by Greg Logan
“They’re trying to keep us from beaming out,” Scott said.
“Scott,” April said. “We have to do something.”
He charged back to April and Mandy. To the telekinetic, he said, “Just how strong is your ability?”
“I can lift a car if I have to.”
“All right. I want you to reach inside her and hold her uterus together, until I can figure a way out of this. Can you do that?”
Quentin nodded. “I can try. But I have to be precise about this.”
“Touch my mind, and you can get the exact coordinates as I get them from my computer.”
Quentin nodded. “ this doesn’t work..,”
“It won’t unless we make it work. And we don’t have much time to debate it.”
Quentin nodded, closing his eyes. “I am reaching to your mind now.”
Scott could feel the fingers of the telekinetic reaching into his thoughts.
“My God,” Quentin said. “I have touched the minds of others before, but yours..,”
“The coordinates,” Scott said.
“Yes, I have them.”
And Quentin reached with his mind into the abdomen of the woman lying curled on the floor and wrapped his telekinetic energy around her uterus.
“The strength of the child,” Quentin said. “It’s like there’s a bomb going off inside this woman. I’m trying to contain it, but..,”
Scott noticed a trickle of blood making its way down Quentin’s lip.
Rick Wilson said, “It happens every time he uses his power.”
A chopper was now flying very close to the windows, the noise of its rotor rattling the glass.
“Sammy,” Scott said. “Get Jake back here.”
However, there was only a sound of static from the audio field.
April said, “What’s going on?’
“They’re jamming our communications. We can’t call Sammy or Jake.”
The side door of the helicopter slid open, and a man decked out in full SWAT regalia fired a weapon toward the window. The glass shattered, spraying shards about the room, and a canister bounced across the floor. A grayish gas began hissing from it.
“Nerve gas,” Wilson said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jake materialized in the courtyard of the detention center where they were holding the man known as Peter LaSalle. Pierre LaSalle, actually, according to his birth certificate, but he usually answered to Peter.
He was better known to Jake and Scott as Bumblebee Man, because of the ridiculous yellow and black get-up he had worn when he attacked Jake a few months earlier. He had called himself Power Man, but Mandy Waid had referred to him as Bumblebee Man in her article on the event. Mandy had a way of coming up with catchy names which tended to stick. Jake knew this all too well.
LaSalle’s power seemed to be superhuman strength and an extreme desensitivity to physical trauma. Scott (who read too many comics) used the term invulnerability. In any event, bullets at best bruised LaSalle a little, but caused him no real harm. The limits of LaSalle’s strength hadn’t been measured, but he claimed to have derailed a train once and Jake fully believed him.
LaSalle was now being held in an institution with walls made of steel and a foot thick. LaSalle had pounded his fists bloody against them and managed to dent the hell out of the steel, but had so far not been able to break free.
He was about to be transferred to a cell in Texas, in a facility designed specifically for him. Walls made of concrete and steel over four feet thick. He would have room to move about, and food would be supplied. He would have access to a television and he would be allowed to surf the web. But he wouldn’t be allowed to roam about freely outside.
April was a bit appalled by this, as his crimes didn’t call for indefinite solitary confinement. He had been charged with vandalism, destruction of private property (to the tune of a couple million dollars), and physical assault and battery (when he punched Jake and knocked him through the wall and down to the street below). The reason for the indefinite solitary was because society was afraid of him. Jake knew he and Scott would be facing a similar fate if the authorities were able to capture and confine them.
Jake and Scott had considered the possibilities of springing LaSalle and inviting him to join the team. But LaSalle’s limited cognitive ability (in other words, he was not the sharpest tool in the shed), and his ethics which seemed to be aimed mostly at self-interest.
As a service to the public, because Scott believed they should always act in the best interest of the public to prove they were not in reality super villains (again, Scott read too many comics), Jake had gone to help the Army escort LaSalle to his new home.
And yet, when he arrived in the courtyard, Jake found a couple dozen National Guardsman standing with rifles aimed at him.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
That was all he had time to ask. One rifle fired, and Jake found a dart landing in his neck. He tried to flip the mental switch to power-up, but other rifles were firing. Another dart bounced off of his jumpsuit, which could easily resist a bullet, let alone a dart. But a third landed also in his neck, and one caught him in an exposed hand.
Knockout juice, he realized. A sedative of some kind, and a fast-acting one. The world quickly started becoming distorted around him and his knees were growing wobbly. He found he could no longer focus his thoughts enough to power up. He fell to the ground and all went black.
Nerve gas, Wilson had said. And Scott thought he was probably right. The authorities had apparently not given up their attempts to gain control of himself and Jake Calder. They were now taking advantage of Mandy Waid’s medical condition to attempt a capture.
They were beginning to really piss him off.
They might have blocked communication with Sammy or Jake, but that didn’t mean they had defeated Scott. He was wearing his battle suit’s utility belt. He never went anywhere without it because, as was being proven at this very moment, you just never know.
“I’m engaging a force field,” he said, flipping a switch in the front of belt. “I’m enveloping it around us.”
Unfortunately, he couldn’t extend it enough to include all of the people in the news room, but he got it around himself, April, Mandy, and the three new meta-humans.
The grayish fog swirled all about him and the news staffers began to drop. I hope to hell the gas is not fatal, Scott thought. However, those within the force field had a bubble of oxygen that should at least last a few minutes.
Sammy had some security protocols built in, should he ever lose contact with Scott or Jake. Scott hoped they were kicking in now. If so, then they shouldn’t need the force field for more than a few minutes.
“I don’t know how much longer I can hold this,” Quentin said, blood now streaming down his face from both nostrils.
“Just do what you can,” Scott said.
Tompkins was in a chopper, advancing quickly toward the building. He had discarded his suit jacket and was shouldering into a flack vest.
He was wearing headphones, and through the ear piece an agent said, “Sir, they have erected some sort of force field. The gas has incapacitated the civilians within the room, but the subjects are still on their feet.”
He was disappointed. He hated to fail in an assignment. He had hoped to capture Scott Tempest, so tests could be conducted on him and they could finally learn what made him tick. The agency had tried for years to work with that freak, which Tompkins had been against from the start. Finally, Washington was beginning to listen to him.
There was also the girl. As far as Tompkins knew she was not a meta-human, but she had information about Tempest and Calder that would probably prove valuable. And Tompkins was still pissed that Tempest had sprung her after Tompkins had arrested her. Tompkins bore her no ill will himself, but the people he answered to would want her interrogated. Tompkins had never lost a prisoner before. They had a sadistic side, and he knew they would order him to make it an interrogation
she would long remember.
But now Tempest was finding a way to circumvent the nerve gas.
Kincaid was beside Tomkins, also wearing headphones. “Sir, do we implement Plan Baker?”
Tompkins nodded reluctantly. “I had hoped to capture them alive. But I suppose as long as Tempest is incapacitated and no longer a threat to society, then the mission can be considered at least a partial success. Yes, implement Plan Baker.”
“Implement Plan Baker,” Kincaid said into a microphone mounted onto his headset. “I repeat, implement Plan Baker.”
Two of the helicopters then fired missiles at the building. Upon contact, the missiles exploded and the fourth floor disappeared in a flash of flame followed by a thunder clap that shook Tompkins in his seat. Fragments of concrete and steel shot past the choppers.
He watched from the chopper as the building crumbled, shaking the ground and spewing up a cloud of dust.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Scott found he was lying on the ground, concrete debris strewn about him, a cloud of grayish dust hanging overhead. He was shaken up, but still conscious. One leg had been struck by a flying chunk of concrete, and was now at least severely bruised. Possibly broken at the shin. He doubted he would be able to stand on it.
He had wondered how much abuse his force field could take in a real-world scenario. Sure, he had tested it in his lab, but as he looked at the rubble about him and the dust cloud overhead, he could say it held together quite nicely as the building was blown apart about them.
The field was no longer operative, obviously, or the chunk of debris would not have struck his leg. And he was coughing on dust.
“April!” he called out.
“Over here.” She was already on her feet, but a little shaky. “I’m all right.”
“Sammy,” he said, into the communicator mounted on his wrist.
Still no response. No audio field was forming around him. We could all be in real trouble.
To April, he said, “Locate Mandy.”
“I’m trying. I was right beside her when all hell broke loose, but now I can’t find her.”
April hadn’t taken the time to grab a battle suit before they beamed in here. She had been in running shorts, which she wore very short. Pleasingly so, Scott thought. Jake had thought Scott never noticed, but he had. But her legs were now covered with scratches and bruises, and blood was trailing from her nose.
Near Scott was the telekinetic guy (Scott had never actually gotten his name). The man’s eyes were shut and his mouth and jaw were covered with blood. Scott didn’t know if he was alive or dead, or how many of his injuries were caused by the collapse of the building, and how many just by using his ability.
“I can’t see her,” April called out. “It’s like she’s disappeared, or something.”
“Possibly buried under some of this rubble.”
Scott tried to rise to his feet, but found his leg would indeed support no weight. He fell back to the ground, slamming one elbow into another chunk of concrete.
He then became aware of figures moving ahead of them in the cloud of dust, working their way toward them. After a moment, he could see they were in uniform. Helmets, oxygen masks, goggles, and flack vests. And they were all carrying weapons.
“One is moving,” a man said, his voice muffled by his mask. “Bring the subject down.”
But they weren’t firing at Scott. They were targeting April. They struck her in the shoulder and back, and Scott realized they were stun guns.
They began releasing electric current, and she screamed and convulsed. But they didn’t ease up on the charge, allowing her the opportunity to fall unconscious, but instead continued the barrage. Apparently they were taking no chances. No! Scott thought. They could kill her.
“Stop!” he called out.
But they continued the charges, and then April seemed to explode in a flash of white light. Scott had been looking directly at her and the flash blinded him for a moment. There had been no sound, just an explosion of light, and a burst of heat he felt against his face.
“What the hell?” He began crawling toward where she had been when they fired.
April was no longer there. All that remained were her running shorts, tank top, and running shoes, and the scrunchie she had held her hair back with.
He didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what happened to her. This would have to come later, if there was indeed to be a later. The advancing troops were now focusing their stun guns on him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Physically, Sammy appeared to be, to his own chagrin, nothing more than an out-dated Macintosh computer. A tower with an old monochrome monitor built in. There was no longer a keyboard attached because none was needed, and there was no mouse. But internally, Sammy was like nothing the world had ever known. A computer built entirely of photons. His processor was the size of a quarter, which was large for photonic computers, Scott Tempest had said. What Sammy found amusing about this statement was that Scott had, so far, built only one photonic computer.
The term the theoretical physicists were using was Quantum Computer, but Scott liked the name photonic better because it sounded more like something out of Star Trek, and because, well, it was built on photons. Why not call it what it was?
The fact that Sammy could feel chagrin or amusement said something about the strength of a photonic computer, especially one this size. His gigabytes of active memory had been in the millions when he was first built, but as more were needed, he just drew in more photons and grew himself a larger processor.
Sammy didn’t mind the name Sammy, he supposed. April had dreamed it up. She could be whimsical, but Sammy liked her, so what the hell? Sammy was a little intrigued by the concept of whimsy, because despite the fact that emotions were developing, and self-awareness had been accomplished a long time ago, whimsy and creativity still seemed beyond his grasp.
He was getting tired of being confined inside this gray, plastic box, though. True, by bouncing signals off of satellites he could get a view of anywhere in the world. He could tap into the Hubble Telescope and scan the heavens. He could take an image from the Hubble, zoom in on it, and then clean it up better than any other computer could, to create a clear picture of a section of space the human scientists of the world could barely see.
But Sammy wanted more. He wanted to be able to walk across the room. He understood the chemical composition of the drink called beer which Scott and Jake liked (though April called it yucky), but he wanted to actually lift a bottle and taste it for himself. He had some ideas about how to accomplish this and would have to confer with Scott.
However, this would all have to wait, because Scott and the others seemed to be in a crapload of trouble.
Ha, Sammy thought. Show me another computer who can use words like crapload.
All communication had been cut off with Scott and April. This meant trouble.
He quickly scanned the area, and found eight hovering helicopters had created a sort of electro-magnetic energy field to block communications. This was a no-no.
Sammy went to initiate communication with Jake, but then discovered Jake was going rapidly unconscious. According to Jake’s medical read-out, in the life signs monitor included in his wrist band, he was being flooded with a heroin derivative.
Gotta take care of this one first, Sammy thought. Initiating Defense Initiative Omega. Omega, of course, the Greek letter for Z, which was short for zeta. Sammy sent a command to the sub-processor in Jake’s belt, which activated a device in the belt, which sent out a quick electronic pulse which was set to the exact modulation needed to initiate a command in Jake’s brain. In this case, the command that would cause Jake to begin powering-up.
Sammy had to admit, for a human, Scott was pretty bright.
Now, back to the folks at the newspaper.
The building had been destroyed, but Scott’s force field had held together well enough to keep any of them from being seriously hurt. Sammy now ha
d to decide the best course of action. He had been programmed not to harm any life form, and he had no access to any weapons. What was required was some creative thinking. Which, unfortunately, was not Sammy’s strong point. He wished April were here.
He was able to tap into surveillance cameras on buildings near the newspaper and while he was watching, he was able to zoom in on April, and saw as she was hit with multiple stun guns. He watched her collapse and then..,
What the hell? Did she explode? She disappeared in a flash of light. Her clothing remained but she was gone. Scott was crawling over with his injured leg and looking the situation over. Apparently he was just as puzzled as Sammy was.
Sammy then felt something he had never felt before. A sort of heat, beginning from within, and rising upward. He was getting hot, and found himself losing his ability to reason. Was this rage? Was he feeling intense anger? He had never felt anger before. However, these bastards had just killed April. And by God, they were going to pay. Sammy would take time to analyze this new emotion later. Right now, he was going to make those bastards realize you don’t harm his friends.
The general public believed Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program, mounting lasers on orbiting platforms to shoot down enemy nuclear missiles, had died when Congress denied the funding. What they didn’t know was it was actually up and running and had been for years. Hacking into the system was child’s play for Sammy. Within seconds, he had access to an orbiting platform now drawing within range of Boston. This platform held a huge laser designed for the government by Scott a few years ago, and aiming it was also child’s play, at least for a photonic computer. And now, you bastards, you die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jake found himself rising to consciousness. He also found he was powering-up, rapidly. He wasn’t exactly sure how this was happening, as he had never done this in his sleep before.