“Lance, what is the right way to save the world, in your opinion?”
“I wish I knew that. But I do know it doesn’t involve getting your way by lying to everyone or terrorizing them.” They reached the corner of Fifth Avenue and East Thirty-Ninth Street, and Lance stopped. “Roz, what do you plan to do with your life now?”
“Now I can finally have a life. I never understood just how much Max was manipulating me until our powers were stripped. It feels strange to have my own opinions instead of his. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. Max wants me to work for him.”
“Let me make you a counteroffer.”
“To join Deliverance? No. I’ve had my fill of superhumans, even if they no longer have any powers.”
“That’s not what I mean, Roz. I’ve just quit Deliverance. That’s why I’m here. I haven’t actually worked with them for a long time, and I don’t even keep track anymore. Cam’s more than capable of running the organization without me. He’s better at it than I was. No, I was thinking of something else. I’ve got another company. There’s only a few of us, but we do good work helping the victims of superhuman squabbles. I want to expand that, focus on a lot of other areas. We need people like you, people who can get things done and who actually care about ordinary people.” He turned in a slow circle, looking at the citizens of Manhattan as they flowed around him. “See, what Max and Ragnarök really couldn’t understand is that this isn’t our world. It’s theirs. Humans. Not superhumans, or proto-superhumans like me and Cord and Cam. Ordinary people. We shouldn’t set ourselves above them. I don’t know why we exist at all, but I’m certain that we’re not here to rule them. . . .”
Roz said, “We’re here to guide them. That’s what Abby said to Krodin.”
Lance smiled. “She was right. We’re their servants, not their leaders. And that’s still true, even though there’s no one left with superhuman abilities.”
“I appreciate the offer, Lance, but I don’t think I’m up for that. I need to take some time to find myself.”
“Don’t mean to be patronizing, Roz, but you have no idea about the real world. You’ve been privileged all your life. You don’t understand what it’s like for ordinary people.”
“That’s what you think? Let me show you something.” Roz opened her bag and took out a small wallet, then handed it to Lance. “Open it.” Inside the wallet was a photo of a smiling eight-year-old girl. “That’s Victoria.”
“Who is she?”
“I met her in the alternate reality that was created when Krodin went back in time and changed the past. Her family had taken refuge in the subways, but they’d died and she had to survive on her own. When I was lost down there, Victoria found me, and led me to safety. She was sick, suffering from severe malnutrition, but I didn’t know that. I couldn’t have known. I thought she was just tired.” Roz stared at the photo. “She died in my arms, Lance. I carried her for miles underground, in the dark, and when we were finally rescued, they told me she’d died just a few minutes earlier.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“But this Victoria, her counterpart in this reality, is still alive. When we came back, I sought her out. It took me nearly a year to find her, because I didn’t know her last name. Her family was very poor, living in a tenement slum. On the edge of starvation. I did what I could to help without them realizing. I found them an apartment in a nicer area, got her father a job in one of Max’s companies. Things got better for them. Victoria’s just turned twenty-one. She has an apartment of her own and a steady boyfriend. So don’t tell me that I don’t know what it’s like for ordinary people! I know how hard it is!”
“All right,” Lance said. “You did a good thing, and you should be genuinely proud of that.”
“Pride has nothing to do with it. It was the right thing to do.”
“It was, it truly was. And tell me . . . the other families living in that tenement building? How have you made a difference in their lives?”
Roz stared at him for a moment. “Don’t judge me, Lance McKendrick! You don’t know what it’s been like for me. You can’t understand that because you’ve never suffered. You haven’t had your memories erased day after day, to the point where you don’t know what’s real anymore. You haven’t had to rush into danger knowing that at any second some supervillain could tear your head from your shoulders, or punch their fist through your heart! I have put my life on the line a hundred times. I have made a difference!”
“I know you have, and I wouldn’t take that away from you. But we don’t get to stop. We don’t get to say, ‘Well, I’ve done my share of helping other people. I’ve done enough.’ Because it’s never enough. Sure, you’ve had bad times, but you’ve never been forced to drink cholera-infested water because there hasn’t been rain in eight months and the only source of clean water is a well ten miles away across a field of land mines. You’ve never been a parent watching helplessly as your nine-year-old son is carried away at gunpoint by a militia group who are going to brainwash him into joining their cause.”
“Well, neither have you!”
“I know. But Max once said to me, ‘Those who do well must also do good.’ I don’t agree with a lot of the things he said or did, but he was right about that. Do we now just sit back and moan about how bad life treated us? Or do we get up off our contented butts and help others?”
“Lance, some people don’t deserve to be helped. You know that.”
“So we help those who do deserve it. People who never had a chance, or who didn’t have the strength or the means to stand up to their oppressors. Because when you get right down to the basics, people like you and me are no more special than anyone else on the planet. We’re just luckier, that’s all. Max said that the age of the superhuman is over, and he might be right, but it’s like Cord always says: It’s not the super part that’s important. It’s the human part.”
“We can’t solve all the problems of the world.”
“I believe we have an obligation to try. We probably won’t succeed. Sometimes people are greedy or evil or just plain stupid. Sometimes bad things just happen. But we have to bear in mind that sometimes people are kind, and smart, and generous. And sometimes good things happen. It’s our job to see that on the whole there’s more good in the world than bad.”
“All right.”
“All right what?”
“You’ve talked me into it, Lance. I’m in.” Roz grinned. “You always were good at persuading people. Come on, I’m still hungry. Let’s eat. And we can start to plan.”
“Great—I love plans!”
They resumed walking, side by side, along Fifth Avenue.
“Lance?” Roz asked.
“Yes, Roz?”
“Ragnarök’s machine . . . It stripped us of the energy that gives us our powers.”
“Right. What about it?”
“I’ve been wondering about that. That energy, whatever it is and wherever it comes from, well, it only ever affected certain people, right? And it only kicked in when we reached puberty. But what about all the kids who are the right kind of person to become superhuman, but they just haven’t hit puberty yet? Will they get powers too?”
Lance shrugged. “There’s no way to be sure. The only one of us who can see the future is Quantum, and he’s not exactly firing on all cylinders. He seems a little more stable now that the powers are gone, but . . . he seems different too. I’m not even sure what I mean by that.”
“We’re all different now,” Roz said. “I’ve been so used to using my telekinesis that I keep forgetting that if I want something, I have to actually go and get it, rather than make it come to me. And I know Josh is having the same trouble. And as for Max . . . Lance, he’d be mad if he knew I told you this, but after it happened, after Casey’s machine stripped our powers, Max was looking around at everyone like he didn’t know them anymore. H
e puts on a brave face, but he is lost without his powers. He used to be able to just glance at someone and instantly know how to deal with them, but that’s gone now. And the thing that scares him most is you. . . . He knows you’re smarter than he is, and the only advantage he had over you was that he could read your mind and alter your memories. Now he lost all of that, and you haven’t lost anything. He’s terrified.”
“He’s human,” Lance said. “And it’s about time he understood what being human really means.”
Dear Lance (or Hunter, if you prefer!),
My last days are approaching and I know I will never see you again. But don’t mourn for me. I really would not like that!
I also know that you will come back one day, so I’m leaving this letter with Morty for safekeeping. I just hope that you return before he passes. He is a good man and it saddens me that he will die alone.
I have not slept well these past few nights, and when I do sleep, I dream. They are not good dreams, Lance. They are dreams of fire and death and ice. There is a darkness approaching, an overwhelming darkness. A chasm that threatens to engulf the world.
But in the darkness there is light. There is hope.
I see a hillside in silhouette against a storm, and on that hillside I see you, among a small number of others, and you are standing strong, and resolute, facing the coming turmoil.
Be strong, Lance McKendrick. Believe in yourself.
Stand with your young friends, Lance. You must train them, guide them, and lead them with a courage and determination far beyond anything you have ever experienced.
I cannot say whether success is to be yours. I pray that it is, but I fear that prayers alone will not be enough.
My hands are shaking now—this frail body grows weaker by the hour—but there is one more thing I must tell you.
You must find your friend Josie, the sweet girl whom circumstances forced you to leave behind. Find her and protect her, because on that hillside, standing alongside you, is the boy Josie bore.
He will be headstrong, and wise, and cunning, and courageous.
And he is your son.
With much love, and hope,
Your friend,
Mary-May
Hunter (9780698158504) Page 28