The Awakening (3 page)

Joseph slowly turned and looked toward the bed.
I could sit. Or I could lie.

He smiled.

Why not? I’ve lied before. Sometimes it seems like my whole life has become a lie.

He wondered how long he had been here.

Then he wondered how much time he had left.

How much time the world had left.

2

C
OLIN UNZIPPED HIS JACKET AND HUNG
it in the hall. As he was pulling off his rain-soaked sneakers, he heard his father shouting from the kitchen.

“What time do you call this?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Colin shouted back. He went into the kitchen, where his parents—Warren and Caroline Wagner were sitting at the table.

“It’s never your fault,” his father said.

“No, really it wasn’t.”

“Your dinner’s in the oven,” his mother said. “Another ten minutes and it would have been in the bin. If you’re going to be late, the least you could do is let us know.”

His father said, “How come your mother leaves the school at the same time that you do and she’s always home hours before you are? Maybe the teachers have access to a special shortcut that the students don’t know about—is that it?”

“But it
wasn’t
my fault!” Colin said. “Let me tell you what happened.” He sat down at the table and looked at his parents.

They looked back at him and he could see from their expressions that they were both thinking,
This had better be good.

“OK, well…Me and Brian and Danny were hanging around at the corner of the park…”

His mother interrupted him. “What were you up to?”

“Nothing. We were just talking. Anyway, Susie came up on her bike to tell Brian that he had to go home and then…” Colin paused. “I don’t really know
exactly
what happened—someone said that there was a fight on the bus and the driver turned around to look—but anyway, the thing is, Susie’s there in the middle of the road and all of a sudden the bus comes screeching around the corner. Heading right for her. And the next thing we know there’s this really loud
crunch
as the bus hits her bike.”

Caroline Wagner put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

“No, no!” Colin said. “Mum, she’s OK, she’s fine! I don’t know how he did it, but Danny saved her! He ran across, picked her up and saved her life! It was brilliant! She went all white and she was shaking and everything, but apart from that she was OK. Her bike was wrecked, though. And she wouldn’t let go of Danny for ages. Now she’ll be even more nuts about him. The police came and an ambulance and everything, but they didn’t need it. No one was really hurt.”

“You’re sure she was OK?”

Colin nodded. “She was. It only took her a few minutes to start blaming Brian for the accident, so that means she was back to normal.”

“Who were the ambulance crew?” his father asked. He was a paramedic, based at the local hospital.

“I didn’t recognize them.” Around a mouthful of mashed potato and peas, he added, “but they checked her over and said she was OK.”

Colin’s mother gave him her famous thin-lipped look, the one that told him she
wanted
to believe him, but wasn’t so sure. “You promise you’re not making this up?”

“No, it really happened!” Colin waved his cutlery around, demonstrating: “The bus came
brrrrrmm
around the corner, really fast, and Susie was here, OK? And we were on the corner and all of a sudden Danny was like…
zoom
! One second he was right next to me and the next he’d scooped Susie up in his arms and was lying on the far side of the road, holding on to her. Then the bus went
screeee
because the driver hit the brakes, but it was too late because he still hit the bike.”

Colin’s parents looked at each other. His dad said, very quietly, “I see.”

“It’s true,” Colin said. “I swear! You can ask Danny or Brian.”

“That was…very brave of Danny,” his mother said, “and very stupid of Susie to just stop in the middle of the road.”

“Yeah, I know. You should have seen Brian’s face, though. I thought he was going to throw up or faint or something.”

Mr. Wagner pushed himself back from the table and got to his feet. “I’d better phone Susie’s parents, see if they need anything. And Danny’s parents too.”

“He’s fine,” Colin said. “There wasn’t a scratch on him.”

“Well, I’ll phone them anyway. Danny might have gone into shock.” He went out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

“So,” Colin’s mother said, “will Danny be coming to the party tomorrow?”

Colin nodded. “Yeah, I think so. And Brian says his parents are going out and they wanted to know if Susie could come too. So I said it was OK. Who else is coming?”

His mother began to list the friends and relatives who had been invited to the party. There were the usual last-minute cancellations and changes, and Colin found himself wondering why they couldn’t go to someone else’s.

“And I don’t want you staying up late tonight. We’re going to have a full day tomorrow getting everything ready.”

“But I want to see Max Dalton’s interview!”

“You can tape it and watch it in the morning.”

“You just said that we’re going to have a full day tomorrow!”

“Then you can watch it the day after.”

“Then I’ll be the only one who hasn’t seen it!”

Caroline Wagner sighed. “All right, then. You can stay up for it. Now finish your dinner.”

After dinner, Colin phoned Brian. “So are you coming out tonight?”

“Are you
kidding
?” Brian said. “My folks went mad about what nearly happened to Susie! They said it was my fault for teasing her. I added up all their punishments and apparently I’m grounded until I’m sixty-one. They’re not even letting me go to your party tomorrow night!”

“You could tell them that you have to come so that you can thank Danny for saving Susie’s life.”

“I already thought of that, but they told me to phone him instead. You know what Susie did? Remember when I had my camera last summer? Well, she took all my photos that Danny was in and she put them up all over her bedroom wall.”

Colin laughed.

“Mad, isn’t it? And you know something else? You know the way we have to write about one of the heroes for homework? Well, Susie’s class has to write an essay called ‘My Hero,’ and she’s going to write about Danny.” He let out a long sigh. “God, he’s going to have even more girls after him now! And it’s not as though he’s
really
a hero. I mean, he just happened to have been looking in the right direction to see the bus. Any one of us could have done it.”

“There was no way he could have seen the bus coming from where we were standing. He must have heard it.” Colin paused. “Though I’ve always had good hearing and
I
didn’t hear it coming. Did you?”

“No.”

“Then how did he know?”

Brian didn’t have an answer for that one.

“And how
did
he move so fast?” Colin asked. “I mean, one second he was right next to me, the next he was picking Susie up.”

“I suppose…Col, I wasn’t looking in the right direction. I heard Danny shouting at her, so I turned to look at him. I mean, I was looking right at Susie. I turned to look at Danny when he shouted, but he was gone. And then I looked back and they were on the ground on the other side of the road. I didn’t actually
see
it happen. Did you?”

“I did,” Colin said. “He was just a blur.”

“But my point is this: he did it in the time it took me to turn my head twice.” They both fell silent again, then, slowly and carefully, Brian said, “Col, that’s not possible. No one can move that fast.”

“Not these days, anyway,” Colin said. “Not since all the superhumans disappeared.”

There was another long pause.

Brian said, “What if…?” He stopped. “Nah, that’s crazy.”

“What?”

“Well, what if
Danny
is a superhuman?”

Most of the prison was underground. From the air, it looked like a small, isolated farmhouse. Its exact location was known only to a small handful of people. Even the prison doctor didn’t know how to find the place on his own; he was driven to and from the prison in a truck with blacked-out windows.

Warden Mills stood in the doorway, squinting his eyes to shield them from the dust stirred up by the twin rotors of the descending Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Even before the copter touched down, the rear ramp was dropped and fourteen people disembarked. The woman was dressed in a simple black trouser suit with a white blouse and flat shoes, but the thirteen men were wearing crisp army fatigues and all were heavily armed.

“What’s all this?” the warden asked.

“Random inspection,” the woman said.

“But we just had one last month!”

“I think you’ll find that the key word is ‘random.’ It wouldn’t be a random inspection if you knew we were coming, would it?”

“Guess not.”

Mills led them along the hall and down into the storm cellar, where a hidden door slid back to reveal the wide stone stairway that led into the prison.

As the men began to unpack their equipment, Mills turned to the woman. “How long will this take?”

“Not long,” she said. “Anything to report?”

“No.” That annoyed the warden a little; they were aware of everything that happened—they even monitored
his
vital signs—but they still felt they had to ask him stupid questions.

One of the men sat down at the warden’s computer and began tapping away at the keyboard. The other men took out sophisticated scanning devices and started to check the integrity of the doors and walls. Two men made several trips back up to the helicopter, bringing in heavier equipment.

“So,” Mills said to the woman. “How’s life in the outside world? It’s Mystery Day, right?”

“You know I’m not allowed to discuss such things with you.”

“I kind of miss the celebrations.”

The woman didn’t respond to that. Instead, she examined her clipboard. “Now…I’ve been ordered to check on the prisoners.”

Another test,
the warden said to himself. “Not possible. No one but me and Doc McLean get to see the prisoners. You know that.”

“We’ll need your access codes to override the locks,” the woman said.

“Yes, you would.
If
you were getting to see the prisoners. Which you’re not.”

“I’m not asking you, Warden Mills. I’m telling you. Give us the codes.”

“You know I can’t do that without a signed order from Central Command,” Mills said with a smile, to give the impression that he was playing along. Inwardly, he was beginning to get worried. They occasionally sprung surprises on him, but this one felt wrong.

The woman turned to one of the soldiers. “Davison?”

The soldier stepped up to Warden Mills, saluted and said, “Sir! Direct order from Central Command, sir! You are to provide us with the override codes necessary for us to access the cells, sir!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, soldier.”

The warden found himself facing the dangerous end of a gun. He sighed. “Son, put the gun away. You’re embarrassing yourself.” He turned to the woman. “Now, I know that you’ve been ordered to put me to the test, but let’s not, and say we did, OK?”

The soldier fired.

Mills glanced down to see a tranquilizer dart protruding from his chest. He collapsed to the floor.

Davison leaned down and smiled at him. “We know you’ve got a biometric implant that will trigger an alarm if your vital signs fluctuate, Warden Mills. Can’t have that happening.” He reached out and pulled down on the warden’s eyelids, closing them. “Don’t worry, you’re not dying. I’m just closing your eyes to prevent them from drying up. You’ve been dosed with a muscle relaxant. You’ll be paralyzed for about seven hours.”

“We have to move fast,” the woman said. “Get those doors open!”

One of the technicians said, “We won’t have time to open them all.”

The woman said, “We don’t
need
to open them all. Just…” She checked one of the computer screens. “Just Cell 18. The man we’re looking for is called Joseph.”

3

L
ATER, AS HE WAS ATTEMPTING TO DO
his homework, Colin couldn’t get the thought out of his mind:
Suppose it’s true? Suppose Danny is a superhuman? Maybe he’s been one all along, but kept it secret. Or maybe Danny didn’t even know. This could be the first time he’s ever done anything like that.

If superpowers are inherited, wouldn’t that mean that one of Danny’s parents is a superhuman too?

Colin dismissed this idea almost immediately; Danny’s parents were just too ordinary. Danny’s father was a manager in the local supermarket and his mother was a driving instructor. Danny also had a seven-year-old brother, Niall. If Danny had inherited superhuman powers from one of his parents, then that would mean that Niall might also become a superhuman.

Colin forced himself to focus on his homework. A single four-page essay. That shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours; then he would be completely free of homework worry for the rest of the weekend.

He was lying on his bed, on his stomach, with his homework book open on the floor at the foot of the bed. He had half a page done and he wasn’t happy with it. He’d been trying Brian’s idea of writing from the point of view of one of the villains, but it was proving to be tougher than he’d expected.

OK. Concentrate! Suppose I had superhuman powers…Say I could fly. That’d be cool!

While he was daydreaming about joining the school’s athletics team—if he could fly, he’d be a champion long jumper—a thought came into his mind:
I wonder if
Danny
will be able to fly?

Maybe Danny won’t want his powers and he’ll find a way to give them to me.

Colin sighed and looked down at his homework again.

“I’m not getting anywhere with this,” he muttered to himself.
OK. Start over.

He turned to a blank page and began to write: “If I was a superhero, I wouldn’t even tell my best friends because that would put them in danger. I would have to come up with some good excuses for always disappearing to go off and save people.”

Danny’s never done that, so maybe he’s not a superhuman after all. But then, how
did
he do it? How did he move fast enough to rescue Susie?

Colin looked at the few lines he’d written, put his homework book away and wandered downstairs to the sitting room.

“How’s the essay coming along?” Colin’s dad asked.

Colin sat down on the floor with his back to the television set. The sound was off and clearly his parents hadn’t been watching it. “Not great. I don’t really know all
that
much about superhumans. What was it like when they were around? It must have been strange.”

His father said, “I was about your age when the first superhumans began to appear. You know the way they always keep weird stories until the end of the news? Well, that’s what it was like, for a while. It was all, ‘And finally, it seems that in New York there’s a new force fighting evil.’ That kind of thing.”

“But weren’t people scared?”

“No, because for a long time most people didn’t
really
believe it. Not until Paragon went up against Façade.”

“Why? Why was that any different?”

“Because everyone saw it happening live on television. It was in Detroit, one of those charity telethon events, like Comic Relief. They were trying to raise twenty million dollars for…can’t remember what it was now.”

“Education,” Colin’s mother said.

“Right, education. Anyway, it’s all just about over, and they’re going on about how much money they’ve raised, then all of a sudden one of the guest musicians comes out and he just transforms himself into Façade. He’s got a whole bunch of thugs with him and Façade demands fifty million dollars or the studio audience and all these celebrities will be killed. Façade is strutting about, showing off his powers by shape-shifting into different people, when Paragon just drops out of the ceiling and lands on top of him.
Bam!
One punch to the head and Façade is out cold! A couple of his henchmen turn their guns on Paragon, but he just flies right into them, knocking them over. Then he launched a dozen gas grenades. The gas instantly sent everyone in the studio—even the hostages—to sleep. The cameras were still running, though, so we could watch him tying up Façade and his men.”

“It would have been a great court case too,” Caroline said, “if Façade hadn’t escaped from custody on the way to the trial.”

“What about Paragon, though? If he arrived so quickly, doesn’t that suggest that he lived nearby? I mean, from what I’ve read about him he wasn’t able to fly very fast.”

“Maybe he just happened to be close by for some other reason,” Caroline said.

“Yeah, but…I suppose the police had the TV studio surrounded, right? That means that Paragon would have had to get past them in order to get into the studio. So you know what I’m thinking?”

“What’s that?” his father asked.

“Maybe Paragon was a cop. In his real life, I mean. Maybe they knew all about him.”

“I doubt it, Colin. Even if he was, he wouldn’t have let anyone know that he was Paragon. The only heroes whose real names we knew were the Daltons. And that was only because they were already rich enough to protect themselves. All the others probably had ordinary lives.” Warren looked up at the television set. “Speaking of which…Only a few minutes to go before Max Dalton’s interview. Right, Colin—put the kettle on.”

“It’s not my turn!”

“It is if you want to stay up and find out what Max Dalton has to say for himself.”

As Colin carried the mugs of tea into the sitting room, the specially extended edition of the ten o’clock news was coming to an end. It had already reported that Times Square in Manhattan was blocked with people. The news report showed a sea of banners and flags, cheering people dressed up as their favorite heroes and mounted policemen attempting to keep the crowds under control.

The TV cut back to the female newsreader. “And after tonight’s exclusive interview with Max Dalton, we’ll be opening tomorrow’s poll: ‘If you had to be a superhuman, which one would you be?’ You can choose between Titan, Apex, Paragon or Max Dalton. We’ll have the results this time tomorrow night, with updates throughout the day.”

The male newsreader chuckled. “Thanks, Diana. No Ragnarök on the list, then?”

“Oh, I don’t think
he’d
get too many votes, Tom, do you?”

“Guess not! You can vote by pressing the red button on your remote, through the website or by phone. Calls cost…”

Colin’s father hit the mute button, then said, “So who would
you
choose, Colin?”

“I don’t know,” Colin said. “Sometimes I’d like to be Thalamus, because he was the smartest man on the planet. But I kind of like Joshua Dalton too.”

Colin’s mother asked, “Because he was rich and he’s had a string of supermodel girlfriends?”

“Mostly because he has his own helicopter. I’d love to have a go in a helicopter.” Colin turned around to look at his father. “So why do you think that only The High Command survived?”

“Maybe they
all
survived, Colin. Did you ever think of that? Maybe they all survived and decided that it was time to retire.”

Colin laughed. “Oh yeah, sure. If you had the sort of power that Titan had, you’d never be able to just sit around when some disaster happened. You’d have to try and help. That’s what Titan was like.”

“You don’t think that he could have just decided that he’d done enough?”

“No. I mean,
I
wouldn’t. Titan was the most powerful man ever. He had a responsibility to use his powers to help everyone else.”

All this talk about superheroes reminded Colin of his earlier conversation with Brian.

“Dad…Remember what I was saying about how Danny saved Susie’s life?”

“Yes…,” his father said cautiously.

“Well, me and Brian were thinking about it. Danny was really, really fast. Maybe he’s a superhuman.”

“How? How could he be? Apart from the Daltons, there aren’t any superhumans left anymore.”

“But the way Danny moved…” Colin shook his head. “I saw it myself and I still can’t believe it.”

“The mind can play tricks on you, Colin,” said his mother. “Especially under a stressful situation. It might just have
seemed
a lot faster than it was.”

“I suppose…But, you see, I was thinking about this, right? Most of the superheroes got their powers when they were teenagers and Danny’s about the right age.”

Warren grinned. “Are you seriously suggesting that your friend Danny Cooper has hidden powers?”

“Well, it seems like it.”

“Then let us know if he learns how to fly. That could come in handy.”

Colin’s mother said, “It’s starting!”

Colin pulled one of the cushions off the sofa and stretched out on the floor, facing the television set.

The screen showed lots of old footage of the superheroes in action—most of it very shaky and out of focus—then cut to a black-and-white photograph of a handsome gray-haired man in his midforties.

“Maxwell Edwin Dalton,” the presenter’s voice said. “Billionaire CEO of MaxEdDal Pharmaceuticals, first came to public notice when…”

Colin twisted around to face his mother. “What’s CEO mean?”

“Chief executive officer,” she replied. “The boss, in other words.”

Colin turned back to see that the screen was now showing the outside of the MaxEdDal headquarters in Manhattan. “At the age of fifteen,” the voice continued, “young Max Dalton discovered that he had the ability to know what other people were thinking, and to some degree influence their thoughts to make them do what he wanted. Yet, unlike most other superhumans, he chose to go public with his abilities. With his younger sister and brother, Roz and Joshua, he formed The High Command.” The screen showed photos of the Daltons as teenagers.

“Is that the best they can do?” Colin asked. “Isn’t there any film of Max in action? You know, actually
doing
something?”

It was another fifteen minutes before the presenter finally said, “Tonight, Maxwell Dalton will give his first interview since the events of the original Mystery Day. That’s next, coming right up after this!”

The television cut to a commercial. Colin yawned.

“I heard that the TV stations are charging a fortune for these ads,” Caroline said. “Twice as much as they charge for ads during the Super Bowl.”

When the program finally returned, the interviewer was sitting behind a desk. To his right, on a long leather sofa, sat Max Dalton. He was dressed in a sports jacket, white shirt open at the collar and faded jeans.

“He looks, well, kind of ordinary,” Colin said. “I thought he’d be bigger.”

“Shhh!”

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Dalton,” the interviewer said.

“It’s my pleasure, Garth,” Dalton said, smiling. His teeth were the whitest Colin had ever seen.

“Now, first, I guess the most obvious question—and one that I’m sure most people want to know—is why now? Why, after all these years, have you decided to finally break your silence?”

Max paused for a second. “Tomorrow’s the tenth anniversary. I think ten years is long enough to wait.”

“Tell me this, Max…Can you read my mind right now?”

Smiling, Max said, “Garth, I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. Those days are gone.”

“Tell us about those days, if you will.”

“Much of what has been written about my life as a superhero is apocryphal at best.”

“Apocryphal?” Colin asked.

“Made-up,” his mother said.

Max continued. “Yes, we fought crime, helped people, tried to make the world a better place. If you’ve been given a gift—like I was—you’re honor-bound to use it for the greater good.”

“And can you tell us what happened ten years ago?”

“Despite what a lot of people have been saying, I wasn’t there. So your guess is as good as mine, Garth. All I know is that Ragnarök had built some enormous machine and was driving it straight for Manhattan. Then…Well, who can say? There was a big explosion and that was it. No more superhumans.”

“Except yourself—and your brother and sister.”

Max nodded. “Exactly. I have no idea what happened. Josh and I visited the site the following day. All we found was a lot of wreckage.”

“No bodies?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange, that you have no more of an idea what happened than we do? Surely you must know
something
!”

“Now, that’s why I don’t usually do interviews. You have to remember that we lost some very good friends during that battle. Energy, Quantum, Titan, Apex, Paragon…all the others. We fought alongside them for
years.
”

“I know, but—”

Max interrupted him. “Do you think that if I knew something I’d just sit back and let it go? Would you? If some of your closest friends suddenly disappeared, wouldn’t you want to investigate it? We did everything we could to find out what had happened to them.”

The interviewer said, “Can you tell me, then, why you and the other members of The High Command weren’t present at that final battle?”

“We might have been superheroes,” Max said, “but even
we
couldn’t be in two places at one time.”

“But there were other superhumans who
weren’t
present, and they’ve also disappeared.”

“This is apparently true,” Max said.

“Care to suggest how that might be?”

“No,” Max said. “I mean, I’ve got a few ideas, but nothing concrete. Nothing that hasn’t been suggested before. Maybe they retired from the business, just as I did.”

“And may I ask, why
did
you retire? If you don’t mind speaking about that.”

“Whatever happened ten years ago…Well, as I said, your guess is as good as mine. We do know that every other superhuman in the world disappeared that day, heroes and villains included. Roz, Josh and I talked about it—at length—and we came to the conclusion that with all the supervillains gone, we weren’t needed anymore.”

“Yes, but—”