by Matt Blake
For the first time since meeting her, I saw the woman’s face soften. A smile stretched across her cheeks. “You really want to test how full of excrement I am? You really want to believe that I’m being anything other than reasonable right now? Is that a game you want to play?”
I looked around at the crowd holding their rifles.
“Some of them have bullets, sure. Others have anti-energy pulses. Enough to take you down. And when they do, we’ll take you in as our prisoner and we’ll finish you.”
“I’m not worried about that in the slightest.”
“You should be,” the woman said, the sound of the helicopter getting nearer. “I mean, I think you’ll maybe dodge one or two anti-energy surges, sure. But thirty? Forty? Is that a chance you really want to take? A risk you seriously want to make?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat and I looked around at all the flashlights.
“I think so,” I said.
I tossed the Failsafe up into the air.
I saw everyone’s eyes rise up into the sky, watching it as it floated above.
And then I clapped my hands and I smashed every single flashlight pointing at me.
I bounced around each and every one of the gunmen as quickly as I could. I patted them all on the back in the space of seconds, sending all of them through wormholes, taking some of their guns away and throwing them off into the distance.
I kept on going and going, the Failsafe still dangling in the air, the woman’s eyes still transfixed on it.
And then I shot over to it and grabbed it from the air.
Something happened, then. Something I wasn’t expecting.
I felt something smack into my side and knock me back to the ground. Hard.
It took me a few seconds to recover my composure. To tune into my surroundings.
When I looked, I saw the Failsafe a few meters away from my position.
I crawled to it, eager to get my hands on it before the group from the compound could—
A heavy smack made the ground shake.
I felt dust in my eyes and became aware that a helicopter was flying just above.
And someone had just jumped out of it.
Someone dressed all in black. Ridiculously well built. His face covered with a black hood.
He was standing opposite me.
He didn’t look like the media.
I had no doubt that this guy was an ULTRA.
And he was looking at the Failsafe with fascination.
With serious fascination.
14
I looked at the ULTRA standing opposite me and I had no doubt that this guy was one mean bastard.
The darkness was faintly illuminated by the light from inside the helicopter. My night vision was working faintly, too. As I lay belly-flat on the ground, the Failsafe between me and this… whoever it was, I felt for the first time like I was really up against it. I’d had a confidence about taking the Failsafe from the militia. A confidence that I was stronger than them, right from the moment I’d got here.
But this guy. Tall. Bulky. Covered in black armor and a black hood. Yeah, he was made of steel; hopefully, not literally. And if I’d learned anything in my time as an ULTRA, it was that a fight against one single ULTRA was way more draining than a battle with a thousand men.
The ULTRA stayed still for a few seconds. I heard the helicopter rotors slowing down. Beside me, I saw shuffling that caught my eye. When I looked, I realized it was the woman who’d led the militia. She was lying face flat on the ground, clearly struggling. Her head was bleeding. Something had happened when this ULTRA arrived. Some kind of shockwave when he’d jumped down from the helicopter and landed on the earth.
And now he was walking to the Failsafe.
I brushed myself down and stood up. “That’s not yours.”
The ULTRA stopped. There was a silence to him. A silent confidence, like he was saying so much in his looks and actions without actually saying anything at all. For a moment, I wondered if he could talk. I saw there were people behind him. People, not ULTRAs, by the looks of things, sitting in that helicopter with him.
I wondered if they spoke for him.
But then he opened his mouth.
“It is mine.”
Then he carried on walking toward the Failsafe.
His voice was strong and booming. It made me feel even more intimidated, as much as I knew I really shouldn’t judge a dog by its bark, so to speak. I cleared my throat in an attempt to sound more masculine too. “It belongs to someone else. It definitely doesn’t belong to an ULTRA.”
“Then why are you so keen to get your hands on it?”
I couldn’t answer that question. I realized what this looked like. How was I so different to any other ULTRA? What made me so special and privileged that I thought I could go telling other ULTRAs that they couldn’t have something because they were ULTRAs, when I was an ULTRA myself and clearly wanted it desperately?
“Just back off,” the voice said. “Nobody needs to get hurt here.”
I thought about backing off. I seriously did. I know, I know. Wuss. Wimp. Etcetera. But there was another logical reason why I was thinking about backing off. If this ULTRA got their hands on this Failsafe, then they surely weren’t just going to use it to destroy ULTRAkind, because that’d mean destroying themselves in the process, right?
I took a deep breath, a bitter taste on my lips, as I watched the ULTRA step closer to the Failsafe.
“You can take it,” I said.
The ULTRA stopped. He looked puzzled by my words. Like he was expecting a fight.
“You can take it. But you can’t use it. You won’t use it. And if you even come close to using it, I’ll—”
“You won’t take it!”
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. A woman’s voice, high-pitched.
I recognized it as the woman who had led the militia.
Only I didn’t have much time to think about that.
A blast of anti-energy surged from a rifle she’d grabbed from one of her fallen comrades and flew at the ULTRA.
I saw an opportunity opening up. An opportunity to lunge for the Failsafe while the ULTRA was otherwise occupied. I focused on it, tensed my eyes together, reached out for it with that invisible telekinetic arm I had.
It rolled toward me.
Rolled closer toward me.
And…
I was distracted by what I saw next.
The anti-energy blast hit the ULTRA.
But nothing happened.
It bounced off him. Bounced off him like it was nothing more than water.
He was tough. There was no doubt about that.
Hopefully just not too tough.
“You made a mistake, Moira,” the ULTRA said, addressing the woman like he knew her. “A very grave mistake.”
She looked at me. “Please. Don’t let Catalyst take it. You don’t know what you’re—”
“And now you’re going to pay for that mistake.”
I saw the anti-energy rise from nothingness to the ULTRA called Catalyst’s side.
I saw them sharpen like knives, hovering in the air.
All pointing at Moira.
And then I saw Catalyst fire them at Moira as she lay there on the ground.
I looked away. I couldn’t watch what happened next.
But needless to say, seconds later, the militia leader called Moira wasn’t with us anymore.
And a part of me couldn’t help wondering if perhaps she was the lesser of two evils after all.
I refocused my attention on grabbing the Failsafe. But when I pulled it now, I saw Catalyst lifting a few more of those anti-energy shards with his mind and grabbing onto the Failsafe too, clearly boasting a strong form of telekinesis.
“Whoever you are, you’ve got nerve. But you’re involving yourself in something way, way bigger than you and I. Something that you should allow. Because trust me, brother. You will reap the rewards.”
I was surpris
ed then that Catalyst didn’t know who I was. He didn’t recognize me. I longed to look into his eyes, wherever they were, hiding underneath that black hood.
But if he didn’t know who I was, that meant I had something to my advantage.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” I said.
I opened up a wormhole right between Catalyst and the Failsafe, which was rolling toward him.
“It’s you that this is too big for. See you later, tough guy.”
I wrapped the wormhole around the Failsafe.
Then I lunged upwards into a wormhole of my own.
I saw the anti-energy charges fly at me. I saw them inches from me. I felt their burning force singeing at my ankles.
And then I disappeared, away from the Outback, away from the compound, away from Catalyst.
When I re-appeared in Indonesia, the Failsafe was with me.
I knew what I had to do.
15
Catalyst knew the ULTRA who had stood against him was gone.
He couldn’t see him. Not properly. Not with vision, anyway. He was blind. A horrible condition to be cursed with. The world was a beautiful place, supposedly. So everyone told him.
But it didn’t seem like the world was such a beautiful place. Not with all the chaos. Not with all the conflict. Not with all the hunger and all the famine.
Catalyst longed for a better world. A world with order. A world where the real beauty that people told him existed behind all the ugliness returned.
The Failsafe was a big part of that plan.
He walked slowly away from the helicopter and to the spot where the ULTRA had disappeared. He knew the exact spot. He could smell the perspiration in the air. He could feel the slight warmth to the ground where someone previously stood. They say going blind heightens your senses. Well, imagine knowing nothing but blindness. You are missing a sense. Therefore you are born with heightened senses.
And they only heighten the longer you survive.
Catalyst crouched down and felt the dirt between his fingers. He felt anger building up inside. He’d misjudged his enemy. He’d expected him to back down. Should he have told him more about his plans for a beautiful future? Should his method of getting the Failsafe have been different? He wasn’t sure. But he knew one thing for certain, now. He wasn’t going to go easy on whoever had taken the Failsafe away from him.
“He just disappeared, man,” a voice behind Catalyst said. Catalyst recognized it as the voice of the helicopter co-pilot. As soon as he’d got wind of the Failsafe’s location, he’d paid off a couple of people to fly him into this compound, masquerading as the media. Poor Moira had slipped up there, bless her. It was a shame what he’d had to do to her. But she’d stood against him, and people who stood against him had to pay the price.
“We tried to stop him. Tried to help you. But—”
“Silence,” Catalyst said.
And then it did go silent.
Both of them went silent. Completely silent.
He waited for the heavy thud of their bodies against the ground. He had, of course, caused a major bleed on the brain of each of them. It wouldn’t be painful. They wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d just be like they were falling into a long, sudden sleep.
Life was over for them, but they’d served him well in the final moments of their lives.
Well. Apart from allowing the Failsafe to slip out of his reach. Apart from failing to truly support and fight with Catalyst.
And for that, they’d had to die.
Although Catalyst was pretty certain they’d have died regardless of how this played out.
Catalyst lifted the earth to his lips. He tasted it. There was lycra there. Some kind of costume that his foe had been wearing. He would remember this taste, and he would remember the voice of the ULTRA who’d stood against him. He sounded young. Late teens. His voice didn’t reverberate loud enough to suggest he was bulky. In fact, from all the signs the other senses had created, Catalyst could see a pretty clear picture of the man who’d stood against him and taken the Failsafe away from him.
Lanky. Tall. Slim.
He’d bear that in mind.
He remembered how he used to be a similar build when he was just a young kid, before he’d been kidnapped, tested on. He remembered the rapid muscle growth that followed. And the bigger his muscles grew, the more he became aware that his mind was strengthening, too.
He was nineteen when he killed his first man with his mind and realized he was special. Not just physically super-strong. But mentally tough, too.
He was telekinetic. He could make the ground ripple with a punch.
He was strong.
And the last eight years had been an exercise in getting stronger and stronger, waiting for an opportunity to rise where he could truly stand against those who had made his life hell.
Where he could finally be the powerful man he’d always craved.
And where he could get his revenge on those who had made his life a misery.
He heard a cough.
The cough snapped him out of his trance. His head immediately shot in the direction of the cough.
It was Moira. No doubt about it.
Moira was still alive.
Catalyst stood. He walked toward Moira slowly, making his bone-fracturing footsteps heavier and heavier.
He crouched beside her. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she wasn’t in a good way. He could smell the blood in the air, taste the charred flesh. He could hear her heartbeat pounding and pounding. He knew she didn’t have long left.
“All this time searching for the Failsafe, our little rivalry blooming, and this is what it comes to.”
“He’s—he’s—”
“Hush now, Moira. I enjoyed our rivalry, in truth. But now it’s time for you to sleep.”
“You’ll never win. You’ll never…”
Catalyst held his breath and tensed every muscle in his body.
Moira coughed a little more.
Then she went quiet.
Catalyst crouched there in the silence. He took deep breaths of the cool desert air. Soon, the sun would rise. The morning would arrive with searing heat. And when it did, this place would be nothing but a lost compound in the middle of the Outback. A ghost town.
Catalyst stood up. He looked into the sky.
He would find whoever had the Failsafe.
He would take back what was rightfully his.
And when he did, he would destroy the ULTRA who’d stood against him.
And every single person who was important to him.
He closed his eyes again, crouched down, and jumped into the sky.
One rival might have died down there on the dirt.
But now he had a new rival.
And he wasn’t letting that rival slip out of his grasp.
16
I shot through the sky above the Pacific Ocean, the Failsafe tightly gripped between my fingers.
It was getting darker the further I traveled, as I moved away from the rising sun in one part of the world and into the deeper night of the rest of the world. At least I wasn’t as cool, now. Honestly, if you’re wondering why I’m flying and not just teleporting, you’re making a valid point. The problem was with Michael Williamson. He’d told me that he didn’t want to tell me where his hideout was, because giving up that kind of information was potentially dangerous for everybody. When I asked him why it was dangerous, he gave me some vague answer about needing to keep his very existence a secret. I asked him how he could so easily trust me, and he told me he just knew from the look in an ULTRA’s eye when he had to worry about them. He hadn’t seen anything in me to worry about yet.
But as soon as he did, he wouldn’t hesitate to cut me loose.
A nice thing to tell someone you’re trying to encourage to save the ULTRA species for you.
Anyway, Michael said he’d find me as soon as I had the Failsafe. Again, I wasn’t sure how. But I just had to trust him.
A niggling voi
ce in the back of my mind told me things weren’t going to be all that straightforward.
But I ignored it and kept on moving, hoping Michael would find me sooner rather than later. I wasn’t all that keen on playing the role of sitting duck. Not one bit.
I looked down as I flew through the sky. The Failsafe was so small. It was impossible to believe that something so small could be capable of so much destruction. But I’d seen the conflict it was causing already. I’d seen the showdowns between enemies, all after the same thing, and I knew I was just another fighter in that war.
I didn’t understand the true ramifications of what I was doing. I didn’t even totally understand why Michael Williamson was so sure that he alone could protect something so important.
All I knew was that he seemed like the lesser of several evils.
Definitely less evil than Moira.
And certainly less evil than that big ULTRA, Catalyst.
I remembered the way he’d addressed me. He didn’t know who I was. And I had to admit, that gave me a weird kind of hope. Perhaps there were others out there that didn’t know who I was. And now the militia had been dealt with, I was growing more confident about my ability to just sink back into the shadows once all this Failsafe business was dealt with.
I had another thought, too. Another dark thought.
What if I activated the Failsafe?
Or what if I kept it for myself? Used it to establish my power over everyone else?
It’d certainly bring order. It’d firmly establish me as a leader again. Hey, maybe it’d even stop people and UTLRAs from bothering me.
A dark thought, sure. Because activating it meant killing myself and the rest of the ULTRAs on this planet, including my sister.
But that’d also mean no more worries.
No more responsibilities…
No. I was being stupid. Sinister, even. I wasn’t willing to put the people I loved at risk. Especially when Damon might still have a trace of ULTRA in him. In fact, what was it that Michael Williamson alluded to with Damon? That ULTRAs never really lost their abilities? Could that mean Damon still had powers?
Nah. Not possible. If he did, there’s no way he’d be keeping them under wraps. I’d known Damon many years, and that much was true.