The Battle for Earth (Teen Superheroes Book 3) (17 page)

It was impossible to determine how much time had passed. It could have been minutes or hours or days. And maybe it made no difference anyway.

I was blind.

A sob rose up within me. I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Every inch of my body ached. The terrible pain in my head had passed, but it had been replaced by a dull pulsing throb. The sensation was worst at the back of my eyes.

Weeping, I fell back into the grass and closed my eyes as tightly as I could. Maybe this was temporary. Maybe it would take a few seconds to pass. Keeping my eyes shut, I counted till I got to sixty before I opened them again.

A wall of inky blackness greeted my vision.

I wiped the tears from my eyes. Somehow, I got to my feet and tried to remember the appearance of the landscape. There had been a patchwork of fields, fences, patches of forest and a thin, curving river. Closing my eyes again, I pressed the palms of my hands into my eye sockets and kept my eyes shut for another minute. I finally opened them again.

The darkness drowned me.

The sound of a blue jay echoed across the field. Further away I could hear the slight drone of a distant engine. The sun felt warm on my skin. A breeze tugged at a stray hair on my brow. An insect bounced off my cheek. The whine of it melted away to nothing.

I wanted to scream.

Somehow I fought the impulse and took a series of deep breaths. My head still ached, but at least now the rest of my body had eased to a dull throb. Clutching my head, I felt something wet on my hand. It had to be blood. I had probably hit my head when I landed.

Had that caused my blindness?

Maybe this was only temporary. Regardless, I had to move. I had to find Brodie and the others. I had to find out if they had survived the crash or not. Survival was the first order of business. I had to find other people. To do that, I needed to find houses. Roads. Fences.

I started walking. Holding my hands out in front of me, I felt only long grass. My last memory was not of crops. This was simply a grassy knoll in some farmer’s field. At some point I would meet a fence. That would lead to another fence. Sooner or later I would come across a person.

Excuse me? Will you help a blind boy?

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to give myself over to peals of laughter and lie down on the grass until I choked to death on my hysteria.

Shut up
. I clenched my hands tightly.
Stay focused.

After the first few minutes I realised I was heading down a gradually sloping hill. I began to feel a little more confident. Encountering a stream would be another good sign. Where there was water there was sure to be people. I just had to –

My left foot met empty air.

Stumbling forward, I threw my hands out and instead something slammed into the left side of my face. For a moment I didn’t know up from down. I thought I was being attacked and I punched out wildly. Then I realised I was lying on the ground against some sort of rocky outcrop. A kind of helpless rage consumed me; I had simply fallen over. Crawling away from the stony projection, I encountered soft earth again and I began to pummel it with my fists.

Screaming and crying, I hit it repeatedly until all the energy was gone from my body. At last my head grew dizzy and I fell into another deep silent sleep. There were dreams, but they were the dreams of a sighted boy. He had a girlfriend that he loved, but he should have told her more often. He could see her walking away from him. As she turned back, he saw her lips and her nose and the gentle curve of her cheeks, but she had no eyes.

No eyes.

When I awoke again, I realised I could hear distant sounds. Engines. Voices. I lifted my head slightly. I knew the sound of those engines. They weren’t from motor vehicles. They were from –

Helicopters.

Opening my eyes, I saw something move before me. A blur. Grasses.

Light.

I let out a cry. A squeak of astonishment. I blinked a few times. With each blink of my eyes and with each tear that rolled down my face, I found my vision returning. Looking down at my hands, I saw them slowly come back into focus.

I could see again.

Running ecstatically across the field, I followed a helicopter as it disappeared over a stand of trees. Beyond the trees I could see the wreckage of the spacecraft. Somewhere over there was Brodie and the rest of the team. Climbing over a fence, I raced through the sparse wood until I reached the other side.

People were everywhere. Alien beings were everywhere. The army was trying to secure some sort of order. A system was in place, but just barely. At least there were survivors. I pushed through a field of people. I could see ambulances on the other side of the field.

“Axel!”

The voice came from behind me.

Brodie.

Tears filled her eyes as she pushed past two army officers. An instant later she was in my arms and her lips were against mine. After what seemed an eternity, I drew back from her and examined her face. I never wanted to leave her again. I wanted to spend the rest of my life gazing at those beautiful features.

So I did not hear the cry from behind me the first time, and it only registered dimly with me when they spoke again.

“That’s him!” the voice said.

I turned. It was Agent Palmer from The Agency. Fury filled her face. Her hand was pointed directly at me. Soldiers flanked her on both sides.

“That’s him,” she snarled. “I want him arrested immediately!”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Morgan Le Fay adjusted the controls on the console and examined the readings. She gave a satisfied grunt. The quantum resonator supplied by the Tagaar was working perfectly. It would still take some time to calibrate the systems, but there was no reason why her adjustments to the Solar Accelerator would not succeed. She stepped back from the equipment.

The inside of the building looked like any high tech laboratory with banks of computer screens lining the walls. The only outstanding feature in the room was the mixing chamber. It looked more like a World War II concrete bunker than something that belonged in a lab. A series of titanium rods like the fingers of a giant hand were located on one side of the chamber. On the other side lay the bowl that accelerated the energy stream. When the Accelerator was activated, the rods would slide across into the chamber and begin the build up to –

A pulsating sound came from outside the building.

Frowning, Morgan stepped from the building into the afternoon light. A Tagaar warship – uncloaked – was coming in to land.

“Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” she said.

She waited till it had landed and watched Graal and his men disembark. Something had gone wrong. She could see that immediately. Still, there was no reason why her plan would be affected. Graal marched up the stone path to the installation as his men quickly vacated the spacecraft to fan out down the hill.

“Hello, Graal,” Morgan said. “What a lovely surprise.”

“How are your plans progressing?” he asked.

Always the conversationalist
, Morgan thought.

“Very well,” she answered. “I will be ready in a matter of hours.” She looked past Graal. “What are your men doing? I thought –”

“Our plans have changed,” he interrupted.

“In what way?”

“The Earthlings know we are here on Earth. This makes your own weapon all the more important.”

“Thank you.”

“I was not showing gratitude. I was simply stating a fact.” He glanced across the island. “Our instruments show this island’s communications have been cut off from the mainland.”

Morgan nodded. “I installed a dampening device.”

“Good. My men can hunt in peace.”

What a vicious species
, Morgan thought.
It’s a shame they look so damn ugly. We could have made a good match.

The alien followed her into the main laboratory. He glanced around at the equipment, his eyes finally settling on the Tagaar modules that now interfaced with the Solar Accelerator.

“How exactly does this weapon work?” Graal peered closely at Morgan. “I find it hard to believe a human could create such a device.”

“I’ve been around.” Morgan smiled sweetly. “This is an experimental base designed to study the flow of electrons from the sun. For some time the scientists have been experimenting with grabbing a stream of electrons and feeding them into the Accelerator chamber.”

“With what purpose?”

“To supply energy. Once the stream is tethered to the Accelerator, it sets up a continuous link back to its source.”

“The sun?”

Morgan nodded. “The idea is to accelerate the flow so that an endless supply of free energy is available.”

“It sounds very primitive.” Graal scrutinised the equipment. “Surely fission is a better system.”

“That technology hasn’t been invented yet.”

“I see.” He peered at the quantum resonator connected to the computer. “And why did you need our equipment?”

“Your device will enable me to boost the input into the chamber and then feed it back at the sun.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I can build a massive explosion on its surface.” She paused. “You are probably familiar with an EMP?”

“Electromagnetic Pulse?”

“Exactly. The detonation of an EMP can knock out electricity across an entire city. Once the power fails, so does communication, transport and everything else that holds a civilisation together.” She pointed to the mixing chamber. “The Solar Accelerator will create an explosion on the sun’s surface so massive that electricity across the planet will be knocked out for months.

“The human race will be reduced to savagery. Chaos will reign.”

Graal nodded approvingly. This woman annoyed him with her confidence, but he admired her complete lack of ethics. It was rare to find in a species, and even rarer in a woman.

“Millions will die in the short term,” Graal said. “And many more millions in the ensuing weeks. When the Tagaar arrive we will be greeted as heroes as we help to ‘rebuild’ this world.” It was a brilliant plan. A scheme worthy even of a Tagaar. He peered closely at the woman. “Are you sure you are human?”

“Please,” Morgan tittered. “A girl’s got to have some secrets.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

I was in trouble. Big trouble. No sooner had Agent Palmer seen me than I was arrested and taken to a military vehicle. Chad was already in the back, handcuffed and furious. He looked up as I was pushed inside and handcuffed to the seat opposite him.

“What do they think they’re doing?” he demanded. “We just stopped that ship from crashing. We just –”

“I know,” I agreed. “We also just kidnapped the Premier of Russia and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. They might be unhappy about that.”

Chad clamped his mouth shut. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but at that moment a military commander appeared at the doorway of the truck. He was a square-jawed man with a grey crew cut. He looked so solid he could have been carved from granite. A realisation slowly struck me as he climbed into the back of the van. He was from the military. The American Military. Most of the people milling around the crashed spacecraft were soldiers. And Agent Palmer was flanked by soldiers. It seemed that the connections between The Agency and the US Government had become far closer than we could have imagined.

The man sat down on the bench next to me. “I am General Clarke,” he said. “And you’re the boys who have caused us so much trouble.”

“You should be pinning medals on us!” Chad said. “Not arresting us.”

“I’d say the chances of you boys receiving a medal are about as likely as Amelia Earhart becoming President.” He shook his head. “You’re both in serious trouble.”

“You can’t hold us,” Chad said. “We can break free any time we want.”

“I know about your powers,” the general said. “And you know you could simply break free of those handcuffs. You really do have powers far beyond those of mortal man.” He looked at me. “But trust me when I say that we could retaliate with enormous force. You don’t want to have the might of the United States war machine against you.”

“But –” I began.

Clarke held up a hand. “I know why you pulled this crazy stunt. That’s all been explained to me. And it’s true you saved thousands of lives today.”

“If that ship had hit the Earth –”

“All right. You saved millions of lives, but you also stole a deadly weapon. You infiltrated Russian airspace. You attacked Russian armed forces. You kidnapped the Premier of Russia, Alexi Kozlov. You –”

“It was me.” I shot a look at Chad. “It had nothing to do with Chad. I was the one who broke those laws. He had nothing to do with this.”

“We both know that’s only partly true,” General Clarke said. “For any one of those offences you could go to jail. Considering everything you’ve done – son, are you all right?”

He was staring at the front of my shirt. I looked down. There was blood on my shirt. I touched my face with my cuffed hands. I was having a nose bleed. Before I could speak, the world began to spin and then everything went dark.

When I awoke I found myself in a hospital bed. I sat up with a groan. My head hurt again. There were other beds in the room, but they were empty. A man hurried in with a chart. It took me a moment to recognise him. Then I realised it was Doctor Williams
from The Agency. He had been doing tests to discover why my powers were intermittent. I started to climb from the bed.

“Hey there. Not so fast.”

He pushed me back onto the bed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You tell me. Apparently you passed out in mid-conversation.”

He asked me a series of questions and wrote down my replies on his notepad. When he asked me if I’d been exerting myself over the last few days, I simply laughed and fell silent.

“Out with it,” he demanded. “In detail.”

So I told him about the flight to Russia and everything that had happened since. He looked downright worried when I told him about my temporary blindness. When I finished speaking he simply shook his head and laid down the clipboard.