“You might. Not my problem.” The clone pushed the door closed. “Don’t try to get past me.”
“You know that Cross is mad, right?” Colin asked, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “If he destroys the world, where are you going to find food?”
“We don’t really need food,” Zeke said. “Just like you. Or like you used to be. It’ll be a long time before your powers come back.”
“I’m betting Cross needs to eat, though. How is he supposed to survive?”
“He’ll think of a way. He’s probably already thought of lots of ways.”
“Yeah,” Colin said, “but don’t forget that he’s still crazy.”
“You’re going to try to persuade me to turn against him,” Zeke said. “That won’t work. Victor built loyalty into us when he made us. Even Nathan is loyal, and he doesn’t like Victor at all. But he’ll do what he’s told.”
“You’re not really people, are you? And that’s not because you’re clones. You’re his pets. No, you’re drones, like worker-bees serving the queen. You think that Cross cares about you, even a little bit? I doubt it. He hasn’t sent a rescue mission to retrieve Roman. The only thing he cares about is himself.”
“Is this really necessary?” Evan Laurie said to Victor. “Your plan failed, Victor. Just… Just quit. Call it a day.” He turned away from the rocket’s controls.
Victor looked up from his workbench. He had the Extractor connected to an oscilloscope and was testing its circuitry. “Could tighten this up a bit… What were you saying?”
“You know what I was saying. You can’t destroy the world just because you don’t get your way. Grow up, for crying out loud!”
Without looking, Victor pointed behind him. “Check the monitors. The kids will be in range soon. Got to tell you, this new guy running things in Sakkara is proving to be quite a challenge. He actually out-smarted me.”
“What do you mean?”
“The attack on my father was a trick. And he knew I’d know that. The real trick was sending Colin.”
“But we captured Colin.”
“Right. And we took away his powers with this little toy and brought him right inside our top-secret base, which is now no longer secret. We did exactly what McKendrick wanted us to do. Like I said. He’s a challenge.”
“You think Colin has some sort of transponder on him? But we searched him.”
“I know… But we didn’t look closely enough. He could have swallowed something. Or… No, that’s it. A GPS strip implanted under his skin. Inside that cut on his head, has to be. They wouldn’t be able to break Colin’s skin themselves. So, yes, Colin’s friends are on the way. Expect a lot of fighting. Our boys will win, of course.” Victor leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “Huh. McKendrick must have also figured that I’d have a way to neutralize Colin’s powers. Clever thinking. Otherwise his plan wouldn’t work. Well… No use crying over spilled milk under the bridge now. They’re coming, and we’ll deal with it. But it does mean we really need to step up the game if we’re going to launch before it’s too late.”
Laurie sighed. “I never understood this. Never. You’re playing with fire and you’re wearing clothes soaked in kerosene, that’s that you’re doing. Colin was right. You’re attempting to trigger Armageddon. What makes you think it’ll work?”
“Because I’m smart enough to make it work.”
Laurie looked out through the control room’s windows, up at the enormous cylindrical rocket. “It’s a one-hundred megaton nuclear missile… Victor, how are we supposed to survive an explosion that’s strong enough to shatter the world’s mantle and trigger a planet-wide tsunami of lava?”
Victor arched an eyebrow and asked, “We?” Then he smiled. “You should know by now to trust me.”
“You’re not going to detonate it, right? You’re going to hold the world to ransom. That’s what I’d do.”
“I know that’s what you’d do. That’s why you’re not in charge. I am going to detonate it. I’m going to punch a hole straight through the Earth’s crust and set the world on fire.”
“Why? Why do you want everyone dead?”
“Because screw them, that’s why.”
“All because your plan failed. You’re sick.” Laurie moved closer to Victor. “No, I can’t let you do it.”
Cross pried a fingernail-sized microchip out of the Extractor’s circuit board. “You can’t stop me. You’re weak, Laurie. You always have been. You have a desperate need to be loved, to be needed, to feel important. That’s why you stuck by me. But the truth is I don’t love you, I certainly never needed you, and you’re important only to the clones. You’re a baby-sitter. That’s all. An au pair with four masters’ degrees that he never uses and an empty heart that will never be filled. You’re here only because I didn’t want to have to change all those dirty diapers.”
Laurie threw himself at Victor, knocking him off his chair, sending him sprawling across the icy floor. “To hell with you, Cross! You… You…”
Victor got to his feet. “The truth hurts, huh? You sad little man. You don’t have the guts to take control of your own life, so you followed me around like a puppy. No, you’re like the sneering little kid who hangs around with the playground bully.”
Laurie picked up the chair, and slammed it down on the computer’s keyboard. Even before the shower of keys had settled, he was swinging the chair at the monitors.
Victor ducked toward the door as shards of plastic and glass flew across the room.
Laurie picked up the nearest computer and heaved it at Victor, who only barely dodged out of its way. “There! What does that do to your plans?”
“Nothing,” Victor said. “Nothing at all. I finished most of my work hours ago. It’s all automated from this point on. That code I was just working on… It’s a program to solve a four-dimensional Rubik’s Cube. An amusement, that’s all. Something to pass the time. Now, are you done with your rant, or is there more?”
Laurie pulled the chair free from the shattered monitors in a shower of sparks. “Your superhuman abilities are all inside your head. You’re no stronger or faster than an ordinary man. What’s to stop me beating you to a pulp right now?”
“What good would it do? When the missile launches, we’re all dead anyway.”
“It’d make me feel a whole lot better!”
“For a while, maybe. Put the chair down, idiot. You’re embarrassing yourself. And also…” Victor reached out and opened the door. “Boys!”
Laurie dropped the chair, backed away further from the door. “You wouldn’t…”
“Sure I would.”
Eldon appeared at the door, followed by Nathan. Both of them had smudges of black paint on their hands.
Victor said, “Kids, uncle Evan is trying to kill Daddy. Now, don’t hurt him. Just hold him so he can’t do any more damage. Nathan, you do it. You’re his favorite.”
Before Laurie could react, Nathan had darted forward and grabbed his arm. Laurie knew there was no point trying to break free—Nathan had a grip stronger than steel.
“Your plan was insane to begin with, Victor. Insane. There’s no other word to describe it.”
Cross picked up the scattered pieces of the Extractor. “Tch. Now I have to start over. The plan will work, Laurie.”
“No, it wouldn’t. You just convinced yourself that it would work because you wanted it so badly. Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.”
“It does when I’m the one who wants it.”
Chapter 26
By carefully arranging the blanket Colin had managed to keep most of it around his body while also getting the lower edge folded into a strip he could sit on.
He still wasn’t sure whether it would be better to be sitting in a corner away from the draft that gusted under the room’s ill-fitting door, or in the center of the room furthest from the ice walls.
The clone had remained standing next to the door for a long time, but was now sittin
g down with his back to the wall.
Colin shuddered constantly and was finding it difficult to breathe. “Zeke. I’m dying here. Get more blankets or bring in a heater or something.”
“No.”
“Victor didn’t order you to let me die.”
“He didn’t order me to let you live, either.”
“Don’t you care?”
Zeke shrugged. “Not really.”
“Victor will care if I die. I’m sure he wants to know more about The Chasm. He’ll punish you if I die without him finding out.” Colin raised his head a little. “How does he punish you, anyway?”
“He tells us that he’s disappointed. It’s part of our programming to feel bad when he does that.”
“What does it feel like?”
“It hurts. Not physically. I can’t describe it. It just makes you feel rotten.”
“That’s called guilt,” Colin said. “Aren’t you curious about me, about my life? Don’t you want to know about the real world, what life is like for ordinary people?”
“We don’t have much curiosity about most things. Victor programmed us with everything we need to know.”
“Everything he wants you to know.” Colin shuddered again and tugged the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders. Wish I still had the power to ignore the cold. I’d forgotten what this felt like. “Hey, Zeke. I have two coins that add up to eleven cents. One of the coins is not a penny. How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never used coins. I don’t know what denominations they come in.”
“Oh. Right. Well, in America they’re one cent, five cents, ten, and twenty-five. The one-cent coin is called a penny. So I’ve got two coins adding up to eleven cents, but one of them isn’t a penny. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“No. It’s a trick.”
“Yeah, but how is it a trick?”
The clone shrugged again. “Don’t know, don’t care.”
There has to be a way out of here, Colin thought. How can I trick someone who doesn’t care about anything and has no sense of curiosity?
Danny heard Stephanie calling his name, and he raised his head. He’d been thinking about the mission ahead, and what failure would mean. None of his thoughts had led him anywhere he wanted to go.
“Danny, it’s time. We’re fifty miles north of Zaliv Kalinina. It’s solid ice down there—we’ll fly you down, and you run.” She handed him his helmet. “Your computer will show the destination projected on the inside of your visor. Just keep the dot in the cross-hairs, and you’ll be on-target.”
He held his breath for a moment. “OK.”
“Right now we don’t know the way in—search around. If you can’t find an easy access point, come back. If you can, search the place top to bottom until you find Mina and Colin. Your helmet’s cameras will be recording everything, but you won’t be able to transmit it back to us until you switch to real-time. As soon as we get it, we’ll come in after you.”
“I’m ready.”
Brawn said, “Good luck, little buddy. We’ll see you in there.”
Kenya nodded to him, and Stephanie slapped him on the shoulder. He looked toward Renata, at the ship’s controls. She looked back for a moment.
She knows, he thought. This isn’t going to work, and she knows it. But we have to do it anyway. We have to try.
He moved toward the hatch, and turned back. “Just one thing. I wish… I wish that we were normal kids, that we didn’t have to do stuff like this. But, uh, I’m very proud to have you as my friends.”
Again, he looked toward the cockpit. Renata looked back.
“Hey?” Danny said.
She replied, “Oh yeah.”
“Cool.” He lowered his helmet into place, and sealed it.
“What was that?” Brawn asked. “Did I miss something?”
Kenya thumped him on the arm and whispered, “You didn’t miss your chance to win the ‘spoiling the moment’ award.”
Stephanie opened the hatch, and the interior of the ship was instantly blasted with icy air.
Danny looked out at the howling, bleak landscape rushing past below. Here goes… He jumped, and for a few horrifying seconds he thought that he was about to die. Then he felt his jetpack burst into life.
He pitched forward, heels over head, until he was upright once more. He found himself being lowered toward the ground, as above him the ChampionShip continued on its way. It was out of sight by the time his boots touched the ice.
OK. OK. He forced himself to slow his breathing. All right. I’m at the north pole. Or close enough. If I see a sleigh and flying reindeer I’m giving up and going home.
He turned slowly from one side to the other, and back, watching the bright dot on the inside of his visor drift left and right. He centered the dot on the cross-hairs, and then slipped into fast-time and began walking.
Stephanie had told him that the ground should be safe, but it wasn’t unknown for packed snow to disguise deep crevasses. “In case that happens,” she’d said, “if your altitude suddenly drops, Razor programmed your jetpack to automatically activate.”
“What if there’s a blizzard?” Danny had asked.
“It’s unlikely. The Arctic is a desert—it gets less than an inch of precipitation each year. The snow that does fall stays on the ground, because there’s not enough sunlight to melt it, and freak winds can whip that up into pretty brutal storms. We should be OK, though. The weather’s pretty good at the moment.”
In the air, the ice had seemed flat and featureless, but he knew now that it was uneven, pitted with car-sized boulders and shot-through with long, parallel furrows that resembled a plowed field. The going was tough, and—to his mind—very slow.
But he was making progress. When he overtook the ChampionShip he looked back to see that the loose snow kicked up by his footsteps still hadn’t settled: it was a thick column stretching back as far as he could see.
He trudged on, step after step, for what to him felt like several days. Often, he had to leap ravines or use the jetpack to lift himself over long, rocky outcrops.
The information projected on the inside of his visor showed him the distance he still had to cover, but Stephanie had told him that it was only an estimate, and could be out by as much as two miles on either side. “If you get close enough, you should be able to see some signs of activity,” She’d told him. “The clones can get out, so there has to be a way in.”
In the New Heroes’ ship, Kenya Cho concentrated on her breathing. Slow deep breaths, in and out, in and out. It was supposed to help her feel calm, but right now all she wanted to do was give up and go home.
I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have joined these people. I barely know them, and now we’re going on a mission that could get us all killed!
She glanced over toward Brawn. The blue giant was reading a paperback book that he cradled in his massive hands like someone holding an injured baby bird.
Renata and Stephanie were concentrating on the mission, quietly discussing tactics.
What do I bring to this? Kenya wondered. I’m not strong compared to Renata, and I don’t have Stephanie’s experience.
In Madagascar, and later in Africa, she had known what her role was in life: to help the helpless, to work to atone for her sins. Since she’d come to America, she had done none of that. She’d slept in a comfortable bed and ate good food, neither of which she felt she deserved.
Brawn looked up from his book and asked, “Quietly panicking?”
Kenya nodded.
“Me too. We all are. We’re flying into the unknown and that’s always scary.”
“I don’t know what use I’m going to be here, Brawn. I’ll just be in the way.”
He closed his book, and leaned back. “None of us are useless. At the very least, we’ll be able to provide some distraction for the others. Even if that only gives them an extra second or two, that could make a big difference.”
“Yeah, but you’re
… Well, you’re Brawn. You’re a legend.”
Brawn smiled. “Hardly. Back before I lost my powers, sure, I was strong. Stronger than Renata is now, probably. But I spent most of my life in hiding, or in prison, when I should have been out in the world, trying to help people. I squandered my gift. Well, now I get to try to make up for that. We’re here because they need us, Kenya. And that’s a good enough reason for me.”
“This man... Victor Cross. What does he want?”
“I don’t know. And to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t know either.”
“We might die today, Brawn.”
“And we might live.” He smiled again. “Does death scare you?”
“I’m not ready. I’ve done a lot of bad things. I’ve killed people—hundreds of people—and I don’t want to die before I can make up for that.”
Brawn put his book aside. “You can’t. You can’t ever make up for killing even one person. Every life you take also hurts everyone that person knows. You understand that, don’t you? There’s nothing you can do to redress the balance.”
“I know that. But I have to keep trying.”
Brawn nodded. “That’s the right approach. What you did was wrong, Kenya, but you had no control over your actions.” He pointed in the direction the ship was flying. “Cross, though, does have control. He chooses to kill. That makes him the bad guy. Trying to make amends for things that weren’t your fault... that’s what makes you a hero.”
“Give up… yet?” Colin asked. He couldn’t understand how his hands and feet were numb and aching at the same time. Earlier, he’d had the blanket pulled over his mouth and nose, and the moisture in his breath had turned to ice and frozen the blanket to his face.
Now, he was desperate to keep warm but unable to do anything but rock back and forth. He knew he had to keep talking: he was sure that if he fell asleep he would never wake up again.
Zeke had successfully proved himself to be the worst conversationalist in the history of the world. No matter what Colin said to him, the clone didn’t seem interested.
The New Heroes: Crossfire Page 21