The Awakening (6 page)

9

B
LUE-WHITE LIGHTNING CRACKED ACROSS
the lab’s computer banks.

“Damn! It’s overloading!” Victor Cross shouted. “Shut it down before we lose everything!”

One of the technicians raced toward the computers. “I’m trying!”

“Try harder!”

The technician began to pound furiously on the keyboard. “It’s not happening! The system is locked out!”

Victor pushed him aside, then reached down and unplugged the computer from the power supply.

The computer sparked once, then was silent.

“Don’t waste time trying to fix it,” Victor said. “Just get the backup system online.”

The phone on the wall buzzed and a woman’s voice said, “Er…Mr. Cross? Some bad news.”

Victor grabbed the phone. “What the hell did you do?”

“We ran a low-power test on the nucleus. There was some sort of leak. I don’t know why, but it shorted out all the computers here. It shouldn’t have had any effect.”

“Well, it did. We lost our main computer here too. Who told you to test the nucleus?”

“No one, but we thought…”

He interrupted her. “You
didn’t
think. If you’d thought, you’d have asked me first! What did we lose?”

“O’Brien and Hammond…They’re alive, but badly burned.”

“I’m talking about the equipment.”

“Oh. Nothing that can’t be replaced.”

“Consider yourself lucky, then. I want you to assign two people to scour the entire base and see what effect your power surge has had. Make the security systems their top priority. The rest of you, repair everything and get back to work on the nucleus. I don’t want any more time lost on this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Victor slammed the phone back into its cradle. He turned to the nearest technician. “Damage report?”

“I think that the data files are safe. The backup system will be online in a couple of minutes. What
was
that, anyway?”

“They think it was a leak from the nucleus.”

The man’s face drained of color. “Is that dangerous?”

“Only if you’re a superhuman.”

The energy surge had rippled through the entire complex. The technicians assigned to check for damage went through the complex level by level, room by room. A few computer components had short-circuited, but aside from that, the effect was minimal.

When they reached the storage room on level one, they opened the door, flipped the light switch and looked in.

“Nothing in here,” one of them said. “Just a few old crates and that weird glass statue.”

“It’s not glass,” his companion said. “Me and Kulvinder were moving it earlier and he slipped and it fell over the rail. Right down to level seven. Didn’t get a scratch. If it was glass it would have broken into a million pieces. And then we had to carry the damn thing all the way back up here.”

They closed the door and moved on.

A few seconds later, the door was opened again. The technician reached in without looking, turned off the light and closed the door behind him.

If he had looked, he would have seen that the statue of the girl had moved.

Colin was strapped into a seat, still handcuffed, sitting with his parents and Danny against the side wall of the copter. Danny was still unconscious, snoring softly.

Colin’s enhanced hearing had returned a few minutes earlier. Now, he could hear the pilot talking to Façade.

“Fuel’s getting pretty low,” Colin whispered to his father. “We’re going to be touching down to refuel any minute.”

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere over the Atlantic,” Colin said. “There must be an aircraft carrier or something.”

His father said, “No, this is a Boeing CH-47 Chinook. It can set down on water.” He nodded toward two large metal drums secured close to the cockpit. “It’s my guess that they’re reserve fuel tanks. They’ll set down and switch over. They probably have enough fuel to get us to mainland America.”

“What are they going to do to us, Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

Colin looked at Danny. “What about Danny’s brother? If Façade has been pretending to be Mr. Cooper for so long, doesn’t that mean that he’s really Niall’s father?”

“Yeah. It does.”

The door to the cockpit slammed open and Façade stepped through. He crouched in front of Danny and pressed his index finger against the boy’s neck.

“Leave him alone,” Colin said. “Haven’t you done enough?”

Façade turned to Colin. “I was checking that he’s all right.” His voice was soft, almost gentle, the same voice Colin had known for years, but there was a hard, determined look to the man’s eyes. Façade stood back up and stretched. At that moment the copter lurched and he grabbed for the handrail to steady himself. “I haven’t been in one of these things for a long time.”

“So what happened?” Warren asked. “You were disguised as Quantum when Ragnarök’s weapon was used and you weren’t able to change back?”

“That’s right.”

“Can I ask you something?” Colin said.

Façade shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“If you took over Mr. Cooper’s life, then Niall is really
your
son, right?”

“Yes. He is.”

“But you’ve left him behind.”

“I know. But this is important.”

“Won’t you miss him?”

“I don’t intend to be away forever.”

Colin’s dad asked, “Why are you doing this, Façade?”

Façade said, “Because it needs to be done. Danny was the oldest potential superhuman who hadn’t developed any powers when Ragnarök’s machine was used. I was ordered to watch him. I didn’t expect that I would be doing it for so long. I certainly didn’t expect to have to look like Quantum permanently. Once we all lost our powers I couldn’t change back.”

“What about Danny’s real dad?” he asked. “What happened to him?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“Then tell me this,” Warren said. “Why did you wait? After the battle-tank, you could have abandoned your mission. Ragnarök was dead, there was no one to give you orders.”

Façade said, “This is bigger than that, Warren. Bigger than you or me or any boy.”

10

O
NCE THE REPAIRS WERE UNDER WAY
,
Victor Cross went to the medical unit where he found Rachel examining Joseph.

“How’s he doing?” Victor asked.

“Considering he’s spent ten years in the same prison cell, he’s in good shape physically. But mentally…” Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

“Please don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Joseph said. “Why
are
we here, exactly?”

Rachel regarded him for a second. “You don’t know? I was told you knew more about this than anyone.”

Joseph closed his eyes and rubbed his palm against his forehead. “Maybe once I did. Now…I’ve had ten years of memories and nightmares mixed together. I’m finding it hard to remember what was real and what wasn’t.” He inhaled deeply, relaxed and opened his eyes. “The boy…he’d be a teenager now, yes?” Before Rachel could respond, he continued. “Ah. Of course. You’re bringing him here, yes? Façade has revealed himself.”

“He’s on the way. He’s also bringing us Warren and Caroline Wagner and their son. He’s almost thirteen years old.”

“Yes, yes…He’s a part of this too.” Joseph smiled. “They called him Colin, if I remember correctly. What’s their ETA?”

Victor said, “Eight hours. They’re halfway across the Atlantic right now. They’ll touch down at the base in Florida, take a civilian transport from there. Unfortunately, we put the country’s defenses on high alert when we broke you out of prison.”

Victor’s cell phone beeped. He checked the display, then turned away from Joseph and Rachel to answer it. “Talk to me.”

It was the electronic voice again. “I want you to contact the team in Orlando, get them ready. Make it clear to them that Daniel Cooper is not to be harmed in any way.”

“Got it.”

“How’s Joseph?”

Victor left the room. When he was sure that Joseph couldn’t overhear, he said, “He’s having some trouble with his short-term memory—he keeps forgetting who we are—but he still remembers the important stuff. The drugs they were giving him in the prison are starting to wear off. He’s becoming more lucid. I’m concerned that if he gets a full grasp of the situation he might not be so eager to cooperate.”

“Just keep him doped up and under armed guard at all times. You know what to do if he gets out of control.”

In the storage room on the top floor of the complex, where the glasslike statue had once stood, the girl was lying on the ground, curled into a ball, shivering.

She’d lain there for hours, unaware of anything other than the pain that coursed through her body.

She didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know what had happened to her. Her thoughts were a blurred jumble of images and words, memories and feelings.

Gradually, she became aware that one word was surfacing more frequently than any other.

Alive.

The pain finally began to subside. The girl pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around the dark room.

She reached up to her face and removed the small black mask from her eyes.

Renata Soliz spoke her first words in ten years: “I’m alive.”

11

C
OLIN WOKE WITH A START AND REALIZED
that the copter had touched down on land; its engines were slowing down and he could hear vehicles approaching. At the back of the copter, the ramp was lowered and sunlight flooded in. The soldiers filed out, leaving their prisoners unsupervised for the first time.

Colin looked at his parents and Danny. “What’s the plan?”

“There is no plan, Colin,” his mother said. “We’re going to have to do what they want and hope they let us go.”

“That’s crazy!”

“There’s nothing else we
can
do,” his father said, looking at the handcuffs. “We don’t even know where we are.”

Colin listened to the copilot talking to Façade. “We’re in Florida. I think we’re on a military base. They said something about trucks to take us to the airport…they’ve got a private jet waiting for us.”

Warren said, “Colin, they don’t know about your hearing. That’s the only thing that might give us an advantage. Keep listening. We might find out something useful.”

“Wait…you can
hear
them?” Danny said to Colin. “Seriously?”

“Later,” Colin said.

Warren glanced at his wife, then turned back to the boys. “We have to act as a team, OK? But sometimes…sometimes we have to act alone. Do you both understand that?”

They nodded.

“Good. If either of you sees an opportunity to escape, go for it. But only if you’re absolutely certain that you can make it.”

Two large troop carriers were reversed up to the Chinook’s ramp. Colin’s parents were herded into one, the boys were put into the other.

For the moment, Colin and Danny were alone. The heat in the truck was almost suffocating; the walls were too hot to touch and pencil-thin shafts of sunlight came through a series of tiny holes in the roof.

“All right,” Colin said, speaking quickly. “We don’t have much time, so just trust me, OK? You ever wondered how your parents got to know mine? It’s because they used to work together. My dad was Titan and my mother was Energy.”

Danny snorted. “On any other day, that might seem strange.”

“When you and your dad—I mean, Façade—were coming over to my house last night, I could hear you. Façade doesn’t know I’ve got any powers, so we need to make sure he doesn’t find out.”

“What else can you do?”

“Not much. Not yet, anyway.” He examined his handcuffs. “Before we were caught, I broke through the tunnel door and I could see where we were going even though there was no real light. I
should
be able to get out of these.” He tensed his muscles, tried to concentrate, then strained against the cuffs.

“If you keep that up, the only thing you’re going to break is your wrists,” Danny said.

Colin relaxed his muscles. “My hearing keeps coming and going, so maybe my strength will come back. How about you?”

“Nothing,” Danny said. “And even if my speed comes back, what good will it do me? I’ll never get through the cuffs.” He sighed. “I swear I’m going to make him pay for this. The first chance I get, I’m going to bash his skull in!”

“Dan…”

“I mean it, Colin! He pretended to be my father for
eleven years
! I don’t even know if my real dad is alive! And what about my mother? She was asleep when we left the flat last night. She won’t have any idea where we are. She must be going out of her mind with worry. And there’s Niall…he’s only seven years old! What’s he going to think? Façade is Niall’s father.”

“Look, we don’t know what they want you for, and your dad—Façade—he said something earlier about not being away forever. Maybe this won’t be so bad.”

“Then why did he have to kidnap us?”

Colin didn’t have an answer for that one.

Danny said, “Did you notice the look in his eyes? He doesn’t want to be here any more than we do. I think—”

“Wait!” Colin said, interrupting him. “My dad’s saying something.”

He concentrated, tried to focus on his father’s voice.

“Colin…I hope you can hear me. Splitting us up was a mistake; now it’s going to be harder to watch us. Most of these soldiers are greenhorns. I think this is the first action they’ve seen. When we get to the airport, maybe I can create some kind of diversion. It might be enough for you and Danny to get away. I don’t think they’re going to risk shooting you. But…they might threaten to shoot me or your mother. Don’t believe them. They need us as much as they need you.”

Colin was sure that his father was lying about that. He wished that he could somehow speak to him.

“If you do get away, be careful. We don’t know how big this organization is; they could have spies everywhere. You need to get to Max Dalton. If you can’t, then try to find a man called Solomon Cord. He will help you. Last I heard he was living in New York, but that’s all I know. Colin, ten years ago Solomon Cord used to be Paragon.”

He was about to tell Danny what his father had said when two soldiers—neither of whom Colin had seen before—climbed into the back of the truck and sat down opposite them, with their guns drawn.

A minute later, they were joined by Façade, who was now wearing civilian clothes. “How are you doing, son?” he asked Danny.

Danny swore.

Façade glared at him. “Watch your language.” He sat down opposite them. “Either of you hungry?”

“Starving,” Colin said.

“We’ll get you something to eat on the plane.”

“Let me phone my mother,” Danny said. “She doesn’t know what’s happened. I want her to know that I’m OK.”

Façade shook his head. “No. Sorry. I know you don’t like it, and I understand that, but we can’t do anything that might jeopardize this operation. Pretty soon it’ll all be over. Then we can go home and forget about it, OK?”

“No. Not OK. Whatever happens, Façade, I will not forget this. I swear that I will make you pay for what you’ve done.”