The screen flickered from one camera to another, until Thalamus said, “I’ve got her!” seconds before Slaughter reached Roz and Hesperus.
“Roz—slow her down. Abby, hit her with everything you’ve got.”
Slaughter’s descent slowed and Hesperus launched herself at her, swinging her sword and ax at the same time. The ax blade slammed into Slaughter’s left forearm as the sword struck the side of her face. As Lance had expected, neither of the blades drew blood—Slaughter’s skin was considerably tougher than steel. But the combined blows were powerful enough to knock the woman straight into Paragon’s path. He aimed his grappling gun at her and fired—the heavy steel hook crashed into the small of Slaughter’s back, and for the first time during the battle, she screamed.
“Her heart’s going crazy, Hunter! She is furious!”
“Good work, Adrianne—you’re beginning to sense her. Forget the heart rate, just concentrate on her emotions. Max, get closer—not too close. Keep scanning her mind.”
Cam said, “They’ve got her on the ropes—they need to hit her until she can’t take any more. And then keep hitting her.”
“Shut up, kid,” Lance said. “She’s not done yet.”
Over the radio, they heard Max yelling, “Paragon, get that cable around her—pin her arms. Thunder, wrap her in a solid shock wave. Hold her steady! We’ve got a minute at best before she recovers.”
Lance said, “Max—what are you doing? We need to get her away from the city!”
“Stand down, Hunter. This is my show now. Thunder, I want to talk to her. Make sure she can hear everything I say.”
“Max, no!” Lance yelled. “This wasn’t the plan!”
“Wasn’t your plan.”
Lance sat back. “This is a mistake.”
“What’s he doing?” Cam asked. “Trying to reason with her never works!”
Max’s voice boomed out through the monitor’s speakers. “Slaughter . . . I know you can hear me. I just hope you’ve retained enough of your senses to take this in. We know everything about you. Suzanne Housten, Nicola Priest, or Jennifer Macht, whatever you want to call yourself . . . Understand this: You are under arrest. You will cease struggling immediately and surrender to our authority.”
“No!” Slaughter screamed. “You’re a dead man, Dalton! You and your friends and your sister! I’m going to tear you apart—and then I’m going after your little brother!”
“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. That’s why we have your partner, Harland Mayfair. And we have his son, Curtis. Right now they’re on the way to a secure location. You hurt any one of us, and you’ll never see them again. You kill one of us, and my people will execute Harland.”
Lance jumped out of his chair. “That lousy . . . ! Should have known he’d try something like this!”
Cam said, “No, Max wouldn’t really do that. Would he?”
Slaughter roared, “You’re bluffing, Dalton!”
“Oh yeah? Unit four, this is Dalton. Put Mayfair on your communicator, and feed the sound through the copter’s speakers. Thunder, make sure she hears this.”
Seconds later, a man’s voice—nervous and trembling—said, “Nicola, please—I don’t know what’s going on, but you have to do what they say. They’ve got Curtis. They . . . They’re holding a gun to his head!”
Lance grabbed the microphone again. “Dalton—you maniac! You’re going too far!”
“Your idea to set a trap for her, Hunter,” Max said. “Slaughter, you have five seconds. That’s more of a warning than you ever gave any of your victims.”
“I’ll kill you for this, Dalton!”
“Unit one . . . Break all the fingers on Mayfair’s left hand.”
Another voice came over radio. “Say again?”
“You heard me. That’s an order, mister!”
Lance said, “Max, no!”
“Do it!” Max roared.
Then Harland Mayfair was screaming, and on-screen the fight drained out of Slaughter.
The ensuing silence was broken by Max: “He has another hand. And the boy has two. Don’t think I won’t do it, Slaughter. You’ve killed over four hundred people. Anything I do to Mayfair or Curtis is just a drop in the ocean compared with that.”
Slaughter allowed herself to be carried down to the ground by Hesperus and Thunder, where she was placed in handcuffs and led into a waiting truck.
Cam asked Lance, “Why didn’t your friends do something to stop that?”
“Max is controlling them,” Lance said, still staring at the screen. “They probably won’t even remember this tomorrow. And neither will we. Max will order us to clear it from the recordings, and then he’ll replace our memories of the event with something that makes him look better.”
“We can make copies of the recordings. Hide them somewhere.”
Thalamus said, “He’ll know we’ve done that. He’ll know where to find them.”
“Then we run,” Adrianne said. “He can keep his million dollars. I don’t want any part of an organization that will threaten a child to get what it wants. We leave here right now, and don’t come back.”
“Tried that before,” Lance said. “It doesn’t work.”
“I’m with Adrianne,” Thalamus said. “Always knew Dalton was a jerk, but this is going too far.”
Cam and Lance turned in their chairs and watched them leave the room.
“Hunter?” Cam said. “We can’t let him get away with something like this.” He jumped to the floor. “Come with us.”
“There’s no point, Cam.”
“You and Thalamus are smarter than he is. And Adrianne will always know if he’s coming for us. We can get away.”
Lance remained seated, staring at the door long after it had closed behind Cam.
Part of him knew that he should be happy that Slaughter had finally been captured, but it felt wrong. You wanted revenge, he told himself. You wanted to hurt her. And now Max has hurt her, in probably the only way possible. You should be pleased with that.
He had always thought of revenge as being nothing more than payback: You hurt me, so I hurt you. That makes us even. But now he knew that revenge had a price of its own.
LANCE MCKENDRICK WAS NINETEEN YEARS and ten days old before he saw Max Dalton again.
In the months since Slaughter’s capture, he had manned the think tank alone and provided successful strategies for eight other missions.
Without Adrianne’s guidance, Thalamus’s intellect, or Cam’s instant recall, he worked mostly on instinct, allowing his conscience to guide him. Though he had worked with Abby, Roz, and Thunder on most of the eight missions, Thunder never showed any further sign that he’d recognized Lance’s voice.
Slaughter was detained in an underground cell with walls constructed of ten-foot-thick reinforced concrete. The cell contained only a thin mattress and a plastic washbasin and toilet—nothing that she could use as a weapon or fashion into an instrument that would enable her to dig her way out.
The cell’s door was a giant rectangular wedge of hardened steel that had beveled edges that only allowed it to open inward, pushed by a massive hydraulic ram from the other side. The door was coated with an almost frictionless carbon film that hampered Slaughter’s constant attempts to get any kind of grip on it.
Lance kept one of the computer monitors permanently switched to the camera hidden in Slaughter’s cell, and he would sometimes spend hours watching her pounding at the walls with her fists. So far, she hadn’t yet made a single dent.
Every day at noon, someone would attempt to speak to Slaughter, but so far, threats had been her only response.
Her boyfriend, Harland Mayfair, and his son, Curtis, had been relocated to Washington State and given new identities. Lance hadn’t been able to find out whether they fully understood the situation with Slaughter.
<
br /> Now, as he returned from another quiet lunch in the base’s dining area, he saw Max in person for the first time since the battle.
Max was striding through the fake mall, accompanied by a man Lance eventually recognized as Oliver French, one of the longest-serving members of Max’s personal security team.
Max and Ollie saw Lance and stopped in the atrium, allowing him to come to them.
Not a trace of regret or remorse in his eyes, Lance thought. He honestly believes it was the right thing to do.
Max said, “She’s the woman who butchered your family, Lance. Don’t forget that.”
“You tortured an innocent man just to force her to comply. How does that make you any better than her?”
“I’ve never claimed to be better than Slaughter. But her goals are selfish, mine are not. That’s the difference you have to keep in mind. I’m willing to get my hands dirty for the greater good.”
“You terrified a child and broke his father’s fingers. How is that for the greater good?”
“She hasn’t killed anyone while she’s been in custody, has she?”
“She’ll get out. If you have any faith in Quantum’s predictions, you know that. She’ll get out and I don’t even want to imagine how she’s going to behave. But we all know that the words sustained rampage and uncontrolled killing spree are going to feature in the reports. And don’t be surprised if Dalton’s head on a spike is in there too. She will kill you for this.”
Max shrugged.
“And you’ll deserve it.”
“Grow up, Lance. If you’re so set against me, why are you still here? Why didn’t you leave with the others?”
“Because I know you. I know that leaving isn’t an option unless you allow it. I’m guessing that by now Cam and Adrianne are back home with no memory of what happened here. Thalamus is wherever he was before you recruited him. You probably didn’t have to tinker much with his mind, because he already shares a lot of your sentiments. I’m sure you’ve been able to persuade him with your ‘greater good’ speech.”
“That’s pretty much how it all happened, yes.” He started moving toward the Strategarium, and Ollie fell into step behind him. “Let’s set our emotions aside for now, Lance. We can resume the fight later.”
Lance followed them into the room, where Ollie stood off to the side while Max sat down at the conference table.
“First off,” Max said, “you’re doing a great job coordinating the missions. You’ve worked out even better than I’d hoped. So I’m upgrading your security clearance. Over the next few weeks you’ll be informed of certain truths . . .” Max paused for a second, then added, “I’m not in a position to tell you any more than that just yet. All I can say is that I’ve got Thalamus working on a piece of hardware that was inspired by something we encountered in Krodin’s alternate reality.”
“A machine that can temporarily nullify a superhuman’s powers,” Lance said. “I know about that.”
Max rolled his eyes. “OK, how could you know? Only eight people in the entire world know about that!”
“I have my own methods of extracting information,” Lance said.
“You persuaded one of the researchers that I said it was OK to tell you everything, and they believed you.” He sighed. “Of course they did. That’s your gift. I keep underestimating you, don’t I? It might be easier in the long run just to have you killed.”
“Ah, your ‘one solution for every problem’ approach. If things don’t go your way, you keep hurting people until they do.” Lance pulled out a chair and sat down. “Max, has it ever occurred to you that you might be the bad guy? Look at everything you’ve done from an outsider’s viewpoint. You’re checking pretty much all the boxes on the supervillain checklist. Including the one where you believe you’re one of the good guys.”
“Are there fewer people dead because of my actions, yes or no?”
“So far, yes.”
“Then I’m a good guy.”
“From your perspective. But is the world as a whole going to be a better place because you’re here? I’ve looked into the companies you own. I’ve found evidence of considerably more greed than good.”
“And that’s also a matter of opinion. You’ll see. In the end—”
“Max, no. Don’t lower yourself even further. You’re a child with a gun when no one else has one. You understand? You think you’re untouchable, and that makes you arrogant. Saying that the end justifies the means, or that we all have to look at the bigger picture, is a cop-out. If you could save the whole human race and all it would take is the sacrifice of one innocent person, you’d believe that sacrifice is worth it. But that’s wrong. And it’s narrow-minded.”
Max stiffened. “Narrow-minded. Me. That’s what you believe?”
“Yes. I doubt you’ve ever once taken the time to examine your actions and your motives and wonder whether you’re right. That’s pretty much the definition of a narrow mind. And you, of all people, should know that: You can read other people’s thoughts. A narrow mind sees only one path to the goal ahead. Broad-minded people are capable of wondering whether they’re doing the right thing, by seeing themselves from other viewpoints. And if they realize that they are wrong, they change. Have you ever done that?”
“Of course I have.”
“I don’t mean like that time in Krodin’s reality when you sided with him and almost got Brawn and James killed by a firing squad. You were acting out of fear. Once again, you were putting yourself first. That wasn’t an example of you changing your nature. That was you living up to it.”
“Then consider this,” Max said. “Right from the start, you’ve held this same opinion about me. If you’re not narrow-minded, why haven’t you reevaluated that opinion?”
“I have. Many times. And each time I do, you do something that proves I was right in the first place. No matter how you try to spin it, Max, you ordered your men to break Harland Mayfair’s fingers.”
“To force Slaughter to stand down.”
“You broke an innocent man’s fingers.”
“How many times do I have to— It was necessary!”
“You could have faked it. Slaughter couldn’t see Mayfair. You could have ordered Thunder to fake the sound of his screams. Even that would have been on shaky moral ground, but at least Mayfair wouldn’t have had to suffer for it.”
Max stood up. “I’m done talking to you.” He stalked away.
Lance called after him, “You’re done listening, because you’re scared that I’m right.”
Max stopped.
“What now?” Lance asked. “Going to zap me with your powers and make me forget what you’ve done? Then go ahead. Take the easy path, like you always do. Changing my opinion won’t make what I’ve said any less true. You can wipe other people’s memories, Max, but not your own.”
For a moment, Max remained where he stood, facing the door. Then, without another look back at Lance, he walked out, followed by Ollie.
“Looks like I won that one,” Lance muttered to himself. “Yay for me.”
EIGHT MONTHS AFTER HER CAPTURE, Slaughter escaped.
On the monitors in the Strategarium, Lance watched it happen, unable to do anything to stop her.
It had taken only seconds. One wall of her cell simply crumbled away as though it were made of loose soil and not reinforced concrete. A tunnel appeared where the wall had been, and she ran.
Within minutes, Max was on the phone to Lance. “It was Terrain,” Max said. “He can exert telekinetic control over any kind of inert matter. We always knew he could do that. What we don’t know is how he found her.”
“Or why he was looking for her. I need a list of all the people who knew the cell’s location,” Lance said. “Everything you have on them.”
“That’s already on the way to you. But first we have to track her d
own again. Send me her ten most likely destinations.”
“Max, that’s going to take some time.”
“You’ll have help.”
Two hours later Cameron Sharkey was escorted into the building.
“This is weird,” Cam said. “These guys showed up at my house and said a code word or something to me, and all of a sudden I remembered everything that happened here! It was like . . . I don’t know, just weird. I’m not used to forgetting things. Is that what it’s like for everyone else?”
“Not really,” Lance said. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Yeah, I guess. Max is going to make my folks think I’m at camp, and that it’s been planned for ages.” He looked around the Strategarium. “This is like I’m remembering a really vivid dream or something.”
“You’re going to have to ignore that feeling, Cam. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Four hours after that, the door was pushed open and Thalamus called out, “I really don’t like being a pawn in someone else’s game!”
Lance said, “When you’re playing with Max Dalton, you can’t win, you can’t quit, you can’t break even.” He nodded toward the computers. “Welcome back. Let’s get to work.”
“There’s just the three of us here?” Thamalus asked, watching the guards leave.
“Yep. The more people there are, the more work Max has to do reading their minds and wiping their memories. So there’s just us. No guards, no other projects going on, no maintenance people unless they’re absolutely necessary.”
Cam rolled his eyes. “What, so we have to make our own beds and cook our own meals?”
“Sounds like someone’s lived a pampered life,” Thalamus said. “Your mom butter your toast for you too?”
Lance said, “Guys . . . Sooner we get this done, the sooner you can leave. Thalamus, I need you to analyze the data from the prison. Cam’s been collating the media reports on Terrain’s movements. If we can’t find Slaughter, maybe we can find him.”
It took them almost a day to reach their conclusions, and another day for Max’s people to discover that neither Slaughter nor Terrain were in any of the destinations deemed to be most probable.
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