The Gathering: Quantum Prophecy 2 (2 page)

Dioxin couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt sick. His
pockmarked, acid-seeping skin was starting to itch. He looked down at his hands.
What’s wrong with me?
He dropped to his knees, leaned over, retched. A thick stream of bile spilled from his mouth, the acid instantly scorching the ground.
Oh God. It’s my own poison! I’m not immune to my own poison anymore!

Then one of the marines shouted, “Sarge! He’s burning!”

Dioxin could feel his skin starting to blister and bubble.
The acid…Need to dilute it.
Dioxin looked around in panic, then spotted a large ornate fountain in the middle of the small town’s square. He tried to push himself to his feet.
The water…

The marine sergeant cocked his gun. “One more move and you’re a dead man!”

If I can’t get the acid off my skin I’m a dead man anyway!
“Help me! The acid…It’s killing me!”

The sergeant paused. “Yeah? Now you know what it felt like for all your victims.”

“Paragon!” Titan’s voice shouted as the armored man entered the dark room.

Paragon could see one of Titan’s legs protruding from beneath a piece of fallen machinery.

“I’m here!” Paragon said. “Where’s Ragnarök?”

“Gone,” Titan said. “I don’t know what happened…It’s like I’ve lost all my powers! I think my leg is broken.”

Paragon looked around, spotted a thick steel beam and grabbed it. “Hold still. I’m going to get you free.” He wedged one end of the beam under the machine. His muscles straining, Paragon pushed up on the beam. The machine raised a centimeter, then another.

Groaning from the pain in his shattered leg, Titan pulled himself free.

Paragon dropped the beam, allowing the heavy machine to crash to the floor. “We’ve got less than a minute. Can you stand?”

“I don’t think so.”

“OK…Nearest exit?”

“The roof…” Titan pointed to a metal ladder leading to an open hatch in the ceiling.

The armored man reached down and lifted Titan up, threw him over his shoulder. He grunted. “You’re damned heavy for a man who can fly.”

Paragon pulled himself up the ladder and on to the roof. “Hold on to my legs!” he yelled at Titan, then activated his jetpack. They soared away from the battle-tank just as it exploded in a two-hundred-meter-high ball of flame.

Dioxin saw his chance: the marines were staring off into the distance at the fireball. Pain coursing through every inch of his body, he pushed himself to his feet, grabbed hold of the nearest soldier and put his hand on the man’s neck. The soldier dropped to the ground screaming.

Before the others could react, Dioxin was on them, pressing his venomous, acid-dripping hands against their bare skin.

Then he turned toward the fountain and ran, painfully aware that his own skin was now beginning to peel away. He was sure that if he looked behind he’d be able to see his own bloodstained footprints.

Get to the water, wash the acid off! If I’m lucky, I won’t be too badly
scarred. Since it happened—whatever it was—there hasn’t been any new acid.

I’m cured.

The fountain—filled with life-giving water—was only a few steps away when something hard and heavy plowed into Dioxin’s back, knocking him facefirst to the ground. He screamed and rolled over on to his back.

Paragon stood over him, his armored fists smoldering from the acid. “Stay down, you goddamned psychopath! You just murdered those men!”

Dioxin tried to crawl backward away from him. “No! You’ve got to let me…”

Paragon slammed his fist into Dioxin’s face. “Let you what? Let you get away?”

Dioxin kicked out at Paragon’s legs, leaving a smoking, bloodied streak across the armor. “I’m not immune to my own acid anymore! It’s killing me!”

Paragon glanced toward the fountain.
He wasn’t trying to escape. He was trying to get to the water…
For a moment, he considered letting the man burn himself to death.

Then he reached down, grabbed hold of Dioxin’s arms and threw him into the fountain. The water hissed and bubbled as it splashed down over Dioxin’s skin, turned red with blood and gore.

Dioxin collapsed, unconscious.

Paragon waded into the water and propped up Dioxin’s head.
Don’t want him to drown before he can go on trial for murder.

As Paragon was stripping off his now-ruined armor, a dark
green army truck screeched to a halt a hundred meters away. A thin, gray-haired old man climbed down. He was wearing an immaculately pressed uniform with four silver stars on the shirt’s lapels.

Paragon took off his helmet and walked over to the truck. “General Piers. What the hell happened here today?”

“I wish I knew. Our people are going over what remains of the tank. We’ve already picked up most of Ragnarök’s men. And we’ve got your friends. They’re all in a bad way. Looks like they’re not superhuman anymore. What about you?”

“I never was a superhuman, General.” Paragon looked back toward the fountain. “What about Ragnarök?”

“He’s gone. There was an escape pod on the roof of the tank. Moved too fast for us to track.”

The general patted Paragon on the shoulder. “You did good work here today, son.”

“General, you’ve got to keep all this secret. We can’t let people know that the superhumans have lost their powers. It might only be temporary. But if not…”

“There’d be chaos. I understand. Every crook on the planet would think that all his birthdays had come at once. Max Dalton said the same thing.”

A soldier approached. “Sir? Dioxin…”

“What about him, soldier?”

“He’s…” The man looked sick and pale. “He’s gone, sir. There’s nothing left of him. Dissolved by his own acid.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry to hear that,” the general said. “All right. Get a crew on to it and start mopping up. Treat it as a level-one
biohazard situation. I want every remaining particle of that man’s body bagged and labeled.” He turned to Paragon. “So what next?”

“Someone has to follow that tank’s path, find out where it came from. I want to know how something that big could have come this far without anyone noticing it. Then we’ve got to find Ragnarök and finish this once and for all.”

C
OLIN
W
AGNER RUSHED TOWARD THE
burning toy store. Even from a hundred meters away he could feel the heat of the fire.

It was late December, a little after five-thirty in the evening, the streets packed with rush-hour traffic, the pavements blocked with shoppers carrying bags.

Colin and Renata had been on the other side of town, just about to start their Christmas shopping, when Colin heard the screams. They’d run to a deserted alley and changed into their costumes; Colin was wearing his father’s old Titan costume, which his mother had repaired and cut down to size. Renata was wearing black jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt under a short red leather jacket she’d bought for a fiver in the local charity shop, and a mask.

Now the two teenage superhumans pushed their way through the crowds. From far away, Colin could hear the sirens of half a dozen fire engines, all slowly trying to get through the dense Christmas traffic.

“Excuse me!” Colin said to a large man who—like hundreds of others—had stopped to watch the fire engulf the toy store.

The man glanced at Colin, then did a double take when he saw his costume and mask. “You’re Kid Titan! I saw you in the paper!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Colin saw that Renata was having better luck: she had leaped over the crowd and was now running
across the roofs of the slow-moving cars, straight toward the burning building.

Colin ducked past the man, spotted a gap in the crowd and ran for it. He jumped on to the hood of a taxi, then on to the roof of a stalled Toyota. The Toyota driver beeped his horn in anger.

Ahead, Renata had reached the building. A frightened-looking, soot-covered woman in a scorched store uniform was talking to her. As he ran, Colin listened:

“We got everyone out of the ground floor, but there’s still people trapped upstairs. Part of the ceiling collapsed! The stairs are burning and there’s no way for them to get out!”

“OK. Get everyone back as far as possible. See if you can get someone to clear the way for the fire brigade.”

The woman nodded and turned back to the crowd.

Colin reached Renata just as she kicked her way through the remains of the burning wooden doors. “What happened?”

“She didn’t know. Said she was working in the storeroom at the back when the alarm went off. She got everyone out of the ground floor. But there’s—”

“More upstairs. I heard that.” Colin squinted around, trying to peer through the thick black smoke. “Stairs are over that way.”

“That woman said the stairs are burning.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Colin said. “Take a deep breath and run for it, OK? I’ll go first.”

“No, let me. I can always turn myself solid if the heat gets too much.”

They ran through the blackness toward the stairway, tearing
their way through the displays of burning teddy bears and melting model kits. Renata took the stairs three at a time, with Colin close behind her.

Ahead of them was a wall of flame; Colin could feel the heat beginning to singe his costume. Without hesitating, Renata plunged into the fire. Colin followed and seconds later he crashed into something cold and hard.

Renata had turned herself solid.

Darn it!
Colin thought.
The heat
was
too much for her!
They were still in the middle of the flames. Colin grabbed Renata’s solid form around the waist and picked her up. He continued up the stairs, moving a little slower now.

He emerged from the flames at the top of the stairway and took a moment to breathe. Ahead was a locked fire door and he could hear something pounding on the other side of it. Knowing that time was crucial, Colin didn’t waste any looking around for something to smash open the door. He muttered, “Sorry about this!” to Renata, then ran straight for the door, using her solid form as a battering ram.

The door crashed open and Colin saw a scared, red-faced man on the other side, holding on to a baseball bat. His name-badge read, “Hi, I’m Dave!”

Colin let Renata drop to the floor and pushed the door closed. “You can’t go that way! The fire’s too hot!”

“What are we going to do?” the assistant screamed. “The sprinklers didn’t come on! We used the extinguishers but they didn’t make much difference.”

Colin looked around. The room was thick with smoke, the
only light coming from the fire at the far end of the room. A small bunch of people were huddled together in the middle of the room, coughing, keeping low to the floor, where the air was a little more clear. “How many others up here?”

“Five, including me,” the man said. “I tried to break the windows with this…” He waved the baseball bat. “They’ve got wire mesh in them.”

On the floor beside them, Renata turned back to her human form and got to her feet. Colin could see that her hands and arms were covered in large white blisters. “Sorry,” she said. “I panicked.”

“Punch out the windows,” Colin said. “I’ll try to find something I can use to lower everyone down.” To the assistant, he said, “Dave, round up everyone. Get them over to the windows. Tell them to keep low.”

All right
, Colin said to himself as Renata ran toward the windows.
What’s on this floor? Dolls, action figures, books, puzzles…Nothing I can use.

There was a crashing sound as Renata punched and tore her way through the wire-mesh glass.

What can I do to get everyone out? Need a rope or something…
He yelled out to the assistant, “Dave! Jump ropes!”

“Downstairs, next to the register!” the man called back. “Actually, there’s a special on this week…Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Great,” Colin muttered. He listened carefully: the fire engines were still a few minutes away. Then, from the floor below, he heard a series of small explosions.
The paint for the model kits
, he realized.
It’s flammable!
“We have got to get out of here
now
!” he yelled to Renata.

“It’s too far for them to jump!” she called back.

With a
crack
, the roof at the far end of the room collapsed, showering them with white-hot sparks.

“
You
jump!” Colin said to Renata, running over to her. “I’ll drop everyone down to you!”

Renata nodded, then vaulted out of the window. As Colin lifted up the nearest woman, he caught a glimpse of Renata’s skin and costume glistening as she turned solid. Seconds later, he heard her call, “I’m ready!”

The woman in Colin’s arms began to panic as he lifted her over the window ledge. “No! It’s too far!”

“Just close your eyes,” Colin said.

“Can’t you just
fly
us down? What the hell kind of superhero are you?”

“The kind who can’t fly,” Colin said, then dropped her. Below, Renata was waiting with her arms outstretched. She caught the woman and lowered her to the ground. The watching crowd clapped and cheered.

“Next!” Colin yelled.

A second section of the roof collapsed, sending the flames surging toward them. Colin turned back to see that Dave was lifting a teenage boy—not much older than Colin—in his arms. Dave dropped the boy down to Renata.

A coughing, wheezing elderly man was next. As carefully as he could—knowing that old people’s bones could be very fragile—Colin lifted the man up. “Hold on to my hands, OK? Can you do that?”

Still coughing, the man nodded.

Colin lifted the old man out and—gripping on to his hands—leaned
out of the window and lowered him down as far as he could go.

“Do it!” Renata shouted. “I’m ready!”

Colin let go, but the old man twisted somehow at the last second, swung away. Renata made a grab for him…And missed.

There was a gasp of shock from the crowd when he hit the ground. The man’s left leg was bent at an unnatural angle. Renata crouched beside him, but he waved her away. “No, help the others!”

A young woman was next. Renata caught her easily, helped by the teenage boy.