felt like far too long, and Roz stopped.
Wait, which way am I facing now?

She knew she'd been heading west as she came through the gate—and that was the direction she wanted to go—but she'd been following the curve of the wall.

No, keep going. I'll get to the gates that lead onto the tracks and
then
worry about the direction.

She realized that a slight but constant breeze was coming from her right.
OK, so I know that the tunnel branches that way.

Is this a crosstown or an uptown station?

To get off the island I need to get to the Lincoln Tunnel. That's like twenty blocks north…which is absolutely useless information because down here there
aren't
any blocks, stupid!

There was another breeze, but this one smelled like month-old socks. “Not going
that
way,” she muttered.

She moved on, still following the wall on her left, but the foul smell seemed to stick with her.
What
is
that? Did something die down here?

Probably did. I could end up tripping over a body or something!

There was a sound too, she realized. A rhythmic, soft, rasping noise, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from.
Another rat? No, not unless it's got asthma.

Almost a minute passed, and the sound and the smell were still there.

And she still hadn't reached the ticket booth or the turnstiles.

OK, think! What does the inside of the average subway station look like?

Tiled walls. They've all got tiled walls. There's usually a booth and a few ticket machines and a guy with a guitar playing the same three chords over and over.

She stopped, and muttered, “Oh, I don't believe it!”

Another feature of many subway stations was the huge cylindrical support pillars. “I'm an idiot! I've been walking around in circles!”

And a soft voice right beside her said, “I know. I bin watchin' you.”